It is widely recognized that accurately identifying and classifying competitors is a challenge for many companies and entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, it is a paramount activity which provide valuable insights that affect a wide range of strategic decisions. One of the main challenges in competitor identification lies in the complex nature of the competitive relationships that arise in business envi- ronments. These have been extensively investigate over the years, which lead to a plethora of competition theories and frameworks. Still, the concept of (...) competition remains conceptually complex, as none of these approaches properly formalized their assumptions. In this paper, we address this issue by means of an ontological analysis on the notion of competition in general, and of business competition, in particular, leveraging theories from various fields, including Marketing, Strategic Management, Ecology, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences. Our analysis, the first of its kind in the literature, is grounded on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and allows us to formally characterize why competition arises, as well as to distinguish between three types of business competitive relationships, namely market-level, firm-level and potential competition. (shrink)

Dwellers in the Land focuses on the realistic development of these bioregionally focused communities and the places where they are established to create a ...

This paper describes a project that consisted of translation conception in the theoretical vision and the available advent in the Internet, the automatic translation. In the establishment of a practical methodology of exercises translated with the dictionary and the automatic translator. Finishing, it diagnosised the necessary requirements with the Letters Course students in the Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia, as previous structure knowledge of the English language and the time and author context. These resources, automatic translators added the previous (...) knowledge made possible the optimization of the time in the process of the English texts translation. (shrink)

Apresenta investigação sobre a relação entre a Representação da Informação e a Dialética, demonstrando que enquanto campos de estudos podem contribuir para um repensar da forma como o conhecimento pode se estabelecer. Traz como questão-chave: Por qual motivo devemos fazer uso dos princípios que regem a Dialética para representar cibercordéis? Para responder a esse problema de pesquisa, tem-se como objetivo geral: Apresentar a Dialética como uma proposta teórico-metodológica capaz de auxiliar no processo de Representação da Informação de cibercordéis. Metodologicamente, a (...) investigação é qualitativa, trazendo como a abordagem o próprio Campo da Dialética e corpus, os Cordéis Digitais (cibercordéis) presentes em grupos de facebook com buscas orientadas pela hashtag cordel (#cordel). Nos resultados identificou-se a presença de 8 (oito) Marcadores Sociais, a saber: Classe Social, Étnico-racial, Gênero, Geração, Nacionalidade, Regionalidade, Religião e Sexualidade. Uma vez categorizados, com a análise dos dados, foi possível melhorar o processo de Representação da Informação através do uso do princípio da contradição, por exemplo, e assim, tornar a prática informacional mais robusta e eficaz. Nas conclusões, foi possível chegar a um posicionamento basilar para podermos compreender a ideia do que é Representação Dialética da Informação, especialmente, se tomado como ponto de apoio e partida, princípios como os da contradição e o da totalidade. (shrink)

The emergence of philosophical hermeneutics as the possible common language of contemporaneity forces us to reflect on the path of hermeneutics from its genesis and through its development. This article briefly covers this trajectory, in order to elucidate the close relationship between hermeneutics and nihilism, as well as place the ¨weak thinking” of the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo as the expression of the nihilistic vocation of hermeneutics. Therefore, the article highlights the key role played by Gadamer in the emergence of (...) what is properly called philosophical hermeneutics. From these foundations, it is intended to demonstrate the extent to which philosophical hermeneutics, rended by Vattimo as the Ontology of Actuality, finds its roots in the Christian secularization process. Christian secularization contributes to form some of the traits of the Western culture. These traits allow both the reading and interpretation of reality as enable a proper understanding of the importance and centrality of the Christian tradition to contemporary philosophical reflection, especially with regards to hermeneutics and nihilism. (shrink)

Rigorous attention has been paid to moral distress among healthcare professionals, largely in high-income settings. More obscure is the presence and impact of moral distress in contexts of chronic poverty and structural violence. Intercultural ethics research and dialogue can help reveal how the long-term presence of morally distressing conditions might influence the moral experience and agency of healthcare providers. This article discusses mixed-methods research at one nongovernmental social support agency and clinic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Chronic levels of moral (...) distress and perceptions of moral harm among clinicians in this setting were both violent, following Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ use of that term, and a source of exceptional and innovative care. Rather than glossing over the moral variables of work in such desperate extremes, ethnography in these settings reveals novel skills and strategies for managing moral distress. (shrink)

Types are fundamental for conceptual modeling and knowledge representation, being an essential construct in all major modeling languages in these fields. Despite that, from an ontological and cognitive point of view, there has been a lack of theoretical support for precisely defining a consensual view on types. As a consequence, there has been a lack of precise methodological support for users when choosing the best way to model general terms representing types that appear in a domain, and for building sound (...) taxonomic structures involving them. For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) - aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs. At the core of this enterprise, there has been a theory of types specially designed to address these issues. This theory is ontologically well- founded, psychologically informed, and formally characterized. These results have led to the development of a Conceptual Modelling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML have been successfully employed on conceptual model design in a variety of domains including academic, industrial, and governmental settings. These experiences exposed improvement opportunities for both the OntoUML language and its underlying theory, UFO. In this paper, we revise the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The new version of this theory shows that many of OntoUML’s meta-types (e.g. kind, role, phase, mixin) should be considered not as restricted to substantial types but instead should be applied to model endurant types in general, including relator types, quality types, and mode types. We also contribute with a formal characterization of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a new metamodel for OntoUML (termed OntoUML 2). To demonstrate that the benefits of this approach are extended beyond OntoUML, the proposed formal theory is then employed to support the definition of UFO-based lightweight Semantic Web ontologies with ontological constraint checking in OWL. Additionally, we report on empirical evidence from the literature, mainly from cognitive psychology but also from linguistics, supporting some of the key claims made by this theory. Finally, we propose a computational support for this updated metamodel. (shrink)

We examined the dilemmas posed by the involvement of expert witnesses in court cases and the institutional constraints on the ethics of expert testimony. The causes for the incorporation of bad science into legal decisions, potential solutions to this dilemma, and the limitations of these solutions are considered. We concluded that law, science, and experts must respond to the problems posed by expert witnessing.

Enterprise Risk Management involves the process of identification, evaluation, treatment, and communication regarding risks throughout the enterprise. To support the tasks associated with this process, several frameworks and modeling languages have been proposed, such as the Risk and Security Overlay (RSO) of ArchiMate. An ontological investigation of this artifact would reveal its adequacy, capabilities, and limitations w.r.t. the domain of risk and security. Based on that, a language redesign can be proposed as a refinement. Such analysis and redesign have been (...) executed for the risk elements of the RSO grounded in the Common Ontology of Value and Risk. The next step along this line of research is to address the following research problems: What would be the outcome of an ontological analysis of security-related elements of the RSO? That is, can we identify other semantic deficiencies in the RSO through an ontological analysis? Once such an analysis is provided, can we redesign the security elements of the RSO accordingly, in order to produce an improved artifact? Here, with the aid of the Reference Ontology for Security Engineering (ROSE) and the ontological theory of prevention behind it, we address the remaining gap by proceeding with an ontological analysis of the security-related constructs of the RSO. The outcome of this assessment is an ontology-based redesign of the ArchiMate language regarding security modeling. In a nutshell, we report the following contributions: (1) an ontological analysis of the RSO that identifies six limitations concerning security modeling; (2) because of the key role of the notion of prevention in security modeling, the introduction of the ontological theory of prevention in ArchiMate; (3) a well-founded redesign of security elements of ArchiMate; and (4) ontology-based security modeling patterns that are logical consequences of our proposal of redesign due to its underlying ontology of security. As a form of evaluation, we show that our proposal can describe risk treatment options, according to ISO 31000. Finally, besides presenting multiple examples, we proceed with a real-world illustrative application taken from the cybersecurity domain. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the development of well-founded conceptual models for Service Management, Accounting Information Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic ex- changes are a central notion in these areas and they occupy a prominent position in frameworks such as the Resource-Event Action (REA) ISO Standard, service core ontologies (e.g., UFO-S) as well as financial stan- dards (e.g. OMG’s Financial Industry Business Ontology - FIBO). We present a core ontology for economic exchanges inspired by a (...) recent view on this phenomenon. According to this view, economic exchanges are based on an agreement on the actions that the agents are committed to perform. This view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the object of the transaction. We ground our core ontology on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), discussing its formal and conceptual aspects, instantiating it as a reusable OntoUML model, and confronting it with the REA standard and the UFO-S service ontology. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in thedevelopment of ontologically well-founded conceptual models for Information Systems in areas such as Service Management, Accounting Information Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic exchanges are central phenomena in these areas. For this reason, they occupy a prominent position in modelling frameworks such as the REA (Resource-EventAction) ISO Standard as well as the FIBO (Financial Industry BusinessOntology). In this paper, we begin a well-founded ontological analysisof economic exchanges inspired by a recent ontological (...) view on the nature of economic transactions. According to this view, what counts asan economic transaction is based on an agreement on the actions thatthe agents are committed to perform. The agreement is in turn based on convergent preferences about the course of action to bring about. This view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the object of the transaction, and complies with the view that all economictransactions are about services. In this paper, we start developing our analysis in the framework of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). (shrink)

While epistemic democrats have claimed that majority rule recruits the wisdom of the crowd to identify correct answers to political problems, the conjecture remains abstract. This article illustrates how majority rule leverages the epistemic capacity of the electorate to practically enhance the instrumental value of elections. To do so, we identify a set of sufficient conditions that effect such a majority rule mechanism, even when the decision in question is multidimensional. We then look to the case of sociotropic economic voting (...) in US presidential elections to provide empirical tractability for these conditions. We find that absent such an epistemic capacity a number of presidential elections might well have been decided differently. By generating clear conditions for the plausibility of claims made by epistemic democrats, and demonstrating their correspondence to empirical data, this article strengthens the broader instrumental grounds recommending democracy. (shrink)

Tem-se como objetivo deste artigo problematizar a questão da dissolução da subjetividade tal como aparece na obra-prima de Nietzsche, O Nascimento da Tragédia, ou Helenismo e Pessimismo, focando, sobretudo, nos capítulos introdutórios 3, 4 e 5. Ao longo de nosso estudo será analisado o percurso argumentativo que permitiu a Nietzsche abrir mão do sujeito centrado doador de sentido para propor, na verdade, seu completo desfazimento através da contemplação estética da arte dionisíaca. Conclui-se que o pensamento de Nietzsche se dá de (...) tal maneira porque é enviesado em uma visão estética de mundo na qual a dicotomia sujeito e objeto não se aplica por completo. (shrink)

The example of the bees, as they appear in Plato’s Phaedo, taken up again in Aristotle’s Politics and in Hobbes’ commentary contained in Leviathan, shows the potential of the phenomenological reading of examples as a method of understanding the basis on which philosophical thought is determined. Sign and communication are peculiar to gregarious and political animal life. In seeking to embody the Aristotelian concept of lógos in the context of a living community, as the basis for interaction and co-existence, we (...) must be sure that our interpretation does not reduce it to what, according to Aristotle, is simply animal behaviour. The Platonic sequence “ass, wolf, bee, god” situates the model of political life between a life in injustice and a life in wisdom. The Aristotelian variationdetermines the lógos on what is just and what is unjust as a natural increment in lucidity, compared with the mere exercising of gregariousness and sociability. Hobbes’ inversion of the Aristotelian example considers a natural reality in the light of the distortions that complicate and make it impossible. Hobbes thus shifts human politics towards artificiality that renders it viable. In each case, the example holds up a different mirror to the same reality. (shrink)

O termo sujeito na filosofia aristotélico-tomista era empregado no sentido de fundamento, substrato, referindo-se a qualquer substância. Com a Idade Moderna surge Descartes que desencadeará uma verdadeira revoluçáo na concepçáo filosófica de sujeito: o homem passa a ser o fundamento primeiro de toda a realidade, sujeito único, inaugurando-se a filosofia da subjetividade. O sujeito cartesiano primeiro é o ego do cogito ( penso ), em que o homem é concebido apenas como espírito, substância pensante . Entretanto, o caminhar meditativo de (...) Descartes aponta para novos desdobramentos de sua concepçáo de homem e conseqüentemente do sujeito, permitindo-nos falar de uma subjetividade corporal. Por outro lado, a realidade das paixões nos leva também a considerar a existência de um sujeito resultante da uniáo alma-corpo. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMaximus the Confessor has been the subject of numerous subsets of the historical, philosophical, and theological disciplines, but the prominent role virtue – and above all else love – plays in his corpus remains vastly underexplored or misunderstood in secondary scholarship. The ascetic thinker’s understanding of virtue is fascinating in its own right since it implies and decodes the enormity of his theological vision by serving as the locus in and through which the created and the uncreated encounter each other. (...) But the distinctive edge of his aretology is all the more peculiar by the way in which he forged it from the remaining shards of the late antique philosophical schools and honed it against the theological touchstones of anchorites, monastics, and Biblical commentators. The result was a multilayered theology of virtue that reimagined the place of love in the Christian life and remained a constitutive aspect of Greek monastic practice and lay piety until the fall of Constantinople and beyond. This chapter situates Maximus within the intellectual horizons wherein he expressed his theology of virtue, analyzes the relationship of love to knowledge and personhood, and examines how the virtues, and especially love, function as the mediating principle between divine condescension and human deification. (shrink)

O estudo que se segue, tratar-se-á, a prima facie, de uma tentativa de justificar a necessidade de Michel Henry em radicalizar o método fenomenológico a fim de conceber a dualidade visível-invisível na Imanência absoluta de um sujeito patético sem, contudo, afastar-se do campo fenomenológico. No entanto, nos será preciso entender que suas considerações se tratam de um projeto onto-fenomenológico pois, segundo o autor, é apenas submetendo toda a ontologia à fenomenologia que o desvelar do Ser é suscetível de dar-se em (...) sua plenitude. Nesta medida, espera-se com esse artigo apresentar-lhes os argumentos principais da Onto-Fenomenologia Material de Michel Henry arguindo, por sua vez, que seu projeto filosófico não se trata de metafísica e, tampouco, de mística. Em sentido oposto, mostraremos em que medida a Filosofia Material de Michel Henry deve ser considerada ontologia e seu método fenomenológico. Para tal utilizaremos como base, em especial, L’essence de la Manifestation e Phenomenologie Materielle. (shrink)

Bien común y ciudadanía en una era emotivista: la política identitaria como vector de crisis y renovación del debate público Este artículo analiza los conceptos de ciudadanía y bien común, considerando la crisis del debate público provocada, entre otras causas, por una distorsión de las políticas identitarias, en el contexto del emotivismo moral moderno. Para ello, este trabajo adopta la metodología de la revisión bibliográfica para desarrollar un análisis teórico de conceptos centrales de la filosofía práctica contemporánea, abarcando diversas referencias, (...) como MacIntyre, Lilla, Taylor, Finnis, Sandel y Kymlicka. Tras presentar el diagnóstico de MacIntyre sobre el ethos emotivista moderno como factor de insolubilidad de las controversias morales y la crítica de Lilla a la despolitización causada por el atomismo de las políticas identitarias, se estudian las condiciones para la rehabilitación teórica de los conceptos de ciudadanía y bien común, a partir de una ética aristotélica y comunitaria relativa a la razón práctica, en virtud de la cual la amistad cívica es relevante para equilibrar las diferencias dentro de una unidad política mayor. La conclusión es que las políticas de identidad pueden salvaguardarse si se ponderan con el concepto de bien común, para así superar las contradicciones emotivistas del debate público. (shrink)

Adotando como referencial teórico a obra de Jürgen Habermas, bem como as bases para o seu pensamento na Escola de Frankfurt, o presente artigo busca analisar em que medida o horizonte que se vislumbra diante da crise sanitária pode ser tomado em perspectiva para se pensar a questão do direito ao meio ambiente sustentável. Para tanto, realizou-se uma pesquisa qualitativa, sob o método hipotético-dedutivo, em uma abordagem exploratória e adotando a técnica de pesquisa bibliográfica. Ao final, conclui-se que a racionalidade (...) moderna necessita de novos paradigmas na relação homem-natureza, a qual não se pode ser mediada pela razão instrumental hegemônica. (shrink)

Nesta reflexão sobre a concepção e a percepção de tempo e de temporalidade no antigo Egipto enfatizam-se as várias formas de encarar o tempo existentes entre os antigos Egípcios, as suas diferentes e operantes marcas, regulares e cadenciadas, aplicáveis ao Cosmos e ao indivíduo e o modo como afectavam, directa ou indirectamente, os comportamentos das diferentes camadas da sociedade egípcia.Além de, obviamente, conhecer os efeitos e a influência da passagem do(s) tempo(s), a sociedade egípcia destacou-se pela sua particular ânsia de (...) superação e anulação desses efeitos. O desejo de abolir o tempo e a ideia de uma apaziguadora eternidade no Além foram, durante muitos séculos, objectivos e ideias estruturantes dos seus modos de ser e de estar, quer no plano mental quer no material. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende discutir os limites e contradições presentes no cotidiano dos refugiados residentes no município do Rio de Janeiro, tendo em vista que esta cidade concentra forte presença de africanos e latino americanos vítimas de conflitos internos em seus Países. Para tanto, destaca as formas de adaptação e sobrevivência dessa população, registrando o papel da variável política na formulação e definição do movimento migratório contemporâneo. Desse modo, pretende-se discutir quais os lugares ocupados pelos povos deslocados nessa nova territorialidade (...) em que se privilegia o fim das limitações econômicas e que asseguram livre fluxo de capitais, em detrimento do próprio fluxo da vida humana. (shrink)

This wide-ranging book examines the new dynamics of corporate social responsibility and the impact they have had on the transformation of business corporations. Written by an international group of distinguished experts in management and organization studies, economics and sociology, the book leads one to theoretically and practically rethink CSR, a movement that has developed into a strong and rich institutional domain since the mid 1990s. Through 14 chapters, the book shows the complexity, diversity and progression of the institutional work performed (...) by a large number of individual and organizational actors in specialized networks to develop this strategic field. Central to this book are: the core issues associated with the field of CSR; recent advances in the development, dissemination and implementation of public and private standards of social responsibility; the pressing challenges of developing sustainable strategies of value creation in the face of global warming and underdevelopment; and finally, examples of how CSR has been implemented and institutionalized within business organizations with special attention to the role played by a variety of social actors in organizational change. Conceived as a movement, corporate social responsibility spearheads a transformation project challenging traditional and outmoded forms of corporate governance that frequently pose troublesome ethical issues. From this standpoint, Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Change will serve as a reference point for academics, researchers, managers and practitioners. (shrink)

This article intends to follow the main movements presented by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze . to propose a strucuture of the sense according to The logic of sense . In order to do this, trying to achieve the very particular Deleuzian structuralism, we will follow especially some arguments established between the fourth . and the eighth . series of this book, as well as points of the text How do we recognize structuralism? .Este texto pretende acompanhar os principais movimentos apresentados (...) pelo filósofo Gilles Deleuze para propor uma estrutura do sentido, de acordo com a Lógica do sentido . Para tanto, tentando nos alçar ao estruturalismo muito particular de Deleuze, seguiremos especialmente alguns argumentos estabelecidos entre a quarta e a oitava séries desse livro, bem como pontos do artigo Em que se pode reconhecer o estruturalismo? (shrink)

Este texto pretende acompanhar os principais movimentos apresentados pelo filósofo Gilles Deleuze para propor uma estrutura do sentido, de acordo com a Lógica do sentido (1969). Para tanto, tentando nos alçar ao estruturalismo muito particular de Deleuze, seguiremos especialmente alguns argumentos estabelecidos entre a quarta (Das dualidades) e a oitava (Da estrutura) séries desse livro, bem como pontos do artigo Em que se pode reconhecer o estruturalismo? (1972).

Este artigo é uma exposição fragmentada de pesquisa realizada no âmbito de doutoramento no PPGArtes/UnB. Mostra-se como uma proposta cênica-pedagógica, sendo um diálogo do corpo com as técnicas e poéticas que se encontram nas expressões de artes do povo que trazem matrizes africanas. Abordar-se-á reflexões sobre os aspectos que envolvem o trabalho do artista cênico no que concerne a sua criação estética. Com isso, pretende-se corroborar com a elaboração de saberes no que concerne ao universo das artes populares na contemporaneidade.

Tongan people in Aotearoa New Zealand experience higher rates of mental health challenges than Tongans born in Tonga. Engagement with services is lower for Pacific Island groups than it is for the dominant population in Aotearoa New Zealand. Meanwhile, the Pacific population is growing in Aotearoa New Zealand year after year. This paper explores how services could use evidence to support more appropriate responses for Pacific Islanders, in particular, Tongan communities. It takes recovery in mental health and explores the relevant (...) concepts that would better support engagement and response for Tongans in Aotearoa New Zealand. (shrink)

Em seus últimos cursos no Collège de France, Foucault dedica uma atenção especial ao conceito de parrhesía. Trata-se de uma experiência viva na cultura greco-romana, que ele analisa em meios às técnicas de produção dos modos de subjetivação. No ensaio de si, como forma de cuidado de si, os antigos submetiam a vida à prova por meio do exercício corajoso da verdade. A parrhesía é, pois, o dizer-verdadeiro que faz da vida um campo de experimentação. No contexto dessas análises, Foucault (...) não cessa de se referir às suas obras anteriores e de situá-las a partir dos problemas que se ocupa na presente ocasião. É assim que inscreve seus outros trabalhos na temática da subjetividade e da verdade. Acompanhando esta releitura, arrisco aqui uma aproximação, bastante pontual, entre a noção de parrhesía e o livro O Sobrinho de Rameau, de Denis Diderot, a partir da abordagem deste texto feita por Foucault em História da loucura. (shrink)