Depression is a widespread concern in the United States. Neuromodulation treatments are becoming more common but there is emerging concern for racial disparities in neuromodulation treatment utilization. This study focuses on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a treatment for depression, and the structural and attitudinal barriers that racialized individuals face in accessing it. In January 2023 participants from the Twin Cities, Minnesota engaged in focus groups, coupled with an educational video intervention. Individuals self identified as non-white who had no previous TMS (...) exposure but had tried at least one treatment for their depression. Results revealed that the intervention did not notably change knowledge or stigma about TMS, but attitudes surrounding traveling for treatment changed. Notably, barriers like affordability, frequency of treatment, and lack of knowledge persist. Participants expressed a desire for more information, personal connection, and a tailored educational approach. The study suggests a need for multifaceted strategies to reduce disparities, focusing on education, community-based resources, and policy interventions. Immediate actions that can be taken include the creation of a TMS education program focused on patient engagement and awareness about TMS. (shrink)

This study explores the ethical ideol-ogies and ethical beliefs of African American consumers using the Forsyth ethical position questionnaire (EPQ) and the Muncy-Vitell consumer ethics questionnaire (MVQ). The two dimensions of the EPQ (i.e., idealism and relativism) were the independent constructs and the four dimensions of the MVQ (i.e., illegal, active, passive and no harm) were the dependent variables. In addition, this paper explores the consumer ethics of African Americans across four demographic factors (i.e., age, education, gender, and marital status). (...) A sample of 315 African American consumers was used to explore these relationships. Results confirmed that consumers who score high on the idealism scale are more likely to reject questionable consumer activities, but there was no relationship between relativism and consumers' rejection of questionable activities. Older, more educated and married consumers rejected questionable activities more than younger, less educated and single consumers. Gender did not have any significant relationship to consumers' ethical orientation. (shrink)

This study examines the role of acculturation in shaping consumers’ views of ethics. Specifically, it examines the relationships between the desire to keep one’s original culture, the desire to adopt the host culture, and the four dimensions of the Muncy and Vitell (Journal of Business Research Ethics 24(4), 297, 1992) consumer ethics scale. Using two separate immigrant populations – one of former Middle-Eastern residents now living in the U.S. and the other of Asian immigrants in the U.S. – results indicate (...) that those who want to keep their original culture are less tolerant of unethical consumer activities, while those who are more willing to adopt the host culture are more tolerant of these same consumer activities. Furthermore, the immigrants in both studies who are more tolerant of unethical consumer activities are those who are generally somewhat younger and with less formal education. The relationship between gender and consumer ethics was not significant. (shrink)

The maqālāt of Abū Qāsim al-Balḫī contain several passages devoted to legal theory. The most important source found there is some extracts of K. al-futyā, a legal treatise by al-Ǧāḥiẓ of which until now only fragments remained, containing the criticisms addressed by al-Naẓẓām to the companions of the Prophet. This article provides a translation of these new extracts preceded by a study of the text and its place in the history of legal theory during this formative period of Islamic thought.

Recent accounts of teleological naturalism hold that organisms are intrinsically goaldirected entities. We argue that supporters and critics of this view have ignored the ways in which it is used to address quite different problems. One problem is about biology and concerns whether an organism-centered account of teleological ascriptions would improve our descriptions and explanations of biological phenomena. This is different from the philosophical problem of how naturalized teleology would affect our conception of nature, and of ourselves as natural beings. (...) The neglect of this metatheoretic distinction has made it difficult to understand the criteria we should use for evaluating proposals to naturalize teleology. We argue that a clearer distinction between scientific and philosophical contexts shows that we need more than one set of criteria for evaluating proposals to naturalize teleology, and that taking these into account might advance or dissolve recurring debates in the literature. (shrink)

When students experience unfairness and normlessness in their academic environment, it exemplifies the concept of social anomie. where students may justify dishonest actions such as exam cheating, plagiarism, and others. Academic honesty, a crucial moral characteristic, fundamentally relies on values, rules, and social norms. Against this backdrop, we conducted a mixed-methods study to capture students’ perspectives on academic dishonesty and social anomie. The current study questions investigate the levels of social anomie and academic dishonesty and the correlation between them based (...) on some variables. A sample consisted of 831 male and female students from one public university located in the middle part of Jordan. Data collection involved the use of multidimensional measures that captured various dimensions of social anomie (meaninglessness, distrust, and moral decline) and different behaviors of academic dishonesty (exam cheating, plagiarism, outside help, prior cheating, falsification, and lying about academic assignments). And to enhance generalizability and minimize selection bias, a qualitative data collection methodology was employed, with twenty-one male and female students randomly invited to participate. The findings reveal that the students exhibited a medium level of social anomie, indicating a notable presence of normative challenges in their academic environment. However, the level of academic dishonesty was relatively lower, suggesting a general adherence to ethical standards among the participants. Moreover, a positive correlation between social anomie and behaviors of academic dishonesty was observed, suggesting a link between the two constructs. It is worth noting that the results of the current study demonstrated consistency in the mixed-method approach used for data collection. Regarding gender differences, no significant variations were detected in the levels of social anomie among students. However, significant differences emerged in academic dishonesty, with higher levels reported among male students compared to their female counterparts. In terms of academic specialization, disparities in social anomie levels were evident, with students from humanities exhibiting higher levels compared to other specializations. Additionally, specific forms of academic dishonesty, namely falsification and unauthorized assistance, showed significant differences based on academic specialization, with higher levels reported among students from humanities. Interestingly, no significant differences were found in the levels of academic dishonesty based on academic level. This suggests that academic dishonesty may persist across different stages of university education. However, it is important to note that the study focused on a specific university setting and may not fully represent other educational contexts. (shrink)

Disparity in consumer ethics reflects cultural variations; these are differences in the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one culture from another. This study explores the differences in consumer ethics across cultural dimensions using Hofstede's (in Culture's consequences: international differences in work-related values, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1980) model (collectivism, masculinity, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance) and Muncy and Vitell (in J Bus Res 24(4): 297-311, 1992) consumer ethics model (i.e., illegal, active, passive, and no harm). This is the first (...) study to empirically explore consumer ethics using these two major constructs. Seven hundred sixty one African American consumers were used to test the four major hypotheses developed in this study. Current research has revealed that there are significant differences in ethics between consumers who score high and consumers who score low on Hofstede's four cultural dimensions. In general, this research revealed that consumers who score high on collectivism, high on uncertainty avoidance, low on masculinity, and low on power distance scales reject questionable activities more than consumers who score low on collectivism, low on uncertainty avoidance, high on masculinity, and high on power distance. This study should prove valuable to international marketers because the Hofstede cultural model allows managers to identify differences in consumer ethics across different cultures and thus provides a theoretical base for designing effective marketing strategies. (shrink)

We outline an alternative to both scientific and liberal naturalism which attempts to reconcile Sellars’ apparently conflicting commitments to the scientific accountability of human nature and the autonomy of the space of reasons. Scientific naturalism holds that agency and associated concepts are a mechanical product of the realm of laws, while liberal naturalism contends that the autonomy of the space of reason requires that we leave nature behind. The third way we present follows in the footsteps of German Idealism, which (...) attempted to overcome the Kantian chasm between nature and agency, and is thus dubbed ‘post-Kantian.’ We point to an overlooked group of scholars in the naturalism debate who, along with recent work in biology and cognitive science, offer a path to overcome the reductive tendencies of empiricism while avoiding the dichotomy of logical spaces. We then bring together these different streams of research, by foregrounding and expanding on what they share: the idea of organisms as living agents and that of a continuity without identity between life and mind. We qualify this as a bottom-up transformative approach to rational agency, which grounds cognition in the intrinsically purposive nature of organisms, while emphasizing the distinction between biological agency and full-fledged mindedness. (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel reading of Schelling’s speculative physics in light of debates concerning the notion of emergence in philosophy of science. We begin by highlighting Schelling’s disruptive potential with regard to the contemporary philosophical landscape, currently polarized over a false dichotomy between reductionist Humeanism and liberal Kantianism. We then argue that a broadly Schellingian approach to nature is unwittingly being revived by a group of scholars promoting a non-mainstream process account of emergence based on the notion of constraint (...) and grounded in far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. Such an account, we argue, represents an effective theoretical platform to re-read Schelling’s philosophy of nature today. This reading provides a picture of life and mind as emerging out of self-organizing processes that take place through the self-inhibition of nature’s inherent tendency to disorder. (shrink)

The flow of thought is persistent, and at times merciless. Mental content is generated throughout the day and into the night, moving forward predictably at times but surprisingly at others. Understanding what influences the trajectory of thought—how thoughts continuously unfold over time—has important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of thought disorders like schizophrenia and recurrent nightmares. Here, we examine whether cognitive control restricts moment-to-moment content shifts across sleep and wakefulness, thus acting as a fundamental constraint on thought variability. Thought (...) variability was measured as the semantic incoherence between sequential thought phrases and was applied to independent datasets of dreaming and waking reports. Our results show that within both sleeping and waking reports, conditions typically marked by higher levels of cognitive control were associated with decreased thought variability (i.e., semantic incoherence). During wakefulness, on-task conditions were associated with reduced levels of thought variability compared to off-task conditions, and thought variability was greater when thoughts wandered around more freely. During sleep, lucid dreams, marked by higher levels of cognitive control, were associated with reduced levels of thought variability compared to non-lucid dreams. Together, these results suggest that cognitive control may limit thought variability across the 24-hour cycle of thought generation. Such findings are consistent with the Dynamic Framework of Thought, where mental states are expected to vary on a continuum of deliberate constraints, with lower cognitive control leading to a categorical cluster of spontaneous thought processes that includes both mind-wandering during wakefulness and non-lucid dreams during sleep. This observation has broad implications for models of cognition, specifically highlighting the continuity of cognitive processes throughout the circadian cycle and the importance of considering varying levels of thought constraint in both waking and dreaming states. (shrink)

The ethical climate in Turkey is beset by ethical problems. Bribery, environmental pollution, tax frauds, deceptive advertising, production of unsafe products, and the ethical violations that involved politicians and business professionals are just a few examples. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the ethical beliefs of American and Turkish consumers using the Ethical Position Questionnaire (EPQ) of Forsyth (1980), the Machiavellianism scale, and the Consumer Ethical Practices of Muncy and Vitell questionnaire (MVQ). A sample of 376 (...) subjects that consists of American consumers (n = 188) and Turkish consumers (n = 199) was used to compare the ethical beliefs and practices of the two samples. The MANOVA results for the two nationality groups found that five out of six criterion variables differed between the two groups. The implications of this study are intended to assist marketers to develop strategies that suit a particular market and lessen their risk of entry. (shrink)

This study was designed to examine the determinants of and differences between the ethical beliefs of two groups of Japanese students in religious and secular universities. Multiple regression analysis revealed that students of the Japanese religious university perceived that young, male, relativistic, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did older, female, and idealistic students. Students of the Japanese secular university perceived that male, achievement-oriented, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did female and experience-oriented students. (...) Opportunism was found to be one of the most important determinants in explaining misconduct. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) revealed that students of the Japanese secular university tended to score higher on achievement and humanism, and lower on theism and positivism than did students of the Japanese religious university. In addition, students of the Japanese secular university were somewhat more sensitive to academic dishonesty practices than were students of the Japanese religious university. (shrink)

P-hacking or data dredging involves manipulation of the research data in order to obtain a statistically significant result. The reasons behind P-hacking and the consequences of the same are discussed in the present manuscript.

One of Averroes' earliest works is dedicated to law. The work comprises a summary of al-Ghazali's work on legal theory called al-Mustasfa min 'ilm al-usul. This volume presents a new edition of the Arabic text accompanied by a French translation and commentary. The edition is preceded by a study that draws attention to the main points of difference between the two philosophers.

To achieve accreditation standards and train residents for clinical practice, ACGME placed a lot of emphasis on ethical competence and professionalism. A crucial requirement for enhancing the standard of future medical practice is ethics education. This study sought to identify the requirement for ethics knowledge in clinical training from the perspective of the residents and determine the most effective methods for education. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted between March and May 2023. Participants included Lebanese postgraduate medical students, 210 completed (...) a Google Forms survey via WhatsApp. A validated questionnaire adapted from a previous study was used, focusing on demographics, ethical experience, attitudes, educational goals, and training effectiveness. Analyses were performed on IBM SPSS Statistics software (version 26.0) and R software. 210 residents representing a range of specialties participated in the survey. predominantly in internal medicine (54.8%). Residents strongly affirmed the importance of professionalism and ethics education. Participants overwhelmingly agreed that it should improve patient care and clinical decision-making (_p_. (shrink)

To achieve accreditation standards and train residents for clinical practice, ACGME placed a lot of emphasis on ethical competence and professionalism. A crucial requirement for enhancing the standard of future medical practice is ethics education. This study sought to identify the requirement for ethics knowledge in clinical training from the perspective of the residents and determine the most effective methods for education. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted between March and May 2023. Participants included Lebanese postgraduate medical students, 210 completed (...) a Google Forms survey via WhatsApp. A validated questionnaire adapted from a previous study was used, focusing on demographics, ethical experience, attitudes, educational goals, and training effectiveness. Analyses were performed on IBM SPSS Statistics software (version 26.0) and R software. 210 residents representing a range of specialties participated in the survey. predominantly in internal medicine (54.8%). Residents strongly affirmed the importance of professionalism and ethics education. Participants overwhelmingly agreed that it should improve patient care and clinical decision-making (_p_. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHate crimes in the United States have drastically increased since 2015, particularly for the American Muslim population. There was a 17% hike in hate crimes against American Muslims in 2017...