Understanding of organizational ethics phenomena requires complex understanding of organizational practices in their real world contexts. We can try to understand and build theory about these complex real world practices from the points of view of: a traditional deductive, ethics literature-based, literature gap formulation approach; or, an inductive, practitioner-based literature gap formulation approach. This consideration of inductive, practitioner-based versus deductive, literature-based literature gap formulation is related to the discussion concerning “engaged scholarship” and relationships and gaps between theory and practice in (...) organization studies [Van De Ven, 2007, Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Research Knowledge ]. However, there is an important difference with respect to the key issue of ethics literature versus practitioner-based literature gap formulation. This article offers examples of the two different approaches and makes comparisons between them. Implications for practice-based organizational ethics theory building, Ph.D. education, and public intellectual work are considered. (shrink)

Este artigo recorda os principais aspectos e motivações da Expedição Langsdorff, missão de reconhecimento do interior do Brasil iniciada em 1821, composta pelo cônsul russo barão Langsdorff, o pintor alemão Moritz Rugendas, Aimé-Adrien Taunay, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, o polígrafo Hercules Florence e o especialista em mapas Néster G. Rubtsov. Busca diferenças entre esta expedição e iniciativas outras, a título de exemplo, as dos bandeirantes e jesuítas, bem como a expedição indigenista de Rondon, e propõe o aprofundamento das investiga­ções. Apresenta atributos resgatados (...) pela poesia brasileira contemporânea e elementos cons­titutivos da identidade cultural brasileira presentes na Expedição Langsdorff, os quais os auto­res sugerem ser relevantes para pesquisadores do tema e para a inserção do Brasil no contexto internacional político, diplomático e econômico nos tempos hodiernos. (shrink)

Health care professionals often face moral dilemmas. Not dealing constructively with moral dilemmas can cause moral distress and can negatively affect the quality of care. Little research has been documented with methodologies meant to support professionals in care for the homeless in dealing with their dilemmas. Moral case deliberation is a method for systematic reflection on moral dilemmas and is increasingly being used as ethics support for professionals in various health-care domains. This study deals with the question: What is the (...) contribution of MCD in helping professionals in an institution for care for the homeless to deal with their moral dilemmas? A mixed-methods responsive evaluation design was used to answer the research question. Five teams of professionals from a Dutch care institution for the homeless participated in MCD three times. Professionals in care for the homeless value MCD positively. They report that MCD helped them to identify the moral dilemma/question, and that they learned from other people’s perspectives while reflecting and deliberating on the values at stake in the dilemma or moral question. They became aware of the moral dimension of moral dilemmas, of related norms and values, of other perspectives, and learned to formulate a moral standpoint. Some experienced the influence of MCD in the way they dealt with moral dilemmas in daily practice. Half of the professionals expect MCD will influence the way they deal with moral dilemmas in the future. Most of them were in favour of further implementation of MCD in their organization. (shrink)

What we perceive is the product of an intrinsic process and not part of external physical reality. This notion is consistent with the philosophical position of transcendental idealism but also agrees with physiological findings on the thalamocortical system. -Frequency rhythms of discharge activity from thalamic and cortical neurons are facilitated by cholinergic arousal and resonate in thalamocortical networks, thereby transiently forming assemblies of coherent oscillations under constraints of sensory input and prefrontal attentional mechanisms. Perception and conscious experience may be based (...) on such assemblies and sensory input to thalamic nuclei plays merely a constraining role in their formation. In schizophrenia, the ability of sensory input to modulate self-organisation of thalamocortical activity may be generally reduced. If during arousal thalamocortical self-organisation is underconstrained by sensory input, then attentional mechanisms alone may determine the content of perception and hallucinations may arise. (shrink)

To whom do sperm and ova belong? Few tissues are produced by the human body with more waste than the germ cells. Yet dominion over the germ cells, and over the early embryo that results from their union in vitro, is behind much of the emotion that modern reproductive intervention can engender. The germ cells differ from other human tissues that can be donated or transplanted because they carry readily utilizable genetic information. Eventual expression of the germ cells' genetic potential (...) is the legitimate concern and responsibility of their donors, although in the right circumstances the responsibility can by agreement be entrusted to institutions administering gamete or embryo donor programmes; these institutions, in turn, may need to assume responsibility for decisions if, in the case of embryo storage, the wishes of the two donors conflict. The fact of sperm and ovum ownership (and the genetic potential that goes with it) before individuals part with these tissues is beyond dispute. Some contentious issues may be clarified if this area of human dominion, namely control over genetic expression among offspring, is acknowledged to be the legitimate persisting concern of those who have produced sperm and ova after storage commences. (shrink)

We discuss five kinds of representations of rationales and provide a formal account of how they can alter disputation. The formal model of disputation is derived from recent work in argument. The five kinds of rationales are compilation rationales, which can be represented without assuming domain-knowledge (such as utilities) beyond that normally required for argument. The principal thesis is that such rationales can be analyzed in a framework of argument not too different from what AI already has. The result is (...) a formal understanding of rationales, a partial taxonomy, and a foundation for computer programs that represent and reason with rationales.The five kinds of rationales are as follows: (c)ompression and (s)pecialization, which yield rules, and (d)isputation, which yields a decision. These are modeled as potentially changing the focus of the dispute. Then there are (f)it, a rationale for rules, and (r)esolution, a rationale for decisions. These cannot be modeled as simply; they force disputation to a meta-level, at least temporarily. (shrink)

The integration of a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach to food systems can contribute to redirect research and innovation toward the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 - Zero hunger - as well as other intertwined SDGs. Even though the scientific literature bridging RRI and food systems has grown over the past years, no critical reviews of this scholarship are currently available. This paper fills this gap by producing a critical review of the scientific literature on RRI in food systems (...) that has been published between 2017 and 2023. Our search led to a selection of 47 research articles that were analysed for this review. Our findings show that studies in this scholarship have focused on the stages of inputs/agricultural production, with a focus on digital technologies for agriculture. When analysing the motivations for applying RRI, we found that this varied from reasons that are more market-related, such as increasing technologies’ societal acceptance, to a reorientation of food systems towards the tackling of societal challenges. Concerning the conceptualization of RRI in food systems, we found that scholars relied on a widely known definition, but its interpretation varied greatly among the studies. Finally, we analysed how RRI has been applied in this literature and found that while some scholars provided examples of responsible innovation, others applied it to analyse innovation governance, and others used RRI to analyze research projects or innovations to ‘improve’ their alignment with this concept. Overall, this literature review showed that there is a need to develop more collaborative and reflexive work to unlock RRI’s potential to inform policy and practice that can foster more responsive and inclusive food systems capable of achieving SDG2. (shrink)

Many physicists regard the flow of time as an illusion. There is an upper level flow of time, the phenomenon of past/present/future; and there is a lower level flow of time which is really a flow of events. Perceptual completion accounts for the lower level flow of time in a few ways: apparent movement; amodal completion; and dynamic change as exemplified by a newly described modal completion that we called happening. It acts like an illusory percept connecting discrete stimuli in (...) all sensory modalities. The past/present/future distinction cannot exist unless an object is perceived to be the same now as it is then. This cognition requires object persistence. Experiments with object persistence suggest the circumstances when that, too, is an illusory percept. The illusory percepts of object persistence and perceptual completion can account for the entire flow of time. Our findings and conclusions are congruent with a few time theories and cosmologies that suggest that the flow of time is an illusion. (shrink)

I propose that neural cognition is supported by non-neural storage of a 3-D model of local space, used in the planning of movements. Information is stored in wave-like excitations which couple to neurons in the thalamus, with the wave-vectors of excitations representing spatial positions. This hybrid of neural and non-neural cognition may have fitness advantages over any purely neural mechanism -- in information capacity, geometric accuracy, and fast selective retrieval. The wave excitations may be sustained on a Bose-condensed state of (...) some excitation in the brain, by a mechanism like those investigated by Frohlich, Umezawa, Vitiello and others. These states, being frictionless, can store information indefinitely at low energy levels, insulated from thermal noise, so are an ideal substrate for memory. If a Bose-condensed state is a 3-D representation of local reality, it may be the basis of phenomenal consciousness . The resulting theory of consciousness is highly constrained, and agrees well with the main properties of conscious experience. In this account, consciousness arises from a very simple state of matter, rather than from complexity; and it evolved to meet one of the strongest selection pressures on the brain. (shrink)

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”.

It may seem faintly absurd to claim or imply that a Vergilian cento has suffered unjustified neglect from scholars. These works—of which there are sixteen, covering a period of over three centuries within Late Antiquity—are usually treated at best with amused tolerance, and at worst with angry disdain. Though always ingenious, sometimes funny, and occasionally informative about the reception of Vergil, they are seldom admired. Even among Italian scholars, some of whom have paid much attention to centos, a recession has (...) set in since the annus mirabilis of 1981, which saw two editions of the Medea of Hosidius Geta. Proba has, deservedly, attracted more attention than most; her aims and methods as a Christian poetess were carefully and illuminatingly studied twenty years ago by Reinhard Herzog, and her interest as a female Roman aristocrat has brought her further attention, especially in recent years. The main aim of the present article is to suggest a particular context and a serious purpose for her cento. A postscript will show that it went on to enjoy considerable popularity until the end of the century, and an introductory section will discuss its date, but very briefly, since Matthews has convincingly said most of what needs to be said about a recent attempt to redate it. Proba's preface, much of it not in cento form, calls for detailed treatment from various angles—textual, literary, historical—and will be explored in a separate article. (shrink)

The cento of Proba has recently enjoyed a remarkable upsurge of scholarly interest. A welcome translation was provided in 1981, and an article of five years later, scrutinizing the evidence for its date and authorship, has aroused much controversy. In two recent contributions vindicating the traditional date new or more precise suggestions have been made about the poem's historical context. In between these, yet another article has argued, without confirming or refuting the revised dating and attribution, that in various ways (...) the work reflects the interest of the aristocratic ladies of the Anician family. And now there is a second article by Danuta Shanzer, repeating many of her early points and adding some interesting new ones. All this sudden attention is not unmerited, for as Herzog observed long ago the work is not of the comic or trivializing kind that Ausonius envisaged in his comments on the genre and does not degrade Vergil but rather, at least in the often quoted words of its prefatory poem, ‘improves’ him. (shrink)

Hutsuls, as one of the ethnic groups of the Ukrainian people, are undoubtedly, along with fights and lemmas, among the most striking exponents of the spiritual culture of the Carpathian Ukrainians. The great attractiveness of the Hutsul's geographical space of habitation could not but affect their worldviews, bright mentality and original patterns of traditional culture. Along with unsurpassed specimens of folk architecture, folk art, choreography, the original pearls of the Hutsul's spiritual heritage include their songs.