Tendencies of organized crime in the context of economical crisis are dealt in the article. The author shows his own position about the economical crisis and how it influenced organized crime in Lithuania. The reasons of economical crisis, characteristics and peculiarities of crimes of organized groups, which operate in Lithuania, are discussed in the article. The author reveals specific features, which enable to evaluate the real influence of organized groups to the economical state (...) of Lithuania. (shrink)

The paper shows mechanisms and manifestations of the challenges for the security in the South American Tri-Border Area. It analyses the background of the activity of chosen organized crime and terrorist groups in this region. The article refers to some social and economic conditions for the spread of violence and illegal business in the area. It is focused on the most important dimensions of these problems and on the strategy implemented by South American governments to fight and (...) prevent organized crime. The paper shows how the security forces deal with the threat and evaluate the impact of these efforts. (shrink)

This article considers the issues of adaptation and organization of the educational process, barrier-free environment and readiness for professional activity of students with disabilities in inclusive education in conditions of inclusive education in a medical university. The relevance of this work is determined by one of the priority areas of state policy in the field of higher education – access to higher education for people with disabilities in inclusive education. Inclusive education at the university is designed to ensure not (...) only the realization of the right of students with disabilities in inclusive education to higher education, but also to solve the problems of socialization and professional demand for such people. In order to improve the process of introducing inclusive education at the Ryazan State Medical University named after Academician I.P. Pavlov, a study was conducted, the main problems and ways of solving them were identified, related to the organization of the educational process, the conditions of the barrier-free environment and the readiness for professional activity of students with disabilities in inclusive education. An increase in the proportion of university teachers who have undergone advanced training in inclusive education also contributes to solving problems. Adaptation of educational programs and educational and methodological support for persons with disabilities includes psychological, pedagogical and tutor support etc. The organization of the educational process using distance education technologies is one of the priority conditions for teaching students with disabilities and/or HIA. The use of this technology makes it possible to significant-ly expand and modify some educational standards for students with disabilities in inclusive education, namely, to create an individual way for each student with disabilities in inclusive education in a medical university. It is proposed to use training techniques such as: online consultation of teachers; VR technologies; availability of training materials 24/7; online webinars that facilitate the inclusion of such students in the educational and research activities of the university. The professionally organized educational space and educational process of the university provide not only a high level of mastery of professional competencies, but also contribute to the formation of personal qualities of students with disabilities in inclusive education, necessary for their successful socialization, life and activity in society. (shrink)

The escalation of violence committed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas against noncombatant civilians triggered a shift in the theoretical orientation of scholars who study Colombia’s political economy. While previous explanations emphasized the sociopolitical “grievances” underlying guerrilla activities, recent explanations emphasize the “greed” motive, including guerrilla involvement in Colombia’s illegal narcotics trade. In this article, the author posits an alternative explanation using Charles Tilly’s theories of state formation to explain FARC activities in Caquetá, Colombia. Drawing from a longitudinal (...) data set that documents the war making, state making, extraction, and protection activities of the FARC between 1975 and 2007, in addition to historical sociological methods, the author finds that increases in FARC repression stem from the growing militarization and paramilitarization of the region, which pressured the FARC to extract resources from the local population in a way that no longer served that population’s legitimate protection interests. (shrink)

In the early 1970s, the major industrial states were preparing to shift to nuclear fission as their principal source of electrical power. But that change has not occurred. In part, this is due to a growing public recognition that techniques and institutions for management of spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium, and long-lived radioactive wastes are not yet fully developed. The consequent pressures for resolution have spurred a series of often ill-defined and sometimes contradictory attempts to promote international cooperation and control (...) of hazardous activities. How are these varied suggestions to be compared and evaluated? By what criteria can plans be selected that are likely to be both effective and negotiable? In this study, Gene I. Rochlin, physicist and social scientist, explores the technical, political, and institutional aspects of international nuclear export and fuel cycle policies. He categorizes existing proposals and suggests way to develop new ones that better promote both national and international goals. Dr. Rochlin argues neither for nor against the use of nuclear power or plutonium fuels. Instead, he addresses the question of how international arrangements could be reached that might jointly satisfy the objective of the several key nations, yet not be too difficult to negotiate. He concludes that a major fault has been the tendency to improvise arrangements for specific technical or industrial operations. As a result, overall social and political goals have become the bargaining points for compromise. Yet attempts to simultaneously resolve all problems are unlikely to prove fruitful. Dr. Rochlin suggests instead the formation of institutions organized around more limited social, political, and technical objectives, even at the expense of excluding some nations or omitting some aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Only by so doing, he argues, can immediate agreements be reached that preserve the potential for more comprehensive future arrangements without sacrificing industrial, environmental, or nonproliferation goals. This important book will be of interest to scientists, social scientists, government officials, and others concerned with the problems of plutonium management and nuclear wastes. (shrink)

The paper analyses the problem of workload quotas for district court judges in relation to the standard statutory work time duration. The problem is set against the general tendency of increase in the number of cases brought before courts each year. District courts as the courts of first instance are faced with an ever growing flow of cases. With regard to civil cases, the numbers are increasing especially in the field of the law of obligations (disputes in relation to sale, (...) loan, credit, consumer credit, lease contracts, as well as contracts for the provision of services, etc.). As far as criminal cases are concerned, the numbers are increasing especially in the fields of robbery, theft, in particular car theft, disturbance of public order and other crimes. In these circumstances, it is extremely important to conduct the analysis of the activity of courts in order to obtain a picture of the current situation with regard to the workload of courts and judges. District courts deserve special attention. Uneven distribution of workload among courts and judges is often the reason for the increase of the number of cases where a final decision (judgement) is reached later than 6 months after the start of proceedings. This was pointed out in the Overview of Activities of the Lithuanian Courts and their Self-Governance Institutions (2009–2010), as well as in the report of the National Courts Administration (2010). Those documents underline the importance to analyse the workload of district court judges for the purposes of optimising work organisation, setting the number of judges, distribution of resources, evaluation of judges’ activity, etc. The said analysis is crucial in order to avoid exceeding working time quotas and excessive workload of judges. At present, the workload of district court judges is calculated in accordance with the regulation adopted by the Courts Council in 2004 (as amended in 2005) and it reflects the number of standard cases (civil, criminal cases and cases of administrative offences) as well as other types of procedural documents dealt with by a judge within a period of one month. However, there are no quotas set for judge’s workload with regard to the duration of the statutory work time. The quotas for separate procedural stages (preparation for hearings, hearings, adoption of decision (judgement), other procedural actions that a judge performs while administering justice) are inexistent. The calculation does not take into account whether those standard cases are heard by a single judge or by a panel of judges, the complexity of a particular case is neither reflected. Establishing quotas for district court judges and other court clerks (judge assistants, secretaries, etc.) should consist of legal, organisational-procedural and technical-economical activity. The Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Lithuania, the National Courts Administration, the Courts Council as well as chairmen and experienced judges of district courts should play an active part in the process of establishing quotas. A special role should be assumed by the General Assembly of Judges. (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

Leisure time is a time frame which is not included in work and study, does not require any social responsibilities and can be used by a person's own will and voluntarily. An individual manages this time through various recreational activities with his own preference and tendencies. The teaching profession is a special service area. The aim of this study is to determine how teachers, who are affected by negative conditions such as stress, fatigue and monotony in business life, make (...) use of leisure time, and the effects of activities they participate on life happiness and job performance. For this purpose, 1604 teachers working in Karesi and Altıeylül districts in Balıkesir province constitute the target population of the study. According to the sample calculation (0.05 error margin), it has been found sufficient to conduct surveys with 310 teachers. A questionnaire has been applied to 450 teachers and 400 questionnaires have been evaluated. In the study, Recreation activities participation form has been used to collect data, the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire has been used to measure the happiness of the participants and the scale developed by LIT (Lamar Institute of Tecnology, 2009) has been used for performance.According to the findings of the study, it has been determined that the teachers are more interested in activities in the 'other activities' category such as video games, chess, watching television, surfing on the internet, board and card games, magazines and newspapers, attending club meetings, there is a weak positively relationship between recreation activities and happiness and happiness affects job performance. (shrink)

In the sacred texts, human beings are described as being created in the most beautiful way. In order to understand and define its integrity of existence in the most accurate way, it is necessary to know both its biological and spiritual aspects. In addition to the well-known and generally accepted characteristics of humans such as will and responsibility, there are also basic realities that constitute humans such as nafs, soul and mind. One of the most powerful factors that make a (...) person virtuous or worthless both in the presence of the Creator and in the eyes of people is the nafs. The nafs has many different meanings such as ”the essence of man, soul, person, self-being, mind, life, lust, desire, the source of bad habits".Philosophers, Sufis and theological scholars with different philosophical ideas in different periods in the history of thought have discussed and evaluated the subject of the nafs. Pythagoras considered the nafs as a substance separate from the body, Democritus as fire or heat, Plato as a substance that gives movement to the body. Aristotle, on the other hand, pointed out the difficulty of defining the soul and talked about three types of the nafs: vegetative, animal and human. The concept of nafs, on whose definition philosophers cannot agree, has a strategic importance as it is accepted as the point of separation of good and evil in religious literature. Because the human nafs, by its nature, has a structure that is prone to worldly pleasures, human desires, wishs and passions. Likewise, human beings are creatures of will, and thanks to this feature, they have the ability and freedom to establish positive and negative relationships and evaluate the beings and events around them. What should be the attitude of a person who has these characteristics towards pleasures, desires and passions? The main theme of our study is Mawardi's answer to this question and the solutions he identified. It was stated that having will makes humans different and superior to other living creatures. In this context, what is expected from a person is to use his will to control his nafs by displaying a sensitive, conscious and astute attitude towards the desires of his soul. It is observed in real life that failure to control one's nafs creates undesirable consequences both individually and socially. If the nafs cannot be controlled consciously, a person may become a victim of excessive passion for the world and the things in it. It is possible for humans to become arrogant and proud and to corrupt the environment, society and the world and make it uninhabitable as a result of pursuing their desires. Therefore, there is a need for a constantly dynamic and active consciousness regarding this feature of the nafs. There is no positive situation that an uncontrollable, undisciplined nafs that is a slave to its desires and passions will bring to its owner. The undisciplined and uncontrolled nafs causes individual, religious, moral and social traumas such as taqiyya, insincere words and actions, formal religious attitudes and behaviors, and alienating others for simple, primitive reasons. This is the point that the thinker focuses on and draws attention to. If a person can manage to control and discipline the passions and desires of his nafs by using his will, space will be opened for virtues that will bring happiness to individual and social life, such as brotherhood, solidarity, altruism. Mawardi evaluated this issue in the fifth chapter of his work Edebü'd-Dünyâ ved-Dîn. Mawardi, who thinks that education is an important factor in the reformation of the nafs, says that the mind and revealed knowledge given to man by God are indispensable elements of this struggle. Because he thinks that the alliance of reason, revelation and knowledge is necessary in distinguishing between right and wrong and in being patient with the harmful and evil tendencies of the nafs. A person who takes revelation, reason, knowledge and wisdom as a guide and whose emotions, thoughts and behaviors are shaped by this guide will not be defeated by his nafs. For this reason, Maverdi emphasizes especially when evaluating the subject of “Literary of the soul” that a person needs decency in adulthood as well as in childhood. In this context, he identified issues such as arrogance, pride, false envy and wrath, which he thought could hinder the evolution of virtue and virtue in individual and social life, and also showed the reasons for these and how to combat them. (shrink)

In the article the parameters of the crime novel and crime story that were used by the postwar German novel of the investigation were highlighted and analyzed. The transformation of the range of problems of criminal literature in the new conditions is showed on the material of such works as ‘Aula‘ Kant, ‘Der Fall d’Arthez‘ G.-E. Nossack ‘Buridan’s ass‘ G. de Breun, ‘Gruppenbild mit Dame‘ G. Boell, ‘Black ass‘ L. Rinzer et al. It is demonstrated which formal elements (...) that organize the system of images, time-space and the intersection of ‘voice streams‘, the texts succeed from the twentieth-century enlightenment ‘postpitaval’s‘ prose. Traditions of Schiller, Goethe and others expressed through the ideological setting of the novel of the investigation, the duality of its structure and the relationship of narrative plans. The narrators of investigation novel work for underlining their detachment; they are out of the events and cherish their independence. Masks and aliases are actively used with the view of creating of the effect of ‘non-presence‘. Authors play with the grammatical forms: I am - you are - he is. Therefore, the novel of investigation adopts the social agenda and coherence with the historical period from the tradition of a criminal novel. Ethical measures used by narrators to evaluate the events described are succeeded from tradition as well. Some elements, which stay relevant, are used as productive. (shrink)

The subject of this study is the process of entering the art world of a new object – the art of the street wave. Based on the method of discursive analysis proposed by M. Foucault, an attempt is made to determine through which discursive utterances the subjects of the art world form the discourse of street wave art, as well as how the field of utterances is organized. The subject whose activity is being investigated is the St. Petersburg (...) Inloco Foundation, which focuses in its work on artists whose creative career has a street background. The article describes the characteristics of what can be conceptualized as a statement in the activities of the Foundation, and also describes how the field of these statements is organized. In the course of the study, the forms of sequences, forms of coexistence and intervention procedures were considered. It was revealed that the experience of street creativity of representatives of the art of the street wave is being modified under the influence of discursive practices of the field of contemporary art. It is noted that the art of the street wave exists at the junction of two fields – the field of graffiti and the field of institutionalized art. It is concluded that the borderline position of street wave art allows it to expand the field of contemporary art due to the fact that it was once in the field of "non-art", was extracted by the subjects of the art world from the sphere of everyday life and endowed with the status of a candidate for evaluation. (shrink)

The predominant trends in the European prison system are population growth and overcrowding of correctional facilities. Recently, the level of criminal offences in Lithuania has been gradually increasing. Current statistics on repeated criminal offences and forecasts of recidivating crime are also pessimistic. The large number of convicts, the negative impact of isolation, the absence of a progressive correction system, the inadequacy of existing correctional measures, and the largely formal activity of penal institutions exacerbate the problems of ineffective resocialization (...) of convicts and resulting recidivism. Thus, the situation demands an examination of effective methods for the elimination of the above detriments. The article emphasizes the need for an essential modernization of the system of resocialization of convicts in Lithuania by transforming formal measures into real ones directed at the reform of behaviour and thinking. The article discusses new corrective measures widely used across the European Union and other countries, such as evaluation of individual risk for repeated criminal offence and implementation of appropriate behaviour-correction programmes on the basis of clearly defined criteria of effectiveness. Unfortunately such measures have not been implemented in Lithuania, either de jure or de facto. (shrink)

Vrednovanje i ocjenjivanje u nastavi Glazbene kulture važna je sastavnica odgojno-obrazovnog procesa koja sa sobom nosi razne poteškoće i subjektivnost. U nastavi Glazbene kulture realiziraju se različite glazbene aktivnosti i sadržaji, koji su više ili manje specifični te se navedeno odražava i na vrednovanje i ocjenjivanje. Navedene aktivnosti i sadržaji u okviru Kurikuluma nastavnog predmeta Glazbena kultura za osnovne škole i Glazbena umjetnost za gimnazije organizirane su u okviru tri domene/nastavna područja: Slušanje i upoznavanje glazbe, Izražavanje glazbom i uz glazbu (...) i Glazba u kontekstu. U radu je prikazano istraživanje provedeno tijekom 2019. godine, a koje je obuhvatilo 269 ispitanika, tj. 30 osnovnoškolskih učitelja Glazbene kulture i 239 učenika osmih razreda. Istraživanje je provedeno u Osječko-baranjskoj i Požeško-slavonskoj županiji te je obuhvatilo učitelje Glazbene kulture i učenike osmih razreda šest osnovnih škola od kojih se četiri nalaze u urbanom, a dvije u ruralnom području. Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je doznati stavove učenika i učitelja o vrednovanju i ocjenjivanju u nastavi Glazbene kulture, utvrditi moguću povezanost sociodemografskih varijabla i mišljenja učitelja i učenika te utvrditi na koji se način provodi ocjenjivanje u nastavi Glazbene kulture. Slušanje glazbe i pjevanje su aktivnosti koje se, prema mišljenju i učitelja i učenika, najčešće vrednuju i ocjenjuju u nastavi Glazbene kulture. Ujedno, učitelji u većoj mjeri smatraju da provode individualno i skupno ocjenjivanje nego li to smatraju učenici. Utvrđeno je da učitelji najčešće ocjenjivanje provode tako što tijekom svakog sata prate učenike, skloni su učenike ocijeniti odmah na satu i najčešće usmeno. Utvrđeno je da su učitelji i učenici mišljenja da učenik ne treba imati razvijene glazbene sposobnosti za ocjenu ‘odličan’ u predmetu Glazbena kultura. S obzirom na povezanost sociodemografskih varijabla i mišljenja ispitanika o vrednovanju i ocjenjivanju, pokazalo se kako su područje na kojemu se nalazi škola i spol značajni prediktori učeničkih stavova, dok se kod učitelja nijedna varijabla nije pokazala prediktorskom. Evaluation and grading in the teaching of Music Culture is an important component of the educational process that carries various difficulties and subjectivity with it. In the course of Music Culture, various music activities and contents are realized, which are more or less specific and also reflect on the evaluation and evaluation. The activities and contents of the Curriculum for the Elementary School Music Culture and High School Musical Arts curricula are organized within three domains/teaching areas: Listening and learning about music, Expressing music and with music, and Music in context. The research was conducted in 2019 and included 269 respondents, i.e. 30 elementary music teachers and 239 eighth grade students. The survey was conducted in Osijek-Baranja and Pozega-Slavonia counties and it included Music teachers and eighth grade students from six primary schools, four of whom are in urban and two in rural areas. The aim of this research was to find out students’ and teachers’ views on evaluation and assessment and to determine the possible correlation of sociodemographic variables and teachers’ and students’ opinions on evaluation and assessment in Music Culture teaching and to determine how the assessment is conducted in Music Culture teaching. Listening to music and singing are activities that, in the opinion of both teachers and students, are most commonly evaluated and graded in teaching Music Culture. At the same time, teachers are more likely to carry out individual and group assessments than students. Teachers usually conduct their assessment by monitoring students every class, they tend to evaluate students during class and most often orally. Teachers and students think that student should not have the developed musical skills to score excellently in Music Culture. Considering the correlation between sociodemographic variables and the respondents’ opinions on evaluation and grading, it was shown that the area in which school is located and gender are significant predictors of students’ attitudes, while in the teachers no variables proved to be predictive. (shrink)

Technology development and innovation are fundamentally different from scientific research. However, in many circumstances, they are evaluated jointly and by the same processes. In these cases, peer review—the most usual procedure for evaluating research—is also applied to the evaluation of technological products and innovation activities. This can lead to unfair results and end up discouraging the involvement of researchers in these fields. This paper analyzes the evaluation processes in Uruguay's National System of Researchers. In this system, all members' (...) activities, both scientific and technological, are evaluated by peer committees. Based on documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews, the difficulties faced by evaluators in assessing technology products are explored. The article highlights the persistence of a linear conception of the link between science and technology and describes the obstacles to assimilate the particularities of technological activities. Refereed publications are presented as the only uncontested product. Other types of output are reviewed with suspicion. This study emphasizes the need for specific mechanisms to evaluate technological production within academic careers. (shrink)

The paper discusses methodological guidelines for evaluating mechanistic explanations. According to current accounts, a satisfactory mechanistic explanation should include all of the relevant features of the mechanism, its component entities and activities, and their properties and organization, as well as exhibit productive continuity. It is not specified, however, how this kind of mechanistic completeness can be demonstrated. I argue that parameter sufficiency inferences based on mathematical model simulations provide a way of determining whether a mechanism capable of producing the phenomenon (...) of interest can be constructed from mechanistic components organized, acting, and having the properties described in the mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

Cooperative learning encourages the development of interpersonal skills and motivates students to participate more actively in the teaching and learning process. This study explores the impact of cooperative learning on the academic goals influencing university students’ behavior and leading to the attainment of a series of academic objectives. To this end, a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used, with a sample of 509 university students from Preschool, Primary and Social Education undergraduate degree courses. Using the Academic Goals Questionnaire, pretest (...) and posttest measures were taken via self-reports to evaluate three types of academic goals: learning goals, social reinforcement goals and achievement goals. The results show that cooperative learning is an effective tool for encouraging university students to develop academic goals that motivate them to fully engage with the tasks they are set in order to acquire knowledge and skills. In addition, when students are asked to work as part of a team on an autonomous basis without the structure and supervision necessary to ensure a minimum standard of cooperation, they display a greater tendency toward social reinforcement goals than toward learning and achievement goals. These findings contribute new knowledge to the conceptual framework on cooperative learning. Goals may be considered one of the most important variables influencing students’ learning and the use of cooperative learning techniques in university classrooms creates the necessary conditions for encouraging students to develop goals oriented toward learning. (shrink)

The right to resist and the right to rebel have again become relevant as legal problems. Their justifications traditionally derive from natural law, human rights, the principle of the lesser evil or of the social contract. Interpretation of the right to resist expresses the tendencies to the law of people, in particular, the right to self-determination, distinguishing national and international understanding, and underscores the special nature of such right. Also, two-level research of the right to resist should be distinguished (...) research of the right to resist – the first is a debate about the nature character and legislative consolidation of this right, partly focused on preventive-limiting its properties, whereas the second one is updated at the time of social upheaval and legal concerns, and it contains not only the evaluation of the events, but sometimes attempts to justify ex post risk of abuse and original post-legitimation of public authorities. An important condition for the existence of the right to resistance is a legitimate aim. This could be called the internal condition, which is provided by those who implement this right. Other condition (which can be called external) and the base of implementation should recognize certain actions, acts or decisions by public authorities – those that violate human rights are illegal and unfair. At the same time, the purpose and result of the right to resistance may be changes in the public authorities, the termination of abuse of authority and violation of human rights by its agents, return to democratic legal regime or change in the constitutional system, aimed at creating a state of law, as well as in some cases, when combined with the right to self-determination, – the achievement of independence. The author of the present paper considers that the right to resist is an individual right, a human right. The author inclines to the idea of the collective nature of the right to resist implementation, but warns against simply counting the number of persons engaged in it. In other words, it does not matter how many people commit acts, but it does matter how many people support them. Considering the modalities of implementing the right to resist, it should be noted that these forms can be active or passive, expressed in actions directly or indirectly. The right of rebellion is an extreme form of the right to resist, which is carried out in case if the non-violent means of resistance are exhausted or proved ineffective. The conditions (and bases) of the right of rebellion are phenomena, such as the following: (1) massive human rights violations by public authorities (quantitative criterion); (2) systematic human rights violations by public authorities (accumulating criterion); or (3) extraordinary human rights violations by public authorities (criterion by serious, explicit and violent nature of the violation). Ambiguous is an issue of the limits of the right of rebellion, its permission and proportion, as well as whether it is possible to develop a mechanism for exercising this right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Institute of MedicineRuth Ellen Bulger (bio)IN 1863 the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was established by federal charter to advise the government on scientific matters. Almost 100 years later, in 1971, the Academy created the Institute of Medicine within the NAS to focus on health-related problems and issues. Today the IOM has a program budget of about $13 million, which includes both private and government funds, and is (...) regarded as a leading center for health policy research.After briefly explaining the structure and general goals of IOM, this article describes several new or anticipated projects as well as some recently completed reports that have a strong ethical component.The IOMThe IOM's distinguished membership is made up of health care professionals of all sorts, scientists working in health-related disciplines, and lawyers, economists, and others knowledgeable in and involved with policies and activities associated with health issues. It is organized around eight working groups or divisions: Health Sciences Policy; Health Care Services; Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, including AIDS activities; International Health; Biobehavioral Sciences and Mental Disorders; the Food and Nutrition Board; the Medical Follow-up Agency; and the Health Policy Fellowship Programs. Each of these divisions is assisted by an oversight board that provides advice on its activities.It is important to know at the outset that IOM has decided that each of the divisions will include consideration of human values and ethical issues in their activities. Therefore, no separate locus was established within the IOM to deal with these matters. I am director of the Division of Health Sciences Policy, which is the only division that has made ethics a priority in its work, and it is the focus of this article.We have addressed questions of ethics, human values, social values, decision making, and priority setting in many of the division's reports. In fact, most of our reports at least raise ethical questions. In addition, a portion of the interest from endowment funds given to IOM by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has been devoted to work in this area. [End Page 73]The division's advisory board, headed by Claude Bennett, chairman of the Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, has decided on two major priorities for the division: (1) foster an environment conducive to productive research, and (2) anticipate the impact of scientific—especially biomedical—advances on society, monitoring and considering the social and ethical factors that accompany basic scientific and technological progress. These two priorities are interdependent because the fostering of a good environment for research presupposes that the results of this research will produce beneficial effects for the society that supports the research.Upcoming StudiesSociety has been unable to establish a mechanism for discussing in a meaningful way—and possibly resolving—a number of pressing national issues with social, ethical, legal, and scientific ramifications. The President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research considered several such issues and produced important reports about them. However, the commission was funded only until 1983. The Congressional Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee was authorized in 1985 to address these contentious issues, but it was caught in the crossfire of congressional abortion politics and subsequently died. A new model is needed to attempt to develop national consensus on these complex, contentious issues.The Board on Health Sciences Policy has wrestled with this idea. Recently, it approved a proposal to establish a study committee charged with developing effective alternative methodologies for anticipating and addressing the social, legal, and ethical issues that may accompany rapid advances in biomedical science and technology. This multidisciplinary committee will be given a series of tasks: (1) to explore past experiences with some of these varying methodologies (i.e., town meetings, consensus conferences, forums, commissions, etc.); (2) to develop an agenda of issues likely to arise in the future; (3) to define and test a variety of alternative methodological approaches to these questions; (4) to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, and impact of the various approaches; and (5) to make recommendations on the process and structure by which this fact-finding, analytical, and decision-making function could be... (shrink)

Purpose of the article is to predict the interrelationship between the change of financial institutions loan portfolio and activities of the main economic sectors in Lithuania. Coherence between financial intermediation and economic growth cause a great interest of economists during the late decade. Prevailed opinion that banking sector is the reflection of economic growth and expansion and that its role - to intermediate in the saving and investing needs, reallocating funds between economic activities, was replaced by sentiment that strong and (...) stable banking sector could be not only the result of economic development, but also the cause of this growth. The purpose of the article is to accomplish forecast of the influence of financial institutions loan portfolio change to the main economic sectors in Lithuania for 2013-2017 period. Methodology/methods Analysis of variation of loan portfolio according economic sectors shows the tendencies of financing of various activities in the past. Regression - correlation analysis helps to identify the influence of loan portfolio changes and their impact for GDP and employment in separate economic sectors. The forecasting of different economic sectors was made using extrapolation methods and econometric method. Scientific aim: Economic situation in Lithuania forces to estimate decisions made by banking sector that influence not only individual countries but also the global economy. In this regard, there is a natural question of whether the process of underway stagnation should be judged as a timely economic development stage, or perhaps as the result of policies pursued by financial institutions? Prerequisites for the problem situation forces to overhaul loan portfolio managed by financial institutions, evaluate its change on the country's economy sectors, and to investigate these relationships forecasts. Findings: There is a strong link between financial sector development and economic growth. The results showed that the volume of loans has a very close interdependence with the GDP. Data obtained for loan portfolio forecasting for 2013-2017 showed that the growth of loans can be seen in all sectors except construction. Employment should grow only in public and retail sectors. Conclusions : The most relationship with GDP was established in retail and public sectors. Determining the correlation coefficients and regression equations between loans and employment the strongest relationship found in retail, industrial and construction sectors. The study encountered lack of data for 2012, since the information about the composition of the loan portfolio in different sectors since November 2011 is no longer provided to the Bank of Lithuania. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that the concepts of work and labor have been shaped by political and feminist philosophers in ways that are more revealing of their specific visions of society than the character and significance of various socially necessary activities. Hegel, Marx, and Arendt each have particular understandings of work that illuminate other elements of society that are considered important, detrimental, or dysfunctional. Their normative understandings stem from the idiosyncratic visions of the public and private spheres that are (...) embedded in their writings and the specific moral and political characteristics that they ascribe to the concepts of labor and work. For feminist theorists such as Eva Kittay, the notion of labor as housework, childcare or carework stems from the project of offering an alternative social or political framework that accommodates women and recognizes their role in the overall functioning of society. However, feminist accounts of labor in the domestic realm also suffer from a tendency to highlight certain important dimensions and elements of society, such as care, moral labor, or the invisible conditions of capitalist production. This focus distracts us from understanding the role of work as a universal practice engaged in subjectively, idiosyncratically, by each member of society. The latter vision of work requires not a concrete definition but a broad contour of the boundaries of work activities. ;My purpose in exploring the role of work in these writings is twofold: the first is to show the normative role and meanings of work in these philosophers. The second is to clear the way for a new understanding of work. Since the recognition of one's membership in a polity is partially dependent on one's contributions to society, and one's contributions are often evaluated in terms of the concept of "work," there is a need for a more expansive vision of work. The concept and meaning of work must be reformulated in order to acknowledge the social obligations and commitments that individuals express through the performance of a broad variety of work activities. If we can arrive at a new formulation of the concept of work, then we can implement it to acknowledge the social character of various activities, and the individuals who perform them, whether or not they are wage-earners , as crucial to society, i.e. as contributing citizens. (shrink)

_Relevance_. The starting point for embedding CSR as part of the management culture is the vision and values. But first, you need to understand what 'values' means in CSR terms. Companies spend time and effort in creating their mission, vision and values statements, but these are often only from a commercial and internal viewpoint. To achieve CSR values, managers need to take an objective external vie", identifying their various stakeholders, and the company's impacts upon them [1]. Management culture is part (...) of an organizational culture that includes both formal and informal elements of the organizational culture. Management culture reflects the level of the organization’s managerial system development, modernity, efficiency and functionality. It depends on this level how innovations will be implemented in the organization’s management and whether they will be implemented at all, and how effectively the objectives will be solved and the aims will be implemented [2]. Summarizing the results of various research made in different countries, it becomes clear that large companies are not always inclined to coordinate their activities with stakeholders because of their institutional weakness. Research aim: assess the level of cultural and social responsibility of organisational management and discuss their links. Research methods. Analysis of scientific literature, questionnaire survey. Research results. The findings of the research carried out in other countries proved that organizations evaluate not all aspects of corporate social responsibility, and this is influenced by the lack of the employees, as one part of the stakeholders, strong institutional capacity. The quantitative research found that the administration of both groups of companies inadequately evaluate corporate social responsibility activities, there is no feedback guaranteed, there is insufficient care about the relations with employees who are one part of stakeholders, their physical environment and psychological condition. There is no effective internal audit system of social responsibility which should be developed to guarantee feedback, and corporate social responsibility has not become an inseparable part of organizational culture. Having evaluated the weaknesses and the positive trends of management culture and social responsibility characteristics of groups of companies, it should be stated that firstly, management culture expression has influence when aiming for corporate social responsibility; secondly, corporate social responsibility can be regarded as an integral derivative of management culture realized in organizations’ management practice. However, there are also significant differences. There were set personal managerial personnel culture and management knowledge significant amounts of estimates, associated with different approaches to other management work criteria according to which the management culture condition is diagnosed. The clearer dynamics of indicator estimates of the second group of companies leads to the conclusion that the management culture is still being formed, but without clear direction vector. Processes are not clearly focused and uncoordinated. The standards, regulations existing in the second group are not sufficiently linked to the activities practice, so they do not guarantee the optimality of processes, unlike in the first group of companies, where there is a standard peculiar management culture, although the estimates of indicators diagnosing it are not particularly high. In such a situation, the questions of investment in the modernization of management, optimization of working processes remain relevant, unresolved, but the effectiveness of their payoff remains uncertain. Human resources in management policy of both groups of companies are under-estimated; in order to create favorable conditions for their effective use, communication and the interrelationship functionality problems are acute. Organizations (larger problems fixed in the second group of companies) are not adequately prepared to implement corporate social responsibility organization-wide, as management work is not optimally organized, the managerial personnel lacks knowledge and skills working with human resources. Even in the evaluation of formal aspects of corporate social responsibility standards implementation possibilities, the situation existing in groups of companies and organizational abilities of leaders would not allow to realize them systematically and effectively. In this case, corporate social responsibility values would remain more as a declarative form and not the organization’s management culture inseperable part, and a natural, balanced way of functioning of processes based on this philosophy. Though in the second group of companies there is clearer dynamics according to separate management culture parameters, the apparent orientation to modernization of activities shows more open to innovation, in which the elimination of drawbacks and purposeful development can serve the realization of corporate social responsibility more effectively. In both groups of companies the highlighted declarative corporate social responsibility policy trends contradict the actual practice of social responsibility in relations with the organization's internal and external stakeholders. This partly confirms theoretical insights presented in Lithuanian scientific works, which emphasize marketing direction of corporate social responsibility as a general cultural dominant. However, this aspect has not been developed yet in the case of the discussed groups of companies, and the research results lead to the conclusion that organizations lack basic knowledge of corporate social responsibility and motivation to realize them in practice, and the high level of clustering and internal corruption impedes social responsibility transfer to the strategic level. The lack of development of dialogue culture between stakeholders (subjects) became apparent in management culture problem areas and can become a formidable obstacle to the implementation of both individual social responsibility initiatives and installing in complex. This is true in the sense that the organizations do not have universal support from employees, and the procedures are carried out in a superficial manner and have a formal character. Corporate social responsibility is a valuable organization's internal culture category, but this base is not strong enough and balanced. Corporate social responsibility in the activities of both groups of companies (and especially - the first) can be considered still developing and has not taken clear shapes yet. According Hoskins (2006) CSR is a means of developing a management culture. However, the fundamental CSR success factor is that it is a living management process. The strategy needs to be reviewed regularly, and implemented across business units and all CSR components. The delivery of CSR practice is a critical activity. If any of the components are weak, then they detract from the effectiveness of the other components. Like all cultural aspects, CSR is only as strong as its weakest link A CSR management system is essential for CSR to become embedded within the business culture. CSR should not be a separate central activity, but become part of the business process and practice for all business units. (shrink)

Outstanding among the social problems facing urban centers of the world in general and Nigeria is the problem of crime. The increasing rate of criminal activities has become a major concern across the globe. Today, lives and properties are no longer safe for both the rich and the poor. All seem to live one day at a time. Content Analysis is used as the method of data analysis. The method adopted was more of an exposition, critical analysis and (...) class='Hi'>evaluation. More specifically, this paper gave a general background about violence, urban violence and the question of self-defense. Furthermore, a philosophical answer was given in the light of the medieval thinker St. Thomas Aquinas. It was concluded that there is a need for social living. A good citizen is one who has an unselfish love for the common good of his state; a love issuing forth in an efficacious desire to see that good is procured and furthered. Thus, a good citizen realizes that he is part of a social and political society. Thus, his personal goodness, and the goodness of his actions contributes to the good of all. KEYWORDS: Sociology, Urban Violence, Self-defense, Thomas Aquinas, Qualitative Research,Nigeria. (shrink)

Background: Research suggests that humans have the tendency to increase the valence of events when these are imagined to happen in the future, but to decrease the valence when the same events are imagined to happen in the past. This line of research, however, has mostly been conducted by asking participants to value imagined, yet probable, events. Our aim was to re-examine this time-valence asymmetry using real-life data: a Reuter’s news and a Facebook status updates corpus. Method: We organized (...) the Reuter news (120,000,000 words) and the Facebook status updates data (41,056,346 words) into contexts grouped in chronological order (i.e., past, present, and future) using verbs and years as time markers. These contexts were used to estimate the valence of each article and status update, respectively, in relation to the time markers using natural language processing tools (i.e., the Latent Semantic Analysis algorithm). Results: Our results using verbs, in both text corpus, showed that valence for the future was significantly higher compared to the past (future > past). Similarly, in the Reuter year condition, valence increased approximately linear from 1994 to 1999 for texts written 1996-7. In the Facebook year condition, the valence of the future was also significantly higher than past valence. Conclusion: Generally, the analyses of the Reuters data indicated that the past is devaluated relative to both the present and the future, while the analyses of the Facebook data indicated that both the past and the present are devaluated against the future. On this basis, we suggest that people strive to communicate the promotion of a bright future and the prevention of a dark future, which in turn leads to a temporal-valence asymmetrical phenomenon (valence = pastshrink)

The article presents the standpoint that naturalistic tendencies in modern science, which are especially expressed in neuroscience, push up social knowledge toward the need to revise its attitudes and norms, which consist in consistent sociocentrism and biophobia, and, hence, a simplified understanding of the phenomenon of “genetic reductionism”. We show that the application of the methods of natural science to social disciplines often marked visible progress and even conceptual breakthroughs in their development. Achievements of modern neuroscience affect a traditional (...) area of social and humanitarian knowledge as political science, which leads to the formation of an independent area of research – political neuroscience. Through the optics of this research, cognitive styles characteristic of individuals and social groups with different value orientations imply the dominance of certain ideological sympathies and antipathies, which attributed to the opposite poles of the ideological scale – liberalism and conservatism. Considerable empirical material allows us to conclude that these ideological positions are exist due to differences in their ontogenetic “foundations”, which allows us to develop I. Kant's ideas about a priorism and transcendentalism in the context of the Kantian research program in contemporary neuroscience. The result of the implementation of this program to the political sphere was the discovery of the genesis of political views, and the demonstration of the peculiarities of their dynamics. They are based on the difference in the activity of certain neural sets, which in their turn are influenced by culture and society, forming an integral system “brain – culture – society”, where each component of which affects other components. Features and changes in the socio-cultural context of the development of an individual or a group of people may have an effect upon the architectonics of the brain and shift, due to its plasticity, of the political views along the scale of ideologies “liberalism – conservatism”. At the same time, carriers of different cognitive styles and, therefore, with a sufficient degree of probability of ideological views, percept the world in which they live in differently, and evaluate its past and possible future in diverse ways. (shrink)

Plagiarism is a prevalent form of academic dishonesty in the undergraduate instructional context. Although students engage in plagiarism with some frequency, instructors often do little to help students understand the significance of plagiarism or to create assignments that reduce its likelihood. This study reports survey, coding, and TurnItIn software results from an evaluation of an instructional activity designed to help students improve their understanding of plagiarism, the consequences of plagiarizing, strategies to help them engage in ethical writing, and (...) key citation elements. Results indicate students had a greater understanding of plagiarism, increased efficacy, and fewer instances of plagiarism as determined by TurnItIn plagiarism software after exposure to an instructional activity on plagiarism. Not surprisingly, when instructors prioritize academic honesty in their classrooms, train students on how to integrate others’ works, cite sources appropriately, and use plagiarism detection software, students are less likely to plagiarize. The discussion includes suggestions for instructors to help them create a plagiarism-free environment. (shrink)

In this Master's dissertation, I try to show that the causal theory of memory, which is the only theory developed so far that at first view seems more plausible and that could be integrated with psychological explanations and investigations of memory, shows some conceptual and ontological problems that go beyond the internal inconsistencies that each version can present. On one hand, the memory phenomenon analyzed is very limited: in general it is reduced to the conscious act of remembering expressed in (...) a propositional format: the idea of an agent who can control his memory reports, in contrast to a passive subject who merely retrieve his encoded memories, is not even considered. Furthermore, the representational function of memory is the only function taken into account; and all the diachronic changes that could entail a dynamic conception of memory are ignored, as is the consideration of context in a broad sense of the term. On the other hand, causal theories make some implicit assumptions that are obviously questionable (e.g., the difference between facts and events) and leave some of their key concepts unexplained, like the nature of the causality, the isomorphism between the memory trace and the memory event, etc. Nonetheless, the principal point that we criticized is the idea of a correspondence between a past event or representation of it, the correspondent memory trace and the memory representation of it. Psychological models of memory, with the exception of the spatial analogy, question some of these assumptions and suggest that memory information is organized in a way other than that implied by the causal theory. But it is distributed connectionism that actually challenges the causal theory of memory, not only through some of its basic postulates, like the superpositional conception of memory traces, their mutual influence and constant state of change, but also because it is compatible with a more situated approach to memory phenomena as well as with the idea that memory in reality accomplishes a variety of functions that go beyond the representational one. The explicit and implicit ideas provided by distributed connectionism, together with the previous criticisms that we made to of causal theory, clearly suggest the possibility of developing another kind of philosophical theory of memory, different from existing theories. This task, nonetheless, implies: (a) A much deeper study of connectionism principles and memory models, as well as of the rival candidate, symbolism, plus the evaluation of these models in the light of psychological and neurophysiological empirical research, which unfortunately I have not dealt with in this work. (b) An analysis of the metaphysical nature of events and facts, in order to see if we should decide in favor of a realist or a non-realist account. It is also clear that this decision can’t be taken without an examination of perception studies (and not exclusively philosophical ones) which would be crucial for determining what is encoded in memory, and studies devoted to language, which, I suspect, plays an important role in the segmentation of reality. (c) A clarification of the notion of causality, because we wouldn’t like to deny any kind entail the complete disappearance of boundaries between memory and imagination. And even if I suspect that my future work will question the existence of absolute boundaries between these two capacities, the notion of causality can’t be completely erase from the theory of memory without erasing the memory phenomenon itself. But this causality, as we’ve already showed, can’t consist in the naïve conception adopted by the causal accounts of memory, nor can it be explained in counterfactual terms. If we think of the reconsolidation concept, of the interdependence between all the memory system, and of the deciding influence of context, it’s almost sure that more than one notion of causality will need to be invoked in order to explain memory. (d) Because I do not want to reduce the study of memory exclusively to cases of remembering, it’s essential to analyze how memory intervenes not only in imagination, but also in perception, reasoning and future projection, for example. In this respect, we could quote the interesting articles of Atance & O’Neill (2001) and Bucker & Carroll (2006), the first concerning the relationship between episodic memory and episodic future thinking, the second concerning the relationship between episodic memory and all kinds of self-projection, such as navigation and theory of mind, relations that would also have to be explored from a philosophical perspective, in particular to overcome the tendency to suppose that representation is the only function of memory. I will also mention the necessity of combining the notion of metamemory with that of memory to some extent; as I have already remarked, it is implausible to suppose that a subject who consciously remembers something is unable to exert any kind of control over his memory reports. (e) Finally, in order to integrate a situated conception of memory into a philosophical account, it will also be indispensable to take into consideration what is known as “everyday memory research” as well as studies in social and collective memory. (shrink)

The phenomenon of corruption as a type of crime is immanently inherent in social and political reality. Sociality as a trans-societal universal form of human community is the environment in which corruption ties are born and function. The socio-political structure is organized as a collective effort, on the one hand, it overcomes disintegration, and on the other, it generates corrupt behaviour patterns. Corruption models of behaviour have an extremely wide scale of distribution and are characterized by active institutional (...) expansion into various spheres and institutions of modern society, they feed business relations and administrative activities, covering huge masses of the population. In this sense, their study is extremely important and relevant. (shrink)

In the Port‐Royal Logic, Arnauld and Nicole argue that eloquence plays a crucial role in the cultivation of the art of thinking. In this essay, we demonstrate that Arnauld and Nicole's reflections on eloquence exemplify the need to reconceive the larger framework in which Cartesian theories of ideas operate. Instead of understanding epistemic agents as solitary thinkers who pursue their intellectual goals without the influence of others, our analysis shows that for Arnauld and Nicole thinking well was an intersubjective discursive (...) activity that unfolds between complexly organized persons. Central to this activity is the ability to gauge the affective and associative tendencies of interlocutors and to communicate accordingly. This ability is required to enable speakers to deal constructively with problems arising from the context sensitivity of language, the influences of the passions, and the audience's capacity to decipher meaning in the communication of ideas that facilitate understanding and knowledge. By drawing attention to communication, affect, and association in the Port‐Royal Logic, we show that there is a significant connection between thinking and expressing oneself well in the early modern period. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2008 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesPeter A. HuffThe Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) sponsored two sessions in conjunction with the 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The first session addressed the topic "Cognitive Science, Religious Practices, and Human Development: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives." The second session focused on the life and legacy of Trappist monk, spiritual writer, and interfaith pioneer Thomas Merton (...) (1915–1968).The first session, moderated by Sandra Costen Kunz (Phillips Theological Seminary), featured five papers probing the relationship between research in the natural and social sciences and lessons from the experience of Buddhist and Christian practice: "The Body and the Mind: Buddhist Bowing and Neuroscience," presented by Paula K. Arai (Louisiana State University) and coauthored with Sascha du Lac (Salk Institute for Biological Sciences); "Who Hears? A Zen Buddhist Perspective" by Robert Aitken Roshi, founder and retired Zen master of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu (read by Ruben Habito, Southern Methodist University); "'Your Cell Will Teach You Everything': Old Wisdom, Modern Science, and the Art of Attention" by Noreen Herzfeld (St. John's University); "Verbal Imagining: Scientific Reflection on Visual Cognition in Light of Traditional Tibetan and Christian Theologies of the Image" by Thomas Cattoi (Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley); and "Cognitive Error and Contemplative Practices: The Cultivation of Discernment in Mind and Heart" by Wesley J. Wildman (Boston University). Revised versions of three of these papers with an introductory essay by Prof. Costen Kunz are included in this issue of Buddhist-Christian Studies.The theme for the society's second session, chaired by Alice Keefe (University of Wisconsin), was "Thomas Merton Forty Years after His Death: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives." Four presenters examined and evaluated Merton's distinctive contributions to Buddhist-Christian relations, theological reflection, and interreligious dialogue. In her paper "Self-Surrender in Merton's Writings and Contemplative Psychology," Daijaku Judith Kinst (California Institute of Integral Studies) concentrated on the place of subjective transformation in Merton's thought, describing his [End Page 143] "great gift" to the literature on the contemplative life as the "fearless" rejection of self-centeredness in the practice of prayer and spiritual formation. "Thomas Merton Meets Tibetan Buddhism" by Judith Simmer-Brown (Naropa University) shed new light on the impact of the dzogchen ("great completion") tradition on Merton's evolving spirituality, particularly as expressed in the letters, speeches, and private documents included in the posthumously published Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1973). In "Non-Dual Wisdom as Feminine: Sophia and Prajnaparamita in Merton's Poem 'Hagia Sophia,'" Paula Hirschboeck (Edgewood College) explored suggestive parallels between Christian mystical experience and Buddhist madhyamika teaching in Merton's long, dreamlike Marian hymn from the early 1960s. Kristin Johnston Largen (Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg) concluded the session with an analysis of the role of Buddhism-inspired insights in Merton's approach to soteriological questions, especially as seen in his changing attitudes toward traditional Christian doctrines of hell, purgatory, eschatology, and the human person.Between sessions, members and friends of the society participated in the annual SBCS/AAR field trip to a local site significant for its relevance to interdisciplinary Buddhist-Christian studies. This year members visited the Chicago Cultural Center of Soka Gakkai International-USA (SGI-USA), the Buddhist association for peace, culture, and education based on the teachings of thirteenth-century Japanese monk and reformer Nichiren Daishonin. Located at 1455 South Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago, the cultural center serves as the primary facility for SGI-USA activities in the Midwest. Mr. Guy McCloskey, senior vice president, publisher, and member of the board of directors for SGI-USA, organized the event. The evening's program included a tour of the center's award-winning architecture, an informal overview of the aims and initiatives of SGI-USA, and a delicious dinner served by members of the organization. [End Page 144]Peter A. HuffCentenary College of LouisianaCopyright © 2009 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In the Port-Royal Logic, Arnauld and Nicole argue that eloquence plays a crucial role in the cultivation of the art of thinking. In this essay, we demonstrate that Arnauld and Nicole's reflections on eloquence exemplify the need to reconceive the larger framework in which Cartesian theories of ideas operate. Instead of understanding epistemic agents as solitary thinkers who pursue their intellectual goals without the influence of others, our analysis shows that for Arnauld and Nicole thinking well was an intersubjective discursive (...) activity that unfolds between complexly organized persons. Central to this activity is the ability to gauge the affective and associative tendencies of interlocutors and to communicate accordingly. This ability is required to enable speakers to deal constructively with problems arising from the context sensitivity of language, the influences of the passions, and the audience's capacity to decipher meaning in the communication of ideas that facilitate understanding and knowledge. By drawing attention to communication, affect, and association in the Port-Royal Logic, we show that there is a significant connection between thinking and expressing oneself well in the early modern period. (shrink)

The diverse essays in Joseph Cropsey’s Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics are unified by their common theme, the complex relationship between thought and politics. The book’s organization reflects its theme, moving from politics to thought. The essays of the first three sections of the book reformulate the way we view ourselves and the political-moral issues confronting us, at the same time that they strengthen our moral resources in the face of our regime’s tendency to weaken them. For example, (...) Cropsey counters the gross hedonism implied in the desire to overcome alienation when he recommends that justice replace alienation as a dominant term in political discourse. Although our regime was originally organized to function without relying on virtue to produce public advantage, Cropsey includes moral virtue, along with legality and raison d’etat, in the elements upon which statesmanship draws. The third section of the book culminates in a critique of the acquisitive egoism of capitalism from the perspective of magnanimity rather than from that of brotherly love. The former perspective favors "the moral fortitude of the individual [and] the community". Cropsey asks, however, "[i]s it possible for a nation simply to adopt the moral principle of its choice?" or do its laws and customs, its defining documents, not imply a morality? Cropsey’s most extensive treatment of the relationship between what constitutes a nation and its capacity for growth through the activity of thought is found in his introductory essay on the American regime. There he shows how a people’s national identity is modified by clarifications and interpretations of a nation’s constitutive documents. The power of thought, however, is not without limit, for the original constitution acts upon its critiques so as to assimilate them to its own moral tendencies. (shrink)

The purposes of this study are (a) to establish a measurement for evaluating conversational impressions of group discussions, and (b) to make an exploratory investigation on their interactional processes which may affect to form those impressions. The impression rating and factor analysis undertaken first give us four factors concerning conversational impressions of “focus group interviews (FGIs)”: conversational activeness, conversational sequencing, the attitudes of participants and the relationships of participants. In relation to the factors of conversational activeness and conversational sequencing in (...) particular, the microanalysis of four selected topical scenes from our database further shows that the behavior of the moderator and the interviewees is organized not independently but with reference to each other. The study thus emphasizes the importance of the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches towards human interactions. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, (...) natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

The relation between mental processes and brain activity is studied from the point of view of the theory of the organism-environment system. It is argued that the systemic point of view leads to a new kind of definition of the primary tasks of neurophysiology and to a new understanding of the traditional neurophysiological concepts. Neurophysiology is restored to its place as a part of biology: its task is the study of neurons as living units, not as computer chips. Neurons (...) are living units which are organised as metabolic systems in connection with other neurons; they are not units which would carry out some psychological functions or maintain states which are typical only of the whole organism-environment system. Psychological processes, on the other hand, are processes always comprising the whole organism-environment system. (shrink)

‘The importance of being experienced’ plays a central part in the ethical philosophy of Aristotle. An experienced person is a person who has acquired a coping skill, an appropriate attitude and a sense of situation. According to Aristotle the soul and the body are interdependent, which indicates a close connection between human activity, human cognition and human character. By insisting on the primacy of action, Aristotle changes the educational focal point from an epistemological discussion of knowledge to an ethical (...) discussion of practice. The paper discusses what Aristotle can offer contemporary education in relation to his understanding of experience. The frame of the discussion is organised according to the three notable elements that are contained in Aristotle’s notion of ‘the importance of being experienced’: a practice, an appropriate hexis or character and a sense of the situation. As a background for and framing of the discussion, the paper will outline some of the many variants as well as substantial differences of the notion of experience and experience-based learning and categorise them in three different understandings. (shrink)

This article explores how historical narratives affect the evaluation of political decisions regarding justice during peace negotiations. Specifically, this study evaluates how different narratives of the Colombian armed conflict relate to the preference for either restorative or retributive justice. Results revealed that a historically accurate narrative that included structural elements correlated with the preference for restorative justice, whereas a schematic narrative that focused on individual greed favoured the preference for retributive justice. These results are explained in terms of the (...) characteristics of expert historical narratives, which include structural elements, such as economic and institutional factors. The presence of these elements in the explanation of conflicts decreases the weight of individual decisions and, in this way, prevent ingroup attributional biases. (shrink)

: The concept of Self-Control carried by contemporary criminology has been put forward in order to catch up with increasing crime rates in society, to prevent crime, and to function in anger control. Works done in this area also include measures that must be taken early in the course of a kind of education to prevent crime in general. we see that in some countries Social and Emotional Learning programs are used in areas such as character education, (...) prevention of violence, anti-drug measures and school discipline. In the Islamic world, the self-control from the earliest times has been dealt with and dealt with as a religious matter. Many of the verses of God and the words of the Prophet are directed at controlling one's self, controlling one's emotions and anger. It has been reported to believers that a way of earning God's love and compassion is self-control. Despite being encouraged by various Islamic sciences, one of the main themes of Islamic mysticism is self-control. Therefore, Islam is one of the main subjects of self-control in education understanding. Summary: In the early 1990s, Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi's "General Theory of Crime" made considerable progress in the theory of control theory and demonstrated remarkable results based on experiments. Along with these, we see that in some countries Social and Emotional Learning programs are used in areas such as character education, prevention of violence, anti-drug measures and school discipline. In 2002 UNESCO undertook the introduction of this program in order to serve the above purposes and sent letters to the education ministries of approximately 140 countries. Today, there are studies aiming to educate the sensation itself instead of using emotion to train. Self-regulation refers to being able to control our emotions and manage them. Some emotions develop over time during the child's brain and biological development and reach maturity level when the development of the nervous system is complete. Pratt and some other researchers found that communalization with parents and neighbourhood conditions predicted the diversity of self-control. They argue that community-level control and socialization are equally important factors contributing to the development of self-control. It has been seen as a virtue for the liberation of man's self and his desires. This virtue was met with the term Sophrosyne in ancient Greek, which means that "one lives his life diligently and intelligently; harmonious balance and wisdom." The Romans and the old Christian church have called it Temperantia, restricting emotional excesses. The subject of self-control and balancing of emotions is also studied in Islamic religion under the name of "Nafs Struggle". In fact, beliefs are emotional patterns. In order for human beings to be able to place their thoughts and beliefs in their native place, they have to be transformed into emotional patterns. For example, "goodness is good to do" expresses a thought. To add the emotional dimension to it, it must be reinforced by confirming that it is nice to do good to people. Emotions that begin to direct man's behaviours certainly shape him according to a reference value. These reference values or, in other words, standard values are determined and imposed by religions or are derived from the moral code of the community. Some scholars have also defined religion as a moral field that regulates psychological and behavioural tendencies by rewarding grieving actions and punishing those who are contrary to common good. Therefore, religion also includes moral concepts; it also affects supernatural thoughts. It is thought that religion, in turn, arouses beliefs and attitudes that prevent personal violence, impiety and dishonesty. In fact, what we call conscience is that the external control power becomes an internal control mechanism. To put it more precisely, it means internalizing these values of powers that represent authority that imposes external controlling thoughts and emotions. Therefore, our conscience in the social and physical environment constitutes the conscience of the things we have developed and the accusations that we have developed. The development of conscience in a person is also linked to the development of education and responsibility he has received. The main goal of religious education is to place the belief in God and to adopt and sustain a whole of values based on God's existence. For a person to know and feel the presence of a person who always sees and controls him will always lead him to a more controlled and supervised life. He who believes that God sees and hears people and that he will be punished or rewarded according to his bad and good behaviours, of course, seeks to control himself. Because in the method of reward and punishment, the aim is to create a mental condition for him by encouraging and loving something. Also, as a result of this operation, the brain learns to set limits on behaviour. This is conscious behaviour. Since consciousness is the information we have about ourselves, we are consciously observing and studying ourselves. The thing that distinguishes human beings from other beings is that they are aware of what they are aware of and that they realize it. If we did not have such a property, it would not be moral and we could not control ourselves. We can only find ourselves in ourselves and without any intermediary. These tools are not only scientific instruments, but also five senses, imaginations and thoughts, which are tools of the mind. Besides, when we add the ability of a person to evaluate and observe himself as an external object, wisdom can be understood when God suggests that we should think about our own nafs. The conscious person who thinks about himself is the one who takes charge of himself and accounts for his soul. To address this, the Messenger of God said: "The wise man,, draws his soul into account and works for the post-mortem; and if he is weak, he will obey God's will and ask for God." The Messenger recommends that a person be curled into himself and think and perceive about the soul, with the following words: "Do not go round with your heart, multiply your condolences and cry." Of course, many arguments have been put in place to ensure that self-control of the person in religious life is ensured. One of these is a feeling. Because the sense of shame requires to be embarrassed by other people, and to behave oneself. The Messenger, when he saw someone among ansar counselling to his brother about the modesty, said, "Certainly, it is by faith." Because the feeling of embarrassment is fed by the fear that the deprivation of social good will live on man. In personal relationships, a person is bound to put a limit on his behaviour in order not to offend others. The sensation of emotion is a feeling of emotion recorded in the frontal area of the brain, covering the social skills. The opposite of shame is insensitivity, impudence and irresponsibility. (shrink)

al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273) was a scholar of tafsīr, ḥadīth and fiqh. He experienced both Western and Eastern civilizations in the geography of Andalusia and Egypt, respectively. In his famous Tafsīr called al-Jâmi li-Aḥkâm al-Qur’ān, al-Qurṭubī comparatively explained and interpreted all legal verses. Also, in addition to exploring the spesific legal rulings denoted in the Qur’ān and the Sunnah, al-Qurṭubī has largely interpreted the legal norms regarding the issues of jurisprudence. By doing this, al-Qurṭubī contributed to the formation and development of (...) a civil codification activity under a kazuistic format. The casuistic structure of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān is anlaysed in terms of the form and content in the sample of al-Jâmi. Therefore, neither the similarity or similarity of the schools of the legal exegesis of Qur’ān and of the legal schools nor the disciplines of positive law, but their kazuistic structures, which systems they built and which interpretation methods and techniques they operated on this basis, were evaluated in terms of their original structure. In this direction, the article emphasizes that the casuistic structure of the legal exegesis of Qur’ān is established on and by the Prophet’s sayings and practices. Although, it has been observed that it is a unique tradition, both as form and content, and that the interpretation means are identified with its own unique structure, it has been concluded that the casuistic method is not one of the fundamental elements of both this tradition and Islamic legal thought. This means that the casuistic method is always a tool that can be changed and transformed according to the conditions of time and space.Summary: As it is stated in al-Isrāʾ 17/106: “And (it is) a Qur’ān which we have separated (by intervals) that you might recite it to the people over a prolonged period. And we have sent it down progressive.”, the Qur’ān is revelaed in about twenty-three years by taking into consideration the sociocultural positions of its interlocutors. The Prophet Muḥammad explained the Qur’ān by the virtue of the ayah: “(We sent them) with clear proofs and written ordinances. And We revealed to you the message (i.e. that you may make clear to the people what was sent down to them and that they might give thought.” (an-Naḥl 16/44). Of course, there is no subject integrity in this Qurānic chronology-which also reflects life. As a matter of fact, the issues related to individual and society have been independently analyzed by a casuistic/case-based method and ruled in accordance with the intention of Allāh. It can be seen that the ayahs “They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, ‘In them is great sin and (yet, some) benefit for people. But their sin is greater than their benefit.’ And they ask you what they should spend. Say, ‘The excess (beyond needs).’ Thus Allāh makes clear to you the verses (of revelation) that you might give thought.” (al-Baqara 2/219) and other ayahs such as (al-Baqara 2/186; al-Nisāʾ 4/176; al-Anfāl 8/1) reflect the casuistic method in terms of form and content. This can also be exemplified by the Sunna. For example, when the question “Is it permissible to perform ablutions with sea water?” was posed to Messenger of Allāh. He said that “It’s water is clean and his dead (fish) are lawful “(Abū Dāwūd, “Ṭaḥāra”, 41). By this answer, the Prophet Muḥammad indeed ruled and established a general rule.It can be said that this early example table formed the basis of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān in terms of origin, source and application, and that its shape and content are often immanent in the examples it contains. In this article, based on the prophetic period, the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān and casuistic structure has been studied with an analytical and critical approach. Again, because the casuistic method is one of the universal concepts of east-west science and cultural life, an interdisciplinary approach was exhibited in this study. The roots of the casuistic method date back to 5000 BC and the legal systems of the society and states of antiquity are examined from this method. This method is chosen and used in the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān. However, this study does not analyse the sameness or the similarity of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān and the legal schools nor the positive law disciplines, but the casuistic structures used by these, the systems they have built on this basis and the interpretation methods and techniques they have been used and analyzed in terms of their originality.In effect, the article embodies the Qur’ānic exegesis called al-Jâmi li-Aḥkâm al-Qur’ān by al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273), a scholar of tafsīr, ḥadīth and fiqh. In addition to the works of the aḥkām al-Qur’āns, which deal with the interpretation of the ayahs related to the subjects of ʿibādāt, muʿāmalāt ve ʿuḳūbāt, many other works have been used in parallel with the development of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān. al-Qurṭubī, who comparingly explained the legal verses in his tafsīr, investigated the aspects of the Qur’ān and Sunna that indicate the aḥkām, generally interpreted the existing legal norms within the framework of evidence and introduced his own opinions and etasblished his ijtihād. Thus, he benefited from the tafsīr accumulation and contributed to the formation and development of a civil legalization activity with casuistic format. As a matter of fact, the casuistic/case-based method has been used as a codification/tadwīn technique by Western and Eastern legal disciplines and systems. The casuistic method covers both concrete event and abstract ruling methods. In the casuistic method, which is fact-based event, the laws are organized according to all possible events that can be experienced. On the other hand, the abstract method, which is defined as the abstract ruling method, aims to organize the laws in a general and abstract framework. In the article, it is stated that the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān contains both concrete and abstract dimensions in its own way. It has been emphasized that the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān is based on divine revelation (waḥy) and that it is separated from human law as its origin and source, and that this feature is its most faithful characteristic. On this basis, the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān is a separate scholarly tradition and has its own definition, subject and purpose. Its original structure and function have been noted. As a matter of fact, the subject and purpose of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān always require the tafsīr and taʾwīl of the legal verses having regard to the Qur’ān and Sunna. It is also necessary for the purpose of investigating the ways in which nuṣūṣ (an explicit statement upon which a ruling is based) can refer to the provisions and to resolve the issues related to individuals and society. As a matter of fact, the legal verses function as a guide for humanity until the day of judgment as the inspiration for religious-legal matters; they contain the content and provisions that offer happiness in the two worlds. (shrink)

From the title, Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare, Peter Gøtzsche makes the thesis of his book very clear. Not only does the pharmaceutical industry contribute to detrimental health outcomes through biased research, deceptive marketing, and disease mongering, but the industry’s business model meets the criteria of an organized criminal operation. Gøtzsche argues for this in two parts. First, he defines organized crime by drawing upon the United States Organized (...) class='Hi'>Crime Control Act of 1970, the centerpiece of which is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO prohibits deriving income from a pattern of racketeering... (shrink)

The intuition holding that an organized crime leader should be punished more severely than a subordinate who directly commits an offence is commonly reflected in legal literature. However, positing a direct relationship between the severity of punishment and the level of seniority within an organizational hierarchy represents a departure from a more general idea found in much of the substantive criminal law writings: that the severity of punishment increases the closer the proximity to the physical commission of the (...) offence. This paper presents an analysis of the said intuition and attempts to ascertain its roots. Rejecting both retribution and deterrence theory as valid explanations, it will be inferred that the imposition of harsher punishment on organized crime leaders is properly based on the multiplicity of offences for which they are responsible, and not the nature of their involvement in any specific offence. (shrink)

“What is the worth of moral values that only inform easy decisions but are impotent in more difficult circumstances?” Yet should one not at times tailor one’s moral views to suit circumstances? Drawing on his personal business experience in Taiwan Peter Huang reflects on the ethical issues raised by trying to do business honestly in a climate of organised crime. Currently completing his MBA at London Business School, he is of Taiwanese origin and returned there from Canada to found (...) his own design company. (shrink)

With the continuous development of “Internet + Education”, online learning has become a hot topic of concern. Decision tree is an important technique for solving classification problems from a set of random and unordered data sets. Decision tree is not only an effective method to generate classifier from data set, but also an active research field in data mining technology. The decision tree mining algorithm can classify the data, grasp the teaching process of the teacher, and analyze the overall performance (...) of the students, so as to realize the dynamic management of the educational administration and help the educational administration personnel to make the right decision, with more reasonable allocation of resources. This paper evaluates students’ academic performance based on the learning behavior data of online learning, so as to intervene in students’ learning in advance, which is the key problem that needs to be solved at present. Taking students’ learning attitude, completion of homework, and attendance as factors, the paper uses decision tree technology to analyze the factors affecting students’ performance, and evaluates students’ performance. Firstly, this paper collects the high-dimensional behavioral characteristic data of students’ online learning and conducts correlation analysis after preprocessing the behavioral characteristic data. Then, the decision tree C4.5 algorithm is used to construct a performance evaluation model. Students’ performance is evaluated by the model, and the evaluation accuracy is about 88% compared with actual performance. Finally, through the model analysis, it is concluded that the video task point completion is the most influential in students’ achievement, followed by chapter test completion and chapter test average score, and the course interaction amount and homework average score are the least influential in students’ achievement, which has a practical reference value for effectively serving online learning and teachers’ teaching. (shrink)

Introduction: It is essential to detect sacroiliitis earlier to decrease morbidity and unwanted complications such as ankylosing of sacroiliac joints. In recent studies, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) serves as a key diagnostic tool for identifying sacroiliitis and is now included in the diagnostic criteria. We aim to detect the utility of diffusion-weighted imaging on the MRI in diagnosing sacroiliitis and measure ADC values for the response to treatment in future studies. Materials -methods: There were 39 patients (16 male, 20 female). (...) A 1.5 Tesla MR device with a pelvic coil was used. The sequences were T1 (before and after intravenous contrast administration of gadolinium), T2-weighted fast field echo, short tau inversion recovery (STIR), diffusion-weighted (DW) images, and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) mapping. Sacroiliac joints were divided into four quadrants, and two radiologists interpreted all the sequences by giving scores from 0 to 3 depending on bone marrow edema from none to severe. The concordance of scores assigned to STIR, T1-weighted gadolinium-enhanced images, ADC mapping, and diffusion-weighted MR images was evaluated by calculating intraclass correlation coefficients. Results: A statistically significant positive correlation was observed between the activity scores derived from short tau inversion recovery (STIR) and other magnetic resonance (MR) sequences, namely T1-weighted gadolinium-enhanced images, apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) mapping, and diffusion-weighted MR images. Conclusion: Active bone marrow abnormalities were identified with comparable efficacy using STIR imaging and other MR sequences (T1W-Gad, ADC mapping, DW-MR). In our study, we tried to emphasize the role of the diffusion-weighted images near the other sequences. Diffusion is a fast, easy-applied sequence. After increased experience in the diffusion-weighted images, routine application of this sequence will increase, and even becoming one of the diagnostic criteria will be inevitable. The difference in DWI from the other sequences is that it is measurable. The response to treatment may be followed up by ADC values. (shrink)

In this chapter, we evaluate the politically generative dynamic of urban space. Notably, we put forward the notion of the ‘multiplier effect’ of the urban, referring to its ingrained tendency to multiply resistance to oppression and violence being exerted against subaltern groups and minorities and, in doing so, to turn this multiplied resistance into an active force of social change. We, therefore, look at the twofold valence of ‘resistance’: negative and affirmative. Resistance initially takes form as a defensive response to (...) oppression and violence. When this happens, the urban becomes the living platform for a multiplying dynamic of encounter and, potentially, of inter-group solidarity, thus laying the foundations for a cooperative – rather than competitive, as in neoliberal rationality, or inimical, as in national-populist reason – way of ‘being together’. After having developed this argument against the backdrop of the women’s movement in Tehran and the urban disobedience to anti-immigration policies in Italy, our chapter concludes by reflecting on the multiplier effect of urban resistance within the current context of national revanchism. (shrink)

The present research paper aims to find out the life patterns of urban beggars' demographic characteristics, socio-economic status and their involvement in criminal activities in Karachi city. A descriptive research design was employed and face to face interviews were conducted in this study. A sample of 140 street beggars, were selected from different public places using a convenience sampling technique. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized for data collection. The key findings of the study show that criminal beggars are (...) organized and have the well-kept house and work in routine as front-line professionals in the city. This study recommends that a comprehensive policy should be implemented to control the begging practice in the city. In this regards a proper advocacy campaign is needed for social mobilization at mass the level. (shrink)

Criminal law doctrine fails to provide an adequate solution for imputing responsibility to organized crime leaders for the offenses committed by their subordinates. This undesirable state of affairs is made possible because criminal organizations adopt complex organizational structures that leave their superiors beyond the reach of the law. These structures are characterized by features such as the isolation of the leadership from junior ranks, decentralized management, and mechanisms encouraging initiative from below. They are found in criminal organizations such (...) as the American Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, and even outlaw motorcycle gangs. The paper offers a doctrine that may transcend this shortcoming. Referred to as “leaders’ liability,” this doctrine will be assessed and appraised through a comparison with competing theories such as accomplice liability, Organisationsherrschaft , and conspiracy. (shrink)

This paper unravels the diverse strands in the manifestations of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA, 2002), focusing not only on law’s words, i.e. the rules, principles and procedures, and its interpretations in judgments, but also on its effects. Adopting the violence of jurisprudence approach, it eschews the dichotomy between law and violence, examining the ‘effects of legal force’, in particular, the ways in which law becomes an integral part of the organization of state violence. Through an examination of the (...) unfolding of POTA and laws dealing with ‘organized crime’ and ‘unlawful activities’ (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, 2005), the trajectory of specific cases and judgments by Trial Courts, the High Courts and the Supreme Court, this paper shows how through an interlocking of the ordinary and extraordinary, anti-terror laws erode both the procedural and substantive aspects of the rule of law, become the terrain where permutations in alliance politics and configuration of power are played out, and assume an antagonistic notion of politics which seeks resolution through the elimination and externalization of difference. Extraordinary laws, it argues, are manifestations of a politics of negation. Processes that prolong the lives of such laws, and procedural interlocking and intermeshing that seek to give them permanence, are symptomatic of a deepening of the politics of negation. (shrink)