This paper analyses managers'' moral decision-making, and studies the role of ethical theories in it by following the research tradition using the multidimensional ethics scale. The research question is: what kinds of ethical dimensions do Finnish business managers reveal when they are making moral decisions, and how have these dimensions changed in the 1990s? This question is answered by examining what kinds of factors emerge when the multidimensional ethics scale is used to analyse Finnish managers'' attitudes toward moral (...) dilemmas. The results show that Finnish managers'' decision-making reflects a variety of ethical theories. Teleological thinking is strongly emphasised by Finnish managers, and relativist thinking is used as well, but often combined with either deontology or justice thinking. In addition, a strong moralistic dimension emerged in Finnish managers'' decision-making. The analysis was carried out in two different surveys in years 1994 and 1999, and the results show that the ways of decision-making were more complex at the end of the 1990s than almost six years earlier. (shrink)

Since it implies a reduction in the quality and the quantity of the natural resources, environmental degradation is a present day problem that requires immediate solutions. This situation is driving firms to undertake an environmental transformation process with the purpose of reducing the negative externalities that come from their economic activities. Within this context, environmental marketing is an emerging business philosophy by which organizations can address sustainability issues. Moreover, environmental marketing and orientation are seen as valuable strategies to improve a (...) firm's competitiveness. However, the literature that has analyzed the link between environmental strategies and firms' results has been inconclusive and contradictory. In this study, we propose and test a model that analyses how the implementation of ecological issues within a firm's marketing strategy and orientation influences organizational results. Data were obtained through a survey sent to Spanish manufacturing firms. The results show that environmental marketing positively affects firms' operational and commercial performance and this improvement will influence their economic results. Moreover, environmental marketing is revealed as an excellent strategy to obtain competitive advantages in costs and in product differentiation. Thus, this study agrees with the researchers who affirm that environmental strategies positively affect firm's competitiveness while reducing environmental impact. (shrink)

Since it implies a reduction in the quality and the quantity of the natural resources, environmental degradation is a present day problem that requires immediate solutions. This situation is driving firms to undertake an environmental transformation process with the purpose of reducing the negative externalities that come from their economic activities. Within this context, environmental marketing is an emerging business philosophy by which organizations can address sustainability issues. Moreover, environmental marketing and orientation are seen as valuable strategies to improve a (...) firm's competitiveness. However, the literature that has analyzed the link between environmental strategies and firms' results has been inconclusive and contradictory. In this study, we propose and test a model that analyses how the implementation of ecological issues within a firm's marketing strategy and orientation influences organizational results. Data were obtained through a survey sent to Spanish manufacturing firms. The results show that environmental marketing positively affects firms' operational and commercial performance and this improvement will influence their economic results. Moreover, environmental marketing is revealed as an excellent strategy to obtain competitive advantages in costs and in product differentiation. Thus, this study agrees with the researchers who affirm that environmental strategies positively affect firm's competitiveness while reducing environmental impact. (shrink)

Modern societies have by nature a corrosive effect on traditional forms of religious life and lead to decline in the scope and influence of religious institutions and in the popularity of religious beliefs. This article argues that prophecies of traditional secularization theory failed to predict the future of religion in the contemporary world. Although modernity caused a degree of rupture between religion and society, there has also been a global revival of religion in the last two or three decades. In (...) order to understand the transformation of religion and its comeback, various manifestations and expressions of religion must be analyzed. This article shows that religion is a multidimensional phenomenon. One’s acceptance of and position towards a supernatural being, towards an ultimate reality and its manifestations involve a multidimensional process that includes attitudes, beliefs, emotions, experiences, rituals, and community and belonging. This article concludes that a multidimensional approach to religion, if revised and re-developed by taking into account the varieties and specificities of Islam, can help us better understand the Muslim world, enable us to make cross-cultural comparisons about the status of religions, and finally to equip us to make better predictions about the future of religion. (shrink)

Arbib, Érdi, and Szentágothai's book seeks to present a multidisciplinary, multistrategied approach to the study of the mind-brain, encompassing structural, functional, and dynamic perspectives. However, the articulated framework is somewhat underspecified at the cognitive level. The representational level of analysis will need to be fleshed out if the explanatory potential of Arbib et al.'s framework is to be fulfilled.

Taking multidimensional ethics scale approach, this article describes an empirical survey of top managers’ moral decision-making patterns and their change from 1994 to 2004 during morally problematic situations in the Finnish context. The survey questionnaire consisted of four moral dilemmas and a multidimensional scale with six ethical dimensions: justice, deontology, relativism, utilitarianism, egoism and female ethics. The managers evaluated their decision-making in the problems using the multidimensional ethics scale. Altogether 880 questionnaires were analysed statistically. It is (...) concluded that relying on the utilitarian principles is a core ethical evaluation criterion amongst top business managers in Finland. This study proves that managers’ moral decision-making patterns change over time. According to the results of this research, managers’ moral decision-making became more multidimensional during the study period. The change is explained by the inclusion of female ethics items in the scale which allows managers to show more diversity in their decision- making, the change in the Finnish economic context from depression to economic prosperity and growth during the study period, which is conducive to the spread of post materialist values, such as the importance of social relations and the increasing public discussion of the importance ethical issues in business. (shrink)

In the debates concerning the ethics of human enhancement through biological or technological modifications, there have been several appeals to the concept of human dignity, both by those favouring such enhancement and by those opposing it. The result is the phenomenon of ‘dignity talk', where opposing sides both appeal to the concept of human dignity to ground their arguments resulting in a moral impasse. This article examines the use of the concept of human dignity in the enhancement debates and reveals (...) that the problem of dignity talk arises because proponents of various positions tend to ground human dignity in different features of the human individual. These features include species-membership, possession of a particular capacity, a sense of self-worth, and moral behaviour. The article proposes a solution to this problem by appealing to another feature of human beings, namely their being-in-relationship-over-time. Doing so enables us to understand dignity as a concept that affirms the worth of human individuals as complex, multidimensional wholes, rather than as isolated features. Consequently, the concept of human dignity can serve both a descriptive and a normative function in the enhancement debates. At a descriptive level, asking what advocates of a position mean when they refer to human dignity will reveal what aspects of being human they deem to be most valuable. The debate can then focus on these values. The normative function, although it cannot proscribe or prescribe all enhancement, approves only those enhancements that contribute to the flourishing of human individuals as multidimensional wholes. (shrink)

The increasing number and influence of women in society brings up several issues related to values and ethics. Looking at business ethics from the gender perspective made us ponder if it would be fruitful to analyse the feminine and masculine dimensions of decision-making style. The article follows the research tradition using the multidimensional ethics scale, and it aims at developing the scale to better include female decision-making. We came to the conclusion that, as the multidimensional ethics scale used (...) in measuring managers' moral decision-making is derived from modern ethical theories focusing on indications of masculinities more than femininities, the scale leaves feminine decision-making dimensions invisible. Our argument is that in seeking a deeper understanding of (female) managers' moral decision-making, we must find a broader basis for the analysis and develop the scale further so that it allows different voices to be heard and different dimensions to be seen. (shrink)

Taking multidimensional ethics scale approach, this article describes an empirical survey of top managers' moral decision-making patterns and their change from 1994 to 2004 during morally problematic situations in the Finnish context. The survey questionnaire consisted of four moral dilemmas and a multidimensional scale with six ethical dimensions: justice, deontology, relativism, utilitarianism, egoism and female ethics. The managers evaluated their decision-making in the problems using the multidimensional ethics scale. Altogether 880 questionnaires were analysed statistically. It is (...) concluded that relying on the utilitarian principles is a core ethical evaluation criterion amongst top business managers in Finland. This study proves that managers' moral decision-making patterns change over time. According to the results of this research, managers' moral decision-making became more multidimensional during the study period. The change is explained by (1) the inclusion of female ethics items in the scale which allows managers to show more diversity in their decisionmaking, (2) the change in the Finnish economic context from depression to economic prosperity and growth during the study period, which is conducive to the spread of post materialist values, such as the importance of social relations and (3) the increasing public discussion of the importance ethical issues in business. (shrink)

Traditionally, dream research focuses on accounting for typical psychological features of dream experiences characteristic of different sleep stages in terms of the global physiological features of the sleep stages in question. However, as subtle differences got into the forefront of enquiry, as, for example, in questions concerning between-stage similarities and within-stage differences of mentations, this methodology became insufficient. What recent findings and theoretical developments suggest is that understanding mental activity during sleep requires studying the fine-grained characteristics of the phenomenal features (...) of individual dreams, which, in turn, demands identifying specific neural processes that might underlie different characteristics of the experiences, and tracking their changes not just between but also within standard sleep stages. The paper argues that such a shift of focus from describing global stages to understanding the significance of local changes results in a true paradigm shift in dream research that can break away from the tradition of thinking about sleep mentation in terms of discrete categories, and offers a novel way of looking at dreams as forming a multidimensional continuum. (shrink)

Building Cosmopolitan Communities contributes to current cosmopolitanism debates by evaluating the justification and application of norms and human rights in different communitarian settings in order to achieve cosmopolitan ideals. Relying on a critical tradition that spans from Kant to contemporary discourse philosophy, Nascimento proposes the concept of a "multidimensional discourse community." The multidimensional model is applied and tested in various dialogues, resulting in a new cosmopolitan ideal based on a contemporary discursive paradigm. As the first scholarly text to (...) provide an interdisciplinary survey of the theories and discourses on human rights and cosmopolitanism, Building Cosmopolitan Communities is a valuable resource to scholars of philosophy, political science, social theory, and globalization studies. (shrink)

In contrast to symbol-manipulation approaches, Cognitive Linguistics offers a modal rather than an amodal account of meaning in language. From this perspective, the meanings attached to linguistic expressions, in the form of conceptualisations, have various properties in common with visual forms of representation. This makes Cognitive Linguistics a potentially useful framework for identifying and analysing language-image relations in multimodal texts. In this paper, we investigate language-image relations with a specific focus on intersemiotic convergence. Analogous with research on gesture, we extend (...) the notion of co-text images and argue that images and language usages which are proximal to one another in a multimodal text can be expected to exhibit the same or consistent construals of the target scene. We outline some of the dimensions of conceptualisation along which intersemiotic convergence may be enacted in texts, including event-structure, viewpoint, distribution of attention and metaphor. We take as illustrative data photographs and their captions in online news texts covering a range of topics including immigration, political protests, and inter-state conflict. Our analysis suggests the utility of Cognitive Linguistics in allowing new potential sites of intersemiotic convergence to be identified and in proffering an account of language-image relations that is based in language cognition. (shrink)

Mental disorders as defined by current classifications are not fully supported by scientific evidence. It is unclear whether main disorders should be broken down into separate categories or disposed along a continuous spectrum. In the near future, new classes of mental disorders could be defined through associations of so-called abnormalities observed at the genetic, molecular and neuronal circuitry levels.

Proceeding of the 22nd International Congress of Vedanta, organized at the Special Center for Sanskrit Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi during December 27-30, 2015.

This research examines, in a general manner, the degree and character of perceptual congruity between salespeople and managers on ethical issues. Salespeople and managers from a diversity of organizations were presented with three scenarios having varying degrees of ethical content and were asked to evaluate the action of the individual in each scenario. Findings indicate that, in every instance, the participating managers tended (1) to be more critical of the action displayed in the scenarios, (2) to view the action as (...) violating a sense of contract or promise, and (3) to view the action as less culturally acceptable than did the salespeople. (shrink)

How can codes of ethics acquire legitimacy—that is, how can they lay down obligations that will be seen by their subjects as morally binding? There are many answers to this question, reflecting the fact that moral agents have a host of different bases on which they may acknowledge code duties as ethically binding—or, alternatively, may reject those duties as morally irrelevant or actively corrupt. Drawing on a wide literature on legitimacy in other practical fields, this paper develops a multidimensional (...) legitimacy framework, describing ten distinct sources of legitimacy. It illustrates how these sources can be seized, not only by the code’s content, but by opportunities presented in the main stages of code development, adoption and implementation. In so doing, it aims to provide practical resources for code developers and ethics reformers in organizations and industries to avoid critical missteps, and to maximize the impact and efficacy of their work. (shrink)

Historically, representations of Islamic themes in media narratives of Black men have been characterized by personal transformations in the midst of surviving in crime-ridden inner city areas. These young Black men are usually at-risk due to their statuses as Black, economically disadvantaged men. Beginning with Malcolm X and Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the Black male Islamic redemption narrative has become a common theme in Black popular culture, as it is usually supplemented with unique methods of confronting the (...) various dimensions of health. Throughout this study, the representations of these approaches among Black men in contemporary film and television are examined throughout realms of spiritual, emotional, mental, physical, social, and vocational health. (shrink)

Winds of change, from the political perspective in Mexico, invite us to reformulate the methodological vision for the direction of public policy in the field of social development, directing their actions towards the construction of a methodological proposal that allows us to direct ourselves towards achieving higher levels of Well-being Social in our country, as a desirable objective of public policy and which is expected to be inclusive, participatory and democratic. -/- In this sense, it is important to recognize that (...) the current debate, in the academic and political sphere, questions what is being well? What is the life that is worth living? And that, additionally, the recognition of the satisfaction of life goals, at an individual and collective level, which invites us to reflect, if the current economic and social policy and strategy has produced results in what we envision as social welfare? Is a new approach necessary to solve the problem? What strategy should it be to consider the new methodological approach that seeks social welfare? And what components should be considered in the measurement of social welfare? This document is an invitation to review the concept of social welfare, as a proposal whose purpose is to correct the deficiencies or historical deficiencies suffered by the population, in the elemental enjoyment of social rights, a situation that causes social backwardness, marginalization, and that it is aimed at the impossibility of participating in the social decisions of the community and in collective decisions, such as: speaking, proposing, being heard and demanding compliance with fundamental human rights such as: health, food, housing, employment and security, among others. These deficiencies in the enjoyment of social and human rights are seen in the presence of social exclusion, and that together these social deficiencies explain the degree of multidimensional poverty suffered by the population in rural and urban areas. It is here that he invites us to reflect: what is the problem that social welfare seeks to solve? Multidimensional poverty, social exclusion, social backwardness or social inequality? And consequently, how to define the components to identify social welfare? -/- The document is made up of three sections: i) Social welfare: A retrospective look; ii) Social Welfare, an integrative view: The contribution of Sen, Naussbam, Rawls, Actis Di Pasquale and Keyes; and iii) Social Welfare: The recognition of limits in economic development -/- The first section presents a review of the proposals, which in the area of economic development have been presented since 1968 in the Human Condition Project, until the 2015 proposal of Sustainable Development Goals. -/- In the second section, the contributions of (Rawls, 1995), (Sen, 1982), (Nussbaum, 2011), (Keyes, 1998) , (Actis Di Pasquale, 2015) and (Actis Di Pasquale, 2017) are presented in order to present an integrative approach to the concept of social welfare. And finally, the third section presents the recognition of limits in development, as well as an invitation for action from a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective in the study of social welfare. -/- August 2020 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24147.20006/1 LicenseCC BY-SA 4.0 -/- . (shrink)

This special issue offers a multidimensional perspective on the recent inquiries into knowledge representation. Multidimensionality exposes the complexity of knowledge representation and helps distinguish between different approaches and research tools. On the one hand, the presented research focuses on the theoretical and empirical aspects of knowledge representation (taking into account cognitive processes and capacities, including linguistic skills needed to generate and express knowledge); on the other, the articles included in the issue discuss the practical discourse, analyzing actions from the (...) point of view of cognitively oriented semantics and the scientific practice broadly understood. The issue consists of five papers that show how certain ideas in the research area of knowledge representation inspired the authors to look for new approaches to modelling concepts and practical reasoning, constructing theory of signs using the tools of data science, and dealing with cognitive artifacts in scientific practice and its dynamics. What these approaches have in common is their attempt at capturing the multidimensionality of knowledge representation in such a way that integrates them. Our goal is to emphasize some innovative aspects of those approaches with respect to the dynamics of knowledge representation in both the cognitive system and scientific practice. (shrink)

Incivility in the academic arena elicits a wide range of reactions: it interferes with learning, increases stress, feelings of disrespect and helplessness. Although reactions to incivility were mainly tested in workplaces, an extensive, robust framework to explain and measure responses to faculty incivility is yet to be offered. This study used Facet theory approach with a multidimensional scaling method of smallest space analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the theoretical structure of reactions to FI. A mapping sentence (...) was constructed expressing the composite of three individual facets based on the theoretical framework: Facet A including four types of reactions Exit Voice Loyalty and Neglect ; Facet B reflecting the destructiveness – constructiveness dimension, and Facet C illustrating a dimension ranging from passive to active responses. Data were gathered by a scale measuring students’ reactions to FI. According to the findings, the CFA result presented four relatively interpretable factors while the SSA showed these factors as well as additional facets. (shrink)

The need for better incorporation of the construct emotional intelligence (EI) into counterproductive work behavior (CWB) research may be achieved via a unified conceptual framework. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to use the Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS) approach, a conceptual framework that unifies motivational process with antecedents and outcomes, to assess differences in EI concerning a variety of constructs: organizational justice, CWB, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation. Employing established scales within a framework (...) unifying CWB, intrinsic motivation, EI, organizational justice, and outcome constructs, two EI-based profiles displayed associations with CWB based on responses from 3,293 employees. Both the first core profile, high overall justice and low emotional intelligence, and the second core profile, high emotional intelligence and low work motivation, displayed associations with interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance, as well as emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. The results are discussed with respect to possible underlying theory and an overarching unified motivation framework that incorporates goal choice, intrinsic motivation, antecedents, and outcomes. We also provide directions for future research and implications for managers in the workplace based on heuristic conceptual frameworks that combine multiple motivational perspectives into a unified model. (shrink)

This article develops a multidimensional approach for the investigation of the ethical codes of professional associations. The authors: (a) examine various ethical frameworks to identify ethical constructs, (b) select ethical constructs to apply to the assessment of professional codes of ethics, (c) content analyze conceptual and descriptive similarities and differences across a large sample of professional codes of ethics, (d) address organizational variables that affect the development of ethical codes, and (e) investigate through survey research the beliefs and (...) attitudes of association leadership toward ethical code issues. The content analysis and survey research results have implications for association leadership, its membership, public policy makers, the general public and for future research. (shrink)

Following Axel Honneth, I accept that recognition is integral to individuals’ self-realization and to social justice and that instances of misrecognition are injustices that cause moral injuries. The change in approach to misrecognition that I advocate is to replace a macrosocial top-down picture of misrecognition, such as Honneth’s typology, with a fine-grained phenomenological picture of multiple dimensions in misrecognition behaviors that offers greater explanatory power. This paper explains why a multidimensional view of misrecognition is needed and explores the (...) various ways that engagement with pathological norms or disengagement from individuals lead to injustices of misrecognition and how understanding behaviors in terms of these two dimensions—norms and individuals—illuminates causes of injustice. The multidimensional view of misrecognition replaces Honneth’s binary view of misrecognition as the contrary to recognition without replacing Honneth’s conceptions of the value of recognition. (shrink)

In the paper we consider an electricity provider company that makes decision on allocating resources on electric network maintenance. The investments decrease malfunction rate of network nodes. An accidental event or a malfunctioning on underground system can have various consequences and in different perspectives, such as deaths and injuries of pedestrians, fires in nearby locations, disturbances in the flow of vehicular traffic, loss to the company image, operating and financial losses, etc. For this reason it is necessary to apply an (...) approach of the risk management that considers the multidimensional view of the consequences. Furthermore an analysis of decision making should consider network dependencies between the nodes of the electricity distribution system. In the paper we propose the use of the simulation to assess the network effects in the multidimensional risk assessment in electricity grid. The analyzed effects include node overloading due to malfunction of adjacent nodes and blackouts that take place where there is temporarily no path in the grid between the power plant and a node. The simulation results show that network effects have crucial role for decisions in the network maintenance – outcomes of decisions to repair a particular node in the network can have significant influence on performance of other nodes. However, those dependencies are non-linear. The effects of network connectivity on its multidimensional performance assessment depend heavily on the overloading effect level. The simulation results do not depend on network type structure – however simulation outcomes for random networks have shown higher variance compared to small-world networks. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to gain an in-depth understanding of the eating lives of low-income single mothers in Japan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine low-income single mothers living in the three largest urban areas (Tokyo, Hanshin [Osaka and Kobe] and Nagoya) in Japan. Framed by the capability approach and sociology of food, their dietary norms and practices, as well as underlying factors that impact the norm-practice gap were analysed across nine dimensions: meal frequency, place of eating, (...) meal timing, duration, persons to eat with, procurement method, food quality, meal content and pleasure of eating. These mothers were deprived of various types of capabilities, extending not only from the quantity and nutritional aspects of food, but also to spatial, temporal, qualitative and affective aspects. Aside from financial constraints, eight other factors (time, maternal health, parenting difficulties, children’s tastes, gendered norms, cooking abilities, food aid and local food environment) were identified as influencing their capabilities to eat well. The findings challenge the view that food poverty is the deprivation of economic resources required to ensure a sufficient amount of food. Social interventions that go beyond monetary aid and food provision need to be proposed. (shrink)

Databases where different types of information from different sources can be integrated, cross‐referenced and interactively accessed are necessary for building a quantitative understanding of the molecular and cell biology intrinsic to the morphogenesis of an embryo. Tassy and colleagues1 recently reported the development of software tailor‐made to perform such a task, along with the generation and integration of three‐dimensional anatomical models of embryos. They convincingly illustrated the utility of their approach by applying it to the early ascidian embryo. BioEssays (...) 28: 874–879, 2006. © 2006 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The Creative Citizenship project was founded to promote critical, ethical, and creative thinking in early childhood, and to recognize and encourage children as social actors and peacebuilders. In concert with the methodology of North American philosopher Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children (P4C), Creative Citizenship seeks to promote in children the ability to think critically, ethically, and creatively in and from their own realities, and to exercise multidimensional thinking skills in the various areas of their daily lives. The research documented (...) here adopted a qualitative approach in so far as it sought to inquire about the character of those relationships, particularly among boys and girls, that promote their identity as social agents. As such, it examined training processes and generated theoretical perspectives in the interest of promoting social transformation through the empowerment of multidimensional thinking. The article begins with a review of the concept of Creative Citizenship and ends with that of Peacebuilding. Three theoretical categories have been applied in order to situate the inquiry within the framework of the realities of childhood, and to chart the pedagogical interventions by adults that occurred throughout the implementation of the project. The first focuses on the development of children’s thinking per se, the second on children's capacities for creative problem-solving in social environments, and the third on the concept of peacebuilding as a commitment to practicing philosophical dialogue among children, which is understood as a form of discourse that builds the capacities of citizens to undertake individual and collective actions that allow them, in turn, to create and re-create scenarios of peaceful coexistence. (shrink)

The scientific approach to these social conglomerates implies the assumption of a systemic and anti-essentialist posture that considers the complexity of the social weave. In this article the process of interpreting these agricultural communities from the phenomenological perspective is consid..

ABSTRACTThis article provides a Global South perspective on marginalised migrant youth and higher educational aspirations, with a specific focus on South Africa. We use data from a case study in Johannesburg to illustrate how marginalised migrant youth experience particular forms of disadvantage in their endeavours to realise their educational aspirations. Yet, educational opportunities and the achievement of educational aspirations may enhance dimensions important for individual wellbeing. Through education, marginalised migrant youth become better positioned to pursue what they have reason to (...) value, including escaping poverty in both their home and host countries. Using the human development and capability lens, the paper also presents what the disadvantages experienced by marginalised migrant youth may mean for human development. We argue that constrained educational aspirations can result in corrosive disadvantage and ultimately systemic poverty. We conclude the paper by highlighting how the capability approach could be used to inform social and educational policies in contexts of marginalisation. (shrink)

Frame Semantics includes context as a central aspect of the theory. Frames themselves can be regarded as a representation of the immediate context against which meaning is to be construed. Moreover, the notion of frame invocation includes context as one possible source of information comprehenders use to construe meaning. As the original implementation of Frame Semantics, Berkeley FrameNet is capable of providing computational representations of some aspects of context, but not all of them. In this article, we present FrameNet Brasil: (...) a framenet enriched with qualia relations and capable of taking other semiotic modes as input data, namely pictures and videos. We claim that such an enriched model is capable of addressing other types of contextual information in a framenet, namely sentence-level cotext and commonsense knowledge. We demonstrate how the FrameNet Brasil software infrastructure addresses contextual information in both database construction and corpora annotation. We present the guidelines for the construction of two multimodal datasets whose annotations represent contextual information and also report on two experiments: the identification of frame-evoking lexical units in sentences and a methodology for domain adaptation in Neural Machine Translation that leverages frames and qualia for representing sentence-level context. Experimental results emphasize the importance of computationally representing contextual information in a principled structured fashion as opposed to trying to derive it from the manipulation of linguistic form alone. (shrink)

In the polemic with T.D. Sokolova’s article the issue is discussed addressing the question whether there is anything new that we can get from the methodology of interdisciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity for determination of scientific rationality and scientific progress. The solution of this question is connected with the intensions of a historical and social-cultural epistemologies. These intentions consist in a complex or “multidimensional” approach to the creation of conceptual designs that define the application of these concepts. None of the (...) "measurements” (methodological, psychological, social, etc.) provides them with a universal definition, but a “stereometric” image “restored” from them is capable to approximate to real use of these concepts of an epistemology and philosophy of science. It is necessary to remember that progress in science in one dimension can be regression in another just as the scientific rationality in a sociological dimension can be in no correspondence with the interpretation of rationality given to it by a certain methodological conception. Philosophy of science must avoid a dogmatic universalization of the criteria of rationality as well as the extremes of of relativism in this question. (shrink)

High-quality education has been considered important for social justice, although what good education means is contested. A project aimed at identifying varieties of conceptions of ethical competence was presented as well as another that focused on a fiction-based approach to ethics education. A multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives was shown as a strong contribution to EE. The aim was to discuss as to what extent such a multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude (...) of narratives could be understood as powerful knowledge. Sweden, where national tests lately have been understood as a tool to increase achievements, but where an unclear understanding of desired knowledge in EE exists, was the setting. Methodologically, the article drew on Michael Young’s definition of powerful knowledge, a hermeneutic meta-study on the findings of EthiCo concerning conceptions of ethical competence, as well as Mark Tappan’s sociocultural perspective on moral development. These perspectives were brought together to discuss powerful knowledge in EE as a contribution to education for social justice. Whether a multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives could be understood as powerful knowledge was shown to be dependent on the definition. Whilst Young’s powerful knowledge is restricted to an academic language, Tappan stresses vernacular language as characteristic for a functional moral discourse. One conclusion was the centrality of fiction in EE for the development of moral discourses that transcend reality and shape ‘knowledge of possibilities’ – powerful in the shaping of societal justice. (shrink)

Facial expressions are one of the commonly used implicit measurements for the in-vehicle affective computing. However, the time courses and the underlying mechanism of facial expressions so far have been barely focused on. According to the Component Process Model of emotions, facial expressions are the result of an individual's appraisals, which are supposed to happen in sequence. Therefore, a multidimensional and dynamic analysis of drivers' fear by using facial expression data could profit from a consideration of these appraisals. A (...) driving simulator experiment with 37 participants was conducted, in which fear and relaxation were induced. It was found that the facial expression indicators of high novelty and low power appraisals were significantly activated after a fear event. Furthermore, after the fear event, the activation of high novelty occurred earlier than low power. These results suggest that multidimensional analysis of facial expression is suitable as an approach for the in-vehicle measurement of the drivers' emotions. Furthermore, a dynamic analysis of drivers' facial expressions considering of effects of appraisal components can add valuable information for the in-vehicle assessment of emotions. (shrink)

Covid-19 has prompted a surge of data visualizations that have been published for public consumption, yet, many have not had broad appeal or may have not been well-understood by laypeople. A data storytelling platform called Flow Immersive has been created to successfully engage both laypeople and experts in understanding complex information. This tool integrates emerging technologies [e.g., augmented reality and virtual reality ] with a multiplatform, multiuser publishing approach. From October 2020 to December 2020, Flow’s Covid-19 AR videos captured (...) 9 million views, and have been used in multiple professional presentations. This paper documents the journey from development to deployment, and some user feedback which all led to breakthroughs in scalability and higher levels of engagement. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to assess the relationships between computational approaches to analyzing constructed responses made during reading and individual differences in the foundational skills of reading in college readers. We also explored if these relationships were consistent across texts and samples collected at different institutions and texts. The study made use of archival data that involved college participants who produced typed constructed responses under thinking aloud instructions reading history and science texts. They also took assessments of vocabulary (...) knowledge and proficiency in comprehension. The protocols were analyzed to assess two different ways to determine their cohesion. One approach involved assessing how readers established connections with themselves. The other approach involved assessing connections between the constructed responses and the texts that were read. Additionally, the comparisons were made by assessing both lexical and semantic comparisons. The result showed that both approaches for analyzing cohesion and making the comparisons were correlated with vocabulary knowledge and comprehension proficiency. The implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This book seeks to bring together the pragmatic theory of 'meaning as use' with the traditional semantic approach that considers meaning in terms of truth conditions. Daniel Gutzmann's new approach captures the entire meaning of complex expressions and overcomes the empirical gaps and conceptual problems associated with previous analyses.

This comprehensive analysis dives deep into the intricate interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) and human agency, examining the remarkable capabilities and inherent limitations of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3 and ChatGPT. The paper traces the complex trajectory of AI's evolution, highlighting its operation based on statistical pattern recognition, devoid of self-consciousness or innate comprehension. As AI permeates multiple spheres of human life, it raises substantial ethical, legal, and societal concerns that demand immediate attention and deliberation. The metaphorical illustration (...) of humans as “shepherds” of AI, coupled with a thought-provoking examination of “agency without intelligence,” engenders deep reflections on the future of human-AI interplay and the associated philosophical, ethical, and practical ramifications. The paper further elucidates critical challenges associated with AI, such as ethical dilemmas, “agency without intelligence,” the role of human oversight, and the environmental impact of AI technologies. In the pursuit of solutions, the paper maps prospective directions, emphasizing the need for robust AI policies, improved AI literacy, sustainable AI practices, and a continued dialogue on the multifaceted issues surrounding AI. Through a holistic exploration of AI, this paper underlines the necessity for a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to chart an ethical, beneficial, and sustainable AI future, enabling society to harness the potential of AI responsibly while mitigating the associated risks. (shrink)

This study explores gratitude as a multidimensional and work-specific construct. Utilizing a sample of 625 employees from a variety of positions in a medium-sized school district in the United States, we developed and evaluated a new measure, namely the Work Gratitude Scale, which encompasses recognized conative, cognitive, affective, and social aspects of gratitude. A systematic, six-phased approach through structural equation modeling was used to explore and confirm the factorial structure, internal consistency, measurement invariance, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity (...) of the WGS. The results supported a 10-item measure with three dimensions: “grateful appraisals”, “gratitude toward others”, and “intentional attitude of gratitude”. Thereafter, first-order, second-order, and bifactor confirmatory models were estimated and compared. Work gratitude was found to be best described by a second-order construct with three underlying first-order dimensions. Measurement invariance was supported in relation to gender. Concurrent validity was supported in relation to two existing dispositional gratitude scales, namely the Gratitude Questionnaire and the Gratitude, Resentment, and Appreciation Scale. Convergent validity was supported in relation to the Core Self-Evaluations Scale and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire. Discriminant validity was supported in relation to various demographic factors such as age, gender, occupation, and tenure. The findings support the WGS as a multidimensional measure that can be used in practice to measure overall work-related gratitude and to track the effectiveness of gratitude-related workplace interventions. (shrink)