Although topics in social and political philosophy might not be the first to associate with Mamardašvili, it is argued in this paper that key concepts in his thought, viz. the concepts of form, thought, and culture come together, in the 1980s in particular, in a notion of civil society that goes deeper than that of many of his contemporaries. The relevance of his philosophy at this point is intensified by the specific nature of Soviet philosophical culture, but, it is argued, (...) extends well beyond that, fully justifying his honorary title of “Georgian Socrates”. (shrink)

It is common to consider an area of science as a system of real or sup posed truths which not only continuously extends itself, but also needs periodical revision and therefore tests the inventive capacity of each generation of scholars anew. It sounds highly implausible that a science at one time would be completed, that at that point within its scope there would be no problems left to solve. Indeed, the solution of a scientific problem inevitably raises new questions, so (...) that our eagerness for knowledge will never find lasting satisfaction. Nevertheless there is one science which seems to form an exception to this rule, formal logic, the theory of rigorous argumentation. It seems to have reached the ideal endpoint of every scientific aspiration already very shortly after its inception; using the work of some predecessors, Aristotle, or so it is at least assumed by many, has brought this branch of science once and for all to a conclusion. Of course this doesn't sound that implausible. We apparently know what rigorous argumentation is; otherwise various sciences, in particular pure mathematics, would be completely impossible. And if we know what rigorous argumentation is, then it cannot be difficult to trace once and for all the rules which govern it. The unique subject of formal logic would therefore entail that this science, in variance with the rule which holds for all other sciences, has been able to reach completion at a certain point in history. (shrink)

Child Family Health International is a U.S.-based nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that has more than 25 global health education programs in seven countries annually serving more than 600 interprofessional undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate participants in programs geared toward individual students and university partners. Recognized by Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council , CFHI utilizes an asset-based community engagement model to ensure that CFHI’s programs challenge, rather than reinforce, historical power imbalances between the “Global North” and “Global (...) South.” CFHI’s programs are predicated on ethical principles including reciprocity, sustainability, humility, transparency, nonmaleficence, respect for persons, and social justice. (shrink)

During the amalgamation period, important changes occurred in landuse planning primarily under the impetus of regional formation. The position of the municipalities has not been strengthened. In the historical monument policy, the gap between the national and the municipal level is particularly large. This is also the case for housing policy, but the gap is generally not felt to be encumbering by the municipal authorities. After the amalgamation and the «politisation» of the municipal council parties, most of the municipal administrators (...) have, in a very pragmatic way, received a direct line to the national land-use planning via party clientism. This appears to be much more efficient than the formal procedures of the urban construction law, the historica monument law, and other provisions. However, this does have the consequence that the people of the amalgamated municipalities feel little involvement in the land-usepolicy. Some municipalities have tried to break through on this by the launching of a structure plan.The political orientations of the designers and other land-use planning experts and the sometimes anti-political attitude of large groups of the population are not alien to the aforementioned pragmatism. All this, however, complicates the impact on land-use organisation by the local communities, which are still administratively powerful after the amalgamation. (shrink)

This paper develops hypotheses about the implications of different types of decision for the utilization of different types of systematically produced information: data, research, and analysis. The engineering and enlightenment models found in the knowledge utilization literature prove inadequate for this purpose. We turn to three decision models—routine, incremental, and fundamental–and determine their implied demands for information. We also examine how information might be used in scanning procedures in anticipation of decision regime shifts. The results suggest that patterns of information (...) should differ markedly in each decision context and indicate that there may be an inherent bias against the use of research in decision. (shrink)

Another striking deviation with regard to philosophical tradition consists in the fact that contemporary schools in the philosophy of mathematics, with the exception again of Brouwer's intuitionism, hardly ever refer to mathematical thought.

We investigate an approach to improving statistical text classification by combining machine learners with an ontology-based identification of domain-specific topic categories. We apply this approach to ad hoc disclosures by public companies. This form of obligatory publicity concerns all information that might affect the stock price; relevant topic categories are governed by stringent regulations. Our goal is to classify disclosures according to their effect on stock prices (negative, neutral, positive). In the study reported here, we combine natural language parsing with (...) a formal background ontology to recognize disclosures concerning particular topics from a prescribed list. The semantic analysis identifies some of these topics with reasonable accuracy. We then demonstrate that machine learners benefit from the additional ontology-based information when predicting the cumulative abnormal return attributed to the disclosure at hand. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Despite extensive research on organizational virtue, our understanding about factors that promote virtue within organizations remains unclear. Drawing on upper echelon theory, we examine the relationship between five top management team characteristics and organizational virtue orientation —the integrated set of values and beliefs that support ethical traits and virtuous behaviors of an organization. Specifically, we utilize prospectuses of initial public offering firms and 10-K post-IPO filings to explore how TMT composition with respect to member age, tenure, education, functional background, and (...) gender influences OVO. Additionally, we examine the moderating effects of organizational size, and argue that the more expansive structures and processes associated with larger organizations diminish the main relationships. Our findings, using two sources of data, are consistent, but somewhat mixed in their support for our hypotheses. Overall, TMT characteristics do appear to influence OVO, but in more complex and counterintuitive ways than initially expected. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss and analyze three instances of exchange and interaction between Russian (incl. Soviet) and (West) European philosophical culture: the correspondence between Merab Mamardašvili and Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida’s visit to Moscow in 1990, and a joint Russian–German publication by Nikolaj Plotnikov and Alexander Haardt. The focus is on the implicit mutual perception of philosophical cultures and on the ‘micro-politics’ of discourse that is at stake in their interaction. Also, it is shown how different contexts—labelled ‘philosophical culture’, (...) though not in any deterministic sense—are at work in the mutual perception between individual thinkers. Even if philosophical thinking tends to transcend the parameters of ‘glocal’ situations, this involves a job that needs to be done, individually and collectively, by the philosophers involved. Consequently, this dimension has to be taken into account when analysing such instances of encounter. (shrink)

Parades were an intrinsic part of urban life in Belgium between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholars have used these festivities time and again to probe into nationalism and the growing political tensions of the time. However, much less attention has been paid to the relation between these parades and the townscape itself. This article tries to fill this gap by exploring how urban festivities can reveal the differing ways in which small-town populations coped with the dilemma (...) of modernization versus preservation (or even creation) of a historical townscape. To this end the routes of the parades are examined,as well as the selective illumination of certain buildings and town quarters, the floats and temporary constructions used during these festivities. (shrink)

SummaryThe germs of future development, contained in Aristotle's logical works, are indicated, and their influence on the later evolution of logic is explained.The history of symbolic logic since Boole's Mathematical analysis and De Morgan's Formal logic, both of which were published in 1847, is divided into four approximately subsequent phases, viz.:1. algebra of logic; this phase is characterized by Boole's work;2. logical foundation of mathematics; this phase is characterized by Frege's, Peano's and Russell's work, by the discovery of the antonomies (...) of logic and set theory, by the Couturat‐Poincaré debate and by the rise of Brouwer's intuitionism;3. intuitive metamathematics, concentrating in Hilbert's attempts towards a consistency proof for classical analysis; the discovery of Gödel's theorem necessitated a change of policy;4. axiomatic methodology, deriving from Hilbert's metamathematics and culminating so far in Tarski's semantics. — E. W. B. (shrink)