The notion of societal boundaries aims to enhance the debate on planetary boundaries. The focus is on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controversial process – based on normative judgments, ethical concerns, and socio-political struggles – it has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation.

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. The article starts by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. It is argued that the growth imperative of capitalist economies, as well as other particular characteristics detailed below, are the main drivers of the ecological crisis and exacerbated trends already underway. Further, the planetary boundaries framework can support interpretations that do not solely emphasize technocratic operational approaches and costs, (...) but also assume that these alone can be the solution. (shrink)

Proponemos que ciertos “detalles” (la catálisis, según Barthes) revelan la presencia del poder disciplinario en la esfera del relato moderno. Iniciamos el análisis a partir de algunas unidades descriptivas del Purén Indómito, a las que consideramos antecedentes directos de esa revelación, y concluimos con la novela Martín Rivas y el cuento El matadero. El texto colonial da cuenta detallada de la vida cotidiana en el reino de Chile, cuenta que expresa las estrategias del poder de soberanía, mientras que en los (...) relatos modernos relevará la presencia del poder disciplinario. Así, la presencia de detalles dramáticos en el Purén obedece a lograr la intervención jurídica-moral del monarca en el reino. En cambio, a partir del realismo esos detalles muestran el actuar de los cuerpos a someter y disciplinar, tal y como ocurre en Martín Rivas y El matadero. La estrategia narrativa será entonces sacar a la luz los detalles de las costumbres retrógradas, bárbaras, sucias, de la sociedad latinoamericana para disciplinarlas, limpiarlas y conseguir, así, naciones modernas y productivas. Our proposition is that certain “details” (catalysis, according to Barthes) reveal the presence of disciplinary power in the sphere of modern fiction. Our analysis starts with some of the descriptive units of Purén Indómito, which we consider to be a direct precedent for this revelation, and we conclude with the novella, Martín Rivas, and the short story, El matadero. The text dating from the colonial period gives a detailed account of daily life in the kingdom of Chile, describing the strategies of the sovereign power, while the modern stories highlight the presence of disciplinary power. Thus, the purpose of the dramatic details recounted in Purén is to ensure the legal-moral intervention of the monarch in the kingdom. In realist works, on the other hand, these details show the actions of organisations to subject and discipline the people, just as it occurs in Martín Rivas and El matadero. In this case, the narrative strategy is to exhibit the details of the foul, barbarous, reactionary customs of Latin American societies in order to discipline and purify them, and thus transform them into modern, productive nations. (shrink)

According to David Chalmers , 'we have good reason to suppose that consciousness has a fundamental place in nature' . This, he thinks is because the world as revealed to us by fundamental physics is entirely structural -- it is a world not of things, but of relations -- yet relations can only account for more relations, and consciousness is not merely a relation . Call this the 'structural argument against physicalism.' I shall argue that there is a view about (...) the relationship between mind and body, what I call, 'Russellian physicalism' that is consistent with the premises of the structural argument yet does not imply that consciousness is fundamental. (shrink)

S’interroger sur la présence des figures de proue zoomorphes dans l’image chrétienne, c’est poser les questions du discours symbolique mis en place, de la typologie de ses signes et de l’intentionnalité signifiante de l’auteur. Aussi cet article propose-t-il dans un premier temps de dévoiler, par le biais d’un examen terminologique, le processus cognitif déterminant les notions culturelles de « figure » et de « navire », avant d’analyser, dans un second temps, l’iconicité qui leur est rattachée. Est ainsi démontré que, (...) sur la base d’une dialectique latine et du remploi de formes antiques, la figure de proue participe d’une rhétorique fondamentale de la spiritualité chrétienne : la multiplication et démonstration du mystère de l’Incarnation. The paper aims to explore the meaning of zoomorphic figureheads in Christian medieval imagery. To do so, I question the symbolic discourse, the typology of pictural signs found in the picture and the signifying intentionality of the author. In a first part, I review the terminology used to name these figureheads; this, in a attempt to unveil the cognitive process behind the cultural notions of “figure” and “ship”: how do medieval people perceived and describe the element? In a second part, I analyse their iconocity: how are these zoomorphic figures pictured? And what does it reveal? It is thus demonstrated that, from a latin dialectic and a reference to ancient forms, the figurehead draws a rhetoric of a fundamental Christian spirituality, which multiplies the mystery of the Incarnation. (shrink)

A ética discursiva de Jurgen Habermas ressalta o compromisso da linguagem racional em um diálogo no qual o objetivo é a busca de um consenso comum. Na atual sociedade a inteligência artificial (IA) tem ganhado cada vez mais espaço, e no contexto educacional não é diferente. Diante disso, objetiva-se então compreender como os princípios habermasianos podem conduzir a prática das IAs, de maneira que possa promover um ensino inclusivo e equitativo para os alunos com autismo em sala de aula. Trata-se (...) de pesquisa qualitativa, com levantamento bibliográfico e a proposta de criação de um aplicativo considerando a ética discursiva de acordo com Habermas. Os resultados implicam que uma IA criada com base haremmasiana ajuda a tornar a sala de aula inclusiva para os alunos com o diagnóstico do autismo. Conclui-se então que a IA pode ser um instrumento promotor da inclusão se criado com este propósito e aplicado de maneira coerente para alunos com autismo. (shrink)

Being White, Being Good focuses on white complicity and white complicity pedagogy. It examines the shifts in our conceptualization of the subject, language and moral responsibility that are required for understanding white complicity and draws out implications for social justice pedagogy.

The accuracy of corporate mission statements has not been well explored. In this study, the authors investigate the relationship between mission statement content and stakeholder management actions. Findings indicate that although social issues such as the environment and diversity are less frequently included, their mention in mission statements is significantly associated with behaviors regarding these issues. The study found no relationship between firms with mission statements that mention specific stakeholder groups (employees, customers, and community) and behaviors regarding these stakeholders. This (...) suggests that the inclusion of specific stakeholder groups in missions is likely the result of institutional pressures, while specifying social issues in missions is related to policy decisions. (shrink)

Essays discuss the division of household labor, anti-semitism, violence against women, reproductive freedom, parenting, friendship between women, and feminist theology.

Socialism and Feminism in the 19th century.

This is a major contribution to the theoretical and comparative literature on welfare states, written by some of the most original and challenging feminist ...

In a highly original rereading of the writings and seminars of Jacques Lacan, together with works of Freud and others, Cassin shows how psychoanalysis, like the sophists, challenges the very foundations of scientific rationality. In taking seriously equivocations, jokes, and unfinishable projects of interpretation, the analyst, like the sophist, allows performance, signifier, and inconsistency to reshape truth.

A consideration of efforts to explain religion naturalistically, including a range of recent cognitive-evolutionary approaches. The book also examines recent efforts to reconcile natural-scientific accounts of the world with traditional religious teachings.

Contemporary public art is still in the process of defining its artistic and legal identity. Indeed to juxtapose the terms public and art is a paradox. Art is often said to be the individual inquiry of the sculptor or painter, the epitome of self-expression and vision that may challenge conventional wisdom and values. The term public encompasses a reference to the community, the social order, self-negation: hence the paradox of linking the private and the public in a single concept. A (...) goal of any general or jurisprudential theory concerning government sponsorship or ownership of art in the public context must reconcile, through state institutions and law, this tension between art’s subjectivity with hits potential for controversy and government’s need to promote the public good.This essay critically examines and discusses existing contemporary legal doctrine and its failure to accommodate or even adequately define the issues and competing values at stake in the public art context. Such failure may be attributed in part to the fact that neither legal theory nor art policy have been inspired by the vision of or located in the broader context of a sociopolitical public realm. Barbara Hoffman practices arts and entertainment law in New York and is counsel to the College Art Association. She is a former professor of constitutional law at the University of Puget Sound, and she has served as chair of the Public Art Committee of the Art Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and president of the Washington Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. (shrink)

Artificial insemination and other fertilization techniques are today considered central to the history of reproductive medicine. The medical treatment of infertile couples, however, constitutes just a small part of the whole story of artificial fertilization. Lazzaro Spallanzani in particular, said to have been the inventor of artificial insemination, did not develop this method for medical purposes. He belonged to a generation of naturalists to whom artificial insemination was part of a heterogeneous series of investigations that were undertaken to explore the (...) natural history of animal generation. Questions concerning conception, the role of the gametes, the definition of species, the production of hybrids or livestock breeding were all included in these investigations. Thus, no one strain of thought, nor single set of ideas or interests, entirely shaped the development of artificial fertilization. (shrink)

A set X is prime bounding if for every complete atomic decidable (CAD) theory T there is a prime model U of T decidable in X. It is easy to see that $X = 0\prime$ is prime bounding. Denisov claimed that every $X <_{T} 0\prime$ is not prime bounding, but we discovered this to be incorrect. Here we give the correct characterization that the prime bounding sets $X \leq_{T} 0\prime$ are exactly the sets which are not $low_2$ . Recall that (...) X is $low_2$ if $X\prime\prime$ $\leq_{T} 0\prime$ . To prove that a $low_2$ set X is not prime bounding we use a $0\prime$ -computable listing of the array of sets { Y : Y $\leq_{T}$ X } to build a CAD theory T which diagonalizes against all potential X-decidable prime models U of T. To prove that any $non-low_{2}$ ; X is indeed prime bounding, we fix a function f $\leq_T$ X that is not dominated by a certain $0\prime$ -computable function that picks out generators of principal types. Given a CAD theory T. we use f to eventually find, for every formula $\varphi (\bar{x})$ consistent with T, a principal type which contains it, and hence to build an X-decidable prime model of T. We prove the prime bounding property equivalent to several other combinatorial properties, including some related to the limitwise monotonic functions which have been introduced elsewhere in computable model theory. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between Italian teachers’ well-being, socio-demographic characteristics and professional background. Using data from the 2015 wave of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) we considered information collected by the questionnaire completed by a total of 6,491 teachers in the sampled schools. Moving from existing literature on teachers’ well-being, we investigate several aspects related to the teachers’ working environment, career motivation and investment, and job satisfaction. We assess the variability in the observed outcomes attributable (...) to school factors and heterogeneity between disciplines. Measurement models are combined in a multilevel setting in order to define teachers’ well-being on a broad perspective while accounting for the multiple sources of heterogeneity due to several factors (e.g., discipline, teacher professional background, and individual differences) occurring at different levels of the data structure. In general, results show that the teachers’ positive perception of the working environment in terms of availability of adequate human and physical resources, and professional development opportunities, provide a substantial state of well-being at work, and are related to teachers’ job satisfaction. Moreover, results highlight the key role of transformational leadership in defining a teacher’s well-being. Findings and implications are discussed. (shrink)

The article is in two parts with the first part showing that the material in the New Zealand Business Roundtable documents is consistent with the contemporary, international, libertarian ideology. The second part draws parallels between this material and the characteristics shown by religious movements, including a claiming of autority from past prophets, a belief in an overarching Power, a missionary zeal to convert others, a canon of texts, a ‘theodicy’, a sense of bonding among believers, a ‘doctrine’ of humanity, and (...) the use of ritual language. The article concludes that the documents show a self-supporting belief system built on a fallacious theoretical premise. (shrink)

Wallace's contributions to biological thought tend to be overlooked or overly praised, neither of which produces a satisfactory assessment. Examples of the latter tendency are the recent expositions by Brackman and Brooks; although both books contain much worthwhile material, both are flawed. At critical points their theories fail to measure up, Brackman's because of his misinterpretations of events in the month of June 1858, and Brooks's Darwin's September 5 letter to Gray could, and probably did, represent an ordering of his (...) ideas in response to a felt challenge.A fruitful way to characterize the relationship between Darwin and Wallace may be found in terms of game theory. Most scholars look upon the relationship as a zero-sum game, with a winner and a loser, the matter of priority being considered as a “single event.” Another approach would be to look upon it as a non-zero-sum game with each man influencing the other. In this case, the productivity of one is stimulated by the contributions of the other, resulting in a net gain in knowledge overall, and both men become winners, or codiscoverers. This approach is possible if Wallace's contributions to the theory of evolution by means of natural selection are recognized. (shrink)

Bioethics education now takes place outside universities as well as within them. How should clinicians, ethics committee members, and policymakers be taught the ethics they need, and how may their progress best be evaluated?

Los conceptos de democracia y de gobierno representativo están inevitablemente conectados y vinculados entre ellos, y uno de los principios fundamentales de la democracia representativa es el principio de mayoría. Este articulo es una aproximación a la teoría de John Stuart Mill sobre el gobierno representativo en relación con el principio de mayoría y bajo su perspectiva elitista. Mill consideró el sistema representativo el modelo político más eficaz, aunque quiso subrayar los puntos críticos y los posibles desvíos negativos de la (...) democracia y, en particular, el riesgo de una dictadura de la mayoría y el contextual aislamiento político de las minorías. El filósofo inglés propuso un ideal de democracia basado sobre el mandato representativo que supone la independencia del representante si bien una independencia restringida y condicionada. Por otra parte, insistió sobre la importancia de que cada ciudadano fuese educado en la conciencia pública y se dejase influenciar por los hombres más cultos y iluminados de la comunidad. (shrink)

We developed a technique to examine the effects of emotional content and context on verbal memory. Two sets of sentences were devised: in the first, each sentence was emotionally arousing due to the inclusion of an emotional “target” word. In the second set, “targets” were replaced with well-matched neutral words. Subjects read aloud a selection of emotional and neutral sentences, and were then surprised with memory tasks after a range of time delays. Emotional target words were remembered significantly better than (...) neutral words in all experiments. Recognition of emotional words was relatively stable despite increasing delays between encoding and recognition testing, in contrast to memory for neutral words, which decayed over time. Memory for neutral non-target words was enhanced when words had been presented in an emotional context. The results confirm the phenomenon of emotional enhancement of memory at short and long delays and suggest that emotional context may be encoded independently of word meaning. (shrink)

The Quest to Understand Human Affairs presents fifty previously unpublished essays by Vincent Ostrom on the U.S. Government's environmental problems and resource governance and span the six decades of Ostrom's career in political science and public administration. Including everything from a 1947 essay on Western issues in national politics to ending with a 2004 manuscript on Constitutional foundations and federal institutional forms, these essays examine significant developments in administration, constitutional design, and the evolution of theory and practice in the field (...) of institutional analysis and development during the second half of the twentieth century and first decade of the new millennium. (shrink)

To return to last week’s yammering, I want to say that I've been getting some interesting responses to the personal/political/feminist article, responses that are underlining for me the fact that I'm still pretty conflicted about defining feminism. A lot of you have said that feminism is a belief set like a religion, and that because of this there will naturally be a certain amount of disagreement among feminists and feminisms. I agree on the second point: debate is essential to learning, (...) to be sure. And I certainly wasn’t arguing that there should be any sort of unchanging rule-book. Quite the contrary—I believe feminists should disagree with one another, debate one another, learn from each other. (Can you say feminist praxis?) (3.5.98) 1. (shrink)

The construction of embodied conversational agents - robots as well as avatars - seem to be a new challenge in the field of both cognitive AI and human-computer-interface development. On the one hand, one aims at gaining new insights in the development of cognition and communication by constructing intelligent, physical instantiated artefacts. On the other hand people are driven by the idea, that humanlike mechanical dialog-partners will have a positive effect on human-machine-communication. In this contribution I put for discussion whether (...) the visions of scientist in this field are plausible and which problems might arise by the realization of such projects. (shrink)

This book addresses the question of gender and feminism in western political theory and practise. It provides students with both the theoretical and historical underpinnings of women's exclusion from politics, and the feminist response to this exclusion.

The individual right of access to one’s own data is a crucial privacy protection long recognized in U.S. federal privacy laws. Mobile health devices and research software used in citizen science often fall outside the HIPAA Privacy Rule, leaving participants without HIPAA’s right of access to one’s own data. Absent state laws requiring access, the law of contract, as reflected in end-user agreements and terms of service, governs individuals’ ability to find out how much data is being stored and how (...) it might be shared with third parties. Efforts to address this problem by establishing norms of individual access to data from mobile health research unfortunately can run afoul of the FDA’s investigational device exemption requirements. (shrink)