Engaging the argument that human rights discourse and activities stand in opposition to (or at least in tension with) the beliefs and activities of religious communities, the author identifies twelve different models of possible relationships between the moral commitments of human rights advocates and the moral and religious commitments of religious (particularly Christian) communities. On the basis of this map of the range of relationships, the author suggests that the two modes of discourse will inevitably be both competitive and cooperative. (...) Holding that both normative universes are necessary, he interprets the dissonance in a mood of modesty and hope, focusing attention on the possibility of complementarity. (shrink)

"This book provides a representative survey of early and more recent concerns in cognitively inspired lexical semantics.

The effectiveness of complaint handling and service recovery policies in customer retention has been the focus of both scholars and service organizations. In the past decade, Justice Theory has provided the basis of the dominant theoretical framework for complaint management and service recovery. However, it does not explicitly address unfair trade practices, which constitute an ethical issue. Favorable outcomes in complaint handling may not be able to restore the reputation of a company and the potential harm perceived by consumers. Using (...) face-to-face interviews, this study applies Fairness Theory to explore the psychological responses of consumers in the post-complaint phase, particularly in ethical judgment. The findings suggest that an unfavorable outcome in the post-complaint stage leads to counterfactual thinking by the consumer about the consumer's state of well-being. The complaint must be due to the discretionary actions of the service provider whose accountability is assessed. Those harmful actions are then judged against an ethical standard. Explanations can reduce blame, and their effectiveness is moderated by outcome favorability but not ethical judgment. Favorable outcome, captured by "Would Perception," has only limited influence on Perceived Potential Harm (PPH), which is an important determinant of ethical judgment. This study makes both theoretical and practical contributions. It is the first study to validate Fairness Theory empirically and apply it to complaint handling as a complement of Justice Theory in the information and communication technology (ICT) service context. The study indicates that customers may condemn a service provider because of PPH even though the outcome is favorable. Unfair trade practices are what make customers hate ICT service providers. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest pogłębiona analiza przyczyn i konsekwencji rozdwojenia sejmiku wiszeńskiego w 1597 r. z naciskiem na relacje polityczno-społeczne obejmujące teren dawnego województwa ruskiego oraz głównych politycznych aktorów zdarzeń: Stanisława Stadnickiego z Łańcuta, Stanisława Żółkiewskiego i Jana Zamoyskiego. Pomimo stosunkowo obfitego materiału źródłowego w postaci listów, protestacji i sejmowych diariuszy jedyna poważna próba zbadania tego tematu podjęta przez Jana Rzońcę okazała się dalece niewystarczająca, zawężając temat rozbicia sejmiku jedynie do obszaru wpływu na późniejsze obrady sejmu oraz ogólną kondycję państwa. Przeprowadzona (...) w artykule krytyczna analiza zachowanych źródeł pozwoliła w dużym stopniu zrekonstruować obrady tytułowego sejmiku, ustalić dokładne przyczyny jego rozbicia oraz powiązać zaszłe na nim zdarzenia z politycznym przesileniem, do którego doszło w województwie ruskim pod koniec roku 1597 w postaci lokalnego sojuszu Jana Zamoyskiego ze Stanisławem Stadnickim z Łańcuta. Poznanie kulis zawarcia powyższego porozumienia oraz powodów jego fiaska pozwoliło natomiast lepiej zrozumieć mechanizmy funkcjonowania stronnictwa kanclerskiego pod koniec XVI w. i stanu, w jakim się wówczas znalazło. W artykule podjęta została ponadto próba rozwikłania problemu uczestnictwa w sejmiku żołnierzy kwarcianych/prywatnych oraz zbadania ich rzeczywistego wpływu na obrady sejmiku w Wiszni. Bezrefleksyjnie przyjmowana do tej pory teoria personalnie obarczająca winą za rozbicie sejmiku hetmana polnego Stanisława Żółkiewskiego wydaje się co najmniej przesadzona, zupełnie pomijając własnowolność służących w wojsku żołnierzy oraz przysługujące im jako szlachcie prawa do uczestnictwa w życiu publicznym Rzeczypospolitej. (shrink)

Detachment, Involvement, and Rationality: are we Essentially Rational Animals? Philosophers have long thought that what differentiates humans from mere animals is that humans are essentially rational. The rational nature of human beings lies in their ability to detach themselves from ongoing involvement and to ask for as well as give reasons for activity. According to the philosophical tradition, human action and perception generally should be understood in light of this ability. This essay examines a contemporary version of this conviction, one (...) promulgated by John McDowell. McDowell follows the tradition in suggesting that people are always able to step back and to ask as well as answer why questions about what they are doing, i.e., they always have reasons for their actions. This essay shows that people have no reasons for many of the things they do. They often, instead, simply respond to shifting situational fields of attraction and repulsion. These attractions and repulsions cannot be captured in propositional form—any attempt to describe, or even just name, them turns them into objects and robs them of their motivational force. The demands of the situation are not available as reasons, but exist only as embodied in actions. McDowell, consequently, errs in claiming that conceptual capacities are inextricably implicated in human activity. Nor is the detached, rational way of being any more essential to human life than is involved coping. (shrink)

The creation and consolidation of a memory can rest on the integration of any number of disparate features and contexts. How is it that these bind together to form a coherent memory? This book offers an unrivalled overview of one of the most debated hotspots of modern memory research: binding, and will instigate innovative and pioneering ideas for future research.

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provided primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of (...) the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research. (shrink)

The Rev’d Roland Allen’s grandson ventures to speculate on the attitudes his grandfather might be expected to have adopted regarding several of today’s controversial issues. After rehearsing briefly Roland’s published and unpublished work, Hubert Allen reviews, both on the basis of Roland’s expressed opinions and by inference from remarks made by him or by members of his immediate family, how he believes his grandfather would have reacted to six matters of current or recent controversy, namely: Modern Translations of the (...) Bible, The Role of Women in the Church, Homosexuality, Ecumenism, Inter-Faith Dialogue, and the proposed Anglican Covenant. (shrink)

The World 3 theory outlined by Popper in the 1960s has been diversely received, raising enthusiasms as well as severe criticisms. In this paper, I resituate the theory in the development of Popper’s philosophy. I not only present the three “sources” of W3, but I also show that the first one dominates the two others. Comparing it with a few other evolutionary philosophies, I propose to understand Popper’s metaphysics as part of an evolutionary and spiritualist philosophy, which was, however, always (...) balanced by a strong ethical reminder of the inescapability of human responsibility. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas’s theory of pleasure and joy has many implications of Plato’s thinking, that pleasure must have a certain measure and different degrees, and especially of Aristotle’s teaching about the relationship between pleasure and affection, pleasure and action. Thomas holds pleasure to be given, when a present good is comprehended as attractive, when a soul turns to it and reaches the point of rest in it. Thomas is convicted, that the delectationes intelligibiles are superior to the delectationes sensibiles by reason (...) of their higher union with the intelligible. Looking back to Aristotle Thomas sees the causae delectationis in operation and in motion. The pleasure of the good person is for Thomas a moral norm of acting: Good is, who has joy to act virtuous. Generally we can speak of a renaissance of pleasure as a category of ethics in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to introduce the concept of Cognitive Fitness (CF), identify its key ingredients underpinning both real-time task performance and career longevity in high-risk occupations, and to canvas a holistic framework for their assessment, training, and augmentation. CF as a capacity to deploy neurocognitive resources, knowledge and skills to meet the demands of operational task performance, is likely to be multi-faceted and differentially malleable. A taxonomy of CF constructs derived from Cognitive Readiness (CR) and Mental fitness (...) (MF) literature maps into phases of operational cycles from foundational to advanced, mission-ready and recovery. Foundational cognitive attributes, such as attention, executive control and co-action, were hypothesized to be trainable at the initial Cognitive Gym phase. More advanced training targets at the CR phase included stress and arousal regulation, adaptability, teamwork, situation awareness (including detection, sense-making and prediction) and decision making (de-biasing and confidence calibration). The mission-ready training phase is focused on tolerances (to sleep loss, monotony, pain, frustration, uncertainty) and resistance (to distraction, deception or manipulation). Operational Augmentation phase relies on support tools such as decision aids and fatigue countermeasures, while the Recovery phase employs reflexive (e.g., mindfulness), and restorative practices (e.g., nutrition and sleep hygiene). The periodization of cognitive training in this cycle is hypothesized to optimize both real-time cognitive performance and the resilience that enables life-long thriving. One of the most promising avenues of validating this hypothesis is by developing an expert consensus on the key CF ingredients and their relative importance in high-performance settings. (shrink)

The ArgumentDevelopments in theoretical physics, even when they are revolutionary for physics, usually donotenter public awareness. The reaction to the special relativity theory is one of the few exceptions. The conceptual changes brought by special relativity to our notions of space and time, induced a lively debate not only within intellectual circles but in many strata of the educated middle class. In this article, I focus on a particular moment of public reaction to special and general relativity theory and to (...) its creator Albert Einstein. I try to paint a picture of the anti-Einstein campaign in Germany of 1920, with finer brush strokes than those applied previously by others. My aim is to embed the campaign into the cultural and political climate of the Weimar republic. Without leaving the realm of physics only a superficial understanding of what happened seems possible. My thesis is that the anti-Einstein-campaign was organized, and the physicists involved in it used, mainly in order to rally support for one of the German right-wing parties, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei. (shrink)

Because Bertrand Russell adopted much of the logical symbolism of Peano, because Russell always had a high regard for the great Italian mathematician, and because Russell held the logicist thesis so strongly, many English-speaking mathematicians have been led to classify Peano as a logicist, or at least as a forerunner of the logicist school. An attempt is made here to deny this by showing that Peano's primary interest was in axiomatics, that he never used the mathematical logic developed by him (...) for the reduction of mathematical concepts to logical concepts, and that, instead, he denied the validity of such a reduction. (shrink)