This study explores the sustainability transition in Iran's oil towns, emphasizing Masjed Soleyman’s evolution. Stemming from the Industrial Revolution, the search for new energy led to the early 20th century D'Arcy Concession, catalyzing oil exploration in Iran. This resulted in the pivotal discovery of oil in Masjed Soleyman in 1908, transforming an uninhabited area into a thriving town intricately linked to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC). This research critically analyzes the unsustainable nature of oil exploration, particularly highlighting APOC's colonial (...) practices, like racial segregation between European and Iranian staff. Despite these challenges, the study identifies pathways for sustainable development, emphasizing the role of Masjed Soleyman's oil heritage. It advocates for the adaptive reuse of historical buildings for diverse community functions, thereby promoting sustainability and cultural preservation. This approach not only safeguards the town's rich historical and cultural fabric but also marks a significant stride towards sustainable urban development in oil-dependent towns. (shrink)

This article criticises one of Stuart Rachels' and Larry Temkin's arguments against the transitivity of 'better than'. This argument invokes our intuitions about our preferences of different bundles of pleasurable or painful experiences of varying intensity and duration, which, it is argued, will typically be intransitive. This article defends the transitivity of 'better than' by showing that Rachels and Temkin are mistaken to suppose that preferences satisfying their assumptions must be intransitive. It makes cler where the argument goes wrong by (...) showing that it is a version of Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. (shrink)

Transitional eras in thought.--Typical eras of transition.--Science and doubt.--The historical spirit and the theory of evolution.--The relation of thought to social movements.--The appeal to faith.--The close of transitional eras.

It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that (...) the Screening-Off Condition is the most important condition for transitivity in confirmation because of its generality and ease of application. We illustrate our point with the example of Moore’s “proof” of the existence of a material world, where H1 logically entails H2, the Screening-Off Condition holds, and confirmation in all four senses turns out to be transitive. (shrink)

On what I take to be the standard account of supererogation, an act is supererogatory if and only if it is morally optional and there is more moral reason to perform it than to perform some permissible alternative. And, on this account, an agent has more moral reason to perform one act than to perform another if and only if she morally ought to prefer how things would be if she were to perform the one to how things would be (...) if she were to perform the other. I argue that this account has two serious problems. The first, which I call the latitude problem, is that it has counterintuitive implications in cases where the duty to be exceeded is one that allows for significant latitude in how to comply with it. The second, which I call the transitivity problem, is that it runs afoul of the plausible idea that the one-reason-morally-justifies-acting-against-another relation is transitive. What’s more, I argue that both problems can be overcome by an alternative account, which I call the maximalist account. (shrink)

Im Transit ist eine subjektorientierte Analyse von Transnationalisierungsprozessen in der Wissenschaft.In dieser exploariven Studie werden das Lehr- und Lernsetting eines außergewöhnlichen Rahmen-Experiments zur Transnationalisierung der ...

It is commonly assumed that causation is transitive and in this paper I aim to reconcile this widely-held assumption with apparent evidence to the contrary. I will discuss a familiar approach to certain well-known counterexamples, before introducing a more resistant sort of case of my own. I will then offer a novel solution, based on Yablo’s proportionality principle, that succeeds in even these more resistant cases. There is a catch, however. Either proportionality is a constraint on which causal claims are (...) true, and the solution works, or it is not and causation is not transitive after all. I will argue that the first horn has unacceptable consequences and should be rejected, but that the second horn is less costly than it might initially appear. (shrink)

The transitive closure of a binary relation R can be thought of as the best possible approximation of R "from above" by a transitive relation. We consider the question of approximating a relation from below by transitive relations. Our main result is that every thick relation (a relation whose complement contains no infinite chain) on a countable set has a transitive thick subrelation. This allows for a solution to a problem arising from previous work by the author and Alan Taylor. (...) We also exhibit a thick relation on an uncountable set with no transitive thick subrelation. (shrink)

I here critique the application of the traditional, similarity-based account of natural kinds to debates in psychology. A challenge to such accounts of kindhood—familiar from the study of biological species—is a metaphysical phenomenon that I call ‘transitional gradation’: the systematic progression of slightly modified transitional forms between related candidate kinds. Where such gradation proliferates, it renders the selection of similarity criteria for kinds arbitrary. Reflection on general features of learning—especially on the gradual revision of concepts throughout the acquisition of expertise—shows (...) that even the strongest candidates for similarity-based kinds in psychology exhibit systematic transitional gradation. As a result, philosophers of psychology should abandon discussion of kindhood, or explore non-similarity based accounts. (shrink)

This article develops a detailed, empirically driven analysis of the nature of the transition costs incurred in becoming disabled. Our analysis of the complex nature of these costs supports the claim that it can be wrong to cause disability, even if disability is just one way of being different. We also argue that close attention to the nature of transition costs gives us reason to doubt that well-being, including transitory impacts on well-being, is the only thing that should (...) determine the wrongness of causing or removing disability. Non-welfare considerations also defeat the claim that it is always wrong to cause disability. The upshot of these conclusions is that closer attention to the nature of transition costs supports disabled people who strenuously contest the assumption that their well-being is lower than nondisabled people. It also suggests that, in addition, disabled people should contest their opponents’ narrow account of how we should make ethical decisions regarding causing or failing to prevent disability. (shrink)

Transition has not always been a success story. In some cases failure was due to the introduction of topdown legislature, which was not always compatible with the existing informal rules of the game. In other cases transition was just a euphemism for a fight for power with little substantial change.Still, most Western analysts indulged in analysing all East-European economies according to a rather standard pattern. This paper explains this approach by referring to the need to maintain rentseeking policies (...) in the West, to create new rents in the East. Western governments complied with the constructivistic view willingly, especially in the EU area, for social engineering was instrumental in order to acquire and expand consensus on the principles of state interference.La transition n’a pas toujours été une réussite. Dans certains cas, les échecs ont été dus à l’ instauration d’un corps législatif directif souvent incompatible avec les règles de jeu informelles. Dans d’autres cas, la transition fut un simple euphémisme pour une lutte pour le pouvoir, peu susceptible de donner lieu à des changements significatifs.De plus, la plupart des chercheurs occidentaux ont analysé les économies de l’Europe de l’Est avec les outils du modèle néoclassique standard. L’auteur explique cette orientation en invoquant la volonté de maintenir les politiques de recherche de rente à l’Ouest, et d’en créer de nouvelles à l’Est. Les gouvernements occidentaux ont volontairement cédé à une vision constructiviste, notamment dans la zone de l’Union Européenne, car l’ingénierie sociale a été un instrument majeur dans la réalisation et l’extension du consensus autour des principes d’interventions étatiques. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel answer to the question of what attitude agents should adopt when they receive misleading higher-order evidence that avoids the drawbacks of existing views. The answer builds on the independently motivated observation that there is a difference between attitudes that agents form as conclusions of their reasoning, called terminal attitudes, and attitudes that are formed in a transitional manner in the process of reasoning, called transitional attitudes. Terminal and transitional attitudes differ both in their descriptive and (...) in their normative properties. When an agent receives higher-order evidence that they might have reasoned incorrectly to a belief or credence towards p, then their attitude towards p is no longer justified as a terminal attitude towards p, but it can still be justified as a transitional attitude. This view, which I call the unmooring view, allows us to capture the rational impact of misleading higher-order evidence in a way that integrates smoothly with a natural picture of epistemic justification and the dynamics of deliberation. (shrink)

The counterfactual tradition to defining actual causation has come a long way since Lewis started it off. However there are still important open problems that need to be solved. One of them is the (in)transitivity of causation. Endorsing transitivity was a major source of trouble for the approach taken by Lewis, which is why currently most approaches reject it. But transitivity has never lost its appeal, and there is a large literature devoted to understanding why this is so. Starting from (...) a survey of this work, we will develop a formal analysis of transitivity and the problems it poses for causation. This analysis provides us with a sufficient condition for causation to be transitive, a sufficient condition for dependence to be necessary for causation, and several characterisations of the transitivity of dependence. Finally, we show how this analysis leads naturally to several conditions a definition of causation should satisfy, and use those to suggest a new definition of causation. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a novel propositional semantics based on the framework of branching time. The basic idea is to replace the moment-history pairs employed as parameters of truth in the standard Ockhamist semantics by pairs consisting of a moment and a consistent, downward closed set of so-called transitions. Whereas histories represent complete possible courses of events, sets of transitions can represent incomplete parts thereof as well. Each transition captures one of the alternative immediate future possibilities open at (...) a branching point. The transition semantics exploits the structural resources a branching time structure has to offer and provides a fine-grained picture of the interrelation of modality and time. In addition to temporal and modal operators, a so-called stability operator becomes interpretable as a universal quantifier over the possible future extensions of a given transition set. The stability operator allows us to specify how and how far time has to unfold for the truth value of a sentence at a moment to become settled and enables a perspicuous treatment of future contingents. We show that the semantics developed along those lines generalizes and extends extant approaches: both Peirceanism and Ockhamism can be viewed as limiting cases of the transition approach that build on restricted resources only, and on both accounts, stability collapses into truth. (shrink)

Igor Douven establishes several new intransitivity results concerning evidential support. I add to Douven’s very instructive discussion by establishing two further intransitivity results and a transitivity result.

The rapid expansion of the public discussion and research on just transition implies the risk of watering down either justice or the (eco-)socio-technical transition itself. We create a theoretical notion of just transition boundaries and propose it to help consider non-negotiable limits to just transition discourse and make sense of negotiations within such limits. Just transition boundaries are comprised of ecological and social boundaries. They determine that just transition-processes must bring societies effectively within the (...) safety thresholds of the two most critical planetary boundaries, climate change and biodiversity loss, and must do that by means and supportive measures that protect vulnerable groups from falling or getting stuck below social minimums in those processes. Boundaries leave room for plural values and visions for realizing transitions and remaining within safe thresholds in community-specific conditions. Context-specific additions to what just transition should cover are possible insofar as they do not contradict or risk just transition boundaries. In addition to justifying and conceptualizing just transition boundaries, we reflect on its implications for policymaking and research. (shrink)

Research on transition to higher education and young people with disabilities has increased in recent years. However, there is still limited understanding of transition issues and how digital technologies, such as social media and mobile devices, are used by this group of students to manage these issues. This article presents the findings of an empirical study that addressed this matter based on young people’s views and experiences. The qualitative study was conducted in the context of a group of (...) students with vision impairments transitioning to a New Zealand university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The study shows that, like their non-disabled peers, the students actively engaged with interactive and collaborative digital technologies to make sense, individually and collectively, of different transition issues before, during and after the first academic trimester of their university journey. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that, just as in recent years Cobreros, Egré, Ripley and van Rooij have provided a non-transitive counterpart of classical logic (i.e. one in which all classically acceptable inferences are valid but Cut and other metainferences are not), the same can be done for every Tarskian logic, with full generality. To establish this fact, a semantic approach is taken by showing that appropriate structures can be devised to characterize a non-transitive counterpart of every (...) Tarskian logic, starting from the logical matrices that are usually taken to render them. (shrink)

We study probabilistically informative (weak) versions of transitivity by using suitable definitions of defaults and negated defaults in the setting of coherence and imprecise probabilities. We represent p-consistent sequences of defaults and/or negated defaults by g-coherent imprecise probability assessments on the respective sequences of conditional events. Moreover, we prove the coherent probability propagation rules for Weak Transitivity and the validity of selected inference patterns by proving p-entailment of the associated knowledge bases. Finally, we apply our results to study selected probabilistic (...) versions of classical categorical syllogisms and construct a new version of the square of opposition in terms of defaults and negated defaults. (shrink)

Adaptive reuse embodies a significant transition in the evolution of urban landscapes, representing a paradigm shift from industrial or obsolete uses to vibrant, sustainable, and community-centric functions. This transformative process, deeply rooted in the principles of sustainable urban development, emphasizes the conservation of architectural heritage, environmental sustainability, and socio-economic revitalization. At the heart of adaptive reuse is the concept of sustainability, which challenges traditional notions of development and conservation by repurposing existing structures, thereby conserving resources, and reducing the carbon (...) footprint associated with new constructions. These initiatives align with broader sustainability goals, such as those outlined in the 2030 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), particularly those related to sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, and climate action. (shrink)

Using a model quantum clock, I evaluate an expression for the time of a nonrelativistic quantum particle to transit a piecewise geodesic path in a background gravitational field with small spacetime curvature (gravity gradient), in the case that the apparatus is in free fall. This calculation complements and extends an earlier one (Davies 2004) in which the apparatus is fixed to the surface of the Earth. The result confirms that, for particle velocities not too low, the quantum and classical transit (...) times coincide, in conformity with the principle of equivalence. I also calculate the quantum corrections to the transit time when the de Broglie wavelengths are long enough to probe the spacetime curvature. The results are compared with the calculation of Chiao and Speliotopoulos (2003), who propose an experiment to measure the foregoing effects. (shrink)

In the present context of intertwined and intensifying economic, environmental and climate challenges and crisis, we need to enlarge our thinking about food systems change. One way to do so is by considering intersections between our longstanding interdisciplinary interest in food and agriculture and new scholarship and practice centered on transitions to sustainability. The general idea of transition references change in a wide range of fields and contexts, and has gained prominence most recently as a way to discuss and (...) address sustainability challenges. To explore connections to food systems change, I highlight two broad approaches in the sustainability transitions research field. First is a multi-level perspective that examines sustainability innovation pathways and second is a social practices approach that illuminates the possibilities for shifts in normal everyday routines and practices. Taken together, these approaches offer different and useful ways to think about the dynamics, durability and significance of innovations in food and agriculture, and the part they play in transitions to sustainability. Numerous opportunities exist to forge more productive links between work on food systems change and the broad and growing sustainability transitions field. First, our research and practice insights about the importance of politics, governance, values and ethics in food and agriculture could help to strengthen the sustainability transitions field, which initially underplayed such questions. Second, the sustainability transitions field’s implicit systems sensibility and its futures orientation could help to widen the scope of inquiry and the contribution to policy and planning of research and practice on food systems change. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a naturalistic account of inference. We posit that the core of inference is constituted by bare inferential transitions, transitions between discursive mental representations guided by rules built into the architecture of cognitive systems. In further developing the concept of BITs, we provide an account of what Boghossian [2014] calls ‘taking’—that is, the appreciation of the rule that guides an inferential transition. We argue that BITs are sufficient for implicit taking, and then, to analyse explicit taking, we (...) posit rich inferential transitions, which are transitions that the subject is disposed to endorse. (shrink)

Vedānta is one of the oldest philosophical systems. While there are many detailed commentaries on Vedānta, there are very few mathematical descriptions of the different concepts developed there. This article shows how ideas from theoretical computer science can be used to explain Vedānta. The standard ideas of transition systems and modal logic are used to develop a formal description for the different ideas in Vedānta. The generality of the formalism is illustrated via a number of examples including saṃsāra, Patañjali’s (...) Yogasūtras, karma, the three avasthās from the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad and the key difference between advaita and dvaita in relation to mokṣa. (shrink)

The modal interpretation of quantum theory ascribes at each instant physical magnitudes with definite values to quantum systems. Starting from certain natural requirements, I determine unique solutions for the evolution of these possessed magnitudes in free systems and in special cases of interacting systems. The evolution is given in terms of transition probabilities that relate the values of the possessed magnitudes at one instant to the values at a second instant. I also determine a joint property ascription to a (...) composite system and its separate subsystems. Finally, I give a proof that the predictions of the modal interpretation with respect to measurement outcomes agree with the predictions of the standard interpretation. (shrink)

This article pays tribute to Vuyani Vellem’s work on the relevance of Black theology of liberation post-1994 in South Africa. Firstly, this article provides a synopsis of the political and economic ‘transition’ of South Africa before and after democracy. Secondly, the article seeks to provide a candid ‘reflection’ on the BLT trajectory, especially its critique of white racial theology. Thirdly, the article attempts ‘rethinking’ the location of the Bible and the black interlocutor in the post-liberation context. Fourthly, the article (...) attempts to ‘reimagining’ the relevance of BLT post-1994 with a focus on proposed contemporary theologies.Contribution: The manuscript is responding to a special issue honouring the legacy and scholarship of the late Prof Vuyani Vellem who contributed immensely to Black Theology of Liberation in the South African context. The manuscript attempt to dialogue with Vellem on key issue that he raised, especially racial issues and the role of the recognition of the black interlocutor. The VukaniBathoTsohangBatho special issue is dedicated to this great son of the soil who distinguished himself through research in the area of BTL challenging issues affecting the majority of black people, issues like racism, land, unemployment and economic inequalities in South Africa. This manuscript engages with some of these issues hence its relevance to the journal. The manuscript argues that as long as social and economic injustices exist, Black Liberation Theology will remain relevant post 1994 dispensation. (shrink)

Ethicists and economists commonly assume that if A is all things considered better than B, and B is all things considered better than C, then A is all things considered better than C. Call this principle Transitivity. Although it has great conceptual, intuitive, and empirical appeal, I argue against it. Larry S. Temkin explains how three types of ethical principle, which cannot be dismissed a priori, threaten Transitivity: (a) principles implying that in some cases different factors are relevant to comparing (...) A to C than to comparing A to B or B to C; (b) principles of limited scope; (c) principles implying that morally relevant differences in degree can amount to differences in kind. My counterexamples employ a principle of type (c): pleasures and pains enormously different in intensity differ in kind. Temkin has also endorsed this type of counterexample, using arguments based on earlier drafts of this paper. (shrink)

There are many commonalities between the goals of transitional justice and domestic redress movements. We look at the movement for reparations for enslavement and Jim Crow in the United States as an example of a domestic reparations movement, and argue for the usefulness of the concept of transitional justice. We are particularly interested in showing that a future democratic transition – the end of mass incarceration – could animate a renewed push for reparations and a formal investigation into America’s (...) legacy of racial injustice. (shrink)

We study probabilistically informative (weak) versions of transitivity by using suitable definitions of defaults and negated defaults in the setting of coherence and imprecise probabilities. We represent p-consistent sequences of defaults and/or negated defaults by g-coherent imprecise probability assessments on the respective sequences of conditional events. Finally, we present the coherent probability propagation rules for Weak Transitivity and the validity of selected inference patterns by proving p-entailment of the associated knowledge bases.

Background:Moving into the last phase of life comprises a developmental transition with specific needs and risks. Facilitating transitions is an important component of the work of nurses. When curative interventions are no longer helpful, nurses enact key roles in caring for patients and families.Aim:The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of registered nurses in acute care settings as they worked with patients and families to facilitate transition to comfort-focused care.Research design:Sampling, data collection, and data analysis (...) were guided by constructivist grounded theory, chosen because of its strength in identifying and explicating social processes.Participants and context:A purposeful sample of 26 registered nurses working in acute care hospitals in one community in the northeastern United States participated in this study through semi-structured interviews.Ethical considerations:The study received approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects. Participants provided informed consent.Findings:Nurses facilitated transition to comfort-focused care by enacting their moral commitments to patients and families. They focused on building relationships, honoring patient self-determination, and maintaining respect for personhood. In this context, they discerned a need for transition, opened a discussion, and used diverse strategies to facilitate achieving consensus on the part of patients, family members, and care providers. Regardless of how the process unfolded, nurses offered support throughout.Discussion:Achievement of consensus by all stakeholders is critical in the transition to comfort-focused care. This study deepens our understanding of how nurses as moral agents utilize specific strategies to assist progress toward consensus. It also offers an example of recognizing the moral agency of nurses through listening to their voices.Conclusion:Increased understanding of effective nursing strategies for facilitating transition to comfort-focused care is essential for developing needed evidence for excellent care and strengthening end-of-life nursing education. (shrink)

The notion of probabilistic support is beset by well-known problems. In this paper we add a new one to the list: the problem of transitivity. Tomoji Shogenji has shown that positive probabilistic support, or confirmation, is transitive under the condition of screening off. However, under that same condition negative probabilistic support, or disconfirmation, is intransitive. Since there are many situations in which disconfirmation is transitive, this illustrates, but now in a different way, that the screening-off condition is too restrictive. We (...) therefore weaken this condition to what we call ‘partial’ screening off. We show that the domain defined by partial screening off comprises two mutually exclusive subdomains. In one subdomain disconfirmation is indeed transitive, but confirmation is then intransitive. In the other, confirmation is transitive, but here disconfirmation is once more intransitive. (shrink)

Humean accounts of natural lawhood have often been criticized as unable to account for the laws’ characteristic explanatory power in science. Loewer has replied that these criticisms fail to distinguish grounding explanations from scientific explanations. Lange has replied by arguing that grounding explanations and scientific explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which can be used to argue that Humean accounts of natural law violate the prohibition on self-explanation. Lange’s argument has been sharply criticized by Hicks and van Elswyk, Marshall, (...) and Miller. This paper shows how Lange’s argument can withstand these criticisms once the transitivity principle and the prohibition on self-explanation are properly refined. The transitivity principle should be refined to accommodate contrasts in the explanans and explanandum. The prohibition on self-explanation should be refined so that it precludes a given fact p from helping to explain why some other fact q helps to explain why p. In this way, the transitivity principle avoids having counterintuitive consequences in cases involving macrostates having multiple possible microrealizations. The transitivity principle is perfectly compatible with the irreducibility of macroexplanations to microexplanations and with the diversity of the relations that can underwrite scientific explanations. (shrink)

This article introduces Transition 2.0, a paradigm shift designed to study and support students with disabilities' transition to higher education. Transition 2.0 is the result of a qualitative study about how a group of young people with vision impairments used digital technologies for their transition to university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The article discusses a conventional view of transition, referred to here as (...) Transition 1.0, which has dominated disability-related research and service provision in higher education. It counters this view by further developing the conceptual framework for Transition 2.0. The findings expand current conceptual approaches to transition by incorporating in the analysis the role played by digital tools such as social media and mobile devices. They also provide a new lens through which to study and understand student engagement in higher education. (shrink)

Constructive set theory a' la Myhill-Aczel has been extended in (Cantini and Crosilla 2008, Cantini and Crosilla 2010) to incorporate a notion of (partial, non--extensional) operation. Constructive operational set theory is a constructive and predicative analogue of Beeson's Inuitionistic set theory with rules and of Feferman's Operational set theory (Beeson 1988, Feferman 2006, Jaeger 2007, Jaeger 2009, Jaeger 1009b). This paper is concerned with an extension of constructive operational set theory (Cantini and Crosilla 2010) by a uniform operation of Transitive (...) Closure, \tau. Given a set a, \tau produces its transitive closure \tau a. We show that the theory ESTE of (Cantini and Crosilla 2010) augmented by \tau is still conservative over Peano Arithmetic. (shrink)

This article focuses on the epistemic transition to testimonial justice. It argues that the recognition of testimonial injustice in the context of reproductive rights may play a central role in this transition. First, I show how testimonial injustice undermines women’s legal protection against sexual violence and rights triggered by it such as the right to abortion. Second, I argue that the epistemic transition initiated by the #MeToo and #YoSiTeCreo movements call for transitional justice. In support, I review (...) the circumstances of transitional justice for cases like the transition to testimonial justice. Finally, I focus on the area of reproductive rights. I argue that policies of recognition contribute to epistemic transitional justice and complement other strategies aimed to overcome testimonial injustice such as the virtue of the responsible hearer and institutional compensatory virtues. (shrink)

For more than 20 years, sustainable development has been advocated as a way of tackling growing global environmental and social problems. The sustainable development discourse has always had a strong technological component and the literature boasts an enormous amount of debate on which technologies should be developed and employed and how this can most efficiently be done. The mainstream discourse in sustainable development argues for an eco-efficiency approach in which a technology push strategy boosts efficiency levels by a factor 10 (...) and more in industrialised and developing countries. A minority argues for a socio-cultural lifestyle switch, relying on new values, quality of life, sufficiency and redistribution strategies, with calls for appropriate and soft technologies. It is remarkable, however, that the articles, books and policy debates on sustainability seldom explicitly draw in a discussion of the nature of technology, how technology influences and is influenced by society, and what this implies for sustainable development. The mainstream interprets technology as neutral and instrumental: technology is no more than an instrument to reach a goal; it cannot be judged on its intrinsic characteristics, only on its use. The alternative view often builds on an autonomous and substantive interpretation of technology: technology is an autonomous, almost uncontrollable power that fundamentally reshapes our culture. A more balanced approach seems to be growing in the research on socio-technical sustainability transitions where the focus shifts to the co-evolution of technology and society, and to the networks, seamless webs and complex multi-actor processes that may carry a sustainability transition forward. This approach builds on insights from recent traditions in the philosophy and sociology of technology, in particular the social construction of technology (SCOT) and actor-network theory (ANT). While this provides for a better understanding of the nature and potential role of technology in sustainability policies, it remains to be seen whether it will actually influence the choice between technologies. This article investigates the different conceptualisations of technology in the sustainability debate. It first distinguishes between different approaches of sustainability and how these are related to differing views on technology. It then moves on to how the socio-technical transitions research incorporates insights from contemporary philosophy and sociology of technology. It reflects on the potential of transitions research to give guidance in technology choices, suggesting that the transition approach might be strengthened by drawing in insights from critical theory of technology and by taking a more political stance in defining sustainable development. (shrink)

For some, cultured animal products ought to be celebrated for the potential they offer to replace factory farming. Others argue that, for the same reason, there is a duty to support their production and consumption. This paper argues that the ethical status of cultured animal products ought to be assessed not just in comparison with factory farming, but also in terms of its potential to bring about interspecies justice. The claim is made that the attitudes embodied within cultured animal products (...) show a lack of proper respect for nonhuman animals and are at odds with those required by justice. Although cultured animal products have the potential to greatly reduce harms done to nonhuman animals, this paper argues that their adoption ought to nevertheless be regarded with some regret. Using a Rawlsian framework for assessing transitional steps towards justice, the paper shows that, whilst the adoption of cultured animal products may be permissible, the case for regarding it as a duty is much weaker. For cultured meats to be permissible, it must first be shown that alternatives that respect the value of nonhuman animals as ends-in-themselves do not exist. (shrink)

Fallibilists about looks deny that the relation of looking the same as is non-transitive. Regarding familiar examples of coloured patches suggesting that such a relation is non-transitive, they argue that, in fact, indiscriminable adjacent patches may well look different, despite their perceptual indiscriminability: it’s just that we cannot notice the relevant differences in the chromatic appearances of such patches. In this paper, I present an argument that fallibilism about looks requires commitment to an empirically false consequence. To succeed in deflecting (...) putative cases of non-transitivity, fallibilists would have to claim that there can’t be any perceptual limitations of any kind on human chromatic discrimination. But there are good reasons to think such limitations exist. (shrink)

For society to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the agri-food industry needs a substantial sustainability transition toward food systems capable of delivering greater volumes of nutritious food, while simultaneously lowering the environmental footprint. This issue of AHV focuses on the big picture—on mechanisms of sustainability transition, from social innovation, to models of finance and institutional systems, and calls for business and agricultural researchers to transform the sector together. Contributors to this issue embrace a transdisciplinary outlook, including scientific, technical, (...) social and political dimensions of agroecology. This issue is a call to action: to encourage the community of social entrepreneurs, ecosystem players and researchers to contribute analytical methods, experiences and scientific insights on emerging social innovations related to food, agriculture and rural–urban transformation. (shrink)

Selon différentes conceptions du genre et des parcours de transition, toujours singulières mais empreintes d’attentes sociales, l’enveloppe corporelle du sujet transgenre se métamorphose. Lors d’entretiens de recherche et d’épreuves projectives (Rorschach et tat ), deux jeunes adultes transgenres aux profils psychopathologiques névrotiques présentaient une sensibilité marquée aux normes, à la morale et aux attentes sociétales. La légitimité, la culpabilité et la honte étaient des problématiques redondantes. Différents temps de transitions subjectives, familiales, sociales et corporelles se sont trouvés en jeu (...) : le passage à l’âge adulte, une vie étudiante hors du giron familial. Ces deux situations illustrent une discussion sur les transitions du corps et des enveloppes chez des sujets transgenres, entre seconde peau et moi-peau corsets. (shrink)

How do societies transitioning from oppressive to democratic rule hold accountable those citizens who contributed to maintaining injustice in the ancient regime by secretly denouncing fellow citizens? Is their public identification a way of fulfilling respect for those who suffered harm as a result of their collaboration? And is public identification respectful of denunciators themselves? This book pursues these questions through a multidisciplinary investigation focusing on the denunciators for the East German secret police and the Ministry of State Security and (...) the way in which they have been publicly unveiled in contemporary German society. The book evaluates the justifications that social actors offer to support or oppose public identifications; how targeted collaborators react to this social practice; and whether it achieves its intended purpose. At every stage, the book asks whether the motivations and the consequences of public identifications honor or undermine the value of respect for people. (shrink)

This article compares the ethical attitudes of Ukrainian business professionals with those of United States business professionals. A widely used survey instrument consisting of 16 hypothetical situations involving ethical dilemmas was employed to gather information on ethical attitudes in the two countries. On 13 of 16 vignettes, Ukrainian respondents demonstrated less stringent ethical attitudes than did their United States counterparts. Possible reasons for these differences are discussed, with primary emphasis on the transition from one economic system to another that (...) is underway in Ukraine. Comments from Ukrainian respondents are presented so as to give an indication of the thought processes behind the questionnaire responses. (shrink)

Aristotle claims that the necessity of the syllogisms in the first figure is evident, and calls them ‘perfect’ on this basis. The perfection of such syllogisms, most notably barbara, appears to be correlated with the actual disposition of the middle term. G. Patzig strengthened the correlation to an explanation, claiming that in virtue of that disposition the transitivity of the relation ‘belongs to all’ between the terms becomes manifest. The present article shows that the modern scheme of transitivity, namely, with (...) contiguous middle term, is not the same as the one employed with remarkable consistency in the ancient mathematical texts. On these grounds, I argue that Patzig’s calling into play the notion of transitivity cannot count as an explanation of first figure syllogisms being perfect, not even of those in barbara. Keywords: Aristotle; logic; syllogism; perfect syllogism; first figure; barbara; proportion; transitivity. (shrink)

A permutation group G on a set A is ${\kappa }$ -homogeneous iff for all $X,Y\in \bigl [ {A} \bigr ]^ {\kappa } $ with $|A\setminus X|=|A\setminus Y|=|A|$ there is a $g\in G$ with $g[X]=Y$. G is ${\kappa }$ -transitive iff for any injective function f with $\operatorname {dom}(f)\cup \operatorname {ran}(f)\in \bigl [ {A} \bigr ]^ {\le {\kappa }} $ and $|A\setminus \operatorname {dom}(f)|=|A\setminus \operatorname {ran}(f)|=|A|$ there is a $g\in G$ with $f\subset g$.Giving a partial answer to a question of (...) P. M. Neumann [6] we show that there is an ${\omega }$ -homogeneous but not ${\omega }$ -transitive permutation group on a cardinal ${\lambda }$ provided (i) ${\lambda } {\omega }$ we give a method to construct large ${\kappa }$ -homogeneous, but not ${\kappa }$ -transitive permutation groups. Using this method we show that there exist ${\kappa }^+$ -homogeneous, but not ${\kappa }^+$ -transitive permutation groups on ${\kappa }^{+n}$ for each infinite cardinal ${\kappa }$ and natural number $n\ge 1$ provided $V=L$. (shrink)

We discuss the evolutionary transition from animals with limited experiencing to animals with unlimited experiencing and basic consciousness. This transition was, we suggest, intimately linked with the evolution of associative learning and with flexible reward systems based on, and modifiable by, learning. During associative learning, new pathways relating stimuli and effects are formed within a highly integrated and continuously active nervous system. We argue that the memory traces left by such new stimulus-effect relations form dynamic, flexible, and varied (...) global sensory states, which we call categorizing sensory states . These CSSs acquired a function: they came to act as internal “evaluators” and led to positive and negative reinforcement of new behavior. They are therefore the simplest, distinct, first-person motivational states that an animal can have. They constitute what we call basic consciousness, and are the hallmark of animals that can experience. Since associative learning has been found in many invertebrate taxa that first appeared during the Cambrian era, we propose that the processes underlying basic consciousness are phylogenetically ancient, and that their emergence may have fueled the Cambrian explosion. (shrink)

Since Freud and his co-author Breuer spoke of dissociation in 1895, a scientific paradigm was painstakingly established in the field of unconscious cognition. This is the dissociation paradigm. However, recent critical analysis of the many and various reported dissociations reveals their blurred, or unveridical, character. Moreover, we remain ignorant with respect to the ways cognitive phenomena transition from consciousness to an unconscious mode. This hinders us from filling in the puzzle of the unified mind. We conclude that we have (...) reached a Kuhnian crisis in the field of unconscious cognition, and we predict that new models, incorporating partly the relevant findings of the dissociation paradigm—but also of dynamic psychology—, will soon be established. We further predict that some of these models will be largely based on the pairs representation–process and analog–digital. (shrink)

Recently proposed models of risky choice imply systematic violations of transitivity of preference. This study explored whether people show the predicted intransitivity of the two models proposed to account for the certainty effect in Allais paradoxes. In order to distinguish “true” violations from those produced by “error,” a model was fit in which each choice can have a different error rate and each person can have a different pattern of preferences that need not be transitive. Error rate for a choice (...) is estimated from preference reversals between repeated presentations of the same choice. Results showed that few people repeated intransitive patterns. We can retain the hypothesis that all participants were transitive. (shrink)