The significance of consciousness in modern science is discussed by leading authorities from a variety of disciplines. Presenting a wide-ranging survey of current thinking on this important topic, the contributors address such issues as the status of different aspects of consciousness; the criteria for using the concept of consciousness and identifying instances of it; the basis of consciousness in functional brain organization; the relationship between different levels of theoretical discourse; and the functions of consciousness.

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and the role of business in global governance. In the debate on political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart from economic responsibilities firms assume political responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast this with a subsidiarity-based approach to governance, in which firms are seen as intermediate actors who (...) have political co-responsibilities in society endowed upon them by national governmental institutions. We argue that both approaches face conceptual and empirical problems, and do not make clear the content and scope of political corporate responsibility. Based on Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility we argue that corporate actors and governmental actors have a shared responsibility to tackle societal problems. Taking political corporate responsibility not only entails engaging in private action or engaging in public–private partnerships, but it also includes aiding governmental actors to remedy injustice or even create public institutions where they do not yet exist. By adding this perspective we contribute to the debate on responsibility in corporate citizenship and clarify the political role business can play in global governance. (shrink)

The kinds of models discussed in this paper function as measuring instruments. We will concentrate on two necessary steps for measurement: (1) the search of a mathematical representation of the phenomenon; (2) this representation should cover an invariant relationship between the properties of the phenomenon to be measured and observable accociated attributes of a measuring instrument. Therefore, the measuring instrument should function as a nomological machine. However, invariant relationships are not necessarily ceteris paribus regularities, but could also occur when the (...) influence of the environment is negligible. Then we are able to achieve accurate measurements outside the laboratory. (shrink)

This paper takes as a starting point a recent development in privacy-debates: the emphasis on social and institutional environments in the definition and the defence of privacy. Recognizing the merits of this approach I supplement it in two respects. First, an analysis of the relation between privacy and autonomy teaches that in the digital age more than ever individual autonomy is threatened. The striking contrast between on the one hand offline vocabulary, where autonomy and individual decision making prevail, and on (...) the other online practices is a challenge that cannot be met in a social approach. Secondly, I elucidate the background of the social approach. Its importance is not exclusively related to the digital age. In public life we regularly face privacy-moments, when in a small distinguished social domain few people are commonly involved in common experiences. In the digital age the contextual integrity model of Helen Nissenbaum has become very influential. However this model has some problems. Nissenbaum refers to a variety of sources and uses several terms to explain the normativity in her model. The notion ‘context’ is not specific and faces the reproach of conservatism. We elaborate on the most promising suggestion: an elaboration on the notion ‘goods’ as it can be found in the works of Michael Walzer and Alisdair Macintyre. Developing criteria for defining a normative framework requires making explicit the substantive goods that are at stake in a context, and take them as the starting point for decisions about the flow of information. Doing so delivers stronger and more specific orientations that are indispensible in discussions about digital privacy. (shrink)

Decision outcomes sometimes result in negative emotions. This can occur when a decision appears to be wrong in retrospect, and/or when the obtained decision outcome does not live up to expectations. Regret and disappointment are the two emotions that are of central interest in the present article. Although these emotions have a lot in common, they also differ in ways that are relevant to decision making. In this article we review theories and empirical findings concerning regret and disappointment. We first (...) discuss how regret and disappointment differ with respect to their antecedent conditions, appraisals, and phenomenology. We also discuss possible behavioural consequences of experiencing these emotions. Next, we consider how the anticipation of regret and disappointment may influence decision making. We use regret and disappointment theory, developed by the economists Bell (1982, 1985), and Loomes and Sugden (1982, 1986, 1987), as a framework for our discussion. Finally, we argue that combining the theoretical approaches and research paradigms of behavioural decision theory with emotion theories will significantly increase our knowledge of antecedents and consequences of emotions. (shrink)

I present an attempt at an explication of the ecological theory of interspecific competition, including its explanatory role in community ecology and evolutionary biology. The account given is based on the idea that law-like statements play an important role in scientific theories of this kind. I suggest that the principle of competitive exclusion is such a law, and that it is evolutionarily invariant. The principle's empirical status is defended and implications for the ongoing debates on the existence of biological laws (...) are discussed. (shrink)

Recently, there has been an effort to make libertarianism compatible with a redistributive inheritance tax: When the tax is levied, the taxpayer in question is already dead and as such she cannot be a bearer of rights. The state is therefore allowed to redistribute the (value of) the estate according to some distributive principle. I consider (and finally dismiss) four successive arguments, each concluding that the state is allowed to use the estate for redistributive purposes. I show that neither of (...) them is able to reconcile (right-) libertarianism with a redistributive inheritance tax. Instead of trying to square the circle, proponents of such a tax should meet the theoretical essentials of (right-) libertarianism head-on. (shrink)

Historians of biology have argued that much of the dynamics of experimental disciplines such as genetics or molecular biology can be understood from studying experimental systems and model organisms alone . Such accounts contrast sharply with more traditional philosophies of science which viewed scientific research essentially as a process of inventing and testing theories. I present a case from the history of biochemistry which can be viewed from both the experimental systems perspective and from the methodology of theory testing. I (...) argue that not only are the two perspectives fully compatible, but they are both necessary for a complete account of the research process. (shrink)

The supervenience and multiple realizability of biological properties have been invoked to support a disunified picture of the biological sciences. I argue that supervenience does not capture the relation between fitness and an organism's physical properties. The actual relation is one of causal dependence and is, therefore, amenable to causal explanation. A case from optimality theory is presented and interpreted as a microreductive explanation of fitness difference. Such microreductions can have considerable scope. Implications are discussed for reductive physicalism in evolutionary (...) biology and for the unity of science. (shrink)

The Representational Theory of Measurement conceives measurement as establishing homomorphisms from empirical relational structures into numerical relation structures, called models. Models function as measuring instruments by transferring observations of an economic system into quantitative facts about that system. These facts are evaluated by their accuracy. Accuracy is achieved by calibration. For calibration standards are needed. Then two strategies can be distinguished. One aims at estimating the invariant (structural) equations of the system. The other is to use known stable facts about (...) the system to adjust the model parameters. For this latter strategy, the requirement of models as homomorphic mappings is not required anymore. (shrink)

This notice provides a critical discussion of some of the issues from Alex Rosenberg’s Darwinian Reductionism, in particular proper functions and the relationship of proximate and ultimate biology, developmental programs and genocentrism, biological laws, the principle of natural selection as a fundamental law, genetic determinism, and the definition of “reductionism.”.

The rule of rescue holds that special weight should be given to protecting the lives of assignable individuals in need, implying that less weight is given to considerations of cost-effectiveness. This is sometimes invoked as an argument for funding or reimbursing life-saving treatment in public healthcare even if the costs of such treatment are extreme. At first sight one might assume that an individualist approach to ethics—such as Scanlon’s contractualism—would offer a promising route to justification of the rule of rescue. (...) In this chapter I argue that contractualism cannot endorse the rule of rescue, whereas a collectivist approach that appeals to group solidarity would offer support for rescue cases. The argument, however, has its limitations, and though solidarity is of central concern in shaping public healthcare, there are good reasons for not endorsing the rule of rescue as a moral basis for allocating scarce resources in clinical care. (shrink)

Control measures directed at carriers of multidrug-resistant organisms are traditionally approached as a trade-off between public interests on the one hand and individual autonomy on the other. We propose to reframe the ethical issue and consider control measures directed at carriers an issue of solidarity. Rather than asking “whether it is justified to impose strict measures”, we propose asking “how to best care for a person’s carriership and well-being in ways that do not imply an unacceptable risk for others?”. A (...) solidarity approach could include elevating baseline levels of precaution measures and accepting certain risks in cases where there is exceptionally much at stake. A generous national compensation policy that also covers for costs related to dedicated care is essential in a solidarity approach. An additional benefit of reframing the questions is that it helps to better acknowledge that being subjected to control measures is a highly personal matter. (shrink)

It is argued that we cannot understand the notion of proper functions of artefacts independently of social notions. Functions of artefacts are related to social facts via the use of artefacts. The arguments in this article can be used to improve existing function theories that look to the causal history of artefacts to determine the function. A view that takes the intentions of designers into account to determine the proper function is both natural and often correct, but it is shown (...) that there are exceptions to this. Taking a social constitutive element into account may amend these backwards looking theories. An improved theory may either have a disjunctive form—either the history or collective intentions determine the proper function—or, as is suggested in the article, be in the form of an encompassing account that views the designers’ intentions as social, in so far as they are accepted by the users. Designers have authority, which is a social fact. The views argued for here are applied to two existing theories of artefact functions, a causal historic approach and an action theoretic approach.Keywords: Function; Artefact; Evaluative judgement; Action; Collective intentionality. (shrink)

Ce travail s’interroge sur les raisons de ce qui a fait le succès de la sociologie de Georges Gurvitch de 1945 à sa mort , et entend se démarquer d’une explication qui se contente de faire valoir le rôle institutionnel actif qu’eut Gurvitch dans ce qu’on a coutume d’appeler la « refondation » de la sociologie française après 1945. En effet, un examen du contenu de ses textes suggère que son projet intellectuel était en phase avec les préoccupations de nombre (...) de sociologues à ce moment-là, certes soucieux de construire une sociologie plus empirique inspirée du modèle américain, mais aussi de conserver une ambition théorique susceptible de fournir des concepts opérationnels pour traiter les grandes questions sociales. Ainsi Gurvitch a proposé un paradigme alternatif qui, tout en illustrant une volonté certaine de « reconstruire » la sociologie, a défendu l’idée d’une continuité de la tradition sociologique en France. Il semble que sa réception a été plus favorable que ce que les textes consacrés à la question laissent entendre.This paper considers the reasons for the success of the sociology of Georges Gurvitch from 1945 until his death in 1965. The approach proposed here intends to differentiate itself from the widespread explanation that focuses essentially on the active institutional role that Gurvitch played in the rebuilding of French sociology after 1945. An examination of the contents of his texts suggests that, at that time, the focus of Gurvitch’s interests were in line with the preoccupations of other sociologists who were certainly anxious to construct a more empirical sociology inspired by the American model, but also to conserve a theoretical ambition capable of providing the operational concepts to address the significant social questions. So Gurvitch proposed an alternative paradigm, while proclaiming his desire to « rebuild » sociology, also defended the idea of a certain continuation of the sociological tradition in France. It seems that its reception was much more favourable than we are led to believe by current texts that consider the question today. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the disjunction elimination rule presupposes the principle that a true disjunction contains at least one true disjunct. However, in some contexts such as supervaluationism or quantum logic, we have good reasons to reject this principle. Hence, disjunction elimination is restricted in at least one respect: it is not applicable to disjunctions for which this principle does not hold. The insight that disjunction elimination presupposes the principle that a true disjunction contains at least one true (...) disjunct is applied to two arguments which argue for this very principle. I show that these arguments are rule-circular since they rest on disjunction elimination. I claim that rule-circularity better explains why the arguments fail than the explanations provided by Rumfitt (2015), which, for instance, rely on controversial principles about truth. (shrink)

Cognitive models propose that both, negative interpretations of ambiguous social situations and ruminative thoughts about social events contribute to the maintenance of social anxiety disorder. It has further been postulated that ruminative thoughts fuel biased negative interpretations, however, evidence is rare. The present study used a multi-method approach to assess ruminative processing following a social interaction and negative interpretation bias in a student sample screened for high and low social anxiety. Results support the hypothesis that group differences in negative interpretations (...) of ambiguous social situations in HSAs vs. LSAs are mediated by higher levels of post-event processing assessed in the questionnaire. Exploratory analyses highlight the potential role of comorbid depressive symptoms. The current findings help to advance the understanding of the association between two cognitive processes involved in social anxiety and stress the importance of ruminative post-event processing. (shrink)

Even though it is often presumed that the use of technology like medication administration technology is both safer and more effective, the importance of nurses' know‐how is not to be underestimated. In this article, we accordingly try to argue that nurses' labor, including their different forms of knowledge, must play a crucial role in the development, implementation and use of medication administration technology. Using three different theoretical perspectives (‘heuristic lenses') and integrating this with our own ethnographic research, we will explore (...) how nursing practices change through the use of medication technology. Ultimately, we will argue that ignoring (institutional) complexity and the various types of important knowledge that nurses have, will seriously complicate the implementation of medication administration technology. (shrink)

Sous l'influence d'Anaximandre, Parménide radicalise la pensée d'Héraclite : comme tout ce qui est au monde, le monde lui-même est à la merci de la puissance universelle et annihilante du temps. Reste pourtant ce sur sur quoi le temps n'a aucune prise : non ce qu'il y a, mais le fait même qu'il y ait.

The practice of economic science is dominated by model building. To evaluate economic policy, models are built and used to produce numbers to inform us about economic phenomena. Although phenomena are detected through the use of observed data, they are in general not directly observable. To 'see' them we need instruments. More particularly, to obtain numerical facts of the phenomena we need measuring instruments. This paper will argue that in economics models function as such instruments of observation, more specific as (...) measuring instruments. In measurement theory, measurement is a mapping of some class of aspects of characteristics of the empirical world into a set of numbers. The paper's view is that economic modelling is a specific kind of mapping to which the standard account on how models are obtained and assessed does not apply. Models are not easily or simply derived from theories and subsequently tested against empirical data. Instruments are constructed by integrating several theoretical and empirical ideas and requirements in such a way that their performance meets a beforehand chosen standard. The empirical requirement is that the model should take account of the phenomenological facts, so that the reliability of the model is not assessed by post-model testing but obtained by calibration. (shrink)

Édition d'un nouveau fragment de la dédicace d'Hadrien SEG XI 340. Elle avait trait à la réfection d'un des temples urbains d'Héra, détruit par un incendie.

Cytokinins are plant hormones that have, among many other functions, senescence‐modulatory effects in plant tissue. This is evident not only from biochemical data, but is vividly illustrated in the “green island” phenotype in plant leaves caused by cytokinins released for example by leaf mining insects or microbial pathogens. It is beyond doubt that, in addition to their roles in plants, cytokinins also provoke physiological and developmental effects in animals. It is hypothesized that the recently much discussed modification of plant metabolism (...) by insects and associated microbes via cytokinin signals has a counterpart in direct cytokinin signalling that interferes with the animals’ hormonal systems and impacts their population dynamics. (shrink)

This paper presents the notion that verbal discourse is structured, in form and contents, by metaphorical reasoning. It discusses the concept of “metaphorical network” as a framework for relating the parts of a speech act to each other, since such an act seems to cohere into a meaningful text on the basis of “domains” that deliver common concepts. The basic finding of several research projects on this concept suggest that source domains allow speakers to derive sense from a verbal interaction (...) because they interconnect the topic of discussion to culturally-meaningful images and ideas. This suggests, in turn, that language is intertwined with nonverbal systems of meaning, reflecting them in the contents of verbal messages. Overall, the concept of metaphorical networks implies that human cognition is highly associative in structure. (shrink)

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a sudden and significant change in the conditions of various academic activities. In the present study, we wanted to investigate the influence of the first pandemic lockdown on procrastination tendencies among Polish students. To achieve this goal we employed a mixed-method, embedded longitudinal study. In the quantitative part of the research, the same group of university students completed the procrastination questionnaire twice: a year before, and two months after the introduction of the (...) first pandemic lockdown. The qualitative part included the open-ended questions about the perceived reasons for an observed change in a tendency to postpone tasks after the pandemic outbreak. Our analyses showed a significant increase in academic procrastination after the lockdown introduction. In particular, students reported a decrease in the study interest and lower working discipline. As the causes of higher procrastination during the lockdown period, students most frequently pointed out the reduced monitoring of work progress by supervisors and lower negative consequences of delaying tasks. The second most frequent theme in provided answers included difficulty in restraining from alternative activities and problems with focusing on tasks or ignoring distractions. Embedding qualitative and quantitative data gave a consistent picture of students' situation in the first lockdown and provided potential explanation for the exacerbation of procrastinatory behaviors after the pandemic outbreak. (shrink)

El modelo viquiano propuesto en este trabajo tiene hoy día implicaciones concretas para la lingüística y las ciencias cognitivas. A nuestro parecer, hoy las investigaciones en estos campos no hacen otra cosa que verificar la existencia de un vínculo gnoseológico entre sentido, concepto y metáfora que Vico exponía en la Scienza nuova. Vico demostró, ante todo, que la lógica poética constituye la facultad preliminar que permite el comportamiento simbólico humano. Dicha noción falta del todo en las actuales investigaciones sobre la (...) metáfora; y falta claramente la noción de Homo Poeticus en todas las visiones hasta ahora expuestas en lingüística. La concepción viquiana de la lógica poética permitirá a estas ciencias trazar el recorrido científico que deberán seguir en el futuro.Recent researches in linguistics and cognitive sciences may be brought as to show that there exist a empistemological bound between sense, concept and metaphor which Vico already acknowledged in his Scienza nuova. While Vico clearly showed that poetical logic helps to developing the human symbolic behavior; the concept of Homo poeticus is lacking in recent scholar contributions on issues related with metaphors and linguistics. It is assumed that the Vichian conception on poetical logic may improve a better understanding of the problems with which those sciences have hitherto been concerned. (shrink)

To define abstract art, which occupies such an important place in contemporary aesthetics, merely as a plastic mode of expression that makes no attempt to seek its own forms among those already existing in reality is to give a very inadequate notion of it. The term “non-figurative art,” which is sometimes used to describe it, arbitrarily restricts its range by stressing as peculiar to it this elementary fact alone and by characterizing abstract art solely as a controversial or even as (...) a revolutionary art, as opposed to traditional aesthetics, which is itself figurative. Abstract art at times has also been called “concrete” or “non-objective” art. All these definitions have as little validity in themselves as those that are made use of in the history of art and are acceptable only at their “face value,” to use the monetary term, because they have no absolute value but merely a conventional one based on the principle of exchange (Baroque, Gothic, Rococo, Cubist). However, they are not to be ignored, since they do express the state of uncertainty, uneasiness, and indecision that afflicts most amateurs and even historians of art in regard to abstract art. At the same time, these definitions also indicate an awareness that we are dealing with a very important and complex phenomenon, enriched by extensive projections into the domain of social psychology, sociology, and probably even metaphysics. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: Rationing medical health care has been debated in the industrialized Western hemisphere for at least two decades. Many factors have contributed to the fact that medical care can no longer be provided free of charge, which used to be an explicit political goal in all countries with a well-established welfare system. Considerable shortage of public financial resources is now generally accepted to pertain also to the health care system. Arguments: So far, efforts have been made to (...) rationalize various medical procedures both with regard to specific medical treatment strategies and to administrative support processes. However, these means are limited in their effects to curb medical costs at a significant level. Thus, rationing medical health care is necessary to further enable the reimbursement system to cover expensive diagnostics and treatment that would exceed the individual’s capability to pay. Rationing can occur explicitly or implicitly. Implicit rationing has to be regarded as an unfair procedure and should be rejected on ethical grounds. Conclusion: Distributive justice in medical care can only be accomplished if the reimbursement system is based on a new theoretical foundation. This entails a stronger emphasis on individual responsibility for one’s own life and health and the insight that health is an individual rather than a collective good. Nevertheless, a mutual insurance-based collective health care system should not be abolished as long as it is thoroughly reformed. As a minimum requirement, it must provide incentives to spend money on preventive health measures. (shrink)

Assessment of error and uncertainty is a vital component of both natural and social science. This edited volume presents case studies of research practices across a wide spectrum of scientific fields. It compares methodologies and presents the ingredients needed for an overarching framework applicable to all.