The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

This study examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) from the retail sector deal with four challenges they face when adopting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies: the challenge of developing well-performing CSR projects and programs, building competitive advantages based on CSR, responding to local stakeholder issues in the host countries and learning from different CSR experiences on a worldwide basis. Based on in-depth case studies of two globally leading retail MNCs (with strong operations in Latin America), the concept of Transverse CSR Management (...) emerged. Transverse CSR Management is defined as a distinctive form of organizational configuration that crosses different functional areas, country operations, and the boundaries of the firm. In particular, this article makes three main contributions: (1) we identify four central challenges faced by MNC managers when developing their CSR strategies; (2) we propose the concept of Transverse CSR Management to face these central challenges (together, at the same time) and identify its key elements (top management, external stakeholders, functional areas, and country subsidiaries); and (3) we propose four mechanisms (hierarchical, relational, cultural, and collaborative) through which the concept of Transverse CSR Management can be implemented by practicing managers. This study provides valuable insights for MNC managers in headquarters and subsidiaries on the issues they need to address in order to successfully deal with the four CSR-related challenges. (shrink)

This article presents a response to Néron and Norman’s contention that the language of citizenship is helpful in thinking about the political dimensions of corporate responsibilities. We argue that Néron and Norman’s main conclusions are valid but offer an extension of their analysis to incorporate extant streams of literature dealing with the political role of the corporation. We also propose that the perspective on citizenship adopted by Néron and Norman is rather narrow, andtherefore provide some alternative ways in which corporations (...) and citizenship might be brought together. We conclude by suggesting that, rather than simply applying the concept of citizenship to corporations, we now need to go further in exploring how corporations might play an active role in reconfiguring the whole notion of citizenship itself. (shrink)

Brouwer and Weyl recognized that the intuitive continuum requires a mathematical analysis of a kind that set theory is not able to provide. As an alternative, Brouwer introduced choice sequences. We first describe the features of the intuitive continuum that prompted this development, focusing in particular on the flow of internal time as described in Husserl's phenomenology. Then we look at choice sequences and their logic. Finally, we investigate the differences between Brouwer and Weyl, and argue that Weyl's conception of (...) choice sequences is defective on several counts. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics.

The concept of the self in Western psychology derives primarily from the work of Freud, Jung, and Rogers. To some extent Western formulations of the self evidence a homunculus-like quality lacking in some Eastern conceptions, especially those derived from the Vijnanavada and Zen Buddhist traditions. The Buddhist notion of self circumvents reification, being an impermanent gestalt formed by the interaction of five skandhas or aggregates . Each skandha is in turn a transient pattern formed by the interaction of the other (...) four. The fifth skandha includes eight consciousnesses, one of which results in the experience of the ego or self as homunculus, which Buddhist psychology rejects as delusion. Implications for psychotherapy and everyday life are discussed. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Competence to enact responsible practices, such as recycling waste or boycotting irresponsible companies, is core to learning for responsibility. We explore the role of apps in learning such responsible practices ‘in the wild,’ outside formal educational environments over a 3-week period. Learners maintained a daily diary in which they reflected on their learning of responsible practices with apps. Through a thematic analysis of 557 app mentions in the diaries, we identified five types of app-agency: cognitive, action, interpersonal, personal development, and (...) material. Findings were interpreted from an actor-network perspective using the lens of ‘translation.’ To understand how apps enabled the learning of responsible practices, we analyzed app agency throughout four moments of translation: problematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization. Based on our analysis of how students’ app mentions changed over time, we further theorize learning as a sequence of subtranslations that form the larger translation process: learning as translation(s). Each subtranslation cycle is centered on enrolling a different set of human and nonhuman actors, with their competence, into the network. We contribute to the learning for responsibility field by showcasing how app-enabled learning may create real-life actor networks enacting responsibility, and by priming an actor-network pedagogy for ‘learning in the wild.’ We also contribute to the actor-network learning discussion by conceptualizing heterogeneous human–nonhuman competence and the first processual model of learning as translation(s). (shrink)

Scheitern wie Gelingen sind ambivalente und zugleich existentielle Erfahrungen des Menschen. Die Sehnsucht, das eigene Leben als gelingend zu erfahren, ist dabei Ausdruck des menschlichen Strebens nach Glück. Das Wagnis einer unwiderruflichen Lebensentscheidung ist dabei der verbindlichste Ausdruck individueller Sinnstiftung für ein gelingendes Leben. Zur Frage, welche Gründe dem Gelingen oder Scheitern eines biografischen Lebensprojektes zugrunde liegen, hat Klaus Demmer wesentliche Überlegungen angestellt, denen in dieser Arbeit nachgegangen wird. Zentral ist dabei die Verhältnisbestimmung von sittlicher Persönlichkeit und Identität. Indem das (...) vorgelegte Konzept aus philosophischer, soziologischer und psychologischer Perspektive befragt wird, zeigt der Autor die Anschlussfähigkeit der moraltheologischen Erwägungen für den gegenwärtigen Diskurs um denBegriff der Identität auf. (shrink)

It has been repeatedly stated that approach and avoidance reactions to emotional faces are triggered by the intention signalled by the emotion. This line of thought suggests that each emotion signals a specific intention triggering a specific behavioural reaction. However, empirical results examining this assumption are inconsistent, suggesting that it might be too short-sighted. We hypothesise that the same emotional expression can signal different social messages and, therefore, trigger different reactions; which social message is signalled by an emotional expression should (...) be influenced by moderating variables, such as the group membership of the expresser. In two experiments, we show that group membership influences approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions: Emotions (fear and happiness) expressed by in-group members elicited concordant behaviour, whereas emotions expressed by out-group members activated the reverse pattern. A third experiment, in which participants directly evaluated smiling and fearful individuals resembling in-group and out-group members supported this result. (shrink)

This paper develops propositions on the added value for SMEs of normatively based, employee-oriented corporate social responsibility (CSR). We suggest that not only motives but also the skills of the owner/manager as an institutional entrepreneur are critical in dealing with institutional variance. Also, the transfer of employee-oriented CSR can have positive results for SMEs that could imply that globalisation is not only a race to the bottom.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rhetorical Sense of Philosophy by Donald Phillip VereneJeffrey Dirk WilsonVERENE, Donald Phillip. The Rhetorical Sense of Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2021. xiii + 139 pp. Cloth, $49.95Rhetoric gives philosophy the ability to speak. Philosophy gives rhetoric something to say. They are mutually indispensable, and their rivalry at times descends into enmity. There are also occasions when only the one can rescue the other from (...) catastrophe. Those are the overarching dynamics of Verene's book.There is an introduction, then two parts, "Prolegomena Philosophiae," comprising four chapters, and "Three Rhetorics," comprising three chapters, followed by an epilogue, notes, and an index.Though Verene does not mention Hume in the introduction—and only twice in the book otherwise—it is difficult not to think of him when Verene speaks of philosophy as "a theater of memory," as if correcting Hume's "theater of the mind." It is also corrective to presentism, often attributed to Hume, when Verene claims that a chief task of the philosopher "is to keep us from always living in the present. For this labor to be accomplished the philosopher must go to school with both the poets and the orators." Rhetoric, rightly understood, helps philosophy to remain philosophy and prevents it from becoming sophistry.In chapter 1, "Philosophical Thinking," Verene reminds the reader that mortality is not a choice. The bounded nature of human life leads to the pursuit of happiness and, therefore, also to the pursuit of meaning. The human responds in two ways, by creating both arguments and stories, but arguments as well as stories need words.The "and yet" comes in the second chapter, "Philosophy and the Muses." Verene writes, "The philosopher knows that the real always outstrips language." Philosophy and its kin, poetry, point beyond themselves. Writing is remembering, but what is written, even at its best, can never capture all that is remembered, and memory, even at its best, can never capture all that is.In "Philosophy and Eloquence," Verene maps a way of escaping Kant. Modern philosophy rejects rhetoric and memory in its pursuit of novelty as progress. Verene introduces the concept of ingenium, "a power philosophy shares with rhetoric." It "is the ability to perceive similarity in dissimilars.... the power to produce metaphor" and irony. Metaphor and irony are philosophy's response to the stale univocal predication of critical thinking that Verene sees as the reduction of reality to an analytic concept.In "Philosophical Style," he shows that as soon as a subject is joined to a predicate, the subject ceases to be only what it was. The predicate is an [End Page 369] otherness that is pulled into the subject such that ever after the subject has an inner dialectic. "The ball is red" is generative of a ball that is not merely a ball but also something else, something foreign to its ballness. The ball gives up nothing of what it was but, rather, gains something that it was not, and yet not in the deterministic way of necessity. The ball does not have to be red, but if it is red, then "ball" and "red" constitute an inner dialectic. The ball is red predicatively and not tautologically, but separating out the kinds of predication does not exhaust all the mystery of the inner dialectic; nothing can.The three rhetorics are of "Self-Discourse," "Absolute Thought," and "The Philosophical Frontispiece." These are chapters respectively about speech appertaining to man, God, and the political entity, though each considered slant rather than head-on.Verene juxtaposes Descartes and Vico with respect to self-discourse. Descartes reframes the human being in terms of the first-person singular pronoun, thereby transforming the personal into the categorical. Vico responds by writing not an "autobiography" but, rather, The Life of Giambattista Vico Written by Himself, thereby transforming the pronoun for the other, "he," into the self-identifier. There follows an essay on the essay and especially on the essays of Montaigne as autobiography. "To think," Verene writes, "is to move ideas in relation to each other and thus to illuminate what comes before the mind in experience." What emerges is a dialectic between the "I" and... (shrink)

Every project in digital and computational history of science starts with the collection of data. Depending on the research project, the subject of study, and other factors, data can comprise a variety of different types, including full texts, images, audio, video, and bibliographic metadata. Publications and project reports generally describe their results and the methods and algorithms employed, but few discuss the challenges of the initial data collection process or how it fits into the overall research data life cycle. This (...) essay discusses a concrete research data life cycle and takes a look at the difficulties it involves. It also explores the strategies and challenges of data collection and the question of the comparability of datasets. (shrink)

Enhancing brain activity and function is a very ancient practice which is usually accomplished by taking illegal drugs. Prescription medication is becoming more commonly used as a means of enhancing mood, and recently, it has become possible to modulate mood by applying magnetic or electrical current to the brain or by training the brain to work at predetermined oscillations. A summary of the available neuromodulation techniques will be presented associated with data from human subjects implanted with cortical and/or subcutaneous electrodes (...) that demonstrate the potential for electrical neuro-enhancement. (shrink)

When making an assessment of animal welfare, it is important to take environmental (housing) or animal-based parameters into account. An alternative approach is to focus on the behavior and appearance of the animal, without making actual measurements or quantifying this. None of these tell the whole story. In this paper, we suggest that it is possible to find common ground between these (seemingly) diametrically opposed positions and argue that this may be the way to deal with the complexity of animal (...) welfare. The model will have to be acceptable for the different parties that will be affected by it and real benefits for the animal should result from it. This will be the basis of a practical ethical approach. All this can be condensed into a model that essentially is made up out of three basic elements: the classical welfare analysis with an existing welfare assessment tool, an assessment of the stockholder, and an implementation of the Free Choice Profiling technique. This new framework does not pretend to be a different or better animal welfare matrix; it is intended to integrate existing knowledge and to provide a practical tool to improve animal welfare. It identifies whether there are welfare problems on a farm, if present whether these problems are caused by the housing system or the stockholder, and what can be done to improve the situation. (shrink)

Jonathan Wolff is Professor of Philosophy at University College London. He is the author of Robert Nozick (1991), An Introduction to Political Philosophy (1996) and Why Read Marx Today (2002). He is currently working on a number of topics at the intersection of political philosophy and public policy.

We show that the Bohmian approach in terms of persisting particles that move on continuous trajectories following a deterministic law can be literally applied to QFT. By means of the Dirac sea model – exemplified in the electron sector of the standard model neglecting radiation – we explain how starting from persisting particles, one is led to standard QFT employing creation and annihilation operators when tracking the dynamics with respect to a reference state, the so-called vacuum. Since on the level (...) of wave functions, both formalisms are mathematically equivalent, this proposal provides for an ontology of QFT that includes a dynamics of individual processes, solves the measurement problem and explains the appearance of creation and annihilation events. (shrink)

This gripping account of university life puts a candid, personal perspective on clashes and crises around the true cost and value of higher education, the governance of public universities, free speech and academic freedom debates, the politicization of the college campus, and the future of the humanities and liberal arts.

This article explains problems and opportunities created by standardized ethics initiatives (e.g., the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative, and SA 8000) from the perspective of stakeholder theory. First, we outline differences and commonalities among currently existing initiatives and thus generate a common ground for our discussion. Second, based on these remarks, we critically evaluate standardized ethics initiatives by drawing on descriptive, instrumental, and normative stakeholder theory. In doing so, we explain why these standards are helpful tools when it (...) comes to ‘managing’ stakeholder relations but also face considerable limitations that can eventually hamper their successful expansion. We suspect that this discussion is necessary to conduct meaningful empirical research in the future and also to provide managers with a more clear-cut picture about a successful application of such initiatives. Third, we outline possible ways to cope with the identified problems and thus demonstrate how standard-setting institutions can improve the initiatives they offer. (shrink)

A central aim of the original Bologna Declaration in 1999 was to give the opportunity of advancement in education to every European citizen. According to the Declaration, this goal is worth achieving not simply in order to provide better-qualified workers within the European Union, rather, the aim of higher education within the European Union is understood in a holistic sense as a prerequisite for the composition of a well-functioning European civil society. How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? In (...) this article, we propose that the core capability at stake is that of empathy which, for this reason, should be central to programmes of European higher education. Empathy is not regarded as just a property of specific individuals but as an attribute which must be ascribed to specific forms of civil intercourse. Therefore, what is needed in European higher education is the provision of a social environment for students which allows for civil-cultivation, and for processes of self-cultivation. Self-cultivation, as described here, means more than a refinement of manners; rather, it refers to the development of a civil mode for approaching others: a mode that is sensitive and self-aware at the same time, and which can be regarded as arising out of a shared European heritage interconnecting rhetoric and sociability. (shrink)

Aus den wirtschaftlichen Turbulenzen des vergangenen Jahrzehnts leitet sich die Frage nach der Verantwortung fur die Gestaltung der Wirtschaftslandschaft ab. Die Arbeit untersucht daher, ob betriebswirtschaftliche Hochschullehrer die Werte ihrer Studierenden beeinflussen wollen und entwickelt ein detailliertes konzeptionelles Modell. Zur Modellvalidierung werden deskriptive Analysen, Strukturgleichungsmodelle und Clusteranalysen auf Daten aus einer weltweiten Befragung von 1.741 betriebswirtschaftlichen Hochschullehrern angewendet. Die Analysen zeigen weltweit eine starke Intention zur Wertebeeinflussung, mit besonderer Werteskepsis in Deutschland. Die Unterstutzung von Kollegen und Verbanden erwies sich als (...) wichtige Voraussetzung fur die Steigerung der Beeinflussungsintention.". (shrink)

Access to public healthcare services for Belgium’s undocumented migrants is regulated through a parallel, administrative procedure within the legal framework of Urgent Medical Aid. This imposes several constraints on their access to healthcare services. Drawing on empirical-ethical methodologies, we show how this procedure impacts on the relationship between patients with undocumented status and healthcare workers. We use the concept of relational autonomy to show how the imposed legal constraints reduce the formal treatment options available to healthcare workers, but simultaneously lead (...) to informal care practices, and how the latter increase the discretionary power of the healthcare workers. We argue that in this context, provision becomes unpredictable and arbitrary, with undocumented migrants tending to value strong personal relations with one particular, trusted healthcare worker. Although this leads to increased dependence, it also increases patients’ options and autonomy by providing access to wider professional networks attached to that healthcare worker. (shrink)

A communication process can be described in terms of a sender transmitting information to a receiver. What happens if one of the two subject roles in this process is virtualised, i.e. substituted by a machine? Is it still appropriate to refer to this as an information transfer even if its source or target is missing? Can information originate from an unknown sender or be transmitted to a (completely) unknown receiver? Before examining these questions and answering them, one has to clarify (...) what is understood by information. As it turns out, different interpretations of this term lead to considerably different answers to the initially raised questions. We consider these questions particularly important since the continuing dissemination of so called information and virtualisation technologies changes the human communication processes fundamentally. These changes are part of the ongoing formation of an information society and may eventually lead to the formation of a new image of man. (shrink)

En 1887, Nietzsche écrivait: «Lévénement le plus actuel, à savoir que Dieu est mort, commence à jeter ses premières ombres sur l'Europe». Ceux qui regardent le monde avec attention, avec une certaine suspicion même, remarquent que le soleil s'est couché, que la confiance de jadis s'est transformée en doute, que notre monde quotidien est devenu plus sombre, plus étrange, «vieux». Cependant cet evenement ne s'est pas encore annonce publiquement, continue Nietzsche, et on ne mesure pas encore les implications de la (...) mort de Dieu: une longue suite de démolitions, de destructions, de déclins, de renversements. II y aura une «logique de terreur», comme on ne l'aura pas encore vu sur la surface de la terre. (shrink)