This study aims to use the Asian knowledge model “APO” as a determinant for performance excellence in universities and identifying the most effecting factors on it. This study was applied on Al-Azhar University in Gaza strip. The result of the study showed that (APO) model is valid as a measure and there are four dimensions in the model affecting significantly more than the others (university processes, KM leadership, personnel, KM outputs). Furthermore, performance excellence produced though modernizing the means of education, (...) curriculum development, technology and flexibility in the organizational structure. The study recommends expanding the usage of (APO) model, enhancing the role of knowledge leadership, technology, organizational flexibility, sharing culture and incentive systems that encouraging innovation. (shrink)

This Handbook fills a large gap in current scholarly literature on animal abuse studies. It moves considerably beyond the debate that has traditionally dominated the discourse of animal abuse – the link between one-on-one interpersonal violence and animal abuse – and towards those institutionalised forms of animal abuse which are routine, everyday, socially acceptable and invisibilised. Chapters from expert contributors raise issues such as: the use of animals as edibles; vivisection; animal sexual assault; animals used in sport and hunting; animal (...) trafficking; the use of animals by youth gangs, by other groups and in war; species extinction; and the passivity of national and international organisations in combating animal abuse. The Handbook is a unique text: it is essential reading for students, researchers, academics, activists and policy makers involved in understanding and preventing animal abuse. (shrink)

We present a formal Arabic wordnet built on the basis of a carefully designed ontology hereby referred to as the Arabic Ontology. The ontology provides a formal representation of the concepts that the Arabic terms convey, and its content was built with ontological analysis in mind, and benchmarked to scientific advances and rigorous knowledge sources as much as this is possible, rather than to only speakers’ beliefs as lexicons typically are. A comprehensive evaluation was conducted thereby demonstrating that the current (...) version of the top-levels of the ontology can top the majority of the Arabic meanings. The ontology consists currently of about 1,800 well-investigated concepts in addition to 16,000 concepts that are partially validated. The ontology is accessible and searchable through a lexicographic search engine that also includes about 150 Arabic-multilingual lexicons, and which are being mapped and enriched using the ontology. The ontology is fully mapped with Princeton WordNet, Wikidata, and other resources. (shrink)

Anticolonial theorists and revolutionaries have long turned to dialectical thought as a central weapon in their fight against oppressive structures and conditions. This relationship was never easy, however, as anticolonial thinkers have resisted the historical determinism, teleology, Eurocentrism, and singular emphasis that some Marxisms place on class identity at the expense of race, nation, and popular identity. In recent decades, the conflict between dialectics and postcolonial theory has only deepened. In _Decolonizing Dialectics _George Ciccariello-Maher breaks this impasse by bringing (...) the work of Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, and Enrique Dussel together with contemporary Venezuelan politics to formulate a dialectics suited to the struggle against the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This is a decolonized dialectics premised on constant struggle in which progress must be fought for and where the struggles of the wretched of the earth themselves provide the only guarantee of historical motion. (shrink)

Americans have recently had thrust into their faces multiple media borne medical and social ethics dilemmas ranging from Dr. Kevorkian's euthanizing a patient on national television to payments by managed care providers for experimental medical treatments,to the nationally telecast situation which this paper will attempt to address. The case at hand concerns a minor in need of a repeat(third) kidney transplant who has been offered a kidney by her father. He also provided a kidney for her second kidney transplant some (...) years ago. The teenage girl went into her current kidney failure/organ rejection state because, feeling well, she stopped taking her antirejection medications. Her father appears to understand the consequences of this offer and is willing nonetheless to donate his remaining kidney to his daughter. His ex-wife and daughter want the kidney and will take it knowing what it will do to him. Of additional interest is that he is incarcerated as a prisoner for a crime for which he will be eligible for parole in the not distant future. This means that although altruistically self-induced, the State will become financially responsible for his medical care and dialysis treatments. This paper will attempt to analyze the competing issues presented by this dilemma and address the underlying conflict between the parameters patient autonomy, parental beneficence and the deontologically based responsibilities of the state and of the health care team. (shrink)

In _Representation in Cognitive Science_, Nicholas Shea offers a theory of representation, of what it is for something to be a representation or have intentionality. Some things have intentionality derivatively. They have it in virtue of something else that has it. Not all intentionality can be like this. Some items must have original intentionality. That is what Shea offers a theory of. Near the end of the book, he makes a provocative suggestion about plants: if his theory is correct, then (...) some of their parts have original intentionality. That is provocative for at least two reasons. First, many theorists think that every cognitive system has original intentionality; since plants don’t have it, they’re not cognitive systems. However, if plants do have it, that argument fails. It can’t be used to show that plants aren’t cognitive systems. Second, and separately, many theorists think that any system with original intentionality is also a cognitive system. On that assumption, if plants turn out to have original intentionality, then they positively are cognitive systems. While Shea makes this suggestion with these provocative implications, he does not adequately develop it. Doing so is my goal in this essay, focusing on the foraging of parasitic vines. (shrink)

This article approaches contemporary European debates on the subject of realism through the lenses offered by two decolonial thinkers: Fanon and Dussel. Whereas both share with realism a fundamental emphasis on reality as the starting point for theory – an assumption shared by much decolonial thought – they nevertheless provide another layer of specificity in their consideration of the colonial condition, diagnosing a fundamental absence of reciprocity that dictates the course of decolonization as a transformation of reality. Reconsidering the debates (...) on realism in light of these insights therefore provides a powerful basis for both formulating a specifically decolonial realism and for engaging in comparative political theorizing more generally. (shrink)

This article sets out from an analysis of the pioneering work of Susan Buck-Morss to rethink, not only Hegel and Haiti, but broader questions surrounding dialectics and the universal brought to light by the Haitian Revolution. Reading through the lens of C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins , I seek to correct a series of ironic silences in her account, re-centering the importance of Toussaint’s successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and underlining the dialectical importance of identitarian struggles in forging the universal. Finally, I (...) offer Frantz Fanon’s reformulation of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic—overlooked in Buck-Morss’ account—as a corrective that allows us to truly rethink progress toward the universal in decolonized dialectical terms. (shrink)

First published in Spanish in 2006, _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is a major statement on political philosophy from Enrique Dussel, one of Latin America’s—and the world’s—most important philosophers, and a founder of the philosophy of liberation. Synthesizing a half-century of his pioneering work in moral and political philosophy, Dussel presents a succinct rationale for the development of political alternatives to the exclusionary, exploitative institutions of neoliberal globalization. In twenty short, provocative theses he lays out the foundational elements for a politics (...) of just and sustainable coexistence. Dussel first constructs a theory of political power and its institutionalization, taking on topics such as the purpose of politics and the fetishization of power. He insists that political projects must criticize or reject as unsustainable all political systems, actions, and institutions whose negative effects are suffered by oppressed or excluded victims. Turning to the deconstruction or transformation of political power, he explains the political principles of liberation and addresses matters such as reform and revolution. _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is inspired by recent political transformations in Latin America. As Dussel writes in Thesis 15, regarding the liberation praxis of social and political movements, “The winds that arrive from the South—from Nestor Kirchner, Tabaré Vásquez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, and so many others—show us that things can be changed. The _people _must reclaim sovereignty!” Throughout the twenty theses Dussel engages with Latin American thinkers and activists and with radical political projects such as the World Social Forum. He is also in dialogue with the ideas of Marx, Hegel, Habermas, Rawls, and Negri, offering insights into the applications and limits of their thinking in light of recent Latin American political thought and practice. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to decision theory, focusing on the question of when it is rational to accept scientific theories. The author examines both Bayesian decision theory and confirmation theory, refining and elaborating the views of Ramsey and Savage. He argues that the most solid foundation for confirmation theory is to be found in decision theory, and he provides a decision-theoretic derivation of principles for how many probabilities should be revised over time. Professor Maher defines a notion (...) of accepting a hypothesis, and then shows that it is not reducible to probability and that it is needed to deal with some important questions in the philosophy of science. A Bayesian decision-theoretic account of rational acceptance is provided together with a proof of the foundations for this theory. A final chapter shows how this account can be used to cast light on such vexed issues as verisimilitude and scientific realism. (shrink)

Originally delivered to mark the fiftieth anniversary of both Frantz Fanon’s death and the publication of his seminal discourse on decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth, these remarks seek to offer a preliminary outline of Fanon’s continuing relevance to the present. Conceptually spanning such touchstone elements of Fanon’s thought as sociogeny, race, violence, the human, and the relation between decolonial ethics and decolonial politics, the authors turn our attention to diagnosing the neoliberal face of contemporary coloniality/modernity and contributing to movements (...) from the Arab (or North African) Spring to the Occupy movement, from Philadelphia’s “flash mobs” to the new Latin American Left. (shrink)

The idea that plants have minds can sound improbable, but some widely respected contemporary scientists and philosophers find it plausible. It turns out to be rather tricky to vindicate the presumption that plants do not have minds, for doing so requires getting clear about what plants can do and what exactly a mind is. By connecting the most compelling empirical work on plant behavior with philosophical reflection on the concept of minds, _Plant Minds _aims to help non-experts begin to think (...) clearly about whether plants have minds. Relying on current consensus ideas about minds and plants, Chauncey Maher first presents the best case for thinking that plants do _not_ have minds. Along the way, however, he unearths an idea at the root of that case, the idea that having a mind requires the capacity to represent the world. In the last chapter, he defends a relatively new and insightful theory of mind that rejects that assumption, making room for the possibility that plants do have minds, primarily because they are alive. (shrink)

In this volume, Maher contextualizes the work of a group of contemporary analytic philosophers—The Pittsburgh School—whose work is characterized by an interest in the history of philosophy and a commitment to normative functionalism, or the insight that to identify something as a manifestation of conceptual capacities is to place it in a space of norms. Wilfrid Sellars claimed that humans are distinctive because they occupy a norm-governed "space of reasons." Along with Sellars, Robert Brandom and John McDowell have tried (...) to work out the implications of that idea for understanding knowledge, thought, norms, language, and intentional action. The aim of this book is to introduce their shared views on those topics, while also charting a few key disputes between them. (shrink)

In this essay, we draw on John Haugeland’s work in order to argue that Burge is wrong to think that exercises of perceptual constancy mechanisms suffice for perceptual representation. Although Haugeland did not live to read or respond to Burge’s Origins of Objectivity, we think that his work contains resources that can be developed into a critique of the very foundation of Burge’s approach. Specifically, we identify two related problems for Burge. First, if (what Burge calls) mere sensory responses are (...) not representational, then neither are exercises of constancy mechanisms, since the differences between them do not suffice to imply that one is representational and the other is not. Second, taken by themselves, exercises of constancy mechanisms are only derivatively representational, so merely understanding how they work is not sufficient for understanding what is required for something, in itself, to be representational (and thereby provide a full solution to the problem of perceptual representation). (shrink)

Doctoral programs at U.S. universities play a critical role in the development of human resources both in the United States and abroad. This volume reports the results of an extensive study of U.S. research-doctorate programs in five broad fields: physical sciences and mathematics, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, biological sciences, and the humanities. Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States documents changes that have taken place in the size, structure, and quality of doctoral education since the widely used 1982 editions. This (...) update provides selected information on nearly 4,000 doctoral programs in 41 subdisciplines at 274 doctorate-granting institutions. This volume also reports the results of the National Survey of Graduate Faculty, which polled a sample of faculty for their views on the scholarly quality of program faculty and the effectiveness of doctoral programs in preparing research scholars/scientists. This much-anticipated update of such an essential reference will be useful to education administrators, university faculty, and students seeking authoritative information on doctoral programs. (shrink)

In this article we will be arguing in favour of legislating to protect doctors who bring about the deaths of PVS patients, regardless of whether the death is through passive means or active means. We will first discuss the ethical dilemmas doctors and lawmakers faced in the more famous PVS cases arising in the US and UK, before exploring what the law should be regarding such patients, particularly in Australia. We will continue by arguing in favour of allowing euthanasia in (...) the interests of PVS patients, their families, and finally the wider community, before concluding with some suggestions for how these ethical arguments could be transformed into a set of guidelines for medical practice in this area. (shrink)

Topics discussed in this work are abortion, euthanasia, medical negligence and human experimentation.

The extended mind hypothesis (EMH) is the claim that the mind can and does extend beyond the human body. Adams and Aizawa (A&A) contend that arguments for EMH commit a ‘coupling constitution fallacy’. We deny that the master argument for EMH commits such a fallacy. But we think that there is an important question lurking behind A&A's allegation: under what conditions is cognition spread across a tightly coupled system? Building on some suggestions from Haugeland, we contend that the system must (...) exhibit a distinctive sort of semantic activity, semantic activity that the system as a whole takes responsibility for. (shrink)

Confirmation is commonly identified with positive relevance, E being said to confirm H if and only if E increases the probability of H. Today, analyses of this general kind are usually Bayesian ones that take the relevant probabilities to be subjective. I argue that these subjective Bayesian analyses are irremediably flawed. In their place I propose a relevance analysis that makes confirmation objective and which, I show, avoids the flaws of the subjective analyses. What I am proposing is in some (...) ways a return to Carnap's conception of confirmation, though there are also important differences between my analysis and his. My analysis includes new accounts of what evidence is and of the indexicality of confirmation claims. Finally, I defend my analysis against Achinstein's criticisms of the relevance concept of confirmation. (shrink)

How can formal methods be applied to philosophical problems that involve informal concepts of ordinary language? Carnap answered this question by describing a methodology that he called “explication." Strawson objected that explication changes the subject and does not address the original philosophical problem; this paper shows that Carnap’s response to that objection was inadequate and offers a better response. More recent criticisms of explication by Boniolo and Eagle are shown to rest on misunderstandings of the nature of explication. It is (...) concluded that explication is an appropriate methodology for formal philosophy. (shrink)

This is an essay in the Bayesian theory of how opinions should be revised over time. It begins with a discussion of the principle that van Fraassen has dubbed "Reflection". This principle is not a requirement of rationality; a diachronic Dutch argument, that purports to show the contrary, is fallacious. But under suitable conditions, it is irrational to actually implement shifts in probability that violate Reflection. Conditionalization and probability kinematics are special cases of the principle not to implement shifts that (...) violate Reflection; hence these principles are also requirements of rationality under suitable conditions, though not universal requirements of rationality. (shrink)

A widely endorsed thesis in the philosophy of science holds that if evidence for a hypothesis was not known when the hypothesis was proposed, then that evidence confirms the hypothesis more strongly than would otherwise be the case. The thesis has been thought to be inconsistent with Bayesian confirmation theory, but the arguments offered for that view are fallacious. This paper shows how the special value of prediction can in fact be given Bayesian explanation. The explanation involves consideration of the (...) reliability of the method by which the hypothesis was discovered, and thus reveals an intimate connection between the 'logic of discovery' and confirmation theory. (shrink)

James Joyce's 'Nonpragmatic Vindication of Probabilism' gives a new argument for the conclusion that a person's credences ought to satisfy the laws of probability. The premises of Joyce's argument include six axioms about what counts as an adequate measure of the distance of a credence function from the truth. This paper shows that (a) Joyce's argument for one of these axioms is invalid, (b) his argument for another axiom has a false premise, (c) neither axiom is plausible, and (d) without (...) these implausible axioms Joyce's vindication of probabilism fails. (shrink)