Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms have witnessed prosperity in solving many-objective optimization problems over the past three decades. Unfortunately, no one single MOEA equipped with given parameter settings, mating-variation operator, and environmental selection mechanism is suitable for obtaining a set of solutions with excellent convergence and diversity for various types of MaOPs. The reality is that different MOEAs show great differences in handling certain types of MaOPs. Aiming at these characteristics, this paper proposes a flexible ensemble framework, namely, ASES, which is (...) highly scalable for embedding any number of MOEAs to promote their advantages. To alleviate the undesirable phenomenon that some promising solutions are discarded during the evolution process, a big archive that number of contained solutions be far larger than population size is integrated into this ensemble framework to record large-scale nondominated solutions, and also an efficient maintenance strategy is developed to update the archive. Furthermore, the knowledge coming from updating archive is exploited to guide the evolutionary process for different MOEAs, allocating limited computational resources for efficient algorithms. A large number of numerical experimental studies demonstrated superior performance of the proposed ASES. Among 52 test instances, the ASES performs better than all the six baseline algorithms on at least half of the test instances with respect to both metrics hypervolume and inverted generational distance. (shrink)

Short-term or working memory provides temporary storage of information in the brain after an experience and is associated with conscious awareness. Neurons sensitive to the multiple stimulus attributes comprising an experience are distributed within many brain regions. Such distributed cell assemblies, activated by an event, are the most plausible system to represent the WM of that event. Studies with a variety of imaging technologies have implicated widespread brain regions in the mediation of WM for different categories of information. Each kind (...) of WM may thus be expected to involve many brain regions rather than a local, uniquely dedicated set of cells. Neurons in a distributed “cell assembly” may be self-selected by their temporally coherent activations. The process by which this fragmented representation of the recent past is reassembled to accomplish essentially automatic and reliable recognition of a recurrent event constitutes an important problem. One plausible mechanism to achieve the identification of past with previous events would require that the representational system mediating WM must coexist in spatial extent and somehow overlap in temporal activation with cell ensembles registering input from subsequent events. The detection of such a postulated mechanism required an experimental approach which would focus upon spatial patterns of coherent activation while information about different events was stored in WM and retrieved, rather than focusing upon the temporal sequences of activation in localized regions of interest. For this purpose, the familiar delayed matching from sample task was modified. A series of information-free flashes, or “noncontingent probes,” was presented before an initial series of visual information items, the Priming Sample, which were to be held in WM during a Delay Period. A second series of visual information items were then presented, the Matching Sample. The task required detection of any item in the second series which had beenabsentfrom the initial series. Thirty such trials with a particular category of visual information constituted a single task. Several DMS tasks with this standardized design, but with different categories of visual information, were presented within each test session. The information categories included letters of the alphabet, single digit numbers, or faces from a school yearbook. Event-related potentials , were computed from 21 standardized electrode placements, separately for information-free probes and for information items in each interval of the trials within a task. Because each electrode is particularly sensitive to coherent activation of neurons in the immediately underlying brain regions, topographic maps were constructed and interpolated across the surface of the scalp. The momentary fluctuations of the resulting voltage “landscapes” throughout the task were then subjected to quantitative analysis. Distinctive landscapes sometimes persisted for prolonged periods, implying sustained engagement of very large populations of neurons. “Difference landscapes” were constructed by subtraction of topographic maps evoked by noncontingent probes during the Delay Period from maps of probe ERPs before the presentation of the initial information in the Priming Sample. Such probe difference landscapes displayed recurrent high similarity to momentary landscapes elicited during subsequent presentation of the information items in the Matching Sample. It seemed as if the distributed cell assembly continuously engaged by mediation of WM of the diverse attributes of the initial stimuli was being dynamically compared to the ensembles engaged by registration of the subsequent stimuli. Spatial Principal Component Analysis was applied to the sequences of momentary voltage landscapes observed throughout trials of each task. This method sought a small number of spatial patterns with which these large sets of inhomogeneous spatial distributions of voltage could be reconstructed. This is the spatial analog of the reconstruction of local ERPs by temporal principal components, as often described previously. Five Spatial Principal Components were found which accounted for about 90% of the total variance of voltage across the surface of the scalp throughout every task. Theloadings,or distinguishing topographic features, of these SPCs, were highly similar during every cognitive task for every subject. However,factor scores,or relative average contribution to the overall voltage distributions, of the different SPCs varied substantially among subjects between the tasks and momentarily within successive intervals of each task. These five SPCs may reflect coherent activation of huge distributed ensembles of neurons which comprise independent but interacting functional brain subsystems. These subsystems may correspond to basic resources available to individuals for allocation to mediate conscious evaluation of information during cognitive activity, providing a filter to bind together fractionated representations of the past to evaluate the present. (shrink)

Suspended sediment modeling is an important subject for decision-makers at the catchment level. Accurate and reliable modeling of suspended sediment load is important for planning, managing, and designing of water resource structures and river systems. The objective of this study was to develop artificial intelligence- based ensemble methods for modeling SSL in Katar catchment, Ethiopia. In this paper, three single AI-based models, that is, support vector machine, adaptive neurofuzzy inference system, feed-forward neural network, and one conventional multilinear regression (...) modes, were used for SSL modeling. Besides, four different ensemble methods, neural network ensemble, ANFIS ensemble, weighted average ensemble, and simple average ensemble, were developed by combining the outputs of the four single models to improve their predictive performance. The study used two-year discharge and SSL data for training and verification of the applied models. Determination coefficient and root mean square error were used to evaluate the performances of the developed models. Based on the performance measure results, the ANFIS model provides higher efficiency than the other developed single models. Out of all developed ensemble models, the nonlinear ANFIS model combination method was found to be the most accurate method and could increase the efficiency of SVM, MLR, ANFIS, and FFNN models by 19.02%, 37%, 9.73%, and 16.3%, respectively, at the verification stage. Overall, the proposed ensemble models in general and the AI-based ensemble in particular provide excellent performance in SSL estimation. (shrink)

This article approaches the recent work of pre-eminent Indian conceptual artist Vivan Sundaram, Trash, as a supplement to dominant representational practices of, and within, the Indian megacity. Re-purposing tropes that motivate both popular and specialist discourses, Sundaram’s recent ensemble rehearses the discursive construction of the megacity-as-waste, by representing an urban totality through elaborate, ordered arrangements of garbage. Working collaboratively with waste-pickers who are members of the non-governmental organization Chintan: Environmental and Research Action Group in New Delhi, the artist sorts, (...) re-assembles and scales the found-objects of Trash into detailed models of a monumental urban landscape. Through a close reading of its formal aspects, the entry examines Trash’s reflection on logics of planned obsolescence which govern both the work as well as fantasies of economic nationalism premised on dualistic images of the global/mega-city. (shrink)

One of the features of an encompassing account of language that Charles Taylor examines in Chapter Five, “The Figuring Dimension of Language,” ofThe Language Animalis a special kind of metaphor, which is rooted in the embodiment of humans. Their perspective-taking, their intuition of position in space, etc., provide ‘structural templates’ for thinking and leave their traces in their expressions. Taylor compares these metaphors with paradigms. My paper discusses the differences between the two. Taylor’s example ‘Time Is a Resource’ is (...) understood more deeply if seen as a paradigm, i.e., a set of beliefs and practices, instead of as a ‘structural template,’ i.e., rooted in embodiment.L’une des possibilités de «la dimension figurative du langage» que Charles Taylor examine au chapitre 5 deThe Language Animalest un type particulier de métaphore ancré dans le corps humain. La perspective que les humains adoptent ou, par exemple, l’intuition de leur position dans l’espace fournissent des modèles structurels pour penser et laissent des traces dans nos expressions. Taylor compare ces métaphores à des paradigmes. Dans cet article, je traite des différences entre les deux. L’exemple du «temps comme ressource» mis en évidence par Taylor, ainsi que ses implications, sont mieux compris s’ils sont envisagés comme paradigme, c’est-à-dire comme un ensemble de croyances et de pratiques plutôt que comme un modèle structurel ancré de façon durable dans des corps. (shrink)

In the years of National Socialism, and even during World War II, German scientists traveled abroad extensively. While international travels by natural scientists were studied in some detail, travels by scholars in the humanities have been studied to a much lesser degree, even though travel documents offer valuable insights into the regulated internationality of National Socialism. – We provide a first overview of international travels of scholars in the humanities between 1933 and 1945. The examples demonstrate how travelling academics dealt (...) with conflicting expectations, justified their intentions, articulated disappointment, offered pragmatic advice for the further shaping of contacts abroad, and in this way became active participants of the resource ensemble of academia and politics. The study is based on extensive material from the political archive of the Auswärtiges Amt and the archive of the Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung from the Bundesarchiv which to this date have been hardly explored. (shrink)

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater (...) specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” (TTOM) – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism. (shrink)

There are few sartorial ensembles as heavily signified as masculine as a suit. This article focuses on the suit within queer fashion digital cultures and spaces to explore how butch of colour digital fashion suits up to offer us different ways to think about masculinity. Intervening in the erasure of women of colour in histories of fashion – including menswear – and histories of sexuality – butch, dapper, tomboy, dandy – I argue that butch digital fashion works as a site (...) and composition of flesh, fabric and feeling that reworks masculinity as a project of embodiment. I look at three interwoven dimensions of butch digital fashion – aesthetic process, texture as feeling and spatial imaginations – attending to the themes of fantasy, desire and pleasure. I situate butch within and between fashion studies and media studies to offer butch as a relation, practice, orientation and site of embodiment to think about being and becoming, about the body politics of space and feeling, as matters of race, sexuality, class and gender – and the materialities of race, sexuality, class and gender, mediated by the global, and as the global by the digital. Digital butch fashion is, at once, a visual culture, a creative visual space, a resource of queer fantasy and an aesthetic process. It is messy, tense and fraught with the politics of race, colonialism and class, yet at the same time, dense with possibility, pleasure and eroticism. Butch of colour fashion offers frames and forms for rethinking and remaking masculinity as a sign of a body, as a category of personhood, as a set of practices and feelings made coherent by processes of embodiment. (shrink)

Persée est un programme de publication électronique de revues scientifiques en sciences humaines et sociales. L'intégralité des collections imprimées de revues est numérisée et mise en ligne sur un portail qui offre un accès à l'ensemble de ces collections et des possibilités avancées d'exploitation de ces corpus numérisés. Les revues font l'objet d'une sélection pour garantir la cohérence de l'offre éditoriale et scientifique du portail. / Persée is a program which was created for the digital publication of scientific journals (...) in the field of the humanities. The entire printed collection of journals is digitized and published online through a portal which offers access to the collections as well as advanced functionalities which facilitate and enhance use of the portal's resources. The journals are selected by an editorial board, thereby guaranteeing the collection's scientific coherence. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ denunciation of the Myth of the Given was meant to clarify, against empiricism, that perceptual episodes alone are insufficient to ground and justify perceptual knowledge. Sellars showed that in order to accomplish such epistemic tasks, more resources and capacities, such as those involved in using concepts, are needed. Perceptual knowledge belongs to the space of reasons and not to an independent realm of experience. Dan Hutto and Eric Myin have recently presented the Hard Problem of Content as an (...) ensemble of reasons against naturalistic accounts of content. In a nutshell, it states that covariance relations—even though they are naturalistically acceptable explanatory resources—do not constitute content. The authors exploit this move in order to promote their preferred radical enactivist and anti-representationalist option, according to which, basic minds—the lower stratum of cognition—do not involve content. Although it is controversial to argue that the Hard Problem of Content effectively dismisses naturalistic theories of representation, a central aspect of it—the idea that information as covariance does not suffice to explain content—finds support among the defenders of classical cognitive representationalism, such as Marcin Miłkowski. This support—together with the acknowledgment this remark about covariance is a point already made by Sellars in his criticism of the Myth of the Given—has a number of interesting implications. Not only is it of interest for the debates about representationalism in cognitive science, where it can be understood as an anticipatory move, but it also offers some clues and insights for reconsidering some issues along Sellarsian lines—a conflation between two concepts of representation that is often assumed in cognitive science, a distinction between two types of relevant normativities, and a reconsideration of the naturalism involved in such explanations. (shrink)

Cette section décrit comment le vouloir se porte sur un objet extérieur, c’est-à-dire s’intuitionne dans son produit tout en s’en distinguant. Comment s’effectue le passage du subjectif dans l’objectif si, conformément au principe du système, agir et intuitionner ne font qu’un ? Est-ce une limite de l’idéalisme que de ne concevoir l’action que comme une intuition ou ce point de vue nous offre-t-il de nouvelles ressources pour penser ensemble la liberté de la volonté et sa nécessaire phénoménalisation ? La (...) réflexion sur le droit et l’histoire montre que l’idéalisme transcendantal ne peut garantir l’efficacité de notre activité pratique qu’en faisant de la nature l’élément inconscient qui permet aux libertés de s’objectiver, c’est-à-dire de s’éduquer mutuellement.This section describes how the will goes to an external object, or intuits itself in its product while distinguishing itself from it. How is made the passage of the subjective in the objective if, according to the principle of the system, acting and having an intuition make one ? Is it a limit of the schellingian idealism to conceive action as an intuition or does this point of view offer us new resources to think together freedom of the will and its necessary phenomenalisation ? The reflection on right and history shows that the transcendental idealism can warrant the efficiency of our practical activity only by making nature the unconscious element which allows freedoms to objectify themselves, that is to educate themselves mutually. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 181-186 [Access article in PDF] Response to June Boyce-Tillman, "Towards an Ecology of Music Education" Claudia Gluschankof Levinsky College of Education, Israel I begin with two confessions. First, music was not my favorite class at school. I cannot even recall what we did there. It did not at all connect with the powerful, meaningful place that music had in my private life, (...) where I loved to sing with my family, and play and sing in ensembles in classes at a private music school. The private piano lessons were fine, but I found no joy in practicing on my own. Music was for me-and still is-a communal experience, associated with personal choice. School did not, and probably could not, provide that.Second, during a recent marketing meeting at the college where I teach and work, I finally said aloud, "I am not sure that I can market a product in which I don't believe." Being a teacher in overcrowded, resource-poor schools where parents are less involved yet more interfering and being expected to conform to standards and to act more as a producer of school ceremonies and festivals and less as a music educator is not a profession I would recommend entering. Boyce-Tillman's paper offers a model for music education in which the corrective emotional experience, in my own case, becomes a remedial object lesson in the setting of the music classroom and a reason to recommend music school teaching as a rewarding profession.Boyce-Tillman calls us to conceive of music "as intimately related to human society and the environment rather than as a discrete and separated category of knowing." Her position is in tune with Christopher Small's coined term "musicking": The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies. They are to be found not only between those organized sounds which are [End Page 181] conventionally thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also between the people who are taking part, in whatever capacity, in the performance; and they model, or stand as metaphor for, ideal relationships as the participants in the performance imagine them to be: relationships between person and person, between individual and society, between humanity and the natural world and perhaps the supernatural world.1The five interlocking areas proposed in Boyce-Tillman's model are present in Small's musicking: the relationships among the sounds parallel the area called Materials; the relationships between people and sounds may parallel the area called Expression, which refers to the personal meaning given to the organized sounds. "In the area of Construction, effectiveness often depends on the right management of repetition and contrast within a particular idiom." Such a particular idiom is part of the style ideal of a particular culture. It is defined in terms of form and content, and expresses some inner quality of the society that produced it. The style ideal can be characterized by different factors (for example, historical period, geographic location, school, manner of performance, individual composer, and so on) and can be examined in terms of musical components (form, texture, harmony, melody).2According to Boyce-Tillman, the area of Values "is related to the context of the music-making experience. All musical experiences are culturally related." Because values are shared by groups, I found this present in the relationships be-tween a subculture and the larger society, in its broader meaning. The fifth area is Spirituality, defined by Boyce-Tillman as "the ability to transport the audience to a different time/space dimension." That different time/space dimension may be understood as the supernatural world, referred to by Small.Small sees the greatest challenge to music educators today to be that of providing "that kind of social context for informal as well as formal musical interaction that leads to real development and to the musicalizing of the society as a whole,"3... (shrink)

The paper illustrates the evolution of the territorial system of government in Italy. A traditionally centralized state is turning into a quasifederation. The reasons underpinning this transformation are the growing insatisfaction with the inefficiency of the central government, the quest for autonomy by the fastest growing regions and the opposition by the latter to the interterritorial redistribution of resources made by the central government with the use of nontransparent and inefficient instruments.A substantial degree of subnational tax autonomy has been reintroduced. (...) The powers of subnational governments have been expanded. The main impact on decentralization derives, however, from the direct, popular, election of mayors and of presidents of regional and provincial governments.The transformation is far from complete. The central government is still reluctant to relinquishing its powers. The increased local tax autonomy did not yet introduce substantial tax competition. More precisely, tax rates were not reduced, but rather increased, due to the fiscal stringency of the whole public sector.L’article illustre l’évolution du système territorial de gouvernement en Italie. Un Etat traditionnellement centralisé est en train de devenir quasi-fédéral. Les raisons fondamentales de cette transformation sont l’insatisfaction croissante vis-à-vis de l’inefficacité du gouvernement central, la quête de plus d’autonomie de la part des régions à croissance rapide et l’opposition de ces dernières à la redistribution interterritoriale des ressources qu’opère le gouvernement central en utilisant des instruments opaques et inefficaces.Un degré substantiel d’autonomie fiscale subnationale a été réintroduit. Les pouvoirs des gouvernements subnationaux ont été étendus. L’impact principal de la décentralisation provient, cependant, de l’élection, directe et populaire, des maires et des présidents de gouvernements régionaux et provinciaux.La transformation est loin d’être complète. Le gouvernement central reste réticent à abandonner ses pouvoirs. L’autonomie croissante des impôts locaux n’a pas introduit pour le moment de concurrence fiscale. Plus précisément, les taux d’imposition n’ont pas été réduits, mais plutôt augmentés, en raison de la rigueur budgétaire de l’ensemble du secteur public. (shrink)

Given a rich environment, how do we decide on what information to use? A view of a single entity (e.g., a group of birds) affords many distinct interpretations, including their number, average size, and spatial extent. An enduring challenge for cognition, therefore, is to focus resources on the most relevant evidence for any particular decision. In the present study, subjects completed three tasks—number discrimination, surface area discrimination, and convex hull discrimination—with the same stimulus set, where these three features were orthogonalized. (...) Therefore, only the relevant feature provided consistent evidence for decisions in each task. This allowed us to determine how well humans discriminate each feature dimension and what evidence they relied on to do so. We introduce a novel computational approach that fits both feature precision and feature use. We found that the most relevant feature for each decision is extracted and relied on, with minor contributions from competing features. These results suggest that multiple feature dimensions are separately represented for each attended ensemble of many items and that cognition is efficient at selecting the appropriate evidence for a decision. (shrink)

To study Earth’s climate, scientists now use a variety of computer simulation models. These models disagree in some of their assumptions about the climate system, yet they are used together as complementary resources for investigating future climatic change. This paper examines and defends this use of incompatible models. I argue that climate model pluralism results both from uncertainty concerning how to best represent the climate system and from difficulties faced in evaluating the relative merits of complex models. I describe how (...) incompatible climate models are used together in ‘multi-model ensembles’ and explain why this practice is reasonable, given scientists’ inability to identify a ‘best’ model for predicting future climate. Finally, I characterize climate model pluralism as involving both an ontic competitive pluralism and a pragmatic integrative pluralism. (shrink)

Technology has played a central role in development programming since the inception of development assistance. Recent development organizations, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, believe technological innovation can improve development outcomes. Development ethics, a field of study focused on the ethical questions posed by development policies and practices, has yet to fully appreciate the ethical dimensions of the science and technology. Addressing this important research and policy gap, we contend that science and technology studies (STS) offers important insights that (...) can be used in combination with development ethics to influence development policies and practices. Utilizing a case study of a private development program in Uganda, we illustrate how STS offers important insights for understanding how a sociotechnical ensemble placed pressure on already scarce water resources. Two dimensions of STS scholarship, the power asymmetries of technological development and the incomplete or partial nature of technoscientific knowledge, are examined and help us to understand how sociotechnical ensembles in development increase the likelihood of the emergence of publics who are negatively impacted by sociotechnical ensembles in development programs. Leveraging STS insights, we argue for the importance of situated ethics—a pragmatic approach to ensuring responsiveness to the emergence of these publics. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging and multidisciplinary volume, leading scholars, activists, journalists, and public figures deliberate about the creative and critical potential of public imagination in an era paradoxically marked by intensifying globalization and resurgent nationalism. Divided into five sections, these essays explore the social, political, and cultural role of imagination and civic engagement, offering cogent, ingenious reflections that stand in stark contrast to the often grim rhetoric of our era. Short and succinct, the essays engage with an interconnected ensemble of (...) themes and issues while also providing insights into the specific geographical and social dynamics of each author's national or regional context. Part 1 introduces the reader to theoretical reflections on imagination and the public sphere; Part 2 illustrates dynamics of public imagination in a diverse set of cultural contexts; Part 3 reflects in various ways on the urgent need for a radically transformed public and civic imagination in the face of worldwide ecological crisis; Part 4 suggests new societal possibilities that are related to spiritual as well as politically revolutionary sources of inspiration; Part 5 explores characteristics of present and potentially emerging global society and the existing transnational framework that could provide resources for a more humane global order. Erudite and thought-provoking, On Public Imagination makes a vital contribution to political thought, and is accessible to activists, students, and scholars alike. (shrink)

Drawing on many areas of expertise, from paleontology to psychology, Tomasello offers a plausible, evolutionary story abouthow our ancestors are likely to have developed cooperative behaviors and collaborative lifeways in order to survive and thrive.He also claims that this narrative explains why they would have begun to think in characteristically cooperative and moral ways,developing a “we is greater than me” [we>me] psychological orientation. Do the arguments offered support this extra claim? Thisarticle suggests that they do not. It seeks to alleviate (...) this shortcoming by drawing upon some conceptual resources offered bySartre’s Theory of Practical Ensembles. The centerpiece of the article consists of a detailed analysis of Sartre’s account of the genesisof the “group-in-fusion,” seeking to show that the genesis of a we-way of thinking in a group made up of many requires themediation of what Sartre calls a “third party” (le tiers). After closely examining Sartre’s treatment of the “third party” in theapocalyptic genesis of the “group-in-fusion,” I evaluate the success of this notion in resolving those questions that Tomasello’saccount raises while, at the same time, addressing the ontological question concerning the nature of the individual-grouprelation, in a way that suggests new and significant alternatives to standard dilemmas in contemporary social philosophy. (shrink)

Because the fauna of the world possess a blood-driven vitality so comparable to that of people, they serve as an unwitting resource in the anthropocentric quest to ward off the ravages of death and decay, to create a cornucopia of human life amid the caprices of the cosmos. Fueled by the human fear of the grave, the “Gilgamesh complex” is the ensemble of beliefs and desires underlying a spectrum of zoocidal practices ranging from religious immolation to scientific experimentation. (...) The name of the complex draws its textual inspiration from the Babylonian epic of the warrior-king Gilgamesh, who lays waste to beasts of forest and field in his quest for immortality. From a psychological perspective, the epic of Gilgamesh pierces the veil of submerged desires and muddled behaviors that most people in modern society are loath to recognize. The Gilgamesh complex is also among the most culturally and historically encompassing of psychological complexes, penetrating to the barest of human existential concerns—the preoccupation with death. (shrink)

Le concept de développement durable s’enracine dans l’histoire des mouvements de préservation de la nature et de conservation des ressources naturelles et de leurs relations avec les sciences de la nature, en particulier l’écologie. En tant que paradigme sociétal, à la fois écologique, politique et économique, il se présente comme un projet politique idéal applicable à l’ensemble des sociétés, qui prétend dépasser l’opposition entre ces deux visions profondément divergentes des relations homme‑nature. L’analyse des textes internationaux pertinents permet de dégager (...) les principes fondamentaux, interdépendants, qui structurent ce paradigme : démocratie effective, soutenabilité sociale et respect de la capacité de renouvellement des systèmes écologiques. En dépit de concessions formelles aux préservationnistes, avec l’affirmation de la valeur intrinsèque de la biodiversité, le développement durable est explicitement anthropocentré et se situe dans la filiation directe du conservationnisme. Parce que ses principes fondamentaux ne sont pas mis en oeuvre de façon intégrée, son évocation rituelle ne réussit pas à cacher ses contradictions profondes, éthiques et politiques, lesquelles l’obligeront à rester dans le champ de l’utopie. -/- Sustainable development is rooted in the history of movements for the preservation of nature and for the conservation of natural resources, and of their relationships with natural sciences, ecology having a central role. As a societal paradigm, at the same time ecological, political, and economical, sustainable development embodies ideal policy for all societies, and is supposed to overcome the opposition between these two diverging views of man-nature relationships. The analysis of international texts devoted to sustainable development emphasizes fundamental, interdependent, principles : true democracy, social sustainability, and respect for the resilience of ecological systems. Despite formal concessions to preservationists, by recognizing the intrinsic value of biodiversity, the sustainable development concept is clearly anthropocentric, and is in direct line of descent from conservationism. As its fundamental principles are not implemented in an integrated way, its ritual evocation fails to hide strong ethical and political contradictions, and it will get stuck with utopia. (shrink)

Voltaire's correspondence has been described as his 'greatest masterpiece' – but if it is, it is also his least studied. One of the most prodigious correspondences in Western literature, it poses significant interpretative challenges to the critic and reader alike. Considered individually, the letters present a series of complex, subtle, and playful literary performances; taken together, they constitute a formidable, and even forbidding, ensemble. How can modern readers even attempt to understand such an imposing work? This Element addresses this (...) question through the use of digital reading methods and resources that enhance our understanding of this complex literary object and its relationship to Voltaire's more canonical literary output, and indeed to the Enlightenment world at large. Nicholas Cronk and Glenn Roe provide scholars and students with new pathways into this particular corpus, using tools and approaches that can then be applied to correspondences and life-writing texts in all languages and periods. (shrink)

Avant la pandémie de COVID-19 (ci-après « la pandémie »), l’adéquation des ressources en matière de soins de santé dans l’ensemble du Canada suscitait déjà de nombreuses inquiétudes. La pandémie de COVID-19 a exacerbé ces inquiétudes de manière exponentielle, en élargissant les fissures déjà importantes dans les systèmes de santé provinciaux. Actuellement, le système est confronté à l’exacerbation des délais d’attente pour les opérations chirurgicales qui avaient été retardées par les fermetures obligatoires pendant la pandémie. En Ontario, les retards (...) dans les opérations chirurgicales et les retards associés en radiologie et dans d’autres services essentiels aux soins pédiatriques ont conduit à la création d’un consortium d’hôpitaux pédiatriques qui se sont engagés à plaider en faveur d’un financement accru de la pédiatrie. Jusqu’à présent, les gouvernements provinciaux et fédéral ont accepté une injection ponctuelle de fonds, mais le consortium demande une augmentation permanente du financement de la pédiatrie. Le secteur des adultes a également souffert de retards et d’arriérés. En outre, comme nous l’avons déjà noté, les adultes plus âgés ont supporté le poids de la morbidité et de la mortalité associées au COVID-19. Le défi pour le secteur pédiatrique est de savoir si et comment défendre la priorité accordée aux enfants et aux jeunes. Dans cet article, nous passons en revue quatre approches de l’allocation équitable – l’âgisme utilitaire, des manches équitables (fair innings), l’approche prudentielle de la durée de vie et l’âgisme prioritaire – et examinons leurs forces et leurs faiblesses. Nous concluons en soutenant l’âgisme prioritaire (prioritarisme). Le prioritarisme conserve les points forts de l’âgisme utilitariste et des manches équitables tout en évitant leurs faiblesses. En outre, comme le prioritarisme ne considère pas l’âge comme un critère moral indépendant, les systèmes d’attribution fondés sur cette base sont moins susceptibles de faire l’objet de contestations juridiques et peuvent être plus acceptables pour le grand public. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation by Jason DemersKenneth SurinDemers, Jason. The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation. University of Toronto Press, 2019. 218pp.This most welcome book gets off on the right foot by eschewing such problematic terms as “post-structuralism” or “French theory” in studying the work of French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, (...) Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. These terms are of a strictly Anglo-Atlantic provenance, a convenient but misleading encapsulation that facilitated their journey or translation into the Anglo-Atlantic world. Instead, Demers prefers to view this transmission as an ensemble of relays between “people, groups, places, ideas, and moments in time” (3), as well as codes; metalanguages; markets for symbolic capital, a notion derived from Pierre Bourdieu; and “networks of feeling” (5n), a term the author borrowed from Raymond Williams. Demers observes, for example, that there was a relay or “mutual implication” (5) between Paris and Columbia University, which occurred in the aftermath of the events of May ’68, that recalled a somewhat earlier circuit, also leading to Paris, which involved the mid-1960s Berkeley free speech movement. To approach the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and Foucault by resorting to terms such as “post-structuralism” or “French theory” severs them from the crucial relays and circuits constituting the complex and highly mobile transpositions of their work to an American intellectual and political milieu, and vice versa, and it is clear that Demers views, quite rightly, that the political and the intellectual are inextricably bound up with each other.Demers acknowledges his debt here to the versions of assemblage theory formulated in Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, Manuel DeLanda’s Assemblage Theory and A New Philosophy of Society, and Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Buttressing these texts for Demers is the work of catalytic significance undertaken by Deleuze and Guattari on assemblages/ensembles. The supervening context for these processes of transmission between France and the Anglo-American world is the global May ’68.Demers’s first chapter deals with Derrida and the notions of translation and margins in order to delineate and analyze the “contiguous [End Page 127] relationship between campus and community” (12). The difficulty Demers grasps here is that Derrida’s work on the place of philosophy, already premised on the defining notion that there is no “we” in the philosophical domain, is rooted in the French educational system, and so is deracinated, inevitably, by its movement out of France into the Anglo-Atlantic world. After seeking to account for the implications of this uprooting, Demers shows convincingly how the later Derrida moved (somewhat) away from the political evasiveness of his earlier writings. Taking Derrida’s “The Ends of Man” as his focus, Demers understands the essay as an attempt to translate the intellectual and practical work being done on the academic and political margins of the university into a properly philosophical position (“deconstruction”) with regard to the logic of margins and centers extending beyond the university. At this point Demers makes two criticisms of Derrida. First, while Derrida’s philosophy pivots on an ever-expanding democracy-to-come, the richness and intricacies of the margins – the very resources created there to disrupt the established centers – have little place in his reflections. Derrida caters to iconic figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, who serve as powerful cryptograms for his thinking, but hardly more than that. This stems from a second problem associated with Derrida’s deconstructive positions, namely, that apart from making theoretical moves acclamatory of those positioned on the margins, albeit in relation to a deconstructed and displaced center held in an endless abeyance, it also leaves the Derridean Other in a situation of debilitating indeterminacy – the infinite deferral of Derrida’s différance and the à venir purports to be redemptive, but is ultimately incapacitating. Derrida’s eschatology always trumps his politics. In fact, in his theoretical and practical “spaces,” Derrida’s cat seems to have the same discursive status as Mandela. Demers, and I suspect he may agree with... (shrink)

Persée est un programme de publication électronique de revues scientifiques en sciences humaines et sociales. L'intégralité des collections imprimées de revues est numérisée et mise en ligne sur un portail qui offre un accès à l'ensemble de ces collections et des possibilités avancées d'exploitation de ces corpus numérisés. Les revues font l'objet d'une sélection pour garantir la cohérence de l'offre éditoriale et scientifique du portail. / Persée is a program which was created for the digital publication of scientific journals (...) in the field of the humanities. The entire printed collection of journals is digitized and published online through a portal which offers access to the collections as well as advanced functionalities which facilitate and enhance use of the portal's resources. The journals are selected by an editorial board, thereby guaranteeing the collection's scientific coherence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Alexandra Kertz-Wezel, “The Magic of Music”Joyce Eastlund GromkoIn her paper, "The Magic of Music," Kertz-Wezel proposes that music be "a means to transform emotions and experience life more intensely." She goes on to speculate that "not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music in educational settings, but also the music itself may prevent individuals from further involvement in classical music." Her goals are (...) involvement [End Page 117] in art music and a deepening and enhancing of individuals' lives through aesthetic experience. Kertz-Wezel grants as reasonable the idea that education should start with an individual's experience 1 and should follow with a series of "intensive musical experiences." With all of this, I can agree.However, whereas we share the goal of transformative music education through aesthetic experience, we differ in the means by which we would accomplish our goal and we differ for philosophical reasons. Kertz-Wezel promotes an approach to music experience that celebrates individuality and a return to Romanticism.2 By contrast, I have developed an approach to music experience that depends on collaborative music-making and that emphasizes the social and interpersonal context, as opposed to the individual. I would like to describe how my approach, contrary to the individualistic approach espoused by Kertz-Wezel, nevertheless accomplishes the goal of transformative music education.My approach is grounded in principles abstracted from the writings of John Dewey.3 Like Dewey, I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of an individual's powers by the demands of the social situations in which individuals find themselves.4 Therefore, in the schools that serve as field and research sites for our university, we create communities of musical practice in which individuals gain the full and ready use of all their capacities while performing newly composed art music.5 Every year a set of new works are composed especially for our students by composers at our university. Through the process of actualizing a piece of art, our students are "stimulated to act as member(s) of a unity, to emerge from (their) narrowness of action and feeling, to conceive of (themselves) from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which (they) belong."6 The image of a fully engaged community member stands in stark contrast to that of the young woman in Kertz-Wezel's paper who, in describing her experience at the rock concert, said, "You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it." When in a trance, individuals are detached from, not connected to, their physical surroundings.7 When in a state of ecstasy, individuals are carried beyond rational thought and self-control.8 It is impossible for me to imagine how an individual in a state of semi-conscious detachment, lacking in rational thought and self-control, can be learning.9Students in communities of musical practice are fully conscious of the value that they have to the group and "the value is reflected back into them."10 They learn to listen intently to other performers within the ensemble. They learn to communicate with one another in the symbol system of music and their musical babblings are transformed into articulate language.11 They become literate when they actualize into musical art what is embedded in the abstract symbols in a score. Through the process of actualizing pieces of musical art, students [End Page 118] heighten their perceptions and strengthen their connections. They have the kind of aesthetic experience described by Dewey:The material of esthetic experience in being human—human in connection with the nature of which it is a part—is social. Esthetic experience is a manifestation, a record and celebration of the life of a civilization, a means of promoting its development, and is also the ultimate judgment upon the quality of a civilization. For while it is produced and is enjoyed by individuals, those individuals are what they are in the content of their experience because of the cultures in which they participate.12The active, social, music-making approach to music education has considerable resource implications for... (shrink)

Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in (...) twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music? -/- In Digital Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Traditions sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library. (shrink)

The article investigates how the use of extended reality technologies and interactive digital interfaces have affected the design of exhibition spaces. Its main objective is to shed light on how these technologies have influenced the ways in which immersive art installations are conceived and experienced. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of interactive technologies on how visitors experience exhibition spaces. The article examines an ensemble of immersive art cases, paying special attention to the distinction between immersion and interactivity. (...) Two concepts that are pivotal for understanding the transformations concerning the subjectivity of the exhibition visitor those of the “imagineer” and the “ultra-technologist”, which are analysed in the article. The intention is to render explicit how extended reality technologies have contributed to the design of immersive experiences, significantly influencing the interrelations between the technical, aesthetic and institutional aspects concerning exhibition design and the methods of dissemination of art. (shrink)

Papers presented at the Kierkegaard: Resources and Results Conference, held at McGill University, June 6-8, 1980.

We have become estranged from the cosmic movements, according to Bataille. We are confined by the error linked to the representation of ‘the stationary earth’. We have negated the immersive immanence of the whole and made nature into a fixed world of tools and things. How then do we recognise ourselves as part of the ‘rapture of the heavens’? Bataille urges us to consider life as a solar phenomenon, the free play of solar energy on the earth. This paper argues (...) how Bataille’s cosmic vision anticipates both planetary and ecological thinking. This entails a base materialism of difference based on a radical Nietzschean and Heraclitean theory of becoming and flux. This thought is developed along Bataillean concepts such as the movement of the whole, the labyrinthine, and compound beings, ipseity, as well as the concept of a communifying movement. This materialism paired with Vladimir Vernadsky’s biosphere lays the foundation for the laws of the general economy, which also constitutes an economy inclusive of a general ecology: a tragic vision of Gaia and Dionysos. Finally, poetry is considered, as a way we might reconnect with the universe and stimulate ecological imagination. (shrink)

Some Comments on de Melo-Martin and Harris.

Much new global genetic research employs whole genome sequencing, which provides researchers with large amounts of data. The quantity of data has led to the generation and discovery of more incidental or secondary findings and to vigorous theoretical discussions about the ethical obligations that follow from these incidental findings. After a decade of debate in the genetic research community, there is a growing consensus that researchers should, at the very least, offer to return incidental findings that provide high‐impact, medically relevant (...) information, when it is not unduly burdensome to the research enterprise to do so. Much as genetic research has been limited to U.S. and European settings, the incidental findings debate has primarily focused on research conducted in high‐income countries. In a 2015 paper, Alberto Ortiz‐Osorno, Linda Ehler, and Judith Brooks note salient differences between the circumstances of research participants in low‐ and high‐resource settings that alter the analysis of when and why incidental findings should be offered to research participants. In this article, we expand on their analysis and present a framework for thinking about how investigators’ obligations to return genomic data might change in low‐resource settings, particularly in settings where participants do not have access to the medical care needed to treat, assess, or monitor incidental findings that are actionable in settings with plentiful resources. (shrink)

In this article we argue for the importance of studying interdisciplinary collaborations by focusing on the role that good choice and design of model-building frameworks and strategies can play overcoming the inherent difficulties of collaborative research. We provide an empirical study of particular collaborations between economists and ecologists in resource economics. We discuss various features of how models are put together for interdisciplinary collaboration in these cases and show how the use of a coupled-model framework in this case to (...) coordinate and combine background models from ecology and economics provided particular collaborative affordances and clear collaborative gain. (shrink)

Around the world, the population is ageing in ways that pose new challenges for healthcare providers. To date these have mostly been formulated in terms of challenges created by increasing costs, and the focus has been squarely on life-prolonging treatments. However, this focus ignores the ways in which many older people require life-enhancing treatments to counteract the effects of physical and mental decline. This paper argues that in doing so it misses important aspects of what justice requires when it comes (...) to older people. (shrink)

Background While community engagement is increasingly promoted in global health research to improve ethical research practice, it can sometimes coerce participation and thereby compromise ethical research. This paper seeks to discuss some of the ethical issues arising from community engagement in a low resource setting. Methods A qualitative study design focusing on the engagement activities of three biomedical research projects as ethnographic case studies was used to gain in-depth understanding of community engagement as experienced by multiple stakeholders in Malawi. (...) Data was collected through participant observation, 43 In-depth interviews and 17 focus group discussions with community leaders, research staff, community members and research participants. Thematic analysis was used to analyse and interpret the findings. Results The results showed that structural coercion arose due to an interplay of factors pertaining to social-economic context, study design and power relations among research stakeholders. The involvement of community leaders, government stakeholders, and power inequalities among research stakeholders affected some participants’ ability to make autonomous decisions about research participation. These results have been presented under the themes of perception of research as development, research participants’ motivation to access individual benefits, the power of vernacular translations to influence research participation, and coercive power of leaders. Conclusion The study identified ethical issues in community engagement practices pertaining to structural coercion. We conclude that community engagement alone did not address underlying structural inequalities to ensure adequate protection of communities. These results raise important questions on how to balance between engaging communities to improve research participation and ensure that informed consent is voluntarily given. (shrink)

As the USA contends with another surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitals may soon need to answer the unresolved question of who lives and dies when ventilator demand exceeds supply. Although most triage policies in the USA have seemingly converged on the use of clinical need and benefit as primary criteria for prioritisation, significant differences exist between institutions in how to assign priority to patients with identical medical prognoses: the so-called ‘tie-breaker’ situations. In particular, one’s status as a frontline healthcare worker (...) (HCW) has been a proposed criterion for prioritisation in the event of a tie. This article outlines two major grounds for reconsidering HCW prioritisation. The first recognises trust as an indispensable element of clinical care and mistrust as a hindrance to any public health strategy against the virus, thus raising concerns about the outward appearance of favouritism. The second considers the ways in which proponents of HCW prioritisation deviate from the very ‘ethics frameworks’ that often preface triage policies and serve to guide resource allocation—a rhetorical strategy that may undermine the very ethical foundations on which triage policies stand. By appealing to trust and consistency, we re-examine existing arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation and provide a more tenable justification for adjudicating on tie-breaker events during crisis standards of care. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has strained healthcare resources the world over, requiring healthcare providers to make resource allocation decisions under extraordinary pressures. A year later, our understanding of COVID-19 has advanced, but our process for making ethical decisions surrounding resource allocation has not. During the first wave of the pandemic, our institution uniformly ramped-down clinical activity to accommodate the anticipated demands of COVID-19, resulting in resource waste and inefficiency. In preparation for the second wave, we sought to make (...) such ramp down decisions more prudently and ethically. We report the development of a tool that can be used to make fair and ethical decisions in times of resource scarcity. We formed an interprofessional team to develop and use this tool to ensure that a diverse range of stakeholder perspectives were represented in this development process. This team, called the clinical activity recovery team, established institutional objectives that were combined with well-established procedural values, substantive ethical principles and decision-making criteria by using a variation on the well-known accountability for reasonableness ethical framework. The result of this is a stepwise, semiquantitative, ethical decision tool that can be applied to resource allocation challenges in order to reach fair and ethically defensible decisions. This ethical decision tool can be applied in various contexts and may prove useful at both the institutional and the departmental level; indeed this is how it is applied at our centre. As the second wave of COVID-19 strains healthcare resources, this tool can help clinical leaders to make fair decisions. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Behind the frequent occurrence of business scandals, it is often the silence and connivance of organizational immorality. Moral voice, a kind of employee active moral behavior, inhibits and prevents the organizational unethical phenomenon. Some researchers have sought to explore how to arouse employee moral voice. However, the limited studies mainly investigated the antecedents of leadership styles, ignoring the impact of the organizational factor on moral voice. Based on the self-determination theory, the current study constructs a theoretical model about how socially (...) responsible human resource management (SRHRM) affects employee moral voice via autonomous motivation and controlled motivation and further considering the moderating role of person–organization value fit. From a two-stage research method and the analysis of 260 valid data, we found that SRHRM promoted employee moral voice and this positive linkage was mediated by autonomous motivation but not by controlled motivation. Besides, the findings also revealed that person–organization fit moderated the indirect influences of SRHRM on moral voice via autonomous motivation, such that the indirect influence was stronger for a high level of person–organization value fit than the low level of person–organization value fit. Some theoretical and practical implications also be discussed. (shrink)

Overwhelmingly, philosophers tend to work on the assumption that epistemic justification is a normative status that supervenes on the relation between a cognitive subject, some body of evidence, and a particular proposition (or “hypothesis”). This article will explore some motivations for moving in the direction of a rather different view. On this view, we are invited to think of the relevant epistemic norm(s) as applying more widely to the competent exercise of epistemic agency, where it is understood that cognitive subjects (...) are simultaneously engaged in a number of different epistemic pursuits (distinct “lines of inquiry”), each placing irreconcilable demands on our limited cognitive resources. In effect, adopting this view would require shifting our normative epistemic concern away from the question of how a subject stands with respect to the evidence bearing on the hypothesis at stake in any one line of inquiry, and over onto the question of how well they cope with the inherent risks of epistemic resource management across several lines of inquiry. While this conclusion brings to light important connections between practical and epistemic rationality, it does not collapse the distinction between them. It does, however, constitute a step in the direction of a more systematically developed account of “non-ideal epistemology.”. (shrink)

Formulating and translating corporate social responsibility strategy into actual managerial practices and outcome values remain ongoing challenges for many organizations. This paper argues that the human resource management function can potentially play an important role in supporting organizations to address this challenge. We argue that HRM could provide an interesting and dynamic support to CSR strategy design as well as implementation and delivery. Drawing on a systematic review of relevant strategic CSR and HRM literatures, this paper highlights the important (...) interfaces between CSR and HRM and develops a conceptual model, the CSR-HRM co-creation model, which accounts for the potential HRM roles in CSR and identifies a range of outcome values resulting from a more effective integration of the role of HRM within CSR. The paper concludes with relevant theoretical and managerial recommendations that advance our understanding of the potential interfaces between HRM and CSR and how HRM can support a systematic and progressive CSR agenda. (shrink)

Past research reveals a tension between children's preferences for egalitarianism and ingroup favoritism when distributing resources to others. Here we investigate how children's evaluations and expectations of others' behaviors compare. Four- to 10-year-old children viewed events where individuals from two different groups distributed resources to their own group, to the other group, or equally across groups. Groups were described within a context of intergroup competition over scarce resources. In the Evaluation condition, children were asked to evaluate which resource distribution (...) actions were nicer. In the Expectation condition, children were asked to predict which events were more likely to occur. With age, children's evaluations and expectations of others' actions diverged: Children evaluated egalitarian actions as nicer yet expected others to behave in ways that benefit their own group. Thus, children's evaluations about the way human social actors should behave do not mirror their expectations concerning those individuals' actions. (shrink)

In order to understand the system wherein human resource management practices are determined by the interactions of a complex system of actors, it is necessary to have a conceptual framework of analysis. In this respect, the works of scholars concerning stakeholder theory opened new perspectives in management theory. An organisation is understood as being part of a politico-economic system of stakeholders who interact and influence management practices. Each stakeholder tries to optimise and protect his interests, 61-75). The framework of (...) stakeholder analysis enables escape from a purely instrumental approach to HRM, and avoids reducing our understanding of conflicts within companies to mere antagonism between employees and their employers. It enables us to point out the existence of other stakeholders in the relationship. Notably, it allows for the incorporation into management theory of actors from the sphere of politics as well as their dependent administrations. All these actors are considered to be stakeholders who define the legal framework of firm management and guarantee the application of these laws. (shrink)

BackgroundPromoting the social value of global health research undertaken in resource poor settings has become a key concern in global research ethics. The consideration for benefit sharing, which concerns the elucidation of what if anything, is owed to participants, their communities and host nations that take part in such research, and the obligations of researchers involved, is one of the main strategies used for promoting social value of research. In the last decade however, there has been intense debate within (...) academic bioethics literature seeking to define the benefits, the beneficiaries, and the scope of obligations for providing these benefits. Although this debate may be indicative of willingness at the international level to engage with the responsibilities of researchers involved in global health research, it remains unclear which forms of benefits or beneficiaries should be considered. International and local research ethics guidelines are reviewed here to delineate the guidance they provide.MethodsWe reviewed documents selected from the international compilation of research ethics guidelines by the Office for Human Research Protections under the US Department of Health and Human Services.ResultsAccess to interventions being researched, the provision of unavailable health care, capacity building for individuals and institutions, support to health care systems and access to medical and public health interventions proven effective, are the commonly recommended forms of benefits. The beneficiaries are volunteers, disease or illness affected communities and the population in general. Interestingly however, there is a divide between "global opinion" and the views of particular countries within resource poor settings as made explicit by differences in emphasis regarding the potential benefits and the beneficiaries.ConclusionAlthough in theory benefit sharing is widely accepted as one of the means for promoting the social value of international collaborative health research, there is less agreement amongst major guidelines on the specific responsibilities of researchers over what is ethical in promoting the social value of research. Lack of consensus might have practical implications for efforts aimed at enhancing the social value of global health research undertaken in resource poor settings. Further developments in global research ethics require more reflection, paying attention to the practical realities of implementing the ethical principles in real world context. (shrink)

Non‐governmental aid programs are an important source of health care for many people in the developing world. Despite the central role non‐governmental organizations play in the delivery of these vital services, for the most part they either lack formal systems of accountability to their recipients altogether, or have only very weak requirements in this regard. This is because most NGOs are both self‐mandating and self‐regulating. What is needed in terms of accountability is some means by which all the relevant stakeholders (...) can have their interests represented and considered. An ideally accountable decision‐making process for NGOs should identify acceptable justifications and rule out unacceptable ones. Thus, the point of this paper is to evaluate three prominent types of justification given for decisions taken at the Dutch headquarters of Médecins sans Frontières. They are: population health justifications, mandate‐based justifications and advocacy‐based justifications. The central question at issue is whether these justifications are sufficiently robust to answer the concerns and objections that various stakeholders may have. I am particularly concerned with the legitimacy these justifications have in the eyes of project beneficiaries. I argue that special responsibilities to certain communities can arise out of long‐term engagement with them, but that this type of priority needs to be constrained such that it does not exclude other potential beneficiaries to an undesirable extent. Finally, I suggest several new institutional mechanisms that would enhance the overall equity of decisions and so would ultimately contribute to the legitimacy of the organization as a whole. (shrink)

The AGM paradigm for belief revision provides a very elegant and powerful framework for reasoning about idealized agents. The paradigm assumes that the modeled agent is a perfect reasoner with infinite memory. In this paper we propose a framework to reason about non-ideal agents that generalizes the AGM paradigm. We first introduce a structure to represent an agent's belief states that distinguishes different status of beliefs according to whether or not they are explicitly represented, whether they are currently active and (...) whether they are fully accepted or provisional. Then we define a set of basic operations that change the status of beliefs and show how these operations can be used to model agents with different capacities. We also show how different operations of belief change described in the literature can be seen as special cases of our theory. (shrink)

This article discusses the function, development and maintenance of meaning and the importance of meaning-making from different perspectives, as it is based on a collaboration between professionals from health science and psychology. The aim is to discuss how meaning-making processes can be employed in the health context to enhance individuals’ well-being. Starting point is a description of the common basis of the understanding of meaning-making. Afterwards brief examples from the different professional areas will show how meaning-making can improve health care (...) practice. We will focus on the processual nature of meaning-making, its existential layers, as well as the ways in which meaning-making is at play in everyday activities and limit situations, such as illness or suicidality. (shrink)

Corporate environmental ethics has moved from a niche issue within business strategy to a potential source of competitive advantage. Firms, however, are comprised of individuals who vary in their personal beliefs regarding environmental responsibility. Environmental stewards are those employees whose attitudes and actions reflect environmental concern. Top management can convey similar environmental values through the creation of eco-capabilities. Applying logic from the natural resource-based view of the firm, we build a model to test how the alignment of environmental values (...) impacts multiple outcomes. We conduct a time-lagged examination using multi-level data from frontline employees, their managers, and their customers. We find that firms can ‘activate’ their corporate environmental ethics through eco-capabilities. Specifically, environmental stewards find more meaning in their work when managers perceive high levels of eco-capabilities within the firm. This meaningful work increases employee brand advocacy and customer satisfaction. Together, we demonstrate how corporate environmental ethics translates to the frontline and the customers they serve. (shrink)