In contemporary Japanese society, it is difficult to find a marriage partner, and therefore, “Konkatsu,” the search for a marriage partner, has become a socially accepted activity in Japan. In response to this social challenge, in addition to private companies, governments and non-profit organizations are supporting individuals in their search for a marriage partner. This paper reviews statistical information related to marriage hunting published in Japan. In addition, some of the authors’ collaborative activities and academic publications based on these activities (...) are reviewed. Subsequently, the paper discusses and highlights the importance of helping individuals have confidence in their physical attractiveness. (shrink)

One author stands out for his contributions to the evolving field of organizations and management: James March. He was the co-author of the two books that were particularly influential in initiating the field which is now broadly recognized as behavioural theories of organizations: A Behavioral Theory of the Firm, written with Richard Cyert, and Organisations, written with Herbert Simon. This article outlines part of the evolution of March’s framework that he has developed in order to understand human action in often-complex (...) situations. It also includes some notes on Richard Cyert’s contributions. March’s framework became clear and was shaped by his background at the interdisciplinary environment at Carnegie Mellon in the 1950s and 60s. The non-rational and adaptive aspects of human decision-making and behaviour have figured more prominently in March’s work as time has gone on. (shrink)

Cet article, au titre de prolégomènes à toute recherche future, entend relever quelques paramètres de la recherche sur l'espérance dans toute la Bible, en la reconduisant à la condition anthropologique de l'humain. Parmi ces paramètres, sont retenus en particulier: la conception du temps supposée par l'espérance, l'espérance comme intentionnalité et comme objet ou terme de cette intentionnalité, l'espérance comme articulation entre temporalité et altérité, l'espérance vue au temps de son élan et au temps de sa vérification, la distinction entre espérance (...) et illusion, le rapport entre espérance et désespoir, l'espérance personnelle et communautaire, pour soi et pour autrui, les modes d'expression de l'espérance, par des mots, des symboles et des actes, les représentations de l'espéré, les raisons de l'espérance, la manière dont Dieu, et le Christ, modèlent l'espérance. (shrink)

Sonzairon -- Shakai sonzai no riron -- Sonzai no muteki seikaku.

En este artículo se discute la relación entre silogismo y demostración con respecto al concepto aristotélico del conocimiento científico formulado en los Analíticos segundos. La argumentación sigue tres líneas principales: (i) se ofrecen razones para rechazar la relegación de la sistematización silogística a la instancia postrera de justificación y exposición didáctica del conocimiento previamente adquirido. Como respuesta alternativa, (ii) se muestra que una explicación aristotélica necesita la silogística en virtud del papel que desempeña la causa como término medio silogístico. En (...) consecuencia, debería estar en condiciones de (iii) sostener que no resulta factible establecer firmemente los principios propios como premisas explicativas sin construir silogismos. This article focuses on the relation between syllogism and demonstration, as related to Aristotle's concept of scientific knowledge in his Posterior Analytics. Three main lines of argumentation are followed: (i) reasons are given to reject that syllogistic systematization plays a unique role as a skill for justification and didactic proof of a body of knowledge previously acquired. Alternatively, (ii) it is showed that an Aristotelian explanation requires syllogistic as to the role of cause as middle syllogistic term. Thus, it should be feasible (iii) to sustain that it is not possible to firmly establish proper principles as explanative premises without constructing syllogisms. (shrink)

This paper explores the laborious and intimate work of turning bodies of research animals into models of human patients. Based on ethnographic research in the interdisciplinary Danish research centre NEOMUNE, we investigate collaboration across species and disciplines, in research aiming at improving survival for preterm infants. NEOMUNE experimental studies on piglets evolved as a platform on which both basic and clinical scientists exercised professional authority. Guided by the field of multi-species research, we explore the social and material agency of research (...) animals in the production of human health. Drawing on Anna Tsing’s concept of “collaborative survival”, we show that sharing the responsibility of the life and death of up to twenty-five preterm piglets fostered not only a collegial solidarity between basic and clinical scientists, but also a transformative cross-fertilization across species and disciplines—a productive “contamination”—facilitating the day-to-day survival of piglets, the academic survival of scientists and the promise of survival of preterm infants. Contamination spurred intertwined identity shifts that increased the porosity between the pig laboratory and the neonatal intensive care unit. Of particular significance was the ability of the research piglets to flexibly become animal-infant-patient hybrids in need of a united effort from basic and clinical researchers. However, ‘hybrid pigs’ also entailed a threat to the demarcation between humans and animals that consolidates the use of animals in biomedical research, and efforts were continuously done to keep contamination within spatial limits. We conclude that contamination facilitates transformative encounters, yet needs spatial containment to materialize bench-to-bedside translation. (shrink)

This article discusses ‘brainstorm’ interaction in a multimodal perspective. It shows how an innovation workshop facilitator is ‘doing facilitation’ by not only organizing group activities and managing turn-taking, but also drawing each group member out to participate actively and contribute to the group process. Institutional goals are transformed to individual conversational participation. Participants are helped to express their thoughts and engage in a social process of clarifying, developing and refining ideas. In the process the facilitator is socializing the participants into (...) a particular participation framework, letting them collaborate in shaping a local community of practice. The facilitator is separating phases of activities to afford decoupling actions, creating specific local sequential environments for participants to produce particular kinds of talk, thus engaging a group of participants in a social process of collaborative idea development. The article will show how multimodal orientation to a range of semiotic resources is used to manage topical talk, elicit talk from a particular person, manage speaker transition, secure progression and shifts, perform shift in participant identity and elicit talk performing particular social actions, explanations and accounts. A process is shaped in which collaboratively produced underspecified ideas are turned into ‘noticings’ in order to create slots for them to be explained and accounted for so that individual cognitive processes are made available for treatment in a social process of idea development, and selection of ideas is prioritized over discussion/rejection. (shrink)

Cowboy Bebop, a popular anime series set in the year 2071 onboard the spaceship Bebop, chronicles the bohemian adventures of a group of bounty hunters. This paper presents how the imaginary characters and their voices are conventionalized to fit hegemonic norms. The social semiotic of desire depicted in Cowboy Bebop caters to a general heterosexual market in which hero and babe characters represent the anime archetypes of heterosexual normativity. Scripted speech used in the anime functions as a role language which (...) indexes common ideological attributes associated with a character’s demeanor. This study focuses on how ideas, including heterosexual normativity and culture-specific practices, are reproduced in media texts in order to negotiate the intertextual distances that link the characters and audience. (shrink)

Me propongo ofrecer una interpretación unificada de la metodología aristotélica y mostrar que ella se integra en un empirismo híbrido en el cual se combina la doble naturaleza de los phainomena , hechos observacionales y creencias comunes. Polemizaré con la lectura coherentista de la prueba dialéctica de consistencia que se expresa en EN VII 1, y trataré de aclarar qué uso hace Aristóteles de aquella doble fuente de sus investigaciones en algunos textos de ciencia natural ( Ph . IV 4).

To clarify Aristotle’s “Identity Thesis” in Metaphysics Z 6, according to which each strictly definable item must be identical to its own essence (1031a15-16, 1032a4- 6), I show that it is a simple corollary of some “logical” theorems drawn from the Organon, which have a direct impact on Z 4’s explanation that identity is based on the possession of essence. As I claim, Z 6’s innovation consists of a clarification about substance as that which - because of having essence - (...) can fulfill the identity- condition. Therefore, Z 6’s argument targets principally “non-Identity” as a consequence of Platonic separation. Further, I argue against the commonly held view that the Identity Thesis stands on the hylomorphism of Z’s later chapters. (shrink)

La supervivencia académica de la filosofía está sometida actualmente en Argentina a una presión impuesta por criterios de productividad e impacto alentados a través del rediseño en curso del sistema científico. Si bien este proceso en desarrollo creciente atañe a las ciencias básicas en general, puede advertirse que aspectos específicos de la elaboración del conocimiento filosófico, incluyendo sus períodos de tiempo y criterios de validación tradicionales, son difícilmente compatibles con una idea de conocimiento socialmente dominante cada vez más orientada a (...) la aplicación y al retorno económico de la inversión en ciencia. En este contexto, es dudoso que la filosofía pueda apelar a justificaciones como la de la “potencial utilidad”, que tienen a su alcance otras ciencias básicas. Hay dos cuestiones candentes y conjuntas que considerar aquí: ¿qué hace de la filosofía todavía hoy una forma del saber socialmente aceptable?, y ¿por qué el estado tiene que seguir manteniendo con fondos públicos esa disciplina dentro de las instituciones académicas? En este artículo me propongo esbozar una justificación posible del papel que puede caberle a la filosofía en el contexto actual ; sugiero que esa justificación proviene de la necesidad de revisar críticamente la idea dominante del saber y apunta a reformular el proyecto del ideal humano de racionalidad. (shrink)

La interpretación de la metodología científica de Aristóteles, desarrollada en las últimas décadas, introdujo algunas modificaciones importantes en la imagen fundacionista-axiomática que tradicionalmente se le había adjudicado a la epistemología del estagirita. Sin embargo, tales modificaciones cond..

En el presente artículo me ocupo de la discusión acerca de cuán exigentes son nuestras obligaciones de contribuir con dinero y tiempo a las agencias humanitarias que asisten a personas en situación de pobreza extrema en el mundo. Defiendo una posición intermedia, moderada, frente a la posición extrema formulada por Peter Singer y frente a la posición según la cual nuestras obligaciones son mínimas. La objeción principal contra esas dos posiciones es que, cuando analizan la situación en que los potenciales (...) donantes se encuentran frente a las personas en situación de pobreza extrema, omiten el carácter iterativo que es propio de esa situación. La posición moderada, en cambio, tiene en cuenta ese carácter, gracias a que entiende a nuestras obligaciones hacia los pobres globales como obligaciones imperfectas. In this article I engage in the debate about the demandingness of our duties to contribute with money and time to humanitarian agencies that assist people who live in extreme poverty around the world. I defend an intermediate, moderate, view against Peter Singer's extreme view, and also against the view according to which our duties are minimal. The main objection regarding those two views is that, when they analyze the situation in which potential donors are vis-à-vis people who live in extreme poverty, they miss its distinctive iterative character. The moderate view, on the contrary, pays heed to that character, thanks to its account of our duties towards the global poor as imperfect duties. (shrink)

I reconstruct Aristotle's epistemology and scientific methodology avoiding some problems which, in my opinion, are attributed to them from inadequate interpretations in terms of foundationalism or coherentism. On the contrary, I credit Aristotle with a hybrid concept of empiricism in which our knowledge is made possible through the integration of two different but cooperative factors: observations and beliefs. By clarifying the implications of Aristotle's concept of experience and the basis for the elaboration of scientific knowledge, I try to give an (...) alternative account of Aristotle's vindication of a positive use of dialectic in science, as well as to show that an integration between dialectical examination of beliefs and scientific analysis of facts is possible and it also gives a plausible methodological image of Aristotle's theory. According to my proposal, some opinions play a conceptual role in the empirical basis of knowledge. But, for Aristotle, this does not amount to any more than a kind of knowledge of the facts, not being equivalent to a scientific knowledge of the causes. Finally, I try to show that within this complex epistemological framework Aristotle's use of induction could also be given an adequate explanation. (shrink)

En un ensayo dedicado al método de la filosofía, Ernst Tugendhat (1989) advertía sobre la escasez de clarificaciones metodológicas generales que la disciplina ofrece a su propio que hacer. Detrás de la variedad de formas de hacer filosofía que existen en la actualidad y a lo largo de su vasta histor..

Aristotle’s main thesis in Metaphysics Z.17, which takes substance to be a principle and a cause of some sort (1041a9–10, 1041b7–9, b30–31), is of a piece with the assumption that hylomorphic compounds are unified wholes (1041b11–12) – an assumption that proves critical to settling an important controversy about the form-matter relationship in that chapter, i. e. whether matter and form are mutually indistinguishable or rather just accidentally the same. By rejecting these interpretive options, this paper argues that form and matter (...) are bound together by an essential link which, nevertheless, is able to preserve both (i) the different explanatory roles that each of those principles play vis-à-vis specific substances and (ii) the compound’s proper unity. (shrink)

: The work of Herbert A. Simon has drawn increasing attention from modern scholars who argue that Simon's work changed during the Cold War. This is due to the fact that Simon seemingly changed the substance of his research in the 1950s. This paper argues that Simon did not change in any significant way, but was lead by his interest in decision making and rationality into areas of economics, political science, sociology, psychology, organization theory, and computer science. He used elements (...) of different disciplines to address his overall interest and there is therefore a considerable continuity in Simon's work. This paper also provides part of a background for the recent increase of interest in Simon's ideas by providing some details of the RAND Corporation and the Ford Foundation's support of scientific research through the post war years in general, and their connections to the behavioral science research at Carnegie Mellon University in particular. (shrink)

Consideraré la sección introductoria de Metafísica Z 11 en su contexto inmediato (conclusión de Z 10) con el propósito de aclarar aspectos cruciales de la relación entre la forma y la materia, que inciden en la posterior discusión con la tesis sobre la definición del Joven Sócrates. Argumentaré que estos pasajes sostienen una posición purista en cuanto a la naturaleza de la forma, que puede comprenderse mejor rechazando la realizabilidad múltiple. Finalmente, sugeriré que todo esto permite explicar en aquella discusión (...) las condiciones diferenciadas de definibilidad propias de las formas y los compuestos. (shrink)

Me propongo explicar que los términos sustanciales usados individuadoramente constituyen la expresión lingüística que fija la referencia a un objeto en el Organon de Aristóteles, y mostrar que esa expresión opera allí como principium individuationis. El artículo desarrolla dos tesis principales: Es legítimo adjudicar a Aristóteles una teoría descriptiva de la referencia, en la cual las propiedades esenciales incluidas en la definición constituyen condiciones suficientes para referir, dado un contexto donde los términos sustanciales se usan para individuar. Los individuos sustanciales (...) se ubican justificadamente en la base ontológica de las Categorías en virtud de que son los objetos de la referencia, y también de que se desempeñan como sujetos últimos de la predicación. My main goal is to explain that the substantial terms fix the reference to an object, and to show that this expression is the principium individuationis, within the Aristotelian Organon. The paper works out two main theses: Aristotle may be ascribed a descriptive theory of reference in which the essential properties included in the definition constitute sufficient conditions for referring to an object, provided that in the context the substantial terms are used to individualize. Substantial individuals are justifiably included at the bottom of the ontology in the Categories by virtue of their being the objects of reference, and also by virtue of their role as ultimate subjects of predication. (shrink)

The paper contributes to previous studies of identity as locally and interactionally produced by pointing to some of the multimodal resources employed by participants to achieving, challenge and manage the professional identity of ‘leader’ in different workplace settings. We examine professional identity work in sequential environments where it provides a resource for handling the resistance to improvement displayed by another participant. We show how leader identity work gets embedded within a four-part structure of: identifying a problem, proposing improvements, misaligning with (...) others’ proposals, and managing the misalignment. The paper is based on video ethnographic fieldwork and recordings of face-to-face institutional interaction at two different institutional settings in Denmark. The study provides insight about the role of identity work in the interactional achievement of institutional procedures. (shrink)

In Metaphysics Z 5, Aristotle discusses definition by addition and comes to accept it for per se accidents. I aim to explain how Aristotle could allow here certain statements by addition as valid definitions without contravening some relevant rules about repetition he established in the Organon, and also how this definition succeeds in blocking the regress he pointed out at 1030b35–1031a1. I conclude that ‘snub nose’ can be defined by a non-superfluous repetition, which in turn contains an explication of the (...) quality (‘snub’) along the line of the specification of the general property (‘concavity’). (shrink)