The commentary analyses ethical dilemmas faced by the global community during the coronavirus pandemic. The importance of the intellectual property rights in the context of vaccine distribution is particularly emphasized. The authors highlight bioethical principles – “forgotten” but so significant – in the context of vaccine distribution.

The relationship between gnostic experience and reason is a crucial issue in gnostic philosophy. Opinions are varied on this issue. Basically these various opinions can be summarized into two one of which sees the gnostic experience and the reason contradictory, that is, according to this perspective gnostic experiences cannot be explained by reason as they are outside the boundaries of the latter. What comes out of this standpoint is that gnostic experience is not real. The other perspective is that gnostic (...) experiences are not irrational. In contrast, reason can entirely account for these experiences, that is, it regards gnostic experience to be real. The first perspective is denied. For, the stories narrated by gnostic people living in different times and areas on their mystical experiences are the same. In order to solve the issue related to the second view, a couple of solutions are presented. Among them are the theories of multiplicity of viewpoints and that of meanings, which Walter Terence Stace does not accept. Finally, the author, it seems to also find himself in controversy. Thus, he believes that gnostic experiences are contradictory in spite of being real. That is, gnostic experiences are both contradictory and real. Apparently, there are two things that make Stace reach such a conclusion: misunderstanding of the statements that picture Gnosticism as something beyond reason (logic) and rationality, and inadequacy of the foundation of Western philosophy. Considering these issues, this research aims to: 1) determine the role of reason in Islamic sciences; 2) explore the function of theoretical reason in empirical, abstract, and intuitive sciences; 3) present and critically analyse Stace’s theory; 4) clarify the reason behind Stace’s regarding gnostic experiences contradictory to reason after acknowledging them as real; and 5) demonstrate the inadequacy of the foundation of Stace’s philosophy, clarifying the relationship between gnostic experience and reason based on the principles of Mulla Sadra’s transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze the deictic representations of person in the British and American media discourse, mostly focusing on such genres and subgenres as newspaper articles, interviews, letters to editors, opinions, headlines and advertisements. For this purpose, we wish to introduce a theoretical framework for the study and then we hope to present certain ways in which deictic expressions represent person. Theoretical framework for our study is based upon the socio-cognitive approach, which gives priority to individual practices and subjectivity (...) over social practices in discourse as well as the definition of discourse based on knowledge. The reason why we focus on the media discourse is obvious. The high degree of personalized conceptualization and contextualization dominated by a large number of subjective factors prevail in the above-mentioned genres and subgenres of media discourse. The deictic representations of person play the key role in this process. (shrink)

This study explores how the prior unethical behavior of institutional investors impacts the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of the companies in which they invest. To identify such behavior, we focus on violations of laws and regulations by Registered Investment Advisers as reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our findings reveal that these investors discourage firms’ engagement in CSR activities within their investee firms, which we attribute to institutions’ disregard for social norms. Our inferences remain unchanged with alternative identification (...) strategies and more stringent definitions of unethical behavior, suggesting that endogeneity bias and construct validity issues do not explain our baseline results. Additionally, we find that statements by these investors in support of CSR initiatives appear hypocritical, as they fail to mitigate the negative consequences of their ownership on CSR activities. Overall, our study suggests that institutional investors’ prior unethical behavior influences their governance activities, generating negative social externalities. (shrink)