Problem: Visions of technology, future scenarios, guiding visions represent imaginations of future states of affairs that play a functional role in processes of technological research, development and innovation—e.g. as a means to create attention, communication, coordination, or for the strategic exertion of influence. Since a couple of years there is a growing attention for such imaginations of futures in politics, the economy, research and the civil society. This trend concerns technology assessment as an observer of these processes and a consultant (...) on the implications of technology and innovation. TA faces increasing demands to assess imaginations of futures that circulate in the present and to participate in shaping these through scenarios or foresights. More than ever, this raises the question, which propositions can be made based on these imaginations by TA and how this can be used in advisory practices. Imaginations of futures are relevant for TA not as predictions but in their significance and effectiveness in the present, which need to be understood and assessed.Contents: This discussion paper outlines how present significance and effects of imagined futures in technological research and innovation processes can be conceived and analyzed. In this paper, all forms of imaginations of technology futures will be called “socio-technical futures” because within them technological developments and social changes are interwoven and inseparably interrelated. In this paper, we discuss why TA should analyze socio-technical futures, how such analyses can grasp the societal conditions that are expressed in the imagined futures and how these become effective in processes of technology development, communication, decision making etc. We raise the question which self-reflexive positioning or possible realignment of TA is needed as a response to its increased concern with assessing and even co-producing socio-technical futures. The latter is often demanded regarding the growing attention by politics and publics to imaginations of futures with wide temporal and spatial reach.Addressee of this paper is the TA community in a broader sense. The aim is to sensitize colleagues for the topic and its challenges, to consolidate discussions and to provide theoretical and methodical suggestions for research in TA and related advisory practices with respect to socio-technical futures. This paper has been originally initiated during the workshop “The present of technological futures-theoretical and methodical challenges for Technology Assessment”, in which all of the paper’s authors participated. The contents of this discussion paper are preliminary results that shall initiate and guide further discussions. (shrink)

This paper reviews and analyses the implications of citizenship thinking for building ethical institutional arrangements for business. The paper looks at various stakeholder groups whose relation with the company changes quite significantly when one starts to conceptualize it in terms of citizenship. Rather than being simply stakeholders, we could see those groups either as citizens, or as other constituencies participating in the administration of citizenship for others, or in societal governance more broadly. This raises crucial questions about accountability and democracy (...) in stakeholder relations with the corporation. We sketch out the main currents informing and emerging from the citizenship perspective on firm-stakeholder relations; analyze specific stakeholder groups and their particular relevance in the context of a citizenship perspective; and conclude with a discussion of the broader implications in terms of building ethical institutions. (shrink)

Brouwer and Weyl recognized that the intuitive continuum requires a mathematical analysis of a kind that set theory is not able to provide. As an alternative, Brouwer introduced choice sequences. We first describe the features of the intuitive continuum that prompted this development, focusing in particular on the flow of internal time as described in Husserl's phenomenology. Then we look at choice sequences and their logic. Finally, we investigate the differences between Brouwer and Weyl, and argue that Weyl's conception of (...) choice sequences is defective on several counts. (shrink)

After the moral framework of sustainable development, the focus on climate change appears to take a lead in the practice and theory of environmental education. Inherent in this perspective is an apocalyptic message: if we do not rapidly change our use of energy resources, we will severely harm the life conditions of our children and grandchildren. In this article we argue that environmental educators should liberate us from this highly instrumental dictate by taking their cue from our daily care for (...) our environment as revealed in child?s play in nature. Inherent in the interaction of the Homo ludens with nature is a spiral time experience. This time condition elicits a particular responsibility: rather than calculating which means are necessary to prevent future disasters, we should respond with care to the concentric circles of an open and indefinite future. Therefore, environmental education should not aim to prevent future disasters, but foster anticipating care for nature. (shrink)

The domain of numbers provides a paradigmatic case for investigating interactions of culture, language, and cognition: Numerical competencies are considered a core domain of knowledge, and yet the development of specifically human abilities presupposes cultural and linguistic input by way of counting sequences. These sequences constitute systems with distinct structural properties, the cross-linguistic variability of which has implications for number representation and processing. Such representational effects are scrutinized for two types of verbal numeration systems—general and object-specific ones—that were in parallel (...) use in several Oceanic languages. The analysis indicates that the object-specific systems outperform the general systems with respect to counting and mental arithmetic, largely due to their regular and more compact representation. What these findings reveal on cognitive diversity, how the conjectures involved speak to more general issues in cognitive science, and how the approach taken here might help to bridge the gap between anthropology and other cognitive sciences is discussed in the conclusion. (shrink)

Via a historical reconstruction, this paper primarily demonstrates how the societal debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) gradually extended in terms of actors involved and concerns reflected. It is argued that the implementation of recombinant DNA technology out of the laboratory and into civil society entailed a “complex of concerns.” In this complex, distinctions between environmental, agricultural, socio-economic, and ethical issues proved to be blurred. This fueled the confusion between the wider debate on genetic modification and the risk assessment of (...) transgenic crops in the European Union. In this paper, the lasting skeptical and/or ambivalent attitude of Europeans towards agro-food biotechnology is interpreted as signaling an ongoing social request – and even a quest – for an evaluation of biotechnology with Sense and Sensibility. In this (re)quest, a broader-than-scientific dimension is sought for that allows addressing the GMO debate in a more “sensible” way, whilst making “sense” of the different stances taken in it. Here, the restyling of the European regulatory frame on transgenic agro-food products and of science communication models are discussed and taken to be indicative of the (re)quest to move from a merely scientific evaluation and risk-based policy towards a socially more robust evaluation that takes the “non-scientific” concerns at stake in the GMO debate seriously. (shrink)

This study adds to business ethics research by investigating how employees’ exposure to despotic leadership might influence their peer-rated workplace status, along with a mediating role of ingratiatory behavior targeted at supervisors and a moderating role of their power distance orientation and self-enhancement motive. Multisource, three-wave data from employees and their peers in Pakistani organizations reveal that exposure to despotic leaders spurs employees’ upward ingratiatory behavior, and this behavior in turn can help them attain higher status in the organization. The (...) mediating role of upward ingratiatory behavior also is more prominent among employees with higher levels of power distance orientation and self-enhancement motive. For business ethics scholars, this study thus pinpoints a potentially dangerous pathway—featuring employees’ deliberate efforts to impress self-centered, destructive supervisors—by which despotic leadership can generate beneficial outcomes for employees but not for the organization, as well as how this process varies due to key personal characteristics. (shrink)

Aristotle asserts that philosophy, which begins in wonder, seeks principles and causes in the world, just as mythology does, but each in a different way. This article argues that Homer analyzes the world according to Vico’s imaginative genera; early Greek philosophy according to natural genera, and philosophers in the strict sense according to rational genera. Thus, Homer’s rainbow is the goddess Iris, which Xenophanes divides into natural object and divinity, and which Aristotle calls principles or causes. In the transition from (...) imaginative to natural genus, wonder is lost because the enchanted world of mythology has become explicable in terms of the five senses. Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophical approach seeks to restore wonder without remythologizing the world. Homer’s Oceanus myth is examined, in relation to the testimony of Thales and the fragments of Xenophanes, and as reflected explicitly and implicitly in the works of Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 2 Seiten: 289-330.

Mathematics is a powerful tool for describing and developing our knowledge of the physical world. It informs our understanding of subjects as diverse as music, games, science, economics, communications protocols, and visual arts. Mathematical thinking has its roots in the adaptive behavior of living creatures: animals must employ judgments about quantities and magnitudes in the assessment of both threats (how many foes) and opportunities (how much food) in order to make effective decisions, and use geometric information in the environment for (...) recognizing landmarks and navigating environments. Correspondingly, cognitive systems that are dedicated to the processing of distinctly mathematical information have developed. In particular, there is evidence that certain core systems for understanding different aspects of arithmetic as well as geometry are employed by humans and many other animals. They become active early in life and, particularly in the case of humans, develop through maturation. Although these core systems individually appear to be quite limited in application, in combination they allow for the recognition of mathematical properties and the formation of appropriate inferences based upon those properties. In this overview, the core systems, their roles, their limitations, and their interaction with external representations are discussed, as well as possibilities for how they can be employed together to allow us to reason about more complex mathematical domains. (shrink)

Abstract“Culture of honor” means that individuals deter others by signaling their commitment to violent retaliation. We develop a multilevel explanation of cross-level interdependence of honor and violence. According to our concept of system-level honor, a social system is loaded with deterrence signaling if culture of honor is highly prevalent in the system. In line with the Smith and Price (1973, in Nature,https://www.nature.com/articles/246015a0) model, we argue that high system-level honor discourages Prober-Retaliator behavior: some individuals might tend to challenge others they assume (...) to be inferior to increase their own reputation. Both individual culture of honor and system-level honor contribute to an increase in violence (H1; H2). However, as system-level honor and deterrence become more prevalent, the impact of individual honor diminishes because engaging in violent behavior becomes increasingly expensive within such a system (H3). As a second contextual effect, inequality in culture of honor should therefore increase violent behavior because it encourages Prober-Retaliator behavior (H4). We analyze the effect of culture of honor on school violence among 15-year-old adolescents. Disentangling the micro- and context-level effects of culture of honor on violent behavior in a multilevel analysis framework allows the estimation of a cross-level interaction using a large data set from more than 25,000 adolescents in more than 1,300 schoolroom contexts. Results are in line with our H3, but not with H4. Model-based predictions show that the deterrent effect must be unrealistically high to generate an equilibrium of average violence. (shrink)

Hayden White wants history to serve life by having it inspire an ethical consciousness, by which he means that in facing the existential questions of life, death, trauma, and suffering posed by human history, people are moved to formulate answers to them rather than to feel that they have no power to choose how they live. The ethical historian should craft narratives that inspire people to live meaningfully rather than try to provide explanations or reconstructions of past events that make (...) them feel as if they cannot control their destiny. This Nietzschean-inspired vision of history is inadequate because it cannot gainsay that a genocidal vision of history is immoral. White may be right that cultural relativism results in cultural pluralism and toleration, but what if most people are not cultural relativists, and believe fervently in their right to specific lands at the expense of other peoples? White does not think historiography or perhaps any moral system can provide an answer. Is he right? This rejoinder argues that the communicative rationality implicit in the human sciences does provide norms about the moral use of history because it institutionalizes an intersubjectivity in which the use of the past is governed by norms of impartiality and fair-mindedness, and protocols of evidence based on honest research. Max Weber, equally influenced by Nietzsche, developed an alternative vision of teaching and research that is still relevant today. (shrink)

This article summarises and comments on the book Studies in Matthew’s Gospel: Literary design, intertextuality, and social setting, by Wim Weren, published during 2014. The essence of this book is all about meaning: the meaning of a structure, texts, and consequently the understanding of the Gospel of Matthew. For Weren, ‘Meaning is the result of the interplay between a textual unit and such other factors as language, literary context, and cultural setting’. This relates to the three parts of the content (...) of this monograph. His approach in studying Matthew comes from three perspectives: firstly intratextuality, then intertextuality, and finally extratextuality. He has deliberately chosen this order of successive steps so that they complement each other. (shrink)

A critical examination of contemporary nursing theory suggests that two distinct discourses coexist within this field. On the one hand, proponents of the ‘knowledge discourse’ argue that nurses should drop the ‘virtue script’ and focus on the scientific and technical aspects of their work. On the other hand, proponents of the ‘caring discourse’ promote a view of nursing that embodies humanistic qualities such as compassion, empathy and mutuality. In view of this, we suggest a way to reconcile both discourses despite (...) the fact that they appear to be at odds theoretically and practically. To that end, we argue that nursing theory must give a prominent role to the Aristotelian conception of virtue, and we offer an account that includes both character and intellectual virtues. This account allows for a focus on moral competence but also accommodates the demands for discipline‐specific knowledge. Our account incorporates the caring discourse by suggesting a way for individuals to cultivate the conditions within themselves that make ‘caring in nursing’ possible, while the knowledge discourse is accommodated via the acquisition of the intellectual virtues. The process for achieving both these ends is the same: an intention to consistently develop, hone and exercise certain character traits over time. (shrink)

Aims : The Modified Reasons for Smoking Scale (MRSS) is a widely accepted scale that measures psychological functions of smoking. The scale has been translated in Dutch and has been validated, in order to be used in clinical smoking cessation practice in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. This study examined the factorial structure, reliability and validity of the scale in a sample of smokers, who are characterized by a high level of dependence and an explicit motivation to stop smoking. Method (...) : The participants were 383 smokers, who volunteered at the stop-smoking clinic of a Belgian university hospital, and completed the translated scale. They were administered the translated MRSS, the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND). Through a clinical interview, smoking behaviour and smoking history was assessed (daily smoking consumption, years smoking, number of quit attempts, weeks stopped, alcohol and coffee consumption, CO level). Exploratory factor analysis was performed. Internal consistency was studied in order to examine the reliability. The concurrent validity was assessed by means of manova, anova and correlation analysis. Results : Factor analysis identified four factors, named stimulation, pleasure of smoking, social smoking and automatism of smoking. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.65 (automatism) to 0.72 (stimulation). manova indicated the influence of the variables age, sex, daily consumption and the FTND (the latter two variables showed a dose-dependent association with each subscale). Regression analysis revealed a relationship with dependence indicators, namely: the daily consumption, the number and duration of previous quit attempts, FTND, CO level and daily coffee intake. Conclusions : The Dutch translation of the MRSS identified four factors and revealed acceptable validity and reliability. The adapted version of the translated scale as a component of the psychological assessment procedure in a smoking cessation treatment in Dutch-speaking areas should be implemented. (shrink)

Drawing from research on strategic choice, this study investigates the relationship between market turbulence and firms’ sustainable behavior, in the context of sustainability-related institutional adversity. It argues that the relationship between market turbulence and sustainability is mediated by network embeddedness, and this mediating role in turn is moderated by a firm’s innovative orientation. Data collected from a sample of Ontario restaurants inform predictions about firms’ propensity to adopt local wines in their portfolios, despite the limited market and normative support that (...) these wines receive compared with imported wines. The study shows that market turbulence enhances sustainable firm behavior, through the development of strong network relationships. Furthermore, the mediating effect of network embeddedness is particularly salient among firms that exhibit a stronger innovative orientation. These findings reveal how and when turbulent market conditions can contribute to a firm’s sustainable behaviors in the presence of limited institutional support for such behaviors. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 3, Page 859-874, July 2022.

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 3 Heft: 2 Seiten: 300-318.

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 2 Seiten: 311-326.

This article focuses on how biblical content and spiritualities can be communicated, probably more effectively, to (late) preschool children by using information technology, which has already been implemented successfully for years in secular and religious environments. Because children enjoy listening to stories, watching cartoons and playing every day, the approach in this research will be to propose a particular construct to communicate biblical content to preschool children. This construct comprises interactive storytelling, cartoon animation and educational gaming, which constitute a trilogy (...) for teaching biblical content and principles to preschool children. This should be done interactively. These three approaches have become fundamental designs and presentations in child education. Churches, Christian nurseries and other Christian educators, in general, are encouraged to develop computer programs according to the construct and strategy proposed in this article for the teaching of the Gospel to late preschool children. The approach in this article will be, firstly, to examine and explore the religious orientation of preschool children and, secondly, to validate and propose how computer technology can be implemented to communicate the biblical content to preschool children via the trilogy of interactive storytelling, cartoon animation and educational gaming in an uninterrupted experience. Contribution: This article argues that the use of interactive storytelling, cartoon animation and educational gaming should be used consecutively and uninterruptedly to communicate the biblical message to preschool children. This is probably the most effective way to keep the attention of these children and to affect their conduct. (shrink)

The term “emotional practices” is gaining currency in the historical study of emotions. This essay discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of this concept. A definition of emotion informed by practice theory promises to bridge persistent dichotomies with which historians of emotion grapple, such as body and mind, structure and agency, as well as expression and experience. Practice theory emphasizes the importance of habituation and social context and is thus consistent with, and could enrich, psychological models of situated, distributed, and (...) embodied cognition and their approaches to the study of emotion.It is suggested here that practices not only generate emotions, but that emotions themselves can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity. Emotion-as-practice is bound up with and dependent on “emotional practices,” defined here as practices involving the self , language, material artifacts, the environment, and other people. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the essay emphasizes that the body is not a static, timeless, universal foundation that produces ahistorical emotional arousal, but is itself socially situated, adaptive, trained, plastic, and thus historical. Four kinds of emotional practices that make use of the capacities of a body trained by specific social settings and power relations are sketched out—mobilizing, naming, communicating, and regulating emotion—as are consequences for method in historical research. (shrink)