The regulation of the activity of multiple autonomous entities represented in a multi-agent system, in environments with no central design (and thus with no cooperative assumption), is gaining much attention in the research community. Approaches to this concern include the use of norms in so-called normative multi-agent systems and the development of electronic institution frameworks. In this paper we describe our approach towards the development of an electronic institution providing an enforceable normative environment. Within this environment, institutional services are provided (...) that assist agents in forming cooperative structures whose commitments are made explicit through contracts. Our normative framework borrows some concepts from contract law theory. Contracts are formalized using norms which are used by the institution while monitoring agents’ activities, thus making our normative environment dynamic. We regard the electronic institution as a means to facilitate both the creation and the enforcement of contracts between agents. A model of “institutional reality” is presented that allows for monitoring the fulfillment of norms. The paper also distinguishes our approach from other developments of the electronic institution concept. We address the application of our proposal in the B2B field, namely regarding the formation of Virtual Organizations. (shrink)
Jake Kosek. Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9341-3 Authors Caroline Felix Oliveira, Iowa State University, 403 East Hall, Ames, IA 50011, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.
We analyse the effect of the regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the local control of the immune responses by T cells. We obtain an explicit formula for the level of antigenic stimulation of T cells as a function of the concentration of T cells and the parameters of the model. The relation between the concentration of the T cells and the antigenic stimulation of T cells is an hysteresis, that is unfold for some parameter values. We study the appearance of (...) autoimmunity from cross-reactivity between a pathogen and a self antigen or from bystander proliferation. We also study an asymmetry in the death rates. With this asymmetry we show that the antigenic stimulation of the Tregs is able to control locally the population size of Tregs. Other effects of this asymmetry are a faster immune response and an improvement in the simulations of the bystander proliferation. The rate of variation of the levels of antigenic stimulation determines if the outcome is an immune response or if Tregs are able to maintain control due to the presence of a transcritical bifurcation for some tuning between the antigenic stimuli of T cells and Tregs. This behavior is explained by the presence of a transcritical bifurcation. (shrink)
Four aspects of Mazur & Booth's target article are discussed from a comparative perspective using teleost fish as a reference: (a) the relationship between aggression, dominance, and androgens; (b) the interpretation of the data in light of the challenge hypothesis; (c) the potential role of testosterone as a physiological mediator between social status and the expression of male characters; and (d) the fact that metabolic conversions of testosterone may be important in its effect on aggression/ dominance.
The financial crash of 2008 following the selling of fictitious derivatives was a crisis of both rationality and values whose aftermath has thrown the legitimation of deregulated markets, and governments, into question. This paper critiques the Becker metaphor of human capital and submits that human value is central to and the fulcrum of both economic and social values. It illustrates that Hume and Adam Smith directly countered the Hobbesian hypothesis that human nature is based only on self-interest, distinguishes market values (...) from social values, explicit from implicit values and parallels Sen in adopting an ordinal ranking of what people value rather than a search for cardinality. It draws on cognitive psychology, neural research, revealed preference theory and a principle of implicit verification. It also outlines implications for what Adam Smith centrally valued as concern for the welfare of the whole of society. (shrink)
The problem of induction is formulated as a set of three questions, namely: 'What is the nature of the attitude of acceptance that we adopt in relation to certain theories?', 'What are the rules according to which we select those theories which we accept?', and, 'What is the justification for the adoption of those rules?'. An original answer is proposed for each question in turn, with the help of the new concepts of sub-theory, established sub-theory, aberrant, arbitrary and degenerate theories. (...) The answer to the third question follows the lines of Reichenbach's pragmatic strategy. (shrink)
The research team measured the enterprise web accessibility levels of the Forbes 250 largest enterprises using the fully automatic accessibility evaluation tool Sortsite, and presented the compliance of the evaluated websites to WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 accessibility levels. Given the recent attention to organizational leaders having ethical duties towards their dedicated employees, we propose that ‘societal citizenship behaviour’ concerns ethical duties of organizational leaders towards society in general and in particular to those who have less means to (...) assert their needs. In effect, we found enterprise website accessibility levels to be in need of significant improvement. An interpretation of a positive path forward to better enterprise website accessibility levels is put forth based on a focus-group interaction and using BNML—a novel Business Narrative Modelling Language. (shrink)
This study provides empirical evidence on how corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones sustainability index, is reflected in the market value of equity. Using a theoretical framework combining institutional perspectives, stakeholder theory, and resource-based perspectives, we develop a set of hypotheses that relate the market value of equity to CSP. For a sample of North American firms, our preliminary results show that CSP has significant explanatory power for stock prices over the traditional summary accounting (...) measures such as earnings and book value of equity. However, further analyses suggest that we should not focus on corporate sustainability itself. Our findings suggest that what investors really do is to penalize large profitable firms with low level of CSP. Firms with incentives to develop a high level of CSP not engaging on such strategy are, thus, penalized by the market. (shrink)
Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 O presente estudo pretende analisar algumas questões relacionadas à forma como a historiografia avaliou a contribuiçáo lógica oferecida pelos filósofos estoicos. Trata-se, sobretudo, de dois posicionamentos em aberta oposiçáo: uma primeira análise é essencialmente negativa e depreciativa, negando qualquer valor às elaborações estoicas no campo da lógica; de outra parte, existe uma revalorizaçáo da importância da lógica dos estoicos na história da Filosofia, de modo geral, e na história da Lógica, especificamente. A principal (...) referência positiva aqui sublinhada é o trabalho do lógico Lukasiewicz. Pretende-se, assim, oferecer subsídios para uma reflexáo que amplie a avaliaçáo do potencial que a lógica estoica oferece aos estudiosos da Filosofia e da Lógica. (shrink)
We are discussing the interpretation of Nietzsche about Heraclitus as the most Greek and anti-Platonic of the pre-Platonic philosophers, from the statement of opposites in the agonic game of becoming. Representative of an attitude originally Hellenistic, Heraclitus is interpreted as a true philosopher, as he intuitively captured the flow of becoming as a process of internalization of knowledge, translated by an investigation of himself. Accordingly, the Nietzschean interpretation goes against the tradition that had described Heraclitus as tearful and dark and (...) re-invents the character as the solitude, tragic joy and innocence of becoming, items for which Nietzsche ordering the metaphors of the game, the artist and child. (shrink)
Este estudo, realizado por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica, tem como foco a Ética da Libertação de Dussel, com o objetivo de refletir sobre a relação entre o Eu e o Outro no campo social, debatendo a questão da exclusão social. A partir de sua ética analisa-se criticamente o discurso eurocêntrico moderno e a possibilidade de superação do irracionalismo moderno, por meio da razão crítico-libertadora. Está estruturado em duas partes: na primeira, apresentamos o olhar de Dussel sobre a modernidade, focando o (...) debate para o eu e o outro no pensamento moderno e, na segunda, tecemos reflexões a partir da Ética da Libertação de Dussel sobre a possibilidade de superação do irracionalismo moderno, por meio da razão libertadora. (shrink)
This paper raises some questions and objections to Alvin Plantinga’s epistemology of religion. In Part I, we have a non-believer speaking (an agnostic about God, spirits or the like). She is in fact an epistemologist and is not very comfortable with Plantinga’s reformed epistemology. In Part II, we have a Christian believer, and the questions will therefore be from the perspective of someone who is inside, who sincerely believes the main teachings of Christian religion. We do not mean by those (...) questions, however, that Plantinga’s approach is wrong. It only needs some clarifications. (shrink)
The article investigates the Husserl-Heidegger relationship, beyond their historical contributions to both phenomenology and hermeneutics as new methods in philosophy, by articulating ontology and subjectivity through a semantic, linguistic paradigm, so as to delineate the task of a phenomenology of justice. KEY WORDS – Hermeneutics. Language. Ontology. Phenomenology. Subjectivity. Theory of justice.
The article revisits Habermas’s recasting of moral universalism, so as to avoid the aporias of naturalism and cultural relativism, according to a pragmatic-formal perspective that does justice to the complex phenomenon of religion in a postsecular, pluralist world, where believers, atheists, and agnostics can coexist together and actively participate in the construction of a more tolerant, just society.
O presente trabalho analisa a perspectiva indeterminista da epistemologia de Karl Popper. A partir da compreensáo unitária do Racionalismo Crítico, como epistemologia e filosofia política, ao mesmo tempo, o artigo mostra em que sentido se pode afirmar que a proposta de Popper revela uma questáo ética de largo alcance e interesse na filosofia contemporânea, sobretudo no que se refere à análise da crise da cientificidade moderna. Palavras-chave: Ética, Indeterminismo, Popper, Racionalismo Crítico.
o presente artigo pretende discutir a proposta de se trabalhar o cinema como componente do ensino de filosofia, a partir das idéias de Gilles Deleuze acerca da arte cinematográfica e de desdobramentos de sua filosofia direcionados a questões pedagógicas.
Pretende-se nesse artigo demonstrar como o chamado experimentalismo se apresenta, nas obras do segundo período da produçáo nietzscheana (1878-1882), enquanto estratégia de combate aos "idealismos" (cujo resultado foi um distanciamento daquilo que Nietzsche compreende como vida) presentes na filosofia metafísica. Além disso, intenta-se esclarecer de que forma o uso desse estratagema contribui para a decifraçáo do fenômeno da vida a partir de uma abordagem histórico-fisio-psicológica que aproxima a ciência do fazer artístico. Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE (...) MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Palavras - chave: Ciência; Experimentalismo; Fisio-psicologia; Procedimento experimental. (shrink)
Trata-se de mostrar em que sentido a concepção normativa de pessoa em John Rawls pressupõe uma transformação semântica da concepção kantiana de subjetividade transcendental, em particular do seu ideal de personalidade (Persönlichkeit). Uma reinterpretação kantiana da concepção normativa de pessoa logra explicar o dispositivo procedimental do equilíbrio reflexivo para responder a críticas comunitaristas em defesa do individualismo inerente ao liberalismo político, concebido não mais como uma doutrina abrangente da auto-identidade mas como um construtivismo, num modelo coerentista de justificativa epistêmico-moral. PALAVRAS-CHAVE (...) – Construtivismo. Equilíbrio reflexivo. Liberalismo político. Personalidade. ABSTRACT The article seeks to show in which sense Rawls’s normative conception of the person does presuppose a semantic transformation of the Kantian conception of transcendental subjectivity, particularly of his ideal of personhood (Persönlichkeit). A Kantian reinterpretation of the normative conception of the person succeeds in accounting for the procedural device of reflective equilibrium so as to address communitarian criticisms in defense of the individualism inherent in political liberalism, conceived no longer as a comprehensive doctrine of selfidentity but as a constructivism, within a coherentist model of moral epistemology. KEY WORDS – Constructivism. Personhood. Political liberalism. Reflective equilibrium. (shrink)
O objetivo deste texto é discutir a tarefa filosófica de elucidação do conceito de conseqüência lógica. Primeiramente, serão eleitos dois critérios de adequação para uma elucidação deste conceito: (1) preservação da verdade, ou adequação material e (2) garantia da verdade da conclusão na inferência válida, ou adequação epistêmica. Em seguida serão apresentadas a proposta de Tarski (1956) e as correspondentes críticas de Etchemendy (2008). Conclui-se com comentários a respeito desta controvérsia.
A impossibilidade de se fundamentar os direitos humanos hoje de maneira satisfatória, sem recorrer a modelos essencialistas ou metafísicos, parece correlata à universalidade de sua defesa e promoção. Uma abordagem fenomenológica favorece uma leitura perspectivista da alteridade, tornando altamente defensável e razoável que se aplique uma semântica transcendental ao problema da fundamentação dos direitos humanos. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Alteridade. Direitos humanos. Fenomenologia. Perspectivismo. Semântica transcendental. Universalidade. ABSTRACT The impossibility of satisfactorily grounding human rights today, without resort to essentialist or metaphysical models, (...) seem correlated to the universality of their defense and promotion. A phenomenological approach favors a perspectivist reading of alterity, making highly defensible and reasonable that a transcendental semantics be applied to the problem of the foundations of human rights. KEY WORDS – Alterity. Human rights. Perspectivism. Phenomenology. Transcendental semantics. Universality. (shrink)
O artigo argumenta que o destino da democracia e o futuro do pensamento liberacionista na América Latina dependem de uma autocompreensão dos conceitos correlativos de raça, etnicidade e identidade cultural. A fim de reformular o que seria uma filosofia latino-americana da libertação, é mister revisitar versões autóctones da análise marxista e da teoria crítica na sua própria gênese e produção fenomenológica de significados.
Eugenio Lecaldano offers an important contribution to the tradition of Italian liberal thought. In his book on bioethics, he deals with the subject’s most relevant topics by adopting a utilitarian perspective, which clearly demonstrates the influence of J.S. Mill’s philosophy. The indication of some significant analogies and the distinction between different moral problems are some of the most interesting and useful aspects of Lecaldano’s work.
The ?values of sport? is a concept that is often used to justify actions and policies by a range of agents and agencies from coaches and teachers to governing bodies and educational institutions. From a philosophical point of view, these values deserve to be analysed with great care to make sure we understand their nature and reach. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the values carried by the educational conception of sport that Pierre de Coubertin developed and (...) to see how they relate to certain values in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. To be able to understand in depth the moral construct of de Coubertin's system, it is essential to delve into the entire system he builds in order to develop athletic participants closer to his ideal of what a human should be. This in turn rests on his conception of Man, which is comprised of body, spirit and character. An understanding of his structure opens the way to a broader awareness of de Coubertin's educational system, of which sport was only part. We will then see that the values are a consequence of this pedagogical search for the ideal human. It is argued that this ideal of a human is similar to the one described by Nietzsche as the Übermensch . A philosophical case study is conducted, taking as its object the story of the first recipient of the Pierre de Coubertin medal, which rewards fair play among Olympic competitors. Judging the story through Nietzschean eyes allows for his thoughts to be put into practice. His lesser-known texts such as Homer and Competition on the emulation of creative powers shed light on today's sports. Concepts such as guilt, excellence, will to power and effectiveness help us compare these two authors and understand that competition is not necessarily about dominating others, but more about generating human excellence. (shrink)
DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO SANTOS, Ariadna de Oliveira. Discurso pentecostal e diálogo inter-religioso: um estudo sob a perspectiva da metáfora conceptual. 2011. 111 folhas. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.
DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO BUENO, Marcos Paulo de Oliveira. A arte de crer na contemporaneidade : possibilidades e limites do cristianismo segundo Gianni Vattimo. 2012. 127 folhas. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.
La síntesis de la filosofía africana aporta datos sorprendentes sobre el origen de la cultura occidental. Ni los filósofos y literatos griegos surgieron de la nada, ni la civilización egipcia nació en sí misma, como un milagro. El hilo conductor, la fuente nutricia de ambos “milagros” culturales “egipcio y griego” está en la cultura africana. Y no podía ser de otra manera ya que nuestra especie, el homo sapiens, surgió en África hace tan sólo 200 milenios. Allí se dieron los (...) primeros logros esenciales de la condición humana: el lenguaje oral y escrito y la emergencia del pensamiento sistematizado, de la dimensión ética y artística del género humano. Con gran profundidad Eugenio Nkogo demuestra que la civilización humanista vino desde África a Occidente a través de Egipto y Roma. Después de sufrir el esclavismo y el colonialismo, el pensamiento africano se está convirtiendo en la vanguardia de un nuevo movimiento que sigue ayudando al género humano en su ruta hacia un mundo más civilizado y libre. (shrink)
Norms conferring public or private powers, i.e., the competence to issue other norms, play a very important rôle in law. But there is no agreement among legal philosophers about the nature of such norms. There are two main groups of theories, those that regard them as a kind of norms of conduct (either commands or permissions) and those that regard them as non-reducible to other types of norms. I try to show that reductionist theories are not quite acceptable; neither the (...) command-variety (Kelsen, Alf Ross inOn Law and Justice), nor the permission-variety (von Wright, Kanger, Lindahl) provide a satisfactory account of competence norms.Among the authors who maintain that competence norms are different from (and hence not reducible to) norms of conduct are Hart, Ross inDirectives and Norms, and Searle. Ross and Searle distinguish between regulative and constitutive rules as two radically different kinds of rules and classify competence norms among constitutive rules. This distinction runs parallel to von Wright's distinction between rules that are prescriptions and determinative rules. While the first regulate actions (by commanding, prohibiting, or permitting them), determinative rules define certain concepts. To view competence norms as (partial) definitions of certain legal concepts (like those of legislator, judge, etc.) seems to open interesting perspectives and to shed light on at least one aspect of these elusive norms. (shrink)
Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. XII: Linguistics and Adjacent Arts and Sciences, The Hague - Paris 1974, pp. 103-171, entitled: "Linguistics and ...
In this work I argue that Descartes was not a trialist by showing that the main tenets of trialist interpretations of Descartes's theory of substance are either not supported by the text or are not sufficient for establishing the trialist interpretation.
To Aristotle, spoken words are symbols, not of objects in the world, but of our mental experiences related to these objects. Presently there are two major strands of interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign. First, there is the structuralist account offered by Coseriu (Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie. Von den Anfängen bis Rousseau, 2003 [1969], pp. 65–108) whose interpretation is reminiscent of the Saussurean sign concept. A second interpretation, offered by Lieb (in: Geckeler (Ed.) Logos Semantikos: Studia Linguistica in Honorem (...) Eugenio Coseriu 1921–1981, 1981) and Weidemann (in: Schmitter (Ed.) Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 2. Sprachtheorien der abendländischen Antike, 1991), says that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is similar to the one presented in Ogden and Richard’s (The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism, 1970 [1923]) semiotic triangle. This paper starts off with an introductory outline of the so-called phýsei-thései discussion which started during presocratic times and culminated in Plato’s Cratylus. Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is to be regarded as a solution to the stalemate position reached in the Cratylus. Next, a discussion is offered of both Coseriu’s and Lieb’s analysis. We submit that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign shows features of both Saussure’s and Ogden and Richards’s sign concept but that it does not exclusively predict one of the two. We argue that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is based on three different relations which together evince his teleological as well empiricist point of view: one internal (symbolic) relation and two external relations, i.e. a likeness relation and a relation katà synthéken. (shrink)
Within the perception-action framework, the underlying mechanisms of empathy and its related processes of moral behavior need to be investigated. fMRI studies have shown different frontal cortex activation patterns during automatic processing and judgment tasks when stimuli have moral content. Clinical neuropsychological studies reveal different patterns of empathic alterations after dorsolateral versus orbital frontal cortex damage, related to deficient cognitive and emotional processing. These processing streams represent different neural levels and mechanisms underlying empathy.
