In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hobbes on the Grand Tour: Paris, Venice, or London?Linda Levy PeckHobbes scholars have long been frustrated by how little contemporary evidence exists for the period when, after graduating from University in 1608, Hobbes was appointed by Lord Cavendish as tutor to his son Sir William Cavendish. Based on a license to travel granted in February 1610 1 and a parenthetical date in a late seventeenth-century source, 2 (...) scholars from George Croom Robertson (1886) to John Stoye (1952 and 2nd ed. 1989), Miriam Reik (1977), Noel Malcolm (1981), Arnold A. Rogow (1986), Richard Tuck (1989 and 1993), and Johann Sommerville (1992) have asserted that Hobbes and Cavendish left on the Grand Tour in 1610. Scholars have claimed that the trip to France, Italy, and perhaps Germany lasted anywhere from three to five years, and they have speculated as to where Hobbes and Cavendish went and whom they met. Robertson wroteThe first journey, which lay through France, Germany, and Italy, was begun in the year when France and Europe were thrown into consternation by the deed by Ravaillac; and so readily does the fanatic’s name slip from his pen even half a century later, that we may well suppose the future apostle of the inviolability of the sovereign to have been moved by what he may have heard or seen of the tragic event and its consequences at the time. 3 [End Page 177]Arnold A. Rogow in Thomas Hobbes, Radical in the Service of Reaction, expands on Robertson’s point by suggesting thatthe tour of 1610, close in time to the murder of Henry IV, if not overlapping it, may have been decisive in convincing Hobbes of the dangers to society and civil peace of religious fanaticism. Guy Fawkes and his coconspirators in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and François Ravaillac were all fanatical Catholics, and Hobbes, although he wrote nothing about these conspiracies at the time, may have decided when still a young man that the single most important condition for domestic order and stability was the total and absolute submission of religion to political authority. 4While noting that the first forty years were the “dark years” in Hobbes life, Miriam Reik agrees on the date of the trip: “In 1610, the Baron sent his son for that indispensable part of a seventeenth century nobleman’s education, the Grand Tour; Hobbes went along as an escort the journey receives scant notice in his writing.” 5 Stoye commented that “Perplexed biographers can only state that Hobbes accompanied Cavendish on a journey to France and Italy, commencing in the year 1610.” 6Noel Malcolm tried to establish a chronology for the Grand Tour in his article “Hobbes, Sandys and the Virginia Company,” 7 demonstrating that Cavendish was back in England for the Parliament of 1614 to which he was elected although he was soon back in Venice on a second trip. 8 Later, in his De Dominus (1984), 9 Malcolm suggested in a footnote that the account book of the first Earl of Devonshire (Chatsworth, Hardwick Ms. 29), supported only one trip between 1614 and 1615 but he provided no detailed evidence. In his edition of Thomas Hobbes: The Correspondence (1994) Malcolm remains cautious and does not address the issue. Richard Tuck, however, is more confident: he writes that “And when Lord Cavendish sent his son off on what would later be called ‘the Grand Tour’ between 1610 and 1615, Hobbes accompanied him as a tutor.” 10 Tuck argues that Hobbes and Cavendish met Paolo Sarpi and other Venetian controversialists at the height of the Venetian interdict controversy between 1610 and 1615. [End Page 178]Between 1610 and 1615 Hobbes accompanied Cavendish as his tutor... on a tour of Europe in which Venice seems to have been a particularly important stopping-place. (Noel Malcolm (1981, pp. 319–20) claims that Cavendish sat in the 1614 Parliament, and that therefore the tour must have been interrupted; but it is probable that Cavendish’s cousin (also called William), later the Earl of New-castle, was elected for both East Retford and the county of Derbyshire, and that he was the only William Cavendish in the 1614 Parliament... (shrink)

Originally published as _Le Mirage linguistique_, this book remains the definitive study of the role of linguistics in structuralism and poststructuralism. Thomas Pavel examines recent French thought through the work of luminaries such as Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida. The "spell of language" for Pavel consists of three things: the promise that linguistics seemed to represent for the humanities and social sciences; the distortions, misunderstandings, and willful neglect incumbent upon the "linguistic turn"; and, above all, the break with traditional humanism. (...) He isolates three modes of thought-moderate structuralism, scientific structuralism, and speculative structuralism-and shows how even as they diverge from each other, they all advocate an antihumanist point of view. In this spirited book, Pavel shows that structuralism's flawed use of linguistic theory has rendered hollow the philosophical core of a whole generation of work in the human sciences. (shrink)

These books will prove valuable to philosophy teachers and their students as well as to other readers who share a general interest in philosophy.

In this book, Linda Wetzel examines the distinction between types and tokens and argues that types exist (as abstract objects, since they lack a unique ...

The distinction between a type and its tokens is a useful metaphysical distinction. In §1 it is explained what it is, and what it is not. Its importance and wide applicability in linguistics, philosophy, science and everyday life are briefly surveyed in §2. Whether types are universals is discussed in §3. §4 discusses some other suggestions for what types are, both generally and specifically. Is a type the sets of its tokens? What exactly is a word, a symphony, a species? (...) §5 asks what a token is. §6 considers the relation between types and their tokens. Do the type and all its tokens share the same properties? Must all the tokens be alike in some or all respects? §7 explains some problems for the view that types exist, and some problems for the view that they don't. §8 elucidates a distinction often confused with the type-token distinction, that between a type (or token) and an occurrence of it. It also discusses some problems that occurrences might be thought to give rise to, and one way to resolve them. (shrink)

Oxford Scholarly Classics brings together a number of great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in a uniform series design, they will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

Anthropologists have provided rich field descriptions of the norms and conventions governing behavior and interactions in small-scale societies. Here, we add a further dimension to this work by presenting hypothetical moral dilemmas involving harm, to a small-scale, agrarian Mayan population, with the specific goal of exploring the hypothesis that certain moral principles apply universally. We presented Mayan participants with moral dilemmas translated into their native language, Tseltal. Paralleling several studies carried out with educated subjects living in large-scale, developed nations, the (...) Mayan participants judged harms caused as the means to a greater good as more forbidden than harms caused as a side-effect (i.e., side-effect bias). However, unlike these other populations living in large-scale societies, as well as a more educated and less rural Mayan comparison group, the target rural Mayan participants did not judge actions causing harm as worse than omissions (i.e., omission bias). A series of probes targeting the action-omission distinction suggest that the absence of an omission bias among the rural Mayan participants was not due to difficulties comprehending the dilemmas, using the judgment scale, or in attributing a greater causal role for actions over omissions. Thus, while the moral distinction between means and side-effect may be more universal, the moral distinction between actions and omission appears to be open to greater cross-cultural variation. We discuss these results in light of issues concerning the role of biological constraints and cultural variation in moral decision-making, as well as the limitations of such experimental, cross-cultural research. (shrink)

Each story is presented as a narrative, so readers can ponder: What would I do if this happened to me? When they've finished the book, they'll feel prepared with an array of theoretical and practical approaches for thinking on their feet.

While most business ethics texts focus exclusively on individual decision making--what should an individual do--this resource presents the whole business ethics story. Highly realistic, readable, and down-to-earth, it moves from the individual to the managerial to the organizational level, focusing on business ethics in an organizational context to promote an understanding of complex influences on behavior. The new Fifth Edition is the perfect text for students entering the workplace, those seeking to become professionals in training, communications, compliance, in addition to (...) chief ethics officers, corporate counsel, heads of human resources, and senior executives. (shrink)

In this volume, Brakel raises questions about conventions in the study of mind in three disciplines—psychoanalysis, philosophy of mind, and experimental philosophy. She illuminates new understandings of the mind through interdisciplinary challenges to views long-accepted. Here she proposes a view of psychoanalysis as a treatment that owes its successes largely to its biological nature—biological in its capacity to best approximate the extinction of problems arising owing to aversive conditioning. She also discusses whether or not "the mental" can have any real (...) ontological standing, arguing that a form of reductive physicalism can be sufficient ontologically, but that epistemological considerations require a branch of non-reductive physicalism. She then notes the positive implications of this view for psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Finally, she investigates the role of "consistency" in method and content, toward which experimental philosophers strive. In essence, Brakel articulates the different sets of challenges pertaining to: a) ancient dilemmas such as the mind/body problem; b) longstanding debates about the nature of therapeutic action in psychoanalysis; and c) new core questions arising in the relatively young discipline of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract:This field survey focused on two constructs that have been developed to represent the ethical context in organizations: ethical climate and ethical culture. We first examined issues of convergence and divergence between these constructs through factor analysis and correlational analysis. Results suggested that the two constructs are measuring somewhat different, but strongly related dimensions of the ethical context. We then investigated the relationships between the emergent ethical context factors and an ethics-related attitude (organizational commitment) and behavior (observed unethical conduct) for (...) respondents who work in organizations with and without ethics codes. Regression results indicated that an ethical culture-based dimension was more strongly associated with observed unethical conduct in code organizations while climate-based dimensions were more strongly associated with observed unethical conduct in non-code organizations. Ethical culture and ethical climate-based factors influenced organizational commitment similarly in both types of organizations. Normative implications of the study are discussed, as are implications for future theorizing, research and management practice. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between action research and policy and the kind of confidence teachers, policy makers and other potential users may have in such research. Many published teacher action research accounts are criticised on the grounds that they do not fully meet the conventional standards for reporting social scientific research, and by implication are held to be less trustworthy. Action research is nevertheless often seen by some academics and policy makers as a potential method for developing theory, disseminating (...) good practice, or raising standards. Through a discussion of three major approaches to action research—seen variously as professional learning, practical philosophy and critical social science—it is argued that judgements about confidence depend upon understanding the various kinds of knowledge claim that can be made by action researchers, and appropriate judgements concerning the strength of evidence or reasons. (shrink)

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, Australia and.

SCIENCE CHAPTER I THE CHANGING PATTERN § i THE case presented in this book is not likely to survive criticism in every detail. There never was and there ...

What is knowledge? Why do we want it? Is knowledge possible? How do we get it? What about other epistemic values like understanding and certainty? Why are so many epistemologists worried about luck? In ON EPISTEMOLOGY Linda Zagzebski situates epistemological questions within the broader framework of what we care about and why we care about it. Questions of value shape all of the above questions and explain some significant philosophical trends: the obsession with answering the skeptic, the flight from (...) realism, and the debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism. THE WADSWORTH PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS SERIES (under the general editorship of Robert Talisse, Vanderbilt University) presents readers with concise, timely, and insightful introductions to a variety of traditional and contemporary philosophical subjects. With this series, students of philosophy will be able to discover the richness of philosophical inquiry across a wide array of concepts, including hallmark philosophical themes and themes typically underrepresented in mainstream philosophy publishing. Written by a distinguished list of scholars who have garnered particular recognition for their excellence in teaching, this series presents the vast sweep of today's philosophical exploration in highly accessible and affordable volumes. These books will prove valuable to philosophy teachers and their students as well as to other readers who share a general interest in philosophy. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

Citizenship presents two faces. Within a political community it stands for inclusion and universalism, but to outsiders, citizenship means exclusion. Because these aspects of citizenship appear spatially and jurisdictionally separate, they are usually regarded as complementary. In fact, the inclusionary and exclusionary dimensions of citizenship dramatically collide within the territory of the nation-state, creating multiple contradictions when it comes to the class of people the law calls aliens--transnational migrants with a status short of full citizenship. Examining alienage and alienage law (...) in all of its complexities, The Citizen and the Alien explores the dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion inherent in the practices and institutions of citizenship in liberal democratic societies, especially the United States. In doing so, it offers an important new perspective on the changing meaning of citizenship in a world of highly porous borders and increasing transmigration. As a particular form of noncitizenship, alienage represents a powerful lens through which to examine the meaning of citizenship itself, argues Linda Bosniak. She uses alienage to examine the promises and limits of the "equal citizenship" ideal that animates many constitutional democracies. In the process, she shows how core features of globalization serve to shape the structure of legal and social relationships at the very heart of national societies. (shrink)

This paper presents a view of action research as a valuable way in which teachers can pose fertile questions and engage in inquiry with transformative possibilities. This counters claims of its being at best a sterile method of teacher research and at worst a perilous trap for teachers.Chris Higgins has argued that AR has lost its original intention of empowering teachers and sealing the theory practice divide. He claims that it has degenerated into a method devoid of thought. In its (...) social science versions, it is harmful to the teacher–student relationship and teachers have been mislead into an impoverished idea of professional development. The impossible challenge for action research is to recover its original intention; impossible because the landscape of educational policy militates against it. The authors challenge Higgin's deep pessimism, his versions of AR and his negative account of the intellectual capacity of teachers. We argue that AR does empower teachers, integrates theory and practice and is alive and well, even though conditions in schools are not optimum. This argument is exemplified with numerous illustrations of actual AR projects, which evidence teachers’ participatory and collaborative work, in which they engage in positive change. There is scope for teachers wishing to develop ‘customised’ AR projects of their own in current conditions which have transformative potential in changing the practice of the individual teacher. This in turn supports building and participating in a ‘community of practice’, which strengthens the communal endeavour to contribute to good teaching and good education. (shrink)

Whatever its implications for the other features of human agency at its best — for moral responsibility, reasons-responsiveness, self-realization, flourishing, and so on—addiction is universally recognized as impairing autonomy. But philosophers have frequently misunderstood the nature of addiction, and therefore have not adequately explained the manner in which it impairs autonomy. Once we recognize that addiction is not incompatible with choice or volition, it becomes clear that none of the Standard accounts of autonomy can satisfactorily explain the way in which (...) it undermines fully autonomous agency. In order to understand to what extent and in what ways the addicted are autonomy-impaired, we need to understand autonomy as consisting, essentially, in the exercise of the capacity forextended agency.It is because addiction undermines extended agency, so that addicts are not able to integrate their lives and pursue a Single conception of the good, that it impairs autonomy. (shrink)

"First Published in 1992, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

Feminist approaches within the social sciences have expanded enormously since the 1960s. In addition, in recent years, geographic perspectives have become increasingly significant as feminist recognition of the differences between women, their diverse experiences in different parts of the world and the importance of location in the social construction of knowledge has placed varied geographies at the centre of contemporary feminist and postmodern debates. Gender, Identity and Place is an accessible and clearly written introduction to the wide field of issues (...) that have been addressed by geographers and feminist scholars. It combines the careful definition and discussion of key concepts and theoretical approaches with a wealth of empirical detail from a wide-ranging selection of case studies and other empirical research. It is organized on the basis of spatial scale, examining the relationships between gender and place from the body to the nation, although the links between different spatial scales are also emphasized. The conceptual division and spatial separation between the public and private spheres and their association with men and women respectively has been a crucial part of the social construction of gendered differences and its establishment, maintenance and reshaping from industrial urbanization to the end of the millennium is a central linking theme in the eight substantive chapters. The book concludes with an assessment of the possibilities of doing feminist research. It will be essential reading for students in geography, feminist theory, women's studies, anthropology and sociology. (shrink)

Knowledge has almost always been treated as good, better than mere true belief, but it is remarkably difficult to explain what it is about knowledge that makes it better. I call this “the value problem.” I have previously argued that most forms of reliabilism cannot handle the value problem. In this article I argue that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. An additional problem is (...) that not all instances of true belief seem to be good on balance, so even if a given instance of knowing p is better than merely truly believing p, not all instances of knowing will be good enough to explain why knowledge has received so much attention in the history of philosophy. The article aims to answer two questions: What makes knowingp better than merely truly believing p? The answer involves an exploration of the connection between believing and the agency of the knower. Knowing is an act in which the knower gets credit for achieving truth. What makes some instances of knowing good enough to make the investigation of knowledge worthy of so much attention? The answer involves the connection between the good of believing truths of certain kinds and a good life. In the best kinds of knowing, the knower not only gets credit for getting the truth but also gets credit for getting a desirable truth. The kind of value that makes knowledge a fitting object of extensive philosophical inquiry is not independent of moral value and the wider values of a good life. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper outlines three conceptions of the relationship between normative and empirical business ethics, views we refer to asparallel, symbiotic, andintegrative. Parallelism rejects efforts to link normative and empirical inquiry, for both conceptual and practical reasons. The symbiotic position supports a practical relationship in which normative and/or empirical business ethics rely on each other for guidance in setting agenda or in applying the results of their conceptually and methodologically distinct inquiries. Theoretical integration countenances a deeper merging ofprima faciedistinct forms of (...) inquiry, involving alterations or combinations of theory, metatheoretical assumptions, and methodology. This paper explicates these positions, summarizes arguments for and against each, and considers their implications for the future of business ethics research. (shrink)

Senior managers are important to the successful management of ethics in organizations. Therefore, their perceptions of organizational ethics are important. In this study, we propose that senior managers are likely to have a more positive perception of organizational ethics than lower level employees do largely because of their managerial role and their corresponding identification with the organization and need to protect the organization’s image as well as their own identity. By contrast, lower level employees are more likely to be cynical (...) about the organization’s ethics. In order to compare senior managers’ and lower level employees’ perceptions of ethics in the organization, we surveyed randomly selected senior managers and lower level employees in three firms. We found that perceptions of ethics in the organization differed predictably across levels, with senior managers’ perceptions being significantly more positive and lower level employees’ perceptions being more negative. Implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

So‐called downshifters seek more meaningful lives by decreasing the amount of time they devote to work, leaving more time for the valuable goods of friendship, family and personal development. But though these are indeed meaning‐conferring activities, they do not have the right structure to count as superlatively meaningful. Only in work – of a certain kind – can superlative meaning be found. It is by active engagements in projects, which are activities of the right structure, dedicated to the achievement of (...) goods beyond ourselves, that we make our lives superlatively meaningful. (shrink)

Kraus, O. Biographical sketch of Franz Brentano.--Stumpf, C. Reminiscences of Franz Brentano.--Husserl, E. Reminiscences of Franz Brentano.--Gilson, E. Brentano's interpretation of medieval philosophy.--Gilson, L. Franz Brentano on science and philosophy.--Titchener, E. B. Brentano and Wundt: empirical and experimental psychology.--Chisholm, R. M. Brentano's descriptive psychology.--De Boer, T. The descriptive method of Franz Brentano.--Spiegelberg, H. Intention and intentionality in the scholastics, Brentano and Husserl.--Marras, A. Scholastic roots of Brentano's conception of intentionality.--Chisholm, R. M. Intentional inexistence.--McAlister, L. L. Chisholm and Brentano on intentionality.--Chisholm, (...) R. M. Brentano's theory of correct and incorrect emotion.--Moore, G. E. Review of Franz Brentano's The origin of the knowledge of right and wrong.--Franks, G. Was G. E. Moore mistaken about Brentano?--Kotarbinski, T. Franz Brentano as reist.--Terrell, D.B. Brentano's argument for reismus.--Bergman, H. Brentano's theory of induction.--Kraus, O. Toward a phenomenognosy of time consciousness. (shrink)

The external world sceptic tells some familiar narratives involving massive deception. Perhaps we are brains in vats. Perhaps we are the victim of a deceitful demon. You know the drill. The sceptic proceeds by observing first that victims of such deceptions know nothing about their external environment and that second, since we cannot rule out being a victim of such deceptions our- selves, our own external world beliefs fail to attain the status of knowledge. Discussions of global external world scepticism (...) tend to focus on the second step, where a number of well-known lines of resistance have been offered. But there has been little attention to the first, seemingly innocuous step. That will be the focus of this paper. Part one – sections 1, 2, and 3 – will explain why these standard narratives are not convincing examples of cases where there is no knowledge of the external world. In part two – section 4 – we shall undertake a useful case study. David Lewis’s ‘Elusive Knowledge’ is often thought of as presenting an epistemological vision that is somewhat friendly to external world scepticism: as Lewis himself presents things, there are contexts where external world knowledge ascriptions are uniformly false, and where true knowledge ascriptions are limited to either axiomatic truths or truths about our inner life. We examine his discussion in the light of the preceding reflections and show that the framework he presents is not so concessionary to global external world scepticism after all. (shrink)

Although it has been shown that immersive virtual reality can be used to induce illusions of ownership over a virtual body , information on whether this changes implicit interpersonal attitudes is meager. Here we demonstrate that embodiment of light-skinned participants in a dark-skinned VB significantly reduced implicit racial bias against dark-skinned people, in contrast to embodiment in light-skinned, purple-skinned or with no VB. 60 females participated in this between-groups experiment, with a VB substituting their own, with full-body visuomotor synchrony, reflected (...) also in a virtual mirror. A racial Implicit Association Test was administered at least three days prior to the experiment, and immediately after the IVR exposure. The change from pre- to post-experience IAT scores suggests that the dark-skinned embodied condition decreased implicit racial bias more than the other conditions. Thus, embodiment may change negative interpersonal attitudes and thus represent a powerful tool for exploring such fundamental psychological and societal phenomena. (shrink)

Every day, in many situations, we use expressions which seem only vaguely to provide us with information. The weather forecaster tells us that "some showers are likely in Northern regions during the night", a statement which is vague with respect to number of showers, location, and time. Yet such messages are informative, and often it is not possible for the producer of the message to be more precise. A tutor tells his students that "only a few students fail their exams (...) outright". This does not give a precise incidence. Yet it might be equally misleading to do so. For example, to say that 12% failed outright last year says nothing about other years, while to say an average of 8% over the last five years says nothing about variability. We argue that a precise, numerical statement can be sometimes more misleading in reality than a vague statement. Many researchers in psychology have attempted to capture the meaning of quantities by relating them to scales of quantity. The book explores this idea in detail and shows with original studies how these expressions also serve to control attention and to convey information about the expectations held by those involved in the communication. The book works towards a psychological theory of the meaning of quantifiers and similarly vague terms. New links are drawn between formal theories of quantification and psychological experimentation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many people now believe that human reproductive cloning – once sufficiently safe and effective – should be permitted on the grounds that it will allow the otherwise infertile to have children that are biologically closely related to them. However, though it is widely believed that the possession of a close genetic link to our children is morally significant and valuable, we argue that such a view is erroneous. Moreover, the claim that the genetic link is valuable is pernicious; it (...) tends to give rise to highly undesirable consequences, and therefore should be combated rather than pandered to. The emphasis on the genetic is unwarranted and unfortunate; rather than giving us moral reason to support reproductive cloning in the case of infertility, the fact that cloning requests are likely to be motivated by the genetic argument gives us reason to oppose its availability. (shrink)

Sociopaths are “outstanding” members of society in two senses: politically, they draw our attention because of the inordinate amount of crime they commit, and psychologically, they hold our fascination because most ofus cannot fathom the cold, detached way they repeatedly harm and manipulate others. Proximate explanations from behavior genetics, child development, personality theory, learning theory, and social psychology describe a complex interaction of genetic and physiological risk factors with demographic and micro environmental variables that predispose a portion of the population (...) to chronic antisocial behavior. More recent, evolutionary and game theoretic models have tried to present an ultimate explanation of sociopathy as the expression of a frequency-dependent life strategy which is selected, in dynamic equilibrium, in response to certain varying environmental circumstances. This paper tries to integrate the proximate, developmental models with the ultimate, evolutionary ones, suggesting that two developmentally different etiologies of sociopathy emerge from two different evolutionary mechanisms. Social strategies for minimizing the incidence of sociopathic behavior in modern society should consider the two different etiologies and the factors that contribute to them. (shrink)

Disaster response is a highly collaborative and critical process that requires the involvement of multiple emergency responders (ERs), ideally working together under a unified command, to enable a rapid and effective operational response. Following the 9/11 and 11/13 terrorist attacks and the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is apparent that inadequate communication and a lack of interoperability among the ERs engaged on-site can adversely affect disaster response efforts. Within this context, we present a scenario-based terrorism case study to (...) highlight the challenges of operational disaster command and response. In this article, which is based on the French emergency response doctrine, we outline a semantics-based common operational command system that is designed to guarantee an efficient information flow among ERs. Our focus is on offering to all ERs, a real-time operational picture of the situation in order to enable multilevel coordination among firefighters, police, healthcare units, public authorities, and other stakeholders. Our approach consolidates information to promote timely sharing of data among ERs. The proposed system is based on an ontology that has been developed to represent the different types of knowledge on the part of ERs, providing a shared vocabulary that covers a variety of interoperability concerns. (shrink)