The essays in this collection attempt to frame a broad humanist context for various current and historical scientific topics. Subjects range from an astronomical interpretation of Van Gogh's Starry Night to popular misconceptions about Neanderthal humans to the risk factors that are inherent in the development of any new technology.--Editorial review.

This article attempts to assess the claim that the unum necessarium in our time is the general dissemination of scientific knowledge because liberal civilization or the “good society” cannot be had in the presence of traditional religion and “metaphysics.” The paper attempts to place this claim in the context of continuing globalization and related questions such as 9/11, Fundamentalist Islam, Sino-Western relations, “pop” atheism and the prospect of a “post-human” future. The paper describes the continuance of pre-Enlightenment traditions and beliefs (...) even as constant globalizing influences with their attendant secularism, atheism and technologism make their presence felt. The paper canvasses the views of Chet Raymo, C.S. Lewis, Bryan Appleyard, Werner Heisenberg, Stanley Rosen, Henry Adams, Friedrich Nietzsche Martin Heidegger and Francis Fukuyama as a means of assessing the claim that an education rooted in a simple commitment to scientific progressivism will be inadequate to the demands of the 21 st Century. (shrink)

How do our bodies influence who we are? Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has examined consciousness associated with the self and related multisensory processing of bodily signals, the so-called bodily self-consciousness. A parallel line of research has highlighted the concept of the autobiographical self and the associated autonoetic consciousness, which enables us to mentally travel in time. The subjective re-experiencing of past episodes is described as re-living them from within or outside one’s body. In this brief perspective, I aim to (...) explore the underlying characteristics of self-consciousness and its relation to bodily signals and episodic memory. I will outline some recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence indicating that bodily cues play a fundamental role in autobiographical memory. Finally, I will discuss these emerging concepts regarding the current understanding of bodily-self, autobiographical-self, their links to self-consciousness, and suggest directions for future research. (shrink)

Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries is the first book to highlight the significance of the idea of 'postwar transition' in the field of music and to demonstrate how the contribution of musicians, composers, and their publics have influenced contemporary understandings of war. At the intersection of four domains including: the relationship between music and war culture, commemorative and consolatory dimensions of music, migration and exile, and the links between music, cultural diplomacy, and propaganda, leading historians, (...) political scientists, psychologists, and musicologists explore disruptions and connections to music through the backdrop of war. In turn, this volume sheds new light on what has been a blind spot in a growing historiography. (shrink)

This critical examination of STEM discourses highlights the imperative to think about educational reforms within the diverse cultural contexts of ongoing environmental and technologically driven changes. Chet Bowers illuminates how the dominant myths of Western science promote false promises of what science can achieve. Examples demonstrate how the various science disciplines and their shared ideology largely fail to address the ways metaphorically layered language influences taken-for-granted patterns of thinking and the role this plays in colonizing other cultures, thus maintaining (...) the myth that scientific inquiry is objective and free of cultural influences. Guidelines and questions are included to engage STEM students in becoming explicitly aware of these issues and the challenges they pose. (shrink)

While Hannah Arendt never wrote a unified theory of anti-totalitarianism, she nevertheless provides a guide for resisting and undoing the affective bonds of totalitarianism, or what she calls “negative solidarity.” Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s notion of an “affective economy,” I consider the importance of emotions in Arendt’s conceptualizing of negative and positive solidarity as bonds that bring people together, as well as the principles that inspire them to engage in anti-democratic or participatory political action. For Arendt, I argue, isonomy and (...) the council system represent a more inclusive and pluralistic framework for forging positive solidarity than the party politics of the nation state, which will always be more susceptible to despotism. I conclude by reflecting on how contemporary feminist work on biopolitics builds on Arendt’s work to think more broadly about radically inclusive, anti-oppressive networks of anti-totalitarianism built on commensality (Bargu), care (Tronto), and creating with others (Haraway). (shrink)

This paper discusses the sexual politics of anti-normalization within the context of the sociological discussions of civil society and the public sphere. The sexual politics of anti-normalization is less centered around “identity” as a means of securing group solidarity and representing sexual communities in civil society. A politics of anti-normalization comprehends identity as a means of normalizing and regulating sexual desire and difference. Anti-normalization entails the politicization of ethical-moral issues concerning sex and desire and the production of sexual differences beyond (...) the usual opposition of heterosexuality to homosexuality. I discuss the ways that the theoretical discourses on civil society reduce conceptions of difference to identity and develop a framework for analyzing the sexual politics of difference “beyond identity” in the public sphere. (shrink)

This paper investigates the learnability by positive examples in the sense of Gold of Pregroup Grammars. In a first part, Pregroup Grammars are presented and a new parsing strategy is proposed. Then, theoretical learnability and non-learnability results for subclasses of Pregroup Grammars are proved. In the last two parts, we focus on learning Pregroup Grammars from a special kind of input called feature-tagged examples. A learning algorithm based on the parsing strategy presented in the first part is given. Its validity (...) is proved and its properties are examplified. (shrink)

Alexandre Dikovsky is born in Leningrad, Russia on August 9, 1945. He died in Nantes, France in the beginning of 2014. He is well known for his significant contributions to the fields of Mathematics, Linguistics, and Informatics. In the course of his career, he published over 100 research papers, 12 book chapters, and participated in numerous national and international projects.

The paper presents a way to transform pregroup grammars into contextfree grammars using functional composition. The same technique can also be used for the proof-nets of multiplicative cyclic linear logic and for Lambek calculus allowing empty premises.

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American (...) sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts. (shrink)

This study used experimental and correlational techniques to examine perceptions that university faculty hold regarding the practice of professorial selling of examination textbooks to wholesalers. Faculty members (n = 236) from 14 universities and community colleges and a wide variety of academic disciplines responded to a web-based survey. We presented hypothetical selling situations to respondents with manipulated variables consisting of solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and use of money (for faculty or for student activities). Both main effects and the interaction (...) effect were significant such that respondents perceived it to be more ethical to sell an examination book when the book was unsolicited and when the money was being used to fund student activities. The variable most correlated with faculty members' beliefs that book selling is ethical and the faculty members' self-reports of whether or not they have engaged in bookselling was how widespread the practice appeared to be on campus. About 30 percent of faculty members sold textbooks over the past year at a dollar value of about $80 per professor. About 38 percent of respondents reported they believed the practice to be generally ethical. Implications for business ethics theory, students' moral development, and advancement of on-campus codes of ethics policies are discussed along with avenues for future research. (shrink)

In this paper I will share the evidence of a world-wide so-cio-spiritual paradigm shift in our basic belief systems. This shift is leading to a realignment of our ethical ap-proach to common questions and requires a different col-lective approach in navigating the subject of ethics. I will also share what those different collective approaches can look like.

(2005). Was Socrates the first philosophical practitioner, the first psychologist, or both? Philosophical Practice: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 73-74.

A survey of 830 faculty members at 89 AASCB-accredited business schools throughout the United States was conducted in Fall 2002 to develop a snapshot of perceptions of ethical and unethical conduct with regard to undergraduate business instruction across a wide range of business disciplines. These behaviors fell into such categories as course content, evaluation of students, educational environment, disrespectful behavior, research and publication issues, financial and material transactions, social relationships with students, and sexual relationships with students and other faculty. Of (...) the 55 behaviors, two were almost universally perceived to be unethical. Eight behaviors were controversial in that there was wide variance on whether the behavior was perceived to be unethical. In addition, females' ethical perceptions differed significantly from males on three behaviors; older participants differed from younger participants on seven behaviors; participants at research-oriented institutions differed from participants at teaching-oriented institutions on one behavior; and tenured, untenured tenure-track, and untenured non-tenure-track participants differed on three behaviors. The findings of this study and the detailed comments of the respondents provide a starting point for discussing more systematic means to consider ethical issues within collegiate schools of business. (shrink)

Drawing on Pennock’s theory of scientific virtues, we are developing an alternative curriculum for training scientists in the responsible conduct of research that emphasizes internal values rather than externally imposed rules. This approach focuses on the virtuous characteristics of scientists that lead to responsible and exemplary behavior. We have been pilot-testing one element of such a virtue-based approach to RCR training by conducting dialogue sessions, modeled upon the approach developed by Toolbox Dialogue Initiative, that focus on a specific virtue, e.g., (...) curiosity and objectivity. During these structured discussions, small groups of scientists explore the roles they think the focus virtue plays and should play in the practice of science. Preliminary results have shown that participants strongly prefer this virtue-based model over traditional methods of RCR training. While we cannot yet definitively say that participation in these RCR sessions contributes to responsible conduct, these pilot results are encouraging and warrant continued development of this virtue-based approach to RCR training. (shrink)

Climate change poses a serious problem for established ethical theories. There is no dearth of literature on the subject of climate ethics that break down the complexity of the issue, thereby enabling one to arrive at partial conclusions such as: 'historical justice demands us to do this...' or 'intergenerational justice demands us to do that...'. In contrast, this article attempts to face up to this complexity, that is: to end with a synthesis of the arguments into what can be considered (...) to be the most reasonable and fairest approach to the politics of climate change on a global scale. A significant part of the paper is devoted to the questions whether or not a) historical emissions and b) population changes are relevant to how emissions rights should be distributed. I discuss the merits and drawbacks of each perspective and briefly outline the normative justifications. (shrink)

This study used experimental and correlational techniques to examine perceptions that university faculty hold regarding the practice of professorial selling of examination textbooks to wholesalers. Faculty members (n = 236) from 14 universities and community colleges and a wide variety of academic disciplines responded to a web-based survey. We presented hypothetical selling situations to respondents with manipulated variables consisting of solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and use of money (for faculty or for student activities). Both main effects and the interaction (...) effect were significant such that respondents perceived it to be more ethical to sell an examination book when the book was unsolicited and when the money was being used to fund student activities. The variable most correlated with faculty members' beliefs that book selling is ethical and the faculty members' self-reports of whether or not they have engaged in bookselling was how widespread the practice appeared to be on campus. About 30 percent of faculty members sold textbooks over the past year at a dollar value of about $80 per professor. About 38 percent of respondents reported they believed the practice to be generally ethical. Implications for business ethics theory, students' moral development, and advancement of on-campus codes of ethics policies are discussed along with avenues for future research. (shrink)