Şüpheye dayalı metodoloji çeşitli yönleriyle felsefenin en öne çıkan konularından biridir. Bu yöntem, Sofistlerin uyguladığına benzeyen gelişigüzel bir süreç olabileceği gibi, gizem ve belirsizlikten uzak, doğru bilgiye ulaşma çabası içinde bireyin yürüttüğü sağlam bir mekanizma da olabilmektedir. Ayrıca sadedinde olduğumuz metodik şüphe, (Sofistçe yapılan) mutlak şüphe ile çelişmekte ve hiçbir düşünürün hakikate ve kesinlik ifade eden görüşlere ulaşmak için kendisinden müstağni kalamayacağı bir olgudur. Her ne kadar mutlak şüphe, felsefe ve düşüncede kınanacak, faydasız bir olgu olup gerçek anlamda faydalı bilgiye (...) götürmese de, metodik şüphe yöntemi, bilgiye ulaşmanın ve gerçeği anlamanın yolu olarak öne çıkan bir araç olmaktadır. Bu metodoloji, filozofların ve bilgelerin ulaştığı birçok bilginin içeriğinde açıkça görülmektedir. Bu çalışmamızda şüphe kavramı ve onun felsefedeki yönleri kısaca ele alınmakla birlikte, mutlak şüphe gibi diğer şüphe türlerinin reddedilmesi anlamına gelen metodik şüphe üzerinde de durulmuştur. Bu yaklaşımı anlamak amacıyla 10. yüzyılda İslam medeniyetinin en önemli âlim ve filozoflarından biri olarak kabul edilen İmam Ebû Hâmid el-Gazzâlî hakkında da bilgiye yer verilmiştir. Nitekim Gazzâlî, felsefe, mantık, tasavvuf, İslam fıkhı ve diğer ilimler dâhil olmak üzere çeşitli alanlarda sunduğu zengin miras nedeniyle çeşitli alan ve çevrede büyük bir konuma sahiptir. Gazzâlî, şüpheci yaklaşımı benimseyen ve takip edenlerin en önde gelenlerinden biri olarak kabul edilir ve bunun tezahürleri de “el-Münkız Mine’d-Dalâl” isimli eserinde görülmektedir. Gazzâlî'nin ölümünden yaklaşık beş yüzyıl sonra bu yaklaşım, Fransız aydınlanma felsefesinin en önemli isimlerinden ve öncülerinden biri olan, aynı zamanda matematik, doğa bilimleri ve tıp ile de ilgilenen Fransız filozof René Descartes tarafından yeniden ortaya çıkmıştır. Descartes, “Metot Üzerine Konuşma” adlı eserinde görüldüğü gibi bu yaklaşımı, Avrupa'daki entelektüel rönesansın ışığında, mutlak şüphenin yayıldığı bir dönemde benimsemiştir. Bu araştırma, hem Gazzâlî'de hem de Descartes'ta metodik şüphenin özelliklerini tanımlamayı amaçlamakta ve onların hakikate ulaşmak için bilgiyi ele alma yöntemini incelemektedir. Ayrıca bu iki filozofun gerçeğe ulaşmanın en iyi yolunu oluşturdukları bilişsel temellerin yanı sıra, geleneksel, aklî ve duyusal bilgilere ilişkin görüşlerine de değinilmektedir. Bu bağlamda araştırmamız, metodik şüphenin özelliklerini tanımlamada, iki filozofun deneyiminden ve bilişsel yolculuğundan faydalanarak, yazdıkları iki kitabın incelenmesine ve analiz edilmesine dayanmaktadır. Makalenin sonunda Descartes'ın bu bağlamda Gazzâlî'den etkilenmiş olabileceğine ve metodik şüphe konusunda sahip olduğu görüşlerindeki benzerliklere de kısaca işaret edilmiştir. (shrink)

The main aim of this study is to undertake a critical examination of the ethical and developmental performance of an Islamic bank as communicated in its annual reports over a period of 28 years. Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited’s ethical performance and disclosures are further analyzed through interviews conducted with the bank’s senior management. The key findings include an overall increase in ethical disclosures during the study period. However, the focus on various stakeholders’ needs has varied over time reflecting the evolving (...) nature of the Islamic finance industry over the last three decades. Based on a secular economy, IBBL focused in the first two decades on the “Particular” Shariah compliance disclosure as a way of establishing its reputation and differentiating itself from conventional banks in a dual banking system. Post 2005, the ethical performance and disclosure shifted to more “Universal” disclosures such as sustainability, charity, employees, and community related disclosures signaling responsible conduct and the bank’s adoption of a “wider stakeholder approach.” However the bank is still failing to provide full disclosure on certain significant categories such as sources and uses of disposable income, thereby contradicting the principles of full and comprehensive disclosure and accountability. In addition, the structure of IBBL’s investment portfolio reveals an overreliance on debt-based financial instruments and a shortcoming in fulfilling the developmental and social objectives of Islamic finance. This is evidenced by the “qualified” Shariah Supervisory Board reports that the bank consistently received. This research provides further evidence that Islamic banking and Finance in its current practices reflect the “global” and the “local” influences in an era dominated by global conventional finance. (shrink)

Recent calls in the corporate social reporting (CSRep) literature have emphasized the importance of giving voice to non-managerial stakeholder groups in the social reporting process. The research, presented in this paper, employs recent work in stakeholder theory and CSRep to examine the perceptions of a diverse set of non-managerial stakeholders in the context of a developing country, Bangladesh. A series of semistructured interviews were conducted with individuals who identify with various non-managerial stakeholder groups. Interviewees generally believed that the motivation and (...) practice of CSRep in Bangladesh is developing in response to pressures from international markets and is producing largely cosmetic responses. Also, they expressed concerns that, given the economic, political, and social conditions in Bangladesh, premature adoption of strict CSRep standards may lead to increased corruption and other unintended consequences. Whilst some of the interviewees sharply criticized the current process of imposing social accounting codes/standards on developing countries which fail to consider the important local socio-economic context, the findings suggest that there is overwhelming support for mandatory externally verified CSRep based on the principles of peoples' right to know, full disclosure/completeness, and relevance, which are anchored in the broader principles of transparency and stakeholder accountability. (shrink)

Recent calls in the corporate social reporting literature have emphasized the importance of giving voice to non-managerial stakeholder groups in the social reporting process. The research, presented in this paper, employs recent work in stakeholder theory and CSRep to examine the perceptions of a diverse set of non-managerial stakeholders in the context of a developing country, Bangladesh. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals who identify with various non-managerial stakeholder groups. Interviewees generally believed that the motivation and practice (...) of CSRep in Bangladesh is developing in response to pressures from international markets and is producing largely cosmetic responses. Also, they expressed concerns that, given the economic, political, and social conditions in Bangladesh, premature adoption of strict CSRep standards may lead to increased corruption and other unintended consequences. Whilst some of the interviewees sharply criticized the current process of imposing social accounting codes/standards on developing countries which fail to consider the important local socio-economic context, the findings suggest that there is overwhelming support for mandatory externally verified CSRep based on the principles of peoples’ right to know, full disclosure/completeness, and relevance, which are anchored in the broader principles of transparency and stakeholder accountability. (shrink)

Every person has his/her own unique signature that is used mainly for the purposes of personal identification and verification of important documents or legal transactions. There are two kinds of signature verification: static and dynamic. Static(off-line) verification is the process of verifying an electronic or document signature after it has been made, while dynamic(on-line) verification takes place as a person creates his/her signature on a digital tablet or a similar device. Offline signature verification is not efficient and slow for a (...) large number of documents. To overcome the drawbacks of offline signature verification, we have seen a growth in online biometric personal verification such as fingerprints, eye scan etc. In this paper we created CNN model using python for offline signature and after training and validating, the accuracy of testing was 99.70%. (shrink)

Given the nature and importance of Islamic banks in recent times, we can expect them to have significant intellectual capital anchored in their Sharia‐based knowledge and expertise. However, we know very little or nothing about how and why intellectual capital‐related information is provided in their corporate reports. We fill this gap in our existing knowledge of the field with a view to enhance relevant literature. As far as we know, this article is one of the earliest exploratory attempts to examine (...) intellectual capital reporting practices of an Islamic bank. We have undertaken a longitudinal (2001–2015) case study related to the intellectual capital reporting practices of an Islamic bank. Key results include significant rise of intellectual capital reporting over time, dominance of internal capital‐related items in intellectual capital reporting profile and the dynamics of changes in intellectual capital reporting practices over time. Through an institutional theory lens, we explain that this is due to the changes in the external institutional environment and various intra‐organisational factors such as strong ethical culture, unique knowledge base (Sharia), and corporate governance regime. (shrink)

High ethical standards have always been at the core of the Afghan culture throughout the country. Unfortunately, over the past few years in Afghanistan, bribery and corruption have become more widespread throughout the government offices as employees attempt to serve their customers. This quantitative study of 98 male and 116 female Afghan-American respondents analyzes their perceptions regarding the recognition of dilemmas related to ethics and bribery. The 214Afghan-American responses are compared with the average scores of 602 American respondents from the (...) retail industry. The groups’ scores are significantly different with the later reporting less tolerance for unethical behavior. It appears that there are no differences in the responses of Afghan males and females. The younger generation seems to be as ethically mature as the older Afghans. Finally, higher education levels among the Afghan respondents demonstrated a statistically significant and positive correlation toward ethical maturity. Results and implications are presented. (shrink)

The temperament of the body is an essential constituent for health conservancy and diagnosis of several diseases. Hence, general body temperament and uterine dystemperament with abnormal vaginal discharge need evaluation. In addition, we also applied a computational intelligence technique for enhancing scientific validity to classify the warm-cold and wet-dry temperaments. This trial included a total of 66 participants with a vaginal discharge of reproductive age. Data included demographic characteristics of the participants, symptoms associated with vaginal discharge, women’s general temperament, and (...) symptoms of uterine dystemperament. Correlation between general body temperament and age, abnormal vaginal discharge, and its associated symptoms was also performed. Additionally, we used the Support Vector Machine-Radial Basis Function model to classify the warm-cold and wet-dry temperaments. Warm general temperament was highly prevalent, followed by moderate on the warm-cold temperament scale. In wet-dry temperament, moderate general body temperament was more prevalent. In warm-cold and wet-dry scores, 78.78% and 74.24% had warm and wet uterine dystemperament, respectively. The age and symptoms were correlated with general temperament. A strong positive correlation was found between warm general temperament and warm dystemperament of the uterus. In addition, our SVM-RBF CV-5 classification model achieved the highest accuracy. Our results showed that vaginal discharge is more common in warm general temperament and warm-wet dystemperament of the uterus. The same has been proven by computational intelligence. Nevertheless, vaginal discharge can also happen in normal and other temperaments. (shrink)

Deep learning techniques, which use a massive technology known as convolutional neural networks, have shown excellent results in a variety of areas, including image processing and interpretation. However, as the depth of these networks grows, so does the demand for a large amount of labeled data required to train these networks. In particular, the medical field suffers from a lack of images because the procedure for obtaining labeled medical images in the healthcare field is difficult, expensive, and requires specialized expertise (...) to add labels to images. Moreover, the process may be prone to errors and time-consuming. Current research has revealed transfer learning as a viable solution to this problem. Transfer learning allows us to transfer knowledge gained from a previous process to improve and tackle a new problem. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive survey of recent studies that dealt with solving this problem and the most important metrics used to evaluate these methods. In addition, this study identifies problems in transfer learning techniques and highlights the problems of the medical dataset and potential problems that can be addressed in future research. According to our review, many researchers use pre-trained models on the Imagenet dataset in many applications such as skin cancer, breast cancer, and diabetic retinopathy classification tasks. These techniques require further investigation of these models, due to training them on natural, non-medical images. In addition, many researchers use data augmentation techniques to expand their dataset and avoid overfitting. However, not enough studies have shown the effect of performance with or without data augmentation. Accuracy, recall, precision, F1 score, receiver operator characteristic curve, and area under the curve were the most widely used measures in these studies. Furthermore, we identified problems in the datasets for melanoma and breast cancer and suggested corresponding solutions. (shrink)

Speech is a primary means of human communication and one of the most basic features of human conduct. Voice is an important part of its subsystems. A speech disorder is a condition that affects the ability of a person to speak normally, which occasionally results in voice impairment with psychological and emotional consequences. Early detection of voice problems is a crucial factor. Computer-based procedures are less costly and easier to administer for such purposes than traditional methods. This study highlights the (...) following issues: recent studies, methods of voice pathology detection, machine learning and deep learning (DL) methods used in data classification, main datasets utilized, and the role of Internet of things (IoT) systems employed in voice pathology diagnosis. Moreover, this study presents different applications, open challenges, and recommendations for future directions of IoT systems and artificial intelligence (AI) approaches in the voice pathology diagnosis. Finally, this study highlights some limitations of voice pathology datasets in comparison with the role of IoT in the healthcare sector, which shows the urgent need to provide efficient approaches and easy and ideal medical diagnostic procedures and treatments of disease identification for doctors and patients. This review covered voice pathology taxonomy, detection techniques, open challenges, limitations, and recommendations for future directions to provide a clear background for doctors and patients. Standard databases, including the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Saarbruecken Voice Database, and the Arabic Voice Pathology Database, were used in most articles reviewed in this article. The classes, features, and main purpose for voice pathology identification are also highlighted. This study focuses on the extraction of voice pathology features, especially speech analysis, extends feature vectors comprising static and dynamic features, and converts these extended feature vectors into solid vectors before passing them to the recognizer. (shrink)

Econophysics is a branch of economics that applies concepts and methods from physics to the financial markets. This article focuses on the approaches to quantum finance developed by Kirill Ilinski and Belal E. Baaquie to deal with the uncertainty characterizing financial time series. Allegedly, their models rest on a formal analogy between quantum mechanics and finance. In order to evaluate them, we raise the question what is really quantum in quantum econophysics. We then argue that the supposed analogy breaks (...) in an important manner, which is relevant to explain the empirical success of the proposed models. (shrink)