Open science will make science more efficient, reliable, and responsive to societal challenges. The European Commission has sought to advance open science policy from its inception in a holistic and integrated way, covering all aspects of the research cycle from scientific discovery and review to sharing knowledge, publishing, and outreach. We present the steps taken with a forward-looking perspective on the challenges laying ahead, in particular the necessary change of the rewards and incentives system for researchers (for which various actors (...) are co-responsible and which goes beyond the mandate of the European Commission). Finally, we discuss the role of artificial intelligence (AI) within an open science perspective. (shrink)

Macpherson (Nous 40(1):82–117, 2006) argues that the square/regular diamond figure threatens representationalism, construed as the theory which holds that the phenomenal character is explained by the nonconceptual content of experience. Her argument is the claim that representationalism is committed to the thesis that differences in the experience of ambiguous figures, the gestalt switch, should be explained by differences in the NCC of perception of these figures. However, with respect to the square/regular diamond and some other ambiguous figure representationalism fails to (...) offer a unified account of how representational content makes them ambiguous. In this paper, I aim, first, to offer a representationalist account of ambiguous figures and, second, to examine and rebut Macpherson’s arguments. My main point is that in each ambiguous figure Macpherson discusses there are differences in representational content that can explain differences in phenomenal character or content. The representational differences are due to the ways the Cartesian frame of reference in which perceptual content is always cast cuts the figure, underlying different properties of the figure with respect to the axes of the Cartesian frame of reference. (shrink)

The book under review treats sociology as a science that identifies and reconceptualizes problems already defined by others. Such definitions are viewed to be dependent on conditions that the book calls “membership orders”. The book argues that the sociological observer should look for and observe from the boundaries that keep “members” and “non-members”, along with their corresponding views of problems, apart. The review essay approaches the book with the dual question, “Who describes the reality in which it is determined that (...) social situations are treated as problematic by those involved?” And “Who determines whose problem is the problem considered relevant in each case?” The essay discusses the answers given by the authors to these questions with the help of their conceptualization, data, and object constitution. Similarities and differences are highlighted in comparison with Luhmann’s theory. For illustration purposes, the authors’ theory is applied to law. (shrink)

This paper approaches the interaction of a health professional with an AI system for diagnostic purposes as a hybrid decision making process and conceptualizes epistemo-ethical constraints on this process. We argue for the importance of the understanding of the underlying machine epistemology in order to raise awareness of and facilitate realistic expectations from AI as a decision support system, both among healthcare professionals and the potential benefiters. Understanding the epistemic abilities and limitations of such systems is essential if we are (...) to integrate AI into the decision making processes in a way that takes into account its applicability boundaries. This will help to mitigate potential harm due to misjudgments and, as a result, to raise the trust—understood here as a belief in reliability of—in the AI system. We aim at a minimal requirement for AI meta-explanation which should distinguish machine epistemic processes from similar processes in human epistemology in order to avoid confusion and error in judgment and application. An informed approach to the integration of AI systems into the decision making for diagnostic purposes is crucial given its high impact on health and well-being of patients. (shrink)

In many countries consumers have shown an increasing interest to the way in which food products are being produced. This study investigates Chinese consumers’ attitudes towards different pig production systems by means of a conjoint analysis. While there has been a range of studies on Western consumers’ attitudes to various forms of food production, little is known about the level of Chinese consumers’ attitudes. A cross-sectional survey was carried out with 472 participants in 6 Chinese cities. Results indicate that Chinese (...) consumers prefer industrial pig production systems, where traditional pig breeds are raised, over large-scale and small family farms. Farms with maximum attention to food safety, which furthermore can provide lean meat with consistent quality, are also preferred. Imported pig breeds and tasty but variable meat were rejected. A 3-cluster solution found that consumers from cluster 1 focus almost exclusively on the food safety aspect. Consumers from cluster 2 show weak overall attitudes to pig production systems in general. Cluster 3 stands out by being very positive about industrial, large-size farms and consistent quality. From a Chinese consumer’s perspective, the industrial approach seems to represent values such as achievement and evolution, as well as quality and safety, since pig production is moving away from low-cost, low-quality, and low-safety family-scale systems. A complex set of rural and environmental development, quality aspects, and food safety measures are challenges that must be met by the stakeholders of pig production systems in China. (shrink)

Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial delivers what no other book on Weil has -- a comprehensive study of her political thought.

The assumption that the onset of puberty is a context-sensitive marker of a reproductive strategy is tested by comparing parental and filial childhood context and somatic development in West and East Germany. Sixty-eight mother-daughter dyads and 35 father-son dyads were taken from two samples of families from Osnabrück in West Germany and Halle in East Germany. According to the observed context discontinuity between the generations in the male dyads, linear regression models show that no indicator of male sexual maturation was (...) influenced significantly by the somatic development of the father. Instead of an inherited timing of maturation, antecedent distal factors like socioeconomic childhood context variables and critical life events lead to an acceleration of male sexual maturation. Finally we test the effect of two different conditions of childhood context continuity on daughter’s age at menarche with maternal age at menarche controlled. Linear regression models show that mother’s age at menarche predicts daughter’s age at menarche only under the condition of contextual continuity between generations, which was the case in the West German sample only. In East Germany, where mother’s age at menarche had no significant effect, the amount of variance explained by childhood context variables was almost the same. These results indicate the context sensitivity of somatic development which seems to follow an evolutionary rationale. (shrink)

This study in progress addresses the question of how market competition affects corporate social performance. An empirical analysis is described designed to shed light on recent theoretical developments on the relation between market structure and stakeholder responsiveness and to inform on the old debate between Friedman and Corporate Social Responsibility.

In this paper, we address the issue of privacy protection in context aware services, through the use of entropy as a means of measuring the capability of locating a user’s whereabouts and identifying personal selections. We present a framework for calculating levels of abstraction in location and personal preferences reporting in queries to a context aware services server. Finally, we propose a methodology for determining the levels of abstraction in location and preferences that should be applied in user data reporting (...) during service provision, according to her personal privacy settings. (shrink)

The text of the Politics itself establishes beyond reasonable doubt that Aristotle’s best city is, in the philosopher’s own terms, an aristocracy: in Books III and IV Aristotle defines aristocracy as the regime that aims at the best, has virtue as its mark, does not allow citizenship to artisans and wage-earners, and distributes offices by merit. Books VII and VIII unequivocally attribute all these essential characteristics of aristocracy to Aristotle’s best city. In addition, his conception of the virtue of the (...) citizens of this polis conforms to the traditional aristocratic interpretation of the term. Aristotle – citizenship – kaloskagathos – aristocratic virtue. (shrink)

We characterize the existence of semicontinuous weak utilities in a general framework, where the axioms of transitivity and acyclicity are relaxed to that of consistency in the sense of Suzumura (Economica 43:381–390, 1976). This kind of representations allow us to transfer the problem of the existence of the ${{\mathcal{G}}{\mathcal{O}}{\mathcal{C}}{\mathcal{H}}{\mathcal{A}}}$ set of a binary relation to the easier problem of getting maxima of a real function. Finally, we show that the maxima of these representations correspond to the different levels of satiation (...) that each of individual has (an individual reaches his or her level of satiation when an increase of consuming an alternative product/service brings no increase in utility). (shrink)

It often happens that a binary relation R defined on a topological space \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document} lacks a continuous utility representation; see, e.g.,. But under an appropriate choice of a second topology τ∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\tau ^{*}$$\end{document} on \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document}, the existence of a semicontinuous utility representation on the bitopological space \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} (...) \begin{document}$$$$\end{document} can be ensured. On the other hand, the traditional notion of weak utility representation as defined by Peleg cannot be used to characterize the generalized optimal choice set, which requires binary relations that allow cycles. The main result in this paper states that for any generalized upper tc-semicontinuous, separable, pairwise spacious and consistent binary relation R defined on a bitopological space \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document} and any subset D of X, there exists a utility function which characterizes the generalized optimal choice set of R in D in terms of the maxima of this function. (shrink)

Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is theory-laden. To defend realism one has to show first that perception relates us directly with the world without any intermediary conceptual framework. The result of this direct link is the nonconceptual content of experience. Second, one has to show that part of the nonconceptual content extracted from (...) the environment correctly represents features of mind independent objects. With regard to the first condition, I have argued elsewhere that a part of visual processing, which I call “perception,” is theory-neutral and nonconceptual. In this paper, facing the second demand, I argue that a part of the nonconceptual content of perception presents properties that are the properties of mind independent objects. I claim first that nonconceptual content is the appropriate level of analysis of the issue of realism since it avoids the main problems besetting various types of analysis of the issue at the level of beliefs about the world. Then I claim that a subset of the nonconceptual content presents features of objects in the environment as they really are. (shrink)

Eine Rationalitätstheorie des Rechts muss die Art und Weise berücksichtigen, wie sich das Recht selbst in der Gesellschaft präsentiert. Unter diesem Aspekt muss sowohl der Zugang zum Recht als auch der Bezug des Rechts zu seinen Gegenständen bestimmt werden. Mit Zugang zum Recht ist nicht ZugangzumGericht gemeint. Ausgangspunkt der Überlegungen ist hier vielmehr die Trennung zwischen rechtlicher Erwartungsbildung und der diese Erwartungsbildung beschreibenden Semantik. Die Orientierung des Rechts an dieser Trennung stellt insofern eine Rationalisierungsleistung dar, als sie im Laufe der (...) Handlungspraxis des Rechts die Kreisläufe von Regelsetzung und Regelbefolgung beeinflusst. In einem zweiten Schritt wird die rechtliche Bedeutung außerrechtlicher Rationalitätsanforderungen an das Recht angesprochen, die mit Blick auf das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen rechtlicher Erwartungsbildung und Semantik formuliert werden. Anschließend wird darauf eingegangen, dass das Recht selbst Rechtspraxis und Wissenschaft auseinanderhält und der Rationalität der Rechtspraxis gegenüber der Rationalität einer wissenschaftlichen Beschäftigung mit Recht den Primat gewährt. Da Rechtspraxis und Rechtswissenschaft mit Realitätsannahmen operieren, unterliegt dieses rechtlich relevante Wissen Richtigkeitsbzw. Bewährungsbedingungen, die als Rationalitätsanforderungen formulierbar sind. Damit geht einher, dass die Fähigkeit des Rechts die nichtrechtliche Rationalität seiner Regelungsgegenstände zu identifizieren und für seine Regelungsziele dienstbar zu machen, eine Rationalitätssteigerung für das Recht mit sich bringt. (shrink)

Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin are two thinkers who seem to have much in common, yet they provide markedly different interpretations of Machiavelli. A comparison of their views on such a distinctive figure in the history of political thought reveals fundamental differences of philosophical outlook and scholarly temperament even as it occasions a re-examination of the ‘enigma’ of Machiavelli himself.

A few decades ago, William Newman drew attention to the significance of the medieval alchemical debate over the possibility of transmuting metals, which was closely connected to the Avicennan phrase known as Sciant artifices. Newman pointed to Albert the Great as one of the participants in this debate. While Newman has covered Albert’s engagement with this Avicennan dictum only partially, this paper aims to enrich our knowledge of this episode by examining a range of further sources concerning Albert’s approach to (...) the Sciant artifices dictum, and thereby to provide a better insight into the role it played in the work of the Dominican master. (shrink)

I examine John Campbell’s claim that the determination of the reference of a perceptual demonstrative requires conscious visual object-based selective attention. I argue that although Campbell’s claim to the effect that, first, a complex binding parameter is needed to establish the referent of a perceptual demonstrative, and, second, that this referent is determined independently of, and before, the application of sortals is correct, this binding parameter does not require object-based attention for its construction. If object-based attention were indeed required then (...) the determination of the referent would necessarily involve the application of sortal concepts, since object-based attention initiates top-down cognitive effects on visual processing. I also examine Mohan Matthen’s claim that reference to objects is established only through the visual processing in the dorsal visual stream and argue that although it is true that processing in the dorsal stream can determine reference, a thesis that goes against Campbell’s view that the determination of the referent requires conscious attention, processing along the ventral visual stream can also establish the reference of perceptual demonstratives. It also claim that Matthen’s account of dorsal processing underestimates the kind of information processed along the dorsal stream and this has some implications regarding perceptual demonstratives reference fixing. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 4 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 265-275.

This second volume of Voegelin's magisterial _Order and History, The World of the Polis,_ explores the ancient Greek symbolization of human reality. Taking us from the origins of Greek culture in the Pre-Homeric Cretan civilizations, through the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_ Hesiod, and the rise of philosophy with the Pre-Socratics Parmenides and Heraclitus, this masterful work concludes with the historians of the classical period. In _The World of the Polis,_ Voegelin traces the emergence of the forms of the city-state and of (...) philosophy from the ancient symbolism of myth. He maintains that the limits and ultimate goals of human nature are constant and that the central problem of every society is the same—"to create an order that will endow the fact of its existence with meaning in terms of ends divine and human." Thus, Voegelin shows how "the meaning of existence" achieved concrete expression in the typical political, social, and religious institutions of Greece and in the productions of its poets and thinkers. He deals with more than fifty Greek writers in the course of his analysis of the rise of myth and its representation of the divine order of the cosmos as the first great symbolic form of order, one later supplanted by the leap in being reflected in the emergence of philosophy. The book is a tour de force, a virtuoso performance by a scholar and philosopher of great power, learning, and imagination that places its subject matter in a new light. The editor's critical introduction places _The World of the Polis_ in the broader context of Voegelin's philosophy of history. Scholars and students of political science, philosophy, and the history of ideas will find this work invaluable. (shrink)

Albertus Magnus’ alchemy is a subject that has attracted the attention of the scholars since the early decades of the 20th century. Yet, the research that has been conducted this far is characterised by its non philosophical character. As a matter of fact, the previous studies approached Albertus’ alchemy either in terms of history of science or of intellectual history. In this paper, I focus on Albertus’ definition of alchemical transmutation that is found in his De mineralibus and I analyze (...) it in terms of his theory of creation and of his theory of matter. Therefore, I show whether a re-creation of a metal is in accordance with Albertus’ philosophy and congruently I bring forth the Aristotle Graecus and the Aristotle Latinus that are found as background in his alchemical theory of transmutation. Ultimately this paper aims to show that the aforementioned theory is not an arbitrary statement from Albertus’ part, but the result of a serious philosophical endeavour. (shrink)

This conceptual article applies the customer value (CV) concept in the context of green marketing aiming to provide insights on the factors that motivate and/or hinder the development of consumer–green brand relationships. The article draws upon existing literature on the streams of CV, relationship marketing and environmental behaviour and synthesises relevant findings to propose an integrated conceptual framework entailing all identified types of value and cost, psychographic characteristics, as well as dimensions of relationship quality (RQ) and loyalty. Furthermore, it addresses (...) existing questions on the links among constructs and proposes several relationships that may lead to a better understanding of consumer behaviour towards green brands. Through the here-proposed conceptual model, the article initiates the process of empirically examining the consumer adoption of and relationship development with green brands. The CV framework adopted here may provide practitioners with knowledge on the value and sacrifice factors, as well as the dimensions of RQ that are the most important in targeting green consumers and designing relationship marketing strategies. The article also fulfils an identified gap in the literature, as it is the first that brings together and applies research findings from CV and relationship marketing fields in the green marketing context and proposes an integrated approach to understanding consumer–green brands relationships. (shrink)