Open peer commentary on the article “The Circular Conditions of Second-order Science Sporadically Illustrated with Agent-based Experiments at the Roots of Observation” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: I address Füllsack’s main conclusions in his article regarding the meaning of second-order observations. Especially envisaged are the epistemological and ontological difficulties raised by his scrutiny of the merging between systemic-internal conditions of second-order reflexivity and the thematic-theoretical accounts of selection, intentionality and purposiveness in evolutionary systems.

Recent work on complex adaptive systems in the natural sciences, and the growing relational turn in the social sciences both reject the "systems theories" of earlier generations. This book builds on these entities to advance a relational processual approach to the comparative study of historical and contemporary international systems.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation, AISC 2000, held in Madrid, Spain in July 2000. The 17 revised full papers presented together with three invited papers were carefully reviewed and revised for inclusion in the book. Among the topics addressed are automated theorem proving, logical reasoning, mathematical modeling of multi-agent systems, expert systems and machine learning, computational mathematics, engineering, and industrial applications.

Digital transformation and “artificial intelligence (AI)”—which can more adequately be called “data-based systems (DS)”—comprise ethical opportunities and risks. Therefore, it is necessary to identify precisely ethical opportunities and risks in order to be able to benefit sustainably from the opportunities and to master the risks. The UN General Assembly has recently adopted a resolution aiming for ‘safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems’. It is now urgent to implement and build on the UN General Assembly Resolution. Allowing humans and the (...) planet to flourish sustainably in peace and guaranteeing globally that human dignity is respected not only offline but also online, in the digital sphere, and in the domain of DS, requires two policy measures: (1) human rights-based data-based systems (HRBDS): HRBDS means that human rights serve as the basis of digital transformation and DS. (2) International Data-Based Systems Agency (IDA): IDA should be established at the UN as a platform for cooperation in the field of digital transformation and DS, fostering human rights, security, and peaceful uses of DS, as well as a global supervisory institution and regulatory authority in digital transformation and DS. The establishment of IDA is realistic because humanity has already shown in its past that we are able to not always “blindly” pursue the technically possible but also to limit ourselves to what is technically feasible when humanity and the planet are at stake. For instance, humans researched the field of nuclear technology, developed the atomic bomb, and detonated it several times. Nonetheless, the same humans limited research and development in the field of nuclear technology to prevent even worse consequences by establishing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the UN. (shrink)

This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems. Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction (...) by one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems. (shrink)

Education-migration, or the multi-step recruitment and retention of international students as immigrants, is an increasingly important component of both higher education and so-called highly-skilled migration. This is particularly true in Canada, a country portrayed as a model for highly-skilled migration and supportive of international student mobility. However, education-migration remains under-analyzed from a social justice perspective. Using a mobility justice framework, this paper considers COVID-19’s impact on Canada’s education-migration system at four scales: individuals, education institutions, state immigration regimes, and (...) planetary geoecologies. It identifies ethical tensions inherent to Canada’s education-migration from a systems-level and suggests that a multi-scalar approach to social justice can both usefully complexify discussions and introduce unsettling paradoxes. It also stresses that the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to reimagine rather than return. (shrink)

Systems of units still fail to attract the philosophical attention they deserve, but this could change with the current reform of the International System of Units. Most of the SI base units will henceforth be based on certain laws of nature and a choice of fundamental constants whose values will be frozen. The theoretical, experimental and institutional work required to implement the reform highlights the entanglement of scientific, technological and social features in scientific enterprise, while it also invites a (...) philosophical inquiry that promises to overcome the tensions that have long obstructed science studies. (shrink)

This book takes a unique organizational approach towards understanding the concept of ethics in educational systems. It provides a global perspective and connects theory and praxis through team-based simulations, case studies and scenarios, thus presenting an integrative approach towards tackling teachers' withdrawal behaviors.

Unnatural States is a radical critique of international theory, in particular, of the assumption of state agency--that states act in the world in their own right. Peter Lomas argues that since the universal states system is inequitable and rigid, and not all states are democracies anyway, this assumption is unreal, and to adopt it means reinforcing an unjust status quo. Looking at the concepts of state, nation, and agency, Lomas sees populations struggling to find an agreed model of the (...) state, owing to inherited material differences; and unsurprisingly, among theorists of the nation, only controversy and a great confusion of terms. Meanwhile, the functional incarnations of the state agent are caricatures: the mandarin state, the lawyer state, the landlord state, the heir-to-history state, and the patriot state. Yet recent developments in international theory (constructivism, scientific realism, postmodernism) sacrifice state agency only at the price of an unhelpful abstraction. The states system is dysfunctional and obsolete, Lomas contends, and international theory must be recast, with morality as central, to inspire and to guide historic change. He focuses in his conclusion on prescriptions for change, led by four moral concerns: human rights, weapons of mass destruction, relations between rich and poor societies, and the environment. "I begin this book," writes Lomas, "with the commonest commonplace of international theory, to expose it as a meaningless cliche. In the masterly hands of Hobbes, it was elaborated into a shock formula for organized society, a reading of history as civilization's failure. Kant sought to rescue morality from Hobbes and create the structures of modernity, but Kant's influence is coming to an end. In the Cold War, politicians disagreeing over another philosopher almost brought the world to an end. Hence the challenges of our time. These are primary and profound. Philosophers have done much to define the modern world. The point of international theory is to change it.". (shrink)

Internal due process systems are the formal mechanisms thatmany organizations use to address and resolve ethics conflicts.Problematical due process systems such asinvestigation-punishment and grievance-arbitration systemsnarrowly constrain the political and moral space needed formeaningful ethics voice, praxis, and community. The relativelyuncommon employee board and mediator-counselor types of systemscan help solve such problems. The employee board andmediator-counselor systems permit questioning not only of guiltwith respect to policy violations but also the appropriateness ofthe policies as well as potential biases in an organization'sembedded tradition-system (...) that may be contributing to unethicalbehavior. Theoretical implications for organization ethics,praxis, community, and integrative social contracts theories areexplored. Several case examples are discussed. (shrink)

The Fifth International Scientific Conference of the Faculty of Nursing, Port Said University 2019 Neutrosophic Information Systems and Nursing Scientific Research.

The conjecture that international system structure determines war propensity has met with mixed results in past theory in political science. This question is reexamined within the context of a dynamic model of inter-nation hostile behavior. System structure is defined in terms of the degrees of grievance, fear, etc., among nations and also in terms of the qualitative patterns of hostile behavior that are possible. Propensity for war is measured in terms of the likelihood of progress to war within a (...) given class of hostile behaviors. Then the dynamic model is used to analyze in detail and interpret the relationship between system structure and war propensity. (shrink)

By drawing up a model of the internal communication system of Bangladeshi ready-made garment factories, Helene Blumer identifies the existence and intensity of its communication flows. She furthermore discloses a connection from this communication system to labor unrest. The absence of a functioning formal channel within the factory, the lack of effective labor representation and the rare physical presence of the factory owners confirm the existence of a communication barrier. As symptom of a flawed communication system, this barrier confirms a (...) connection to labor unrest and the management's unawareness of its emergence, which would thwart any modes to predict and prevent work disruptions. Contents - Introduction to the Bangladeshi ready-made garment sector - Illustration of the internal communication system of Bangladeshi ready-made garment factories - Display of a communication barrier and its connection to labor unrest Target Groups - Academics in the fields of corporate responsibility and corporate/internal communication - Practitioners in the fields of corporate responsibility, corporate communication, development cooperation and garment industry About the Author Helene Blumer obtained her Master of Science in Business Administration (major in New Business Development) at the University of Applied Sciences HTW Chur. She currently works at the Swiss Institute for Entrepreneurship (SIFE) in the fields of corporate responsibility and business internationalization. (shrink)

The question whether international law is a system is one of the modern topics discussed by specialists of international law. The text of P. Saganek poses this question with respect to the rules on international responsibility. The two aims are to establish whether the rules on state responsibility are a system themselves and whether they may prima facie support the idea of international law as such a system. The two prima facie answers are positive. Every violation (...) of international law gives rise to state responsibility if it can be attributed to a state and no circumstance precluding wrongfulness is in place. In this sense the rules on state responsibility form a sub-system supporting the thesis on the systemic nature of international law. On a closer analysis one can encounter several doubts as to both answers. Paradoxically those rules are too ideal, too systemic. The author – without denying the necessity of several if not the majority of the identified rules – refers to a tendency of presenting as law some non-binding documents prepared by expert groups. This is a part of a wider process of ‘paper-law’. In this sense expert groups engage in ‘creating the language’ in which the true subjects of international law are expected to speak. (shrink)

International Scientific Relations offers a holistic analysis of the role and impact of science, technology, and innovation in the international system of the twenty-first century.

We present a general method for inserting proofs in Frege systems for classical logic that produces systems that can internalize their own proofs.

The paradox which characterizes the modern states system is that the dual structure of sovereignty and justice through which the system was originally conceived is no more, yet the system is still with us. Justice was redefined in the 19th century as a mere derivation of state sovereignty, a process reducing the focus of the system to sovereignty alone and thus dispossessing the system of a principle to mediate between the sovereign will and the international community. It is argued (...) in this essay that the lack of a mediating principle may signify violence as inherent in the system, subsequently making intervention and terrorism facets of the established order rather than anomalies. Relying greatly on recent critical international legal studies, the article asks if the strategies suggested by lawyers such as Anthony D'Amato and Rosalyn Higgins to cope with the paradox, coupled with the contemporary universal human rights arguments, signal a move towards restoring the historical focus of the system. (shrink)

The International Investment Law system (IIL) is the result of a colonial project within a capitalist system that has been influenced by developmentalism discourse and neoliberal ideology. This book shows how it has become an instrument that facilitates forms of systemic violence against so called “Third World” countries.

H. L. A. Hart proposed one of the most influential accounts of law, according to which law is a union of primary rules, which guide the behavior of the law’s subjects, and secondary rules, which guide officials in recognizing, changing, and interpreting primary rules. Writing at the end of the 1950s, Hart had serious doubts about whether international law meets the necessary criteria for a legal system. But there are several reasons to reconsider his position. One is that (...) class='Hi'>international law has grown significantly since then, but a more important reason is that Hart provided an oversimplified description of the necessary and sufficient conditions for law provided by his account, and therefore of the nature of the international legal order. A proper understanding of Hart’s view gives us a richer and more accurate understanding of the essential features of law, but also a less precise yardstick by which to measure and characterize the various systems of rules, including international law. According to this new yardstick, international law fails to meet the criteria for a Hartian legal system, but for reasons other than those identified by Hart. (shrink)

Using food regime analysis, this paper critically analyzes how corporate actors amass, secure and apply power in the global agrifood system through International Investment Agreements (IIAs). IIAs are a key enabler of increasing corporate power in the agrifood system. We focus on three sets of investment provisions in IIAs: (a) the stringent enforceability mechanism of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, (b) the expansion of the concept of expropriation, and (c) limitations or prohibitions on host countries to impose performance (...) requirements on foreign investors. We argue that these provisions compromise fairness in the international economic system. Attracted by promises of technology transfer, economic growth and employment, host states often prioritize policies that favor foreign investors even if such policies compromise domestic policy space. We provide analysis and examples of escalating corporate power at different stages of the industrial and transgenic model of agriculture. (shrink)

A farming systems approach to development has meant many things over the past 15 years, depending on its institutional and ecological setting, its target populations, and the goals motivating its implementation. Despite the diversity of approaches, and the sometimes rancorous discussion over which was best and why, the approach is now recognized in many places as the only one that can identify and respond to the needs of limited resource farm families, especially those in marginal ecosystems. Involving an iterative process (...) of diagnosis, design, testing and extension, the farming system approach to date has done more to change research objectives at national and international institutions than to change actual farmer practices. By legitimizing what limited resource farmers do and why they do it, a farming systems approach lends itself to policy analysis as well. Recent research in farming systems suggests greater attention should be payed to exogenous variables, including policy and infrastructure, as well as to development of technology that really responds to the felt needs of limited resource farmers in improving their level of living. (shrink)

Even though International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is, strictly speaking, a branch of international law serving as the body of laws governing the conduct of armed conflicts, it functions also, and perhaps to a greater extent, as a moral system (either followed or rejected) for the armies involved in armed conflicts. As utilitarians already noticed, the development of legal systems was powerfully influenced by moral opinion, and conversely, moral standards had been profoundly influenced by law, so that the content (...) of many legal rules mirrored moral rules or principles. Law, like morality, is interested in creating a good society: enabling people to live together in a community and inculcating a sense of social responsibility. However, despite these similarities between the systems, law and morality differ in some of their objectives and in the methods they use for achieving their goals and sustaining human behavior. The application of this conclusion to IHL and the analysis of both its historical nascence in the nineteenth century and the philosophical concepts informing it suggests that IHL serves more the purposes of a moral system than those of a legal system. This claim is strengthened by the analysis of two examples of legal rules of IHL: the proportionality principle in causing collateral damage and the instruction that preventive (or targeted) killings should be used as a last resort. (shrink)

The authors present the conceptual and system-theoretical model of human motor behaviour. The main assumption is that movement is the only observable manifestation of all psychical processes, thus, it is the only phenomenon enabling the creation of hypotheses concerning the psychological conditioning of human behaviour. They pointed to the fact that in the field of biology, and all the more, in psychology, mathematical descriptions are hardly eligible. In this respect, a system-theoretical approach seems to be appropriate. The authors present two (...) systems: information processing modalities in the human mind, based on Nikolai Bernstein’s theory, and the series of processes from stimuli reception to motor response execution. Both these sub-systems make up a super-system. Its simplified graphical representation may be termed “Column Diagram.” The authors analyse the functioning of this super-system in various intellectual-motor purposeful operations. The system-theoretical perspective enables clear categorisation of various human motor operations, their “driving” mechanisms, internal patterns, and their superficial physical and/or mathematical “appearance.” The stream of consciousness in a human motor operation joins the various psychological constructs, which are reception, perception, attention, motivation, intellect, memory, etc., into one coherent, inseparable system. (shrink)

RésuméContrairement aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni, la reconnaissance de l’expertise en linguistique en contexte judiciaire canadien francophone semble, à première vue, marginale. Toutefois, l’état réel de la situation est inconnu puisque le portrait global de la nature des interventions des linguistes lors de procès en tant que témoins experts devant ces tribunaux n’a jamais été réalisé. Notre article a donc pour objectif de contribuer à combler en partie cette lacune. Plus spécifiquement, à l’aide de jugements de tribunaux québécois et fédéraux (...) canadiens, nous dresserons un portrait global de la nature des interventions des linguistes lors de procès en tant que témoins experts devant ces tribunaux. Ensuite, nous discuterons des résultats de notre analyse dans un contexte plus large, soit le contexte judiciaire, afin de tenter d’évaluer l’impact des chercheurs œuvrant en linguistique légale. Notre article se terminera par un appel à la vulgarisation scientifique de la linguistique légale, au dialogue entre les professionnels du système judiciaire et les chercheurs, et à la collaboration interdisciplinaire entre les chercheurs. (shrink)

Democracy may contribute to friendly attitudes and positive attitudes toward outgroups (i.e., outgroup tolerance) because members of democratic societies learn to exercise their rights (i.e., cast a vote) and, in the process, listen to different opinions. Study 1 was a survey study with representative samples from 33 countries (N = 45, 070, 53.6% female) and it showed a positive association between the levels of democracy and outgroup tolerance after controlling for gender, age and the rate of immigrants influx from 2010 (...) to 2013. Study 1 demonstrated that members in countries with higher political participation and civil liberty showed greater tolerance toward immigrants. In Study 2, we conducted an experimental study in Taiwan (N = 93, 67.7% female) to further examine two potential mediators (opinion sharing and voting) of the effect of democratic system on tolerance toward outgroups (i.e., attitudes toward mental patients) after controlling for gender and age. We found that when individuals were allowed to share opinions and vote, they had the highest positive other-oriented emotions toward mental patients, which in turn led to greater tolerance toward outgroups compared to those who were not allowed to share opinions or vote. In general, these results demonstrated that the democratic system plays a critical role in increasing outgroup tolerance. Limitations of the two studies and implications regarding opinion sharing, voting, democratic systems, and effects on outgroup tolerance are discussed. (shrink)

Enthusiasts of the idea of globalization often view international human rights institutions as part of an emerging global governance regime. They claim that these institutions illustrate how state sovereignty is being diminished. This paper looks at the international system for thepromotion and protection of human rights aspart of normative globalization. It arguesthat this system does not constitute a systemof global governance, although in some areas itcomes close.

SummaryThe foundations of modern international thought were constructed out of diverse idioms and disciplines. In his impressive book, Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage focuses on the normative idioms of natural law and political philosophy from the Anglophone world, from Hobbes and Locke to Burke and Bentham. I focus on parallel developments in the empirically-oriented disciplines of history and historiography to trace the emergence of histories of the states-system in the Italian- and German-speaking worlds, from Bruni and (...) Sarpi to Pufendorf and Heeren. Taking seriously Armitage's remark that ‘the pivotal moments in the formation of modern international thought were often points of retrospective reconstruction’, I argue that the historical disciplines supplied another significant intellectual context in which the modern world could be imagined as ‘a world of states’. (shrink)

In 1798, the National Institute and the French minister of foreign relations invited European countries to send delegations of science practitioners to Paris to finalise the values of the metre and the kilogram. This article reads the event as part of a wider attempt to establish the political relevance of international scientific consensus and include scientific exchanges in the diplomatic culture of post-revolutionary Europe. At the end of the 18th century, the scope and methods of both the sciences and (...) diplomacy were being renegotiated. French academicians hoped that the new system of weights and measures would at once facilitate international scientific exchanges and advertise that new authority should be politically invested in savants. During the Directory, part of the political elite hoped to stabilise the Revolution and forge an international order where the Republic could coexist with old regime monarchies. This entailed focusing diplomatic negotiations on commercial development, something a shared metrological system could foster. The conference was the product of the alliance between the two groups. Foreign responses to the project reveal the novelty of the association between scientific discussions and diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, European savants and governments did not agree that metrological reforms fell primarily under the expertise of science practitioners, rather than under that of trading actors or administrators. The conference did not produce consensus on the suitability of the metric system or on the feasibility of programmes for the unification of weights and measures. It was more successful at promoting precision and rationality as key parameters to assess metrological systems and science practitioners as main experts in the matter. (shrink)

In his response to "The Politics of Rescue," Winston argues that the real dilemma facing the international system is not a question of what form intervention will take, but rather a question of the existence of political will to act on the humanitarian impulse.

Departing from theories of distributive justice and their relation with the distribution of health care within society, especially egalitarianism and libertarianism, this paper aims at demonstrating that the approach taken by the European Court of Justice regarding the application of the Internal Market principles (or the market freedoms) to the field of health care services has introduced new values which are more concerned with a libertarian view of health care. Moreover, the paper also addresses the question of how these new (...) values introduced by the Court may affect common principles of European health systems, such as equity and accessibility. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give one kind of internal proportional systems with general representation and without closure and finiteness assumptions. First, we introduce the notions of internal proportional system and of general representation. Second, we briefly review the existing results which motivate our generalization. Third, we present the new systems, characterized by the fact that the linear order induced by the comparison weak order ≥ at the level of equivalence classes is also a weIl order. We prove (...) the corresponding representation theorem and make some comments on strong limitations of uniqueness; we present in an informal way a positive result, restricted uniqueness for what we call connected objects. We conclude with some final remarks on the property that characterizes these systems and on three possible empirical applications. (shrink)