Biomimicry studies natural systems and attempts to use the gained knowledge and understanding to solve human problems. Can biomimicry, if applied in urban planning, help to make our cities more sustainable or, precisely, more friendly for walkable and 15-minute city models? Various researchers identify the following features of natural systems as form fits function, catalysis of cooperation, local contextuality, continuity of development, diversity, integrity, redundancy, decentralization, multifunctionality, and less energy consumption (e.g. TOD if the energy needed for transportation is considered), (...) hierarchy, fractality, etc. The presented research has two objectives: analyze the possibility of describing and evaluating the degree of expression of the features of natural systems in urban spatial structures to use them for comparison, benchmarking, or creation of a biomimicry index; evaluate if cities with more strongly expressed biomimicry features could be considered more walkable and close to the 15-minute city concept. To give answers to the above-presented questions Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn were investigated. They represent both certain similarities and differences in terms of history, urban planning, political context, size, etc. A simulative mathematical graph model was used as the main tool to describe and analyze complex urban structures based on spatial configurations. Various graph centralities were employed to describe and compare the expression of natural systems’ features in the selected cities. OSM data was used to overlap graph models with such information as the density of inhabitants, concentrations of various points of interest in order to evaluate walkability and 15-minute city friendliness. The research results could be seen as an important step for better understanding of informal principles of biomimicry that can help transform urban areas. (shrink)

While philosophers have been debating for decades on whether different entities—including severely disabled human beings, embryos, animals, objects of nature, and even works of art—can legitimately be considered as having moral status, this question has gained a new dimension in the wake of artificial intelligence (AI). One of the more imminent concerns in the context of AI is that of the moral rights and status of social robots, such as robotic caregivers and artificial companions, that are built to interact with (...) human beings. In recent years, some approaches to moral consideration have been proposed that would include social robots as proper objects of moral concern, even though it seems unlikely that these machines are conscious beings. In the present paper, I argue against these approaches by advocating the “consciousness criterion,” which proposes phenomenal consciousness as a necessary condition for accrediting moral status. First, I explain why it is generally supposed that consciousness underlies the morally relevant properties (such as sentience) and then, I respond to some of the common objections against this view. Then, I examine three inclusive alternative approaches to moral consideration that could accommodate social robots and point out why they are ultimately implausible. Finally, I conclude that social robots should not be regarded as proper objects of moral concern unless and until they become capable of having conscious experience. While that does not entail that they should be excluded from our moral reasoning and decision-making altogether, it does suggest that humans do not owe direct moral duties to them. (shrink)

Straipsnyje nagrinėjamas švietimo prieinamumas kaip vienas iš svarbiausių žmogaus gerovės kūrimo transformuotoje visuomenėje principų. Švietimo prieinamumas transformuotoje visuomenėje laiduoja asmens socialinį mobilumą, karjerą, pajamas, o tai pagrindiniai rodikliai, turintys įtakos valstybės gerovės indeksui. Taip pat pateikiamas atliktas empirinis tyrimas, kuriame atsispindi švietimo prieinamumo galimybės įvairių socialinių grupių atstovams.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 139-158.

The paper discusses the myth of the founding of Vilnius as an example of a myth of city foundation. The myth has received two independent semiotic interpretations. Narrative grammar procedures are applied to the analysis of the mythical story and the semantic code generating the story in the paper “Gediminas’ Dream (Lithuanian myth of city foundation: an attempt at analysis)” by Algirdas Julien Greimas (1971). The sovereignty ideology expressed in the myth, which describes religious and spiritual culture of the Grand (...) Duchy of Lithuania, is linked to the tri-functional model of the Indo-European social structure. The semantics of the Vilnius myth is seen as analogous with such Indo-European myths as king’s accession to the throne and creation of a city-state. The Lithuanian myth of Vilnius is linked paradigmatically to the Indo-European mythology in the study “Vilnius, Wilno, Vil’na: City and myth” by Vladimir Toporov (1980). At the level of the signifier, phonological equivalents of toponyms of Vilnius are traced. At the level of the signified, transformations of the “core” Indo-European myth are identified. The myth of the city foundation can be read both as a figurative form of cultural expression and as an ideology narrated as a plot of a story. In this view, the paradigmatic and syntagmatic approaches complement each other. (shrink)

Straipsnyje analizuojamos mokslinės struktūrinio funkcionalizmo, kapitalo, socialinio konflikto, tinklaveikos, modernizmo teorijos. Šių teorijų prieiga leidžia interpretuoti švietimo institutą, jo reikšmę visuomenei ir individui, švietimo instituto funkcijų kaitą, ugdymo dalyvių lygiavertiškumą bei švietimo prieinamumą visų socialinių grupių atstovams.

For decades the study of social perception was largely compartmentalized by type of social cue: race, gender, emotion, eye gaze, body language, facial expression etc. This was partly due to good scientific practice, and partly due to assumptions that each type of social cue was functionally distinct from others. Herein, we present a functional forecast approach to understanding compound social cue processing that emphasizes the importance of shared social affordances across various cues. We review the traditional theories of emotion and (...) face processing that argued for dissociable and noninteracting pathways, as well as more recent evidence for combinatorial processing of social cues. We argue here that early, and presumably reflexive, visual integration of such cues is necessary for adaptive behavioral responding to others. In support of this claim, we review contemporary work that reveals a flexible visual system, one that readily incorporates meaningful contextual influences in even nonsocial visual processing, thereby establishing the functional and neuroanatomical bases necessary for compound social cue integration. Finally, we explicate three likely mechanisms driving such integration. Together, this work implicates a role for cognitive penetrability in visual perceptual abilities that have often been ascribed to direct encapsulated perceptual processes. (shrink)