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Copyright of Financial & Business Studies Journal / Maǧallaẗ Al-Dirāsāt Al-Māliyyaẗ wa Al-Tiǧāriyyaẗ is the property of Beni Suef University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines how the intense focus on immigration in Western societies serves as a distraction from more fundamental institutional failures across various sectors. Through a multi-faceted qualitative approach combining critical discourse analysis, comparative institutional analysis, and philosophical inquiry, we investigate the rhetoric surrounding immigration and its purported impacts. Our findings reveal that immigration discourse often functions as a smokescreen, obscuring systemic issues such as economic stagnation, housing crises, healthcare inefficiencies, and educational shortcomings. By applying theoretical frameworks from thinkers like Girard, Habermas, and Žižek, we demonstrate that the scapegoating of immigrants is a complex societal mechanism allowing for the displacement of anxieties stemming from institutional dysfunction. The research highlights the contrast between stagnation in traditional sectors and the dynamism of the technology industry, underscoring the need for comprehensive institutional reform. We argue for reframing public discourse away from divisive immigration debates and towards addressing root causes of social and economic challenges. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of contemporary societal issues and calls for a shift in focus towards meaningful institutional reform to create more efficient, institutions capable of addressing 21st-century challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural selection is a general process that operates in different populations. To characterise natural selection as a mechanism within the framework of the new mechanistic philosophy, it is required to identify a pertinent phenomenon for which natural selection is responsible. Firstly, every case identified by evolutionary biologists as instances of natural selection must align with this mechanistic characterisation. Secondly, natural selection should genuinely be responsible for the attributed phenomenon. While philosophers often posit producing adaptation as the quintessential phenomenon, Pérez-González and Luque challenge this perspective, contending that not all instances of natural selection are cases where natural selection produces adaptation. This paper further supports Pérez-González and Luque's objection and demonstrates that natural selection is also not responsible for the increased frequency of traits with a greater expected number of offspring. Furthermore, the paper argues that even if there is a phenomenon that allows for the mechanistic characterisation of natural selection to encompass all instances, it is improbable that natural selection assumes responsibility for it. Consequently, characterising natural selection as a mechanism emerges as an implausible stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent research programs dealing with the nature and mechanisms of interpersonal social coordination have emerged in cognitive science, developmental psychology and evolutionary anthropology. I argue that the mechanistic approach to explanation in contemporary philosophy of science can facilitate interdisciplinary integration and division of labor between these different disciplinary research programs. By distinguishing phenomenal models from mechanistic models and structural decomposition from functional decomposition in the process of mechanism discovery, I argue that behavioral and cognitive scientists can make interlocking contributions to families of mechanism models representing a) what central forms of interpersonal social coordination consist in, b) what types of agents engage in such forms of coordination, c) what types of cognitive mechanisms give rise to such forms of coordination, d) how the operation of such mechanisms is modulated by the natural and social environments that the agents populate. Thus mechanistic philosophy of science can play a heuristic role in guiding the research strategies of scientists in different scientific disciplines in a manner that is complementary to the research strategies of scientists in other disciplines and thereby efficient from the point of view of the division of epistemic labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supercapacitor has been widely known as a representative electrochemical energy storage device with high power density and long lifespan. Recently, with the deeper understanding of its charge storage mechanism, unidirectional-charging supercapacitor, also called supercapacitor diode (CAPode), is successfully developed based on the ion-sieving effect of its working electrode towards electrolyte ions. Because CAPode integrates mobile ion and mobile electron in one hybrid circuit, it has a great potential in the emerging fields of ion/electron coupling logic operations, human–machine interface, neural network interaction, and in vivo diagnosis and treatment. Accordingly, we herein elucidate the working mechanism and design philosophy of CAPode, and summarize the electrode materials that are suitable for constructing CAPode. Meanwhile, some other supercapacitor-based devices beyond CAPode are also introduced, and their potential applications are instructively presented. Finally, we outline the challenges and chances of CAPode-related techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Kant, inquiry into nature requires seeking to explain all material wholes merely mechanically, in terms of their parts. There is no consensus on how he justifies this Principle of Mechanism. I argue that Kant seeks to derive this claim about part and wholes neither from his laws of mechanics, nor from the mere discursivity of our understanding (two standard options in the literature), but instead from a priori principles laid out in the first Critique, which govern parts, wholes, and magnitudes. These principles are also fundamental to Kant's account of mathematics. Therefore, Kant's Principle of Mechanism and his philosophy of mathematics have common foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this article is to provide a critique of the pandemic strategy suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) and implemented by various countries from March 2020 onwards in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Based on the theories of Michel Foucault, this critique aims to show that, in the first instance, the pandemic may be understood in terms of the art of governing human beings at the point of interaction between politics and medicine; secondly, in Foucauldian terminology, such interaction may be referred to as 'noso-politics', that is, a mechanism used to control the body of the population via authoritarian measures exercised in the name of the health of the population; thirdly, such a mechanism exercises its power by invoking a mechanistic truth about the SARS-CoV-2 virus which may be countered by an argument that takes a historical perspective on the virus; fourthly, the pandemic strategy may be opposed by a syndemic approach that takes into account interactions between emerging diseases such as COVID-19 and non-communicable illnesses, as well as the biological and socio-economic conditions that the well-being of the population depends on. In short, by providing a critique of the politics of truth about the pandemic, the virus, and health measures, the article aims to encourage a critical attitude that will challenge both the authorities and the truth they invoke to prevent the pandemic strategy being used as a mechanism for governing, given the predictions of the recurrent emergence of new viruses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the liberal international order (LIO) has been swift, with challenges from state actors like China and Russia. Gerlinde Groitl's book examines this assault on the LIO, focusing on the choices made by the leaders of these countries. Groitl argues that China's approach is characterized as "constructive" while Russia's is "destructive." China has actively sought to counter and replace international institutions based on Western values, while Russia attacked the post-Cold War settlement with its invasion of Ukraine. Groitl's neo-classical realist model suggests that the survival of political systems, rather than states themselves, drives international strategies. The book concludes that as long as the attractiveness of Western democracies persists, counter-movements will continue to emerge, necessitating a strategy of "neo-containment." [Extracted from the article]

Although the literature on the issue of pluralism within the philosophy of science is very extensive, this paper focuses on the metaphysical causal pluralism that emerges from the new mechanistic discussion on causality. The main aim is to situate the new mechanistic views on causation within the account of varieties of causal pluralism framed by Psillos (2009). Paying attention to his taxonomy of metaphysical views on causation (i.e., the straightjacket view, the functional view, the two-concept view, the agnostic view and the atheist view) will help clarify differences in opinion and, at the same time, make it possible to elucidate the main metaphysical theses present within the new mechanistic debate. Special attention is given to S. Glennan's theory of causation, since it is unique in offering an overall metaphysical view of the issue. It is also argued that mechanists are not "atheists" on causation: while all of them are causal realists, most mechanists are "agnostic" on causation, with a few exceptions such as S. Glennan, P. Machamer and J. Bogen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this dissertation is to measure the role of philosophy in contemporary society, and to express the urgency that it must be present in the Venezuelan educational system, without distinction of disciplines in order to achieve an interdisciplinary, holistic and comprehensive approach that can be related to different topics related to the modern/contemporary world. This research arises from the need to reflect on the importance of philosophy as a space of encounter, dialogue, confrontation of ideas and the emergence of critical thinking, leading to rational, fair and humane choices. It is about creating a legal and regulatory framework whose purpose is to promote and guarantee the exercise of philosophy by creating mechanisms to act, defend and function, protected by the national constitution and existing organizations established to guarantee freedom of thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book review discusses Nathan I. Sasser's book, "Hume and the Demands of Philosophy: Science, Skepticism, and Moderation," which offers a fresh interpretation of David Hume's response to skepticism. Sasser argues that Hume is an epistemic skeptic about core beliefs but provides a purely practical justification for continuing to hold them. The review praises the book for its clear and concise writing, extensive quotations from Hume's works, and its contribution to the literature on Hume's skepticism and naturalism. However, it also points out some omissions in the book, such as a lack of discussion on the practical benefits of skeptical philosophy and unresolved philosophical problems in Sasser's interpretation. Overall, the review recommends the book as a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in Hume's epistemology. [Extracted from the article]

This paper critically examines Mitchell's integrative pluralism. Integrative pluralism is the view that scientific explanations should primarily aim to integrate descriptions from different ontological levels. We contend that, while integrative pluralism is a fundamental strategy in contemporary science, there are specific reasons why one should not expect integration in the sense developed by Mitchell to be the optimal strategy and the one that scientists should always aim for. Drawing on some examples from contemporary biology, we argue that integration is sometimes neither epistemically desirable, nor ontologically achievable. We conclude that integrative pluralism should thus be limited to a specific class of complex systems but cannot be generalised as the preferable research strategy without further information about the epis-temic practices of the scientific community or the ontology of the system under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on unraveling the intricate relationship between human beings and the concept of value. It delves into the realm of "relational axiological properties," aiming to decipher the intricate web of values that objects possess for human beings. It endeavors to unravel the factors that determine why specific objects are deemed good or bad for humans and the underlying mechanisms governing these evaluative judgments.

Copyright of Logos: Anales del Seminario de Metafísica (1575-6866) is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revue Electronique Internationale Pour la Publication de Recherches Juridiques is the property of Revue Electronique Internationale Pour la Publication de Recherches Juridiques and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Edited by Dan Brooks, James DiFrisco, and Bill Wimsatt, I Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences i grew out of a workshop held at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in 2018. Yet Angela Potochnik remains unconvinced and advances a detailed criticism of the notion of levels or - more strikingly - a criticism of philosophers' various attempts to defend this idea. In his contribution, Dan Brooks portrays the concept of levels as a "doctrine" in biology - since it figures so prominently in textbooks and other scientific sources - as well as a "tool" in biology. [Extracted from the article]

"Truth" and "cause" are essential issues in theology. Truths of faith are meant to remain solid and fundamental and can be traced back to the unique truth of God. The same God is conceived of as the Creator who brought everything into existence before every other cause. Recent discussions about scientific rationality and causality have engaged with the same ideas of "truth" and "cause", even though they have done so according to different methodologies and from different points of view. Can those discussions stimulate theology, and if so, in what manner? In this paper, we begin by considering the subject of scientific change and rationality, arguing that scientific change leads to the recognition of the connection between any scientific theory and what remains intelligible in nature. Next, we show some of the outcomes from new mechanistic philosophy, focusing on the idea of cause, which unveils a strong correspondence between epistemology and ontology and provides a unique way of speaking about causality. Finally, we conclude that science can support theology through new approaches to nature and that a theology of science is required today as an intertwined perspective between science and theology. The main virtue that guides this approach is humility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article in this journal, David Rondel argues that symbolic (or semiotic) objections to markets hold significant argumentative force. Rondel distinguishes between Incidental markets and Pervasive markets, where Incidental markets describe individual instances of exchange and Pervasive markets comprise the social management of goods by an institutional market arrangement. In this reply, I specify a key insight that buttresses Rondel's distinction. The distinction as it is currently characterized fails to identify when Incidental markets become Pervasive. This opaqueness allows scholars that defend markets without limits to question the analytical distinctiveness of Incidental and Pervasive markets. I show that by incorporating the market's price mechanism as an indicator of a properly Pervasive market, Rondel's distinction is not only able to tackle the aforementioned retort, but also allows for important reflections on what types of institutions should be considered markets at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Adab Al-Kufa is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Alan M. Turing's last published work and some posthumously published manuscripts were dedicated to the development of his theory of organic pattern formation. In "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" (1952), he provided an elaborated mathematical formulation of the theory of the origins of biological form that had been first proposed by Sir D'Arcy Wendworth Thompson in On Growth and Form (1917/1942). While arguably his most mathematically detailed and his systematically most ambitious effort, Turing's morphogenetical writings also form the most thematically self-contained and least philosophically explored part of his work. We dedicate our inquiry to the reasons and the implications of Turing's choice of biological topic and viewpoint. We will probe for possible factors in Turing's choice that go beyond availability and acquaintance with On Growth and Form. On these grounds, we will explore how and to what extent his theory of morphogenesis actually ties in with his concept of mechanistic computation. Notably, Thompson's pioneering work in biological 'structuralism' was organicist in outlook and explicitly critical of the Darwinian approaches that were popular with Turing's cyberneticist contemporaries—and partly used by Turing himself in his proto-connectionist models of learning. Resolving this apparent dichotomy, we demonstrate how Turing's quest for mechanistic explanations of how organisation emerges in nature leaves room for a non-mechanist view of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue Académique des Études Sociales et Humaines is the property of Hassif Benbouali University of Chlef and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Scripta Mediaevalia is the property of Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The relationship between natural and artistic aesthetics has not always been easy. Neither have the correlations between art and nature been independent from the contextualising filter that is human cultural history and its corresponding scientific developments. Approaching the subject requires studying the transition between the rights of the natural environment and its unstoppable conversion into a nature-product over time. It requires us to reflect upon a number of dichotomies: aesthetic and natural objects; representation and expression; nature as an available reality and nature as a given reality; natural environment and artificial environment. These conceptual and functional hinges may provide us with a better understanding of the different historical moments that have articulated the dialogues between art and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates Descartes' physical thinking within the nexus of machine science, which rests upon different foundational piers than regular classical mechanics of a Newtonian stripe. In particular, connected cyclic processes of the sort encountered in clockwork mechanisms (and Descartes' own vortices) become central rather than impactive collisions of any kind. Such a placement supplies a more sympathetic understanding of many of his most notorious claims: conservation of 'quantity of motion', relationalism with respect to space, relative rest as an explanation of particle cohesion, etc. Of course, the resulting system of ideas is not perfect, but the mistakes are more subtle than usually presumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enable secondary energy-dissipation components to actively attract and dissipate seismic energy, a new type of sacrificial-energy dissipation beam-column joint (SEDJ) was proposed. This study validates the performance of the proposed SEDJ through full-scale quasi-static loading tests. The rotation angle of the proposed SEDJ at the beam end, corresponding to the peak strength F u , can be controlled within 1/250 - 1/50. In addition, the beam and column components remain elastic, thereby achieving the seismic performance objectives of "no damage, sacrificial-energy dissipation, and no collapse under service-level (SLE), design-basis (DBE), and maximum-considered (MCE) earthquakes", respectively. This study enhances the design of the SEDJ by adopting a built-in sleeve connection scheme to significantly reduce the free-stroke displacement, and a double-coupling block scheme to solve the issue of stress concentration in friction plates that leads to cracking. Furthermore, the efficiency of the installation and disassembly of friction plates is improved, thus enabling the rapid replacement of bolts and friction plates after strong earthquakes. Finally, a practical engineering design methodology is proposed that decouples the bending moments of the sacrificial M R and energy-dissipation M S stages, this methodology activates the sacrificial mechanism under DBEs or MCEs to protect primary beam and column components, and will provide potential insights for the development and application of innovative structural components based on the sacrificial mechanism design philosophy. • Sacrificial-energy dissipation beam-column joint (SEDJ) was improved and tested. • Working mechanism of SEDJ was identified through full-scale tests and theoretical analysis. • Engineering design methodology was proposed for SEDJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nietzsche - Studien is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Neurogeneticists and others argue that what Richerson and Boyd call "culturally based behavior" is governed or controlled by genes, while social scientists argue that genes occupy a limited role in explaining such behavior. In the fifth article, B Mathieu Charbonneau b and B James W. A. Strachan b scrutinize the epistemic gains yielded by imitation studies and, more broadly, by studies presupposing that copying is a major mechanism in cultural evolution. In November of 2020 we wrote to a handful of cultural evolution researchers to invite them to a pre-read workshop in Brittany, France, sponsored by the Borchard Foundation. Second, cultural evolution appears far more model-driven than theory-driven. [Extracted from the article]

This article addresses the contributions of the literature on the new mechanistic philosophy of science for the scientific practice of model building in ecology. This is reflected in a one-to-one interdisciplinary collaboration between an ecologist and a philosopher of science during science-in-the-making. We argue that the identification, reconstruction and understanding of mechanisms is context-sensitive, and for this case study mechanistic modeling did not present a normative role but a heuristic one. We expect our study to provides useful epistemic tools for the improvement of empirically-riven work in the debates about mechanistic explanation of ecological phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay concerns two forms of moral non-naturalism according to which general moral principles or laws enter into the grounding explanations of particular moral facts. According to bridge-law non-naturalism (BLNN), the laws are themselves partial grounds of the moral facts; whereas according to grounding-law non-naturalism (GLNN), the laws explain the grounding connections that obtain between particular natural facts and particular moral facts. I pose and develop an objection to BLNN concerning moral worth: as compared to GLNN, BLNN has trouble accommodating the common intuition that actions performed out of motivation for rightness de dicto are, at least in paradigm cases, deficient in their moral worth as compared to those performed out of motivation for rightness de re. After presenting the moral worth objection to BLNN, I respond to a possible defense of the view and explain why GLNN is not itself imperiled by an analogous objection. I finally argue that in light of the moral worth objection, a purported analogy between the law and morality fails to give us any reason to prefer BLNN to GLNN. I conclude that non-naturalists who accept the existence of general and explanatory moral principles should adopt GLNN rather than BLNN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanistic framework traditionally comes bundled with a multi-level view. Some ascribe ontological weight to these levels, whereas others claim that characterising a higher-level entity and the corresponding lower-level mechanism are only different descriptions of the same thing. The goal of this paper is to develop a consistent metaphysical picture that can underly the latter position. According to this flat view, wholes and their parts are embedded in the same network of interacting units. The flat view preserves the original virtues of the mechanistic approach and is able to avoid the problems associated with the multi-level view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two striking claims are advanced on behalf of the free energy principle (FEP) in cognitive science and philosophy: (i) that it identifies a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems; and (ii) that it has important implications for our understanding of how the brain works, defining a set of process theories—roughly, theories of the structure and functions of neural mechanisms—consistent with the free energy minimising imperative that it derives as a necessary feature of all self-organising systems. I argue that the conjunction of claims (i) and (ii) rests on a fallacy of equivocation. The FEP can be interpreted in two ways: as a claim about how it is possible to redescribe the existence of self-organising systems (the Descriptive FEP), and as a claim about how such systems maintain their existence (the Explanatory FEP). Although the Descriptive FEP plausibly does identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems, it has no important implications for our understanding of how the brain works. Although the Explanatory FEP would have such implications if it were true, it does not identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems. I consider various ways of responding to this conclusion, and I explore its implications for the role and importance of the FEP in cognitive science and philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the handling and rescuing stage of emergency administration, stress scenarios are formed by the tension and conflicts among multiple targets, and many emergency information service products with short R&D cycle will be widely spread in use under such circumstance. And this is the result by the joint effects both from inner and outer formation mechanism. As for the inner formation mechanism, factors as the data, demand and technology based on the emergency information service products are taken into consideration. In regard to the outer formation mechanism, the products are innovated with the reference of the policies on scientific and technical innovation, the existed emergency information service products, and the sharing extent of information resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance of a peer-to-peer system is commonly assessed by the ease of scalability it offers, level of fault tolerance it can handle and querying latency it results. Especially for a P2P system meant for file sharing, efficient search mechanism is crucial. Such efficiency of file querying is noticeably improved when participating peers are grouped based on their shared interests. Peers when clustered by their geographic proximity can also yield better search latency. Current works use both location proximity and common interest as the basis for clustering and these works take advantage of both the methodologies. This survey talks about various P2P proximitybased clustering models and common-interest based network formulations and to the best of our knowledge there does not exist any survey paper that considers the topic which we have considered in our present work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]