Environmental protection activities in industry have rapidly increased in number over the last years. Additionally, surveys of environmental activities have identified a change in the kind or in the approaches used to environmental problem solving. A new paradigm ‘Clean Technology’ has been developed which gradually seems to replace the ‘Clean-up Technology’ paradigm and the older ‘Dilute and Disperse’ paradigm. The new ‘Clean Technology’ paradigm brings with it not only a new way of looking at environmental protection, but also a range (...) of ‘rules’ guiding the application of technology and the design of technological systems. This paper presents a few case studies highlighting and evaluating Clean Technology activities. (shrink)

When is it permissible to move an issue out of normal politics and treat it as a security issue? How should the security measures be conducted? When and how should the securitization be reversed? Floyd offers answers to these questions by combining security studies' influential securitization theory with philosophy's long-standing just war tradition, creating a major new approach to the ethics of security: 'Just Securitization Theory'. Of interest to anyone concerned with ethics and security, Floyd's innovative approach enables scholars to (...) normatively evaluate past and present securitizations, equips practitioners to make informed judgements on what they ought to do in relevant situations, and empowers the public to hold relevant actors accountable for how they view security. (shrink)

The doctor patient relationship starts with a story. Doctors' notes, a patient's chart, the recommendations of ethics committees and insurance justifications all hinge on written and verbal narrative interaction. The "practice" of narrative profoundly affects decision making, patient health and treatment and the everyday practice of medicine. In this edited collection, the contributors provide conceptual foundations, practical guidelines and theoretical considerations central to the practice of narrative ethics.

If our sense of the past is inevitably shaped by the explanatory logic of narrative, then the stories that we create in turn reveal the inescapable presence and ...

In this paper, I consider the claim that a corporation cannot be held to be morally responsible unless it is a person. First, I argue that this claim is ambigious. Person flags three different but related notions: metaphysical person, moral agent, moral person. I argue that, though one can make the claim that corporates are metaphysical persons, this claim is only marginally relevant to the question of corporate moral responsibility. The central question which must be answered in discussions of corporate (...) moral responsibility is whether corporations are moral agents or moral persons. I argue that, though we can make a case for saying corporations are moral agents, they are not moral persons, and hence, we can hold them responsible. In addition, we need not treat them the way we would be obligated to treat a moral person; we needn't have the same scruples about holding a corporation morally responsible as we would a moral person. (shrink)

Across two studies, a wide age range of participants was interviewed about the nature of death. All participants were living in rural Madagascar in a community where ancestral beliefs and practices are widespread. In Study 1, children (8–17 years) and adults (19–71 years) were asked whether bodily and mental processes continue after death. The death in question was presented in the context of a narrative that focused either on the corpse or on the ancestral practices associated with the afterlife. Participants (...) aged 8 years and older claimed that death brings an end to most bodily and mental processes. Nevertheless, particularly in the context of the religious narrative, they claimed that certain mental processes continue even after death. This assertion of an afterlife was more evident among adults than children, especially with respect to cognitive processes, such as knowing and remembering. In Study 2, 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds were asked similar questions in connection with the death of a bird and a person. Seven‐year‐olds consistently claimed that bodily and mental processes cease at death, whereas 5‐year‐olds were unsystematic in their replies. Together, the two studies replicate and extend findings obtained with Western children showing that, in the course of development, different conceptions of death are elaborated—a biological conception in which death terminates living processes and a religious conception in which death marks the beginning of a new form of spiritual existence. (shrink)

Care ethics can provide a valuable conceptual and normative resource for many issues in law, but given the conservative nature of law in general, much work needs to be done before care ethics can explicitly play such a role. In this paper I survey the landscape of law, discuss two attempts to incorporate care ethics into the normative framework of law, and suggest other avenues for incorporating care ethics in law and legal reasoning.

The essay analyses the utopian imaginary in women’s writings with specific reference to the 1970s. Since the late 19 th century, utopia as a genre becomes a space to deconstruct and re-elaborate women’s identity and subjectivity. The appropriation of the utopian paradigm enriches the classical critique of the existing social systems with the deconstruction of gender roles and female stereotypes as a means to fight gender discrimination as well as other forms of oppression which lie at the foundation of the (...) Western symbolic and social orders. It also implies the restructuring of the technical and stylistic devices of the utopian genre. The imaginary worlds represent a space of empowerment that will enable the transformation of power systems, gender and sexual policies against any discriminations. This transformation is seen as salvific for both men and women. (shrink)

I The area between sensation and conceptualization is gray and confusing. Despite abundant philosophical and empirical research, results about how to understand this area that command widespread assent are very scarce. One contributory source to this impasse is the fact that, for mature and intact humans, the sensory, the perceptual, and the conceptual seem merged in consciousness. Perception is phenomenally so "cognitively penetrable" - so infused for humans by discursive understanding - that experimental and theoretical efforts to distinguish between it (...) and conceptualization, and consequently between it and sensation, often seem constrained only by whatever favored theory drives the effort. In what follows, I consider reasons for distin- guishing perceptual from conceptual categories and suggest a way of making the distinction. First, however, some preliminaries will help make clearer just what topic is under discussion. (shrink)

I applaud Mitchell et al.’s expanded emphasis on cognition in learning theory, for our understanding pervades all we do. Nevertheless, there are fundamental problems with the propositional approach they propose. The title bills a propositional approach to human associative learning, animal learning being tucked in later as an egalitarian gesture, but the model proposed would be a standard neo-classic account of human learning in terms of a representational theory of mind /except for /its universal extension to all learning, human and (...) otherwise. Such neo-classic accounts deem it explanation enough of some human behavior to hypothesize rich formal structures of inference and sentence generation internal to the organism as causes of like changes in behavior. The hypothesized structures are extrapolated from formal linguistics and formal logic. Some have found such explanations useful, not surprisingly for computer modeling of human linguistic behavior, but the target article’s bold step is to extend the neo-classic model to all animal learning. (shrink)

Este texto, de caráter ensaístico, tem por objetivo colocar em debate as relações entre infância e cultura contemporânea, mais especificamente, sobre o lugar social que as crianças ocupam na cibercultura, lugar esse vem se mostrando um tanto paradoxal: por vezes se atribui às crianças uma quase inata expertise; por outras, as supomos frágeis e desprotegidas. Trata-se de um esforço de aproximação e de delimitação de um objeto de estudo em permanente devir cujas transformações psíquicas, sociais e culturais envolvidas afetam também (...) os modos de pesquisar e de produzir conhecimento. Isto exige, pois, uma construção teórica e metodológica em constante e vertiginoso processo que, mais do que poder contar com o conhecimento historicamente acumulado, parece manter-se mergulhada na intersecção de nossas incertezas. O caminho proposto para a formulação das indagações que aqui queremos compartilhar com o leitor passa inicialmente por um levantamento da produção discursiva sobre a relação das crianças com a internet que circula no cotidiano e nas pesquisas de caráter acadêmico e oficial. Num segundo momento buscamos a produção discursiva do mercado para observar como a produção de sites dirigidos para crianças dialoga com prerrogativas do saber dito especializado. Por fim, apresentamos uma perspectiva filosófica de análise desses discursos amparada metaforicamente na narrativa homérica e na releitura que Franz Kafka faz da passagem de Ulisses pela ilha das sereias. Com esse caminho buscamos analisar tendências que emergem na produção de conhecimento sobre infância e cibercultura e, junto disto, pensar sobre os desafios éticos e metodológicos que a temática em tela impõe para os pesquisadores da infância. (shrink)

O presenta artigo se constitui em um estudo interpretativo a respeito dos efeitos da inserção maciça de tecnologias conectadas à rede mundial de computadores, em nossa cultura. Celebradas a ponto de se alastrarem como objeto de desejo por toda a parte, essas tecnologias, sobretudo as mídias móveis, têm se tornado ubíquas e não há um único segmento da sociedade que não tenha sido tocado por essa inserção. A educação formal em nosso país, por meio de políticas públicas como o Programa (...) Nacional de Tecnologia Educacional – Proinfo, procurou introduzir nas escolas da rede recursos para agregar qualidade ao nosso ensino básico, sabidamente precário. Entretanto a iniciativa se depara com resistências de toda a sorte, tanto por parte de gestores quanto de professores. Esse artigo pondera sobre essas resistências procurando ultrapassas questões, tais como falta de capacitação dos gestores, incidência de problemas técnicos ou mera falta interesse nas tecnologias. Busca pistas dessa oposição silenciosa a partir das alterações promovidas pela “virtualidade” na relação simbólica do sujeito com o meio, incidindo na esfera de sua identidade. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to illuminate the ethically difficult situations experienced by care providers working in a nursing home. Individual interviews using a narrative approach were conducted. A phenomenological-hermeneutic method developed for researching life experience was applied in the analysis. The findings showed that care providers experience ethical challenges in their everyday work. The informants in this study found the balance between the ideal, autonomy and dignity to be a daily problem. They defined the culture they work in (...) as not supportive. They also thought they were not being seen and heard in situations where they disagree with the basic values of the organization. The results are discussed in terms of Habermas’s understanding of modern society. Care settings for elderly people obviously present ethical challenges, particularly in the case of those suffering from dementia. The care provider participants in this study expressed frustration and feelings of powerlessness. It is possible to understand their experiences in terms of Habermas’s theory of modern society and the concept of the system’s colonization of the life world. (shrink)

What does it mean to get hooked by a work, whether a bestseller or a classic, a TV series or a painting in a museum? What is this aesthetic experience that makes us feel captivated? What do works of art do, and how, in particular, do they bind us to them? In "Hooked," Rita Felski builds an aesthetics premised on our attachments rather than our free agency and challenges the ethos of critical aloofness that is so much a part (...) of modern intellectuals' self-image. The result is sure to be as widely read, and as controversial, as Felski's 2015 book, "The Limits of Critique." Felski looks at several "attachment devices." One of these is "attunement"--those affinities and stirrings that often fall below the threshold of consciousness. Why, for example, are we drawn to a painting or piece of music in ways we struggle to explain, while being left cold by others whose merits we duly acknowledge? Another attachment device is "identification"--a widespread response to fiction that is often invoked by critics but usually treated as synonymous with either identity or empathy. But Felski shows that identifying has no neat fit with identity categories, and it can trigger ethical, political, or intellectual affinities that have little to do with co-feeling. What people most commonly identify with, Felski argues, are characters who are alluring, arresting, or alive, not in spite of their aesthetic qualities but because of them. This kind of identification is not limited to naïve readers or over-invested viewers, but is also a defining aspect of what scholars in the humanities do. Relatedly, academic "interpretation" emerges here as another circuit of connection: critics forge ties to the works they explicate, the methods they use, the disciplinary identities they inhabit. "Hooked" returns us to the fundamentals of aesthetic experience, showing that the social meanings of artworks do not lie encrypted in their depths, within reach only of expert critics, but are generated within the embrace of captivated audiences. (shrink)

The current study aims to test a moderated-mediation model in which the indirect effect of the presence of negative stereotypes towards older workers in the organization on psychological engagement to work domain and attitudes toward development opportunities through identification with the company depends on the occupational self-efficacy. The survey involved 1501 Italian employees over age 50, working for a major retailer of the big distribution. In line with Social Exchange theory, the results showed that the perception of negative stereotypes towards (...) older workers in the organization is associated with low identification with the company and in turn with psychological engagement to work domain and attitudes toward development opportunities. In addition, this relationship was found to be stronger for older workers with higher and medium levels of occupational self-efficacy. These findings suggest to organizations to discourage the dissemination of negative stereotypes toward older workers in the workplace because the perception of the lack of reciprocity may lead to older workers’ disengagement from the work domain and their loss of interest toward development opportunities. (shrink)

In this timely and highly original merging of theory and practice, conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner applies Marshall McLuhan's semiotic theories of language, media, and technology to iPhone photographs taken during a military embed in Afghanistan. In a series of what Leistner calls iProbes—a portmanteau of iPhone and probe—Leistner reveals the face of war through the extensions of man. As digital photography becomes more ubiquitous, and as the phones we carry with us become more advanced, the process (...) of capturing images becomes more democratic and more spontaneous. Leistner's photos result from both access and impulse. Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan will appeal anyone with an interest in the conflicts in the Middle East, the seminal communications theorist, or iPhone apps and photography. (shrink)

Rita Carter ponders the nature, origins, and purpose of consciousness in this fascinating inquiry into the toughest problem facing modern science and philosophy. Building on the foundation of her bestselling book _Mapping the Mind, _she considers whether consciousness is merely an illusion, a by-product of our brain's workings, some as yet inexplicable feature or property of the material universe or—as the latest physics may suggest—the very fundament of reality. Little, she discovers, is as it first seems. Carter draws from (...) a solid body of knowledge—empirical findings and theoretical hypotheses--about consciousness, much of it derived from recent discoveries about the brain. Her lively, accessible narrative ranges widely over new ways of thinking about the subject and what direction new research is taking. Leading scholars from a range of perspectives provide topical essays that complement Carter's account. The book also discusses how traditional approaches—philosophical, scientific, and experiential—might be brought together to create a more complete understanding of consciousness. (shrink)

This is a study of the development of Christian symbolic use of the Cross. Early depictions were anastasic, the empty cross symbolizing the resurrection and hiding the manner of Jesus’ death. As the Christian community itself became more violent, and first practiced and then justified the practice of war, the Crucifix showed Christ on the Cross increasingly graphically. The writer compares this with a set of images in and around the chapel at Central American University in San Salvador. The images (...) record a memory of suffering and terror. The article ends by locating the experience of writing about these images in the context of global grass-roots protest against the war in Iraq. (shrink)

This review is focused on recent advances in our understanding of the development of coordinated cell polarity, through experiments on the Drosophila compound eye. Each eye facet (or “ommatidium”) contains a set of eight photoreceptor cells, placed so that their rhabdomeres form an asymmetric trapezoid. The array of ommatidia is organized so that these trapezoids are aligned in two mirror-image fields, dorsal and ventral to the eye midline (or “equator”). The development of this pattern depends on two systems of positional (...) information that inform the cluster of cells that will form an ommatidium of anterior/posterior (a/p) and dorsal/ventral (d/v) direction. The former (a/p) is encoded by a progressive wave of development (the morphogenetic furrow). The latter (d/v) involves molecules known to act in tissue polarity in other organs and organisms. Our understanding of the function of these molecules rests not only on their mutant phenotypes, biochemistry, and expression patterns, but also on the spatial effects when mutant patches of cells are made (genetic mosaics). BioEssays 21:275–285, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In her Massey lecture series "The Ethical Imagination," bioethicist Margaret Somerville argues that we humans have a moral duty to preserve what is most basic to being human, namely, the human form itself. We should not, therefore, tolerate the development and application of technologies in the life sciences in ways that would result in radically altering the human form. The concern, here, is not simply with human enhancement. The concern is more specific: we should not tolerate the development and application (...) of the technosciences, for either health or enhancement, that would alter the natural identity of the human species—as when, for example, an individual's germline cells are altered in the treatment of a condition, or when human bodies are integrated with technology to create cyborgs. With such alterations, over time the human form could be lost altogether in the creation of a posthuman form. (shrink)

In this paper, I survey liberal and communitarian defenses of privacy, paying particular attention to defenses of privacy in the workplace. I argue that liberalism cannot explain all our of intuitions about the wrongness of workplace invasions of privacy. Communitarianism, on the other hand, is able to account for these intuitions.

Anthropology combines two quite different enterprises: the ethnographic study of particular people in particular places and the theorizing about the human species. As such, anthropology is part of cognitive science in that it contributes to the unitary theoretical aim of understanding and explaining the behavior of the animal species Homo sapiens. This article draws on our own research experience to illustrate that cooperation between anthropology and the other sub-disciplines of cognitive science is possible and fruitful, but it must proceed from (...) the recognition of anthropology’s unique epistemology and methodology. (shrink)