Volume 46, Issue 6, November 2020, Page 640-657.

Climate change appears to be a classic aggregation problem, in which billions of individuals perform actions none of which seem to be morally wrong taken in isolation, and yet which combine to drive the global concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) ever higher toward environmental (and humanitarian) catastrophe. When an individual can choose between actions that will emit differing amounts of GHGs―such as to choose a vegan rather than carnivorous meal, to ride a bike to work rather than drive a car, (...) or to take a reusable bag to the supermarket rather than send another plastic bag to landfill―does she have any reason to choose the lower-emitting actions? In this chapter I'll reject the claim that individuals don't make a difference when it comes to climate change. I first discuss making a difference with every action, as a way of getting clearer about how individuals' actions impact causally on the harms resulting from climate change, making a distinction so far overlooked in the climate ethics discussion between 'macro' thresholds like ice-cap melt, and 'micro' thresholds like severe weather events. I set aside making a difference with every action as implausible, and then move on to discuss both low probability of major difference, and high probability of minor difference. I argue that both of these are plausible characterizations of individuals' causal contributions to climate change. I conclude by noting some policy implications of having (probabilistic) individual difference-making back in play. (shrink)

is chapter takes a fresh look at micro-macro relations in the social sciences from the point of view of the mechanistic account of explanation. Traditionally, micro- macro issues have been assimilated to the problem of methodological individualism. It is not my intention to resurrect this notoriously unfruitful controversy. On the contrary, the main thrust of this chapter is to show that the cul-de-sac of that debate can be avoided if we give up some of its presuppositions. (...) The debate about methodological individualism is based on assumptions about explanation, and once we change those assumptions, the whole argumenta- tive landscape changes. (shrink)

Preparers of financial statements are in a position to manipulate the view of economic reality presented in those statements to interested parties. This paper examines two principal categories of manipulative behaviour. The term macro-manipulation is used to describe the lobbying of regulators to persuade them to produce regulation that is more favourable to the interests of preparers. Micro-manipulation describes the management of accounting figures to produce a biased view at the entity level. Both categories of manipulation can be (...) viewed as attempts at creativity by financial statement preparers. The paper analyses two cases of manipulation. First, it describes a recent case of significant and successful lobbying against the accounting regulator in the USA. The second case examines some recent Spanish earnings manipulation to demonstrate the effects of biased reporting at the entity level. Both types of creativity are considered in an ethical context. The paper concludes that the manipulations described in it can be regarded as morally reprehensible. They are not fair to users, they involve an unjust exercise of power, and they tend to weaken the authority of accounting regulators. (shrink)

Andreas Gursky is the darling of philosophers and art theorists of all kinds of traditions and denominations. He has been used as a prime example of the return of the sublime in contemporary art, as a trailblazer in the use of the digital manipulation of images in order to represent something abstract and even as a philosopher of perception who makes some subtle point about the nature of visual experience. All of these arguments are based on some or another technological (...) innovation Gursky uses: the size of his photos, their postproduction (often digital) manipulation and their unusually high resolution. The aim of this paper is to shift the emphasis from these arguments on the significance of the new technology in Gursky’s oeuvre to a much more important role technology plays in his works, namely, in their aesthetics. (shrink)

Influential or frequently cited business ethics research does not appear in a vacuum; our study reveals its predominant sources and contributors by discipline. By examining citations from articles published in three top business ethics journals (Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly and Business Ethics: A European Review) over the period 2004–2008, we document that the preponderance of influential business ethics research comes primarily from the management faculty. In addition, management journals and management books are the predominant sources for influential (...) business ethics research. Further, among the management fields, organizational behavior and organizational structure predominate leadership and strategy as the major subject areas for influential business ethics research, suggesting that this influential body of research is focused on a micro rather than on a macro context. These empirical results lend credence to the perception that there is a silo effect in influential business ethics research and suggest that business ethics research in a micro context might have permeated to the teaching of business ethics. (shrink)

Influential or frequently cited business ethics research does not appear in a vacuum; our study reveals its predominant sources and contributors by discipline. By examining citations from articles published in three top business ethics journals (Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly and Business Ethics: A European Review) over the period 2004–2008, we document that the preponderance of influential business ethics research comes primarily from the management faculty. In addition, management journals and management books are the predominant sources for influential (...) business ethics research. Further, among the management fields, organizational behavior and organizational structure predominate leadership and strategy as the major subject areas for influential business ethics research, suggesting that this influential body of research is focused on a micro rather than on a macro context. These empirical results lend credence to the perception that there is a silo effect in influential business ethics research and suggest that business ethics research in a micro context might have permeated to the teaching of business ethics. (shrink)

Most readers will agree with the starting assumptions of Klee that contemporary science and philosophy assume a primarily micro-deterministic view of nature–and that this has long been the case, or was at least until the 1970s. Defending a strict micro-determinism, Klee argues that concepts of emergence that seemingly are opposed to micro-determinist doctrine can be shown, on analysis, to be ultimately consistent with a thoroughgoing philosophy of micro-determinism. An exception is made, however, in the case of (...) my own view, labeled “direct macro-determinism,” which he describes as “ultimately more troublesome” but then disposes of as being based on “simplistic analogies” and “metaphors” and “too weak to be conclusive.”. (shrink)

This contribution addresses the relation between (macro) hypotheses about social collectives (ranging from dyads to societies) on the one hand and (micro) hypotheses about individual actors on the other. This relation is the subject of methodological individualism (MI) and micro–macro modeling. Their ideas are first illustrated with an example: it is shown how the hypothesis that inequality is related to societal political violence can be explained by considering theories about individuals (i.e. micro theories) and relations (...) between the macro and micro factors (bridge assumptions). Next the components of micro–macro explanations are analyzed in detail. One question is whether macro and micro propositions and bridge assumptions are lawful statements, causal singular hypotheses or only correlations. It is shown that bridge assumptions can be empirical and analytical (i.e. logically true) statements. An example of the former is the impact of inequality on individual political deprivation, an example of the latter is the aggregation of individual crimes to the crime rate. After outlining the major arguments for micro–macro modeling and methodological individualism I illustrate their wide application in the social sciences. I conclude with a discussion of possible problems of micro–macro modeling and MI and a summary of the program of MI. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 28-43, March 2022.

How do states build a security apparatus after violent resistance against state rule? This article argues that in early periods of state building two main factors shape the process: the macro-strategic goals of the state and administrative challenges of personnel management. These dynamics are studied in the context of the establishment of police forces in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia. The empirical analysis relies on information about the location of police stations and a near full (...) census of police forces, compiled from the German Federal Archives. A mismatch is found between the allocation of police presence and the allocation of police personnel. The first was driven by the strategic value of locations in terms of extractive potential, political importance, and the presence of critical infrastructure, whereas the allocation of individual officers was likely affected by adverse selection, which led to the assignment of low-quality recruits to strategically important locations. (shrink)

Scientific collaboration between Northern and Southern researchers and development programs for research capacity-building have received new attention of practitioners and scholars during the last decades. This essay review takes four recent publications on North-South research cooperation and development politics as a starting point to ask for possible links between macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of social analysis that has found renewed interest in the sociology of science literature. The approach has the advantage to heuristically systematize the anthropological, sociological and (...) policy-driven approaches chosen by the editors and authors of the books under review. Moreover, the focus on links between the three levels adds to the conceptual interaction of sociology of science and the science policy fields to estimate the effects of science governance in international and especially in asymmetrical relations with different access to resources. (shrink)

How and why did comparative political economy lose sight of the sources of growing macroeconomic and political instability, a problem that encompassed a growing financial bubble and then a crash in the housing market, a period of sluggish growth that plausibly constitutes secular stagnation, and a crisis of political legitimacy manifesting itself in the rise of antisystem “populist” parties? A gradual shift in CPE’s research agenda from macroeconomic to microeconomic concerns, and from demand-side to supply-side explanations, diminished its ability to (...) analyze adequately the central economic and political problems of the past twenty years. This article traces CPE’s evolution through successive “supermodels” that constituted its core research foci. To understand the current crisis, CPE needs to revisit and update its original roots in Keynes, macroeconomics, and the demand side. This shift is already happening at the margins, as CPE scholars struggle to understand the current crisis. (shrink)

Standard semantic information processing models—information in; information processed; information out —lend themselves to standard models of the functioning of the brain in terms, e.g., of threshold-switch neurons connected via classical synapses. That is, in terms of sophisticated descendants of McCulloch and Pitts models. I argue that both the cognition and the brain sides of this framework are incorrect: cognition and thought are not constituted as forms of semantic information processing, and the brain does not function in terms of passive input (...) processing units organized as neural nets. An alternative framework is developed that models cognition and thought not in terms of semantic information processing, and, correspondingly, models brain functional processes also not in terms of semantic information processing. As alternative to such models: I outline a pragmatist oriented, interaction based, model of representation; derive from this model a fundamental framework of constraints on how the brain must function; show that such a framework is in fact found in the brain, and develop the outlines of a broader model of how mental processes can be realized within this alternative framework. Part I of this discussion focuses on some criticisms of standard modeling frameworks for representation and cognition, and outlines an alternative interactivist, pragmatist oriented, model. In part II, the focus is on the fact that the brain does not, in fact, function in accordance with standard passive input processing models—e.g., information processing models. Instead, there are multiple endogenously active processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales across multiple kinds of cells. A micro-functional model that accounts for, and even predicts, these multi-scale phenomena in generating emergent representation and cognition is outlined. That is, I argue that the interactivist model of representation outlined offers constraints on how the brain should function that are in fact empirically found, and, in reverse, that the multifarious details of brain functioning entail the pragmatist representational model—a very strong interrelationship. In the sequel paper, starting with part III, this model is extended to address macro-functioning in the CNS. In part IV, I offer a discussion of an approach to brain functioning that has some similarities with, as well as differences from, the model presented here: sometimes called the predictive brain approach. (shrink)

What role can philosophy play in a world dominated by neoliberalism and globalization? Must it join universalist ideologies as it has in past centuries? Or might it turn to ethnophilosophy and postmodern fragmentation? Universalist cosmopolitanism and egocentric culturalism are not the only alternatives.

This article examines ontological/dynamical aspects of emergence, specifically the micro-macro relation in cases of universal behavior. I discuss superconductivity as an emergent phenomenon, showing why microphysical features such as Cooper pairing are not necessary for deriving characteristic properties such as infinite conductivity. I claim that the difficulties surrounding the thermodynamic limit in explaining phase transitions can be countered by showing how renormalization group techniques facilitate an understanding of the physics behind the mathematics, enabling us to clarify epistemic and (...) ontological aspects of emergence. I close with a discussion of the impact of these issues for questions concerning natural kinds. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow do micro cases lead us to surprising macro claims? Historians often say that the micro level casts light on the macro level. This metaphor of “casting light” suggests that the micro does not illuminate the macro straightforwardly; such light needs to be interpreted. In this essay, I propose and clarify six interpretive norms to guide micro‐to‐macro inferences.I focus on marginal groups and monsters. These are popular cases in social and cultural histories, (...) and yet seem to be unpromising candidates for generalization. Marginal groups are dismissed by the majority as inferior or ill‐fitting; their lives seem intelligible but negligible. Monsters, on the other hand, are somehow incomprehensible to society and treated as such. First, I show that, by looking at how a society identifies a marginal group and interacts with it, we can draw surprising inferences about that society's self‐image and situation. By making sense of a monster's life, we can draw inferences about its society's mentality and intelligibility. These will contest our conception of a macro claim. Second, I identify four risks in making such inferences — and clarify how norms of coherence, challenge, restraint, connection, provocation, and contextualization can manage those risks.My strategy is to analyze two case studies, by Richard Cobb, about a band of violent bandits and a semi‐literate provincial terrorist in revolutionary France. Published in 1972, these studies show Cobb to be an inventive and idiosyncratic historian, who created new angles for studying the micro level and complicated them with his autobiography. They illustrate how a historian's autobiographical, literary, and historiographical interests can mix into a risky, and often rewarding, style. (shrink)

This article examines the cross-level causal relationship between macro-political settings and micro-political attitudes in eleven Asian societies using the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey (China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan) and the 2006 South Asian Survey (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). After extracting the four underlying dimensions of political attitudes from the broadly comparable questions used in the two surveys, the study first detects national differences in terms of (1) citizens' attitudes toward political activities other (...) than voting, (2) their commitment to a democratic system, (3) their political frustration, and (4) their confidence in their ability to govern themselves. Then, regression analysis examines the possibility that the micro-level variations in each of the four dimensions of political attitudes are related to the abundant macro-level variations found in these Asian countries. The results show that although the country-level predictors for citizens' attitudes toward direct political actions are common to both regions (ethno-linguistic fractionalization and the degree of institutionalization of preference articulation), factors influencing the variations in other dimensions are different. Specifically, the effects of political competitiveness and inclusiveness are more salient in South Asia than in East Asia. (shrink)

My title refers to a very modern problem, for what else is modernization than a process of rational differentiation of society in autonomous, mutually isolated sub-spheres, to the point where no one any longer knows what the unity of it all is? We differentiate, we specialize, we hyperspecialize, and then we get puzzled over the fragmentation we have produced around us, between ourselves and even within ourselves. Look at our own area. You cannot even specialize in practical ethics any more. (...) You have to limit your attention to medical ethics, for example, the ethics of engineering, or business ethics. And within business ethics, my own field of research, the homo universalis is also threatened with extinction. You can do marketing ethics, ethics of finance or computer ethics, until you finally become the typical ‘expert’: someone who knows almost everything about almost nothing.From the despair over hyper-differentiation, the call for integration arises: the call for meaning, for reconfiguration, for making sense of our world and our lives again, the call for reconnection with the great traditions of our culture, the call for community.If we read the great theorists of modernization — Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Habermas, Münch — we learn that the quest for integration is in fact an equally important aspect of modernization as is differentiation. They are two sides of the same coin. In this sense, I think, the integrative endeavour of the EEN can still be considered a modern one.We are presently facing an escalation, or a climax, of modernity. We live in a state of hypermodernity, in which technological, economic and cultural forces dynamize our society on an unprecedented scale. We are really living high up on the dazzling slopes of the exponential growth curves that the Club of Rome predicted over 25 years ago. Everyone speaks of change. Everything is changing, and with institutionalized change, everything has become uncertain. Within uncertainty, however, social disintegration is lurking. Does not the structural uncertainty that we are introducing in our society bring us back to a state of nature, to a state outside the hypothetical social contract on which modern social communities are based? Is not the life of the individualized, flexible wanderers on the labour market again resembling the pledge of man which Hobbes described as ‘solitary, nasty and brutish’ . Has not the life of many in our society again become ‘very unsafe and very insecure, full of fears and continual dangers’, in the way that Locke depicted the state of nature .I understand business ethics as an integrative undertaking in our society, integrative in particular with respect to the economy and the realm of formal organization, integrative also at the interface between life-world and system, to use the terminology of Habermas.Integrative endeavours in our society have an ambiguous relation to change. Change is a key challenge to business ethics. Should we accept disruptive forms of change as inevitable, in order to remain on speaking terms with the economy and its spokesmen? Or should we fiercely resist certain changes? Is change on our side, perhaps? Business ethics is sometimes presented as a way to help managers cope with the many paradoxes of our time. One-dimensional technological rationality, we say, is no longer adequate to grasp the complexities, ambiguities and paradoxes of our world. Successful management requires more flexible, more creative forms of thinking. Philosophy and ethics are then presented as alternatives. But then aren’t we, the philosophers, simply promoting ourselves as the new masters of change for our time? Isn’t the so-called postmodern consciousness in fact an ideological underpinning of hyper differentiation, and in this sense the ultimate self-realization of the spirit of modernity? What sense of direction do we offer, as business ethicists?I would like to speak about the integration of micro, meso and macro-levels in business ethics, from the perspective of social change. My basic thesis is that only an adequate ethics of responsibility can integrate a highly differentiated and ultra-complex society like ours. This integration through responsibility opens up new directions of social change, that proceed simultaneously at the micro, meso and macro-level.In order not to complicate matters too much, I will limit myself to two dimensions of change which are important for business ethics at the moment: economic change ; organizational change . In relation to these changes, I will conclude with some reflections on changes in business ethics itself, the ones that I think are needed. (shrink)

Micro decisions, made by individuals, during a health crisis in which healthcare resources are particularly in short supply, should not be based only on the age of the patients. Ameliorate care is only appreciated when the patient has a limited time to live, whatever their age. Macro decisions concern public policy. We must decide now who will pay for the vaccines, who will get them before others, whether minorities should be granted priority, and whether the United States should (...) join a global distribution system. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics, and the micro level indeterminacy it implies, is generally accepted by philosophers. So too naturalism on which macro states are held to supervene on micro states is now orthodox in the philosophy of mind and science. Still, in both fields it is frequently assumed that macro systems evolve deterministically. This assumption is commonly implicit and undefended, though at times it is made explicit and given minimal defense. In neither case is the incompatability of quantum (...) indeterminacy, macro-micro dependence, and macro level determinism fully acknowledged. Even when incompatability is recognized, it is held that there is hope that quantum indeterminacy might be confined to micro levels. We argue that this is a vain hope. For certain standard quantum mechanical systems, micro indeterminism entails macro indeterminism unless macro states are effectively independent from micro states. This result obtains whether the relationship between supervenient and subvenient states is deterministic or indeterministic. (shrink)

Context: Referring to a recent proposition by Kauffman about the “fundamental nature of circularity in cybernetics and in scientific work in general,” I try to advance this insight with the help of system scientific concepts and a computational model. Problem: Often circularity seems to be taken as a metaphor that does not provide a firm epistemological base that fosters analysis. Method: The methodology builds on mathematics, computer-based modeling, and reasoning. Results: By building on conceptual suggestions for grasping the micro- (...) class='Hi'>macro difference of complex systems in terms of computational power, circularity can be conceived of as an emerging macro-level phenomenon. Implications: I show that the seemingly irritating - and traditionally evaded - concept of circularity is a fundamental and ubiquitous phenomenon in complex systems that can be grasped on a firm physical basis open to computational analysis. The proposal could support constructivist reasoning and help to eventually bridge the disconcerting gap between the humanities and natural sciences. Constructivist content: Circularity is a fundamental principle in the conception of second-order cybernetics and in particular in the observation of observing systems, as suggested by von Foerster. Trying to set it up on a firm analytical basis could advance the constructivist approach and further support it in becoming the contemporary scientific epistemology it deserves to be. (shrink)

For a variety of reasons, it's difficult to determine, with any accuracy, the number of trans and gender nonbinary folks living in the United States.1 Data are difficult to obtain since neither the U.S. Census Bureau nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey people's gender identity. But even if they did, responses would likely be unreliable. Many members of these two groups are hesitant to answer such questions for fear of their safety, resulting discrimination, or because they disagree (...) on the definition of what it means to be transgender. It's also difficult to obtain accurate numbers on these groups since most medical forms still rely on a two-sex system of... (shrink)

코로나 전염병에 관한 담론을 주제로 한 본 연구는 이중적 목적을 갖고 있다. 첫째 방역정책에 있어 개인의 행동에 초점을 두는 미시적 담론에서 가장 논란이 되는 “신체주권(bodily Sovereignty)”이란 개념을 전염병 현실과 관련하여 분석한다. 이 개념의 원조인 J.S. 밀의 저작에서 신체주권이 무엇을 의미하는지 파악하고, 이를 코로나 현실 상황에 적용하여 신체주권에 기반한 주장의 타당성을 검토한다. 둘째 이렇게 미시적으로 분석된 내용을 사회-정치체계의 장기적 방향을 논의하는 거시적 담론과 연결시켜 논쟁의 향방을 ‘가늠’해보려고 시도한다. 아감벤과 지젝이 서로 대척점에 선거시논쟁에서 본 연구는 미시담론적 분석이 지젝쪽의 주장에 좀 더 무게를 (...) 실어주지 않나 어림잡아 본다. 미시와 거시라는 두 수준에서 각기 분석하여 연결을 이와 같이 시도하는 것은 코로나 전염병에 관한 담론의 전반적 구도를 드러내어 이 주제에 관한 향후 논의에 담론적 개요를 제공할 수 있기를 기대하기 때문이다. (shrink)

This paper concerns reductionist views about psychology and the special sciences more generally. I identify a metaphysical assumption in reductionist views which I dub the 'Micro-Macro Mirroring Thesis'. The Mirroring Thesis says that the relation between the entities of any legitimate higher-level science and their lowerlevel realizers is similar to that between the entities of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. I argue that reductionism implies the Thesis, and that the Thesis is not a priori. It is more difficult to (...) tell whether the Thesis is true, and I indicate some relevant considerations. (shrink)

This paper concerns reductionist views about psychology and the special sciences more generally. I identify a metaphysical assumption in reductionist views which I dub the ‘Micro–Macro Mirroring Thesis’. The Mirroring Thesis says that the relation between the entities of any legitimate higher-level science and their lower-level realizers is similar to that between the entities of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. I argue that reductionism implies the Thesis, and that the Thesis is not a priori. It is more difficult to (...) tell whether the Thesis is true, and I indicate some relevant considerations. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to discuss which relation can be established between molecular chemistry, on the one hand, and macrochemistry and nanochemistry, on the other hand. In order to do this, we will consider molecular chemistry as an underlying level, and macrochemistry and nanochemistry as emergent levels. Emergence is characterized in very different ways in the philosophical literature; we will not discuss those differences. We will address a distinction between inter-domain emergence and intra-domain emergence. It is our purpose (...) to argue that, from a basal micro-molecular level, macrochemistry and nanochemistry emerge in parallel. The emergence of macrochemistry is an inter-domain emergence, while the emergence of the nanolevel is an intra-domain one. If this is the case, therefore macrochemistry and nanochemistry are not “successive” levels, but parallel ones. This discussion will be held from an ontological point of view, instead of the classical characterization in terms of scale. (shrink)

Social innovations are urgently needed as we confront complex social problems. As these social problems feature substantial interdependencies among multiple systems and actors, developing and implementing innovative solutions involve the re-negotiating of settled institutions or the building of new ones. In this introductory article, we introduce a stylized three-cycle model highlighting the institutional nature of social innovation efforts. The model conceptualizes social innovation processes as the product of agentic, relational, and situated dynamics in three interrelated cycles that operate at the (...) micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis. The five papers included in this special issue address one or more of these cycles. We draw on these papers and the model to stimulate and offer guidance to future conversations on social innovations from an institutional theory perspective. (shrink)

This article argues that the tradition within the individualism-holism debate of importing arguments from the micro–macro discussion in other disciplines significantly has hampered our understanding of the “individual-social” relationship. While, for example, the “neural-mental” and “atomic-molecular” links represent empirical “gives rise to” relationships, in the social sciences the micro–macro link is a purely analytical “qualifies as” type of relationship. This disanalogy is important, since it has significant implications for the individualism-holism debate: it implies a phenomenally monist (...) social ontology and it disqualifies the notion of social macro causation. (shrink)

This contribution investigates the role ofcontext in natural-language communication bydifferentiating between linguistic andsociocultural contexts. It is firmly anchoredto a dialogue framework and based on arelational conception of context as astructured and interactionally organisedphenomenon. However, context is not onlyexamined from this bottom-up or microperspective, but also from a top-down or macroviewpoint as pre- and co-supposed socioculturalcontext. Here, context is not solely seen as aninteractionally organised phenomenon, butrather as a sociocultural apparatus whichstrongly influences the interpretation of microsituations.The section, micro building blocks (...) andlocal meaning, argues for a sociopragmaticapproach to natural-language communication thusaccommodating both speech act theory andconversation analysis. It examines the questionof how linguistic and sociocultural contextsare accommodated by the micro building blocksof speech act and turn, and speaker and hearer.The results obtained are systematised in thesection, micro meets macro, and adaptedto the requirements of the dialogue act ofa plus/minus-validity claimbased on thecontextualisation of Jürgen Habermas''sconception of ratification of validityclaimadopted from this theory ofcommunicative action(1987). The definition ofa plus/minus-validity claim is furthersupplemented by the Gricean CooperativePrinciple, the ethnomethodological premise ofaccountability of social action, theconversation-analytic notion of sequentialorganisation and the interpersonal concepts offace and participation format. Validity claimsare discussed from both bottom-up and top-downperspectives stressing the dynamics of contextwith regard to both process and product, andselection and construction. (shrink)

This article analyses the patterns underlying debates in sociological theory, using the debate surrounding the distinction between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ as its case. Although – and indeed because – few authors have attempted explicit definition of the distinction, a number of different distinctions have been subsumed under these labels and research has been shaped by packages of assumptions that have gone largely unexamined in their contradictory nature. The article disaggregates the different distinctions that have been associated with the (...) terms ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ and situates theoretical strategies of the past decades in the grammar of oppositions that makes them possible and innovative. Gap-bridging has been the attempt to bring together aspects of the distinction that have been construed as direct opposites; recombination has been the attempt to release certain aspects of the distinction from their association with one side of the divide. Disaggregating the distinction can help us isolate specific theoretical problems for further work, including work that asks how aspects emphasized by different theoretical approaches vary empirically. (shrink)

A unique multilevel perspective-structural social psychology-is explicated to help build theoretical bridges between micro and macro levels of analysis in sociology. The perspective portrays actors (human or corporate) as having minimal properties of purposiveness and responsiveness, encounters as interaction episodes between multiple actors, microstructures as local patterns of interaction emerging from and subsequently influencing encounters, and macrostructures as networks of social positions. These levels of analysis are connected via mutually contingent processes. Applying these assumptions, we illustrate the ability (...) of the framework to strengthen the macrosociological import of micro theories of power, status, and justice. We argue that structural social psychology is an important metatheoretical strategy for developing testable connections between individual and collective units of sociological analysis. (shrink)

In the 21st century, discussions on the environment actively intersect with religious discourse, purposefully incorporating religious texts and spiritual perspectives to propose effective solutions for addressing the pressing global environmental crisis. Within this context, this study employs a narrative analysis approach, conducting fifteen semi-structured interviews with students pursuing undergraduate course in science, aged 18–21 years, representing diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. The primary aim is to understand how traditional values embedded in micro-level activities and rituals, drawn from their culturally (...) and religiously diverse backgrounds, significantly contribute to the formation of distinctive household-based value systems that integrated within education can bring about attitudinal changes by developing sensitivity toward the environment. These narratives offer valuable insights into a nuanced understanding of the crucial role that religious/spiritual teachings can play in shaping robust eco-ethics essential for nurturing a sustainable future. The research underscores the interplay of cultural, religious, and ethical dimensions in shaping individual perspectives and actions toward the environment. (shrink)

Philosophical debate on the measurement problem of quantum mechanics has, for the most part, been confined to the non-relativistic version of the theory. Quantizing quantum field theory, or making quantum mechanics relativistic, yields a conceptual framework capable of dealing with the creation and annihilation of an indefinite number of particles in interaction with fields, i.e. quantum systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. I show that a solution to the standard measurement problem is available if we exploit the (...) properties of the infinite quantum models available in this broader conceptual framework. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relationship between the individual and the collective dimensions of reparations, highlighting the gaps and confluences between the two by focusing on symbolic reparations. It argues that massive reparations programs leave a disparity between the individual and the collective dimensions of reparations, i.e., between the needs of victims dealing with extreme trauma, and the social and political needs of a transitional society. Through reparations, the victim seeks some sort of reparation, i.e., a psychological state in which (...) they feel adequate amends have been made. However, whether reparation at an individual level has taken place is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain. The individual and the collective always stand in tension with one another when granting reparations. This dilemma is central to the reparations debate. It is argued that the gap between the micro and macro can be narrowed through a better understanding of the impact of extreme political trauma. Steps can be taken at the social and political level to potentially increase the impact of reparations on individuals as well as the context, process, and discourses surrounding their delivery. (shrink)

Organoids, in general, have become an established theme in bioethics. However, brain organoids are almost unique due to the vital and symbolic nature of the organ they reproduce, albeit partially,...