This paper challenges Daniel Dennett’s attempt to reconcile the performance of mind and brain within a physicalist framework with Jaegwon Kim’s argument that a coherent physicalist framework entails the epiphenomenalism of mental events. Dennett offers a materialist explanation of consciousness and argues that his model of mind does not imply reductive physicalism. I argue that Dennett’s explanation of mind clashes with Jaegwon Kim’s mind-body supervenience argument. Kim contends that non-reductive physicalism either voids the causal powers of mental properties, or it (...) violates physicalist framework. I conclude that Dennett’s account of mind does not escape or overcome Kim’s mind/body supervenience problem. If Kim’s argument does not prove Dennett’s explanation of mind to be either a form of reductive materialism, or a logically inconsistent view, it is due to the ambiguity of concepts involved in Dennett’s theory. (shrink)

This article focuses stakeholder theory on that critical juncture where stakeholder relationships and corporate policy decisions converge. A case study methodology is described that permits detailed analyses of multiple stakeholders’ objectives; it is suitable for studies of major corporate strategic decisions that are complex, controversial, involve multiple stakeholders, and require strategic trade-offs. The methodology is applied here to the dramatic decision by a Pacific Northwest forest company to phase out traditional clear-cut harvesting methods of old-growth forests. The study’s findings point (...) to new research questions and have theoretical implications for a finer grained conceptualization of stakeholder groups, stakeholder objectives, and stakeholder issues. (shrink)

Ukraine has always had a special place in Canadian foreign policy. Currently, Canada is deeply engaged in supporting Ukraine to restore political and economic stability and to implement democratic reforms. The Government in Ottawa has condemned Russian aggressive policy and the illegal military occupation of Crimea and has taken a variety of steps and initiatives since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine in 2014 including imposing sanctions, economic and military assistance, and supporting of NATO measures.

Scanlon grounds all moral principles in claims about "what individuals have reasons to agree to." Analyzing Scanlon's groundwork, I discuss his central reason for being concerned with morality and why personal and impersonal reasons for moral conduct cannot co-exist in his contractualism. I demonstrate that personal values and reasons are incommensurable with impersonal values and reasons. Thus, Scanlon needs to exclude impersonal reasons from the moral theory he advocates. But I argue that there may be a means of inclusion of (...) both the personal and impersonal values and reasons. I propose Aristotelian virtue ethics as a plausible foundation for subordinating the impersonal values and reasons to the value of human rationality in its full capacity. This subordination may provide the defensible condition that Scanlon's contractualism requires to justify moral principles to each person on the grounds of respect for human rationality. (shrink)

Human–nonhuman chimeras have been the focus of ethical controversies for more than a decade, yet some related issues remain unaddressed. For example, little has been said about the relationship between the origin of transferred cells and the morally relevant capacities to which they may give rise. Consider, for example, a developing mouse fetus that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a human and another that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a dolphin. If both chimeras acquire morally relevant (...) capacities as a result of transplantation, and if those capacities are indistinguishable, should the difference in cell origin matter to how we classify these creatures? I argue that if morally relevant capacities are easy to detect, cell origin is irrelevant to how the chimera ought to be treated. However, if such capacities are hard to detect, cell origin should play a role in considerations about how to treat the chimera. (shrink)

The current study investigated age differences in the use of attentional deployment, positive reappraisal and suppression while regulating responses to sadness-eliciting content. We also tested to what extent these emotion regulation strategies were useful for each age group in managing response to age-relevant sad information. Forty-two young participants (Mage = 18.5, SE =.15) and 48 older participants (Mage = 71.42, SE = 1.15) watched four sadness-eliciting videos (about death/illness, four to five minutes long) under four conditions—no-regulation (no regulation instructions), attentional (...) deployment (divert attention away), positive reappraisal (focus on positive outcomes) and suppression (conceal emotional expressions). We assessed negative emotional experience, expression, skin conductance level (SCL) and visual fixation duration while participants watched the emotional clips and followed the instructions for each condition. Results suggest that older adults were more successful than younger adults at implementing both attentional deployment and positive reappraisal. Ability to suppress emotions appears to remain stable with age. Within age-group comparisons suggested that for the older adults, positive reappraisal was a more useful emotion regulation strategy than the others, while the pattern among younger adults was less conclusive. Age-relevant differences in motivation and successful emotion regulatory efforts based on theoretical and empirical literatures are discussed. (shrink)

In his Metaphysics of Morals (particularly in the Doctrine of Virtue), but also in other late works, Kant extends and refines the content of his earlier works on ethics (Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason) to a considerable extent. These revisions and extensions not only show the limitations of an exclusive interpretation of Kants ethics as a deontological ethics of principles. His thoughts are also relevant for a large number of questions of theoretical morality currently under discussion. Thus, the distinction (...) drawn in the Doctrine of Virtue between perfect and imperfect obligations informs the problem of the solvability of moral conflicts and the role of supererogatory actions. Kant goes further into the question of what it means to be a good person, what moral significance is contained in close human ties such as friendship, and what role is played by happiness and the so-called obligations towards oneself. The papers each discuss Kants central ideas in the context of his earlier writings, but also within the context of our contemporary ethical debates. Thus attention is drawn to the significance and possible extent of an ethics of virtue understood in the Kantian sense. (shrink)

Extrapolation from a well-understood base population to a less-understood target population can fail if the base and target populations are not sufficiently similar. Differences between laboratory mice and humans, for example, can hinder extrapolation in medical research. Mice that carry a partial or complete human physiological system, known as humanized mice, are supposed to make extrapolation more reliable by simulating a variety of human diseases. But what justifies our belief that these mice are similar enough to their human counterparts to (...) simulate human disease? I argue that, unless three requirements are met in the process of humanizing mice, very little does. My requirements are not meant to provide necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee a particular outcome. Instead, they serve as a heuristic for guiding scientific judgments involving extrapolation. In developing each requirement, I engage with philosophical issues concerning the nature of model-based science and the mechanistic approach (and its limits) to making generalizations in the life sciences. (shrink)

The Theory of Mind Debate has seen a recent shift of focus from social observation toward social interaction. Defenders of so-called second-person accounts claim that social interactions reveal an understanding of another person which is different in kind to merely knowing that the other has a particular mental state. The aim of this paper is to specify this new form of understanding. In the first part, I criticize attempts to describe it as the knowledge of how to react to the (...) other’s mental state, i.e. as the exhibition of a social skill. In the second part, I develop an alternative proposal which is based upon the work of Cavell and Thompson. I suggest that understanding another person in a social interaction is to be conceptualized as the propositional nexus of acknowledging his mental state to him. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed commentary on the classic monograph by Alfred Tarski, and offers a reinterpretation and retranslation of the work using the original Polish text and the English and German translations. In the original work, Tarski presents a method for constructing definitions of truth for classical, quantificational formal languages. Furthermore, using the defined notion of truth, he demonstrates that it is possible to provide intuitively adequate definitions of the semantic notions of definability and denotation and that the notion (...) in a structure can be defined in a way that is analogous to that used to define truth. Tarski’s piece is considered to be one of the major contributions to logic, semantics, and epistemology in the 20th century. However, the author points out that some mistakes were introduced into the text when it was translated into German in 1935. As the 1956 English version of the work was translated from the German text, those discrepancies were carried over in addition to new mistakes. The author has painstakingly compared the three texts, sentence-by-sentence, highlighting the inaccurate translations, offering explanations as to how they came about, and commenting on how they have influenced the content and suggesting a correct interpretation of certain passages. Furthermore, the author thoroughly examines Tarski’s article, offering interpretations and comments on the work. (shrink)

Tinguelys gesamtes Œuvre scheint vom Vanitas-Motiv grundiert: seine sinnlosen Maschinen aus Schrott, sich selbst vernichtenden, ephemeren Artefakte, die in Form von Flügelaltären stattfindende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tod und erst recht der eine barocke Tragikomödie referierende Cenodoxus. Dass dieser Eindruck trügt, zeigt sich sobald das scheinbar Evidente mit den frühneuzeitlichen Spielarten der Vanitas konfrontiert wird. Dennoch adaptiert und inszeniert Tinguely das Motiv mit dem melancholischen Gestus des seines Heilshorizonts verlustig gegangenen Subjekts.

The purpose of this article is to describe how expansive learning in organisations can become a resource for learning in a wider community of practice (CoP). The “developmental work research” approach (DWR) based on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) is beneficial for analysing and interpreting the requirements in a field of action. Engeström’s specific form of “action research” focuses on expansive learning in activity systems. However, complex socio-technical change processes cannot be initiated and managed by the local community of practise (...) alone. In order to establish the use of new tools, new methodologies or organisational solutions in a field of work, a double path of expansive learning is needed: Findings from the participative analysis and interpretation of contradictions in the local activity system have to be transferred to wider communities of practice. This paper illustrates a double path of expansive learning by presenting the experiences of research and development in machine and plant engineering companies in Germany. In the AQUIMO project, a project team has developed an adaptable software tool for multidisciplinary mechatronical engineering and created a related qualification program. The support from external social researchers has helped to initiate, disseminate and establish new ways to organise the division of labour in teams of engineers. (shrink)

The development of the modern democratic society depends upon the successful integration of main democratic values in all its spheres, including education. Schools are faced with these challenges as well. The main role in the process of school change is given to the school principal, who is the leader of every innovation in school. One out of many types of school leadership is called democratic school leadership. One of the goals of such leadership is the development of school culture that (...) is based on democratic values and practices. Further on, the development of democratic school leadership opens an opportunity for students and teachers to gain knowledge an develop skills needed for them to become active citizens in their communities. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing literature in the field of democratic school leadership. Special focus is on the theoretical and practical operationalization of the democratic school leadership as it is presented the literature. Further, we shall analyze the possible answers to the questions of why and how to develop the democratic school leadership, and what is its role in the development of the democratic school community. (shrink)

W artykule dyskutowana jest problematyka genezy wglądu z odniesieniem do klasycznych koncepcji wglądu w psychologii postaci i nawiązującej do niej filozoficznej koncepcji wglądu Bernarda J.F. Lonergana. Przyjmują one, że wgląd jest uwarunkowany przez przygotowujące go procesy nieświadome. Teza o podstawowej roli nieświadomości w powstawaniu wglądu wymaga ustosunkowania się do istotnych problemów podejmowanych przez Stanisława Judyckiego w kontekście epistemologii przy charakterystyce nieświadomości: 1) czy ma sens przyjmowanie istnienia nieświadomych stanów mentalnych, niedostępnych w drodze introspekcyjnej, które mimo to są wyposażone w określone (...) treści intencjonalne?; 2) czy działanie nieświadomości jako mechanizmu powstawania wglądu unieważnia podmiotowość (autonomię) poznającego? Artykuł przedstawia argumenty na rzecz takich odpowiedzi na postawione pytania, które pozwalają utrzymać tezy na temat genezy wglądu przedstawione przez klasyczne koncepcje wglądu, tj. broni intencjonalności nieświadomych procesów przygotowujących wgląd oraz niedestrukcyjnego charakteru nieświadomych procesów wglądotwórczych wobec podmiotowości poznającego. (shrink)

The article has been dedicated to profile of the press texts’ specific group called fails divers. According to the author they may be considered as an example of linking information to an entertainment. Owing to them we obtain a piece of information that is not as essential as incredible, the reading provides us firstly with an entertainment. Because of this it may be improper to consider fails divers as a specific variety of a press note. However, formal determinants do not (...) supply a base sufficient to define faits divers as a separate informative species. Faits divers are hybrid product, which attraction and easy receipt have come into contemporary fashion of popular informative species. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to aspects of a journalist’s work published between 1996–2014 in the professional monthly magazine Press, aimed at people interested in media, advertisement and public relations. These statements help other media professionals become familiar with the work experience of their colleagues, as well as help acquaint new entrants to the profession with the rules, difficulties and dilemmas associated with this work. The author classifies and defines three types of published texts: those written in an instructional form, those (...) which approach the conventions of an informative article, and finally, copyright protected publications. An analysis of these texts leads to a conclusion that the primary aims of the publication have led its authors to focus attention on perceptions and the practical dimensions of the knowledge being shared. They use detailed descriptions, and have gradually abandoned ready solutions, encouraging readers instead to consider a range of possibilities; they also illustrate their suggestions with examples from personal experience. They do not fail to provide enlightening recollections of their own mistakes or detail the difficult beginnings of their own careers. The role models presented demand from the reader an ability to synthesize various elements. The original structure of the publication as well as its thoughtful and recollection-driven approach to the subject helps to achieve this. An awareness of the technical nature of texts urges experienced journalists to explain in plain terms the ins and outs of the profession by presenting specific events, making comparisons, and offering brief advice or warnings. This also relates to the language of expression they use, which makes even the official and hackneyed style of instructional discourse easy to understand. (shrink)

Die Unverzichtbarkeit der Beratung bzw. Prüfung einer medizinischen Studie durch eine Ethikkommission ist weithin anerkannt. Dennoch sind Forschungsethikkommissionen immer wieder der Kritik, z.B. nach mehr Effizienz, Transparenz oder Konsistenz ausgesetzt. Evaluationsinstrumente für Ethikkommissionen beinhalten oft implizite Vorstellungen „guter“ Qualität. Aus ethischer Sicht sind vor allem der Schutz der Versuchsperson und eine vertretbare Schaden-Nutzen-Bewertung wichtig. Der interdisziplinäre Sammelband geht der Frage auf den Grund, wie sich eine Qualitätsverbesserung aus ethischer Sicht gewährleisten und umsetzen lässt. Der Inhalt · Ethikkommissionen im rechtlichen und (...) ethischen Diskurs · Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen von Ethikkommissionen in der Schweiz und organisatorische und prozedurale Qualitätskriterien · Forschungs-Ethikkommissionen in der Schweiz: Qualitätsbewertung aus ethischer Sicht · Ethikkommissionen als Patientenschutzkommissionen · Die ethische Aufgabe von Ethikkommissionen angesichts normativer Divergenz von Therapie und Forschung · Ethische Theorien und die Bewertung von Forschungsvorhaben · Kriterien für die ethische Qualität des Begutachtungsprozesses · Schutz der Versuchsperson: Forderungen aus ethischer Sicht zur Struktur-, Prozess- und Ergebnisqualität Die Herausgeber Prof. Dr. Monika Bobbert lehrt und forscht zur Moraltheologie und Medizinethik an der Universität Münster. Dr. Gregor Scherzinger ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Sozialethik der Universität Luzern. (shrink)

Actions expressing emotions (such as caressing the clothes of one's dead friend in grief, or tearing apart a photograph out of jealousy) pose a notorious challenge to action theorists. They are thought to be intentional in that they are in some sense under the agent's control. They are not thought to be done for a reason, however, because they cannot be explained by considerations that favor them from the agent's point of view. This seems to be the case, at least, (...) if one subscribes to the Davidsonian standard model of action explanation. So far, philosophers have had three different reactions to this challenge. Rationalists insist that such actions can be rationalized by re-interpreting them. Arationalists insist that there simply is no reasoning process moving agents in emotional states to act. A third reaction questions the intentionality of such actions altogether. All three reactions, however, share the assumption underlying the standard account: if an agent is thought to act for a reason - and hence acts intentionally - he must entertain a desire and some means-end belief reflecting his reasoning process about how to attain what he desires by acting. In this paper, I try to show that this reflective reasoning mechanism is only one way to rationalize an action. Another way is by tracing an action to an unreflective valuing stance respresenting reasons the agent has from his point of view. Emotions are attitudes that help to grasp reasons the agent has. Since emotions come with a strong motivational potential they move the agent to act expressively. But the agent typically allows himself to do so, thereby monitoring the way in which he does it. To the extent that the agent unreflectively acts on a motive that is itself representative of his point of view, his expressive actions can be regarded as rationalizable. (shrink)