La Philosophie du Procès est une doctrine dynamique de l’individu. Chaque individu, chaque entité actuelle exprime l’Univers tout entier, mais chaque individu vit et existe en vue de l’expression de soi d’autres individus. L’accomplissement de l’entité actuelle en elle-même est la satisfaction; le mouvement d’objectivation de soi par lequel elle se transcende pour servir à la détermination et à l’accomplissement d’une autre est la décision.

I have tried to expound Whitehead's doctrine of Creativity and of actual entities. Nothing remains but to give a brief summary of what has been said in the foregoing notes.Creativity is the ultimate activity and principle of novelty in the Universe.The world is said to consist of “actual entities,” not substances. An actual entity is also called an “actual occasion.” It is essentially a genetic process, having two sides, the process of “becoming,” and the outcome of (...) the process named the “satisfaction.” The satisfaction is the fully determined achievement abstracted from the process. On attaining satisfaction the actual entity viewed as a self-creating subject loses its “final” causation, and as a subject perishes, but the “satisfaction” remains as a potential constituent for the emergence of a new actual entity. This is its “efficient” causation. The potentiality of the satisfaction for a new creation is called its “objective immortality”: in this capacity it functions as an “object” for the self-creation of another actual entity. (shrink)

The discrepancy between measures of preferred and actual participation in decision making was used as a measure of ecological dissonance for an organization and then used to assess its relationship to job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. Questionnaires were administered to 143 faculty and staff members of Mississippi State University. Correlational analyses indicated mild relationships between the measures of ecological dissonance and job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization, thus providing support for ecological (...) dissonance theory (see Miller, Topping, & Wells-Parker, 1989). It was concluded that ecological dissonance in participation in decision making was a predictor of workers’ job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. (shrink)

‘Patient satisfaction’: Knowledge for ruling hospital reform — An institutional ethnography Driven by funding restraint, Canadian health‐care has undergone over a decade of significant reform. Hospitals are being restructured, as text‐based practices of accountability bring a new business‐orientation into hospital and clinical management. New forms of knowledge, generated through records of various sorts, are a necessary resource for managing care in the new environment. This paper's research uses Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith's institutional ethnographic methodology to critically analyse one instance (...) of text‐based management. I analyse information about ‘patient satisfaction’ as it is generated through a patient survey (in which I was implicated through my involvement with a hospitalized family member). Subsequently, I have studied the management environment into which that information would be entered. I argue that in the instance analysed, the information becomes part of a dominant consumer oriented healthcare discourse that subordinates concerns about ‘what actually happened’ as a professional caregiver would have known it. On this basis, I contend that this sort of taken‐for‐granted approach to making decisions about quality care in hospitals may be seriously, even dangerously, flawed. (shrink)

Maximizing want-satisfactionper seis a relatively unattractive aspiration, for it seems to assume that wants are somehow disembodied entities with independent moral claims all of their own. Actually, of course, they are possessed by particular people. What preference-utilitarians should be concerned with is how people's lives go—the fulfilment of their projects and the satisfaction of their desires. In an old-fashioned way of talking, it ishappy peoplerather thanhappiness per sethat utilitarians should be striving to produce.

This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities (...) and their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Symbolic communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural protolanguage learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion, narrative, and intersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and object – of self and world – the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being. -/- Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use. Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyncratic conceptualizations of the individual. Awareness-in-itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of creative unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power – and enormous responsibility – of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn, confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,” truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, extent, and future of conscious experience will have to be made. (shrink)

The goal is to present how shared decision-making in paediatric oncology occurs from the viewpoints of parents and physicians. Eight Swiss Pediatric Oncology Group centres participated in this prospective study. The sample comprised a parent and physician of the minor patient. Surveys were statistically analysed by comparing physicians’ and parents’ perspectives and by evaluating factors associated with children’s actual involvement. Perspectives of ninety-one parents and twenty physicians were obtained for 151 children. Results indicate that for six aspects of (...) information provision examined, parents’ and physicians’ perceptions differed. Moreover, parents felt that the children were more competent to understand diagnosis and prognosis, assessed the disease of the children as worse, and reported higher satisfaction with decision-making on the part of the children. A patient’s age and gender predicted involvement. Older children and girls were more likely to be involved. In the decision-making process, parents held a less active role than they actually wanted. Physicians should take measures to ensure that provided information is understood correctly. Furthermore, they should work towards creating awareness for systematic differences between parents and physicians with respect to the perception of the child, the disease, and shared decision-making. (shrink)

In this article I argue against the claim that “actual entity” and “actual occasion” are synonymous in Whitehead. My examination of these terms will help to illuminate the role of “society” in Whitehead’s philosophy and to prepare the way for a fruitful comparison of process thought and contemporary systems theory in the sciences.

This article asks: Is the human self, the stream of human consciousness, a single unique enduring actual entity or whole (like Alfred North Whitehead’s God) or a society of transient actual occasions (like Charles Hartshorne’s God)? It argues forcefully for the former and against the latter and concludes that both God and human selves are enduring but constantly developing actual entities who are constantly being enriched by new events, experiences, and activities in time.

A superposition of the field ofmeaning or set of concepts proper to process philosophy and theology upon the field ofmeaning proper to contemporary biology (in what Mary Gerhart and Allan Russell call “metaphoric process”) yields some interesting results for both disciplines. Gene mutations within cells can be philosophically explained as a society of actual entities deviating from the normal pattern ofdevelopment within the structured society proper to a cell and the different genes at work in it. The notion of (...) supervenience or emergence within biology confirms that developing organisms exercise a form of causation upon their ultimate constituents (actual entities) that is more than and quite different from what these constituents produce on their own through bottom-up causation from moment to moment. (shrink)

In this article I argue against the claim that "actual entity" and "actual occasion" are synonymous in Whitehead. My examination of these terms will help to illuminate the role of "society" in Whitehead's philosophy and to prepare the way for a fruitful comparison of process thought and contemporary systems theory in the sciences.

The psychological mechanism of decision-making has traditionally been modeled with the help of belief-desire psychology: the agent has some desires (or other pro-attitudes) and some background beliefs and deciding between two possible actions is a matter of comparing the probability of the satisfaction of these desires given the background beliefs in the case of the performance of each action. There is a wealth of recent empirical findings about how we actually make decisions that seems to be in conflict with (...) this picture. My aim is to outline an alternative model that is consistent with these empirical findings. This alternative model emphasizes the role imagination plays in our decisions: when we decide between two possible actions, we imagine ourselves in the situation that we imagine to be the outcome of these two actions and then compare these two imaginings. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to: outline the essential elements in Alfred North Whitehead's theory of “actual entities“; indicate the erroneous nature of a number of widely held interpretations and criticisms of his speculative scheme; state criticisms which seem legitimately applicable to Whitehead's cosmology.Whitehead's theory of actual entities can only be understood if one continually bears in mind Whitehead's purpose in formulating this theory and the method which he uses in his project.

Without the active participation of enterprises and front-line workers, it is difficult for the government to perform effective supervision to ensure behavioral safety among front-line workers. To overcome inadequate government supervision and information attenuation caused by vertical management mode and limited resources, and to change passive supervision into active control with the proactive participation of enterprises and workers, this paper combines the entity responsibility mechanism and the third-party participation mechanism based on government supervision to analyze the decision-making process of (...) government and enterprises on safety behavior supervision. An evolutionary game model was established to describe the decision-making interactions between the government and construction enterprises under the two mechanisms, and a simulation was performed to illustrate the factors influencing the implementation of the mechanisms. The results show that both mechanisms have a positive effect on government supervision, and the third-party participation mechanism was found to be working better. The implementation of the two mechanisms is influenced by punishment, subsidy, and cost, and it has different sensitivities to the three influencing factors. This study provides a theoretical framework for enhancing the government supervision mechanism, and the decision-making between the government and construction enterprises enhances the management form and guides their actual supervision practices. (shrink)

This article defends Marjorie Suchocki’s position against two main objections raised by David E. Conner. Conner objects that God as a single actual entity must be temporal because there is succession in God’s experience ofthe world. The reply is that time involves at least two successive occasions separated by perishing, but in God nothing ever perishes. Conner also objects that Suchocki’s personalistic process theism is not experiential but is instead theoretical and not definitive. The reply is that his dismissal (...) of Part V of PR is arbitrary, the interpretation of all experience is theoretical, and no metaphysical interpretations are absolutely definitive, including PR as a whole. Also, Conner ignores religious experience. (shrink)

While the traditional economic wisdom believes that an individual will become better off by being given a larger opportunity set to choose from, in this paper we question this belief and build a formal theoretical model that introduces decision costs into the rational decision process. We show, under some reasonable conditions, that a larger feasible set may actually lower an individual’s level of satisfaction. This provides a solid economic underpinning for the Simon prediction.

The paper deals with Aristotle’s concept of corruption. First, it reconstructs Aristotle’s debate with the pre-Socratics and then it focuses on the candidates for entity that can perish: form, matter, and substance. The text argues against the widely accepted thesis according to which substance is a corruptio simpliciter without further ado. The paper intensely relies upon ancient and medieval commentators of Aristotle. Finally, special attention is devoted to the dimension of time and the problem of actuality.

Veterinary ethics is a coordination of ethical principles that apply morals, values and judgements to the practice of veterinary profession. Veterinary ethics cover its practical application in veterinary practices as well as on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology. Veterinary ethics combine veterinary professional ethics and the focus of animal ethics. It can be inferred as a critical manifestation on the provision of veterinary services in hold of the profession’s responsibilities to animal kind and mankind. Many ethical issues arise in (...) a business unit in veterinary practice. Whenever such issues arise, it may lead to dilemmas, then proper and well-thought out ethical decision is to be made. Ethical decision making process in a business unit in veterinary practice is the use of ethical theories, principles, and rules by veterinary professionals and paraprofessionals in resolving ethical dilemmas in the veterinary practice. In order to resolve ethical dilemmas, being aware of and revelation to ethical theories is essential. Thoughtfulness of animal welfare and ethical issues is an essential component of a good ethical veterinary practice. This article reviews and discusses the ethics and major steps engaged in the ethical decision-making process in a business unit in veterinary practice. Strong commitment to the role, organization’s commitment to ethics and staff support could lower the levels of moral stress while facing ethical dilemma in a veterinary practice. Though using the ethical frameworks portrayed may not change the actual decisions finally reached by veterinary professionals, a good knowledge of ethical issues is imperative for client communication, better job satisfaction and preserving a positive public outline for both the individual and the veterinary practice. (shrink)

Aim: To examine how physicians’ life stances affect their attitudes to end-of-life decisions and their actual end-of-life decision-making.Methods: Practising physicians from various specialties involved in the care of dying patients in Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Australia received structured questionnaires on end-of-life care, which included questions about their life stance. Response rates ranged from 53% in Australia to 68% in Denmark. General attitudes, intended behaviour with respect to two hypothetical patients, and actual behaviour were compared (...) between all large life-stance groups in each country.Results: Only small differences in life stance were found in all countries in general attitudes and intended and actual behaviour with regard to various end-of-life decisions. However, with regard to the administration of drugs explicitly intended to hasten the patient’s death , physicians with specific religious affiliations had significantly less accepting attitudes, and less willingness to perform it, than non-religious physicians. They had also actually performed PAD less often. However, in most countries, both Catholics and Protestants reported ever having made such a decision.Discussion: The results suggest that religious teachings influence to some extent end-of-life decision-making, but are certainly not blankly accepted by physicians, especially when dealing with real patients and circumstances. Physicians seem to embrace religious belief in a non-imperative way, allowing adaptation to particular situations. (shrink)

This dissertation is meant to interpret Whitehead's basic unit of ontology in energetic terms. The actual entity is to be understood as an oscillating unit of existence that is nothing other than its oscillatory activity. There is nothing substantial underlying it: it is essentially a vibrating entity that has nothing more primary appended to it. Through such vibratory activity, it realizes itself out of its own conative drive and its deeply interrelated adventures with other entities and objects. Energizing actuality (...) makes such entities objectively stubborn, subjectively agentive, massively interrelated to others, and entirely aesthetic in constitution. There are two main ways to analyze this metaphysical energy. This is mirrored by Whitehead's twofold analysis of actuality from the genetic and coordinate perspectives, which itself is an adaptation of James's Pragmatic analysis of experience. The quantum oscillation model of atomicity perfectly matches Whitehead's genetic analysis, and thus the phases of actuality, the poles of existence, and the formation of an atomic unit, are all developed in oscillatory terms. Conversely there is the coordinate analysis, where issues of ontological rhythmicity, identity via agentive repetition, unification via cyclical patternings, and coeval concrescence among entities will be dealt with according to the principles of wave transmission. Each analysis develops important characteristics of actuality, but neither analysis on its own can capture the totality of what actuality is. For such a generic interpretation to occur, unification between the genetic and the coordinate analyses must take place. The energy thesis accomplishes this by adopting the language of energy fields. The actual entity is a field of energy that is both the center of agentive activity that defines the field, and the center of attention of other entities. Whitehead calls this ontologically agentive attention 'concern,' a term that allows Whitehead to be closely compared to Heidegger, whose existential analysis of Dasein will be used to further develop the character of actuality. The aesthetic core of Whiteheadian ontology will be developed by comparing it to Dewey's aesthetic theory of consummatory experience. Together, a fully concerned and consummatory actual entity will stand as the most generic rendering of actuality. (shrink)

Decision theory is founded on the principle that we ought to take the action that has the maximum expected value from among actions we are in a position to take. But prior to the notion of expected value is the notion of the actual value of that action: roughly, a measure of the good outcomes you would in fact procure if you were to take it. Surprisingly many decision theories operate without an analysis of actual value. (...) I offer a definition of actual value, and show that a form of decision theory due to Stalnaker can be reformulated so as to be in line with the edict to maximize expected value. By contrast, I show that there is no quantity — given by my definition or otherwise — that plays the role of actual value in Jeffrey's decision theory. (shrink)

— La toute première Catégorie du Schème catégorial de Procès et réalité est celle de l’Ultime, qui comprend la Créativité, l’unité et la pluralité dont la solidarité assure « l’avancée créatrice dans la nouveauté ». De fait, la notion de l’ultime est omniprésente. Par exemple, le but ultime des entités actuelles, « choses réelles dernières dont le monde est constitué », est la « satisfaction » par laquelle elles cessent d’être actuelles et acquièrent une « immortalité objective ». Cette « (...) phase ultime du passage au sein de la nature de Dieu ne cesse de se déployer » ; « Dieu n’est pas avant la création, mais avec la création ». Si le procès connaît une « phase ultime », il ne connaît donc pas de fin, et l’on peut même dépasser la présente « époque cosmique » vers une généralité ultime, une vérité métaphysique ultime, valant pour toutes les époques possibles.— In Process and Reality the very first Category of the Categoreal Scheme is the Ultimate, which includes Creativity, many and one whose solidarity ensures the « creative advance into novelty ». As a matter of fact, the notion of the Ultimate is omnipresent. For example, the ultimate aim of the actual entities, « final real things of which the world is made up », is the « satisfaction » by which they cease to be actual, but gain an « objective immortality ». This « final phase of passage in God’s nature is ever enlarging itself » ; « he is not before all creation, but with all creation ». If there is an « ultimate phase » for the process, it is therefore never ending, and one can even go beyond the present « cosmic epoch » towards an ultimate generality, an ultimate metaphysical truth, equally valid for all possible epochs. (shrink)

Creativity in Whitehead is analogous to prime matter in Aristotle; both principles serve as the counterpart of form. A fundamental difference is that whereas prime matter is purely passive, creativity is pure activity. ;My dissertation focuses on the question whether creativity in some sense exists as numerically one running throughout the entire universe, or only as numerically many in the many individual actual entities which are the basis of his avowed ontological pluralism? ;The most common view in the literature (...) is that creativity exists only as many . Four leading commentators are examined, and each is seen to face a problem with creativity's on-goingness. If creativity exists only in its individuals, then why do new individuals continue to come into existence? Two of the commentators attempt to answer this question by appealing, each in a slightly different way, to creativity's universality; but in both cases it is argued that this form of answer is circular for the pluralist must show that creativity is universal in the future. ;Two other interpreters of creativity are examined who emphasize creativity's causal role in perpetuating the universe. Analysis of their interpretations shows that each in fact requires creativity to be something numerically one throughout the universe , though this view is not made explicit. ;A monistic interpretation is then put forward and defended against a common criticism; namely, that it is inconsistent with Whitehead's ontological pluralism. It is argued that creativity implies process and process implies a plurality of stages. The monistic creativity is not more real than its plurality of stages, since these stages are essential to its being a creating activity. Creativity is merely the counterpart of form; each stage of creativity's process has its own ingredient eternal objects and its own subjective aim at satisfaction in terms of which it is a novel atomic individual . A monistic creativity does not imply ontological monism. Furthermore, since it solves the problem of on-goingness, it should replace the received pluralistic interpretation. (shrink)

If the Category of the Ultimate requires every actual entity to be, as Whitehead says, both a processing subject and a superject existing objectively immortal, death of a personally ordered social nexus seems impossible since a personal nexus cannot die unless it has a last member. How that is possible is examined, concluding that actual entities of necessarily existing personal societies always have enough creative power to integrate their physical prehensions into new satisfaction/superjects, but others in contingently existing (...) personal societies inevitably do not. (shrink)

Tournai is a town of intermediate dimensions with a regional vocation ; since a few years it has had to face serious budgetary problems. These are primarily due to a relative absence of resources as opposed to a constant growth of the financial burdens, actually stemming from this regional vocation.Therefore, the intention to start from the existing entity and to create a larger entity which ought to be financially viable, is quite right. In this respect, the governmental merger plan aims (...) at reassembling Tournai - as the core of the mergers - with the neighbouring communes that actually are the town's suburbs, and with the recently created industrial areas. Moreover, merging Tournai with the rural communes serving as abuffer between Tournai and the French border, the new entity will directly touch the "urban community" Lille - a major pole of attraction from the economic and commercial as well as from the cultural point of view.A particular care to keep an equilibrium among rural and urban population accounts for the absorption of several communes that are rather distant and have no direct links with Tournai. Finally, there has been an underlying concern to ensure that in the new entity the christian-democratic and the socialist party would have an almost equal weight and the Walloon Gathering would have a chance to break through ; this seems to explain the fact that Antoing and its peripheral communes, having a socialist majority, have been kept out of the merging operation, one has on the contrary merged several rural communes with a clear christian-democratic tendency, and the government eventually decided to realize a maximum merger which is supposed to electorally favour the Wallon Gathering. (shrink)

In this paper I will present some important ideas about the relation between religious experience and metaphysics in Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy. This endeavor is significant for the topic from two points of view: firstly, Whitehead’s thinking is among the most comprehensive and widely extended from the 20th Century, the applications of his ‘speculative scheme’ covering issues from ecology, physics and the foundations of mathematics, to art and religion; secondly, the concept of ‘God’, with a meaning ascribed to it by (...) Whitehead in relation both with the history of philosophy and with his own ideas, plays a key-role in Process and Reality, his most important treatise. For Whitehead, religion is linked, broadly speaking, to the most intimate inner evolution of a human person. Although this assertion may seem trivial, in the context of his thinking, which defines terms such as ‘process’, ‘value’ or ‘satisfaction’ as essentially bounded with the evolution of any actual being, to associate a kind of experience, the religious one, to the fact itself of inner becoming conveys to this experience a fundamentally profound and inalienable metaphysical character. It is this character and ‘definiteness’ which I will describe and analyze. (shrink)

It may seem trivial to state that one of the major trends in biological investigation consists in an attempt to explain the structural and functional aspects of living matter in chemical terms, in an effort to obtain insight into the equivalent of macroscopic phenomena on the molecular level. I am sure you are aware of, and this meeting of the Association has brought ample additional evidence, in how many fields this tendency has become apparent. It can be recognized in genetics (...) with the molecular analysis of chromosomes and the enzymatic or metabolic interpretation of hereditary properties like the eyecolor of Drosophila. In a purely morphological branch like histology we do not ask merely for a differentiation of stained cell structure but we ask for the nature of the staining reaction; in nerve physiology we try to interpret conduction as alterations of protein lipoid layers; or in pathology where the age old syndrome of inflammation is explored with biochemical methods. I should mention molecular models of membranes and cell surfaces, the molecular interpretation of secretion and of the macroscopic phenomena of metabolism. Yet insofar as this yield of data could be designated as a trend, it would rather seem to be the natural outcome to be expected from the application of the analytic method of science. In one instance, however, this approach has been carried farther than in all the other fields, and it would seem to be worthwhile to pause for one moment to ask whether this case is important merely because of its technical implications or whether it is meaningful in a wider sense. (shrink)

Using the emerging technology of large-scale textual analysis, this study examines the use of the term ‘customer satisfaction’ and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded U.S. corporations and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Form 10-K. We document the frequency of the term’s occurrence in 10-Ks over the 1995–2013 period and the differences in usage across industries. We then relate the term’s usage in 10-Ks to subsequent scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index to (...) determine whether management’s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible. The commitment of management to shareholders versus, more broadly, stakeholders is a central question in business ethics, and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. We document a complex relation between management’s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction. We find that the general use of customer satisfaction in 10-K documents is negatively correlated with subsequent ACSI scores. However, for retail firms, when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon, the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive. (shrink)

Whitehead claims there is only one type of individual in the universe—the actual entity—but there are necessarily multiple tokens of this type. This turns out to be paradoxical. Nevertheless, a type of individuality that is necessarily plural because, for each token, relations to other tokens are constitutive is something familiar from ordinary language, everyday politics, and, not least, 19th century German social thought. Whitehead’s actual entity generalizes the notion of species-being we find in Fichte, Feuerbach, and Marx. The (...) rationale for the concept of species-being brings to light important social and political implications of Whitehead’s cosmology. (shrink)

The era of AI-based decision-making fast approaches, and anxiety is mounting about when, and why, we should keep “humans in the loop” (“HITL”). Thus far, commentary has focused primarily on two questions: whether, and when, keeping humans involved will improve the results of decision-making (making them safer or more accurate), and whether, and when, non-accuracy-related values—legitimacy, dignity, and so forth—are vindicated by the inclusion of humans in decision-making. Here, we take up a related but distinct question, which (...) has eluded the scholarship thus far: does it matter if humans appear to be in the loop of decision-making, independent from whether they actually are? In other words, what is stake in the disjunction between whether humans in fact have ultimate authority over decision-making versus whether humans merely seem, from the outside, to have such authority? Our argument proceeds in four parts. First, we build our formal model, enriching the HITL question to include not only whether humans are actually in the loop of decision-making, but also whether they appear to be so. Second, we describe situations in which the actuality and appearance of HITL align: those that seem to involve human judgment and actually do, and those that seem automated and actually are. Third, we explore instances of misalignment: situations in which systems that seem to involve human judgment actually do not, and situations in which systems that hold themselves out as automated actually rely on humans operating “behind the curtain.” Fourth, we examine the normative issues that result from HITL misalignment, arguing that it challenges individual decision-making about automated systems and complicates collective governance of automation. (shrink)

Many studies have linked idealized body image on social media to negative psychological well-being among young females. However, social media influencers’ imagery has not attracted much research attention in either the Western or the Asian context. This study aimed to experimentally investigate the impact of high versus low popular social media influencer images on young Chinese females’ body satisfaction and mood. The participants were 420 female RED users who were randomly assigned to three groups: the influencer-high group ; the influencer-low (...) group ; or a control set of nature images. The results revealed that the groups exposed to influencer imagery had lower body satisfaction and more negative mood than the control group. Notably, this comparison showed no significant difference between the low-influencer and high-influencer groups in body satisfaction and mood. Additionally, this effect was moderated by individuals’ self-discrepancy between personal ideals and their own bodies. That is, exposure to idealized body images does not always produce harmful effects. For those with lower self-discrepancy, idealized body posts somewhat positively affected their body satisfaction. The current research contributes to the media effect literature by providing critical new insights into the study of body image in the context of China. (shrink)

This paper studies the notion of virtuality in the Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory of 1924. We situate the virtual entities of BKS within the tradition of the correspondence principle and the radiation theory of the Bohr model. We show how, in this context, virtual oscillators emerged as classical substitute radiators and were used to describe the otherwise elusive quantum transitions. They played an effective role in the quantum theory of radiation while remaining categorically distinct and ontologically separated from the quantum world of (...) the Bohr model. The notion of virtuality thus differs markedly from its counterpart in quantum mechanics or QFT. (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical climate types presented in the Korean tourism industry, the differences in the perceptions of these ethical climate types based on individual/organizational characteristics, and the influence of ethical climate types based on job satisfaction/organizational commitment. Empirical findings of this study identify six ethical climate types and demonstrate significant difference and significant influence of the proposed relationships. This research contributes to the existing body of academic work by using empirical data collected from 820 respondents across 14 companies (...) within the Korean tourism industry, to demonstrate the relationship between actual ethical climate types and ethical climate related factors. The findings of this study identify the new factor ‹moral caring,’ which describes an environment characterized by decisions that maximize collective interest, but based on an individual employee’s personal values and ethics. Such a factor has important implications for the service industry, where face-to-face encounters typify the relationship between employee and consumer. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the research of civic engagement processes, which are gaining more and more publicity in world political science. Applying modern professional approaches, the author offers an explanation of the recruitment of civil advocacy through a clear political goal and connection with the current situational context. The article reveals and describes the main components of measuring the involvement of political activists within the framework of modern civil advocacy campaigns. The author reveals the mechanisms of expressing views and (...) positions, protecting one’s rights and influencing decision-making processes at different levels of management. It is emphasized that civil advocacy covers a wide range of activities aimed at participation in political processes. The text examines advocacy campaigns in the political practice of consolidated democracies as organized events aimed at drawing attention to specific problems and achieving policy changes or raising public awareness. In the work, an appeal was also made to the qualification requirements and job duties of the leaders of civil campaigns. The article analyzes the actualization of the issue of civil advocacy in social and political innovations at the current stage. It is noted that in developed democratic countries a tendency to pay attention to social public innovations is outlined. It has been established that the development of civil society in Ukraine involves the development of a national model of engaging citizens in conducting advocacy campaigns. Attention is paid to attracting new active participants, for whom public advocacy campaigns become a factor in forming an environment of collaboration and expanding the circle of social communication. Emphasis is placed on the continuous inclusion of individuals and groups in activities aimed at improving the public environment and forming conscious public leadership and an atmosphere of social success. In the final part of the article, the author emphasizes that effective public involvement involves a variety of approaches. It was concluded that the decisive factor that prompts citizens to take a proactive position and participate in civil advocacy campaigns are pragmatic needs and ideas about achieving a state of satisfaction of requirements. (shrink)

For decades, student ratings of university faculty have been used by administrators in high stakes faculty employment decisions such as tenure, promotion, contract renewal and reappointment, and merit pay. However, virtually no attention has been paid to the ethical questions of using ratings in employment decisions. Instead, the ratings literature is generally limited to psychometric issues such as whether a given student ratings instrument exhibits the statistical properties of reliability and validity. There is no consensus understanding of teaching effectiveness, the (...) very attribute that students are alleged to “evaluate.” What students are actually doing when they complete a ratings form—whether measuring, evaluating, reporting, judging, opining, etc.—remains unsettled in the ratings literature. If ratings are surveys of student satisfaction, they have no logical or ethical connection with teaching expertise. I argue that the administrative use of student ratings in faculty employment decisions violates basic moral principles including nonmaleficence, beneficence, professional autonomy and clinical independence, and multiple aspects of justice including due care, truthfulness, and equitable treatment. These ethical violations rule against any administrative use of student ratings in faculty employment decisions, including the “use with caution in conjunction with other evaluative methods” deployment of student ratings. My conclusion is that such use should be immediately and universally terminated. Formative use of student questionnaires as part of ordinary instructional communication and feedback between instructor and students is a separate issue and outside of the scope of this paper. (shrink)

The world, the all-inclusive unity of entities in real actuality, is the field whence the various positive sciences draw their realms of research. Directed straight at the world, these sciences in their allied totality seem to aim at a complete knowledge of the world and thus to take charge of answering all questions that can be asked about entities. It seems there is no field left to philosophy for its own investigations. But does not Greek science, already in its first (...) decisive beginnings, direct its unceasing efforts towards entities as such? Do not entities as such serve it as the subject matter of a fundamental science of being, a "first philosophy"? For Greek science, to directly determine entities -- both individuals and even the universal whole, and in whatever regard they be taken -- did not mean to understand entities as such. Entities as entities -- that is, with regard to their being -- are enigmatic.2 For a long time the lines of inquiry and the answers remain tangled in obscurities. Nonetheless, in the first steps of this "first philosophy"3 one may already see the source whence springs the questionability of entities as such. Parmenides seeks to clarify being4 via a reflection on one's thinking about entities. Plato's disclosure of the Ideas takes its bearings from the soul's.. (shrink)

Nishida in his writings pursued two main lines of thought, which are almost equally pervasive and persistent. These are the philosophy of self-consciousness, which is mainly religious and soteriological, and the philosophy of history-politics, which is fundamentally historical and political. Both philosophies are essentially ontologies, by virtue of the application of ontological operators. These operators function in almost every phase of Nishida's philosophy, with the notable exception of his discussion of the sciences, and in the main include activity, self-determination, actuality, (...) one-qua-many logic, and immanent-qua-transcendent logic. Once they are at work, whatever entity they apply to will have full reality in Nishida's texts. In general, the operators are applied in turn to pure experience, an artistic creation, an act of self-consciousness, a historical epoch, the state, and the Emperor, in their chronological order in Nishida's texts. The extension of his ontological operators from acts of self-consciousness to a historical epoch is what I call the turn in Nishida's philosophy. This occurred about 1931 and is the most decisive shift in Nishida's philosophy, because it paved the way for Nishida's return to the world which he had once rejected and called transitory. This turn signifies that the applications of these ontological operators are turned from conscious phenomena to non-conscious phenomena, and also reflects Nishida's own critical stance toward his earlier religious-soteriological philosophy. ;Nishida's extension of ontological operators to his historical-political thinking, or his assertion of a direct union of self-consciousness and the historical world, is seen as fundamentally inappropriate. It fails to appreciate the incompleteness of a historical epoch and the culpability of the state. I call this union a category mistake, since acts of self-consciousness and a historical epoch are not similar enough to be treated by similar ontological operators. Nishida's later philosophy may be seen as his effort to overcome his earlier sharp distinction between homo interior and homo exterior by giving fuller reality to the latter. But the manner in which Nishida overcomes his internalism remains fundamentally internal, since the ontological operators themselves, which he uses to overcome that internalism, are originated from his discussion of aesthetic creativity and creative acts of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Guilin rural homestays are an important support for rural tourism destinations, serving not only as accommodation but also as a representative of the local culture of the town. To improve satisfaction with rural homestays among tourists, enhance destination attractiveness, and better meet tourist demands for accommodation conditions, this study combines literature and network text analysis to construct an evaluation index system for Guilin rural homestay tourist satisfaction. The data collected by a questionnaire survey based on importance–performance analysis are analyzed. The (...) results show that actual tourist satisfaction with the experience in the 21 indexes is lower than the pre-consumption expectation, due to the imperfect facilities, lack of special service development, relative optimization of basic road construction, and the need for improvement in the internal and external environment, among other factors. Through the improvement of the above factors, the satisfaction of tourists to the rural homestay can be improved. (shrink)

This concise book brings behavioral insights to the wide array of topics commonly taught in the required professional responsibility course, including admission to the practice of law, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, representing entities, prosecutorial and criminal defense ethics, litigation and negotiation ethics, legal billing, and managerial and subordinate responsibilities. Behavioral legal ethics relies on empirical research to explore how lawyers actually make ethical decisions in context, rather than how they predict they would decide an ethical dilemma. This approach complements the (...) law of lawyering by seeking to understand how various psychological factors and situational pressures explain and influence decision-making and resulting ethical (or unethical) action. Each chapter explores findings from behavioral science that pertain to ethical decision-making such as motivated reasoning, confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, fast thinking, the fundamental attribution error, wrongful obedience, conformity, moral disengagement, and much more. In addition, each chapter contains relevant case studies and reflection questions to deepen and cement students' understanding of the role of behavioral legal ethics in professional responsibility. Finally, the book offers ideas for individual attorneys and legal organizations to improve ethical decision-making."--Publisher's webpage. (shrink)

The ramifications are explored of taking physical theories to commit their advocates only to ‘physically real’ entities, where ‘physically real’ means ‘causally efficacious’ (e.g., actual particles moving through space, such as dust motes), the ‘physically significant’ (e.g., centers of mass), and the merely mathematical—despite the fact that, in ordinary physical theory, all three sorts of posits are quantified over. It's argued that when such theories are regimented, existential quantification, even when interpreted ‘objectually’ (that is, in terms of satisfaction via (...) variables, rather than by substitution-instances) need not imply any ontological commitments. (shrink)