Purpose: Gordon Pask has left behind a voluminous scientific oeuvre in which he frequently uses technical language and a detail of argument that makes his work difficult to access except by the most dedicated of students. His ideas have also evolved over a long period. This paper provides introductions to three of Pask's key concepts: "conversations," "individuals," and "concepts." Method: Based on the author's close knowledge of Pask's work, as his collaborator for ten years and as someone who has had (...) access to and is familiar with almost all of his published work, the paper selects three of Pask's key concepts for elucidation in order to motivate the interested reader to explore Pask's work in the original. Results: Pask's key concepts, "conversations," "individuals," and "concepts," which are central in his conversation theory and his later elaborations in "interaction of actors theory," are shown to be grounded in fundamental principles from cybernetics. Furthermore, the form of Pask's theorising is that of second order (reflexive) metatheorising, developing theories of theorising that explain their own form and genesis. (shrink)

This article seeks to conceptualize global counterterror actor types by examining the designated terrorist organizations lists of six countries; the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Russia, and China. It is argued that these countries should be placed into one of three distinct categories: Trendsetters, Trend Followers, and Individual Players. Being able to classify countries according to these categories is important for global policymakers. It raises awareness of the differences between countries, and emphasizes that “one-fits-all” policies are inappropriate (...) and have little chance of achieving global endorsement. (shrink)

Prominent recent scholarship in global political justice has focused on creating conceptual space for international NGOs ? and sometimes also corporations and states ? as fully-fledged participants in global governance. While acknowledging the achievements of international non-state actors, I argue that core global governance tasks ? of global distribution, regulation or administration ? should not be assigned to them. Drawing from neo-republican theory, I contend that such actors fall short of the formal criteria that are necessary for constituting (...) a global public actor, because they do not have a global function and orientation. The distinction between public and private actors matters, since it conditions our expectations for them: both categories of actors are asked to avoid dominating individuals, but public actors must, in addition, protect individuals from third-party domination. (shrink)

Abstract:We discuss the role that transnational corporations (TNCs) should play in developing global governance, creating a framework of rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the (...) social responsibility of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)

This book investigates the relationship between non-state actors and climate justice from a philosophical perspective. The climate justice literature remains largely focused upon the rights and duties of states. Yet, for decades, states have failed to take adequate steps to address climate change. This has led some to suggest that, if severe climate change and its attendant harms are to be avoided, non-state actors are going to have to step into the breach. This collection represents the first attempt (...) to systematically examine the climate duties of the most significant non-state actors - corporations, sub-national political communities, and individuals. Targeted at academic philosophers working on climate justice, this collection will also be of great interest to students and scholars of global justice, applied ethics, political philosophy and environmental humanities. (shrink)

Much social theory takes for granted the core conceit of modern culture, that modern actors-individuals, organizations, nation states-are autochthonous and natural entities, no longer really embedded in culture. Accordingly, while there is much abstract metatheory about "actors" and their "agency," there is arguably little theory about the topic. This article offers direct arguments about how the modern (European, now global) cultural system constructs the modern actor as an authorized agent for various interests via an ongoing relocation into society (...) of agency originally located in transcendental authority or in natural forces environing the social system. We see this authorized agentic capability as an essential feature of what modern theory and culture call an "actor," and one that, when analyzed, helps greatly in explaining a number of otherwise anomalous or little analyzed features of modern individuals, organizations, and states. These features include their isomorphism and standardization, their internal decoupling, their extraordinarily complex structuration, and their capacity for prolific collective action. (shrink)

This article refers to the idea of Constitution, understood as a social contract. It is argued that the emergence of new actors in the Latin American constituent processes has made it possible to appreciate the Constitutions as increasingly complex pacts. It is not only a pact “between individuals” or “between citizens”, but it can also be understood as an agreement between cultures, between human beings and nature, and even between men and women. It ends by noting that, as new (...) groups participate in the constituent processes, the pacts will also become increasingly diverse, so that the concept of Constitution continues to be a concept in construction. (shrink)

Understanding personality effects and their role in influencing relationship quality, varied according to gender and relationship duration, could help us better understand close relationships. Participants were Chinese dating dyads and were asked to complete both the Big Five Inventory and Perceived Relationship Quality Component scales. Males and those who had a long-term relationship perceived better relationship quality; individuals who scored higher on agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and emotional stability enjoyed better relationship quality; gender and/or relationship duration moderated the actor effect of (...) extraversion and the partner effects of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness on relationship quality. Regarding the profile similarity, those couples who were more dissimilar in their profile personality had better relationship quality, especially when they were in a relatively long-term relationship. Meanwhile, with an increase in profile similarity, the males’ perceived relationship quality decreased. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the ontological status of actants. Actants are argued as being the basic constituting entities of networks in the framework of Actor Network Theory (Latour, 2007). I introduce two problems concerning actants that have been pointed out by Collin (2010). The first problem concerns the explanatory role of actants. According to Collin, actants cannot play the role of explanans of networks and products of the same newtork at the same time, at pain of circularity. The second (...) problem is that if actants are, as suggested by Latour, fundamentally propertyless, then it is unclear how they combine into networks. This makes the nature of actants inexplicable. -/- I suggest that both problems rest on the assumption of a form of object ontology, i.e. the assumption that the ontological basis of reality consists in discrete individual entities that have intrinsic properties. I argue that the solution to this problem consists in the assumption of an ontology of relations, as suggested within the framework of Ontic Structural Realism (Ladyman & Ross, 2007). Ontic Structural Realism is a theory concerning the ontology of science that claims that scientific theories represent a reality consisting on only relation, and no individual entities. -/- Furthermore I argue that the employment of OSR can, at the price of little modification for both theories, solve both of the two problems identified by Collin concerning ANT. -/- Throughout the text I seek support for my claims by referring to examples of application of ANT to the context of networked learning. As I argue, the complexity of the phenomenon of networked learning gives us a convenient vantage point from which we can clearly understand many important aspects of both ANT and OSR. -/- While my proposal can be considered as an attempt to solve Collin's problems, it is also an experiment of reconciliation between analytic and constructivist philosophy of science. -/- In fact I point out that on the one hand Actor Network Theory and Ontic Structural Realism show an interesting number of points of agreement, such as the naturalistic character and the focus on relationality. On the other hand, I argue that all the intuitive discrepancies that originates from the Science and Technology Studies’ criticism against analytic philosophy of science are at a closer look only apparent. (shrink)

Because of the impact of close partner's touch on psychological and physical well-being by alleviating stress, it is important to explore the influence factors that underlie the stress-alleviating effect of close partner's touch. Previous studies suggested that the stress-alleviating effect was different when individuals were touched by different persons. Specifically, the stress was reduced significantly when the individual was touched by the close partner compared with the acquaintance and the stranger. However, whether the stress-alleviating effect of touch was modulated (...) by the close relationship quality is unknown. To examine this question, the participants performed a 3 × 2 within-subjects experiment. The results revealed that the stress of the participants alleviated significantly while close partners present with touch compared with without touch during facing a threat. We also found that the relationship quality of couple-members modulated touch-induced stress alleviation. Participants perceiving the low quality of alternatives and the high partners' commitment level showed stronger touch-induced stress-alleviating effect than participants perceiving the high quality of alternatives and the low partners' commitment level. The explained variance was around 16.8% jointly for actor and partner effects. These findings provide evidence for explaining the reasons for touch-induced alleviating stress and have important implications for predicting the future effect of interactive behaviors. (shrink)

Actions within organizational contexts should be understood differently as compared with actions performed outside of such contexts. This is the case due to the agentic shift, as discussed by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, and the role that systemic factors play in shaping the available alternatives from which individuals acting within institutions choose. The analysis stemming from Milgram’s experiments suggests not simply that individuals temporarily abdicate their moral agency on occasion, but that there is an erosion of agency within organizations. The (...) point about the erosion of agency is deepened in the discussion of a case study which illustrates the difficulty of identifying even the bare “ownership” of actions within organizations. While this is the case, explicating these reasons suggests that both individual actors and firms can bear ethical responsibility within organizational contexts. As part of the effort to present the whole picture, business ethics courses should introduce students to the relevant insights from social psychology and human factors research. (shrink)

We explore and provide an account for a recently identified judgment anomaly, i.e., an order effect that changes the strength of intentionality ascriptions for some side effects (e.g., when a chairman's pursuit of profits has the foreseen but unintended consequence of harming the environment). Experiment 1 replicated the previously unanticipated order effect anomaly controlling for general individual differences. Experiment 2 revealed that the order effect was multiply determined and influenced by factors such as beliefs (i.e., that the same actor (...) was involved in bringing about both good and bad side effects) and philosophical training (i.e., more training was associated with smaller differences in judgment when harm followed help). Results provide more evidence that the folk's philosophically relevant intuitions are predictably fragmented and depend on the dynamic interplay between persons, process, and environments. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This article understands codes of ethics as written documents that represent social actors in specific ways through the use of language. It presents an empirical study that investigated the codes of ethics of the German Dax30 companies. The study adopted a critical discourse analysis-approach in order to reveal how the code-texts produce a particular understanding of the various internal social groups for the readers. Language is regarded as social practice that functions at creating particular understandings of individuals and groups, (...) how they are interrelated, and how they should behave. Findings show that codes of ethics do not represent employees as a group that is empowered or morally enlightened; instead they are positioned as passive receivers of rules and regulations. Furthermore, codes of ethics classify employees as having a need to be monitored and controlled by the higher levels of the corporate hierarchy. Overall, code language enforces compliance through maintaining existing and building new asymmetries between the different groups within a company. As a consequence, the article discusses a somewhat different understanding of code effectiveness. Reproducing and reemphasizing hierarchical relations could also lead to code compliance, perhaps without any need for developing the moral employee that is committed to ethical values. (shrink)

Background Moral courage means courage to act according to individual’s own ethical values and principles despite the risk of negative consequences for them. Research about the moral courage of whistle-blowers in health care is scarce, although whistleblowing involves a significant risk for the whistle-blower. Objective To analyse the moral courage of potential whistle-blowers and its association with their background variables in health care. Research design Was a descriptive-correlational study using a questionnaire, containing Nurses Moral Courage Scale©, a video vignette (...) of the wrongdoing situation with an open question about the vignette, and several background variables. Data were analysed statistically and inductive content analysis was used for the narratives. Participants and research context Nurses as healthcare professionals (including registered nurses, public health nurses, midwives, and nurse paramedics) were recruited from the membership register of the Nurses’ Association via email in 2019. A total of 454 nurses responded. The research context was simulated using a vignette. Ethical considerations Good scientific inquiry guidelines were followed. Permission to use the Nurses’ Moral Courage Scale© was obtained from the copyright holder. The ethical approval and permission to conduct the study were obtained from the participating university and the Nurses’ Association. Findings The mean value of potential whistle-blowers’ moral courage on a Visual Analogue Scale (0–10) was 8.55 and the mean score was 4.34 on a 5-point Likert scale. Potential whistle-blowers’ moral courage was associated with their socio-demographics, education, work, personality and social responsibility related background variables. Discussion and conclusion In health care, potential whistle-blowers seem to be quite morally courageous actors. The results offer opportunities for developing interventions, practices and education to support and encourage healthcare professionals in their whistleblowing. Research is needed for developing a theoretical construction to eventually increase whistleblowing and decrease and prevent wrongdoing. (shrink)

Critical development and food studies scholars argue that the current food security paradigm is emblematic of a ‘New Green Revolution’, characterized by agricultural intensification, increasing reliance on biotechnology, deepening global markets, and depeasantization. High-profile examples of this model are not hard to find. Less examined, however, are food-security programs that appear to work at cross-purposes with this model. Drawing on the case of Feed the Future in Guatemala, I show how USAID engages in activities that valorize ancestral crops, subsistence production, (...) and agroecological practices. Rather than the result of macro-level planning—of either the New Green Revolution or a greener reform regime—I argue that nonconforming food security projects can be traced to individual actors and their interactions on the ground. I draw on an ‘interface approach’ (Long 1990 ), focusing on the lifeworlds of development workers, their interfaces with each other, and with the to-be-developed. Doing so reveals how food security projects are significantly shaped by the relationships and interests of development actors enmeshed in particular organizational and national settings. This research contributes a fresh perspective on the food security paradigm and its role within the ‘corporate food regime’. (shrink)

How should we make sense of praise and blame and other such reactions towards collective agents like governments, universities, or corporations? Collective agents can be appropriate targets for our moral feelings and judgements because they can maintain and express moral positions of their own. Moral agency requires being capable of recognising moral considerations and reasons. It also necessitates the ability to react reflexively to moral matters, i.e. to take into account new moral concerns when they arise. While members of a (...) collective agent are capable of this, the collective frames the thinking of the individual moral agents within it and affects their options in myriad ways. The moral positions thus formed and expressed belong to the collective. Crucially, unlike marginal moral agents, collective agents as moral actors can be held fully responsible for their acts and omissions. (shrink)

: We discuss the role that transnational corporations should play in developing global governance, creating a framework of rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the (...) social responsibility of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)

The article addresses the topic of “group agency” with respect to large organizations. It undertakes to analyze some of the concrete micro- and meso-level processes through which large organizations arrive at collective “knowledge” and “action.” The article makes use of the theory of strategic action fields to analyze processes of knowledge and the implementation of organizational intentions. The article describes some of the dysfunctions and disunities that should be expected from these individual-level processes, including principal–agent problems, conflicts of interests (...) and priorities among organizational actors, loose coupling among subunits, and outcomes that are influenced by powerful outsiders. It argues for a limited conception of “ bounded localistic organizational rationality” in which organizations have limited coherence, unity, and consistency over time in their beliefs and actions. (shrink)

Criminal law commonly requires judges and juries to decide whether defendants acted reasonably. Nevertheless, issues of reasonableness fall into two distinct categories: (1) where reasonableness concerns events and states, including risks of which an actor is conscious, that can be justly assessed without regard to the actor’s individual traits, and (2) where reasonableness concerns culpable mental states and emotions that cannot justly be assessed without reference to the actor’s capacities. This distinction is significant because, while the reasonable person by (...) which category-1 cases are assessed is a disembodied and impersonal ideal that consists of nothing but the uncompromising values of the jurisdiction, the reasonable person by which category-2 cases are measured must necessarily incorporate some of an actor’s individual traits or risk blaming the blameless. Courts and commentators have thus far approached the task of individualizing or subjectivizing reasonableness in category 2 by trying to determine in advance which individual traits are generally relevant and which are not. I propose an alternative approach that, in addition to applying to negligence and voluntary manslaughter cases alike, derives its content from the social practice of blaming. I propose that a reasonable person in category-2 cases consists of every physical, psychological, and emotional trait an actor possesses, with one exception—the exception being that he possesses proper respect for the values of the people of the state as reflected and incorporated in the statute at hand. (shrink)

While various strategic business issues related to product design have been explored by academicians and practitioners, one issue has largely been ignored: how do financial markets assess and evaluate companies’ product design? The purpose of this article is to examine this issue, especially when it comes to the assessments and evaluations made by the most essential actors of contemporary financial markets: investment analysts and institutional investors. I develop propositions concerning the product design-related evaluative schemes and heuristics used by the (...) financial market actors in evaluating companies as investment opportunities. I illustrate my propositions with examples from, e.g., the mobile phone industry as well as with interview excerpts from interviews with investment analysts and institutional investors. Propositions are provided both for assessments of companies’ individual end products (‘design as the end product’ perspective) and for assessments of companies’ design capabilities (‘design as a capability’ perspective). In essence, the propositions highlight that the evaluative schemes used by financial market actors are partly rational, yet involve biases and are likely to lead to overvaluation and undervaluation of certain kinds of product designs by certain kinds of companies. Thus, even from the perspective of profit-maximization, many of the evaluative schemes of the financial market actors are, at most, quasi-rational. Moreover, the evaluative schemes of the financial market actors may motivate company managers to pursue certain kinds of product design rather than others—and may even lead to self-reinforcing (vicious or virtuous) circles of certain kinds of product designs being advocated. (shrink)

Interactions in service ecosystems, as opposed to the service dyad, have recently gained much attention from research. However, it is still unclear how they influence a customer’s experiential value and trigger desired prosocial behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify which elements of the multi-actor service ecosystem contribute to a customer’s experiential value and to investigate its relation to a customer’s interaction attitude and inter-customer helping behavior. The authors adopted a scale development procedure from the existing literature. Service, (...) brand, retail and tourism management research as well as expert feedback is used to generate a pool of 33 items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. The scale was validated based on more than 468 responses to a CASI at one of the world’s largest trade shows. Scale-development procedure was followed by structural equation modeling. CFA supports that experiential value in multi-actor ecosystems comprises five dimensions. The functional value of personnel, the perception of other customers’ appearance, the perception of other customers’ behavior, multisensory stimuli, and a customer’s enjoyment. Experiential value positively and directly relates to a customer’s interaction attitude and inter-customer helping behavior. Furthermore, the effect of experiential value on inter-customer helping behavior is partially mediated by interaction attitude. Managers interested in getting more out of interactions with customers will develop an understanding for the interplay between the physical environment and individuals within a multi-actor ecosystem. Social scientists and managers can use the scale to assess experiential value, encourage a customer’s interaction attitude and utilize the customers’ influence on their peers. This paper synthesizes insights from existing research on experiential value, from various fields, in one scale. This holistic approach is the first to simultaneously account for a customer’s interactions with the multisensory physical environment, personal interactions with employees and interactions between customers in a multi-actor service ecosystem. (shrink)

Each of us makes a number of decisions, from the less important to those with far-reaching consequences. As members of different groups, we are also actors of group decision making. In order to make a rational decision, a choice-making procedure must satisfy a number of assumptions of rationality. In addition, when it comes to group decisions, those procedures should also be?fair.? However, it is not possible to define a procedure of choice-making that would transform individual orders of alternatives (...) based on preferences of perfectly rational individuals into a single social order and still meet conditions of rationality and ethics. The theory of deliberative democracy appeared in response to the impossibility of Social Choice theory. The basic assumption of deliberative democracy is that individuals adjust their preferences taking into account interests of the community. They are open for discussion with other group members and are willing to change their attitudes in order to achieve common interests. Ideally, group members come to an agreement during public discussion. Still, this concept cannot completely over?come all the difficulties posed by the theory of social choice. Specifically, there is no solution for strategic and manipulative behavior of individuals. Also, the concept of deliberative democracy faces certain problems particular to this approach, such as, to name but a few, problems with the establishment of equality of participants in the debate and their motivation, as well as problems with the organization of public hearings. (shrink)

States restrict immigration on a massive scale. Governments fortify their borders with walls and fences, authorize border patrols, imprison migrants in detention centers, and deport large numbers of foreigners. Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration argues that immigration restrictions are systematically unjust and examines how individual actors should respond to this injustice. Javier Hidalgo maintains that individuals can rightfully resist immigration restrictions and often have strong moral reasons to subvert these laws. This book makes the case (...) that unauthorized migrants can permissibly evade, deceive, and use defensive force against immigration agents, that smugglers can aid migrants in crossing borders, and that citizens should disobey laws that compel them to harm immigrants. Unjust Borders is a meditation on how individuals should act in the midst of pervasive injustice. (shrink)

Why do some individuals willingly make extreme sacrifices for their group? Whitehouse argues that such willingness stems from a visceral feeling of oneness with the group – identity fusion – that emerges from intense, shared dysphoric experiences or from perceived close kinship with others. Although Whitehouse's argument makes a valuable contribution to understanding extreme sacrifice, factors independent of identity fusion, such as devotion to sacred values, can predict self-sacrifice.

Game theory is central to modern understandings of how people deal with problems of coordination and cooperation. Yet, ironically, it cannot give a straightforward explanation of some of the simplest forms of human coordination and cooperation--most famously, that people can use the apparently arbitrary features of "focal points" to solve coordination problems, and that people sometimes cooperate in "prisoner's dilemmas." Addressing a wide readership of economists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers, Michael Bacharach here proposes a revision of game theory that resolves (...) these long-standing problems. In the classical tradition of game theory, Bacharach models human beings as rational actors, but he revises the standard definition of rationality to incorporate two major new ideas. He enlarges the model of a game so that it includes the ways agents describe to themselves their decision problems. And he allows the possibility that people reason as members of groups, each taking herself to have reason to perform her component of the combination of actions that best achieves the group's common goal. Bacharach shows that certain tendencies for individuals to engage in team reasoning are consistent with recent findings in social psychology and evolutionary biology. As the culmination of Bacharach's long-standing program of pathbreaking work on the foundations of game theory, this book has been eagerly awaited. Following Bacharach's premature death, Natalie Gold and Robert Sugden edited the unfinished work and added two substantial chapters that allow the book to be read as a coherent whole. (shrink)

Public health ethics is commonly analyzed within a consequentialist or rights-based perspective, but recent approaches explore public health from a virtue ethical perspective. Rozier focuses on the virtues of individual members of the public and I discuss public health professionals. MacKay emphasizes the role of the collective level, the practice and social structure of public health. The structure can be important in two ways. First, it potentially affects the cultivation of the virtues of individuals. Second, the structure itself could (...) have virtues. MacKay defends the latter notion and argues that structures become objective reality that is non-reducible to individuals. She implicitly describes public health as an actor, as having hopes and aspirations. MacKay’s account is an interesting contribution to the field. I agree with that the social structure is important but argue that it is primarily important in relation to the cultivation of individual virtues. Public health is not an agent and if it is described as such, it needs a supporting argument concerning moral group agency. I argue that there are no collectives without individuals. Future studies should focus on the links between the individual and social levels and discuss which virtues are the most important. (shrink)

This article proposes a more culturalist and variegated conception of the individual than that presented by individualization theorists. Inspired by the approach of the individual advocated by Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and John Meyers, it first outlines the general script of the individual-as-actor that informs modern individualism as well as the generic characteristics that are routinely attributed to persons such as agency and free will. It subsequently reconstructs three predominant interpretations of this general script, i.e. utilitarian, moral (...) and expressive individualism. For each variant, the intellectual genesis and overall definition of the institutionalization in specific societal domains and the dominant articulations in social theory are briefly presented. With this threefold distinction, the aim is to synthesize the extensive literature on individualism and to show the sociological strengths of approaching subjectivity in terms of institutionalized scripts. (shrink)

Much of the debate around requirements for the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples has focused on enabling indigenous communities to participate in various forms of democratic decision-making alongside the state and other actors. Against this backdrop, this article sets out to defend three claims. The first two of these claims are conceptual in nature: (i) Giving (collective) consent and participating in the making of (collective) decisions are distinct activities; (ii) Despite some scepticism, there is a coherent (...) conception of collective consent available to us, continuous with the notion of individual consent familiar from discussions in medical and sexual ethics. The third claim is normative: (iii) Participants in debates about free, prior, and informed consent must keep this distinction in view. That is because a group’s ability to give or withhold consent, and not only participate in making decisions, will play an important role in realising that collectives’ right to self-determination. (shrink)

This study aims to shed light on the relationship between individual and regional Christian religion and individual sustainable behaviors in an exploratory manner, with a special focus on sustainable consumption and investment decisions. To this end, we econometrically analyze online representative survey data that contains information on the self-reported importance of the consideration of ecological and social/ethical criteria in the context of a large variety of individual behaviors. The target group are financial decisions makers in German households, (...) i.e., important actors in the largest economy in Europe. Results of the econometric analysis suggest that Christian religion is positively related to a variety of ecological and social/ethical activities. Our findings empirically support explanations postulating a positive relationship between Christian religion and environmental behavior, such as the stewardship hypothesis, rather than opposite theories like White’s :1203–1207, 1967) dominion hypothesis. Particularly, we find that both individual and regional measures for Christian religion positively affect various behaviors emphasizing the importance of individual and contextual norms for individual behavior. Hence, we provide empirical evidence for the importance of Christian religion for another country than the USA, which is typically in the focus of similar studies. Our results can be used for targeted information campaigns by politicians to enhance sustainable behaviors or acceptance for related policy measures. (shrink)

Individuals and institutions sometimes have morally stringent reasons to not do a given action. For example, an oil company might have morally stringent reasons to refrain from providing revenue to a genocidal regime, or an engineer might have morally stringent reasons to refrain from providing her expertise in the development of weapons of mass destruction. But in some cases, if the agent does not do the action, another actor will do it with much worse consequences. For example, the oil company (...) might know their assets will be bought by a company with worse environmental and labor practices. Or the engineer might know her position will be filled by a more ambitious and amoral engineer. I call this the moral problem of worse actors (MPWA). MPWA gives reason, at least some of the time, to consider otherwise morally impermissible actions permissible or even obligatory. On my account, doing the action in the circumstances of MPWA remains morally objectionable even if permissible or obligatory, and this brings additional moral responsibilities and obligations to the actor. Similarly, not doing the action in the circumstances of MPWA may also bring additional (but different) moral responsibilities and obligations. Acknowledging MPWA creates considerable challenges, as many bad actors may appeal to it to justify morally objectionable action. In this paper, I develop a set of strategies for individuals and institutions to handle MPWA. This includes appeals to integrity and the proper attribution of expressive responsibility, regulatory responsibility, and compensatory responsibility. I also address a set of related concerns, including worries about incentivizing would-be bad actors, concerns about epistemic uncertainty, and the problem of mala in se exceptions. (shrink)

Abstract:Trains, a representation of Western technology and civilization, entered China in the early twentieth century. Han Bo poeticizes this train-induced Chinese modernity and its ongoing processes by mobilizing female images and characters on, of, or around the train, itself a complex of technocultural material forces entering into the vision of the modern Chinese people both individually and collectively. This essay analyzes such a train of train images in two poems by Han Bo, “Modern Sexual Equipmentality” and “Mass-Murdering Equipmentality,” while providing (...) a brief contextual and conceptual framework for understanding some of the literary and philosophical aspects of contemporary Chinese poetry with some focus on their gender dynamics. (shrink)

Studying social phenomena is often assumed to be inherently different from studying natural science phenomena. In psychology, this assumption has led to a division of the field into social and experimental domains. The same kind of division has carried over into ecological psychology, despite the fact that Gibson clearly intended his theory for both social and natural phenomena. In this paper, we argue that the social/natural science dichotomy can be derived from a distinction between hermeneutics and science that is deeply (...) rooted in the atomistic, structuralist ontological tradition. We show that, from a process-based perspective, the central questions of hermeneutics (action of an individual within a context of possible actions), ecological psychology (behavior of an organism in an ecological niche) and physics (motion of a particle in a field) share a similar structure. Building on these ideas, we propose a common, process-based methodology for psychology that integrates field theory with insights from quantum mechanics to accommodate traditionally problematic concepts in natural science such as teleology and values. To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, empirical findings on the paradigmatic problem of prospective control (such as gaze control in automobile driving in relation to perceptual tuning) are presented. (shrink)

The Clinical ethics centre in Paris offers its services equally to doctors and patients/proxies. Its primary goal is to re-equilibrate doctor–patient roles through giving greater voice to patients individually in medical decisions. Patients are present at virtually all levels, initiating consults, providing their point of view and receiving feedback. The implications of patients' involvement are threefold. At an operational level, decision-making is facilitated by repositioning the debate on ethical grounds and introducing a dynamic of decisional partnership, although contact with patients (...) can make it difficult to deny their demands and set the limits of our role. Ethically, it reinforces patients' autonomy and grants them a place of veritable ethics ‘actors’, with the danger that this may become excessively autonomy oriented. Finally, at a collective level, the programme fulfils its political purpose in promoting patients' rights and the ideal of démocratie sanitaire, but complicates balancing individual demands with collective values. (shrink)

The increasing role that new technologies play in intimate relationships has led to the emergence of a new form of couple violence, cyber dating abuse, especially among adolescents and young adults. Although this phenomenon has received increased attention, no research has investigated predictors of cyber dating abuse taking into account the interdependence of the two partners. The study examines adverse childhood experiences and early maladaptive schemas as possible predictors of young adults’ perpetrated and suffered cyber dating abuse. Adopting a dyadic (...) approach, mediational models in which adverse childhood experiences were assumed to be related to individual and partner’s cyber dating abuse through individual early maladaptive schemas were tested. 134 couples completed online self-reports of the variables of interest, including a bidimensional measure of cyber dating abuse assessing pressure-aggression and control-monitoring. Actor-partner interdependence mediation model analyses were conducted. Results indicated that the emotional deprivation schema mediated the association between adverse childhood experiences and cyber dating abuse, whereas the abandonment schema did not. Specifically, more frequent experiences of emotional abuse and physical neglect during childhood were indirectly related to increased likelihood of perpetrating cyber dating pressure-aggression as well as of perpetrating and suffering cyber dating control-monitoring in both males and females. These associations were mediated by a stronger internalization of the emotional deprivation schema and were supported by both self-reported and partner-reported data. Also, a strong and direct association was found between childhood exposure to intimate partner violence by the opposite-sex parent and cyber dating pressure-aggression by females or control-monitoring by both males and females. These findings help to clarify the potential negative effects of specific adverse childhood experiences and early maladaptive schemas on the tendency to perpetrate and suffer cyber abuse in romantic relationships. The implications for prevention and treatment programs are noted and avenues for future research are described. (shrink)

This paper draws on the thought of the early twentieth century Chinese intellectual Zhang Shizhao to re-examine the foundations of effective political action. Writing during the critical historical juncture that spanned the fall of China's last imperial dynasty and the establishment of a republican government, Zhang reflects upon the possibilities for political action in contexts where the communities that might underwrite its meaning are no longer--or not yet--accessible. These reflections culminate in Zhang's vision of self-rule as an individualized process of (...) "self-awareness." I sketch out the model of political action his account implies to explain how he can render such individualized activity politically relevant. Contrasting with accounts of democratic action like Hanna Pitkin's that privilege "action in concert," Zhang's self-awareness reorients the focus of political activity toward disparate--though cumulative--efforts to render shared problems incrementally and personally tractable. (shrink)

This article aims to uncover the processes of developing sustainable business models in innovation ecosystems. Innovation ecosystems with sustainability goals often consist of cross-sector partners and need to manage three tensions: the tension of value creation versus value capture, the tension of mutual value versus individual value, and the tension of gaining value versus losing value. The fact that these tensions affect all actors differently makes the process of developing a sustainable business model challenging. Based on a study (...) of four sustainably innovative cross-sector collaborations, we propose that innovation ecosystems that develop a sustainable business model engage in a process of valuing value in which they search for a result that satisfies all actors. We find two different patterns of valuing value: collective orchestration and continuous search. We describe these patterns and the conditions that give rise to them. The identification of the two patterns opens up a research agenda that can shed further light on the conditions that need to be in place in order for an innovation ecosystem to develop effective sustainable business models. For practice, our findings show how cross-sector actors in innovation ecosystems may collaborate when developing a business model around emerging sustainability-oriented innovations. (shrink)

In concluding his ‘Autobiographical notes’, Albert Einstein explained that the purpose of his exposition was to ‘show the reader how the efforts of a life hang together and why they have led to expectations of a definite form’. Einstein's remarks tell of a coherence between personal ‘strivings and searchings’ and scientific activity, which has all but vanished in the midst of the current trend of social constructivism in history of science. As Nancy Nersessian recently pointed out, in the process of (...) illuminating complex relationships between scientific activity and its social context, ‘socio-historical analysis has “black-boxed” the individual scientist’. Has the pendulum swung too far? In reaction to the preceding great-man hagiographie approach to the history of science, the social constructivists have largely ‘thrown the baby out with the bathwater’; consideration of individual scientists' personal approaches to science was unnecessarily expunged with the removal of ‘genius’ as an explanatory tool. (shrink)

BackgroundResearch misconduct and questionable research practices have been the subject of increasing attention in the past few years. But despite the rich body of research available, few empirical works also include the perspectives of non-researcher stakeholders.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science. (...) We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting.ResultsGiven the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series with the current paper focusing on the problems that affect the integrity and research culture. We first found that different actors have different perspectives on the problems that affect the integrity and culture of research. Problems were either linked to personalities and attitudes, or to the climates in which researchers operate. Elements that were described as essential for success were often thought to accentuate the problems of research climates by disrupting research culture and research integrity. Even though all participants agreed that current research climates need to be addressed, participants generally did not feel responsible nor capable of initiating change. Instead, respondents revealed a circle of blame and mistrust between actor groups.ConclusionsOur findings resonate with recent debates, and extrapolate a few action points which might help advance the discussion. First, the research integrity debate must revisit and tackle the way in which researchers are assessed. Second, approaches to promote better science need to address the impact that research climates have on research integrity and research culture rather than to capitalize on individual researchers’ compliance. Finally, inter-actor dialogues and shared decision making must be given priority to ensure that the perspectives of the full research system are captured. Understanding the relations and interdependency between these perspectives is key to be able to address the problems of science.Study registrationhttps://osf.io/33v3m. (shrink)

International Human Rights Law is clear in holding only states or state-like entities responsible for human rights abuses, yet activists and philosophers alike do not see any rational basis for this restriction in responsibility. Multi-national corporations, individuals and a whole array of other 'non‐state actors' are capable of harming vital human interests just as much as states, so why single-out the latter as human rights-responsible agents? In this paper I distinguish two ways of looking at human rights responsibility. One (...) is simply in terms of the outcomes that are deemed desirable to avoid (or secure), and the other is in terms of the relationships one sees these moral standards as governing. I argue that the peculiar form of responsibility and responsiveness (the way of 'holding to account')inherent to human rights principles is directed at establishing a particular type of relationship: one in which individuals are empowered in the face of a very special form of communal power. Other kinds of relationship and potential transgression are more appropriately governed by different kinds of moral principles, such as those relating to criminality. The outcomes view fails to incorporate this insight and for that reason fails to see the distinct role played by human rights standards in our moral reasoning: they are precisely valuable because they provide a way to judge the relationship of individuals to the peculiar kind of power exercised by the state. Part of this project is a re-assessment of the methodology employed by philosophers in establishing moral principles and concepts, such as those relating to human rights standards. (shrink)

This paper examines the consequences of a culture of “personal ethics” when using new methodologies, such as the use of social media sites as a source of data for research. Using SM research as an example, this paper explores the practices of a number of actors and researchers within the “Ethics Ecosystem” which as a network governs ethically responsible research behaviour. In the case of SM research, the ethical use of this data is currently in dispute, as even though (...) it is seemingly publically available, concerns relating to privacy, vulnerability, potential harm and consent blur the lines of responsible ethical research behaviour. The findings point to the dominance of a personal, bottom-up, researcher-led, ‘ethical barometer’ for making decisions regarding the permissibility of using SM data. We show that the use of different barometers by different researchers can lead to wide disparities in ethical practice - disparities which are compounded by the lack of firm guidelines for responsible practice of SM research. This has widespread consequences on the development of shared norms and understandings at all levels, and by all actors within the Ethics Ecosystem, and risks inconsistencies in their approaches to ethical decision-making. This paper argues that this governance of ethical behaviour by individual researchers perpetuates a negative cycle of academic practice that is dependent on subjective judgements by researchers themselves, rather than governed by more formalised academic institutions such as the research ethics committee and funding council guidelines. (shrink)

The history of laboratories may become controversial in social sciences. In this paper, the story of Sciences Po Médialab told by Venturini et al. is discussed and completed by demonstrating the incoherence in the choice of digital methods at the Médialab from the actor network theory perspective. As the Médialab mostly used web topologies as structural analysis of social positions, they were not able to account for the propagation of ideas, considered in actor network theory as non-humans that have their (...) own agency. The main arguments in favour of the ‘more continuous social’ developed at the Médialab proved to be as misleading as the network metaphor. The distribution of agency that actor network theory so successfully expands was paradoxicallty reduced to structures and individual preferences, to the detriment of the agency of replications that circulate entities in the form of messages, content or memes, and that should now become the next step for actor network theory-style digital methods. (shrink)

Differences in empathic abilities between acting, dance, and psychology students were explored, in addition to the appropriateness of existing empathy measures in the context of these cohorts. Students (N= 176) across Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom and Europe were included in the online survey analysis, consisting of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Empathy Quotient (EQ), and the E-drawing test (EDT), each measuring particular facets of empathy. Based on existing (...) evidence and our understanding of the discipline practices, we predicted that acting students would perform the best at identifying people’s emotional expressions but might lack other cognitive or affective empathy skills, particularly those related to emotional reactions. This cohort thus provides an opportunity to evaluate different empathy measures. While actors showed significantly higher RME scores than dancers, the difference between actors and psychologists was marginal. Moreover, actors’ scores did not differ significantly on other empathy measures, such as their concern for others’ emotional wellbeing or fantasy, both measured by IRI subscales. Psychology students scored highest in the IRI perspective taking subscale and the data supported anecdotal evidence that psychologists were more concerned for others’ emotional wellbeing than dancers or actors. Dancers seemed the least concerned with others’ perspectives and emotional states, which we explained through a somatosensory ‘inward’ focus required by their art form. Nevertheless, compared to the general population, our groups reported higher empathic abilities on all IRI subscales except for personal distress. Altogether, our study shows that the RME, the IRI, and the EDT vary in their susceptibility to different facets of empathic abilities in acting, dance, and psychology students whereas the EQ does not. Emotions can be expressed and perceived through language, facial expressions, or behavior. As many empathy tests focus on one type of signal they might miss other strategies. Where empathy tests are applied to individuals that have a predominance to read or respond to others in a particular way, as we showed through these three disciplines, they might not capture these empathic strategies. We thus propose that empathy tests must evolve by means of integrating varied forms of communication. (shrink)

Although there is a significant amount of research on organizational citizenship behavior and its importance to individual and organizational outcomes, relatively little research has explored the process by which such behavior emerges and is established within an organization. Against this backdrop, we combine the perspectives offered by contextualist inquiry and actor–network theory to propose an integrative framework for investigating how organizational citizenship behavior develops in a large, heterogeneous organization. In order to illustrate the framework, we present a detailed case (...) study of recycling at a large university. Like many other organizations, the university does not have a formal organizational structure to address sustainability concerns and the initiatives are therefore mainly voluntary and emerging in nature, and outcomes are, as a consequence, highly uncertain, and fragile. We argue that contextualist inquiry in combination with actor–network theory provides new and important insights into the emergence and establishment of organizational citizenship behaviors, and that outcomes are contingent upon interactions between the context, process, and content of the behaviors in question and the related networks of human and non-human actors. (shrink)

Musical idioms may appear side by side in a wide variety of historical, group-based or individual compositional styles used in the postmodern compositions. The reception interpretation of musical works is based on the idioms of musical speech as meaningful and expressive constants. Not only do the reveal the positive or negative ties of current musical language to the musical poetics from previous periods, they also update their meanings. The idiomatic musical structures naturally grow into the social system of music (...) and thus become part of the deeper levels of European compositional tradition. Musical meanings are becoming typical for the particular sectors of European musical culture, and may even become their emblem. It is even likely that the idioms cease to be seen as a complex musical structure in the process of reception and they become a plain composition material, singular units of musical language. Using the postmodern composition Apolloopera by Marek Piaček, we illustrate the in-depth reference platform of musical idioms and examine the role of idiomatic units in the structure of a postmodern piece. (shrink)

What is it that determines the identity of an entity? Processualism is a theoretical perspective that offers a startling answer to this question. The identity of an entity—whether human or nonhuman, animate or inanimate—depends on the set of relations in which this entity is located. And as the sets of relations are several, so are the identities that an entity can take. This article discusses this conclusion by integrating processual accounts from different fields of inquiry, such as relativistic physics and (...) actor-network theory. According to a processual interpretation of relativistic physics, speaking of states of things is but an abstraction. For states come from the introduction of arbitrary breakups of the spacetime continuum. Therefore, processes precede states, a process being a set of relations that confers identity on a physical state. According to a processual interpretation of actor-network theory, the same holds true for actors. Again, speaking of states of actors is but an abstraction. For what really acts is heterogeneous networks. When one describes actors in isolation, one is neglecting a whole array of relations with other actors whereby that actor can act or is made to act in such and such a way. These strands of processualism come to the same conclusion as to the identity of entities. These are not characterized by individuality but by individuality: they can be differently individuated according to the set of relations one is able to take into account. The main methodological consequence is that, if one intends to describe what an entity is, knowledge of this entity—whether human or nonhuman, animate or inanimate—should be based on progressively less narrow localizations and mappings of the relations it has to other entities. (shrink)

Este artículo se pregunta por las dinámicas identitarias contemporáneas de los actores políticos. Parte de retomar dos fenómenos ampliamente tratados en la ciencia política actual: la creciente volatilidad de los formatos representativos en los sistemas políticos, por un lado, y el auge de expresiones políticas reaccionarias y segregativas, por el otro. A partir de una articulación de la Teoría Política del Discurso y ciertas nociones del psicoanálisis lacaniano, aquí conjeturamos que en ambos procesos subyace un trastocamiento estructural en el modo (...) en que se constituyen las relaciones sociales, relacionado con la consolidación del capitalismo neoliberal y caracterizado por el declive de las referencias de autoridad y la entronización del sujeto como agente individual omnipotente. Para fundamentar nuestro planteo, pondremos de relieve el carácter performativo de la ideología y su doble dimensión imaginaria y simbólica. Luego destacaremos cómo, en la actualidad, las identificaciones políticas dejan de apoyarse predominantemente sobre dinámicas de articulación simbólica, para subrayar el sostén imaginario de la relación intersubjetiva. Este proceso de imaginarización, que tiende a repudiar el carácter incompleto del lazo social y a impulsar una satisfacción irrestricta del goce particular, debe ser considerado al analizar los actores políticos contemporáneos y su intervención en el debate democrático. (shrink)

While an ethical obligation to report findings of clinical research to trial participants is increasingly recognised, the academic debate is often vague about what kinds of data should be fed back and how such a process should be organised. In this article, we present a classification of different actors, processes and data involved in the feedback of research results pertaining to an individual. In a second step, we reflect on circumstances requiring further ethical consideration. In regard to a (...) concrete research setting—the one of clinico-genomic research—we discuss what kinds of difficulties have to be faced when returning individual research results to trial participants. In a last step, we elaborate on a stepwise model to trigger the individual feedback process. Hence, this paper gives guidance on how to feedback individual research results in a specific research setting and responds at the same time to new challenges in the debate on the duty to return individual research findings. (shrink)

The problem of race has typically been treated as a problem of individual or institutional prejudice. However, more attention needs to be paid to structural racism, which shows how racialized opportunity structures sustain racial injustice even when actors are not prejudiced. Because Catholic social thought treats social structures as mere aggregates of individual behavior, however, it is unable to explain how opportunity structures constrain human agency, how social positions condition the behaviors of people who occupy them, and (...) how harms may occur without intent. A critical realist approach to understanding social structure corrects the reductive tendencies of dominant perspectives on race, such as colorblindness and antiracism, and helps explain how nonracists can perpetuate racial injustice. An analysis of the case of residential segregation shows how the pursuit of individual goods in racialized opportunity structures like the housing market simultaneously hinders the common good. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly influential in most people’s lives. This raises many philosophical questions. One is what responsibility we have as individuals to guide the development of AI in a desirable direction. More specifically, how should this responsibility be distributed among individuals and between individuals and other actors? We investigate this question from the perspectives of five principles of distribution that dominate the discussion about responsibility in connection with climate change: effectiveness, equality, desert, need, and ability. Since (...) much is already written about these distributions in that context, we believe much can be gained if we can make use of this discussion also in connection with AI. Our most important findings are: (1) Different principles give different answers depending on how they are interpreted but, in many cases, different interpretations and different principles agree and even strengthen each other. If for instance ‘equality-based distribution’ is interpreted in a consequentialist sense, effectiveness, and through it, ability, will play important roles in the actual distributions, but so will an equal distribution as such, since we foresee that an increased responsibility of underrepresented groups will make the risks and benefits of AI more equally distributed. The corresponding reasoning is true for need-based distribution. (2) If we acknowledge that someone has a certain responsibility, we also have to acknowledge a corresponding degree of influence for that someone over the matter in question. (3) Independently of which distribution principle we prefer, ability cannot be dismissed. Ability is not fixed, however and if one of the other distributions is morally required, we are also morally required to increase the ability of those less able to take on the required responsibility. (shrink)