Naturological systems contain two bases of power: personal and group capital. Profit seeking and profit sharing are mechanisms by which capital is obtained. For example, acquiring profits in the form of body fat, food caches, and prime territory allows organisms to survive scarcity; likewise, profit sharing appeases those who might otherwise steal resources. Moreover, sharing is a cost-effective way for organisms to avoid predation. Complementary powers of nature are applicable to corporations, with implications for governance. Corporate environments dominated by recessions (...) and takeovers (the equivalent of scarcity and predation) require investors, management, and boards (the wealthy) to share profits with employees and the surrounding community (the masses) for long-term survival. To explore these mutualistic relationships, the authors discuss naturological approaches to corporations and stakeholders. Connections with governance literature follow, emphasizing solutions in nature to age-old problems that contributed to recent abuses. The article closes with implications for socially responsible corporate governance. (shrink)

In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins (1976) proposed the existence of a unit of cultural inheritance that he called the meme. Some examples of memes are clothing fashions, tool designs, and architectural designs. Like genes, memes must share three properties: longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. Longevity refers to the lifespan of a meme, fecundity to the rate of spread of a meme, and copying-fidelity to how accurately a meme is replicated. In other work (Hardisty and Cassill, in preparation), we hypothesized that (...) successful memes should share a fourth property with successful genes: memes should affect an organism’s lifetime fitness by improving survival or reproduction. Sterelny (2006) argued that high-fitness memes include tools or artifacts that are physically enduring, made from easy to find materials, and easy to reverse-engineer. Here, we argue that another way to link memes to individual fitness is to think of tools as part of an organism’s ecological niche. Each tool or artifact an organism makes that extends its evolutionary lifespan or increases its reproductive output is thus a meme that is directly contributing to that organism’s fitness. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a case for fundamental indeterminacy (FI) by Elizabeth Barnes and offer my counterarguments. Barnes' account of FI includes both the characterization of FI and why we need to accept it. I argue that her reasons for accepting FI can be challenged even when we accept her characterization of FI. Her main claim is that finding a fundamental proposition that our fundamental theory is indeterminate about (FPF) gives us a reason to accept FI in metaphysics. I (...) challenge her claim by pointing out more plausible options to address FPFs. An FPF may either indicate that the theory is nonfundamental or lead us to accept the antirealist view; there is no room for FI in either option. One may insist on accepting FI, but I argue that it is not theoretically rewarding enough. Hence, Barnes' case for FI can be contested. (shrink)

Proponents of “broad scope” theories of intention argue that agents cannot intend to achieve given ends without intending certain inevitable or probable consequences. I shall argue that some Thomistic variants of these theories collapse into the Expectation View (EV), i.e., that we intend to produce all of the consequences that we expect to result from our actions. I shall then raise four objections to EV. First, EV falsely implies that we intend to produce all of the expected beneficial consequences of (...) our actions. Second, EV falsely renders altruistic self-sacrifice a species of suicide. Third, EV falsely implies that medical interventions with probable fatalities must involve intentional killing even when, of the available options, they offer the most likely prospects of long-term survival. Fourth, EV falsely implies that foreseeably fatal actions must involve intentional killing even when they will foreseeably prolong the agent’s life before killing him. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This study examines the origin and religious roots of taegyo, Korean traditional prenatal education, and raises concerns about potential negative impacts of contemporary taegyo practice from feminist and disability perspectives. Taegyo has been accepted without much criticism due to its deep integration into prenatal care culture, and most existing literature focuses on taegyo's positive impacts on fetal health and development from scientific or nursing perspectives. This article analyzes a 19th-century taegyo manual, Taegyo Singi, and Seon and Won Buddhist literatures on (...) taegyo in order to understand the religio-cultural concepts and contexts of taegyo. The article then discusses the potential downsides of taegyo practice today, considering its patriarchal, mother-blaming, ablest roots in Korean history and culture. The author raises concerns about social oppression, the control of women's bodily autonomy, and the disproportionate responsibility burden that taegyo places on Korean women. The article concludes with suggestions for future research and for well-balanced taegyo practice. (shrink)

Bringing Pierre Bourdieu to Science and Technology Studies Content Type Journal Article Pages 263-273 DOI 10.1007/s11024-011-9174-2 Authors Mathieu Albert, Wilson Centre and Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 200 Elizabeth Street , Eaton-South 1-581, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4, Canada Daniel Lee Kleinman, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 348 Agricultural Hall 1450 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA Journal Minerva Online ISSN 1573-1871 Print ISSN 0026-4695 Journal Volume Volume 49 Journal Issue Volume 49, Number (...) 3. (shrink)

While social interaction and play in a VR environment are becoming ever more popular, little is known about how social VR games affect users. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the role of several contingent factors in social VR games by modeling the relationships between involvement, well-being, depression, self-esteem, and social connectedness. A conditional process-moderated mediation model of the measured variables was analyzed with 220 pieces of collected data. The result showed that: the direct effect of involvement on (...) well-being was significant, and the index of moderated mediation involving depression, self-esteem, and social connectedness was significant. We conclude that high levels of involvement in social VR games by socially isolated users with low self-esteem can negatively affect their well-being. The findings of this study contribute in several ways to our understanding of the effect of social VR games upon users and provide important practical implications. (shrink)

In this study, we investigate, both theoretically and empirically, the impact of language gender marking on gender wage inequality and country income inequality. We find that nations with a higher level of gender marking in their dominant language have a higher wage gap between genders. Using an instrumental variable approach, we also find that gender marking has an indirect impact on country income inequality via gender wage inequality. Furthermore, we find evidence that the income inequality of a society as a (...) whole is affected by gender wage inequality. Finally, we document that linguistic gender marking outperforms survey-based cultural gender dimensions as a predictor of both gender wage inequality and country income inequality. (shrink)

This article seeks to model the agenda-setting strategies of stakeholders equipped with online and other media in three cases involving protests against multinational corporations (MNCs). Our theoretical objective is to widen agenda-setting theory to a dynamic and nonlinear networked stakeholder context, in which stakeholder-controlled media assume part of the role previously ascribed to mainstream media (MSM). We suggest system dynamics (SD) methodology as a tool to analyse complex stakeholder interactions and the effects of their agendas on other stakeholders. We find (...) that largely similar dynamics of interactions occur among stakeholders in these cases, and that the costs for managements of maintaining their agendas steadily rises. We conclude that the “web of watchdogs” comprises a powerful reason for managers to engage in responsibility negotiations with their stakeholders. (shrink)

In the late thirteenth century, western Europe suffered the notable disgrace of losing the last of the Christian strongholds in mainland Syria with the fall of Acre in 1291, and yet throughout the early fourteenth century Western powers were unable to launch a crusade to recover the Holy Land despite repeated and costly attempts. Until not long ago, historians of the crusades had interpreted the inaction of the fourteenth century as a sign that the age of true crusading was over (...) and that both disillusionment with the machinery of the papal indulgence and increasing local strife effectively removed the possibility of international cooperative action that a crusade to the Holy Land required. Recent scholarly work on the late Middle Ages has shown that this interpretation ignores both historical reality and late-medieval attitudes toward crusading. Acre's loss in many respects crystallized issues regarding crusade reform, and, though no new crusade to the Holy Land ever materialized, crusading in its various guises experienced renewed vitality throughout the fourteenth century—notably in Iberia, Italy, and the Baltic—in spite of the ravages of the Black Death, the suppression of the Templars, the collapse of prominent Italian banking houses that supported crusade finance, and the Anglo-French conflict. While the Holy Land may have remained in heathen hands, crusading remained a diverse, multifaceted, and vibrant set of practices that continued to be contested and redefined by various social groups despite the papacy's sophisticated descriptions of it in papal bulls and in canon law. In this study I hope to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion of crusade theory and practice by examining literary evidence—specifically, the Middle English romance Sir Isumbras—with a more broadly conceived notion of crusade discourse that includes connections among propaganda, chronicle, religious ritual, and popular romance. As I argue, Sir Isumbras critiques certain knightly behavior following Acre's loss and at the very least imagines, if not outright promotes, crusading reform and action for a mixed audience of lesser knights and non-nobles. The topicality of the poem's critique, however, is fully intelligible only when considered in light of other facets of crusade discourse; hence, I discuss below how features of popular fourteenth-century crusading movements, chronicle histories, and literary history are appropriated and reconfigured by the text. By reading these various sources as part of a connected, evolving discussion, we effectively expand our definition of the genre of the crusading romance in a way that not only incorporates historians' recent insights regarding the range of crusading practices but also reveals that crusading's personal and political aspects, in addition to its mass military campaigns, continued to shape a complex medieval outlook that found literary expression. (shrink)

In his debates with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Gerd Gigerenzer puts forward a stricter standard for the proper representation of judgment heuristics. I argue that Gigerenzer’s stricter standard contributes to naturalized epistemology in two ways. First, Gigerenzer’s standard can be used to winnow away cognitive processes that are inappropriately characterized and should not be used in the epistemic evaluation of belief. Second, Gigerenzer’s critique helps to recast the generality problem in naturalized epistemology and cognitive psychology as the methodological problem (...) of identifying criteria for the appropriate specification and characterization of cognitive processes in psychological explanations. I conclude that naturalized epistemologists seeking to address the generality problem should turn their focus to methodological questions about the proper characterization of cognitive processes for the purposes of psychological explanation. (shrink)

We prove here:Theorem. LetT be a countable complete superstable non ω-stable theory with fewer than continuum many countable models. Then there is a definable groupG with locally modular regular generics, such thatG is not connected-by-finite and any type inG eq orthogonal to the generics has Morley rank.Corollary. LetT be a countable complete superstable theory in which no infinite group is definable. ThenT has either at most countably many, or exactly continuum many countable models, up to isomorphism.

Universal Basic Income is a periodic cash payment to all residents in a jurisdiction, without obligation. Universalism and unconditionality distinguish UBI from other redistributive policies that require means testing and certain behaviors to gain and maintain eligibility. Despite an increased interest in UBI, it is poorly understood how these two critical features – universalism and unconditionality – influence public attitudes toward UBI. This paper explores results of the eighth round of the European Social Survey and finds that people who support (...) unconditionality are more likely to support UBI, as expected. But support for UBI is also significantly associated with a desire to help the poor rather than provide universal cash transfers to all individuals. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a coherentist justification of induction along the lines of a Sellarsian coherence theory. On this coherence theory, a proposition is justified if we can answer all objections raised against it in our social practice of demanding justification and responding to such demands. On the basis of this theory of justification, I argue that we are justified in accepting the uniformity of nature partly because we have no alternative but to accept it for rationally pursuing our (...) epistemic goal. In addition, my coherentist view explains which inductive inferences it is rational to accept. Furthermore, my coherentist view also explains why we can hardly determine a particular numerical value x such that we can draw the conclusion ‘it is rational to accept that p’ from the premise ‘the numerical probability of p is greater than or equal to x’. (shrink)

Let T be a one-based theory. We define a notion of width, in the case of T having the finiteness property, for the lattice of finitely generated algebraically closed sets and prove Theorem. Let T be one-based with the finiteness property. If T is of bounded width, then every type in T is nonorthogonal to a weight one type. If T is countable, the converse is true.

INTRODUCTION Lee Palmer Wandel In Essay XII, Book II of his Essais, first published in, Michel de Montaigne posed the question 'Que sçay-je? ...

While self-report data is a staple of modern psychological studies, they rely on participants accurately self-reporting. Two constructs that impede accurate results are insufficient effort responding and response styles. These constructs share conceptual underpinnings and both utilized to reduce cognitive effort when responding to self-report scales. Little research has extensively explored the relationship of the two constructs. The current study explored the relationship of the two constructs across even-point and odd-point scales, as well as before and after data cleaning procedures. (...) We utilized IRTrees, a statistical method for modeling response styles, to examine the relationship between IER and response styles. To capture the wide range of IER metrics available, we employed several forms of IER assessment in our analyses and generated IER factors based on the type of IER being detected. Our results indicated an overall modest relationship between IER and response styles, which varied depending on the type of IER metric being considered or type of scale being evaluated. As expected, data cleaning also changed the relationships of some of the variables. We posit the difference between the constructs may be the degree of cognitive effort participants are willing to expend. Future research and applications are discussed. (shrink)

I argue that Spinoza’s account of appetition, and its application to human sexuality, is more original than many commentators suggest; and that it offers resolutions to several puzzles in the philosophy of sex. The paper first situates these puzzles in contemporary debates, offers a detailed analysis of Spinoza’s remarks on love in general and sexual love in particular, and concludes with some of the normative consequences which Spinoza attempts to derive from these.

This paper provides an analysis of data collected on the continued prevalence of outdated, marginalizing terms in contemporary cataloguing practices, stemming from the Library of Congress Subject Heading term “Indians” and all its related terms. Using Manitoba Archival Information Network’s (MAIN) list of current LCSH and recommended alternatives as a foundation, we built a dataset from titles published in the last five years. We show a wide distribution of LCSH used to catalogue fiction and non-fiction, with outdated but recognized terms (...) like “Indians of North America-History” appearing the most frequently and ambiguous and offensive terms like “Indian gays” appearing throughout the dataset. We discuss two primary problems with the continued use of current LCSH terms: their ambiguity limits the effectiveness of an institution’s catalog, and they do not reflect the way Indigenous Peoples, Nations, and communities in North America prefer to represent themselves as individuals and collectives. These findings support those of parallel scholarship on knowl­edge organization practices for works on Indigenous topics and provide a foundation for further work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While claiming to be a much-needed corrective to the dual disappointments of structuralism and post-structuralism, one is starting to get the sense that affect may have simply inverted, rather than resolved, the binary of form/feeling. Yet emerging within and against the affective turn is a re-turn to structure as the condition of possibility for affectivity. From this re-turn, which I'll term affective formalism, is culled the transdisciplinary exemplars reviewed here: Ruth Leys's The Ascent of Affect, Gary Genosko's Critical Semiotics, (...) Eugenie Brinkema's The Forms of the Affects, with a nod to Eve Sedgwick's Touching Feeling. Far from caging affect, these new books suggest a return to form, once again, with feeling. (shrink)

In 2011, when Judith Butler delivered the lecture series that would become Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, the speech act theorist joined other critical scholars attempting to work through the dark cloud of neoliberal fatigue settling over the humanities. “Identitarian ontologies” had become only more entrenched in the age of terror, any potential alternatives seeming destined for “discursive appropriation” by the insidious vocabulary of late biopolitical capitalism. Fatigued, but not yet resigned, Notes sets out “to rethink the speech (...) act”, not to discover something else to say or some other way to say it but instead to take seriously what Butler described more than a... (shrink)

This experimental study extends prior capital market and environmental accounting research by utilizing the theoretical underpinnings of legitimation through impression management, source credibility bias, perceived trust, and ideology in assessing the influence of discretionary environmental accounting narratives on jurors’ punitive damage award assessments. We utilize mock jurors as environmental stakeholders and find that: jurors in a court case involving corporate environmental malfeasance assess lower punitive damage awards against a firm that provides discretionary disclosure on its website regarding future abatement and (...) control narratives, environmental sensitivity of the firm’s industry moderates the negative relationship between the discretionary disclosure and jurors’ punitive damage award assessments, and juror’s perceived trust toward firm management mediates the prior moderation effect. Further, juror political ideology is found to affect the punitive damage award assessments, with liberal jurors levying comparatively higher awards than conservative jurors. (shrink)

Aggregated reputation scores and rankings have been rightly criticized for lacking a theoretical basis by which to weight the individual perceptions that form them. The resulting product can be a score or ranking that fails to represent the perceptions of many or even most stakeholders. Little attention has been paid, however, to the reverse. Rather than focus on how individual perceptions can be represented at an aggregate level, herein we focus on how an aggregated reputation can influence individual perceptions. We (...) hypothesize that ratings have a significant influence on stakeholder perceptions, especially where other information is lacking. Through experiments, we find that exposure to reputation ratings provides stakeholders with an anchor point – information about what others think – and their perceptions of the firm are adjusted relative to this anchor. We suggest future work on reputation delve into the heuristics and biasesboundedly rational stakeholders deploy when assessing firms. (shrink)