Social and environmental problems attributed to current electricity sector restructuring structures are spelled out. The energy source choices and market power of large industrial and commercial users versus residential consumers are compared. An institutional analytic approach is used to reveal the best option to alleviate the social and environmental problems associated with electricity restructuring. Community aggregation emerges with great potential to achieve meaningful social and environmental improvement.

It is held that the quality of the working environment afforded to an individual critically affects the health and well-being of that individual. This has consequences for both the quality of work which that individual can actually perform, and for the quality of the society in which that individual has a place. Conceptions of a fit working environment have led to the idea of a human-centred system, and this idea is applicable to the area of knowledge-based systems (KBS). A system (...) structure is discussed, which permits a human-centred approach to be adopted towards KBS design. It is held that the performance of such a system will generally exceed that of unaided KBS operation. (shrink)

A collection of essays on rationality - its scope, its limitations and its failures.

Ageism has unfortunately become a salient phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, triage decisions based on age have been hotly discussed. In this article, I first defend that, although there are ethical reasons (founded on the principles of benefit and fairness) to consider the age of patients in triage dilemmas, using age as a categorical exclusion is an unjustifiable ageist practice. Then, I argue that ageism during the pandemic has been fueled by media narratives and unfair assumptions which have (...) led to an ethically problematic group homogenization of the older population. Finally, I conclude that an intersectional perspective can shed light on further controversies on ageism and triage in the post-pandemic future. (shrink)

This book is designed to remedy that lack.

Value change is a phenomenon that is gaining increasing attention in ethical analyses of technologies. However, a comprehensive study of how reprogenetic technologies and values coevolve is lacking. To remedy this gap, in this overview article, I address the relationship between reprogenetics and value change. This contribution thus argues for the importance of investigating the phenomenon of value change in relation to the technological controversies discussed in bioethics. To meet this goal, I begin by clarifying, first, how technologies shape reproductive (...) choice. I then clarify what “values” and “moral values” are, how reprogenetic technologies are value laden, and what values are often discussed in reprogenetics debates. Next, I show five types of value changes that have occurred in advance in reproductive and genetic technologies. Finally, I argue for the bioethical relevance of discussing future techno-value change, pointing out the descriptive and normative challenges of this philosophical endeavor. (shrink)

In arguments in support of capitalism, the following propositions are sometimes advanced or presupposed: the best life for the individual is one of consumption, understood in a broad sense that includes aesthetic pleasures and entertainment as well as consumption of goods in the ordinary sense; consumption is to be valued because it promotes happiness or welfare, which is the ultimate good; since there are not enough opportunities for consumption to provide satiation for everybody, some principles of distributive justice must be (...) chosen to decide who gets what; the total to be distributed has first to be produced. What is produced depends, among other things, on the motivation and information of the producers. The theory of justice must take account of the fact that different principles of distribution have different effects on motivation and information; economic theory tells us that the motivational and informational consequences of private ownership of the means of production are superior to those of the various forms of collective ownerships. In the traditional controversy over the relative merits of capitalism and economic systems, the focus has been on proposition. In this paper, I consider instead propositions and. Before one can even begin to discuss how values are to be allocated, one must consider what they are – what it is that ought to be valued. I shall argue that at the center of Marxism is a specific conception of the good life as one of active self-realization, rather than passive consumption. (shrink)

This paper examines corporate social responsibility in Japan today within the context of the paradigm of the moral unity of business. Under this paradigm, business is expected to operate under the same set of moral standards operative in other societal institutions. We suggest that a micro moral unity characterizes Japan—business activity is linked to that society’s moral values but only within carefully circumscribed communities of interest. Because of the strains brought on by the maturing of the Japanese economy, the negative (...) consequences of this micro moral unity are now becoming apparent. A new paradigm will be required to address thesechallenges. A possible foundation for such a paradigm, based on the emerging notion of kyosei (living and working together for the common good), is discussed. (shrink)

This article uses concepts from sociology, history, and philosophy to explore the shifting relationship between moral values and business in the Western world. We examine the historical roots and intellectual underpinnings of two major business-society paradigms in ideal-type terms. In pre-industrial Western society, we argue that business activity was linked to society’s values of morality (the moral unity paradigm}-for good or for ill. With the rise of industrialism, we contend that business was freed from moral constraints by the alleged “invisible (...) hand” of efficient markets (the amoral theory of business). Armed with this understanding of the intellectual history of the moral unity and amoral business-society paradigms, we suggest that some variant of the moral unity paradigm may be recurring in post-industrial society. (shrink)

Resilience is increasingly discussed as a key concept across many fields of international policymaking from sustainable development and climate change, insecurity, conflict and terrorism to urban and rural planning, international aid provision and the prevention of and responses to natural and man-made disasters. Edited by leading academic authorities from a number of disciplines, this is the first handbook to deal with resilience as a new conceptual approach to understanding and addressing a range of interdependent global challenges. The Handbook is divided (...) into nine sections: Introduction: contested paradigms of resilience; the challenges of resilience; governing uncertainty; resilience and neoliberalism; environmental concerns and climate change adaptation; urban planning; disaster risk reduction and response; international security and insecurity; the policy and practices of international development. Highlighting how resilience-thinking is increasingly transforming international policy-making and government and institutional practices, this book will be an indispensable source of information for students, academics and the wider public interested in resilience, international relations and international security. (shrink)

Some propositional attitude verbs, such as certain, have local implicatures (Chierchia 2004, 2006), sometimes in addition to global ones. The local implicature of (1a) is given in (1b), and its global implicature is given in (1c). (1b) entails (1c).

It is commonplace amongst philosophers of art to make claims which postulate important links between aesthetics and perception. In this paper, I focus on one such claim: that perception is the canonical route to aesthetic judgement. I consider a range of prima facie plausible interpretations of this claim and argue that they each fail to identify any important link between aesthetic judgement and perception. Given this, I conclude that we have good reason to be sceptical of the claim that perception (...) is in any way privileged as a source of aesthetic judgement. (shrink)

In this chapter we explore the process of extrapolating causal claims from model organisms to humans in pharmacology. We describe and compare four strategies of extrapolation: enumerative induction, comparative process tracing, phylogenetic reasoning, and robustness reasoning. We argue that evidence of mechanisms plays a crucial role in several strategies for extrapolation and in the underlying logic of extrapolation: the more directly a strategy establishes mechanistic similarities between a model and humans, the more reliable the extrapolation. We present case studies from (...) the research on atherosclerosis and the development of statins, that illustrate these strategies and the role of mechanistic evidence in extrapolation. (shrink)

The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze is increasingly gaining the prestige that its inventiveness calls for in the Anglo-American theoretical context. His wide-ranging works on the history of philosophy, cinema, painting, literature, and politics are being taken up and put to work across disciplinary divides, and in interesting and surprising ways. However, the backbone of Deleuze's philosophy – the many and varied sources from which he draws the material for his conceptual innovation – has until now remained relatively obscure and unexplored. (...) This book takes as its goal the examination of this rich theoretical background. Presenting essays by a range of Deleuze scholars and theorists of his work, it is composed of in-depth analyses of the key figures in Deleuze's lineage, whose significance – as a result of either their obscurity or the complexity of their place in the Deleuzean text – has not previously been well understood. Included are essays on Deleuze's relationship with figures as varied as Marx, Simondon, Wronski, Hegel, Hume, Maimon, Ruyer, Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, Reimann, Leibniz, Bergson, and Freud. (shrink)

L’articolo esamina le qualità della democrazia deliberativa a partire dal ri­ferimento a espressioni storiche di questa: nelle istituzioni ateniesi del quin­to-quarto secolo a. C., nella Convenzione Federale statunitense del 1788, negli Stati Generali della Rivoluzione francese, in varie esperienze lo­cali odierne. Stabiliti tre modelli di democrazia e tre criteri per la deliberazione , la questione da affrontare è se la forma deliberativa di democrazia sia un buon sistema politico. La risposta è sì, purché si verifichino tre con­dizioni: intensità della motivazione (...) nei partecipanti, orientamento al bene pubblico della motivazione stessa, corretta informazione dei partecipanti. Ma si tratta di una conclusione ipotetica, che tiene conto della complessità e molteplicità dei fattori in gioco, e dunque del fatto che nessuna proprietà dei processi decisionali collettivi è desiderabile incondizionatamente.The article reflects upon strengths of deliberative democracy from an historical point of view: beginning with Athens’ institutions , pas­sing through States-General during French Revolution and U. S. Federal Con­vention , finally reaching today’s experience. Having established three different models of democracy and three criteria for the deliberative process , the issue is whether deliberative democracy works well as a po­litical system. We can surely say it does, although under some con­ditions: level of participants’ motivation, actions directed towards well-being and good information. Nevertheless, this is only a hypothetical con­clu­sion: there’s no perfect deliberative process, because of the complexity and plurality of the factors at play. (shrink)

B. F. Skinner's claim that "operant behavior is essentially the field of purpose" is systematically explored. It is argued that Charles Taylor's illuminating analysis of the explanatory significance of common-sense goal-ascriptions (1) lends some (fairly restricted) support to Skinner's claim, (2) considerably clarifies the conceptual significance of differences between operant and respondent behavior and conditioning, and (3) undercuts influential assertions (e.g., Taylor's) that research programs for behavioristic psychology share a "mechanistic" orientation. A strategy is suggested for assessing the plausibility of (...) Skinner's broader claims about the adequacy of the operant behaviorist program for the analysis of purposive behavior. (shrink)

The concept of quasi-cause is a relatively marginal one in the work of Gilles Deleuze, appearing briefly in The Logic of Sense and then Anti-Oedipus three years later. In part because of this marginality – the meagre degree to which it is integrated into the respective metaphysical system of the two works – it provides us with a useful vantage point from which to examine these systems themselves. In particular, a careful exposition of the two forms that the concept of (...) the quasi-cause takes provides us with an aperture on the shifting role of the concepts of the virtual and the intensive in Deleuze's ongoing project. In this paper, I will argue that, through this aperture, it is possible to see the displacement of the virtual in favour of the intensive. In turn, we can characterise Anti-Oedipus as the birth of a fully actualist Deleuzian metaphysics. (shrink)

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

The study begins with the language employed in and the psychological basis of thought experiments as understood by certain medieval Arabic philosophers. It then provides a taxonomy of different kinds of thoughts experiments used in the medieval Islamic world. These include purely fictional thought experiments, idealizations and finally thought experiments using ingenious machines. The study concludes by suggesting that thought experiments provided a halfway house during this period between a staunch rationalism and an emerging empiricism.

This theoretical paper elucidates the nature of educational technology and, in the process, sheds light on a number of phenomena in educational systems, from the no-significant-difference phenomenon to the singular lack of replication in studies of educational technologies. Its central thesis is that we are not just users of technologies but coparticipants in them. Our participant roles may range from pressing power switches to designing digital learning systems to performing calculations in our heads. Some technologies may demand our participation only (...) to enact fixed, predesigned orchestrations correctly. Other technologies leave gaps that we can or must fill with novel orchestrations, which we may perform more or less well. Most are a mix of the two, and the mix varies according to context, participant, and use. This participative orchestration is highly distributed: in educational systems, coparticipants include the learner, the teacher, and many others, from textbook authors to LMS programmers, as well as the tools and methods they use and create. From this perspective, all learners and teachers are educational technologists. The technologies of education are seen to be deeply, fundamentally, and irreducibly human, complex, situated and social in their constitution, their form, and their purpose, and as ungeneralizable in their effects as the choice of paintbrush is to the production of great art. (shrink)

MORE THAN MOST PHILOSOPHERS, Spinoza needed a coherent and sophisticated set of views on the nature of possibility: many of his most important philosophical positions and arguments depended on it. As one example, take Ethics IP33. This Proposition—among the most famous of the Ethics— states, “Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced.” In a salutary attempt to clarify the meaning of IP33 et relata, Spinoza adds in (...) the first Scholium to IP33 that “by these propositions I have shown more clearly than the noon light that there is absolutely nothing in things on account of which they can be called contingent.” Now, such assertions were bound to give rise to numerous objections and Spinoza knew it. To meet these objections, he immediately proceeds to one of the most powerful: namely, are there not things that actually have been “produced by God” that need not have been “produced by God?” And would it not make sense to call these things “contingent or possible?” In reply, Spinoza reinterprets the concept of possibility. We call existing things “contingent” “only because of a defect of our knowledge.” There are, he continues, two types of deficiency that lead us to regard existing things as “contingent or possible”: either we do not know “that the thing’s essence involves a contradiction” or we do know that the thing’s essence does not involve a contradiction but we do not know enough about the “order of causes” to affirm anything “certainly about its existence.”. (shrink)

A task force of pharmaceutical industry employees and medical journal editors propose ten recommendations to address the problem of erosion of confidence in reporting industry-sponsored clinical trial results. These recommendations do not solve the fundamental problem of industry-sponsored biomedical research. A radical solution is required that severs the relationship between the industry and the journals and restores the integrity of the medical literature.

The problem of evil is typically presented as a problem – sometimes the problem – facing theistic realists. This article takes no stance on what effect (if any) the existence of evil has on the rationality of theistic belief. Instead, it explores the possibility of using the problem of evil to generate worries for some of those who reject theistic realism. Although this article focuses on the consequences for a particular kind of religious fictionalist, the lessons adduced are intended to (...) have more general application. (shrink)

I argue that Newtonian-style deduction-from-the-phenomena arguments should only carry conviction when they yield unexpectedly simple conclusions. That in that case they do establish higher rational probabilities for the theories they lead to than for any known or easily constructible rival theories. However I deny that such deductive justifications yield high absolute rational probabilities, and argue that the history of physics suggests that there are always other not-yet-known simpler theories with higher rational probabilities on all the original evidence, and that these (...) later turn out closer to the truth. My analyses rely on the modern Solomonoff-Levin solution to the problem of constructing a mathematically and philosophically acceptable inductive logic. (shrink)

The ambiguity to which Porpora (1980) objects in Wright's (1972, 1976) analysis of goal-directedness permits certain counterexamples to Porpora's analysis to be easily accommodated by Wright's. As a consequence, Ringen's (1976) claim that some operant behavior is goal-directed is in accord with Wright's analysis and with certain features of common sense that Wright's analysis captures. However, the way our commonsense conception of goal-directedness accommodates some of the counterexamples to Porpora's analysis suggests an intimate connection between goal-directedness and intentional notions like (...) belief and desire. This suggests a possible criticism of Ringen and highlights problematic aspects of contemporary folk psychology. (shrink)

La metateoría estructuralista concibe las teorías científicas como redes formadas por elementos teóricos que poseen la misma estructura conceptual y están interconectados por relaciones de especialización. Además, postula que gran parte de la práctica científica tiene como fin concretar el elemento básico de estas redes añadiéndoles elementos más especializados. Así, pues, concibe el núcleo básico de elementos de una teoría como el paradigma que guía su evolución y la práctica científica normal como la adición, a redes preexistentes, de nuevos elementos (...) teóricos. En el artículo se propone que, en la ecología de poblaciones, el patrón de la actividad científica es diferente, pues es habitual el uso conjunto de elementos de distintas redes. Se introduce la noción de “constelación teórica” para dar cuenta de estas prácticas científicas de integración, en una misma unidad epistémica, de elementos teóricos de redes distintas. (shrink)

We argue that the stakeholder perspective on corporate social responsibility is in the process of being enlarged. Due to the process of institutional isomorphism, corporations are increasingly adopting organizational features designed to promote proactivity over mere reactivity in their stakeholder relationships. We identify two sources of pressure promoting the emergence of the proactive corporation -- stakeholder activism and the recognition of the social embeddedness of the economy. The final section describes four organizational design dimensions being installed by the more proactive (...) corporations today -- cooperation, participation, negotiation, and direct anticipation. (shrink)

The global pandemic and resultant lockdowns are challenging our traditional assumptions about the times and spaces of labour and leisure - but how were these norms established and why have they had such an enduring appeal? In this paper, we take a long view to investigate the philosophical and historical roots of the binary distinction between work and play and outline ways in which these long-held ideas are being increasingly challenged. As lockdown measures are relaxed, we urgently need to develop (...) more nuanced conceptions of the spatial and temporal conditions of work and leisure to ensure a more equitable and compassionate post-lockdown world. (shrink)

This book provides pre-service and practising teachers with an integrated approach to language and literacy learning in early childhood. Written by leading academics in the field, it explores how children learn to talk, play using language, become literate and make meaning - from birth through to the pre-school years. Emphasising the importance of imagination and the arts in language learning, this book addresses a wide range of contemporary issues, highlights the impact of diverse socioeconomic, language and cultural backgrounds on young (...) children's language and literacy development, and shows how early childhood teachers can effectively partner with parents and caregivers to help children learn through and about language. Case studies, interviews, reflective questions, clear links to the Early Years Learning Framework and the Australian Curriculum, and a rich array of practical and creative activities for use in early childhood environments help students connect theory and current research to practice. (shrink)