Changes in the past two decades of goals for science education in schools have induced new orientations in science education worldwide. One of the emerging complementary approaches was the science-technology-society (STS) movement. STS has been called the current megatrend in science education. Others have called it a paradigm shift for the field of science education. The success of science education reform depends on teachers' ability to integrate the philosophy and practices of current programs of science education reform with their existing (...) philosophy. Thus, when considering the STS approach to science education, teacher beliefs about STS implementation require attention. Without this attention, negative beliefs concerning STS implementation and inquiry learning could defeat the reform movements emphasizing STS. This article argues the role of STS in science education and the importance of considering science teachers' beliefs about STS in implementing significant reforms in science education. (shrink)

As future citizens, students must make decisions requiring an understanding of the interaction of science and technology and its interface with society. STS education has been strongly identified with meeting this goal, but putting theory into practice has so far been difficult. This article asks, “What are the challenges influencing science teachers to implement STS education in the science classroom?” The author investigated using a mixed method research technique incorporating multiple sources of qualitative and quantitative data (questionnaire, interviews, field notes, (...) and classroom observations). Constraints a fecting teachers' practices in teaching science through STS education were identified and can be categorized into impersonal, interpersonal, and personal constraints. Findings indicated interactions within and between external and internal constraints. Suggestions are made for implementing change in various aspects of science teacher education. (shrink)

Compassion, as an indicator for quality care, is highly valued by patients and healthcare professionals. Compassionate care is considered a moral dimension of nursing practice and an essential component of high quality care. This study aimed to answer these questions: What are the facilitators and barriers of providing compassionate nursing care in the clinical setting? Which strategies do nurses use to provide compassionate care? What is the specific model of compassionate care for the nursing context? A grounded theory approach was (...) used in this study. A total of 21 nurses working in diverse clinical settings participated in the study. Purposive and theoretical sampling was used to select the participants. Data were collected by in-depth face to face interviews and analyzed by the constant comparative method. Ethical approval was gained from the Ethical Review Board of Tabriz University of Medical sciences. The analysis resulted in the development of three main themes: contextual factors affecting compassionate care, the compassionate care actions, and the consequences of compassionate care. The main dimensions of compassionate care are demonstrated in a Compassionate Nursing Care Model. Nurses’ ability on providing compassionate care is influenced by individual and organizational factors that may facilitate or inhibit this type of care. Leadership and nurse managers should remove the barriers which diminish the nurses’ ability to provide compassionate care and support them to engage in compassionate care programs. Identifying and recruiting compassionate nurses, developing their compassionate capacity, and providing role models of compassion could improve the flourishing of person-centered and compassionate care in clinical settings. The Compassionate Nursing Care Model provides a model to guide nursing care and research. (shrink)

This paper attempts an historical analysis of a dream of the physicist George Gamow recorded shortly before his death in 1968. The dream is contextualized through Gamow's extended scientific work and popular scientific efforts, and in light of enduring preoccupations with the notion of a complete science. The analysis extends to an examination of the relationship of the dream to dreaming practices and deliberations apart from Gamow’s, as evident in the relationship and collaboration between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and C. (...) G. Jung. (shrink)

Background: Dengue Disease is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus, symptoms typically begin three to fourteen days after infection. This may include a high fever, headache, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash. Dengue serology is applied in different settings, such as for surveillance, in health care facilities in endemic areas and in travel clinics in non-endemic areas. The applicability and quality of serological tests in dengue endemic regions has to be judged against a (...) background of potential cross reactivity with other flavi-viruses, difficulties in distinguishing primary from secondary infections and technological problems related to the fact that most dengue endemic regions are relatively poor of resources .Objectives: to help doctors and patients in diagnosing Dengue Disease and give them the information of how to prevent Dengue Disease and to be able to understand the signs and symptoms of Dengue Disease. Methods: We collected all relevant material for Dengue Disease. Then we designed and implemented a knowledge based system for diagnosing Dengue Disease using SL5 Object Language. Results: The knowledge based system was evaluated by a group of Patients and specialized doctors and they found it very friendly and easy to use. (shrink)

The two potential public spaces of political expression in the city, the mosque and the plaza, were denied their civic function for anywhere between thirty and fifty years of despotic rule across the Arab world depending on the country. Abrupt and violent revolts sometimes managed to stage their protests in one or the other for a short moment, but the reprisal of the regime was usually swift and ruthless.

Throughout this research, imposing the training of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to play tic-tac-toe bored game, by training the ANN to play the tic-tac-toe logic using the set of mathematical combination of the sequences that could be played by the system and using both the Gradient Descent Algorithm explicitly and the Elimination theory rules implicitly. And so on the system should be able to produce imunate amalgamations to solve every state within the game course to make better of results (...) of winnings or getting draw. (shrink)

This paper is based on review of the publications of the Islamic Movement and interviews with its leadership and activists. It argues that the Movement’s resistance to the 1948, 1967 and diasporic dismemberment of Palestine has constituted a critical challenge to Israeli policies, and contributed to reframing the internal Israeli political discourse. That is what led to its being banned by the state. The Islamic Movement was established in the 1970s. It remains, despite its split in 1996 into Northern and (...) Southern branches, a key player in Palestinian minority affairs at the political level, and at the social level through service provision to the marginalized Arab communities, especially in East Jerusalem. In 2015, the Israeli cabinet declared the Northern branch illegal and withdrew its status as a recognized organization. The findings of this paper show that this measure is directly linked to the Movement’s effectiveness in resisting the dispossession of the Palestinians, in advocating their right of return and other human rights, in providing leadership in the struggle over East Jerusalem, and in the organization and delivery of humanitarian services. (shrink)

The Road Inns in Bilād al-Shām. By Katia Cytryn-Silverman. BAR S2130. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2010. Pp. vi + 290, illus. £58.

In this paper an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model, for predicting the category of a tumor was developed and tested. Taking patients’ tests, a number of information gained that influence the classification of the tumor. Such information as age, sex, histologic-type, degree-of-diffe, status of bone, bone-marrow, lung, pleura, peritoneum, liver, brain, skin, neck, supraclavicular, axillar, mediastinum, and abdominal. They were used as input variables for the ANN model. A model based on the Multilayer Perceptron Topology was established and trained using (...) data set which its title is “primary tumor” and was obtained from the University Medical Centre, Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia Test data evaluation shows that the ANN model is able to correctly predict the tumor category with 76.67 % accuracy. (shrink)

: Mu1ammad Taqiyy al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī is undoubtedly the historian with the most expansive repertoire of the entire fifteenth century Arabic historiography. His al-Mawā’iẓ wa-l-i’tibār bi-dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-l-āthār, in particular, is a unique achievement, which manages to present a general historical discourse through the chronicling of buildings and topography. This unprecedented book, this paper argues, may have benefited from the author’s extended association with Ibn Khaldūn, the great interpreter of the notion of ’umrān. Ibn Khaldūn was al-Maqrīzī’s revered teacher for at (...) least thirty years. He seems to have influenced his pupil’s thinking about the city as the domain of civilization in two ways: analytical, that is to look for causes and effects behind events and appearances, and interpretive, that is to see in the urban and architectural history of the city the illustration of the underlying civilizational cycle. In the Khiṭaṭ, al-Maqrīzī seems to have applied his master’s theory to a concrete example – the city of Cairo – and drew from it pronounced moral lessons on the decline he was observing in the Mamlūk sultanate. This is probably why the Khiṭaṭ’s influence has endured for more than five centuries: a tribute to its author’s ardent passion and filial affinity with his city and country, as well as his interpretive framework, which he probably absorbed from Ibn Khaldūn. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a deterministic time discrete mathematical model based on multiregional periodic matrices to describe the dynamics of Sardina pilchardus in the Central Atlantic area of the Moroccan coast. This model deals with two stages (immature and mature) and three spatial zones where sardines are supposed to migrate from one zone to another. The population dynamics is described by an autonomous recurrence equation N(t + 1) = A.N(t), where A is a positive matrix whose entries are estimated (...) using data collected during biannual acoustic surveys carried out from 2001 to 2003 onboard the Norwegian research vessel “Dr Fridtjof Nansen”. The dominant eigenvalue λ of A that gives the long-term growth rate of fish population is smaller than one. This agrees with the stock decrease observed in the data collected. We show that λ is highly sensitive to the recruitment rate and much less sensitive to the reproduction rate. These results can clearly be used to define an efficient scenario in order to fight for instance against a stock decrease. (shrink)

The production of genetically modified crops is growing around the world, and with it possible opportunities to combat food insecurity and hunger, as well as solutions to current problems facing conventional agriculture. In this regard the use of GMOs in food and agricultural applications has increased greatly over the past decade. However, the development of GM crops has been a matter of considerable interest and worldwide public controversy. This, in addition to skepticism, has stifled the use of this practice on (...) a large scale in many areas, including Iran. It stands to reason that a greater understanding of this practice could be formed after a review of the existing expert opinions surrounding GM crops. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the predictors that influence agricultural experts’ attitudes toward the development of and policies related to GM crops. Using a descriptive correlational research method, questionnaire data was collected from 65 experts from the Agricultural Organization in the Gotvand district in Southwest Iran. Results indicated that agricultural experts were aware of the environmental benefits and possible risks associated with GM crops. The majority of participants agreed that GM crops could improve food security and accelerate rural development, and were proponents of labeling practices for GM crops. Finally, there was a positive correlation between the perception of benefits and attitudes towards GM crops. (shrink)

Given the predominance of multilingualism in many countries there is great need for a new, interdisciplinary approach to the problem. Sociolinguistics—or the sociology of language—provides such an approach and can help to shed new light on a phenomenon which is often discussed in terms that tend to create more problems than they solve. In order to demonstrate how sociolinguistic theory and practice can contribute to the study of multilingualism this paper will attempt to outline briefly some of the basic premises (...) of sociolinguistic theory which appear relevant to the understanding of the phenomenon of multilingualism and also to define multilingualism as a social behaviour in response to a contact situation. (shrink)

Comment penser les processus d’interactions culturelles? L’analyse du monde arabe est réduite trop souvent à l’analyse conjoncturelle de ces relations, elle contient trop souvent en elle-même un chauvinisme de l’universel. En effet, la force de l’idéologie de l’immédiateté, c’est sa capacité à domestiquer notre point de vue. Cela présuppose que la confiance commune de sujet connaissant est si forte que notre lecture de l’immédiat est corrélée par une analyse aussi rapprochée en termes de temps que l’événement lui-même et son commentaire. (...) Et pourtant bien que notre savoir se réduise en qualité de pensée, nous n’avons aucune difficulté pour dire que nous savons. Mais que savons-nous au juste à propos des relations de l’interculturalité pratique? Comment penser sans narcissisme idéologique ou ethnocentrisme scolastique, les cultures politiques extra-occidentales? Pour cela, il s’agit de se défaire du prisme des aires culturelles et de reposer à nouveau la question de l’expérience de l’universel. (shrink)

Comment penser les processus d’interactions culturelles? L’analyse du monde arabe est réduite trop souvent à l’analyse conjoncturelle de ces relations, elle contient trop souvent en elle-même un chauvinisme de l’universel. En effet, la force de l’idéologie de l’immédiateté, c’est sa capacité à domestiquer notre point de vue. Cela présuppose que la confiance commune de sujet connaissant est si forte que notre lecture de l’immédiat est corrélée par une analyse aussi rapprochée en termes de temps que l’événement lui-même et son commentaire (...) (par exemple les termes antagonistes : « Occident versus Orient », « guerre de civilisations »). Et pourtant bien que notre savoir se réduise en qualité de pensée, nous n’avons aucune difficulté pour dire que nous savons. Mais que savons-nous au juste à propos des relations de l’interculturalité pratique? Comment penser sans narcissisme idéologique ou ethnocentrisme scolastique, les cultures politiques extra-occidentales? Pour cela, il s’agit de se défaire du prisme des aires culturelles et de reposer à nouveau la question de l’expérience de l’universel. (shrink)

The concept of green jobs emerged in 2007 as a means for conserving energy, minimizing natural gas emissions, reducing pollution and waste and protecting and improving ecosystems. The practice of decent employment through such jobs has caught on significantly and shown much positive effects. Decent work refers to employment opportunities that provide for fair income, security, improving personal and social development and promoting equality. Combining green job and decent work as a new approach can alter the traditional perspective of labour (...) laws. According to the Islamic view, the Qur’an has taken into account all such concepts directly or indirectly. This article focuses on reviewing green jobs from the Islamic perspective, and concepts and principles such as squander, cleanliness, waste, no-harm and causation are directly mentioned as a necessary condition for green jobs. This paper examines the concept of green job based on content analysis approach within Islamic jurisprudence. (shrink)

The question of whether females tend to act more ethically or risk-averse compared to males is an interesting ethical puzzle. Using a large sample of US firms over the 1992–2014 period, we investigate the effect that the gender of a chief executive officer has on earnings management using classification shifting. We find that the pre-Sarbanes–Oxley Act period was characterized by high levels of classification shifting by both female and male CEOs, but the magnitude of such practices is, surprisingly, significantly higher (...) in firms with female CEOs than in those with male CEOs. By contrast, our results suggest that following the passage of the punitive SOX Act, classification shifting by female CEOs declined significantly, whilst it remained pervasive in firms with male CEOs. This suggests that the observable differences in financial reporting behavior between male and female CEOs seem to be because female CEOs are more risk-averse, but not necessarily more ethically sensitive than their male counterparts are. The central tenets of our findings remain unchanged after several additional checks, including controlling for alternative earnings management techniques, corporate governance mechanisms, CEO and chief financial officer characteristics and propensity score-matching. (shrink)

Plus d’une trentaine d’années après la création des premières structures dédiées à sa promotion, l’intégrité scientifique s’est progressivement constituée en tant que thématique de recherche à part entière. Aujourd’hui, une communauté scientifique et académique est réunie autour de cet objet, comme en témoignent la publication d’un nombre croissant d’articles, la création de revues spécialisées ou encore l’organisation de conférences spécifiquement dédiées. Néanmoins, rares sont les travaux qui ont cherché à proposer une vue d’ensemble de la littérature académique relative à l’intégrité (...) scientifique. C’est dans cette perspective que cet état de l’art s’inscrit et entend apporter une contribution. Avec la volonté de rendre compte des principales tendances de la recherche en la matière, nous avons principalement ciblé dans ce travail des articles, des commentaires ou encore quelques documents institutionnels qui ont cherché à approfondir la compréhension que l’on a de l’intégrité scientifique, à explorer les diverses façons de la promouvoir, à mieux cerner l’occurrence des manquements qui y sont liés, ou encore à proposer une lecture de ces questions sous un angle spécifique. Certaines des thématiques qui sont abordées dans cet état de l’art sont incontournables dans le paysage de la recherche et font l’objet d’une attention marquée depuis longtemps, à l’image de l’étude des manquements à l’intégrité scientifique. D’autres, à l’instar des études historiques de l’intégrité scientifique, représentent des pistes de recherche un peu moins explorées mais dont l’intérêt nous semble assez important pour appeler à davantage de développements. (shrink)

BackgroundBetween the need for transparency in healthcare, widely promoted by patient’s safety campaigns, and the fear of negative consequences and malpractice threats, physicians face challenging decisions on whether or not disclosing medical errors to patients and families is a valid option.We aim to assess the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of physicians in our center regarding medical error disclosure.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional self-administered questionnaire study. The questionnaire was piloted and no major modifications were made.A day-long training workshop consisting of didactic (...) lectures, short and long case scenarios with role playing and feedback from the instructors, were conducted. Physicians who attended these training workshops were invited to complete the questionnaire at the end of the training, and physicians who did not attend any training were sent a copy of the questionnaire to their offices to complete. To assure anonymity and transparency of responses, we did not query names or departments.Descriptive statistics were used to present demographics and KAP. The differences between response\s of physicians who received the training and those who did not were analyzed with t-test and descriptive statistics. The 0.05 level of significance was used as a cutoff measure for statistical significance.ResultsEighty-eight physicians completed the questionnaire (55 attended training (62.50%), and 33 did not (37.50%)). Sixty Five percent of physicians were males and the mean number of years of experience was 16.5 years. Eighty-Seven percent (n = 73) of physicians were more likely to report major harm, compared to minor harm or no harm. Physicians who attended the workshop were more knowledgeable of articles of Jordan’s Law on Medical and Health Liability (66.7% vs 45.5%,p-value = 0.017) and the Law was more likely to affect their decision on error disclosure (61.8% vs 36.4%,p-value = 0.024).ConclusionFormal training workshops on disclosing medical errors have the power to positively influence physicians’ KAP toward disclosing medical errors to patients and possibly promoting a culture of transparency in the health care system. (shrink)

In a detailed and spirited critique, Professor James M. Humber has found my defence of the ontological argument unconvincing. Humber's case rests upon his claim that my ‘error’ is due to my ‘having accepted an incorrect definition of “physically necessary being” … ’. Now I do indeed claim that God must be conceived as a factuall necessary being, i.e. as eternally independent. I take the notion of God's aseity or eternal independence to be relatively straightforward and uncontroversial; it is accepted (...) as an essential component of the concept God by many philosophers who also insist that there is no acceptable form of demonstrative theism. Thus, it is widely held that ‘God is a factually necessary being’ does not imply ‘God is a logically necessary being’; that God is eternally independent does not imply that he exists in all possible worlds. But it is precisely this view that I have argued is incorrect. While I concur that there is an intelligible concept of God as factually necessary, I deny that the existence of such a being is logically contingent, a mere matter of empirical fact. Indeed, a rigorous inspection of the concept of an eternally independent being reveals that whether that concept is instantiated, i.e. whether there exists a being exemplifying that concept, is knowable a priori . My claim is in fact stronger than this. I argue that the existence of an eternal, independent, omniscient and omnipotent being is demonstrable by conceptual analysis. It is Humber's contention that my alleged demonstration of God's existence crumbles upon the discovery of the unacceptability of my definition of ‘factually necessary being’. Let us see. (shrink)

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

La discapacidad ha sido concebida a lo largo del tiempo de diferentes modos, lo cual fue ocasión para que algunos autores construyeran modelos para explicar ciertas praxis en torno al tema. Este artículo traza un recorrido desde el primer modelo hasta la actualidad. A su vez propone un nuevo, el Modelo de Comunicación y Reconocimiento Legítimo de la Discapacidad (MCRLD), el cual se caracteriza por un cambio de paradigma: pasar de la inclusión al reconocimiento. Para fundamentar esto, se presentan sus (...) tres categorías: reconocimiento, distancia y vulnerabilidad. También se expondrán las diferentes teorías y conceptos que lo sustentan. El propósito del MCRLD es profundizar en la idea del empoderamiento de las personas con discapacidad como parte de la diversidad de la sociedad, acortando brechas históricamente construidas y aún vigentes. (shrink)

Islamic banking is based on moral foundations that make it distinct from conventional banking. Some argue that because of its foundation in Islam, Islamic banking may represent a more morally appealing alternative. Yet, evidence shows that this is not the case. Indeed, the current practice of Islamic banking has not been able to achieve its goals which are based on Islam's moral values: to enhance justice, equitability, and social well-being. This essay examines the extent to which Islamic banking is ethical (...) and concludes that the practice of the industry does not seem to be de facto ethical from the Islamic perspective of ethical values. It only consists in trading the same instruments of conventional banks without genuinely enforcing Islam's ethical vision. The practice of Islamic banking misrepresents Islam and does not contribute to solving social problems. The interaction between maqasid al-shari᾽a and qiyās provides a supplementary tool for interpreting the failure of the prior in terms of the practical misuse of the latter by Islamic banks. This essay provides an interpretive approach to the current debate about why Islamic banking has failed and suggests ways to move cautiously in the future. (shrink)

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

Prior research suggests that the presence of high-quality auditors constrains accrual-based earnings management, but it inadvertently leads to higher real activities manipulation. We investigate whether such trade-off exists between accrual-based and real earnings management activities in the presence of female or male auditors. We use a sample of UK firms for the period 2009 to 2016 and find that firms audited by female auditors do not resort to a higher-level real activities manipulation when their ability to engage in accruals management (...) is constrained. Overall, our results suggest that the benefits of hiring female auditors are overwhelmingly higher than the costs they might bring to the client firms. (shrink)

Can politics be studied scientifically, and if so, how? Assuming it is impossible to justify values by human reason alone, social science has come to consider an unreflective relativism the only viable basis, not only for its own operations, but for liberal societies more generally. Although the experience of the sixties has made social scientists more sensitive to the importance of values, it has not led to a fundamental reexamination of value relativism, which remains the basis of contemporary social science. (...) Almost three decades after Leo Strauss's death, Nasser Behnegar offers the first sustained exposition of what Strauss was best known for: his radical critique of contemporary social science, and particularly of political science. Behnegar's impressive book argues that Strauss was not against the scientific study of politics, but he did reject the idea that it could be built upon political science's unexamined assumption of the distinction between facts and values. Max Weber was, for Strauss, the most profound exponent of values relativism in social science, and Behnegar's explication artfully illuminates Strauss's critique of Weber's belief in the ultimate insolubility of all value conflicts. Strauss's polemic against contemporary political science was meant to make clear the contradiction between its claim of value-free premises and its commitment to democratic principles. As Behnegar ultimately shows, values--the ethical component lacking in a contemporary social science--are essential to Strauss's project of constructing a genuinely scientific study of politics. (shrink)

Lorsque la vie apparaît comme une oeuvre d'art au plein sens du terme, elle est alors portée par ce geste d'invention de soi, geste de résistance qui déplace les lignes de force, qui vise la récupération du monde à travers une subjectivité révolutionnaire. Une des caractéristiques fondamentales de l'homme est l'altérité et l'étrangeté. Exposé à l'inconnu, il est amené à déployer son existence au-delà d'une origine ou d'un foyer. Il est acculé à puiser en lui des ressources insoupçonnées pour faire (...) face aux turbulences de l'être. Cela confère une liberté de mouvement que donnent à voir des trajectoires d'hommes exceptionnels dotés d'un courage et d'une puissance de pensée pour tracer de nouveaux chemins. Cela ne va pas sans crise de l'intériorité, sans destruction des frontières de la subjectivité faisant de l'homme un étranger sans repos et sans assise. Mais c'est dans l'échappée à la tyrannie du même que la mutation survient avec une conscience ouverte aux réalités les plus étrangères. A ce niveau se situe la lutte perpétuelle dont parle Nietzsche qui vise une transformation radicale de l'individualité. Le regard de l'étranger se situe dans cette ligne de fuite qui bouleverse les modalités du voir, propulsant l'âme vers des horizons stupéfiants à travers une puissance de la pensée où le sujet est désormais porté par l'infini de l'être. (shrink)

Philosophers from anselm and scotus to hartshorne and malcolm have argued that the true claim that God is a necessary being implies that theism is a-Priori demonstrable. Philosophers such as hick, Penelhum, And geach have denied this, Contending 1) that god's necessity is factual, Indicating his eternal independence, Rather than logical, Indicating his existence in all possible worlds, And 2) that from the former nothing follows a-Priori about the truth or falsity of theism. I argue that factual and logical necessity (...) are conceptually inseparable, That God can be demonstrated to exist in all possible worlds. I take statements about the modalities of existence of things to be equivalent to statements about the modalities of instantiation of concepts, And argue that the concept God is necessarily instantiated, I.E., That God necessarily exists. The argument is compared and contrasted to a similar argument of hartshorne's. (shrink)

It is an important issue for economic and finance applications to determine whether individuals exhibit a behavioral bias toward pessimism in their beliefs, in a lottery or more generally in an investment opportunities framework. In this paper, we analyze the answers of a sample of 1,540 individuals to the following question “Imagine that a coin will be flipped 10 times. Each time, if heads, you win \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$10\texttt{C}\!\!\!\rule[2.3pt]{.4em}{.3pt}\!\!\rule[3.3pt]{.4em}{.3pt}$$\end{docum ent}. How many times do you (...) think that you will win?” The average answer is surprisingly about 3.9 which is below the average 5, and we interpret this as a pessimistic bias. We find that women are more “pessimistic” than men, as are old people relative to young. We also analyze how our notion of pessimism is related to more general notions of pessimism previously introduced in psychology. (shrink)

Phenomenal Conservatism is an approach to epistemological justification that, based on "appearances" and "seemings" and in line with the theory of common sense epistemology, attempt to set up an internal and non-inferential justification, at least for some kind of beliefs. According to this view, justification and non-justification have a direct relationship with the mental state of the agent. Based on this assumption that “Things are as they seem”, phenomenal conservatism offers its central idea that if, for an agent, something seems (...) to be true -and there is no defeater for that until doubting in - that agent thereby has at least some justification for believing that. In this article, we will interpret this new approach with an empathetic attitude and, in addition to explaining its main components, we will effort to answer the most important objections of phenomenal conservatism and show that this view is a significant approach to the justification and rationality of human beliefs. (shrink)

De la pensée de Bolzano, l’objectivisme sémantique est certainement l’aspect le plus largement commenté. Mais son œuvre maîtresse, la Wissenschaftslehre, comprend aussi bien la version la plus aboutie de cet objectivisme qu’une partie proprement épistémologique, la « Théorie de la Connaissance ». Si l’épistémologie bolzanienne repose sur la désubjectivation des éléments de la connaissance, la théorie de la perception présente dans cette Wissenschaftslehre prête au sujet connaissant un rôle actif dans l’élaboration du réel perceptif.