This article re-examines the theoretical basis for environmental and heritage interpretation in tourist settings in the light of hermeneutic philosophy. It notes that the pioneering vision of heritage interpretation formulated by Freeman Tilden envisaged a broadly educational, ethically informed and transformative art. By contrast, current cognitive psychological attempts to reduce interpretation to the monological transmission of information, targeting universal but individuated cognitive structures, are found to be wanting. Despite growing signs of diversity, this information processing approach to interpretation remains dominant. (...) The article then presents the alternative paradigm of hermeneutics through the works of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, to provide a broader interpretation of interpretation. This not only captures the essence of Tilden’s definition but construes heritage interpretation as a more inclusive, culturally situated, critically reflexive and dialogical practice. (shrink)

We propose developing AIs whose only final goal is being shut down. We argue that this approach to AI safety has three benefits: (i) it could potentially be implemented in reinforcement learning, (ii) it avoids some dangerous instrumental convergence dynamics, and (iii) it creates trip wires for monitoring dangerous capabilities. We also argue that the proposal can overcome a key challenge raised by Soares et al. (2015), that shutdown-seeking AIs will manipulate humans into shutting them down. We conclude by comparing (...) our approach with Soares et al.'s corrigibility framework. (shrink)

This article reflects on the conceptual and aesthetic practices engaged in the development of a performance work by Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum titled DISRUPTERS, THIS IS DISRUPTER X. Nkosi/Sunstrum liberally describe this multimedia performance work as an ‘anti-opera’. In 2014, the Iwalewahaus African Art Archive at the University of Bayreuth invited Nkosi and Sunstrum to make further developments to an anti-opera they had been conceiving since 2013. The invitation formed part of ‘Mashup The Archive’, an artist (...) residency encouraging contemporary artists from Africa to engage with the Iwalewahaus Archive. The resulting performance was presented at the Schokofabrik, Bayreuth and was a tour through a ‘maquette’ of the anti-opera. It was a ‘living maquette’ in which audiences (termed ‘Safarists’) travelled through stations illustrating sketches of scenes, histories of characters, and other fragments of narrative exposition. The artists illustrated these stations using both ‘relics’ from the Iwalewahaus Archive, and newly generated digital and analogue content. Using a common tactic found in electronic music known as ‘sampling’, Nkosi/Sunstrum recontextualized and reinvented these artefacts to form part of the anti-opera narrative. The world of the anti-opera was created by video projections, sound streamed live to Bayreuth from Johannesburg, handmade replicas of archival objects, original music created from archival instruments, live performers and a professional opera singer. South African literary theorists Delphi Carstens and Mer Roberts suggest that the sci-fi genre ‘offers a potential vehicle for expressing the African oral mythical mode and a (re)writing of the continent’s marginalized oral histories in the mythopoeic mode’.1 Nkosi/Sunstrum are interested in the radical implications of this view and are using sci-fi as a tactic for imagining and ‘occupying’ new African futures. (shrink)

According to ‘Excluders’, descriptive uncertainty – but not normative uncertainty – matters to what we ought to do. Recently, several authors have argued that those wishing to treat normative uncertainty differently from descriptive uncertainty face a dependence problem because one's descriptive uncertainty can depend on one's normative uncertainty. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the phenomenon of dependence poses a decisive problem for Excluders. I argue that existing arguments fail to show this, and that, while stronger ones (...) can be found, Excluders can escape them. (shrink)

We sometimes seem to face fundamental moral uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty about what is morally good or morally right that cannot be reduced to ordinary descriptive uncertainty. This phenomenon raises a puzzle for noncognitivism, according to which moral judgments are desire-like attitudes as opposed to belief-like attitudes. Can a state of moral uncertainty really be a noncognitive state? So far, noncognitivists have not been able to offer a completely satisfactory account. Here, we argue that noncognitivists should exploit the formal analogy between (...) moral uncertainty and moral multi-objective decision problems. Our ‘multi-objective story’ enables noncognitivists to save our moral uncertainty thought and talk by explaining how the underlying phenomenon could be noncognitive. (shrink)

Reveals how we can each reconnect to collective intelligence and return our world to wholeness, balance, and sanity • Explains how collective intelligence manifests in flocks of birds, instantaneous knowing in indigenous peoples, and the power of sacred places • Offers ways for us to reconnect to the infinite source of wisdom that fuels collective intelligence and underscores the importance of ceremony, pilgrimage, and initiation • Draws on recent findings in New Paradigm science, traditional teachings from indigenous groups from North, (...) South, and Central America and Siberia, as well as sacred geometry, deep ecology, and expanded states of consciousness For our ancestors, collective intelligence was a normal part of life. We see it today as the mysterious force that enables flocks of birds, swarms of bees, and schools of fish to function together in perfect synchrony, communicating and cooperating at some undetectable level. At its most subtle, it’s an instantaneous knowing, shared by members of a group, of the wisest course of action that will benefit all. As Dery Dyer reveals, collective intelligence still resides within each of us, and it is the key to restoring balance and harmony to our world. She shows how it occurs spontaneously when individuals who share a need and a purpose instinctively “self-organize” into a group and function with no leader or central authority. Such groups exhibit abilities much greater than what any of their members possess individually--or what can be replicated with artificial intelligence. Dyer explains, due to an unquestioning dependence on technology, modern humanity has forgotten how to connect with collective intelligence and fallen into collective stupidity, otherwise known as mob mind or groupthink, which is now endangering the interconnected web of life on Earth. Drawing on recent findings in New Paradigm science, traditional teachings from indigenous groups, as well as sacred geometry, deep ecology, and expanded states of consciousness, the author shows how the ability to think and act collectively for the highest good is hardwired in all living beings. She explains how to release ourselves from enslavement by technology and use it more wisely toward the betterment of all life. Underscoring the vital importance of ceremony, pilgrimage, and initiation, she offers ways for us to reconnect to the infinite source of wisdom that fuels collective intelligence and which manifests everywhere in the natural world. Revealing that once we relearn how to hear the Earth, we can heal the Earth, Dyer shows how each of us has a vital role to play in restoring our world to wholeness. (shrink)

This article is made available under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND, which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited.

Artificially intelligent systems will be used to make increasingly important decisions about us. Many of these decisions will have to be made without universal agreement about the relevant moral facts. For other kinds of disagreement, it is at least usually obvious what kind of solution is called for. What makes moral disagreement especially challenging is that there are three different ways of handling it. _Moral solutions_ apply a moral theory or related principles and largely ignore the details of the disagreement. (...) _Compromise solutions_ apply a method of finding a compromise and taking information about the disagreement as input. _Epistemic solutions_ apply an evidential rule that treats the details of the disagreement as evidence of moral truth. Proposals for all three kinds of solutions can be found in the AI ethics and value alignment literature, but little has been said to justify choosing one over the other. I argue that the choice is best framed in terms of _moral risk_. (shrink)

The role of a corporation is often debated as a mutually exclusive choice between economic responsibility to shareholders and social responsibility to society. An evolving viewpoint embraces an integrated approach focused on long-term value creation for shareholders which benefits other stakeholders. Maximizing long-term shareholder value as a corporate objective can be compatible with stakeholder theory when an enlightened shareholder maximization strategy is embraced. Firms implementing an enlightened shareholder maximization strategy are expected to make decisions and use resources which achieve long-term (...) value-creating outcomes. However, critics of enlightened shareholder maximization as a corporate goal contend this strategy conflicts with maximizing shareholder value. This study explores whether firms which embrace a balanced enlightened shareholder maximization strategy indeed create long-term value which does not sacrifice shareholder wealth. (shrink)

Extending the dialogue on corporate social performance as descriptive stakeholder management, we examine differences in CSP activity between family and nonfamily firms. We argue that CSP activity can be explained by the firm’s identity orientation toward stakeholders. Specifically, individualistic, relational, or collectivistic identity orientations can describe a firm’s level of CSP activity toward certain stakeholders. Family firms, we suggest, adopt a more relational orientation toward their stakeholders than nonfamily firms, and thus engage in higher levels of CSP. Further, we invoke (...) collectivistic identity orientation to argue that the higher the level of family or founder involvement within a family firm, the greater the level of CSP toward specific stakeholders. Using social performance rating data from 1991 to 2005, we find that family and nonfamily firms demonstrate notable differences in terms of social initiatives and social concerns. We also find that the level of family and founder involvement is related to the type and frequency of a family firm’s social initiatives and social concerns. (shrink)

ABSTRACTExperiences that contradict one's core concepts elicit intense emotions. Such schema incongruence can elicit awe, wherein experiences that are too vast...

The popularity and profitability of American gridiron football is beyond dispute. Recent polls put football as the overwhelming favorite of people who follow at least one sport and huge revenues are reported at both the professional and the university level. We know, however, that what is the case tells us little about what ought to be the case, and it is to the latter question that this paper is directed. I offer a three-pronged attack on the ethical acceptability of American (...) football, both amateur and professional, based on harm to the players, objectification of the players, and harm to others done by the players, leading to the conclusion that the sport, as currently constituted, is morally unacceptable. (shrink)

The clinical application of the concept of patient autonomy has centered on the ability to deliberate and make treatment decisions (decisional autonomy) to the virtual exclusion of the capacity to execute the treatment plan (executive autonomy). However, the one-component concept of autonomy is problematic in the context of multiple chronic conditions. Adherence to complex treatments commonly breaks down when patients have functional, educational, and cognitive barriers that impair their capacity to plan, sequence, and carry out tasks associated with chronic care. (...) The purpose of this article is to call for a two-component re-conceptualization of autonomy and to argue that the clinical assessment of capacity for patients with chronic conditions should be expanded to include both autonomous decision-making and autonomous execution of the agreed-upon treatment plan. We explain how the concept of autonomy should be expanded to include both decisional and executive autonomy, describe the biopsychosocial correlates of the two-component concept of autonomy, and recommend diagnostic and treatment strategies to support patients with deficits in executive autonomy. (shrink)

In this rich cultural history, Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness through a close study of film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters as unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed: failing, resisting, or opting out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the Silent Era to the Oscar-winning Nomadland in 2021, Wojcik shows how film cycles reveal a tension in the American imaginary between (...) viewing homelessness as, on the one hand, deviant or threatening, and, on the other, emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively 'unhomes' dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to the American cinema (and American story) all along. (shrink)

The paper presents evidence in bacteria for the utility of Godfrey-Smith’s environmental complexity thesis, using certain kinds of signal transduction systems as proxies for cognitive/behavioral complexity. Microbiologists already accept that the number of signal transduction proteins in a bacterial genome indicates the level of ecological complexity to which the organism is subject: the more signalling proteins, the greater the complexity. Sheer numbers are not always a reliable indicator of behavioral complexity, however. The paper proposes a new, ECT-based procedure for identifying, (...) from genomic sequence and signalling repertoire, novel bacterial candidates likely to exhibit behavioral complexity in response to a complex ecological niche. (shrink)

Lena Horne was the first African-American woman to be signed to a contract to a major Hollywood studio, who did however not know what to do with her. Her >colour< – in her voice as well as her looks – meant that she did not fit into the racial hierarchies of the day and she was largely confined oppressively to the margins. However, she was also able to some degree, and in collaboration with other African-American figures in Hollywood, to use (...) this to give a glimpse of African-American modernism in Hollywood cinema. This is thus a case study of cultural production as struggle. (shrink)

Previous studies of technical innovation in organizations have tended to neglect how power and political processes shape the development of new technologies. Our study of new product development at a successful computer graphics company suggests that corporate ideology and politics often determine the success or failure of new product ideas. Four stages of product development are identified along with the political activities and influence tactics used at each stage.

This paper discusses the tenability of John Greco's solution to the problems of the nature and value of knowledge in his book, Achieving knowledge (2010). Divided into two parts, the discussion (1) specifies how both problems have developed until the current period and (2) determines whether Greco, with his virtue reliabilism, supplies an adequate solution to both problems. I take the view that regardless of Greco's adoption of a contextualist semantics, his epistemic theory remains inadequate so long as it is (...) unable to specify the extent to which a person's abilities can be appropriately involved in the attainment of knowledge or any success from ability. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that, in order for white racial consciousness and practice to shift toward an antiracist praxis, a relational understanding of racism, the "self, "and society is necessary We find that such understanding arises from a confluence of propositional, affective, and tacit forms of knowledge about racism and one's own situatedness within it. We consider the claims sociologists have made about transformations in racial consciousness, bringing sociological theories of racism into dialogue with research on whiteness and antiracism. (...) We assert that sociological research on white racism and "whiteness" tends to privilege propositional and tacit/common sense knowledge, respectively, as critical to shifting white racial consciousness. Research on antiracism privileges affective knowledge as the source of antiracist change. We examine some of Perry's recent ethnographic research with white people who attended either multiracial or majority white high schools to argue that the confluence of these three types of knowledge is necessary to transform white racial praxis because it produces a relational understanding of self and "other, "and, by extension, race, racism, and antiracist practice. (shrink)

Although theoretically rigorous, the book is comprehensible to the beginning qualitative researcher.

In this article, I follow the evolving visual form of the plant illustrations produced by the 17th-century physician and microscopist Nehemiah Grew. I trace the changing appearance of a variety of magnified plants throughout the course of their manifestation in illustration: beginning with their unsteady earliest appearance in 1672 in the publication The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun, into their reworking in the popular French translation, which was reissued and reprinted multiple times, and finally to Grew's magnum opus a decade later, (...) The Anatomy of Plants (1682). In addition to addressing the epistemic significance of these shifts in style, I also consider the importance of the translation process for the refining of Grew's ideas. (shrink)

Through a content analysis of print media and a comparison of media images with trends in women's behavior, the authors explore the rhetoric and reality surrounding the exit of college-educated women from the workforce to become full-time mothers, a phenomenon that has been dubbed “opting out.” The major imagery surrounding opting out emphasizes motherhood and family, elites, and choice. A close reading reveals some inconsistencies that counter the prevailing positive depiction. The authors also find that media coverage of opting out (...) appears in leading publications reaching large and diverse audiences. A comparison of articles' themes against actual trends in women's opting-out behavior shows that there is a disjuncture between the two. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the dissemination of a new feminine mystique. (shrink)

Barrett, Pamela Believers or atheists, generous or tight, Hero or coward, black, yellow or white, Female or male, fully grown or a child, Those of vast wealth or the desperately poor, At the end we're all equal. We are all shown the door..

The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue Anderson, (...) In Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise. (shrink)

In spite of the seemingly omnipresent corruption and Mafia activity plaguing modern Russia it is nevertheless possible, and desirable, to conduct business ethically there, as the author testifies. Pamela Woolley has recently completed a full time MBA at London Business School, prior to which her career was in international telecommunications. She has long been interested in Russia and worked in Moscow during the summer between her two years of study. The experience has prompted her to seek a more permanent (...) position in the region and was the impetus behind writing this article. She also wishes to thank Dr Jan Dauman of InterMatrix Group for his interest and contribution to the information gathered in the preparation of this article. (shrink)

This book explores Rousseau's contribution to the Republican tradition in political thought. Through comparisons with various Republican lineages, it addresses problems that have defined and redefined Republicanism: attaining virtue, preserving liberty, sustaining the social order, orienting persons toward the common good, and having the law rule over men.

The anonymous fourth-century tract De poenitentia depicts with a grand oratorical flourish the universality of the psalms in the Christian world. Its author proclaims that the psalms are heard at vigils, at morning prayer, and at funerals in the city churches, but the power of “David” extends beyond their walls.