A renewed focus on the role of interpersonal relationships in the cultivation of religious sensibilities is emerging in the study of religion. Matthew Ryan Robinson addresses this question in his study of Friedrich Schleiermacher's notion of "free sociability." In Schleiermacher's ethics, the human person is formed in and consists of intimate, tightly interconnecting relationships with others. Schleiermacher describes this sociability as a natural tendency prompted by experiences of physical and existential limitation that lead one to look to others to (...) complete one's experience. But this experience of incompleteness and orientation to "the completion of humanity" also constitute the fundamental structure of religion in Schleiermacher's theory of religion as orientation to "the universe and the relationship of humanity to it." Thus, Schleiermacher not only presents sociability as basic to human nature, but also as inherently religious - and, potentially, redemptive. What making such a claim means and the implications it raises are central considerations of this study of Schleiermacher's ethics, theory of religion and ecclesiology. (shrink)

Um dos grandes problemas postos pelo tema dos direitos humanos à filosofia é, entre outros, o de sua fundamentação filosófica. No pano de fundo deste debate, surgem questões específicas: como se pode fundamentar/justificar filosoficamente a exigência de reconhecimento aos direitos humanos? Neste estudo, procuro abordar, de modo direto, o núcleo argumentativo sobre o qual está estruturada da proposta de Höffe. Para ele, os direitos humanos têm uma profunda relação com a noção de justiça. O conceito de justiça, na sua concepção, (...) deve ser entendido fundamentalmente como troca. Embora o conceito pareça demasiado simples, ele oferece uma série de dificuldades no que se refere à sua fundamentação. (shrink)

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a moderate degree) categories of tactics (...) proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)

Los nuevos roles de participación ciudadana, vienen de parte de otros sujetos y actores sociales que en nada se vinculan u originan con los protagonismos institucionales que caracterizaron hasta hacemuy poco la actividad política en los países latinoamericanos. Estos han sido desplazados por completo, en lamedida que su fracaso reveló el fracaso de la democracia representativa para legitimar los poderes gubernamentales, cuando en su efecto no logró los cambios que se prometían a través de las vías de la constitucionalidad y (...) el discurso ideológico. Las nuevas prácticas políticas que se insertan en el campo de la participación política son ahora mucho más directas con respecto a los sectores marginados, y la forma en la que éstos se han hecho presentes a través de las protestas y cualquier tipo de desobediencia civil en el espacio público, logrando enfrentar al Estado con los reclamos de quienes siendo la mayoría no han dejado de sufrir la explotación y alineación económica y política. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Green Utopia Now! A Transdisciplinary Symposium on How to Deal with the Climate Crisis: November 30, 2022, University of Ferrara, ItalyManuel Sousa Oliveira, Ilenia Vittoria Casmiri, Fabiola Onofrio, Tânia Cerqueira, Francisca Teixeira, and Florian WagnerHow could we come together in transdisciplinary collaboration to deal with the climate crisis? Could utopianism be what brings us together? Last summer (2022) we started asking ourselves these questions, and months later Green Utopia (...) Now! A Transdisciplinary Symposium on How to Deal with the Climate Crisis was our initial attempt at finding an answer. The symposium was an ambitious and challenging venture from the start. Our aspirations for it were perhaps still formulated best in the event program:Green Utopia Now! brings together an outstanding group of early career researchers (ECRs) working on climate and the environment in various fields of study. The symposium will provide a creative space where ECRs can share their transdisciplinary perspectives on how to challenge the limits of monodisciplinary views on sustainability, and how the sciences and the humanities can join forces to tackle the current climate crisis. Each of these scientific and cultural points of view will be brought together by a utopian impulse that insists on the role of collaboration, and the urgency of positive [End Page 368] climate action. In fact, this symposium is guided by our conviction about the importance of (1) transdisciplinary collaboration, (2) innovative research conducted by ECRs, and (3) utopian thinking and practice for engaging with global scale problems.Fortunately, eleven guest speakers accepted the challenge, and their answers were unsurprisingly diverse.1If we are to approach the vicissitudes of the climate crisis, we must, as Hannah Nelson-Teutsch and Lena Pfeifer recently called for, seek “new, entangled form(at)s of scholarship in the humanities.”1 These entanglements have become even more obvious in the ways in which research on the climate and environmental crises challenges the very limits of humanities and monodisciplinary scholarship. Not circumscribed to the humanities, then, Green Utopia Now! similarly aspired to “new, entangled form(at)s” of transdisciplinary research at the intersection of environmental and utopian studies. Thus, it follows that this briefing too should diverge from the conventional form(at) in an attempt to convey the professional, personal and collective entanglements of our projects.Green utopianism, as described in a recent issue of this journal, shares with political ecological movements a radical and urgent “need to live and embody better alternatives within the Now.”2 This idea of “nowness” inspired our symposium down to its title. It would be only fitting, then, that the author, Heather Alberro, would deliver the opening keynote of the Green Utopia Now! symposium. Alberro (Nottingham Trent) joined us online to, on the one hand, (re)introduce the idea of green utopianism and, on the other, propose a new iteration termed “terrestrial ecotopianism.” Drawn for a wide range of both fictional and nonfictional, imaginative and empirical sources, Alberro’s terrestrial ecotopianism redirects our focus toward the here and the now. Providing a further layer to this utopian project is the work being conducted in empirical ecocriticism, as made obvious by W. P. Małecki (Wrocław), who delivered the closing keynote, which was based on “hot off the press” research on environmental communication, environmental psychology, as well as affective (and, of course, empirical) ecocriticism. It inquired into the possibilities of utopian cli-fi in general, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020) in particular, to change attitudes toward the climate crisis. [End Page 369]Most of our speakers, were far from being utopian scholars. Still, by the end of the symposium it was becoming clear that many (if not all) were in fact unwitting utopians. Regardless of the fields—from literature to genetics, biology to sociology, or economics to architecture—collectively the proposals that were put forth constitute a fresh and wide-ranging utopian project exploring both more and less exact ways of dealing with the climate crisis now. Not wishing to have the project become monolithic, much of the utopian aspirations for the symposium were placed in the process, the relationships, and the conversations. Even if to admittedly mixed results, the panels too... (shrink)

The speech act of bragging has never been subjected to conceptual analysis until now. We argue that a speaker brags just in case she makes an utterance that is an assertion and is intended to impress the addressee with something about the speaker via the belief produced by the speaker's assertion. We conclude by discussing why it is especially difficult to cancel a brag by prefacing it with, ‘I'm not trying to impress you, but…’ and connect this discussion with Moore's (...) paradox and the recent neologism ‘humblebrag’. (shrink)

We present a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the ACT‐R–based model of sentence processing developed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005) (LV05). The predictions of the model are compared with the results of a recent meta‐analysis of published reading studies on retrieval interference in reflexive‐/reciprocal‐antecedent and subject–verb dependencies (Jäger, Engelmann, & Vasishth, 2017). The comparison shows that the model has only partial success in explaining the data; and we propose that its prediction space is restricted by oversimplifying assumptions. We then implement a (...) revised model that takes into account differences between individual experimental designs in terms of the prominence of the target and the distractor in memory‐ and context‐dependent cue‐feature associations. The predictions of the original and the revised model are quantitatively compared with the results of the meta‐analysis. Our simulations show that, compared to the original LV05 model, the revised model accounts for the data better. The results suggest that effects of prominence and variable cue‐feature associations need to be considered in the interpretation of existing empirical results and in the design and planning of future experiments. With regard to retrieval interference in sentence processing and to the broader field of psycholinguistic studies, we conclude that well‐specified models in tandem with high‐powered experiments are needed in order to uncover the underlying cognitive processes. (shrink)

One antidote to moral distress is stronger moral agency—that is, an enhanced ability to act to bring about change. The Clinical Ethics Residency for Nurses, an educational program developed and run in two large northeastern academic medical centers with funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, intended to strengthen nurses’ moral agency. Drawing on Improving Competencies in Clinical Ethics Consultation: An Education Guide, by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and on the goals of the nursing profession, CERN (...) sought to change attitudes, increase knowledge, and develop skills to act on one's knowledge. One of the key insights the faculty members brought to the design of this program is that knowledge of clinical ethics is not enough to develop moral agency. In addition to lecture‐style classes, CERN employed a variety of methods based in adult learning theory, such as active application of ethics knowledge to patient scenarios in classroom discussion, simulation, and the clinical practicum. Overwhelmingly, the feedback from the participants (sixty‐seven over three years of the program) indicated that CERN achieved transformative learning. (shrink)

In the third of his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Reid devotes the fourth chapter to the concept of‘identity’, and the sixth chapter to Locke’s theory of ‘personal identity’. This latter chapter is widely regarded as a definitive refutation of the thesis that personal identity is no more than memories of a certain sort. It is interesting that the terms ‘identity’ and ‘personal identity’ do not appear as chapter or section titles elsewhere in any of Reid’s works; and (...) Hume is neither mentioned nor his theory of personal identity discussed in the two chapters specifically addressed to the matter. Moreover, while Locke, Reid, and Hume are often anthologized in works on personal identity, Reid is always presented as replying only to Locke. (shrink)

BackgroundSuicide research aims to contribute to a better understanding of suicidal behaviour and its prevention. However, there are many ethical challenges in this research field, for example, regarding consent and potential risks to participants. While studies to-date have focused on the perspective of the researchers, this study aimed to investigate the views and experiences of members of Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) in dealing with suicide-related study applications.MethodsThis qualitative study entailed a thematic analysis using an inductive approach. We conducted semi-structured (...) interviews with a purposive sample (N = 15) of HREC Chairs or their delegates from Australian research-intensive universities. The interview guide included questions regarding the ethical concerns and challenges in suicide-related research raised by HREC members, how they dealt with those challenges and what advice they could give to researchers.ResultsThe analysis identified four main themes: (1) HREC members’ experiences of reviewing suicide-related study applications, (2) HREC members’ perceptions of suicide, suicide research, and study participants, (3) Complexity in HREC members’ decision-making processes, and (4) HREC members’ relationships with researchers.ConclusionsReliance on ethical guidelines and dialogue with researchers are crucial in the assessment of suicide-related study applications. Both researchers and HREC members may benefit from guidance and resources on how to conduct ethically sound suicide-related studies. Developing working relationships will be likely to help HRECs to facilitate high quality, ethical suicide-related research and researchers to conduct such research. (shrink)

The provision of aid in war zones can be fraught with political difficulties and may itself foster inequalities, as it is rare to be allowed access to civilians on both sides of a conflict. Over the past decade, a United Nations brokered agreement has allowed Operation Lifeline Sudan , a UN “umbrella” organisation, to provide the diplomatic cover and operational support to allow long term humanitarian and emergency food aid to both the government and the rebel sides in the long-running (...) south Sudanese civil war. Over the years, the destruction of infrastructure in the country has meant that the provision of basic health care has been seriously hampered. Operation Lifeline Sudan has coordinated the work of most of the non-governmental organisations , working in this part of Africa. Each NGO has had responsibility for a particular area of the country and has worked closely with the local Sudanese authorities on either side of the conflict, conforming to strict codes of conduct or “ground rules”, based on neutrality. Operation Lifeline Sudan has provided an air-bridge for emergency relief supplies in regions where road access is impossible, either because of landmines, or simply because the roads do not exist. The war continues, however, and the underlying causes of war—economic exploitation, marginalisation of communities, lack of political representation, and systematic violence and abuse remain unsolved. The warring factions have brought some OLS operations in south Sudan to a standstill recently, for certain political reasons that could have compromised the neutrality of the OLS-coordinated humanitarian aid schemes. It would appear that the only resolution to the country's problems are external political pressure to get the respective combatants to negotiate and, less probably, an undertaking by countries of the developed world not to continue to supply arms. Nevertheless, OLS may serve as a model for how medical aid can be delivered in an even-handed way to the populations of countries where there is civil war, irrespective of where they may live. (shrink)

The “self” shapes the way in which we process the world around us. It makes sense then, that self-related information is reliably prioritised over non self-related information in cognition. How mig...

We draw on Short’s work on Peirce’s theory of signs to propose a new general definition of interpretation. Short argues that Peirce’s semiotics rests on his naturalised teleology. Our proposal extends Short’s work by modifying his definition of interpretation so as to make it more generally applicable to putatively interpretative processes in biological systems. We use our definition as the basis of an account of different kinds of misinterpretation and we discuss some questions raised by the definition by reference to (...) parallel problems in the field of teleosemantics. We propose that interpretative responses fulfilling the criteria of our definition may be made by relatively simple molecular entities and we suggest two specific empirical applications of the definition to experimental work in the field of origin of life research. Our wider aim is to suggest that a well formulated naturalistic definition of interpretation will allow a re-evaluation of the role of semiotic phenomena in biological systems, including the generation of empirically testable hypotheses. (shrink)

Stewardship—the caring for fellow human beings as well as the nonhuman world—is receiving increasing attention from scholars in the field of global environmental change. Recent publications underscore that stewardship is becoming a key norm within the global international system of states, but that in remaining state-centric, stewardship fails to create a deeper systemic transformation of the international system’s normative structure. In this article, we examine whether stewardship also underpins hybrid governance arrangements, which are a combination of public requirements and private (...) standards, with a specific emphasis on certification. We argue that a stewardship ethos requires citizenship, compassion and sufficiency. We, thus, contribute to the burgeoning literature on certification by focusing on normative principles that are fundamental for sustainability governance, but have so far been neglected in governance research. Empirically, we are able to reveal broader implications of the normative transformations underway in global sustainability governance. To add depth to our analysis, we concentrate on palm oil, an agricultural commodity, which serves for food purposes and as a substitute for fossil fuels to mitigate global warming. Palm oil is representative of the interlinkages between social and environmental objectives, which are at the core of the notion of stewardship as conceptualized in this article. We find that stewardship underpins hybrid governance arrangements but momentarily it is realized only in niches. We argue that in order to move to a state of global stewardship, we need a bolder public policy agenda which respects environmental limits, acknowledges boundaries for the global poor, and allows for the expression of emotions in public dialogue. (shrink)

Communication plays an important role in promoting sustainable consumption. Yet how the academic literature conceptualizes and relates communication and sustainable consumption remains poorly understood, despite growing research on communication in the context of sustainable consumption. This article presents the first comprehensive review of sustainable consumption communication (SCC) research as a young and evolving field of scholarly work. Through a systematic review and narrative synthesis of N = 67 peer-reviewed journal articles, we consolidated the research conducted in this field into four (...) distinct types: communication as an approach to (1) behavior change, (2) self-empowerment, (3) systems change, and (4) reflection on current discourses and practices around sustainable consumption. Our findings reveal that most journal articles focus on incremental changes in individual consumer behavior (“weak” sustainable consumption) and employ communication as an intervention tool with little reference to communication science and theory. They also reveal integration challenges arising from the disciplinary diversity and fragmentation characteristic of the research field. Future research should develop shared frameworks and terminology, diversify its foci, synthesize relevant evidence, and innovate critical perspectives that go beyond one-way business-to-consumer communication. The results of our review can serve researchers engaged in sustainable consumption communication to better systematize their efforts and contribute more effectively to changing systems of consumption in the future. (shrink)

The work of general practitioners is infused by norms from several movements, of which evidence based medicine, patient-centredness, and virtue ethics are some of the most influential. Their precepts are not clearly reconcilable, and structural factors may limit their application. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework that explains how GPs respond, across different fields of interaction in their daily work, to the pressure exerted by divergent norms. Data was generated from unstructured interviews with and observations of sixteen Swedish (...) GPs and family medicine residents between 2015 and 2017. Straussian Grounded Theory was used for analysis. We found that GPs’ maxims of action can be characterised in terms of dichotomous responses to demands from four distinct sets of norms, or “voices”: the situation, the self, the system, and the profession. From the interactions between these voices emerge sixteen clusters of maxims of action. Based on the common features of the maxims in each cluster, we have developed a conceptual framework that appears to be rich enough to capture the meaning of the ethical decisions that GPs make in their daily work, yet has a high enough level of abstraction to be helpful when discussing the factors that influence those decisions. Our four-dimensional model of GPs’ responses to norms is a first step toward a middle-range theory of quality from GPs’ perspective. It brings out the complexity of their practice, reveals tensions that easily remain invisible in more concrete accounts of their actions, and aids the transferability of substantive theories on GPs’ ethical decision making. By explaining the nature of the ethical conflicts that they experience, we provide some clues as to why efforts to improve quality by imposing additional norms on GPs may meet with varying degrees of success. (shrink)

1. The theory of classes presented in this paper is a simplification of that presented by J. von Neumann in his paper Die Axiomatisierung der Mengenlehre. However, this paper is written so that it can be read independently of von Neumann's. The principal modifications of his system are the following.(1) The idea of ordered pair is defined in terms of the other primitive concepts of the system. (See Axiom 4.3 below.)(2) A much simpler proof of the well-ordering theorem, based on (...) von Neumann's equivalence axiom (Axiom 2.2 below) is given. (More exactly, the theory of ordinal numbers, on which the proof of the well-ordering theorem is based, is simplified—see §8.)(3) Functions are not assumed to be defined for all arguments. In place of “ = A” we have “is undefined.” This makes possible a constructive interpretation of the system. (See §2.)2. We wish first to give a rough picture of the system which we are trying to construct. Suppose that we have the idea “class,” but no material from which to construct classes. Nevertheless, we can construct the class 0 having no elements. And then the class 1 having 0 as its only element. And then the classes {1}, and {0, 1}, etc., using always the previously constructed classes as elements. To extend this method to infinite classes, we must give rules telling what elements are to be included. Since the nature of the rules which we can use is not altogether clear, we try to formalize the whole system; that is, to set up a system of axioms which seems to characterize this system of classes. Now in this set of axioms we find it necessary to use the idea of function (in the “Axiom of Replacement”). (shrink)

Discusses the problems that surround the developing science of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This title introduces and clarifies the basic concepts for understanding these problems and also discusses opposing views and possible solutions. It describes the kinds of research that seem to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of intelligence.

The book begins with an overview of globalization, showing how wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a transnational elite while ever increasing numbers of people are being marginalised. Institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund are intent upon exercising a new hegemony over individuals as the role of the traditional nation state is transformed. At the centre of this power shift is a group of high-tech robber barons who dominate the Information Age (...) and exploit the technologies of globalization for their own narrow interests. The second part of the book explores the rise of the new grass roots oppositional movements around the world. Manifest in such diverse struggles as the uprising of the Zapatistas in Mexico and the battle of Seattle against the World Trade Organisation, this new postmodern politics is "de-centred" and has little interest in the old ideologies that dominated much of the twentieth century. The final section of the book contextualizes postmodern politics by drawing on contemporary examples. The authors discuss the demise of socialist and proto-socialist experiments in Chile, Grenada, Nicaragua and Cuba and the emergence of postmodern movements in Latin America. The final two chapters take a specific look at the Zapatista movement and its significance for revolutionary struggles around the world. (shrink)

A fundamental aspect of biological systems is their spatial organization. In development, regeneration and repair, directional signals are necessary for the proper placement of the components of the organism. Likewise, pathogens that invade other organisms rely on directional signals to target vulnerable areas. It is widely understood that chemical gradients are important directional signals in living systems. Less well recognized are electrical fields, which can also provide directional information. Small, steady electrical fields can directly guide cell movement and growth and (...) can generate chemical gradients of charged macromolecules against the leveling action of diffusion. At the site of a lesion in an ion‐transporting epithelium, for example, a substantial electrical field is instantly generated and may extend over many cell diameters. There are numerous other situations in which relatively long‐range electrical fields have been shown to exist naturally. Recently, there has been substantial progress in identifying specific processes that are controlled, to some extent, by these endogenous electrical fields. This review highlights these recent data and discusses possible mechanisms by which the fields might affect biological processes. BioEssays 25:759–766, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

A major theme in biological research is the quest for mechanism, embodied in explanatory reductionism: the interpretation of phenomena through links to the entities and laws of more fundamental sciences. For example, the form of Starling's Law of the Heart, relating contractile force to heart volume, follows from the sliding-filament hypothesis of muscle contraction, a molecular concept. Although alternative mechanisms for muscle contraction and cardiac regulation could be deduced from biochemical principles, the formulation provides clear correspondence with the phenomena and (...) a deeper understanding of cardiac function. Moreover, even if the reduction provides no better formulation of the phenomenon, of the macro-regularity, it is still prized as a nearer approach to physical reality, as a step toward realizing fundamental unities and codifying general principles, and as a door to new experimental opportunities. (shrink)

In a series of works, Peter Carruthers has argued for the denial of the title proposition. Here, I defend that proposition by offering direct support drawn from relevant sciences and by undercutting Carruthers argument. In doing the latter, I distinguish an intrinsic theory of consciousness from Carruthers relational theory of consciousness. This relational theory has two readings, one of which makes essential appeal to evolutionary theory. I argue that neither reading offers a successful view.

In my feature article, ‘Pregnancy and superior moral status: a proposal for two thresholds of personhood’,1 I argue that there are reasons to recognise that pregnant women have a superior moral status. This is a new argument on personhood in philosophy, and I am not surprised that it has generated some discussion. While I am grateful that many authors have engaged with my ideas, I have not identified from the six commentaries any aspect in my approach that would need to (...) be revised. I will do my best here, in the space available, to address the main points raised. Gibson starts off by correctly noting that my proposal rests on a starting assumption (which I do not defend) that we follow a first threshold of personhood, but then seems to leave this aside in the rest of his critique.2 He says I have not justified why humanity’s survival is important, and that I have assumed that the existence of human persons matters. My response is that yes, I have, and that the first threshold already recognises the high moral value of human persons. If alternatively babies are harms themselves, or are harmed from being born, then perhaps we will see pregnant women as pest-making or victim-making entities. I …. (shrink)

A philosophical analysis of sonically charged concepts to map a theory of "sound affects.".

It is sometimes suggested that the logic of religious language differs from other kinds of language. Or it is said that each ‘language-game’ has its own ‘logic’ and that, whatever usual language-games are played in the context of religion, there is something that could be called the ‘religious language-game’ which does not correspond to any other and, therefore, has its own peculiar logic. In either case, religious people are urged to make clear what this logic is, so that their utterances (...) may be understood and evaluated. (shrink)