In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Closing the Gaps in Pediatric HIV/AIDS Care, One Step at a TimeLisa V. Adams, Helga Naburi, Goodluck Lyatuu, Paul Palumbo, and C. Fordham von ReynFatuma's* doctors were completely perplexed. It was 2003 and she had returned to the DARDAR clinic in her hometown of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania three times that week with vague complaints of various pains and aches. Her doctors were considering whether these symptoms were (...) due to the initiation of her recent treatment with antiretroviral medications for her HIV infection or related to the last administration of the investigational tuberculosis (TB) vaccine that the DARDAR Health Study was evaluating. Fatuma's doctor, Dr. Lillian Mtei, consulted with Dartmouth's chief of Infectious Disease, Dr. Ford von Reyn, who happened to be in Dar that week on a site visit. Neither physician could determine the basis for her symptoms. Dr. Mtei returned to the exam room once more and this time emerged with the answer: Fatuma had just learned that her three year old daughter was HIV-infected, likely contracted from Fatuma during or shortly after she gave birth to her daughter. Fatuma believed that her HIV diagnosis was a death sentence for her daughter since antiretroviral therapy was not widely available for children.Dr. von Reyn, Dartmouth's lead clinical researcher in Africa and a father, knew too well the harsh reality of inequities in a resource-limited country. He turned to Dr. Mtei and said decidedly, "we need to do something about this."Thus the DARDAR Pediatric Program was born.Pediatric HIV: A Neglected DiseaseThe need for HIV treatment among children in Tanzania, as in most of sub-Saharan Africa, is compelling. At the end of 2009, approximately 160,000 children aged zero to fourteen in Tanzania were living with HIV (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS [UNAIDS], 2011). Even with successful roll out of prevention of mother to child transmission programs in Tanzania, there were nearly 29,000 perinatal infections in 2009. As of December 2010, only 18% of these were enrolled in HIV treatment programs (UNAIDS, 2011; World Health Organization [WHO], 2011). Without antiretroviral therapy (ART), one-half of HIV-infected children will die before their second birthday. Since clinical research to determine efficacy and safety of new medical treatments is conducted almost exclusively in adults, provision of new medical treatments to [End Page 75] children always lags behind advances for adults. Furthermore, children are often underrepresented in programs for antiretroviral drugs for the following reasons: 1) they are not prioritized for care; 2) facilities lack infant diagnostic capabilities; 3) there is limited pediatric HIV training and consequently, a shortage of pediatric providers; and 4) pediatric antiretroviral formulations are frequently unavailable. The unacceptable delays in pediatric HIV drug development and treatment access led the international organization Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative to publish an editorial in which they referred to pediatric HIV as a "neglected disease" (Lallemant, Chang, Cohen, & Pecoul, 2011).The Tip of the Iceberg: More than Just MedicinesWith a grant from the New York-based Foundation for the Treatment of Children with AIDS, the DARDAR Pediatric Program, a joint collaboration between Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, began seeing patients in May 2006. It was the first dedicated pediatric HIV Care and Treatment Center in Tanzania and operates in accordance with Tanzania's National AIDS Control Programme's guidance. Testing for both children and infants (the latter of which requires a more sophisticated assay) is available.The day the clinic opened we celebrated this collaborative effort that would provide HIV-infected children in Dar es Salaam access to antiretroviral treatment. One of our first patients was a six-year-old boy whose mother, like Fatuma, was a participant in our TB vaccine trial. She had been advised to bring her son to us for HIV screening. Her son looked healthy so she was surprised and understandably distraught when his test results indicated that not only was he HIV-infected, but his CD4 percentage was very low. His mother was reluctant to have him started on antiretrovirals given his general appearance and young age—and that he was... (shrink)

Few fields in philosophy are so seemingly distant from ordinary human experience as theories of knowledge. How much information do we draw in from bodies outside of us? And to what degree do our perceptual and mental processes subjectify that information to the point of becoming non-objective? The Heart of Matter: Bridging the Kantian Gap in How we Know Things presents both a back history of current theories of perception, and a plausible theory to span the gap between subject and (...) object. This book begins with K. Popper's theory of falsifiability, as a twentieth-century version of Kantian subjectivism. Before considering eighteenth-century transcendental philosophy, a look at both the empirical and rational theories that inspired Kant helps place his Critique of Pure Reason in context. This book highlights the developments in Kant's thought, as he struggled to solve important problems within his Copernican revolution. How far does Kant's theory coincide with our actual perceptual experience? Twentieth-century experimentation in perception sheds important light on human knowing. The Heart of Matter follows C. Fabro's study of those psychological findings, and especially his ability to incorporate those findings into a coherent description and explanation. Many current theories of knowledge dismiss any possibility of our objectively knowing bodies outside of us; this book takes a candid look at both the major dilemmas implied in such a dismissal, as well as our actual perception of things. On this account, a fruitful exchange does appear to take place between the mind and reality in perception. (shrink)

One challenge while learning scientific concepts is to select relevant information and to integrate different representations of the learning content into one coherent mental model. Virtual reality learning environments offer new possibilities to support learners and foster learning processes. Whether learning in VR is successful, however, depends to a large extent on the design of the VRLE and the learners themselves. Hence, adding supportive elements in VRLEs, such as annotations, might facilitate the learning process by guiding attention and supporting (...) the selection of relevant information. Additionally, the mapping of pictorial and verbal information is eased by these annotations. The beneficial effect of annotations is highly dependent on learners' intrinsic motivation as intrinsic motivation while learning also affects the information selection and visual search patterns. In our experimental study, we compared two conditions: learning in a VRLE with or without annotations. We measured the learning outcome on three different levels. Additionally, we investigated intrinsic motivation as a moderator for the effect of annotations on learning outcome. We found no significant main effect of annotations on learning outcome. The moderating effect of intrinsic motivation for annotations on the overall learning outcome was significant. Our results imply that learners are either intrinsically motivated or need additional support by annotations as these support the selection of relevant information in the VRLE and therefore enable them to learn successfully. Which type or quantity of annotations supports learning processes best needs to be explored in future research. (shrink)

The purely retributive moral justification of punishment has a gap at its centre. It fails to explain why the offender should not be protected from punishment by the intuitively powerful moral idea that afflicting another person (other than to avoid a greater harm) is always wrong. Attempts to close the gap have taken several different forms, and only one is discussed in this paper. This is the attempt to push aside the ‘protecting’ intuition, using some more powerful intuition specially invoked (...) by the situations to which criminal justice is addressed. In one aspect of his complex defence of pure retributivism, Michael S. Moore attempts to show that the emotions of well-adjusted persons provide evidence of moral facts which justify the affliction of culpable wrongdoers in retribution for their wrongdoing. In particular, he appeals to the evidential significance of emotions aroused by especially heinous crimes, including the punishment-seeking guilt of the offender who truly confronts the reality of his immoral act. The paper argues that Moore fails to vindicate this appeal to moral realism, and thus to show that intrinsic personal moral desert (as distinct from ‘desert’ in a more restricted sense, relative to morally justified institutions) is a necessary and sufficient basis for punishment. Other theories of the role of emotions in morality are as defensible as Moore’s, while the compelling emotions to which he appeals to clinch his argument can be convincingly situated within a non-retributivist framework, especially when the distinction between the intuitions of the lawless world, and those of the world of law, is recognised. -/- . (shrink)

The scope of Platonism is extended by introducing the concept of a “Platonic computer” which is incorporated in metacomputics. The theoretical framework of metacomputics postulates that a Platonic computer exists in the realm of Forms and is made by, of, with, and from metaconsciousness. Metaconsciousness is defined as the “power to conceive, to perceive, and to be self-aware” and is the formless, con-tentless infinite potentiality. Metacomputics models how metaconsciousness generates the perceived actualities including abstract entities and physical and nonphysical realities. (...) It is postulated that this is achieved via digital computation using the Platonic computer. The introduction of a Platonic computer into the realm of Forms thus bridges the “inverse explanatory gap” and therefore solves the “inverse hard problem of consciousness” in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The scope of Platonism is extended by introducing the concept of a “Platonic computer” which is incorporated in metacomputics. The theoretical framework of metacomputics postulates that a Platonic computer exists in the realm of Forms and is made by, of, with, and from metaconsciousness. Metaconsciousness is defined as the “power to conceive, to perceive, and to be self-aware” and is the formless, con-tentless infinite potentiality. Metacomputics models how metaconsciousness generates the perceived actualities including abstract entities and physical and nonphysical realities. (...) It is postulated that this is achieved via digital computation using the Platonic computer. The introduction of a Platonic computer into the realm of Forms thus bridges the “inverse explanatory gap” and therefore solves the “inverse hard problem of consciousness” in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In this paper, key concepts from the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality are used to develop an art education research project that can enhance the freedom of art students in their art work and, potentially, contribute to the promotion of emancipation beyond the world of art work. In the process of developing this project, the author engages in a two-way interrogation of both concepts and empirical research. The stratified model of reality, the ontological status of absence and (...) the concepts of transcendental identification, transcendental agency and the ground-state have informed decisions about data collection and contributed to the analysis of data in this study. The research results offer some empirical support for the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality, whilst also identifying potential inconsistencies. A further original feature of the paper is that it draws on the flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to complement Roy Bhaskar's account of the ground-state and of the nature of free-flowing activity; also using neuroscience to provide some neurological evidence for the differences between mindful and spontaneous activity. It is anticipated that the cross-analysis between cases resulting from the two-way interchange between theory and empirical evidence could help to generate a model for ‘unblocking the creative block’, experienced not only by students practising art-making, but also by the wider community. (shrink)

I present the new realist philosophy by Jocelyn Benoist, in particular, his solution to the problem of the explanatory gap in the philosophy of mind.

In order to take advantage of the potential offered by the medium of virtual reality, it will be essential to develop an understanding of how to maximize the desirable experience of ‘presence’ in a virtual space (‘being there’), and how to minimize the undesirable feeling of ‘cybersickness’ (a constellation of discomfort symptoms experienced in virtual reality). Although there have been frequent reports of a possible link between the observer’s sense of presence and the experience of bodily discomfort in (...) virtual reality, the amount of literature that discusses the nature of the relationship is limited. Recent research has underlined the possibility that these variables have shared causes, and that both factors may be manipulated with a single approach. This review paper summarizes the concepts of presence and cybersickness and highlights the strengths and gaps in our understanding about their relationship. We review studies that have measured the association between presence and cybersickness, and conclude that the balance of evidence favours a negative relationship between the two factors which is driven principally by sensory integration processes. We also discuss how system immersiveness might play a role in modulating both presence and cybersickness. However, we identify a serious absence of high-powered studies that aim to reveal the nature of this relationship. Based on this evidence we propose recommendations for future studies investigating presence, cybersickness, and other related factors. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine whether corporate social responsibility activities perceived by consumers affect brand trust and corporate sustainability management. In other words, this study tried to examine whether the compatibility and authenticity of CSR influences brand trust, thereby affecting CSM including economic viability, environmental soundness, and social responsibility. To measure this, an empirical analysis was conducted on 479 consumers who had experience purchasing products from cosmetic companies that are carrying out CSR. As a result of the (...) analysis, it was found that the compatibility and authenticity of CSR have a positive effect on brand trust. Also, it was found that brand trust had a positive effect on social responsibility among the sub-concepts of CSM, but did not affect economic viability and environmental soundness. The results of this study are expected to provide strategic implications for social responsibility performance and brand trust building necessary for cosmetics companies to grow continuously. (shrink)

During the Asian and Pacific War, the Japanese government mobilized approximately 200,000 Asian women to military brothels to sexually serve Japanese soldiers. The majority of these victims were unmarried young women from Korea, Japan’s colony at that time. In the early 1990s, Korean feminist leaders helped more than 200 Korean survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery to come forward to tell the truth, which has further accelerated the redress movement for the women. One major issue in the redress movement and (...) research relating to the so-called “comfort women” issue is whether Japan’s colonization of Korea or gender hierarchy was a more fundamental cause of the Korean women’s suffering. Using an intersectional perspective, this article analyzes how colonial power, gender hierarchy, and class were inseparably tied together to make the victims’ lives miserable. By doing so, it shows that a one-sided emphasis on colonization or gender hierarchy will misrepresent the feminist political issue and misinterpret the “comfort women’s” experiences. (shrink)

Abstract:“Modern Sexual Organicity” (《现代性器》 Xiàndài Xìngqì) and “Super Killer” (《大杀器》 Dà Shaqì) by Han Bo, which I translate and discuss here, unfold around the poet’s playfully sustained series of observations of the irreconcilable gaps and irreducible dissonances between Western modernity and Chinese contemporaneity. Focusing on the (post)structural dimension of the extreme intricacy and intensity of Han’s language game that polysemically intersects with traditional Chinese poetic moves as well, which itself mirrors the structurally (bi)polarized and gendered social realities in China, (...) this essay highlights the unfused/able figure of the woman, a “farmwoman” on the train in particular, a moving image of precarious mobility, transience, and vitality. (shrink)

Aleksej Losev''s definition of myth centres onthe concept of detachment. In modern timesdetachment has most often figured in thecontext of philosophical aesthetics, where itis a cognitive category akin to Kant''s``disinterestedness'''' or the Russian formalists''``estrangement.'''' However Losev''s usage alsomakes reference to the ontological sense ofdetachment as contemplativeascent (cf. Meister Eckhardt''sAbgeschiedenheit). Thus, Losev''s concept ofmyth combines both senses of detachment,binding perceptual attitude and being togetherin a double movement of resignation from theworld and union with meaning; this movementliterally makes sense out of (...) class='Hi'>reality. Ittherefore bears comparison to the treatment ofdistanciation in contemporary hermeneutics,where detachment is a key condition ofunderstanding. By investigating Losev''sconnections to other Russian thinkers, theauthor makes a case for a distinct Russiantradition of hermeneutic philosophy (V. Ivanov,G. Shpet, A. Bakshy, A. Losev). (shrink)

The essay brings a summation of human efforts seeking to understand our existence. Plato and Kant & cognitive science complete reduction of philosophy to a neural mechanism, evolved along elementary Darwinian principles. Plato in his famous Cave Allegory explains that between reality and our experience of it there exists a great chasm, a metaphysical gap, fully confirmed through particle-wave duality of quantum physics. Kant found that we have two kinds of perception, two senses: By the spatial outer sense we (...) perceive phenomena, objects in space. Our temporal inner sense lets us perceive our inner state, noumena . Kant's two senses are fully confirmed through bilateral brain duality of cognitive science. The bilateral brain serves inner, temporal sense, logic & noumena in the left hemisphere. The right brain half is for the outer, spatial sense, geometry & phenomena. We form a whole system, a bilateral interior cosmos, a kind of world model, expressing what may lie beyond the metaphysical gap. In the right brain we build a phenomenal cosmos, to resemble the outer environment. In the brain's left hemisphere a noumenal cosmos, a model of our private world including Saint Teresa of Avila's castillo interior. The cosmos is regularly updated with novel sense data integrated into our memory banks. This was recognized early by Helmholtz (1860s). Our lives, health & well-being depend on us keeping our interior cosmos in good order. This used to be seen as saving one's precious soul from perdition. While we endeavour to keep our phenomenal cosmos neat & orderly by protecting the environment from harm, our noumenal cosmos to be livable requires us to engage in ethical conduct. This bilateral cosmos is responsible for our common sense judgment power, that we depend on for being able to lead a good & benign life. The 200 million neurons of BA10 in the prefrontal lobe have global access to the interior cosmos, & apply massive feedback to identify environmental conditions rapidly. The global access also gives conscious presence of the individual to itself, all that is present in the interior cosmos, for total freedom of action. In the left brain private ego, we are guarded by faith in divine mercy, & guided to choose the best course of action, able to survive under the most adverse conditions. For this, we receive directions from the Holy Ghost in Saint Teresa's castillo interior. (shrink)

The State of Emergency declaration in Japan due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected many aspects of society in the country, much like the rest of the world. One sector that felt its disruptive impact was education. As educational institutions raced to implement emergency remote teaching (ERT) to continue providing the learning needs of students, some have opened to innovative interventions. This paper describes a case of ERT where Filipino vocabulary was taught to a class of Japanese students taking Philippine Studies (...) in a Japanese university using a cognitive innovation based on virtual reality, an immersive technology often researched for immersion and presence. Students were divided into three groups to experience six lessons designed around virtual reality photo-based tours at different immersion levels. While the effect of immersion on satisfaction was not found to be statistically significant, presence and satisfaction were found to be correlated. Despite challenges that were encountered, benefits like enjoyment, increased engagement, and perceived learning were reported by the students. Our findings exemplify how emerging multisensory technologies can be used to enhance affective and cognitive dimensions of human experience while responding to gaps created by the spatial limitations of remote learning. (shrink)

The idea of the constructed character of social reality implies human contribution to institutional arrangements and cultural patterns that determine the shape of collective existence. The article examines the specific features of social construction seen and studied in phenomenological approach by A. Schutz, P. Berger, Th. Luckmann. The concept reveals significance of daily cognitive style which enables people to structure and understand the world they share with others, escaping situations fraught with gaps of meanings and anomy. The author (...) of the article analyzes the process of social construction, distinguishing it from imaginary building of reality that goes beyond the existed order. Reality of daily life is compared with fictional society represented in J.L. Borges’ “Lottery in Babylon”. Telling about the social construction as it may be, the story demonstrates the similarities between the mental procedures that underlie real and antiutopian routines. The article also centers on peculiarities of phenomenological beholder’s attitude towards sociality. On the one hand, it tends to be free from any theoretical abstractions, imaginary constructions or critical destruction of reality, on the other - inclines to transcend the reified forms of social being and engenders a certain critical message. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that police performance may be hindered by psychophysiological state changes during acute stress. To address the need for awareness and control of these physiological changes, police academies in many countries have implemented Heart-Rate Variability biofeedback training. Despite these trainings now being widely delivered in classroom setups, they typically lack the arousing action context needed for successful transfer to the operational field, where officers must apply learned skills, particularly when stress levels rise. The study presented here aimed (...) to address this gap by training physiological control skills in an arousing decision-making context. We developed a Virtual-Reality breathing-based biofeedback training in which police officers perform deep and slow diaphragmatic breathing in an engaging game-like action context. This VR game consisted of a selective shoot/don’t shoot game designed to assess response inhibition, an impaired capacity in high arousal situations. Biofeedback was provided based on adherence to a slow breathing pace: the slower and deeper the breathing, the less constrained peripheral vision became, facilitating accurate responses to the in-game demands. A total of nine male police trainers completed 10 sessions over a 4-week period as part of a single-case experimental ABAB study-design. Results showed that eight out of nine participants showed improved breathing control in action, with a positive effect on breathing-induced low frequency HRV, while also improving their in-game behavioral performance. Critically, the breathing-based skill learning transferred to subsequent sessions in which biofeedback was not presented. Importantly, all participants remained highly engaged throughout the training. Altogether, our study showed that our VR environment can be used to train breathing regulation in an arousing and active decision-making context. (shrink)

Considering the increasing influx of international students to Chinese universities in recent decades, it is surprising to find that few empirical research, especially longitudinal ones, have been conducted in exploring the motivation of international students in China. To fill up the existing gap, this study explored and tracked international students' motivations dynamically. Mixed research design, such as surveys, reflective journals, and interviews, was employed in this study. Data were collected from 671 international students and three teachers in three Chinese universities (...) in Zhejiang province, mainland China on a longitudinal basis. The present study found that international students' motivation could be discussed with considerations to the following two different phases: preliminary phase before they come to China and follow-up phase when they are in China. This study found that the integrative understanding of the external pulling force and the self-motivated pushing force plays a vital role in answering international students' motivations to China. International students were driven more by the self-motivated pushing force than the external pulling force in selecting China as their study destinations. Moreover, international students experienced motivational changes when their expectations conflict with reality and their positive motivational adjustments and social interaction were important to the sustainability of their academic journey. Moreover, this study provides implications for the government, universities and international students in the aspects of policymaking, education and application. (shrink)

Our aim was to employ a critical analytic lens to explicate the role of nursing research in supporting the notion of caring realities. To do this, we used case exemplars to illustrate the infusion of such discourses. The first exemplar examines the fundamental concept of caring: using Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing, the case study surfaces caring as originally grounded in ritualized practice and subsequently describes its transmutation, via competing discourses, to a more holistic concept. It is argued that in (...) the many and varied attempts to define the dynamic concept of care, caring has now become paradoxically, a more fragmented concept despite attempts to render it more holistic and inclusive. In the second exemplar, one of the authors draws on her personal experience of the gap between theory and practice, so pronounced that it pushed the author to revisit the concept of evidence‐based practice and nursing education. In our third and final exemplar, we refer to the absence of knowledge and practice generated through natural enquiry and curiosity, an absence which has led to production of corporate led rhetoric. Drawing together the central arguments of the three exemplars, we reflect on the influential role of nursing research in enabling the deconstruction of taken for granted assumptions such as caring, evidence‐based practice and empowerment; assumptions which have been generated by discourses riddled with confusion and alienation from the reality of practice and the natural spirit of professional enquiry. (shrink)

In light of the continued erosion of business ethics in America, the ongoing question is what are the nation's business schools doing to prepare ethically responsible future leaders of industry and government? This paper reports the findings of a survey mailed to every program accredited by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. The curriculum treatment of business ethics is identified at the undergraduate and the graduate levels in public as well as in private colleges and universities. In addition, (...) the paper presents the status (required versus elective), credits, and enrollment patterns associated with institutions offering a special course whose primary focus is the ethical or moral component of business decisions. Depending on one's perspective, the results range from encouraging to disappointing and suggest that more can and should be done within the curriculum of American post-secondary higher education. (shrink)

The notion of reality in the physical world has become, during the last century, somewhat problematic. The contrast between the simple and obvious reality of the innumerable instruments, machines, engines, and gadgets produced by our technological industry, which is applied physics, and of the vague and abstract reality of the fundamental concepts of physical science, as forces and fields, particles and quanta, is doubtlessly bewildering. There has already developed a gap between pure and applied science and between (...) the groups of men devoted to the one or the other activity, a separation that may lead to a dangerous estrangement. Physics needs a unifying philosophy, expressible in ordinary language, to bridge this gulf between "reality" as thought of in practice and in theory. I am not a philosopher but a theoretical physicist. I cannot provide a well balanced philosophy of science that would take due account of the ideas developed by differing schools, but I shall endeavor to formulate some ideas which have helped me in my own struggle with these problems. (shrink)

This paper engages with two contrasting approaches to conceptualising and studying consumer behaviour that appear to dominate existing research on consumption. On one hand, agency-focused perspectives take an individual consumer to be the primary author of practice and a basic unit of analysis. On the other hand, socio-centric paradigms focus on the social roots of consumption activities and the wider societal contexts in which they take place. The need to provide a more balanced view of consumption phenomena has been acknowledged, (...) yet not adequately acted upon. This paper begins to fill this gap through relevant theoretical and empirical contributions. First, we provide a critical review of the dominant theoretical perspectives on consumption in general and ethical consumption in particular, highlight their key ontological assumptions and explain how they preclude a fuller understanding of the ways in which consumer practices are moulded and shaped. Taking a critical realist approach, we then present the findings from qualitative analysis of consumers' ethical food practices to empirically demonstrate the role of human agency and social structure in creating and shaping ethical consumption. Thus, by means of theoretical analysis and empirical research this paper responds to the call for a more comprehensive understanding of consumption and provides a consolidated account of consumer behaviour which acknowledges and explains the complex ensemble of individual and systemic powers in which consumer practices are contained. (shrink)

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer (2017) that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold, there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles (...) such as grounding principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection. (shrink)

This article begins by questioning the commitment of business, government, and education leaders to the goal of ensuring that our public and private sector organizations are directed by ethically responsible individuals. Noting that while there appears to be genuine concern with the most recent outbreak of ethical failings as well as widespread support for the concept of morally and ethically educated current and future managers, there is less agreement on the most efficient and effective means of realizing this goal. For (...) perspective purposes, recent research findings and opinions of leaders in higher education and business on the issue of ethics and the curriculum are highlighted.This paper challenges business, government, and higher education to disengage the cheap talk and to engage in a collaborative effort to develop a required, team-taught, interdisciplinary business ethics course based on philosophical inquiry, organizational theory, and actual business situations. Course goals, content, leadership, and benefits to students, managers, and ethicists are identified and discussed. (shrink)

I agree with nearly everything Martin Davies says. He has written an elegant and highly informative analysis of recent philosophical debates about the mind–brain relation. I particularly enjoyed Davies’ discussion of B.A. Farrell, his precursor in the Oxford Wilde Readership (now Professorship) in Mental Philosophy. It is intriguing to see how closely Farrell anticipated many of the moves made by more recent ‘type-A’ physicalists who seek to show that, upon analysis, claims about conscious states turn out to be nothing more (...) than complex third-personal claims about internal and external behaviour. Davies is also exemplary in his even-handed treatment of those contemporary ‘type-B’ physicalists who have turned away from the neo-logical-behaviourism of Farrell and his ilk. Davies explains how type-B physicalists recognize distinctive subjective ‘phenomenal concepts’ for thinking about conscious states and so deny that phenomenal claims can be deduced a priori from behavioural or other third-personal claims. However, type-B physicalists do not accept that these subjective phenomenal concepts refer to any distinct non-material reality. In their view, phenomenal concepts and third-personal scientific concepts are simply another example of the familiar circumstance where we have two different ways of referring to a single reality. Since I am persuaded by pretty much all Davies says about these matters, I shall not comment substantially on the dialectical points he covers. Instead I want to raise two rather wider issues. The first is the set of ideas associated with the phrase ‘the explanatory gap’. Davies specifies that he is using this phrase in a specific technical sense. But the phrase has further connotations, and this can lead to a distorted appreciation of the philosophical issues. The second issue is the methodological implications of the philosophical debate. I shall argue that the philosophical issues addressed by Davies suggest that there are unexpected limitations on what empirical brain research can achieve.. (shrink)

This paper discusses the results of the international applied research project ‘UniDiversity – Universities Towards Diversity’ that examined what discriminatory attitudes, beliefs and behaviours based on sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics (SOGISC) exist in the Lithuanian, Greek and Italian academic environment. Specifically, this paper analyses how LGBTI+ individuals conceive of different forms of discrimination in the Lithuanian academic environment. The paper fills the knowledge gap in terms of intolerance and discrimination against LGBTI+ individuals at Lithuanian higher education institutions (...) and provides its theoretical explanation. By focusing on the empirical data collected from survey and focus group interviews, the paper interprets them within the framework of both the sociopolitical context and theoretical debates about heteronormative attitudes. The paper argues that there exists a gap between the declarative openness to LGBTI+ people within Lithuanian universities and persisting stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes towards them. (shrink)

Scott Sturgeon has claimed to undermine the principal argument for Physicalism, in his words, the view that ’actuality is exhausted by physical reality’. In noting that actuality is exhausted by physical reality, the Physicalist is not claiming that all that there is in actuality are those things identified by physics. Rather the thought is that actuality is made up of all the things identified by physics and anything which is a compound of these things. So there are tables (...) as well as their microphysical constituents. The argument that Sturgeon has in his sights is the Overdetermination Argument. In what follows, I shall argue that Sturgeon’s criticism of the Overdetermination argument fails. I shall also argue that physicalism can accommodate his claim that causal statements concerning the mental and physical respectively may require diverse patterns of counterfactual activity for their truth. (shrink)

Although James and Schutz provide us with the most insightful investigations of multiple realities that we come across in philosophical, psychological and sociological literature, hardly any critical studies have addressed James’s and Schutz’s conceptions of multiple realities alongside each other. This paper fills this gap. The paper demonstrates that James and Schutz were concerned with the same set of issues in their respective accounts of multiple realities. It further shows the different ways in which James and Schutz understood multiple realities (...) and how they conceptualized the fundamental levels of reality’s constitution. It also provides a critical analysis of Schutz’s allegation that James’s analysis is psychologistic, arguing that this accusation is ungrounded and that Schutz’s epoche of the natural attitude in fact bolsters James’s analysis of belief. The paper concludes with a set of reflections on the heterogenous nature of paramount reality, bringing into question James’s and Schutz’s assumption that each reality is inwardly coherent, although incompatible with each other. (shrink)

A survey on ethical issues in engineering was administered over a five-year period to Stanford engineering students and practicing engineers. Analysis of its results strongly suggests that important disconnects exist between the education of engineering students regarding ethical issues in engineering on the one hand, and the realities of contemporary engineering practice on the other. Two noteworthy consequences of these gaps are that the views of engineering students differ substantially over what makes an issue an ethical issue, while practicing (...) engineers exhibit significant disagreement over what is the most important non-technical aspect of being a responsible engineering professional in contemporary society. These divergences impede the recognition of ethical issues and of specific moral responsibilities of engineers in concrete professional practice. It is argued that the use of suitably refined and probing surveys of engineering students and practicing engineers about ethical issues in engineering is an important although neglected empirical approach to the study of engineering ethics. Such an approach can enhance the prevailing case study method and combat over-tidy theoretical-analytical approaches to the subject. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The article aims, through a comparison of the modern identity as presented in Charles Taylor’s concept with the Postmodern era identities, to show the strengths and weaknesses of Charles Taylor’s position on preserving or prolonging the Modern era identity to our time, as well as to define the specifics of _liquid modernity_ compared to the New Age. _Theoretical basis._ Given the relevance of the topic of the human search for authentic existence in the modern world, the author analyzes Taylor’s (...) belief that the moral ideal of authentic identity emerged in the New Age. This ideal to contrast the idea of it in the previous periods is not set from the outside but is formed or created by a human himself. In addition, it is so powerful and productive that it must be fought for nowadays. After Taylor, since the existence of modern people tends to experience negative distortions associated with the focus on consumer individualism, instrumental thinking, and their loss of political freedom, the only possible way out is to turn to the ideal of authenticity of modern times. However, the article emphasizes that the modern studies of the Second Modernity (U. Beck) or liquid modernity (Z. Bauman) show a rather radical change in social reality, which, accordingly, requires new types of identity. _Originality._ The article argues that the identity formed in the New Age had signs of authenticity only owing to the socio-economic system of the time that formed a human as a self-acting being who determines his or her destiny. This person was characterized by such traits as individualism, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, victory, heroism, and so on. However, the article emphasizes that today the situation has changed radically, as the reality of the Postmodern era is characterized by the fact that instead of stable, clearly defined life forms and institutions we are dealing with changing, fluid, "liquid" (Z. Bauman) institutions and behaviours of people. Diversity, uncertainty, and pluralism are the hallmarks of this era that need to be taken into account in one way or another. Therefore, although Taylor’s arguments for defending the modern identity are logically invulnerable, they have the disadvantage of not taking into account the irreversibility of the changes that have taken place in modern reality. Therefore, the ideal of authenticity formed in the New Age may not be adequate in the times of pluralism and the development of other dimensions of identity. _Conclusions._ Taylor’s interpretation of modern authenticity was based on the idea of man as one who constantly constructs himself and is focused on the future, which we can imagine, plan and make some effort to achieve. This position of Taylor is criticized in the article. I substantiate the view that both the moral ideal and its components can change in the process of historical development. This becomes clear if we take into account the gap that manifested itself in the shift of value orientations during the transition from the Modern to the Postmodern era. Nowadays, we have a process of changing the basic conditions that determined the identity of a modern human, and the formation of new _basic conditions_ that are suggested as requiring identity redefinition in a post-industrial network society. (shrink)

The results of Cubitt et al. on the spectral gap problem add a new chapter to the issue of undecidability in physics, as they show that it is impossible to decide whether the Hamiltonian of a quantum many-body system is gapped or gapless. This implies, amongst other things, that a reductionist viewpoint would be untenable. In this paper, we examine their proof and a few philosophical implications, in particular ones regarding models and limitative results. In more detail, we examine the (...) way these theorems model many-body quantum systems, and we question what, if anything, is the physical counterpart of the models used by Cubitt et al. We argue that these models are non-representational and that, even if they are so artificial that it is hard to imagine a physical system arising from them, they nonetheless offer an opportunity to learn about the world and the relation between mathematics and reality. On this basis, we draw the conclusion that their results do not undermine the reductionist viewpoint in a strong sense but leave the question open in a weak sense. (shrink)

There is a gap between Rand 'sethical egoism and today's global capitalism on at least six points. Since her version of " capitalism : the unknown ideal" addresses none of these points, it cannot resemble the reality of today's global capitalism. The connection between Objectivist ethics and politics is preserved by a possible change in her minarchical political philosophy. This will mean that there is no necessary connection between ethical egoism and minarchism or between ethical egoism and minimal government (...) intervention. An ethically hard Objectivism determining the unknown ideal of capitalism leaves room for a politically soft Objectivism. (shrink)

In Cognitive science and philosophy of consciousness, the explanatory gap, following Joseph Levine, refers to the unintelligible link between our conscious mental life and its corresponding objective physical explanation; the gap in our understanding of how consciousness is related to a physical or a physiological substrate :354–361, 1983). David Chalmers holds the explanatory gap as the evidence for a form of metaphysical dualism between consciousness and physical reality. On the other hand, McGinn takes it as an epistemic rather than (...) an ontological gap. Considering the recent advances in neuroscience, however, the reductionist approaches have become replete, which attempt to reduce consciousness and subjectivity to neurobiological accounts. On this view, consciousness mirrors the brain mechanisms, and the self is formulated as an illusory product or construct of neuronal processes. Thomas Fuchs, who is committed to embodied and enactive approaches toward cognition, in Ecology of the Brain, espouses an enactive-ecological perspective concerning the problem of the explanatory gap. He develops an account of human’s life in its dual aspects of the living body and lived body which, on the one hand, defies the ontological dualism and, on the other hand, avoids drifting towards any form of reductionism. Often, the ontologically monistic approaches to the explanatory gap have inclined to a form of reductionism because they conceive consciousness as either identical with its physiological substrate or caused by it, where in both cases, consciousness is claimed to be explainable within the framework of physicalism. Fuchs, however, defends an ontological monism which remains irreconcilable with reductionism. In his account of dual aspects, there is no interaction or impact between the sphere of subjectivity and nature; however, these two aspects imply one another. In this essay, I will develop the philosophical justification of the above reformulation of the mind–body problem and employing the analogy of light will canvass the paradoxical relationship between dual aspects in a phenomenological framework. (shrink)

Guided by key insights of the four great philosophers mentioned in the title, here, in review of and expanding on our earlier work (Burchard, 2005, 2011), we present an exposition of the role played by language, & in the broader sense, λογοζ, the Logos, in how the CNS, the brain, is running the human being. Evolution by neural Darwinism has been forcing the linguistic nature of mind, enabling it to overcome & exploit the cognitive gap between an animal and its (...) world by recognizing environmental structures. Our work was greatly influenced by Heidegger’s lecture notes on metaphysics (Heidegger, 1935). We found agreement with recent progress in neuroscience, but also mathematical foundations of language theory, equating Logos with the mathematical concept of structure. The mystery of perception across the gap is analyzed as radiation and molecules impinging on sensory neurons that carry linguistic information about gross environmental structures, and only remotely about the physical reality of elementary particles. The most important logical brain function is Ego or Self, guiding the workings of the brain as a logos machine. Ego or Self operates from neurons in frontopolar cortex with global receptive fields. The logos machine can function only by availing itself of global context, its internally stored noumenal cosmos NK, and the categorical-conceptual apparatus CCA, updated continually through the neural default mode network (Raichle, 2005). In the Transcendental Deduction, Immanuel Kant discovered that Ego or Self is responsible for conscious control in perception relying on concepts & categories for a fitting percept to be incorporated intoNK. The entire CNS runs as a “movie-in-the-brain” (Parvizi & Damasio, 2001), at peak speed processing simultaneously in a series of cortical centers a stack of up to twelve frames in gamma rhythm of 25 ms intervals. We equate global context, or NK, with our human world, Heidegger’s Dasein being-in-the-world, and are able to demonstrate that the great philosopher in EM parallels neuro-science concerning the human mind. (shrink)

phenomenology and logical analysis. John Searle and Bert Dreyfus are for me two of the paradigm figures of contemporary philosophy, so I am extremely proud to have been offered the opportunity to engage with their work. The editors of The Harvard Review of Philosophy, it seems to me, have shown a keen sense of what is deep and important in our discipline by publishing extended interviews with these two influential thinkers. At the same time, writing this article meant entering into (...) a debate between Searle and Dreyfus about the priority of their respective philosophical methodologies, and this, I am afraid, is at best a no-win situation. My strategy, therefore, has been to try to engage as sympathetically as possible with the programs of each philosopher, and to draw from their work lessons that seem to me important for any philosophical account of intentionality and social reality. I have not shied away from criticism; indeed the whole paper is an extended series of criticisms of the work of both philosophers. But I hope they will recognize this for what it is: an engagement with the work of each that is based on the deepest respect and admiration. Before I jump into the fray, I should mention that I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Searle and Dreyfus as well. They were not only my two advisors in graduate school, but were the two main reasons I entered philosophy. Having become dissatisfied with the formal worlds of mathematics and computer science, their respective critiques of artificial intelligence and cognitivism showed me the rich possibilities of philosophy and struck me as a reason to become a philosopher. It is a difficult discipline, sometimes unforgiving; but I am glad I followed them into it. (shrink)

Change according to Heraclitus is the only abiding substance observable in the universe. The implication of this view is that apart from change which remains the only constant thing, there is nothing that is held to be permanent. That is why life though relatively blissful, sooner or later is overtaken by death. Of course, death is always a dread to human conciousness. It is a phenomenon which man has always whished that it not be a reality. It is this (...) facticity and the finitude of life that the writer intends to critically examine in this paper. With the methodological approach of critical reflection, he aimed at achieving the goal of the study which concludes that death is an inescapable phenomenon awaiting every single existent being, though not the end of existence. (shrink)

This is the first of two essays concerned to specify in what sense "ought" and "value" are genuine characteristics of reality serving as data that help us empirically verify the truth and falsity of our moral judgments. This, the first, essay discusses the significance of the ought/is question for moral philosophy and theological ethics, giving reasons for the inadequacy of current views on the relation between "ought" and "is." Building on the perceptual theories of Gestalt psychologists yields a phenomenological (...) description of the nature of "ought" and "value" as unique experiences of gap-induced demands or requiredness. These moral experiences of requiredness are delineated in such a way that they are distinguishable from aesthetic, logical, and causal forms of requiredness. (shrink)

In this paper we intend to discuss the importance of providing a physical representation of quantum superpositions which goes beyond the mere reference to mathematical structures and measurement outcomes. This proposal goes in the opposite direction to the project present in orthodox contemporary philosophy of physics which attempts to “bridge the gap” between the quantum formalism and common sense “classical reality”—precluding, right from the start, the possibility of interpreting quantum superpositions through non-classical notions. We will argue that in order (...) to restate the problem of interpretation of quantum mechanics in truly ontological terms we require a radical revision of the problems and definitions addressed within the orthodox literature. On the one hand, we will discuss the need of providing a formal redefinition of superpositions which captures explicitly their contextual character. On the other hand, we will attempt to replace the focus on the measurement problem, which concentrates on the justification of measurement outcomes from “weird” superposed states, and introduce the superposition problem which focuses instead on the conceptual representation of superpositions themselves. In this respect, after presenting three necessary conditions for objective physical representation, we will provide arguments which show why the classical representation of physics faces severe difficulties to solve the superposition problem. Finally, we will also argue that, if we are willing to abandon the presupposition according to which ‘Actuality = Reality’, then there is plenty of room to construct a conceptual representation for quantum superpositions. (shrink)