The contradictions between food poverty affecting a large section of the global population and the everyday wastage of food, particularly in high income countries, have raised significant academic and public attention. All actors in the food chain have a role to play in food waste prevention and reduction, including farmers, food manufacturers and processors, caterers and retailers and ultimately consumers. Food surplus redistribution is considered by many as a partial solution to food waste reduction and food poverty mitigation, while others (...) criticize charitable initiatives as inadequate responses, that inhibit governments from responsibly protecting the citizens right to food. This paper frames food assistance as “hybrid systems”, situating at the intersection of territorial food, public welfare and third sector voluntary systems. Based on available literature and reflections on previous research examining food banks in Italy, we develop a system dynamics conceptual mapping. The aim is to model a set of relations and dynamic mechanisms associated with variables relevant to food waste generation, food recovery for social purposes and food poverty alleviation. The analysis of feedback interactions highlights the vulnerabilities of food assistance systems that occur when addressing food poverty by reducing food surplus. In summary, as the awareness on food poverty and food surplus arises, incentives to food recovery and redistribution strengthen the role of food assistance actors, increasing their exposure to drivers of change, such as retailers’ standards for food surplus prevention. This paper contributes to the current academic debate on charitable food assistance, with insights for policy makers and other systems’ actors. (shrink)

The article investigates the influence that the theological debates on divine grace have exercised on the evolution of Dante’s reflection on the relationship between nobility of the soul and natural predisposition, from the Vita nuova to the Commedia. If in his youthful work, commenting the sonnet Negli occhi porta la mia donna amore, Dante had attributed to Beatrice the ability to «induce Love in potentiality where he is not» (Vn. 12, 6) - an ability that Augustine’s doctrine of grace had (...) reserved to God -, in Le dolci rime d’amor and, above all, in the IV book of the Convivio, Dante affirms, with Guinizelli, the essential correlation between a «gentle heart» and love, that is to say the necessity of a natural predisposition for the purpose of possessing nobility, i. e. the divine «grace» (Cv. IV XX 7). Finally, in the Commedia, the poet returns to freeing God’s gift from any preventive natural disposition, as demonstrated not only by the repeated references to the twins Jacob and Esau, destined to opposite fates by virtue of the «grace» with which God «at his own pleasure endows each creature differently» (Pd. XXXII, vv. 65-6), but also by the XXX canto of Purgatorio, where Dante no longer appears uncertain whether to attribute his genius to a «good star» or to «a better thing» (If. XXVI, vv. 21-24), but clearly affirms its dependence on the «largess of celestial graces» (v. 112). (shrink)

Cooperazione e competizione sembrano comporre un dualismo di difficile coesistenza. Tuttavia, l'intreccio tra il pensiero gruppoanalitico e il microcredito modello Grameen pare riesca a superare questa prospettiva. In questo articolo proponiamo una discussione focalizzata sulla cooperazione e sulla competizione intese come due bisogni; due diversi modi di stare nelle relazioni umane. Il gruppo č il protagonista principale di questo dibattito inteso nella sua identitÀ di generatore di beni relazionali teoricamente infiniti. Altro punto centrale in questa discussione č il significato relazionale (...) della parola oikos nomos, l'espressione greca da cui deriva la parola ‘economia'. Questo ci porta all'idea di un sistema di condivisione che nasce dalla famiglia per estendersi alla comunitÀ e alla societÀ piů vasta. (shrink)

This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant's 1791 "Theodicy Essay" and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including "Jewish" post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The authors argue (...) that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka'sThe Trial, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism. (shrink)

The original version of this article has been corrected due to typesetting mistakes regarding Fig. 1.

This paper extends arguments about the potential for reflexive governance in agri-food sustainability by linking food ethics to the notion of ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘responsibilisation’. Analysis of sustainable consumption governance shows the way authorities and intermediaries use food waste reduction projects to ‘responsibilise’ the consumer, including recent examples of shared responsibility. This paper takes this argument further by developing a ‘strategies of responsibilisation’ framework that connects relations between food system outcomes, problematisation in public discourse and strategies of responsibilisation in agri-food (...) governance. A food and drink waste case study of strategies to introduce reusable coffee cups in UK coffee shops and food retail chains is examined to exemplify relations between problematisation and responsibilisation. We examine problematisation and responsibilisation discourses that have emerged in relation to the issue, particularly in relation to single-use plastics, together with emerging governance arrangements and their underlying rationalities. The case study shows two key things: firstly, how ethical questions about food in public discourses connect to wider environmental planetary concerns ; and secondly, how responsibility has emergent and dynamic properties, which we term ‘cycles of responsibilisation’. The paper concludes by assessing the wider value of applying a responsibility framework to examine governance responses to increasingly complex agri-food system sustainability challenges. (shrink)

Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon? Most contemporary philosophers and theorists hold that it is, and take this to be supported by modern science. But a significant minority endorse non-physicalist theories such as dualism, idealism and panpsychism, among other reasons because it may seem impossible to fully explain consciousness, or capture what it's like to be in conscious states (such as seeing red, or being in pain), in physical terms. This Element will introduce the main non-physicalist theories of consciousness and (...) explain the most important arguments for them, and consider how they each respond to the scientific and other arguments in support of physicalism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The phenomenal powers view claims that phenomenal properties metaphysically necessitate their effects in virtue of how they feel, and thereby constitute non-Humean causal powers. For example, pain necessitates that subjects who experience it try to avoid it in virtue of feeling bad. I argue for this view based on the inconceivability of certain phenomenal properties necessitating different effects than their actual ones, their ability to predict their effects without induction, and their ability to explain their effects without appeal to laws (...) or regularities. I also offer a harmony argument according to which the view offers the best explanation for otherwise seemingly fortunate psychophysical regularities. I then outline the view’s main implications for the metaphysics of causation and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of the main theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as (...) polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practise using the concepts. 'Adopt-a-Word' exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word. (shrink)

In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the relation of consciousness, the will, and our intentional and voluntary actions. Wegner claims that our experience and common sense view according to which we can influence our behavior roughly the way we experience that we do it is an illusion.

The socialist construction in Vietnam, aspect of human role.

This book integrates pragmatism and transcendental philosophy in examining the most serious problem defining the human condition, death and mortality. Its analysis of human limits and finitude is intended to be relevant to the concerns of philosophers specializing in, for example, transcendental philosophy, philosophical anthropology, pragmatism, Wittgenstein, and the philosophy of religion. Mortality is studied as providing a necessary framework within which questions concerning the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of human life become possible.

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

The emerging field of cognition and culture has had some success in explaining the spread of counterintuitive religious concepts around the world. However, researchers have been reluctant to extend its findings to explain the widespread occurrence of culturally counterintuitive ideas in general. This article develops a broader notion of social counterintuitiveness to include ideas that violate shared expectations of a group of people and argues that the notion of social counterintuitiveness is more crucial to explaining cultural success of surprising ideas (...) than the traditional notion of individual counterintuitiveness. Building on the context-based account of individual counterintuitiveness, the article also outlines how the once unorthodox cultural ideas become conventionalized over time only to be swept under the next wave of cultural innovation. By helping us peel away the layers of tradition that weave together the multilayered tapestry of culture, this account can be useful for understanding the development of cultural scaffolding that is needed to support the spread of maximally counterintuitive concepts such as widespread religious concepts of God and ghosts. (shrink)

Polyhedral functions provide a model for an important class of problems that includes both linear programming and applications in data analysis. General methods for minimizing such functions using the polyhedral geometry explicitly are developed. Such methods approach a minimum by moving from extreme point to extreme point along descending edges and are described generically as simplicial. The best-known member of this class is the simplex method of linear programming, but simplicial methods have found important applications in discrete approximation and statistics. (...) The general approach considered in this text, first published in 2001, has permitted the development of finite algorithms for the rank regression problem. The key ideas are those of developing a general format for specifying the polyhedral function and the application of this to derive multiplier conditions to characterize optimality. Also considered is the application of the general approach to the development of active set algorithms for polyhedral function constrained problems and associated Lagrangian forms. (shrink)

Biography of Thiện Chiếu, an outstanding Buddhist monk and an intellectual of Vietnam revolution.

東アジアの朱子後継者のなかで日本的な朱子学、あるいは朱子学の日本化を成し遂げたという山崎闇斎。彼を筆頭にする崎門学派の理気心性論の言説をとくに朝鮮の李退渓との比較において東アジアの近世思想史のなかに再 定位する。.

This chapter introduces the subject of personhood and its significance to Indic traditions and academic discourses. The category of 'person' is distinguished from the categories of 'self' and 'body' by virtue of its relational, permeable, and "extensional" or "expansive" character. The scholarly tendency to frame persons as "microcosms"-bodies that contain within the replication of the cosmos-at-large-is problematized. Indic persons are most often conceived as outward-facing, phenomenalistic, world-wide entities. Chapters of the work are summarized. Significance of Indic theories of personhood to (...) modern debates on environmental personhood and legal personhood is discussed. (shrink)

Liturgy and ritual -- Structure -- Curriculum.

We would like to thank an anonymous referee for his helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.