Recent discussions on corporate citizenship highlight the new political role of corporations in society by arguing that corporations increasingly act as quasi-governmental actors and take on what hitherto had originally been governmental tasks. By examining political and sociological citizenship theories, the authors show that such a corporate engagement can be explained by a changing conception of corporate citizens from corporate bourgeois to corporate citoyen. As an intermediate actor in society, the corporate citoyen assumes co-responsibilities for social and civic affairs and (...) actively collaborates with fellow citizens beyond governmental regulation. This change raises the question of how such corporate civic engagement can be aligned with public policy regulations and how corporate activities can be integrated into the democratic regime. To clarify the mode of CC contributions to society, the authors will apply the tenet of subsidiarity as a governing principle which allows for specifying corporations’ tasks as intermediate actors in society. By referring to the renewed European Union strategy for Corporate Social Responsibility, the authors show how such a subsidiary corporate-governmental task-sharing can be organized. (shrink)

In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes. Drawing on paradox theory, this article uses a case study of zero-deforestation commitments in the Indonesian palm oil sector to argue that goal-based private sustainability governance’s characteristics set (...) the stage for two types of paradoxes to emerge: performing paradoxes between environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals, and organizing paradoxes between cooperation and competition approaches. Companies’ responses to these paradoxes, in turn, can explain the lack of full goal attainment and differential rates of progress between actors. These results draw our attention to the complexities hidden behind governance through goal setting in the corporate space, and raise important questions about the viability of similar strategies such as science-based targets and net-zero goals. (shrink)

Robots as social companions in close proximity to humans have a strong potential of becoming more and more prevalent in the coming years, especially in the realms of elder day care, child rearing, and education. As human beings, we have the fascinating ability to emotionally bond with various counterparts, not exclusively with other human beings, but also with animals, plants, and sometimes even objects. Therefore, we need to answer the fundamental ethical questions that concern human-robot-interactions per se, and we need (...) to address how we conceive of »good lives«, as more and more of the aspects of our daily lives will be interwoven with social robots. (shrink)

This article suggests that the best available normative framework for guiding conduct in war rests on categories that do not echo the terms of an individual rights-based morality, but acknowledge the impossibility of rendering warfare fully morally justified. Avoiding the undue moralization of conduct in war is an imperative for a normative framework that strives to actually give behavioral guidance to combatants, most of whom will inevitably be ignorant of the moral status of the individuals they encounter on the battlefield (...) and will often be uncertain or mistaken about the justice of their own cause. We identify the requirement of military necessity, applied on the basis of what we refer to as the “St. Petersburg assumption”, as the main principle according to which a combatant should act, regardless of which side or in which battlefield encounter she finds herself. This pragmatic normative framework enjoys moral traction for three reasons: first, in the circumstances of war it protects human life to a certain extent; second, it makes no false claims about the moral justification of individual conduct in combat operations; and, third, it fulfills morally important functions of law. However, the criterion of military necessity interpreted on the basis of the St. Petersburg assumption does not directly replicate fundamental moral prescriptions about the preservation of individual rights. (shrink)

How do civilians react to being harmed in war? Existing studies argue that civilian casualties are strategically costly because civilian populations punish a belligerent who kills civilians and support the latter's opponent. Relying on eighty-seven semi-structured interviews with victims of coalition attacks in Afghanistan, this article shows that moral principles inform civilians’ attitudes toward their own harming. Their attitudes may therefore vary with the perceived circumstances of an attack. Civilians’ perception of harm as unintended and necessary, in accordance with the (...) moral principles of distinction and necessity, was associated with narratives that cast an attack as relatively more legitimate and with a partial or full release of the coalition from blame. The principle of proportionality, which requires that civilian casualties are caused in pursuit of a legitimate war aim, informed their abstract attitudes toward civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Two rules of international law, which accord with the moral principles of distinction and necessity, were reflected in the civilians’ attitudes. The legal rule of proportionality, which diverges from the namesake moral principle, failed to resonate with the civilians. The article explores whether compliance with the legal rules of distinction and necessity can contribute to mitigating the strategic costs of civilian casualties. (shrink)

This study investigates how background music influences learning with respect to three different theoretical approaches. Both the Mozart effect as well as the arousal-mood-hypothesis indicate that background music can potentially benefit learning outcomes. While the Mozart effect assumes a direct influence of background music on cognitive abilities, the arousal-mood-hypothesis assumes a mediation effect over arousal and mood. However, the seductive detail effect indicates that seductive details such as background music worsen learning. Moreover, as working memory capacity has a crucial influence (...) on learning with seductive details, we also included the learner’s working memory capacity as a factor in our study. We tested 81 college students using a between-subject design with half of the sample listening to two pop songs while learning a visual text and the other half learning in silence. We included working memory capacity in the design as a continuous organism variable. Arousal and mood scores before and after learning were collected as potential mediating variables. To measure learning outcomes we tested recall and comprehension. We did not find a mediation effect between background music and arousal or mood on learning outcomes. In addition, for recall performance there were no main effects of background music or working memory capacity, nor an interaction effect of these factors. However, when considering comprehension we did find an interaction between background music and working memory capacity: the higher the learners’ working memory capacity, the better they learned with background music. This is in line with the seductive detail assumption. (shrink)

The first part deals with the problem of the external form of ostensive definition. It is concluded that the definition statement is not complete. The proper form of this statement is not a sentence, but a sentential function, namely a sentential function of the type: ``Π x [N(x)=x is in the respect R and in the degree D such as A, B... and not such as K, L...]" where "N" stands for the term being defined. Thus the ostensive definition informs (...) about the criteria of applicability of the defined term in a partial way only, and the rest must be supplied by the addressee for whom the given definition was destined. In the second part the conditions are analysed on which depends the possibility of solving that problem, and consequently the conditions on which depend the informational value and the efficacy of ostensive definition. The concluding remarks deal with the properties of the terms introduced by the ostensive method. (shrink)

There has been little attention to feminism and gender issues in mainstream philosophy of technology and vice versa. Since the beginning of the so-called »second wave feminism« (in the middle of the 20th century), there has been a growing awareness of the urgency of a critical reflection of technology and science within feminist discourse. But feminist thinkers have not consistently interpreted technology and science as emancipative and liberating for the feminist movement. Because technological development is mostly embedded in social, political, (...) and economic systems that are patriarchally hierarchized, many feminists criticized the structures of dominance, marginalization and oppression inherent in numerous technologies. Therefore, the question of defining and ascribing responsibility in technics and science is essential for this anthology – regarding for instance the technological transformation of labor, the life in the information society, and the relationship between humans and machines. (shrink)

The transcription factor NF‐κB (p65/p50) plays a central role in the coordination of cellular responses by activating the transcription of numerous target genes. The precise role of the dynamics of NF‐κB signalling in regulating gene expression is still an open question. Here, we show that besides external stimulation intracellular parameters can influence the dynamics of NF‐κB. By applying mathematical modelling and bifurcation analyses, we show that NF‐κB is capable of exhibiting different types of dynamics in response to the same stimulus. (...) We identified the total NF‐κB concentration and the IκBα transcription rate constant as two critical parameters that modulate the dynamics and the fold change of NF‐κB. Both parameters might vary as a result of cell‐to‐cell variability. The regulation of the IκBα transcription rate constant, e.g. by co‐factors, provides the possibility of regulating the NF‐κB dynamics by crosstalk. (shrink)

Robots as social companions in close proximity to humans have a strong potential of becoming more and more prevalent in the coming years, especially in the realms of elder day care, child rearing, and education. As human beings, we have the fascinating ability to emotionally bond with various counterparts, not exclusively with other human beings, but also with animals, plants, and sometimes even objects. Therefore, we need to answer the fundamental ethical questions that concern human-robot-interactions per se, and we need (...) to address how we conceive of »good lives«, as more and more of the aspects of our daily lives will be interwoven with social robots. (shrink)

„Polyamorie“ ist die Bezeichnung für das explizite und konsensuelle Eingehen mehrerer Liebesbeziehungen zur selben Zeit. Mit polyamoren Konstellationen korreliert, dafür wird in diesem Beitrag argumentiert, eine Ethik der Beziehungsgestaltung und sie schließen darüber hinaus für gewöhnlich das Teilen äquivalenter gesellschaftspolitischer Prämissen ein, auf die im Folgenden an einigen Stellen hingewiesen wird. Eine Ethik der Polyamorie umfasst zwei Eigenschaften: Polyethiken brechen zum einen mit dem traditionellen Verständnis vom Individuum oder Handlungssubjekt. Ich werde zeigen, dass polyamoren Beziehungsnetzwerken und der Ethik, die in (...) ihnen idealiter gelebt wird, ein relationales Denken zugrunde liegt. Zum anderen zeichnen sich Polyethiken durch ein besonderes Augenmerk auf die Beziehungen, die als poly bezeichnet werden können, aus, in denen typischerweise eine Reihe von Werten realisiert werden. Zuvor gilt es allerdings, das Verständnis von Liebe zu definieren, das nach meinem Verständnis einem Polycule bzw. polyamoren Beziehungsnetzwerken im Allgemeinen zugrunde liegt. (shrink)

For a long time the representatives of the social sciences had been passionately interested in whether certain identities in the moral aspect of different cultures, which are so numerous and different, can be found.

What is the nature of the compulsion to life writing? How does the elongated project of writing a life change as it shifts moments and locales, and why do others respond so directly as readers of stories that are so specific and particular? Janina Bauman is known in English-speaking cultures for two books, Winter in the Morning and A Dream of Belonging. The first covers her girlhood in the Warsaw ghetto, and escape; the second, more fictionalized, deals with the (...) period leading up to exile from Poland after 1968. Janina Bauman spent 20 years of her life working in Polish film. This article reflects on the process of coming to autobiography, and making sense of the writing process and the reception process. (shrink)

How will the Holocaust be remembered as its survivors disappear? In this article Janina Bauman reflects upon her own work on the Holocaust in the context of the Holocaust's broader reception. She offers her own views about the genre with reference to contemporary documents and testimonials, secondary work, scholarly work, fiction and film. These observations and stories all circulate around her own 1986 landmark text, Winter in the Morning.

Since their arrival in Europe in the Middle Ages the Gypsies have suffered from discrimination on the grounds of racial prejudice. In the 20th century the NAZI doctrine lead to Porrajmos - the Gypsy Holocaust. In the post-war communist countries, Gypsies were forced to give up their traditional ways of life and become productive. Persecution of Gypsies - those who stayed in the post-communist countries and those who migrated to the West - continued in Europe after the big changes of (...) 1989 and up to the present time. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Nothing Wants to Die An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth Solution 1: Keep Your Powder Dry Solution 2: Pretend It Wasn't You Solution 3: Give, and Ye Shall Receive Solution 4: Take Only What You Need Solution 5: Cheat Death The Keepers of the Game as a Moral Authority Notes.