The aim of this paper is to focus on Arne Nass’s phenomenological method and some of its anthropological and cosmological implications. Nass’s Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, in fact, can be fruitfully read as an example of phenomenological inquiry, in which the notion of “spontaneous experience” plays a fundamental role. This method leads Nass to develop a “relational ontology,” in which the “ecological self” is seen as a “relational junction within the total field.” In addition, I show how Tymieniecka’s philosophical thought (...) can offer us the proper eco-phenomenological perspective to better understand Nass’s Ecosophy T. (shrink)

Providing Single Sign-On (SSO) between service providers and enabling service providers to share user personal attributes are critical for both users to benefit from a seamless access to their services, and service providers to realize new business opportunities. Today, however, the users have several independent, partial identities spread over different service providers. Providing SSO and attribute sharing requires that links (federations) are established between (partial) identities. In SAML 2.0 (Maler et al. 2003), the links between identities are stored and managed (...) at the network side by the identity providers (network-side identity federation). This model prevents the service providers from mass-correlating the partial identities they have, but the users must fully trust the identity providers. In this paper, we propose a complementary approach where the users have a full control of the links between their partial identities. It is a client-side identity federation approach, which relies on the introduction of a new cryptographic tool, called invariable partially blind signature scheme, that may be of independent interest. (shrink)

Comparative quantifiers, such as more than three books, cannot take scope over any quantifier in subject position if they occupy object position. This is clearly different from the behavior of other quantifiers (e.g., universal quantifiers). This paper argues that this scope puzzle is due to a more complex internal structure of comparative quantifiers than other quantifiers. In the decompositional approach that I pursue, comparative quantifiers are decomposed into two generalized quantifiers (i.e., in the case above, the comparative operator er than (...) three and the DP many books). In this approach, obligatory narrow scope of comparative quantifiers in object position is a consequence of the interplay of the independently motivated principles of grammar that also constrain other quantifiers. On the basis of the scope puzzle, I specifically argue for two constraints on Scope Shifting Operations (SSOs) a locality condition on SSOs and Scope Economy, proposed by Fox (2000), which prohibits SSOs that have no effect on semantic interpretation. Thus, I argue that the apparently peculiar facts of comparative quantifiers are, in fact, additional evidence for the core properties of SSOs. (shrink)

In the year ending March 2020, an estimated 773,000 people in England and Wales were sexually assaulted. These types of crimes have lasting effects on victims’ mental health, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. There is a large body of literature which identifies several factors associated with the likelihood of the victim reporting a sexual assault to the police, and these differences may be due to rape myth stereotypes which perpetuate the belief that rape is only “real” under certain (...) conditions. Less is known, however, about the effect these rape myths and stereotypes have on the investigation process itself and the subsequent police outcomes assigned to sex offences. This study aimed to address this gap, providing a profile of all RASSO committed over a 3-year period in one English police force, the police outcomes of these offences, and whether any offences, suspect, or victim variables were associated with different outcomes, in particular the decision to charge or cases where victims decline to prosecute. In line with previous research, the majority of victims were female while the majority of suspects were male, and the most frequent victim–suspect relationship was acquaintance, followed by partner/ex-partner. Charge outcomes were more likely in SSOs and less in rape offences, more likely with stranger offences and less likely than offences committed by partners/ex-partners and relatives, and some non-white suspects were more likely to be charged than suspects of other ethnicities, including white suspects. Victim attrition was more likely in cases where the suspect was a partner or ex-partner and least likely where the suspect was a stranger, more likely in SSOs than in rape cases, and more likely when the victim ethnicity was “other”. Law enforcement should be aware of the potential biases, both relating to rape myths and stereotypes and to the biased treatment of victims and suspects based on demographic characteristics, and work to eliminate these to ensure a fairer and more effective RASSO investigative process. (shrink)

With the fantastic features of smartphones, smartphone addiction is a prevalent phenomenon. However, there is a lack of theory-based understanding of how smartphone addiction affects employees’ personal and work lives. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of smartphone addiction in reinforcing techno exhaustion and life invasion and the final effects of these factors on job performance, and this study applied stress–strain-outcome (SSO) as the foundation of the model. In total, 475 responses were obtained from office and (...) service workers in Iran by a survey. Our findings show that smartphone addiction leads to enhancement in job performance, whereas it significantly strengthens life invasion and techno exhaustion, and thereby life invasion and techno exhaustion dramatically reduce job performance. Our findings indicate the two-sided role of direct and indirect effects of smartphone addiction. Implications for both organizations and employees are discussed. • Stressor-strain-outcome framework is utilized to examine smartphone addiction. • Smartphone addiction leads to enhancement in job performance. • Smartphone addiction significantly strengthens life invasion and techno exhaustion. • Life invasion and techno exhaustion dramatically reduce job performance. • The negative indirect effects of smartphone addiction are more powerful than its positive direct influence. (shrink)

The term “spontaneous self-organisation” (SSO for short) is used to describe the emergence of an object or structure “by itself” within a dynamical system. While usage of the term will no doubt vary somewhat, in this paper I will take it to have three key features: 1. The appearance of the object does not require a special, “fine-tuned” initial state. 2. There is no need for interaction with an external system. 3. The object is likely to appear in a reasonably (...) short time. The first two conditions say that the object arises from the dynamics of the system alone, without any help. The third condition says that, for an object s to appear by spontaneous self-organisation, its appearance should not just a matter of dumb luck (e.g. a monkey with a typewriter just happening to produce Hamlet), nor just from waiting long enough (e.g. a monkey typing for long enough that Hamlet was likely to appear), or any combination of the two. What is “reasonably short” in this context? The time needed for spontaneous self-organisation should be much shorter than the expected time required to assemble the object purely at random from its components. Note that, for very large and intricate systems, the random-assembly time will be unimaginably vast, so that the appearance of such objects in merely billions of years will count as spontaneous self-organisation. (shrink)

Contemporary research, across various disciplines, alludes to notion of complexity. Indeed, the phenomenon has even been accredited for comprising a new “world-view” that not only heralds theory construction but also instigates miscellaneous nifty yet practical avenues. On the other hand, however, the complexityparadigm has frequently been criticized of obscurity, contestation and scope imprecision. In addition, its various mutually incommensurable philosophical implications have lead to much heated debates regarding methodological pluralism and metaphorical applications, within literature. To elaborately discussand resolve these concerns, (...) this paper will be organized in three sections: The first section will build on the idiosyncratic characteristics of complexity that differentiate it from related notions of chaos and complicatedness. The second section will shed light on the philosophical deliberations of individual complexityattributes, toward metaphysics of complexity, through elaborately drawn diagrams. Also, this section will draw attention to several conflicting perspectives encompassing the theological, epistemological and ontological domain of complexity. The third section will trace the origins of such paradoxical debates, in the complexity literature, through a ‘Super-System-Outlook’ (SSO) framework. The framework is likely to be of particular significance as it aims to not only divulge an eradicable joint cause of the disparity governing complexity studies but also to propose a possible assimilation of such deliberations. (shrink)

Over the past few years, the Virtual Organization (VO) paradigm has been emerging as an ideal solution to support collaboration among globally distributed entities (individuals and/or organizations). However, due to rapid technological and societal changes, there has also been an astonishing growth in technologies and services for mobile users. This has opened up new collaborative scenarios where the same participant can access the VO from different locations and mobility becomes a key issue for users and services. The nomadicity and mobility (...) introduces additional challenges for managing collaboration in VO environments. This paper focuses on the Identity Management challenge in a Mobile Dynamic VO environment, which is a VO that takes into account nomadicity and seamless mobility aspects as elaborated within the EU funded project Akogrimo (Access to Knowledge through the Grid in a mobile world). The resulting work is the design of the Akogrimo Identity Management system supporting the authentication and authorization process across the different administrative domains of the Mobile Dynamic VO. This design follows the service oriented approach and integrates the different perspectives: that of the network, that of the user and that of the service provider. Such an integration requires facing challenges; both from the architectural and technological viewpoints because different ‘worlds’ (i.e. network and service level) leverage different (and sometimes conflicting) approaches when addressing Identity Management. (shrink)