Argumentation is a very fertile area of research in Artificial Intelligence, and various semantics have been developed to predict when an argument can be accepted, depending on the abstract structure of its defeaters and defenders. When these semantics make conflicting predictions, theoretical arbitration typically relies on ad hoc examples and normative intuition about what prediction ought to be the correct one. We advocate a complementary, descriptive-experimental method, based on the collection of behavioral data about the way human reasoners handle these (...) critical cases. We report two studies applying this method to the case of reinstatement (both in its simple and floating forms). Results speak for the cognitive plausibility of reinstatement and yet show that it does not yield the full expected recovery of the attacked argument. Furthermore, results show that floating reinstatement yields comparable effects to that of simple reinstatement, thus arguing in favor of preferred argumentation semantics, rather than grounded argumentation semantics. Besides their theoretical value for validating and inspiring argumentation semantics, these results have applied value for developing artificial agents meant to argue with human users. (shrink)

Manufacturing companies in today's industrial world are seeking to use the new manufacturing process methods. The primary goal of corporations is to achieve optimum production while deploying minimal capital. The fundamental purpose of this study is to examine the influence of various lean manufacturing practices on the sustainability performance of companies and the mediating role of green supply chain management. The data was gathered using questionnaires from 250 Pakistani manufacturing firms and analyzed using AMOS 25. Results demonstrate that process and (...) equipment, product design, supplier relationships, and customer relationships significantly affect sustainable performance. It is also recognized that Green Supply Chain Management mediates the interaction between HR processes, product design, supplier relationship, customer relationship, and environmental performance. The findings of this study will enable managers and decision-makers of manufacturing companies to increase sustainable efficiency and reduce waste through the use of lean manufacturing and GSCM implementation. (shrink)

This article traces Aimé Césaire’s engagement with Marxism through the concept of alienation, which is central to the Marxist-Hegelian tradition. The idea of restoring human creative powers, which take on an alien character under particular historical conditions, deeply shaped Césaire’s analysis of French colonial assimilation, which compelled the Black colonized subjects to identify with French bourgeois culture instead of taking revolutionary action against capitalism. Situating Césaire within the intellectual milieu of interwar Paris, this piece draws out his links with the (...) Marxist intellectual group called the Philosophies, which first published Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts in France in 1929, and with Alexandre Kojѐve’s Marxian reading of Hegel. The concern with alienation would persist in Césaire’s later writings in the 1950s and the 1960s, where the concept is engaged through a theory of culture, defined as the creative life of a collectivity. This theory supplies the conceptual basis for Césaire’s idea of “tropical Marxism,” which he discusses during his trip to Cuba in 1968. Tropical Marxism emphasized the necessity for colonized peoples to integrate Marxism creatively to the particular conditions of their societies and opposed any alien top-down impositions of the doctrine by European communists. By situating Césaire in a Marxist-Hegelian intellectual genealogy, we glean a crucial component of his thinking, going beyond his affiliation with surrealism and his experience with the French Communist Party. We also come to see alienation as a rich concept belonging to the tradition of anticolonial political theorizing. (shrink)

With the increase in market competition and dynamic work environment, work overload seems to have become a common issue suffered by almost every employee. Overload usually results in not only poor health conditions but also mental circumstances. These problems then become a threat to the organizations in the form of poor performance and lack of ability to reach standards. Workplace spirituality is one way to deal with stressful overload conditions. This research deals with the study of moderating affects of workplace (...) spirituality on job overload and employee’s satisfaction relationship. Having large piles of work in given targeted time results in employees becoming stressed out from their work as well as their organization. The motive of their job becomes to achieve targets and diminish the creativity within the employees. Workplace spirituality basic dimensions mentioned in this research help one achieve these targets and help employees cope with the symptoms caused by work overload. The research includes three variables, workplace spirituality, job overload, and job satisfaction. The samples of 76 respondents were asked to fill the questionnaire on all the three variables. The final results show interestingly different results then, as conceptualized according to theory. Workplace spirituality also showed to have quite an impact on job satisfaction. (shrink)

Jama’at-i-Islami is one of the most prominent religious parties of Pakistan that also take active part in the politics of the country. The party is credited with the introduction of Islamic element in the political and constitutional set up of Pakistan. This paper highlights the efforts of the party for the enforcement of Islamic Constitution soon after the creation of Pakistan up to the enforcement of the Constitution of 1956. The style, ideas and politics of the party regarding the Islamic (...) Constitution in Pakistan from 1947 to 1956 are the main focus of the discussion. The second part of the paper deals with the contribution of the Jama’at in the Ahmadiyah issue. How reluctantly the party was involved in the issue and in what way could it win the sympathy of the people as a main leading force of the campaign against Ahmadiya influence in 1953 have been examined in the course of the discussion. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to identify how both tourism service provider- and tourist-generated social media communication affect the value co-creation process and how this can affect online customer experience and customer wellbeing. A questionnaire survey was used and 361 valid responses were obtained from Malaysian citizens. The research findings showed that tourism service provider- and tourist- generated social media communication positively influence value co-creation. Similarly, value co-creation positively influences cognitive and affective experiential states and these two states positively (...) influence customer wellbeing. Furthermore, value co-creation partially mediates the relationship between social media communication and online customer experience, whereas, online customer experiences also partially mediate the relationship between value co-creation and customer wellbeing. This study has tried to establish theoretical relationship between some significant variables and the findings would aid both academicians and practitioners in formulating strategies for future. (shrink)

A personalized recommender system is broadly accepted as a helpful tool to handle the information overload issue while recommending a related piece of information. This work proposes a hybrid personalized recommender system based on affinity propagation, namely, APHPRS. Affinity propagation is a semisupervised machine learning algorithm used to cluster items based on similarities among them. In our approach, we first calculate the cluster quality and density and then combine their outputs to generate a new ranking score among clusters for the (...) personalized recommendation. In the first phase, user preferences are collected and normalized as items rating matrix. This generated matrix is then clustered offline using affinity propagation and kept in a database for future recommendations. In the second phase, online recommendations are generated by applying the offline model. Negative Euclidian similarity and the quality of clusters are used together to select the best clusters for recommendations. The proposed APHPRS system alleviates problems such as sparsity and cold-start problems. The use of affinity propagation and the hybrid recommendation technique used in the proposed approach helps in improving results against sparsity. Experiments reveal that the proposed APHPRS performs better than most of the existing recommender systems. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to understand how fake news can cause an impact on consumer behavioral intentions in today’s era when fake news is prevalent and common. Brands have not only faced reputational losses but also got a dip in their share prices and sales, which affected their financial standing. Hence, it is significant for brands to understand the impact of fake news on behavioral intentions and to strategize to manage the impact. Design/methodology/approach This study uses several branding and marketing (...) concepts such as brand experience, brand trust, brand credibility, consumer behavioral intentions along with variables suggested by Elaboration Likelihood Model and Heuristic Systematic Model such as personal relevance/involvement. For fake news, news truthfulness, news credibility and source credibility are used. Findings The results of this study shows that positive brand experience, brand trust, brand credibility help in creating positive behavioral intentions for brands. This study shows that brands focusing on providing positive brand experience have a stronger brand trust and credibility and are affected less by fake news than those brands which do not emphasize on these factors. Practical implications This paper can assist brand managers in understanding the impact fake news can have on behavioral intentions of consumers. The managers can strategize such that the fake news affects their brands the least. Originality/value The authors in this paper attempt to fill in the gap in literature, which is to study how the fake news impacts the brands considering the credibility, trust and experience they establish with their customers. The existing literature discusses the generation and dissemination of fake news on social media and its impact on political scenarios and personalities. Also, studies explain the impact of fake news on the financial position of brands, but marketing facets are not tested empirically. (shrink)

Исследование посвящено философскому осознанию природы духовности человека. Автор рассматривает духовность внутреннего мира человека как единство высших чувств души и нравственного сознания. Для специалистов в области философии, методологии науки.

The aim of this study is to explore social media marketing activities and their impact on consumer intentions. This study also analyzes the mediating roles of social identification and satisfaction. The participants in this study were experienced users of two social media platforms Facebook and Instagram in Pakistan. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. We used an online community to invite Facebook and Instagram users to complete the questionnaire in the designated online questionnaire system. Data were (...) collected from 353 respondents, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Results show that SMMAs have a significant impact on the intentions of users. Furthermore, social identification mediates the relationship between social media activities and satisfaction, and satisfaction mediates the relationship between social media activities and the intentions of users. This will help marketers how to attract customers to develop their intentions. This is the first novel study that used SMMAs to address the user intentions with the role of social identification and satisfaction in the context of Pakistan. (shrink)

The first thorough study in English of the multi-faceted system of Mou Zongsan, this book examines key influences on the New Confucian thinker and introduces his Kantian- and Mahāyāna Fo-inflected moral metaphysical reading of the Lu-Wang Learning of the Mind.

In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" _Star Trek_-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In _How We Became Posthuman,_ N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age. Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost (...) its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman." Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel _Limbo_ by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems. Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, _How We Became Posthuman_ provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here. (shrink)

We argue that the appraisal of models in social epistemology requires conceiving of them as argumentative devices, taking into account the argumentative context and adopting a family-of-models perspective. We draw up such an account and show how it makes it easier to see the value and limits of the use of models in social epistemology. To illustrate our points, we document and explicate the argumentative role of epistemic landscape models in social epistemology and highlight their limitations. We also claim that (...) our account could be fruitfully used in appraising other models in philosophy and science. (shrink)

Tipy mirovozzreniĭ -- Chuvstvennai︠a︡, intellektualʹnai︠a︡ i misticheskai︠a︡ intuit︠s︡ii︠a︡ -- Ideal-realizm.

AimThe current study attempted to assess the effect of positive emotion on post-graduate students’ psychological capital as well as on their academic engagement behavior. Also, the direct relationship between PsyCap and academic engagement behavior was assessed alongside the presence of Stress as a moderating variable between PsyCap and academic engagement behavior amongst post-graduate students in Malaysia.Materials and MethodsA self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection from 373 post-graduate Ph.D. students registered in various universities throughout Malaysia with a non-probabilistic sampling technique. (...) Research respondents belonged to management, humanities, engineering, computer science, and health sciences domains, and they responded through a questionnaire copy. Statistically, structural equation modeling was applied to evaluate confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis, validity analysis, measurement model, structural model, and path analysis. Furthermore, the bootstrapping approach was utilized to test the final model.ResultsFor the hypothesized model, our results confirmed that positive emotions had a positive and significant effect on students’ psychological capita as well as on their academic engagement behavior. Further, PsyCap also had a positive and significant effect on academic engagement behavior. Our results also reported that stress as a moderating variable has a negative and deteriorating effect on the relationship between PsyCap and the academic engagement of students.ConclusionThe study’s findings support the theoretical assumption that positive emotions help individuals generate cognitive resources, which in turn help them manage their engagement behavioral requirements. However, the stress caused by their study needs may deplete their psychological resources, consequently influencing their academic engagement behavior. Interventions like personal coaching/counseling, appropriate follow-up, and flexible goal settings with other measures may help post-graduate students in achieving their daunting tasks. (shrink)

Exclusionary defeat is Joseph Raz’s proposal for understanding the more complex, layered structure of practical reasoning. Exclusionary reasons are widely appealed to in legal theory and consistently arise in many other areas of philosophy. They have also been subject to a variety of challenges. I propose a new account of exclusionary reasons based on their justificatory role, rejecting Raz’s motivational account and especially contrasting exclusion with undercutting defeat. I explain the appeal and coherence of exclusionary reasons by appeal to commonsense (...) value pluralism and the intermediate space of public policies, social roles, and organizations. We often want our choices to have a certain character or instantiate a certain value and in order to do so, that choice can only be based on a restricted set of reasons. Exclusion explains how pro tanto practical reasons can be disqualified from counting towards a choice of a particular kind without being outweighed or undercut. (shrink)

Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is best understood as one type of a broader notion, which I call institutional legitimacy. An institution is legitimate in my sense when it has the right to function. The right to function correlates to a duty of non-interference. Understanding legitimacy in this way favorably contrasts with legitimacy understood in the traditional way, as the right to rule correlating to a duty of obedience. It helps unify our discourses of legitimacy across a wider range of practices, especially including (...) the many evaluations we increasingly make of international institutions of various sorts, but also including domestic institutions. (shrink)