scholarly journals How Does Business Strategy Treat Cognition?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alan Mayo
Keyword(s):  
Business Strategy ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Cognitive Dynamics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Fundamental Shift ◽  
Limited Scope

<p>Strategizing is a human cognitive activity. While this may suggest that business strategy would focus on human cognition, this thesis finds the opposite – that business strategy overwhelmingly treats cognition superficially, and that business strategy consequently is limited and underperforms. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn that places cognition at the centre of business strategy and thereby enables the enhanced research and execution of business strategy.   To research the question “how does business strategy treat cognition?” requires an epistemology that admits cognition. Having found no such epistemology, this thesis creates its own – Pragmatic Cognitivism. A research method that is based upon the works of Michel Foucault, and which aligns with this epistemology, is adopted to analyse two mainstream business strategy discourses and two academic business strategy discourses.   This analysis finds that business strategy, driven by Enlightenment thinking and human sciences, perceives itself to be the problem and creates a large variety of approaches to strategy and strategy solutions. The development of these approaches establishes both the discipline of strategy and the role of the strategist. The analysis concludes that business strategy often ignores cognition and, when it is considered, it is treated only as a side issue. Furthermore, strategy solutions are not cognitive solutions, tasks such as learning and designing strategy are not considered, there is no consideration of knowledge of strategy and strategy intentions, and the subconscious is rarely mentioned.   Conditions that have led to this limited treatment of cognition include a scientific approach that does not easily cater for cognition and the complexities of understanding the mind. For business strategy, this has resulted in methodological approaches, a limited scope, and underperformance. Business strategy has developed in such a way that its own context is the limiting factor – business strategy cannot perform well because its core ingredient, cognition, is left untreated.   This thesis recommends a cognitive turn in business strategy that makes cognition the centre of strategy discourses. This is not to wholly reject current discourses, but it is a fundamental shift in how business strategy is conceived, researched, and executed. By placing cognition at the centre of strategy interpretations, strategy can potentially develop higher levels of performance rather than being structurally constrained.   The necessary starting point for such a cognitive turn is epistemological – to enable cognition to be well thought. Pragmatic Cognitivism is recommended as an epistemology that enables the reinstatement of the concepts of intuition and judgment, the inclusion of the subconscious as a cognitive factor, and the consideration of group cognitive dynamics. Such a cognitive turn is not an increased drawing of theory from contemporary psychology – it is a turn to concepts initially found in pre-behavioural approaches.   This thesis seeks to understand business strategy in the present by exploring how business strategy has treated human cognition in the past.</p>

scholarly journals How Does Business Strategy Treat Cognition?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alan Mayo
Keyword(s):  
Business Strategy ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Cognitive Dynamics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Fundamental Shift ◽  
Limited Scope

<p>Strategizing is a human cognitive activity. While this may suggest that business strategy would focus on human cognition, this thesis finds the opposite – that business strategy overwhelmingly treats cognition superficially, and that business strategy consequently is limited and underperforms. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn that places cognition at the centre of business strategy and thereby enables the enhanced research and execution of business strategy.   To research the question “how does business strategy treat cognition?” requires an epistemology that admits cognition. Having found no such epistemology, this thesis creates its own – Pragmatic Cognitivism. A research method that is based upon the works of Michel Foucault, and which aligns with this epistemology, is adopted to analyse two mainstream business strategy discourses and two academic business strategy discourses.   This analysis finds that business strategy, driven by Enlightenment thinking and human sciences, perceives itself to be the problem and creates a large variety of approaches to strategy and strategy solutions. The development of these approaches establishes both the discipline of strategy and the role of the strategist. The analysis concludes that business strategy often ignores cognition and, when it is considered, it is treated only as a side issue. Furthermore, strategy solutions are not cognitive solutions, tasks such as learning and designing strategy are not considered, there is no consideration of knowledge of strategy and strategy intentions, and the subconscious is rarely mentioned.   Conditions that have led to this limited treatment of cognition include a scientific approach that does not easily cater for cognition and the complexities of understanding the mind. For business strategy, this has resulted in methodological approaches, a limited scope, and underperformance. Business strategy has developed in such a way that its own context is the limiting factor – business strategy cannot perform well because its core ingredient, cognition, is left untreated.   This thesis recommends a cognitive turn in business strategy that makes cognition the centre of strategy discourses. This is not to wholly reject current discourses, but it is a fundamental shift in how business strategy is conceived, researched, and executed. By placing cognition at the centre of strategy interpretations, strategy can potentially develop higher levels of performance rather than being structurally constrained.   The necessary starting point for such a cognitive turn is epistemological – to enable cognition to be well thought. Pragmatic Cognitivism is recommended as an epistemology that enables the reinstatement of the concepts of intuition and judgment, the inclusion of the subconscious as a cognitive factor, and the consideration of group cognitive dynamics. Such a cognitive turn is not an increased drawing of theory from contemporary psychology – it is a turn to concepts initially found in pre-behavioural approaches.   This thesis seeks to understand business strategy in the present by exploring how business strategy has treated human cognition in the past.</p>

scholarly journals „Wenn ich es nicht tue, dann macht's ein anderer“ – Subjektwerdungen und Verantwortung

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124
Author(s):  
Klaus Geiselhart ◽  
Tobias Häberer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Autonomous Action ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Mind

Abstract. Poststructuralist theory focuses largely on describing how and why subjects reproduce the social conditions they have internalised. This is a deconstruction of the central idea of the Enlightenment, the human capacity for autonomous action. At the same time, however, it also denies all individuals any responsibility and ultimately leads criticism into a crisis. Pragmatist philosophy offers the possibility of determining the role of the mind in processes of becoming a subject without abandoning the achievements of the poststructuralist concept of subjectification. The concept of transaction describes how actors constitute each other as subjects within social situations. The relationships that arise through such processes depend, among other things, on the personalities of those people involved. Accordingly, it is possible to identify the responsibility of individuals to govern their social relations and personality development. Since these aspects can only be determined in localised individual cases, this offers a particularly suitable starting point for geographical critic.

scholarly journals Johna Locke’a koncepcja wychowania moralnego

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-175
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Raniszewska-Wyrwa
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
John Locke ◽  
School Experiences ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Blank Slate ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Educational Thinking

John Locke was an English philosopher, doctor and politician who also contributed to the developmen of educational thinking. His school experiences, as well as those acquired in the role of a teacher, were the impulse behind his deliberations on education. The letters to Edward Clarke, forming an answer to Clarke’s request that he guide his children’s upbringing, provided the opportunity for him to present them. The content that Locke included in his letters was, in time, repeated in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. The ideas on descent and the limits of human cognition presented in his philosophical works are closely related with his views on education. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke stated that the human mind at the moment of birth is a blank slate (tabula rasa), which through life is filled by experiences. As a result, he attributed much importance to education – it is an integral part of the process of filling the mind with content, and through this shaping the person. Locke stressed that most people are “good or bad, beneficial or not as a result of their education”. He was convinced that there is an unbreakable connection between three areas of education: the moral, mental and physical. Of those three he considered moral education as the most important. He stressed that the aim of education is to guide a person in such a way that enables them to control their aspirations, desires and affections with the mind – and that such skills are the basis of virtue. According to Locke, without virtue and self-discipline it is difficult to act in a reasonable way. He recognised people’s individualism, so he recommended that the methods of education should be fitted to the abilities of the child. He called for the replacement of orders and prohibitions with explanation, habituation, understanding and experience. A child needs to be taught, among other things, to appreciate truth, honesty, respect for others, kindness and restraint from cruelty towards people and animals. According to Locke, this should lead to correct shaping of moral character.

Emergence and Complexity

2021 ◽  
pp. 166-194
Author(s):  
Marco Bernini
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
System Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Dynamics ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The chapter argues that Beckett’s exploration of the mind is not just complicated, but targets non-linear, interacting, networking dynamics in cognition that, according to contemporary theories of complexity, classify the mind as a proper complex system. Within contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind, it is increasingly suggested that the brain should be regarded as a complex system (see, e.g., Gazzaniga 2012): as the physical site of decentralized interactions and distributed, looping causality among its neurons. Within this complex account of human cognition, also the mind and its mental properties, including consciousness and a sense of self, have been interpreted through the conceptual lenses of complex system theory. Theories of complexity in cognition, therefore, can help us thread together, and collectively reconsider, all the cognitive dynamics, patterns of emersions, and laws of the mind that Beckett has modeled when exploring consciousness and subjective experience. An emergentist reappraisal of prior chapters should give us a more complex, more global interpretation of Beckett’s early call for a formal access to (as a modeling exploration of) the “recondite relations of emergal” (D, 16) within human cognition. Also, it should support an interpretive shift from a view of Beckett as a complicated author to an account of him as an explorer of the mind’s complexity. The chapter begins by addressing the kind of problems complexity poses to modeling in general, and to narrative modeling in particular.

scholarly journals Ranges of B, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Pb, Sr, Tl, and Zn Concentrations and Isotope Ratios in Environmental Matrices from an Urban Area

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Pallavicini ◽  
Emma Engström ◽  
Douglas C. Baxter ◽  
Björn Öhlander ◽  
Johan Ingri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Isotope Ratios ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Environmental Matrices ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Elemental Cycling ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Isotopic Studies ◽  
Compositional Variability ◽  
Isotopic Mixing

Isotopic information may provide powerful insight into the elemental cycling processes which occur in natural compartments. Further implementation of isotopic techniques in natural sciences requires a better understanding of the range of elemental and isotopic compositional variability in environmental matrices. This study assesses the local-scale concentration and isotopic composition variability of nine elements: boron (B), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), lead (Pb), strontium (Sr), thallium (Tl), and zinc (Zn) in lysimetric waters, mushrooms, litter, needles, leaves, and lichens. Sequential extractions were also performed on soil samples from 6 depth profiles providing more detailed information on the variability of elemental concentrations and isotope ratios between the elemental pools present in soil. For most of the sample types studied the range of isotopic variability between samples spans almost the entire ranges reported in the literature for natural samples. These results represent a starting point for discussing the role of natural variability in isotopic studies (for example, as a limiting factor in the use of isotopic mixing models) and a baseline for future in-depth studies examining the controls on isotope fraction in natural systems.

scholarly journals Ritual Artifacts as Symbolic Habits

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Magnani
Keyword(s):  
Human Cognition ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Mind

Abstract The concepts of manipulative abduction and of extending, disembodying, and distributing the mind can help delineate important aspects of the role of habits, rituals, and symbols in human cognition, including when new concepts are created. Taking advantage of some psychoanalytical and anthropological issues, I will show how symbolic habits in rituals can function as memory mediators which are able to play significant roles in human cognition and action. They can maximize abducibility and so recoverability of knowledge contents, including at the unconscious level.

Pushing Social Philosophy to Its Democratic Limits

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Brendan Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Coordinated Action ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Fundamental Shift

Abstract Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy reformulates the question of democracy posed by our current historic conjuncture using the resources of a variety of pragmatic thinkers. He brings into the contemporary conversation regarding democracy’s fortunes both classical and somewhat neglected figures in the pragmatic tradition to deal with questions of power, ontology, and politics. In particular, Frega takes a social philosophical starting point and draws out the consequences of this fundamental shift in approach to questions of democratic and political theory. This turn to social philosophy as a theoretically more sufficient conceptual vocabulary, extended in detail by Frega, raises questions regarding the work that a social ontology does in clarifying the role of economic and political approaches to democracy that are worth further exploration. Likewise, the practical proposals for moving beyond methodological nationalism with respect to forming publics for the sake of problem-solving, while providing a clarifying and fresh starting point, are still too beholden to models of agency and expressions of coordinated action that themselves are the very fruit of those systems which undermine democratic power in the first instance.

scholarly journals IRRATIONAL AND RATIONAL RELIGIOUS IN SCIENTIFIC COGNITION

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
Mykola Stadnyk
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Inner Experiences ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Role Of Religion

In the article, the author reveals the metaphysical systems of the irrational justification for the existence of the supernatural. It is shown that diverse arguments in the protection of the supernatural are based on references to the limited and historical underdevelopment of human practice, the evidence of the presence of uncontrolled and therefore incomprehensible phenomena of nature, society and the human psyche. A characteristic feature of theological cognition is not systematic, but spontaneous, irrational at its basis. The process of cognition for Orthodox theologians involves the domination of faith and the silence of the mind. A similar understanding of the process of cognition and the role of science has changed over time. The logic of the structure of religious consciousness shows that the mind in this process plays only an auxiliary role along with the intuitively gained faith. With this understanding, the role of faith significantly increases and the role of knowledge diminishes and therefore thought of a person, his scientific search is completely ignored. At the same time, the idea that cognitive activity should be focused above all on the comprehension of God is embedded in the consciousness of a person. Under the influence of the growing role of science, theologians began to point out in some questions not only the possible combination of religion with scientific knowledge, but also to prove the beneficial influence of religion on science. In theological understanding, this indicates the leading role of religion in the emergence of science. The task of religion is the knowledge of the supernatural through the suggestion, conviction of people in its reality. Scientific knowledge strives for objective significance and maximum accuracy, excluding all personal and subjective. Religion not only recognizes subjectivism but also brings theological faith and inner experiences to the rank of criteria of truth. Science is characterized by dynamism and development. It relies on rational knowledge. Religion is conservative, static in nature. Its support is irrational consciousness. Science is based on experience. However, the basis of religion is a belief in supernatural, mystical experience. The comparative analysis of scientific and religious knowledge indicates that their purpose, methods and criteria of knowledge are essentially opposite.

Testing ecological release as a compensating mechanism for mass mortality in a keystone predator

2020 ◽  
Vol 637 ◽  
pp. 59-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Sullivan-Stack ◽  
BA Menge
Keyword(s):  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Sea Star ◽  
Top Predator ◽  
Oregon Coast ◽  
Ecological Release ◽  
Keystone Predator ◽  
Pisaster Ochraceus ◽  
Wasting Syndrome

Top predator decline has been ubiquitous across systems over the past decades and centuries, and predicting changes in resultant community dynamics is a major challenge for ecologists and managers. Ecological release predicts that loss of a limiting factor, such as a dominant competitor or predator, can release a species from control, thus allowing increases in its size, density, and/or distribution. The 2014 sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS) outbreak decimated populations of the keystone predator Pisaster ochraceus along the Oregon coast, USA. This event provided an opportunity to test the predictions of ecological release across a broad spatial scale and determine the role of competitive dynamics in top predator recovery. We hypothesized that after P. ochraceus loss, populations of the subordinate sea star Leptasterias sp. would grow larger, more abundant, and move downshore. We based these predictions on prior research in Washington State showing that Leptasterias sp. competed with P. ochraceus for food. Further, we predicted that ecological release of Leptasterias sp. could provide a bottleneck to P. ochraceus recovery. Using field surveys, we found no clear change in density or distribution in Leptasterias sp. populations post-SSWS, and decreases in body size. In a field experiment, we found no evidence of competition between similar-sized Leptasterias sp. and P. ochraceus. Thus, the mechanisms underlying our predictions were not in effect along the Oregon coast, which we attribute to differences in habitat overlap and food availability between the 2 regions. Our results suggest that response to the loss of a dominant competitor can be unpredictable even when based in theory and previous research.

Revaluations through Dance: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought in Isadora Duncan's Speech The Dance of the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Meindert E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Mind

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Isadora Duncan's work, in particular his idea of the Dionysian, has been widely discussed, especially in regard to her later work. What has been left underdeveloped in critical examinations of her work, however, is his influence on her earlier choreographic work, which she defended in a famous speech held in 1903 called The Dance of the Future. While commentators often describe this speech as ‘Nietzschean’, Duncan's autobiography suggests that she only studied Nietzsche's work after this speech. I take this incongruity as a starting point to explore the connections between her speech and Nietzsche's work, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue that in subject and language Duncan's speech resembles Nietzsche's in important ways. This article will draw attention to the ways in which Duncan takes her cues from Nietzsche in bringing together seemingly conflicting ideas of religion and an overturning of morality; Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and the teleology present in his idea of the Übermensch; and a renegotiation of the body's relation to the mind. In doing so, this article contributes not only to scholarship on Duncan's early work but also to discussions of Nietzsche's reception in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the importance Duncan ascribes to the body in dance and expression also asks for a new understanding of Nietzsche's own way of expressing his philosophy.

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