The concept of the future is re-emerging as an urgent topic on the academic agenda. In this article, we focus on the ‘politics of the future’: the social processes and practices that allow particular imagined futures to become socially performative. Acknowledging that the performativity of such imagined futures is well-understood, we argue that how particular visions come about and why they become performative is underexplained. Drawing on constructivist sociological theory, this article aims to fill this gap by exploring the question (...) ‘how do imagined futures become socially performative’? In doing so, the article has three aims to identify the leading social–theoretical work on the future; conceptualize the relationship of the imagination of the future with social practices and the performance of reality; provide a theoretical framework explaining how images of the future become performative, using the concepts ‘techniques of futuring’ and ‘dramaturgical regime’. (shrink)

Very little has been done to find out what corporations have done to build ethical values into their organizations. In this report on a survey of 1984 Fortune 1000 industrial and service companies the Center for Business Ethics reveals some facts regarding codes of ethics, ethics committees, social audits, ethics training programs, boards of directors, and other areas where corporations might institutionalize ethics. Based on the survey, the Center for Business Ethics is convinced that corporations are beginning to take steps (...) to institutionalize ethics, while recognizing that in most cases more specific mechanisms and strategies need to be implemented to make their ethics efforts truly effective. (shrink)

Mit Beitragen von: Wolfgang U. Eckart, Christian Bonah, Wolfgang U. Eckart / Andreas Reuland, Alexander Neumann, Peter Steinkamp, Volker Roelcke, Anne ...

The thesis that mental states extend beyond the skull, otherwise known as the extended mind thesis, has attracted considerable philosophical attention and support. It has also been accused of lacking practical import. At the same time, the field of psychiatry has remained largely unacquainted with ExM, tending to rely instead upon what ExM proponents would consider to be outdated models of the mind. ExM and psychiatry, therefore, have much to offer one another, but the connection between the two has remained (...) largely unexplored. Here, I consider what implications ExM may have for psychiatry and, in so doing, reveal how psychiatry may lend practical import to ExM. First, I detail the possibility of the extension of one mental state relevant to psychiatry. I augment this example by surveying other possibilities for extension in the context of psychiatric diagnoses. I then consider ways in which such extensions might alter psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Overall, I argue that recognition of the truth of ExM could alter the diagnostic status of certain individuals by correcting both false positives and false negatives, re-conceptualize certain aspects of treatment, help us re-envision psychiatric research, and potentially increase empathy towards those individuals considered to be mentally disordered or mentally different. (shrink)

It is very useful to distinguish between four types of interactions in nature: gravitation, and then electromagnetism, weak interaction and strong interaction. The mathematical structure of electromagnetism but also of weak and strong interaction could be understood as induced by a local gauge group. The associated groups are the unitary group in one dimension—U—for electromagnetism, the special unitary group in two dimensions—SU—for the weak interaction, and the special unitary group in three dimensions—SU—for the strong interaction. The essence of this article (...) is to give a “first-principles” explanation for the three gauge groups. (shrink)

Nature-based solutions (NbS) have in recent years occupied a central position in conservation and climate discussions among both scientists and policy makers. NbS generally refer to a set of strategies which use nature, or natural objects, to address societal (human) issues while simultaneously supporting the broader environment. This paper examines the concept of NbS to determine whether it is a useful and well-motivated category to guide future climate and conservation efforts. I argue that NbS may in fact be a valuable (...) contribution to environmental thought and policy, but not for the reasons that they are typically thought to be. Specifically: while we have reason to doubt that NbS should be prioritized over other environmental strategies on the grounds that they are uniquely environmentally-friendly or supportive of biodiversity, they may nevertheless have an advantage insofar as they play a vital aesthetic role in developing a healthier relationship between humans and the nonhuman world. (shrink)

Some terms identify enigmata of today’s cosmology: “Inflation” is expected to explain the homogeneity and isotropy of the cosmic background. The repulsive force of a “dark energy” shall prevent a re-collapse of the cosmos. The additional gravitational effect of a “dark matter” was originally supposed to explain the deviations of the rotation curves of the galaxies from Kepler’s laws. Adopting a theory founded on the core notion of absolute quantum information–Protyposis–being a cosmological concept from the outset, the observed phenomena can (...) be explained without postulating further unknown specific “particles” or “fields”. Moreover, this theory allows for a rationalization of the fact that huge black holes with their enormous jet structures, acting as “seeds” of the galaxies, are detected ever closer to the big bang. The problem of the rotation curves in the galaxies can be addressed outside of General Relativity within a Newtonian approximation: by an attenuation of the gravitational acceleration as in the modified Newtonian dynamics, or by the effect of additional invisible “particles of dark matter”, yet unknown and not yet established in natural sciences. Within the Protyposis theory, these problems are solved without having to invent a lot of parameters. The cosmology of the Protyposis causes the change of the gravitational acceleration in the vicinity of large masses and, at the same time, avoids a recollapse of the cosmos for which a cosmological constant or “dark energy” was invented. (shrink)

This best-selling volume examines the nature, morality, and social meanings of contemporary sexual phenomena. Updated and new discussion questions offer students starting points for debate in both the classroom and the bedroom.

Many research-intensive universities have moved into the business of promoting technology development that promises revenue, impact, and legitimacy. While the scholarship on academic capitalism has documented the general dynamics of this institutional shift, we know less about the ground-level challenges of research priority and scientific problem choice. This paper unites the practice tradition in science and technology studies with an organizational analysis of decision-making to compare how two university artificial intelligence labs manage ambiguities at the edge of scientific knowledge. One (...) lab focuses on garnering funding through commercialization schemes, while the other is oriented to federal science agencies. The ethnographic comparison identifies the mechanisms through which an industry-oriented lab can be highly adventurous yet produce a research program that is thin and erratic due to a priority placed on commercialization. However, the comparison does not yield an implicit nostalgia for federalized science; it reveals the mechanisms through which agency-oriented labs can pursue a thick and consistent research portfolio but in a strikingly myopic fashion. (shrink)

The present article examines the contemporary stakes and “application” of The Differend with particular attention to neo-fascist denialism, trolling, and alt-right “free speech” discourse. This entails investigating the text’s own rhetorical performance as well as the shifting attitudes towards the sophistic tradition in The Differend and its precursor text, “On the Force of the Weak.” The article thus also takes up in detail three examples of the characteristic sophistic form of the dilemma or double-bind, two of which are drawn from (...) Lyotard: the Holocaust denialist Robert Faurisson’s infamous dilemma of “the witness to the gas-chambers”; the canonical ancient dilemma through which Protagoras wins his fee from his student Euathlus despite seemingly never having helped him win a dispute; and “if you can speak, you can breathe,” the contemporary denialist’s rejoinder to “I can’t breathe.” Lyotard’s arguments are briefly compared to those of other thinkers. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine whether ethics officers are able to perform their assigned duties independently of organizational management. Specifically, we investigate whether inherent conflicts of interest with company management potentially hinder the ability of ethics officers to serve as an effective monitor and deterrent of unethical activity throughout the organization. As part of our analysis, we conducted 10 detailed phone interviews with current and retired ethics officers in order to determine whether practicing ethics officers feel the need for additional (...) independence protection from management. We propose that the current system in which ethics officers report to management must be changed in order for ethics officers to effectively perform their jobs. Specifically, we maintain that ethics officers should (1) be hired by, (2) be fired by, and (3) report directly to the corporate board of directors rather than company management. Such a change in the reporting environment would greatly enhance the independence of ethics officers. (shrink)

This chapter is a brief discussion of Thomas Aquinas’s views on spiritual change. Much of the chapter is spent clarifying the interpretive positions staked out by Myles Burnyeat and Sheldon Cohen. The chapter argues that although there is nominal agreement between Burnyeat and Cohen on these matters due to Burnyeat’s broad definition of “physical,” there is substantive disagreement as to whether the reception of sensible forms is a wholly corporeal event. And where there is substantive agreement—namely, in the contention that (...) changes in or of the body are wholly corporeal—both Burnyeat and Cohen are mistaken. The chapter contends that, according to Aquinas, the sensible reception of sensible forms ‘is partly material and corporeal because it takes place in the body, but it is partly immaterial and incorporeal because it is not a natural change but rather a spiritual change.’. (shrink)

Perspectives on Time deals with the problem of time from different perspectives such as logic, physics and philosophy. It contains 18 previously unpublished papers, written by philosophers from various European countries, as well as a large introduction about the history and the main situation in the respective fields today. The prominent issues which are addressed in this book concern the direction of time, the reality of tenses, the objectivity of becoming, the existence in time, and the logical structures of reasoning (...) about time. The papers have been written based on different approaches, partly depending on whether the authors subscribe to an A-theory or a B-theory of time. (shrink)

The stories we tell of psychiatric disability1 and gender play a crucial role not only in the experience of psychiatric disorders, but in who disordered individuals are in the most literal sense. Recent theories of the self—so-called narrative self-constitution views, or “narrative theories”—contend that the self is, fundamentally, constituted by a narrative one tells about oneself. Furthermore, this narrative almost certainly absorbs elements from surrounding cultural scripts. Thus, narrative self-constitution views can shed light on some of the ways in which (...) cultural... (shrink)

Aquinas maintains that when we succumb to temptation our actions are wholly voluntary. When we give up a good in the face of a threat our actions are partly involuntary, but they are more voluntary than involuntary. I argue that when we succumb to temptation our actions can also be partly involuntary. I also defend my intuition that in some mixed cases our action is more involuntary than voluntary, and I show how Aquinas’s psychological theory can explain this. Finally, I (...) explain why it matters that actions fully in accordance with our reasonsresponsive choices might not be fully voluntary. (shrink)

Any philosophy of science ought to have something to say about the nature of mathematics, especially an account like constructive empiricism in which mathematical concepts like model and isomorphism play a central role. This thesis is a contribution to the larger project of formulating a constructive empiricist account of mathematics. The philosophy of mathematics developed is fictionalist, with an anti-realist metaphysics. In the thesis, van Fraassen's constructive empiricism is defended and various accounts of mathematics are considered and rejected. Constructive empiricism (...) cannot be realist about abstract objects; it must reject even the realism advocated by otherwise ontologically restrained and epistemologically empiricist indispensability theorists. Indispensability arguments rely on the kind of inference to the best explanation the rejection of which is definitive of constructive empiricism. On the other hand, formalist and logicist anti-realist positions are also shown to be untenable. It is argued that a constructive empiricist philosophy of mathematics must be fictionalist. Borrowing and developing elements from both Philip Kitcher's constructive naturalism and Kendall Walton's theory of fiction, the account of mathematics advanced treats mathematics as a collection of stories told about an ideal agent and mathematical objects as fictions. The account explains what true portions of mathematics are about and why mathematics is useful, even while it is a story about an ideal agent operating in an ideal world; it connects theory and practice in mathematics with human experience of the phenomenal world. At the same time, the make-believe and game-playing aspects of the theory show how we can make sense of mathematics as fiction, as stories, without either undermining that explanation or being forced to accept abstract mathematical objects into our ontology. All of this occurs within the framework that constructive empiricism itself provides the epistemological limitations it mandates, the semantic view of theories, and an emphasis on the pragmatic dimension of our theories, our explanations, and of our relation to the language we use. (shrink)

Multidisciplinary studies indicate that auditory hallucinations may arise from speech perception neurocircuitry without disrupted theory of mind capacities. Computer simulations of excessive pruning in speech perception neural networks provide a model for these hallucinations and demonstrate that connectivity reductions just below a “psychotogenic threshold” enhance information processing. These data suggest a process whereby vulnerability to schizophrenia is maintained in the human population despite reproductive disadvantages of this illness.

As scholarly interest in the experience of French Maoism has been undergoing something of a renaissance, it is unsurprising that the Maoist practice of investigations has elicited varying degrees of attention in recent years. But this attention has tended to be subsumed within, if not overshadowed by, much broader historical and exegetical undertakings. This paper seeks to redress this limitation in the literature by focusing on the lengthiest and most detailed summary of Maoist investigations among peasants in the French countryside,The (...) Book of Poor Peasants, published by Alain Badiou’s Group for the Foundation of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist in 1976. This book vividly demonstrates the difficulties and limitations associated with the practice of investigations. It thus affords a more critical appreciation of this practice. The book also casts Badiou’s shift toward a ‘politics without party’ in a new light. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique Kant sets forth the ancient problem of freedom and determinism by way of the Third Antinomy. The problem, according to Kant, arises out of a conflict of reason with itself as it seeks an unconditioned ground which will provide a unity for all conditions. In the thesis of the Third Antinomy reason sees the necessity of postulating a free causality “without which, even in the [ordinary] course of nature the series of appearances (...) on the side of the causes can never be complete.” On the other hand, in the antithesis, there is a denial of such transcendental freedom on the ground that it would undercut the unity of the work of the understanding so that “the appearances which in their natural course are regular and uniform would be reduced to disorder and incoherence.”. (shrink)

Health information technology is becoming increasingly prevalent in medical offices and facilities. Like President George W. Bush before him, President Obama announced a plan to computerize all Americans’ medical records by 2014. Computerization is certain to transform American health care, but to ensure that its benefits outweigh its risks, the federal government must provide appropriate oversight.President Obama’s stimulus legislation, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, dedicated $27 billion to the promotion of health information technology. It provides payments of (...) up to $44,000 per clinician under the Medicare incentive program and $63,750 per clinician under the Medicaid program. (shrink)

As a self-conscious religious collective with minority status, Jews seeking recognition in the modem nation-state have had to fashion not just principles of belief, but also a narrative to articulate the historical essence of their existence. The most common narrative of the twentieth century has been a story, not a myth—a story, moreover, with limited capacity for interfaith dialogue. By the end of the century, that story began to lose its compelling quality. The twenty-first century demands a return to myth, (...) with the promise of more promising theological conversation across faith lines. (shrink)