Cuprins CONTUR Re-Introducere sau: Dincolo de „teoria şi practica” informării şi documentării – Spre o hermeneutică posibilă şi necesară Proiectul şi Programul PHILOBIBLON( în noua formulare) FOCUS Dana Stana, Omonimia şi paronimia în bibliologie Victoria Frâncu, Profesia de bibliotecar la graniţa dintre spaţiul bibliotecii şi ciberspaţiu Olimpia Curta, Laboratorul de informatică şi profesioniştii săi Ionel Enache, Fundamentele teoretice ale marketingului de bibliotecă Maria Petrescu, Bibliotecile digitale şi impactul lor asupra tinerilor Adriana Szekely, Liana Grigore, Bibliorev – în continuă schimbare István (...) Király V., Proiect în vederea Acreditării ISI al revistei PHILOBIBLON Valeria Salánki, Cultura organizaţională. Propunere de studiu asupra culturii organizaţionale – octombrie 2008 Marian Petcu, Originile faptului divers în presa română Tudor-George Pereverza Expresia bibliografică a Iconografiei eminesciene (Fotografie şi artă plastică, 1939-1989) Vlad A. Codrea, Gabriela-Rodica Morărescu, Forray Erzsébet, Catalogus Raritatum et Benefactorum, un manuscris reprezentativ din perioada de început a Muzeului de Ştiinţele Naturii din Aiud 4 Alin Mihai Gherman, Pornind de la o Bucoavnă necunoscută Roxana Bălăucă, Tipărituri franceze în colecţiile BCU „Lucian Blaga”: secolul al XVIII-lea Maria-Stela Constantinescu-Matiţa, Szabó Károly – bibliotecar, bibliograf şi istoric Roxana Bălăucă, Theodor Aman în Donaţia Sion Margareta Berchez, Îmbogăţirea colecţiilor Bibliotecii Universităţii de Ştiinţe Agricole şi Medicină Veterinară Cluj-Napoca prin schimbul de publicaţii de-a lungul timpului Ioana Rotund, O oază francofonă la Cluj Ilona Okos-Rigó, Biblioteca şi Grădina Botanică Clujeană Gabriela Pop, Institutul de Iudaistică şi Istorie Evreiască „Dr. Moshe Carmilly” şi Biblioteca de Studii Iudaice Mariana Falup, Împrumutul interbibliotecar intern şi internaţional şi livrarea de documente la B.C.U. Cluj-Napoca ORIZONTURI Doru Radosav, Viaţa ca alterego. Petrea Icoanei: travesti şi clandestinitate în mişcarea de rezistenţă anticomunistă Ionuţ Costea, Mitbiografia între propagandă şi memorie Gabriela Morărescu ;Vlad Codrea, Preocupări pentru cunoaşterea şi protecţia naturii în scrierile unui entuziast naturalist al secolului XIX: Basiliu Basiota Alin Mihai Gherman, Vechi lexic bibliotecăresc Raluca Betea, Influenţa artei Renaşterii asupra decoraţiei icoanelor din secolele XVI-XVIII din Transilvania şi Maramureş 5 Monica Mureşan, Căsătoria civilă ca aspect al modernizării societăţii transilvănene la sfârşitul secolului al XIX –lea. – Discurs oficial şi receptare socială reflectate în presa vremii Ancuţa-Lăcrimioara Chiş, Diferenţa şi discriminarea socio-politică a femeii Irina Petraş, Casa, locul vieţii (fragmente) Monica Mureşan Pentru o istorie a morţii în peisajul istoriografic românesc - prezentarea unor contribuţii colective recente: Religiozitate şi atitudini în faţa morţii în spaţiul transilvan din premodernitate până în secolul XX, coord. Mihaela Grancea, 2005 şi Discursuri despre moarte în Transilvania secolelor XVI-XX, coord Mihaela Grancea şi Ana Dumitran, 2006. REFLEXII Olimpia Curta, Reviste electronice. Baze şi perspective de Alice Keller – Recenzie Adrian Grănescu, Arhitectura Clinicilor Universitare din Cluj 1886-1903 Dorina Buia, Itinerar de suflet la Tăul Muced Raluca Soare, De la teoriile ataşamentului la tehnicile de intervenţie în psihoterapie. (Školka Enikő – Teorii explicative, Modele şi Tehnici de intervenţie în psihologie clinică şi psihoterapie) Sidonia Nedeianu Grama, Mitbiografia politică în istoria orală Raluca Soare, Opera bibliothecariorum 1990-2007 – Recenzie Ionuţ Costea, Kovács Mária, A kolozsvári „Lucian Blaga” Központi Egyetemi Könyvtár 19. századi magyar nyelvű kéziratainak katalógusa. Első kötet: történelmi és földrajzi kéziratok/ Catalogul manuscriselor maghiare din secolul al 19-lea din colecţiile Bibliotecii Centrale Universitare „Lucian Blaga” Volumul I: Manuscrise de istorie şi geografie, Editura Argonaut, Cluj-Napoca, 2007, 218 p. – Recenzie 6 Ana Maria Căpâlneanu, Lola Maria Petrescu – Biblioteca şi provocările secolului XXI, Cluj-Napoca: Risoprint, 2007 István Király V, Bibliografia ca instrument al clarificării de sine Kinga Tamás, Viorica Sâncrăian - un coleg şi un bibliotecar de excepţie În colecţia BIBLIOTHECA BIBLIOLOGICA au apărut Revista PHILOBIBLON – Volumele apărute. (shrink)

Noted Hungarian historian Karoly Szerencses provides brief, steam-of-consciousness essays to accompany each photo. Acting as the photographer's fictive guide, Szerencses introduces "Margaret" to each of her photos, providing her with an encapsulated historical background of the subject and in the process revealing the soul and conscience of the nation in 1938. As he says in farewell to Margaret at the end of their "tour": "... please remember us, our terrible fears; recite a prayer for us so that we may say, (...) for the very last time: they caught us by surprise, they meant to annihilate us, yet we managed to survive." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that at least some moral properties can be part of the contents of experience. I argue for this claim using a _contrast argument_, a type of argument commonly found in the literature on the philosophy of perception. I first appeal to psychological research on what I call emotionally empathetic dysfunctional individuals to establish a phenomenal contrast between EEDI s and normal individuals in some moral situations. I then argue that the best explanation for this contrast, assuming (...) non-skeptical moral realism, is that _badness_ is represented in the normal individual’s experience but not in the EEDI ’s experience. I consider and reject four alternative explanations of the contrast. (shrink)

According to phenomenal conservatism, seemings can provide prima facie justification for beliefs. In order to fully assess phenomenal conservatism, it is important to understand the nature of seemings. Two views are that (SG) seemings are a sui generis propositional attitude, and that (D2B) seemings are nothing over and above dispositions to believe. Proponents of (SG) reject (D2B) in large part by providing four distinct objections against (D2B). First, seemings have a distinctive phenomenology, but dispositions to believe do not. Second, seemings (...) can provide a non-trivial explanation for dispositions to believe, which wouldn’t be possible if seemings were dispositions to believe. Third, there are some dispositions to believe that are not seemings. Fourth, there are instances of seemings which are not dispositions to believe. I consider and reject each of these objections. The first and third objections rely on a misunderstanding of (D2B). The second objection fails because there are contexts in which an appeal to a previously unknown identity can provide an interesting explanation. The fourth objection overlooks the possibility of finkish and masked dispositions, phenomena which are widely accepted in the dispositions literature. I conclude that (D2B) escapes these common objections unscathed. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that our first-person preferences regarding pleasurable and painful experiences exhibit a bias toward the future (positive and negative hedonic future-bias), and that our preferences regarding non-hedonic events (both positive and negative) exhibit no such bias (non-hedonic time-neutrality). Further, it has been assumed that our third-person preferences are always time-neutral. Some have attempted to use these (presumed) differential patterns of future-bias—different across kinds of events and perspectives—to argue for the irrationality of hedonic future-bias. This (...) paper experimentally tests these descriptive hypotheses. While as predicted we found first-person hedonic future-bias, we did not find that participants were time-neutral in all other conditions. Hence, the presumed asymmetry of hedonic/non-hedonic and first/third-person preferences cannot be used to argue for the irrationality of future-bias, since no such asymmetries exist. Instead, we develop a more fine-grained approach, according to which three factors—positive/negative valence, first/third-person, and hedonic/non-hedonic—each independently influence, but do not determine, whether an event is treated in a future-biased or time-neutral way. We discuss the upshots of these results for the debate over the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 72-74.

Proponents of impure moral perception claim that, while there are perceptual moral experiences, these experiences epistemically depend on a priori moral knowledge. Proponents of pure moral perception claim that moral experiences can justify independently of substantive a priori moral knowledge. Some philosophers, most notably David Faraci, have argued that the pure view is mistaken, since moral perception requires previous moral background knowledge, and such knowledge could not itself be perceptual. I defend pure moral perception against this objection. I consider two (...) ways to understand the notion of “background knowledge” that is crucial to the objection. On a reading, the claim that background knowledge is necessary for moral perception is likely false. On a second and weaker reading, the claim is true, but the background knowledge in question could be perceptual, and thus compatible with pure moral perception. Thus, the objection fails. (shrink)

Left and right libertarians alike are attracted to the thesis of self-ownership because, as Eric Mack says, they ‘believe that it best captures our common perception of the moral inviolability of persons’. Further, most libertarians, left and right, accept that some version of the Lockean Proviso restricts agents’ ability to acquire worldly resources. The inviolability of SO purports to make libertarianism more appealing than its egalitarian counterparts, since traditional egalitarian theories cannot straightforwardly explain why, e.g. forced organ donation and forced (...) labor are serious wrongs even when they generate more equitable outcomes or benefit the greater good. I argue that, when SO is coupled with LP, this appeal is unfounded. SO, as usually construed, allows for the possibility of justified incursions of non-culpable agents up to and including forced organ donation. I conclude by considering a few possible responses on behalf of the libertarian, assessing each one’s plausibility. (shrink)

My article – as a first step in a comprehen- sive research program – attempts to verify the hypothesis according to which M. Eliade’s morphologi-cal and historical investigations of archaic religious- ness reveal the outlines of an archaic ontology. For this purpose, the article focuses upon Eliade’s conception of religious tradition as the carrier of the indivisible unity of sacred existence and religious experience. The ontological difference found in religious existence and revealed by religious experience is rooted in the essentially (...) hermeneutic nature of religious tradition. Therefore the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics proves very productive in the investigation of this problem. (shrink)

In Science, Faith and Society, Michael Polanyi speaks about various ‘interpretations of nature’. I discuss the items that he has in mind, identify two of his major theses about them, and investigate the extent to which he treated science as resting on different ‘ultimate suppositions’ at different times in its history.I then consider what he says about how to decide between science and rival ‘interpretations of nature’, arguing that the idea of such a choice or decision is dubious, and that (...) there is no prospect, nowadays, of rejecting science ‘as a whole’. Polanyi’s better approach to the issue, I urge, is in terms of the replacement of our natural inclination through education.Polanyi’s account of free discussion rests on the two principles of fairness and tolerance. Rival interpretations of nature, though, are too different for the decision procedure that he envisages to work. And only a public committed to a scientific interpretation of nature could nowadays count as judicious.Finally, I discuss the debate between what Polanyi calls the ‘metaphysical believer’ and the ‘nihilist’, arguing that Polanyi’s recognition that universal nihilism is logically untenable implies that we do not have to resort to the ‘mental satisfactions’ to which he appealed. (shrink)

The sensory constraint on conscious thought says that if a thought is phenomenally conscious, its phenomenal properties must be reducible to some sensory phenomenal character. I argue that the burgeoning psychological literature on aphantasia, an impoverishment in the ability to generate mental imagery, provides a counterexample to the sensory constraint. The best explanation of aphantasics’ introspective reports, neuroimaging, and task performance is that some aphantasics have conscious thoughts without sensory mental imagery. This argument against the sensory constraint supports the existence (...) of a non-sensory phenomenology of thought. Moreover, this argument can be extended to show that this non-sensory phenomenology determines a thought content. Finally, it can potentially diagnose the disagreement over cognitive phenomenology in the philosophy of mind, as such disagreement may turn on interpersonal variation in mental imagery. (shrink)

Proponents of phenomenal intentionality share a commitment that, for at least some paradigmatically intentional states, phenomenal character constitutively determines narrow intentional content. If this is correct, then any two states with the same phenomenal character will have the same narrow intentional content. Using a twin-earth style case, I argue that two different people can be in intrinsically identical phenomenological states without sharing narrow intentional contents. After describing and defending the case, I conclude by considering a few objections that help to (...) further illustrate the problem. (shrink)

The careful historical and metaphilosophical attention recently bestowed upon analytic philosophy has revealed that traditional ways of defining it are inadequate. In the face of this inadequacy, contemporary authors have proposed new definitions that detach analytic philosophy from its turn of the twentieth century origins. I argue that this contemporary trend in defining analytic philosophy is misguided, and that it diminishes the likelihood of our coming to an accurate historical and metaphilosophical understanding of it. This is especially unsatisfactory since such (...) understanding is essential to finding an adequate remedy for the widely perceived ills of contemporary analytic philosophy. I suggest that a more fruitful approach to developing such understanding might begin with treating the unity of analytic philosophy as illusory. (shrink)

The standard formulation of Newcomb's problem compares evidential and causal conceptions of expected utility, with those maximizing evidential expected utility tending to end up far richer. Thus, in a world in which agents face Newcomb problems, the evidential decision theorist might ask the causal decision theorist: "if you're so smart, why ain’cha rich?” Ultimately, however, the expected riches of evidential decision theorists in Newcomb problems do not vindicate their theory, because their success does not generalize. Consider a theory that allows (...) the agents who employ it to end up rich in worlds containing Newcomb problems and continues to outperform in other cases. This type of theory, which I call a “success-first” decision theory, is motivated by the desire to draw a tighter connection between rationality and success, rather than to support any particular account of expected utility. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive justification of success-first decision theories as accounts of rational decision. I locate this justification in an experimental approach to decision theory supported by the aims of methodological naturalism. (shrink)

Next SectionIn order to cope with the imperfective paradox, the assumption that the event in progress must get completed, if not in the actual world, then in a counterfactual world or worlds, has been a part of the standard modal approach to the progressive since Dowty (1977). This is generally coupled with the further assumption that some variant of normalcy should be used to single out the relevant counterfactual continuations. Recently, however, Bonomi (1999), Gendler Szabó (2004, 2008) and Wulf (2009) (...) have argued against these assumptions. The present paper suggests that the counter-arguments give compelling evidence that the truth-conditions of the progressive are weaker than is assumed by the standard approach, and that the normalcy requirement should be replaced by reference to the conditions necessary for the completion of the event. (shrink)

The input data to grammar learning algorithms often consist of overt forms that do not contain full structural descriptions. This lack of information may contribute to the failure of learning. Past work on Optimality Theory introduced Robust Interpretive Parsing (RIP) as a partial solution to this problem. We generalize RIP and suggest replacing the winner candidate with a weighted mean violation of the potential winner candidates. A Boltzmann distribution is introduced on the winner set, and the distribution’s parameter $T$ is (...) gradually decreased. Finally, we show that GRIP, the Generalized Robust Interpretive Parsing Algorithm significantly improves the learning success rate in a model with standard constraints for metrical stress assignment. (shrink)

In this article, using the recent work by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age as my point of departure, I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to think past the competing binary of atheistic and religious experience and allows us to surpass the present narratives of secularism. In A Secular Age, Taylor himself seeks a middle ground between atheism and religion, arguing that it is possible to open ourselves to the cross-pressures of modern existence that find us caught between (...) scientific atheism and a need for spiritual and religious guidance. Here, Taylor finds a way of picturing ourselves within a secular age, remaining faithful to scientific rationalism, but still open to religion and a sense of a higher good. However, as I shall demonstrate, in his thesis Taylor misrepresents the Continental philosophical tradition (particularly Nietzsche and post-structuralism) that has itself sought to understand these cross-pressures of existence. Taking this misrepresentation, and specifically his reductive and colloquial analysis of Nietzsche, Camus, and Derrida, as my point of departure, I provide an alternative manner of thinking through the work of these writers, one that leads to a detailed analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy and his project the deconstruction of Christianity. In this analysis I argue that Nancy provides a manner of thinking that remains open and allows an experience of freedom, without seeking to close that sense of openness with explanation, nor maintaining that sense of openness with a conception of the divine. (shrink)

The Problem with (i) -- Illustration -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index.

Salient stimuli presented at unattended locations are not always perceived, a phenomenon termed inattentional blindness. We hypothesized that inattentional blindness may be mediated by attentional inhibition. It has been shown that attentional inhibition effects are maximal near an attended location. If our hypothesis is correct, inattentional blindness effects should similarly be maximal near an attended location. During central fixation, participants viewed rapidly presented colored digits at a peripheral location. An unexpected black circle was concurrently presented. Participants were instructed to maintain (...) central fixation and name each color/digit, requiring focused attention to that location. For each participant, the critical stimulus was presented either near to or far from the attended location . In support of our hypothesis, inattentional blindness effects were maximal near the attended location, but only at intermediate task accuracy. (shrink)

A school of thought traceable to the political writings of Bodin and Hobbes believes that "order" is the cardinal principle which takes precedence over "justice" - which is reduced to conformity. The main concern of this book is to analyse this tradition through study of its progenitors.

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay (...) examines a troubling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary physics. (shrink)

An adequate semantics for generic sentences must stake out positions across a range of contested territory in philosophy and linguistics. For this reason the study of generic sentences is a venue for investigating different frameworks for understanding human rationality as manifested in linguistic phenomena such as quantification, classification of individuals under kinds, defeasible reasoning, and intensionality. Despite the wide variety of semantic theories developed for generic sentences, to date these theories have been almost universally model-theoretic and representational. This essay outlines (...) a range of proof-theoretic analyses for characterizing generics. Particular attention is given to an expressivist proof-theory that can be traced to 1) work on logical syntax that Carnap undertook prior to his turn toward truth-conditional model theory in the late 1930s, and 2) research on sequent calculi and natural deduction systems that originate in work from Gentzen and Prawitz.1. (shrink)

Moral distress (MD) is well-documented within the nursing literature and occurs when constraints prevent a correct course of action from being implemented. The measured frequency of MD has increased among nurses over recent years, especially since the COVID-19 Pandemic. MD is less understood among nurse leaders than other populations of nurses. A qualitative systematic review was conducted with the aim to synthesize the experiences of MD among nurse leaders. This review involved a search of three databases (Medline, CINAHL, and APA (...) PsychINFO) which resulted in the retrieval of 303 articles. PRISMA review criteria guided authors during the article review and selection process. Following the review, six articles were identified meeting review criteria and quality was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) Checklist for qualitative studies. No ethical review was required for this systematic review. The six studies included in this review originated from the United States, Brazil, Turkey, and Iran. Leadership roles ranged from unit-based leadership to executive leadership. Assigned quality scores based upon CASP criteria ranged from 6 to 9 (moderate to high quality). Three analytical themes emerged from the synthesis: (1) moral distress is consuming; (2) constrained by the system; and (3) adapt to overcome. The unique contributors of MD among nurse leaders include the leadership role itself and challenges navigating moral situations as they arise. The nurse leader perspective should be considered in the development of future MD interventions. (shrink)

Philosophers working on time-biases assume that people are hedonically biased toward the future. A hedonically future-biased agent prefers pleasurable experiences to be future instead of past, and painful experiences to be past instead of future. Philosophers further predict that this bias is strong enough to apply to unequal payoffs: people often prefer less pleasurable future experiences to more pleasurable past ones, and more painful past experiences to less painful future ones. In addition, philosophers have predicted that future-bias is restricted to (...) first-person preferences, and that people’s third-person preferences are time-neutral. Philosophers disagree vigorously about the normative status of these preferences—i.e., they disagree about whether first-person future-bias is rationally permissible. Time-neutralists, for example, have appealed to the predicted asymmetry between first- and third-person preferences to argue for the rational impermissibility of future-bias. We empirically tested these predictions, and found that while people do prefer more past pain to less future pain, they do not prefer less future pleasure to more past pleasure. This was so in both first and third-person conditions. This suggests that future-bias is typically non-absolute, and is more easily outweighed in the case of positive events. We connect this result to the normative debate over future-bias. (shrink)

Imagine coming across an alternative community such that, while they have normative terms like 'ought' with the same action-guiding roles and relationships to each other, their normative terms come to pick out different properties. When we come across such a community, or even just imagine it, those of us who strive to be moral and rational want to ask something like the following: Further Question: Which set of concepts ought we use—theirs or ours? The problem, first raised by Eklund, is (...) that on almost any metasemantic theory, Further Question cannot be stated in a way that captures the spirit of what we want to ask. This is because any way of asking the question makes use of our own normative concepts, and thus their reference is already fixed on the properties that our current normative concepts refer to. Any purported solution to this problem must meet two conditions. First, it must capture the spirit of what Further Question is intuitively attempting to ask. Second, it must reframe the inquiry in a way that makes the answer neither trivial nor ineffable. In this paper, I propose a solution to this problem by appeal to edenic representation, inspired by, but not identical to, Chalmers’ notion of edenic content. The rough idea here is that representation is edenic to the extent that the representational vehicle mirrors, in quality and structure, the represented property. I argue that a reframing of Further Question in terms of edenic representation can capture the spirit of the question, without collapsing it into a question with a trivial or ineffable answer. Thus, the realist about normative properties can face the problem of the alternative normative community head on, without collapsing into incoherence or triviality. If correct, this solution is of further interest to any metanormative realist concerned with metasemantic questions, because it can tell us more about how the proper representation of the robustly normative would look. (shrink)

I summarise certain aspects of Paul Feyerabend’s account of the development of Western rationalism, show the ways in which that account is supposed to run up against an alternative, that of Karl Popper, and then try to give a preliminary comparison of the two. My interest is primarily in whether what Feyerabend called his ‘story’ constitutes a possible history of our epistemic concepts and their trajectory. I express some grave reservations about that story, and about Feyerabend’s framework, finding Popper’s views (...) less problematic here. However, I also suggest that one important aspect of Feyerabend’s material, his treatment of religious belief, can be given an interpretation which makes it tenable, and perhaps preferable to a Popperian approach. (shrink)

In recent years, a disagreement has erupted between two camps of philosophers about the rationality of bias toward the near and bias toward the future. According to the traditional hybrid view, near bias is rationally impermissible, while future bias is either rationally permissible or obligatory. Time neutralists, meanwhile, argue that the hybrid view is untenable. They claim that those who reject near bias should reject both biases and embrace time neutrality. To date, experimental work has focused on future-directed near bias. (...) The primary aim of this paper is to shed light on the debate by investigating past-directed near bias. If people treat the past and future differently with respect to near bias, by being future-directed but not past-directed near biased, then this supports a particular version of the hybrid view: temporal metaphysic hybridism. If people treat the past and future the same with respect to near bias, then this supports a simple version of time neutralism, which explains both future bias and near bias in terms of the functioning of a single mechanism: the anticipatory/retrospectory mechanism. Our results undermine the claim that people are future-directed, but not past-directed, near biased, and hence do not support temporal metaphysic hybridism. They also fail to support simple time-neutralism; instead, they suggest that there are multiple mechanisms that differently shape future- and past-directed preferences. (shrink)

We study behind-the-scenes investor activism promoting environmental, social, and governance improvements by means of a proprietary dataset of a large international, socially responsible activist fund. We examine the activist’s target selection, forms of engagement, impact on ESG performance, drivers of success, and effects on the targets’ operations and value creation. Target firms are typically large and visible, perform well, and have high liquidity and low ESG performance. Engagement induces ESG rating adjustments: firms with poor ex ante ESG ratings experience a (...) ratings increase after complying with the activist’s demands, whereas firms with high ex ante ESG ratings experience a ratings decrease following the revelation of their ESG problems. Activism that is focused on environmental and social issues is more likely to succeed if targets are ESG-sensitive. Successful engagements boost targets’ sales. Risk-adjusted excess stock returns of successful engagements outperform those of unsuccessful engagements by 2.7%. Results are especially strong for firms with low ex ante ESG scores. Specifically, targeted firms in the lowest ex ante ESG quartile outperform matched peers by 7.5% in the year after the end of the engagement. Our results thus suggest that the activism regarding corporate social responsibility generally improves ESG practices and corporate sales and is profitable to the activist. Taken together, we provide direct evidence that ethical investing and strong financial performance, both from the activist’s and the targeted firm’s perspective, can go hand-in-hand together. (shrink)

Most of us display a bias toward the near: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our near future and painful experiences to be in our distant future. We also display a bias toward the future: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our future and painful experiences to be in our past. While philosophers have tended to think that near bias is a rational defect, almost no one finds future bias objectionable. In this essay, we argue that this hybrid (...) position is untenable. We conclude that those who reject near bias should instead endorse complete temporal neutrality. (shrink)

It is essential for social robots to fit in the human society. In order to facilitate this process we propose to use the family dog’s social behaviour shown towards humans as an inspiration. In this study we explored dogs’ low level social monitoring in dog-human interactions and extracted individually consistent and context dependent behaviours in simple everyday social scenarios. We found that proximity seeking and tail wagging were most individually distinctive in dogs, while activity, orientation towards the owner, and exploration (...) were dependent on the context and/or the activity of the owner. The functional analogues of these dog behaviours can be implemented in social robots of different embodiments in order to make them acceptable and more believable for humans. Keywords: dog-owner interaction; social robotics; low-level social monitoring; greeting behaviour; individually distinctive behaviours. (shrink)

This paper compares the heuristic potential of three metaphorical paired concepts used in the relevant literature to characterise global relationships between the anthroposphere and the ecosphere. Methodologically, the guiding question is whether and to what extent metaphorical theses can support an arrival at hypotheses which accurately reflect reality and possess explanatory force. The predator-prey model implies that the populations of two species in such a relationship in principle exhibit coupled oscillations, giving prey populations the possibility of periodic regeneration. For some (...) time, however, the most important indicators of human destruction of nature have been showing a relentless upward trend which appears to render the tumour-host metaphor more appropriate. Another fact which favours this analogy is that a tumour develops within its host and from its host's normal cells, in a similar way to the emergence of the anthroposphere from within the biosphere. But the parasite-host analogy also allows the formulation of fruitful hypotheses, since ecological parasitology is equally familiar with varieties of autoaggressive interaction and provides a means of focusing particularly on the adelphoparasitic hierarchy within the anthroposphere. (shrink)