Introduction Social anxiety disorder (SAD) symptoms are maintained by cognitive biases, which are overestimations of the severity and likelihood of negative social events (cost/probability biases), and by sensitivity to rewards and punishments that are determined according to behavioral inhibition/behavioral activation systems (BIS/BAS). Cost/probability biases might activate the behavioral immune system and exacerbate the avoidance of social events. Earlier studies have proposed that low BIS or high BAS decrease SAD symptoms; BIS/BAS may even change the effects of cognitive biases on (...) SAD symptoms. Hence, the current study investigates the interaction effects of BIS/BAS and cost/probability biases on SAD symptoms. Method Seventy-six Japanese undergraduate students completed the Japanese version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), which comprises Fear and Avoidance subscales, the BIS/BAS Scale, and the Social Cost Probability Scale. Results A multiple regression analysis was performed to examine whether cost/probability biases, BIS/BAS, and their interactions affected SAD symptoms; following this, the main effects of cost bias and BIS were determined for LSAS-Fear (β =.64, p <.001; β =.33, p <.01) and LSAS-Avoidance (β =.49, p <.001; β =.35, p <.01). The interaction effect between cost bias and BAS was significant for LSAS-Avoidance (β = −.32, p <.05). Simple slope analysis showed that the slope of cost bias was significant for low-BAS individuals (β =.77, p <.001) but not for high-BAS individuals (β = −.21, n.s.). The interaction effect between probability bias and BAS was significant for LSAS-Avoidance (β =.40, p <.01) as well. Further, simple slope analysis revealed that the slope of probability bias was significant for low-BAS individuals (β = −.53, p <.05) but not for high-BAS individuals (β =.17, n.s.). Discussion The study found interesting results with respect to the avoidance of social events. Low-BAS individuals with high cost or low probability biases regarding social events may have a tendency to avoid social events. In contrast, if high-BAS individuals overestimate the cost of social events or underestimate the probability of social events, their anticipation of rewards might prevent them from avoiding social events. (shrink)

The paper describes a methodology to be used for analysis and design of human activity systems. The methodology is based on an analysis of the decision settings whereas most other decision analysis methodologies are analysing the process. The decision concept is analysed and discussed. A distinction between programmed and programmable as well as non-programmed and non-programmable decisions is proposed. A classification of different information types for decision making is presented. A methodology based on a systemic and systematic analysis of (...) the information requirements of an organization is proposed. This methodology also indicates organizational discrepancies and information imbalances. The methodology focuses the settings of the decisions on all levels of organizations. The methodology can be regarded as a dynamic, learning system. The author proposes further research on the individuals decision making abilities. (shrink)

Lockean views of personal identity maintain that we are essentially persons who persist diachronically by virtue of being psychologically continuous with our former selves. In this article, I present a novel objection to this variant of psychological accounts, which is based on neurophysiological characteristics of the brain. While the mental states that constitute said psychological continuity reside in the cerebral hemispheres, so that for the former to persist only the upper brain must remain intact, being conscious additionally requires that a (...) structure originating in the brainstem—the ascending reticular activating system—be functional. Hence, there can be situations in which even small brainstem lesions render individuals irreversibly comatose and thus forever preclude access to their mental states, while the neural correlates of the states themselves are retained. In these situations, Lockeans are forced to regard as fulfilled their criterion of diachronic persistence since psychological continuity, as they construe it, is not disrupted. Deeming an entity that is never again going to have any mental experiences to be a person, however, is an untenable position for a psychological account to adopt. In their current form, Lockean views of personal identity are therefore incompatible with human neurophysiology. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a novel mnemonic, ACTIVE, inspired by Mason's 1985 PAPA mnemonic, which will help researchers and IT professionals develop an understanding of the major issues in information ethics. Design/methodology/approach – Theoretical foundations are developed for each element of the mnemonic by reference to philosophical definitions of the terms used and to virtue ethics, particularly MacIntyrean virtue ethics. The paper starts with a critique of the elements of the PAPA mnemonic and then (...) proceeds to develop an understanding of each of the elements of ACTIVE ethics, via a discussion of the underpinning virtue ethics. Findings – This paper identifies six issues, described by the mnemonic, ACTIVE. ACTIVE stands for: autonomy, the ability of the individual to manage their own information and make choice; community, the ethical effect of an information systems on the community which it supports; transparency, the extent to which the derivation of content and process in an information system is made clear; identity, the social and ethical effect of an information system on the definition and maintenance of the distinctive characteristics of a person; value, the value or moral worth placed on information associated with an individual and hence on the relationship with the individual; and empathy, the ability of the information systems professional to emotionally connect with the user and the extent to which the information system distances or connects. Originality/value – The paper applies virtue ethics to developing a tool to help information professionals reflect on their ethical practice in developing and supporting information systems. (shrink)

Nowdays the formation of integrated corporate structures in Ukraine can become one of the tools to counter foreign competitors, the creation of large export-oriented structures that can make investments in enterprises of related industries in order to guarantee their supply of raw materials, sales of products, filling the domestic market with domestic products; consolidation of financial resources of enterprises, stabilization, social condition in the regions of economic presence of companies in view of the creation of new jobs, increase of the (...) tax base through loading of existing and deployment of new productions of their capitalization. The study of integration processes, their nature, and economic significance made it possible to generalize theoretical definitions of the very essence of integration and its types, to emphasize that in the conditions of modern economic development, one of the forms of integration development is the creation of integrated corporate structures. Integrated corporate structures are an effective form of consolidation of investment resources, knowledge-intensive technologies and production capital, that is, they are the most optimal organizational form of implementing the innovation process. Considering the purpose of this article is the study of the current problems of the innovative development of corporate-integrated structures in the system of activation of the organizational resource of marketing management and the determination of ways to solve them. To achieve the goal, the methods of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison, classification, system approach, statistical analysis, structural and logical generalization were used. The article studies and summarizes the global experience of corporate management. The Polish practice of successful operation of integrated corporate structures is considered. A statistical analysis of the activities of joint-stock companies in Ukraine was performed. The problematic state of the innovative development of corporate structures of Ukraine is considered and ways to eliminate it are determined. Peculiarities, factors, organizational forms, models, types of scientific, technical and innovative activities of corporate structures in Ukraine were studied. The organizational design of the company is proposed, which is aimed at attracting organizational resources. The priority areas of innovative development of corporate-integrated structures in Ukraine have been determined. (shrink)

The question whether cognition is subserved by internal processes in the brain (internalism) or extends in to the world (active externalism) has been vigorously debated in recent years. I show how internalist and externalist ideas can be pursued in a common framework, using (1) open dynamical systems, which allow for separate analysis of an agent's intrinsic and embodied dynamics, and (2) supervenience functions, which can be used to study how low-level dynamical systems give rise to higher-level dynamical structures.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 132-160, April 2022. Autonomic nervous system activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles, measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection (...) of studies. Univariate results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate. (shrink)

Active inference offers a unified theory of perception, learning, and decision-making at computational and neural levels of description. In this article, we address the worry that active inference may be in tension with the belief–desire–intention model within folk psychology because it does not include terms for desires at the mathematical level of description. To resolve this concern, we first provide a brief review of the historical progression from predictive coding to active inference, enabling us to distinguish between active inference formulations (...) of motor control and active inference formulations of decision processes. We then show that, despite a superficial tension when viewed at the mathematical level of description, the active inference formalism contains terms that are readily identifiable as encoding both the objects of desire and the strength of desire at the psychological level of description. We demonstrate this with simple simulations of an active inference agent motivated to leave a dark room for different reasons. Despite their consistency, we further show how active inference may increase the granularity of folk-psychological descriptions by highlighting distinctions between drives to seek information versus reward—and how it may also offer more precise, quantitative folk-psychological predictions. Finally, we consider how the implicitly conative components of active inference may have partial analogues in other systems describable by the broader free energy principle to which it conforms. (shrink)

This article explores how and why high levels of income inequality result from configurations of different types of entrepreneurial activities and elements of the institutional context in a multicountry sample. A configurational approach is used to unpack the complexities associated with how income inequality arises from different types of entrepreneurial activities embedded in different institutional contexts associated with Whitley’s national business systems dimensions. The findings from fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis reveal that high levels of both high-growth and necessity entrepreneurial (...) class='Hi'>activity are associated with income inequality in certain contexts that are characterized by distinct institutional complementarities. (shrink)

This paper presents the design, simulation, and experimental verification of the fractional-order multiscroll Lü chaotic system. We base them on op-amp-based approximations of fractional-order integrators and saturated series of nonlinear functions. The integrators are first-order active realizations tuned to reduce the inaccuracy of the frequency response. By an exponential curve fitting, we got a convenient design equation for realizing fractional-order integrators of orders from 0.1 to 0.95. The results include simulations in SPICE of the mathematical description and the electronic (...) implementation and experimental measurements that confirm them. Monte Carlo and sensitivity tests revealed a robust realization. Contrary to its passive counterparts, the suggested realizations significantly reduce design and implementation efforts by favoring resistors and capacitors with commercial values and reducing hardware requirements. (shrink)

Paper 1 establishes that persistence-based frameworks — the Free Energy Principle, Global Workspace Theory, and adjacent approaches — rely on batteries of dynamical observables insufficient, on at least one substrate where the frameworks would naturally apply them, to individuate the systems they characterize. The supplementary structural condition Paper 1 §7 calls a partition-warrant must be sensitive to substrate properties not invariant under the admissible transformation group of the dynamics. The present paper develops closure activation as a candidate filling for that (...) slot. The formal predicate W_CA is partition-evaluative: for each subsystem under a partition P, it returns a verdict structure (τ₀, μ*, κ) recording whether the activation event T₀ has been crossed, the maintenance margin μ* under graded perturbation, and the resulting classification (closed, closure-competent, subthreshold). The activation conditions — state-referential constraint, internally governed corrective response, internally viable maintenance budget — are evaluated relative to the partition's imposed boundary. The predicate's two-axis structure (binary T₀, scalar T*) is phase-structured in a way that distinguishes closure activation from classical autopoietic operational closure. W_CA is non-G-invariant at the predicate level: the causal support graph relative to the imposed boundary is partition-relative and not preserved under admissible transformations. The predicate operates in three structural modes — rejection, selection, and stratification — depending on the substrate's closure-bearing properties under G-related partitions. Evaluation on the Paper 1 witness yields a rejection-mode verdict: neither partition is closure-bearing, and the uniform negative output is the predicate's correctness behavior on a substrate where the activation conditions cannot be satisfied under any admissible labeling. Distinctions from optimization-based (Integrated Information Theory), structural-definitional (Global Workspace Theory), statistical-structural (Free Energy Principle in nonlinear regimes), and process-based (autopoietic operational closure) alternatives are developed structurally and by operational-mode coverage. The route × mode cross-tabulation supplies a meta-taxonomy for partition-warrants more generally. Falsification conditions are stated at predicate, verdict-structure, and discriminative-scope levels. In conjunction with Paper 1, the present paper separates three questions persistence-based frameworks have often conflated: what persists dynamically, what individuates structurally, and what sustains recursive closure. The class of closure-bearing systems is a proper subset of the class of persistence-bearing systems under the battery characterization, and the structural rarity of closure-bearing organization is a derivable consequence of the activation conditions' joint stringency. (shrink)

ANNOTATION Sardak S.E. Global Regulatory System of Human Resources Development. – Manuscript. Thesis for the Doctor of Economic Science academic degree with major in 08.00.02 – World Economy and international economic relations. – SHEE «Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman», Kyiv, 2014. The preconditions and factors of the global economic system with the identified relevant subjects areas and mechanisms of regulation instruments have been investigated. The crucial role of humans in the global economic system as (...) a key factor of production, the main resource, the producer and the consumer of economic and social benefits that are exposed to global threats, problems, challenges, trends and subjects has been confirmed. There have been revealed the causes and consequences of the public institutions transformation under the influence of globalization, which formed a qualitatively new conditions for social and economic development that determine the need for further changes in the areas of conceptual guideline for the management of human resources development, optimization of tasks, state and international institutions activity forms, integration of efforts as for monitoring, planning and forecasting. The modern major instruments and spheres of international cooperation to ensure human development have been determined. The integrated characteristic of human resources and their role in social development both from the standpoint of their use in labour processes and as a medium of civilization and social utility with the help of the categorical classification system organizing and expanding which enables to design and apply the appropriate approaches at all managerial levels have been defined. The necessity and the concept of human resources development in the context of the content of managerial influence identifying (self-development, self-management and external control of development) at different administrative levels that ensures the growth of human capital to the limits of its potential have been analysed. The survey of human activity system aspects in the global world, taking into account the parametrization of the global environment, its structure, management and development have been realized. The formed methodology principles of managerial influence on the development of human resources with scientific schools, hardness degrees, available models, research and providing theoretical and practical implementation peculiarities for groups of countries and territories of the world taken into consideration have been examined. There have been noted civilization and national differences in the forms of managerial influence on the development of human resources, which lead to the formation of human resources development national control systems conditioned by different value public strategic guidelines, especially in relation to social security, education, national management and state migration policy. The current and future requirements for global human resources development which are proposed to be achieved by the development and formalization of global civilizational paradigm of social development due to social coordination interaction have been given. The influence of the institute of state on the human resources development has been evaluated and it has been proved that in the beginning of the XXI century in the global environment the institute of state is the ultimate guarantor of its citizens’ labour ability and vital activity renewal, that makes it the main instrument of managerial influence on human development. The methodology of countries and territories matrix positioning by human development qualitative criteria and population size quantitative parameters which allows to design unified managerial measures as for human resources for similar national economies in the context of global regulatory trends has been proposed. The strategic trends of improvement of human resources development in the national economy, taking into account the differences in the development of human resources in different countries and areas which vary and differ in their focus, content and ways of implementation for such groups. The varying criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the global impact on human resources development, taking into account the natural, biological, technological, economic, social and management dimensions and the results of human resources development management in social and economic systems at various levels have been revealed. The periodization and the forecast of the global dynamics of human resources development by analyzing and modeling the values of the absolute and relative terms correlation character have been carried out, which enables to make their retrospective and prospective comparison and to find chronological boundaries of qualitatively different periods. The configuration of the human resource development global coordinate system as a set of interrelated principles, components, fields, tools, frameworks, management levels and forms of managerial influence that allows with the help of institutional means to adapt the state of human resources development to a globally varying environment. (shrink)

There is a popular hypothesis that performance on implicit and explicit memory tasks reflects 2 distinct memory systems. Explicit memory is said to store those experiences that can be consciously recollected, and implicit memory is said to store experiences and affect subsequent behavior but to be unavailable to conscious awareness. Although this division based on awareness is a useful taxonomy for memory tasks, the authors review the evidence that the unconscious character of implicit memory does not necessitate that it be (...) treated as a separate system of human memory. They also argue that some implicit and explicit memory tasks share the same memory representations and that the important distinction is whether the task (implicit or explicit) requires the formation of a new association. The authors review and critique dissociations from the behavioral, amnesia, and neuroimaging literatures that have been advanced in support of separate explicit and implicit memory systems by highlighting contradictory evidence and by illustrating how the data can be accounted for using a simple computational memory model that assumes the same memory representation for those disparate tasks. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 10, October 2024, Page 43-45.

In our previous discussions, we focused primarily on visual intuition, which is, of course, a form of sensuous intuition. In this section, we will turn to non-visual forms of sensuous intuition. In phenomenology, “intuition” (Anschauung) should not be understood as a merely visual activity. The core of intuition does not lie in which sensory organ is employed, but rather in the manner in which an object is given to consciousness in its own way. Wherever an object can present itself (...) to consciousness with a certain originary givenness (originäre Gegebenheit), this presentation may be called intuition. Accordingly, experiences constituted through vision, hearing, touch, smell, and bodily movement all belong to different forms of sensuous intuition. Different sensory organs do not merely provide different channels of information; rather, they correspond to different modes of givenness of the object and thus participate, at the level of meaning-structure, in the constitution of the object. Therefore, through the participation of various sensory organs, we are not only able to obtain the content-meaning of an object, but also to acquire many other sensuous meanings. However, we must recognize that positing (Setzung) itself depends on the cognitive system of the transcendental ego. Consequently, all meaning-constitution depends on the cognitive system of the transcendental ego. Different transcendental egos, by virtue of having different cognitive systems, obtain different object-meanings. Moreover, Husserl does not restrict intuition to the sensuous level. In his phenomenology, there also exist non-sensory forms of intuition, most notably eidetic intuition (Wesensanschauung). Eidetic intuition is not realized through sensory organs but rather through the imaginative activity of free variation, by which the invariant structures of objects are grasped. Thus, the phenomenological call to “return to intuition” does not amount to a return to sensory empiricism, but rather to a return to the domain in which all meanings can receive originary givenness. In this section, however, we confine ourselves to a discussion of sensuous intuition. -/- . (shrink)

Health Recommender Systems are promising Articial-Intelligence-based tools endowing healthy lifestyles and therapy adherence in healthcare and medicine. Among the most supported areas, it is worth mentioning active aging. However, current HRS supporting AA raise ethical challenges that still need to be properly formalized and explored. This study proposes to rethink HRS for AA through an autonomy-based ethical analysis. In particular, a brief overview of the HRS’ technical aspects allows us to shed light on the ethical risks and challenges they might (...) raise on individuals’ well-being as they age. Moreover, the study proposes a categorization, understanding, and possible preventive/mitigation actions for the elicited risks and challenges through rethinking the AI ethics core principle of autonomy. Finally, elaborating on autonomy-related ethical theories, the paper proposes an autonomy-based ethical framework and how it can foster the development of autonomy-enabling HRS for AA. (shrink)

Relevance. The article gives (in the first approximation) a university comparing criteria system based on statistics from world rankings and universities’ official sites. The mentioned system was approbed for comparison of Wuhan University (PRC) and Kharkiv National University named after V.N. Karazin (Ukraine). The purpose of the article is to select, organize and interpret the criteria for comparing higher education institutions using the example of one of the leading Ukrainian universities and one of the leading universities from the (...) socialist education system, which is successfully integrating into the global educational space, while simultaneously highlighting the features of its core activities for scientific and 103 statistical purposes. Methods. The system of criteria is collected in several groups that combine homogeneous criteria, in particular: image, educational, human, scientific, administrative, and organizational criteria. Novelty. It is shown that the proposed system of criteria (taking into account new criteria substantiated by the authors) allows for a more comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of higher education institutions in various areas of their activity (both in quantitative and qualitative dimensions). The results of the comparison well-based show the effectiveness of educational, scientific, administrative and other activities of the compared universities (for example, the university from China top-10 ten is better than the one from Ukrainian top-5). Conclusion. Due to the heterogeneity of a large volume of data, it is advisable to perform appropriate monitoring using machine learning tools to consolidate information. The results of such analyses can be useful in programs and strategies for the development of Ukrainian universities, because prestige in the modern world has a real basis in the form of purposeful activity. (shrink)

In the preceding discussions, we established a basic framework for Cognitive System Phenomenology. We have pointed out that every cognitive activity necessarily depends upon our existing cognitive system — this is beyond doubt. Therefore, I believe that Cognitive System Phenomenology is the truly correct method for epistemology and that it holds revolutionary significance for epistemology as a whole. Subsequently, we generalized the example of “seeing” a cube and developed a static phenomenological theory under Cognitive System (...) Phenomenology. This theory corresponds to Husserl’s static phenomenology. In this section, we will first develop the theory of object constitution under Cognitive System Phenomenology. In fact, we have already discussed this theory in a general way earlier. Here, we will explore it in greater depth and detail to make it more complete. (shrink)

Near-death experiences (NDEs), reported by individuals who nearly died but survived, are vivid conscious experiences occurring in near-death states, such as cardiac arrest, when the brain is expected to cease functioning. This paper examines recent developments in neuroimaging research aimed at characterising neural activity in the dying human brain to identify neural correlates of consciousness and NDEs. By combining historical epistemology and media studies, I situate this research within its historical context that I trace to the mid-20th-century technological changes (...) in identifying NDEs and determining death. I then analyse several pioneering studies that utilised clinical EEG recordings from deceased patients to investigate if neural activity in the dying human brain indicates conscious processing. Drawing on Hans- Jörg Rheinberger, I argue that these studies have established a new experimental system capable of formulating new questions and generating novel empirical findings about its object of inquiry. Finally, using Ludwig Jäger’s concept of transcriptivity, I discuss why the complex patterns of synchronised brain activity in dying individuals identified by these studies elude clear interpretation and stabilisation as neural markers of disconnected consciousnesses and NDEs. Apart from tracing how this emerging neuroimaging research introduces epistemic shifts in the medical investigation of neural underpinnings of NDEs, this paper also contrib- utes to broader discussions in the philosophy of science about the processes of knowledge production within exploratory experimental research. It does so by drawing attention to how such processes are configured in an emerging experimental system that is not yet capable of articulating its object of inquiry and by discussing why such a system can, despite its limitations, be regarded as epistemically productive. (shrink)

The strategies of action employed by a human subject in order to perceive simple 2-D forms on the basis of tactile sensory feedback have been modelled by an explicit computer algorithm. The modelling process has been constrained and informed by the capacity of human subjects both to consciously describe their own strategies, and to apply explicit strategies; thus, the strategies effectively employed by the human subject have been influenced by the modelling process itself. On this basis, good qualitative and semi-quantitative (...) agreement has been achieved between the trajectories produced by a human subject, and the traces produced by a computer algorithm. The advantage of this reciprocal modelling option, besides facilitating agreement between the algorithm and the empirically observed trajectories, is that the theoretical model provides an explanation, and not just a description, of the active perception of the human subject. (shrink)

High temporal resolution event-related brain potential and electroencephalographic coherence studies of the neural substrate of short-term storage in working memory indicate that the sustained coactivation of both prefrontal cortex and the posterior cortical systems that participate in the initial perception and comprehension of the retained information are involved in its storage. These studies further show that short-term storage mechanisms involve an increase in neural synchrony between prefrontal cortex and posterior cortex and the enhanced activation of long-term memory representations of material (...) held in short-term memory. This activation begins during the encoding/comprehension phase and evidently is prolonged into the retention phase by attentional drive from prefrontal cortex control systems. A parsimonious interpretation of these findings is that the long-term memory systems associated with the posterior cortical processors provide the necessary representational basis for working memory, with the property of short-term memory decay being primarily due to the posterior system. In this view, there is no reason to posit specialized neural systems whose functions are limited to those of short-term storage buffers. Prefrontal cortex provides the attentional pointer system for maintaining activation in the appropriate posterior processing systems. Short-term memory capacity and phenomena such as displacement of information in short-term memory are determined by limitations on the number of pointers that can be sustained by the prefrontal control systems. Key Words: coherence; event-related potentials; imaging; long-term memory; memory; short-term memory; working memory. (shrink)

This paper develops a methodology for using Activity Theory (AT) to investigate pedagogical practices in primary school mathematics classrooms by selecting object-oriented pedagogical activity as the unit of analysis. While an understanding of object-oriented activity is central to Activity Theory (AT), the notion of object is a frequently debated and often misunderstood one. The conceptual confusion surrounding the object arises both from difficulties related to translating the original Russian conceptualisation of object-oriented activity into English as (...) well as from the different interpretations of the object currently in use within two contemporary approaches in activity theory. This paper seeks to clarify understandings of the object by exploring notions of object oriented activity. To this end, the paper traces the historical development of the object through Leontiev (1978; 1981) and Engeström’s (1987; 1999) expansion of Vygotsky’s original triadic understanding of object oriented activity. Drawing on Basil Bernstein’s (1996) notion of evaluative criteria as those rules that transmit the criteria for the production of a legitimate text, the paper goes on to elaborate a methodology for using AT to analyse observational data by developing the notion of “evaluative episodes” as pedagogical moments in which the pedagogical object is made visible. Findings indicate that an evaluative episode can serve as an analytical space in which the dynamism of an activity system is momentarily frozen, enabling one to model human activity in the system under investigation and, hence, in this study, to understand pedagogy in context. (shrink)

Earth system science (ESS) has identified worrying trends in the human impact on fundamental planetary systems. In this conceptual article, we discuss the implications of this research for business schools and management education (ME). We argue that ESS findings raise significant concerns about the relationship between business and nature and, consequently, a radical reframing is required to embed economic and social activity within the global sustainability of natural systems. This has transformative implications for ME. To illustrate this reframing, (...) we apply the ESS lenses of social-ecological interdependence, multiscalar relations, environmental governance, and environmental values to the ME functional domains of institutional purpose, social context and engagement, pedagogical practice, curricular design, and research focus. Our work contributes to the literature on business education for sustainability and the business-society-nature nexus. We explore and apply key ESS findings and concepts, discuss normative implications of these ideas, and offer guidance on transformational pathways for business schools and ME. (shrink)

Tailoring assistive systems for guiding and monitoring an individual in daily living activities is a complex task. This paper presents ALI, an assistive system combining a formal possibilistic argumentation system and an informal model of human activity: the Cultural-Historic Activity Theory, facilitating the delivery of tailored advices to a human actor. We follow an activity-centric approach, taking into consideration the human’s motives, goals and prioritized actions. ALI tracks a person in order to I) determine what (...) activities were performed over a period of time (activity recognition tracking), and II) send personalized notifications suggesting the most suitable activities to perform (decision-making monitoring). The ALI system was evaluated in a formative pilot study related to promote social activities and physical exercise. (shrink)

Tailoring assistive systems for guiding and monitoring an individual in daily living activities is a complex task. This paper presents ALI, an assistive system combining a formal possibilistic argumentation system and an informal model of human activity: the Cultural-Historic Activity Theory, facilitating the delivery of tailored advices to a human actor. We follow an activity-centric approach, taking into consideration the human’s motives, goals and prioritized actions. ALI tracks a person in order to I) determine what (...) activities were performed over a period of time (activity recognition tracking), and II) send personalized notifications suggesting the most suitable activities to perform (decision-making monitoring). The ALI system was evaluated in a formative pilot study related to promote social activities and physical exercise. (shrink)

This article develops a processual-perspectivist interpretation of Active Inference. Predictive Processing, the Free Energy Principle, and Active Inference are often read as theories of internal world-modeling by an epistemically secluded brain. On such readings, the brain constructs generative models of hidden external causes and thereby risks reinstating a classical inside–outside architecture: here the model-building brain, there the external world to be inferred. Against this internalist interpretation, the article argues that Active Inference is philosophically most coherent when understood as enactive inference: (...) a theory of embodied, affectively regulated organism–environment coupling. The dark-room problem serves as a diagnostic case showing why free-energy minimization cannot be reduced to passive sensory-surprise reduction, but must be understood in relation to expected free energy, exploration, viability, and biological normativity. Building on enactivism, autopoiesis, ecological psychology, interoceptive accounts of consciousness, affective embodiment, and debates on Markov blankets, the article introduces processual perspectivism as an ontology of perspective-bearing life. Mind is not an inner representational object, but the perspectival form of embodied self-organization. Consciousness is accordingly understood as the intrinsic, affectively structured perspective of a living system regulating its openness to the world. This framework preserves the formal strengths of Active Inference while resisting both reductive neurocentrism and traditional dualism. (shrink)

The "System of Ethics" was published at the height of Fichte's academic career and marks the culmination of his philosophical development in Jena. Much more than a treatise on ethics narrowly construed, the "System of Ethics" presents a unified synthesis of Fichte's core philosophical ideas, including the principle I-hood, self-activity and self-consciousness, and also contains his most detailed treatment of action and agency. This volume brings together an international group of leading scholars on Fichte, and is the (...) first of its kind in English to offer critical and interpretive perspectives on this work, covering topics such as normativity, belief, justification, desire, duty, and the ethical life. It will be an essential guide for scholars wanting to deepen their understanding of Fichte's ethical thought, as well as for those interested in the history of ethics more broadly. (shrink)

According to Leontiev’s “activity approach,” the external world is not something available to be “worked over” according to a subject’s inner or “ideal” representations; at stake instead is the emergence of an “idealized” objective world that relates to a subject’s activity both internally and externally construed. In keeping with a Marxian account of anthropogenesis, Leontiev links the emergence of “ideality” with social activity itself, incorporating it within the general movement between the poles of ‘inner’ cognition and ‘external’ (...) action. In this manner, Leontiev both parallels and goes beyond Hutto and Myin’s recent “enactivist” account of “content-involving” cognition, where representational thought depends on socio-cultural scaffolding and, as such, is uniquely human. What traditionally comes to be called representational content is for Leontiev the result of the transition from a primitive cognitive apparatus of “image-consciousness” to a one which is mediated by social activity. For the being endowed with “activity-consciousness,” mental content is something apprehended by assimilating “the objective world in its ideal form” [Leontiev, 1977, p. 189]. And the precondition for such assimilation is the apprehension of meanings from their origin in the social-material system of activity. The genesis of content-involving cognition is thus coeval with the development of socializing activity systems, replete with the external representations of values and norms as described in enactivist literature as publicly scaffolded symbol systems. Leontiev thus offers an anti-internalist account of cognition commensurate with Hutto and Myin but with the added dimension of a developmental scale of analysis with which to explain the origin of human-specific cognition. (shrink)

Relying on the universality of quantum mechanics and on recent results known as the “threshold theorems,” quantum information scientists deem the question of the feasibility of large‐scale, fault‐tolerant, and computationally superior quantum computers as purely technological. Reconstructing this question in statistical mechanical terms, this article suggests otherwise by questioning the physical significance of the threshold theorems. The skepticism it advances is neither too strong (hence is consistent with the universality of quantum mechanics) nor too weak (hence is independent of technological (...) contingencies). *Received June 2009; revised August 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

In this article I offer the deliberative systems approach as a normative and evaluative approach through which to appraise typically ‘non-deliberative’ animal activism. Although such actions can contribute to inclusive deliberation through the political representation of animals, I caution against an over-reliance on such tactics, and interrogate the claim that non-deliberative tactics are essential ingredients for prompting the reflection and reconsideration that animal rights philosophy demands. Instead, non-deliberative activism may serve not only to undermine further deliberation but actually to jeopardise (...) animal protection goals. (shrink)

The autonomic nervous system is the other division of the human nervous system, which is in charge of most of the automatic processes in the body including heartbeat, digestion, breathing, dilation of the pupils, constriction of pupils, ejaculation, and micturition. This work focuses on the relations and mediators implied in these functions and on the principal regulatory models. Both sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are essential in creating flexibility, and whenever a shift occurs, many health issues may develop as (...) a result. For instance, an ANS activity level too high will cause hypertension or heart issues, while an ANS activity level too low will cause anxiety or panic disorders. The review also discusses the impact of ANS and other new advancements in genetics and genetic makeup regarding stress responsiveness. Even though some people’s genetic predisposes them to certain ANS disorders they can be faced with it due to their lifestyle and stress. Nevertheless, concise information is still scarce about ANS, underlining the importance of further research to evaluate pathogenic genes, and constituent the genetic treatments to enhance the disease's negative outlook. (shrink)

Nursing programs are complex systems that articulate values of relationality and holism, while developing curriculums that privilege metric‐driven competency‐based pedagogies. This study used an interpretive approach to analyze interviews from 20 nursing students at two Canadian Baccalaureate programs to understand how nursing's educational context, including its hidden curriculums, impacted student writing activities. We viewed this qualitative data through the lens of activity theory. Students spoke about navigating a rigid writing context. This resulted in a hyper‐focus on “figuring out” the (...) teacher with minimal focus on the act of writing. Students used a form of behavioral “code‐switching” to maximize their grade while considering how their “valuing” of the assignment fit within their writing motives. Hidden curriculum messages taught students that academic success was assured whether their writing mirrored instructor preferences. Instructional practices of rigidity reinforced unequal social conditions for some minority students. Faculty can counteract the impact of the hidden curriculum through encouragement of choice and independent thinking about writing activities. Acknowledging power relationships and their influence on how students navigate writing assignments and nursing discourse may relieve pressures on students who fear penalties for countering norms and result in a more flexible learning environment. (shrink)

Comme c’est le cas dans de nombreux pays européens, les difficultés psychosociales sont devenues une source de préoccupation importante en Suède. Les expériences que les personnes ayant un handicap psychosocial ont de différents domaines tels que l’école, le travail, la vie en famille et les contacts avec les agences de l’État social requièrent une analyse complexe qui tient compte tant de facteurs personnels que de facteurs contextuels. Cet article se base sur quinze entretiens avec des personnes ayant un handicap psychosocial (...) et discute leurs expériences et les difficultés qu’elles ont rencontrées au cours de leur vie. Ces expériences sont conceptualisées à l’aide du cadre référentiel de “citoyenneté active” développé par Hvinden et al. (2016), qui distingue trois dimensions-clé de la citoyenneté active: la sécurité, l’influence et l’autonomie. Basé sur une recherche empirique, cet article traite des opportunités et des barrières qui soutiennent ou empêchent les personnes en situation de handicap psychosocial de devenir des citoyens actifs dans l’État social suédois et souligne quelques défis majeurs qui font obstacle à leur “pleine et effective participation à la société sur la base de l’égalité avec les autres” (CRPD, article 1). (shrink)