Civility is formed by social norms that guide our behavior and allow us to interact appropriately with others. These norms affect everyone and are learned through the socialization process. However, in the same process, people also learn gender norms that dictate how men and women should behave, leading to gender stereotypes and differentiated behavioral characteristics. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between gender and civility, and how we react to those who behave uncivilly given their gender. (...) The results of Study 1 showed that even in a fictional and gender-neutral society, uncivil behaviors were associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics, and those who behaved uncivilly were dehumanized. In Study 2, gender differences were observed in incivility. Women were harsher when facing uncivil transgressors than men, especially if the transgressor was another woman. Our findings support the notion that gender norms are applied to civility, leading those supposedly equal social norms to unequal perceptions and evaluations. (shrink)

How does consciousness vary across the animal kingdom? Are some animals ‘more conscious’ than others? This article presents a multidimensional framework for understanding interspecies variation in states of consciousness. The framework distinguishes five key dimensions of variation: perceptual richness, evaluative richness, integration at a time, integration across time, and self-consciousness. For each dimension, existing experiments that bear on it are reviewed and future experiments are suggested. By assessing a given species against each dimension, we can construct a consciousness profile for (...) that species. On this framework, there is no single scale along which species can be ranked as more or less conscious. Rather, each species has its own distinctive consciousness profile. (shrink)

_Background:_ Weight-related stigma is reported frequently by higher body-weight patients in healthcare settings. Bariatric surgery triggers profound weight loss. This weight loss may therefore alleviate patients' experiences of weight-related stigma within healthcare settings. In non-clinical settings, weight-related stigma is associated with weight-inducing eating patterns. Dietary adherence is a major challenge after bariatric surgery. _Objectives:_ (1) Evaluate the relationship between weight-related stigma and post-surgical dietary adherence; (2) understand if weight loss reduces weight-related stigma, thereby improving post-surgical dietary adherence; and (3) explore (...) provider and patient perspectives on adherence and stigma in healthcare settings. _Design:_ This mixed methods study contrasts survey responses from 300 postoperative bariatric patients with ethnographic data based on interviews with 35 patients and extensive multi-year participant-observation within a clinic setting. The survey measured experiences of weight-related stigma, including from healthcare professionals, on the Interpersonal Sources of Weight Stigma scale and internalized stigma based on the Weight Bias Internalization Scale. Dietary adherence measures included patient self-reports, non-disordered eating patterns reported on the Disordered Eating after Bariatric Surgery scale, and food frequencies. Regression was used to assess the relationships among post-surgical stigma, dietary adherence, and weight loss. Qualitative analyses consisted of thematic analysis. _Results:_ The quantitative data show that internalized stigma and general experiences of weight-related stigma predict worse dietary adherence, even after weight is lost. The qualitative data show patients did not generally recognize this connection, and health professionals explained it as poor patient compliance. _Conclusion:_ Reducing perceptions of weight-related stigma in healthcare settings and weight bias internalization could enhance dietary adherence, regardless of time since patient's weight-loss surgery. (shrink)

The phrase ‘person‐centred care’ (PCC) reminds us that the fundamental philosophical goal of caring for people is to uphold or promote their personhood. However, such an idea has translated into promoting individualist notions of autonomy, empowerment and personal responsibility in the context of consumerism and neoliberalism, which is problematic both conceptually and practically. From a conceptual standpoint, it ignores the fact that humans are social, historical and biographical beings, and instead assumes an essentialist or idealized concept of personhood in which (...) a person is viewed as an individual static object. From a practical standpoint, the application of such a concept of personhood can lead to neglect of a person's fundamental care needs and exacerbate the problems of social inequity, in particular for older people and people with dementia. Therefore, we argue that our understanding of PCC must instead be based on a dynamic concept of personhood that integrates the relevant social, relational, temporal and biographical dimensions. We propose that the correct concept of personhood in PCC is one in which persons are understood as socially embedded, relational and temporally extended subjects rather than merely individual, autonomous, asocial and atemporal objects. We then present a reconceptualization of the fundamental philosophical goal of PCC as promoting selfhood rather than personhood. Such a reconceptualization avoids the problems that beset the concept of personhood and its application in PCC, while also providing a philosophical foundation for the growing body of empirical literature that emphasizes the psychosocial, relational, subjective and biographical dimensions of PCC. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a sharp reminder that large scale, unpredictable events always bring about profound changes with significant consequences on many levels. In light of lockdown measures taken in many countries across the world to control the spread of the virus, academics were “forced” to adapt and move to online settings all teaching, mentoring, research, and support activities. Academic leaders in higher education had to make decisions and to act quickly how were they to manage large educational communities, (...) addressing students', teachers', and staff's needs, as well as society's needs. Using an inductive approach, our study seeks to highlight the main challenges faced by university leaders and to understand their responses to those challenges. The current study aims to investigate perceptions and experiences of academic leaders in a University in Romania during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our foci were the processes underlying their leadership decisions and actions during the second part of the 2019–2020 academic year. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 11 university and faculty leaders in Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania. The findings from the thematic analysis revealed three main themes emerging from participants' responses: “the leader's personal attributes,” “unity through decentralization,” and “opportunities to reinvent the university.” Good practices to manage academic institutions in times of crises and changes are discussed, along with insights into strategies for supporting higher education development during crisis and post-crisis times resulting into recommendations for increasing management effectiveness. (shrink)

The debate about how neurotechnologies impact authenticity has focused on two inter-related dimensions: self-discovery and self-creation. In this paper, we develop a broader framework that includes the experimental and relational dimensions of authenticity, both understood as decisive for shaping one’s narrative identity. In our view, neurointerventions that alter someone’s personality traits will also impact her very own self-understanding across time. We argue that experimental authenticity only needs a minimum conception of narrative coherence of the self and that reversibility should remain (...) a key feature in the ethical assessment of neurotechnologies. The relational dimension of authenticity derives from the fact that a process of self-constitution is never a solitary business. The significant others act not just as subsequent judges of one’s life decisions, but as real co-authors of one’s self. We discuss relevant cases in which others are actively contributing to the meaning-making process, as to the direction one’s life is taking. We also claim that the experimental and the relational dimensions of authenticity should aim to correct each other. The relational dimension introduces socially approved standards as well as limitations to the array of available possibilities of self-fashioning or human enhancement. The experimental side enables us to avoid confusing one’s personal identity with a social and narrative construct that only bears the mark of social pressure and conformism. (shrink)

Phenomenology is often mistakenly understood as both introspectionist and anthropocentric and thus as incapable of providing us with objective knowledge. While clearly wrong, such critiques force us to spell out how the _life world_ that is given in human experience is in fact not anthropocentric and not incompatible with science. In this article we address this by adapting a recent proposal to extend the key methodological principle of cognitive semiotics, _phenomenological triangulation_, along two planes. The first is horizontal and concerns (...) the dimensions of Self, Others and Things, as irreducibly interrelated dimensions of the life world. The second is vertical, and deals with the way phenomena are accessed: from a first-person (philosophical), second-person (empirical in a qualitative sense) and third-person (scientific in a quantitative sense) perspective. With each perspective, the life world becomes correspondingly extended beyond direct experience. It is thus neither static nor confining. We exemplify each step with corresponding research, also providing examples of how non-human animals and not only human beings may serve as Others, thus addressing the critique of anthropocentrism. We conclude by pointing out how, despite some theoretical differences, the focus on subjectivity and the explicit or implicit adoption of the principle of phenomenological triangulation can serve as common ground for cognitive semiotics and biosemiotics. (shrink)

A long lasting debate in the field of implicit learning is whether participants can learn without acquiring conscious knowledge. One crucial problem is that no clear criterion exists allowing to identify participants who possess explicit knowledge. Here, we propose a method to diagnose during a serial reaction time task those participants who acquire conscious knowledge. We first validated this method by using Stroop-like material during training. Then we assessed participants’ knowledge with the Inclusion/Exclusion task and the wagering task . Both (...) experiments confirmed that for participants diagnosed as having acquired conscious knowledge about the underlying sequence the Stroop congruency effect disappeared, whereas for participants not diagnosed as possessing conscious knowledge it only slightly decreased. In addition, both experiments revealed that only participants diagnosed as conscious were able to strategically use their acquired knowledge. Thus, our method allows to reliably distinguish between participants with and without conscious knowledge. (shrink)

Bioethics plays a pivotal role in guiding ethical decision-making within the realm of medical research and healthcare. However, the influence of geopolitics on bioethical considerations, particularly regarding bioweapons research, remains an underexplored area. This study delves into the uncharted territory of how international political interests can intersect with bioethical principles, potentially shaping collaborative efforts and global health policies related to bioweapons research. Through a hypothetical scenario involving a hypothetical pathogen, a collaborative effort between unspecified countries, we examine the implications of (...) such cooperation on global health governance, with a specific focus on bioweapons research. Ethical dilemmas surrounding responsible research, potential risks and benefits, equitable distribution of findings, and biosafety measures are explored. This analysis underscores the importance of transparent and responsible practices in bioweapons research amidst geopolitical tensions. By striking a balance between national interests and international solidarity, we advocate for robust bioethical frameworks to navigate such collaborations for the collective well-being of humanity and to mitigate potential risks associated with bioweapons research. (shrink)

Disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality for Latinx populations are a paradigmatic example of the now widely acknowledged structural racism in U.S. health care that predisposed minorities to...

This study provides a critical examination of biopolitics and the process of the subjectification of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Estonia. The authors analyze multiple overlapping regimes of belonging, performativity, and debordering.

BackgroundEvolving medical technology, advancing biomedical and drug research, and changing laws and legislation impact patients’ healthcare options and influence healthcare practitioners’ (HCPs’) practices. Conscientious objection policy confusion and variability can arise as it may occasionally be unclear what underpins non-participation. Our objective was to identify, analyze, and synthesize the factors that influenced HCPs who did not participate in ethically complex, legally available healthcare.MethodsWe used Arksey and O’Malley’s framework while considering Levac et al.’s enhancements, and qualitatively synthesized the evidence. We searched (...) Medline, CINAHL, JSTOR, EMBASE, PsychINFO, Sociological Abstracts, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global from January 1, 1998, to January 15, 2020, and reviewed the references of the final articles. We included articles written in English that discussed the factors that influenced physicians and registered nurses (RNs) who did not participate in end-of-life (EOL), reproductive technology and health, genetic testing, and organ or tissue donation healthcare areas. Using Covidence, we conducted title and abstract screening, followed by full-text screening against our eligibility criteria. We extracted the article’s data into a spreadsheet, analyzed the articles, and completed a qualitative content analysis using NVivo12.ResultsWe identified 10,664 articles through the search, and after the screening, 16 articles were included. The articles sampled RNs (n = 5) and physicians (n = 11) and encompassed qualitative (n = 7), quantitative (n = 7), and mixed (n = 2) methodologies. The care areas included reproductive technology and health (n = 11), EOL (n = 3), organ procurement (n = 1), and genetic testing (n = 1). One article included two care areas; EOL and reproductive health. The themed factors that influenced HCPs who did not participate in healthcare were: (1) HCPs’ characteristics, (2) personal beliefs, (3) professional ethos, 4) emotional labour considerations, and (5) system and clinical practice considerations.ConclusionThe factors that influenced HCPs’ who did not participate in ethically complex, legally available care are diverse. There is a need to recognize conscientious objection to healthcare as a separate construct from non-participation in healthcare for reasons other than conscience. Understanding these separate constructs will support HCPs’ specific to the underlying factors influencing their practice participation. (shrink)

Community music is a successful concept in the world of music and music education. Based on ethnomusicological research, community music tries to implement the notion of music for all that transforms societies and people. While celebrating informal learning and the musical amateur, community music has never really been philosophically challenged or critically analyzed. This might be surprising because community music is a rather vague concept. This paper critically analyzes some of community music’s foundations in terms of epistemological or ethnomusicological issues, (...) Kitsch, the notion of learning, and the relation to higher education. In order to improve musicking internationally, it is crucial to start critically investigating the very foundations of community music and with regard to fostering a collaboration with music education. (shrink)

El desarrollo de la presente investigación se sustenta en los argumentos legales y constitucionales que permiten impulsar la modernización del Estado ecuatoriano, considerando la desmaterialización de las actuaciones notariales y la manera como esta se vincula al principio de seguridad jurídica. La metodología empleada se basó en el enfoque cualitativo, de tipo descriptivo, utilizando como instrumento de recolección de datos la entrevista estructurada dirigida a notarios y abogados. Los principales resultados indican que en efecto la desmaterialización de documentos es percibida (...) como parte del proceso de modernización del Estado, y se ciñe al principio de seguridad jurídica, en virtud de los procedimientos establecidos, sin embargo, es preciso que se mantenga actualizado el sistema de información informático conforme a los adelantos tecnológicos, con el fin de lograr afianzar la confianza del usuario en el sistema, así como la constante capacitación de los servidores notariales y la simplificación de trámites para la obtención de la información. (shrink)

The American Urological Association (AUA) and American College of Surgeons (ACS) codes of professionalism require surgeons to disclose the specific roles and responsibilities of trainees to patients during the informed consent process. The objective of this study is to analyze how these requirements are met by urology training programs. An anonymous electronic survey was distributed to the program directors (PDs) of the 143 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education urology residency programs in the United States in 2021. Information was collected (...) regarding program demographics, aspects of the program’s consent process, and the disclosure to patients of the role and participation of residents in their surgery. There were 49 responses to the survey (34.3% response rate). Nearly 70 percent of PDs reported that attending physicians lead the consent process. The topics covered during consent discussion include possible complications (25%), expected recovery time (23%), length of the surgery (22%), the people involved (18%), and their specific roles (7%). Many PDs do not explicitly discuss trainee involvement (48.8%) or when a resident is to perform the majority of the case (87.8%). The majority of PDs (78.8%) communicate medical student involvement, but 73.2 percent reported having a patient decline participation of a trainee after describing their role. Despite the AUA and ACS codes of professionalism, many urologists do not disclose resident involvement in surgery to patients. Further discussions are needed to explore how to better balance resident education and patient autonomy. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s influential concept of epistemic injustice has recently seen application to many areas of interest, with an increasing body of healthcare research using the concept of epistemic injustice in order to develop both general frameworks and accounts of specific medical conditions and patient groups. This paper illuminates tensions that arise between taking steps to protect against committing epistemic injustice in healthcare, and taking steps to understand the complexity of one’s predicament and treat it accordingly. Work on epistemic injustice is (...) therefore at risk of obfuscating legitimate and potentially fruitful inquiry. This paper uses Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis as a case study, but I suggest that the key problems identified could apply to other cases within healthcare, such as those classed as Medically Unexplained Illnesses, Functional Neurological Disorders and Psychiatric Disorders. Future work on epistemic injustice in healthcare must recognise and attend to this tension to protect against unsatisfactory attempts to correct epistemic injustice. (shrink)

In recent decades scholars have acknowledged that transactions in the informal economy have not vanished with modernization and industrialization as expected but rather remain an important contemporary aspect of overall production and consumption across the world, in both developing and developed countries. Yet little is known about the profile of the consumers in this realm or what drives them to purchase from the informal economy. A systematic review of the literature investigating consumption in the informal economy reveals a severely underdeveloped (...) area of consumer studies with significant gaps in terms of its theoretical approaches, methods and regional coverage. The findings of the existing literature is that multiple motives are used by consumers for justifying their purchases in the informal economy beyond the dominant simplistic view that they do simply for financial gain or for a lower price. The outcome is a recognition that responsibility to reducing this phenomenon with negative effects on governments, businesses, workers and consumers lies not just with public authorities but also practitioners who need to correct the failures in formal market provision. The significant gaps identified in the literature are then used to highlight a comprehensive future research agenda, which includes the need for the development of an institutionalist theoretical perspective when explaining consumers‘ participation in the informal economy and social marketing interventions. (shrink)

The charge of hypocrisy is a peculiar kind of accusation: it is damning and ubiquitous; it is used to deny the hypocrite standing to speak; and it is levelled against a great variety of conduct. Much of the philosophical literature on hypocrisy is aimed at explaining why hypocrisy is wrongful and worthy of censure. We focus instead on the use of the accusation of hypocrisy and argue for a revisionary claim. People think that hypocrisy in politics is bad and that (...) calling it out is good. Our novel claim is that even if hypocrisy in politics is bad (and that is a big if), calling it out is worse. We give a feminist case as to why accusations of hypocrisy are problematic. We also go further and claim that hypocrisy is a ubiquitous and perhaps even a necessary and beneficial part of political debate in liberal democracies. We also consider and reject candour as a possible alternative solution to hypocrisy in public debate. We argue that requiring people to be candid is not necessarily a good solution because it will often require one to divulge what is private when there are good reasons not to do so. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the experiences of EU migrants working in UK restaurants in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. We do so through a care ethics lens, which we bring together with the integrative approach to organisational silence to consider the ethical consequences of the organisational policies of political silence adopted by the restaurant chains in our qualitative empirical study. We develop the concept of political organisational silence and probe its ethical dimensions, showing how at the organisational level (...) it falls short of constituting a practice of caring for migrant workers in politically divisive and hostile times. We argue that organisational policies of political silence emphasise the exploitative nature of the business of (im)migration, which prioritises concern for profits over care for the needs of others. Organisations refuse caring responsibility for migrant workers, leaving care to the migrants themselves and their co-workers and managers. Whilst peer-care practices partially fill this politically silent care-vacuum, this leaves individuals to negotiate difficult tensions without institutional support at a time of increased uncertainty, complexity, hostility, violence, and vulnerability. Drawing lessons from our study and its aftermath, we call for a care manifesto to inform the business of (im)migration, which would need to include caring political responsibility towards migrant workers exercised through caring political organisational voice as well as silence. (shrink)

Research on linguistic interaction suggests that two or more individuals can sometimes form adaptive and cohesive systems. We describe an “alignment system” as a loosely interconnected set of cognitive processes that facilitate social interactions. As a dynamic, multi-component system, it is responsive to higher-level cognitive states such as shared beliefs and intentions (those involving collective intentionality) but can also give rise to such shared cognitive states via bottom-up processes. As an example of putative group cognition we turn to transactive memory (...) and suggest how further research on alignment in these cases might reveal how such systems can be genuinely described as cognitive. Finally, we address a prominent critique of collective cognitive systems, arguing that there is much empirical and explanatory benefit to be gained from considering the possibility of group cognitive systems, especially in the context of small-group human interaction. (shrink)

As algorithms have become ubiquitous in consequential domains, societal concerns about the potential for discriminatory outcomes have prompted urgent calls to address algorithmic bias. In response, a rich literature across computer science, law, and ethics is rapidly proliferating to advance approaches to designing fair algorithms. Yet computer scientists, legal scholars, and ethicists are often not speaking the same language when using the term ‘bias.’ Debates concerning whether society can or should tackle the problem of algorithmic bias are hampered by conflations (...) of various understandings of bias, ranging from neutral deviations from a standard to morally problematic instances of injustice due to prejudice, discrimination, and disparate treatment. This terminological confusion impedes efforts to address clear cases of discrimination. -/- In this paper, we examine the promises and challenges of different approaches to disambiguating bias and designing for justice. While both approaches aid in understanding and addressing clear algorithmic harms, we argue that they also risk being leveraged in ways that ultimately deflect accountability from those building and deploying these systems. Applying this analysis to recent examples of generative AI, our argument highlights unseen dangers in current methods of evaluating algorithmic bias and points to ways to redirect approaches to addressing bias in generative AI at its early stages in ways that can more robustly meet the demands of justice. (shrink)

“The Rules of the School,” or Eduba R, is a previously unedited Sumerian literary composition that describes a day in the life of an Old Babylonian student. In this paper, we examine the nature of Eduba R, its place within the corpus of scribal life texts, and its pedagogical role within the Old Babylonian scribal school curriculum as a whole. In addition, we publish a transliteration, translation, commentary, and photos of the two primary manuscripts of the composition.

When a term is used in science, we tend to integrate its origins, functions, and history to see if the term is a scientific one or comes from other fields. The term «empathy» is an example to such a case. This article challenges the widespread view that empathy is the capability of a person to understand emotions and thoughts of others. We will deconstruct the concept of empathy as an academic one by focusing on its limits. We will discuss the (...) possibility of empathy for humans in critically reconstructing the meaning of the word and its meanings from its ancient origins to contemporary research. Our question is centered on cognitive actions that enable empathy as an emotional way of understanding others. Based on our findings, we argue that the concept of empathy is a recently established academic term. As a concept, it matches with some alternative concepts such as apathy and sympathy. In rhetoric, it is the pathos of the speech that affects the speaker by emotions since no specific receptive ability of the speaker is needed. Similarly, when we use the term empathy, we should use it as a category of the sender, not that of the receiver. This concept of logical empathy opposes to the classical view of empathy studies emphasizing that empathy is a receptive category of the receiver. So, empathy is nothing else but the ability to send emotional or intellectual content suitable to a capable receiver. Also, the comparative study in the concept of empathy in Buddhism gives us evidence that empathy is a spiritual or mental concept whose applications are in the area of pre-linguistic states and esoteric contexts. In rhetorical terms we could define it as a persuasive mood of pathos-driven speech. (shrink)

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a “young” disorder formally recognized in the early 1980s, although the symptoms have been noted for centuries particularly in relation to military conflicts. PTSD may develop after a serious traumatic experience that induces feelings of intense fear, helplessness or horror. It is currently characterized by three key classes of symptoms which must cause clinically significant distress or impairment of functioning: persistent and distressing re-experiencing of the trauma; persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing (...) of general responsiveness; and persistent symptoms of hyper-arousal. One of the possible symptoms within the second class is difficulty in remembering an important aspect of the traumatic event.PTSD is not an uncommon condition, with an estimated lifetime prevalence of about 7-9% based on studies conducted in the United States and Canada, with women at higher risk than men. While not everyone who experiences a significant trauma will go on to develop PTSD, about a third will do so. Sexual assault, along with other forms of assaultive violence, pose a comparatively high risk of PTSD. (shrink)

It is shown that for any computable field K and any r.e. degree a there is an r.e. set A of degree a and a field F ≅ K with underlying set A such that the field operations of F (including subtraction and division) are extendible to (total) recursive functions. Further, it is shown that if a and b are r.e. degrees with b ≤ a, there is a 1-1 recursive function $f: \mathbb{Q} \rightarrow \omega$ such that f(Q) ∈ a, (...) f(Z) ∈ b, and the images of the field operations of Q under f can be extended to recursive functions. (shrink)

The history of encyclopedism seeks to trace the metamorphoses and various cultural adaptations of three essential components. The first of these is an intellectual endeavor, reflecting the conception, hierarchy, and articulation of knowledge in a given society: How is the map of knowledge organized and defined? How do human thought and memory gather together and master all accessible knowledge? The second component can take the form of a material object, the encyclopedia - whether conceived as a book that unites the (...) knowledge found in all other books, or again as the body of texts that, though not titled as such, belong nevertheless to an encyclopedic genre. The last constituent of the trilogy consists of the group of practices that fan out between these two poles, between the intellectual endeavor and the material object, and contribute to collecting, shaping, and transmitting the knowledge in a given society and time. (shrink)

Aesthetics is commonly considered a complicated field of inquiry, particularly for students. Nevertheless, aesthetic experiences often raise questions about the nature of music which philosophical aesthetics is intended to answer. To bring students in contact with aesthetics depends primarily on the choice of appropriate methods. Case studies exemplify aesthetic theory in a small story. They can engage students in aesthetic inquiry directly related to students' musical world. Case studies also offer further applications to music education in terms of performing, improvising, (...) or giving pre-concert lectures. Music education could use the opportunities which aesthetics offers in order to enhance making music and aesthetic experiences. (shrink)

This is an anthology of writings about art, art history, esthetics, and art theory from the 18th to 20th century.

Peirce's Law of Triviality: The Implementation of the Trivium of Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar. Basic Categories for Linguistics and Literature Studies from a Universal Semiotic Theory This article focuses on the aspects that refer to linguistics in the works of Charles S. Peirce. His pragmatic philosophy implemented many other sciences and among them is the traditional trivium of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, which Peirce divided into different kinds of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. While the impact of the work of Peirce (...) on theses sciences is weak, the integration of the sciences in his philosophy is interesting as a step in the history of science and his work is an example for ecclecticism and historism of science in the 19th century and the universalism of science deducted from a philosophy that uses the sign as an unitarian principle. Triple constructions are a very common feature in the writings of Peirce, and the trivium is an example of an academic construction Peirce implemented. (shrink)

Rescue workers have a stressful and risky occupation where being engaged is crucial to face physical and emotional risks in order to help other persons. This study aims to estimate work engagement levels of rescue workers (namely comparing nurses, firefighters, and police officers) and to assess the validity evidence related to the internal structure of the Portuguese versions of the UWES-17 and UWES-9, namely, dimensionality, measurement invariance between occupational groups, and reliability of the scores. To evaluate the dimensionality, we compared (...) the fit of the three-factor model with the fit of a second-order model. A Portuguese version of the instrument was applied to a convenience sample of 3,887 rescue workers (50% nurses, 39% firefighters, and 11% police officers). Work engagement levels were moderate to high, with firefighters being the highest and nurses being the lowest engaged. Psychometric properties were evaluated in the three-factor original structure revealing acceptable fit to the data in the UWES-17, although the UWES-9 had better psychometric properties. Given the observed statistically significant correlations between the three original factors, we proposed a 2nd hierarchal structure that we named work engagement. The UWES-9 first-order model obtained full uniqueness measurement invariance, and the second-order model obtained partial (metric) second-order invariance. (shrink)