A tight control of intracellular [Ca2+\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{2+}$$\end{document}] is essential for the survival and normal function of cells. In this study we investigate key mechanistic steps by which calcium is regulated and calcium oscillations could occur using in silico modeling of membrane transporters. To do so we give a deterministic description of intracellular Ca2+\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{2+}$$\end{document} dynamics using nonlinear dynamics in order to understand Ca2+\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} (...) \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{2+}$$\end{document} signaling. We first present the ordinary differential equations system for cell calcium kinetics and make a preliminary work on Sobol indices. We then describe and analyze complex transporters action. Besides, we analyze the whole system. We finally perform numerical simulations and compare our results to real data. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this paper, we explore the effects of certain forbidden substructure conditions on preordered sets. In particular, we characterize in terms of these conditions those preordered sets which can be represented as the supremum of a well-ordered ascending chain of lowersets whose members are constructed by means of alternating applications of disjoint union and ordinal sums with chains. These decompositions are examples of ordinal decompositions in relatively normal lattices as introduced by Snodgrass, Tsinakis, and Hart. We conclude the paper with (...) an application to information systems. (shrink)

The Energy-Time Uncertainty (ETU) has always been a problem-ridden relation, its problems stemming uniquely from the perplexing question of how to understand this mysterious Δ t . On the face of it (and, indeed, far deeper than that), we always know what time it is. Few theorists were ignorant of the fact that time in quantum mechanics is exogenously defined, in no ways intrinsically related to the system. Time in quantum theory is an independent parameter, which simply means independently known (...) . In the early 1960s Aharonov (1961-64) and Bohm (1961-64) mounted a spirited attack against the ETU, which sealed its fate to the present date. By emphasising that time is always “well-defined” in quantum theory, they were led to the conclusion that no ETU should exist, a view shared by many in the 1990s, if Busch (1990) is to be believed. In a similar vein, I emphasize that (a) physical systems occupy a particular energy state at a particular instant of time, if at all; (b) even in absence of all time-measuring instruments, it is still trivially warranted that one can measure a system's energy as accurately as one pleases, and simply announce “The system's energy is exactly E NOW!”, a possibility which no quantum mechanics of any sort, or any physical theory whatsoever, can afford to tamper with or change, except circularly. One never loses one's own perception of time, when one measures the energy, a fact which no measurement conceivable can interfere with or affect. Both (a) and (b) uniquely entail that energy and time are compatible, if not indeed intimately interconnected, contrary to what the relevant uncertainty seems to affirm. In response to Aharonov's and Bohm's initial problem, I reinterpret ΔEΔt ≥ h , as directly derived from authentic quantum principles, without however having to assume a direct incompatibility between its related concepts, attributing their complementarity to conditions other than ordinarily assumed. (shrink)

The classical response to Zeno’s paradoxes goes like this: ‘Motion cannot properly be defined within an instant. Only over a period’ (Vlastos.) I show that this ob-jection is exactly what it takes for Zeno to be right. If motion cannot be defined at an instant, even though the object is always moving at that instant, motion cannot be defined at all, for any longer period of time identical in content to that instant. The nonclassical response introduces discontinuity, to evade the (...) paradox of infinite proximity of any point of a distance with any ‘next’. But it introduces the wrong sort of discontinuity because, rather than assuming the discontinuity of motion, as Quantum Theory does, it assumes the discontinuity of space. Due then to the resulting spacetime disorder, though all else is certainly lost, the Tortoise now turns up at least as fast as Achilles and hence not even this much is rescued. Zeno rejects motion because he shows that a moving object must be where it is not. Hence motion, if to occur, must violate the Law of Contradiction (LNC). Applying the concept of quantum discontinuity, I produce an alternative. If an object is to move discontinuously between two boundary points, A and B, what actually obtains is, rather, that it is nowhere at all in-between A and B. And cannot therefore be at two places in-between A and B. And cannot therefore be where it is not. Thus, LNC is conserved. However, in these conditions, the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) fails. To mitigate the undesirability of this effect, I show that LEM fails because LNC holds. Thus, the resulting nonbivalent logic, which is also appropriate for quantized transitions of all kinds, will always turn up nonbivalent, because consistent. And this is not too bad, considering. (shrink)

A system of logic usually comprises a language for which a model-theory and a proof-theory are defined. The model-theory defines the semantic notion of model-theoretic logical consequence (⊨), while the proof-theory defines the proof- theoretic notion of logical consequence (or logical derivability, ⊢). If the system in question is sound and complete, then the two notions of logical consequence are extensionally equivalent. The concept of full formalization is a more restrictive one and requires in addition the preservation of the standard (...) meanings of the logical terms in all the admissible interpretations of the logical calculus, as it is proof-theoretically defined. Although classical first-order logic is sound and complete, its standard formalizations fall short to be full formalizations since they allow non-intended interpretations. This fact poses a challenge for the logical inferentialism program, whose main tenet is that the meanings of the logical terms are uniquely determined by the formal axioms or rules of inference that govern their use in a logical calculus, i.e., logical inferentialism requires a categorical calculus. This paper is the first part of a more elaborated study which will analyze the categoricity problem from its beginning until the most recent approaches. I will first start by describing the problem of a full formalization in the general framework in which Carnap (1934/1937, 1943) formulated it for classical logic. Then, in sections IV and V, I shall discuss the way in which the mathematicians B.A. Bernstein (1932) and E.V. Huntington (1933) have previously formulated and analyzed it in algebraic terms for propositional logic and, finally, I shall discuss some critical reactions Nagel (1943), Hempel (1943), Fitch (1944), and Church (1944) formulated to these approaches. (shrink)

BackgroundAlthough the number of reporting guidelines has grown rapidly, few have gone through an updating process. The STARD statement (Standards for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy), published in 2003 to help improve the transparency and completeness of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies, was recently updated in a systematic way. Here, we describe the steps taken and a justification for the changes made.ResultsA 4-member Project Team coordinated the updating process; a 14-member Steering Committee was regularly solicited by the Project Team when making critical (...) decisions. First, a review of the literature was performed to identify topics and items potentially relevant to the STARD updating process. After this, the 85 members of the STARD Group were invited to participate in two online surveys to identify items that needed to be modified, removed from, or added to the STARD checklist. Based on the results of the literature review process, 33 items were presented to the STARD Group in the online survey: 25 original items and 8 new items; 73 STARD Group members (86 %) completed the first survey, and 79 STARD Group members (93 %) completed the second survey.Then, an in-person consensus meeting was organized among the members of the Project Team and Steering Committee to develop a consensual draft version of STARD 2015. This version was piloted in three rounds among a total of 32 expert and non-expert users. Piloting mostly led to rewording of items. After this, the update was finalized. The updated STARD 2015 list now consists of 30 items. Compared to the previous version of STARD, three original items were each converted into two new items, four original items were incorporated into other items, and seven new items were added.ConclusionsAfter a systematic updating process, STARD 2015 provides an updated list of 30 essential items for reporting diagnostic accuracy studies. (shrink)

There are two antithetical classes of Paradoxes, The Runner and the Stadium, impregnated with infinite divisibility, which show that motion conflicts with the world, and which I call Static. And the Arrow, impregnated with nothing, which shows that motion conflicts with itself, and which I call Dynamic. The Arrow is stationary, because it cannot move at a point; or move, and be at more points than one at the same time, so being where it is not. Despite their contrast, however, (...) both groups can be evaded, if motion is conducted over discrete points: (a) If no two points touch, there will be a step ahead, for there will now be nextness. And (b) if they do not touch, “here” and “there” (=not–here) will no longer be sufficiently proximal to have the body be where it is not. They will be separate. So the body is only where it is. Hence, both groups, despite their contrast, presuppose, each in its own way, the infinite proximity of any point with anynext. But the Dynamic group cannot survive what it needs. Suppose that “here” and “not–here” (i.e., “there”), are not discrete but infinitely proximal. Then Rest also would be self-contradictory. And it gets worse. For it takes two to make a contradiction, in this case, “here,” “not–here,” and their proximity. But, with regard to conditions of infinite proximity, “in the end there can be only one” (point), and hence no contradiction in the first place. The Dynamic paradoxes rest on a premise with which they are inconsistent. They need two of this, of which, in a different but just as equally vital connection, there can be only one. On the force of this remark, the Dynamic paradoxes, initially the stronger of the lot, actually turn out to be the weaker. (shrink)

Constantine Sandis argues for a holistic approach to museums.

Equivalences and translations between consequence relations abound in logic. The notion of equivalence can be defined syntactically, in terms of translations of formulas, and order-theoretically, in terms of the associated lattices of theories. W. Blok and D. Pigozzi proved in [4] that the two definitions coincide in the case of an algebraizable sentential deductive system. A refined treatment of this equivalence was provided by W. Blok and B. Jónsson in [3]. Other authors have extended this result to the cases of (...) k-deductive systems and of consequence relations on associative, commutative, multiple conclusion sequents. Our main result subsumes all existing results in the literature and reveals their common character. The proofs are of order-theoretic and categorical nature. (shrink)

Historische Praxeologie richtet ihren Blick auf vergangenen Alltag. Ihr Interesse gilt dem historischen Menschen in seinem alltäglichen Tun und Sprechen, das sie in Praktiken verortet. Der Band stellt den historisch-praxeologischen Forschungsansatz programmatisch als neuen Zugriff auf die Kulturgeschichte vergangenen Handelns vor. Praktiken sind erkennbare Muster im vergangenen Alltag. Sie zeichnen sich durch Routinen und Dynamiken, zeitgenössische Logik und Bedeutungszuschreibungen sowie das Mitwirken von Dingen aus. Als Zusammenhänge menschlichen Handelns sind sie bis heute lesbar. Der historisch-praxeologische Ansatz versteht sich als eine (...) Weiterführung von Alltags- und Mikrogeschichte sowie Selbstzeugnisforschung. Mit Beiträgen von M. Böth, J. Breittruck, J. Esch, A. Mariss, J. Cáceres Mardones, T. Neu, A. Raapke, B. Reicherdt und D. Sittler sowie einem runden Tisch mit N. Buschmann, D. Freist, M. Füssel, F. Hillebrandt und A. Landwehr. (shrink)

This volume focuses on Hegel's philosophy of action in connection to current concerns. Including key papers by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John McDowell, as well as eleven especially commissioned contributions by leading scholars in the field, it aims to readdress the dialogue between Hegel and contemporary philosophy of action. Topics include: the nature of action, reasons and causes; explanation and justification of action; social and narrative aspects of agency; the inner and the outer; the relation between intention, planning, and (...) purposeful behaviour; freedom and responsibility; and self-actualisation. This book will appeal alike to Hegel scholars and philosophers of action. -/- List of Contributors: Katerina Deligiorgi, Stephen Houlgate, Dudley Knowles, Arto Laitinen, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Mcdowell, Francesca Menegoni, Dean Moyar, Terry Pinkard, Robert B. Pippin, Michael Quante, Constantine Sandis, Hans-Christoph Schmidt Am Busch, Allen Speight, Charles Taylor, Allen W. Wood. (shrink)

The eleventh-century Byzantine compiler Cedrenus includes a unique story in the midst of his otherwise traditional and hagiographic material on the emperor Constantine. Mentioning the outbreak of war between the Roman and Persian empires, he describes the cause of the breakdown of peace somewhat as follows. A certain Metrodorus, who was of Persian origin, went to visit the Brahmins in India to study philosophy and won the reputation of being a holy man through his asceticism. He also built water mills (...) and baths, unknown to the Indians till that time. Having acquired this reputation, he entered the temples and took away many precious stones and pearls. He also received gifts from the king of the Indians. On his return to Byzantium he gave them to the emperor Constantine as being gifts of his own. When Constantine expressed his astonishment, Metrodorus said he had sent other gifts by the land route but that they had been detained by the Persians. Constantine then wrote a strong protest to Sapor demanding the gifts but received no reply; thus the peace was broken. This remarkable conte, more appropriate to the Arabian Nights than to sober history, is generally supposed to be referred to in a passage in Ammianus. Towards the end of a long section commenting on the personality and achievements of Julian, Ammianus turns briefly to the question of the ultimate responsibility for the Persian War which ended so disastrously for Julian and the Roman Empire: et quoniam eum obtrectatoribus novos bellorum tumultus ad perniciem rei communis insimulant concitasse, sciant docente veritate perspicue, non Iulianum sed Constantinum ardores Parthicos succendisse, cum Metrodori mendaciis avidius acquiescit, ut dudum rettulimus plane. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 139-147 [Access article in PDF] A Mahayana Theology of Salvation History John P. Keenan Middlebury College Salvation history is a Western theological strategy based on biblical ideas about how God acts in history to bring about the salvation/deliverance of God's people. It begins with the scriptural accounts of creation as the inception of God's plan. It moves to describe Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt (...) and goes on to depict the guidance the Lord Yahweh provides for his people throughout their journeys and despite their trials and reverses.Israel may be idealized in scripture as God's domain, sovereign among the nations, but in fact it was a small country sandwiched between the two superpowers of the day—Egypt and Assyria (or Babylon), and subject to the rise and fall of those empires. 1 The New Testament goes on to describe God's plan in sending his son Jesus to effect salvation and unite all people in him (Eph. 1:1-16). The passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus comprise the central drama, in which we all are invited to participate. The author of Luke/Acts gives an account of how God moves through the teachings and the life and death of Jesus to establish his Church and how that Church evolves from a small and marginal community to enter and permeate the very heart of the Empire at Rome. The story continues in postscriptural Christian history, from Constantine's vision at Milvian Bridge to the Christianization of Europe, and further to the missionary endeavors to convert all peoples to the path of the Gospel. In the twentieth century, Liberation theology is heir to these notions, insisting that conversion means not simply becoming Christian, but the furtherance of justice and peace among all peoples, even non-Christians.A Mahayana reading of this schema is not at first glance very promising. Mahayana knows nothing of God, much less of God acting in history. Nor, indeed, of history itself as a purposeful unfolding of events. Indian thought is known for its ahistoricity. No histories were produced in ancient India at all. No Herodotus, no Thucydides. The first Buddhist histories were written not in India but in Tibet, some thousand years after the birth of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Indian traditions in their focus on the eternal truth (sanatana dharma) turned away from the concrete flow of events and from any recording of their progression. [End Page 139]The task before us is challenging. To tackle it best, I will divide this essay into three parts, and thus attempt to argue for a Mahayana reading of salvation history. The first part will treat Mahayana philosophy and argue that despite its Indian lack of historical consciousness, it does possess the tools for writing history. Its teaching that all events are empty (sunyata) is coterminous with its teaching that all events arise in dependence upon a host of causes and conditions (pratitya-samutpada). In a word, emptiness itself entails a radical insight into the contingent and conventional historicity of events (dharmas). Beyond this, since all events are seen as empty of any abiding core essence, Mahayana deconstructs the very idea of an eternal world truth over and apart from the everyday world of events. It proclaims, rather, that to an awakened person, all is "worldly convention-only" (samvrti-matra). 2 This focus on the radical conventionality of events can serve, I would argue, as a needed corrective to a literalistic reading of salvation history. Looked at from this perspective, the story of the New Testament writers can perhaps become more apparent—how they are writing of God's design, purpose, and plan in order to counter the regnant patterns of Greek and Roman arrogance, and to substitute insight into the mystery of our being and of our being here.The second part of this article will address the Western doctrine of salvation history, focusing on the New Testament, particularly Pauline theology as expressed in one passage from Ephesians about how salvation is attained through Jesus as the unfolding plan of God's purpose... (shrink)

Drawing upon the insights of Spinoza and Constantin Brunner, Bickel develops a theory of the identity of mind and body. Difficult to understand.-F. E. B.

This passage is discussed in AJPb 97 , 252, by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, who rightly draws attention to the ‘absurdity’’ of exilii specie sepositos and observes that ‘Ausonius must be saying that the brothers were banished in fact, though not in name’’. Shackleton Bailey's solution is to replace exilii with bospitii, which gives excellent sense, but, even on the assumption of psychological error by a scribe, which is how Shackleton Bailey explains the corruption, may seem rather hard to credit. (...) An easier solution might be to write auxilii for exilii: in appearance Constantine's brothers were being helped and protected, in reality confined in exile. (shrink)

It would be hard to find a more effective visual source for understanding the political ideology that underscores Dante's relationship to Boniface VIII in the Divina Commedia than the frescoes that line the walls of the Oratorio di San Silvestro in the Basilica of the Santi Quattro Coronati in Rome. These frescoes, which depict episodes from the life of St. Sylvester and his relationship to the emperor Constantine, express as their clear subtext the thirteenth-century papacy's view of the proper relationship (...) between ecclesiastical and secular power . Their vivid dramatization of these events synthesizes and, more importantly, interprets two well-known literary sources: the life of St. Sylvester that was thought to have been composed by Eusebius of Caesarea and the text of the Donation of Constantine, the Constitutum Constantini. The account of the life of St. Sylvester that is contained in the Golden Legend also provides a readily accessible point of reference for the cycle, since it is roughly contemporaneous with it and is itself a compilation based on these earlier texts. (shrink)

It has been frequently asserted that the western Roman supreme commander Stilicho’s neglect of the Transalpine provinces during the usurpation of Constantine III contributed to his eventual downfall in 408. Stilicho’s fatal flaw, in this recurring opinion, seems to have been a desire to annex eastern Illyricum for which he sought to employ Alaric. In a volte-face, he then wished to use Alaric as the leader of the western field army that was supposed to bring down Constantine. The aim of (...) this article is to advance several notes of critique on this narrative that has had a long life in Stilichonian scholarship. Instead it will demonstrate that a) the threat of Constantine has been overestimated, b) Stilicho had no designs on annexing eastern Illyricum, c) he had a military strategy ready against Constantine that was sound and in tandem with earlier civil wars, and d) that the intended role of Alaric during this enterprise has been misunderstood. Nevertheless, Stilicho’s military strategy in 408 proved to be fundamentally corrosive towards his hitherto carefully built-up political capital. Olympius, the architect of his demise and his precise knowledge of Stilicho’s army preparations, as befitted the magister officiorium, provided the former with the perfect material to fabricate stories of Stilicho coveting a throne while neglecting the west. This set in motion the plot that ultimately brought down Stilicho. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 239 die Herausgeber nicht mit, von wem. Jedem Dialog geht eine Gliederung voran; jeder Band ist mit einer recht brauchbaren Bibliographie versehen. Es ist erstaunlich zu erfahren, dass der erste Band, erstmalig in 1957 erschienen, in 1963 eine Auflage von 78000 erreicht hat; bleiben auch die Auflageziffern der fibrigen B~inde dahinter zurfick, so sind sie doch genfigend eindrucksvoll. Man wfinscht, der Verlag m6chte doch, durch diesen Erfolg (...) ermutigt, das nach Obgesagtem noch Fehlende--und dazu noch Platons Gedichte--in einem Erg~inzungsband bringen, wie immer man fiber die Echtheit der Stficke denkt. Der stilistische Unterschied zwischen den ~bersetzungen von Schleiermacher (erstmalig: 1804-1810) und von H. und F. H. Mfiller ist ausserordentlich. Dies ist nicht etwa auf die gr6ssere Sprachmeisterschaff Schleiermachers zurfickfiihren. Vielmehr liegt seiner Obersetzungsmethode eine h6chst interessante Theorie zugrunde (die F. A. Wolff, der Schleiermachers ~bersetzung verhShnt und Wilamowitz, der sie als ungeniessbar bezeichnet hatte, offenbar unbekannt war). Dieser Theorie zufolge ist es die Aufgabe des ~2bersetzers, den Leser besffindig daran zu erinnern, dass er nur eine l~bersetzung vor sich hat. Einem ~bersetzer, der sich brfistet, dass sich sein Text so liest, wie ihn der Autor geschrieben h~itte, wenn er in der Sprache des ~bersetzers und seines Publikums gedacht h~itte, sollte erwidert werden "Daffir bin ich dir so dankbar, wie ich es w~ire, wenn du mir das Bild eines Mannes zeigtest und sagtest--So wiirde er ausgesehen haben, wenn ihn mit seiner Mutter ein anderer Vater gezeugt h~tte." In anderen Worten: da sich Inhalt und Ausdruck nicht abtrennen lassen, sollte der f2bersetzer, start das Original seiner Sprache anzueignen, vielmehr--wir gebrauchen hier den bekannten Brechtschen Begriff--im Leser einen Verfremdungseffekt erzeugen. Wie man sieht, ist Schleiermachers ~3bersetzungstheorie jeder "rationalistischen " strikte entgegengesetzt; ja, man k6nnte sagen, dass sie das ganze Wesen des Romantisch-Irrationalen eben auf ein Einzelproblem, das des l~bersetzens angewendet, aufs beste ausdrfickt. Und Schleiermachers f2bersetzungspraxis entspricht genau seiner Theorie. Dies ist ihre Eigentfimlichkeit. Und ich denke, dass diese Theorie mehr Au{merksamkeit verdient, als ihr in den nie endenden Diskussionen darfiber, welchen Prinzipien der Obersetzer folgen sollte, geschenkt wird. PHILIP MERLAN Scripps College, Claremont, Calif. Platon der Erzieher. Von Julius Stenzel. Mit einer Einffihrung von Konrad Gaiser. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1961. Pp. xxx + 337. DM 26.) Platon der Erzieher was first published in 1927. The present edition, with 240 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the exception of the preface by Gaiser, is an exact reproduction of the earlier one. As a reviewer of the reissue, I feel myself obligated to formulate what seems to me relevant today. I remember that, when I read the first edition about the time of its appearance, I was full of admiration and felt myself indebted to the book for many years. Today it seems to me more dated than most writings on Plato of that period, including various publications of Stenzel. Criticizing Platon der Erzieher, I criticize what I once read differently. Julius Stenzel had earlier established his reputation as a Platonic scholar with his Studien zur Entwicklung der platonischen Dialektik von Sokrates zu Aristoteles (1917). This book as well as most of Stenzel's later investigations have exercised a considerable influence on international Platonic scholarship. In Germany it prefaced a new approach to ancient and especially to Platonic philosophy. In spite of the spadework done by German scholars in the nineteenth century and still by men like Apelt, Constantin Ritter and Theodor Gomperz, Plato's image in German thought about the end of the First World War was mainly determined by three sources: the neo-Kantian interpretation and Natorp's monograph in particular ; the highly original but very personal and philosophically naive "biography" of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff; and the vision of the Plato gestalt by the George circle. Stenzel dedicated the Studien to Wilamowitz and, while paying his respect to Natorp, stated that in contrast to the philosophical Plato interpretation of the Marburg school, he had chosen a philological and historical approach. As for the George circle, he did not acknowledge its significance, though I believe that at least in his later works he was indirectly influenced by it. In the years following World War I, it became important that Stenzel and... (shrink)

As recently stakeholders complain about the use of conflict minerals in consumer products that are often invisible to them in final products, firms across industries implement conflict mineral management practices. Conflict minerals are those, whose systemic exploitation and trade contribute to human right violations in the country of extraction and surrounding areas. Particularly, supply chain managers in the Western world are challenged taking reasonable steps to identify and prevent risks associated with these resources due to the globally dispersed nature of (...) supply chains and the opacity of the origin of commodities. Supply chain due diligence represents a holistic concept to proactively manage supply chains reducing the likelihood of the use of conflict minerals effectively. Based on an exploratory study with 27 semi-structured interviews within five European industries, we provide insights into patterns of implementation, key motivational factors, barriers and enablers, and impacts of SCDD in mineral supply chains. Our results contribute to both theory and practice as we provide first insights to SCDD practices and make recommendations for an industry-wide implementation of SCDD. Altogether, this study provides the basis for future theory testing research in the context of SCDD and conflict mineral management. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the current use of the Principal Agent Model (PAM) in accounting and finance, focusing on the agent'ss use of private information. The agent'ss behavioral norms in the the PAM deviate from commonly held ethical values in society, from models of man in conventional economic theory, and also from behavioral foundations of related business school fields like corporate strategy, business ethics, and human resource management. Still, it would be unwise to reject the PAM solely because of its distasteful (...) ethical assumptions. The model does appear to have predictive power, but its descriptive or normative qualities remain unexplored. The popularity of the PAM, with its extreme model of man, raises fundamental questions about the impact of this model on business school stakeholders and society at large. (shrink)

This volume focuses on Hegel's philosophy of action in connection to current concerns. Including key papers by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John McDowell, as well as eleven especially commissioned contributions by leading scholars in the field, it aims to readdress the dialogue between Hegel and contemporary philosophy of action. Topics include: the nature of action, reasons and causes; explanation and justification of action; social and narrative aspects of agency; the inner and the outer; the relation between intention, planning, and (...) purposeful behaviour; freedom and responsibility; and self-actualisation. This book will appeal alike to Hegel scholars and philosophers of action. List of Contributors: Katerina Deligiorgi, Stephen Houlgate, Dudley Knowles, Arto Laitinen, Alasdair Macintyre, John Mcdowell, Francesca Menegoni, Dean Moyar, Terry Pinkard, Robert B. Pippin, Michael Quante, Constantine Sandis, Hans-Christoph Schmidt Am Busch, Allen Speight, Charles Taylor, Allen W. Wood. (shrink)

This article presents a brief general view of the recent literature and the scholarly activity in the field of philosophy of medicine in Scandinavia. The focus of attention is not on medical ethics, but on studies on topics like decision theory, medical classification, causality, causal explanations, concept formation, and on analyses of different ideals of medical science and clinical practice. A few principal works on medical ethics are mentioned by way of introduction and a brief account of a highly topical (...) debate on the legislation on artificial insemination in Sweden is given at the end. (shrink)

Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally (...) with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between the two enterprises was effected by his work in history; and in the end it was Bacon's conception and practice of history that provided the answer to his efforts to advance policy and natural philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we re-examine a series of gedanken welcher Weg (WW) experiments introduced by Scully, Englert and Walther that contain the essential ideas underlying the quantum eraser. For this purpose we use the Bohm model which gives a sharp picture of the behaviour of the atoms involved in these experiments. This model supports the thesis that interference disappears in such WW experiments, even though the centre of mass wave function remains coherent throughout the experiment. It also shows exactly what (...) it means to say ‘that the interference can be restored by manipulating the WW detectors long after the atoms have passed’. It does not support Wheeler’s notion that ‘the past is undefined and undefinable without the observation (in the present)’. (shrink)

We investigated the competition between automatic and controlled processes in a word stem completion task. Prime-display duration and the prime-target interval were manipulated. On each trial a masked prime was displayed briefly, followed either immediately or after a delay by a word stem. The subjects were required to complete each stem with the first word that came to mind, to report any prime they could identify, and not to give as completion any identified prime. By the assumption that automatic processes (...) require less stimulus input and can be completed faster than consciously controlled processes we expected a stronger performance contribution from automatic processes with the shorter prime-display durations and in the immediate stems condition. The results confirmed this expectation. The findings highlight that consciously controlled processes require more time to run their course than unconscious automatic processes. (shrink)

The study of historiography is undergoing a revolution akin to that which took place in the history of political thought in the 1960s, and the work of J.G.A. Pocock is central to both. Pocock's continuing exploration, in Barbarism and Religion (1999-), of the intellectual contexts of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is central to this enterprise, and this essay situates the origins of his own work within a pre-‘Cambridge School’ Cambridge and its experience of (...) what might be called the Butterfieldian moment. That was marked by a desire to treat religion seriously as a driving force in history; and the same concern is applied here to further understanding an eighteenth-century controversy in which history and religion were dramatically involved, and which profoundly affected Gibbon's own historical and religious views. The work of Conyers Middleton and John Jortin is critically examined from this perspective. These preludes to Gibbon lead to a series of postludes examining the particular contexts in which Victorian and twentieth-century historians and writers, from Henry Hart Milman to Evelyn Waugh, variously appreciated and interpreted Gibbon. The whole is to be seen as a reflexive engagement with Pocock's vitally illuminating studies in eighteenth-century historiography. ☆ A slightly revised version of a lecture given at the University of Sussex on 22nd May 2008, on the occasion of a colloquium devoted to J.G.A. Pocock's Barbarism and Religion. It had originally acted as a prelude to a lecture by Pocock on the same occasion, subsequently published as ‘Gibbon and the invention of Gibbon: chapters 15 and 16 reconsidered’, History of European Ideas 35 (2009), 209–16. In this sense, therefore, the present essay has become a postlude. I am deeply grateful to Noël Sugimura for generously reading and commenting on the rescoring of a lecture into an essay. (shrink)

We present a variant of ATL with incomplete information which includes the distributed knowledge operators corresponding to synchronous action and perfect recall. The cooperation modalities assume the use the distributed knowledge of coalitions and accordingly refer to perfect recall incomplete information strategies. We propose a model-checking algorithm for the logic. It is based on techniques for games with imperfect information and partially observable objectives, and involves deciding emptiness for automata on infinite trees. We also propose an axiomatic system and prove (...) its completeness for a rather expressive subset. As for the constructs left outside this completely axiomatised subset, we present axioms by which they can be defined in the subset on the class of models in which every state has finitely many successors and give a complete axiomatisation for a “flat” subset of the logic with these constructs included. (shrink)

This paper explores John Rawls’s strangely neglected notion, the political conception as educator, which captures how the public political culture can educate citizens. The aim is to elucidate both the idea itself and above all its function in Rawls’s Political Liberalism. After first surveying its main content and some historical parallels, the main body of the paper explores why Rawls places so much trust in the educative effect of institutions and, apparently, so little in schools. Along the way we shall (...) discuss the relation between political liberalism and republicanism, the border disagreement between political conception and comprehensive doctrine, Mackie’s distinction between wide and narrow morality and the importance of trust in Rawls’s view of society. (shrink)

This essay reflects on 25 years since Christian Bioethics began publication and, in somewhat autobiographical fashion, engages two core concerns. First, although “non-ecumenism” may often appear a pretext for contention and division, I suggest that a respectful non-ecumenism may provide the opportunity for dialogue and the occasion for employing certain tools from religious studies. Second, although many are skeptical about the possibilities of identifying a “common morality,” a defense of that notion provides a plausible explanation for the development of limited (...) consensus on some issues in bioethics. (shrink)

This study examines the history of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism, starting with the seminal correspondence between Freud and Romain Rolland concerning the concept of "oceanic feeling." Providing a corrective to current views which frame psychoanalysis as pathologizing mysticism, Parsons reveals the existence of three models entertained by Freud and Rolland: the classical reductive, ego-adaptive, and transformational. Then, reconstructing Rolland's personal mysticism through texts and letters unavailable to Freud, Parsons argues that Freud misinterpreted the oceanic feeling. In offering a fresh (...) interpretation of Rolland's mysticism, Parsons constructs a new dialogical approach for psychoanalytic theory of mysticism which integrates culture studies, developmental perspectives, and the deep epistemological and transcendent claims of the mystics. (shrink)