Information space and time in their socio-cultural dimension act as knowledge components of being, and, consequently, the most important regulator of social relations. At the same time, the social and cultural dominants of the information space and time are determined by the creative activity of a person. In principle, a person is always focused on knowledge, where its elements interact in a comprehensive way, and not on information, in which there is a separation of its elements from the spiritually observed (...) cross-section of reality, and thus from reality, which does not lend itself to the construction of connections, and the construction somewhat reduces the elasticity of the structure of information space and time. (shrink)

Inspirée d’un cadre poststructuraliste, cette étude qualitative de « réception d’un médium » nous a permis de mettre en lumière les « lectures » que font une vingtaine de consommateurs de pornographie des notions de masculinité, de race et ethnicité, du milieu gai et du genre en lien avec la pornographie qu’ils consomment. Les résultats qui émergent de notre analyse critique de discours sont à l’effet que les lectures des consommateurs sont majoritairement dominantes, reproduisant ainsi les stéréotypes présents en société (...) et qui sont re/produits et véhiculés dans la pornographie qu’ils consomment. Les récits des participants attestent du fait que ces derniers remettent peu en question ce qu’ils voient dans le matériel pornographique ; matériel pouvant avoir certaines répercussions sur des indicateurs de santé mentale en accentuant et perpétuant certaines formes de stigmatisation chez certains groupes sociaux. Inspired by a poststructuralist perspective, our qualitative exploratory media reception study offers a critical discourse analysis of 20 male pornography consumers, focusing on their readings of masculinity, race/ethnicity, the gay world, and gender in relation to the pornography they consume. For the most part, results show dominant readings of these categories, which suggests that social stereotypes are produced, reproduced, and transmitted through the medium of pornography. Participant narratives reveal individuals who rarely question what is shown in pornographic material; the latter having potential implications for certain mental health indicators, as well as perpetuating and accentuating forms of stigmatization among specific social groups. (shrink)

In this article, we use qualitative methodology to explore how 15 low‐income women of diverse sociocultural location construct and experience health and weight gain during pregnancy, as well as how they position themselves in relation to messages pertaining to weight gain, femininity and motherhood that they encounter in their lives. Discussing the findings through a feminist poststructuralist lens, we conclude that the participants are complex, fragmented subjects, interpellated by multiple and at times conflicting subject positions. While the discourse of maternal (...) responsibility (i.e. managing personal behaviours for the baby's health) is very much in evidence in their narratives, embodied experiences of pregnancy, lived experiences of financial constraints and religious beliefs provided some with an alternative discourse and resistant subject position. Participants also had mixed emotions about weight gain; they recognized the need to gain weight in order to have a healthy pregnancy, but weight gain was also not welcome as participants reproduced the dominant discourse of obesity and the discourse of ‘feminine’ bodily norms. Based on our results, we advocate for change to recent clinical guidelines and social discourses around pregnancy and weight gain, as well as for policies that provide pregnant women with a range of health‐promoting resources. (shrink)

Canadian and American population-based research concerning sexual and/or gender minority populations provides evidence of persistent breast and gynecologic cancer-related health disparities and knowledge divides. The Cancer's Margins research investigates the complex intersections of sexual and/or gender marginality and incommensurabilities and improvisation in engagements with biographical and biomedical cancer knowledge. The study examines how sexuality and gender are intersectionally constitutive of complex biopolitical mappings of cancer health knowledge that shape knowledge access and its mobilization in health and treatment decision-making. Interviews were (...) conducted with a diverse group of sexual and/or gender minority breast or gynecologic cancer patients. The LGBQ//T2 cancer patient narratives we have analyzed document in fine grain detail how it is that sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients punctuate the otherwise lockstep assemblage of their cancer treatment decision-making with a persistent engagement in creative attempts to resist, thwart and otherwise manage the possibility of discrimination and likewise, the probability of institutional erasure in care settings. Our findings illustrate the demands that cancer places on LGBQ//T2 patients to choreograph access to, and mobilization of knowledge and care, across significantly distinct and sometimes incommensurable systems of knowledge. (shrink)

The island of Palawan stretches northward from Borneo like a bridge to Luzon in the South China Sea. This tropical forest environment, rich in thousands of species of plants and animals, is home to about 50,000 people, known as the Palawan. Besides hunting with blowpipes, traps, spears, and dogs, these people also practice shifting cultivation. Hunting and gathering activities as well as work in the fields follow the alternation of two seasons, the “monsoon” and the “heat,” barat and bulag. As (...) an integral ecosystem, swidden places a high value on mobility rather than on land property. Land tenure, and recourse to physical violence of all kinds are considered unethical behavior. Social life among the Palawan is governed by a bilateral or undifferentiated kinship system, a complex customary law based on rules and values dictated by “the tradition of the Ancestors,” Adat ät Kägunggurangan. (shrink)

rails to total abstraction, to conjure a perfect social system, between fulfilment of individual and colective will.

This volume, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Wittgenstein's death, brings together thirteen of Crispin Wright's most influential essays on Wittgenstein ...

Book Information Rails to Infinity: Essays on Themes from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Rails to Infinity: Essays on Themes from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations Crispin Wright Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press 2001 x + 484 Hardback US$55 By Crispin Wright. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. Pp. x + 484. Hardback:US$55.

This chapter contains sections titled: Proceeding According to Rules Rules and Regularities The Uses of Rules Three Questions a bout Rules Rules and Interpretations Rules and Intentions Contested Rules Further reading.

This paper addresses what I call ‘the constitutive question’ concerning the rules we follow: namely, what determines the standard for a rule's correct application. John McDowell has offered a putative ‘middle position’ between two extreme, unacceptable answers: empirical idealism, which takes the requirements of a rule in any given situation to be constituted by our reaction to the case; and hard platonism, which takes these requirements to be delivered by unvarnished reality as absolutely the simplest or most natural way to (...) carry on. Tellingly, however, McDowell's position is itself unacceptably idealist in his picture of the way in which we are ‘involved’ on the right-hand side of biconditionals such as, ‘“Diamonds are hard” is true if and only if diamonds are hard’.In response to this stultifying state of affairs, I suggest that McDowell has followed the empirical idealist and hard platonist in assuming that the requirements of a rule must be grounded by something else: something external to the rule, which mediates between the rule and the standard for its correct application. This assumption is false. What is more, one application of a metaphor to which Wittgenstein has a somewhat equivocal relation—that of rules as rails invisibly laid to infinity—can help this point to stick. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments RAILING AGAINST REALISM: PHILOSOPHY AND TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by S. P. ROSENBAUM The argument of Graheim Parkes's "Imagining Reality in To the Lighthouse" is described by its author as "a railing against the realist position" (p. 35) as he understands it primarily in my article "The Philosophical Reedism ofVirginia Woolf." ' Apart from the question of whemer railing is a useful way of conducting an inquiry (...) into literature and philosophy, Parkes's discussion raises several important issues about these connections. The way diey are raised, however, involves various mistedces and muddles that make a brief reply to his eurticle difficult. To begin with a small reveeding example, Parkes asserts that I miss the irony in Virginia Woolfs use of die letters P, Q, and R to describe Mr. Ramsay's problems of diought (p. 41). Here is what I wrote: "By representing Mr. Ramsay 's thinking as proceeding in die very genered form of conventional logical symbols, Virginia Woolf is wittily extending the standard letters used to symbolize die conditional type of argument, If P men Cf (p. 339, with italics added this time). Parkes's misreading of my text does not inspire confidence when he turns to Virginia Woolfs fiction or G. E. Moore's philosophy. On a more significant issue, Parkes complains that I boggle his mind by saying diat philosophically, Moore influenced Virginia Woolf more man anyone else, whereas Platonic ideas abound in her books (p. 35). Of course they do, but not very much in her epistemology, which was the subject of my eurticle.2 What Peirkes does not mention is that Plato was also a profound influence on Moore's philosophy. One of die reasons Moore's influence on Bloomsbury was so strong is that he reinterpreted Plato for them. In her images and ideas Virginia Woolf was influenced direcdy dirough her reading of Plato etnd also indirectly through the work of Plotinus and Moore. These influences are not easily sepeurated, which is why studies of Platonic emd Neoplatonic influences in her work that ignore Moore's significance are so incomplete. 89 90Philosophy and Literature Peirkes claims mat die evidence of Moore's influence on Virginia Woolf is slight (p. 34), and then he concerns himself with the putative influences of German philosophers for whom mere is no evidence at all. In the fifteen years since I wrote my article, the biographical evidence for Moore's influence has continued to accumulate as Virginia Woolfs letters, memoirs, emd dieiries were published. From her first novel, in which Principia Etnica is quoted emd briefly discussed, down to die recently discovered revised version of her last memoir, in which she reaffirms her deep respect for Moore,3 the indications of Moore's significance for Virginia Woolf ought to convince any disinterested reader. It cannot be dismissed with a sneer about "the voguish fascination of the Bloomsbury Group..." (p. 34), especially from someone proposing to study yet again the depth psychology of her fiction via Nietzsche and Heidegger (P- 44). Nothing I say here, of course, will persuade Parkes of the value of philosophical realism for understanding To the Lighthouse because diat philosophy, as he conceives of it in his article, consists of straw. To tedce just one exeimple, Peirkes appeeurs to believe Moore's epistemology etrgues "diat things and persons are what they are independently of human consciousness" (p. 37). There is no space here to explain philosophical realism again to Parkes, odier than to note that it is not inconsistent with the veirious concerns (to use Peurkes's terminology) about "transpersonal imagination" or "participation in phenomena" that he finds so interesting in the novel. But what about die novel? For readers indifferent to whether Moore or Russell, Nietzsche or Heidegger are to be found in To the Lighthouse, the relevant question is what such philosophical interpretations medce of it. To them I ceui only say, reread the novel and then ask yourselves if an account of it diat says nothing about die value of art and almost nodiing about the value oflove bears much resemblance to your reading experience. Parkes thinks the portrait of Mr. Ramsay is unsympathetic because he is criticized emd mocked... (shrink)

Climate litigation presents specific challenges to judicial decision-making, related to uncertainties caused by the border-crossing nature of the applicable legal frameworks and the complexity of the climate system. Judiciaries around the world often turn to process-based review when dealing with such uncertainties. In process-based review, judges focus on ensuring that decision-making procedures are fair and inclusive of all relevant interests, instead of on substantive policy choices. However, in the case of climate litigation, it appears that where judges wish to use (...) process-based review to avoid substantive judgments in the face of uncertainty, they cannot escape uncertainty about who to include and exclude from the processes. We argue that judges engaged in process-based review must develop an ethic of responsibility for those who are excluded from the democratic process by judicial decision. This ethic of responsibility focuses on the moment before and after the judicial decision, calling the judge's attention to her responsibility to become receptive to the ‘face of the other’ and to reflect on the ‘moral remainders’ caused by her decision. While the decision on exclusion remains based on uncertain grounds, this approach helps ensure it is taken responsibly. (shrink)

Urban rail transit can improve a city’s accessibility. However, high construction and operation costs restrict the development of urban rail transit. Value capture recoups the additional value that the investments of urban rail transit confer to local land and is considered to be an effective measure to alleviate this financial problem. Understanding the land value uplift effects of urban rail transit is essential for understanding value capture. This study applied a Space-P model of urban rail (...) transit network based on complex network theory and demonstrated the influence of urban rail transit network characteristics on residential and commercial land prices. The model was tested with eight metropolises in China, using the 2003 to 2022 timeframe as the context. The results showed a significant positive correlation between the number of nodes and the land prices, the average clustering coefficient was highly positively correlated with the land prices, and there was a significant negative correlation between the average path length and the land prices. This study provides theoretical support for value capture, is beneficial for urban rail transit planning, and supports improvements in the development quality of urban rail transit networks. (shrink)

Depuis 2002, les régions sont pleinement responsables de la gestion des TER. Cette évolution permet-elle de faire l'hypothèse que la décentralisation s'apparente à une forme instituée d'expérimentation et d'innovation publiques ? L'hypothèse mérite discussion tant elle heurte frontalement une certaine tradition politique française.

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 5-6.

As people’s lives get better and better, more and more people choose to travel and with that comes the demand for more transportation. For now, traditional transportation hubs can temporarily meet people’s travel needs. If driven by big data concepts and methods, the various capabilities of high-speed rail transportation hubs will be sublimated, and the regional economy will be in line with the prosperity of this place. Proportionally, railway hubs are extremely attractive to the rapid growth of the regional (...) economy. This paper takes the high-speed railway hub construction model under big data as the research object and verifies the reliability of the research model and the development of economic regions based on the high-speed railway data in recent years as reference parameters. This article selects the panel data of railway transportation and regional economy in China’s provinces for 10 consecutive years from 2011 to 2020. Among them, seven indicators were selected for railway transportation: passenger volume, freight volume, passenger turnover, cargo turnover, number of railway employees, railway transportation industry fixed asset investment and construction scale, and per capita railway network density. In terms of regional economy, six indicators were selected: regional GDP, per capita GDP, per capita investment in fixed assets, per capita total retail sales of consumer goods, per capita investment in imports and exports, and the proportion of the added value of the tertiary industry in GDP. The experimental results prove that each sample is tested in pairs, the standard error level of the mean is 0.002, which is less than 0.05, and high-speed railway construction can finally achieve economic integration. By improving the development of high-speed railways, continuously shortening the distance between time and space, breaking regional trade barriers, and reducing the cost of commodity circulation, industrial interaction and coordinated development between different regions can be effectively promoted. (shrink)

Optimization for vertical vibration performance of a rail-train coupling system is investigated in this paper with the introduction of inerters for both primary and secondary suspensions. A model of a typical Chinese passenger train that travels on a traditional rail with track, sleepers, and ballast is simulated. The goal is to improve the ride quality for the train and vibration attenuation for the rail system in response to track irregularities. Optimizations for only inertance and all suspension parameters (...) are carried out by the particle swarm algorithm. Performance benefits for both the train and the rail system are demonstrated and suspension layouts with inerters connected in parallel and series are compared with the traditional one in both time domain and frequency domain. (shrink)

The green economy is essential in supporting sustainable economic development and relies on talents and technologies. From the perspective of traditional economic theory, this study explores the impact of high-speed rail and innovation on the green economy from the perspectives of talent and technology. Using the data of 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2018, this study constructs empirical models to discuss the driving factors of the green economy. Empirical results show that high-speed rail and innovation (...) can promote the development of a green economy, and the opening of high-speed rail can strengthen the positive association between innovation and a green economy. The accessibility of high-speed rail improves the flow of talent between different cities and greatly stimulates the positive impact of innovation on green economic activities. In the further test, this study explores the impact of high-speed rail and innovation on the green economy from different dimensions, including government policy, economic strength, and administrative level. During China’s 12th Five-Year Plan, high-speed rail and innovation had a positive impact on the green economy, but the impact of innovation can still be significant after this period. Moreover, the opening of high-speed rail may motivate the migration of talents from developed cities to developing ones, while developed cities can rely on technological advantages to support green economic activities. Furthermore, low-administrative level cities will rely on attracting more talents to promote a green economy due to technological disadvantages. Innovation can play a critical role in enhancing the green economy of cities with high administrative levels. Talents and technology are both important to green economic activities, and the construction of high-speed rail changes the impact of technology on the green economy through the flow of talent. Our findings can explain why the opening of high-speed rail can promote the development of a green economy and effectively help governments achieve the goal of sustainable development. (shrink)

Optimal strategy, one of the main transit assignment models, can better demonstrate the flexibility for passengers using routes in a transit network. According to the basic optimal strategy model, passengers can board trains based on their frequency without any capacity limitation. In the metropolitan cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, morning commuters face huge transit problems. Especially for the metro system, there is heavy rush in metro stations. Owing to the limited train capacity, some passengers cannot board the (...) first coming train and need to wait for the next one. To better demonstrate the behavior of passengers pertaining to the limited train capacity, we consider capacity constraints for the basic optimal strategy model to represent the real situation. We have proposed a simulation-based algorithm to solve the model and apply it to the Beijing Subway to demonstrate the feasibility of the model. The application of the proposed approach has been demonstrated using the computational results for transit networks originating from practice. (shrink)

The Social Security system is expected to go bankrupt in approximately 2032. The debate on how to reform the system currently revolves around the issue of privatization. Advocates of privatization claim that allowing individuals to invest some of their SSI contributions would provide greater returns and protect the system from insolvency. Opponents of privatization argue that such a move would expose individuals to excessive risk.The debate should be resolved through a rational examination of alternative proposals. Unfortunately, defenders of the status (...) quo are again resorting to the type of iconography seen in other recent public policy debates. They are equating defense of the current government-financed system with protecting the elderly from evil predators who wish to "starve the old folks" for their own gain. The purpose of this paper is to show how iconography could harm future retirees by stifling debate on an important public policy issue. (shrink)

Environmentalists can convince others to adopt nature-friendly policies through appeal to commonly-held values. Efficiency and justice are such values in industrial societies, but these values are often considered at odds with each other and with policies that preserve land and reduce pollution. The present paper analyses the notion of efficiency and argues that transportation policies that environmentalists favour – substitution of intercity rail and urban mass transit for most automotive forms of transport – are both efficient and just.

Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On To Ethics is a collection of seven essays, divided into three parts. The essays bring out connections between Wittgenstein's thinking and questions of continuing interest in the philosophy of language, logic, and ethics. A dialogue with Anscombe runs through the essays, which take up questions about how we should respond to thinking that has miscarried or gone off the rails. The main issues discussed in this book concern how we are to understand thoughts, forms (...) of words, and uses of language that seem crucially important to our understanding or self-understanding, but cannot fit in the template we instinctively bring to bear on questions about how language and thought are related to reality. The book presents Wittgenstein as a responsive philosopher, and it does this through a continuing dialogue with Anscombe. (shrink)

In an essay on performance-enhancing drugs, author Chuck Klosterman (2007) argues that the category of enhancers extends from hallucinogens used to inspire music to steroids used to strengthen athletes—and he criticizes those who would excuse one means of enhancement while railing against the other as a form of cheating: After the summer of 1964, the Beatles started taking serious drugs, and those drugs altered their musical performance. Though it may not have been their overt intent, the Beatles took performance-enhancing drugs. (...) And . . . absolutely no one holds it against them. No one views “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” as “less authentic” albums, despite the fact that they would not (and probably could .. (shrink)

Business Ethics is intended for business practitioners and students of business at all levels and is written in a lively and accessible style. It redresses the balance of buisness ethics writing which, up to now, has been weighted heavily in favour of American cases. There are numerous references to real businesses - from multi-national chains to French restaurants, from manufacturing giants to driving schools. Ethically 'hot' topics such as the social chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, the new EC directives, entry (...) of the countries of the former Soviet Union into the world market economy, privatization and the 'green' environment are just some of the more general issues discussed. Companies covered in the book are: Allied Lyons, Apple Corporation, Avon, Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Barlow Clowes, Benetton, Body Shop, British Airways, British Rail, Cadbury-Schweppes, Ecology Building Society, Fiat, Gateway Foodmarkets, Grand Metropolitan, Guinness, ICI, John Lewis, Kingfisher, Ladbrokes, Lloyds Bank, Management Week, Marks & Spencer, Mirror Group Newspapers, Nestle, Polly Peck, Price Waterhouse, Scott Bader, Securicor, Traidcraft, United Biscuits, Virgin, Worldwide Fund for Nature...and many more. Packed with excellent examples from many international companies Written in a lively and accessible style. (shrink)

The anthropological scale -- Organ projection -- The first tools -- Limbs and measure -- Apparatuses and instruments -- The inner architecture of the bones -- Steam engines and rail lines -- The electromagnetic telegraph -- The unconscious -- Machine technology -- The fundamental morphological law -- Language -- The state.

Nietzsche famously rails against Christian virtues such as humility and compassion. Yet he is well aware that historical Christians, especially those in positions of power, typically preached such values but did not practice them. This raises the question whom Nietzsche is really targeting in his animadversions against Christian virtues. The answer developed here is that his real targets are his contemporaries, including atheist, socialists such as Eugen Dühring, who, with their advocacy of egalitarian, democratic social and political policies, are trying (...) to implement the values Christians long preached but rarely practiced. In nominating moderns, including those who seek the realization of enlightenment liberal democratic values, rather than past Christians, as Nietzsche’s real targets we create space for reconciling Nietzsche’s claim that he accepts the past (as embodied in his doctrine of amor fati) with his project of seeking to open up new possibilities for the future. In the concluding sections the questions are raised to what extent do Nietzsche’s attacks on Christian virtues exhibit the very ressentiment he so vehemently criticises as a source of Christian values, and whether his criticism of the modern social and political implementation of those values is really supported by his own values. (shrink)

The transition to a low carbon economy demands new strategies to enable organizations to take advantage of the potential for “green” growth. An organization's environmental stakeholders can provide opportunities for growth and support the success of its low carbon strategies, as well as potentially acting as a constraint on new initiatives. Building environmental capabilities through engagement with environmental stakeholders is conceptualized as an important aspect for the success of organizational low carbon strategies. We examine capability building across a range of (...) sectors affected by the sustainability agenda, including construction, rail, water, and health care. We identify a number of emergent environmental stakeholders and explore their engagement with the development of environmental capabilities in the context of the transition toward a low carbon economy. Our conceptual framework offers a categorization of environmental stakeholders based on their position in relation to a focal organization and the potential for the development of environmental capabilities. (shrink)