A necessity of establishing the law for oneself

In the information age, social development trends clearly show that a person endowed with technical intelligence is somehow alienated from his own existence and is spiritually empty and "kinless". In this paper, we focus on this most difficult problem. The pathos of our discussion is as follows: understanding and sharing the difficulties of existence is the most reliable and unmistakable way of human self-knowledge and self-exaltation. In any historical section, a legal entity including an individual, nation, country, or world community, is obliged to verify the veracity of this path. Especially we need it from the perspective of our troubled but at the same time "successful century". It is obvious fact that in the twenty-first century, in the age of technical civilization, humanity fights to save human lives - in an unusual and unexpectedly difficult situation caused by COVID-19. A few years ago, we could never ever imagine that the world would "stop". We would believe that noisy traffic between states would stop, movement within countries would slow down, people would be forced to stay at home, meetings with each other would become dangerous, and due to lack of vaccine, millions of people would die. What are we dealing with? How can we overcome the most difficult challenges caused by co-existence with COVID? How do we evaluate what’s going on? It is difficult, extremely difficult to answer these questions, but the most difficult conditions are forcing us to find reasonable answers to such questions.

Bored: A Pandemic of Domestic Violence

Alarm spreads among potential victims of domestic violence as cases multiply during the confinement required by COVID19, and authorities face the growing frustration of not knowing how to respond. The question of what to do begs the question of why the lockdown increases domestic violence. Loss of jobs, alcohol, and psychological stress are reasonable answers; but they are predictable and don't suggest new approaches for remedy. This essay considers an unsuspected if obvious trigger of violence at home. Boredom. It is a stressor that becomes intolerable as the pandemic lockdown continues. Since boredom is a volatile condition associated with the lack of engagement, and since boredom is resolved either creatively or violently, an evident program for primary prevention would be to provide disgruntled and potentially aggressive intimate partners with engaging activities. These activities address a responsibility of the State. When the State turns homes into places of involuntary confinement, it levies serious limitations on a range of human rights. Therefore, the State's obligation to address risks, including boredom, is a corollary to restricting freedom of movement. Perhaps the strategy to provide programs will face objections and skepticism. Why should potential perpetrators of violence be beneficiaries of pleasurable programs? And how can pleasure be a remedy when it carries a stigma of irresponsibility or sin? But a practical response to the spike in domestic violence will have to overcome this irrational stigma to become more strategic than moralizing (Sommer, 2014). We should address the spiral of aggression in ways that are effective, not reactive.

Man, nature, death of V.S. Solovyov and A. Schopenhauer

In this article the question about the influence of the natural sciences on the philosophical concepts of Arthur Schopenhauer and Vladimir Solovyov was raised. The influence of Kantian transcendental criticism on Schopenhauer's philosophy was studied. It was shown that this influence manifested itself very vividly in the Schopenhauer concept of «will to live». It was established that the ontological status of man as a «phenomenon» had an impact both on Schopenhauer's concept of death and on his ethics of compassion. It was emphasized that the natural world plays an important role in Soloviev’s philosophical concept. According to Soloviev the nature of a person is determined by three needs: «animals, mental and heart», while the ontological basis of all these three needs is life, that is, the ability to «exist». It was indicated that the moral feelings of a person justified by Soloviev – shame, conscience, pity, and reverence – are a kind of human «response» of a rational being to its natural instincts and needs. The parallels between the philosophical views of Schopenhauer and Solovyov were drawn. On the basis of this parallels it was concluded that, despite the significant differences in the worldview of these two very different thinkers in nature, their approach to philosophy was largely identical and was characterized by scientific objectivity, interdisciplinarity, the skill of argumentation, the sharpness of the mind, the desire to give reasonable answers to the «last questions» of philosophy.

Prejudices on Concerning Human Rights Vis-a-Vis Islam

In the history of thought, defending human rights and freedom, positivist and materialist views are critical of religion in general and Islam in particular. Islam as a divine religion with its theoretical and practical dimensions has been the guarantor of human rights. Positivist and materialist views on every occasion ready to blame and identify the Islamic concept of servitude (to God) with slavery. But if we examine Islam in-depth with a philosophical mind, we can see that the Islamic concept of devotional servitude accommodates genuine freedom which intends to protect the health of both the body and the soul. Positivist and materialist minds consider the issue of human rights as their own, and religious sides approach this issue reluctantly due to the rhetoric of human rights devoid of religious rhetoric. Finding reasonable answers to the questions of what the source of human honor is and what makes human being meaningful will bring closer to each other the positivist/materialist views and religious views.

On Constrained Open-World Probabilistic Databases

Increasing amounts of available data have led to a heightened need for representing large-scale probabilistic knowledge bases. One approach is to use a probabilistic database, a model with strong assumptions that allow for efficiently answering many interesting queries. Recent work on open-world probabilistic databases strengthens the semantics of these probabilistic databases by discarding the assumption that any information not present in the data must be false. While intuitive, these semantics are not sufficiently precise to give reasonable answers to queries. We propose overcoming these issues by using constraints to restrict this open world. We provide an algorithm for one class of queries, and establish a basic hardness result for another. Finally, we propose an efficient and tight approximation for a large class of queries.

Do Good Intentions Justify Bad Actions?

The comparison is between the biographies of a dedicated communist commander of one of the Gulag camps and of a Nazi SS officer. Each is guilty of having done very bad actions. Each believed that his intentions were good and that his bad actions were justified in the circumstances. One intended to protect his country against its enemies. The other intended to save as many lives as he could by means of his bad actions in order to gain the trust of other SS officers. He was an intentional collaborator in the crimes of the SS, but he thereby saved many lives. A reasonable answer to this hard question depends on whether their intentions were really good or merely believed to be so; on what the overall balance was of their good and bad the actions; on whether they should have had doubts about the nature of their intentions and actions; and what the justification of their bad actions was supposed to be. There are reasonable answers, but they vary with persons, intentions, actions, and contexts. If we bear in mind the questionable good intentions of the communist and the Nazi, we should become less trusting of our own supposedly good intentions and more attentive to the likely consequences of our actions.

Introduction

The book is concerned with what we personally can do to answer hard questions we face in our personal and social circumstances. Reasonable answers depend on a critical examination of anthropological, historical, and literary contexts in which others struggled to give reasonable answers to hard questions. Our understanding of our possibilities and limits are enriched by learning from the good and bad examples of others. Each of the following chapters compares and critically examines two conflicting answers given by two people to the same hard question they faced in different circumstances.

Conclusion

The comparative approach of this book is an alternative to the absolutist and relativist approaches to hard questions. Central to the argument are the unavoidability of conflicts, the context-dependence of reasonable answers, the plurality of evaluations and good lives, and the importance of personal attitudes.

Should We Forgive Wrong Actions?

The question is considered by comparing the reasons for and against forgiving two men whose actions were wrong. Captain Vere in Billy Budd did wrong in the course of discharging his duty to uphold military law. It required him in time of war to hang a morally innocent although legally guilty person. The other was Albert Speer, who was responsible for German war production in the latter part of World War II. His dedication and efficiency prolonged the already lost war for years, during which time millions were killed. Both had reasons for and against their actions. Whether it is right to forgive them depends on how wrong their actions were; whether their actions were isolated episodes in their lives or part of a pattern; whether the war in which they acted was just; whether they regretted their actions; and whether they had reasonable alternatives. This chapter shows that the reasons for and against forgiveness vary with persons, actions, and contexts. If by thinking about these cases we realize that forgiveness is neither always right, nor always wrong, then we see that reasonable answers to this hard question must vary from case to case. Given that, I claim that there are good reasons for forgiving Vere for the one episode of killing of a morally innocent person and against forgiving Speer for the pattern of his actions that led to the deaths of millions of innocent people.

Islamic marketing: bridging the gap between research and practice

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the link between research and practice within the context of Islamic marketing (IM), an issue which is controversial in the literature. It offers reasonable answers that bridge the gap between research and practice, as well as the way to mitigate it.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a critical approach to analytically review the literature on IM, and relates it to research and practice.FindingsThe study finds that the advancement of knowledge on IM necessitates research and practice. There is a gap between research and practice which evolved from decades of objectivity between researchers and practitioners in the field of IM. It is necessary to search for some practicable solutions that can narrow the gap between theory and practice.Research limitations/implicationsThe basic limitation of this study is that IM has not yet emerged as a distinct discipline. Hence, there is limited study on IM issues in the context of research and practice.Originality/valueThis study makes essential contributions to the chastisement by research and practice, a theoretically new field of IM subject.