Kant interpreters are divided on the question of whether determinate cognition plays a role in the harmony of the faculties in aesthetic judgement. I provide a ‘non-cognitive’ interpretation that allows Kant’s statements regarding judgements of natural beauty to cohere such that determinate cognition need not be taken to perform any role in such judgements. I argue that, in aesthetic harmony, judgement privileges the free activity of the imagination over the cognizing function of the understanding for the purpose of unifying the (...) object, although the free imagination cannot violate the obscure concepts and principles of ordinary common sense. (shrink)

Kant interpreters have contrasting views on what Kant takes to be the basis for human dignity. Several commentators have argued that human dignity can be traced back to some feature of human beings. Others contend that humans in themselves lack dignity, but dignity can be attributed to them because the moral law demands respect for humanity. I argue, alternatively, that human dignity in Kant’s system can be seen to be grounded in the reciprocal relationship between the dignity of the moral (...) law and the dignity inherent in the human constitution. The latter includes the dignity of personhood, construed as rational inner purposiveness, and the dignity of giving oneself the law and striving to follow it. (shrink)

Kant claims that the transcendental self can be represented as a “feeling of existence” (Gefühl eines Daseins). Some interpreters take this claim to be inconsistent with Kant’s larger theory of self-consciousness. I consider the extent to which two eighteenth-century philosophy texts that Kant knew well - Tetens’ Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung and Feder’s Logik und Metaphysik - can contribute to our understanding of Gefühl eines Daseins. I point to some continuities between Kant’s characterization of “Gefühl” (...) in Gefühl eines Daseins, and Tetens’ and Feder’s conceptualizations of Selbstgefühl. I show that Gefühl eines Daseins is prima facie consistent with Feder’s clear “I” (or Selbstgefühl) and Tetens’ clear Selbstgefühl; and both Gefühl eines Daseins and clear Selbstgefühl relate to higher cognition. Finally, I discuss whether the notion of Selbstgefühl is compatible with key aspects of Kant’s conceptualization of the self - the transcendental-empirical distinction, and the atemporality of the self. (shrink)

This paper provisionally offers a way of addressing the predicament of a person who does not feel at home in her own concepts, because these concepts were once forced upon her by a colonial regime. If the goal for a person in such a circumstance is to overcome this alienation through intellectual means, then one way in which this might be accomplished would be to develop a hermeneutics that would enable her to ascertain the alienating aspects of her existing concepts. (...) To this end, I outline a hermeneutical strategy which requires that, in reading the colonizer’s textual tradition, the colonized/ex–colonized person must heuristically presuppose that her current concepts are entirely determined by this tradition unless these concepts can be shown to resist such determination on reflective–systematic grounds. (shrink)

The literature on transcendental idealism is vast and controversy-ridden. Some interpreters view this puzzling doctrine as detracting from Kant’s real contribution—his theory of experience. Those who take the doctrine seriously debate whether or not appearances and things-in-themselves constitute two ontologically discrete worlds. Currently, the discussion centers around whether the appearance/thing-in-itself distinction should be read epistemologically, as referring to two different aspects of the same object, or as a metaphysical distinction, since Kant thinks of appearances as non-ultimate reality. The essays in (...) this engaging volume fill a lacuna in the existing literature by addressing Kant’s .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Theory of SelfApaar KumarArthur Melnick. Kant’s Theory of Self. New York-London: Routledge, 2009. Pp. viii + 186. Cloth, $118.00.Melnick interprets the Kantian self from the first-person perspective as real abiding intellectual action. It unfolds in time but does not arise in inner or outer attending. Hence, it is neither a noumenal entity nor Kantian intuitable substance. Melnick thinks that his interpretation not only clarifies Kant’s arguments in (...) the Paralogisms of the first Critique, but also illuminates Kant’s positive theory of self.Melnick argues that a thought is inchoate, unformed, and unsettled until the thinking self as intellectual marshaling action brings it into focus and “coalesces” around it a series of related but out-of-focus thoughts ready to replace the focal thought if necessary. This marshaling action is temporal because it shifts/adjusts (“accompanies”) progressive attending but cannot be intuited in time. Its shifting/adjusting constitutes its only reality, for it would have to be in objective time if it were intrinsically real, which Kant’s transcendental idealism does not allow.As intellectual marshaling action, the thinking self cannot know itself as simple substantial entity. Instead, it knows itself as always-subject-and-never-predicate because it is constant and never swallowed up by particular thoughts, and as indivisible because its self-awareness as marshaling action in a whole thought is not the sum of its self-awareness in each part of that thought. Self-consciousness is a structural possibility of this marshaling action. It occurs when the subject has to report its thoughts, which it does by distancing-itself-from-but-still-encompassing its thought/s in reflection.The same marshaling action makes for the identity of the cognizing subject by constantly regulating thinking. Thinking is “proneness” to standardize or regulate. If I am unifying/regulating a synthesis of outer apprehension (empirical-object-dog) through my prior grasp of a thought or rule (empirical-dog-concept), I am self-identical in empirical apperception. If I am unifying/regulating outer or inner attending per se according to pure rules of space and time in a synthesis of outer apprehension, then I am self-identical in pure apperception.In the synthesis of inner apprehension, I can be self-identical only if I, as intellectual marshaling action, set representations of inner sense in time. Personal identity is the extension of this identity. It is to be construed as a “thin” capacity contingent upon the fulfillment of its activation conditions, rather than as a metaphysical entity. Given that time-consciousness [End Page 535] demands outer bodily representations in Kant, and bracketing his abstraction from the body, self-identical persons must necessarily be construed as embodied. Finally, contra the rationalists, intellectual marshaling action is neither material nor separable from material reality, and our capacity for such action relates immediately to the capacity of material things to affect us.The problem with this argument, which Melnick admits Kant himself never articulated, is that at key moments, it is neither a comprehensive interpretation of Kant (especially since Melnick relies principally on the first Critique, but not exhaustively so: for instance, he does not discuss the important distinction between the analytic and synthetic unity of apperception, etc.), nor a stand-alone first-person account of the self.First, Melnick’s use of several Kant-independent spatial analogies to explain crucial mental concepts is disconcerting: to some extent, self as “marshaling” action, consciousness as “awning” that envelops affection from outside, and (most obscurely) self-conscious subjects ostensibly require reflection to “mirror” a thought into a verbal report (56–57), but it remains unclear what mirroring into involves.Second, Melnick uncritically accepts Kant’s obscure equation of the unities of act and consciousness (7–8, 97), and hence sidesteps the thorny problem of relating/distinguishing activity and consciousness. Since he categorically interprets self as activity, Melnick appears to presuppose the priority of activity over consciousness. But this needs justification, which, in turn, requires further investigating the relationship between attention, consciousness, and intellectual marshaling action.Finally, although Kant never says this, Melnick offers a two-step argument that we possess a capacity for personhood, which seems rather unconvincing... (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate one aspect of Kant’s larger theory of the transcendental self. In the Prolegomena, Kant says that the transcendental self can be represented as a feeling of existence. In contrast to the view that Kant errs in describing the transcendental self in this fashion, I show that there exists a strand in Kant’s philosophy that permits us to interpret the representation of the transcendental self as a feeling of existence—as the obscurely conscious and temporally inaccessible modification (...) of the state of the discursive subject, which is built into all the representations of such a subject. I also provide an account of how the transcendental self can be legitimately understood both as an epistemic condition for the possibility of experience as well as the representation of a non-naturalistic feeling of existence. (shrink)

The analytically rigorous essays in this volume celebrate the innovative thought of John Haugeland by locating, critiquing, and extending it. Divided thematically into four parts, the volume begins with essays concerning Haugeland's Heidegger interpretation, followed by sections relating to his views on embodiment and intentionality. The final part contains Haugeland's unfinished and hitherto unpublished "Two Dogmas of Rationalism," responses to this essay, and an interpretation of Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories that Haugeland drafted based on a reading group including (...) himself, James Conant, and John McDowell.Adams and Browning's helpful introduction attempts to unify the diverse strands of... (shrink)

Melnick interprets the Kantian self from the first-person perspective as real abiding intellectual action. It unfolds in time but does not arise in inner or outer attending. Hence, it is neither a noumenal entity nor Kantian intuitable substance. Melnick thinks that his interpretation not only clarifies Kant’s arguments in the Paralogisms of the first Critique, but also illuminates Kant’s positive theory of self.Melnick argues that a thought is inchoate, unformed, and unsettled until the thinking self as intellectual marshaling action brings (...) it into focus and “coalesces” around it a series of related but out-of-focus thoughts ready to replace the focal thought if necessary. This marshaling action is temporal because it shifts/adjusts progressive attending but cannot be intuited in time. Its shifting/adjusting constitutes its only reality, for it would have to be in objective time if it were intrinsically real, which Kant’s transcendental idealism does not allow.As intellectual marshaling action, the thinking self cannot know itself as simple substantial entity. Instead, it knows itself as always-subject-and-never-predicate because it is constant and never swallowed up by particular thoughts, and as indivisible because its self-awareness as marshaling action in a whole thought is not the sum of its. (shrink)

The reluctant revolutionary -- The patent slave -- The golden Dane -- The quantum atom -- When Einstein met Bohr -- The prince of duality -- Spin doctors -- The quantum magician -- A late erotic outburst -- Uncertainty in Copenhagen -- Solvay 1927 -- Einstein forgets relativity -- Quantum reality -- For whom Bell's theorem tolls -- The quantum demon.

Humans are moral creatures. Among all life on Earth, we alone experience rich moral emotions, follow complex rules governing how we treat one another, and engage in moral dialogue. But how did human morality evolve? And can humans become morally evolved? -/- In A Better Ape, Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell draw on the latest research in the biological and social sciences to explain the key role that morality has played in human evolution. They explore the moral traits that (...) humans share with chimpanzees; how a more complex moral mind enabled Homo sapiens to arise and out-compete other human species; and the place of morality alongside historic revolutions in technology and social organization. Throughout the book, Kumar and Campbell argue that morality co-evolved with intelligence and complex sociality. Morality prevents societal collapse and enables complex knowledge. -/- After unearthing the ancient origins of human morality, Kumar and Campbell use evolutionary theory to deliver profound insights about how to advance moral progress and resist moral regress, such as reducing animal suffering on industrial farms; capitalizing on the recent revolution in gay rights to foster a nascent revolution in transgender rights; opposing intersectional inequality that impacts women and people of color in lower socioeconomic classes; and addressing major problems of global inequality, especially impending crises of injustice caused by anthropogenic climate change. Understanding how we evolved--and how we continue to evolve--can help us become a better ape. (shrink)

The Unified Medical Language System and the Gene Ontology are among the most widely used terminology resources in the biomedical domain. However, when we evaluate them in the light of simple principles for wellconstructed ontologies we find a number of characteristic inadequacies. Employing the theory of granular partitions, a new approach to the understanding of ontologies and of the relationships ontologies bear to instances in reality, we provide an application of this theory in relation to an example drawn from the (...) context of the pathophysiology of hypertension. This exercise is designed to demonstrate how, by taking ontological principles into account we can create more realistic biomedical ontologies which will also bring advantages in terms of efficiency and robustness of associated software applications. (shrink)

In A. Kumar, & M. Banerjee [(2012). Definable and rough sets in covering-based approximation spaces. In T. Li. (eds.), Rough sets and knowledge technology (pp. 488–495). Springer-Verlag], A. Kumar, & M. Banerjee [(2015). Algebras of definable and rough sets in quasi order-based approximation spaces. Fundamenta Informaticae, 141(1), 37–55], authors proposed a pair of lower and upper approximation operators based on granules generated by quasiorders. This work is an extension of algebraic results presented therein. A characterisation has been presented (...) for those quasiorder-generated covering-based approximation spaces whose corresponding collections of definable and rough sets form Stone algebras. The notion of rough lattice was proposed in A. Kumar, & M. Banerjee [(2015). Algebras of definable and rough sets in quasi order-based approximation spaces. Fundamenta Informaticae, 141(1), 37–55], A. Kumar [(2020). A Study of Algebras and Logics of Rough Sets Based on Classical and Generalized Approximation Spaces. In Transactions on Rough Sets XXII, LNCS (Vol. 12485, pp. 123–251). Springer]. Some special rough lattices are introduced in this work, viz. rough Stone algebra, ∼1-complemented and ∼2-complemented rough lattices. Representations of these algebras in terms of rough sets are obtained. Moreover, logics for these algebras are shown to be sound and complete with respect to rough set semantics. (shrink)

It is widely understood that protein functions can be exhaustively described in terms of no single parameter, whether this be amino acid sequence or the three-dimensional structure of the underlying protein molecule. This means that a number of different attributes must be used to create an ontology of protein functions. Certainly much of the required information is already stored in databases such as Swiss-Prot, Protein Data Bank, SCOP and MIPS. But the latter have been developed for different purposes and the (...) separate data-structures which they employ are not conducive to the needed data integration. When we attempt to classify the entities in the domain of proteins, we find ourselves faced with a number of cross-cutting principles of classification. Our question here is: how can we bring together these separate taxonomies in order to describe protein functions? Our proposed answer is: via a careful top-level ontological analysis of the relevant principles of classification, combined with a new framework for the simultaneous manipulation of classifications constructed for different purposes. (shrink)

What did science make possible for colonial rule? How was science in turn marked by the knowledge and practices of those under colonial rule? Here I approach these questions via the social history of Madras Observatory. Constructed in 1791 by the East India Company, the observatory was to provide local time to mariners and served as a clearinghouse for the company’s survey and revenue administration. The astronomical work of Madras’ Brahmin assistants relied upon their knowledge of jyotiśāstra [Sanskrit astronomy/astrology], and (...) can be seen as a specialized form of the kind of South Indian scribal labor and knowledge that also staffed the company’s tax offices. If at Greenwich the division of labor meant observatory work bore resemblances to the factory and the accounts office, in Madras, astronomy and accounting drew on similar labor forms because they were part of the same enterprise. But the company did not just adapt preexisting forms of labor, it also attempted to produce its own at a school built near the observatory to train “half-caste” orphans as apprentice surveyors and assistant computers. The school, staffed by the Brahmins, drew upon knowledge and pedagogical practice associated with the tinnai, the schools in which upper-caste children learned to read, write, and calculate. For a time, the observatory’s social order was literally “half-caste.” The paper also considers how the relationship between caste, status, and instrument was reflected in the visual and material culture of the observatory, such as in Indian-language inscriptions on its central pillar. For company astronomers, the measurement of time meant reworking the relationships among the Indian past, the colonial present, and an imperial posterity. Science under colonial rule spanned multiple temporal and social registers because it was the result of negotiations between the demands of political economy and the knowledge and practices of colonized others. (shrink)

Outcomes research in healthcare has been a topic much addressed in recent years. Efforts in this direction have been supplemented by work in the areas of guidelines for clinical practice and computer-interpretable workflow and careflow models.In what follows we present the outlines of a framework for understanding the relations between organizations, guidelines, individual patients and patient-related functions. The derived framework provides a means to extract the knowledge contained in the guideline text at different granularities, in ways that can help us (...) to assign tasks within the healthcare organization and to assess clinical performance in realizing the guideline. It does this in a way that preserves the flexibility of the organization in the adoption of the guidelines. (shrink)

This paper promotes critical realism as a suitable and fruitful philosophical foundation for the development and implementation of urban digital twins. The proliferation of a-theoretical digital twin research and practices, not declaring their philosophical positions, is threatening the scientific soundness of this new paradigm and offers little evidence for reflecting on the knowledge it produces. To address this issue, first, this paper uses focus group discussions to explore digital twin experts’ perceptions of digital twin best practices for urban management and (...) uncover the philosophical worldviews underlying these perceptions. A philosophical worldview is a general orientation about the world that is described in terms of ontological and epistemological assumptions and views on human nature. The inferred philosophical worldviews are then compared with critical realism principles, supporting the argument that critical realism provides a suitable philosophical foundation for digital twin practices in urban management envisaged by participating experts, as well as enhancing current forms of digital twin practice. (shrink)

Formal principles governing best practices in classification and definition have for too long been neglected in the construction of biomedical ontologies, in ways which have important negative consequences for data integration and ontology alignment. We argue that the use of such principles in ontology construction can serve as a valuable tool in error-detection and also in supporting reliable manual curation. We argue also that such principles are a prerequisite for the successful application of advanced data integration techniques such as ontology-based (...) multi-database querying, automated ontology alignment and ontology-based text-mining. These theses are illustrated by means of a case study of the Gene Ontology, a project of increasing importance within the field of biomedical data integration. (shrink)

Purpose Digital transformation leverages digital technologies to change current processes and introduce new processes in any organisation’s business model, customer/user experience and operational processes. Artificial intelligence plays a significant role in achieving DT. As DT is touching each sphere of humanity, AI led DT is raising many fundamental questions. These questions raise concerns for the systems deployed, how they should behave, what risks they carry, the monitoring and evaluation control we have in hand, etc. These issues call for the need (...) to integrate ethics in AI led DT. The purpose of this study is to develop an “AI led ethical digital transformation framework”. Design/methodology/approach Based on the literature survey, various existing business ethics decision-making models were synthesised. The authors mapped essential characteristics such as intensity and the individual, organisational and opportunity factors of ethics models with the proposed AI led ethical DT. The DT framework is evaluated using a thematic analysis of 23 expert interviews with relevant AI ethics personas from industry and society. The qualitative data of the interviews and opinion data has been analysed using MAXQDA software. Findings The authors have explored how AI can drive the ethical DT framework and have identified the core constituents of developing an AI led ethical DT framework. Backed by established ethical theories, the paper presents how DT pillars are related and sequenced to ethical factors. This research provides the potential to examine theoretically sequenced ethical factors with practical DT pillars. Originality/value The study establishes deduced and induced ethical value codes based on thematic analysis to develop guidelines for the pursuit of ethical DT. The authors identify four unique induced themes, namely, corporate social responsibility, perceived value, standard benchmarking and learning willingness. The comprehensive findings of this research, supported by a robust theoretical background, have substantial implications for academic research and corporate applicability. The proposed AI led ethical DT framework is unique and can be used for integrated social, technological and economic ethical research. (shrink)

Moral reasoning and arguments are truly a driving force for social change in politics. Without it, progress is impossible. The key is patience, persistence, and mutual respect. Under the right conditions, moral arguments can move mountains — slowly but surely.

ABSTRACT Tests which predict the sex of a fetus have led to female feticide in India, and hence to demands that such tests be banned. This paper examines the arguments for banning such tests. These will depend partly on one's views regarding the morality of feticide: different views are discussed. However the morality of feticide is not the only relevant consideration, especially since it may become possible to choose the sex of the child at conception. Whether or not parents have (...) the right to freedom of choice and information is analysed. Many non‐western societies have special problems since the strong preference for boys may lead to the neglect of female children and to female infanticide. In heavily populated countries like India and China the need to control population growth is an additional complication. The paper concludes that in these societies the case for banning tests is weak. (shrink)

This book presents and argues for a suitably articulated version of consensualism as a form of Kantian moral theory with an ability to powerfully illuminate the moral intuitions to which Kantian and utilitarian theories have traditionally appealed.

In this paper, we employ bibliometric analysis to empirically analyse the research on social entrepreneurship published between 1996 and 2017. By employing methods of citation analysis, document co-citation analysis, and social network analysis, we analyse 1296 papers containing 74,237 cited references and uncover the structure, or intellectual base, of research on social entrepreneurship. We identify nine distinct clusters of social entrepreneurship research that depict the intellectual structure of the field. The results provide an overall perspective of the social entrepreneurship field, (...) identifying its influential works and analysing scholarly communication between these works. The results further aid in clarifying the overall centrality features of the social entrepreneurship research network. We also examine the integration of ethics into social entrepreneurship literature. We conclude with a discussion on the structure and evolution of the social entrepreneurship field. (shrink)

(2014). The Rāga Bhāva in the Sāṁkhya Kārikā: Rectifying an Age-Old Mistake. Asian Philosophy: Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 133-146. doi: 10.1080/09552367.2014.917831.

These essays, by widely respected scholars in fields ranging from social and political theory to historical sociology and cultural studies, illuminate the significance of the public/private distinction for an increasingly wide range of ...

I propose a leadership theory with moral concerns at its core. Sāttvika leadership is defined as a set of purposive leader actions comprising knowledge-driven cooperation that are initiated on the basis of positive and reasonably accurate assumptions and executed through morally responsible and sustainably fruitful means to secure the flourishing of followers and the collective. SL enhances psychological capital, psychological empowerment, and work engagement of followers while developing them into morally better persons. It enhances their trust on the leader and (...) fellow followers. Further, it develops ethical climate of the organization. (shrink)

Indian psychology scholars have primarily focused on developing triguṇa-based personality models. However, triguṇa-based personality models are not epistemologically consistent with Sāṁkhya. This article offers a bhāva-based conception of personality that is epistemologically consistent with Sāṁkhya. It proposes svabhāva as a personality-like construct that refers to individual-specific arrangements of prākṛtika and vaikṛtika bhava. This article contributes to both Indian psychology and Sāṁkhya scholarship.

The culture of science is deeply influenced and conditioned by the socio-political realities of both time and locale. Pre-colonial India, for example, was no tabula rasa. It had a vigorous tradition in at least the realms of mathematics, astronomy and medicine. But gradual colonization made a big dent. It brought forth a massive cultural collision which influenced profoundly the cognitive and material existence of both the colonizer and the colonized.

The objective of the paper is to implement and validate diagnosis in the medical field via refined neutrosophic fuzzy logic (RNFL). As such, we have proposed a Max-Min composition (MMC) method in RNFL. This method deals with the diagnosis under certain constraints like uncertainty and indeterminacy. Further, we have considered the diagnosis problems to validate the sensitivity analysis of the novel multi attribute decision-making technique. Finally, we gave the graphical representations and compared the obtained results with other existing measures in (...) refined neutrosophic fuzzy sets. (shrink)

An important part of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is its Semantic Network, consisting of 134 Semantic Types connected to each other by edges formed by one or more of 54 distinct Relation Types. This Network is however for many purposes overcomplex, and various groups have thus made attempts at simplification. Here we take this work further by simplifying the relations which involve the three Semantic Types – Diagnostic Procedure, Laboratory Procedure and Therapeutic or Preventive Procedure. We define operators (...) which can be used to generate terms instantiating types from this selected set when applied to terms designating certain other Semantic Types, including almost all the terms specifying clinical tasks. Usage of such operators thus provides a useful and economical way of specifying clinical tasks. The operators allow us to define a mapping between those types within the UMLS which do not represent clinical tasks and those which do. This mapping then provides a basis for an ontology of clinical tasks that can be used in the formulation of computer-interpretable clinical guideline models. (shrink)

Consumers are increasingly facing product evaluation and choice situations that include information about product sustainability, i.e., information about a product’s relative environmental and social impact. In many cases, consumers have to make decisions that involve a trade-off between product sustainability and other valued product attributes. Similarly, product and marketing managers need to make decisions that reflect how consumers will respond to different trade-off scenarios. In the current research, we study consumer responses across two different possible trade-off scenarios: one in which (...) consumers face a trade-off between product sustainability and hedonic value, and another in which they must trade-off between product sustainability and utilitarian value. Our results suggest that, overall, consumers are more likely to trade-off hedonic value for sustainability than to trade-off utilitarian value for sustainability. In Studies 1A and 1B, we presented participants with a product choice task and also measured their anticipatory emotions as they contemplated their options. The results suggest that given a trade-off, consumers are more likely to choose a sustainable product when they have to trade-off hedonic value than when they have to trade-off utilitarian value. Further, these studies provide some insight into the emotions underlying this effect. In Study 2, we use a different consumer response measure, relative purchase likelihood, and investigate the effect of trade-off type across categories that vary in the degree to which hedonic and utilitarian attributes are perceived to be important. Our results suggest that the effect of trade-off type still holds, yet is moderated by product type such that consumers’ greater willingness to trade-off hedonic value for sustainability is attenuated as the relative importance of hedonic attributes increases. In addition to building on our theoretical understanding of decision making given trade-offs with moral attributes, this research is also intended to support managers as they define and choose among various strategic, product development, and marketing promotion options. (shrink)

This paper provides a paradigm for evaluating the factors that affect the development of a global code of ethics in marketing. Based on a review of the literature pertaining to global codes of ethics, we examined the potential for the development and acceptance of a universal code of ethics in the international marketing arena. Towards that end, we suggest that any global code of ethics in marketing should consider two levels – normative guidelines and specific behaviors. A discussion detailing the (...) factors that can impede the development of such a two-tiered code is included as well. Those factors being moral reasoning, organizational ethical climate, level of economic development and cultural dimensions. Finally, the feasibility and the possible outcomes of a global code of ethics in marketing is examined. (shrink)

We provide a methodology for the creation of ontological partitions in biomedicine and we test the methodology via an application to the phenomenon of blood pressure. An ontology of blood pressure must do justice to the complex networks of intersecting pathways in the organism by which blood pressure is regulated. To this end it must deal not only with the anatomical structures and physiological processes involved in such regulation but also with the relations between these at different levels of granularity. (...) For this purpose our ontology offers a variety of distinct partitions � of substances, processes and functions � and integrates these together within a single framework via transitive networks of part-whole and dependence relations among the entities in each of these categories. The paper concludes with a comparison of this methodology with the approaches of GOTM, KEGG, DIP and BIND and provides an outline of how the methodology is currently being applied in the field of biomedical database integration. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 297-319, July 2022.

The past 15 years occasioned an extraordinary blossoming of research into the cognitive and affective mechanisms that support moral judgment and behavior. This growth in our understanding of moral mechanisms overshadowed a crucial and complementary question, however: How are they learned? As this special issue of the journal Cognition attests, a new crop of research into moral learning has now firmly taken root. This new literature draws on recent advances in formal methods developed in other domains, such as Bayesian inference, (...) reinforcement learning and other machine learning techniques. Meanwhile, it also demonstrates how learning and deciding in a social domain—and especially in the moral domain—sometimes involves specialized cognitive systems. We review the contributions to this special issue and situate them within the broader contemporary literature. Our review focuses on how we learn moral values and moral rules, how we learn about personal moral character and relationships, and the philosophical implications of these emerging models. (shrink)

Felicitas Goodman (1990) observed that naive participants experienced unique trance states, characterized by specific visionary content, when they assumed particular postures and listened to monotonous rattling. Students (n = 284), enrolled in various sections of the course Introduction to Psychology, experienced one of four conditions with their eyes closed: Sitting Quietly with and without Drumming, Standing (Feather Serpent) Posture plus Drumming with and without Suggested Experiences. Participants completed the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (Pekala 1982, 1991c) and wrote narratives following their (...) respective stimulus conditions. Participants reported less imagery, joy, and absorption, but more internal dialogue, self‐awareness, and muscular tension in the posture, compared to the sitting quietly, conditions. Goodman's results of specific posture (content‐related) effects with naive participants were not replicated. (shrink)