The question of how literary fiction is used for political and ideological propaganda involves both textual and contextual comparative analysis. Using recent discussions of the literary genre of prophecy, Mehtonen explores the case of a hitherto unexplored anonymous fictional publication from 1770, which became a literary sensation and was soon translated from German into Danish, Russian, Swedish, Finnish and Dutch. Mehtonen shows how this narrative – about the 106-year-old Swiss hermit Martin Zadeck, who presented on his deathbed in (...) 1769 a prophecy about the coming of a powerful united Northern Europe – was closely attached not only to emerging ideas of Europe and its transoceanic expansion after the Seven Years War (1756–1763), but also to topical trends in the utopian fiction of the nobility and military networks in the Northern European monarchies. Mehtonen concludes that the seemingly simple prophecy by Zadeck, often catalogued as »devotion literature«, in fact addressed multiple audiences and even clashing worldviews. The monarchic and colonialist ideas of the narrative appealed to royalist patriots; the legendary and mythological layers were immediately evident to readers familiar with the Rosicrucian and Hermetic underpinnings; the millenarian vision pleased the eschatological mindset of proponents of religious awakening movements; and, ultimately, the Zadecksche Gattung was food for enlightened critiques and philosophies concerning superstition. (shrink)

To stimulate research and innovation (R&I), to contribute to the solution of societal challenges and to align R&I with societal values, the European Commission has launched the governance framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI figures in many high-level EU policies as a means to promote smart growth, and a growing community of R&I practitioners from both the public and private sectors appears committed to it. Although debates on what RRI precisely entails have not reached closure yet, RRI provides (...) an interesting avenue to explore ways of making R&I more societally germane. While recognizing the usefulness of keeping critical reflection on RRI’s meaning alive, we suggest that to make the step from theorizing to implementation, RRI could benefit from a clearer conceptualization. This chapter presents the iterative trajectory in conceptualizing RRI followed as part of RRI Tools, one of a number of EC-funded research projects and support acts aimed at fleshing out what RRI can and should be, and the conceptualization of RRI that this led to. It suggests that RRI is best captured if in R&I governance attention is paid to the five p’s of Purpose, Products, Processes, Preconditions and People, and that further elaborations on the meaning of RRI should happen in dialogue with attempts at practicing RRI. (shrink)

Catholic health care is one of the key places where the church lives Catholic social teaching (CST). Yet the individualistic methodology of Catholic bioethics inherited from the manualist tradition has yet to incorporate this critical component of the Catholic moral tradition. Informed by the places where Catholic health care intersects with the diverse societal injustices embodied in the patients it encounters, this book brings the lens of CST to bear on Catholic health care, illuminating a new spectrum of ethical issues (...) and practical recommendations from social determinants of health, immigration, diversity and disparities, behavioral health, gender-questioning patients, and environmental and global health issues. (shrink)

The equation of the world with 'life' and 'life' with consciousness ramified into the baffling account Wittgenstein gave of the 'philosophical self '. The physical world, as Descartes argued, is made of material substance, and the mental world 'is liable to be imagined as gaseous, or rather, aethereal'. Conceiving of consciousness as a private realm populated by private experiences, one is bound to be puzzled at its evolutionary emergence. Consciousness is attributable to an organism as a whole, not to its (...) parts, no matter how complex. And it is attributable to the organism on the grounds of the behaviour of the organism, its exercise of its perceptual faculties, its susceptibility to sensation, and its voluntary action. A venerable tradition going back at least as far as Descartes conceived of consciousness as the immovable rock against which the waves of scepticism break. (shrink)

Structural biology has experienced several transformative technological advances in recent years. These include: development of extremely bright X-ray sources and the use of electrons to extend protein crystallography to ever decreasing crystal sizes; and an increase in the resolution attainable by cryo-electron microscopy. Here we discuss the use of these techniques in general terms and highlight their application for biological filament systems, an area that is severely underrepresented in atomic resolution structures. We assemble a model of a capped tropomyosin-actin minifilament (...) to demonstrate the utility of combining structures determined by different techniques. Finally, we survey the methods that attempt to transform high resolution structural biology into more physiological environments, such as the cell. Together these techniques promise a compelling decade for structural biology and, more importantly, they will provide exciting discoveries in understanding the designs and purposes of biological machines. Structural biology is undergoing technological advancements that now reveal the structures of previously inaccessible biological machines. Microfocus synchrotron beamlines, X-ray free electron lasers, and MicroED cope with vanishingly small crystals, while cryo-electron microscopy targets single molecules at near atomic resolution. These advances promise an exciting decade for structural biology. (shrink)

The name of the third author was incorrect in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.

Tournament-like promotion systems are the default in audit firms, which are generally internally owned professional partnerships. While awarding promotions in a contest-like fashion stimulates contestants’ motivation and productivity, it may also upset an organizations’ ethical climate and trigger ethically adverse behaviors. Since nearly all research on promotion tournaments in management has been conducted in public firms, little is known about how these incentive systems operate in professional partnerships. In this study, we analyze how the perception of the two controllable design (...) parameters of promotion tournaments—the relative pay spread between winners and losers and tournament breadth in terms of the number of contestants that compete for a prize—affects audit firm behavior. Survey results provide evidence that the tournament’s perceived breadth prompts adverse behavior, as it does in public firms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the perceived pay spread has no significant effect on adverse behavior, but triggers desirable behaviors instead. Our study suggests that promotion tournaments indeed provide powerful incentives, but also that understanding the unintended consequences of these incentives on organizational ethical climates and behavior requires tournament theory to be contextualized when it is applied in new settings like internally owned professional partnerships. (shrink)

Tournament-like promotion systems are the default in audit firms, which are generally internally owned professional partnerships. While awarding promotions in a contest-like fashion stimulates contestants’ motivation and productivity, it may also upset an organizations’ ethical climate and trigger ethically adverse behaviors. Since nearly all research on promotion tournaments in management has been conducted in public firms, little is known about how these incentive systems operate in professional partnerships. In this study, we analyze how the perception of the two controllable design (...) parameters of promotion tournaments—the relative pay spread between winners and losers and tournament breadth in terms of the number of contestants that compete for a prize—affects audit firm behavior. Survey results provide evidence that the tournament’s perceived breadth prompts adverse behavior, as it does in public firms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the perceived pay spread has no significant effect on adverse behavior, but triggers desirable behaviors instead. Our study suggests that promotion tournaments indeed provide powerful incentives, but also that understanding the unintended consequences of these incentives on organizational ethical climates and behavior requires tournament theory to be contextualized when it is applied in new settings like internally owned professional partnerships. (shrink)

This paper provides a general framework for analyzing self-confirming policies. We study self-confirming equilibria in recurrent decision problems with incomplete information about the true stochastic model. We characterize stationary monetary policies in a linear-quadratic setting.

The problem of the values of Ukrainian society is one of the most important and debatable problems in modern scientific discourse. This is due to the transition of our state from the traditional model of the state, in which there is authoritarianism, secrecy, to a socially oriented society and a democratic, open state.Accordingly, there is a change in values, which is an integral part of the existence of any society and state. To replace the Soviet system of declaration of surrogatecollective, (...) paternalistic values, which existed for several decades, a new system is formed, which provides a clear orientation of Ukrainians to European values, the significant achievements of the Ukrainian people, the moral recovery of society, increasing values and culture of civil society. Honor and dignity of Ukrainians, which is an indispensable basis for the development of moral culture of society.The purpose and objectives of the article. Based on the achievements of modern science and philosophy, to analyze the essence of the moral culture of the people, the place of human dignity and its importance in moral culture; to characterize and classify the main factors of dignity formation in the moral culture of the people. The research methodology is complex and is based on philosophical-anthropological and philosophical-cultural analysis of the problems of formation of moral culture of the Ukrainian people and its structural element - human dignity. Research results.The most important, synthetic, integral consequence of human development is moral culture. Moral culture is the level of assimilation by an individual or a group of people of existing moral values in society, the degree of their involvement in the moral aspects of activity, a measure of personal moral development. Practical and spiritual factors include, first of all, ethnic stereotypes specific to a certain people (traditions, customs, rituals, typical traits of character and behavior, dominant emotions, folk crafts, entertainment, games), as well as historical memory, established symbols, folk shrines. Historical memory, preserving every page of life, the people’s struggle for social, political and national rights at all stages of its development, serves as a solid foundation on which national self-consciousness is successfully formed.Institutional factors are important for the formation of dignity in the moral culture of the people. These include nation- and state-building activities of public authorities, national elite, political parties, religious and public organizations. If the state creates conditions in society for the assimilation of the historical and cultural experience accumulated by the nation, it contributes to the education of national self-esteem, ie awareness of community members of their belonging to the nation, their duty to the community of like-minded people. Conclusions. Summarizing the results of the study, we can formulate the following conclusions. Human dignity in the moral culture of the Ukrainian people is the result of the interaction of a combination of many factors that determine its structure and content. The process of its formation is quite long, complex and contradictory. This is due to the fact that it is human dignity that provides the spiritual, ideological foundation for the functioning of national communities, contributing to the development of promising guidelines for the development of the nation and the state. (shrink)

Throughout its long history metaphysics has been variously conceived. At its most sublime, it has been taken to be the study of the super‐sensible, in particular of the existence of a god, the nature of the soul, and the possibility of an afterlife. When the young Ludwig Wittgenstein entered the lists, it was entirely reasonable to conceive of metaphysics in this manner. Its subject matter was held to be the language‐independent and thought‐independent de re necessities of the world. The Tractatus (...) is dominated by three problems: first, the nature of logic and logical necessity; secondly, the essence of the proposition and hence the characterization of the general propositional form; and thirdly, the intentionality of the proposition. Logical propositions are combinations of elementary propositions by means of truth‐functional logical connectives. The metaphysics adumbrated in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein thought, was required for the possibility of representation and for the possibility of logic. (shrink)

Positive public perceptions of academic quality and professional ethics are critical to the long-term legitimacy of American colleges and universities. Faculty codes of conduct are one mechanism whereby the professoriate can define acceptable practice, exercise social control, and maintain public confidence in higher education, yet the drivers of their adoption are not well understood. Building upon previous research into such organizational behavior by institutional type, this study examined the prevalence and content of publicly posted faculty codes of conduct within an (...) organizational field of institutions that share a common religious identity but differ in their institutional types and employment structures. Faculty handbooks from American member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, an international association of faith-based institutions, were gathered and analyzed. Although only 27% of CCCU member institutions in the U.S. publicly posted faculty codes of conduct, the average number of tenets present in each code was higher than suggested by previous research. Study findings also revealed that membership category, institutional type, and employment structures influence the content of faculty codes of conduct, indicating that isomorphic pressures operate within this particular organizational field. The piece concludes by commending publicly posted codes of conduct as an affirmation of the personal responsibility, fairness, and care exercised by ethical professionals in the academy. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Baker's New Conception Waismann and Wittgenstein Wittgenstein on the Psychoanalytic Analogy Wittgenstein's Methodology Reconsidered Wittgenstein and Ryle 1: Categorial Confusions Wittgenstein and Ryle 2: Logical Geography Baker's Wittgenstein.

Concerns a problem posed, but not solved, by Frege in part III of his Grundgesetze. As a preliminary to defining ‘real number’, Frege attempts to analyse the notion of a quantitative domain. He was unaware of the previous attempt of Otto Holder to do this; it is remarked how much weaker Frege's assumptions were in deriving theorems than Holder's. Frege deals with groups on which there is a right‐invariant semilinear ordering, although he does not use this terminology. He is uncertain (...) whether it can be deduced that the ordering is also left‐invariant, and proves as much as possible without invoking the assumption that it is. The independence proof, due to Dr Peter Neumann, establishes that it could not be deduced. (shrink)

A wide range of expressions are predicable literally or primarily only of human beings and of creatures that behave like them. The English word 'mind' is connected primarily with the intellect and the will. To have a mind to do something is to be inclined or tempted to do it, and to have half a mind to do something is to be sorely tempted, perhaps against one's better judgement. Artificial‐intelligence scientists insist that they are already building machines that can think (...) and see, recognize and identify, make choices and decisions. Chess‐playing machines can 'beat' chess‐masters, and computers can 'calculate' far more efficiently and quickly than mathematicians. Machines, unlike living creatures, do not have a body, although they are bodies. Machines and their parts have purposes and functions: viz. those which they were designed to fulfil. (shrink)

Throughout much of human history most people conceived of death as a transitional event. An alternative, secular, conception of death is as the permanent cessation of all life‐sustaining biological functions. The death of the physical organism is the death of the person or human being. However death be conceived, human beings are the only creatures that are aware of their mortality. The death penalty is often thought to be the most severe punishment of all, far worse than life imprisonment. Attitudes (...) towards death vary according to the acceptance or rejection of belief in an afterlife. Death in old age is generally held to be less deplorable than death in one's prime. Premature death, however, is commonly deemed to be tragic, but not because merely being alive is a good of one kind or another, let alone good in itself. Lucretius exaggerated the symmetry between prenatal and post‐ mortem events. (shrink)

The private language arguments exemplify the analogy: private ownership of experience; private knowledge of experience; private ostensive definition; the mereological fallacy; the 'beetle in the box'; and so on. The supposition that Wittgenstein's philosophy is primarily therapeutic obscures the extent to which therapy is only possible if one attains a grasp of the logical geography of the relevant part of the philosophical landscape. The analogy between clarifying and eradicating philosophical confusion and treating a disease is often linked to a related (...) analogy that Wittgenstein drew in five different contexts in the 1930s, namely between his methods in philosophy and the method of treating mental illness by psychoanalysis. The idea of a private language is incoherent precisely because it fails to distinguish imagining a justification for using a word and justifying the use of a word in one's imagination. (shrink)