A commentary on “SUPPORT: Risks, Harms, and Equipoise,” by Robert M. Nelson; “The Controversy over SUPPORT Continues and the Hyperbole Increases,” by Alan R. Fleischman; and “SUPPORT and the Ethics of Study Implementation,” by John D. Lantos and Chris Feudtner, all in the January‐February 2015 issue.

Cet article s’inscrit dans le prolongement d’une recherche que je mène depuis une vingtaine d’années sur les rapports entre cinéma et pensée. En m’appuyant en particulier sur les réflexions de Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Edgar Morin, j’ai ainsi pu créer les concepts de « complexité esthétique », « noosphère filmique », « cinématographie des flux ». Suite à l’évocation de créateurs-penseurs du cinéma muet d’avant-garde, sont ici abordés des films d’Amos Gitaï, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais et Andreï Tarkovski. (...) L’intitulé, « Les métaphores filmiques du cerveau » indique que l’approche de la relation cinéma-cerveau est d’ordre philosophique, mais également d’ordre poétique. Si le cinéma est à même de donner forme à la pensée, il invente aussi des circuits cérébraux — sonores et visuels — qui lui permettent de devenir forme « pensante ». This paper is a continuation of my research over the past twenty years on the relationship between cinema and thought. By relying in particular on the reflections of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Edgar Morin, I was able to create the concepts of “aesthetic complexity”, “filmic noosphere” and “cinematography of flows”. Following the evocation of creative thinkers coming from avant-garde movies of the silent era, here I discuss films from Amos Gitaï, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Andreï Tarkovsky. My title, “The brain’s cinematic metaphors”, indicates that my approach to cinema-brain relationship is philosophical, but also of a poetic nature. If cinema is able to shape thought, it also invents metaphorical brain paths—audio and visual—that allow it to become a “thinking” form. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Info-computational Constructivism and Cognition” by Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic. Upshot: Focusing on the relationship between info-computationalism and constructivism, I point out that there is a need to clarify fundamental concepts such as information, informational structures, and computation that obscure the theses regarding the relationship with constructivist thought. In particular, I wonder how we can reconcile constructivism with the view that all nature is a computational process.

Johannes Kinker (1764–1845) who tried to promote Kantian philosophy in different ways, was also interested in the phenomenon of language. His general language theory is presented in Inleiding eener Wijsgeerige Algemeene Theorie der Talen, published in 1817. An impression of that theory is given in this paper. Some important questions arise, viz. whether Kinker was influenced by others; whether his theory was an original one and what the place of the theory is in the linguistic situation of the eighteenth and (...) the beginning of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Current bioethical debate is bizarre because it concentrates on exceptional cases while it does not pay attention to underlying value perspectives that determine the agenda of the debate.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

As a first comment it should not be taken that we have any argument against the consistency of Mellor’s actualist version of the B-theory. Not only have we no argument; we hold that Mellor’s position is consistent. As far as logic goes we believe that you can translate A into B, and B into A. Mellor takes a quotation from our article as endorsing the policy of doing for time just what you do for modality, and vice versa, and it (...) is true that you can take our sentence that way. It is also true that we are sympathetic to an equal treatment of these two, but it is important to acknowledge that nothing in the logic forces you to do this. In particular, we agree with Mellor that practically no one treats space in an A-theory manner – even though it is logically consistent to do so. Our concern is solely with Mellor’s argument that a certain position in the temporal case is inconsistent where the analogous modal position is not. And our paper is addressed not so much to Mellor’s own position as to an A-theorist who wants to escape the consequences of Mellor’s argument by doing for time what Mellor does for modality. In fact, there is a position against which Mellor’s argument is successful. As far as we can tell the version we shall present is, if not precisely what Mellor has in mind, close to it, or at least sufficiently like it to illustrate his reply in a form in which we are able to comment on it. Mellor’s example is of Jim who …. (shrink)

Book Information Logical Form and Language. Edited by G. Preyer and G. Peter. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2002. Pp. x + 512. Hardback, £55. Paperback, £19.99.

International business organizations are regularly addressed on their corporate social responsibility (CSR). As illustrated in this paper, it is not yet clear exactly what CSR means to organizations and how to deal with it. In this paper, the authors explore how a sensemaking approach helps to understand the business challenges of CSR within an organizational context. The theories of Karl Weick are applied to the experiences of CSR in Royal Dutch Shell. The authors argue that the key to CSR in (...) international business organizations is to engage stakeholders and start a process of joint sensemaking. Three main competencies are crucial in this: the competency to engage stakeholders through listening and understanding; the creation of an organizational language so that CSR makes sense to members of the organization; and recognizing the momentum of taking action. (shrink)

This study examines the specificvalues held by consumers towards organic andconventionally produced meat, with particularreference to moral issues surrounding foodanimal production. A quota sample of 30 femalesfrom both a rural and an urban area of Scotland, were interviewed. Overall, there was lowcommitment towards the purchase of organicmeats and little concern for ethical issues.Price and product appearance were the primarymeat selection criteria, the latter being usedas a predictor of eating quality. Manyattitude-behavior anomalies were identified,mainly as a result of respondents' cognitivedissonance and (...) lack of understanding regardingmeat production criteria underpinning meatquality marks, e.g., Soil Association label.Responsibilities for ethical issues appeared tobe delegated by the consumer to the meatretailer or government. This raises issuesabout educating consumers and bringingconsumers closer to understanding meatproduction systems. A conceptual framework isproposed that illustrates the significance ofconsumer involvement in how meat-purchasingdecisions are approached in terms of theevaluation of tangible and or intangiblequality attributes. The results also point tothe need for further research into thoseaspects of quality that individuals tend toaddress at the level of the citizen,rather than at the point of purchase. (shrink)

Einstein’s razor, a corollary of Ockham’s razor, is often paraphrased as follows: make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. This rule of thumb describes the challenge that designers of a legal system face—to craft simple laws that produce desired ends, but not to pursue simplicity so far as to undermine those ends. Complexity, simplicity’s inverse, taxes cognition and increases the likelihood of suboptimal decisions. In addition, unnecessary legal complexity can drive a misallocation of human capital toward comprehending and (...) complying with legal rules and away from other productive ends. While many scholars have offered descriptive accounts or theoretical models of legal complexity, most empirical research to date has been limited to simple measures of size, such as the number of pages in a bill. No extant research rigorously applies a meaningful model to real data. As a consequence, we have no reliable means to determine whether a new bill, regulation, order, or precedent substantially effects legal complexity. In this paper, we begin to address this need by developing a proposed empirical framework for measuring relative legal complexity. This framework is based on “knowledge acquisition”, an approach at the intersection of psychology and computer science, which can take into account the structure, language, and interdependence of law. We then demonstrate the descriptive value of this framework by applying it to the U.S. Code’s Titles, scoring and ranking them by their relative complexity. We measure various features of a title including its structural size, the net flow of its intra-title citations and its linguistic entropy. Our framework is flexible, intuitive, and transparent, and we offer this approach as a first step in developing a practical methodology for assessing legal complexity. (shrink)

Business theory and management practices are outgrowths of basic economic principles. To evaluate the proper place of ethics in business, the meaning of ethics as defined by economic theory must be assessed. This paper contends that classical economic thought advocates a nonethical decision-making context and is not functional for a modern complex, interdependent environment.

This book critically analyses experiences with bioethics education in various countries across the world and identifies common challenges and interests. It presents ethics teaching experiences in nine different countries and the basic question of the goals of bioethics education. It addresses bioethics education in resource-poor countries, as the conditions and facilities are widely different, and set limits and provide challenges to bioethics educators. Further, the question of how bioethics education can be improved is explored by the contributors. Despite the volume (...) of journal publications agreement on bioethics education is rather limited. There are only few examples of core curricula, demonstrating consensus on the contents, goals, methods and assessment of teaching programs. We need ask: How can agreement on the best modalities of bioethics education be promoted? (shrink)

International business organizations are regularly addressed on their corporate social responsibility (CSR). As illustrated in this paper, it is not yet clear exactly what CSR means to organizations and how to deal with it. In this paper, the authors explore how a sensemaking approach helps to understand the business challenges of CSR within an organizational context. The theories of Karl Weick are applied to the experiences of CSR in Royal Dutch Shell. The authors argue that the key to CSR in (...) international business organizations is to engage stakeholders and start a process of joint sensemaking. Three main competencies are crucial in this: the competency to engage stakeholders through listening and understanding; the creation of an organizational language so that CSR makes sense to members of the organization; and recognizing the momentum of taking action. (shrink)

Individuals make decisions under uncertainty every day. Decisions are based on in- complete information concerning the potential outcome or the predicted likelihood with which events occur. In addition, individuals’ choices often deviate from the rational or mathematically objective solution. Accordingly, the dynamics of human decision making are difficult to capture using conventional, linear mathematical models. Here, we present data from a 2-choice task with variable risk between sure loss and risky loss to illustrate how a simple nonlinear dynamical system can (...) be employed to capture the dynamics of human decision making under uncertainty (i.e., multistability, bifurcations). We test the feasibility of this model quantitatively and demonstrate how the model can account for up to 86% of the observed choice behavior. The implications of using dynamical models for explaining the nonlin- ear complexities of human decision making are discussed as well as the degree to which the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems might offer an alternative framework for understanding human decision making processes. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume ask whether democracy is universal or culturally bound, how the adoption of Western liberal models of democracy has hindered democratisation in Africa, and how indigenous African political thought can be utilised to design models of democracy suitable for twenty-first-century African countries.

Next SectionCultural differences in end-of-life care and the moral disagreements these sometimes give rise to have been well documented. Even so, cultural considerations relevant to end-of-life care remain poorly understood, poorly guided, and poorly resourced in health care domains. Although there has been a strong emphasis in recent years on making policy commitments to patient-centred care and respecting patient choices, persons whose minority cultural worldviews do not fit with the worldviews supported by the conventional principles of western bioethics face a (...) perpetual struggle in getting their care needs met in a meaningful, safe, and healing way. In this essay, attention is given to exploring why cultural differences exist, why they matter, and how health care providers should treat them in order to reduce the incidence and impact of otherwise preventable harmful moral outcomes in end-of-life care. In addressing these questions, a novel application of the renowned terror management theory will be made. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper it is argued that Vendler's classification of verbs into aspectual categories, called activities, accomplishments, achievements, and states, is better seen as classifying the meanings of sentences, and a recursive scheme for describing the aspectual character of sentences is presented.In the second part, this scheme is applied to the discussion of the epistemic and deontic meanings of the modal verbs must, will, and may. In particular, the relation between the “future” and “nonfuture” senses of (...) epistemic will is examined. (shrink)