This article focuses on Auguste Comte’s understanding of the organism–environment relationship. It makes three key claims therein: (a) Comte’s metaphysical position privileged materiality and relativized the intellect along two dimensions: one related to the biological organism, one related to the social environment; (b) this twofold materiality confounds attempts to reduce cognition to either nature or nurture, so Comte’s position has interesting parallels to the field of ‘epigenetics’, which sees the social environment as a causative factor in (...) biology; and (c) although Comte ultimately diverged from the ‘postgenomic’ view in crucial ways, he remains a forerunner of the trend towards viewing the social and biological as entangled. Tending to these dimensions challenges the view that Comte is notable from a classical standpoint but ignorable from a contemporary one. It consequently invites renewed attention to his theoretical system. (shrink)

The paper’s aim is to retrace the history of climate change through its definition and the process of negotiation aroused from the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC). After a brief description of this institution, the basic principles beneath the whole system of environment protection and the struggle against climate change will be presented. The intention is to demonstrate how, despite the undeniable advancements of the latest decades, the international legislative framework, even supported (...) by the action and intervention of the European Union, is still not sufficient and leads to a diffused and latent disillusion among civil society. (shrink)

Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. On both views, perceiving organisms are not merely passive receivers of environmental stimuli, but rather form a dynamic relationship with their environments in such a way that shapes how they interact with the world. In this paper, I suggest that while enactivism and ecological psychology enjoy a shared specification of the environment as the cognitive domain, on both accounts, the structure of (...) the environment, itself, is unspecified beyond that of contingent relations with the species-typical sensorimotor capacities of perceiving organisms. This lack of specification creates a considerable gap in theory regarding the organization of organisms as coupled with their environments. I argue that this gap can be filled by drawing from resources in developmental systems theory, namely, specifying the environmental state-space as a developmental niche that shapes and is shaped by individual organisms over developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time. Defining the environment as an organism’s developmental niche makes it clearer how and why certain contingencies have arisen, in turn, strengthening a joint appeal to both enactivism and ecological psychology as theories asserting complementarity between organisms and their environments. (shrink)

The social dimension of purchase seems particularly important when it comes to food, since it can contribute to foster “consumers’ embeddedness” in the local food system. The discussion on this topic is growing after the emergence of alternative food networks , which are thought to have potentials to re-connect the different actors of local food systems, and/or to strengthen the existing social ties among them. This study focuses on the evaluation of the degree of sociality in different food shopping (...) environments. The research is focused on the structure and the features of the interactions, with the aim to provide an assessment of the degree of sociality of AFNs compared to other food chain networks. More specifically, a farmers’ market, a greengrocer and a supermarket have been compared. The three shopping environments show remarkable differences: in the supermarket perfunctory interactions are most often observed, unless shoppers already know each other, whereas the farmers’ market environment is likely to foster quite intense relations among strangers; the greengrocer, on the contrary, shows a completely different pattern of relations, typically involving customers who already know each other. Results support the common argument that farmers’ markets may enhance sociality among people, although some interesting relations patterns are observed in the other food stores as well. Issues for further research in the field emerge, which might be useful to improve the understanding of the social dimension of food shopping as well as to more deeply analyse the elements of attractiveness of AFNs. (shrink)

Media criticism is an area of modern journalism that provides critical cognition and assessment of socially significant, relevant aspects of information production in the media. Media criticism studies and evaluates the mobile complex of the diverse relationships of the print and electronic press with the media audience and society as a whole, contributes to the introduction of social and professional adjustments to the activities of the print and electronic press. Modern media criticism covers not only aspects of the functioning of (...) the print and electronic press related to journalism, the activities of journalistic groups and editorial policies, but also invades a wide range of problems, the formulation of which involves the study and evaluation of media content, the relationship of the media and their audience, the media and society as a whole. Today in the space of the Internet the most effective mass criticism of the media. Authors of media criticism blogs set as their main task the recording and analysis of materials that do not meet accepted journalistic standards and have poor quality and ethically dubious content. Media criticism blogs in new media are becoming a platform for discussion, where the problems of the influence of the media on society and the role of the media in this society are discussed. (shrink)

The term ‘environment’ is complex and conveys different meanings: the word ‘environment’ is employed as a synonym for space, territory, place, or ecosystem. A comprehensive definition of environment describes it as the set of conditions in which living takes place: it is the complex system of physical, chemical and biological factors, of living and non-living elements and of the relationships in which all the organisms that inhabit the planet are immersed. While we can envision many types (...) of environment, the term is commonly used in relation to nature, the so-called natural environment. This latter notion encompasses all forms of living and non-living beings; ecology is the science that studies the interactions of organisms with each other and with their physical surroundings. (shrink)

The optimization of the business environment helps to create a good market ecological environment and promote industrial development. Based on the theory of institutional complexity, this study constructs the evaluation index system of China's urban business environment and analyzes the influencing factors using the NCA method. It is found that there is no necessary condition for a single element to constitute the high-level development of the tourism industry, but improving public service, total market volume, and innovation (...) environment play universal roles in promoting the high-level development of the tourism industry. Using fsQCA for configuration analysis, two business environment configuration paths with high-level development of the tourism industry are obtained, which shows that there is no single path to promote the development of the tourism industry. In addition, the antecedent paths of high- and low-level tourism industry development are not the opposite, presenting an asymmetric causal relationship. The above findings reveal the realization path of the business environment for the development of China's urban tourism industry. Under the logic of multiple systems, cities can find the business ecological environment that best matches the development of the local tourism industry. (shrink)

The way information is perceived and defined today is no longer an accurate portrayal of the interactions occurring among user–information–interface. We are so accustomed to the traditional models of human–machine interactions that we often overlook the fact that first- and second-order cybernetics definitions are now antiquated and one-dimensional when used to describe user–information–interface interactions. Within this new era of user–information–interface relationship, the introduction of the concept of Meta-Environment reflects a more accurate representation of the processes of information gathering (...) and sharing and their interactions. Meta-Environments break the mold of traditional thinking and refocus attention not on the user, information or interface alone, but on the relationships and processes as a whole. It expands cybernetics to its fourth order while focusing on the relationship among user-information-interface as a Complex Adaptive System. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns the active role of the organism in evolutionary theory. In particular, it concerns how our conception of the relationship between organism and environment, and the nature of natural selection, influences the causal and explanatory role of organismic activity and behavior in evolutionary explanations. The overarching aim is to argue that the behaviors and activities of organisms can serve both as the explananda (that which is explained) and the explanantia (that which explains) in evolutionary explanations. I (...) attempt to achieve this aim by offering three central arguments. First, that the organism-environment relation is the ontologically basic unit of biology. A common way of conceiving the relationship between organism and environment is as a duality—as two causally independent systems that overlap through interaction. I think this is a mistake. There cannot be organisms without environments and vice versa. They are codependent and codetermined. Second, that natural selection is an ecological process. By this I mean that natural selection acts primarily on organism-environment interactions. It is only in virtue of organisms interacting with their environments that there can be fitness differences amongst individual organisms in a population. The ecological approach to natural selection also entails that the nature of the system(s) of inheritance involved in the reoccurrence of favorable organism-environment interactions is, in principle, immaterial to the process of selection. It only matters for selection that organism-environment interactions actually do reoccur in subsequent generations. Third, that niche construction theory—the most well-developed theoretical and conceptual framework for studying how the activities of organisms influences evolutionary dynamics—can be seen as fully a compatible and integrated part of evolutionary theory. Together, these three arguments constitute an overarching argument. Namely that we both can, and should, take organismic activity and behavior to be crucial explanatory elements in evolutionary theory. Throughout the dissertation I also show how these three arguments have consequences for other debates in the philosophy of evolutionary theory, such as the nature of evolutionary processes, the structure of selection-based explanations, the validity and utility of the proximate-ultimate distinction, and the nature of teleology in evolutionary systems. (shrink)

The environment impacts human health in profound ways, yet few theories define the form of the relationship between human physiology and the environment. It is conjectured that such complex systems cannot interact directly, but rather their interaction requires the formation of an intermediary “interface.” This position contrasts with current epidemiological constructs of causation, which implicitly assume that two complex systems transfer information directly while remaining separate entities. Further, it is contended that dynamic, process‐based interfaces incorporate components from (...) all the interacting systems but exhibit operational independence. This property has many consequences, the foremost being that characteristics of the interface cannot be fully resolved by only studying the systems involved in the interaction. The interface itself must be the subject of inquiry. Without refocusing the attention on biodynamic interfaces, how the environment impacts health cannot be discerned. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/XeyjeZeyo4o. (shrink)

Recently, scholars have begun to shift their focus toward the idea of the marketization of startups and the relationship with entrepreneurial psychology or other factors; however, the establishment of a unified and clear standard of entrepreneurship educational methods remains unfulfilled. Our study investigates 46 representative startups in four industries, including financial technology, biotechnology, education, and cultural tourism areas in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Southeast Asia to observe factors from different backgrounds but matter in common for building entrepreneurship (...) education systems and methods in different countries. We used the fuzzy qualitative comparison method to survey startup entrepreneurs and executives through questionnaires, selecting startup key factors including entrepreneurial psychology, product advantage, market and cultural environment, entrepreneurial policy, and geographical advantage. The survey was conducted on six key variables, namely, geographical advantage, to observe the conditional grouping and paths of factors influencing the establishment of Startups from an overall perspective. This study explores the path combination that plays a key role in the establishment of new enterprises, and further uses specific industry cases to verify the rationality and credibility of the path combination. The main conclusions are as follows: There are five combination paths affecting the establishment of new enterprises, which are “psychology and market,” “psychology, product, and region,” “psychology, culture and policy,” “psychology, market, and culture,” and “market, policy, and region” combination paths; Entrepreneur psychology, market environment, and entrepreneurship policy are the core conditions to improve the effectiveness of the establishment of new enterprises, while the other three variables are non-core variables in different paths; There are different paths of entrepreneurial paths and factor combinations in different regions or industries. (shrink)

In the traditional scientific research and production activities, due to the lack of sufficient communication and communication between researchers, the phenomenon of waste of scientific research resources occurs from time to time, which hinders the efficiency of scientific research output. Based on the design principle of the semantic knowledge framework, this paper puts forward the definition of ontology and semantic relationship of the collaborative system of scientific researchers. In this paper, a framework of collaborative semantic knowledge among researchers (...) is established through decentralized semantic information exchange architecture. In this article, the simulation is verified by experiments and compared with other exchange architectures. The results of the experiment confirmed the semantic information exchange architecture based on semantic knowledge proposed in this paper is 10.39% faster than the traditional centralized method in terms of data volume; the construction speed under the data node perspective is 12.84% higher than that of the traditional centralized construction method; the subject query speed is 36.84% higher than that of the traditional centralization method; the predicate query speed is 31.58% higher than that of the traditional centralization method. The experimental results confirm that the semantic information exchange architecture based on the semantic knowledge framework is feasible, and it has excellent performance in terms of construction speed and query speed. Under the background that researchers rely more and more on collaborative technology to interact with other members, this paper has a certain reference value and exploration value and proposes a new idea of group collaboration system under the framework of semantic knowledge. (shrink)

This article proposes an alternative approach in sustainability assessment. The conceptual framework was developed by modifying Ken Wilber's All Quadrants, All Levels (AQAL) approach, and focuses on the inter-relatedness/inter-connection of various perspectives inherent to the concept of sustainability. To look at how our framework can facilitate the practice of sustainability assessment, we apply the framework to examine the relationships between social systems and the environmental changes in the Ili River basin across the period 1900?2008. This approach enables us to investigate (...) the environmental problems of the Ili River basin in a four-quadrant framework, and combine the empirics of quadrants obtained from traditional disciplinary methodologies. The four-quadrant framework adopted in this study illustrates the interlocking relationships among various perspectives of environmental issues in the Ili River basin, namely, physical perspective, personal perspective, cultural perspective, and social perspective. In particular, the protruding development (evolution) of the lower right dimension is the fundamental cause of the environmental degradation and its related social problems in the Ili River basin. Compared to other established approaches in literature that emphasize on the tradeoffs of various perspectives of sustainability, our findings indicate the potential contributions of four-quadrant framework to sustainability assessment through its focus on the inter-relatedness/inter-connection of different perspectives. (shrink)

This book brings together the most current thinking about the Anthropocene in the field of Environmental Political Theory ('EPT'). It displays the distinctive contribution EPT makes to the task of thinking through what 'the environment' means in this time of pervasive human influence over natural systems. Across its chapters the book helps develop the idea of 'socionatural relations'--an idea that frames the environment in the Anthropocene in terms of the interconnected relationship between human beings and their surroundings. (...) Coming from both well-established and newer voices in the field, the chapters in the book show the diversity of points of view theorists take toward the Anthropocene idea, and socionatural relations more generally. However, all the chapters exemplify a characteristic of work in EPT: the self-conscious effort to provide normative interpretations that are responsive to scientific accounts. The Introduction explains the complicated interaction between science and EPT, showing how it positions EPT to consider the Anthropocene. And the Afterword, by a pioneer in the field, relates all the chapters to a perspective that has been deeply influential in EPT. This book will be of interest to scholars already engaged in EPT. But it will also serve as an introduction to the field for students of Political Theory, Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines, who will learn about the EPT approach from the Introduction, and then see it applied to the pressing question of the Anthropocene in the ensuing chapters. The book will also help readers interested in the Anthropocene from any disciplinary perspective develop a critical understanding of its political meanings. (shrink)

The European Union’s common agricultural policy (CAP), in addition to its primary production and farm income goals, is a large source of funding for environmentally friendly agricultural practices. However, its schemes have variable success and uptake across member states (MS) and regions. This study tries to explain these differences by demonstrating differences between policy levels in the understanding of the relationship between nature and farming. To compare constructs and values of the respective policy communities, their discursive construction as it (...) appears in the main strategic EU and MS agricultural policy documents is analysed. The theoretical framework integrates elements from existing frameworks of CAP and environmental discourse analysis; specific agri-environmental discourses, their elements and interplay, are identified. The six discourses suggested here are ‘Productivism’, ‘Classical neoliberal’, ‘Ecological modernisation’, ‘Administrative’, ‘Multifunctionality’ and ‘Radical green’. The discourse analysis of selected documents reveals that there are indeed differences in how farming and the environment are generally conceptualised at different levels of CAP decision-making. At EU level, farming is primarily understood as a sector whose main task is to produce food (‘Productivism’), and the environment is used as a justification for CAP payments (‘Multifunctionality’). At the national/regional level, Rural Development Programmes reflect different value systems: in England, environmental protection is mainly seen as sound management of natural capital (‘Classical neoliberal’); in Finland, a benefit for producers and conscious consumers (‘Ecological modernisation’); in Croatia, a necessity limiting productivity (‘Productivism’) and imposed by an external authority (‘Administrative’ discourse). This diversity shows that differences can visibly manifest despite the Commission constraining the discursive space, helping to explain the differential implementation and success of environmental measures. (shrink)

The Acheulean techno-complex represents a significant chapter in hominin cognitive evolution. Two important developments include enchained technological behaviours that were practiced with broad consistency over thousands of generations, and the expansion of hominins into dynamic Pleistocene environments, well beyond their evolutionary origins. In this paper we expand on Material Engagement Theory to argue that the making and use of Acheulean tools generates social forms that are emergent outcomes of complex technical practice. We introduce three key features of this sociality, which (...) form the basis of what we term Technologically Emergent Communities of Practice. These features include (1) enactive alignment, the synchronization of materially mediated experience and intentionality; (2) techno-intercorporeality, the shared dispositions and awareness through which communities respond with environmental change; and (3) tool-dependent ontology, the non-representational ordering of being and relationality that guides collective environmental cognition among users of a technology. Understood as an early example of such a community, the Acheulean represents an evolutionary shift in the relationship between hominins and their environments, characterized by novel cybernetic processes of feedback, memory, and responsiveness. We argue that for Acheulean communities, this emergent sociality—scaffolded by technological practice—enabled an ecological creativity that is expressed in the eventual radiation and resilience of hominins across dynamic Pleistocene environments that stretched across Africa, Asia and Europe. By conceptualizing the Acheulean as an emergent sociality, we link enactivism, niche expansion and ecological agency. This framework sheds light on the evolution of sociality and offers a new direction to explore the genesis of coupled human-environment systems. (shrink)

A special report of The Hastings Center and the Association of American Medical Colleges addressed the ethical oversight of learning health systems, which seek to combine high‐quality patient care with routine data collection aimed at improving patient outcomes. The report contained two position papers, authored by a number of distinguished bioethicists, and several commentaries. The position papers urged two changes. First, they urged a rethinking of our approach to the regulation of human subjects research, so as to make it easier (...) in the future for learning health systems to function well. Second, they argued that the rethinking required dispensing with a strict distinction between research and therapy, which has been a major tenet of bioethics since the Belmont Report, which explicated basic ethical principles governing human subjects research. We fully support the objectives of the authors, and we agree that the learning health system is an important advance that serves patients well. Unnecessary regulatory burden ought not impede this progress. We disagree, however, that the best way to bring about these needed changes in the regulatory environment is to reject the basic distinction between research and treatment. Unfortunately, we find the arguments in favor of that strategy to be, in places, reminiscent of what we take to be basic conceptual errors that hampered the ethical understanding of human subjects research prior to adoption of the Belmont Report. To see why one need not reject the research‐treatment distinction in order to promote learning health systems, we first investigate in some detail the arguments offered for eliminating the distinction. We next turn to an issue not addressed by those authors, namely, the relationship between the physician or investigator and the patient or subject, to illustrate why the distinction is important and what is lost if it is jettisoned. (shrink)

The relationship of genes, genomes, the organism and the environment where development takes place can be explained in two dramatically different ways. The two views are characterized as ,,program theory' and ,,systemic theory' of DNA. The first assumes that genetic information is encoded in DNA and preexists development. Environmental influences are treated as conditions for adequate gene expression, sometimes as selective conditions for different developmental pathways. The second assumes that genetic information that makes a difference in development is (...) generated in the developmental contexts themselves. Environment, according to this account, matters per se, as a distinct kind of causes in developmental systems. The laboratory, a place where person-independent reproducibility of observations is enacted, may act as a selective epistemological factor that makes the program approach more viable than the systemic. Other reasons for the inclination of 20th Century's genetics towards the program view however are rooted in an a priori metaphysical tradition that placed DNA in the role of the essential causa formalis for ontogeny. German Die Beziehung zwischen Genen, Genomen, Organismen und der Umwelt, in der die Entwicklung stattfindet, kann auf zwei dramatisch verschiedene Weisen erklärt werden. Diese beiden Ansichten werden charakterisiert als ,,ProgrammTheorie und als ,,systemische Theorie der DNA. Die erstere nimmt an, dass genetische Information in der DNA codiert ist und vor der Entwicklung schon existiert. Umwelteinfl-üsse werden als Bedingungen für eine adequate Gen expression behandelt, manche als selektive Bedingungen für die Auswahl zwischen verschiedenen Entwicklungswegen. Die zweite Ansicht nimmt an, dass genetische Information, die in der Entwicklung einen Unterschied macht, in den Kontexten der Entwicklung erst erzeugt wird. Die Umwelt ist gemäss diesem Ansatz per se wichtig, als eine eigene Art von Ursachen in sich entwickelnden Systemen. Das Laboratorium, ein Ort, in dem die personenunabhängige Reproduzierbarkeit von Beobachtungen inszeniert wird, kann als ein selek tiver epistemologischer Faktor angesehen werden, der die Programm-Sicht des Genoms favorisiert. Andere Gründe für die Neigung der Genetik des 20. Jahrhunderts zur Programm-Theorie liegen aber in einer metaphysischen Tradi tion, die der DNA die Rolle der essentiellen causa formalis für die Ontogenese verliehen hat. (shrink)

There are inconsistencies in the treatment and attitudes of human beings to animals and much confusion in thinking about what are appropriate conditions for using and keeping animals. This article outlines some of these considerations and then proposes guidelines for designing animal management systems. In the first place, the global and local ecological effects of all animal management systems must be considered and an environment designed that will not rock the biospherical boat. The main points to consider are the (...) interrelatedness of living things with each other and the environment, the self-sustaining nature of ecosystems, and the importance of diversity in the stability and maintenance of ecosystems. These can and should be taken into account when assessing animal management. They are illustrated by examples of companion/urban dogs, as well as farm, zoo, and circus animals. The environment must also be considered from the point of view of the ethological needs of the animals. There are two possible approaches to this: (1) the reductionist approach, illustrated by the choice experimental tests; and (2) a holistic, evolutionist approach that concentrates on the degree of behavioral restriction and the identification of distress. The assessment of an animal's ethological needs, and thus the ethological soundness of an environment, must take into account the species needs (communication system, species-specific characteristics of the brain receptors and cognition) and the individual's needs (his past experience). The behavioral effects of domestication and how distress can be assessed are discussed. Different ethical positions toward animals and their treatment are briefly outlined, and it is argued that, provided animals are in ecologically and ethologically sound environments, their use by human beings is ethically acceptable. The animal-human association should be characterized by symbiosis—mutual benefit—rather than a parasitic or exploitative relationship—employer to employee, rather than master to slave. (shrink)

During the Nineties, the diffusion of information and communication technologies allowed a dramatic transformation in art practices. Radically new aesthetic experiences, such as tele-presence, immersivity, responsivity, hyper-mediacy and multimediality, emerge in the framework of the digital arts and call into question not only the traditional status of the work of art but also the fundamental relation with the beholder. The aim of this paper is to define a conceptual framework for the ontology of digital arts by identifying some ontological features (...) that are distinctive to digital idioms. Such an analysis tries to outline how aesthetic and technical innovations affect our cognitive and sensorial relationship with technological artifacts. In the first part, the relation between technogenesis and ontology, as well as the key topics of the ontology of digital arts are discussed. The second part deals with the notion of presence. Despite traditional understandings of digital arts, mainly focused on immateriality, simulation and mediation, my analysis demonstrate how the notion of presence can provide an original perspective in order to understand the ontological status of the mediatized artistic practices. In the last three decades the generalisation of information and telecommunication technologies has played a major role in the transformation of the arts, opening the field to important experiments in the domain of computer graphics, digital audio, robotics and motion capture systems… (Dixon 2007). Peculiar forms of aesthetic experience such as tele-presence, immersivity, responsivity, hyper-mediation and multimediality, progressively arise from digital arts and question not only the status of artwork but also, more generally, the foundational relationship between this latter and the recipient. (shrink)

Disclosure of medical and errors to patients has been increasingly mandated in the U. S. and Canada. Thus, some health systems are developing formal disclosure policies. The present study examines how disclosure training may impact staff and the organization. We argue that organizations that support "disclose and apologize" activities, as opposed to "deny and defend," are demonstrating values-based ethics. Specifically, we hypothesized that when health care clinicians are trained and supported in error disclosure, this may signal a valuesbased ethical (...) class='Hi'>environment, and staff may be more committed to the organization. We surveyed 325 clinical care providers employed by a large hospital that had recently begun implementing disclosure policies and training. Disclosure training explained significant variance in perceptions of the ethical environment, and the ethical environment mediated the relationship between disclosure training and organizational commitment. Although this study explored disclosure of medical errors, organizational support for error disclosure is a concept that could be relevant for many types of organizations. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of narratives in our understanding of the relationship between food, agriculture, and the environment. Narratives are the most comprehensive way of representing things that have a historical dimension. They are crucial for putting events into context, portraying characters, and depicting scenarios. The chapter argues that environmental ethics needs to embrace the “narrative turn” in order to account for the diversity of ethical issues surrounding food, agriculture, and the environment, as well as to (...) connect overarching stories about food systems to our everyday lives. It identities several narratives commonly seen in the United States that frame the way we understand food and environmental issues. A narrative approach provides an alternative to theory-driven environmental ethics toward practical, non-academic focus on actual problems and solutions. (shrink)

The second edition of Educational Leadership: Together Creating Ethical Learning Environments is a groundbreaking work at the forefront of current research into the ethical challenges inherent to leadership. Patrick Duignan combines a new perspective of leadership as an influence relationship, with a collective ethic of responsibility. Educational Leadership draws together cutting-edge research, theory and best practice on learning, teaching and leadership to assist leaders and teachers to better understand contemporary educational challenges and respond to them wisely, creatively and effectively. (...) This book is indispensable for all system and educational professionals engaged in policy-making, leadership development, leading learning in schools and those in academe responsible for programs aimed at the improvement of learning, teaching and leadership. (shrink)

As COVID-19 emerged as a phenomenon of the total environment, and despite the intertwined and complex relationships that make humanity an organic part of the Bio- and Geospheres, the majority of our responses to it have been corrective in character, with few or no consideration for unintended consequences which bring about further vulnerability to unanticipated global events. Tackling COVID-19 entails a systemic and precautionary approach to human-nature relations, which we frame as regaining diversity in the Geo-, Bio-, and Anthropospheres. (...) Its implementation requires nothing short of an overhaul in the way we interact with and build knowledge from natural and social environments. Hence, we discuss the urgency of shifting from current to precautionary approaches to COVID-19 and look, through the lens of diversity, at the anticipated benefits in four systems crucially affecting and affected by the pandemic: health, land, knowledge and innovation. Our reflections offer a glimpse of the sort of changes needed, from pursuing planetary health and creating more harmonious forms of land use to providing a multi-level platform for other ways of knowing/understanding and turning innovation into a source of global public goods. These exemplary initiatives introduce and solidify systemic thinking in policymaking and move priorities from reaction-based strategies to precautionary frameworks. (shrink)

As the result of the complexity inherent in nature, mathematical models employed in ecology are often governed by a large number of variables. For instance, in the study of population dynamics we often deal with models for structured populations in which individuals are classified regarding their age, size, activity or location, and this structuring of the population leads to high dimensional systems. In many instances, the dynamics of the system is controlled by processes whose time scales are very different (...) from each other. Aggregation techniques take advantage of this situation to build a low dimensional reduced system from which behavior we can approximate the dynamics of the complex original system.In this work we extend aggregation techniques to the case of time dependent discrete population models with two time scales where both the fast and the slow processes are allowed to change at their own characteristic time scale, generalizing the results of previous studies. We propose a non-autonomous model with two time scales, construct an aggregated model and give relationship between the variables governing the original and the reduced systems. We also explore how the properties of strong and weak ergodicity, regarding the capacity of the system to forget initial conditions, of the original system can be studied in terms of the reduced system. (shrink)

The standard picture of evolution, is externalist: a causal arrow runs from environment to organism, and that arrow explains why organisms are as they are (Godfrey-Smith 1996). Natural selection allows a lineage to accommodate itself to the specifics of its environment. As the interior of Australia became hotter and drier, phenotypes changed in many lineages of plants and animals, so that those organisms came to suit the new conditions under which they lived. Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman, building on (...) the work of Richard Lewontin, have shown that while sometimes appropriate, this is an inadequate conception of the relationship between organisms and the environments in which they live. Over time organisms alter their environment as well as being altered by their environments (Lewontin 1982; Lewontin 1983; Lewontin 1985). For example, animals modulate the effects of their physical and biological environment by building shelters: the beaver’s dam and lodge system, and termite mounds are two famous cases of animal structures, but they are few of many. There are many thousands of animals which make nests, burrows and other shelters. Likewise, animals make tools that give them access to resources from which they would otherwise be excluded: thus the Galapagos woodpecker finch uses a cactus needle to extract insects from crevasses in bark — insects that they would otherwise be unable to catch (Tebbich, Taborsky et al. 2001). Tool making is not as common as shelter-making, but it is common. For example many animals make traps: there are many species of pit-making antlions. Thus in part organisms make the world in which they live. They partially construct their own niches. Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman argue that this has five major and under-appreciated consequences for biological theory. (shrink)

The stage of the formation and establishment of a market economy in Georgia raises the necessity for economic science to solve fundamentally different problems concerning the improvement of the investment environment and investment climate in national economy. After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the replacement with new relationships has been quite difficult and painful in which foreign investments should play a crucial role. Issues to be discussed include the questions that explore some of the categories and the (...) constraints of the investment climate. All this leads to the relevance of the article and, therefore, determines the purpose of the article. The research process uses general dialectical methods of socio-economic research as well as modern methods of research of economic theory. The scientific aim of the research is to highlight the current issues of the investment environment and investment climate in economy, to study the transformation processes taking place in Georgia during the last two decades, to conduct analysis using proper methods, to show the current social and political as well as other important processes, to generalize them and to form proper opinions. Findings based on research suggest that it is possible to speed up the process of economic development of Georgia. However, the situation will remain difficult in the region and the factors causing the recession _ instability in oil prices and the weakening of the national currency against the US dollar will still be present. In conclusion, the opinion can be formed that a stable and predictable legislative process is important for the investment environment. Therefore, all the parties that may undergo the changes should be informed and involved in every project planned by the government; At present, it becomes necessary to further extend the deregulation policy, which should include the development of financial and investment sectors and support of the establishment of appropriate infrastructure, promotion of the further development of microfinance institutions, investment companies and funds, designing the system of investment insurance and stimulation, elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy and artificial barriers, etc. (shrink)

This essay employs Charles Peirce’s triadic semiotics in order to develop a biosemiotic theory of life that is capable of illuminating the function of information in living systems. Specifically, I argue that the relationship between biological information structures , selecting environments, and the adapted bodily processes of living organisms is aptly modelled by the irreducibly triadic relationship between Peirce’s sign, object, and interpretant, respectively. In each instance of information-based semiosis, the information structure is a complex informational sign that (...) represents the informational object ; and the bodily, behavioral, mental, or intellectual processes that are organized by the informational sign to more or less accurately interpret the present environment constitute a complex informational interpretant—a living, interpreting organism. The essay begins by discussing the precise sense in which this biosemiotic theory is based upon Charles Peirce’s semiotic theory. Next, the theory is developed at length in relation to genetic information structures. Finally, I present a brief outline of how the theory applies to neural and linguistic information structures. The essay concludes with a reflection upon the anti-reductionist implications of the theory. (shrink)

The article examines the impact of digitalization on human life and intellectual experience. The development of computer technology demands an understanding of new aspects of human development and requires a capability to overcome not only external conditions but also ourselves. Entering a new level of development cannot imply a complete rejection of previous dispositions, but should be accompanied by reflection on personal experience and by the quest for new forms of interaction in society and with nature. Communicative and cognitive activity (...) of a person has an ontological basis and relies on processes that actually evolve in nature. Therefore, the creation of new objects is always associated with the properties of natural material and gives rise to new points of support in the development of man. The more audacious his projects, the more important it is to preserve this connection to nature. It is always the human being who turns out to be the initiator who knows how to solve problems. The conformity of complex technical systems to nature is not only a goal but also a value of meaningful construction of development perspectives. The key to the nature orientation of the modern digital world is the human being himself, who keeps all the secrets of the culture of his natural development. Therefore, the proposed by the Russian philosopher V.S. Stepin post-non-classical approach, based on the principle of “human-sizedness,” is an important contribution to contemporary research because it draws attention to the “human – machine” communication, to the relationship between a person and technological systems he created. The article concludes that during digital transformation, a cultural conflict arises: in an effort to solve the problems of the future, a person equips his life with devices that are designed to support him, to expand his functionality, but at the same time, the boundaries of humanity become dissolved and the forms of human activity undergo simplification. Transhumanism engages society in the fight against fears of vulnerability and memory loss and ignores the flexibility and sustainability of natural foundation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 77-88 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]The Aesthetic Appreciation of Environmental Architecture under Different Conceptions of EnvironmentAllen CarlsonIntroductionIn what is in retrospect easily recognized as one of the three or four truly groundbreaking essays in environmental aesthetics, Francis Sparshott distinguishes a number of different ways of conceptualizing our relationships to our environments. Such different conceptualizations, he argues, deeply influence the ways in which (...) we aesthetically experience both environments and the things that occupy them. 1 It follows that understanding of, and thus education about, our environmental conceptualizations are of the utmost importance to our aesthetic appreciation. In this article I follow up some of Sparshott's insights by considering the ways in which a number of rather common conceptualizations of environments relate to what is an increasingly important feature of our built environments—what is commonly referred to as "environmental architecture." In doing so, I hope to make clear how aesthetic education concerning these common conceptualizations is vital for the appreciation of not only environmental architecture but the whole of our built environment.Initially, however, some clarifications are in order. First, due to the emphasis in environmental architecture on environments in general, there is, within this area of concern, somewhat of a shift away from the idea of architecture as a fine art. Traditionally, architecture, along with painting, sculpture, poetry, and music, was regarded as one of the five founding art forms of the so-called modern system of the arts. 2 And, although architecture, given its utilitarian dimensions, has often been the poor sister of the famous five, some individuals nonetheless regard it essentially as a fine art. 3 However, given my focus on environmental architecture, I here pay equal attention to what is known as "vernacular architecture." [End Page 77]Second, the phrase "environmental architecture" refers to architecture and architectural practices that are typically promoted as "working with the environment" or as being "environmentally friendly." Such characterizations bring to mind ideas such as ecological design, sustainable development, and green architecture. They are associated with design and building practices that rely on renewable energy and materials, stress recycling and efficient use of resources, and attempt to maintain the long-term integrity of both natural and human environments. Consequently, whether exemplified in the fine art of architecture or in the vernacular, such design and building practices point initially to the ecological and, more broadly, the ethical issues associated with architecture, which are best approached within environmental ethics or traditional ethical theory. 4 Although these ethical matters are of the greatest importance, I here primarily address, as noted, aesthetic issues involved in environmental architecture.Aesthetics and Environmental ArchitectureThe aesthetics of environmental architecture, as the ethics of environmental architecture, concerns most generally the relationships between structures and their environments, and especially the environmental effects of the former on the latter. Of course, unlike ethics, which in the case of architecture considers the environmental benefits or harms brought about by design and building practices and the resultant structures, aesthetics focuses first and foremost on appearances, on that which is perceived by the senses. As is well known, the discipline takes its name from the Greek aisthetikos, meaning "of sense perception." However, to recognize that aesthetics is concerned with appearances is not necessarily to relegate it to the realm of the superficial. Even though, since the aesthetics of environmental architecture considers the relationships between structures and their environments, it initially focuses on the appearances of such relationships, it need not be restricted to questions of whether such relationships are simply "pleasing to the eye" or "pretty." Rather, the basic question in the aesthetics of environmental architecture is whether structures reside in their environments such that they appear as they should. By this I mean that they and their environments are related in such a way that the structures appear appropriate or proper within their environments. 5An emphasis on whether structures appear appropriate within their environments immediately moves the matter beyond simple appearances. This is because... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflecting Back, Looking Forward:Ethics and the Environment at 25Lori Gruen (bio)Twenty-five years ago, when Ethics and the Environment launched, I remember having engaging conversations with the late founding editor, Victoria Davion, about just how important feminist thinking was to ethical explorations of our vexed relationships with the more than human world. She promised to promote feminist philosophical scholarship in this journal and she kept that promise. Although (...) I'm quite skeptical of "metrics" I did a search on the term "feminism" in the three prominent journals that publish on ethics and the environment and was not surprised to find that this journal contains 147 results where there are 51 in Environmental Values and just 33 in Environmental Ethics, a journal that has been publishing longer than Ethics and the Environment.Before the journal launched, Vicky, Chris Cuomo, and I spoke regularly about the value that feminist philosophical insights brought to environmental ethics. While we disagreed on a variety of issues (should the climate be central? Should we center our relationships with other animals?) and names (should we think of ourselves as "ecofeminists" or "ecological feminists"?) and had lively debates with other ecofeminists, including Carol Adams, Greta Gaard, Marti Kheel, Deborah Slicer, Val Plumwood, and Karen Warren, among others, we all shared a commitment to feminist methodology as well as recognizing the crucial need to incorporate ecofeminism into environmental ethics and praxis.Part of the reason it is important to incorporate ecofeminist insights into environmentalism is that ecofeminism builds on work in feminist philosophy that uncovers various biases that distort our knowledge and our relationships. For example, feminist epistemologies help us to see how testimony from those outside the center are undervalued or ignored. This has become painfully clear in environmental justice struggles; communities of [End Page 3] color are disproportionately impacted by exposure to toxins and are then burdened with finding "experts" who can "objectively" assess their claims. Ecofeminists have helped identify the inequity of looking to so-called objective expertise when communities are suffering. This sort of epistemic injustice is getting worse in the face of extreme weather events, in at least two ways. Many people who are impacted by hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, are often not well positioned to navigate institutions that may be able to help, if those institutions even exist. And as sea ice melts and oceans rise, indigenous people's multi-generational wisdom is often overlooked, while their communities are simultaneously imperiled.Another reason that feminist and ecofeminist analyses are crucial for environmental philosophy is that ecofeminists can correct certain problematic frameworks that often hinder our abilities to reshape our relationships with the more than human world. Ecofeminists have long been critical of the abstract individualism that has permeated environmental ethics, including animal ethics (Adams and Gruen, 2014). This focus on abstract individualism leads to faulty analyses of our place in the natural world, as many holistic environmental philosophers have argued. Ecofeminists have also provided important challenges to holism in environmental philosophy, as the categorical "wholes" tend to occlude important differences within and between them. (Kheel, 2007). Ecofeminists have sought to contextualize ecological sensibilities to illuminate how systems of power differentially structure our relationships with each other and our environments.Vicky's commitment to incorporating feminist and ecofeminist perspectives as a central part of this journal's vision has also provided newer scholars with a venue for further development of ecofeminist thinking, as can be seen in A.E. Kings' "Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism" (2017) and Chaone Mallory's "What's in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment)" (2018) published in the special tribute issue to Vicky. New thinking is always important, but in the face of global climate collapse, it is more important than ever.This journal has also been one of the go-to venues for animal ethics. In the early days of environmental ethics, there was a complex debate about what role, if any, animal ethics should play in environmental ethics. Over 35 years ago, two of the early pioneers, J. Baird Callicott (1980) and the late Marti Kheel (1985), argued in the pages of... (shrink)

In the selection of job candidates who have the mental ability to become professional ATCOs, psychometric testing has been a ubiquitous activity in the ATM domain. To contribute to psychometric research in the ATM domain, we investigated the extent to which spatial orientation ability (SOA), as conceptualized in the spatial cognition and navigation literature, predicted air traffic conflict detection performance in a simulated free route airspace (FRA) environment. The implementation of free route airspace (FRA) over the past few years, (...) notably in Europe, have facilitated air traffic services by giving greater flexibility to aviation operators in planning and choosing preferred air routes that can lead to quicker arrivals. FRA offers enhanced system safety and efficiency, but these benefits can be outweighed by the introduction of air traffic conflicts that are geometrically more complex. Such conflicts can arise from increased number and distribution of conflict points, as well as from elevated uncertainty in aircraft maneuvering (for instance, during heading changes). Overall, these issues will make conflict detection more challenging for air traffic controllers (ATCOs). Consequently, there is a need to select ATCOs with suitably high levels of spatial orientation ability (SOA) to ensure flight safety under FRA implementation. In this study, we tested 20 participants who are eligible for ATCO job application, and found that response time-based performance on a newly developed, open access, computerized spatial orientation test (SOT) predicted time to loss of minimum separation (tLMS) performance on an air traffic conflict detection task (AT-CDT) we designed. We found this predictive relationship to be significant to a moderately large extent under scenarios with high air traffic density (raw regression coefficient = 0.58). Moreover, we demonstrated our AT-CDT as a valid test in terms of eliciting well-known mental workload and spatial learning effects. We explained these findings in light of similar or overlapping mental processes that were most likely activated optimally under task conditions featuring approximately equal numbers of outcome-relevant stimuli. We conclude by discussing the further application of the SOT to the selection of prospective ATCOs who can demonstrate high levels of conflict detection performance in FRA during training simulations. (shrink)

The small- and medium-sized tourism and hospitality enterprises are the main forms of enterprises in Macao. This study put forward a new framework of survival and sustainable development from the perspective of competitive advantage and regional soft environment, which significantly holds theoretical and practical research value. The study obtained cross-sectional data of 317 small- and medium-sized tourism and hospitality enterprises in Macao through a large-scale questionnaire survey. This article used exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to test the (...) reliability and validity of each factor system and its measurement scale. The variance analysis is used to judge the differences between the elements. The regression analysis is used to verify the hypothesis of a causal relationship between factors. The structural equation analysis is used to fit the model and make necessary amendments. The results reveal that the government service environment has a significant positive impact on the ability of an entrepreneur. In addition, the regional soft environment significantly impacts the competitive advantage of small- and medium-sized tourism and hospitality enterprises in Macao. Contrary, the impact of laws of Macao on the acquisition of financial resources and the promotion of entrepreneur ability and innovation ability is found insignificant. In conclusion, the results showed that market of Macao lacks venture investors where enterprises cannot obtain funds through angel financing or risk financing. (shrink)

_Relevance_. Organizations' social responsibility in the market is manifested through the quality of the services they provide, consumer information, care for their health, safety and the integration of environmental requirements into the activities of the organizations. Employees are one of the key stakeholders, and their approach is one way of exposing the organization's CSR issues. From the point of view of organizations' economic responsibility, it is important to strive for competitiveness of goods and services, efficient management and economical use of (...) resources (Carden and Boyd, 2011, etc.). Ethical social sphere emphasizes honest cooperation with stakeholders, taking into account public expectations and customer information. Pedersen (2010), Homburg et al. (2013), Segal (2011) discuss topical issues of social responsibility that define an organization's relationship with its stakeholders in pursuit of organizational customer loyalty and trust and socio-economic justice in the community. In the field of environment protection, the integration of environmental protection legislation into the activities of the company, reduction of pollution, improvement of operational activities, continuous monitoring, anticipation and implementation of necessary changes is important (Delmas et al. 2013, Claydon (2009), Valdes-Vasquez (2011), Fleming (2017), Allen (2016), Shin (2015), etc. A survey of CSR in the market was conducted in small and medium-sized enterprises. 175 respondents participated in the research. _R__esearch aim_. Assess the social responsibility of organizations towards consumers, the environment and the community in terms of employees. _Research methods_. Analysis of scientific literature, questionnaire survey. _Research results and conclusions_. Responsibility in the market for the quality of services provided was assessed on the basis of the following statements: at my workplace there is paid great attention to quality of service (production), effort is made to deliver on our promises to our customers, quality of services declared within the organization does not differ from reality, product quality control system exists in the workplace, consumer complaints are being investigated and the findings improve quality, and not only the legislation is used in customer relations, but generally accepted morals are rated only moderately. Responsibility in the market according to consumer information, caring about their health and safety has been assessed by employees to what extent these statements correspond to the reality: organizations provide detailed product information; I enjoy the services and products of my organization; my organization is concerned with the health of consumers when providing services, products; there has been no evidence that the services (products) provided by my workplace have been detrimental to the welfare of consumers and my organization does not manipulate consumer confidence. From the employees' point of view, the investigated organizations have a higher than average level of responsibility. The lack of responsibility is reflected in the fact that employees disagree that organizations do not manipulate consumer confidence. Promoting environmental protection is important in terms of market responsibility. Responsibility in the market is defined by these statements: the organization uses technologies that comply with organic standards; organizes environmental initiatives; uses only tools and technologies that reduce the negative impact on the environment; the organization takes care of the ecologic education of its employees, the organization takes care of all waste to be recycled, the waste is sorted, and green ideas are encouraged financially in the workplace. Having assessed the respondents' attitudes towards meeting environmental requirements, it could be indicated that the surveyed organizations have a medium level of responsibility, while employees indicate that organizations do not financially promote green ideas or contribute to the organization of environmental initiatives. Based on the results obtained there was ascertained higher than average level of social responsibility of organizations in the market, therefore, in the case under review, the activities of organizations in the context of applying social responsibility principles should be improved according to all categories defining social responsibility in the market. __. (shrink)

Based on theory of planned behavior, we develop a theoretical model involving love of money (LOM), job satisfaction (attitude), coping strategies/responses (perceived behavioral control), work environment (subjective norm), and work-related behavioral intentions (behavioral intention). We tested this model using job satisfaction as a mediator and sector (public versus private), personal character (good apples versus bad apples), gender, and income as moderators in a sample of 515 employees and their managers in the Republic of Macedonia. For the whole sample, both (...) coping strategies and helpful work environment were related to high job satisfaction. The relationship between work environment and job satisfaction was the strongest link in all subsequent analyses. High LOM is associated with unfavorable work environment for employees in the private sectors and people with low income and is positively associated with coping strategies for bad apples. A favorable work environment was related to less corrupt intent for people in the public sectors, good apples, and with low income, but not for their counterparts. Coping strategies were related to high job satisfaction for males, but not for females. Our counterintuitive results showed that bad apples’ high LOM was related to low corrupt intent. Our theoretical model sheds new light and provides novel theoretical, empirical, and practical implications to Macedonian managers’ corrupt intent. (shrink)

Why do multinational corporations frequently encounter corporate social responsibility crises in leading emerging markets in the new century? Existing research about institutional impacts on MNC CSR has developed a void-based account about how the flawed institutional system allows misdeeds to happen. But the fact that such misdeeds have turned into increasing CSR crises in the new century along with institutional change is rarely taken into account. This paper combines studies of institutional voids, institutional entrepreneurship, and stakeholder theory to develop (...) a concept of institutional sophistication, which refers to both the top-down maturation of the regulatory system that standardizes firm behavior and the bottom-up diversification and intensification of grassroots initiatives that redefine stakeholder membership. Based on this concept, we developed a framework to comprehensively demonstrate how both institutional voids and sophistication drive the MNC CSR crisis in leading emerging markets. Empirically, we established an original database that includes 309 publicized CSR crises encountered by major foreign MNCs in China, India, and Russia, 2000–2011. Through a content analysis, the paper reveals six common sophistication processes that drive the MNC crisis across contexts and also specifies stakeholder strategies that make these processes happen and vary by social problems and national contexts. We also discussed the value of studying corporate social irresponsible behavior in understanding the institution–MNC relationship. (shrink)

In light of the recent focus in bioethics on questions of deliberate moral enhancement through the use of psychoactive drugs, Levy et al. (2014) argue that the more pressing issue may be the incidental effect that prescription drugs could already be having on moral agency. Although concerns have focused on the possibility of altering moral psychology through direct effects on brain function, the authors point out that this may already be a reality, albeit an unintentional one. They conclude from their (...) survey of prescription drugs already in use, that we should urgently investigate the ways they may be “influencing the shape of our societies” (2014, 123). The question of how we ought to respond to this possibility, I believe, must be considered in the broader context of existing attitudes and policy in response to substances with similar effects; and the relative significance of these drug effects compared with other factors, in particular social factors that shape society through their developmental influence on moral psychology. -/- First, it is important to consider the drugs described by the authors alongside widely used drugs with known, comparable effects. For example, alcohol has profound effects on features of cognition that seem relevant to moral agency, in altering risk assessment and increasing aggression (Bushman and Cooper 1990; George et al. 2005). Its impairing of inhibitory control arguably undermines the reflective processes that are often considered central to moral agency (Craigie 2011; Field et al. 2010). However, by and large the current policy adopted in liberal democratic societies is to educate people about these dangers but leave it up to adults to choose whether they use alcohol. Exceptions to this position are grounded in reasons of public protection, for example, in the case of blood alcohol limits for drivers in order to protect people against injury or death as a result of drunk driving. Restrictions are also sometimes placed on inebriation in the context of particular public roles, for example, serving on a jury, although the issue remains controversial (Law Reform Commission 2010, s. 8.21, 8.26, 8.27). This approach to alcohol regulation offers an established model for responding to the kinds of drugs in question. Broadly, it suggests that concerns about the effect of a drug on moral agency are only considered serious enough to warrant restricting its use when this puts others at risk of serious harms, or when a person is fulfilling a public role where sound decision making is of great importance (e.g., in maintaining trust in institutions such as the criminal justice system). Although at first it may be an alarming thought that pharmaceuticals [End Page 127] could be influencing individual moral psychology, the example of alcohol suggests that this this is a familiar experience, and something for which states already have a policy framework. -/- Caffeine is another commonly used drug with psychoactive properties that seem likely to affect moral agency. Along with potentially morally relevant effects on attention and aggression (Einöther and Giesbrecht 2013; Kuhns et al. 2010), research suggests a connection between cortisol—a hormone that is elevated by caffeine—and the processing of social cues relating to threat (Montoya et al. 2012; Putman et al. 2007). There are little in the way of restrictions on the use of caffeine. Nonetheless, one might be concerned about the possible effects of caffeine on moral agency and society, particularly if the effects are less obvious than in the case of alcohol (Kuhns et al. 2010). The same concern might apply to the pharmaceuticals in question. Perhaps there is a need to investigate these effects on thought and behavior because they are not easy to detect. The greater danger might be in the fact that people do not recognize how these drugs change their appraisals and decisions, rather than in the effects themselves. It seems a reasonable suggestion that if a drug has significant enough effects on interpersonal relationships, then this information should be made available as a part of an informed consent procedure. (shrink)

The influences large corporations have on the lives of most citizens is huge. In the developed world the relationships between corporations and citizens is generally close, with top corporate managers making decisions that shape the societies which they share with their fellow citizens. Individuals in Western society may be trained to accept the status quo, which allows business leaders significant influence over the allocation of society’s assets, and thereby over societal developments. Formal education systems often encourage the maintenance of the (...) status quo, whereas they could encourage students to challenge it. This paper argues the need to help business students develop an understanding of critical theory, independent thought and self-improvement. The paper employs a case study approach which focuses on the development of one person, its author. He argues that those responsible for education today must encourage their students to think holistically about the consequences of business behaviour on society. If managers view business life through a scientific lens, focused primarily on the maximisation of financial returns, they will continue to encourage unsustainable behaviour, which damages the ecosystems and the social cohesion in society. Managers must learn to approach their business decisions as whole human beings. This will make it more likely they will manage in a sustainable way, and help them find meaning and happiness in their roles. (shrink)

This speech analyzes the constitutive relationship between liberty and domination. In it freedom is intended as opposition to power through the concept of liberation. But many forms of power, in spite of fighting liberty, try to present themselves as liberators or as a guarantor of liberty itself. In this way the concept of freedom becomes first with Christianity and then with modernity an instrument for a sophisticated technology of power that has the opposite function. This individualistic notion of liberty (...) is criticized also from an epistemological point of view (complexity theory, chaos theory), and from a multicultural point of view by a brief comparison with holistic Sino-Japanese concept of spontaneity. Complexity theory shows that the subject is always connected to a system in his decision making process. Chaos theory shows that what seems spontaneous is an unpredictable interaction of causes. Finally Sino-Japanese culture has not a traditional concept of freedom, because it focuses the spontaneity of Dao or nature that is conceived as whole necessary for the comprehension of the individuals’ life. The aim of this text is to give just some hints for a “mise en question” of the concept of liberty related to recent problems such as globalization, environmental problems and crisis of modern political systems. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo determine whether gait and accelerometric features can predict disorientation events in young and older adults.MethodsCognitively healthy younger and older participants navigated on a treadmill through a virtual representation of the city of Rostock featured within the Gait Real-Time Analysis Interactive Lab system. We conducted Bayesian Poisson regression to determine the association of navigation performance with domain-specific cognitive functions. We determined associations of gait and accelerometric features with disorientation events in real-time data using Bayesian generalized mixed effect models. The (...) accuracy of gait and accelerometric features to predict disorientation events was determined using cross-validated support vector machines and Hidden Markov models.ResultsBayesian analysis revealed strong evidence for the effect of gait and accelerometric features on disorientation. The evidence supported a relationship between executive functions but not visuospatial abilities and perspective taking with navigation performance. Despite these effects, the cross-validated percentage of correctly assigned instances of disorientation was only 72% in the SVM and 63% in the HMM analysis using gait and accelerometric features as predictors.ConclusionDisorientation is reflected in spatiotemporal gait features and the accelerometric signal as a potentially more easily accessible surrogate for gait features. At the same time, such measurements probably need to be enriched with other parameters to be sufficiently accurate for individual prediction of disorientation events. (shrink)

The aim of my contribution is to try to analyse some points of similarity and difference between post-Parsonian social systems theory models for sociology — with special reference to those of W. Buckley, F.E. Emery and N. Luhmann — and expert systems models1 from Artificial Intelligence. I keep specifically to post-Parsonian systems theories within sociology because they assume some postulates and criteria derived from cybernetics and which are at the roots of AI. I refer in particular to the fundamental relevance (...) of the system-environment relationship in both sociology and AI. (shrink)

Attempts to explain the origin of macroevolutionary innovations have been only partially successful. Here it is proposed that the patterns of major evolutionary transitions have to be understood first, before it is possible to further analyse the forces behind the process. The hypothesis is that major evolutionary innovations are characterized by an increase in organismal autonomy, in the sense of emancipation from the environment. After a brief overview of the literature on this subject, increasing autonomy is defined as the (...) evolutionary shift in the individual system–environment relationship, such that the direct influences of the environment are gradually reduced and a stabilization of self-referential, intrinsic functions within the system is generated. This is described as relative autonomy because numerous interconnections with the environment and dependencies upon it are retained. Features of increasing autonomy are spatial separations, an increase in homeostatic functions and in body size, internalizations and an increase in physiological and behavioral flexibility. It is described how these features are present in different combinations in the major evolutionary transitions of metazoans and, consequently, how they should be taken into consideration when evolutionary innovations are studied. The hypothesis contributes to a reconsideration of the relationship between organisms and their environment. (shrink)

The successful early acquisition of reading literacy represents a crucial learning process determining the further course of academic development (Stanovich, 2009). During this process, interactions between children and their proximal social environment are of utmost importance. Therefore, we introduce a systemic framework for the development of learning potential (e.g., Mudrak et al., 2015, 2019, 2019b; Ziegler & Stoeger, 2017) and explore the interactions between the social and motivational processes associated with reading literacy development in school-age children. We base our (...) analysis on a representative Czech sample of fourth-grade pupils involved in the Progress in International Reading Literacy study (PIRLS, Martin et al., 2016). On the basis of the systemic framework, we hypothesized hierarchical relationships among family socioeconomic status, related developmental resources (including parental support, expectations, and reading resources), children’s reading motivation (including reading engagement and reading confidence), and manifested learning outcomes (including school grades and reading competence). We implemented three structural equation models to test the hypothesized relationships. The first model tested the direct effect of developmental resources on reading competence. The second model included the motivational variables as mediators between resources and competence. The third model included school grades as mediators between resources and motivational variables. Our analyses indicated the good fit of the proposed models. The final model explained 37.8 % of the variance in children’s school grades and 46.5 % of the variance in reading literacy test scores (compared to 34.8 % in the first model). Moreover, parental socioeconomic status was strongly associated with parental expectations, which were associated with reading confidence, partially through the effect of parental expectations on children’s school grades. Reading confidence was the main predictor of reading literacy within the model, followed by the direct effects of parental resources. The results illustrate complex processes through which the family environment affects the development of learning competencies such as reading literacy by providing children with the relevant social and material resources associated with their motivation and school outcomes. We discuss some of the reasons that these relationships may take place and consider their implications for educational practice. (shrink)

Developmental systems theory (DST) is a general theoretical perspective on development, heredity and evolution. It is intended to facilitate the study of interactions between the many factors that influence development without reviving `dichotomous' debates over nature or nurture, gene or environment, biology or culture. Several recent papers have addressed the relationship between DST and the thriving new discipline of evolutionary developmental biology (EDB). The contributions to this literature by evolutionary developmental biologists contain three important misunderstandings of DST.

The purpose of this article was to validate the published artificial intelligence facilities management outsourcing relationships system by real business cases in the working environment. The research aims to inspire the modern FM professionals in different industries with some challenging and innovative concepts about FM outsourcing relationships between facilities owners and service providers. First, it will briefly introduce the theory of the FM outsourcing relationships system on how it can help the FM seniors and strategists to design (...) their FM daily strategies wisely and make their business more effective and productive. Second, it will also introduce what the research is practically doing in the stage of case study for test and verification. It is concluded that FM outsourcing categorization may help to define the appropriate relationships. This further detailed outcome generated from the AI can be considered a solid reference to define and explain the existing outsourcing relationships between the stakeholders and the service providers to assign an outsourcing category to the FM relationship between the client and service provider based on the learnt rules. (shrink)

A new advanced systems theory concerning the emergent nature of the Social, Consciousness, and Life based on Mathematics and Physical Analogies is presented. This meta-theory concerns the distance between the emergent levels of these phenomena and their ultra-efficacious nature. The theory is based on the distinction between Systems and Meta-systems (organized Openscape environments). We first realize that we can understand the difference between the System and the Meta-system in terms of the relationship between a ‘Whole greater than (...) the sum of the parts’ and a ‘Whole less than the sum of its parts’, i.e., a whole full of holes (like a sponge) that provide niches for systems in the environment. Once we understand this distinction and clarify the nature of the unusual organization of the Meta-system, then it is possible to understand that there is a third possibility which is a whole exactly equal to the sum of its parts that is only supervenient like perfect numbers. In fact, there are three kinds of Special System corresponding to the perfect, amicable, and sociable aliquot numbers. These are all equal to the sum of their parts but with different degrees of differing and deferring in what Jacques Derrida calls “differance”. All other numbers are either excessive (systemic) or deficient (metasystemic) in this regard. The Special Systems are based on various mathematical analogies and some physical analogies. But the most important of the mathematical analogies are the hypercomplex algebras, which include the Complex Numbers, Quaternions, and Octonions, with the Sedenions corresponding to the Emergent Meta-system. However, other analogies are the Hopf fibrations between hyperspheres of various dimensions, nonorientable surfaces, soliton solutions, etc. These Special Systems have a long history within the tradition since they can be traced back to the imaginary cities of Plato. The Emergent Meta-system is a higher order global structure that includes the System with the three Special Systems as a cycle. An example of this from our tradition is in the Monadology of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. There is a conjunctive relationship between the System schema and the Special Systems that produce the Meta-system schema cycle. The Special Systems are a meta-model for the relationship between the emergent levels of Consciousness (Dissipative Ordering based on the theory of negative entropy of Prigogine), Living (Autopoietic Symbiotic based on the theory of Maturana and Varela), and Social (Reflexive based on the theory of John O’Malley and Barry Sandywell). These different special systems are related to the various existenitals identified by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time and various temporal reference frames identified by Richard M. Pico. We also relate the special systems to morphodynamic and teleodynamic systems of Terrence Deacon in Incomplete Nature to which we add sociodynamic systems to complete the series of Special Systems. (shrink)

This paper offers a theoretical discussion on why the nursing profession has had a delayed response to the issue of climate change. We suggest this delay may have been influenced by the early days of nursing's professionalization. Specifically, we examine nursing's professional mandate, the generally accepted metaparadigm, and the grand theorists’ conceptualizations of both the environment and the nurse–environment relationship. We conclude that these works may have encouraged nurses to conceptualize the environment, as well as their (...) relationship with it, mainly in terms of the individual patient, and as such, nurses have not been encouraged to understand these concepts from a broader perspective. By not having the philosophical and theoretical foundations to understand the environment in relation to society, it is not surprising that nurses have had a delayed response to climate change and may not have viewed it as a professional concern. A planetary health perspective is suggested as a theoretical basis for nursing education, research and practice. Taking on a planetary health perspective could help nurses progress the profession and move healthcare systems towards supporting a climate‐resilient future. (shrink)

The relationship between brain and mind has been extensively explored through the developments within neuroscience over the last decade. However, the ontological status of mind has remained fairly problematic due to the inability to explain all features of the mind through the brain. This inability has been considered largely due to partial knowledge of the brain. It is claimed that once we gain complete knowledge of the brain, all features of the mind would be explained adequately. However, a challenge (...) to such a position is downward causation: How do we explain the causal power that mental states exert over brain activities? If we agree that downward causation occurs, then to what extent could a sole explanation of brain activities account for our behaviour? (For they would in themselves be conditioned by the mental states which are left unexplained). This dissertation is an attempt to understand relation between brain and mind through the concept of emergence, placed in the context of complex systems approach. This will create a space to account for the causal power of mental states. The complex systems approach says that as the complexity of a system increases, we witness the emergence of novel qualities and after a certain threshold (of complexity), the emergence of a novel structure. When the body (and correspondingly, brain) reaches a certain level of complexity, the mind emerges. The brain is a complex system from which the mind emerges. The brain, consisting of billions of neurons interacting with each other, regulates the body placed in the environment. The interaction of neurons (local interactions involving self-organization) result in dynamical brain signatures (global synergy). Such signatures are correlative to mental states. Mind is the process of a living organism embodying an intentional stance. This object could be the subject itself or another distinct from the subject. With the emergence of mind, the causal powers of brain are conditioned by the mind. Such a conditioning is evident through the causal efficacy of mental states. While the brain is minimal condition for the mind to emerge, the mind in itself is embedded (showcased/explicated/manifested) throughout the body. The mind is a process that belongs to body-as-a-whole with the novel quality of intentionality. A preliminary to understanding this relation is its metaphysical inclination. A large portion of the history of philosophy of mind has advocated a metaphysics of entities where the mind and body have been seen as two entities with distinct essences. However, such attribution of entity-ship does not take into account the processual nature of these existents (that they are essentially dependent on their environment for their existence and sustenance). Thus, the category of processual unity has been introduced which sought to account for existent as emergent wholes that move towards a stable equilibrium through self-organization. By considering existents to be processual unities, we can account for their identity as a whole-in-itself (what has been called organizational closure) and also for their processual nature. The brain is a component of the body which is a complex system and is representative of the body’s stance in the world. The brain, consisting of billions of neurons interacting with each other, regulates the body placed in the environment. The interaction of neurons (local interactions involving self-organization) result in dynamical brain signatures (global synergy). Such signatures are correlative to mental states. These mental states in turn condition the brain patterns, that allows the embodying of mental states. Thus, the three-way process of the representation of body in the world by the brain, the emergence of mental state through dynamic brain patterns and the reciprocal causal power on the brain patterns by the mental states marks embodiment. The relation between brain, body and mind can be outlined as follows: A. There are complex interactions in the brain. These interactions are representative of the body’s stance in the world and are present in form of dynamical brain signatures. B. The dynamical brain signatures lead to emergence of mind as a process. The mental state has causal power which conditions the brain. C. The brain conditioned by causal power of the mind carries out embodiment of the mind throughout the body. In the dissertation, an exposition on relation between brain and mind through complex system approach is followed by a brief on relation between body and mind. The radical embodiment approach adopts the nonlinear dynamic systems theory to understand relation of brain, body and mind. It states a shift from mapping of cognitive states onto Neural Correlates of Consciousness to their mapping through dynamic brain signatures. Every mental state is embedded throughout the body. The dissertation explores the three features of consciousness, intentionality and qualia. These have previously formed a challenge within a dualistic framework and the dissertation intends to show a direction in which they can be accounted for, within the complex systems approach and radical embodiment viewpoint. After a certain threshold of the rate of production of cell assemblies is bypassed, we become conscious of the representation itself. This leads to emergence of phenomenal states. Qualia is the qualitative character of such states, which belong to the body-as-a-whole and for this reason, cannot be reduced to properties of any of the components from which it emerges (the dynamic brain signatures) or in which it is embodied (the body and its individual parts) alone. Intentionality is the novel property of mind of moving towards a certain set of attractors where attractors refer to the states that the system prefers (which would positively contribute to its fitness). The scope of this dissertation is to delineate the relation of brain to the mind and unravel some persistent troubles of philosophy of mind within such delineation. The types of components and their relation within the mind preceded by a thorough study of how the mind is embodied is an area yet to be extensively explored in the coming works. (shrink)

The multidimensional environments providing the stimuli for normal and abnormal human behavior have been characterized by a variety of environmental tensors, the time rates of change of which yield quantitative measures of various aspects of environmental dynamics. A general response tensor is introduced to describe the behavior of living organisms to any desired degree of complexity. Tensor measures of such psychiatric concepts as reactivity, adaptability, responsiveness, instinctiveness and suggestibility are mathematically defined in terms of the response and environment tensors. (...) Based on clinical and experimental observations, postulates are then made regarding the dynamic relationships between the external responses and the internal drives of the self-system at different levels of consciousness. Lemmas and theorems are deduced pertaining to behavioral and environmental interactions in a psychomedical context, and a nonlinear mechanism for stochastically learned behavior patterns is proposed. (shrink)

Animal production, especially pork production, is facing growing international criticism. The greatest concerns relate to the environment, the animals’ living conditions, and the occupational diseases. But human and animal conditions are rarely considered together. Yet the living conditions at work and the emotional bond that inevitably forms bring the farm workers and the animals to live very close, which leads to shared suffering. Suffering does spread from animals to human beings and can cause workers physical, mental, and also moral (...) suffering, which is all the more harmful due to the fact that it is concealed. The conceptual tools used to conceal suffering ( animal welfare, stress, pain) suggest that the industrial system can be improved, whereas for farmers it is by definition incompatible with animal husbandry. (shrink)