The body of information on the Internet is becoming increasingly geographical. This is both due to the expansion of established categories of geographic information and to the simultaneous enrichment of other types of information through geographic identifiers. As this repository of geographic information expands, it is also a key site for multiple processes of commodification transforming informational resources into market goods. Understanding the dynamics driving the integration of geographic information into the digital economy requires a comprehensive (...) political economic analysis. A key component of this analysis is to explain the logics of creation and allocation of economic value from geographic information on the Internet. Addressing this need, in the present article I deploy the property regimes schema developed by Schlager and Ostrom and expand it to elucidate the differentiated commodification processes of geographic information on the Internet. Property regimes are arrangements that define rules, distribute rights, and delineate roles with respect to particular goods. These arrangements are enabled by elements such as legal frameworks, jurisdictions, type of information, and technologies of access. In this article, I explore how the legal frameworks regulating traditional categories of geographic information have been destabilized in the process of technological innovation, leading to the creation of new informational goods along with their respective property regimes, and rearticulating legal, economic, and sociotechnical relations. To illustrate this, I analyze the case of Google Street View images through their property regimes in various jurisdictions. (shrink)

This paper revisits the debate over whether the study of facilitation requires ecologists to revise their understanding of the relationship between realized and fundamental niches as conceptualized by Hutchinson. Following Rodriguez-Cabal et al., I argue against Bruno et al.’s claim that facilitation can make a species’ realized niche larger than its fundamental niche. However, I also maintain that the abstract Hutchinsonian conceptualization of the niche makes a whole range of facilitative interactions—which I propose to call ameliorative facilitation—invisible to niche-based approaches (...) to the study of ecological communities. I propose a way to incorporate ameliorative facilitation into such approaches. My proposal involves supplementing the Hutchinsonian realized/fundamental dyad with a third concept: the potential niche. This concept was introduced by ecologists studying the effects of environmental change on species distributions, but I show how it could also be fruitfully used in facilitation studies. I argue that this proposed solution is more appealing than Stachowicz’s suggestion that Hutchinson’s realized/fundamental contrast be applied to a spatial-geographical, as opposed to an abstract-conceptual, notion of the niche. (shrink)

BackgroundIncreasingly, hospitals and research institutes are developing technical solutions for sharing patient data in a privacy preserving manner. Two of these technical solutions are homomorphic encryption and distributed ledger technology. Homomorphic encryption allows computations to be performed on data without this data ever being decrypted. Therefore, homomorphic encryption represents a potential solution for conducting feasibility studies on cohorts of sensitive patient data stored in distributed locations. Distributed ledger technology provides a permanent record on all transfers and processing of patient data, (...) allowing data custodians to audit access. A significant portion of the current literature has examined how these technologies might comply with data protection and research ethics frameworks. In the Swiss context, these instruments include the Federal Act on Data Protection and the Human Research Act. There are also institutional frameworks that govern the processing of health related and genetic data at different universities and hospitals. Given Switzerland’s geographical proximity to European Union (EU) member states, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may impose additional obligations.MethodsTo conduct this assessment, we carried out a series of qualitative interviews with key stakeholders at Swiss hospitals and research institutions. These included legal and clinical data management staff, as well as clinical and research ethics experts. These interviews were carried out with two series of vignettes that focused on data discovery using homomorphic encryption and data erasure from a distributed ledger platform.ResultsFor our first set of vignettes, interviewees were prepared to allow data discovery requests if patients had provided general consent or ethics committee approval, depending on the types of data made available. Our interviewees highlighted the importance of protecting against the risk of reidentification given different types of data. For our second set, there was disagreement amongst interviewees on whether they would delete patient data locally, or delete data linked to a ledger with cryptographic hashes. Our interviewees were also willing to delete data locally or on the ledger, subject to local legislation.ConclusionOur findings can help guide the deployment of these technologies, as well as determine ethics and legal requirements for such technologies. (shrink)

Creation, collection and retention of knowledge in digital communities is an activity that currently requires being explicitly targeted as a secure method of keeping intellectual capital growing in the digital era. In particular, we consider it relevant to analyze and evaluate the empathetic cognitive personalities and behaviors that individuals now have with the change from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication online. This document proposes a cyber-humanistic approach to enhance the traditional SECI knowledge management model. A cognitive perception is added to (...) its cyclical process following design thinking interaction, exemplary for improvement of the method in which knowledge is continuously created, converted and shared. In building a cognitive-centered model, we specifically focus on the effective identification and response to cognitive stimulation of individuals, as they are the intellectual generators and multiplicators of knowledge in the online environment. Our target is to identify how geographically distributed—digital—organizations should align the individual’s cognitive abilities to promote iteration and improve interaction as a reliable stimulant of collective intelligence. The new model focuses on analyzing the four different stages of knowledge processing, where individuals with sympathetic cognitive personalities can significantly boost knowledge creation in a virtual social system. For organizations, this means that multidisciplinary individuals can maximize their extensive potential, by externalizing their knowledge in the correct stage of the knowledge creation process, and by collaborating with their appropriate sympathetically cognitive remote peers. (shrink)

Social capital and scaling social impact are two of the most important concepts within social entrepreneurship and social enterprise research. However, what role social capital plays in scaling social impact is less understood and academic literatures on the connection of these two crucial concepts are fragmented and scattered. To fill this research gap, we have conducted a bibliometric review to inform academics and researchers the salient agents in the field and categorize the conceptual structure of the knowledge base. Using science (...) mapping techniques, we have analyzed 1549 relevant documents from SCOPUS that are published between 1986 and 2021. The primary objective of this review is to uncover the size, growth trajectory, and geographic distribution of literatures related to social capital's role in scaling social impact. Additionally, we have also analyzed key publishing journals, authors, and documents to map the intellectual structure and research fronts of the domain. The review shows that there is a reasonable accumulation of scientific knowledge concerning social capital's role in scaling social impact in the last three decades. Another key finding is that, some of the keywords identified within the research fronts are closely aligned with a number of UN-SDG goals. This is the first study to systematically map social capital's role in scaling social impact literature with the help of a science mapping tool called bibliometric analysis. This work provides a clear overview of the evolution of the research field and presents potentially important research gaps that require further attention. (shrink)

By the 1840s and 1850s biogeographical theory had polarized into two opposing views — both of which had their origins in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. At issue in this polarization was the question of God's involvement with His creation. At one end of the spectrum were Sclater, Agassiz, Kirby, and others who saw a neatly designed world in which geographical distributions were planned and executed by the hand of God at creation. For most of these naturalists, organisms were created (...) en masse within the regions they now occupy. Disjunct distributions were proof to them that God had indeed created species in situ as many individuals. These naturalists hoped to reveal God's biogeographical plan by discovering His regions of creation. They had hoped to demonstrate a neatly devised set of regions of creation which might be applicable to all creatures, but in attempting to do so, they arrived at conflicting sets of delineations — thus helping to undermine their conceptions of nature in which design (both idealist and utilitarian) played an important part.93At the other end of the biogeographical spectrum were the theoretical ideas of Prichard and Lyell, who viewed a more remote God — one who allowed His creation to be shaped and modified by secondary laws. Lyell in particular wished to leave considerations of design aside, hoping to demonstrate that the shape of the present creation is due to natural laws. Prichard and Lyell saw God's role in the creation of species (and distributions) as being extremely limited. In fact, the regions of creation seen today are in actuality only natural artifacts produced by migrations and barriers. They saw distributions being in constant flux, as was the rest of nature.Those supporting the views of Prichard and Lyell spent a great deal of effort in attempting to remove a major obstacle in their paths — disjunct distributions. If disjunct distributions were indeed the products of separate creative acts, as Sclater and others claimed, then the arguments of Prichard and Lyell would be negated. For if the creation of a species was shown to be the product of multiple creations, then what was the need of migrations and dispersal mechanisms? Also at stake, of course, was the concept of species based upon generation. Darwin was well aware that if the supernatural implications of disjunct distributions could not be refuted, then his evolutionary system — founded upon a species concept based on descent — would be in peril.94A further barrier to the acceptance of the Prichard/Lyell view was the fact that those sympathetic to a nonsupernatural explanation of disjunct distributions could not agree upon a natural explanation for those anomalies, and an internal debate between naturalists within this group raged for decades.95By 1859 a biogeographical stalemate had occurred. Sclater and others, supporting their static view of nature, continued to look for regions of creation, pointing to disjunct distributions in support of their arguments, while those favorable to the views of Prichard and Lyell continued to search for natural explanations for such biogeographical anomalies.The key needed to resolve the biogeographical debate was a credible theory for species origins. By 1858 there were essentially three options for British naturalists: supernatural creation, Lamarckian transmutation, or natural creation. A few British naturalists grasped at these straws, but most workers preferred the option of remaining silent until a more viable explanation for the origin and distribution of species could be advanced.96 And not until the publication of Darwin's theory did that explanation become available. (shrink)

The definitions and conceptualizations of health, and the management of healthcare have been challenged by the current global scenarios (e.g., new diseases, new geographical distribution of diseases, effects of climate change on health, etc.) and by the ongoing scholarship in humanities and science. In this paper we question the mainstream definition of health adopted by the WHO—‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO in Preamble to the constitution (...) of the World Health Organization as adopted by the international health conference, The World Health Organization, 1948)—and its role in providing tools to understand what health is in the contemporary context. More specifically, we argue that this context requires to take into account the role of the environment both in medical theory and in the healthcare practice. To do so, we analyse WHO documents dated 1984 and 1986 which define health as ‘coping with the environment’. We develop the idea of ‘coping with the environment’, by focusing on two cardinal concepts: adaptation in public health and adaptivity in philosophy of biology. We argue that the notions of adaptation and adaptivity can be of major benefit for the characterization of health, and have practical implications. We explore some of these implications by discussing two recent case studies of adaptivity in public health, which can be valuable to further develop adaptive strategies in the current pandemic scenario: community-centred care and microbiologically healthier buildings. (shrink)

The pandemic brought new norms and techniques of pedagogical strategies in formal education. The synchronous/ asynchronous video streaming brought an emphasis on virtual and augmented realities, which are rapidly replacing textbooks as the main medium for learning and teaching. This transformation requires more extensive online and interactive content with simpler user interfaces. The aim of this study is to report on the design, implementation, and testing of a game based on low-cost and user-friendly content for digital cultural heritage. In this (...) project, a game aimed at inclusive and equitable education was developed using 360° images of the targeted architectural heritage geographically distributed in a pilot site. We promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, following the SDG4, aiming for quality education with the easy-to-use online platform and easy access to immersive education through mobile platforms. Towards a post-carbon future without the need for travel, computational design methods such as using 360° videos and images in combination with virtual reality (VR) headsets allow a low-cost approach to remotely experiencing cultural heritage. We propose developing and testing a GIS-based educational game using a low-cost 360° virtual tour of architectural heritage, more specifically, caravanserais of Anatolia. (shrink)

While Wallace disagreed with Darwin that domesticates provided a great deal of useful information on wild populations,71 Darwin continued to draw on his domesticated animals and plants to inform him on the workings of his theory. Unlike Wallace, his exposure to natural populations was extremely limited after his return from the Beagle voyage. By the 1850s, he had settled into a life at Down House and was becoming more and more withdrawn from London scientific circles. He turned to his network (...) of informants, visits from colleagues such as Hooker and T. H. Huxley, subscriptions to various journals, and his own experimental studies at Down.This work on domesticates was clearly related to other natural history studies conducted by Darwin and others during the same period. For example, during the 1850s when Darwin worked on domesticates, he was also engaged in questions of geographic distribution. To study the dispersal and subsequent viability of introduced seeds, he soaked various seeds in a tub filled with seawater and counted which of the seeds floated after a given period; later he planted the seeds in the yard at Down to look for potential viability. There was no attempt at controlled, replicated experiments in these studies, or in his work with domesticates, nor should there have been. To Darwin the results of one experiment represented a potential truth of nature, and he was quick to seize upon these results as supporting evidence for his theory.I have suggested in this paper that his work on domesticates was not simply meant to provide an analogy for natural selection but rather became a research program to investigate other aspects of his natural selection theory, especially inheritance and variability; these subjects were integral parts of his theory of natural selection, but by 1859 he had not found a mechanism to account for them. The experiments brought home the difficult problems of inheritance, and Darwin specifically formulated pangenesis to account for these problems. Pangenesis was not an afterthought but an integration of several decades of thinking on inheritance. It was a unified theory to explain the complicated results he witnessed in his own experiments.Much of the Darwin scholarship has focused on Darwin's path toward the discovery of natural selection. Natural selection per se was a major interest, but not the only area of interest to Darwin. Inheritance was an area of serious concern for him both before and after he had formulated natural selection. His experimentation with domesticates was an attempt to look beyond natural selection and to concentrate on the difficult subject of inheritance. He found inheritance especially troublesome, requiring a “provisional hypothesis” to account for it. To see domesticates, as they are described in the Origin, as merely an analogy for natural selection, does not account for the importance Darwin placed on them. For him they were not man's monstrous productions, but worthy experimental subjects providing him with crucial information on inheritance. (shrink)

A key challenge faced by organizations is to provide project teams with workspaces, information, and collaboration technologies that fosters creativity and high-performance team productivity. This requires understanding the relation between and impacts of (1) workspace, (2) activity and content that is created, and (3) social, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of work. This paper describes an exploratory study of everyday activities in the context of knowledge work in a shared workspace used by a high-tech global design team that explores future products. (...) The study formalizes key elements for productive knowledge work as a function of tasks, context, and team. It identifies enablers, hindrances, and requirements for physical, virtual, and social work environments. The study identified, through semi-structured interviews, surveys, and on-site shadowing, a key workspace component that facilitates dynamic participation of all team members. This workspace component is a wall used as a large, public, physical display surface for project content (the WALL). The WALL acts as a mediator for individual reflection-in-action and team reflection-in-interaction. It serves as “social glue” both between individuals and between geographically distributed subgroups. (shrink)

Given the tremendous burst of activity in the philosophy of science during the last quarter century, the number of books by trained philosophers dealing with the logic of biology is surprisingly small. Simon’s book resembles Morton Beckner’s The Biological Way of Thought in its comprehensive ambitions: "trying to discover what, if anything, is distinctive about biological science, its concepts, and its mode of explaining." The most obvious difference of the two books is Simon’s long central chapter on "Theories, Models, and (...) the Concept of the Gene," which deals with the history of genetics from Mendel’s predecessors to the successors of Watson and Crick. Beckner paid little explicit attention to the history of biology. Another difference lies in Beckner’s dogged assessment of all problems in the logic of biology from the perspective of what he called the Humean Pattern of Explanation—a detailed and difficult variant of the approach of Hempel, Oppenheim, and Nagel. Simon’s philosophical position is more flexible than Beckner’s. He provides an acceptable review of the literature of the last decade and a half; some of his conclusions are most interesting—even when incompletely supported by his arguments; and the utility of his book is insured by the fact that it is necessary to go back over twelve years to find another with which it can be compared. The first chapter contains a very effective critique of J. J. C. Smart’s thesis that biology is no more an autonomous science than is electrical engineering, but is merely applied physics and chemistry. Smart had argued from the grounds that all biological generalizations implicitly refer to terrestrial evolution and are not truly universal, and Simon demonstrates the general lack of success of all efforts to demonstrate a difference in kind between so-called laws of nature and empirical generalizations of the sort found in biology. The second chapter continues in this same vein, drawing an interesting contrast between phylogenetic explanation in biology and the explanation of individual events in human history, and claiming that ‘explanatory’ status may be granted to accounts which do not meet the requirements of the deductive-nomological model, as in the case of Darwin’s theories of the geographical distribution of plants and animals and the persistence of rudimentary organs. The author’s negative reaction to much of the recent philosophical literature concerning the role of functional analysis in biology seems particularly well placed. Following Hempel, most philosophers writing in the past ten years have regarded the occurrence of the item whose function is in question as the event to be explained. Simon correctly points out that in the biological literature, statements indicating the presence of this item are part of the explanans, usually one component in an explanation of the normal functioning of the organism. He also insists that functional or teleological statements cannot effectively be replaced by nonteleological ones. A functional account is one that relates an entity to the role it plays in an organized system. In the first of several serene non-sequiturs which mar the latter half of this book, Simon insists that the above account shows that the notion of function is essentially an "extrinsic" one and that teleological principles generally cannot be used to account for experience. No better argument than an appeal to Kant’s authority backs up this conclusion. The third chapter deals with the recent history of genetics; its summary makes the claim that "at no time during this history was it correct to say that one model was replaced by another one; rather, the development appears to have been one involving successive correction and refining of earlier conceptions. There has been no revolution: geneticists have always succeeded in either repelling or accommodating critical attacks on the model." The evidence presented earlier in the chapter confers some plausibility on this conclusion, but no more: Simon takes no notice of the controversy surrounding Kuhn and the notion of scientific revolutions, and provides no criteria by which to distinguish "revolutions" from "accommodations." The precise nature of the methodological continuity to be found in the history of genetics is crucial for the view that "biology, or at least genetics, must be regarded as incapable of yielding a complete explanation of the phenomena that come within its purview; if the ultimate principles appealed to are not those of chemistry and physics and hence essentially nonbiological, the explanation cannot be regarded as complete." The text does not clearly indicate the extent to which the author agrees with the statement just quoted; perhaps he only attributes it to "many biologists" impressed by the successes of molecular genetics. It is clear the Simon regards something he calls the "Cartesian attitude" as pervasive in biology. "Biologists are committed to attempting to explain the phenomena of life in terms of the nonliving... The property of being alive or being associated with a living system is simply not treated as a logical primitive within biological science." But this seems to take us back full circle—to the position of Smart, that biology is no more than applied physics and chemistry. Simon disagrees with Smart. How does he stand vis-a-vis this last statement of the Cartesian spirit he finds so pervasive in biology? I think he disagrees with it, but it is very hard to tell. Perhaps the answer is that the resolution of the issue of the autonomy of biology is a pragmatic matter, relative to a complex set of needs and commitments: the sorts of things that determine life styles, political attitudes, and religious points of view, as well as the growth of scientific understanding. The question of the precise configuration of Simon’s pragmatism remains very vague indeed—a consequence of his over use of the style of impersonal attribution rather than direct assertion. Simon says generally sane and familiar things about Biology and the Idea of Progress and about Biology and Ethics. The really startling assertion of the penultimate chapter, that "consciousness" is neither a biological nor a behavioral predicate, and that its foundations are essentially moral and legal, is unfortunately supported by no argument whatsoever. Instead, the reader is urged to examine two of the author’s previous articles.—E. M. (shrink)

Interest in the study of domesticated plants increased near the end of the 18th century, mainly because of their economic potential. In the 19th century, there was a new focus on the historical understanding of species, their origin, changes in their distribution, and their evolutionary history. Charles Darwin developed an extended interpretation of species domestication, considering variations, reproduction, inheritance, and modification as standard processes between wild and domesticated organisms. In this context, one relatively neglected aspect was the geographical (...) class='Hi'>distribution of domesticated species. Alphonse de Candolle addressed and developed in detail the question of the geographical origin of cultivated plants. Since 1836 Alphonse de Candolle had been studying the topic and obtained evidence that contributed to understanding aspects such as the center of origin, dispersion, competition, selection, and time of domestication. Although Darwin himself admitted that _Géographie botanique raisonnée_ (de Candolle, Alphonse,de. Géographie botanique raisonnée; ou, exposition des faits principaux et des lois concernant la distribution géographique des plantes de l’epoque actuelle, 2ème tome. Paris: Masson.) was of great help to him in the development of his evolutionary theory, the importance of de Candolle’s contribution is seldom recognized. Our purpose is to detail the dialogue between Alphonse de Candolle and Darwin on the geography of domesticated plants, to understand some of the most critical discussions that contributed to the reinterpretation of domestication under the Darwinian proposal of modified descent. (shrink)

This study investigates the spatial distribution of industrial facilities within Dhi Qar Governorate. By analyzing geographical patterns, the research aims to identify clusters, hotspots, and potential areas for industrial development. The study utilizes geographic information systems (GIS) to visualize and analyze the distribution of industrial establishments across the governorate. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the industrial landscape, informing future planning and decision-making for economic development and resource allocation in Dhi Qar.

(1886). ON THE SUBJECTIVE CAUSES OF EVOLUTION AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 275-294.

This paper describes an exploratory comparative study of knowledge workers and their challenges in high tech global project teams. More specifically we focus on the tension between perceived collocation and actual geographical distributed project work as a function of: (1) the demand to distribute and shift attention in multi-teaming, (2) virtuality i.e. number of virtual teams participants engage in, (3) the continuous adjustment and re-adjustment to new places they perform their activity, and (4) the collaboration technologies they use. We present (...) the methodology for data collection that included semi-structured interviews, surveys, and on site shadowing of the project participants, and discuss the findings from the data analysis. The study is based on the bricks-bits-interaction framework. It is at the intersection of the design of physical spaces, i.e., bricks; rich digital information and collaboration technology (ICT) content, mobile devices and network infrastructures, i.e., bits, and emergent work practices, process, and new ways people behave in communicative events using the affordances of ICT augmented physical, virtual spaces and digital content, i.e., interaction. (shrink)

Philippe Van Parijs has argued that, in a globalizing economy, acquiring a second language, additional to one's native language, is more necessary for some persons than others — and that this asymmetric bilingualism is a form of injustice which should be rectified by a more equitable global sharing of the costs of second-language acquisition. This article responds by suggesting that (1) since native languages have geographic locations, and (2) since locations with less globally useful native languages thereby sustain lowered (...) living costs, then (3) the costs which persons incur, in acquiring a second, more globally useful language, may already be offset by the lower costs they incur by virtue of their living in a location with a less globally useful native language. Hence, theories of justice (such as Van Parijs's) that require the egalitarian redistribution of locational values would impose, rather than remedy, an injustice by redistributing second-language-acquisition costs. Key Words: distributive justice • global redistribution • linguistic assets • locational values • Philippe Van Parijs. (shrink)

Among philosophical analyses of Darwin’s Origin, a standard view says the theory presented there had no concrete observational consequences against which it might be checked. I challenge this idea with a new analysis of Darwin’s principal geographical distribution observations and how they connect to his common ancestry hypothesis.

Climate engineering (CE), the intentional modification of the climate in order to reduce the effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, is sometimes touted as a potential response to climate change. Increasing interest in the topic has led to proposals for empirical tests of hypothesized CE techniques, which raise serious ethical concerns. We propose three ethical guidelines for CE researchers, derived from the ethics literature on research with human and animal subjects, applicable in the event that CE research progresses beyond computer (...) modeling. The Principle of Respect requires that the scientific community secure the global public's consent, voiced through their governmental representatives, before beginning any empirical research. The Principle of Beneficence and Justice requires that researchers strive for a favorable risk–benefit ratio and a fair distribution of risks and anticipated benefits, all while protecting the basic rights of affected individuals. Finally, the Minimization Principle requires that researchers minimize the extent and intensity of each experiment by ensuring that no experiments last longer, cover a greater geographical extent, or have a greater impact on the climate, ecosystem, or human welfare than is necessary to test the specific hypotheses in question. Field experiments that might affect humans or ecosystems in significant ways should not proceed until a full discussion of the ethics of CE research occurs and appropriate institutions for regulating such experiments are established. (shrink)

According to the beneficiary pays principle (BPP), following an injustice that has produced damages, agents that have received benefits from it may incur a duty to redress the victim even if they are not at fault for it. In this paper, I do not offer either a full-blown defense or a refutation of the principle. Instead, I take issue with the common view, accepted by both sympathetic and critical authors, according to which the BPP is a matter of corrective justice. (...) In the end, I am going to argue that the sole way of defending the BPP is as a principle of distributive justice. Far from a merely semantic dispute, the issue of whether the BPP is corrective or distributive is going to lead to significant normative implications regarding the sense in which we can meaningfully say that beneficiaries owe it to victims to redress the unfairness existing between them. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, (...) natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Organ Transplant AllocationPat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)The introduction of the antibiotic, cyclosporin, which enhances the success rate of transplantation surgery, has resulted in the steady growth of organ transplantation since the mid-1980s. This growth increasingly focuses ethical interest on both the procurement and the allocation of human organs. Not everyone who might benefit from organ transplants can receive them since the number of patients in need of organs far exceeds (...) the number of organs available. Each year the waiting list for transplants increases by 20 percent, but the number of donated organs has remained stable for the past five years (Lawry 1994).Organ transplantation surgery performed on rock stars, sports heroes, politicians, and television celebrities brings questions about the fair allocation of scarce resources to the attention of everyone. Abigail Trafford, editor of Washington Post Health, wonders whether "new livers for hard livers" can be deserved when not enough organs are available for everyone who needs them. Writing about the dilemma of just allocation of organs, she calls famous recipients "poster patients" or "health care celebrities of medical catastrophe" (Trafford 1994). Personal responsibility—the viewpoint that "medical treatment should not be an entitlement program for profligate living"—is an emerging moral consideration according to Trafford. Deciding whose standards and values should apply to the allocation of organs raises many questions. Popular arguments for keeping the current criteria for allocation include: these patients are sick and therefore should be treated, regardless of the cause of their illness; former substance abusers should be able to benefit from their present abstention; physicians should treat anyone who is ill; and although many human illnesses may be caused by individual behavior, such behavior is not always used as a reason to deny care (Trafford 1995).Prior to 1984, when the government established regulations governing organ transplantation, organs routinely were given to the patients of the surgeons who excised them (Prottas 1994). In an effort to achieve a more equitable method of distribution, Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 (Pub. [End Page 365] L. No. 98-507, amended by Pub. L. No. 100607 and Pub. L. No. 101-616), which established a national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to improve the effectiveness of organ procurement, organ distribution, and transplant activities. The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) received the federal government contract to be the OPTN.UNOS and its 66 regional organ procurement organizations (OPOs) around the nation have carried out the mandate since 1986. It requires hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funds and perform transplants to belong to the network and to allocate organs according to network policies. UNOS maintains the national computer registry to match donor organs with individual recipients. In distributing organs, UNOS is required by law to use a fair and equitable system based on accepted medical criteria. UNOS regularly reevaluates its policies to ensure that organ donation and recipient selection meet criteria of efficiency and equity (UNOS Update 11 (8), 1995).At the end of June 1995, 278 transplant centers were in operation in the United States: almost all of them (247 centers) transplanted kidneys; 167 did hearts; 119, pancreases; 114, livers; 93, heart-lung; 88, lungs; 26, intestines; and only 19 centers performed pancreas islet cell transplants (UNOS Update 11 (8): 28, 1995). The number of patients waiting for organ transplants in July 1995 totalled 41,075: 29,274 were waiting for a kidney transplant; 4,937, liver; 3,298, heart; 1,816, lung; 1,223 kidney-pancreas; 240, pancreas; and 211, heart-lung (UNOS Update 11 (8): 40-41, 1995).OPOs are located in different geographic areas across the country, each with different organ needs, lengths of waiting lists, or with lists in areas with large older populations making it more difficult to find suitable donors. Black recipients often wait longer due to complex reasons including sensitization or rarer blood and antigen types (UNOS 11 (8): 31-32, 1995). When an organ becomes available, the OPO involved identifies a potential recipient from the UNOS list and offers it to the patient's surgeon. If no match can be made locally, the organ is next offered within a UNOS region, and finally, to... (shrink)

Photo ID 279661800 © Sidewaypics|Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT Decolonization is complex, vast, and the subject of an ongoing academic debate. While the many efforts to decolonize or dismantle the vestiges of colonialism that remain are laudable, they can also reinforce what they seek to end. For decolonization to be impactful, it must be done with epistemic and cultural humility, requiring decolonial scholars, project leaders, and well-meaning people to be more sensitive to those impacted by colonization and not regularly included in the discourse. (...) INTRODUCTION Decolonization is complex. To successfully achieve decolonization, projects should incorporate the voices of those subjugated or silenced. Including such voices requires sincerely exploring who has been affected by colonialism or neocolonialism and how, as well as cultural sensitivity. In its basic use, decolonization refers to countries under colonial rule gaining independence or freedom from forms of subjugation. Additionally, scholars use the term to refer to efforts to dismantle neocolonialism and vestiges of colonialism. The process includes de-silencing subjugated voices.[1] I use decolonization in the latter way to refer to countries with technical independence. While arguably colonization ended formally with independence from colonizing powers, neocolonialism is the indirect, informal, and sometimes subtle control of the people, their economy, and political life despite formal independence from colonizing authorities. I conceptualize neocolonialism as a system that involves direct and involuntary control of another’s political, economic, or social life, impacting their worldview and ways of encountering the world. Decolonization may target actions, places, or systems like health care or AI to overcome the ills of colonialism and neocolonialism. It also may target knowledge and require rethinking how people develop their knowledge base. For example, if people grew up seeing an outside colonizer as superior, they would need to change their knowledge of superiority. Decolonization may target power, for example, changing who owns and distributes COVID-19 vaccines and who distributors exclude in the distribution of vaccines. Decolonization could require looking at those disempowered in the distribution process. Additionally, decolonization may target autonomy of persons by freeing people, ensuring human and individual rights, and respecting cultural traditions. Decolonization projects that try to de-silence by including the voices of those affected by colonialism and neocolonialism must examine inclusiveness in the context of the culture of the subrogated individuals. Examples of decolonization projects include making datasets inclusive of diverse peoples and places, returning to traditional food and eating practices, making sure hospitals in developing countries are led by locals and respectful of cultural traditions, returning unethically obtained artefacts or objects. Another project would be laying the groundwork for equality in formerly colonized countries to ensure that business ownership, education, and financial success will flow fairly to those previously victimized by colonization. Summarily, there are many strategies for decolonizing. However, it is worth asking whether the strategies have risks that undermine the goal of decolonization. I. Understanding Decolonization Discourses Many fields, from AI to politics, economics, health care, aviation, and academia, discuss decolonization. The content of the discourse on decolonization depends on the region and field discussing it. Rather than just reporting on decolonization, the discussions may be calls to action. For example, decolonization discourses reflect activism for cognitive justice, such as equal consideration of Indian or African knowledge systems in global health discourses.[2] In politics and political science, some scholars frame decolonization as an anti-western, anti-colonial movement by Africans to emancipate Africa/ns from subjugation or shift the continent to postcolonialism and post-neo-colonialism. This framing walls off non-African participants and may undermine their capacity to benefit the conversation.[3] There are other political scientists who actively support decolonization and see it as a field of activism in support of anyone and countries where colonization harmed people and development.[4] The point is that two ways of conceptualizing decolonization in politics and political science are discernible. One conceptualization is less inclusive since it alienates scholars and professionals from Western, high-income, or developed countries. The other is more inclusive. In humanitarian studies, including philosophy, some decolonization articles and conversations are efforts to end the destructive force of colonization. They focus on either the form, such as ecocide, genocide, and many others, or the geographic location, such as Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania.[5] Finally, the feelings one brings into this conversation can adversely impact how one engages in them and who they listen to or are willing to hear from. For example, anger, rage, bitterness, and hatred are emotions that are not uncommon in spaces of decolonization conversations. Decolonization conversations that originate from a place of negativity risk deepening the psychological state of victimhood and prevent people from disrupting constructively or critically engaging in the conversation.[6] II. Understanding Decolonization Strategies Decolonization strategies mainly aim to de-silence victims of domination or subjugation. People have proposed many strategies for decolonizing. These strategies may be informed by what the target is for decolonization. Decolonization can target power relations in global health. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health organizations noted the power imbalance in vaccine distribution. Decolonization could involve de-silencing those affected by neocolonialism to bring about a more balanced distribution of power and a more fair distribution of the vaccine. By analyzing who was adversely impacted by the distribution and who ought to wield power, those engaged in decolonizing advocated for positive change and equitable power relations. Equally, when being is the target of decolonization, the language of unlearning or relearning and mental decolonization take centre stage in the decolonization discourse. For example, the quest to decolonize colonized minds aims to demythologize African inferiority and Western superiority. Demythologizing African inferiority enables those engaged in the decolonization discourse to cultivate and foster African agency.[7] Finally, when knowledge production is the target of decolonization, scholars use inclusion and cognitive justice. For example, they try to alter the knowledge that underlies global health ethics.[8] “[D]decolonizing researchers aim to respectfully understand and integrate theory from Other(ed) perspectives, while also critically examining the underlying assumptions that inform their Western research framework.”[9] One common strategy that scholars use in decolonization is inclusion. It is worth asking, does including people who have been subrogated foster decolonization? Whether that is effective depends on whether included people are more heard or whether the strategies to include them create new forms of silencing. III. Inclusion and the Quest to Decolonize Evaluating how effective inclusion is in the quest to de-silence subjugated voices is important. First, inclusive strategies are not neutral. They are epistemically situated. This situatedness constrains meaning-making in different ways: how and what questions are asked, how social roles are constructed, organized or assigned, and who is admitted to the room where these conversations occur.[10] Inclusion strategies may reinforce (unchallenged) assumptions. For example, to address prejudices and stereotypes in global health images, Arsenii Alenichev and his colleagues[11] successfully inverted “one stereotypical global health image” by prompting a generative AI to produce “an image of a traditional Indian or African healer healing a White Child.” Although there were some problems with the image of the White child, this innovation is a significant, useful effort to de-embed or strip global health images of problematic pictures that mythologize White superiority and Black inferiority. Yet it is possible that using categories like traditional Indian or African reinforces unchallenged assumptions, raising key questions regarding how language and words create new stereotypes. It is common to define traditional as non-conventional, unorthodox, and informal. Yet studies continue to reveal that non-scientifically appraised healing approaches in India or Africa are not only effective but also real, meaningful, fundamental, and primary care-seeking behaviours in many communities in these regions.[12] Suppose inclusive strategies are not un-situated. These conversations may be had within the structures, language, and spaces built by or connected to colonialism. The spaces, language, places, and structures in which these conversations occur can limit who can participate and how they participate. Importantly, some conditions are not conducive to participation as equals. The allocated time for the discussion could also constrain how individuals express themselves. It is unclear who is ultimately heard. Furthermore, epistemic situatedness of inclusion can impact decolonization conversations when participants are beneficiaries of, products of, and trained by structures and systems they seek to dismantle. To enhance the decolonization project and its goals, a pressing task is to unveil and question how the circumstances may inhibit activism. If the vestiges of colonialism continue to structure the decolonization discourse invisibly, the vestiges may undermine decolonization. For example, a public health discussion that includes white Western doctors and Western pharmaceutical executives in Africa may have many local Africans at the table but could still effectively devalue their input based on built-in assumptions and biases that are vestiges of colonialism. Second, exclusion and inclusion are also not binary. Individuals may experience exclusion, even while included (the phenomenon called internal exclusion). In other words, inclusion can fail to be substantial or become a means of enhancing optics, “a way of (un)consciously weakening the radical claims being pursued.”[13] For example, in South Africa, many institutions have made significant efforts to diversify their faculties due to the promulgation of the Employment Equity Act 55.[14] The act requires South African institutions to implement employment equity that redresses the history of harmful discrimination in the country. The act further requires transforming departments and institutional administrations. Although many recognize and support the need to transform departments in South Africa, the rhetoric of transformation departs sharply from the lived experiences.[15] This misalignment between the plan and practice is evident in the underrepresentation of black people and females in senior management teams, professorships in many universities and health departments, and positions of power in some South African institutions. Those selected in the transformation of the departments have also complained of being overworked. The burden of extra work undermines their ability to develop agency and voice in the space they now occupy or fulfil key requirements that have implications for their career trajectory.[16] This is called the minority tax. Notably, "the minority tax… is the burden of extra responsibilities [placed] on faculty of colour to achieve diversity and inclusion and contributes to attrition and impedes academic promotion."[17] One challenge for decolonializing projects will be for decolonial scholars and those selected for decolonization objectives to have the humility to decline invitations, requests, roles, and platforms for which they are either unqualified or lack the capacity to fulfil. At its heart, decolonization strategies must empower those included rather than weaken them. Finally, inclusion can lead to a phenomenon known as elite capture.[18] Elite capture occurs when socially advantaged individuals in a group monopolize or exploit activism to their own benefit at the expense of the larger, struggling group. Elite capture weakens decolonization efforts from within, revealing that those likely to benefit from global inclusive efforts are those who fulfil globally constructed standards, those “already present in the room.” There is no better strategy to weaken decolonial movements than weakening the project from within by strategically positioning individuals who share physical properties with the victims of exclusion and silencing but intellectually, behaviourally, psychologically, and emotionally share more common ground with the colonizer. Such insiders may be unaware they are furthering neocolonial conditions rather than decolonizing. In relation to decolonization, particularly in global health, elite capture reveals that those whose voices are loudest in the room are not necessarily those more impacted by colonialism. They may benefit more from reinforcing colonialism. Opportunism weakens meaningful activism from within, preventing good initiatives and strategies from having their intended impact or taking substantive root.[19] This paper cannot do justice to elite capture, but it is worth noting its negative impacts. IV. Improving the Impact of Decolonization To end neo-colonialism, it is important to understand how it manifests and what to do at each level. Beyond the academic discourse, many tangible efforts exist to decolonize through de-silencing. Examples of these efforts include the ME2 movement that seeks to centre the concerns and experiences of sexually abused or harassed victims in the public discourse. At the funding level, many grant-awarding agencies like Wellcome Trust have dedicated huge budgets to studies that help them understand how they may have perpetrated colonialism or neocolonialism and what they can do differently going forward.[20] In South Africa, promulgating the Employment Equity Act 55 was a tangible attempt to entrench decolonization concerns in a country's regulatory framework. Yet, these decolonization efforts could fail to be substantive if they do not reflect cultural sensitivity. Two key components of cultural sensitivity are worth highlighting here: epistemic and cultural humility. Epistemic humility is an intellectual virtue described as knowing one’s limitations and the limitations of the learning methods employed. At its simplest, it is the ability to admit when one is wrong. Cultural humility includes genuine attempts to learn about and embrace other cultures. Epistemic and cultural humility are signs of academic excellence and strength. Epistemic and cultural humility seriously acknowledge how the state of our knowledge, cognitive limitations, experiences, and backgrounds, while constraining us, also invite us to listen, learn, grow, and change. The limitations-owing account of epistemic and cultural humility suggests that “a person who is aware of her cognitive limitations and owns them is much better positioned to achieve such epistemic goods as true beliefs and understanding than someone who… simply has insight into the epistemic status of her beliefs.”[21] Epistemic and cultural humility may help prevent decolonization projects that unintentionally reinforce what they seek to dismantle. Epistemic humility calls on decolonizers to defer tasks for which they are not qualified to suitably qualified persons. Beyond this, humility supports brave scholarship that imagines and reimagines how featuring the same voices, faces, and perspectives possibly introduces new forms of domination or silencing. Cultural knowledge can lead to a more intentional way of seeking out the right people or a more diverse group than those frequently featured in decolonization conversations. This would give others more opportunities to navigate these spaces and should do so in ways that are familiar to them. One ought to be more sensitive to those who would ordinarily not be included in these conversations. Unless we radically and boldly reimagine these discussions, we risk alienating those most negatively impacted by neocolonialism. CONCLUSION Decolonization conversations are complex and the subject of academic debate. The strategies employed to decolonize can harm or help the victims of neo-colonialism. Inclusion of previously silenced individuals may not be enough to overcome the vestiges of colonialism, leading to a false inclusion, where those included feel excluded or contribute in ways reflecting their own biases and circumstances. Inclusion of an elite or people who do not truly represent the subjugated can lead to elite capture. For decolonization strategies to be impactful, for example, in the context of global health, project leaders and participants must engage in conversations employing epistemic and cultural humility. In many ways, epistemic and cultural humility can help us demythologize our assumptions of any cultural superiority or cognitive authority, allowing for diverse voices, cultures, and perspectives to emerge without domination. - [1] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [2] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [3] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh 2023. Is decolonisation Africanisation? The politics of belonging in the truly African university. Social Dynamics, 1-20. [4] Rianna Oelofsen 2015. Decolonisation of the African mind and intellectual landscape. Phronimon, 16, 130-146. [5] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [6] Pedro Alexis Tabensky 2008. The Postcolonial Heart of African Philosophy. South African Journal of Philosophy, 27, 285-295. [7] Nicholas M. Creary 2012. African Intellectuals and Decolonization, Ohio, Ohio University Press. [8] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [9] Vivetha Thambinathan & Elizabeth Anne Kinsella 2021. Decolonizing Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Creating Spaces for Transformative Praxis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 16094069211014766. [10] Abimbola Seye 2023. Knowledge from the global South is in the global South. Journal of Medical Ethics, 49, 337. [11] A. Alenichev, P. Kingori & K. P. Grietens 2023. Reflections before the storm: the AI reproduction of biased imagery in global health visuals. Lancet Glob Health. [12] Jonathan K. Burns & Andrew Tomita 2015. Traditional and religious healers in the pathway to care for people with mental disorders in Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 50, 867-877. [13] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh & Cornelius Ewuoso 2023. What type of inclusion does epistemic injustice require? Journal of Medical Ethics, jme-2023-109091. [14] 1998. Employment Equity Act. In: GOVERNMENT, S. A. (ed.) 19370. [15] Dina Zoe Belluigi & Gladman Thondhlana 2019. ‘Why mouth all the pieties?’ Black and women academics’ revelations about discourses of ‘transformation’ at an historically white South African university. Higher Education, 78, 947-963. [16] Juliet Ramohai & Khomotso Marumo 2016. Women in Senior Positions in South African Higher Education: A Reflection on Voice and Agency. 231, 135-157. [17] J. Trejo 2020. The burden of service for faculty of color to achieve diversity and inclusion: the minority tax. Mol Biol Cell, 31, 2752-2754. [18] Olufemi Taiwo 2020. Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference. The Philosopher, 108, 7. [19] Margarita Kurbatova & Elena Kagan 2016. Opportunism of University Lecturers As a Way to Adaptate the External Control Activities Strengthening. Journal of Institutional Studies, 8, 116-136. [20] Jeremy Farrar. 2022. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme [Online]. Available from: https://wellcome.org/news/update-wellcomes-anti-racism-programme [Accessed August 10, 2022 2022]. [21] Katherine Dormandy 2018. Does Epistemic Humility Threaten Religious Beliefs? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 46, 292-304. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to continue the discussion about factors of importance for an including ethics of care. A further polarization between partiality and impartiality does not seem a relevant approach. What is important is to direct attention both to the other and to the third person, which requires an acknowledgement of responsibility that extends beyond established relationships. Thus, we need to draw attention not only to the vulnerability existing within every seriously ill or injured person, but to (...) factors of importance for marginalization of groups like refugees, people suffering from serious mental illness, and substance misusers, to mention some in the Western world. Marginalized groups are groups experiencing a discrepancy between need of health care and care given. They are not given proper priority in the distribution of resources, and they may experience ignorance when they first meet the healthcare system as patients.Efforts to understand what circumstances can lead to inadequate inclusion indicate that the elements of differentness and extensive losses of life contexts which may be causing feelings of hopelessness and helplessness in the health professionals, are key factors posing challenges to empathy both within and beyond established relationships, besides geographical distance. Groups of people who have suffered extensive loss in their life contexts may be threatening for us, as they reflect our own fears, and remind us of our own vulnerability.I raise the question: How can we contribute to meeting the need for an ethics of care that extends beyond the familiar to the unfamiliar both in established and non‐established relationships? (shrink)

An ecological description of a landscape transcends its geographical definition to characterize it in terms of a complex agency composed of a spatial mosaic, structured energy, information and meaning. Because the dimensions of the landscape encompasses both natural and human processes, it requires a more robust set of theories that incorporate the material components and their perceptual meaning. A biosemiotic approach defines the landscape as the sum of its organisms’ eco-fields, which are spatial configurations that carry meanings connected to specific (...) needs and related functions. In this perspective, the new postulated General Theory of Resources, offers a substantial contribution to complete the paradigmatic framework of a “private landscape” species-, individual- and function-specific. From this theory resources are considered every material (f.i. food) or immaterial elements (f.i. safety) necessary to fullfill individual needs. The habitat becomes the “private landscape” and the well-being versus the ill-being are the emergent conditions of each individual under the environmental constraints. Definitively space is the entity on which material and immaterial resources are distributed and the dimension on which individuals species are interacting by using biosemiotic mechanisms. (shrink)

The research aims to identify the impact of the management requirements on operating of computerized management information systems to improve performance, and discuss the perceptions of respondents to develop the performance of employees in the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company, the researchers used the stratified sample method, (360) questionnaires were distributed on the study sample, (306) questionnaires were recoved with a percentage of (85%). The most important findings of the study: computerized MI have a positive impact on the development of (...) performance in the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company systems. The is statistical significance impact between “the physical, software supplies, human and organizational” requirements for the management and operation of computerized management information systems and performance development in the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company. -/- The research also concluded a series of recommendations: the need to strengthen the company's management interest in the use of computerized management information systems in all its components and elements of being an important variable which contributes to the effect on performance development. It's essential that we develop the infrastructure for information technology in general, and computerized management information systems, in particular for the development of performance. Increased interest in providing the material of equipment and devices used in the computerized management information system requirements. Interest in providing technical inputs to the computerized management information systems through keeping pace with technological means and modern techniques and work on the training of personnel to use those systems. And increased attention to human inputs of computerized management information systems "specialists technicians and end-users" through a variety of disciplines working in the field of computerized management information systems. (shrink)

Fine has recently proved the surprising result that satisfaction of the Bell inequality in a Clauser-Horne experiment implies the existence of joint probabilities for pairs of noncommuting observables in the experiment. In this paper we show that if probabilities are interpreted in the von Mises-Church sense of relative frequencies on random sequences, a proof of the Bell inequality is nonetheless possible in which such joint probabilities are assumed not to exist. We also argue that Fine's theorem and related results do (...) not impugn the common view that local realists are committed to the Bell inequality. (shrink)

Important variations in access to health care and health outcomes are associated with geography, giving rise to profound ethical concerns. This paper discusses the consequences of such concerns for the allocation of health care finance to geographical regions. Specifically, it examines the ethical drivers underlying capitation systems, which have become the principal method of allocating health care finance to regions in most countries. Although most capitation systems are based on empirical models of health care expenditure, there is much debate about (...) which needs factors to include in such models. This concern with legitimate and illegitimate drivers of health care expenditure reflects the ethical concerns underlying the geographical distribution of health care finance. (shrink)

Humans can pronounce a nonword. Some researchers have interpreted this behavior as requiring a sequential mechanism by which a grapheme-phoneme correspondence rule is applied to each grapheme in turn. However, several parallel-distributed processing models in English have simulated human nonword reading accuracy without a sequential mechanism. Interestingly, the Japanese psycholinguistic literature went partly in the same direction, but it has since concluded that a sequential parsing mechanism is required to reproduce human nonword reading accuracy. In this study, by manipulating the (...) list composition, we demonstrated that past psycholinguistic studies in Japanese have overestimated human nonword reading accuracy. When the more fairly reevaluated human performance was targeted, a newly implemented Japanese PDP model simulated the target accuracy as well as the error patterns. These findings suggest that PDP models are a more parsimonious way of explaining reading across various languages. (shrink)

Sufficientarian theories of distributive justice are often considered to be vulnerable to the ‘blindness to inequality and other values objection’. This objection targets their commitment to holding the moral irrelevance of requirements of justice above absolute thresholds of advantage, making them insufficiently sensitive to egalitarian moral concerns that do have relevance for justice. This paper explores how sufficientarians could reply to this objection. Particularly, I claim that, if we accept that the force of the aforementioned objection comes from relational, and (...) not distributive, inequalities, different strategies are open for sufficientarians in order to be sensitive to these concerns. Drawing on recent literature about the relation between distributive and relational egalitarianism, and the possibility of reducing one to the other, strategies of ‘internalizing’ and ‘externalizing’ relational egalitarian concerns to a distributive sufficientarian framework are explored. In turn, I suggest that both strategies fail in their standard versions, but argue that a particular ‘hybrid view’ about justice is an attractive candidate for the sufficientarian theorist. (shrink)

A Geographical Approach for Measuring the Creative Capital. Case Study: Creative Capital Index of Slovakia Calculation of creativity index is a part of a modern quantification wave, in some cases also formulation of the spatial differentiation of social and economic phenomena required from the academic sphere by the decisive sphere. Policy makers have interest by this means to help themselves in obtaining public for their objectives. The creative capital as a sum of quantifiable creativity indicators is in this contribution operationalized (...) including the social capital, which is out of accord with a traditional understanding of creativity following the Florida's concept of the creative class. Methods for creativity index formation are introduced at the global level of states as well as at the regional level of a given state. There are substantial differences among both indexes results and statistical data on export of creative goods that are well documented on example of USA and China. Terminological chaos associated with the concepts of creative class and economy is thus extended with a chaos in the interpretation of findings, what contributes to the critique of the Florida's concept of creative class. There arise doubts that the quantification of creativity indexes with correlation quantification with other economic and social factors as GDP, entrepreneurship, inequality, Index HDI1) ; is maybe right in terms of mathematics, but it does not reveal the casual connections. The research purpose of the contribution is a geographical approach to the creative capital. The case study incorporates the Slovak regions, creativity index calculation and its spatial differentiation in form of map expression. The scientific goal lies in a confirmation of hypothesis about a dominant position of Bratislava region, and thus the capital of Slovakia. A limit of calculation is the choice of indicators which were strongly determined by the accessibility of statistical data. (shrink)

In this article I attempt a normative analysis of the relations between the ideal of democracy and the distribution of power. In particular, I suggest that democratic institutions and procedures, as they are generally understood, are not able per se to avoid domination. In line with the interpretation of domination that I propose, I claim that in order to promote an ideal of democracy as non-domination we need to take into account power inequalities present outside the political sphere. More (...) specifically, I suggest that the obtainment of a certain degree of equality in the distribution of social power should be understood as a procedural requirement for the realization of the democratic ideal. (shrink)

For some thirteen years now, the World Bank (‘the Bank’) has regularly reported the number of people living below an international poverty line, colloquially known as ‘$1/day’.3 Reports for the most recent year, 1998, put this number at 1,175.14 million.4 The Bank’s estimates of severe income poverty — its global extent, geographical distribution, and trend over time — are widely cited in official publications by governments and international organizations and in popular media, often in support of the view that (...) liberalization and globalization have helped to reduce poverty worldwide. For instance, the President of the World Bank recently declared: “Over the past few years, these better policies have contributed to more rapid growth in developing countries’ per capita incomes than at any point since the mid-1970s. And faster growth has meant poverty reduction: the proportion of people worldwide living in absolute poverty has dropped steadily in recent decades, from 29% in 1990 to a record low of 23% in 1998. After increasing steadily over the past two centuries, since 1980 the total number of people living in poverty worldwide has fallen by an estimated 200 million — even as the world’s population grew by 1.6 billion.”. (shrink)

Geographical variations are documented for a wide range of health care services. As many such variations cannot be explained by demographical or epidemiological differences, they are problematic with respect to distributive justice, quality of care, and health policy. Despite much attention, geographical variations prevail. One reason for this can be that the ethical issues of geographical variations are rarely addressed explicitly. Accordingly, the objective of this article is to analyse the ethical aspects of geographical variations in the provision of health (...) services. Applying a principlist approach the article identifies and addresses four specific ethical issues: injustice, harm, lack of beneficence, and paternalism. Then it investigates the normative leap from the description of geographical variations to the prescription of right care. Lastly, the article argues that professional approaches such as developing guidelines, checklists, appropriateness criteria, and standards of care are important measures when addressing geographical variations, but that such efforts should be accompanied and supported by ethical analysis. Hence, geographical variations are not only a healthcare provision, management, or a policy making problem, but an ethical one. Addressing the ethical issues with geographical variations is key for handling this crucial problem in the provision of health services. (shrink)

This study aims to use geographic information systems to analyze the spatial distribution of ATMs in Abha city. This is based on the most important applied aspects of geographic information systems, namely spatial analysis, to reveal the characteristics of the spatial distribution of ATMs and their distribution pattern, and to evaluate the efficiency of their distribution according to spatial variables. The study came out with a number of results and recommendations, the most important of (...) which is increasing the number of ATMs in high-density neighborhoods that are deprived of service, which reduces the pressure on them, in a way that ensures their sustainability, and in a manner that is proportional to both the area and the number of residents in the city's neighborhoods. (shrink)

The present article explores ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ arguments that shared institutions above the state, such as there are, are not of a kind that support or give rise to distributive claims beyond securing minimum needs. The upshot is to rebut certain of these ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ arguments. Section 1 asks under which conditions institutions are subject to distributive justice norms. That is, which sound reasons support claims to a relative share of the benefits of institutions that exist and apply to individuals? Such norms may (...) require strict equality, Rawls’ Difference Principle, or other constraints on inequality. Section 2 considers, and rejects, several arguments why existing international institutions are not thought to meet these conditions. (shrink)

In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer articulates an approach to distributive ethics based on complex equality that is closely attentive to the specific ways particular communities value goods. A renewed interest in place and geography among practitioners and theoreticians is giving rise to questions that are beyond the scope of Walzer's system and reveal abstractions at the geographic level that undercut his overall approach. This internal inconsistency weakens, but does not ultimately discount, Walzer's overall system of distributive ethics. When (...) calibrated to allow for geographic particularity, Walzer's approach becomes even more useful to critique a range of contemporary development movements. (shrink)

Geographic definitions of constituency—the set of voters eligible to vote for a representative—have been criticized by theorists and reformers as undermining democratic values. I argue, in response, that there is no categorical (or even generally applicable) reason sounding in political equality to reject geographic districts. Geographic districting systems are typically flexible enough that, when properly designed, and matched with an appropriate electoral system, they can satisfy the requirements of political equality. More generally, I argue that it is (...) a mistake to evaluate the egalitarian character of constituency definitions in isolation from the political decision-making process as a whole. While it is conceptually important that we can detach constituency definition from other features of electoral systems, when it comes to normative and evaluative judgment, we ought to judge holistically. When we do so, we will rarely find general reasons to prefer one type of constituency definition to another. Geographic districts may offer benefits of logistical convenience and information circulation, even given the existence of advanced information technology. The best reason to reject geographic districts is their liability to anti-democratic abuse. Their defensibility in any given polity thus depends on how feasible it is to protect against such abuses while retaining a geographic districting system. (shrink)

This study reports the geographical distribution of personal names in the Land of Israel and Transjordan during the Iron II Period. In contrast with previous onomastic studies, the emphasis here is geographic and therefore only names from archaeological excavations are used. 799 names from 66 sites are collected and grouped as theophoric names, hypocoristic theophoric names, or other. The theophoric names are further sorted into seven subgroups comprising the five theophoric elements yhw, yh, yw, bʿl, ʾl, divine appellatives, (...) and god names other than Yahweh. Finally, the data are presented in a series of maps showing the geographic distribution of name types and its evolution over time. This work shows how names can be used to track historical ethnic trends. yhw and yh are unique Judean elements. Furthermore, names from major Judean sites show a characteristic mixture of theophoric elements that is substantially unchanged across all the Judean sites studied but different from that found in Samaria. Additionally, yw is an element unique to Israel and the bʿl element is also found there. ʾl is a dominant but not unique Ammonite element. Qws is a unique Edomite element. The use of god names other than Yahweh in ancient Israel was very limited. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical examination of the strongest defenses of the pure lifetime view, according to which justice requires taking only people's whole lives as relevant when assessing and establishing their distributive entitlements and obligations. The paper proposes that we reject a pure lifetime view and replace it with an alternative view, on which some time-specific considerations--that is to say, considerations about how people fare at specific points in time--have nonderivative weight in determining what our obligations are to them.

Gray, like other recent authors, seeks a scientific approach to consciousness, but fails to provide a biologically convincing description, partly because he implicitly bases his model on a computationalist foundation that embeds the contents of thought in irreducible symbolic representations. When patterns of neural activity instantiating conscious thought are shorn of homuncular observers, it appears most likely that these patterns and the circuitry that compares them with memories and plans should be found distributed over large regions of neocortex.

Service geography is one of the branches of applied geography that has emerged as an applied intellectual interest to engage with the immediate direct needs of both urban and rural communities. The importance of studying services is due to their connection to economic planning, so geographical interest in them increases, as applied geography is based on a specific approach and philosophy of relevance or social benefit that focuses on the application of geographical knowledge and skills. To come up with solutions (...) to real-world social, economic and environmental problems. The study focused on the use of geographic information systems in analyzing the geographic calendar of rental offices in the city of Abha, relying on the most important applied aspects of geographic information systems represented in spatial analysis. To reveal the characteristics of the spatial distribution of rental offices and their distribution pattern, and to evaluate the efficiency of their distribution according to the local standard. The study came out with a number of results and recommendations, and also verified the hypotheses assumed by the researchers. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 19 Collectivities can have obligations beyond the aggregate of pre-existing obligations of their members. Certain such collective obligations _distribute_, i.e., become members’ obligations to do their fair share. In _incremental good_ cases, i.e., those in which a member’s fair share would go part way toward fulfilling the collectivity’s obligation, each member has an unconditional obligation to contribute.States are involuntary collectivities that bear moral obligations. Certain states, _democratic legal states_, are collectivities whose obligations can distribute. Many existing (...) states are democratic legal states, but none satisfies more rigorous requirements of distributive justice. There, citizens who hold assets, in excess of what is just, bear a distributed duty to dedicate that excess toward correcting the injustice. It is an incremental good case not conditioned on the conformity of others who are also wealthier than justice allows, nor on the diligence of the state in meeting its obligations. (shrink)

Distribution of sufficient health care resources to the maximum number of people in LIC is the central theme of the book. Bangladesh is taken as a representative of low income countries (LIe. In LIC, there is scarcity of health care resources like other resources but the deserving persons are numerous. Therefore, it requires an efficient distribution of resources. Considering 'Inequality to get access to health care' as the basic problem in LIC, John Rawls' principle of fair equality of (...) opportunity is proposed to apply to give people access to health care resources. In this book it is critically analyzed how the principle fails to return a good result in LIC. Instead the principle of maximizing utility is proposed for the purpose. It is argued that maximum number of people can be provided sufficient health care by applying the principle. The principle has also been justified theoretically in concerned low income country and a fruitful result has been achieved from the test. It is claimed that applying principle of utility to provide sufficient health care to the maximum number of people is the most efficient way of health care resources distribution in LIC. (shrink)

Summary The common view has been that Darwin regarded species as artificial and arbitrary constructions of taxonomists, not as distinct natural units. However, in his transmutation notebooks he clearly subscribed to the reality of species, on the basis of the criterion of non-interbreeding. A consequence of this biological species concept was his identification of the acquisition of reproductive isolation as the mark of the completion of speciation. He developed in the notebooks a theory of geographic speciation on the grounds (...) of (a) an empirical correlation between barriers and the geographical distributions of allied species, (b) the analogy of artificial isolation in the formation of new domesticated varieties, and (c) the logical consequence of blending inheritance. A brief discussion of Darwin's species concept in later writings concludes the paper. (shrink)

The concept of boundary represents one of the fundamental philosophical issues triggered and required by the reflection upon geography – and ontology of geography specifically. But what kind of entity are geographical boundaries? What sorts of boundary have been identified by contemporary ontologists of geography? How can boundaries be classified from a geo-ontological point of view? What are the main contemporary classifications of geographical boundaries? How can culture and human beliefs influence such classifications? These questions represent the starting point of (...) this paper, aimed at analyzing how the notion of boundary has been conceived by contemporary ontologists of geography, what kinds of geographical boundaries have been identified and categorized, and the influence eventually exerted by cultural diversities and human beliefs on such geo-ontological classifications. Primarily, we will take into account Smith’s and Galton’s taxonomies, which represent two of the most cited examples of comprehensive classifications of geographical boundaries encompassing physical, biological, psychological, social, and political phenomena. Secondly, starting from Smith’s and Mark’s considerations, the importance of cultural diversities and human beliefs for geo-ontological classifications will be discussed. As third, we will analyze the possibility of the existence of cultural boundaries and the prospect of categorizations that can influence, in their turn, beliefs, culture and individual or collective behavior. The idea is to show three different modalities through which culture and beliefs may have an influence on (and the power to modify) the definition and the individuation of geographical boundaries. (shrink)