Brain–machine interfaces are systems that allow the control of a device such as a robot arm through a person’s brain activity; such devices can be used by disabled persons to enhance their life and improve their independence. This paper is an extended version of a work that aims at discriminating between left and right imagined hand movements using a support vector machine classifier to control a robot arm in order to help a person to find an object in the environment. (...) The main focus here is to search for the best features that describe efficiently the electroencephalogram data during such imagined gestures by comparing two feature extraction methods, namely the continuous wavelet transform and the empirical modal decomposition, combined with the principal component analysis that were fed through a linear and radial basis function kernel SVM classifier. The experimental results showed high performance achieving an average accuracy across all the subjects of 92.75% with an RBF kernel SVM classifier using CWT and PCA compared to 80.25% accuracy obtained with EMD and PCA. The proposed system has been implemented and tested using data collected from five male subjects and it enabled the control of the robot arm in the right and the left direction. (shrink)

Advocates of political liberalism hold it as a superior alternative to perfectionism on the grounds that it avoids superfluous and/or controversial claims in favor of a maximally-inclusive approach undergirded by a "free-standing" justification for the ideology. These assertions prove difficult to defend: political interpretations of liberalism tend to be implicitly ethnocentric; they often rely upon a number of controversial, and even empirically falsified, assumptions about rationality--and in many ways prove more parochial than their perfectionist cousins. It is possible to reform (...) political liberalism to address these challenges, but generally at the expense of the supposed normative force and universality of the liberal project. However, this para-liberal approach is much better in keeping with contemporary findings in sociology, psychology and cognitive science--and can much more effectively accommodate the illiberal challenge. (shrink)

What is the significance of postmodern philosophy for the pursuit of knowledge generally?

Ce livre part à la recherche des origines de la controverse sur l'unité de l'intellect humain, qui a opposé les penseurs les plus célèbres du XIIIe siècle. Parmi eux, Thomas d'Aquin, Albert le Grand, Siger de Brabant, Gilles de Rome, sans compter bien des maîtres inconnus de la Sorbonne. Qui a imaginé, le premier, l'existence d'un intellect unique pour tous les hommes? Pourquoi les théologiens de l'époque y ont-ils vu une grave hérésie? Comment les maîtres et les étudiants ont-ils continué (...) à en débattre, malgré deux condamnations prononcées par l'évêque de Paris à la demande du pape? Ce livre est le premier à proposer une histoire des textes qui en témoignent, tant à la Sorbonne qu'à Oxford, depuis les débuts de l'Université médiévale jusqu'à l'apaisement de la controverse. On y verra les ruses que les universitaires ont opposées à la censure, en conquérant une liberté de pensée dont le XXIe siècle peut s'inspirer, face aux menaces sur l'autonomie de la Raison. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a new form of right that is both antidisciplinarian and liberated from ‘sovereignty’, the term Michel Foucault uses for what he claims to be the traditional theme of modern political philosophy. Some attempts to derive a theory of right from Foucault’s critique have been made. However, by their own admission they do not yield a coherent and adequate theory, and other work has demonstrated the major problems inherent in Foucault’s (...) critique that render such a project problematic. This paper takes a different approach by revising the philosophical foundations of modern democracy with the goal of developing a new theory of right that addresses the problems that Foucault identified. To provide a theoretical context for this exploration, Foucault’s key concepts of disciplinary technologies, power, the construction and maintenance of human subjects, and the role of the human body in human subjection are briefly reviewed. The main analysis will focus on the ideas of three political theorists whose respective works represent the core of ‘sovereignty’, and who are indisputably basic to any student of Western political theory, namely Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. The aim of this analysis is not to provide another critique of their virtues and shortcomings. Instead, the work of these thinkers is used in a pragmatic way, to elicit a new form of right that could serve as a counter to disciplinary power. (shrink)

Welfarism, a position which for a long time enjoyed a hegemonic status in the field of normative economics, holds that the sole ethically relevant information for assessing social states of affairs pertains to individual utilities. Serge-Christophe Kolm presents the Equal-Labour Income Equalization model very explicitly and repeatedly as breaking with the still dominant tradition of welfarism. This paper explores the meaning of this distancing from welfarism found in the ELIE model. After having provided conceptual clarifications concerning both ELIE and welfarism, (...) we discuss various opposing aspects of this model of income redistribution to welfarism. We show that the refusal of welfarism by the ELIE model does not depend mainly on its axiomatic features, but on its deontological perspective. (shrink)

This article studies the ideological identity of the authors of the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ and addresses the question of the authorship of the other works attributed to the Brethren of Purity. Based on these theosophical works, it provides new evidence for the authors’ political stance against the Abbasid state and confirms their Shii inclination and opposition to the Abbasid caliphs of their time. These findings highlight the Ikhwān’s involvement in political activities through preaching the end of the “state of evil” (...) and the beginning of the “state of good”. It also contributes to the debate on the Ikhwān’s relation to other political opposition movements against the Abbasid reign and their links to the Shii states. (shrink)

L’objectif de ce papier est double : d’une part défendre l’idée que la théorie de la justice proposée par le libertarisme de gauche fait de la figure de l’entrepreneur une éminence grise, centrale, bien que très rarement mentionnée et, d’autre part, discuter les critiques qui ont été adressées à cette théorie de la justice.

This article defends a regulative ethics of voluntary belief. In order to determine the occasion and the scope of such an ethics, the article begins with an examination of the concept of belief in conversation with the view of J. L. Schellenberg. Next, against the dominant position in contemporary epistemology, it argues that some beliefs can be voluntary, in the sense that they are under the immediate control of the believer, and replies to William Alston's influential objections to doxastic voluntarism. (...) If some beliefs are subject to the immediate control of the believer, then in these cases believers are ethically responsible not only for how they investigate those beliefs, but also for the choice of whether or not to believe them. The article concludes by formulating and defending two types of regulative ethical principles governing voluntary belief. (shrink)

Key ideas in the work of Michel Foucault are explored and applied to the organized pursuit of knowledge in higher education. His association of power and knowledge accounts for deeply rooted practices in higher education that would need to be mediated or overcome for there to be a revolution in inquiry to occur, such as the one advanced by Nicholas Maxwell. Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power and bio-power, and how they act to manage the behavior of free citizens, are described. (...) These concepts are then applied to free inquiry, to show how the activity of individual inquirers is managed and how critical inquiry is controlled. The management of inquiry involving four norms, two of them intrinsic to inquiry and the other two extrinsic, is explained. The potential of Foucault’s concept of discursive formations is introduced as a means of reconceiving inquiry to overcome these impediments to a revolution in inquiry. (shrink)

Neuromarketing has gained attention to bridge the gap between conventional marketing studies and electroencephalography -based brain-computer interface research. It determines what customers actually want through preference prediction. The performance of EEG-based preference detection systems depends on a suitable selection of feature extraction techniques and machine learning algorithms. In this study, We examined preference detection of neuromarketing dataset using different feature combinations of EEG indices and different algorithms for feature extraction and classification. For EEG feature extraction, we employed discrete wavelet transform (...) and power spectral density, which were utilized to measure the EEG-based preference indices that enhance the accuracy of preference detection. Moreover, we compared deep learning with other traditional classifiers, such as k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, and random forest. We also studied the effect of preference indicators on the performance of classification algorithms. Through rigorous offline analysis, we investigated the computational intelligence for preference detection and classification. The performance of the proposed deep neural network outperforms KNN and SVM in accuracy, precision, and recall; however, RF achieved results similar to those of the DNN for the same dataset. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a new form of right that is both antidisciplinarian and liberated from ‘sovereignty’, the term Michel Foucault uses for what he claims to be the traditional theme of modern political philosophy. Some attempts to derive a theory of right from Foucault’s critique have been made. However, by their own admission they do not yield a coherent and adequate theory, and other work has demonstrated the major problems inherent in Foucault’s (...) critique that render such a project problematic. This paper takes a different approach by revising the philosophical foundations of modern democracy with the goal of developing a new theory of right that addresses the problems that Foucault identified. To provide a theoretical context for this exploration, Foucault’s key concepts of disciplinary technologies, power, the construction and maintenance of human subjects, and the role of the human body in human subjection are briefly reviewed. The main analysis will focus on the ideas of three political theorists whose respective works represent the core of ‘sovereignty’, and who are indisputably basic to any student of Western political theory, namely Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. The aim of this analysis is not to provide another critique of their virtues and shortcomings. Instead, the work of these thinkers is used in a pragmatic way, to elicit a new form of right that could serve as a counter to disciplinary power. Key Words: civil right • Enlightenment • Foucault • natural right • political philosophy • political theory • postmodern critique • social justice. (shrink)

Professor Mourad Wahba outlines how the philosophy of Averroes, who was an important influence on the Western Enlightenment, might now offer us a much needed with the Islamic world.

This chapter contains sections titled: Note.

Once the Divine Law is established, of course, theology must be based upon it. Consequently, the arguments of the theologians involve nothing but quotations from the sacred texts. And these quotations provide the main evidence, sufficient and final, in terms of which any question is to be settled. The pivotal belief of most Islamic theologians is that God's Unity necessitates the dependence upon Him of all beings. If this were not the case, there would be the possibility of transforming God (...) into Gods. In ethics, for example, if man could judge what is good, he might overrule what God rightly prescribes for him, and this would be blasphemous. This view is theistic, then, in that the decider of all values is taken to be God. (shrink)

A brief primer contrasting conservativism from progressivism, and outlining the major schools of conservative thought.

The transformative university is a reflective and critical university that attempts to transform the world so as to live under democratic values of freedom, inclusion, equality and justice. It is a...

The first English translation of the Prison Narratives written by the seventeenth-century French mystic and Quietist, Jeanne Guyon . Guyon describes her confinement between 1695 and 1703 in various prisons, including the dreaded Bastille, and the introduction provides a comprehensive context for Guyon's writing.

This examination of the mythification of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī shows how the transformation of his historical person into a complete myth was accomplished, along with the groups responsible for making him say and do what legitimizes their own views and practices.

En France, la tradition de philosophie économique est brillamment illustrée : la publication d'un "état des lieux" en fournit le référent francophone, un panorama aussi complet que possible afin de s'y orienter. La critique que peut porter la philosophie économique se comprend comme un partage bien pensé entre bon et mauvais usage de la raison, comme méthodologie ainsi que comme ontologie, une discussion du rôle des sciences adjacentes (comme la psychologie), de l'usage des normes, des modes de raisonnement, l'explicitation des (...) bases trop souvent dans l'ombre de l'analyse économique vue en ses champs d'application multiples : simulation, analyse institutionnelle, finance et autres enjeux. Les contributeurs du présent ouvrage, connus pour leur expertise dans leurs champs respectifs, en proposent un examen représentatif des tendances actuelles. Le collectif ici réuni s'inscrit dans une tradition, celle des Leçons de philosophie économique coordonnées par Alain Leroux et Pierre Livet, qui avait marqué une étape dans ce domaine. La philosophie économique comprise comme mise en question réflexive de la discipline trouve avec le présent état des lieux un nouveau jalon : au titre d'un regard épistémologique, il offre à nouveaux frais la carte d'un champ en plein essor, et ce avec une ampleur renouvelée par les auteurs francophones ici rassemblés. Le but des coordinateurs du volume est de fournir un vade-mecum pour philosophes et économistes soucieux de compréhension mutuelle. (shrink)

Biobanks and biospecimen collections are becoming a primary means of delivering personalized diagnostics and tailoring individualized therapeutics. This shift towards precision medicine requires interactions among a variety of stakeholders, including the public, patients, healthcare providers, government, and donors. Very few studies have investigated the role of healthcare students in biobanking and biospecimen donations. The main aims of this study were to evaluate the knowledge of senior healthcare students about biobanks and to assess the students’ willingness to donate biospecimens and the (...) factors influencing their attitudes. A cross-sectional study was conducted among senior healthcare students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained using a self-administered questionnaire in English. In addition to the respondents’ biographical data section, the questionnaire assessed the respondents’ general knowledge about biobanking, the factors influencing their willingness to donate biospecimens to biobanks and their general attitudes towards biomedical research. A total of 597 senior healthcare students were included in the study. The general knowledge score was 3.2 out of 7. Only approximately 44% and 27% of students were aware of the terms “Human Genome Project” and “biobank,” respectively. The majority of the students were willing to donate biospecimens to biobanks. Multiple factors were significantly associated with their willingness to donate, including their perceived general health, past experience with both tissue testing and tissue donation, biobanking knowledge score and biomedical research attitude score. The main reasons for students’ willingness to donate were advancement of medical research and societal benefits, whereas misuse of biospecimens and confidentiality breaches were the main reasons for a reluctance to donate. Despite their strong willingness to donate biospecimens, students exhibited a notable lack of knowledge about biobanking and the HGP. To expedite the transition towards PM, it is highly recommended to enhance healthcare curricula by including more educational and awareness programmes to familiarize students with OMICs technologies in addition to the scope of research and clinical applications. (shrink)

The central conflicts of the world today are closely related to cultural, traditional, and religious differences between nations. As we move to a globalized world, these differences often become magnified, entrenched, and the cause of bloody conflict. Growing out of a conference of distinguished scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, this volume is a singular contribution to mutual understanding and cooperative efforts on behalf of peace. The term paideia, drawn from Greek philosophy, has to do with (...) responsible education for citizenship as a necessary precondition for effective democracy. (shrink)

The central conflicts of the world today are closely related to cultural, traditional, and religious differences between nations. As we move to a globalized world, these differences often become magnified, entrenched, and the cause of bloody conflict. Growing out of a conference of distinguished scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, this volume is a singular contribution to mutual understanding and cooperative efforts on behalf of peace. The term paideia, drawn from Greek philosophy, has to do with (...) responsible education for citizenship as a necessary precondition for effective democracy. (shrink)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the visual cortex can induce phosphenes as can non-diagnostic ultrasound, the latter while participants have closed their eyes during Stimulation. Here we sought to study potential alteration of a visual target (a white crosshair) due to application of diagnostic ultrasound to the visual cortex. We applied a randomized series of actual or sham diagnostic ultrasound to the visual cortex of healthy participants while they stared at a visual target, with the ultrasound device placed where TMS (...) elicited phosphenes. These participants observed percepts 7 out of 10 times, consisting of extra or extensions of lines relative to the original crosshair, and additional colors. Observation of a percept occurred an average of 53.7 +/- 2.6% of the time over the course of the experiment for these participants. In contrast, 7 out of 10 participants exposed to sham-only diagnostic ultrasound observed comparable percepts an average of 36.3 +/ 1.9% of the time, a statistically significant difference (p < 0.00001). Moreover, on average, participants exposed to a combination of sham and actual ultrasound reported a net increase of 47.9 percentage points in the likelihood that they would report a visual effect by the end of the experiment. Our experiment demonstrated that a random combination of sham-only and actual diagnostic ultrasound applied to the visual cortex of participants increased the likelihood that they would observe visual effects, but not the type of effects, with that likelihood increasing over the course of the experiment. From this we conclude that repeated exposures by diagnostic ultrasound made the visual cortex more responsive to stimulation of their visual cortex by the visual target. These observations, consistent with other’s observation of effects of diagnostic ultrasound stimulation of human motor cortex and amygdala, as well as the FDA approved nature of diagnostic ultrasound, may lead to increased study of diagnostic ultrasound applied to human brain. (shrink)

Resumé Dans cette étude, nous nous proposons d’analyser de la perspective sémiotique de la traduction l’œuvre intitulée De la part de la princesse morte de Kenizé Mourad, écrivaine francophone, qui a une identité multiculturelle étant donné qu’elle est princesse ottomane du côté de sa mère et princesse indienne du côté de son père. Née à Paris dans des conditions de la Deuxième guerre mondiale, et orpheline de mère à l’âge d’un an et demi, Kenizé Mourad a été élevée (...) dans le contexte culturel français car son père en Inde ignorait qu’elle était vivante. Dans cette œuvre, elle raconte l’histoire tragique de sa mère en exil, la Princesse Selma, petite-fille du Sultan Mourad V, padischah ottoman. Nous abordons le texte et ses deux traductions turques intitulées toutes les deux Saraydan Sürgüne pour étudier les conséquences de la transformation des expressions neutres en français en des locutions idiomatiques en turc. Nous menons à bien cette interrogation au prisme de la notion de surinterprétation conçue dans le cadre de la Systématique de la désignification en traduction comme « un commentaire excessif du sens de l’original » tout en analysant en quoi les expressions idiomatiques constituent la surinterprétation et de quelle manière elles naturalisent le discours original. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper examines the debate on gender equality which is considered by some groups to be in conflict with Q.S. An-Nisa [4]: ​​11. With a philosophical approach and referring to the concept of inheritance of Sa'id Ramadan al-Buthi in the _Kitab_ _al-Mar'ah Bayna Thughyan al-Nizam al-Gharbi wa Lata'if al-Tashri' al-Rabbani_, this paper tries to refute these allegations and offers a more gender-friendly interpretation. For al-Buthi, the verse has actually liberated women because the provisions are caused by the responsibilities imposed (...) by Islam on men as prospective husbands and not experienced by women. On the contrary, if women are empowered than men, that is a moral responsibility, not a _sharia_ responsibility. Thus, women have been given freedom by the _sharia_ in order to determine the choice to participate in bringing about stability in life, regardless of the existence of a condition of women more empowered than men that will not be the cause of changes in the provisions of _sharia_ concerning inheritance. (shrink)