The literature on public perceptions of, and attitudes towards, nanotechnology used in the agrifood sector is reviewed. Research into consumer perceptions and attitudes has focused on general applications of nanotechnology, rather than within the agrifood sector. Perceptions of risk and benefit associated with different applications of nanotechnology, including agrifood applications, shape consumer attitudes, and acceptance, together with ethical concerns related to environmental impact or animal welfare. Attitudes are currently moderately positive across all areas of application. The occurrence of a negative (...) or positive incident in the agri-food sector may crystallise consumer views regarding acceptance or rejection of nanotechnology products. •Acceptance of agrifood nanotechnology based on perceptions of risk, benefit and ethics.•Attitudes towards nanotechnology in general are currently moderately positive.•Occurrence of a major nanotechnology-related "event" may crystallise consumer attitude. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

In the twentieth century, two Nobel-Prize winning economists wrote two seemingly unrelated characterizations of the processes constraining human behavior. One, Ronald Coase, wrote a short article entitled The Nature of the Firm,1 in which he reduced all managerial decision-making to a fundamental choice between making the factors of production, or buying them. This article and the idea of the "make or buy" decision for which it has come to be known, have proven to be among the most seminal in the (...) history of financial economics and organizational behavior. The second economist, Friedrich Hayek, wrote what he thought to be a comprehensive treatment of the approach that ought to be taken to the generation of rules constraining human interaction. This voluminous work, Law, Legislation and Liberty, characterized the creation of legal rules as the product of either spontaneous or planned orders. Hayek argued that spontaneous orders like "law" were more efficient mechanisms for governing human behavior than planned orders like "legislation." 2 This thesis received a lukewarm reception generally, and virtually no reception at all in legal circles. This Article demonstrates that Coase and Hayek were actually making the same observation, albeit in different contexts. Hayek's conception of the two sources of order is, in fact, a more abstract application of Coase's "make or buy" decision. Had Hayek understood his characterization of legal processes to be a variant of Coase's "Theory of the Firm," his ideas may have received more traction. Lawyers, judges, and lawmakers may also have understood some of the implications of Hayek's thesis for constraining legal actors, as well as its applications in current debates on the scope of administrative agency authority, tort reform, or the use of legislative history in litigation. (shrink)

Professor Lewis and I have some important differences of opinion regarding the identity and distinctness of conscious persons, which it will be well to try to clarify on the present occasion, first of all by enumerating a number of points on which we are, I think, in agreement. Both of us believe in the existence of individual persons, each of whom can be said to live in a ‘world’ of his own intentional objectivity, a world ‘as it is for him’, (...) which differs in a considerable extent, both in content and emphasis, from the world as it is for anyone else. Both of us further believe that all these intentionally objective worlds for a large part coincide in content, and are in fact excerpted from a more comprehensive real world which is common to us all, and which, in addition to in some sense including all such intentionally objective worlds, also includes many real material objects which exist regardless of our intentionality, and which further includes our own material bodies, which appear in so central a manner in each of our intentionally objective worlds. Both of us believe in matter as a transcendent reality, as well as an intentional object, and are content to accept the dicta of science as to the most probable view of its structure. We are in fact quite Cartesian and Lockean in our belief in the primary and secondary qualities of matter. We believe further that our intentional subjectivity is geared causally into our material objectivity, and that the gearing takes place, in some inscrutable manner, in our nervous systems. We both also believe that our intentional subjectivity transcends bodily mechanisms and instrumentalities, and can be liberated from the latter, but that, when thus liberated, our subjectivity may still affect some sort of an intentionally objective material body such as we wear in dreams, a body in which it will manifest itself to itself and to others much as we do in our dreams and fantasies. (shrink)

The background and purpose of this paper require some explanation. It is not the product of a New Testament scholar, able to weigh and balance theories as to date, origin and doctrinal background of the text attributed to St John, nor to assess the identification of its author with the beloved Disciple elsewhere mentioned or with the author of the Apocalypse, nor to consider his relationship to Gnostics or Stoics or Essenes or other influences in the contemporary Jewish or Christian (...) ambience. It is only the effort of one who recognizes in St John's Gospel, if read with an appropriate hermeneutic, a supreme mystico-religious document which can provide guidance at every turn of the spiritual life, but which, if read in another manner, becomes only the expression of a hard-line particularism, which is not less unacceptable in that it acclaims a particular standing in a special relation to another particular on which we all depend for our existence and for all our properties. Conceive of God, or the supreme object of worship, as a particular among particulars, and as much other than ourselves as other things and persons are other, and religious reverence becomes a repugnant form of heteronomous idolatry, wrought up, moreover, with the blind acceptance of a large number of historic and cosmic myths. But conceive of God as being something beyond category-differences, and which as much transcends particularity as it transcends any form of abstract universality, and which incorporates in strict identity all those values of Truth, Love, Beauty, Justice, etc. which are all simply universality in action, and which, moreover, as much transcends personality and personal relationships as it also may have in them its supreme expression, and religion and worship at once acquire a perfect sense and reference. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give a characterisation of religion and the Religious Spirit, basing itself on the Platonic assumption that there are Forms, salient jewels of simplicity and affinity, to be dug out from the soil of vague experience and cut clear from the confusedly shifting patterns of usage, which will give us conceptual mastery over the changeable detail in a given sector. It will further be Platonic in that it will not seek to discount the deep (...) gulfs between the species into which religion qua genus divides itself, i.e. its theistic, polytheistic and atheistic subvarieties, taking it to be of the essence of a true genus to extend itself over mutually exclusive species, only being what it is by including in its sense the alternatives which are thus mutually exclusive. And my treatment will be Platonic, thirdly, in that it will endeavour to delimit the Religious Spirit by, on the one hand, setting it over against what it excludes, all purely this-world talk and life which is quite irreligious, and by, on the other hand, opposing it to forms of talk and life which fall short of it in various ways or which deviate from it variously, thereby likewise contributing to our understanding of what it is. The practice of Plato, which could study the deviations from his ideal city in order to confirm his notion of its structure and excellence, and which also paired every ideal pattern with its opposite— piety with impiety, justice with self-interested tyranny, etc.—is plainly one to be followed: Plato, as we know from a citation from his contemporary Hermodorus in one of the Aristotelian commentators, always set beside the ‘in itself’ of the pure Form the deviant and the wholly negative which were nonetheless part of its sense. Religion will therefore stand before us as a target that it is possible to fall short of or miss altogether as well as to hit squarely, and we shall try by a series of glancing darts to end by hitting it squarely. (shrink)

All recent memory theories of hippocampal function have incorporated the idea that the hippocampus is required to process items only of some qualitatively specifiahle kind, and is not required to process items of some complementary set. In contrast, it is now proposed that the hippocampus is needed to process stimuli of all kinds, but only when there is a need to associate those stimuli with other events that are temporally discontiguous. In order to form or use temporally discontiguous associations, it (...) is essential to maintain some memory of the first component until the second component has occurred. When the temporal gap to he spanned is small, and the number of items to be temporarily retained is low, a limited-capacity, short-term store is sufficient to allow associations to be formed. Such a store is presumed to operate in parallel with the hippocampus in normal animals. Hippocampal damage disrupts a much higher-capacity store that has a slower decay rate, and so leaves animals with only a very limited ability to form temporally discontiguous associations. Hippocampal damage, however, is not held to affect the long-term storage of associations of any kind, if they can be formed. Analyses of both new and existing data are presented to show that by classifying tasks in terms of the need to use a temporary memory store to retain temporally discontiguous information one can cut right across existing classifications as well as achieve a better fit to the data. The hippocampus thus seems best described as a high-capacity, intermediate-term memory store. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America. by Thomas R. Cole.

Renowned philosopher J. N. Mohanty examines the range of Indian philosophy from the Sutra period through the 17th century Navya Nyaya. Instead of concentrating on the different systems, he focuses on the major concepts and problems dealt with in Indian philosophy. The book includes discussions of Indian ethics and social philosophy, as well as of Indian law and aesthetics.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Wal-Mart received widespread praise for its response to Hurricane Katrina when it hit the Louisiana coast in August 2005 and low prices at the world’s largest retailer are estimated to save consumers billions of dollars a year. Nonetheless, it was coming under increasing criticism for corebusiness practices, ranging from detrimental effects on communities when Wal-Mart stores are established, to abusive labour practices, to alleged sourcing from sweatshops. This case looks at the benefits and the potentially harmful consequences of the Wal-Mart (...) business model. The focus is on supply chain issues and, more specifically, a lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) charging that Wal-Mart failed to meet contractual obligations specified in its Standards for Suppliers Agreement. However, the retailer must respond to a range of criticisms that chief executive Lee Scott recognizes are harming its reputation. Scott asks, in reference to Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina, “what would it take for Wal-Mart to be that company, at our best, all the time?” More fundamentally, the case asks, how sustainable is Wal-Mart’s business model? (shrink)

In 2003, Unilever and Oxfam embarked on a groundbreaking “learning project” designed to better understand the impacts of business on poverty. Developing countries were seen as an essential component of Unilever’s corporate strategy, with developing and emerging markets forecast to account for 90% of the world’s population by 2010. Unilever had long been present in many of these markets and increasingly had come to see that its future growth would depend upon its contribution to addressing issues of social and economic (...) development in developing countries, including poverty. Oxfam, one of the world’s most prominent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), was focused in its campaigning and other activities on the alleviation of poverty. Thus, despite the often adversarial relationship between corporations and NGOs, the two organizations shared a common interest and this formed the basis for their collaboration. The goal was to examine the role of business in poverty reduction and study, specifically, Unilever’s operations in Indonesia. The Unilever and Oxfam (A) case describes how this collaboration came about and provides background on Unilever, Unilever Indonesia (UI) and Oxfam, including its recent campaigns against the pharmaceutical and coffee industries. It also examines the role of NGOs and outlines the challenge of poverty in developing countries, the Millennium Development Goals, and the UN Global Compact. The case shows the difficulties inherent in better understanding the role of MNCs in poverty alleviation as well as in formulating an effective collaboration between corporations and NGOs. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of my essays on philosophy of logic from a phenomenological perspective. They deal with the four kinds of logic I have been concerned with: formal logic, transcendental logic, speculative logic and hermeneutic logic. Of these, only one, the essay on Hegel, touches upon 'speculative logic', and two, those on Heidegger and Konig, are concerned with hermeneutic logic. The rest have to do with Husser! and Kant. I have not tried to show that the four logics (...) are compatible. I believe, they are--once they are given a phenomenological underpinning. The original plan of writing an Introduction in which the issues would have to be formulated, developed and brought together, was abandoned in favor of writing an Introductory Essay on the 'origin'- in the phenomenological sense -of logic. J.N.M. Philadelphia INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGIN OF LOGIC The question of the origin of logic may pertain to historical origin (When did it all begin? Who founded the science of logic?), psychological origin (When, in the course of its mental development, does the child learn logical operations?), cultural origin (What cultural - theological, metaphysical and linguisti- conditions make such a discipline as logic possible?), or transcendental constitutive origin (What sorts of acts and/or practices make logic possible?). (shrink)

In his award-winning book _The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Development_, J. N. Mohanty charted Husserl's philosophical development from the young man's earliest studies—informed by his work as a mathematician—to the publication of his _Ideas_ in 1913. In this welcome new volume, the author takes up the final decades of Husserl's life, addressing the work of his Freiburg period, from 1916 until his death in 1938. As in his earlier work, Mohanty here offers close readings of Husserl's main texts (...) accompanied by accurate summaries, informative commentaries, and original analyses. This book, along with its companion volume, completes the most up-to-date, well-informed, and comprehensive account ever written on Husserl's phenomenological philosophy and its development. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on conceptual, empirical and practical arguments why corporations need to focus on their social dimensions, in order to further enhance organizational performance. The paper starts with an introduction on the general trend towards inclusiveness and connectedness. It then elaborates on the phase-wise development of cultures and organizational structures. Managing corporate improvement by building cultures of trust is the central focus of this contribution. By showing the cultural dimensions of Great Places to Work and their workplace practices, worthwhile (...) experiences leading to organizational improvement and superior financial performance are demonstrated. (shrink)

The degrees of formality into which speech can be graded are in no sphere more obvious than in expressions of address and third-person reference. Methods of naming vary according to many factors: the formality of the circumstances in which naming takes place, the nature of the subject under discussion, and the ages, sex, and relative status of the speaker and addressee. Conventions of naming sometimes reflect the rigidity or otherwise of social divisions. In some societies or circles address between superior (...) and subordinate is non-reciprocal: the speaker with the greater prestige will adopt one form of address, the subordinate another. In other societies when unequals address each other both may use the same formal method of address: the difference of prestige is not explicitly acknowledged. (shrink)

L'interprétation de l'eschatologie paulinienne est dominée par la question de son rapport avec l'apocalyptique juive. Les points communs, soulignés par J.C. Beker à la suite de E. Käsemann, ne sont pas contestables, mais ne doivent pas occulter des différences notables, qui tiennent à la prééminence du Christ dans la vision paulinienne des événements de la fin. Ni l'attente ni le retard de la parousie ne semblent avoir eu, quoi qu'on en dise, d'influence décisive sur la pensée de l'Apôtre, mais bien (...) plutôt la réconciliation avec Dieu par la Croix et l'inauguration d'une humanité nouvelle dans la résurrection du Christ.Les lettres deutéropauliniennes ne rnodifient pas fondamentalement cette eschatologie, si ce n'est qu'elles accentuent encore l'emprise de la christologie sur la vision de la fin : à ceux qui attendent les ascensions célestes promises par la littérature apocalyptique, Paul répond qu'ils possèdent déjà leur être ressuscité avec le Christ, qui trône bien au-dessus de tous les être célestes. Ses idées sur le jugement dernier et la rétribution finale sont parfois dépendantes de celles du judaïsme, souvent imprécises et limitées, mais c'est toujours sa connaissance du Ressuscité, second Adam, qui conduit sa réflexion et l'aide à déchiffrer le destin final de l'humanité dans le Christ. The interpretation of pauline eschatology is dominated by the question of its rapport with Jewish apocalypse. The common points, underlined by J.C. Beker following E. Käsemann, cannot be contested, but should not hide the notable differences, which are based on the pre-eminence of Christ in the Pauline vision of the final events. Neither the expectation nor the delay of the Parousia does not seem to have had, despite what is said, a decisive influence on the Apostle’s thinking. He was concerned more about reconciliation with God through the cross and the inauguration of a new humanity by the resurrection of Christ.The deuteropauline letters do not fundamentally modify this eschatology, except in so far as they accentuate the dominance of Christology on the vision of the end. For those who await the celestial ascensions promised by apocalyptic literature, Paul answers that they already possess their resurrected being with Christ, who sits well above are celestial beings. These ideas on the Last Judgement and the final retribution are sometimes dependent on those of Judaism, often imprecise and limited, but it is always Paul's knowledge of the Resurrected, the second Adam, which directs his reflection and helps to decipher the final destiny of humanity in Christ. (shrink)