In their competition for higher-status men, women with higher socioeconomic status use indirect forms of aggression (ridicule and gossip) to derogate lower-status female competitors and the men who date them. Women's greater tendency to excuse their aggression is arguably a cultural enhancement of an evolutionarily based sex difference and not solely a cultural construction imposed by patriarchy.

Research from ethology and evolutionary biology indicates the following about the evolution of reasoning capacity. First, solving problems of social competition and cooperation have direct impact on survival rates and reproductive success. Second, the social structure that evolved from this pressure is the dominance hierarchy. Third, primates that live in large groups with complex dominance hierarchies also show greater neocortical development, and concomitantly greater cognitive capacity. These facts suggest that the necessity of reasoning effectively about dominance hierarchies left (...) an indelible mark on primate reasoning architectures, including that of humans. In order to survive in a dominance hierarchy, an individual must be capable of (a) making rank discriminations, (b) recognizing what is forbidden and what is permitted based one's rank, and (c) deciding whether to engage in or refriin from activities that will allow one to move up in rank. The first problem is closely tied to the capacity for transitive reasoning, while the second and third are intimately related to the capacity for deontic reasoning. I argue that the human capacity for these types of reasoning have evolutionary roots that reach deeper into our ancestral past than the emergence of the hominid line, and the operation of these evolutionarily primitive reasoning systems can be seen in the development of human reasoning and domain-specific effects in adult reasoning. (shrink)

Prominence hierarchy effects such as the animacy hierarchy and definiteness hierarchy have been a puzzle for formal treatments of case since they were first described systematically in Silverstein 1976. Recently, these effects have received more sustained attention from generative linguists, who have sought to capture them in treatments grounded in well-understood mechanisms for case assignment cross-linguistically. These efforts have taken two broad directions. In the first, Aissen 1999, 2003 has integrated the effects elegantly into a competition model of grammar using (...) OT formalisms, where iconicity effects emerge from constraint conjunctions between constraints on fixed universal hierarchies (definiteness, animacy, person, grammatical role) and a constraint banning overt morphological expression of case. The second direction grows out of the work of Jelinek and Diesing, and is found most articulated in Jelinek 1993, Jelinek and Carnie 2003, and Carnie 2005. This work takes as its starting point the observation that word order is sometimes correlated with the hierarchies as well, and works backwards from that to conclusions about phrase structure geometries. In this paper, I propose a particular implementation of this latter direction, and explore its consequences for our understanding of the nature of case assignment. If hierarchy effects are due to positional differences in phrase structures, then, I argue, the attested cross-linguistic differences fall most naturally out if the grammars of these languages countenance polyvalent case—that is, assignment of more than one case value to a single nominal phrase. (shrink)

Dominance hierarchies (sometimes called “pecking orders”) are virtually universal in social species, including humans. In most species and in ancestral and early human societies, these hierarchies allocate scarce resources, including food and often access to females. Humans sometimes use hierarchies for these allocational purposes, but humans use hierarchies for productive purposes as well—as in firms, universities, and governments. Productive hierarchies and dominance hierarchies share many features. As a result, people, including students of human behavior, (...) often confuse types of hierarchies. For example, the Communist Manifesto attributes features to productive hierarchies that are actually characteristic of dominance hierarchies. Government hierarchies are particularly confusing, as they have many features of both types. In modern societies with socially mandated monogamy and voluntary attachment to hierarchies in the form of competitive labor markets, productive hierarchies are generally useful for all members, and it is important not to confuse the two types, either in policy or in scientific analysis. (shrink)

Two studies examined the link between social dominance and male waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Groups of four men interacted in a leaderless group discussion. In both studies, men with higher WHRs (associated with current and long-term health status) were rated by other group members as behaving more leader-like when an observer was present, and rated themselves as being more assertive. In Study 2, men with higher WHRs were rated by independent observers as behaving more dominantly, but only when the evaluator was (...) present. These results are discussed in terms of evolutionary models of health, attraction, and intrasexual competition. (shrink)

During active vision, the eyes continually scan the visual environment using saccadic scanning movements. This target article presents an information processing model for the control of these movements, with some close parallels to established physiological processes in the oculomotor system. Two separate pathways are concerned with the spatial and the temporal programming of the movement. In the temporal pathway there is spatially distributed coding and the saccade target is selected from a Both pathways descend through a hierarchy of levels, the (...) lower ones operating automatically. Visual onsets have automatic access to the eye control system via the lower levels. Various centres in each pathway are interconnected via reciprocal inhibition. The model accounts for a number of well-established phenomena in target-elicited saccades: the gap effect, express saccades, the remote distractor effect, and the global effect. High-level control of the pathways in tasks such as visual search and reading is discussed; it operates through spatial selection and search selection, which generally combine in an automated way. The model is examined in relation to data from patients with unilateral neglect. (shrink)

In this article I suggest a view of evolution characterized as a progressive process toward successively higher levels of complexity. In this approach, complexity is defined by means of an operational definition giving the possibility of its measurement by means of a procedure in which development has a crucial role. Furthermore, the concept of competition applied in the complexity space explains the cumulative emergence of new species as well as the presence of stagnant species. In this process, species are formed (...) in a hierarchical order in which the human species is situated on the highest level. This view of evolution, thus also embracing human cultural evolution, is depicted in a diagram of complexity versus time, thus forming a new kind of a Tree of Life. The purpose of the suggested interpretation of evolution is to make it more readily acceptable for common people. (shrink)

Since the earliest human societies, there has been an ongoing struggle between hierarchy and resistance to hierarchy, and this struggle is a major driver of the evolution of moralities and of institutions. Attempts to initiate or sustain hierarchies are often met with resistance; hierarchs then adopt new strategies, which in turn prompt new strategies of resistance; and so on. The key point is that the struggle is typically conducted using moral concepts in justifications for or against unequal power and (...) involves the stimulation of the moral emotions. Both parties to the struggle treat morality as a valuable strategic resource; and the dynamic of interaction between hierarchs and resisters generates changes in that resource. The hierarch/resister struggle is in part a competition between moral concepts and justifications, and that competition drives the emergence of new moral concepts and justifications, just as competition in other contexts generates innovations. Among the moral concepts generated by the struggle are the following: authority, legitimacy, aristocracy, the divine right of kings, the mandate of heaven, natural rights, civil and political rights, constitutionalism, the rule of law, sovereignty, collective self-determination, exploitation, oppression, and domination. (shrink)

Although there exist advantages to group-living in comparison to a solitary lifestyle, costs and gains of group-living may be unequally distributed among group members. Predation risk, vigilance levels and food intake may be unevenly distributed across group spatial geometry and certain within-group spatial positions may be more or less advantageous depending on the spatial distribution of these factors. In species characterized with dominance hierarchy, high-ranking individuals are commonly observed in advantageous spatial position. However, in complex social systems, individuals can develop (...) affiliative relationships that may balance the effect of dominance relationships in individual's spatial distribution. The objective of the present study is to investigate how the group spatial distribution of a semi-free ranging colony of Mandrills relates to its social organization. Using spatial observations in an area surrounding the feeding zone, we tested the three following hypothesis: (1) does dominance hierarchy explain being observed in proximity or far from a food patch? (2) Do affiliative associations also explain being observed in proximity or far from a food patch? (3) Do the differences in rank in the group hierarchy explain being co-observed in proximity of a food patch? Our results showed that high-ranking individuals were more observed in proximity of the feeding zone while low-ranking individuals were more observed at the boundaries of the observation area. Furthermore, we observed that affiliative relationships were also associated with individual spatial distributions and explain more of the total variance of the spatial distribution in comparison with dominance hierarchy. Finally, we found that individuals observed at a same moment in proximity of the feeding zone were more likely to be distant in the hierarchy while controlling for maternal kinship, age and sex similarity. This study brings some elements about how affiliative networks and dominance hierarchy are related to spatial positions in primates. (shrink)

The landscape of sport shows conspicuous discursive and material disparities between the responses to openly violent on-field transgressors and the responses to other kinds of transgressor, most notably drug users. The former gets off significantly lighter in terms of ideological framing and formal punishment. The latter—and drug users in particular—are typically demonised and heavily punished, whilst the former are regularly lionised, dramatised, celebrated and punished less severely. The preceding disparities cannot be upheld from the standpoint of morality in general or (...) from that of a Broad Internalist sport ethic. Consideration of the consequences, actions, motives and vices involved in the respective categories fails to support them. Nor is support provided by the notion that sports are tests of the physical skills and virtues that the obstacles presented are designed to foster and promote, and behaviour that threatens the opportunity to exercise those excellences or have competitions determined by them should be the subject of critical moral scrutiny. Openly violent on-field transgression does not fare at all well by the yardstick of Broad Internalism. Robust investigation of and ultimate change in the values underpinning the disparities is warranted. (shrink)

A quintessential challenge for any perceptual system is the need to focus on task-relevant information without being blindsided by unexpected, yet important information. The human visual system incorporates several solutions to this challenge, one of which is a reflexive covert attention system that is rapidly responsive to both the physical salience and the task-relevance of new information. This paper presents a model that simulates behavioral and neural correlates of reflexive attention as the product of brief neural attractor states that are (...) formed across the visual hierarchy when attention is engaged. Such attractors emerge from an attentional gradient distributed over a population of topographically organized neurons and serve to focus processing at one or more locations in the visual field, while inhibiting the processing of lower priority information. The model moves towards a resolution of key debates about the nature of reflexive attention, such as whether it is parallel or serial, and whether suppression effects are distributed in a spatial surround, or selectively at the location of distractors. Most importantly, the model develops a framework for understanding the neural mechanisms of visual attention as a spatiotopic decision process within a hierarchy and links them to observable correlates such as accuracy, reaction time, and the N2pc and PD components of the EEG. This last contribution is the most crucial for repairing the disconnect that exists between our understanding of behavioral and neural correlates of attention. (shrink)

Wolfhart Pannenberg's innovative account of the Trinity, in which the mutual self-distinction of the divine persons is also constitutive for the divinity of each, is an important corrective to one-sided views of Trinitarian relations which reductively account only for relations of origin. However, his account ties relationality to death and self-emptying in such a way that it becomes impossible to escape a hierarchical account of Trinitarian relations in which the differences between the persons collapse into an ordered relation that repeats (...) the pattern of the relations of origin. As a result, the most significant potential contribution of Trinitarian theology, its responsiveness to a reality that is internally differentiated yet non-competitive, is lost. This problem is the result of tying the inner-Trinitarian relations too closely to the cross, such that there has to be something in the divine life that can make the cross possible, a move that has become increasingly popular in recent Trinitarian theology. The inner-Trinitarian relations are then reduced to a single taxis which is not sufficiently flexible to respond to the various ways in which God interacts with the world as narrated in the Bible. (shrink)

Early to mid-nineteenth-century America experienced a cultural fascination with oneness or monism--the notion that individuals are not separate from divinity but, rather, that the individual soul is an incarnation of the universal soul. Everything is one. This buzz of monism was traceable in part to translations of the Vedas by Indian philosopher Rammohun Roy and found some of its fullest expression in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. This oneness tradition is what animates Jeremy David Engels--not only (...) because we can't understand Emerson, Whitman, and other American philosophers without it, but because Engels thinks this tradition offers a way of thinking and acting that can meet the ethical challenges of everyday democracy in the present. The Ethics of Oneness is not only a brilliant study of the centrality of the Bhagavad Gita in the philosophy of Emerson and Whitman and a compelling reception history of the Gita in America, it is also a constructive project of moral and political philosophy intended to open possibilities for the present. If the lessons of oneness are taken to heart, Engels thinks, it ispossible to counter the pervasive, problematic American ideals of separation, competition, hierarchy, exclusion, and domination. For both Emerson and Whitman, American democracy requires a firm ontological foundation of oneness that is beyond question if it is to survive and thrive. (shrink)

The concept of dominance is used in the behavioral and biological sciences to describe outcomes in a variety of competitive interactions. In some taxa, a history of agonistic encounters among individuals modifies the course of future agonistic encounters such that the existence of a certain type of relationship can be inferred. If one is to characterize such relationships as dominance, however, then they must be distinguished from other kinds of interaction patterns for which the term tends to be used, (...) as well as from factors such as territoriality and "trained" winners and losers, which may also influence the expression of agonistic behavior. Operational definitions based on causal, functional, evolutionary, and ontogenetic considerations have been proposed. Reliability and validity problems have been discussed, but the dominance concept has proved useful despite methodological difficulties. The confusion of dominance relationships (which involve two or more individuals) with dominance ranks (which are assigned to a single individual) has obscured the possible evolutionary basis of dominance relationships. If benefits accrue to dominant members of pairs, then those attributes which allow an animal to establish dominance can be selected. Dominance per se and dominance ranks, on the other hand, cannot be genetically transmitted since they constitute relationships with other individuals rather than absolute attributes. Dominance rankings in particular may be useful for describing behavioral patterns within a group, but they may reflect our own ability to count rather than any important variable in social organization. (shrink)

Females' tendency to place a high value on protecting their own lives enhanced their reproductive success in the environment of evolutionary adaptation because infant survival depended more upon maternal than on paternal care and defence. The evolved mechanism by which the costs of aggression (and other forms of risk taking) are weighted more heavily for females may be a lower threshold for fear in situations which pose a direct threat of bodily injury. Females' concern with personal survival also has implications (...) for sex differences in dominance hierarchies because the risks associated with hierarchy formation in nonbonded exogamous females are not offset by increased reproductive success. Hence among females, disputes do not carry implications for status with them as they do among males, but are chiefly connected with the acquisition and defence of scarce resources. Consequently, female competition is more likely to take the form of indirect aggression or low-level direct combat than among males. Under patriarchy, men have held the power to propagate images and attributions which are favourable to the continuance of their control. Women's aggression has been viewed as a gender-incongruent aberration or dismissed as evidence of irrationality. These cultural interpretations have evolutionarily based sex differences by a process of imposition which stigmatises the expression of aggression by females and causes women to offer exculpatory (rather than justificatory) accounts of their own aggression. (shrink)

Reinforcement Learning is a promising technique for creating agents that can be applied to real world problems. The most important features of RL are trial-and-error search and delayed reward. Thus, agents randomly act in the early learning stage. However, such random actions are impractical for real world problems. This paper presents a novel model of RL agents. A feature of our learning agent model is to integrate the Analytic Hierarchy Process into the standard RL agent model, which consists of three (...) modules: state recognition, learning, and action selecting modules. In our model, the AHP module is designed with {\\it primary knowledge} that humans intrinsically have in a process until a goal state is attained. This integration aims at increasing promising actions instead of completely random actions in the standard RL algorithms. Profit Sharing is adopted as a RL method for our model, since PS is known to be useful even in multi-agent environments. To evaluate our approach in a multi-agent environment, we test a PS RL method with our agent model on a pursuit problem in a grid world. Computational results show that our approach outperforms the standard PS in terms of learning speed in the earlier stages of learning. We also show that the learning performance of our approach is superior at least competitive to that of the standard one in the final stages of learning. (shrink)

The notion of mutual aid, which Peter Kropotkin introduced in the 19th century, goes against the logic of competition as a natural condition, and instead shows how mutual aid is a more important factor to consider for the survival and flourishing of a group. The best cooperation strategies allow organisms to adapt to different types of changes in their environment—and we have witnessed a lot of these changes since the start of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This propensity towards cooperation is not (...) a foreign concept, despite how it seems to be overshadowed by individualism in Western societies. These reflections then lead us to believe it is possible to apply the anarchist philosophical principle of mutual aid to our social organizations, rather than giving priority, again and again, to competition and professional hierarchies, especially in healthcare systems, and particularly in hospitals were the majority of nurses work. For us, anarchist philosophical precepts, including but not limited to mutual aid, can be the key to a more adequate functioning of healthcare institutions. Anarchism can help to imagine the first steps needed to take to gradually move away from ideologies that encourage competition, professional hierarchies, and illegitimate authority. In this paper, we will first explore some anarchist philosophical precepts before turning to mutual aid as it is currently conceptualised, then highlight several concrete ways it is visible in nursing, as well as ways it can be applied in hospitals, and healthcare systems. (shrink)

Competitive sport is not governed by luck egalitarianism. Luck egalitarianism is intended to minimise or prevent all inequalities that arise from luck, as these inequalities are judged to be unjust. Sigmund Loland1 correctly notes that there are elements of luck egalitarian practice in sports: competitors must run the same distances, use the same equipment and so on. However, these measures of standardisation do not level the playing field, because competitors are at liberty to use as much money as they (...) can to further their own chances of success. They may buy the best equipment they or their sponsors can afford; they may spend money to access world-class training facilities; they may employ the most expensive coaches, physiotherapists and nutritionists; they may use personal wealth to minimise the need to earn money and maximise training time. Differences in wealth lead to enormous inequalities between competitors, and these differences largely come down to the luck of their position in various socioeconomic hierarchies. Every sportsperson is affected by socioeconomic luck. Luck plays a role in other ways, too: an archer’s shot is affected by a gust of wind; an athlete’s hopes are dashed by injury; a team’s path through a tournament depends on the initial draw. For a luck egalitarian, …. (shrink)

For thousands of years, various spiritual traditions and social activists have appealed to humans to adopt compassionate ways of living to address the suffering of life. Yet, along with our potential for compassion and self-sacrifice, the last few thousand years of wars, slavery, tortures, and holocausts have shown humans can be extraordinarily selfish, callous, vicious, and cruel. While there has been considerable engagement with these issues, particularly in the area of moral psychology and ethics, this paper explores an evolutionary analysis (...) relating to evolved resource-regulation strategies that can be called “care and share” versus “control and hold.” Control and hold are typical of primates that operate through intimidatory social hierarchies. Care and share are less common in non-human primates, but evolved radically in humans during our hunter-gatherer stage when our ancestors lived in relatively interdependent, small, mobile groups. In these groups, individualistic, self-focus, and self-promoting control and hold strategies (trying to secure and accumulate more than others) were shunned and shamed. These caring and sharing hunter-gatherer lifestyles also created the social contexts for the evolution of new forms of childcare and complex human competencies for language, reasoning, planning, empathy, and self-awareness. As a result of our new ‘intelligence’, our ancestors developed agriculture that reduced mobility, increased group size, resource availability and storage, and resource competition. These re-introduced competing for, rather than sharing of, resources and advantaged those who now pursue (often aggressively) control and hold strategies. Many of our most typical forms of oppressive and anti-compassionate behavior are the result of these strategies. Rather than (just) thinking aboutindividualscompeting with one another, we can also consider these different resource regulation strategies ascompeting within populationsshaping psychophysiological patterns; both wealth and poverty change the brain. One of the challenges to creating a more compassionate society is to find ways to create the social and economic conditions that regulate control and hold strategies and promote care and share. No easy task. (shrink)

This book uses game theory to analyse the creation, evolution and function of economic and social institutions. The author illustrates his analysis by describing the organic or unplanned evolution of institutions such as the conventions of war, the use of money, property rights and oligopolistic pricing conventions. Professor Schotter begins by linking his work with the ideas of the philosophers Rawls, Nozick and Lewis. Institutions are regarded as regularities in the behaviour of social agents, which the agents themselves tacitly create (...) to solve a wide variety of recurrent problems. The repetitive nature of the problems permits them to be described as a recurrent game or 'supergame.' The agents use these regularities as informational devices to supplement the information contained in competitive prices. The final chapter explores the applicability of this theory, first by relating it to previous work on the theory of teams, hierarchies, and non-maximizing decision theory, and then by using it to provide a new approach to a variety of questions both within and outside economics. (shrink)

Animals have evolved complex foraging strategies to obtain a nutritionally balanced diet and associated fitness benefits. Recent research combining state-space models of nutritional geometry with agent-based models (ABMs), show how nutrient targeted foraging behavior can also influence animal social interactions, ultimately affecting collective dynamics and group structures. Here we demonstrate how social network analyses can be integrated into such a modeling framework and provide a practical analytical tool to compare experimental results with theory. We illustrate our approach by examining the (...) case of nutritionally mediated dominance hierarchies. First we show how nutritionally explicit ABMs that simulate the emergence of dominance hierarchies can be used to generate social networks. Importantly the structural properties of our simulated networks bear similarities to dominance networks of real animals (where conflicts are not always directly related to nutrition). Finally, we demonstrate how metrics from social network analyses can be used to predict the fitness of agents in these simulated competitive environments. Our results highlight the potential importance of nutritional mechanisms in shaping dominance interactions in a wide range of social and ecological contexts. Nutrition likely influences social interactions in many species, and yet a theoretical framework for exploring these effects is currently lacking. Combining social network analyses with computational models from nutritional ecology may bridge this divide, representing a pragmatic approach for generating theoretical predictions for nutritional experiments. (shrink)

We argue that broad, simplegeneralizations, not specifically linked tocontingencies, will rarely approach truth in ecologyand evolutionary biology. This is because mostinteresting phenomena have multiple, interactingcauses. Instead of looking for single universaltheories to explain the great diversity of naturalsystems, we suggest that it would be profitable todevelop general explanatory frameworks. A frameworkshould clearly specify focal levels. The process orpattern that we wish to study defines our level offocus. The set of potential and actual states at thefocal level interacts with conditions at (...) thecontiguous lower and upper levels of organization,through sets of many-to-one and one-to-manyconnections. The number of initiating conditions andtheir permutations at the lower level define thepotential states at the focal level, whereas theactual state is constrained by the upper-levelboundary conditions. The most useful generalizationsare explanatory frameworks, which are road maps tosolutions, rather than solutions themselves. Suchframeworks outline what is understood about boundaryconditions and initiating conditions so that aninvestigator can pick and choose what is required toeffectively understand a specific event or situation. We discuss these relationships in terms of examplesinvolving sex ratio and mating behavior, competitivehierarchies, insect life-histories and the evolutionof sex. (shrink)

This paper offers a way to construe personality as the relatively stable hierarchy of one's desires: the fact that one prefers solitude to competition , finds dishonesty more aversive than arrogance , and so on. Several measures of the intensity of a desire are discussed: the alacrity with which one seeks to satisfy it, the persistence in one's efforts to do so, and other displays of one's willingness to sacrifice for its satisfaction. A method is offered for distinguishing preferences which (...) are features of personality from others which are insufficiently stable or otherwise to be explained. Finally the usefulness of this conception for moral theory is explored. Specifically, I argue that those attracted to utilitarianism have here an unusually congenial way of thinking about moral character, and a way to meet certain leading objections to their view. (shrink)

This work is an argument for the notion of knowledge production. It is an attempt at an epistemological and historiographic position which treats all facets and modes of knowledge as products of human practices, a position developed and demonstrated through a reconstruction of two defining episodes in the scientific career of Robert Hooke : the composition of his Programme for explaining planetary orbits as inertial motion bent by centripetal force, and his development of the spring law in relation to his (...) invention of the spring watch. ;The revival of interest in the history of experimental and technological knowledge has accorded Hooke much more attention than before. However, dependent on the conception of knowledge as a representation of reality, this scholarship is bound to the categories of influence and competition, and concentrates mainly on Hooke's numerous passionate exchanges with Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens. I favourably explore the neo-pragmatist criticism of representation epistemology in the writing of Richard Rorty and Ian Hacking. This criticism exposes the conventional portrayal of Hooke as "a mechanic of genius, rather than a scientist" as a reification of the social hierarchy between Hooke's Royal Society employers and his artisan-experimenters employees. ;However, Rorty and Hacking's efforts to do away with the image of the human knower as an enclosed realm of 'ideas' have not been completed. Undertaking this unfinished philosophical task, my main strategy is to erase the false gap between knowledge which is clearly produced--practical, technological and experimental, 'know how', and knowledge which we still think of as representation--theoretical 'knowing that'. I present Hooke, Newton and Huygens as craftsmen, who, employing various resources, labor to manufacture material and theoretical artifacts. Eschewing the category of independent facts awaiting discovery, I attempt to compare practices and techniques rather than to adjudicate priority claims, replacing ideas which 'develop', 'inspire', and 'influence', with tools and skills which are borrowed, appropriated and modified for new uses. ;This approach enables tracing Hooke's creation of his Programme from his microscopy, and reconstructing his use of springs to structure a theory of matter. With his unique combination of technical and speculative talents Hooke comes to personify the relations between the theoretical-linguistic and the experimental-technological in their full complexity. (shrink)

My main purpose here is to provide an account of context selection in utterance understanding in terms of the role played by schemata and goals in top-down processing. The general idea is that information is organized hierarchically, with items iteratively organized in chunks—here called “schemata”—at multiple levels, so that the activation of any items spreads to schemata that are the most accessible due to previous experience. The activation of a schema, in turn, activates its other components, so as to predict (...) a likely context for the original item. Since each input activates its own schemata, conflicting schemata compete with (and inhibit) each other, while multiple activations of a schema raise its likelihood to win the competition. There is therefore a double movement—with bottom-up activation of schemata enabling top-down prediction of other contextual components—triggered by multiple sources. Another claim of the paper is that goals are represented by schemata placed at the highest-levels of the executive hierarchy, in accordance with Fuster’s model of the brain as a hierarchically organized perception action cycle. This account can be considered, in part at least, a development of ideas contained in Relevance Theory, though it may imply that some other claims of the theory are in need of revision. Therefore, a secondary purpose of the paper is a contribution to the analysis of that theory. (shrink)

We provide an economic assessment of the operation of schooling quasi-markets, re-interpreting the findings of the mainly sociologically-based empirical research. We find that economic analysis is complementary to that of sociology, providing further explanations for the failure of greater competition to increase the diversity of provision and challenge traditional school hierarchies.

The self-worth of political communities is often understood to be an expression of their position in a hierarchy of power; if so, then the desire for self-worth is a source of competition and conflict in international relations. In early modern German natural law theories, one finds the alternative view, according to which duties of esteem toward political communities should reflect the degree to which they fulfill the functions of civil government. The present article offers a case study, examining the views (...) concerning confederation rights and the resulting duties of esteem in diplomatic relations developed by Christoph Besold (1577–1638). Besold defends the view that confederations including dependent communities—such as the Hanseatic League—could fulfill a stabilizing political function. He also uses sixteenth-century conceptions concerning the acquisition of sovereignty rights through prescription of immemorial time. Both strands of argument lead to the conclusion that the envoys of dependent communities can have the right to be recognized as ambassadors, with all the duties of esteem that follow from this recognition. (shrink)

The self-worth of political communities is often understood to be an expression of their position in a hierarchy of power; if so, then the desire for self-worth is a source of competition and conflict in international relations. In early modern German natural law theories, one finds the alternative view, according to which duties of esteem toward political communities should reflect the degree to which they fulfill the functions of civil government. The present article offers a case study, examining the views (...) concerning confederation rights and the resulting duties of esteem in diplomatic relations developed by Christoph Besold (1577–1638). Besold defends the view that confederations including dependent communities—such as the Hanseatic League—could fulfill a stabilizing political function. He also uses sixteenth-century conceptions concerning the acquisition of sovereignty rights through prescription of immemorial time. Both strands of argument lead to the conclusion that the envoys of dependent communities can have the right to be recognized as ambassadors, with all the duties of esteem that follow from this recognition. (shrink)

This paper uses Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to develop tools for analyzing interdisciplinary scientific fields. Interdisciplinary fields are scientific spaces where no single form of scientific capital has a monopoly and therefore multiple forms of scientific capital constitute the structures and stakes of scientific competition. Scientists compete to accumulate and define forms of scientific capital and also to set the rates of exchange between them. The paper illustrates this framework by applying it to the interdisciplinary field of behavior genetics. Most (...) behavior geneticists envision their participation in the field as a means to compete for scientific capital in other fields. However, the scientific capital of behavior genetics has different values for scientists attempting to deploy it in different neighboring fields. These values depend on situations in each field and the ways behavior genetics mediates relationships among them. The pattern of relationships of exchange helps explain the social hierarchy and several features of knowledge production within behavior genetics. (shrink)

This study attempts to refine and test a theory of social influences on ethical decisions of journalists. The theoretical model proposes that several social factors influence any given decision, and that a hierarchy of influences assigns relative value to each: individual, small group, organization, competition, occupation, extramedia, and law. Print and broadcast journalists reacted to 3 hypothetical scenarios that raised ethical problems. The journalists then rated the salience of various reasoning statements, each representing 1 of the 7 social influences. No (...) single source of ethical guidance appeared; in many cases different influences emerge as powerful under different circumstances. But of the 7 proposed influences, 5 showed consistent strength in predicting the decision the journalist makes. The individual influence was the weakest of the 7, despite its prominent strength in the literature. The organizational and small-group strength suggests company-level strategies for media policy-makers who wish to increase journalists'ethical awareness. Overall, the study seems to challenge a traditional assumption that in ethical dilemmas journalists are autonomous moral agents, acting on the basis of their own values alone. The data support the notion of a far more dynamic and complex pattern of social influences. (shrink)

Both behavioral ecological and social anthropological analyses of polygynous marriage tend to emphasize the importance of competition among men in acquisition of mates, whereas the strategic options to women both prior to and after the establishment of a marriage have been neglected. Focusing on African marriage systems that are in some senses analogous to resource-defense polygyny, I first review the evidence of reproductive costs of polygyny to women. Then I discuss why the conflict of interests between men and women over (...) mate number is often likely to be settled in favor of men. Using East African ethnographic data I examine the strategic responses of women and their families to polygynous marriage, focusing on four topics: mate choice (Kipsigis), attitudes toward incoming wives (Kipsigis), labor allocation and cooperation (comparative data, Kipsigis), and use of parental wealth (Datoga). The results of these quantitative analyses suggest that through a combination of judicious marriage choice and strategic responses within marriage, polygyny need not be costly to women in resource-defense polygynous systems. The conclusion is that a hierarchy of questions need to be addressed in the analysis of any polygynous marriage system. (shrink)

The gradual crowding out of singleton and small team science by large team endeavors is challenging key features of research culture. It is therefore important for the future of scientific practice to reflect upon the individual scientist’s ethical responsibilities within teams. To facilitate this reflection we show labor force trends in the US revealing a skewed growth in academic ranks and increased levels of competition for promotion within the system; we analyze teaming trends across disciplines and national borders demonstrating why (...) it is becoming difficult to distribute credit and to avoid conflicts of interest; and we use more than a century of Nobel prize data to show how science is outgrowing its old institutions of singleton awards. Of particular concern within the large team environment is the weakening of the mentor–mentee relation, which undermines the cultivation of virtue ethics across scientific generations. These trends and emerging organizational complexities call for a universal set of behavioral norms that transcend team heterogeneity and hierarchy. To this end, our expository analysis provides a survey of ethical issues in team settings to inform science ethics education and science policy. (shrink)

This paper clarifies the usage of Albert Hirschman’s categories of market behaviour as of exit and voice in debates about workplace democracy by taking seriously his critique of the neoclassical analysis of competition. Pro-market liberals are generally hostile to the idea of workplace democracy and tend to favour top-down hierarchies as a way of organising labour. This hostility is generally inspired by the neoclassical analysis of exploitation and efficiency, which leads them to defend distributions achieved through exit-based competitive (...) equilibria. Following Hirschman, I propose to consider a hypothetical alternative: a democratic equilibrium, reached through the use of voice. I show that it would present the same appealing characteristics than its competitive counterpart while also accounting for the non-ideal conditions in which markets operate. Support for free markets should entail support for workplace democracy minimally understood as a strengthening of voice. (shrink)

Moral foundations theory (MFT) proposes the existence of innate psychological systems, which would have been subjected to selective forces over the course of evolution. One approach for evaluating MFT, therefore, is to consider the proposed psychological foundations in relation to the reconstructed Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. This study draws upon ethnographic data on nomadic forager societies to evaluate MFT. Moral foundations theory receives support only regarding the Caring/harm and Fairness/cheating foundations but not regarding the proposed Loyalty/betrayal and Authority/subversion foundations. These (...) latter two proposed foundations would seem to reflect the historical classic assumptions of modernity, involving self-interest, competition, individualism, hierarchy, authority and so forth. Studying the ethical dimensions of nomadic forager societies can highlight our biases about the foundations of morality, some of which may be steeped in particularist Western political and social traditions. Some recent developments from cosmopolitanism are discussed as an alternative evolving worldview that parallels nomadic forager ethos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tokyo School of Philosophy? A Preliminary ReflectionThomas P. KasulisIntroductionPhilosophical circles worldwide have recognized the so-called Kyoto School for decades. Can we also speak of a modern Tokyo School and, if so, of its distinguishing nature? That question drives most articles in this journal’s special issue. Before beginning my inquiry, however, I have two preliminary questions. First, why is it important to ask whether there is, was, or even ever (...) will be something legitimately considered a Tokyo School? Second, how do the Japanese think in terms of schools, and what words might specifically designate a school of philosophy? I will try to answer these questions, not in an abstract or general way, but one that uses the Japanese cultural context for its point of departure.Japanese Regionalism and Japanese PhilosophyLet us start with the first issue: why ask whether there is a Tokyo School? One possibility, of course, is regional bragging rights between Kansai and Kantō as we find in, for example, sumō rivalries. That may seem like a joke, but we need to go back only a couple of centuries for concrete evidence of just such a competitive spirit. Examine this broadside published in Japan during the height of the Edo period.1 [End Page 5] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.1.Gakusha kakuryoku shōbu tsuki hyōban (学者角力勝負附評判) (Standings Assigned to a Sumō Match of Scholars).As a sumō program, this banzuke divides the philosophical competitors between those from East Japan (Edo, today’s Tokyo) and West Japan (Kyoto-Osaka).2 Along the top are the typical sumō hierarchies of ranks (ōzeki, sekiwake, komusubi, etc.),3 but here they correspond not to wrestlers but philosophers. In this version, for example, Kumazawa Banzan 熊沢蕃山 is the ōzeki and Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 the sekiwake of the East, while the equivalents in the West are Arai Hakuseki 新井白石 and Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁斎.Such artifacts confirm a long history of East–West philosophical rivalries within Japan, but that hardly justifies our quest for a Tokyo School. Still, let us not too quickly dismiss the banzuke as simply an idiosyncratic curiosity; it has something more to teach us. If nothing else, it shows that at least in the Edo period, some intellectuals assumed a correlation between geographical location and philosophical perspective. That brings to light two common [End Page 6] present-day misconceptions, one about Japanese culture and one about philosophy.The first misconception is that Japanese culture is monolithic, or if it is not, that the Japanese like to think of their identity in that way. That mistaken view overlooks a potent force shaping Japanese identity: regionalism. The Japanese delight in celebrating the distinctive foods, crafts, scenery, dialects, festivals, and social customs of the different locales within the country. Even today, weeklong regional themes play out on morning TV shows as they broadcast on site from different locales throughout Japan. Undoubtedly a marketing ploy to encourage tourism, the shows also reinforce the Japanese sense of regional differences within their country. Grocery or department stores join in with weeklong “matsuri” campaigns dedicated to particular Japanese regions, highlighting sales of specialties in foods and crafts. If you go on a trip within Japan, your family and coworkers expect you to bring back omiyage as gifts—souvenirs or edibles distinctive to the place you visited. As a convenience for the harried traveler, train stations sell the omiyage associated with the specific locale.The recognition of regional differences within a single national identity traces back at least to the Nara period when the newly established central government began regularly compiling Fudoki 風土記 for each of the provinces. Those almanacs or gazetteers included details about the local demography, climate, agriculture, topography, dialects, local customs, festivals, folklore, and so forth. The East vs. West, Kantō vs. Kansai, or Tokyo (Edo) vs. Kyoto-Osaka contrast that interests us here became most prominent in the Edo period as Tokyo vied with Kyoto for prominence as the cultural center of Japan.4Centuries before anyone identified a “Kyoto School” of philosophy, the banzuke suggests that at least some intellectuals assumed that philosophizing in Kyoto-Osaka differed in some respects from philosophizing in Edo. This does not imply... (shrink)

The world in which we live is largely the product of the rise, competition, and fall of empires. This chapter examines European, and principally British, ideologies of imperialism during the last two hundred years. The chapter starts by distinguishing between imperial imaginaries, ideologies, and theories, before dissecting elements of the western imperial imaginary, focusing in particular on notions of civilizational hierarchy. The rest of the article examines three ideal-typical aspects of imperial ideology: justification; governance; and resistance. Ideologies of justification provide (...) reasons for supporting or upholding imperial activity, seeking to legitimate the creation, reproduction, or expansion of empire. Ideologies of governance articulate the modalities of imperial rule in specific contexts. Finally, ideologies of resistance reject imperial control. (shrink)

A number of commentators have suggested that the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regime of political economy has had positive consequences for sociology, including the reinforcement of critical sociologies (Burawoy, 2005; Steinmetz, 2005). This article argues that, although disciplinary hierarchies have been destabilized, what is emerging is a new form of instrumental knowledge, that of applied interdisciplinary social studies. This development has had a particular impact upon sociology. Savage and Burrows (2007), for example, argue that sociological knowledge (...) no longer has a privileged claim to authority and is increasingly in competition with social knowledge produced by the private sector and agencies of the public sector. The response of many sociologists to such claims has been to reassert the importance of the discipline as the purveyor of critically relevant knowledge about society. The article traces how the idea of internal critique within sociology has developed to embrace ‘knowing capitalism’ (Thrift, 2005), at the same time as declaring the impossibility of sociological knowledge. The critique of sociology also becomes the critique of critique and what remains is the instrumentalization of knowledge. Where many sociologists continue to claim a special interest in critical knowledge, the article suggests that, in contrast, we potentially confront the problem that such knowledge may itself be facing a crisis of reproduction. (shrink)

The paper presents a formal model of the system of number representations as a multiplicity of mental number axes with a hierarchical structure. The hierarchy is determined by the mind as it acquires successive types of mental number axes generated by virtue of some algebraic mechanisms. Three types of algebraic structures, responsible for functioning these mechanisms, are distinguished: BASAN-structures, CASAN-structures and CAPPAN-structures. A foundational order holds between these structures. CAPPAN-structures are derivative from CASAN-structures which are extensions of BASAN-structures. The constructed (...) formal model unifies two competitive conceptions of cognitive arithmetic: namely, the conception of the mental number line and the conception of parallel individuation. The paper is the continuation of a paper entitled Representational structures of arithmetical thinking, in which rich empirical evidence supporting the model is presented. The main result achieved in the present paper may be philosophically interpreted as an attempt to formalize the Kantian conception of the pure idea of time, understood as the a priori form of human arithmetical thinking. In this way, our theory may be comprehended as a result of applying the hard method of logical reconstruction of fundamental epistemological categories. (shrink)

Why do men and women compete? And what makes them compete more or less? An answer to the first question follows directly from Darwin. If Homo sapiens, like other species, is a product of natural selection, then we should have evolved to compete in order to reproduce. An answer to the second question follows from more recent versions of Darwinism. People, like other organisms, are likely to compete socially - to form dominance hierarchies - to the extent that it (...) is costly for subordinates to flee ecologically. This paper first reviews evidence that winners at political competition have consistently won at reproductive competition. Next, it documents the slow shift toward declining political competition - toward democracy, and toward declining reproductive competition - toward monogamy, in the course of Western history. Last, it offers a model of what might account for that change. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker Doing Academia Differently: “I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society” A great deal of harm is being done by belief in the virtuousness of work. — Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness” We are committed to doing (...) academia in particular ways, and not in others. — Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective I had decided that becoming a university professor might be a good fit; friends and colleagues had suggested that I would be valuable to a university, so I prepared for a restructuring of my family life.1 I read Tokarczyk and Fay’s Working-Class Women in the Academy and Babcock and Laschever’s Women Don’t Ask to gather understandings of the milieu I was entering. I now see that my preparations had not shined sufficient light on the social and structural factors that organize the contemporary university.... As it turns out, the restructuring of our lives within the working conditions, priorities, and rationalities of this professional milieu triggered unanticipated and painful effects.... Had Mountz published her article “Women on the Edge” before I decided on a career migration into the university system and, had I been fortunate enough to discover it, I would have made other career choices.2 1. The authors, who describe themselves as the Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective, indicate their personal narratives in this text using italics. 2. Michelle M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds., Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Bisaillon et al. 131 Introduction: Personal, Professional, and Political We are seven women who met at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance, Switzerland, in July 2017, where we had been selected to spend a few months as research fellows. This competitively awarded opportunity is open to persons fluent in English, from graduate students to senior scholars, with or without academic appointment, whose scholarship advances knowledge about the ethical, legal, and social implications of health and biotechnologies.3 When we found ourselves on the shores of Lake Leman with the gift of time, we began opening up to each other in unexpected, compelling ways. Whatever our vantage point in the hierarchy of the university system, we discovered that there was remarkable overlap in our experiences as women in academia. When we began writing, our authoring team was composed of two graduate students, four faculty members at the assistant professor rank, and one full professor, residing in Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our plural subject position led us to underexplored and imaginative responses to broader social issues, which we share in this article as the “Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective.” We analyze our experiences from our standpoint as women health researchers laboring in the academy. Our similarities and differences were exciting entry points for discussion and analysis: we are all of eastern or western European descent. We have different countries of birth, mother tongues, ages, disciplinary training and career trajectories, relationships to chronic illness and disability, marital status, and experiences with parenthood. We bring the troubles and contradictions we experience as academics into conversation with each other. We seek to productively illustrate and emphasize that the tensions we see around us, and also feel within us, arise as a result of how the academic system is organized, produced, and sustained across time, place, and space. Press, 2003); Alison Mountz, “Women on the Edge: Workplace Stress at Universities in North America,” The Canadian Geographer 60, no. 2 (2016): 205–18. 3. We experienced this fellowship as a valuable opportunity. But we also recognized that our access to it was mediated by social, economic, or other obligations. As countries in the global north continue to tighten their national border regimes, marginalized academics, especially those from the global South, were less likely to succeed in getting a Swiss visa or securing relevant temporal and economic resources. 132 Bisaillon et al. The promise here, we posit... (shrink)

The network concept is increasingly used for the description of complex systems. Here, we summarize key aspects of the evolvability and robustness of the hierarchical network set of macromolecules, cells, organisms and ecosystems. Listing the costs and benefits of cooperation as a necessary behaviour to build this network hierarchy, we outline the major hypothesis of the paper: the emergence of hierarchical complexity needs cooperation leading to the ageing (i.e. gradual deterioration) of the constituent networks. A stable environment develops cooperation leading (...) to over‐optimization, and forming an ‘always‐old’ network, which accumulates damage, and dies in an apoptosis‐like process. A rapidly changing environment develops competition forming a ‘forever‐young’ network, which may suffer an occasional over‐perturbation exhausting system resources, and causing death in a necrosis‐like process. Giving a number of examples we demonstrate how cooperation evokes the gradual accumulation of damage typical to ageing. Finally, we show how various forms of cooperation and consequent ageing emerge as key elements in all major steps of evolution from the formation of protocells to the establishment of the globalized, modern human society. (shrink)

Since the last decades of the Republic and in the early Empire, a refined lifestyle in general, the consumption of luxury goods imported from all over the known world and the competitive increase of refinement of the preparation of extravagant foodstuffs in particular became part and parcel of the set of cultural strategies with which social distinction and hierarchies, reputation and rank within the élite were permanently re-negotiated and re-constructed. This paper explores the interdependence and particular dynamics of (...) these processes. (shrink)

In order to dismantle the racial and social hierarchy that is the legacy of apartheid, South Africa has followed the lead of Western liberal democracies andappropriated the discourse of affirmative action. This paper argues that current affirmative action policy fails in significant ways because it paradoxically ignores the concrete social and historical conditions of race and racism in South Africa and simply aims to normalize competition among abstract individuals by using a principle of racial neutrality The author argues that social (...) justice will only be achieved in South Africa in a context of deliberative democracy, where effective affirmative action aims at social cooperation, full participation of non-whites in decision-making, and the elimination of race as a relevant social category. (shrink)

In order to dismantle the racial and social hierarchy that is the legacy of apartheid, South Africa has followed the lead of Western liberal democracies andappropriated the discourse of affirmative action. This paper argues that current affirmative action policy fails in significant ways because it paradoxically ignores the concrete social and historical conditions of race and racism in South Africa and simply aims to normalize competition among abstract individuals by using a principle of racial neutrality The author argues that social (...) justice will only be achieved in South Africa in a context of deliberative democracy, where effective affirmative action aims at social cooperation, full participation of non-whites in decision-making, and the elimination of race as a relevant social category. (shrink)

Characterizing science as a public good, as Steve Fuller notes, is a part of an ideological construal of science, linked to a particular portrayal of science in the postwar era that was designed to provide a rationale for the funding of pure or basic science. The image of science depended on the idea of scientists as autonomous truth-seekers. But the funding system, and other hierarchies, effectively eliminated this autonomy, and bound scientists tightly to a competitive system in which (...) the opportunity to pursue ideas in science depended on peer approval in advance. Funding agencies then turned to assessments of impact. John Ziman had already recognized the effects of these changes in the nature of science, and characterized it as “reliable knowledge” produced on demand from funders. As the competition for funds increased, there were further changes in the nature of science itself toward “reliable enough” knowledge. This made science into a “good”. but a good in the sense of results produced for funders, a transformation that left the original epistemic aims of science behind. (shrink)

Between 1900 and 1925, the American economy witnessed a remarkably successful effort to upgrade competition through associations. Unlike the prevailing interpretation of American industrialization, in which associations fell prey to antitrust and collective action problems, we find many associations that reinvented themselves from cartels to developmental associations. This transition marked two previously unrecognized varieties in economic institutions. In the first, associations joined markets and corporate hierarchies to create variety in American capitalism. In the second, associations used deliberation, cost accounting, (...) and benchmarking to enhance productivity and create varieties of collective governance. This article explains the origins of developmental associations, outlines their principles, traces their implementation in the commercial printing industry, and surveys their distribution and performance effects across 344 industries. Based on these findings, we revise conventional institutionalist assumptions about order and agency to make room for institutional diversity and actors’ capacities for reflexivity and learning. (shrink)

Development strategy of using modern portfolio theory focused on the short term. However, macroeconomic uncertainty and geopolitical environment makes their use ineffective. And challenge is to provide a reasonable balance between the short and long term profitability. Another issue, which is to some extent related to the previous observation is the absence in most matrices strategic recommendations for non-standard "behavior" of business units with dynamic analysis. This applies to the use of a relatively new tool matrix approach to development strategies (...) the company and its strategic business units - SPACE-analysis that also takes into account not forecasts of changes in the environment impact on the company. The aim of this paper is to develop methods of portfolio analysis on the basis of SPACE-dynamic analysis and formation of the list of possible strategic initiatives for definite basic trajectories of its strategic business units energy holding DTEK. Methods. SPACE-analysis, analytic hierarchy process, expert analysis. Results. The authors proposed a methodological approach to the implementation of dynamic SPACE-analysis company. The technique involves a strategic segmentation of the company, the formation of an expert group to assess reliable energy holding the current forecast period and on four aspects of SPACE-analysis. Also, using the analytic hierarchy determined by weighting the partial evaluation criteria. Methodology offers a "weighting" expert estimates within a particular group of partial criteria: sectors to "competitive advantage" and "stability branch" scale ratings is positive. The next phase involves the construction of vectors for the current and projected state holding that can be placed in one of four quadrants. Each quadrant has 4 basic strategic trajectory states, they can also be interpreted as a strategic gaps. In other words diagnosis of trajectories allows to identify and evaluate strategic gaps company or its individual business units according to specific criteria and receive partial numerical values of generalized gaps on key evaluation criteria. Conclusions. The authors matrix formed strategic decisions SPACE-dynamic analysis. The article graphically interpreted SPACE-analysis for the energy holding in three strategic business units. The study offers an integrated approach to the definition of policy recommendations for each strategic unit based on an analysis of superposition defined basic trajectories. S-trajectory or S-vectors can be represented as the sum of two vectors : numbers and appropriate call intensity factors relevant basic trajectories since their values determine the degree of contribution of each of these basic paths in the integrated S-vector is a vector strategic set of strategic business units to achieve strategic objectives, transfered into numerical form by partial criteria by expert predictive testing. These coefficients also make it possible to calculate the value of integrated strategic gaps generalized criteria. (shrink)

The critical concept of commodity fetishism and its developed forms of money and capital fetishism ground the contemporary shape of social life under the rule of capital. This chapter offers a novel interpretation based on Marx’s Capital, elucidating the oft-overlooked interconnection of the fetishism triptych that accounts for domination, as well as the normalisation of exploitation as experienced in capitalist life. In commodity fetishism, a market-based pseudo-social ‘thing-hood’ preponderates over commodity owners and producers, concealing the double inversion that constitutes the (...) ‘world of commodities’. Money’s fetish form makes it appear as the ‘sovereign’ of the commodity world, possessing the exclusive social power to establish the value hierarchy of all persons and objects relativised in regard to it. The universal condition of monetisation of the life process in bourgeois society necessitates the adoption of the competition principle, leading to the generalised formation of a commodity self, shaped by competitive individualism. The social separation of the great mass of commodity producers from the means of production and the consequent need to sell themselves as commodities in the form of wage labour constitutes the social basis of capital fetishism, through which the process of capital ‘valorisation’ is enfolded within the process of use value production, disappearing into its socio-material character and thus naturalised. Capital fetishism dissimulates the production of surplus value by social labour and constructs the harmonised appearance of an equitable contribution of ‘factors of production’ in the sharing of the surplus product, thereby obscuring distributional struggles over it. Such antagonisms over surplus undergird the logic of neoliberal capitalism’s two-pronged strategy, pursuing ‘deregulation of labour relations’ on the one hand and dismantling the welfare state on the other. (shrink)

This paper addresses the recent challenges faced by universities in teaching, research and outreach. A hermeneutical standpoint is proposed to perform a political analysis of emotions with the aim of revealing how pathological behaviors emerge in academic communities dealing with extreme social pressures. The discussion is developed in two parts: first, the concept of paranoia is characterized; second, appealing to the concept of psychological potentials, the institutional conditions in which paranoia emerges are discussed. The main conclusion of the article is (...) that in conditions of competition and hierarchy, human beings experience negative emotions and a diminished potential for capabilities development. (shrink)

In the years that have passed since publication of the Club of Rome's seminal report "Limits to Growth," the issues raised in terms of development, resource use and the environment have become ever more pressing. The potential of advances in science and technology to affect all aspects of life, including development, was then little understood. Today's unparalleled burst in scientific and technological creativity has given new options and opportunities to the world economic system. Central to this process is a series (...) of concepts which includes the scientification of technology, by which technology is increasingly generated and developed on scientific bases, the breaking down of interdisciplinary barriers and mankind's new found capacity literally to invent resources, leading to the emergence of whole categories of new materials. These changes make possible a new approach to economic growth, relying on decentralization and flexibility and the selection of technology mixes best suited to different socio-economic and cultural contexts. In parallel, the key importance above all of the information technologies is producing a dematerialization of goods, a trend exemplified by the shift from product oriented to function oriented industries. The new technologies of the 1980s are cross-fertilizing and self-disseminative. They are creating an exceptional number of innovative options in processes, products, services, organization and markets. Mature industrial sectors can undergo a process of rejuvenation to recover competitiveness by the grafting of advanced technologies onto traditional activities. The results are already evident in industrialized countries, such as Italy. The flexibility offered by the new technologies offers perhaps our best hope for a solution to the widening gap between rich and poor nations, contrary to the belief that identifies in advances in science and technology the seeds of a process of polarization dividing the world. The countries of the United States, Japan and Western Europe--the so-called Triad Power--dominate the emerging technologies and their applications. In fact, given the pace of today's technological revolution, developing countries are effectively excluded from active participation in the process of technological change. New technologies are not "off the peg," they have to be learned and controlled, to be introduced into an existing flexible system possessing trained manpower and an adequate capital base. Introduction into the Third World, where these essential conditions are frequently lacking, will not be a painless process. Technology transfer without adaptation is likely to have undesirable cultural and societal disadvantages. North and South are simultaneously experiencing radically different processes of evolution: the former, through restructuring and innovation; the latter, through the drive for more quantitative growth. Continuing stress on quantitative growth carries with it the risk that other goals--environmental quality, even the eradication of poverty--may suffer. Here lies the possibility that unless economic patterns change, today's imbalance between the haves and the have nots may be perpetuated or even consolidated. The countries of the North individually all face problems in addressing these issues. The international banking system is hamstrung with the problems of Third World debt. Primary producers no longer command high prices for their raw materials on world markets and so this source of development funding is also drying up. The need is therefore for a global approach. In each Third World situation, specific needs and requirements must be identified to be tackled via technology blending, whereby a mix of emerging and traditional technologies is selected to raise the quality of output to the levels now demanded by a sophisticated world economy. Another important area is that of energy, together with the worsening environmental and even climatic effects of energy policies. The need is for a long term strategic view to marshall the contribution new technologies can make to improving the lot of mankind in full respect for his environment. Technological change also implies societal change. In labor markets, labor mismatch creates pockets of employment which are difficult to eradicate. Yet, overall, the hope is that expanding economic horizons will create unlimited opportunities for new jobs and new skills. The key is education and training. A feed and feedback mechanism between education and the economy represents an intangible investment in the future. Economic growth, technological innovation, development of culture and society, have always moved together with synergism. Current changes are not so much just physical as conceptual. We are passing from a mechanical (or mechanistic) society to one that can be termed cybernetic. Causality, sequentiality and hierarchy are giving way to a functional interdependence at a systems level. Greater participation will produce more opportunities for self-fulfillment. As old social equilibria collapse, management of social change can be seen to be as important as management of technological change. The technological revolution has deep roots in Western culture. It is a liberating force that can lead to greater cultural enrichment. By understanding the changes now underway, we can ensure that the new pattern of society that emerges from exploitation of the new technologies retains man at its center and so benefits the whole of humanity. (shrink)