Understanding causation in social-ecological systems (SES) is indispensable for promoting sustainable outcomes. However, the study of such causal relations is challenging because they are often complex and intertwined, and their analysis involves diverse disciplines. Although there is agreement that no single research approach (RA) can comprehensively explain SES phenomena, there is a lack of ability to deal with this diversity. Underlying this diversity and the challenge of dealing with it are different causal reasonings that are rarely explicit. Awareness of hidden (...) assumptions is essential for understanding how the causal reasoning of an RA is constituted, and for promoting the integration, translation, or juxtaposition of different RAs. We identify the following elements as particularly relevant for understanding causal reasoning: methods, frameworks and theories, accounts of causation, analytical focus, and causal notions. We begin with the idea that one of these elements typically figures as an entry point to an RA. This entry point is particularly important because it generates a path dependence that orients causal reasoning. In a subsequent step, when an approach is applied, causal reasoning concretizes as a result of a particular constellation of the remaining elements. We come to these insights by studying the application of four different RAs to the same social-ecological case (the collapse of Baltic cod stocks in the 1980s). On the basis of our findings we developed a guide for the analysis of causal reasoning by raising awareness of the assumptions, key elements, and the relations between these key elements for a given RA. The guide can be used to elicit the causal reasoning of RAs, facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, and support disclosure of ethical/political dimensions that underlie management/governance interventions that are formulated on the basis of causal findings of research studies. (shrink)

The seven deadly sins have provided gossip, amusement, and the plots of morality plays for nearly fifteen hundred years. In Wicked Pleasures, well-known philosopher, business ethicist, and admitted sinner Robert C. Solomon brings together a varied group of contributors for a new look at the old catalogue of sins. Solomon introduces the sins as a group, noting their popularity and pervasiveness. From the formation of the canon by Pope Gregory the Great, the seven have survived the sermonizing of the Reformation, (...) the Inquisition, the Enlightenment, the brief French reign of supreme reason, the apotheoses of capitalism, communism, secular humanism and postmodernism, the writings of numerous rabbis and evangelical moralists, two series in the New York Times, and several bad movies. Taking their cue from this remarkable history, the contributors, including Thomas Pynchon, allowed one sin apiece, provide a non-sermonizing and relatively light-hearted romp through the domain of the deadly seven. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 676-690, July 2022.

Related Works: Part II: C. T. Chong, Yue Yang. $\Sigma_2$ Induction and Infinite Injury Priority Argument, Part II: Tame $\Sigma_2$ Coding and the Jump Operator. Ann. Pure Appl. Logic, vol. 87, no. 2, 103--116. Mathematical Reviews : MR1490049 Part III: C. T. Chong, Lei Qian, Theodore A. Slaman, Yue Yang. $\Sigma_2$ Induction and Infinite Injury Priority Argument, Part III: Prompt Sets, Minimal Paries and Shoenfield's Conjecture. Mathematical Reviews : MR1818378.

Starting from the importance of the figure of the parrhesiastes—the political and therapeutic truth-teller—for Foucault’s understanding of the care of the self, this paper traces the political figuration of the analogy between philosophers and physicians on the one hand, and rhetors and disease on the other in Plato’s Gorgias. I show how rhetoric, in the form of ventriloquism, infects the text itself, and then ask how we account for the effect of the “contaminated” philosophical dialogue on our readerly health. Is (...) the text placebo, vaccine, or virus? All of these options, I argue, complicate Foucault’s prescription for parrhesia, requiring us to think anew the continuing political ramifications of the metaphor of care. (shrink)

A coordinate-free formulation is established for (semi) classical particle-field interactions. The exterior language of spacetime chains and De-Rham currents enables the description to include extended strings and membranes besides point particles. Treating physical fields in terms of sections of particular bundles, a unified account of interactions is presented in terms of an intrinsic action principle on a bundle of jets over spacetime. The theory is illustrated by considering the specific model of point particles with intrinsic spin covariantly coupled to theU(1) (...) andSL(2, C) connections describing the electromagnetic and gravitational fields, respectively. The notion of dual spin is examined in this context and coupled equations for this particle-field system are explicitly derived in a local chart. Attention is drawn to the global implications of the theory. (shrink)

The kleptocratic supremacy of the praetorian prefect C. Fulvius Plautianus was felt throughout the city of Rome, the Empire and even beyond the imperial frontiers. Indeed, for the senatorial historian Dio Cassius, there was no more picturesque demonstration of Plautianus' acquisitiveness than his seizure of strange striped horse-like creatures from ‘islands in the Erythraean Sea’. The passage, as preserved in the text of Xiphilinus' Epitome, reads as follows : καὶ τέλος ἵππους Ἡλίῳ τιγροειδεῖς ἐκ τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῃ νήσων, (...) πέμψας ἑκατοντάρχους, ἐξέκλεψεν·In the end he even stole tiger-like horses to Helios from the islands in the Erythraean Sea, having sent some centurions to carry out the task. (shrink)

Discussion about the application of scientific knowledge in robotics in order to build people helpers is widespread. The issue herein addressed is philosophically poignant, that of robots that are “people”. It is currently popular to speak about robots and the image of Man. Behind this lurks the dialogical mind and the questions about the significance of an artificial version of it. Without intending to defend or refute the discourse in favour of ‘recreating’ Man, a lesser familiar question is brought forth: (...) “and what if we were capable of creating a very convincible replica of man (constructing a robot-person), what would the consequences of this be and would we be satisfied with such technology?” Thorny topic; it questions the entire knowledge foundation upon which strong AI/Robotics is positioned. The author argues for improved monitoring of technological progress and thus favours implementing weaker techniques. (shrink)

A scholium in codex Vaticanus graecus 156 provides evidence that Cassius Dio's Roman History once contained an explicit reference to the ludi saeculares of a.d. 204, something that has been denied in recent scholarship.

We are told that when news of Caracalla's death reached Rome a group of senators denounced their former emperor, likening him to all the tyrants of the past who had ruled over them. The senator who recorded these actions, the historian Cassius Dio, does not say which tyrants were listed, but it is likely that such a comprehensive list included the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and his son Sextus. The senators' actions were doubtless more an act of group (...) catharsis than a private show of loyalty to their new emperor, Marcus Opellius Macrinus. Yet what the scene reveals perhaps most clearly is the Romanexemplatradition in practice. (shrink)