Experimental evidence suggests that individual consumption has not only personal value but also enters the social part of the utility. Existing models of social preferences make ad hoc parametric assumptions about the nature of this duality. This creates a problem of experimental identification of preferences since without such assumptions it is impossible to distinguish whether consumption or social concerns are driving the behavior. Given observed choice, the Axiomatic model of preferences in this article makes it possible to unambiguously determine personal (...) and social utility without any assumptions about their relationship. The unique separation can be achieved only if the individual choices in different subgroups of other people are available. Preferences over consumption and status are used as an example to demonstrate how the utility is constructed. The model shows what kind of information about choice is needed to empirically determine the nature of social preferences without making restrictive assumptions. This can help to estimate whether personal consumption or social value is more important in economic decisions. (shrink)

Even though standard economic theory traditionally ignored any motives that may drive incentivized social decision making except for the maximization of personal consumption utility, the idea that ‘preferences for fairness’ (following social norms) might have an economically tangible impact appeared relatively early. I trace the evolution of these ideas from the first experiments on bargaining to the tests of the hypothesis that pro-sociality in general is driven by the desire to adhere to social norms. I show how a recent synthesis (...) of economics approach with psychology, sociology, and evolutionary human biology can give rise to a mathematically rigorous, psychologically plausible, and falsifiable theory of social norms. Such a theory can predictwhich norms should emerge in each specific (social) context and is capable of organizing diverse observations in economics and other disciplines. It provides the first glimpse at how a unified theory of normative decision making might look like. (shrink)

In the previous issue of Analyse & Kritik (2020, vol. 42, issue 1) Alexander Vostroknutov (3-39) aims at a ‘synthesis’ of economics with ‘psychology, sociology, and evolutionary human biology.’ This paper argues that his approach needs to be complemented at least by work from sociologists and social psychologists. Starting with problems of defining and measuring norms it is then claimed that a theory of norms should address the origin, change and effects of norms and model micromacro processes. This (...) should also be the goal of a theory of institutions (which are defined here as sets of norms-norms in the sense of accepting oughtness statements). We show how the social psychological value expectancy theory can be applied to model the variety of incentives that could play a role in explaining the effects of norms. Regarding the origin Coleman’s theory of norms is applied to show how Vostroknutov’s dissatisfaction-norms hypothesis can be improved. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Interest in esoteric and mystical aspects of Islam in present-day Russia and its Soviet and tsarist predecessors is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The article starts with a critical discussion of Aleksandr Dugin’s interpretations of Sufism in his ambitious intellectual project Noomachia: Wars of the Intellect [and] Civilizations of Borderlands. The author then compares Dugin’s conceptualizations of Sufism with those of several Russian writers who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose portrayal of Sufism and its (...) followers is similar to Dugin’s in some important respects. These ideologically driven constructions of Sufism stand in sharp contrast to the self-consciously objective scholarly ones that emerged in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century within the Russian academic and teaching institutions specializing in Eastern religions, languages, and cultures. The author argues that Russian academic conceptualizations of Sufism mirrored those of the fin-de-siècle German Islamology and then proceeds to examine the profound changes in Russian attitudes to Sufism, and Islam generally, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet state that based its legitimacy on the Marxist-Leninist concept of history with its pervasive atheism, materialism, and emphasis on class struggle. It shaped Soviet-era academic and nonacademic approaches to Sufism until the mid-1980s, when Soviet scholars began to question the Marxist-Leninist certainties of the previous six decades. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 201-224.

Cadmium (Cd) is one of the most toxic heavy metals. Its high mobility and bioaccumulation power in plant, animal and human tissues differentiate it from the rest of its group and motivate the interest of scientists to know its effects and interaction with plants and the environment. The aim of the present study was to isolate and evaluate the in vitro tolerance of rhizospheric bacteria associated with rice plants in cadmium-contaminated environments and to evaluate them in vitro capacity to tolerate (...) cadmium and the production of compounds related to their ability to remediate and promote plant growth. Rhizospheric bacteria were isolated, tolerance was found up to 500 mg/L CdCl2 and the ability to produce siderophore and solubilize phosphate at this concentration of cadmium was observed in vitro. The morphospecies with the ability to tolerate cadmium up to 500 mg/L found corresponds to Pseudomonas aeruginosa GU270941.1, a species of rhizospheric bacteria that shows an alternative to reduce cadmium uptake by rice plants and promote the growth of these plants for their adaptation and tolerance to this metal. (shrink)

Understanding the interaction of Cd with plants, as well as the search for alternatives to minimize its effects, has caught the interest of the scientific community, due to the accelerated growth of contamination with this metal and its high toxicity. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the ability of two rhizospheric bacterial strains LC7504001.1 Burkholderia cepacia (C65RLIM) and FJ972527.1 Pseudomonas aeruginosa (C85RLIM) to three concentrations of cadmium (100, 300 and 500 mg/L) and to compare the growth behaviour (...) with increasing temperature from 32 to 45°C. The results show different growth patterns for each strain tested against exposure to the three cadmium concentrations and the four temperatures tested. The Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain (C85RLIM) had the best adaptive behaviour to the three cadmium concentrations tested, and also showed stability when subjected to 500 mg/L CdCl2 and temperatures between 40 and 45°C. The results predict the possible behaviour of rhizospheric bacteria in the face of global warming and heavy metal remediation processes. (shrink)

One of the strongest objections to epiphenomenalism is that it precludes any kind of knowledge of qualia, since empirical knowledge has to include a causal relationship between the respective belief and the object of knowledge. It is argued that this objection works only if the causal relationship is understood in a very specific sense (as a 'direct' causal relationship). Epiphenomenalism can, however, live well with other kinds of causal relationships ('indirect' causal relationships) or even with a reliability account of knowledge (...) which does not invoke causation at all. Michael Pauen has argued extensively (this volume of Journal of Consciousness Studies), however, that this line of defence doesn't work because it presupposes the existence of psychophysical laws connecting qualia with physical phenomena which cannot be established under epiphenomenalist presuppositions. It is argued that Pauen's arguments lead to sceptical consequences which threaten not only interactionist alternatives to epiphenomenalism but finally his own account. (shrink)

Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics published in 1871 is usually regarded as the founding document of the Austrian School of economics. Many of the School’s prominent representatives, including Friedrich Wieser, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig Mises, Hans Mayer, Friedrich August Hayek, Fritz Machlup, Oskar Morgenstern, and Gottfried Haberler, as well as Israel Kirzner, Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard, and Don Lavoie, advanced and modified Menger’s research program in sometimes conflicting ways. Yet, some characteristics of the Austrian School remain (nearly) consensual from its foundation (...) through to contemporary neo-Austrian economists. In eight sections, we will briefly discuss some of the philosophical and methodological characteristics of Austrian economics: Austrian action theory and interpretative understanding, a relatively thoroughgoing subjectivism, methodological individualism, ontological individualism, apriorism, essentialism, an often overstated rejection of formal methods, and alertness to economic semantics. (shrink)

The article critically examines the project of Brian Epstein's social ontology. The authors propose to interpret a social fact as derived from the appropriate perspective of an observer carrying out a structural reconstruction of a social phenomenon and identify difficulties in the way of analyzing social facts as structurally independent of causally determining factors. The article shows that the determination and foundation of social facts cannot be understood as asymmetric, substantiates the symmetrical nature of the relationship between the determinable complex (...) fact and the ontological foundations that determine them, and suggests that the judgments describing them are equivalent, and also proves the need to involve philosophical and scientific methodology, the resources of the philosophy of language and epistemology to address the issue of the validity of projects “ontological fixation”, which the authors of the article propose to consider as a scientific classification. Understanding the ontology of the social is possible only when going beyond its limits, and any classifications can be idiosyncrasies of individual classifiers or observers, scientifically unequal and requiring epistemological evaluation. The authors note that epistemology allows us to judge the necessity or, on the contrary, artificiality of classification, and the question of the ontological basis of a social fact should be solved by analogy. Accordingly, the search for such ontological foundations is not possible without prior resolution of the epistemological problem: which classifications (fixations) of “natural” or “social species” are structurally necessary (in the sense that their macro-properties properties stem from the internal structure), and which are arbitrarily constructed by the observer, based on his idiosyncrasy or local-historical, cultural or ideological position. (shrink)

The term ‘Orthodox Christian medicine’ has become so customary among believers in Russia that the concept behind it is rarely questioned. However, it is worth articulating both for the sake of the profession and for the benefit of patients whether such a phrase is at all meaningful and if so what exactly it stands for. The following analysis, based on a public lecture, draws on the personal experience and reflections of a practicing GP and cardiologist who is also the Chairman (...) of the Society of Orthodox Christian Physicians of Russia. (shrink)

Let Mm k be the simply connected constant curvature space form of dimension m. • Mm 0 is Rm with euclidean metric • Mm k for k > 0 is an m-sphere of radius k−1/2 • Mm k for k < 0 is m dimensional hyperbolic space modelled on the m-ball of radius (−k)−1/2.

So far I have taken prose and poetry where admittedly they exist, in literature, and attempted to discover the difference between them by taking pieces of prose or poetry which have the same or much the same subjects and comparing them with one another. In all these pairs of passages I thought I could detect this difference: that in the poem the subject as rendered in words acquires a life of its own, is a living thing, as it were, living (...) its own life like an animal or plant, is organic, and, in a word, concrete. While the prose, for all its constructive unity, is not self-subsistent, but is descriptive of a given subject, even though that subject is itself created by the writer, as in a novel, and, in a word, is analytic. It is not the greater passion or vividness of the poem, for prose may be vivid, as in Carlyle, and passionate, as in Burke. It is that the poet places himself and places his hearer within the subject itself, and works from within outwards, while the prosaist describes relatively from without. Both of them describe, the poet as well as the prosaist. But the prosaist builds up his subject so as to bring it before your mind. The poet starts with his subject in its integrity, places the hearer's mind within it, and his exposition is the unfolding life of the subject itself. (shrink)

This article analyses how Rousseau's First Discourse and the questions it posed about human progress and the reform of society were debated in the institutional context of the Berlin Academy by Formey and Herder. Despite some important disagreements, Formey and Herder fundamentally shared Rousseau's assumption that erudition could be detrimental both to society and to the individual. In order to limit the socially corrosive effects of the arts and the sciences, and in an attempt to realize their full beneficent potential, (...) they called for their reform through institutional regulation and management by a meritocracy of scholarly experts. Drawing on Hume, Herder in particular developed a positive role for the modern state as an active agent of enlightenment, provided it not only promoted the arts and sciences but also guaranteed freedom and the rule of law to ensure their flourishing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Genome Research in an Interdependent WorldAlexander Morgan Capron (bio)This has been the year of agenda-setting conferences for the ambitious ELSI (ethical, legal and social issues) program of the Human Genome Project (HGP). But of the dozen or more major meetings of this sort held across the country, the one held at the National Institutes of Heakh (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, June 2-4, 1991, was distinctive in several respects.1As (...) its name implies, "Human Genome Research in an Interdependent World" was a global look at the issues raised by gene mapping and sequencing. Unlike previous conferences, however, this meeting looked beyond a comparative analysis of clinical and domestic legal issues, and concentrated on topics that may require responses on a truly international level if they are to be successfully resolved.The meeting's organizers gathered an impressive group of more than seventy participants from fifteen countries, including the first significant contingent of Soviet and Japanese scientists, physicians, and philosophers at an ELSI meeting. In addition to talks by the heads of the genome projects in the Soviet Union, Japan, and the United States, the meeting was keynoted by Dr. James Wyngaarden, director general of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), and I had the honor of serving as its general chairman.The goal of the meeting was to consider an array of issues that scientists, philosophers, and lawyers from around the world suggested might have international significance, with an eye to deciding three things: (1) Does the issue deserve further attention? (2) Is the issue best addressed in an international or domestic context? and (3) Do structures exist to which the issue can be referred for resolution? In the final sessions, the entire group debated proposed resolutions on the various topics and narrowed the list needing further, intensive exploration.To provide an international framework for this process, the conference [End Page 247] established a Global Steering Committee on Ethical and Social Issues in Genome Research, which will coordinate the efforts of several task forces charged with refining the tentative resolutions adopted by the conference participants on June 4. The task forces are expected to be able to complete work on some topics by the time of the steering committee's first meeting, which was described by one participant as a "check point," probably within the coming year; on other topics, the task forces will provide interim reports and arrange to continue their analysis. Several topics—less complex or more embryonic—were referred directly to the steering committee. On all issues, a major objective will be to ascertain what existing or newly created structure or structures are capable of implementing the group's recommendations and then to monitor the issue to ensure that appropriate implementation is occurring.Issues to be Explored by Task ForcesInsurance and EmploymentWhile individuals may derive medically useful information from the expanded range of genetic tests that will flow from the HGP, they could also be harmed if test results become a basis for discrimination. An area of particular concern at the conference in Bethesda was whether genetic information should be used to decide eligibility for employment or the scope and cost of health and life insurance. The complexity of this issue is increased as barriers to worker migration fall (especially in Europe) and as more firms carry on business internationally. Furthermore, questions arise about the limits of required testing and whether individuals may decline to be informed of the results of tests.The task force will not only gather information on practices and legal standards throughout the world—especially in light of the differences among nations with regard to the linkage of employment and various forms of insurance—but will also examine international anti-discrimination laws as a possible means of supplementing domestic statutes and regulations. As a starting point, the Bethesda meeting agreed on a set of principles for the task force to refine.2ForensicsAlthough their legal status is not fully resolved, DNA tests are being used increasingly in judicial proceedings and civil and criminal investigations as a highly probative means to identify people. Most forensic uses of "DNA fingerprints" are domestic, but international cooperation among investigative bodies... (shrink)

This paper concerns a feature of the deontic landscape that, although pervasive, has hitherto escaped notice. None of the current categorizations of duties adequately capture a common and important form of duty, the “open duty.” The difference between open and closed duties, whether perfect or imperfect, rests not on the side of the end or action enjoined by the duty, but on that of the agents who are enjoined to act. An open duty belongs to more than one person, not (...) all of whose performance of the action is required to fulfill the duty. An example would be the situation faced by American doctors following Hurricane Katrina, when it was imperative that some of them provide aid, but when it was just as necessary that many remain where they were to treat local patients. In this paper, I examine these duties’ nature and structure, and explain several of their more unusual features. -/- . (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This article brings critical pressure to bear on two different critical terms: modernism and camp. Arguing that these two historically and theoretically weighted categories have much to tell us when read in relation to each other, this article revisits the short fiction of the canonical modernist Virginia Woolf, and debates the critical significance of the work of a hitherto overlooked late modernist, Charles Henri Ford. Comparing and contrasting the very different writing styles of these important modern cultural producers, this article (...) moves to affirm a fresh and queer object of significant scholarly interest: camp modernism. (shrink)

The author opens with a general discussion of religion & the beginnings of Law. Each subsequent chapter discusses topics such as: Origin of Laws, Inherited Education, Rulers & Leaders, Evolution, Tyranny, Taxation, & many others. A very readable text, which invokes additional thought on a variety of topics.

The advent of functional imaging has reinforced the attempts to define dreaming as a sleep state-dependent phenomenon. PET scans revealed major differences between nonREM sleep and REM sleep. However, because dreaming occurs throughout sleep, the common features of the two sleep states, rather than the differences, could help define the prerequisite for the occurrence of dreams. [Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Solms; Revonsuo; Vertes & Eastman].

Each human being is a co-creator of the world and when a human being dies the world he co-created is thereby annihilated. The main authors discussed are Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and David Hume.

A study investigating the ideas of Pre-Reformation Scottish philosophers such as John Duns Scotus, John Ireland, John Mair of Haddington and George Lokert of Ayr.

The intense media coverage of the latest version of “human cloning” that began in mid‐October with a front‐page story in the New York Times revealed more than the public's deep fascination with the prospect of endless human replicas.1 It also served as a reminder that for the past decade no official, broad‐based advisory bioethics body has operated in the United States.