This research examines how an organization, Thanksgiving Coffee, establishes and maintains its legitimacy with its constituent publics. In line with Boyd’s (2000, Journal of Public Relations Research 12(4), 341–353.) concept of actional legitimacy, Thanksgiving Coffee demonstrates a legitimation strategy addressing social issues and by responding to ethical and political questions. Applying Fisher’s (1984, Communication Monographs 51, 1–18) concepts of narrative fidelity and probability, Thanksgiving Coffee’s policies and communication activities were found to alleviate the social issues to which they were addressed (...) and therefore reinforce perceptions of legitimacy among publics. Viewing the influence of organizations from a different perspective, this study provides an example of how the policies of an organization can have a positive impact on the broader society in which it operates. (shrink)

Apresentamos os resultados dos nossos estudos entre os processos educacionais e processos de subjetivação. Associamos este fato com a dificuldade dos educadores deslocarem o corpo do lugar de quem ensina para o lugar de quem aprende. Estudamos as implicações do corpo nos processos educacionais e sugerimos uma “atitude moderna” a partir do “cuidado de si”, apoiados em Foucault, como a ação do educador que “toma partido” do educando.

Over the last decade, research in semantics and pragmatics has started to increasingly incorporate new experimental methods from cognitive psychology. That this empirical stance on utterance interpretation has now reached maturity is revealed by two unmistakable symptoms: an increased reflection on the contextual methods used to elicit experimental data, and a continuous expansion of the linguistic phenomena and themes being investigated through these methods. The articles gathered in this volume testify to this very recent evolution of the field: a first (...) set of papers questions the interpretation or interpretability of data collected in non-naturalistic settings, while a second set reflects the extension of experimental methods to new topics. The volume offers an up-to-date overview of contemporary issues arising within the thriving field of Empirical Pragmatics. (shrink)

"TAKE A LINE cut in two unequal sections, one for the kind that is seen, the other for the kind that is thought, and go on and cut each section in the same ratio". In order to follow this request, not only must one know geometry, which treats linear magnitudes; one must also know the relations between geometry and the art which treats kinds. The problem of the first cut in the line is the problem of determining what ratio of (...) two parts of a line is the same as the ratio of the two kinds: visible and thinkable. In order to solve this problem, a procedure seems to be needed for deciding when a ratio of magnitudes, a geometric ratio, is the same as a ratio of kinds, or at least what ratio of magnitudes is the same as the ratio of visible to thinkable. (shrink)

This research examines how an organization, Thanksgiving Coffee, establishes and maintains its legitimacy with its constituent publics. In line with Boyd’s (2000, Journal of Public Relations Research12(4), 341–353.) concept of actional legitimacy, Thanksgiving Coffee demonstrates a legitimation strategy addressing social issues and by responding to ethical and political questions. Applying Fisher’s (1984, Communication Monographs51, 1–18) concepts of narrative fidelity and probability, Thanksgiving Coffee’s policies and communication activities were found to alleviate the social issues to which they were addressed and therefore (...) reinforce perceptions of legitimacy among publics. Viewing the influence of organizations from a different perspective, this study provides an example of how the policies of an organization can have a positive impact on the broader society in which it operates. (shrink)

This second festschrift for Robert Sokolowski brings together papers given in April 2000 at a colloquium on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. In contrast with the first festschrift in honor of his sixtieth birthday, which was mostly phenomenological philosophy, the present collection is mostly phenomenological theology.

RESUMO O presente artigo apresenta uma semântica baseada nas atitudes cognitivas de aceitação e rejeição por uma sociedade de agentes para lógicas inspiradas no First Degree Entailment de Dunn e Belnap. Diferente das situações epistêmicas originalmente usadas em E, as atitudes cognitivas não coincidem com valores-de-verdade e parecem mais adequadas para as lógicas que pretendem considerar o conteúdo informacional de proposições “ditas verdadeiras” tanto quanto as proposições “ditas falsas” como determinantes da noção de validade das inferências. Após analisar algumas lógicas (...) associadas à semântica proposta, introduzimos a lógica E B cuja relação de consequência semântica subjacente - o B-entailment - é capaz de expressar diversos tipos de raciocínio em relação às atitudes cognitivas de aceitação e rejeição. Apresentamos também um cálculo de sequentes correto e completo para E B.ABSTRACT In the present work I introduce a semantics based on the cognitive attitudes of acceptation and rejection entertained by a given society of agents for logics inspired on Dunn and Belnap’s ‘First Degree Entailment’. Distinctly from the original epistemic situation of E, the cognitive attitudes do not coincide with truth-values and it seems more suitable for logics that intend to consider the informational content of propositions “said to be true” as well as propositions “said to be false” as determinants of the notion of logical validity. After analyzing some logics associated with the proposed semantics, we introduce the logic E B, whose underlying semantic entailment relation - the B-entailment - is able to express several kinds of reasoning towards the cognitive attitudes of acceptance and rejection. Acorrect and complete sequent calculus for E B is also presented. (shrink)

The feasibility of reversing human aging within a matter of decades has traditionally been dismissed by all professional biogerontologists, on the grounds that not only is aging still poorly understood, but also many of those aspects that we do understand are not reversible by any current or foreseeable therapeutic regimen. This broad consensus has recently been challenged by the publication, by five respected experimentalists in diverse subfields of biogerontology together with three of the present authors, of an article (Ann NY (...) Acad Sci 959, 452–462) whose conclusion was that all the key components of mammalian aging are indeed amenable to substantial reversal (not merely retardation) in mice, with technology that has a reasonable prospect of being developed within about a decade. Translation of that panel of interventions to humans who are already alive, within a few decades thereafter, was deemed potentially feasible (though it was not claimed to be likely). If the prospect of controlling human aging within the foreseeable future cannot be categorically rejected, then it becomes a matter of personal significance to most people presently alive. Consequently, we suggest that serious public debate on this subject is now warranted, and we survey here several of the biological, social and political issues relating to it. BioEssays 24:667–676, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The development of synthetic biology calls for accurate understanding of the critical functions that allow construction and operation of a living cell. Besides coding for ubiquitous structures, minimal genomes encode a wealth of functions that dissipate energy in an unanticipated way. Analysis of these functions shows that they are meant to manage information under conditions when discrimination of substrates in a noisy background is preferred over a simple recognition process. We show here that many of these functions, including transporters and (...) the ribosome construction machinery, behave as would behave a material implementation of the informationmanaging agent theorized by Maxwell almost 150 years ago and commonly known as Maxwell’s demon (MxD). A core gene set encoding these functions belongs to the minimal genome required to allow the construction of an autonomous cell. These MxDs allow the cell to perform computations in an energy-efficient way that is vastly better than our contemporary computers. (shrink)

Written in a highly personal style, Spinoza's "Ethics" presents to readers anordered vision of the universe as a unified whole--not as a lifeless world ofinnumerable separate entities. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The essays in Practicing Gnosis demonstrate that the Gnostics were not necessarily trendy intellectuals seeking epistomological certainities. Instead, this book explores how Gnostics were seeking religious experiences that relied on practices including ritual, magic, liturgy, and theurgy. This book celebrates the career of Birger A. Pearson.

Recent times have seen increasing interest in conversational assistants (e.g., Amazon Alexa) designed to help users in their daily tasks. In military settings, it is critical to design assistants that are, simultaneously, helpful and able to minimize the user’s cognitive load. Here we show that embodiment plays a key role in achieving that goal. We present an experiment where participants engaged in the desert survival task in augmented reality. Participants were paired with a voice assistant, an embodied assistant, or no (...) assistant. The assistants made suggestions verbally throughout the task, whereas the embodied assistant further used gestures and emotion to communicate with the user. Our results indicate that both assistant conditions led to higher performance over the no assistant condition, but the embodied assistant achieved this with less cognitive burden on the decision maker than the non-embodied assistant. We discuss implications for the design of intelligent collaborative systems for the warfighter. (shrink)

"TAKE A LINE cut in two unequal sections, one for the kind that is seen, the other for the kind that is thought, and go on and cut each section in the same ratio". In order to follow this request, not only must one know geometry, which treats linear magnitudes; one must also know the relations between geometry and the art which treats kinds. The problem of the first cut in the line is the problem of determining what ratio of (...) two parts of a line is the same as the ratio of the two kinds: visible and thinkable. In order to solve this problem, a procedure seems to be needed for deciding when a ratio of magnitudes, a geometric ratio, is the same as a ratio of kinds, or at least what ratio of magnitudes is the same as the ratio of visible to thinkable. (shrink)

In this article we intend to analyze the relationship between science and values from the philosophy of Hans Jonas. It starts with an analysis of the change identified by the author with regard to the new status of knowledge in modernity, which gives rise to the so-called technobioscience, born from the articulation between knowing and doing, in view of a new power. It is about showing how the old formulation of knowledge as contemplation gave way to the utilitarian idea of (...) knowledge as exploration, although in such a version, the claim of neutrality and absolute freedom is maintained, characteristic of the old moral island represented by knowledge pre-modern. Jonas argues in favor of an articulation of technobioscience with ethics, in order to provide the values capable of guiding knowing, doing and power in technological civilization. (shrink)

Counterfactual thinking involves imagining hypothetical alternatives to reality. Philosopher David Lewis argued that people estimate the subjective plausibility that a counterfactual event might have occurred by comparing an imagined possible world in which the counterfactual statement is true against the current, actual world in which the counterfactual statement is false. Accordingly, counterfactuals considered to be true in possible worlds comparatively more similar to ours are judged as more plausible than counterfactuals deemed true in possible worlds comparatively less similar. Although Lewis (...) did not originally develop his notion of comparative similarity to be investigated as a psychological construct, this study builds upon his idea to empirically investigate comparative similarity as a possible psychological strategy for evaluating the perceived plausibility of counterfactual events. More specifically, we evaluate judgments of comparative similarity between episodic memories and episodic counterfactual events as a factor influencing people's judgments of plausibility in counterfactual simulations, and we also compare it against other factors thought to influence judgments of counterfactual plausibility, such as ease of simulation and prior simulation. Our results suggest that the greater the perceived similarity between the original memory and the episodic counterfactual event, the greater the perceived plausibility that the counterfactual event might have occurred. While similarity between actual and counterfactual events, ease of imagining, and prior simulation of the counterfactual event were all significantly related to counterfactual plausibility, comparative similarity best captured the variance in ratings of counterfactual plausibility. Implications for existing theories on the determinants of counterfactual plausibility are discussed. (shrink)

Healey et al. introduce the special issue with a brief overview of work on communication in the Cognitive Sciences and some of the historical and conceptual influences that have marginalized the study of miscommunication. Drawing on more recent work in Cognitive Science and Conversation Analysis they argue that miscommunication is in fact a highly structured, ubiquitous phenomenon that is fundamental to human interaction.

Cet article remet en question les fondements théoriques et pédagogiques de la notion de compétence éthique ainsi que la conception de l’éthique qu’elle préfigure. Après une analyse du contexte d’émergence de cette notion, notamment dans le champ de la santé, nous verrons en quoi l’approche socioconstructiviste de l’apprentissage, à laquelle se réfèrent de nombreux dispositifs de formation, fait de l’éthique une ressource d’action visant l’adaptation passive des professionnels au contexte organisationnel et socioprofessionnel. Nous proposerons dès lors de revisiter l’apprentissage de (...) l’éthique dans une approche pragmatiste plus critique et plus émancipatrice. Nous en exposerons les principales orientations pédagogiques et insisterons, pour conclure, sur la responsabilité des environnements socioprofessionnels. Ces derniers sont appelés à devenir plus capacitants, c’est-à-dire à créer les conditions favorables au développement de cet apprentissage de l’éthique. (shrink)