Climate change poses as one of the greatest ethical challenges of the contemporary era and which is rapidly affecting all sectors and ecosystems, including natural ecosystems and human and social environments. The impacts on human societies, and societies’ ability to mitigate and adapt to these changes and to adhere to ethical principles are influenced by various factors, including gender. Therefore, this study aimed to design a model of climate change adaptation behavior among rice farmers in Mazandaran Province, northern Iran, based (...) on gender analysis and using the developed model of protection motivation theory. For this purpose, 173 female and 233 male rice farmers in Mazandaran Province were selected through stratified random sampling. The results showed that threat and coping appraisal had positive and significant effects on climate change adaptation behavior in both groups. Additionally, men’s and women’s perceived severity had the greatest impact on threat appraisal, and response costs had the greatest impact on their coping appraisal of climate change. Given that climate change adaptation behavior has been largely dependent on the development of ethical principles and the behavior of men and women toward climate change and based on the research findings, some suggestions are recommended at the mega, macro, meso and micro levels for male and female rice farmers to adapt to the climate change phenomenon. (shrink)

This work delves into the nature of the morality of the judges and prosecutors of the ICC, who are instrumental in perpetuating the flawed concept of international criminal vacation. This work does not imply distrust in the capacities of the prosecutors or judges of the Court. However, if they are not morally and legally accountable for safeguarding the survival and security of the rights of victims, then who is? This volume places a significant emphasis on an ethical and philosophical understanding (...) of the system of international criminal justice and how the system of vacation for major criminals has become a mechanism against the universal rights of men across the globe. It is in these circumstances that we become instruments of political power, devoid of morality and humanity, driven solely by the evil greed of governments that disregard the dignity of other nations and relegate their victims to a state of insignificance. (shrink)

With the principle of tour de force, we refer to the use of the power of moral legality, the strength of statutes, and the fairness of judgments. A quantum force of moral legality and legal morality serves as an imperative force in the implementation of fair criminal justice, as well as in the prevention of future victims across the globe. Contrary to positivist ideas, the simple notion of morality contains within itself the very essence of international criminal norms. If the (...) source of morality did not exist in the structure of our criminal justice, we could no longer call it criminal justice and would instead have to call it criminal revenge. Beyond the moral essence of international criminal justice, we also challenge the hidden illegality and immorality of certain attitudes. This is done in order to prevent acts which violate human rights law and criminal justice provisions. The codes of international human rights law cannot properly function without the comprehensive nature of morality which elevates the moral virtue of international criminal justice and strengthens the tour de force. One may observe that the principle of the tour de force of the moral virtue within the system of international criminal justice loses its legal power when governments attempt to justify their unjust decisions. This is the main reason why the major potential value of the tour de force of the moral virtue of human rights law and international criminal justice is not as strong as it should be. In order to achieve a vision of the tour de force of moral virtue, we need to establish a devoted influential ethical vision of the truth beyond political tradition. An unparalleled philosophical piece of literature for libraries. (shrink)

Supply-side interventions such as prescription drug monitoring programs, “pill mill” laws, and dispensing limits have done little to quell the burgeoning opioid crisis. An increasingly popular demand-side alternative to these measures – now adopted by 38 jurisdictions in the USA and 7 provinces in Canada — is court-mandated involuntary commitment and treatment. In Massachusetts, for example, Part I, Chapter 123, Section 35 of the state's General Laws allows physicians, spouses, relatives, and police officers to petition a court to involuntarily commit (...) and treat a person whose alcohol or drug abuse poses a likelihood of serious harm. This paper explores the ethical underpinnings of this law as a case study for others. First, we highlight the procedural and substantive standards of Section 35 and evaluate the application of the law in practice, including the frequency with which it has been invoked and outcomes. We then use this background to inform an ethical critique of the law. Specifically, we argue that the infringement of autonomy and privacy associated with involuntary intervention under Section 35 is not currently justified on the grounds of a lack of evidenced benefits and a risk of significant of harm. Further ethical concerns also arise from a lack of standard of care provided under the Section 35 pathway. Based on this analysis, we advance four recommendations for change to mitigate these ethical shortcomings. (shrink)

We briefly review the recent literature on globalization, and present empirical evidence showing that economic globalization has been correlated with higher economic growth and lower poverty rates. We then evaluate the consequences of economic globalization in light of standards of commutative justice as Smith articulated, distributive justice as Rawls presented, and practical justice as Kolm explicated. This essay argues that economic globalization fulfills the requirements of all three species of justice.

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology used in hundreds of active projects in scientific and other domains. BFO has been selected to serve as top-level ontology in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), an initiative to create a suite of ontologies to support digital manufacturing on the part of representatives from a number of branches of the advanced manufacturing industries. We here present a first draft set of axioms and definitions of an IOF upper ontology descending from BFO. The (...) axiomatization is designed to capture the meanings of terms commonly used in manufacturing and is designed to serve as starting point for the construction of the IOF ontology suite. (shrink)

In the year 1749 Adam Smith conceived his theory of commercial liberty and David Hume laid the foundation of his monetary theory. These two intellectual developments, despite their brevity, heralded a paradigm shift in economic thinking. Smith expanded and promulgated his theory over the course of his scholarly career, culminating in the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Hume elaborated on the constituents of his monetary framework in several essays that were published in 1752. Although Smith and Hume (...) devised their economic theories in 1749 independently, these theories complemented each other and to a considerable extent created the structure of classical economics. (shrink)

Kant’s investigations into so‐called a priori judgments of pure mathematics in the Critique of Pure Reason (KrV) are mainly confined to geometry and arithmetic both of which are grounded on our pure forms of intuition, space, and time. Nevertheless, as regards notions such as irrational numbers and continuous magnitudes, such a restricted account is crucially problematic. I argue that algebra can play a transcendental role with respect to the two pure intuitive sciences, arithmetic and geometry, as the condition of their (...) possibility. It follows that Kant’s schematism of the concept of magnitude ought to be quantitatively represented in algebraic formulas in general, and also undergo several modifications in order to suit continuities. (shrink)

Le problème du mondeLe problème du monde, de sa légitimation, de sa donation, et du rapport qu’entretient celui-ci avec l’ego a été et demeure le problème de la constitution en philosophie. On connaît la solution kantienne qui consiste à privilégier la légalité de notre subjectivité transcendantale à la place de l’objectivité en soi du monde. Or Michel...

Farhad Dalal argues that people differentiate between races in order to make a distinction between the "haves" and "must-not-haves", and that this process is cognitive, emotional and political rather than biological. Examining the subject over the past thousand years, Race, Colour and the Process of Racialisation covers theories of racism and a general theory of difference based on the works of Fanon, Elias, Matte-Blanco and Foulkes, as well as application of this theory to race and racism. Farhad Dalal (...) concludes that the structures of society are reflected in the structures of the psyche, and both of these are colour coded. This book will be invaluable to students, academics and practitioners in the areas of psychoanalysis, group analysis, psychotherapy and counseling. (shrink)

In this critique and extension of Foulkes' work, Farhad Dalal presents a contemporary appraisal of the theory of group psychoanalysis as a whole. Dalal argues that Foulkes was ultimately unable to take the group seriously because he did not develop a specific set of group concepts.

Une tentative d'élaboration d'un statut du sujet qui fonde les sciences sociales, en y incluant la dimension religieuse.

Trois mouvements sociaux caractérisent la société iranienne d’aujourd’hui. Le premier est le mouvement des étudiants, qui combine des revendications culturelles pour une société plus ouverte avec des demandes politiques pour une société plus libre, dans laquelle la participation active des citoyens à la scène politique devrait être reconnue. Le second mouvement est celui des femmes, par lequel des femmes d’âge moyen ainsi que la nouvelle génération expriment leur demande pour une société moins discriminatoire vis-à-vis des femmes. Le troisième mouvement est (...) celui des intellectuels, par lequel de nouvelles interprétations de l’islam mettent en question la nature théocratique du régime politique en vigueur. Contrairement aux mouvements des années 1970, qui débouchèrent sur la révolution islamique de 1979, les nouveaux mouvements sociaux en Iran ont une forte dimension démocratique. Ils sont « protodémocratiques » dans le sens où ils revendiquent l’ouverture du système politique au nom d’une nouvelle version de l’islam, moins holistique, plus individualiste, séparant le registre de la spiritualité religieuse de celui du politique.Three social movements characterize today’s Iranian society. The first is the students’ movement which combines cultural demands for a more open society with a political one, for a freer society in which the citizens’ participation to the political system should be recognized. The second is the womens’ movement, through which middle-aged women and the younger generation express their claim for a less gender-discriminating society. The third movement is the intellectuals’ movement, in which new interpretations of Islam put into question the theocratic nature of the political regime. Contrary to the movements of the 1970s that ended up in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the new social movements in Iran have a strong democratic dimension. They are « protodemocratic » in the sense that they ask for the opening of the political system in the name of a new version of Islam, less holistic, more individualistic, separating the realm of religious spirituality from the arena of the politics. (shrink)

Depuis le début du XXe siècle, se sont succédé en Iran quatre générations d’intellectuels. La première a vu officiellement le jour sous la Révolution constitutionnelle, et se réclamait d’un pluralisme politique entretenant des relations ambiguës avec l’islam. La seconde, sous Réza Shah, dans les années 1930 et 1940, se réclamait du nationalisme ou du marxisme, l’islam étant marginal dans leur horizon intellectuel. La troisième génération, à partir des années 1960, revient à l’islam et y puise les ressources pour lutter contre (...) l’autocratie du chah et l’impérialisme occidental. L’islamo-marxisme en est la conséquence pour la grande majorité d’entre eux. Enfin, après la Révolution islamique s’ouvre, dans les années 1990, une nouvelle période où les intellectuels « religieux » présentent une version pluraliste de l’islam qui remet en cause la théocratie islamique au nom d’un islam spirituel ou qui laisse le champ politique à la société. Cette nouvelle version de l’islam remet en cause le gouvernement du Jurisconsulte Islamique sur lequel est fondée la République Islamique d’Iran. L’opposition intellectuelle au pouvoir se décline désormais pour la première fois de manière explicite à partir d’une vision qui entend concilier islam et démocratie.Since the early 20th century, four generations of intellectuals have followed each other in Iran. The first was officially born in the wake of the Constitutional Revolution. It was based on a political pluralism maintaining ambiguous relations with Islam. The second, under the rule of Reza Shah, in the 1930s and 1940s, combines nationalism and marxism, Islam being of marginal interest at the time. The third generation, after the 1960s, reverts to Islam, in which it finds the intellectual weapons against the despotism of the monarch and Western imperialism. As a result, a combination of Islam and marxism defines their intellectual horizon. Eventually, after the Islamic Revolution, in the 1990s, a new period sets in, in which the « religious intellectuals » work out a pluralist version of Islam that questions Islamic theocracy in the name of a spiritual Islam or a religion that does not impose its views on the political arena. This new version of islam puts into question the Government of the Islamic Jurist upon which the Islamic Republic in Iran is based. From now on, the intellectual opposition to the government expresses itself from a perspective that intends to reconcile Islam and democracy. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré à l’étude des acteurs des révolutions arabes, principalement en Tunisie et en Égypte. Soulignant les convergences et les divergences entre les deux cas, il distingue les types d’acteurs (séculier/religieux) qui ont apparu à partir de 2011, mais s’attache aussi à analyser leur rapport à la violence réelle ou symbolique. Il en restitue parallèlement les spécificités en étudiant le positionnement des acteurs institutionnels (police, justice) vis-à-vis des acteurs civils ainsi que leur attitude à l’égard des changements majeurs (...) survenus dans les deux pays. (shrink)

During the last quarter of a century, Iran has undergone fundamental changes. The revolution was supported by a heterogeneous coalition of social forces, but it led to a war with Iraq and the stabilization of an Islamic regime. Since the end of the 1980s, four different types of new social actors have emerged in Iran: post-Islamist intellectuals; feminists; students as a nonrevolutionary, reformist and democratically minded group; and ethnic movements. These actors mostly (with the exception of some intellectuals) belong to (...) a generation which did not take part in the revolution; their aspirations and demands are totally different from those most characteristic of the revolutionary phase. The election of President Khatami in 1997 was a result of these changes. Since then, a stalemate has prevailed: the society is post-Islamist, whereas the decisive power centres are controlled by Islamist conservatives. (shrink)

Western jihadism is a complex phenomenon in which the imaginary dimension, the subjectivity of the actors linked to their socio-economic condition but also to their ethnicity, and beyond that, what I call their subjectivation (the ability to empower oneself as a social actor), play a significant role. In Europe, among the Muslim offshoots of migrant workers, most of the psychological developments associated with Jihadism occurs in very specific urban structures, the poor districts or suburbs, where a high concentration of urban (...) poor live with a burden of social stigma linked to the high criminality rate. These settings are often de facto ghettoes. The development of a specific urban imagination often gives meaning to the jihadist commitment among young people living in this type of settlement. This imaginary often feeds on a feeling of stigmatization among these people. Jihadism is not a quest for meaning, but its discovery, the wielding of it through embracing death and inflicting it on the ‘infidels’. It is, in another way, a punishment of society, an act of vengeance against it, be it due to personal reasons (mainly for the young downtrodden of the immigrant origin who feel stigmatized by the society) or due to the lack of ideal, utopia and social justice in society (the case of the young middle class people). This study aims at underlining the fact that social imaginaries should be at the root of socio-anthropological analysis and without understanding the meaning of social action, quantitative views give us at best a unilateral, at most a distorted view of social action and social behavior. (shrink)

We examine the writings of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman regarding their interpretation and use of the concept of self-interest.We argue that neither Smith nor Friedman considers self-interest to be synonymous with selfishness and thus devoid of ethicalconsiderations. Rather, for both writers self-interest embodies an other-regarding aspect that requires individuals to moderate theiractions when others are adversely affected. The overriding virtue for Smith in governing individual actions is justice; for Friedman it isnon-coercion.

Internet-enabled technologies have provided a way for people to communicate and collaborate with each other. The collaboration and communication made crowdsourcing an efficient and effective activity. Crowdsourcing is a modern paradigm that employs cheap labors for accomplishing different types of tasks. The task is usually posted online as an open call, and members of the crowd self-select a task to be carried out. Crowdsourcing involves initiators or crowdsourcers, the crowd, crowdsourcing task, the process, and the crowdsourcing platform where requesters offer (...) various tasks and crowd workers complete these tasks. As the crowdsourcing is carried out in the online environment, it gives rise to certain challenges. The major problem is the selection of crowd that is becoming a challenging issue with the growth in crowdsourcing popularity. Crowd selection has been significantly investigated in crowdsourcing processes. Nonetheless, it has observed that the selection is based only on a single feature of the crowd worker which was not sufficient for appropriate crowd selection. For addressing the problem of crowd selection, a novel “ant colony optimization-based crowd selection method” is presented in this paper that selects a crowd worker based on multicriteria features. By utilizing the proposed model, the efficiency and effectiveness of crowdsourcing activity will be increased. (shrink)

The traditional view of cognition as detached from emotions is recently being questioned. This study aimed to investigate the influence of emotional valence on the accuracy and bias in the representation of numbers on the mental number line (MNL). The study included 164 participants who were randomly assigned into two groups with induced positive and negative emotional valence using matched arousal film clips. Participants performed a computerised number-to-position (CNP) task to estimate the position of numbers on a horizontal line. The (...) results showed that participants in the positive valence group exhibited a rightward bias, while those in the negative valence group showed an opposite pattern. The analysis of mean absolute error revealed that the negative valence group had higher error rates compared to the positive valence group. Furthermore, the MNL estimation pattern analysis indicated that a two-cycle cyclic power model (CPM) best explained the data for both groups. These findings suggest that emotional valence influences the spatial representation of numbers on the MNL and affects accuracy in numerical estimations. Our findings are finally discussed in terms of body-specificity and the Brain’s Asymmetric Frequency Tuning (BAFT) theories. The study provides new insights into the interplay between emotions and numerical cognition. (shrink)

One of the mathematical programming techniques is data envelopment analysis, which is used for evaluating the efficiency of a set of similar decision-making units. Fixed resource allocation and target setting with the help of DEA is a subject that has gained much attention from researchers. A new model was proposed by determining a common set of weights. All DMUs were involved with the aim of achieving higher efficiency in every DMU after the procedure. The minimum resources and targets allocated to (...) each DMU were commensurate to the efficiency of that DMU and the share of DMU in the input resources and the output productions. To examine the proposed method, other methods in the DEA literature were examined as well, and then, the efficiency of the method was demonstrated through a numerical example. (shrink)

The Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) was formed to create a suite of interoperable ontologies. Ontologies that would serve as a foundation for data and information interoperability in all areas of manufacturing. To ensure that each ontology is developed in a structured and mutually coherent manner, the IOF has committed to the tiered architecture of ontology building based on the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as top level. One of the critical elements of a successful tiered architecture build is the domain mid-level (...) ontologies. However, thus far there has been no mid-level manufacturing ontology that is based on BFO. The IOF has recently released the IOF Core version 1 beta to fill this gap. This paper documents the development process and gives an overview of the current content of the IOF Core. Finally, the paper describes how the IOF Core can be used as the basis for a more domain-specific Supply Chain Ontology. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a number of promising technical and institutional developments regarding use of ontologies in industry. At the same time, however, most industrial ontology development work remains within the realm of academic research and is without significant uptake in commercial applications. In biomedicine, by contrast, ontologies have made significant inroads as valuable tools for achieving interoperability between data systems whose contents derive from widely heterogeneous sources. In this position paper, we present a set of principles learned (...) from the successful Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry initiative to guide the design and development of the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), which is a counterpart to the OBO Foundry initiative for the manufacturing industry. We also illustrate the potential utility of these principles by sketching the conceptual design of a framework for sustainable IOF development. (shrink)