While it is well known that SME owner–managers’ sustainability values and attitudes impact their company’s sustainability activities, they often face profit-driven institutional orders. In a qualitative study, we investigate which identities are critical for their engagement in sustainability and how these identities interrelate with their institutional environment. We applied a qualitative design with narratives from 29 owner–managers of hospitality businesses who belong to a New Zealand-based sustainability network. Our study revealed no single overarching sustainability identity; instead, six identities could be (...) identified as sustainability-related and be linked to different institutional orders. By analyzing the interplay between the identities and the institutional environment, we also found mechanisms on how SME owner–managers impact on their business’ sustainability. We revealed that an adequate institutional environment can foster the development of sustainability-related identities, which in turn can lead to cultural evolution towards more sustainability. By integrating identity theory with organizational institutionalism, we contribute to theoretical development and to further sustainability research at individual and institutional level. (shrink)

We provide a Bayesian justification of the idea that, under certain conditions, the absence of an argument in favour of the truth of a hypothesis H constitutes a good argument against the truth of H.

Schupbach and Sprenger introduce a novel probabilistic approach to measuring the explanatory power that a given explanans exerts over a corresponding explanandum. Though we are sympathetic to their general approach, we argue that it does not adequately capture the way in which the causal explanatory power that c exerts on e varies with background knowledge. We then amend their approach so that it does capture this variance. Though our account of explanatory power is less ambitious than Schupbach and Sprenger’s in (...) the sense that it is limited to causal explanatory power, it is also more ambitious because we do not limit its domain to cases where c genuinely explains e. Instead, we claim that c causally explains e if and only if our account says that c explains e with some positive amount of causal explanatory power. (shrink)

We investigated whether people show signs of conflict detection in both more implicit and explicit judgments about the authenticity of short video clips depicting interviews with famous American actors. If so, they would be less confident when incorrectly seeing deepfakes as authentic than when correctly seeing authentic videos as authentic. Participants (N = 128; Mage = 33.7, SD = 12.1) from the USA were recruited on Prolific. Results showed that participants were more accurate at recognising deepfakes and less accurate at (...) recognising authentic videos when they were explicitly asked to judge if a video was authentic or deepfake compared to more implicit authenticity judgments. Interestingly, they showed signs of conflict detection both when making more implicit and explicit authenticity judgments. These findings are relevant for the literature on both conflict detection in reasoning and decision-making and on deepfake recognition, as well as for research on training people to learn to recognise deepfakes. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to offer an interpretation of U. Eco’s hypperrelaity and J. P. Baudrillard’s simulacrum as related to the conceptions of mixed reality and virtua-lity continuum , which have been articulated in the laboratories of communication technology in the early 1990s. The paper tries to show the interference point of the two approaches – philosophical and technical ones, as well as the possibility and necessity of revisiting some traditional philosophical question and categories, such as humanity or (...) reality. (shrink)

_Sandplay Therapy in Vulnerable Communities_ offers a new method of therapeutic care for people in acute crisis situations such as natural disasters and war, as well as the long-term care of children and adults in areas of social adversity including slums, refugee camps and high-density urban areas. This book provides detailed case studies of work carried out in South Africa, China and Colombia and combines practical discussions of expressive sandwork projects with brief overviews of their sociohistoric background. Further topics covered (...) include: the social aspect of psychoanalysis the importance of play pictographic writing and the psyche. Providing the reader with clear, practical instructions for carrying out their own sandwork project, this book will be essential reading not only for psychotherapists involved with sandplay therapy but also for those with an interest in cross cultural psychotherapy, as well as all professionals working with those in situations of social adversity. (shrink)

The central ideas coming out of the so-called pragmatic turn in philosophy have set in motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It has become commonplace among political theorists to draw on theories of language and meaning in theorising democracy, pluralism, justice, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore attempts by political theorists to use theories of language and meaning for such normative purposes. Focusing on Wittgenstein's account, it is argued that these (...) attempts are unsuccessful. It is shown that pragmatically influenced political theorists draw faulty epistemological, ontological and semantic conclusions from Wittgenstein's view in their normative theorising, and it is argued that pragmatically influenced theories of language and meaning, however full of insight, cannot be put to substantial normative use in political theory. The general scope of the thesis is motivated by pointing to the general form of the argument and by moving beyond Wittgenstein to other philosophers of mind and language, illustrating how similar overextensions are made with regard to Robert Brandom's theory of language and meaning. (shrink)

The question of whether global democracy requires a world state has with few exceptions been answered with an unequivocal ‘No’. A world state, it is typically argued, is neither feasible nor desirable. Instead, different forms of global governance arrangements have been suggested, involving non-hierarchical and multilayered models with dispersed authority. The overall aim of this paper is to addresses the question of whether global democracy requires a world state, adopting a so-called ‘function-sensitive’ approach. It is shown that such an approach (...) is equipped to resist the predominant binary view of a world state and offer a more differentiated and nuanced answer to this question. In brief, a basic presumption of a function-sensitive approach is that the content, justification and status of principles of democracy are dependent on the aim they are set out to achieve, what functions they are intended to regulate (e.g., decision-making, implementation, enforce... (shrink)

Honesty is essential for the care of seriously ill and dying patients. The current study aimed to describe how nurses experience honesty in their work with patients receiving palliative care at home. The interviews in this phenomenological study were conducted with 16 nurses working with children and adults in palliative home-based care. Three categories emerged from analyses of the interviews: the meaning of honesty, the reason for being honest and, finally, moral conflict when dealing with honesty. The essence of these (...) descriptions was that honesty is seen as a virtue, a good quality that a nurse should have. The nurses’ ethical standpoint was shown in the moral character they show in their work and in their intention to do good. This study could help nurses to identify different ways of looking at honesty to promote more consciousness and openness in ethical discussions between colleagues and other staff members. (shrink)

This article offers a narrative analysis of the contributing factors of moral distress (MD) and moral injury (MI) among mental health clinicians working amidst humanitarian crises. It discusses the impact of moral stress on therapeutic relationships in mental health trauma. The article originated from the author's experience developing a peer-to-peer support program at a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and conducting peer-to-peer support for mental health clinicians and healthcare providers in Ukraine and Turkey. A significant amount of literature has documented the detrimental (...) effects of MD and MI on mental health, job sustainability, and resilience of healthcare providers and first responders. The negative effects of MD and MI are particularly relevant in trauma counseling, where clinicians must draw upon the use of self to develop therapeutic relationships with their clients. This process demands a high level of moral reasoning and self-awareness, which can be severely tested under the morally challenging conditions of a humanitarian crisis. There is an imperative need to deepen our understanding and to swiftly address the factors that precipitate MD and MI in mental health clinicians working in crisis zones. By doing so, we aim to bolster their resilience and the enduring nature of their commitment to help and save others. This, in turn, will not only contribute to saving more lives but also enable those who are affected by trauma to flourish in the aftermath of their experiences. (shrink)

This article explores Southern Saami reindeer herders’ experiences and contestations over state consultation and corporate dialogue during a conflict over the Øyfjellet wind energy project in Norway. Informed by a committed research approach and juxtaposition with findings from Indigenous peoples' territorial struggles in Latin-America, the article provides critical perspectives on governance practices in a Nordic-Saami green colonial context. The research draws on ethnography from a consultation meeting between Jillen Njaarke, the impacted reindeer herding community, and state authorities, as well as (...) diverse written material. The study suggests that the state- and corporate-led “dialogues” displaced the root cause of the conflict, revealed epistemic miscommunication, and perpetuated relations of domination which limited emancipatory effects for Jillen Njaarke. The premises and discourses underpinning the “dialogues” further reproduced racist notions which devalue ancestral Saami reindeer herding knowledges, practices, and landscape relations. These findings challenge dialogue as prescription of good governance and conflict resolution in a context where democracy and compliance with Indigenous peoples’ rights are perceived as high. (shrink)

I discuss an argument for non-conceptualism based on animal and infant per- ception. Crudely put, some animals and infants who possess no concepts nonetheless have perceptual states with non-conceptual content. Perceptual experiences of adult humans have the same kind of content as the experiences of animals and infants, so the content of the perceptual experiences of adult humans is also non-conceptual. I defend this argument against potential attacks from the conceptualist. I argue that there are indeed creatures which possess no (...) concepts, but have perceptual experiences, and I attack McDowell’s view that we share perceptual sensitivity with animals and infants, but not genuine perceptual contents. (shrink)

This volume addresses whether, how, and where laws (variously defined) teach values and shape moral character in late modern liberal societies. Each author recognizes the essential value of state law in fostering peace, security, health, education, charity, trade, democracy, constitutionalism, justice, and human rights, among many other moral goods. Each author also recognizes, however, the grave betrayals of law in supporting fascism, slavery, apartheid, genocide, persecution, violence, racism, and other forms of immorality and injustice. They thus call for state laws (...) that set a basic civil morality of duty for society and for robust freedoms that protect private individuals and private groups to cultivate a higher morality of aspiration"--Back cover. (shrink)

People dedicate significant attention to others’ facial expressions and to deciphering their meaning. Hence, knowing whether such expressions are genuine or deliberate is important. Early research proposed that authenticity could be discerned based on reliable facial muscle activations unique to genuine emotional experiences that are impossible to produce voluntarily. With an increasing body of research, such claims may no longer hold up to empirical scrutiny. In this article, expression authenticity is considered within the context of senders’ ability to produce convincing (...) facial displays that resemble genuine affect and human decoders’ judgments of expression authenticity. This includes a discussion of spontaneous vs. posed expressions, as well as appearance- vs. elicitation-based approaches for defining emotion recognition accuracy. We further expand on the functional role of facial displays as neurophysiological states and communicative signals, thereby drawing upon theencoding-decodingandaffect-inductionperspectives of emotion expressions. Theoretical and methodological issues are addressed with the aim to instigate greater conceptual and operational clarity in future investigations of expression authenticity. (shrink)

Topos quantum theory represents a whole new approach to the formalization of non-relativistic quantum theory. It is well known that TQT replaces the orthomodular quantum logic of the traditional Hilbert space formalism with a new intuitionistic logic that arises naturally from the topos theoretic structure of the theory. However, it is less well known that TQT also has a dual logical structure that is paraconsistent. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between these two logical structures and study the implications (...) of this relationship for the definition of modal operators in TQT. (shrink)

In this Monograph, Eva Bonda proposes a new theory of the sense of ‘touch’ in Aristotle’s foundational treatise ‘Περὶ Ψυχῆς’ (On the Soul). The author argues that a delve into the aristoteleian lexicon reveals an intrinsically dialectical theory of the senses, that of all senses being reduced to ‘touch’ either as an experience of polysensoriality or synaeshthesia or of remote sensing touch. ‘Touch’ becomes in Aristotle the thread connecting the matter to its transmutation into the abstract mind. On the basis (...) of neuroimaging results, Eva Bonda describes how the human brain codes, as intangible cognitive phenomena, the body image and the memory through touch. The Monograph is based in Author’s participation at the 2016 World Conference ‘Aristotle 2400 years from his birth’, organized by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece on 23-28 May 2016. The Congress, in celebration of the 2400th anniversary from Aristotle’s birth, was held in ancient Stageira, the birthplace of Aristotle (born c. 384 BCE) and in ancient Mieza, the place where Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. //Evangelia-Eva Bonda, PhD is Founder and CEO of Neuroaisthesis, a Cognitive Neuroscience Research Company based in Paris since 2005. She has expertise in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Primate Neuroanatomy, and Clinical Psychotherapy. She studied and conducted research at McGill University in Canada, Université Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris, University of California at Davis and Washingthon University in Saint-Louis in USA, and at Psychology UCL and Crystallography Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. She pioneered neuroimaging experiments in the human brain. Peer-reviewed, 21 illustrations. Available on AMAZON. (shrink)

One Seit Platon (mit dem Spott von Diogenes) über Kant ist die Fundamentalfrage "Was ist der Mensch?" bis heute nicht nur von der Philosophie (als regina scientiarum), sondern von der Wissenschaft überhaupt nicht beantwortet. Phänomenologisch hat der Mensch a posteriori physische (somatische), psychische(perceptio, emotio, cognitio), mentale (logische), spirituelle (conscientia, volitio, actio) "Sphären". Ontologisch in Kontext von to ti en einai (Aristoteles) sollte der Mensch a priori ein "Programm" (Information) vor der Kosmogonie haben. Der (Neo‐) Positivismus (z.B. Hume bis Carnap, Russel*; (...) * Nobel Laureate) verwirft Fragen der Metaphysik als Scheinprobleme. Damit bleibt das Menschen‐Wesen in Kontext von Postulaten, wie res cogitans (Descartes), Monaden(Leibniz), "Gott, Freiheit, Unsterblichkeit", Seligkeit und (moralischer) Vollkommenheit (Kant), absoluter Geist (Hegel) in der theologischen Dimension. Antwort könnte eine zukünftige (holistisch‐multidimensionale) philosophische theoretische und Experimentaltheologie (kontrollierbare Beobachtung) durch weitere Forschung geben, in Kontext (bzw. Existenz) von A. Physikotheologie bzw. (a) höhere (als drei) geometrische/physikalische Dimensionen (Hilbert, Riemann /Friedmann, Minkowski, Schmutzer), (b) Paralleluniversen (z.B. L. Randall), (c) Quantentheorie/‐philosophie (Planck*, u.a.), (d) Gravitations‐/Relativitätstheorie (Newton/Einstein*), (e) Vakuumenergie (Sato), etc. B. ChemoBiotheologie bzw. "psychischen" (Fechner) und "spezifischen" (Joh. Müller) Energien,"biologischem Feld" (Gurwitsch), künstlicher Biogenese (Oparin, Fox, Urey*, u.a.; 32 Fragen von John Bernal). C. Psychotheologie bzw. parapsychische Phänomene (Carrel*, Richet*/France, Rhinne/USA, Vassilev, Bechterew/Russia, etc.). D. Religionstheologie: (über‐) Bewußtsein, übersinnliche, immaterielle, supraphysikalische Phänomene (Sri Aurobindo, Dalai Lama*, Konfuzius/Laotse, Gopi Krishna, Papst Benedikt, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Yogendra, etc.)und ihre physiologische Begründung (Anand/Chinna, Kasamatsu/Hirai, Ornstein, Pauli*, von Weizsäcker, etc.). Damit hängt die ontologische Frage nach dem MenschenWesen mit der Lösung des Problemkomplexes "Gott Geist/Seele Mensch Natur" zusammen. (shrink)

This article investigates whether religious experience can be conceived in such a way that the perceiver's religious expertise (via cognitive penetration or perceptual learning) contributes to the justificatory power of the experience. It also considers what kind of content religious experience would have to have to be able to justify standard types of religious beliefs. It argues that, against first impressions, religious expertise cannot supplement perceptual justification. At the same time, to the extent that religious experience has singular contents or (...) Gestalt contents, it may well be able to justify religious belief in virtue of such contents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950Eva L. CorredorA History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950, by René Wellek; xvii & 458 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, $42.50.The seventh volume of René Wellek’s history of modern criticism may well be the most interesting of his eight-volume monumental oeuvre. Devoted to German, (...) Russian, and Eastern European criticism between 1900 and 1950, it exemplifies most strikingly Wellek’s personal battles with critics who were roughly his contemporaries and closest to his own European background. “I should like to think of my History as ‘elucidatory,’ as not ‘argumentative’ or ‘polemical’” (v, xxi), Wellek writes, but he does not shrink from expressing his own critical perspective usually in a gentlemanly humorous or ironical, but occasionally also quite harsh and stubborn fashion. He insists on the importance of individual value judgments in critical analysis, particularly when they are his own: “I do not believe that... my views and those of my contemporaries will be replaced by completely different assumptions” (“Reflections on my History,” The Attack on Literature, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982, p. 145).Since Wellek rejects the idea of a historical determinism and thinks that “an evolutionary history of criticism must fail” (The Attack, p. 144), he provides less a history than a collection of essays in which he offers succinct appraisals of writers, thinkers and critics both as individuals and as participants in the broader literary movements of the century. He presents “portraits” (p. xv), which he also calls “doxographies” (The Attack, p. 143), containing a vast amount of quotations carefully selected to support the authority of his own views or to let them speak for themselves when he would rather not comment.More than any previous work, this volume embodies Wellek’s will and determination to carry on against all odds even when he can no longer do so on his own. An accident in 1986 left him bedridden and dependent on students and secretaries to help him with his research and writing. He was able to draw on a wealth of previously published essays, some of which had been written more than three decades ago. There are some arguable inaccuracies and shortcomings (his canon includes obscure writers but not Adorno and [End Page 259] again no women writers), and problems with his bibliographies and references. Yet Wellek’s unique talent to assemble in one volume half a century of critical commentary on the literatures of half a dozen different cultures appears intact. So do his well-known critical positions.Among his most interesting essays are those on Spitzer, Auerbach, Ingarden, Bakhtin, and Benjamin, highly erudite men in whose company Wellek enjoys moving. On the other hand, some extraordinarily fertile minds and their enormous influence on the post-1950 critical discourse are often quickly dismissed or treated with unnecessary condescension. Young Roman Jakobson “should be forgotten” (p. 372). Freud’s psychoanalysis “seems forced and mistaken” (p. 79). Heidegger “often ascribes a meaning which seems to me absent in the text itself” (p. 89). Wellek’s low tolerance of any but his own interpretation of Dostoevsky appears repeatedly in this volume: Thomas Mann’s views are called “strange” and “distorted” (p. 12), Freud’s “deeply flawed” (p. 79), Bakhtin’s “simply wrong” (p. 357), and Lukács’s “simply... [those] of Communism” (p. 232). Wellek’s anti-historicism is dramatized in essays on Auerbach and his “historical perspectivism” (p. 132), vs. Spitzer who “always saw that there is a point at which historicism must fail” (p. 144). The vacuum of German criticism during the Nazi period is hauntingly demonstrated. The essays on Walter Benjamin, Bertholt Brecht, and in particular György Lukács reveal best Wellek’s notorious feuds with Marxists. Wellek indulges in a sarcastic critique of the Marxist Lukács’s “doctrinaire limitations” (p. 245) and attempts, wrongfully, to “prove” the Hungarian philosopher’s “exaltation of Socialist Realism” (p. 244). When in the mid-eighties and after much encouragement Wellek finally writes an essay on the early Lukács, he... (shrink)