The purpose of the article was 1) to assess the relationship between the organizational culture (OC) type and business strategy (BS); 2) to prove that OC influences the survival strategy success/implementation; 3) to contribute to the expansion of organizational theory by analyzing the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) strategy palette as the basis for developing an effective company survival strategy during the crisis. To achieve the purpose, correlation analysis between OC types (authors' typology) and BS (...) (Boston Consulting Group and Miles & Snow Models) was used (561 employees of different industries participated in the survey; the data collected laid the foundation for the research). As a result, it was proved that 1) certain types of organizational culture correspond to certain types of strategies; 2) during the period when the company overcomes the recession, OC affects strategic innovation decisions; 3) building a sustainable business ecosystem enhances the positive impact. The main limitations of the study are 1) some elements of subjectivity assessment, 2) constant changes in OC and BS, 3) the probability of different subcultures coexistence. Implications for a Central European audience: The results confirmed that there is a need for managers to 1) take into account the organizational culture characteristics/features to implement chosen strategies successfully; 2) be ready to adapt the OC before the BS is approved; 3) adopt the idea that building an innovation ecosystem can be crucial to confront the crisis with confidence. (shrink)

Conscious or Unconscious, we survive under the age of strategy or strategic planning. It is one of essential process for the public organization, and the kind of central reference for the leadership. For the followers, it is the kind of standard of conduct for reward and discipline, probably a soft norm from the hard nature of laws. It is a province for development and sustainability, as distinct from the latter, often a province of inertia for law- abiding and (...) some career pursuing modern personality. For the general public, the strategic planning or its crystallization into the mission statement or vision plan allow to understand the public organization, and hence the kind of thread for public relations or general awareness of complex mosaic of world dynamism. In this context, the paper deals with the primary feature of strategic planning and its evolution with the intense speed of globalization. For the stimulation, the author begins with the part of communication exchanged with the peer scholars. Next the author proceeds with the nature of strategic planning, its benefits, limitations, and pitfalls. The author delivers a final message, which highlights a new fashion of strategic planning in response with the global environment. Keywords: strategic planning; globalization; 3 Cs; entrepreneurship; public organization; leadership; efficiency. (shrink)

The monograph is an English, expanded and revised version of the book Cheshko, V. T., Ivanitskaya, L.V., & Glazko, V.I. (2018). Anthropocene. Philosophy of Biotechnology. Moscow, Course. The manuscript was completed by me on November 15, 2019. It is a study devoted to the development of the concept of a stable evolutionary human strategy as a unique phenomenon of global evolution. The name “An Evolutionary Metaphysics (Cheshko, 2012; Glazko et al., 2016). With equal rights, this study could be entitled (...) “Biotechnology as a result and factor of the evolutionary processˮ. The choice in favor of used “The Evolutionary Metaphysics of Human Enhancement Technologiesˮ was made in accordance with the basic principle of modern post-academician and human-sized science, a classic example of which is biotechnology. The “Metaphysics of Evolution” and “Evolutionary Metaphysics” concepts are used in several ways in modern philosophical discourse. In any case, the values contain a logical or associative reference to the teleological nature of the evolutionary process (Hull, 1967, 1989; Apel, 1995; Faye, 2016; Dupre, 2017; Rose, 2018, etc). In our study, the “evolutionary metaphysics” serves to denote the thesis of the rationalization and technologization of global evolution and anthropogenesis, in particular. At the same time, the postulate of an open future remains relevant in relation to the results of the evolutionary process. The theory of evolution of complex, including the humans system and algorithm for its constructing are а synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern science. ln other words, natural philosophy is regaining the status bar element theoretical science in the era of technology-driven evolution. The co-evolutionary concept of 3-modal stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens is developed. The concept based оn the principle of evolutionary complementarity of anthropogenesis: value of evolutionary risk and evolutionary path of human evolution are defined bу descriptive (evolutionary efficiency) and creative-teleological (evolutionary correctness) parameters simultaneously, that cannot bе instrumental reduced to others ones. Resulting volume of both parameters define the vectors of blological, social, cultural and techno-rationalistic human evolution Ьу two gear mechanism genetic and cultural co-evolution and techno-humanitarian balance. The resultant each of them сап estimated Ьу the ratio of socio-psychological predispositions of humanization / dehumanization in mentality. Explanatory model and methodology of evaluation of creatively teleological evolutionary risk component of NBIC technological complex is proposed. Integral part of the model is evolutionary semantics (time-varying semantic code, the compliance of the blological, socio-cultural and techno-rationalist adaptive modules of human stable evolutionary strategy). It is seem necessary to make three clarifications. First, logical construct, “evolutionary metaphysics” contains an internal contradiction, because it unites two alternative explanatory models. “Metaphysics”, as a subject, implies deducibility of the process from the initial general abstract principle, and, consequently, the outcome of the development of the object is uniquely determined by the initial conditions. Predicate, “evolutionary”, means stochastic mechanism of realizing the same principle by memorizing and replicating random choices in all variants of the post-Darwin paradigm. In philosophy, random choice corresponds to the category of “free will” of a reasonable agent. In evolutionary theory, the same phenomenon is reflected in the concept of “covariant replication”. Authors will attempt to synthesize both of these models in a single transdisciplinary theoretical framework. Secondly, the interpretation of the term “evolutionary (adaptive) strategyˮ is different from the classical definition. The difference is that the adaptive strategy in this context is equivalent to the survival, i.e. it includes the adaptation to the environment and the transformation (construction) of the medium in accordance with the objectives of survival. To emphasize this difference authors used verbal construction “adaptiveˮ (rather than “evolutionaryˮ) strategy as more adequate. In all other cases, the two terms may be regarded as synonymous. Thirdly, the initial two essays of this series were published in one book in 2012. Their main goal was the development of the logically consistent methodological concept of stable adaptive (evolutionary) strategy of hominines and the argumentation of its heuristic possibilities as a transdisciplinary scientific paradigm of modern anthropology. The task was to demonstrate the possibilities of the SESH concept in describing and explaining the evolutionary prospects for the interaction of social organization and technology (techno-humanitarian balance) and the associated biological and cultural mechanisms of the genesis of religion (gene-cultural co-evolution). In other words, it was related to the sphere of cultural and philosophical anthropology, i.e. to the axiological component of any theoretical constructions describing the behavior of self-organizing systems with human participation. In contrast, the present work is an attempt to introduce this concept into the sphere of biological anthropology and, consequently, its main goal is to demonstrate the possibility of verification of its main provisions by means of procedures developed by natural science, i.e. refers to the descriptive component of the same theoretical constructions. The result of this in the future should be methods for assessing, calculating and predicting the risk of loss of biological and cultural identity of a person, associated with a permanent and continuously deepening process of development of science and technology. (shrink)

I develop an argument that believing in the survivability of a mind uploading procedure conveys value to its believers that is assessable independently of assessing the truth of the belief. Regardless of whether the first-order metaphysical belief is true, believing it conveys a kind of Darwinian fitness to the believer. Of course, a further question remains of whether having that Darwinian property can be a basis—in a rational sense of being a basis—for one’s holding the belief. I’ll also make some (...) remarks in the present article toward answering that latter question. (shrink)

As a sort of intellectual provocation and as a lateral thinking strategy for creativity, this chapter seeks to determine what the study of the dynamics of biodiversity can offer linguists. In recent years, the analogical equation "language = biological species" has become more widespread as a metaphorical source for conceptual renovation, and, at the same time, as a justification for the defense of language diversity. Language diversity would be protected in a way similar to the mobilization that has taken (...) place to protect endangered species. Nevertheless, one must be careful when uncritically transferring conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks from one field to another, since obviously, these two phenomena are quite different in the real world. The dialogue with bioecologists starts by asking about the formation of diversity, i.e., about specialization. Here, one can observe the similarity between the processes of linguistic and genetic fragmentation, in the sense that both phenomena have a (socio)geographical basis for dispersion and consequently, for the loss of their original compact nature and their intercommunication. The self-organizing and creative properties of human beings favor the development of specific varieties for each subset, varieties that continue to evolve constantly, through the unceasing "languaging" of humanity. Regarding the continuity of species or languages, one can also observe the decisive role of intragroup relations. The staying power of linguistic varieties will increase in direct proportion to the intensity of the relationship among the components of the subset. On the other hand, if exotic elements are introduced, especially if these elements are aggressive in nature, the alteration of the ecological niche may turn out to be fatal for the continuity of the previously existing forms. This suggests to us the need to make an in-depth study of what the minimal contextual conditions would be so that a set linguistic group could be assured a sustainable continuity within a framework of linguistic contact. What type of minimum (socio-)ecological niche would a language have to have if we wished to ensure its habitual reproduction? A proposal is made here to explore the ideas of "exclusive functions" and "non-hierarchical functional distribution" for codes in situations where there is high contact and a danger of disuse. As regards change, this phenomenon is seen as an inherent element in the tendency of life to create new developments, which may or not be accompanied by an adaptation to changing environmental conditions. It is pointed out that, similar to what happens in biology, much of linguistic innovation stems from a systemically reorganized mixture of solutions from different codes. An important research question would be, however, to determine why some of these innovations disappear and others survive and extend throughout the community. The big question mark, as Mufwene points out, is, then how to manage to understand how "the evolution of language proceeds by naturally selecting from among the competing alternatives available through the idiolects of individual speakers". Extinction, whether it be of languages or of species, is caused in most cases "by a combination of demographic processes and environmental changes", as Brown points out. Thus, the environment plays a fundamental role in the direction of evolution, since the "the survival of the fittest is, in actuality, the survival of those who fit into the context (Allen and Hoekstra)". This allows us to see the great degree of importance of political-economic contexts in the case of languages. In the same way, migratory movements are also one of the major variables determining the extinction of biodiversity and language diversity. Species and habitat form the basic unit of existence, and this is the major point of departure for understanding the problem of the preservation and recovery of species or languages. Given the increase in the degree of linguistic contact, the continuity of language diversity depends on determining, as exactly as possible, as Prigogine, the physicist, would say, what precise conditions of imbalance may prove to be stable. The great challenge is not so much avoiding contact but managing it. And "restorative ecology" can also be of help to us here. Being able to reach sustainable solutions for language diversity implies a profound knowledge of the dynamics for determining the ways in which language is used in contact situations. The general conclusion is that linguistics is still terminologically and conceptually ill prepared to deal with the dynamic character of human languages. The world and our objects must be conceived of as elements in a state of flux, as changing systems in an unstable equilibrium. With respect to language policy, it would be necessary to make an effort to manage to establish some general principles regarding the linguistic organization of the human species that would make it possible for local linguistic diversity and communication on a planetary scale, which must necessarily take place, to be compatible with each other. To succeed, it will be necessary to continue promoting an autonomous socio-ecological perspective devoted to the comprehension of language phenomena. Such a perspective would be based on a paradigm of complexity, and would, at the same time, place human beings at the center of its theoretical underpinnings. (shrink)

In this essay I propose a new reading of Michel Foucault’s main thesis about biopower and biopolitics. I argue that organisation represents the neglected key to Foucault’s new conceptualisation of power as something that is less political and more organisational. This unique contribution was lost even on his closest interlocutors. Foucault’s work on power had a strong influence on organisation and management theory but interestingly not for the reasons I am proposing. In fact, although theorists in management and organisation studies (...) have emphasised power in relation to discipline, control and subjectivity they have overlooked the transformative meaning of Foucault’s organisation. His work on biopolitics has attracted opposition, too, as evidenced by the controversy sparked by Giorgio Agamben about Foucault’s biopolitics. From Agamben’s critique, it appears that Foucault’s notions of politics and power do not allow a deconstruction of the violence of the concentration camp. However, a critical reading of Primo Levi’s biographical narratives reveals the camp as a place where the prisoners’ability to organise their daily lives secured survival. To make sense of Levi’s revelation, I use John Dewey’s notion of habits as forms of organisation and reconnect it to Foucault’s organisation. A shared understanding of the objective conditions of human activity and experience highlights the similarities between Dewey’s pragmatism and Foucault’s pragmatic metaphysics. In the end, however, Foucault’s metaphysical background has caught up with him, pushing him away from his own most radical proposal that organisation was the new form of power and the new substance of politics. (shrink)

Leadership is certainly a central concept that the contemporary society now requires to increase the chances of survival and prosperity. As the contemporary politics guides, the world now see a greater turn to the kind of strategic paradigm heavily departing from the previous adherence to the ideological tenet. The strategy is a vital way of approach to address the needs of followers, subordinates, stakeholders and shareholders although there are other strands of influence including the culture (For political discourse, (...) it is also interesting to read the Huntington’s viewpoint about the clash of civilization), ideology though (still heavily on the global politics), shared comradeship and intelligence, and others. The leadership, in the contemporary framework, is likely to be analyzed as several points of evolution. The leadership, as we set aside the assumed status of peaceful coexistence in the ancient communal society unlike the Marxism circle, can be seen as one of interactive products about some form of organization. For example, ancient Chinese leaders, through its imperial history, almost always have been concerned about the integration of his subject against the foreign threat of ingression. While we realistically see the phenomenon of world as a split nature, the organization, even most simple form for the state, has to find their leadership as one kind of interactive context. That is, without any submission, surely the case if we talk about a for-profit organization and also non-profit organization. We can see an idealistic organization that may be perceived as monopolistic, such as UN and NGOs. These organizations, however, are also facing the realistic challenge to interact with outside actors and other organizations. For the UN, a terrorist state or organization might be a good example which it needs to interact. In some cases, the states in the dispute and hostile confrontation may be concerned interactively. For the NGOs, the state and conservatists’ group of WTO can be the actor or organization that they have to deal with. Then we can reach the deep structure or environmental element which the leaders of organization have to deliberate on his true nature of leadership. (shrink)

Using incoming revenues and the associated costs that underpin the concept of breakeven analysis, this article investigates the business survival strategies of immigrant-own-businesses in the context of African immigrants in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area of South Africa, and proposes a framework for the start-up survival of these businesses. The study was designed within the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. A triangulation of three methods was utilised to collect and analyze the data. The research revealed that African immigrant (...) entrepreneurs face a range of challenges when starting their businesses and again as they try to grow or stay afloat. Furthermore, the study indicated that African immigrants rely more on certain entrepreneurial attributes as they seek innovative solutions to the problems that they encounter relating to business. As a business survival strategy, these immigrants develop a number of unconventional initiatives aimed at increasing sales revenue while minimising cost. (shrink)

The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss the issue of managing fake news in the online environment, from an organizational perspective, by using reactive PR strategies. First, we critically discuss the most important definitions of the umbrella term fake news, in the so-called post-truth era, in order to emphasize different challenges in conceptualizing this elusive social phenomenon. Second, employing some valuable contribution from literature, we present and illustrate with vivid examples 10 categories of fake news. Each type of (...) fake news is discussed in the context of organizational communication. Based on existent literature, we propose a 3D conceptual model of fake news, in an organizational context. Furthermore, we consider that PR managers can use either reactive PR strategies to counteract online fake news regarding an organization, or communication stratagems to temporarily transform the organization served into a potential source of fake news. The existing typology of reactive public relations strategies from the literature allow us to discuss the challenge of using them in counteracting online fake news. Each reactive PR strategy can be a potential solution to respond to different types of online fake news. Although these possibilities seem to be extensive, in some cases, PR managers can find them ineffective. In our view, this cluster of reactive PR strategies is not a panacea for managing fake news in the online environment and different strategic approaches may be need, such as communication stratagems. In this context, communication stratagems consist in using organization as a source or as a vector for strategic creation and dissemination of online fake news, for the benefit of the organization. We conclude that within online environment PR managers can employ a variety of reactive PR strategies to counteract fake news, or different communication stratagems to achieve organizational goals. (shrink)

Stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens (SESH) is built in accordance with the modular and hierarchical principle and consists of the same type of self-replicating elements, i.e. is a system of systems. On the top level of the organization of SESH is the superposition of genetic, social, cultural and techno-rationalistic complexes. The components of this triad differ in the mechanism of cycles of generation - replication - transmission - fixing/elimination of adoptively relevant information. This mechanism is implemented either (...) in accordance with the Darwin-Weismann modus, or according to the Lamarck modus, the difference between them is clear from the title. The integral attribute of the system of systems including ESSH is the production of evolutionary risks. The sources of evolutionary risk for stable adaptive strategy of Homo sapiens are the imbalance of (1) the intra-genomic co-evolution (intragenomic conflicts); (2) the gene-cultural coevolution; (3) the inter-cultural co-evolution; (4) techno-humanitarian balance; (5) intertechnological conflicts (technological traps). At least phenomenologically the components of the evolutionary risk are reversible, but in the aggregate they are in potentio irreversible destructive ones for bio-social, and cultural self-identity of Homo sapiens. When the actual evolution is the subject of a rationalist control and/or manipulation, the magnitude of the 4th and 5th components of the evolutionary risk reaches the level of existential significance. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic health protocols have adversely impacted the economic profit and business operations of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This study aimed to evaluate the business strategies employed by MSMEs as they are facing the public health crisis in Bato, Leyte, Philippines. A random sample of 200 MSMEs were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. Some descriptive statistics and Chi-square test for independence were used to summarize and determine the relationship among variables, respectively. Results showed that dominantly more of (...) the MSMEs are operated by owner-managers during the pandemic. On average, most (97.5%) of the enterprise operating are micro and operates for about 3 years. About 63.5% of the MSMEs during the pandemic has adopted a new strategies to cope with COVID-19’s negative impact and most of them are micro in nature. The major business strategies adopted to survive the adverse impact of the pandemic are as follows: following health protocols (50%), finding suppliers in nearby towns (33.8%), seeking alternative sources (26%), increasing prices of items sold (24.5%), and local outsourcing (22.5%), among others. It is concluded that age is a significant factor in implementing business strategies (p-value<0.019). This implies that owner-managers with higher age (average is 40 years old) are more likely to adopt business strategies. Moreover, as they are experiencing vulnerability to the pandemic such as economic profits being significantly reduced, then they are more likely to implement strategies (p-value<0.001). Short and long term plans are considered in order to survive and sustain its business operations. Hence, the study recommends that the government should help and enhance the capability of enterprises in managing risk as well as ensuring MSME’s continuity amidst the pandemic. (shrink)

Introduction: This article discusses the brain hierarchical organization/evolution as a consequence of the information-induced brain development, from the perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness. Analysis: In the frame of the Informational Model of Consciousness, a detailed info-neural analysis ispresented, concerning the specific properties/functions of the informational system of the human body composed by the Center of Acquisition and Storing of Information, Center of Decision and Command, Info-Emotional Center, Maintenance Informational System, Genetic Transmission System, Info Genetic Generator and Info- (...) Connection center, in relation with the neuro-connected brain areas, with a special attention to the Info-Connection and its specific properties. Besides a meticulous analysis of the info-connections/neuro-functions of these centers, a special attention was paid to limbic/cingulate cortex activities. Defined as a trust/confidence center, additional features are highlighted in correlation with the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex, consisting in the intervention/moderation of amygdala emotional signals, conflicting opposite YES/NO data and error elimination in the favor of the organism adaptation/survival, the intervention in the certainty/uncertainty balance to select a suitable pro-life information (antientropic effect), in moderation of pain and in the stimulation of the empathic inter-human relations/communication. Representing the correspondence between the informational subsystems and the brain area map, itis shown that the up/down integration of information by epigenetic mechanisms and the down/ up evolution are correlated. Results: The analysis of the functions of the anterior cingulate opens new gates of investigations concerning the involved intimate mechanisms at the level of cell microstructure, specifically on the compatibility with quantum assisted processes admitted by the Informational Model of Consciousness and the quantum-based models The discussion on the information integration/codification by epigenetic mechanisms shows that this process starts from the superior levels of brain conscious info-processing areas and progressively advances to the automatic/autonomic inferior levels ofthe informational system, under insistent/repetitive cues/stress conditions, pointing out an hierarchical functional/anatomical structure of the brain organization. Additional arguments are discussed, indicating thatthe down/up progressive scale representation is a suggestive illustration of the brain evolution, induced/assisted/determined by information, accelerated at humans by the antientropic functions of the Info-Connection center. Conclusions: The hierarchical organization of the brain is a consequence of the integration process of information, defining its development accordingly to the adaptation requirements for survival during successive evolution stages of the organism, information playing a determinant/key role. (shrink)

Abstract: The field of life extension is full of ideas but they are unstructured. Here we suggest a comprehensive strategy for reaching personal immortality based on the idea of multilevel defense, where the next life-preserving plan is implemented if the previous one fails, but all plans need to be prepared simultaneously in advance. The first plan, plan A, is the surviving until advanced AI creation via fighting aging and other causes of death and extending one’s life. Plan B is (...) cryonics, which starts if plan A fails, and assumes cryopreservation of the brain until technical capabilities to return it to life appear. Plan C is digital immortality in the sense of collecting data about the person now so future AI will be able to recreate a model of a person. Plan D is the hope based on some unlikely scenarios of infinite survival, like so-called “quantum immortality”. All these plans have personal and social perspective. The personal aspect means efforts of the increasing chances of personal survival via taking care about one’s own health, signing cryocontract or collecting digital immortality data. The social aspect means the participation in collective work towards creation and increase of the availability of life extension technologies, which includes funding scientific research, promotion of life extension value and direct performing of research and implementation, as well as preventing global catastrophic risk. All plans converge at the end, as their result is the indefinite survival as an uploaded mind inside an ecosystem, created by a superintelligent AI. (shrink)

Stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens (SESH) is built in accordance with the modular and hierarchical principle and consists of the same type of self-replicating elements, i.e. is a system of systems. On the top level of the organization of SESH is the superposition of genetic, social, cultural and techno-rationalistic complexes. The components of this triad differ in the mechanism of cycles of generation - replication - transmission - fixing/elimination of adoptively relevant information. This mechanism is implemented either (...) in accordance with the Darwin-Weismann modus, or according to the Lamarck modus, the difference between them is clear from the title. The integral attribute of the system of systems including ESSH is the production of evolutionary risks. The sources of evolutionary risk for stable adaptive strategy of Homo sapiens are the imbalance of (1) the intra-genomic co-evolution (intragenomic conflicts); (2) the gene-cultural co- evolution; (3) the inter-cultural co-evolution; (4) techno-humanitarian balance; (5) inter- technological conflicts (technological traps). At least phenomenologically the components of the evolutionary risk are reversible, but in the aggregate they are in potentio irreversible destructive ones for bio-social, and cultural self-identity of Homo sapiens. When the actual evolution is the subject of a rationalist control and/or manipulation, the magnitude of the 4th and 5th components of the evolutionary risk reaches the level of existential significance. (shrink)

Mechanisms to ensure the integrity of the system stable evolutionary strategy Homo sapiens – genetic and cultural coevolution techno-cultural balance – are analyzed. оe main content of the study can be summarized in the following the- ses: stable adaptive strategy of Homo sapiens includes superposition of three basic types (biological, cultural and technological) of adaptations, the integrity of the system provides by two coevolutionary ligament its elements – the genetic-cultural coevolution and techno-cultural balance, the system takes as result (...) of by develop- ment of genetic and information technologies by advent of genetic and informa- tion technologies extremely unstable conūguration; a harbinger of a radical change in the mechanisms of global evolution religion is a consequence of structural and functional organization of the human psyche; it played (along with science and technology) the role of socio-cultural adaptation of the human mind are present a number of ideas or concepts (the idea of God, including) the genesis of that ideas is associated with the interaction of two information systems, that appear to each other as information substrates – emotional, and verbal-logical (discursive) forms; evolution of the mentality has two nodes, that corresponding to the dominance of rationalism or religion in spiritual culture; the problem of rational justiūcation of religion in modern science is presented by two alternative methodologies – evo- lutionary epistemological and metaphysical-ontological ones; both methodologies are incompatible in a logical perspective; in the evolutionary epistemological im- pact concept of religion and science are equal and alternative building blocks of a stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens, and their balance sheet pro. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the sustainable marketing strategies for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research technique, a quantitative descriptive survey was utilized to examine 363 MSMEs in designated cities and municipalities in Pangasinan, such as Binmaley, Calasiao, Dagupan City, Mangaldan, San Carlos City, Santa Barbara, and Urdaneta City, all registered with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). According to the findings, manufacturing is the primary industry for most respondents; they are sole (...) proprietorships with less than PhP3 Million in assets, have 1-9 employees, and have been in operation for less than three years. The sustainable marketing strategies implemented by the MSMEs in terms of product, place, price, promotion, physical evidence, people, and process are considered extremely important. The level of effectiveness in sustaining marketing strategies of MSMEs is considered very effective. The respondents assessed the problems encountered by the MSMEs in sustaining marketing strategies as extremely serious. It can be concluded that the majority of the respondents were in the manufacturing business, a single type of business organization, and, capitalization comprises not more than 3 million. Most of them have a minimal number of employees and operate for a short time. For the sustainable marketing strategies implemented by the MSMEs product, place, price, physical evidence, people and process are extremely important while promotions are very important. The effectiveness of 7ps of marketing is considered very effective. The respondent’s problems encountered by the MSMEs in sustaining marketing strategies as extremely serious. (shrink)

The main purpose of the study is to understand the mathematical problem-solving strategies among student teachers. This study used both quantitative and qualitative type of research. Aside from the semi-structured interviews, data were gathered through participant's actual mathematical problem-solving outputs and the videotaped interviews. Findings revealed that the problem-solving strategies among student teachers in the Problem-Solving subject are cognitive, metacognitive and other strategies. The cognitive strategies used by the student teachers are rehearsal, elaboration, and organization. The metacognitive strategies are (...) critical thinking and self-regulation. Other strategies are overlapping the cognitive and metacognitive strategies. These are prediction/orientation, planning, monitoring, and evaluating. The findings also suggest a significant influence of the strategies to the academic performance of the student teachers. (shrink)

COVID-19 and military actions on the territory of Ukraine fundamentally changed the organization of the educational process, forcing educational institutions to transfer classroom learning to virtual space. To organize the educational process remotely, we need to organize an educational environment in which we can ensure the implementation of all types of educational activities, as well as creation and selection of e-resources depending on their types. Having guidelines in the form of modes, forms and learning outcomes, it is necessary to (...) structure the content of educational disciplines, corresponding curricula, to ensure the activity of students during lectures and the implementation of practical tasks with the necessary tools, to determine and carry out the selection of electronic educational resources for the effective organization of the educational process in conditions of open education. First of all, it is important to take into account all types of student activities, namely: those ones, which are usually implemented in class and determine the possibility of their implementation in a remote format using cloud services. The monograph considers the problem of effective use of Microsoft 365 services for the organization of e-learning through the prism of the competency approach. In particular, the study established a correspondence between training activities and M365 services, which can provide tools support for their implementation. Chapter 1 analyzes the components of digital competence and the abilities necessary for the organization of the e-learning process. Based on the analysis, the correspondence between the components of digital competence and M365 services, the possession of which indicates the existing level of digital competence, was established. Chapter 2 of the monograph describes the digital competences necessary for the organization of various types of training using Microsoft 365 services. It studies features of using digital identity cloud services, Microsoft 365 services for digital data management and collaboration, e-learning management, design and creation of digital content, problem solving and innovation, digital communication, cooperation and interaction. Chapter 3 offers a developed model of hybrid educational environment architecture based on Microsoft Teams platform and analyzes digital competences for the organization of asynchronous interaction between students and teachers using MS Teams tools. Chapter 4 is devoted to the results of an experimental study of the effectiveness of the use of Microsoft 365 services for the organization of e-learning and the readiness of teachers and students to use them. (shrink)

Abstract: Knowledge requires more than mere true belief, and we also tend to think it is more valuable. I explain the added value that knowledge contributes if its extra ingredient beyond true belief is tracking . I show that the tracking conditions are the unique conditions on knowledge that achieve for those who fulfill them a strict Nash Equilibrium and an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy in what I call the True Belief Game. The added value of these properties, intuitively, includes (...) preparedness and an expectation of survival advantage. On this view knowledge is valuable not because knowledge persists but because it makes the bearer more likely to maintain an appropriate belief state—possibly nonbelief—through time and changing circumstances. When Socrates concluded that knowledge of the road to Larissa was no more valuable than true belief for the purpose of getting to Larissa, he did not take into account that one might want to be prepared for a possible meeting with a misleading sophist along the way, or for the possibility of road work. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out a version of the Forfeiture Theory of Punishment. Forfeiture Theory: Legal punishment is just or permissible because offenders forfeit their rights.On this account, offenders forfeit their rights because they infringed on someone’s rights. My strategy is to provide a version of the Forfeiture Theory and then to argue that it survives a number of initially intuitive seeming objections, most having their origins in the recent work of David Boonin.

The global economy has showed progress in terms of a new reign of multilateral cooperation represented by the World Trade Organization (WTO). On the other hand. regional integration creates economic benefits as illustrated by the creation of the EU and NAFTA. East Asia has also seriously pursued prospects for economic integration. producing considerable successes thus far. A Free Trade Agreement is a useful tool to assist in this evolution of trade relations. and South Korea. one of the major economies (...) in East Asia. is uniquely situated to play a significant role in future negotiations. From this perspective. this paper surveys the global structure and organization of international trade. problems of regional economic integration emphasizing East Asia. and attempts to articulate a plausible South Korean strategy. (shrink)

Prevention, they say, is cheaper, easier and better than curing. It is from this maxim that this study was conceptualized. Metallurgical laboratory accidents are an issue of great concern because it not only affect the productivity and economic growth of an organization but also the physical, mental, and entire wellbeing of the victim. This study was aimed at reviewing the types and causes of metallurgical laboratory accidents, their effects, and their preventive measures. It was concluded that if the identified (...) preventive measures are strictly adhered to, the prevalence of such accidents would be curtailed tremendously. (shrink)

By using the general investigation framework offered by the cognitive science of religion (CSR), I analyse religion as a necessary condition for the evolutionary path of knowledge. The main argument is the "paradox of the birth of knowledge": in order to get to the meaning of the part, a sense context is needed; but a sense of the whole presupposes the sense (meaning) of the parts. Religion proposes solutions to escape this paradox, based on the imagination of sense (meaning) contexts, (...) respectively closures of these contexts through meta-senses. What is important is the practical effectiveness of solutions proposed by religion, taking into account the costs of faith and the costs of the absence of religious belief. The hypothesis has the following consequences: religion is a necessary condition for the initial evolution of knowledge and the emergence of religion is determined by the evolution of knowledge. The continuation of the solving of paradox is a Bayesian one, using explorations: a sense of the whole allows cognitive arrangements of the parties, which in turn open the possibility of a rearrangement of the whole. The contribution of religion to the emergence of sense (meaning) could be governed by the rule: any map of the world is more useful than no map; any meaning (of life) is better than no meaning. The human mind fills the perceptual and cognitive gaps, some (religious) filling solutions being true vault keys of the entire cognitive construction called the world. Knowledge is conditioned by the existence of an organized context, as the cosmos created by religion by means of explanatory meta-theories supports knowledge by closing the cognitive context and using meaning networks. The proposed analysis is consistent with a redefinition of rationality from the perspective of evolution: the importance and relevance of knowledge is determined by its practical outcome - survival. In the context of useful fictions, it does not matter what God actually does, but what we have done by believing in God. Existence has provided a pragmatic verification of the cognitive solutions that underlie the survival strategies promoted by religions. (shrink)

The high prevalence of aggression, anxiety and stress symptoms among team members in the organisation, while acquisition of task is alarming causation of adjustment disorder influences on team embeddedness, is the subject of this study. The ontogenesis of psychosocial adjustment disorder in any employees is not palingenetic, this is exact reproduction of psychosocial factors (PSF) which develops at workplace The most important strategy for productivity improvement is based on the fact that human productivity, both positive and negative, is determined (...) by the attitudes of all those who work in the enterprise and gap surfaced between teamwork and competence development particularly with regard to managing individualism within organisation and specifically individualistic approach, organisational justice, productivity management and psychosocial support. We strongly feel that there is a need to reexamine organisational team credentials and possible strong influences on individual’s psychosocial adjustment disorders. Findings suggest psychosocial adjustment factors are significantly correlated with psychosocial disorders (PSDs). (shrink)

Levels of organization and their use in science have received increased philosophical attention of late, including challenges to the well-foundedness or widespread usefulness of levels concepts. One kind of response to these challenges has been to advocate a more precise and specific levels concept that is coherent and useful. Another kind of response has been to argue that the levels concept should be taken as a heuristic, to embrace its ambiguity and the possibility of exceptions as acceptable consequences of (...) its usefulness. In this chapter, I suggest that each of these strategies faces its own attendant downsides, and that pursuit of both strategies (by different thinkers) compounds the difficulties. That both kinds of approaches are advocated is, I think, illustrative of the problems plaguing the concept of levels of organization. I end by suggesting that the invocation of levels may mislead scientific and philosophical investigations more than it informs them, so our use of the levels concept should be updated accordingly. (shrink)

The survival enhancing propensity (SEP) account has a crucial role to play in the analysis of proper function. However, a central feature of the account, its specification of the proper environment to which functions are relativized, is seriously underdeveloped. In this paper, I argue that existent accounts of proper environment fail because they either allow too many or too few characters to count as proper functions. While SEP accounts retain their promise, they are unworkable because of their inability to (...) specify this important feature. However, I suggest that this problem can be overcome by the application of a new strategy for specifying proper environment that is grounded in the operation of natural selection and I conclude by offering a first approximation of such an account. (shrink)

The main disciples of Socrates criticise the use of city walls. However, their attacks are less grounded in a deep strategic reflexion than related to the traumatic consequences of Pericles’ strategy at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. The Lacedemonians’ opposition to the erection of surrounding walls is more likely linked to their aristo- cratic ideology and interests than to moral imperatives. Though Plato and Xenophon’s motives are to avoid political divisions in the city, their positions on fortifications reveal (...) their aristocratic bias and the question of the walls appears to be part of a more general questioning on the spatial and political organisation of the city. On that issue, Aristotle criticises Plato from a pragmatic point of view and defends the use of walls, but under strict conditions only. The Spartan and Socratic critique of the building of the walls, as well as Aristotle reluctance to fully accept them, could be traced back to a common Greek archaic ideal. (shrink)

The development of student's skills in the conduct of research, both qualitative and quantitative, is envisioned in the K to12 curriculum. This study uses qualitative research to show students' perceptions and understanding of a particular issue. Similarly, it describes apparent cultures postulated within the students' chosen themes. Finally, it determines the development of cultural knowledge in the context of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception among Grade 11 students at a Senior High School near Laguna Lake in the City of San Pedro, (...) Laguna, Philippines, during the school year 2016-2017. Semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and triangulation was used to obtain students' cultural understanding and share their experiences undertaking diverse qualitative research using purposive sampling. The data was analyzed using phenomenological analysis. Students' perceptions and streams of consciousness include street children, child labor fishermen, and school violence. Cultural understanding encompasses (a) the economic and psychological implications of family, (2) camaraderie, pakikisama and pakikiisa, and (3) education as a survival strategy. Senior High School students' research experiences connect underpinnings of cultural understanding. (shrink)

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...

Theoretical accounts of development exhibit several internal tensions and face multiple challenges. They span from the problem of the identification of the temporal boundaries of development (beginning and end) to the characterization of the distinctive type of change involved compared to other biological processes. They include questions such as the role to ascribe to the environment or what types of biological systems can undergo development and whether they should include colonies or even ecosystems. In this chapter we discuss these conceptual (...) issues, and we argue that adopting an organizational approach may help solve or clarify them. -/- While development is usually identified with the achievement of an adult form with the capability to reproduce and therefore maintain a lineage, adopting the organizational approach may provide a different strategy, which focuses also on the maintenance of the current organization of the organism. By doing so an organizational approach favors a switch in perspective which consists in analyzing how organisms maintain their viability at each moment of development rather than considering them as going through intermediate stages of a process directed toward a specific goal state. This developmental dimension of biological organization has yet to be given a general and detailed analysis within the organizational theoretical perspective, apart from some preliminary attempts. How a biological organization is maintained through a series of radical organizational changes and what these changes are issues that still require clarification. In this chapter we offer the beginnings of such an analysis of developmental transitions, understood as changes in functionality brought forth by regulatory mechanisms in the context of the continued maintenance of organizational viability at every step. (shrink)

This selective review explores biologically inspired learning as a model for intelligent robot control and sensing technology on the basis of specific examples. Hebbian synaptic learning is discussed as a functionally relevant model for machine learning and intelligence, as explained on the basis of examples from the highly plastic biological neural networks of invertebrates and vertebrates. Its potential for adaptive learning and control without supervision, the generation of functional complexity, and control architectures based on self-organization is brought forward. Learning (...) without prior knowledge based on excitatory and inhibitory neural mechanisms accounts for the process through which survival-relevant or task-relevant representations are either reinforced or suppressed. The basic mechanisms of unsupervised biological learning drive synaptic plasticity and adaptation for behavioral success in living brains with different levels of complexity. The insights collected here point toward the Hebbian model as a choice solution for “intelligent” robotics and sensor systems. Keywords: Hebbian learning; synaptic plasticity; neural networks; self-organization; brain; reinforcement; sensory processing; robot control . (shrink)

Local participation is always beneficial for sustainable action and environmental problems resulting from urban implementation due to the failure of social and institutional change necessary for a successful transformation of rural life to urban life ahead of the rapid movement of the population. Despite good legal practice and comprehensive guidelines, evidence suggests that Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or more broadly Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment (ESHIA) have not yet been found satisfactory in Nigeria, as the current system amounts to (...) duplication of efforts and cost. However, ESHIA has been developed and integrated to help manage project activities, facilities, and operations sustainably, so that both economic and ecological profits are accrued (sustainable development) or ensure that any development project does not result in excessive deterioration of and/or the irreversible adverse effect on any component of the environment – a recite for sustainable development. A literature review was done by using a variety of search engines including Research Gate, Google Scholar, Academia, Mendeley, SSRN search strategy to retrieve research publications, “grey literature” and expert working group reports. The thrust of this study is to evaluate the potential benefits of ESHIA as a tool for sustainable environmental development. The evaluation and implementation of EIA are one of the strengths of these tools. Indeed, EIA is the first and foremost management tool employed to help mitigate adverse, potential, and associated impacts of proposed major developments in our environment. EIA is a regulatory requirement that is efficiently used to improve performance, project design, enhancing decision-making, and facilitating policy programs in a sustainable environment. An evaluation of the EIA systems reveals several weaknesses of the EIA system. These include the inadequate capacity of EIA approval authorities, deficiencies in screening and scoping, poor EIA quality, insufficient public participation, and weak monitoring, and erratic government policies. Overall, most EIA study rarely meets the objectives of being a project planning tool to contribute to achieving sustainable development and mitigate the impact of the development project. The study recommends some directions for the future to ensure that entire content of the EIA are religiously implemented, review the existing EIA act, increase the expertise of EIA consultants, create a liaison office with an international organisation and with sister agency, ESHIA must enjoy Improved budgetary provision, time latitude, spatial contexts and methodological improvements for outcome measures to achieve results that are relevant to sustainable development by improving project design, enhancing decision making and facilitating policy programs. (shrink)

Schröedinger’s question “what is life?” was a real challenge for the scientific community and this still remains as an opened question, because in spite of the important advances in various scientific branches like philosophy, biology, chemistry and physics,, each of them assesses life from its particular point of view to explain the life’ characteristic features, so not a coherent and well structured general model of life was reported. In this paper life is approached from informational perspective, starting from earlier Draganeacu's (...) philosophic concepts, showing that actually life is structured by matter and information. Therefore, it is analyzed carbon-matter properties on the basis of which the living structures are composed, giving rise not only of a considerable number of carbon-based compounds, but serving now beside silicon, as an useful material for micro/nanostructure applications. Such specific properties refers to the high ability of carbon to associate/dissociate in chemical reactions regulated/facilitated by informational (Bit unit) YES/NO bistable mechanisms to form macro/small molecules with complementary properties, reactive info-functional pathways of transduction, relaying, amplification, integration, spreading, modulation, activation and positive/negative feedback reactions, like in the informational microelectronic/microsystems circuits. It is argued that the negentropy invoked earlier in Schrödinger's analysis is a consequence of informational-assisted structuration/organization of the cell and human organism. From the analysis of inter/intra-communication mechanisms in the cell and comparing with the outcomes described by the Informational Model of Human Body, it is deduced that, the living organisms operate on the basis of three main streaming circuits assuring the living functions: (1) the metabolic matter-related circuit; (2) the operative informational circuit; (3) the epigenetic informational circuit for the gradual integration of information in the central informational structure – DNA. It is founded on these bases the Informational Model of the Living Structures, and the Informational System of the Living Structures (ISLS), with similar functions on the entire living scale size, from unitary to multicellular living structures, composed by seven informational systems, namely [CASI (center of acquisition and storing of information), CDC (center of decision and command), IRSS (info-reactive sentient system), MIS (maintenance info-system), GTS (genetic transmission system), IGG (info-genetic generator) and IC (info-connection)]ISLS, and are identified the specific functions of each of them. The living structures operate thus like self-“polarized" bipolar info-matter informational devices by means of the stand-by metabolic matter-related circuit, and react/respond to the external/internal informational stimuli, which modulate their functionality, returning an external reaction signal (“attitude"), for adaptation and survival. (shrink)

Every organization, as they grow has many stakeholders like shareholders, employees, customers, vendors, community, etc. For survival and growth, they have to rely upon healthy relations with all these stockholders. Hence organizations need to provide good returns for shareholders but also good jobs for employees, reliable products for consumers, responsible relations with the community and a clean environment. -/- Business ethics is the application of general ethical principles to business dilemmas and encompasses a broader range of issues and (...) concerns than laws do, as everything that is legal is not ethical. Ethics involves learning what is right or wrong, and then doing the right thing -- but "the right thing" is not nearly as straightforward. -/- Business Ethics has the following purposes: - To give people the tools for dealing with moral complexity in business - Business decisions have an ethical component - Ethical implications must be weighed before acting -/- Corporate governance is concerned with the ownership, control and accountability of companies, and how the corporate pursuit of economic objectives relates to a number of wider ethical and societal considerations. It is the application of best management practices, compliance of law in true letter and spirit and adherence to ethical standards for effective management and distribution of wealth and discharge of social responsibility for sustainable development of all stakeholders. -/- Good Corporate Governance is key to Growing Profits and Reputation. It represents the relationship among stakeholders that is used to determine and control the strategic direction and performance of organizations. Accountability is a key element as well as requirement for corporate governance, fortifying the latter in such a way that it provides a transparent template for governing critical decisions, procedures, and activities. -/- Corporate Governance deals with the questions: (1) Who benefits from corporate decisions/senior management actions? (2) Who should benefit from corporate decisions/senior management actions? -/- There are a number of reasons why businesses should act ethically .As behavior is based on values priorities, a mutual effort at all levels to deal with corporate ethics begins with a clear understanding of core values, both individually and organizationally. -/- Good corporate governance begins with a company's own internal practices and policies. While corporate governance issues are common across organizations, each company requires governance principles that are unique in their approach. Good governance is, ultimately, the sine qua non for continued growth and prosperity. -/- Corporate governance ensures that long term strategic objectives and plans are established and that the proper management structure is in place. Companies that provide good governance, both in terms of practices and results can expect the backing not only of investors but of customers too. -/- Corporate Governance represents the moral framework, the ethical framework and the value framework under which an enterprise takes decisions. In the long run ethical behavior has a positive impact on the company's performance. -/- This paper discusses the elements of corporate governance, inter-relationship between business ethics and corporate governance with reference to some of the Indian companies over the years and their impact in this era of globalization and liberalization. (shrink)

Survival of the fittest is an over simplification because the creature is tuned to the value in the environment. All variation is constrained and sophistication emerges as a consequence of value. -/- If we could zoom out until the entire universe appeared as an infinitesimal point, then it becomes one thing, undifferentiated, a system in search of a narrative. The system is a form of a dance, without the dancers, there is no system. The narrative unfolds as an expression (...) in a context. The meaning branches out as an increasingly rich and complex expression where the dancers enrich the environment and the environment enriches the dancers. As the deeper layers are expressed, more and more subtlety and sophistication is created and the process continues ad infinitum... Value is the measure of an enriching principle of organization. (shrink)

When you type the word “serendipity” in a word-processor application such as Microsoft Word, the autocorrection engine suggests you choose other words like “luck” or “fate”. This correcting act turns out to be incorrect. However, it points to the reality that serendipity is not a familiar English word and can be misunderstood easily. Serendipity is a very much scientific concept as it has been found useful in numerous scientific discoveries, pharmaceutical innovations, and numerous humankind’s technical and technological advances. Therefore, there (...) have been many books written around the concept. So why do we need this additional book? This is not just another book about serendipity. It has evolved from the Editor’s question lingering for a decade after finishing his widely cited article (coauthored with Prof. Nancy K. Napier of Boise State University, ID, USA) “Serendipity as a strategic advantage?” in T. Wilkinson’s edited volume Strategic Management in the 21st Century, published by Praeger. The Editor and contributing authors have tried to achieve the following in this title. Demystifying the Serendipity Myth The phenomenon of serendipity has always been thought of as a “miracle”. It is the mystery of human innovation and one of the ultimate secrets of our society. But serendipity is not just a lucky coincidence nor any hidden conspiracy. This book explores the science of the information process behind this seemingly miraculous phenomenon. It connects human society with nature, going back to the root of our existence and looking at the flame of survival to discover the harmony in making creativity. Presenting the nuts and bolts of being an adventurer of science The authors present their conceptual investigations into serendipity’s nature and its mechanism by examining interesting real events and stories. The content is thought-provoking, and readers are led to question and explore their own life stories and problems along the journey of reading this book. Catching an elusive high-value target requires great strategies and efforts. But there are no dark secrets here because this is the “way of nature” – how we humans have always strived for innovation without realizing the blueprints behind such processes. Unlike other books on serendipity, this book will show you that a powerful “secret” is closer than you think. Delivering practical uses for different audiences By understanding the conditionality and survival drivers of serendipity, individuals or organizations can make better decisions on creating the right environment to facilitate the encounter and attainment of this valuable phenomenon. For scientists: With clear explanations of the information processes underlying serendipity, flexible theoretical frameworks of mindsponge and the 3D principle of creativity, researchers are provided with the tools they need to dig deeper into their own fields of study and find practical applications, be it psychology, economics, sociology, or anything that involves innovation (which is, in fact, every scientific discipline). For curious casual readers: Everybody needs innovation to make breakthroughs or spice up one’s life. If you think great ideas come to people randomly from an unknown fairy place, this book will convince you otherwise without taking away that awe and wonder. But above all, you will know how to become more creative, scientifically and straightforwardly, with no snake oil and no weird tricks. For ambitious business people: The flame that brought about great successes throughout human history is within you. But you can only use it if you understand it. While others wait for serendipity to come, you will be able to actively hunt for those precious moments. As it has always been: the best hunters triumph, not the passive wanderers. And in this age of information chaos, finding the golden fruits is not easy. Those from information technology know this problem well, and this book is the treasure map that they have been seeking to navigate that stormy ocean looking for jewels. Like a kingfisher tracking its prey through the water, waiting to gracefully strike, with serendipity, a person seizes the prize of creativity amid the chaos of life. ¤ ¤ ¤ Official introduction: The book explores the nature, underlying causes, and the information processing mechanism of serendipity. It proposes that natural or social survival demands drive serendipity, and serendipity is conditional on the environment and the mindset, on both individual and collective levels. From Darwin's evolution theory to Sun Tzu's war tactics, major innovations throughout human history are unified by this key concept. In the rapidly changing world, information is abundant but rather chaotic. The adaptive power of serendipity allows people to notice treasures within this wild sea, but only for those who understand how it works. To increase the probability of encountering and attaining serendipity, one should employ the mindsponge mechanism and the 3D process of creativity, for without these frameworks, serendipity is truly an elusive target. The book also discusses methods to build environments and cultures rich in navigational and useful information to maximize the chance of finding and capitalizing on serendipity. As a skill, serendipity has a resemblance to how kingfishers observe and hunt their prey. (shrink)

In this chapter, it is demonstrated that the concepts of leadership and organization are closely linked. A leader should initially get to know the organizational culture as well as possible. Such a culture can for example be authoritarian and conformist or innovative and progressive in nature. The assumption is that leaders are influenced by their own culture. Strategic decisions are characterized by the fact that they are new, complex and open in nature, and being able to develop a (...) class='Hi'>strategy is one of the most difficult tasks for a leader. Traditionally, it is primarily the top leadership in an organization that works with strategic decisions, and thus it is common that strategic issues are handled by top leadership teams. This is related to the globalization of business and to the fact that the pace of work has increased significantly. In order to exercise leadership, a leader must have access to power. A power base can be created through networking as well as by using different political tactics. However, it is important to use political tactics in order to promote the organization's interests. When a leader has built up a power base, it is essential that power is used properly. The decisions that leaders make must be ethically correct and not violate universal human values. For instance, they should not lead to negative consequences for others within or outside the organization. Evidence suggests that most leaders have the potential to develop as ethical decision makers. -/- . (shrink)

The contrast between the strategies of research employed in reductionism and holism masks a radical contradiction between two different scientific philosophies. We concentrate in particular on an analysis of the key philosophical issues which give structure to holistic thought. A first (non-exhaustive) analysis of the philosophical tradition will dwell upon: a) the theory of emergence: each level of organisation is characterised by properties whose laws cannot be deduced from the laws of the inferior levels of organisation (Engels, Morgan); b) clarification (...) of the relations between the “whole” and the “parts” (Woodger, Needham); c) the ontological or epistemological nature of the emergent properties; are they a phenomenological reality or solely an artefact of the state of our knowledge? (Pepper, Henle, Hempel and Oppenheim); d) the proposition of the holistic theoretical and methodological model ( Novikoff, Feibleman). I then go on to examine the differences that exist between the reductionist and the holistic approaches at various levels of analysis: that is to say, the differences which affect their ontologies, methodologies and epistemologies respectively. I attempt to understand the spirit of a holistic approach to ecology by analyzing the major work of E.P. Odum Fundamentals of ecology (1953, 1959, 1971). I set forward what might be meant by the “holistic approach”, which is implicated in all the different levels of organisation at which the problem of “complexity” is debated. Ecology presents itself as an “holistic science” and Odum’s book offers a vision of the world which dates far back in the history of philosophy. By looking at the three different editions of this fundamental text on ecology, we may become aware of the evolution of Odum’s thought. In fact, only in the third and last edition is there a conscious appropriation of the holistic approach (by using the theoretical models of Feibleman who, for his part, refers to Novikoff). However, even when formally referring to the theory of emergence (that is to say the ontological nucleus of every holistic approach), Odum’s systemic analysis presents the same logical errors, which push him back into the reductionist domain. Above all, in his examination of the main concepts of “population”, “community” and “ecosystem”, there is a misunderstanding of the profound difference between “collective properties” and “emergent properties”. Moreover, the cybernetic models of Odum’s systemic analysis (introduced into ecology by Margalef), allowed him to vastly oversimplify his methodological task: in fact, neither how many levels nor which levels of organization are fundamental for the study of each individual level is clearly marked. Finally, Odum analyses the ecosystem as composed of energetic flux and cycles of matter, referring to the trophic-dynamic vision of Lindeman. That is to say, in my opinion, he juxtaposes a reductionistic methodology and epistemology to an holistic ontology. (shrink)

Drèze and Sen are not entirely right in their apparent glorification of the roles of nongovernmental organizations in Bangladesh in An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions because they leave out and/or de-emphasize some important issues, especially those that are related to the problematic trusting relationship between nongovernmental organizations in Bangladesh and rural poor women. Nongovernmental organizations’ use of trust disturbs social solidarity in rural Bangladesh mainly because of their massive supervision mechanism that they undertake to sustain the so-called trusting (...) relationship between them and their debtors. The massive supervision mechanism damages social solidarity also because it creates a tension between local norms and nongovernmental organizations’ neoliberalist values of “discipline, efficiency and competitiveness,” which nongovernmental organizations try to inject into villagers by their numerous social engineering programs, which are state’s responsibility. Nongovernmental organization monitoring has some psychological impacts on their clients that also contribute to shaking social solidarity. The absence of a proper trusting relationship between nongovernmental organizations and rural poor women reduces the capabilities of the latter as a result of which Drèze and Sen’s glorification of Bangladeshi nongovernmental organizations and Sen’s capabilities approach are in tension. However, there are strategies that Bangladeshi nongovernmental organizations should employ to address the issues raised due to their massive supervision mechanism. (shrink)

In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that (...) is of particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies. (shrink)

Background: Health care practitioners are recognized to have a large influence in shaping uptake of vaccine in new borns, children, adolescents, as well as adults. Parents remain more secure in their decisions when health care practitioners communicate successfully with them about vaccine dangers and benefits, the value as well as necessity for vaccinations, as well as vaccine safety. Thus, immunization remain the foundation of the primary health care system, an indisputable human right as well as a global health and development (...) success story, saving millions of lives yearly. Recently, we have vaccines to prevent more than 20 life threatening diseases, helping people of all ages live longer, healthier lives. Yet despite tremendous progress, far too many people around the world, including nearly 20 million infants yearly have insufficient access to vaccines. In some countries, progress has stalled or even reversed, and there is a real risk that complacency will undermine past achievements. Purpose: The current study aimed to explores vaccine hesitancy, its barriers and impact studies regarding COVID-19 decision impacts. Also, to provides policy and decision makers and operational staff with evidence to inform decisions to promote vaccine uptake across Bayelsa State. Methods: A literature review tried to do a deep dive by using a variety of search engines such as Scopus, Research Gate, Mendeley, Summon, PubMed, Google Scholar, Hinari, Dimension, Academia, CAB Abstract, OARE Abstract, SSRN search strategy to retrieve research publications, “grey literature” and expert working group reports, including author’s field experience. Findings: Absence of uniform methods of organization in the various health care facilities upon which we were obliged to rely. Thus affecting the overall immunization programme and health system. Hence policy must urgently address these challenges with emphasis on policy clarity while continuously improving infrastructure. Conclusions: Bayelsa State is categorized as low/poor performing as the findings suggest that the involvement of community-based leaders can improve community participation and acceptance while enhancing and strengthening integrated disease surveillance and Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) monitoring and reporting systems; and conducting integrated advocacy and communications activities to promote demand for vaccination as part of increasing overall demand and acceptability of all essential Primary Health Centers (PHC) services, thus, breaking barriers of vaccine hesitancy. (shrink)

Today every organization is acting in a dynamic environment and in a world characterised by turbulent change and fierce competition due to technological advancement and the knowledge based economy, an organization must always ready to adapt and transform themselves so as to be able to confront the shifting needs of the new environment, more demanding customers, smarter workers, anticipating ability to changes, accelerating the development of new products, processes and services, changing technologies and customer expectations, businesses have realised (...) the importance of Customer Relationship Management in acquiring new customers, retain existing ones and maximize their lifetime value. The wide spread availability of the internet across the world has led airlines to use their corporate web-sites to bypass travel intermediaries and focus on online communication, information and transaction. The paper considers five dimensions of Web site quality-usability, web site design, service quality, information quality and enjoyment on a sample of 150 respondents from four airlines namely, Air India, Spicejet, Indigo and Jet Airways. Respondents consisted of 40 employed, 80 business men and 30 students. Overall, the majority of respondents are frequent, experienced Internet users and likely to be relatively good judges of Web quality. Analysis of results shows that customers’ priority about airlines website are changing. As the self-service, no-frills and low-cost trend for air travel has grown in recent years, so consumers have been driven less by service quality and more by easy access to good information packaged in an entertaining and fun "wrapper'. More over the airlines have pursued different strategies for their Web sites over the period of study .Air India rated badly for service quality and Jet Airways and Spice jet scored high on service and information quality. The paper suggests that careful management and selection of subjects to be placed on web site can retain the customers and reduce switching intentions. (shrink)

As we look beyond our terrestrial boundary to a multi-planetary future for humankind, it becomes paramount to anticipate the challenges of various human factors on the most likely scenario for this future: permanent human settlement of Mars. Even if technical hurdles are circumvented to provide adequate resources for basic physiological and psychological needs, Homo sapiens will not survive on an alien planet if a dysfunctional psyche prohibits the utilization of these resources. No matter how far we soar into the stars, (...) our psychologies for future generations will be forever tethered to the totality of our surroundings. By shaping our environment toward survival and welfare during the voyage to Mars and in a Martian colony, we indirectly shape our psyches and prepare them for a mission of unprecedented alienation and duration. Once on Mars, human factors such as leadership structure, social organization and code of conduct, group size, gender balance, developmental cycle, mobility, length of stay and the ecological settings and type and manner of subsistence, will create a novel Martian culture. The degree that settlers are severed from the Earth will affect how radically foreign this culture will be when compared with cultures on Earth. (shrink)

The strategic planning serves a variety of purposes in organizations, and it can be properly considered vital for the competitive and also rapidly shifting atmosphere and because of innovation in a scope of paradigm. The word "strategy" is conceptually neutral and carries a high potential to be connected with various levels beginning with the persons and levels of varying organizations. It may be pertinent to a person, for example, in preparing for the final exam. It also matters with the (...) politburo of communist party to plan and implement the communist ideals. The strategic planning can be utilized in private firms and the size of firms often factors to bring a differing forms or elements than the nature of firms, to say, for-profit and non-profit. That means that the larger for-profit firms share much more with the larger non-profit organizations, and relatively less with the small for-profit organization. For example, the mission statement of chaebol is idealistic as similar to the government, and their mode of administration is fairly instituted as well as objective. The strategic planning, in its literal view, presupposes some of challenge, threat, or environmental demand in some mild receipt. Hence, we can note its increasing profile given the nature of contemporary society. Through the chapters, the author attempts to register a brief thought with examples and illustrations in the end to enlighten its contemporary relevance. (shrink)

Self-disorders in depression and schizophrenia have been the focus of much recent work in phenomenological psychopathology. But little has been said about the role the material environment plays in shaping the affective character of these disorders. In this paper, we argue that enjoying reliable (i.e., trustworthy) access to the things and spaces around us — the constituents of our material environment — is crucial for our ability to stabilize and regulate our affective life on a day-today basis. These things and (...) spaces often play an ineliminable role in shaping what we feel and how we feel it; when we interact with them, they contribute ongoing feedback that " scaffolds " the character and temporal development of our affective experiences. However, in some psychopathological conditions, the ability to access to these things and spaces becomes disturbed. Individuals not only lose certain forms of access to the practical significance of the built environment but also to its ​ regulative​ significance, too — and the stability and organization of their affective life is compromised. In developing this view, we discuss core concepts like " affordance spaces " , " scaffolding " , and " incorporation ". We apply these concepts to two case studies, severe depression and schizophrenia, and we show why these cases support our main claim. We conclude by briefly considering implications of this view for developing intervention and treatment strategies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)

There is a growing body of scholarship that is addressing the ethics, in particular, the bioethics of space travel and colonisation. Naturally, a variety of perspectives concerning the ethical issues and moral permissibility of different technological strategies for confronting the rigours of space travel and colonisation have emerged in the debate. Approaches ranging from genetically enhancing human astronauts to modifying the environments of planets to make them hospitable have been proposed as methods. This paper takes a look at a critique (...) of human bioenhancement proposed by Mirko Garasic who argues that the bioenhancement of human astronauts is not only functional but necessary and thus morally permissible. However, he further claims that the bioethical arguments proposed for the context of space do not apply to the context of Earth. This paper forwards three arguments for how Garasic’s views are philosophically dubious: (1) when he examines our responsibility towards future generations he refers to a moral principle (which we will call the principle of mere survival) which, besides being vague, is not morally acceptable; (2) the idea that human bioenhancement is not natural is not only debatable but morally irrelevant; and (3) it is not true that the situations that may arise in space travel cannot occur on Earth. We conclude that not only is the (bio)enhancement of humans on Earth permissible but perhaps even necessary in certain circumstances. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

There are different narratives on mathematics as part of our world, some of which are more appropriate than others. Such narratives might be of the form ‘Mathematics is useful’, ‘Mathematics is beautiful’, or ‘Mathematicians aim at theorem-credit’. These narratives play a crucial role in mathematics education and in society as they are influencing people’s willingness to engage with the subject or the way they interpret mathematical results in relation to real-world questions; the latter yielding important normative considerations. Our strategy (...) is to frame current narratives of mathematics from a virtue-theoretic perspective. We identify the practice of mathematizing, put forward by Freudenthal’s ‘Realistic mathematics education’, as virtuous and use it to evaluate different narratives. We show that this can help to render the narratives more adequately, and to provide implications for societal organization. (shrink)

The definitions and conceptualizations of health, and the management of healthcare have been challenged by the current global scenarios (e.g., new diseases, new geographical distribution of diseases, effects of climate change on health, etc.) and by the ongoing scholarship in humanities and science. In this paper we question the mainstream definition of health adopted by the WHO—‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO in Preamble to the constitution of (...) the World Health Organization as adopted by the international health conference, The World Health Organization, 1948)—and its role in providing tools to understand what health is in the contemporary context. More specifically, we argue that this context requires to take into account the role of the environment both in medical theory and in the healthcare practice. To do so, we analyse WHO documents dated 1984 and 1986 which define health as ‘coping with the environment’. We develop the idea of ‘coping with the environment’, by focusing on two cardinal concepts: adaptation in public health and adaptivity in philosophy of biology. We argue that the notions of adaptation and adaptivity can be of major benefit for the characterization of health, and have practical implications. We explore some of these implications by discussing two recent case studies of adaptivity in public health, which can be valuable to further develop adaptive strategies in the current pandemic scenario: community-centred care and microbiologically healthier buildings. (shrink)