Neste texto refletiremos sobre a importância da imagem como possibilidade de construção mental e social. Investigaremos o discurso laico em representações imagéticas dos monarcas franceses Francisco I e Henrique II. Nesse período, a sociedade passava por mudanças sociais entre o Medievo e a Modernidade, implicando a construção da ideia de Estado, como organizador social. Entendemos que as imagens além de revelar as relações sociais, eram também, um veículo formador. Acreditamos, assim, na relevância da realização de pesquisas na História, na Educação (...) e na Arte, nos oportunizando a compreensão da formação do sujeito social. (shrink)

In order to highlight the intimate relationship between imagining, drawing and making worlds, this essay questions the educational meaning of children to initiate in the action of drawing in face of the growing cultural tendency of the body being less and less required to produce senses. The incarnated action of drawing, as an aesthetic action of touching and being touched by the world when transposing the visible limits and entering into the intimacy of worldly invisibility, constitutes an experience that is (...) as recurrent and trivialized in school daily life as it is existentially complex due to its poetic power to enter the invisible and inaugurate worldviews. The historical disqualification of the image and imagination in Western thought, supported by the separation between subjectivity of the body and objectivity of the world, does not allow educational thought to consider the phenomenon of poetic imagination as an existential experience of language insertion in the world from the gesture of drawing. Gesture that finds its specificity in the instant the hand traces and inscribes lines on the surface of the supports as infinitely creative writing. The aesthetic gesture of drawing, temporalized by the rhythm of the body in the emergence of the fabulation that accompanies the repetition of the marks, implies a poetic experience of language that involves the fusion of two senses: that of the gesture in materiality and that of the mark configured in it, marked and cicatrized in the surface of the support by the body’s action that performed it. The approximation between education, arts and childhood allows us to highlight the philosophical and pedagogical tensions that involve the question of poetic imagination and to take another look at the action of drawing in the context of children's education. What emerges, from the dialogue between Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy, is the relevance of the educational intention of caring for the vital function of language as an aesthetic and poetic experience that is constituted in the processuality of the body to make something appear that produces and contains presence, that which promotes and expands the existential density of the real. (shrink)

This paper brings studies around the poetic dimension of language to approach the relationship between teaching in preschool education and the experience of being open and listening as an aesthesic way of coexisting in the world. The approximation of philosophy, arts and preschool education from the reunion between music and education highlights that listening refers to the sound of meaning, and not to the meaning of the sound to be interpreted. The dialog with the thinking of Jean-Luc Nancy, stating that (...) the sensible sense/meaning arouses the intelligible sense/meaning and in a constant movement that is not completed or finalized, producing signification or information, appears as a philosophical resistance to the privilege of the theoretical record founded upon the western prevalence of the optical model. To be open and listening implies the resonance as the sound of sense, as the body's first or last depth. The music as a play between sound and noise, as a poetic production of ordering sound senses provoked by resonance – as a gesture of listening to the listening, contributes to question the education of babies and small children based on a body that can play with the worlds' sounds to experience the poetics of making noise as the musical power of playing with sounds and noises. Children's sonic appetite calls them to make noise for the esthesia of listening to the world in the plurality of coexistence. The gesture of being open and listening in the teaching of babies and small children points out to educative actions that consider the experience constituted by resonances and reverberations of meanings implied in the sound, a feeling of feeling, as share and sharing of voices, signs, gestures, shapes, of the felt meaning and the sensible meaning that gather ones-with-others in human coexistence.key words: music; listenin; early childhood education; jean-luc nancy.estar à escuta: música e docência na educação infantilresumoO ensaio aproxima estudos em torno da dimensão poética da linguagem para abordar a relação entre docência na educação infantil e experiência de estar à escuta como modo estésico de coexistir no mundo. A aproximação entre filosofia, artes e educação infantil, desde o encontro entre e música e educação, sublinha que a escuta é o som do sentido e não o sentido do som a ser interpretado. A interlocução com o pensamento de Jean-Luc Nancy, ao permitir afirmar que o sentido sensível suscita o sentido sensato ou inteligível e o faz num movimento constante que não se completa ou finaliza produzindo uma significação ou uma informação, emerge como resistência filosófica ao privilégio do registro teórico fundado na primazia ocidental do modelo óptico. Estar à escuta implica a ressonância como o som do sentido, como profundidade primeira ou última do corpo. A música como jogo entre som e ruído, como produção poética de ordenação de sentidos sonoros provocados pela ressonância – como gesto de escutar a escuta, contribui para interrogar a educação de bebês e crianças pequenas a partir de um corpo que pode brincar com a sonoridade do mundo para viver a poética do barulhar como potência musical de jogar com sons e ruídos. O apetite sonoro das crianças as convocam a barulhar pela estesia de escutar o mundo na pluralidade da coexistência. O gesto de estar à escuta na docência com bebês e crianças pequenas aponta para ações educativas que consideram a experiência constituinte de ressonâncias e reverberações de sentidos imbricamos no som, um sentir se sentir, como partição e partilha das vozes, dos signos, dos gestos, das formas, do sentido sentido e do sentido sensato que nos situam sendo-uns-com-os-outros na coexistência mundana.palavras chave: música; escuta; educação infantil; jean-luc nancy.estar a la escucha: música y docencia en la educación infantilresumenEl ensayo aproxima estudios acerca de la dimensión poética del lenguaje para abordar la relación entre docencia en la educación infantil y experiencia de estar a la escucha como modo sensible de coexistir en el mundo. La aproximación entre filosofía, artes y educación infantil, desde el encuentro entre música y educación, destaca que la escucha es el sonido del sentido y no el sentido del sonido a ser interpretado. La interlocución con el pensamiento de Jean-Luc Nancy, al permitir afirmar que el sentido sensible suscita el sentido sensato o inteligible y lo hace en un movimiento constante que no se completa o finaliza produciendo una significación o una información, emerge como resistencia filosófica al privilegio del registro teórico fundado en la primacía occidental del modelo óptico. Estar a la escucha implica la resonancia como el sonido del sentido, como profundidad primera o última del cuerpo. La música como juego entre sonido y ruido, como producción poética de ordenación de los sentidos sonoros provocados por la resonancia -como gesto de escuchar la escucha, contribuye para interrogar la educación de bebés, niños y niñas pequeñas a partir de un cuerpo que puede jugar con la sonoridad del mundo para vivir la poética del hacer ruido como potencia musical del jugar con sonidos y ruidos. El apetito sonoro de los niños y niñas las llama hacer ruidos por la sensibilidad de escuchar el mundo en la pluralidad de la coexistencia. El gesto de estar a la escucha en la docencia con bebés, niños y niñas pequeñas apunta para acciones educativas que consideran la experiencia constituyente de resonancias y reverberaciones de sentidos solapados en el sonido, un sentir sentirse, como participación y intercambio de voces, de signos, de gestos de las formas, del sonido sentido y del sentido sensato que nos sitúan siendo-unos-con-los-otros en la coexistencia mundana.palabras clave: música; escucha; educación infantil; jean-luc nancy. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetiva apresentar alguns dos fundamentos da Pedagogia freiriana, a fim de compreender as justificativas para os constantes ataques que esse autor tem sofrido por parte da extrema direita do país. Nesse sentido, buscamos responder à seguinte problemática: quais as principais perspectivas e os fundamentos da Pedagogia freiriana que ameaçam a extrema direita do Brasil? Para tanto, buscamos responder às seguintes questões norteadoras, a saber: quem foi Paulo Freire? Em qual contexto emergiu a Pedagogia libertadora? Qual a perspectiva (...) de educação defendida pela extrema direita e suas divergências históricas com a Pedagogia freiriana? Posto isto, realizamos uma pesquisa bibliográfica de abordagem dialética, como proposta por Sánchez Gamboa, ancorando-nos nos seguintes autores: Brandão Paludo, Prado, Freire, Marx, Gramsci, dentre outros. (shrink)

COVID-19 is an acute respiratory illness with higher mortality in older adults. This condition is spread person-to-person through close contact, and among policies employed to decrease transmission are the improvement of hygiene habits and physical distancing. Although social distancing has been recognized as the best way to prevent the transmission, there are concerns that it may promote increased depression symptoms risk and anxiety, mainly in older adults. This cross-sectional study aimed to verify self-concept of social distancing in adults compared to (...) older adults. All participants, over 18 years and residents of São Paulo state, were invited to join this research study by a message application and answered an interdisciplinary questionnaire during the period from May 23 to June 23, 2020. The questions were divided into the following aspects: sociodemographic data, financial conditions, routine-related perception, perception of health, physical and emotional state, and eating habits. The younger adult group was composed of 139 participants, with a mean age of 43.15 years, and the older adult group was composed of 437 participants with a mean age of 67.59 years of both sex. Changes in routine during the period of social distance were reported by 95% of adults and 96.8% of older adults, but adults indicated more significant alterations in routine. Although there was no difference between groups for several aspects, adults revealed greater alterations in sleep quality, evacuation frequency, and more difficulty to perform daily activities at home. Further studies are necessary to follow up the impacts of social distancing among adults and older adults in different socioeconomic contexts to better understand the long-term alterations and the necessity of interventions. (shrink)

This short piece draws on political philosophy to show how social media interference operations can be used by hostile states to weaken the apparent legitimacy of democratic governments. Democratic societies are particularly vulnerable to this form of attack because democratic governments depend for their legitimacy on citizens' trust in one another. But when citizen see one another as complicit in the distribution of deceptive content, they lose confidence in the epistemic preconditions for democracy. The piece concludes with policy recommendations for (...) how democratic governments should protect themselves. (shrink)

When we look back upon people in past societies, such as slaveholders and colonialists, we judge their actions to have been morally atrocious. Yet we should give some thought to how the future will judge us. Here I argue that future people are likely to regard our behavior as no better than that of the past. If these future people are to be believed, then we are morally hopeless; we have little chance of working out the moral truth for ourselves. (...) I argue that we ought to resist this conclusion, and that our best means for doing so it to reject moral objectivity and accept instead a form of time-linked moral relativism. (shrink)

Deepfake technology uses machine learning to fabricate video and audio recordings that represent people doing and saying things they've never done. In coming years, malicious actors will likely use this technology in attempts to manipulate public discourse. This paper prepares for that danger by explicating the unappreciated way in which recordings have so far provided an epistemic backstop to our testimonial practices. Our reasonable trust in the testimony of others depends, to a surprising extent, on the regulative effects of the (...) ever-present possibility of recordings of the events they testify about. As deepfakes erode the epistemic value of recordings, we may then face an even more consequential challenge to the reliability of our testimonial practices themselves. (shrink)

In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, several feminist theorists began developing alternatives to the traditional methods of scientific research. The result was a new theory, now recognized as Standpoint Theory, which caused heated debate and radically altered the way research is conducted. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader is the first anthology to collect the most important essays on the subject as well as more recent works that bring the topic up-to-date. Leading feminist scholar and one of the founders of Standpoint (...) Theory, Sandra Harding brings together the a prestigious list of scholars--Dorothy Smith, Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Hartsock and Hilary Rose--to not only showcase the most influential essays on the topic but to also highlight subsequent developments of these approaches from a wide variety of disciplines and intellectual and political positions. The Reader will be essential reading for feminist scholars. (shrink)

The book brings into relief the variety of approaches and disciplines that have informed the quest for a theory of cognition. The center of interest are the historical, geographical, and theoretical peripheries of classic AI's mainstream research program. The twelve chapters bring back into focus the variety of strategies and theoretical questions that researchers explored while working toward a scientific theory of cognition and pre-cognition. The volume is organized in four parts, each one including three essays. The first one deals (...) with cybernetics, the approach that may be considered as the most important periphery of classic AI research. The second part focuses on the geographical periphery of AI research. It examines how the theories and techniques developed on AI's home ground were translated into countries with different cultures and traditions: Italy, France, and the Soviet Union. The third part focuses on AI's periphery understood in the cultural and historical meaning of the term. It contains essays that locate some of the central concepts of AI, like representation and computability, within a broader philosophical (Descartes, Aristotle, Leibniz) and technical background (programming theory and practice). The fourth and final part of the volume is focused directly on the limitation of Turing's classic computability theory and its possible alternatives, some of which were studied in the early years of AI's research (e.g. Ashby's re-entrant information model), while others have been intensely studied in recent times (quantum automata). (shrink)

This article presents an analytic critique of the predominant revisionist theoretical paradigm of just war (henceforth: revisionism). This is accomplished by means of a precise description and explanation of the practicability problem that confronts it, namely that soldiers that revisionism would deem “unjust” are bound to fail to fulfil the duties that revisionism imposes on them, because these duties are overdemanding. The article locates the origin of the practicability problem in revisionism’s overidealized conception of a soldier as an individual rational (...) agent analogous to the aggressor or defender in a case of lethal self-defense, who is capable of reflecting on the morality of his status in war and of the killing he performs and thus of recognizing his revisionist duties. Revisionism, however, ignores the following fact: Killing in war is not a natural human behavior. This is why training soldiers to kill is—and arguably always has been—a necessity for the existence of war and the killing that occurs in it. Moreover, this training involves a certain level of moral desensitization to violence whose goal is to prevent soldiers from thoroughly reflecting on the morality of the killing they engage in. Hence, war and killing can only exist if soldiers are trained in such a way that they do not reflect on whether they could be addressees of revisionist duties in the first place. This means that military training is a “constitutive condition” of soldiers and war, which is why it cannot excuse their noncompliance with revisionist duties, thus making these duties categorically overdemanding. The argument here draws on the paradigmatic example of modern US military killing conditioning (MC), but embeds it into a broader military-historical perspective that describes how soldiers have always needed to be mentally and morally influenced in order to enable war and killing. The article’s explanation of revisionism’s practicability problem has a constructive consequence for future theory-building in the ethics of war: It implies that a potentially revised ethical theory of war must necessarily analyze the institutions that allocate belligerent resources, if it aims to morally assess battlefield behavior in a practicable manner. (shrink)

How can we tell whether an incident counts as a microaggression? How do we draw the boundary between microaggressions and weightier forms of oppression, such as hate crimes? I address these questions by exploring the ontology and epistemology of microaggression, in particular the constitutive relationship between microaggression and systemic social oppression. I argue that we ought to define microaggression in terms of the ambiguous experience that its victims undergo, focusing attention on their perspectives while providing criteria for distinguishing microaggression.

L'apport des femmes à la production des soins revêt un caractère essentiel et universel tant dans l'histoire que dans la société actuelle, selon deux axes d'articulation : la protection du corps et le soutien par l'entraide et l'accompagnement. Les orientations actuelles des systèmes de santé occidentaux, comprenant une promotion idéologique de l'autonomie ayant pour conséquence la déqualification de certaines valeurs, notamment celle de l'interdépendance, compromettent l'avenir des soins dans la mesure où il n'existe pas de soin sans l'existence simultanée de (...) la dépendance et de l'interdépendance. Le soin représente une forme de rituel d'accompagnement dans les passages de la vie, un travail de médiation.Women's contribution to care production has been in the past, and remains in society today, of an essential and universal nature, regarding two principal concerns : care for the body and support through mutual aid and accompaniment. The current orientation of western healthcare systems, including an ideological promotion of autonomy that results in a diminishment of certain values, especially those of interdépendance, compromise the future of care to the extent that there is no care without the simultaneous existence of dépendance and interdépendance. Care represents a sort of ritual of accompaniment in life's passage, a work of mediation. (shrink)

Die Freie Musikszene war, im Gegensatz zum Freien Theater, in Deutschland bisher kaum Gegenstand kulturpolitischer Debatten. In Statistiken uber die Musikforderung in Deutschland wird sie nur selten gesondert aufgefuhrt, da ihre offentliche Unterstutzung im Vergleich zur Forderung von Musiktheatern und Sinfonieorchestern verschwindend gering ist. Ziel dieser Studie ist es, das Phanomen Freie Musikszene naher zu beschreiben, ihren Stellenwert in der deutschen Musiklandschaft zu diskutieren und mogliche Entwicklungsperspektiven aufzuzeigen. Basierend auf Experteninterviews, die in den drei Stadten Hamburg, Koln und Freiburg im (...) Breisgau einerseits mit Vertretern international renommierter Spezialensembles und andererseits mit verantwortlichen Kulturpolitikern gefuhrt wurden, werden die finanziellen und organisatorischen Strukturen verschiedener Spezialensembles fur Alte und Neue Musik beschrieben, nach dem kunstlerischen Potential der Freien Musikszene gefragt und kulturpolitische Handlungsempfehlungen formuliert.". (shrink)

We consider the theory Thprin of Boolean algebras with a principal ideal, the theory Thmax of Boolean algebras with a maximal ideal, the theory Thac of atomic Boolean algebras with an ideal where the supremum of the ideal exists, and the theory Thsa of atomless Boolean algebras with an ideal where the supremum of the ideal exists. First, we find elementary invariants for Thprin and Thsa. If T is a theory in a first order language and α is a linear (...) order with least element, then we let Sentalg be the Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra with respect to T, and we let intalg be the interval algebra of α. Using rank diagrams, we show that Sentalg ⋍ intalg, Sentalg ⋍ intalg ⋍ Sentalg, and Sentalg ⋍ intalg. For Thmax and Thac we use Ershov's elementary invariants of these theories. We also show that the algebra of formulas of the theory Tx of Boolean algebras with finitely many ideals is atomic. (shrink)

Build the skills you need to understand and resolve ethical problems! Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions, 7th Edition provides a solid foundation in ethical theory and concepts, applying these principles to the ethical issues surrounding health care today. It uses a unique, six-step decision-making process as a framework for thinking critically and thoughtfully, with case studies of patients to illustrate ethical topics such as conflict of interest, patient confidentiality, and upholding best practices. Written by Regina F. Doherty, an (...) educator and occupational therapist, this book will help you make caring and effective ethical choices that improve patient care and outcomes. UNIQUE! Ethical decision-making process provides an organizing framework to use in making the best decisions when faced with ethical problems. Patient stories depict real-life situations and demonstrate the ethical decision-making process. Reflection boxes depict important concepts and stimulate critical thinking. Summary boxes highlight the most important information in each section. Coverage of interprofessional team decision-making reflects this important, expanding movement in healthcare nationally and internationally. Questions for thought and discussion encourage students to apply the ethical decision-making process to different situations. NEW! Updated content throughout the book reflects the changes in the growing interprofessional movement. NEW! Expanded content on clinician well-being includes tools for supporting moral resilience and preventing burnout in health professionals. NEW! Updated content addresses the topics of social justice, health disparities, intersectionality, and health outcomes. NEW! Updated national standards and regulations are provided for electronic health communications, data protections, and clinical research. NEW! Coverage of scientific literature is expanded with studies on the effects of compassion on patient outcomes, patient safety, and provider and organizational well-being. NEW! Coverage of ethical issues impacting healthcare and society includes topics such as medical scarcity due to healthcare supply chain shortages and extreme weather events due to climate change. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

Contemporary and emerging chatbots can be fine-tuned to imitate the style, tenor, and knowledge of a corpus, including the corpus of a particular individual. This makes it possible to build chatbots that imitate people who are no longer alive — deathbots. Such deathbots can be used in many ways, but one prominent way is to facilitate the process of grieving. In this paper, we present a framework that helps make sense of this process. In particular, we argue that deathbots can (...) serve as affective scaffolds, modulating and shaping the emotions of the bereaved. We contextualize this affective scaffolding by comparing it to earlier technologies that have also been used to scaffold the process of grieving, arguing that deathbots offer some interesting novelties that may transform the continuing bonds of intimacy that the bereaved can have with the dead. We conclude with some ethical reflections on the promises and perils of this new technology. (shrink)

This paper examines the scholarship, evidence, and assumptions that place the origins of Chinese drama in shamanic ritual. The paper is roughly divided in two parts: the first contextualizes the use of shamanism within the theories of art and literature of one of the first scholars to link the origins of Chinese theatre to shamanism, Wang Guowei, to show that Wang’s view of the relationship between shamanism and drama differs from mainstream interpretations. The second part assesses the views of modern (...) ethnographers and historians of China on the role of shamanism in theater, with a focus on the work of the scholar Piet van der Loon. (shrink)

Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of general problem‐solving methods in acquiring rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, methods that focus on reaching specific goals, such as means‐ends analysis, are assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under an alternative view such methods are believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that the role of general methods in learning varies with both the (...) specificity of the problem solver's goal and the systematicity of the strategies used for testing hypotheses about rules. In the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule‐induction learning strategy, whereas provision of a specific goal fosters use of difference reduction, which tends to be a non‐rule‐induction strategy. We performed two experiments to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule‐induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that during free exploration of a problem space, greater learning occurred if participants adopted more systematic strategies for rule induction, and that participants come to favor such strategies. Experiment 2 revealed that participants who were provided with a specific goal performed well on the initial problem but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal. Instruction on a systematic rule‐induction strategy facilitated solution for both the initial and transfer problems, but participants' use of this strategy declined if they had a specific goal. Our results support Sweller's (1988) proposal that general problemsolving methods applied to a specific goal foster acquisition of knowledge about an isolated solution path but do not provide an effective way of learning the overall structure of a problem space. We interpret these results in terms of dualspace theories of search through problem space. (shrink)

Introduction CLASSICAL American pragmatism represents a historical period in American philosophy, spanning a particular time frame and including the ...

The reason of faith -- Thought and language -- Truth -- The Monologion arguments for the existence of God -- The Proslogion argument for the existence of God -- The divine attributes -- Thinking and speaking about God -- Creation and the word -- The Trinity -- Modality -- Freedom -- Morality -- Incarnation and atonement -- Original sin, grace, and salvation.

Morality and Cognitive Science What do we know about how people make moral judgments? And what should moral philosophers do with this knowledge? This article addresses the cognitive science of moral judgment. It reviews important empirical findings and discusses how philosophers have reacted to them. Several trends have dominated the cognitive science of morality in … Continue reading Morality and Cognitive Science →.

Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries adopted Late Antique aesthetics, characterized by brilliance, dazzle and colors, to create a new form of imagination, where the corpses of the martyrs and their physical remains became shining bodies. Relics became a spiritual body, whose μετάληψις often produced roses or violets. Therefore there was a strict association in Late Antique Christianity among roses, relics and the colour red.

Abstract pictures are distinguished from depictive pictures in that no visibly recognizable objects can be seen in them. Abstract pictures are thus non-depictive and non-figurative. The question still remains, however, if abstract pictures can be representations. The aim of this chapter is to defend the view that abstract pictures can be representational and therefore have content or subject matter. It will be shown that there are at least three ways to understand what the subject matter of abstract pictures can be: (...) it is either abstracted from figurative content, it is spiritual or the subject matter is produced. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article assesses the proliferation of international accountability standards (IAS) in the recent past. We provide a comprehensive overview about the different types of standards and discuss their role as part of a new institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility. Based on this, it is argued that IAS can advance corporate responsibility on a global level because they contribute to the closure of some omnipresent governance gaps. IAS also improve the preparedness of an organization to give an explanation and a justification (...) to relevant stakeholders for its judgments, intentions, acts and omissions when appropriately called upon to do so. However, IAS also face a variety of problems impeding their potential to help address social and environmental issues. The contribution of the four articles in this special section is discussed in the context of standards’ problems and opportunities. The article closes by outlining a research agenda to further develop and extend the scholarly debate around IAS. (shrink)