What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive questions that the science of complexity seeks to answer. In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex systems (...) scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Comprehending such systems requires a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. She explores as well the relationship between complexity and evolution, artificial intelligence, computation, genetics, information processing, and many other fields. Richly illustrated and vividly written, Complexity : A Guided Tour offers a comprehensive and eminently comprehensible overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time. (shrink)

This article investigates related contexts and connections that both hide and display the coercion and sexual violence manifest in Western cultural and aesthetic artefacts during ancient Greek and Roman eras and the French imperialist epoch. Exploring ‘Pan and Syrinx’ from Ovid’s ‘Book I’ of the Metamorphoses and Claude Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute, I historicise the meanings of rape and sexual assault that informed Ovid’s epic and then revisit the genesis of Debussy’s Syrinx because of the uneasy elements surrounding its (...) creation. I show how its cultural production is complicit with the imperial in several ways. I consider how sexual violence impacts voice, subjectivity and the body, and finally, I draw on Luce Irigaray’s work to sketch an embodied Syrinx in relation with others and her environment. I suggest the desiring potential of sexual difference, with limitations, as a generative conception of figuring the feminine-maternal body beyond masculine appropriation. In this way I open the myth up to watery material-social relations. (shrink)

The stories from the Clergy Health Initiative and Word Made Flesh missionary organization exhibit transformations that ushered Christian leaders into deeper love of God, neighbor, and themselves.

In Berlin, the pronunciation of /ç/ as [ɕ] is associated with the multi-ethnic youth variety. This alternation is also known to be produced by French learners of German. While listeners form socio-cultural interpretations upon hearing language input, the associations differ depending on the listeners’ biases and stereotypes toward speakers or groups. Here, the contrast of interest concerns two speaker groups using the [ç]–[ɕ] alternation: multi-ethnic adolescents from Berlin neighborhoods carrying low social prestige in mainstream German society and French learners of (...) German supposedly having higher cultural prestige. To understand the strength of associations between phonetic alternations and social attributes, we ran an Implicit Association Task with 131 participants using auditory and written stimuli. In experiment 1, participants categorized written words as having a positive or negative valence and auditory stimuli containing pronunciation variations of /ç/ as canonical [ç] or non-canonical [ɕ]. In experiment 2, identical auditory stimuli were used but the label Kiezdeutsch was changed to French Accent. Results show faster reaction times when negative categories and non-canonical pronunciations or positive categories and canonical pronunciations were mapped to the same response key, indicating a tight association between value judgments and concept categories. Older German listeners match a supposed Kiezdeutsch accent more readily with negatively connotated words compared to a supposed French accent, while younger German listeners seem to be indifferent toward this variation. Young multi-ethnic listeners, however, seem to associate negative concepts more strongly with a supposed French accent compared to Kiezdeutsch. These results demonstrate how social and cultural contextualization influences language interpretation and evaluation. We interpret our findings as a loss of cultural prestige of French speakers for the YMO group compared to the OMO group: younger urban listeners do not react differently to these contextual primes. YMU listeners, however, show a positive bias toward their in-group. Our results point to implicit listener attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes and shared world knowledge as significant factors in culturally- and socially situated language processing. (shrink)

Melanie Sarzano | : In this paper, I compare cases of self-deception and cases of pragmatic encroachment and argue that confronting these cases generates a dilemma about rationality. This dilemma turns on the idea that subjects are motivated to avoid costly false beliefs, and that both cases of self-deception and cases of pragmatic encroachment are caused by an interest to avoid forming costly false beliefs. Even though both types of cases can be explained by the same belief-formation mechanism, only (...) self-deceptive beliefs are irrational: the subjects depicted in high-stakes cases typically used in debates on pragmatic encroachment are, on the contrary, rational. If we find ourselves drawn to this dilemma, we are forced either to accept—against most views presented in the literature—that self-deception is rational or to accept that pragmatic encroachment is irrational. Assuming that both conclusions are undesirable, I argue that this dilemma can be solved. In order to solve this dilemma, I suggest and review several hypotheses aimed at explaining the difference in rationality between the two types of cases, the result of which being that the irrationality of self-deceptive beliefs does not entirely depend on their being formed via a motivationally biased process. | : Dans cet article, je compare les cas classiques de duperie de soi aux cas que l’on trouve dans les débats sur la question de l’empiètement pragmatique et défends l’idée selon laquelle ces deux types de cas peuvent être compris comme étant produits par un même mécanisme visant à éviter la formation de croyances fausses coûteuses. Cette comparaison nous mène naturellement à former un dilemme à propos de la rationalité des croyances. Le dilemme repose sur l’idée que bien que ce mécanisme mène à la formation de croyances irrationnelles dans les cas de duperie de soi, il ne semble pas affecter la rationa-lité du sujet dans les cas d’empiètement pragmatique : alors que les sujets autodupés sont irrationnels, les sujets décrits dans les cas d’empiètement pragmatique ne le sont pas. Pour résoudre ce dilemme sans rejeter les présupposés selon lesquels les croyances issues de la duperie de soi sont irrationnelles et que les cas sur lesquels repose l’empiètement pragmatique sont rationnels, je propose plusieurs hypothèses visant à expliquer cette différence, prouvant ainsi que ce dilemme n’est qu’apparent et que l’irrationalité de la duperie de soi ne peut uniquement dépendre de ce mécanisme sous l’influence de considérations pratiques. (shrink)

Within the field of medical ethics, discussions related to public health have mainly concentrated on issues that are closely tied to research and practice involving technologies and professional services, including vaccination, screening, and insurance coverage. Broader determinants of population health have received less attention, although this situation is rapidly changing. Against this backdrop, our specific contribution to the literature on ethics and law vis-à-vis promoting population health is to open up the ubiquitous presence of pets within cities and towns for (...) further discussion. An expanding body of research suggests that pet animals are deeply relevant to people’s health (negatively and positively). Pet bylaws adopted by town and city councils have largely escaped notice, yet they are meaningful to consider in relation to everyday practices, social norms, and cultural values, and thus in relation to population health. Nevertheless, not least because they pivot on defining pets as private property belonging to individual people, pet bylaws raise emotionally charged ethical issues that have yet to be tackled in any of the health research on pet ownership. The literature in moral philosophy on animals is vast, and we do not claim to advance this field here. Rather, we pragmatically seek to reconcile philosophical objections to pet ownership with both animal welfare and public health. In doing so, we foreground theorizations of personhood and property from sociocultural anthropology. (shrink)

This research examines the practice of cryonics and provides empirical evidence for an improved understanding of the motivations and attitudes of participants. Cryonics is the freezing of a person who has died of a disease in hopes of restoring life at some future time when a cure may be available. So far, about 300 people have been cryopreserved, and an additional 1200 have enrolled in such programs. The current work has three vectors. First, the results of a worldwide cryonics survey (...) carried out as part of this research are discussed. Second, a theoretical model is developed from the survey results to propose a Theory of Cryonic Life Extension which explains an individual’s decision to select cryopreservation. Third, the most distinctive survey result, a conceptualization of personal identity malleability, is extended with a philosophical formulation. Personal identity is found to be emergent, not fundamental, and thus may continue to evolve in concept and application, particularly in the longer time frames implicated by cryonics. The potential consequences of this work are that the conceptual norms materializing in the cryonics community could be forerunners of wider societal trends of how humans understand themselves as subjects in an era increasingly configured by science and technology. (shrink)

In this essay we argue that there is a contradiction lurking at the heart of Bernard Suits's seminal book on the philosophy of games, The Grasshopper, which has oddly gone unnoticed for 43 years. Suits argues that games need inefficiency and defines inefficiency such that it wouldn't exist in Utopia. This trivially entails that there could be no games in Utopia, yet the whole normative point of The Grasshopper is that games would be the only worthwhileactivity in Utopia. We then (...) diagnose Suits's error and suggest some ways forward. (shrink)

Australia’s punitive policy towards people seeking asylum deliberately causes severe psychological harm and meets recognised definitions of torture. Consequently, there is a tension between doctors’ obligation not to be complicit in torture and doctors’ obligation to provide best possible care to their patients, including those seeking asylum. In this paper, we explore the nature of complicity and discuss the arguments for and against a proposed call for doctors to boycott working in immigration detention. We conclude that a degree of complicity (...) is unavoidable when working in immigration detention, but that it may be ethically justifiable. We identify ways to minimise the harms associated with complicity and argue that it is ethical to continue working in immigration detention as long as due care and attention is paid to minimising the harms of complicity. (shrink)

Our exploratory study considers whether the internal audit function is an efficient “third line of defense” for risk management and control as proposed by The Institute of Internal Auditors. To that end, we interview chief audit executives and experienced internal auditors to examine whether CAEs manage the impressions of audit committee members in the annual accountability process. We also provide an illustration of impression management techniques through a documentary case that explores a unique and exclusive dataset consisting of the main (...) guidance, framework, and accountability documents of one of these organizations. Our analysis highlights how several macro- and microimpression management techniques were used to burnish the image of internal auditors and, more importantly, the management team. Rather than monitoring managers, the CAEs team up with them. Our findings cast doubts on the conceptualization of internal audit as the independent third line of defense envisioned to be a keystone of the governance mosaic. This study supports other research that questions the effectiveness of internal auditing as a governance mechanism. It also contributes to the impression management literature by exposing impression management practices that occur through a private reporting channel—the internal audit function’s annual accountability to the audit committee. Last but not least, significant ethical concerns are raised in regard to internal audit, and research is urged in that area. (shrink)

Abstract:The Paris Agreement requires that States take action to avoid dangerous climate change. It is informed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that summarizes hundreds of scientific articles, yet the language of the treaty does not mirror the scientific literature. Instead, the Agreement encourages States to join in a collective effort without assigning responsibility for past emissions. The Agreement tells a story that does not track the truth. One justification is to see it as a "noble lie," and that, (...) like in the Republic, it could be the story that States need to hear to do what must be done. (shrink)

Der Begriff der Integrität begegnet in Alltag und Beruf häufig: Wir sprechen davon, jemand sei integer oder auch habe Integrität. Manchmal schreiben wir auch nur berufliche Integrität zu. Aber inwiefern sollten diese beiden Auffassungen von Integrität zugeschrieben werden? Anhand dreier Fallbeispiele wird diese Frage diskutiert. Zu diesem Zweck wird das moderne Paradigma der Integrität mit dem neoaristotelischen Paradigma der schwachen Einheit der Tugenden identifiziert und mit diesem argumentiert. Aufbauend auf alltäglichen Intuitionen wird die Problematik der Zuschreibung von Integrität als einzelne (...) Tugend und an einzelne Personen aufgezeigt. Daraufhin wird beispielhaft mit Neera K. Badhwar und Daniel C. Russell für die Kontextualität von Integrität, d. h. für ihre Einbettung in Lebenskontexte oder auch -bereiche wie eben den Beruf, argumentiert. Des Weiteren wird die Relationalität von Integrität aufgezeigt, d. h. deren Abhängigkeit von verschiedenen Rollen und von Bezugspersonen. (shrink)

What happens when a peer-assisted learning scheme becomes “business as usual” rather than innovation? The proctoring scheme in undergraduate philosophy programmes at the University of Leeds has been running for over 25 years, making it one of the oldest continuously running higher education peer-assisted learning schemes in the country. Over time, the centrality of the scheme in the teaching environment has changed, particularly in the shared understanding of philosophy learning and teaching and in the practical constraints of curriculum and timetable (...) space. Using the insights of teachers, students, and graduates, this report identifies the extent of success for proctoring in fostering philosophical learning and developing academic community, the two major objectives for the scheme. We also identify the conditions for success of peer-assisted learnings schemes, which our results suggest. An unexpected outcome of this project is found in identifying a challenge around “value” resulting from the fee-paying environment in higher education where peer-assisted learning may be understood as “teaching on the cheap.” These findings raise important questions for all higher education peer-assisted learning schemes about how schemes are embedded, sustained, and remain central to the learning environment in a rapidly changing education environment. (shrink)

To credit animals with any kind of capacity (even the capacity to suffer) or to be concerned with their fate at the hands of men would be automatically to deny the majesty of human suffering, to offend man by not affording sufficient status to the gap created by his escape from nature, his interiority, liberty and powers of self-constitution.In the Cerisy lectures, Derrida famously argues that the animal question is at the heart of all the great questions, such as those (...) concerned with the origins and nature of law, rights, justice, freedom and morality. For Émile Durkheim, founder of the French sociological tradition, the question of society is one such great question.1 Indeed, it was the question for Durkheim, as .. (shrink)

In _Jain Approaches to Plurality_ Melanie Barbato offers a new perspective on the Jain teaching of plurality and how it allowed Jains to engage with other discourses from Indian inter-school philosophy to global interreligious dialogue.

We examine the relation between worker substance abuse and workplace fraud in a sample of medical doctors. Relative to their peers, we observe that doctors engaging in substance abuse are between 50 and 100 times more likely to commit fraud in a given year. This result is consistent with research suggesting that substance abuse both creates financial pressures and impairs the functioning of cognitive self-regulatory mechanisms. Our results are robust in within-subject tests and between-subject tests, as well as in tests (...) using instrumental variables that exploit exogenous variation in the state-level availability of opioids, a commonly abused substance. (shrink)

Ce texte est écrit à quatre mains : Tamara Dmitrieva est sociologue, spécialiste de l’enfance sourde, qui s’est découverte comme entendante par la rencontre avec des sourd·e·s, et Mélanie Joseph, artiste-chercheuse, sourde signante et implantée, vivant avec le trouble dans sa lutte d’éloignement de la doctrine oraliste. Cet article donne à voir des perspectives de leurs recherches respectives qui s’y entrelacent, en créant un espace de réflexion sur la condition sourde et les possibilités de faire exister les diversités dans la (...) société de demain, selon les perspectives sourdiennes. (shrink)

The paper explores the possibilities for promoting epistemic justice in a South African university setting through a participatory action-based photovoice research project in which university resea...

This paper examines six cross-sector partnerships in South Africa and Zambia. These partnerships were part of a research study undertaken between 2003 and 2005 and were selected because of their potential to contribute to poverty reduction in their respective countries. This paper examines the context in which the partnerships were established, their governance and accountability mechanisms and the engagement and participation of the partners and the intended beneficiaries in the partnerships. We argue that a partnership approach which has proven successful (...) in one context can be used as a valuable learning resource. However, a partnership's work, which includes all aspects of the partnership and its activities, cannot necessarily be transferred directly to another partnership without a thorough and locally informed analysis of the context in which it is implemented. In addition, we suggest that it is difficult to assess whether the good intentions behind partnerships were translated into real benefits for target groups as effective monitoring and evaluation procedures were not in place in the partnerships studied. Similarly, the absence of regularised governance and accountability systems in partnerships made it difficult to support partner and beneficiary participation and engagement. We conclude that there is a need to move beyond a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to partnerships and that partnership replication should focus more strongly on the transfer of learning about partnership processes instead of simply copying partnership activities. Moreover, the development of stronger mechanisms for assessing and ensuring accountability towards both partners and intended beneficiaries is required if partnerships are to meet their intended objectives. (shrink)

Background: Few robust autism-specific outcome assessments have been developed specifically for use by teachers in special schools. The Assessment of Barriers to Learning in Education – Autism is a newly developed teacher assessment to identify and show progress in barriers to learning for pupils on the autism spectrum with coexisting intellectual disabilities. Aims: This study aimed to conduct a preliminary validity and reliability evaluation of the ABLE-Autism. Methods and procedures: Forty-eight autistic pupils attending special schools were assessed using the ABLE-Autism. (...) Multi-level modelling was used to evaluate test-retest reliability, internal consistency and convergent validity with the Teacher Autism Progress Scale. Outcomes and results: Results showed excellent test-retest reliability and internal consistency. A large effect size suggested that the ABLE-Autism is strongly correlated with the Teacher Autism Progress Scale. Teacher feedback was positive and suggested that the ABLE-Autism is easily understood by teachers, relevant to autistic pupils in special schools, and adequately covers the skills and behaviours that teachers believe are important to assess for these pupils. Conclusions and implications: Although further validation is recommended, the preliminary evaluation of the ABLE-Autism suggests that it is a useful and has the potential to be an effective outcome assessment for autistic pupils in special schools. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 40-60.

ABSTRACTEmployees who possess cross-cultural capabilities are increasingly sought after due to unparalleled numbers of cross-cultural interactions. Previous research has primarily focused on the bright side of these capabilities, including important individual and work outcomes. In contrast, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the cross-cultural capability of cultural intelligence can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Applying the general theory of confluence, we propose that expatriates high in CQ excel in customer relationship performance, while simultaneously behaving opportunistically. (...) We also suggest that ethical relativism moderates these relationships. Using mixed methods, four separate studies generally support our predictions while also deepening our understanding of various forms of opportunism and the mechanism behind two seemingly opposing effects. Conceptual and managerial implications of CQ for opportunism, customer relationship performance, and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

Emile Durkheim and Henri Bergson, two of the most important thinkers of early 20th-century France, give us different accounts of the relationship between habits, society and life. The article focuses on their use of embodied metaphors to illustrate how each thinker conceives of habit as a force of life. It argues that Durkheim uses the metaphor of ‘lifting’ to describe how social life creates habits capable of transcending bodily instinct. Bergson also recognizes the force of habits; he uses the language (...) of leaping to describe the kind of action required to transcend them. The article makes three claims. First, it argues that these metaphors are central to each thinker’s understanding of the means by which habits attach us to life. Second, they offer a means of revisiting, and explicating, Bergson’s tacit critique of Durkheim in his Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Third, they both symbolize processes of conversion that inform each thinker’s diagnosis of the moral challenges faced in modern social life. (shrink)

While the Web Ontology Language (OWL) provides a mechanism to import ontologies, this mechanism is not always suitable. Current editing tools present challenges for working with large ontologies an...

In this paper, key concepts from the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality are used to develop an art education research project that can enhance the freedom of art students in their art work and, potentially, contribute to the promotion of emancipation beyond the world of art work. In the process of developing this project, the author engages in a two-way interrogation of both concepts and empirical research. The stratified model of reality, the ontological status of absence and the concepts (...) of transcendental identification, transcendental agency and the ground-state have informed decisions about data collection and contributed to the analysis of data in this study. The research results offer some empirical support for the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality, whilst also identifying potential inconsistencies. A further original feature of the paper is that it draws on the flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to complement Roy Bhaskar's account of the ground-state and of the nature of free-flowing activity; also using neuroscience to provide some neurological evidence for the differences between mindful and spontaneous activity. It is anticipated that the cross-analysis between cases resulting from the two-way interchange between theory and empirical evidence could help to generate a model for ‘unblocking the creative block’, experienced not only by students practising art-making, but also by the wider community. (shrink)

Research studying the effects of non-financial goals on stakeholder relationships remains inconclusive, with scholars disagreeing on which goals increase or decrease a firm’s proactive stakeholder engagement (PSE). Instead of examining which goals act as forces for good or evil, we shift the focus of recent discussions by emphasizing the mechanisms that can explain the positive and negative stakeholder outcomes of non-financial goals under the umbrella of one theoretical lens. We do so by introducing an ethics of care perspective. Specifically, we (...) first show that four of the five most distinctive non-financial goals of family owners jointly stipulate care-based morality, which likely enhances PSE. However, we subsequently argue that one goal, namely, the wish to exert power and influence, interacts with other goals and related care-based morality to lower PSE. Finally, we show how female family directors temper these interactions. Our insights into the additive and interactive effects of non-financial goals on PSE contribute to corporate social responsibility research, to the organizational goal literature, to family business studies and to work drawing on care ethics in management studies. (shrink)

Parce que le temps est une question de pouvoir, la nuit en est également une. À notre collègue Marc Bessin En 2017, le numéro de _Conflits et Cultures _dirigé par le collectif CANDELA avait « pour ambition de démontrer la pertinence de ce champ de recherche [les sciences sociales du politique de la nuit] en constitution » (2017, p. 27). Six ans après, notre appel à articles plus spécifiquement sur les _Temporalités du nocturne_, a recueilli un très vif intérêt, puisque (...) nous avons reçu quarante-deux propositions d’articles, plus stimulantes les unes que les autres. Nous avons retenu celles qui nous semblaient traiter au mieux des dimensions temporelles de la nuit, qui, au-delà d’un contenant préalable à l'action, contrairement à l’espace, résulteraient aussi de l’activité, de pratiques (Bensa, 1997 ; Bessin, 1998). La nuit peut être envisagée comme un élément circonstanciel qui se borne par le lever et le coucher du soleil ; elle peut également indiquer « la noirceur en général, qu’elle soi... (shrink)

How does the body influence the way we see the world? _Imagination, Illness and Injury_ examines the psychological factors behind perceptual limitations and distortions and links a broad range of somatic manifestations with their resolution. Melanie Starr Costello applies Jungian theory to a variety of cases, attributing psychosomatic phenomena to cognitive processes that are common to us all. She analyses the role of illness in several life narratives, and interprets the appearance of somatic phenomena during important phases of analytic (...) treatment. Together these case narratives present a significant challenge to established views of psychosomatics. Subjects covered include: archetypal constrictions of identity somatic elements of perception the psyche-soma split. _Imagination, Illness and Injury _brings a fresh perspective to the understanding and treatment of the psychotherapy client as a psycho-somatic unity. Jungian analysts, psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists will greatly benefit from the clinical applications of archetypal theory presented here. (shrink)

Neither art criticism nor a scholar’s monograph on an artist, Jean-François Lyotard’s Sam Francis: Lesson of Darkness: ‘like the paintings of a blind man’ is a reflection that engages both the painter and 43 of his works into a conversation alternating painting and aphoristic writing. Their order follows neither the chronology of the works nor a linear argument in the prose. And yet, the work generates the strongest feeling of there being a continuity in this peculiar dialogue of pictures and (...) poeticism, a continuity not clearly presented by logic, but one concerning what remains unpresented in presentation. The conversation is revelatory of their shared concerns with the energetic force of absence and is fascinating. (shrink)