The link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and competitiveness has been examined mainly at the business level. The purpose of this paper is to improve conceptual understanding and provide empirical evidence on the link between CSR and competitiveness at the national level. We draw on an eclectic-synthetic framework of international economics, strategic management and CSR literatures to explore conceptually whether and how CSR can impact on the competitiveness of nations, and test our hypotheses empirically with a sample of 19 developed (...) countries over a 6-year period. Our evidence suggests that CSR can make a significant positive contribution to national competitiveness, as measured by national living standards. We also find that countries with a relatively low innovation record can benefit more, as compared to highly innovative countries, by implementing nationwide CSR-based positioning strategies. (shrink)

L’ouvrage s’inscrit dans une tentative, inaugurée par les travaux de B. Bourgeois et F. Fischbach, de lire Hegel et Schelling à titre d’égalité en envisageant la philosophie post-kantienne non pas comme un progrès linéaire, mais comme champ de virtualités qui ont aujourd’hui un sens autant généalogique que conceptuel. L’auteur revient ainsi à un moment historico-philosophique où « sous la triple influence de Herder, de Kant et de la Révolution française », l’histoire devient « une question pr...

Empathy is essential in story comprehension as it requires understanding of the emotions and intentions of the characters. We evaluated the sensitivity of an emotional perspective-taking task using Aesop’s Fables in relation to empathy. Participants (N = 301) were presented with 15 short fables and were asked to rate the intensity of the emotions they would feel (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, joy, trust, and anticipation) by adopting the perspective of one of the characters (offender, victim) or the observer’s perspective. (...) A data-driven approach revealed that participants’ responses were aligned with the characters’ intentions, suggesting successful emotional perspective-taking. Participants sympathized with the victim rather than the offender, demonstrating affective sharing processes. Further, participants with higher empathy scores exhibited stronger negative emotions from the victim’s perspective, independently of their level of distress. Our task was not influenced by gender effects. We suggest that the Aesop’s Fables task could provide an indirect instrument to study empathy. (shrink)

This study examines whether and how female board directors may affect corporate social performance (CSP) by drawing on social role theory and feminist ethics literature. The empirical analysis, based on a sample of 126 firms drawn from the S&P500 group of companies over a 5-year period, suggests that board gender diversity (BGD) significantly affects CSP. However, this impact depends on the social performance metric under investigation. In particular, more gender diverse boards exert stronger influence on CSP metrics focusing on ‘negative’ (...) business practices, such as the ‘concerns’ dimension of the Kinder Lydenberg Domini, Inc. (KLD) ratings. This is because such CSP ratings have the potential to induce higher levels of ‘empathic caring’, which strongly appeals to female directors. Hence, this study reveals further hidden connections in the BGD–CSP link which have important implications for managers, nongovernmental organisations and socially responsible investors. (shrink)

We present a graduate science ethics course that connects cases from the historical record to present realities and practices in the areas of social responsibility, authorship, and human/animal experimentation. This content is delivered with mixed methods, including films, debates, blogging, and practicum; even the instructional team is mixed, including a historian of science and a research scientist. What really unites all of the course’s components is the experiential aspect: from acting in historical debates to participating in the current scientific enterprise. (...) The course aims to change the students’ culture into one deeply devoted to the science ethics cause. To measure the sought after cultural change, we developed and validated a relevant questionnaire. Results of this questionnaire from students who took the course, demonstrate that the course had the intended effect on them. Furthermore, results of this questionnaire from controls indicate the need for cultural change in that cohort. All these quantitative results are reinforced by qualitative outcomes. (shrink)

Constant risk to the confidentiality, integrity and the availability of information in our everyday lives and work has increased the need for responsible use and handling of information. Security education is becoming an integral part of any undergraduate curriculum in computer science and information systems. The evolving role of security in this digital era makes it nontrivial to decide the appropriate topics that need to be covered during the course duration in a way that all aspects of security deployment are (...) examined. The only approach to this challenge is to use student-oriented learning strategies to encourage the students not only to recognize relationships between concepts and comprehend the underlying structure of what is being learned but also expose them to methods where they are responsible for their own independent learning. The current study examines the experiences gained in COMP-431 Computer Security, a senior-level undergraduate computer security course using such methods, with an emphasis on the students’ reactions, perceptions, and experiences as well as the educator’s role in the teaching and learning process. (shrink)

I reclaim the patristic Christological use of perichoresis, by showing how in bringing together different entities, such as God and Nature, and looking at them in unity as the one person of Christ, we can acknowledge the perichoresis between divine and human, divine and nature. Christological perichoresis supports the idea that the whole creation is included in God’s recreated cosmos, in response to the redeeming power of Christ who entered the web of life as a creature. The Christological reading of (...) perichoresis can be an original contribution which supports my ecofeminist Christian view. Christological perichoresis, as the divine form of contextualization, can enable us to follow Christ’s steps to contextualize by taking our own contexts seriously. Human contextualization can only be a witness of divine contextualization. (shrink)

Plato defined the primal dualism of reality: its division into the invisible eternal realm of thought and the unshaped matrix of the visible temporal realm of corporeality. The hierarchy of mind over body is reflected in the hierarchy of male over female, of human over animals, and in the class hierarchy of rulers over workers. Plato adds the alienation from body and earth, as the lowest level of cosmic hierarchy. The interrelatedness and interdependence of all cosmic beings uncover the dualism: (...) soul/body. The idea of creatio ex nihilo promotes the desecration of the created world, lying at the root of the eco-crisis. The patristic idea of creation ‘ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων’ [‘out of non-being’] refers to what in God is envisaged as the pre-ontological nihil from which all proceed, deconstructing the dualism of a spiritual and a materialistic cosmos. (shrink)

I discern in Greek myths of the goddess Athena traces of the idea of domination of mind over senses, and that men were seen as superior to women because of their naturally ruling mind. The Athenian, Platonic, androcentric, hierarchical worldview saw women as physically inferior to men. Behind courageous, wise Athena, lies Plato’s dualistic philosophy of reason, and the ideology of control. We must make a distinction between a dualistic philosophy and a holistic approach to reality. Ancient goddess Hestia’s inextinguishable (...) flame as energy of all life extended to the entire world can be read as symbolizing the interrelatedness of all life. (shrink)

How can state authority be legitimised in reference to the idea of human dignity? Jacob Weinrib offers a response to this question in his book Dimensions of Dignity. 1 The book uses elements of soc...

During an interview on human rights in a TV programme, the interviewer all of a sudden said that, so far as he could understand, I was establishing a connection between philosophy and torture, and asked me what this connection was. I was shocked.In a couple of seconds I tried to guess how he could have come to such a conclusion. My response was: there is no connection between philosophy and torture, still when you look at the fact of torture with (...) philosophical-ethical knowledge, you can realize that torture does not damage, nor ‘degrade’, the human dignity of the victim of torture, as is usually accepted – e.g. in the formulation of the title of the ‘Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment’. It causes damage to the human dignity of the person who tortures. We protect or damage human dignity, but our own human dignity, by what we do and not by what we suffer, since we are responsible for what we do and not for what others do to us. What we do, or refrain from doing, depends on each of us, i.e. acting in accordance with human dignity in our relations with other human beings is a problem in our ethical relation with ourselves, in spite of the fact that our actions are directed to somebody else. (shrink)

Two main but discrepant tendencies characterize the intellectual climate of our world at the turn of the century. We promote, on the one hand, “respect for human rights,” i.e. for certain universal norms, but on the other hand, equally promote “respect to all cultures,”which are differentiated among themselves by their different world-views and their parochial norms. Not rarely do we see that the demands that such parochial norms bring are contradictory to those of human rights.

Words, as well as ways of behavior, can be the objects of value judgments. The term ‘rational’ is such a word: to be rational is to be good. This is probably why, as a reaction to ‘western rationality’, people began to speak of many ‘rationalities’, a claim propounded by postmodernists. Rather than dwelling on the historical developments that led to such a claim, the author looks at concepts relevant to the colloquium ‘The encounter between rationalities’ (on which this issue of (...) Diogenes is based), within their intellectual framework: the modernist–postmodernist debate. (shrink)

The marketisation of heritage has been a major topic of interest among heritage specialists studying how the online marketplace shapes sales. Missing from that debate is a large-scale analysis seeking to understand market trends on popular selling platforms such as eBay. Sites such as eBay can inform what heritage items are of interest to the wider public, and thus what is potentially of greater cultural value, while also demonstrating monetary value trends. To better understand the sale of heritage on eBay’s (...) international site, this work applies named entity recognition using conditional random fields, a method within natural language processing, and word dictionaries that inform on market trends. The methods demonstrate how Western markets, particularly the US and UK, have dominated sales for different cultures. Roman, Egyptian, Viking and Near East objects are sold the most. Surprisingly, Cyprus and Egypt, two countries with relatively strict prohibition against the sale of heritage items, make the top 10 selling countries on eBay. Objects such as jewellery, statues and figurines, and religious items sell in relatively greater numbers, while masks and vessels sell at generally higher prices. Metal, stone and terracotta are commonly sold materials. More rare materials, such as those made of ivory, papyrus or wood, have relatively higher prices. Few sellers dominate the market, where in some months 40% of sales are controlled by the top 10 sellers. The tool used for the study is freely provided, demonstrating benefits in an automated approach to understanding sale trends. (shrink)

This book seeks to fill a void in contemporary aesthetics scholarship by considering the cognitive features that make the aesthetic and artistic worthy of philosophical study. Aesthetic cognition has been largely abandoned by analytical philosophy, which instead tends to focus its attention on the ‘non-exhibited’ properties of artwork or issues concerning semantic and syntactic structure. The Cognitive Basis of Aesthetics innovatively seeks to correct the marginalization of aesthetics in analytical philosophy by reinterpreting aesthetic cognition through an integration of Ernst Cassirer’s (...) philosophy of symbolic forms with Paul Crowther’s theory of imagination and philosophy of art. This integration has three important outcomes: 1) it explains why the aesthetic and artistic constitute a unique form of knowledge; 2) it shows the role this plays in the formation of aesthetics as a discipline; and 3) it describes why aesthetic cognition is so deeply engaging. This book’s unique theoretical approach engages with important works of visual, conceptual, and digital art, as well as literature, music, and theatre. (shrink)

This paper discusses the nature and limits of player embodiment within digital games. We identify a convergence between everyday bodily actions and activity within digital environments, and a trend towards incorporating natural forms of movement into gaming worlds through mimetic control devices. We examine recent literature in the area of immersion and presence in digital gaming; Calleja’s (2011) recent Player Involvement Model of gaming is discussed and found to rely on a probematic notion of embodiment as 'incorporation'. We go on (...) to further reflect on the nature of player involvement in digital gaming environments by applying insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. It is argued that digital embodiment differs so significantly from primordial embodiment that any idea of total immersion is simply fantasy. We subsequently argue that digital game media nonetheless provide us with unique opportunities for exploring the nature of distinctively human forms of embodiment, and so we need more complete and more reliable phenomenological descriptions of the experiences associated with computer games. (shrink)

L'inscription inédite d'Ambracie, qui est ici publiée, fait connaître le règlement frontalier entre les deux cités qui est intervenu après la destruction de l'Épire par Paul-Émile en 167 avant J.-C. Elle comprend le texte d'arbitrage entre Ambraciotes et Charadrites, puis les dispositions pratiques prises pour le bornage et le texte du serment. Elle permet de résoudre bien des problèmes de géographie historique : le fleuve Aphas est le Louros, Horraon — Horreum chez Tite-Live — est localisé dans le beau site (...) archéologique voisin d'Ammotopos, Charadros à Palaia Philippias. La délimitation frontalière peut être reconstituée et fait penser à celles qu'Ambracie tente de régler, à la même époque, avec ses voisins Athamanes et Acarnaniens. Le document permet d'identifier le grand temple archaïque dégagé à Arta comme étant celui d'Apollon Sôter et souligne les relations étroites entretenues avec l'Élide et la Thessalie ; il renseigne sur les institutions des deux cités et complète le calendrier épirote. (shrink)

Background: Patients prescribed with medication that treats mental health conditions benefit the most compared to those prescribed with other types of medication. However, they are also the most difficult to adhere. The development of mobile health (mHealth) applications (‘apps’) to help patients monitor their adherence is fast growing but with limited evidence on their efficacy. There is no evidence on the content of these apps for patients taking psychotropic medication. The aim of this study is to identify and evaluate the (...) aims and functioning of available apps that are aiming to help and educate patients to adhere to medication that treats mental health conditions. Method: Three platform descriptions (Apple, Google and Microsoft) were searched between October 2015 and February 2016. Included apps need to focus on adherence to medication that treats mental health conditions and use at least a reinforcement strategy. Descriptive information was extracted and apps evaluated on a number of assessment criteria using content analysis. Results: Sixteen apps were identified. All apps included self-monitoring properties like reminders and psycho-educational properties like mood logs. It was unclear how the latter were used or how adherence was measured. Major barriers to medication adherence like patients’ illness and medication beliefs and attitudes were not considered nor where information to patients about mediation side effects. Very few apps were tailored and none was developed based on established theories explaining the processes for successful medication adherence like cognitions and beliefs. Reported information on app development and validation was poor. Discussion: A variety of apps with different properties that tackle both intentional and unintentional non-adherence from a different perspective are identified. An evidence-based approach and co-creation with patients is needed. This will ensure that the apps increase the possibility to impact on non-adherence. Theories like social cognition models can be useful in ensuring that patients’ education, motivation, skills, beliefs and type of adherence are taken into consideration when developing the apps. Findings from this study can help clinicians and patients make informed choices and pursue policy-makers to integrate evidence when developing future apps. Quality-assurance tools are needed to ensure the apps are systematically evaluated. (shrink)

PurposeScarce evidence exists regarding end-of-life decision (EOLD) in neurocritically ill patients. We investigated the factors associated with EOLD making, including the group and individual characteristics of involved healthcare professionals, in a multiprofessional neurointensive care unit (NICU) setting.Materials and methodsA prospective, observational pilot study was conducted between 2013 and 2014 in a 10-bed NICU. Factors associated with EOLD in long-term neurocritically ill patients were evaluated using an anonymised survey based on a standardised questionnaire.Results8 (25%) physicians and 24 (75%) nurses participated in (...) the study by providing their ‘treatment decisions’ for 14 patients at several time points. EOLD was ‘made’ 44 (31%) times, while maintenance of life support 98 (69%) times. EOLD patterns were not significantly different between professional groups. The individual characteristics of the professionals (age, gender, religion, personal experience with death of family member and NICU experience) had no significant impact on decisions to forgo or maintain life-sustaining therapy. EOLD was patient-specific (intraclass correlation coefficient: 0.861), with the presence of acute life-threatening disease (OR (95% CI): 18.199 (1.721 to 192.405), p=0.038) and low expected patient quality of life (OR (95% CI): 9.276 (1.131 to 76.099), p=0.016) being significant and independent determinants for withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that EOLD in NICU relies mainly on patient prognosis and not on the characteristics of the healthcare professionals. (shrink)

There is wide research about the Philosophy for/with Children program. However, there is not any known attempt to investigate how a philosophical discussion can be implemented through a museum workshop. The present research aims to discuss aesthetic and epistemological issues with primary school children through a temporary art exhibition in a museum in Cyprus. Certainly, paintings have been used successfully to connect philosophical topics with the experiences of the children. We suggest, though, that this is not as innovative as the (...) conduction of a dialogue in a museum. Results were mostly positive. Pupils participated in the discussion and they gave intensive definitions of beautiful paintings and counterexamples for given definitions. The structure of inductive arguments and the difference between belief and knowledge were discussed. Progress in the analysis of inductive arguments was slightly noticeable, but it is likely that this was due to limited time spent on analysing those arguments. Furthermore, more sessions are needed to make generalisations for the effectiveness of the Philosophy for Children program in a museum instead of a traditional classroom. Even though there is discussion about the different stimuli of the discussion, it might be worth considering the effectiveness of different contexts where the discussion can take place. (shrink)

Using the analysis developed in our earlier paper, we show that every uncountable cardinal in Gitik's model of in which all uncountable cardinals are singular is almost Ramsey and is also a Rowbottom cardinal carrying a Rowbottom filter. We assume that the model of is constructed from a proper class of strongly compact cardinals, each of which is a limit of measurable cardinals. Our work consequently reduces the best previously known upper bound in consistency strength for the theory math formula (...) + “All uncountable cardinals are singular” + “Every uncountable cardinal is both almost Ramsey and a Rowbottom cardinal carrying a Rowbottom filter”. (shrink)

The present study investigated the role of thought suppression in incubation, using a delayed incubation paradigm. A total of 301 participants were tested over five conditions, viz., continuous work control, incubation with a mental rotations interpolated task, focussed suppression, unfocussed suppression and a conscious expression condition. Checks were made for intermittent work during the incubation condition. The target task was alternative uses for a brick. In the incubation and suppression conditions, participants worked for 4 minutes, then had a break during (...) which suppression or the mental rotations interpolated task was carried out for 3 minutes before conscious work was resumed for a further 4 minutes on the alternative uses task. Results indicated that both incubation with an interpolated distractor task and incubation with suppression were effective in enhancing performance relative to controls. The intermittent work hypothesis (that effects of an incubation period are simply due to illicit con.. (shrink)

What is the function of new neurons entering the olfactory bulb? Many insights regarding the molecular control of adult neurogenesis have been uncovered, but the purpose of new neurons entering the olfactory bulb has been difficult to ascertain. Here, studies investigating the role of adult neurogenesis in olfactory discrimination in mice are reviewed. Studies in which adult neurogenesis is affected are highlighted, with a focus on the role of environment enrichment and what happens during ageing. There is evidence for a (...) role of adult neurogenesis in fine discrimination tasks, as underscored by studies that enhance adult neurogenesis. This is also observed in ageing studies, where older mice with reduced levels of adult neurogenesis perform poorly in olfactory discrimination. Differences in methodology that could account for alternative conclusions, and the importance of specificity in methods being used to investigate the effect of adult neurogenesis in olfactory performance are emphasized. (shrink)

It has been a widespread belief among historians of antiquity that Athens’ importance on the political scene declined rapidly after 338, and especially after 322; Athens, so it is assumed, succumbed to the will of Alexander and, later on, of his Diadochoi. Of course, it cannot be denied that Athens found itself in a very precarious and sometimes impossible position. Yet the attitudes of Athens towards one king or the other, as well as its status, vary considerably until 261, the (...) end of the Chremonidean War against Antigonos Gonatas, king of Macedon. Certain aspects of the Athenian relationship with the various monarchs are reflected in the decrees of the assembly, passed in honour of royal officials, as well as in the decrees conferring the highest honours upon Athenian citizens who belonged to a king's court. My purpose is to examine precisely the image that Athens projects through the above-mentioned decrees with regard to its relations with the various rulers and their officials; and these in relation to its perception of its own position on the military and political scene on different historical occasions. (shrink)

It has been a widespread belief among historians of antiquity that Athens’ importance on the political scene declined rapidly after 338, and especially after 322; Athens, so it is assumed, succumbed to the will of Alexander and, later on, of his Diadochoi. Of course, it cannot be denied that Athens found itself in a very precarious and sometimes impossible position. Yet the attitudes of Athens towards one king or the other, as well as its status, vary considerably until 261, the (...) end of the Chremonidean War against Antigonos Gonatas, king of Macedon.Certain aspects of the Athenian relationship with the various monarchs are reflected in the decrees of the assembly, passed in honour of royal officials, as well as in the decrees conferring the highest honours (proedriaof the games,sitesisin thePrytaneion, and a statue) upon Athenian citizens who belonged to a king's court. My purpose is to examine precisely the image that Athens projects through the above-mentioned decrees with regard to its relations with the various rulers and their officials; and these in relation to its perception of its own position on the military and political scene on different historical occasions. (shrink)

I consider how we might begin to redress a cognitive model for thought experimental and other imagery-based scientific reasoning from an embodied cognition viewpoint. The paper gravitates on clarifying tour issues: (i) the danger of understanding the genuine novelty of thought-experimental reasoning and other imagery-based reasoning as a product of ‘quasi-perceiving’ new phenomenology with the ‘mind’s eye’ (as asserted by quasi-pictorialist theories of imagery); (ii) the erroneous choice of units of analysis that assume equivalence of external reports of visual imagery (...) with those internal structures that govern imagery-based reasoning, which are, as I will argue, largely linked to motor processes; (iii) the establishment of thought experimentation as imagery-based reasoning by providing evidence for the psychological necessity of imagistic simulation in thought experiments; (iv) a cognitive model for how learning via thought experimentation and other imagery-based reasoning takes place. The study was underpinned by constructivist assumptions. Case methodology was adopted, the case being a pair of final year A-level physics students. Data was collected through non-participant observation over two sessions of collaborative problem-solving. The tasks drew upon Newtonian mechanics. (shrink)

Christian tradition speaks mainly of two possible post‐mortem human destinies. It holds that those human beings who, in their earthly lives, acted according to God’s will and accepted God’s love will be reconciled to Him in heaven; whereas those who have acted against God’s will and refused His love will be consigned to the everlasting torments of hell. The notion that hell is everlasting and also a place of unending suffering inevitably gives rise to the following question for theists: how (...) could an omnipotent, all‐good and all‐loving God allow anyone to suffer the torments of hell for eternity? There have been several attempts to shore up the doctrine of hell in the face of this problem. Universalists, in particular, try to evade the problem by claiming that a doctrine of hell is not in fact taught in the scriptures , and that Christians are therefore able to affirm that all human beings will be saved in the end. The paper begins with an explanation of the doctrine of hell and an identification of the main problems and criticisms against it. This will assist us in understanding the increasing popularity of universalism and moreover, on what grounds it is challenged. (shrink)