In this study, we investigate, both theoretically and empirically, the impact of language gender marking on gender wage inequality and country income inequality. We find that nations with a higher level of gender marking in their dominant language have a higher wage gap between genders. Using an instrumental variable approach, we also find that gender marking has an indirect impact on country income inequality via gender wage inequality. Furthermore, we find evidence that the income inequality of a society as a (...) whole is affected by gender wage inequality. Finally, we document that linguistic gender marking outperforms survey-based cultural gender dimensions as a predictor of both gender wage inequality and country income inequality. (shrink)

In recent years, firms have greatly increased the amount of resources allocated to activities classified as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While an increase in CSR expenditure may be consistent with firm value maximization if it is a response to changes in stakeholders' preferences, we argue that a firm's insiders (managers and large blockholders) may seek to overinvest in CSR for their private benefit to the extent that doing so improves their reputations as good global citizens and has a "warm-glow" effect. (...) We test this hypothesis by investigating the relation between firms' CSR ratings and their ownership and capital structures. Employing a unique data set that categorizes the largest 3000 U. S. corporations as either socially responsible (SR) or socially irresponsible (SI), we find that on average, insiders' ownership and leverage are negatively related to the firm's social rating, while institutional ownership is uncorrelated with it. Assuming that higher CSR ratings is associated with higher CSR expenditure level, these results support our hypothesis that insiders induce firms to over-invest in CSR when they bear little of the cost of doing so. (shrink)

Background: Ethical conflict is a barrier to decision-making process and is a problem derived from ethical responsibilities that nurses assume with care. Intensive care unit nurses are potentially exposed to this phenomenon. A deep study of the phenomenon can help prevent and treat it. Objectives: This study was aimed at determining the frequency, degree, level of exposure, and type of ethical conflict among nurses working in the intensive care units. Research design: This was a descriptive cross-sectional research. Participants and research (...) context: In total, 382 nurses working in the intensive care units in Iranian hospitals were selected using the random sampling method. Data were collected using the Ethical Conflict in Nursing Questionnaire-Critical Care Version (Persian version). Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Medical Research Ethics Committee. Ethical considerations such as completing the informed consent form, ensuring confidentiality of information, and voluntary participation were observed. Findings: The results showed that the average level of exposure to ethical conflict was 164.39 ± 79.06. The most frequent conflict was related to “using resources despite believing in its futility,” with the frequency of at least once a week or a month (68.6%, n = 262). The most conflictive situation was violation of privacy (76.9%, n = 294). However, the level of exposure to ethical conflict according to the theoretical model followed was the situation of “working with incompetent staff.” The most frequently observed type of conflict was moral dilemma. Conclusion: The moderate level of exposure to ethical conflict was consistent with the results of previous studies. However, the frequency, degree, and type of ethical conflict were different compared to the results of other studies. Recognizing ethical conflict among intensive care unit nurses can be useful as it allows to consolidate those measures that favor low levels of ethical conflict, design appropriate strategies to prevent ethical conflicts, and improve the nursing work environment. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 297-320.

One of the fundamental enigmas of our existence, and for that matter, God's existence, is the act of creation. Has the cosmos been created ex nihilo or was it an intelligent design by God? Does God, having created the world, let it evolve and develop on its own, subject to the rules of evolution and chance; or does God intervene in every step of evolution in a deus ex machina manner? What is the role of man in creation? Is it (...) as central as existentialism and quantum mechanics assure us: that without human consciousness interacting with energy-matter, there would not be any objects and life forms? Is man the crown of creation permanently, or once evolution forms a more effective connecting agent between spirit and energy-matter, will man be relegated to the world of fossils? The book concludes with a thorough examination of human norms, values and morals. As such, this book constitutes a comprehensive treatise on the genesis of the world, the birth of God, and the role of man. (shrink)

Humans are capable of extracting recurring patterns from their environment via statistical learning (SL), an ability thought to play an important role in language learning and learning more generally. While much work has examined statistical learning in infants and adults, less work has looked at the developmental trajectory of SL during childhood to see whether it is fully developed in infancy or improves with age, like many other cognitive abilities. A recent study showed modality‐based differences in the effect of age (...) during childhood: While visual SL improved with age, auditory SL did not. This finding was taken as evidence for modality‐based differences in SL. However, since that study used auditory linguistic stimuli (syllables), the differential effect of age may have been driven by stimulus type (linguistic vs. non‐linguistic) rather than modality. Here, we ask whether age will affect performance similarly in the two modalities when non‐linguistic auditory stimuli are used (familiar sounds instead of syllables). We conduct a large‐scale study of children's performance on visual and non‐linguistic auditory SL during childhood (ages 5–12 years). The results show a similar effect of age in both modalities: Unlike previous findings, both visual and non‐linguistic auditory SL improved with age. These findings highlight the stimuli‐sensitive nature of SL and suggest that modality‐based differences may be stimuli‐dependent, and that age‐invariance may be limited to linguistic stimuli. (shrink)

_An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications._.

From the end of the 19th century until his death, one of history's most brilliant mathematicians languished in an asylum. The Mystery of the Aleph tells the story of Georg Cantor (1845-1918), a Russian-born German who created set theory, the concept of infinite numbers, and the "continuum hypothesis," which challenged the very foundations of mathematics. His ideas brought expected denunciation from established corners - he was called a "corruptor of youth" not only for his work in mathematics, but for his (...) larger attempts to meld spirituality and science. (shrink)

Plagiarism has been on the rise amongst university students in recent decades. This study puts university teachers in the spotlight and investigates their role in raising students’ awareness about plagiarism. To that end, plagiarism policies in 207 Iranian university TEFL teachers’ syllabuses were analyzed. The researchers analyzed the syllabuses to find out if they contain a plagiarism policy, and if so, how the term is defined; whether they approach the issue of plagiarism directly; if they offer students any guidelines on (...) how to avoid plagiarism; and if the consequences of committing plagiarism are specified. The results indicated that the majority of the syllabuses (83.6%) lacked a plagiarism policy and those that did include a policy were often vague in their definition of the phenomenon. However, when there was a plagiarism policy in the syllabuses, the teachers tried to address the issue directly half of the time and offered students brief guidelines on how to avoid plagiaristic behavior, which was a small step in the right direction. It is recommended that other higher education institutions make it obligatory for their academic staff to include a plagiarism policy in their syllabuses if they wish to cultivate academic integrity in students. (shrink)

We identify two pragmatic problems in temporal reasoning, the qualification problem and the extended prediction problem, the latter subsuming the infamous frame problem. Solutions to those seem to call for nonmonotonic inferences, and yet naive use of standard nonmonotonic logics turns out to be inappropriate. Looking for an alternative, we first propose a uniform approach to constructing and understanding nonmonotonic logics. This framework subsumes many existing nonmonotonic formalisms, and yet is remarkably simple, adding almost no extra baggage to traditional logic. (...) We then use this framework to propose a solution to the qualification problem. We also outline a solution to the extended prediction problem, and speculate on a possible connection between the above discussion and the concept of causation. (shrink)

Contributors to the recent disagreement debate have sought to provide a uniform response to cases in which epistemic peers disagree about the epistemic import of a shared body of evidence, no matter what kind of evidence they are disagreeing about. The varied cases addressed in the literature have included examples of disagreement about restaurant bills, court verdicts, weather forecasting, chess, morality, religious beliefs, and even disagreements about philosophical disagreements. The equal treatment of these varied cases has motivated the search for (...) a uniform response to peer disagreement wherever it is encountered. In this article I challenge this prevalent approach in the literature. I grant the notion of epistemic peer and accept that being a peer may amount to the same thing in different domains; nonetheless I contend that different domains appear to call for different responses to disagreement. I argue that the appropriate response to finding out about a disagreement with a peer is different in different domains. (shrink)

Cells live in dynamic environments that necessitate perpetual adaptation. Since cells have limited resources to monitor external inputs, they are required to maximize the information content of perceived signals. This challenge is not unique to microscopic life: Animals use senses to perceive inputs and adequately respond. Research showed that sensory‐perception is actively shaped by learning and expectation allowing internal cognitive models to “fill in the blanks” in face of limited information. We propose that cells employ analogous strategies and use internal (...) models shaped through the long process of evolutionary adaptation. Given this perspective, we postulate that cells are prone to “misperceptions,” analogous to visual illusions, leading them to incorrectly decode patterns of inputs that lie outside of their evolutionary experience. Mapping cellular misperception can serve as a fundamental approach for dissecting regulatory networks and could be harnessed to modulate cell behavior, a potentially new avenue for therapy. (shrink)

Schelling's philosophy can be seen as perpetrating the philosophical fallacy known as the Myth of the Given, in that it takes rational activity to be affected by an experience which is not conceptually mediated. This is supported by Schelling's repeated claim that there is an experience which is indescribable, and which forces us to silence. In the first part of the paper it will be shown how different readings of Schelling result in this fallacy. In the second and third parts (...) an alternative reading will be developed which avoids the fallacy while still making room for unsayable experience. Finally, the proposed interpretation will enable us to interpret Schelling's claim that expressing the unsayable, conveying it to another, is possible after all. »The wish for intelligibility is a terrible one. It means that we are willing to reveal ourselves through the self 's betrayal of itself.« (Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed. (shrink)

While logical theories of information attitudes, such as knowledge, certainty and belief, have flourished in the past two decades, formalization of other facets of rational behavior have lagged behind significantly. One intriguing line of research concerns the concept of intention. I will discuss one approach to tackling the notion within a logical framework, based on a database perspective.

A culturally cultivated ignorance with regard to the care and presentation of tightly-curled hair pervades American society. This ignorance masquerades as a discourse of manageability, which supports institutional prohibitions of historically Black American hairstyles. In other words, rather than acknowledging our knowledge deficits, we attribute the medical and aesthetic consequences of our ignorance to the hair itself. The insidious implication is that the display of tightly curled hair is not a matter of taste but indicative of a lack of self-care. (...) I conclude that this trend is racially prejudicial and that laws and education are possible mechanisms of redress. (shrink)

This paper shows how we can plausibly extend the guise of the good thesis in a way that avoids intellectualist challenge, allows animals to be included, and is consistent with the possibility of performing action under the cognition of their badness. The paper also presents some independent arguments for the plausibility of this interpretation of the thesis. To this aim, a teleological conception of practical attitudes as well as a cognitivist account of arational desires is offered.

This article aims to understand the concept of work in the teachings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook. As the person who had the maximum impact on the religious Zionist sector, with its guiding principle of Torah va’avodah, meaning Torah and work, it is necessary to clarify his attitude towards work. Did he perceive work as a necessity, a part of one’s duty to support the members of the household, or perhaps also as an ideological value, part of a worldview (...) that combines religious values with extra-religious values, or then again maybe he perceived work as a religious value? This article shows that R. Kook’s positive attitude towards work differs from traditional perspectives on work because of a pantheistic influence. Pantheism made him redefine the boundaries of Torah and include work and materiality. (shrink)

The task of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Kant’s notion of proportionality between morality and happiness, which is fundamental to his conception of the highest good. Kant claims that the complete good of humans as both natural and rational beings is a proportionate relation between virtue and happiness. He takes this to mean that nature is purposively designed so it accords with morality, which is only possible in a divine world where God secures this responsiveness. The paper (...) shows various difficulties with this claim and argues that they can be resolved by a nuanced interpretation of what Kant might mean by “happiness”. This finally leads to a conception of proportionality modeled on Kant’s aesthetics. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of Schelling's theory of ideas within his philosophy of identity, arguing that it should be understood as a theory of the intelligibility of being—that is, the capacity for the world to be meaningfully articulated in thought. By placing Schelling's ideas into dialogue with Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico -Philosophicus, the author aims to show how Schelling's philosophy might provide valuable insights for contemporary analytic interpretations of German idealism. Schelling's notion of ideas encompasses three key features: (1) they (...) express the principle of identity as the foundation of reality, (2) they constitute totalities or self-contained universes, and (3) they are individuals that are unified within a single totality. The author explains these features and demonstrates how they jointly establish the conditions necessary for the possibility of meaning and coherent thought. (shrink)

Despite the central place of suffering in medical care, suffering in infants and nonverbal children remains poorly defined. There are epistemic problems in the detection and treatment of suffering in infants and normative problems in determining what is in their best interests. A lack of agreement on definitions of infant suffering leads to misunderstanding, mistrust, and even conflict amongst clinicians and parents. It also allows biases around intensive care and disability to affect medical decision-making on behalf of infants. In this (...) paper, I propose the concept of suffering pluralism, which is a novel multidimensional view of infant suffering based on subjective and objective components. The concept of suffering pluralism is more inclusive of the multiple ways in which infant suffering can occur. It acknowledges and defines a subjective component to infant suffering, while also focusing moral attention on objective well-being by describing it using the language of suffering. This concept allows us to better weigh up subjective and objective components of well-being. It also encourages clarity and consistency in claiming suffering, which is likely to improve communication and reduce conflict in medical decision-making for unwell infants and children. I will end by exploring possible critiques and limitations of this concept. (shrink)

Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally (...) vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing. (shrink)

Asserting that humanitarian intervention is a highly ambiguous principle, Pasic and Weiss warn of the dangers of politically driven rescues that often force trade-offs between the pursuit of rescue and political order.

Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn was a religious Zionist thinker and one of the founders of the “Mizrachi” movement. The present article aims to trace his approach towards work: did he see work as a need, an obligation imposed upon the human being to sustain his household, or did he, perhaps, associate work with a religious value as an integral part of the theology which he steered by? The conclusion is that R. Hirschensohn's approach towards work is both a must for a (...) livelihood and part of Jewish and national identity, to the point where Redemption itself depends upon it. Work is also part of religious Zionist theology, one of whose proponents and founders Chaim Hirschensohn was. (shrink)

Even those who consider themselves lucky to have escaped trauma, long-term illness and death, have experienced radical changes to their conception of life in its relation to public and private domains due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When public space turned into a dangerous realm, private interiors were assigned a new role and with these shifts, also new questions about the relation of interiority to any type of exteriority emerged. The first four contributions in this ‘Projected Interiorities’ issue of Technoetic Arts (...) (TA) reflect from an architectural and urban point of view on the conception of the public and private, their past, present and future. Yet, the pandemic contributed more widely to a re-evaluation of interiority, not least because the public and private realms seemingly coalesced via digital processes. While this journal issue cannot cover all these questions, it indicates the range of the pandemic turn in thought, collecting contributions from theory and practice, including architecture, art, philosophy and literary studies. With authors of a variety of disciplinary backgrounds based in China, India, Norway, France, the United Kingdom and the United States, this issue of TA covers not only a multiplicity of methodological approaches but also diverse regional and cultural perspectives on the idea of ‘Projected Interiorities’. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a game semantics for the (associative) Lambek calculus . Compared to the implicational fragment of intuitionistic propositional calculus, the semantics deals with two features of the logic: absence of structural rules, as well as directionality of implication. We investigate the impact of these variations of the logic on its game semantics.

Because you are highly unlikely to cast the deciding vote in the next elections, it is often said that you don’t have a reason to vote in order to change the outcomes. In a recent paper, however, Zach Barnett forcefully argues that this is a mistake. He shows how it follows, from rather conservative assumptions, that in many real-life cases the expected social value of voting is higher than its cost. Barnett is successful, we believe, in showing that the commonly (...) held belief – that voters do not have a reason to vote in order to change the outcomes – is way too hasty. However, Barnett is – we argue in this paper – too quick on one key premise, and once this is noticed, it becomes unclear how often Barnett’s reasoning can point to a justification of voting to change the outcomes. Barnett’s reasoning, we conclude, may apply to significantly less real-life scenarios than he suggests. (shrink)

Leibniz’s interest in the Talmud and in Jewish philosophy and theology in general, is well established in the scholarly literature. In this paper, we suggest a short comparative study of Leibniz’s concept of the monad and the Talmudic idea of “Malchut.” Our study is based, specifically, on a tractate of the Talmud titled Yoma. This tractate is mainly focused on the Jewish Atonement Day, in which Jews are judged by God for their sins in the previous year. In particular, in (...) pages 38a-b of Yoma, the Talmud reads: “By your name they shall call you, and in your place they shall seat you, and from your own they shall give you; No person may touch that which is prepared for another, and one Malchut does not touch another even to the extent of a hairbreadth.” The Talmud suggests here that even though we somehow influence one another’s life, one cannot directly affect others’ predetermined place in the world or interfere in the individual paths prepared for others. In this paper, we aim to indicate the similarities between such Talmudic notions and Leibniz’s ideas in the Monadology – such as the ideas that monads have “no windows” and that a pre-established harmony is set among all monads by God – as a ground for future research. (shrink)

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, shows great promise and potential and is gradually being used in mental health care, but it also raises ethical concerns. These relate t...

The acquaintance principle (AP) and the view it expresses have recently been tied to a debate surrounding the possibility of aesthetic testimony, which, plainly put, deals with the question whether aesthetic knowledge can be acquired through testimony—typically aesthetic and non-aesthetic descriptions communicated from person to person. In this context a number of suggestions have been put forward opting for a restricted acceptance of AP. This paper is an attempt to restrict AP even more.

The purpose of the paper is to show that semanticexternalism – the thesis that contents are notdetermined by ``individualistic'' features of mentalstates – is mistaken. Externalist thinking, it isargued, rests on two mistaken assumptions: theassumption that if there is an externalist wayof describing a situation the situation exemplifiesexternalism, and the assumption that cases in which adifference in the environment of an intentional stateentails a difference in the state's intentional objectare cases in which environmental factors determine thestate's content. Exposing these mistakes (...) leads to seethat the conditions that are required for thetruth of externalism are inconsistent. (shrink)

There are two kinds of view in the literature concerning the relevance of intention to permissibility. While subjectivism assumes that an agent acts permissibly if he or she believes that the conduct is necessary for a moral purpose, for objectivism the de facto presence of an objective reason to justify one’s deeds is what matters. Recently, Scanlon and Hanser defend a moderate version of objectivism and subjectivism, respectively. Although I have a degree of sympathy toward both views, I will argue (...) that the truth lies somewhere in between. The view that I suggest in this paper hopefully occupies a space between subjectivism and objectivism and can accommodate the intuitions that neither of those views cannot account for. (shrink)

In this paper we prove the equiconsistency of "Every ω 1 -tree which is first order definable over (H ω 1 ·ε) has a cofinal branch" with the existence of a Π 1 1 reflecting cardinal. We also prove that the addition of MA to the definable tree property increases the consistency strength to that of a weakly compact cardinal. Finally we comment on the generalization to higher cardinals.

Este artículo estudia una corta narración en árabe muy conocida a través de diversas versions populares documentadas en manuscritos de diferentes orígenes (Siria, Egipto y Norte de África), comenzando en el siglo XVII. La narración describe cómo un peque.o gorrión queda atrapado en la trampa de un cazador y cómo, mediante todo tipo de estratagemas y usando su ingenio, logra escapar de su terrible destino. Si bien esta narración aparece frecuentemente en los círculos tardíos más populares, muchos de sus elementos (...) esenciales, se pueden rastrear en los escritos árabes medievales clásicos de los orígenes islámicos de Oriente y Occidente, en la mayoría de los casos como dos fábulas distintas. La historia de esta narración se mueve así entre la literatura clásica medieval y la popular premoderna. Incluso toca los márgenes de la historia de las Mil y una noches. En un artículo reciente se ha examinado un manuscrito datado en el siglo XVII que presenta toda la narración tal y como se encuentra con el ritmo y metro del dialect egipcio en el mawwāl. El presente estudio, basado en un manuscrito, analiza en cambio la adaptación de la narrative popular a la prosa. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.