Islāmic aesthetic is an outcome of Islāmic civilisation based on Islāmic metaphysics and theology and emphasizes that God is the origin or source of all art and thought, including various art forms. Thus, the essences or forms of all things have their reality in the Divine Wisdom or Intellect (Al-‘Aql-i-Awwal). Islāmic conception of art and beauty has its origin in Islāmic Weltanschauung, so, each object of beauty in nature reflects the Creative and Aesthetic aspect of Jamīl Allāh with His Jamāl. (...) Generally, in Muslim world, art and beauty are almost neglected ones, so, they are not given significant and sufficient importance because of some unauthentic and false notions and consequently, we have almost lost this pristine Islāmic heritage and now we must revisit it and realise its vital function and role in our socio-political and ethico-spiritual life. Islāmic aesthetics has a significant role in the cultural tradition of Islāmic Ummah, so it must be revitalised for a peaceful life’s onward caravan. In the present paper, an effort has been made to discuss the etymological meaning of ‘aesthetics’ in general and the main features of Islāmic conception of aesthetics, including art and beauty, in particular, along with various Islāmic art-forms. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#69-70; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2021 P 119-144. (shrink)

God has created all living and non-living things with a distinctive purpose. As the Sustainer of all, He has also arranged for each living organism a desirable environment that provides sustainable items. So, each life requires a sound environment for sustainability. Ecological studies help us understand organisms’ relationship to the environment around them. As God’s highest creation, humans have a close relationship with Nature to maintain and sustain their lives in vibrant caravans. The philosophical interpretations do accept the intimate relationship (...) between humanity and Nature. However, our lifestyle is based on the rich consumption of resources, the development of new technologies and sciences for processing natural resources, burning fossil fuels, and discharging harmful radiation, which has alienated Nature from humanity. We can also point out other causes responsible for a radical break between human society and Nature. The Qur’ān and the Sunnah of the Prophet of Islām are the primary sources of all arts and thoughts. They may lead us to develop an Islāmic perspective on ecological crises and help us solve them. It is attempted here to understand some of the vital environmental phenomena in the light of these sources of Islām. There is intrinsic goodness, beauty, harmony and orderliness in the creation of God; everything in it, the sky and earth, including the sun, moon, stars, water, air, land and a thousand other things have been created for the benefit of man. The Creator created the universe with a Divine trust, which he had accepted and blessed to live in. He thanks God for all bestowed gifts practical in his entire gamut of human emotional life. From the Islāmic perspective, environmental ethics has become intrinsically relevant to dealing with all issues related to ecological crises. In the present paper, we are attempting to briefly discuss the Islāmic perspective on environmental ethics with particular reference to the Qur’ān and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad. It is assumed that the Islāmic framework on the said topic can also pave the way to bring out its relevance and application in crucial times. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#73-74; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2023 P 1-20. (shrink)

A journalist and a political philosopher of international repute, Walter Lippman was the author of more than twenty books, scores of essays, and countless newspaper editorials, articles, and columns. This book attempts to discover and state Lippmann's philosophy of international politics as it developed over the years 1913 to 1963.

The twenty-first century has seen an increase in ethical misconduct at the workplace, highlighting the need to stimulate discussion on the role of work ethics. The objective of the current study is to extend the literature on work ethics by examining the role of Islamic work ethic in enhancing the task performance of employees. The current study proposes that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. It is also proposed that ethical leadership might act as (...) a boundary condition that boosts the positive relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. Data were collected in three-time lags from employees working in the service sector of Pakistan through the questionnaire. The results supported the mediation and moderation hypothesis, confirming that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. Ethical leadership moderates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. The results offer implications for theory and practice. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed. (shrink)

The paper proposes a research model explaining the sequential mediation effect of job embeddedness and work engagement between ethical leadership and career satisfaction. The model also examines whether JE heightens WENG, a factor indirectly influenced by ethical practices ending in employee satisfaction. The study used a time-lagged data collection procedure and survey responses of 247 hotel workers in China. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results showed that EL directly and indirectly contributes to employee CS. The present empirical (...) framework extends the hospitality industry literature by explaining the precise mechanism through which EL generates CS among hospitality workers in China. The paper offers theoretical and practical implications and future research directions. (shrink)

Health care ethics is a sensitive domain, which if ignored, can lead to patient dissatisfaction, weakened doctor–patient interaction and episodes of violence. Little importance has been paid to medical ethics within undergraduate medical education in developing countries such as Pakistan. Three doctors in Pakistan are currently facing an official police complaint and arrest charges, following the death of a sanitary worker, who fell unconscious while cleaning a drain and was allegedly refused treatment as he was covered in sewage filth. The (...) medical license of the doctors in question should be cancelled, if found guilty following a thorough investigation into the case. The ‘right to life’ has been universally assured by all moral, cultural and legal codes and no society can ever argue against the sacredness of a human life. It is quite clear that the aforesaid doctors’ actions are not only against the core principles of the physicians’ code, but also go against the doctrine of human rights. If serious efforts on an urgent basis are not made by the regulatory and governing bodies, one can definitely expect similar incidents for at least a few more decades before any noticeable change is seen. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism has been dramatically increasing in recent decades, but in service sector, fewer research has been conducted especially in the fast-food industry. In this paper, we determined empirically the consumer perceived ethicality effects on repurchase intentions as well as on word of mouth through brand image partial mediation and customer expertise moderation in fast-food sector. The data were collected from 307 consumers of the fast-food restaurants through self-administered questionnaires. Common method variance and social desirability bias were measured before testing (...) hypotheses, and the data were investigated by SPSS and AMOS 21st version. The empirical results demonstrated that consumer perceived ethicality effects on repurchase intentions directly and through brand image partial mediation indirectly. Moreover, the direct and positive effects of repurchase intentions on word of mouth were experienced. This study generalized the results of previous studies of consumer perceived ethicality conducted in western culture in Pakistani fast-food sector. This study also proposed that firms should tackle ethical concerns at corporate and operational strategy levels to improve consumers’ behavioral intentions. (shrink)

Amidst growing calls for environmentally sustainable practices, this study delves into the nuanced relationship between CEO trustworthiness, managerial ability, and green innovation. Departing from surface-level examinations, we propose that managerial ability serves as the link between CEO trustworthiness and green innovation initiatives. Moreover, we contend that the influence of CEO trustworthiness on managerial ability is accentuated under specific contextual conditions including higher social capital, crisis situations, and state-owned firms. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of Chinese firms over 12 years, this (...) study provides robust support for these propositions. Our findings not only offer insights into the essential traits that CEOs should possess to foster competitiveness but also shed light on their role in driving sustainable innovation. By illuminating the intricate dynamics between CEO trustworthiness, managerial ability, and green innovation, our research contributes significantly to the literature offering novel perspectives and enriching the understanding of sustainable development strategies in organizational contexts. (shrink)

The approach of the complex network has well described seismic complex systems. In this paper, this is the first time three classical network construction methods for seismicity are compared. By using the same dataset from the Southern California Seismic Network, three networks are constructed. They all present the scale-free, small-world properties, a strength-degree correlation, and an assortative mixing feature. However, they show some differences in the hierarchical clustering feature. On observing the evolution results, three measures show a similar correlation with (...) seismicity dynamics, but one measure shows a different result. These results show that different network construction methods will present some similarities and differences in network properties. This situation needs to be considered, especially when discussing a predictive indicator of seismicity. (shrink)

Generative AI models are shaping our future. In this work, we discover and expose the bias against physically challenged people in generative models. Generative models (Stable Diffusion XL and DALL·E 3) are unable to generate content related to the physically challenged, e.g., inclusive washroom, even with very detailed prompts. Our analysis reveals that this disability bias emanates from biased AI datasets. We achieve this using a novel strategy to automatically discover bias against underrepresented groups like the physically challenged. Finally, we (...) track the root of this disability bias in search engines (Google, Bing, Yandex, and DuckDuckGo). Search engines suffer from disability bias for neutral prompts. The standard strategy of using synonyms to retrieve diverse results does not automatically include the physically challenged. Search engines require specific mention of the underrepresented group to retrieve relevant results. Therefore, conscious effort is required to include underrepresented groups while scraping datasets from search engines. A future built by generative AI having little understanding of physically challenged people will have serious implications. We hope that our effort lays the groundwork for future datasets and algorithms that include this underrepresented group. (shrink)

Being inherently different from any other lifesaving organ transplant, uterine transplantation does not aim at saving lives but supporting the possibility to generate life. Unlike the kidneys or the liver, the uterus is not specifically a vital organ. Given the non-lifesaving nature of this procedure, questions have been raised about its feasibility. The ethical dilemma revolves around whether it is worth placing two lives at risk related to surgery and immunosuppression, amongst others, to enable a woman with absolute uterine factor (...) infertility to experience the presence of an organ enabling childbirth. In the year 2000, the first uterine transplantation, albeit unsuccessful, was performed in Saudi Arabia from where it has spread to the rest of the world including Sweden, the United States and now recently India. The procedure is, however, still in the preclinical stages and several ethical, legal, social and religious concerns are yet to be addressed before it can be integrated into the clinical setting as standard of care for women with absolute uterine factor infertility. (shrink)

Consented autopsy is almost non-existent in the Middle-East where established social and cultural beliefs regarding the procedure might discourage family members from requesting a consented autopsy. Evidence suggests that new information is obtained from consented autopsies. It would not be in the best interest of medicine if social and cultural misconceptions succeed in erasing the existence of consented autopsies entirely.

The aim of this study is to explore social media marketing activities and their impact on consumer intentions. This study also analyzes the mediating roles of social identification and satisfaction. The participants in this study were experienced users of two social media platforms Facebook and Instagram in Pakistan. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. We used an online community to invite Facebook and Instagram users to complete the questionnaire in the designated online questionnaire system. Data were (...) collected from 353 respondents, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Results show that SMMAs have a significant impact on the intentions of users. Furthermore, social identification mediates the relationship between social media activities and satisfaction, and satisfaction mediates the relationship between social media activities and the intentions of users. This will help marketers how to attract customers to develop their intentions. This is the first novel study that used SMMAs to address the user intentions with the role of social identification and satisfaction in the context of Pakistan. (shrink)

Taking support from ego-depletion theory, this study examines ego depletion as a mechanism that explains how employees’ organizational citizenship behavior leads to antagonistic consequences, i.e., service sabotage. Employees’ positive psychological capital is considered a moderator. PROCESS macro was used to test all the hypotheses using time-lagged, dyadic data collected from 420 employees and their 112 their supervisors associated with the service industry in China. This study finds that employees’ exhibition of OCB is positively linked to ego depletion, which in turn (...) drives service sabotage behavior. Furthermore, employees’ PsyCap weakens the effect of OCB on employees’ ego depletion. This study highlights the dark side of OCB, the mechanism through which it causes adverse effects, and the moderating effect of PsyCap. It also provides insights to the organizations for managing service sector employees to effectively interact with customers. (shrink)

The genome of two completely unrelated individuals is quite similar apart from minor variations called single nucleotide polymorphisms which contribute to the uniqueness of each and every person. These single nucleotide polymorphisms are of great interest clinically as they are useful in figuring out the susceptibility of certain individuals to particular diseases and for recognizing varied responses to pharmacological interventions. This gives rise to the idea of ‘personalized medicine’ as an exciting new therapeutic science in this genomic era. Personalized medicine (...) suggests a unique treatment strategy based on an individual’s genetic make-up. Its key principles revolve around applied pharmaco-genomics, pharmaco-kinetics and pharmaco-proteomics. Herein, the ethical and legal aspects of personalized medicine in a new genomic era are briefly addressed. The ultimate goal is to comprehensively recognize all relevant forms of genetic variation in each individual and be able to interpret this information in a clinically meaningful manner within the ambit of ethical and legal considerations. The authors of this article firmly believe that personalized medicine has the potential to revolutionize the current landscape of medicine as it makes its way into clinical practice. (shrink)

Data analytics, machine intelligence, and other cognitive algorithms have been employed in predicting various types of diseases in health care. The revolution of artificial neural networks in the medical discipline emerged for data-driven applications, particularly in the healthcare domain. It ranges from diagnosis of various diseases, medical image processing, decision support system, and disease prediction. The intention of conducting the research is to ascertain the impact of parameters on diabetes data to predict whether a particular patient has a disease or (...) not. This paper develops an improved ANN model trained using an artificial backpropagation scaled conjugate gradient neural network algorithm to predict diabetes effectively. For validating the performance of the proposed model, we conduct a large set of experiments on a Pima Indian Diabetes dataset using accuracy and mean squared error as evaluation metrics. We use different number of neurons in the hidden layer, ranging from 5 to 50, to train the ANN models. The experimental results show that the ABP-SCGNN model, containing 20 neurons, attains 93% accuracy on the validation set, which is higher than using the other ANNs models. This result confirms the model’s effectiveness and efficiency in predicting diabetes disease from the required data attributes. (shrink)

The study empirically investigates the relationship between corporate governance and the triple bottom line sustainability performance through the lens of agency theory and stakeholder theory. We claim, in fact, that no single theory fully accounts for all the hypothesised relationships. We measure sustainability performance through manual content analysis on sustainability reports of the US-based companies. The study extends the existing literature by investigating the impact of selected corporate governance mechanisms on each dimension of sustainability performance, as defined by the GRI (...) framework. Our approach allows to identify which governance mechanisms foster triple bottom line performance, also revealing that some mechanisms fit only specific dimension of sustainability. The fact-based findings provide support for a new beginning in the theorising process in which the theories must try not only to provide rationale for the impact of corporate governance on sustainability, but also to explain which dimension of sustainability might be more affected. The most important implication for practitioners is the support for sustainability practices, which may be gained through implementation of particular corporate governance mechanisms. The findings contribute also to the improvement of the ongoing standard setting process, in particular as it concerns the in-depth revision of the economic dimension of sustainability carried out under the new GRI framework. (shrink)

There is a great deal of support for the contention that the ethical cognition of health care professionals are of consequence to the level of patient care provided. The present study examines the ethical cognition of what has traditionally been deemed a profession of incomplete or marginal status: the retail, or community, pharmacy setting. An empirical examination of ethical cognition compares a systematic random sample of retail pharmacists with pharmacy students. Additional comparisons are made with a baseline of ethical cognition (...) abilities of other health care professionals, such as physicians and nurses.Based on cognitive-developmental theory and using a well-known measure of ethical reasoning, two hypotheses are explored regarding the ethical reasoning skills of retail pharmacy practitioners and pharmacy students. Results indicate that, contrary to cognitive moral development theory, students possess greater ethical reasoning skills than do their practitioner counterparts. In addition, baseline comparisons with other health professional groups reflect unfavorably on the retail pharmacists. It is suggested that the selection-socialization processes inherent in the retail pharmacy setting may result in one or more of the following outcomes: 1) the selection of lower ethical reasoners to the community pharmacy setting, 2) the exodus to other pharmacy settings of higher reasoners, and 3) a possible retrogression in the ethical cognition of community practitioners. Implications for retail practice and limitations are discussed. (shrink)

Objective: To explore the relationship between pharmacists'' tenure in the community setting and their moral reasoning abilities. Design: Systematic random sample design. Setting: A large southeastern city in the United States. Participants:450 independent and chain community pharmacists identified from the state board of pharmacy list of licenced community pharmacists. Interventions: A mailed questionnaire that included a well-known moral reasoning instrument and collected demographic information. Main Outcome Measures: Moral Reasoning abilities and tenure of community pharmacists. Results: As a group, community pharmacists (...) with greater years of tenure in community practice scored significantly lower on moral reasoning than those pharmacists with fewer years of tenure (p = 0.016). Conclusion: Four plausible explanations for the results are given including: a) a selection of lower ethical reasoners and/or an exodus of higher ethical reasoners from the community setting; b) a retrogression in the moral reasoning skills as community pharmacists obtain tenure in this setting; c) differences between the low and high moral reasoning groups may be due to a cohort effect; and d) the obtained practitioner sample may not have been representative of the population of community pharmacists. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Islam is one of the major religions, the frameworks of this faith are yet to be fully understood. As a consequence, it is being confused with activities contrary to its teachings. Islam has an elaborate treatment for almost every aspect of life including the affairs of business. Business is an acceptable and dignified occupation, which has to be conducted within the given frameworks. Islam encourages the creation, acquisition and consumption of wealth, and the fulfilling of certain (...) conditions in so doing. Wealth is held in trust as a gift from God. The terms of reference of this trust are to be complied with. Ethical principles do play a major role in shaping the behavior of a Muslim, in or out of business. In an era of globalization, the need for a better understanding of the premises of Islamic faith cannot be overemphasized. (shrink)

The efficiency argument for profit maximization says that corporations and their managers should maximize profits because this is the course of action that will lead to an ‘economically efficient’ or ‘welfare maximizing’ outcome. In this paper, I argue that the fundamental problem with this argument is not that markets in the real world are less than perfect, but rather that the argument does not properly acknowledge the personal sphere. Morality allows each of us a sphere in which we are free (...) to pursue our personal interests, even if these are not optimal from the social point of view. But the efficiency argument does not come to terms with this feature of social life. (shrink)

According to Palazzo and Scherer, the changing role of business corporations in society requires that we take new measures to integrate these organizations into society-wide processes of democratic governance. We argue that their model of integration has a fundamental problem. Instead of treating business corporations as agents that must be held accountable to the democratic reasoning of affected parties, it treats corporations as agents who can hold others accountable. In our terminology, it treats business corporations as “supervising authorities” rather than (...) “functionaries.” The result is that Palazzo and Scherer’s model does not actually address the democratic deficit that it is meant to solve. In order to fix the problem, we advocate removing business corporations from any policymaking role in political CSR and limiting participation to political NGOs and other groups that meet the standards we set out for a politically representative organization (PRO). (shrink)

In THE GENEALOGY OF MORALITY Nietzsche assess the value of the value judgments of morality from the perspective of human flourishing. His positive descriptions of the “higher men” he hopes for and the negative descriptions of the decadent humans he thinks morality unfortunately supports both point to a particular substantive conception of what such flourishing comes to. The Genealogy, however, presents us with a puzzle: why does Nietzsche’s own evaluative standard not receive a genealogical critique? The answer to this puzzle, (...) I argue, lies in recognizing the centrality of the notion of “life”, and its connection to power, in Nietzsche’s overall account. Leiter has argued that his “Millian Model” provides the most charitable reconstruction of appeals to a privileged evaluative standard of power; this model ascribes an inference from a strong doctrine of the will to power according to which only power can be desired. I propose a “Benthamite Model” that ascribes an inference from the inescapability of a tendency towards power, a tendency that is essential to life. I argue that this model avoids the objections Leiter directs at the Millian Model. (shrink)

Markets, just like states, are systems of governance. Their justification must therefore meet similar standards of moral scrutiny, despite the fact that their authority structure is impersonal. In order to argue for the role of markets as systems of governance that raise similar justificatory burdens, this book provides a philosophical account of market institutions. According to this view, shared social institutions define a framework for how members of a political community think and act toward one another, consistent with citizens respecting (...) themselves and one another as free persons, each entitled to guide their activities in light of their own judgments. The market is one of these shared institutions, so its rules must also be consistent with mutual respect as free persons. This perspective represents a fundamentally different way of thinking about economic life, which rejects both the view of economic actors as disconnected individuals in a state of nature and the view of economic actors as mere preference orderings that are inputs to a giant social welfare function. The book formulates a deeper framework for thinking about economic life, which can displace the familiar ideas that underpin contemporary neoliberalism and finance capitalism. In so doing, the book works out the implications of the idea that the burdens of equal citizenship extend to economic life, such that appropriately regulated markets and workplaces elicit and realize a system in which people respect one another as free. The book concludes with a defense of economic democracy, elements of which can be found under German codetermination. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 48, Issue 1, Page 79-113, Winter 2020.

For sentences $\phi$ of $L_{\omega_{1},\omega}$, we investigate the question of absoluteness of $\phi$ having models in uncountable cardinalities. We first observe that having a model in $\aleph_{1}$ is an absolute property, but having a model in $\aleph_{2}$ is not as it may depend on the validity of the continuum hypothesis. We then consider the generalized continuum hypothesis context and provide sentences for any $\alpha\in\omega_{1}\setminus\{0,1,\omega\}$ for which the existence of a model in $\aleph_{\alpha}$ is nonabsolute . Finally, we present a complete (...) sentence for which model existence in $\aleph_{3}$ is nonabsolute. (shrink)

We study the Generalized Kurepa hypothesis introduced by Chang. We show that relative to the existence of an inaccessible cardinal the Gap-n-Kurepa hypothesis does not follow from the Gap-m-Kurepa hypothesis for m different from n. The use of an inaccessible is necessary for this result.

It is being argued, in this article, that multicultural education is subversive because it challenges the assumed inevitability and superiority of the dominant culture by presenting alterna-tives to it. For multicultural education to be subversive, however, culture has to be understood as an order of things mapped across truth and power axis à la Foucault. These order of things are sup-pressed by the dominant culture in order to maintain its hegemony. It is being further argued that with the help of (...) Foucault's genealogy we can understand how multicultural education can liberate subjugated order of things. (shrink)

If α and α’ are distinct variables and ϕ and ϕ’ are open sentences of some language, where ϕ’ is the result of replacing one or more free occurrences of a in α with free occurrences of α’ in ϕ’, then a universal closure of ⌜)⌝, is an indiscernibility principle of that language. For instance, is an indiscernibility principle.The existence of opaque constructions falsifies the familiar unrestricted principle of substitution which affirms that co-referential expressions are intersubstitutable in all contexts without (...) change of truth-value. But indiscernibility principles are another matter. Not every counter-example to the unrestricted principle of substitution is a counter-example to some indiscernibility principle. Indeed, it is likely to be thought that there is no counter-example to any indiscernibility principle, and that the semantics of variables and objectual quantification ensures that all indiscernibility principles are true. (shrink)

(2009). A Critical Analysis of School Enrollment and Literacy Rates of Girls and Women in Pakistan. Educational Studies: Vol. 45, WOMEN AND EDUCATION, pp. 424-439.