Since the emergence of Pakistan the history of Pak-Afghan relations can best be analyzed from conflict to cooperation. Some of the early problems are mainly responsible for conflict and cooperation in both countries relations. After the establishment of democratic setup in both states, different CBMs indicate positive sign in Pak-Afghan diplomatic relationship. The drawdown of US forces has created security concern for Pakistan and Afghanistan that the creation of power vacuum can push the country again into civil war like situation. (...) In such state of security Pakistan’s engagement to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table will smooth the way for a broad-based government in Afghanistan. Some of the Afghan domestic political issues also created mistrust i.e., the refugee’s problem, cross border militant’s infiltrations, drug problem and issue of the Taliban. However, the paper will highlight the measures to keep intact the reconciliation more effective and replace the mistrust by trust. How domestic political issues effect their bilateral relations and why various methods taken in the prescribe time not effective in bilateral relations of the two states. (shrink)

Most philosophers agree that causal knowledge is essential to decision-making: agents should choose from the available options those that probably cause the outcomes that they want. This book argues against this theory and in favour of evidential or Bayesian decision theory, which emphasises the symptomatic value of options over their causal role. It examines a variety of settings, including economic theory, quantum mechanics and philosophical thought-experiments, where causal knowledge seems to make a practical difference. The arguments make novel use of (...) machinery from other areas of philosophical inquiry, including first-person epistemology and the free will debate. The book also illustrates the applicability of decision theory itself to questions about the direction of time and the special epistemic status of agents. (shrink)

Feminism is sensational -- On being directed -- Willfulness and feminist subjectivity -- Trying to transform -- Being in question -- Brick walls -- Fragile connections -- Feminist snap -- Lesbian feminism -- Conclusion 1: A killjoy survival kit -- Conclusion 2: A killjoy manifesto.

The Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) is an XML-based language designed to allow Command and Control (C2) systems to interface easily with Modeling and Simulation (M&S) systems. While some of the XML-tags defined in this language correspond to types of entities that exist in reality, others are mere syntactic artifacts used to structure the messages themselves. Because these two kinds of tags are not formally distinguishable, JBML messages in effect confuse data with what the data represent. In this paper we (...) show how a realism-based ontology combined with a rule language can be used to make these distinctions explicit. The approach allows storage of the contents of JBML messages in a Referent Tracking System in a format that mimics the structure of reality thereby providing an aid to message validation. (shrink)

Introduction: find your way -- Orientations toward objects -- Sexual orientation -- The orient and other others -- Conclusion: disorientation and queer objects.

In What's the Use? Sara Ahmed continues the work she began in The Promise of Happiness and Willful Subjects by taking up a single word--in this case, use--and following it around. She shows how use became associated with life and strength in nineteenth century biological and social thought and considers how utilitarianism offered a set of educational techniques for shaping individuals by directing them toward useful ends. Ahmed also explores how spaces become restricted to some uses and users (...) with specific reference to universities. She notes, however, the potential for queer use: how things can be used in ways that were not intended or by those for whom they were not intended. Ahmed posits queer use as way of reanimating the project of diversity work as the ordinary and painstaking work of opening up institutions to those who have historically been excluded from them. (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)

Hardy is the last of the Victorian and one of the most popular novelists of England. He, being an author of unique endowments, was not much esteemed in his life time. Hardy became the victim of stereotypical criticism and was badly ostracized by the ecclesiastical circles and the critics of his time as they merely focused on the depressing features of his fiction. This paper intends to reveal certain aspects of his work which remained neglected for a long time. The (...) present study is designed to focus on those characteristics of his work which win the title of a modern novelist for him. Hardy was quite conscious of the shifting environment around him at the vogue of industrialization that left profound marks on his meditative temperament. His depiction of the 19th century scenario is dominated with clash and collision between innovation and tradition. His art deals with twofold aspects of modernity exposing the sanguine and gloomy consequences of modernity. Owing to such an approach of the writer he is regarded as a social realist and one of the earliest of the modern novelists. Hardy poignantly observes the pathetic condition of the labourers, on one hand, and the modern mechanical advancements, one the other, which were of little benefit for the common man in society. The current study is designed to focus upon his approach to the modern developments in the broad context of social and political changes. Hardy is a modern novelist as he concentrates on the current issues such as gender, class, social and psychological disorders, etc. He is a supporter of class and female liberation. (shrink)

Differences That Matter challenges existing ways of theorising the relationship between feminism and postmodernism which ask 'is or should feminism be modern or postmodern?' Sara Ahmed suggests that postmodernism has been allowed to dictate feminist debates and calls instead for feminist theorists to speak (back) to postmodernism, rather than simply speak on (their relationship to) it. Such a 'speaking back' involves a refusal to position postmodernism as a generalisable condition of the world and requires closer readings of what postmodernism (...) is actually 'doing' in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Sara Ahmed hence examines constructions of postmodernism in relation to rights, ethics, subjectivity, authorship, meta-fiction and film. (shrink)

The essay presents a novel counterexample to Causal Decision Theory (CDT). Its interest is that it generates a case in which CDT violates the very principles that motivated it in the first place. The essay argues that the objection applies to all extant formulations of CDT and that the only way out for that theory is a modification of it that entails incompatibilism. The essay invites the reader to find this consequence of CDT a reason to reject it.

We consider countable so‐called rich subsemigroups of ; each such semigroup T gives a variety CPEAT that is axiomatizable by a finite schema of equations taken in a countable subsignature of that of ω‐dimensional cylindric‐polyadic algebras with equality where substitutions are restricted to maps in T. It is shown that for any such T, if and only if is representable as a concrete set algebra of ω‐ary relations. The operations in the signature are set‐theoretically interpreted like in polyadic equality set (...) algebras, but such operations are relativized to a union of cartesian spaces that are not necessarily disjoint. This is a form of guarding semantics. We show that CPEAT is canonical and atom‐canonical. Imposing an extra condition on T, we prove that atomic algebras in CPEAT are completely representable and that CPEAT has the super amalgamation property. If T is rich and finitely represented, it is shown that CPEAT is term definitionally equivalent to a finitely axiomatizable Sahlqvist variety. Such semigroups exist. This can be regarded as a solution to the central finitizability problem in algebraic logic for first order logic with equality if we do not insist on full fledged commutativity of quantifiers. The finite dimensional case is approached from the view point of guarded and clique guarded (relativized) semantics of fragments of first order logic using finitely many variables. Both positive and negative results are presented. (shrink)

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical (...) recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world. (shrink)

The primary and secondary sources of Islamic law often assume a binary distinction between ijtihād and taqlīd, ignoring a third level of engagement with the sources, which was conceptualized by some jurists as forming a distinct category. In this article I discuss the evolution of the terms ijtihād, taqlīd, and ittibāʿ, using a conceptual-historical approach. I argue that the use of taqlīd to mean “precedent-following” did not emerge as a technical term until after the time of al-Shāfiʿī. The distinction between (...) precedent-following and verifiable-following did not appear in legal discourse until the time of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. I also demonstrate that there were three approaches to these terms in legal discourse after the time of Ibn Ḥanbal, with three groups of jurists defining them in ways that advanced their different visions of law-making. I conclude with a discussion of the debate over the meanings of these terms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

An interpolation Theorem is proved for first order logic with infinitary predicates. Our proof is algebraic via cylindric algebras.1.

Buildings energy consumption is growing gradually and put away around 40% of total energy use. Predicting heating and cooling loads of a building in the initial phase of the design to find out optimal solutions amongst different designs is very important, as ell as in the operating phase after the building has been finished for efficient energy. In this study, an artificial neural network model was designed and developed for predicting heating and cooling loads of a building based on a (...) dataset for building energy performance. The main factors for input variables are: relative compactness, roof area, overall height, surface area, glazing are a, wall area, glazing area distribution of a building, orientation, and the output variables: heating and cooling loads of the building. The dataset used for training are the data published in the literature for various 768 residential buildings. The model was trained and validated, most important factors affecting heating load and cooling load are identified, and the accuracy for the validation was 99.60%. (shrink)

In _Willful Subjects_ Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will (...) and willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination. (shrink)

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study examines a mechanism, namely organizational social capital, through which self-sacrificial leadership is related to two types of employee behaviours: organizational citizenship behaviours and counterproductive behaviours. The results of two different studies in Egypt showed that self-sacrificial leadership is positively related to OSC which, in turn, is positively related to OCBs and negatively related to CPBs. Overall, the findings suggest that self-sacrificial leaders are more likely to achieve desirable employee behaviours through improving the quality (...) of social relationships among employees. (shrink)

Evidential Decision Theory is a radical theory of rational decision-making. It recommends that instead of thinking about what your decisions *cause*, you should think about what they *reveal*. This Element explains in simple terms why thinking in this way makes a big difference, and argues that doing so makes for *better* decisions. An appendix gives an intuitive explanation of the measure-theoretic foundations of Evidential Decision Theory.

Abstract: Background: In spite of the fact that computers continue to improve in speed and functions operation, they remain complex to use. Problems frequently happen, and it is hard to resolve or find solutions for them. This paper outlines the significance and feasibility of building a desktop PC problems diagnosis system. The system gathers problem symptoms from users’ desktops, rather than the user describes his/her problems to primary search engines. It automatically searches global databases of problem symptoms and solutions, and (...) also allows ordinary users to contribute exact problem reports in a structured manner. Objectives: The main goal of this Knowledge Based System is to get the suitable problem desktop PC symptoms and the correct way to solve the errors. Methods: In this paper the design of the proposed Knowledge Based System which was produced to help users of desktop PC in knowing many of the problems and error such as : Power supply problems, CPU errors, RAM dumping error, hard disk errors and bad sectors and suddenly restarting PC. The proposed Knowledge Based System presents an overview about desktop PC hardware errors are given, the cause of fault are outlined and the solution to the problems whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Knowledge Based System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed PC desktop troubleshooting Knowledge Based System was evaluated by IT students and they were satisfied with its performance. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to present a new argument for understanding the philosophical roots of Abū al-Qāsim al-Junayd’s (d. 909/297) ambiguous definition of monotheism (tawḥīd). Al-Junayd defines tawḥīd in terms of separating the eternally existing (qadīm) from the temporally generated (muḥdath). This study argues that Plato’s distinction between “that which is and always is” and “that which comes to be and never is” in the Timaeus better clarifies neglected aspects of al-Junayds’s definition than the orthodox Neo-Platonic interpretation put (...) forward by Ali Hassen Abdel Kader. Given the lacuna of historically decisive textual evidence in support of either interpretation, this study will demonstrate how the Platonic distinction, which was widely circulating in the theological and philosophical circles of the ninth and early tenth century Baghdad, better furnishes a more coherent interpretation of al-Junayd’s positions. The first part of the study suggests that al-Junayd’s definition of tawḥīd could best be described as a creatively epistemic appropriation and development of the Platonic essentially metaphysical distinction. Through a careful examination of his theory of self-consciousness, the second part of the study explains how al-Junayd developed his epistemic definition of tawḥīd in response to the charges of pantheism addressed to Sufisms. This examination will further support my claim that a Platonic, rather than a Neo-Platonic, framework better explains the philosophical foundation of al-Junayd’s conception and definition of monotheism. I conclude by indicating how this study’s results contribute to the larger scholarship on philosophy and formation of early Sufism. (shrink)

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools produce hallucinations exposing developers and users to a myriad of liabilities in courts. Given the absence of strict laws and regulations structuring how Generative AI content interact with potential allegations of defamation, libel, and slander, judges and attorneys are left with the semiotics of the fragmented articles and rules in each system attempting to settle such cases. The endless interpretations of written and non-verbal signs in the law across the world constitutes a new realm for (...) legal semiotics in the area of Generative AI and defamation. The present analysis examines existing civil liability articles in the Jordanian code to shed light on the litigation and defenses afforded in the defamation realm with respect to Generative AI content. The key finding is that like other countries, civil codes in Jordan are outdated concerning Generative AI content opening a plethora of liability scenarios in libel or slander cases. More importantly, the exercise of semiotic interpretation generates several defenses salvaging users and developers under strict sets of conditions. In sum, new amendments and updated legislative frameworks are needed to protect the healthy development of Generative AI while preserving citizens from damaging defamation, libel, and slander. (shrink)

The present study examined how the pre-war debate of the US decision to invade Iraq (in March 2003) was discursively constructed in the US/British mainstream newspaper opinion/editorial (op/ed) argumentation. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical discourse analysis and argumentation theory, I problematised the fallacious discussion used in the pro-war op/eds to build up a ‘moral/legal case’ for war on Iraq based on adversarial (rather than dialogical) argumentation. The proponents of war deployed ‘instrumental rationality’ (ends-justify-means reasoning), ‘ethical necessity’ (Bush’s ‘Preemption Doctrine’) (...) and ‘humanitarian virtue’ (the bombing of Iraq to ‘save’ Iraqis from Saddam’s pestilent tyranny) to justify the pending invasion of Iraq. Their arguments intertextually resonated with Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ rhetoric in a way that created a form of indexical association through ‘recontextualisation’. The type of arguments marshalled by the pro-war op/ed commentators uncritically bolstered the set of US official ‘truth claims’ and ‘presuppositions’. (shrink)

Advertising, a form of publicity, can pass on a social message so that people understand their sobligation towards society. The purpose of this study was to look into how consumers responded to socially conscious advertisements. This study conceptualizes the antecedents of attitude towards commercial advertisements that incorporate the social message, including advertising creativity, informativeness, and emotional appeal; each one can influence consumers' behavior. This study also examined the relationship between (i) Attitude towards the ad with a social message and purchase (...) intention of the consumer and (ii) Purchase intention of the consumer and subjective well-being. The interrelationships in the proposed model were investigated using structural equation modeling (SEM). A quantitative survey of university students was conducted in order to gather the data, which was based on an experiment. A field survey of 395 students was conducted to test the hypotheses. The results of the empirical tests confirm that attitude towards the advertisement positively affects the purchase intention of the consumer and that advertising creativity and emotional appeal are the key predictors of attitude towards the advertisement that highlights a social issue. And, purchase intention positively influences the subjective well-being of the consumers. This paper contributes to the theory by giving new insight into the advertising literature. It also provides the necessary knowledge to marketers and advertisers on commercial advertisements incorporating a social message and the subjective well-being of consumers. (shrink)

Let \(2 (...) It is shown that \(\mathbf{K_n}\) is not finitely axiomatizable and that it coincides with the class of atomic algebras in the elementary closure of \(\mathbf{S_c}{\sf Nr}_n{\sf CA}_{\omega}\) where \(\mathbf{S_c}\) is the operation of forming complete subalgebras. For any class \(\mathbf{L}\) such that \({\sf At}{\sf Nr}_n{\sf CA}_{\omega}\subseteq \mathbf{L}\subseteq {\sf At}\mathbf{K_n}\), it is proved that \({\bf SP}\mathfrak{Cm}\mathbf{L}={\sf RCA}_n\), where \({\sf Cm}\) is the dual operator to \(\sf At\); that of forming complex algebras. It is also shown that any class \(\mathbf{K}\) between \({\sf CRCA}_n\cap \mathbf{S_d}{\sf Nr}_n{\sf CA}_{\omega}\) and \(\mathbf{S_c}{\sf Nr}_n{\sf CA}_{n+3}\) is not first order definable, where \(\mathbf{S_d}\) is the operation of forming dense subalgebras, and that for any \(2shrink)

The risk of cigarette smoking plays a pivotal role in increasing the incidence rates of lung cancer. This paper sheds new light on modeling the impact of cigarette smoking on lung cancer evolution, especially genetic instability and the number of gene mutations in the genome of stem cells. To handle this issue, we have set up stochastic multi-stage models to fit the data set of the probabilities of current and former smokers from the Nurses’ Health Study cohort of females and (...) the Health Professionals Follow up Study cohort of men. Throughout this paper, we consider both mutation rates and clonal expansion rates as parameters in each compartment. For current and former smokers, three-driver mutations are most likely to take place in the progression of lung cancer under smoking risk. For current smokers, our findings reveal that two to sixteen gene mutations are required to obtain a cancerous cell among men and women in US. Moreover, two to six cancer-mutations are available in the pathway to lung cancer among former smokers who have quit smoking for more than ten years for both male and female patients. This highlights that cigarette smoking stimulates the number of driver mutations during lung tumorigenesis in both sexes. It is very crucial to examine the role of cigarette smoking in determining whether genomic instability is an early stage or late stage in the process of lung carcinogenesis. (shrink)

We formulate several statements in Algebraic Logic that turn out to be independent of ZFC. We relate such statements to Martin's axiom, omitting types for variants of first order logic and topological properties of Baire spaces.

Este artículo presente y analiza el legado de Abū Madyan cuyas bases van a quedar ilustrado perfectamente en el posterior desarrollo del sufismo andalusi-magrebi de origen šāḏilī y la doctrina de ibn ‘Arabī: traduccion española y estudio critico de las evidencias y cotejos textuales, ensenanzas y practicas espirituales y funcionalidad social.

A decision problem where Causal Decision Theory (CDT) declines a free $1,000, with the foreseeable effect that the agent is $1,000 poorer, and in no other way better off, than if she had taken the offer.

In recent years, scholars have sought to investigate the impact that ethical leaders can have within organisations. Yet, only a few theoretical perspectives have been adopted to explain how ethical leaders influence subordinate outcomes. This study therefore draws on social rules theory (SRT) to extend our understanding of the mechanisms linking ethical leadership to employee attitudes. We argue that ethical leaders reduce disengagement, which in turn promotes higher levels of job satisfaction and organisational commitment, as well as lower turnover intentions. (...) Co-worker social undermining is examined as a moderator of the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement, as we suggest that it is difficult for ethical leaders to be effective when co-worker undermining prevails. To test the proposed model, questionnaires were administered to 460 nurses in Romanian hospital settings over three time points separated by two-week intervals and the hypotheses were tested using generalised multilevel structural equation modeling (GSEM) with STATA. The findings revealed that ethical leadership has a beneficial effect on employee attitudes by reducing disengagement. However, the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement was moderated by co-worker social undermining, such that when undermining was higher, the significance of the mediated relationships disappeared. These results suggest that while ethical leaders can promote positive employee attitudes, their effectiveness is reduced in situations where co-worker undermining exists. (shrink)

Le cri que porte l'intitulé de cet ouvrage est un appel aux lecteurs et aux historiens du Rushdisme à une halte réflexive sur ce que l'auteur appelle cri. Car le cri est une revendication légitime du philosophe. C'est une sorte de voix extra temporelle qui, par fidélité à l'esprit de sa philosophie, s'insurge et déclare que sa pensée a été trahie. Qui est donc ce philosophe à qui on a prêté tant de légendes et commis à son égard tant d'erreurs? (...) Est-ce un grand philosophe réduit au statut de simple commentateur? Ou est-ce une grande méprise à l'égard d'un penseur dont le seul tort est d'avoir voulu sauver le rationalisme philosophique? C'est avec force et détermination que l'auteur de cet essai nous démontre ses convictions sur un personnage historique essentiel, manifestement trop méconnu... Ahmed Mellah est professeur de philosophie. Il a pour ambition de soumettre la philosophie islamique à une analyse critique qui la débarrasserait du dogmatisme institué et autres a priori qui la gangrènent et rendent toute lecture audacieuse totalement inopérante. (shrink)