Multiple sequence alignment is one of the major problems that can be encountered in the bioinformatics field. MSA consists in aligning a set of biological sequences to extract the similarities between them. Unfortunately, this problem has been shown to be NP-hard. In this article, a new algorithm was proposed to deal with this problem; it is based on a quantum-inspired cuckoo search algorithm. The other feature of the proposed approach is the use of a randomized progressive alignment method based on (...) a hybrid global/local pairwise algorithm to construct the initial population. The results obtained by this hybridization are very encouraging and show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution. (shrink)

Grounding necessitarianism (GN) is the view that full grounds necessitate what they ground. Although GN has been rather popular among philosophers, it faces important counterexamples: For instance, A=[Socrates died] fully grounds C=[Xanthippe became a widow]. However, A fails to necessitate C: A could have obtained together with B=[Socrates and Xanthippe were never married], without C obtaining. In many cases, the debate essentially reduces to whether A indeed fully grounds C – as the contingentist claims – or if instead C is (...) fully grounded in A+, namely A plus some supplementary fact S (e.g. [Xanthippe was married to Socrates]) – as the necessitarian claims. Both sides typically agree that A+ necessitates C, while A does not; they disagree on whether A or A+ fully grounds C. This paper offers a novel defence of the claim that, in these typical cases, unlike A+, A fails to fully ground C – thereby bringing further support to GN. First and foremost, unlike A+, A fails to fully ground C because it fails to contain just what is relevant to do so, in two distinct senses – explanatory and generative relevance. Second, going for A, rather than A+, as a full ground undermines not just grounding necessitarianism, but modally weaker views which even contingentists may want to preserve. (shrink)

This research focuses on the contributions of a non-Arab scholar who has significantly impacted the study of the language of the Qur'an, the most revered and miraculous of texts. Despite its eternal wonders and the mysteries of its miraculous nature remaining untapped, the language of the Qur'an continues to be a subject of intense study. After reviewing the works of al-Farahi, I was impressed by the boldness of this non-Arab scholar in critiquing many established theories of Arabic lexicographers, morphologists, and (...) grammarians from both earlier and later periods. His responses in linguistic matters, particularly in grammatical issues, will be the main focus of this research. The research will examine his responses in grammatical issues, which we have categorized into two sections: responses related to nouns and responses related to prepositions. The section on nouns is further divided into two main categories: responses concerning inflected nouns and responses concerning constructed nouns. This classification follows the approach of al-Zamakhshari in his book Al-Mufassal, and is organized as follows. (shrink)

Academic integrity is a vital pedagogical responsibility that educational institutions should explicitly address. One of the best ways to uphold academic integrity is to create a culture of academic integrity throughout the school. This is especially imperative at high schools where students develop their moral identity because students who act dishonestly at high school will likely behave accordingly in post-secondary education and ultimately be dishonest in familial and professional settings. Creating a culture of academic integrity is a challenging, long and (...) multifaceted journey. In this respect, this exploratory case study set out to create a culture of academic integrity at a high school in Türkiye and explore what facilitates and impedes the process. We followed Stephens’ (2016) Multilevel Intervention Model and implemented a School-Wide Education program to guide us through the process. We conducted various activities throughout one academic year, from seminars to competitions. At the end of the term, we conducted individual and focus group interviews with the members of the school community and analyzed the interview data to identify facilitators and barriers of the process. The analysis yielded five facilitators (1) creating buy-in, (2) administrative embracement and support, (3) activities that promote student involvement, (4) external expert and school collaboration as praxis, and (5) policy as the blueprint and five barriers (1) deficiencies in responding academic misconduct, (2) prioritization of academic success over academic integrity, (3) teacher resistance against change, (4) exam-based assessment design, and (5) timing of the activities. Each theme was discussed in detail, and recommendations were made for high schools which set out on a journey of creating academic integrity culture. (shrink)

An important task for metaphysicians and philosophers of science is to account for laws of nature – in particular, how they distinguish themselves from ‘mere’ regularities, and the modal force they are endowed with, ‘natural necessity’. Dispositional essentialism about laws is roughly the view that laws distinguish themselves by being grounded in the essences of natural entities. This paper does not primarily concern how essentialism compares to its main rivals – Humeanism and Armstrongeanism. Rather, it distinguishes and comparatively assesses various (...) brands of essentialism – which mainly differ as to where exactly they take laws to find their essentialist sources, and what they take to be the targets of laws, namely what they apply to. Yet, this internal comparison is not unrelated to the more general debate about laws: the main criteria with which I compare these essentialist views concern how they can deal with some of the main objections faced by essentialism in general, and how they can keep what is arguably the main intuitive advantage of essentialism over its rivals. Thus, the paper also concerns the relative position of essentialism in the larger debate about laws – ultimately bringing support to it. (shrink)

The purpose of this article, which takes the form of a dialogue between a vegetarian and a meat eater, is twofold. On the one hand, we argue for a general characterisation of moral value in terms of well-being and suffering. On the other hand, on the basis of this characterisation, we argue that, in most cases, the moral value attached to the choice of eating meat is negative; in particular, we defend this claim against a number of objections concerning the (...) nature of animal suffering, its moral value, and the moral responsibility of meat eaters. (shrink)

Do causes necessitate their effects? Causal necessitarianism is the view that they do. One major objection—the “monotonicity objection”—runs roughly as follows. For many particular causal relations, we can easily find a possible “blocker”—an additional causal factor that, had it also been there, would have prevented the cause from producing its effect. However—the objection goes on—, if the cause really necessitated its effect in the first place, it would have produced it anyway—despite the blocker. Thus, CN must be false. Though different (...) from Hume’s famous attacks against CN, the monotonicity objection is no less important. In one form or another, it has actually been invoked by various opponents to CN, past and present. And indeed, its intuitive appeal is quite powerful. Yet, this paper argues that, once carefully analysed, the objection can be resisted—and should be. First, I show how its success depends on three implicit assumptions concerning, respectively, the notion of cause, the composition of causal factors, and the relation of necessitation. Second, I present general motivations for rejecting at least one of those assumptions: appropriate variants of them threaten views that even opponents to CN would want to preserve—in particular, the popular thesis of grounding necessitarianism. Finally, I argue that the assumption we should reject is the one concerning how causes should be understood: causes, I suggest, include an element of completeness that excludes blockers. In particular, I propose a way of understanding causal completeness that avoids common difficulties. (shrink)

In his book The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Contemporary Epistemology, Jonathan Kvanvig argues that there is an interchangeability of personal and doxastic justification, which ‘blocks the quick route to virtue epistemology’. To prove that personal justification is reducible to doxastic justification, he utilizes λ-calculus expressions that aim to show the logical equivalence of the two notions of justification. In this paper, I argue that he has made an illegitimate move (...) in his translation of the ordinary talk of personal justification into λ-expressions because his translation involves both an elimination from and an addition to the ordinary language. Pace Kvanvig, there is no logical equivalence of personal to doxastic justification. So, his argument for the reducibility of personal to doxastic justification founders. More importantly, since he has failed to disprove that personal justification is irreducibly primitive, he hasn’t shown that the prospects for virtue epistemology are ‘hopeless’. (shrink)

The transition from empire to nation-state poses challenges in managing religious and ethnic pluralism. Empires, characterized by hierarchical structures and diversity, contrast with nation-states, which aim for uniformity and unity. As empires modernize administratively, they grapple with different approaches to pluralism. While Habsburgs were more in favor of a federal plurality, the Romanovs pushed for centralization and assimilation. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottomans vacillated between these two alternative paths. This vacillation is most evident in their approach to millet system (...) which simultaneously followed the contradictory policies of undermining millet boundaries in order to promote a sense of unity across the multi-faith society and policies of promoting and safeguarding the privileges and group-specific rights of non-Muslim communities. Ottoman nationalism eventually shifted towards a homogenizing model, akin to the Romanov approach, leading to the exclusion of religious minorities. This process of homogenization continued in the nationalist policies of modern Turkey and resulted in the secular Turkish Republic being less tolerant towards non-Muslims than the Islamic Ottoman Empire. (shrink)

Kant's analysis and theory of beauty is explained in this book by Salim Kemal. The author clarifies the nature of aesthetic claims, examines the scope of Kant's justification of their validity, and shows how these lead Kant to investigate the relationship between beautiful objects, morality and subjects.

A common feature of all standard theories of the laws of nature is that they are "absolutist": They take laws to be either all metaphysically necessary or all contingent. Science, however, gives us reason to think that there are laws of both kinds, suggesting that standard theories should make way for "non-absolutist" alternatives: theories which accommodate laws of both modal statuses. In this paper, we set out three explanatory challenges for any candidate non-absolutist theory and discuss the prospects of the (...) two extant candidates in light of these challenges. We then develop our own non-absolutist theory, the essentialist DTA account, which combines the nomic-necessitation or DTA account with an essentialist approach to metaphysical modality in order to meet the three explanatory challenges. Finally, we argue that the distinction between kinematical and dynamical laws found in physical theories supports both non-absolutism in general and our proposed essentialist DTA view in particular. (shrink)

The paper concerns the Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics written by Avicenna (Ibn Sina : 930-1037AD). The paper is divided into two parts, the first of which examines Avicenna's account of poetic imagination and the use he makes of this concept in justifying a 'poetic syllogism' that accounts for aesthetic validity. The second part develops this account of the poetic syllogism to show that the completeness of the syllogistic requires us to consider the kind of commurlty and moral validity sustained by (...) poetic validity. To explain the first claim - for poetic syllogisms - the paper examines Avicenna's writings on logic and parts of his commentaries on the Prior and Posterior Analytics, linking these to issues in his commentary on the Poetics. To explain the relation of poetry to community, the paper develops issues from the commentary on the Poetics, especially Avicenna's use of the concept of 'themes'. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tuomas Tahko has argued for a hybrid view of the laws of nature, according to which some physical laws are metaphysically necessary, while others are metaphysically contingent. In this paper, we show that his criterion for distinguishing between these two kinds of laws — which crucially relies on the essences of natural kinds — is on its own unsatisfactory. We then propose an alternative way of drawing the metaphysically necessary/contingent distinction for laws of physics based on (...) the central kinematical/dynamical distinction used in physical theorising, and argue that the criterion can be used to amend Tahko’s own account, but also that it can be combined with different metaphysical views about the source of necessity. (shrink)

On what I call absolutist essentialism about modality (AE), the metaphysical necessities are the propositions that are true in virtue of the essence (i.e. Aristotelian, absolute essence) of some entities. Other kinds of necessity can then be defined by restriction – e.g. the conceptual necessities are the propositions that are true in virtue of the essence of conceptual entities specifically. As an account of metaphysical modality and some other kinds (e.g. logical, conceptual), AE may have important virtues. However, when it (...) comes to accounting for further important kinds, like natural or normative necessity, it faces a challenge. Three main options have been defended: treat those kinds as further restricted forms of metaphysical necessity; define them as conditional forms of metaphysical necessity; treat them as primitive kinds. -/- In this paper, I propose a new option, which combines the main idea of AE (reducing necessities to essences) with an idea which has been developed largely independently: that of relative essence. On the proposed view, those kinds (e.g. natural necessity) that cannot be grounded in the essences (i.e. absolute essences) of the relevant entities (e.g. natural entities) may be grounded in their relative essences instead. Thus, I propose a generalized, or extended, version of AE, which I call relativized essentialism about modality (RE). In particular, RE offers prospects for a general framework for kinds of modality which is flexible enough to cover a large range of kinds (both absolute and relative ones) while remaining parsimonious and unified. (shrink)

This book examines the studies of Aristotle's Poetics and related texts in which three Medieval philosophers proposed a conception of poetic validity (beauty), and a just relation between subjects in a community (goodness).

Il s'agit d'interroger la topique d'assignation homologique et pédagogique souvent faite entre la naïveté de l'interrogation curieuse du philosophe et l'ingénuité épistémique de l'absence de préjugés de représentations de l'enfance et ainsi de comparer les modes d'approches ontologiques des phénomènes du monde et de la vie logique. Y a-t-il dans l'usage critique du concept chez le philosophe une rémanence fondamentale et spéculative de l'interrogation anthropologique et métaphysique de l'enfant sur le cosmos, l'être, et l'apparition des étants dans la sphère de (...) son vécu historique de la réalité? (shrink)

Integrating Kant's ideas on aesthetics and morality, Dr. Kemal explains how Kant's theories emphasize that art is critical to the development of culture and community goals. He clarifies Kant's often obscure efforts to justify artistic judgements and demonstrates Kant's claim that they have their own necessity. Containing explanations of many difficult terms present in Kant's Critique of Judgment, this study is a valuable guide to understanding Kant's association of beauty and morality.

It has long been hypothesized that pretend play is beneficial to social and cognitive development. However, there is little evidence regarding the neural regions that are active while children engage in pretend play. We examined activation of prefrontal and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) regions using near-infrared spectroscopy while 42 four- to eight-year-old children freely played with dolls or tablet games with a social partner or by themselves. Social play activated right prefrontal regions more than solo play. Children engaged the (...) pSTS during solo doll play but not during solo tablet play, suggesting they were rehearsing social cognitive skills more with dolls. These findings suggest social play utilizes multiple neural regions and highlight how doll play can achieve similar patterns of activation, even when children play by themselves. Doll play may provide a unique opportunity for children to practice social interactions important for developing social emotional skills, such as empathy. (shrink)

Nietzsche's writings have shaped much contemporary reflection on the relation between philosophy and art. This book brings together a number of distinguished contributors to examine his aesthetic account of the origins and ends of philosophy. They discuss the transformative power which Nietzsche ascribes to aesthetic activity, including his aesthetic justification of existence and its fusion of social and personal existence, and they investigate his experiments with an 'aesthetic politics' and a politicisation of aesthetics. Together their essays set out the ground (...) for future debate about the inter-relation between art, philosophy, and value. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DAVID HUME AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MONETARY THOUGHT: A CRITICAL COMMENT ON RECENT VIEWS To the argument that it makes little difference what precise roles were played by various actors in a great movement, and that the busy modern reader cannot be bothered to go behind the scenes of popular successes, the answer is simple: it is on the whole better to call men and events by their right names; (...) it is on the whole wiser not to make false diagrams of the way things happen. What, after all, are we so busy about? Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner The praise that has been bestowed upon David Hume's monetary thought in recent years would suggest that however little attention is paid to the history of economic thought otherwise, no one is averse to a long and respectable lineage.1 However, it is just when an individual is singled out and focused upon that the most misleading ideas can arise; furthermore, when the scholars who provide this attention are renowned authorities in specialized fields, their views receive very widespread circulation. It would not be easy to find a contemporary student of the eighteenth century who would assert that the mercantilists believed real wealth to consist of gold and silver, yet the late Harry Johnson made just such an assertion not very long ago, and the number of economists who read Harry Johnson must far outnumber those who read eighteenthcentury scholars.2 By the same token, the liberal praise bestowed upon those credited with having "demolished" mercantilism, such as David Hume, requires careful scrutiny. A recent article by Dietrich Fausten3 has shown how different Hume's analysis 157 actually was from modern monetarism, despite the many attempts to designate Hume the father of monetarist doctrines, and this critical approach can be taken farther. Before turning to an examination of Hume's position, it may be worthwhile to make a methodological point. There are those who consider delving into indebtedness and priorities "antiquarian" (but not if their own contributions are in question!). After all, they claim, Hume's views are there in black and white, he wrote elegantly and his philosophical merits are widely admired; does it really matter if Hume did not acknowledge his sources, that he was somewhat inconsistent, or that he caricatured his opponents? Surely some compassion is appropriate for someone who wrote at the very dawn of "economic science." This is to miss the point of such historical scrutiny altogether. If compassion were required, why should it be bestowed upon Hume, rather than on such predecessors as Gervaise, Cantillon or Vanderlint? Scholars employ certain critical standards in judging published work; let us employ these standards to Hume and if sympathy be required, let it follow and not precede the analysis. II The following passage is certainly one of the most frequently quoted in the history of economics but its importance for our argument makes repetition necessary. Suppose, that all the money of Great Britain were multiplied fivefold in a night, must not the contrary effect follow? Must not all labour and commodities rise to such an exorbitant height, that no neighbouring nations could afford to buy from us; while 158 their commodities, on the other hand, became comparatively so cheap, that, in spite of all the laws which could be formed, they would be run in upon us, and our money flow out; till we fall to a level with foreigners, and lose that great superiority of riches, which had laid us under such disadvantages?4 Two points should be noted about the above. First, Hume assumes a sudden, large inflow of money to make his point. This is a very different thing from the small [relative to the money stock] and steady inflow advocated by the so-called mercantilists. Secondly, Hume assumes that this sudden inflow is met by instantaneous adjustment in prices. Otherwise, if the change in, say, wages attracts more labour, there is no reason why the increased money supply could not lead to a greater output and thus avoid inflation. International labour mobility was a standard feature of mercantilist thought and so it will be seen that Hume's "new" result is obtained by his... (shrink)

This paper interprets John von Neumann's views on the proper role of mathematics in science, with attention to its implications for economics. The evolution of von Neumann's thought over his lifespan, an examination of which is greatly aided by some self-conscious appraisals of von Neumann himself, suggests that von Neumann ended by taking a very pragmatic approach to the use of mathematics. One can almost characterize it as an engineering approach to the philosophy of mathematics since von Neumann takes mathematics (...) to be justified by its applications. This approach, which is surprisingly non-technical and hence accessible to general readers, is then placed in the context of his wider world-view. (shrink)

a relatively more sympathetic attitude among younger judges, many of them women, and among trainees, may reflect a historical evoluti.

Ce double numéro de _Noesis _est issu du colloque « Europe, État, fédéralisme » que Mélanie Plouviez et Pierre-Yves Quiviger ont organisé à la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société Sud-Est (MSHS-SE), à Nice, du 3 au 5 octobre 2017, dans le cadre du programme de recherche en droit, en philosophie du droit et en philosophie politique, qui associe depuis 2010 le Laboratorio Hans Kelsen (LHK) de l’Università degli studi di Salerno ; l’équipe « Normes, Sociétés, Philosophies (...) » (NoSoPhi) de l’Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne à l’Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (ISJPS) ; et, depuis 2012, le Centre de recherches en histoire des idées (CRHI) d’Université Côte d’Azur (UCA). Le choix du thème de l’Europe a été déterminé par le constat de l’accumulation des « crises européennes » depuis alors plus de dix ans : « constitutionnelle », « grecque », « des dettes souveraines », « de la zone euro », « ukrainienne », « des réfugié-e-s », « sécuritaire » ou e... (shrink)

Starting from the observation of the seriousness and recurrence of the “European crises” for more than fifteen years, this article proposes to study one of their main causes: the “midstream” that characterizes the contemporary political and institutional situation of Europe, in particular of the European Union, the eurozone and the Schengen area, that is, the unsustainable tension between, on the one hand, the irreducibly contradictory diversity of the member states of these institutions at this intermediate stage of their integration, and, (...) on the other hand, the necessity, for the overcoming of the crises, of the accomplishment of their integration into a European political unity. The main thesis of the article is that only such a unification could overcome the current crises, provided that it is open to the rest of the world, on the internal mode of hospitality and external mode of contribution to the unification of the world itself. (shrink)

Introduction : law, religion and the challenge of accommodation -- Muslim communities in a multicultural context -- Contextualishing Shari ̀ah : Shari ̀ah in the Common Law world -- Muslims, family relationships and the Common Law -- Muslims, crime and the Common Law -- Muslims, business transactions and the Common Law -- Conclusion.

CHAPTER 1 Knowledge What the Muslim woman needs to know Etiquette and conditions of seeking knowledge...

It is widely accepted that necessity comes in different varieties, often called ‘kinds': metaphysical necessity, logical necessity, natural necessity, conceptual necessity, moral necessity, to name but a few – and the same goes for the varieties of possibility. What is usually not fully appreciated, however, is that modal variety is not simply ‘unidimensional': it does not only involve one main variable – kind, whose values are the particular kinds of necessity. Rather, I argue, it is ‘bidimensional', involving two distinct variables (...) – domain and strength. In the first part of the paper, I introduce and develop the proposed bidimensional picture of modal variety, defending it against the common, unidimensional one. In the second part, I consider how the main available accounts of necessities and their relations rely, at least to a significant extent, on the latter picture, pointing out important limitations that they face as a result. I also show how, accordingly, alternative accounts based on a clear and systematic distinction between domain and strength would overcome those limitations. I conclude that, beyond the particular bidimensionalist view defended, our understanding of the modal realm may benefit from more direct debate on whether and how it is multidimensional. (shrink)