Gender ideology has quickly developed as a response to fostering human rights, especially in the case of gender equality. Gender policy thus became a political and ideological instrument that subjects human rights to another contest – a new form of crusade pursued by anti-gender movements which advocate traditional and conservative ideologies against gender equality and gender theories. In this paper, we seek to track and map the recent development of anti-gender movements and their mobilisation. We apply critical discourse analysis to (...) several doctrines of antigenderism in order to understand the global popularity and mass appeal of these movements. (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)

The relationship between mental models and ethical decision making, along with the mechanisms through which mental models affect EDM, are not well understood. Using the sensemaking approach to EDM, we empirically tested the relationship of mental models to EDM. Participants were asked to depict their mental models in response to an ethics case to reveal their understanding of the ethical dilemma, and then provide a response, along with a rationale, to a different ethical problem. Findings indicated that complexity of respondents’ (...) mental models was related to EDM, and that this relationship was mediated by sensemaking processes. The implications of these findings for improving integrity training in organizations, as well as ultimately understanding the role of mental models in EDM, are discussed. (shrink)

Retraction note: Melo Zamora, M. D. & Zarta Campos, M. A. (2022). Sustainability and eco – efficiency: A regional business model with a global vision (Colombia). HUMAN REVIEW. International Humanities Revista Internacional De Humanidades, 14(4), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.37467/revhuman.v11.4141 The Editorial Office of Eurasia Academic Publishing Group has retracted this article. An investigation carried out by our Research Integrity Department has found a group of articles, among which this one is found, that are not within the thematic scope of the journal. We (...) believe that the editorial process was manipulated and, furthermore, acceptance decisions were made under possibly inappropriate peer review. (shrink)

Ethical review systems need to build on their experiences of COVID-19 research to enhance their preparedness for future pandemics. Recommendations from representatives from over twenty countries include: improving relationships across the research ecosystem; demonstrating willingness to reform and adapt systems and processes; and making the case robustly for better resourcing.

Sexting has been defined as sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, images, or photos to others through digital platforms, and can assume more consensual or more abusive and violent forms. This study aims to explore the prevalence of abusive sexting in Portuguese adolescents and the psychological characteristics of sexting abusers in terms of emotional and behavioral problems, potential markers of psychopathy, childhood trauma and maltreatment, and different forms of aggression. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 4,281 participants, aged 12–20 (...) years, of whom 204 engaged in abusive sexting behaviors and 182 self-identified as being a non-consensual sexting victim. Abusive sexting was more common among boys and middle adolescents, and abusive sexting victims were more likely to be children of single-parent families. Engaging in abusive sexting and being a victim of abusive sexting were also related to behavioral and emotional problems, callousness, experiences of neglect and abuse in childhood, and various forms of aggression. Implications for future research and intervention are discussed. (shrink)

Problem: Visions of technology, future scenarios, guiding visions represent imaginations of future states of affairs that play a functional role in processes of technological research, development and innovation—e.g. as a means to create attention, communication, coordination, or for the strategic exertion of influence. Since a couple of years there is a growing attention for such imaginations of futures in politics, the economy, research and the civil society. This trend concerns technology assessment as an observer of these processes and a consultant (...) on the implications of technology and innovation. TA faces increasing demands to assess imaginations of futures that circulate in the present and to participate in shaping these through scenarios or foresights. More than ever, this raises the question, which propositions can be made based on these imaginations by TA and how this can be used in advisory practices. Imaginations of futures are relevant for TA not as predictions but in their significance and effectiveness in the present, which need to be understood and assessed.Contents: This discussion paper outlines how present significance and effects of imagined futures in technological research and innovation processes can be conceived and analyzed. In this paper, all forms of imaginations of technology futures will be called “socio-technical futures” because within them technological developments and social changes are interwoven and inseparably interrelated. In this paper, we discuss why TA should analyze socio-technical futures, how such analyses can grasp the societal conditions that are expressed in the imagined futures and how these become effective in processes of technology development, communication, decision making etc. We raise the question which self-reflexive positioning or possible realignment of TA is needed as a response to its increased concern with assessing and even co-producing socio-technical futures. The latter is often demanded regarding the growing attention by politics and publics to imaginations of futures with wide temporal and spatial reach.Addressee of this paper is the TA community in a broader sense. The aim is to sensitize colleagues for the topic and its challenges, to consolidate discussions and to provide theoretical and methodical suggestions for research in TA and related advisory practices with respect to socio-technical futures. This paper has been originally initiated during the workshop “The present of technological futures-theoretical and methodical challenges for Technology Assessment”, in which all of the paper’s authors participated. The contents of this discussion paper are preliminary results that shall initiate and guide further discussions. (shrink)

Apresentamos conceitos algébricos básicos e fundamentais como conjuntos ordenados, reticulados, álgebra de Boole e as TK-álgebras. Destacamos os espaços de Tarski, associados ao conceito de sistema dedutivo e sua apresentação quase topológica. Então, apresentamos a Lógica da Dedutibilidade, vinda da formalização lógica dos espaços de Tarski. A seguir, trazemos os pares de funções de Galois, que surgem em muitos tópicos da Matemática. Como resultado original, além de alguns desenvolvimentos teóricos, destacamos uma conexão de Galois com os espaços de Tarski.

In the United States, final amendments to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (“the Common Rule”) were published on January 19, 2017, and they will take effect on January 21, 2019. One of the most widely discussed provisions is that for the first time, federal regulations governing research with humans authorize the use of broad consent for future, unspecified research on individually identifiable biospecimens and associated data. Many questions have been raised about broad consent, including what effect (...) it will have on research and whether it adequately protects the interests of research participants.There are lessons to be learned for the U.S. and other countries by looking to countries that already have experience with broad consent for biobank collection and with the storage and subsequent use of the biospecimens and data. This article describes how broad consent works in five countries—Canada (in Quebec), Israel, Nigeria, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom—and with different types of biobanks: national biobanks, federated biobanks, and regional biobanks. Evaluating the provisions and challenges of the broad consent approaches in these countries can inform policies for this increasingly used approach to biobank regulation. (shrink)

3500 word interview with Tom Cochrane discussing his philosophical background, the nature of aesthetic value, the benefits of art, and aestheticism.

Background The first COVID-19 wave started in February 2020 in France. The influx of patients requiring emergency care and high-level technicity led healthcare professionals to fear saturation of available care. In that context, the multidisciplinary Ethics- Support Cell (EST) was created to help medical teams consider the decisions that could potentially be sources of ethical dilemmas. Objectives The primary objective was to prospectively collect information on requests for EST assistance from 23 March to 9 May 2020. The secondary aim was (...) to describe the Cell’s functions during that period. Research design This observational, real-time study of requests for Cell consultations concerned ethical dilemmas arising during a public health crisis. The EST created a grid to collect relevant information (clinical, patient’s/designated representative’s preferences and ethical principles strained by the situation), thereby assuring that each EST asked the same questions, in the same order. Participants and research context Only our university hospital’s clinicians could request EST intervention. Ethical considerations The hospital Research Ethics Committee approved this study (no. CER-2020-107). The patient, his/her family, or designated representative was informed of this ethics consultation and most met with EST members, which enabled them to express their preferences and/or opposition. Findings/results 33 requests (patients’ mean age: 80.8 years; 29 had COVID-19: 24 with dyspnea, 30 with comorbidities). 17 Emergency Department solicitations concerned ICU admission, without reference to resource constraints; others addressed therapeutic proportionality dilemmas. Discussion Intervention-request motives concerned limited resources and treatment intensity. Management revolved around three axes: the treatment option most appropriate for the patient, the feasibility of implementation, and dignified care for the patient. Conclusions COVID-19 crisis forced hospitals to envisage prioritization of ICU access. Established decision-making criteria and protocols do not enable healthcare professionals to escape ethical dilemmas. That acknowledgement highlights ethical risks, enhances the added-value of nursing and encourages all players to be vigilant to pursue collective deliberations to achieve clear and transparent decisions. (shrink)

Telecommunications is one of the most dynamic sectors in the market, where the customer base is an important pawn in receive safe revenues, so is important to focus attention is paid to maintaining them with an active status. Migrating customers from one network to another varies among telecommunication companies depending on different factors such as call quality, pricing plan, minute consumption, data, sms facilities, customer billing issues, etc. Determining an effective predictive model helps detect early warning signals when churn occurs (...) and assigns to each customer a score called “churn score” that indicates the likelihood that the individual might migrate to another network over a predefined time period. To this extent, the present paper uses more than 10k customers sample of a telecommunication company and tries to analyse the churn behavior. The aim of the paper is both to test the efficiency and performance of the most commonly used data mining techniques to predict the churn behavior and to underline the main indicators that can be used when conducting such analyses. Knowing the magnitude of the churn phenomenon, the company can prevent the instability that is going to occur by applying a series of measure in order to increase the retention of the current customers. (shrink)

As part of a European Erasmus Plus project entitled Death Education for Palliative Psychology, this study assessed the ways in which Master’s Degree students in psychology and the creative arts therapies self-rated their confidence and interest in death education and palliative and bereavement care. In five countries (Austria, Israel, Italy, Poland, Romania), 344 students completed an online questionnaire, and 37 students were interviewed to better understand their views, interest, and confidence. The results revealed some significant differences between countries, and showed (...) that older respondents with previous experience as formal caregivers for end-of-life clients showed greater interest in obtaining practical clinical competence in these fields. A mediation analysis indicated that students’ previous care experiences and past loss experiences were related to students’ current interest in death education and palliative and bereavement care through the mediation of their sense of confidence in this field. The qualitative findings identified five shared themes: life and death, learning about death, the psychological burden, personal experience and robust training, and four key training needs. Overall, students’ interest in studying and working with terminal illness and death are rooted in internal resources, a preliminary sense of confidence, but also external requirements. (shrink)

Objective:Prior research examining sexual and intimacy concerns among metastatic breast cancer patients and their intimate partners is limited. In this qualitative study, we explored MBC patients’ and partners’ experiences of sexual and intimacy-related changes and concerns, coping efforts, and information needs and intervention preferences, with a focus on identifying how the context of MBC shapes these experiences.Methods:We conducted 3 focus groups with partnered patients with MBC [N = 12; M age = 50.2; 92% White; 8% Black] and 6 interviews with (...) intimate partners [M age = 47.3; 83% White; 17% Black]. Participants were recruited through the Fox Chase Cancer Center Tumor Registry and the Cancer Support Community. Qualitative data were analyzed using the Framework Method and Dedoose software.Results:Qualitative analyses revealed several key themes reflecting ways in which MBC shapes experiences of sex/intimacy: the heavy disease/treatment burden leads to significant, long-term sexual concerns and consequent heightened emotional distress for both patients and partners ; viewing the relationship as having “an expiration date” influences patients’ and partners’ concerns related to sex/intimacy and complicates coping efforts; and information needs extend beyond managing sexual side effects to include emotional aspects of intimacy and the added strain of the life-limiting nature of the disease on the relationship. The heightened severity of sexual concerns faced by patients with MBC, compounded by the terminal nature of the disease, may place patients and partners at risk for significant adverse emotional and interpersonal consequences.Conclusion:Findings suggest unique ways in which sex and intimate relationships change after a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer from both patients’ and partners’ perspectives. Consideration of the substantial physical and emotional burden of MBC and the broader context of the relationship and intimacy overall is important when developing a sexuality-focused intervention in this population. Addressing sexual concerns is a critical part of cancer care with important implications for patients’ health and quality of life. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Recent arguments claim that behavioral science has focused – to its detriment – on the individual over the system when construing behavioral interventions. In this commentary, we argue that tackling economic inequality using both framings in tandem is invaluable. By studying individuals who have overcome inequality, “positive deviants,” and the system limitations they navigate, we offer potentially greater policy solutions.

Measuring psychological attributes, such as motivation, typically involves rating scales, assuming that an attribute can be ordered, and that ratings represent this order. Previously, only the first assumption had been tested, albeit limited. First, we checked the ordinal structure of motivation, looking at whether people can establish transitive relations between motivation levels in pairwise comparisons; and we found different ordering patterns: strict transitive, weak transitive, changing order, and intransitivity. The rate of intransitivity was similar to that found previously and was (...) somewhat higher than we obtained when we asked participants to compare definitely quantitative attributes. Second, we checked if specific ordering patterns were related to individual interpretations of the statements that deviated from expected motivation types. Indeed, about a third of participants miscategorized statements, and these deviant interpretations were related to intransitivity as well as weak transitivity. Third, we checked whether Likert ratings represent the order of motives obtained from pairwise comparisons. We found rather homomorphic representation: ratings correlated with the order, but they did not differentiate between different ordering patterns and hierarchies of motives. We conclude that the Likert rating scale provides less information about respondents than pairwise ordering. The findings question the mainstream practice of using rating scales without testing underlying assumptions. (shrink)

This article draws on the conceptualisation of ‘discursive formation’ to examine the particular configuration of the ‘objects, subjects, concepts and strategies’ which constituted ‘nuclear proliferation’ between 2006 and 2012. While previous studies have mostly explored the discourse of nuclear proliferation through the analysis of newspaper texts, few have considered corpora from different sites or considered the changes, transformations and contradictions that take place when meanings are delocated from one site and relocated in another. Elements of poststructuralist discourse theory, critical linguistics (...) and corpus linguistics are brought together to consider how events were constructed within two corpora: UN Security Council resolutions and newspaper articles published in prominent UK and US broadsheets. WordSmith Tools was used to analyse word frequencies, statistical patterns of keywords, word collocation profiles and concordance patterns. Results indicate that the most salient lexical items refer to actors, strategic actions and technologies. As these constituents of nuclear proliferation are delocated from the political sphere and relocated in the public sphere, three discursive strategies unfold: personalisation, normalisation or exceptionalisation, and reification. (shrink)

Research suggests that some fathers and birth partners can experience post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing a traumatic birth. Birth-related PTSD may impact on many aspects of fathers’ and birth partners’ life, including relationship breakdown, self-blame and reducing plans for future children. Despite the potential impact on birth partners’ lives there is currently no measure of birth-related PTSD validated for use with birth partners. The current study therefore adapted the City Birth Trauma Scale for use with birth partners. The City Birth (...) Trauma Scale is a 29-item questionnaire developed to measure birth-related PTSD according to DSM-5 criteria: stressor criteria, symptoms of re-experiencing, avoidance, negative cognitions and mood, and hyperarousal, as well as duration of symptoms, significant distress or impairment, and exclusion criteria or other causes. A sample of 301 fathers/birth partners was recruited online and completed measures of birth-related PTSD, bonding, and demographic details. Results showed the City Birth Trauma Scale had good reliability and psychometric and construct validity. The fathers/birth partners version has the same two-factor structure as the original scale: general symptoms and birth-related symptoms, which accounted for 51% of the variance. PTSD symptoms were associated with preterm birth and maternal and infant complications. Overall, the City Birth Trauma Scale provides a promising measure of PTSD following childbirth that can be used in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Book review: Christian, Brian. The Alignment Problem: How Can Artificial Intelligence Learn Human Values? London: Atlantic Books, 2021. 476 stran.

Post-war Japan has seen profound and rapid social change and transformation. One of the most visible areas of change in Japan has been medicine, and particularly the ethical practices and policies that guide medical decision-making. The formal discipline of bioethics, Seimei Rinri in Japanese, has grown by leaps and bounds since the late 1970s, when it began to appear in the curriculum and professional activities of Japanese medical schools and philosophy departments. The introduction of bioethics to Japan was timely, as (...) innovation in medicine and technology was evolving in ways that revealed that the intersection of medicine, traditional Japanese values, and new cultural trends was an area of great moral complexity. In its infancy, bioethics in Japan was more or less an import from the United States, where the discipline took its roots. Quickly, however, it became clear that Japan's history and tradition would call for a different approach, and the engagement of slightly different ethical issues. Organ transplantation, for example, sparked much greater controversy in Japan than it ever did in the United States. Today, Japan has one of the most dynamic bioethics programs in the world, and it is one that reflects both traditional Japanese culture and the need for inter-cultural engagement in an increasingly global world. Through a series of original chapters written by bioethicists and covering a range of ethical issues, this anthology shows that, in contrast to previous assumptions, Japanese bioethics has, in fact, taken on an identity that is undoubtedly separate from its American origins. Rich philosophical questions raised by medicine, human subjects research, and psychiatric care are being posed by scholars in a way that reflect Japanese tradition and is no longer simply reflective of, or shaped by, American traditions and philosophical problems. The book highlights and showcases these trends through a series of chapters written by some of the leading scholars in contemporary Japanese bioethics, many of whom were pioneers of the field when it began and are now nearing retirement. (shrink)

"L'idée de cet ouvrage prend sa source dans un texte du tout dernier Schelling, extrait de l'Exposé de la philosophie rationnelle pure, professé à Berlin dans les années 1847-1852 et publié ensuite par le fils de Schelling dans un ensemble plus vaste, l'Introduction à la Philosophie de la mythologie."--Prologue, p. [7].

The book discusses the central notion of logic, the concept of logical consequence, and its model-theoretic definition as truth-preservation in all models. Whether the model-theoretic definition captures the modal and epistemological features of our pre-theoretic notion depends on what models model. The book argues that, given a non-formal understanding of models, the universal quantifier used in the definition of consequence must be restricted: if literally all models had to be considered, no argument would ever be logically valid. A central challenge (...) of the philosophy of logic is therefore to supplement the model-theoretic definition by a criterion for admissible models. The problem of logical constants, so prominent in the current literature on logical consequence, constitutes but a special case of this much more general demarcation problem. The book explores the various dimensions of the problem of admissible interpretations and proposes that the standard views are unjustified or even unjustifiable. As a consequence, it develops a new vision of logic and suggests in particular that our notion of logical consequence is deeply imbued with metaphysics. (shrink)

Democracy and the Divine articulates a democracy that is based on the principle of giving oneself to another. For this project, the author highlights two traditions that rarely have been read side by side or considered seminal to the philosophical idea of democracy: nineteenth-century German romanticism and French postmodernism.

This book examines the conceptual and temporal frames through which modern Western historiography has linked itself to classical antiquity. In doing so, it articulates a genealogical problematic of what history is and a more strictly focused reappraisal of Greek and Roman historical thought. Ancient ideas of history have played a key role in modern debates about history writing, from Kant through Hegel to Nietzsche and Heidegger, and from Friedrich Creuzer through George Grote and Theodor Mommsen to Momigliano and Moses Finley; (...) yet scholarship has paid little attention to the theoretical implications of the reception of these ideas. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of relevant topics and approaches and boast distinguished authors from across Europe in the fields of classics, ancient and modern history and the theory of historiography. (shrink)

Even with a significant increase in representation of minority identities in popular media – especially in stories of speculative fiction – the ways in which inclusivity is designed must be examined, with Lovecraft Country standing as a useful example for this scrutiny. Adapted from a novel of the same name, the show Lovecraft Country swapped the genders and sexualities of a few characters from the book to increase representation. The ways that these swaps reified tropes about diverse identities is the (...) central concern of this analysis. Using Fields and Fields's conceptualization of racecraft as a "mental terrain of pervasive beliefs," this piece seeks to identify how pervasive beliefs and rules about identity were implicated in the series. The characters of Montrose Freeman, Ruby Baptiste, and Christina Braithwhite all undergo gender and/or sexuality swaps in the adaptation from page to screen, but the ways in which stereotypical assumptions around gender and sexuality are preserved in the narrative work mostly to reproduce negative tropes around these identities. This argument details narratives of violence, avoidance, and sacrifice that are given to these gender- and sexuality-swapped characters, and illustrates how, ultimately, these narratives provide detrimental instead of productive representation of diverse identities. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of the wrong that is done to women when everyday people fail to believe allegations of sexual assault made by women. I argue that an everyday person wrongs both the accuser and women causally distant from the accuser when they fail to believe the accuser’s allegation. First, I argue that there are responses that we, as everyday members of society, owe to victims of sexual assault. A condition enabling everyday people to respond in (...) the way owed to victims is that they have an outright belief that the accuser was assaulted. Actively suspending judgement about whether a crime occurred is in tension with the ability to respond to the victim in a way that supports and validates them. When an everyday person fails to have an outright belief in the truth of an allegation, they wrong the accuser because they risk failing to satisfy the conditions enabling them to fulfill their obligation to her. Second, I argue that everyday people wrong women who are causally distant from the accuser because in our social context, women are often treated in particular ways – especially in the sexual domain – because they are women. As a result, when women hear that an everyday person fails to believe a particular allegation, they easily project themselves into the accuser’s position and reasonably worry that if they were to be assaulted, they too would be met with doubt and disbelief by the people in their community. (shrink)

Do neuromodulation technologies change patients’ personal identities? Haeusermann et al. claim that there is not enough evidence to support this worry. In their study, participants, following a res...

Durkheim's functional and structural sociology is examined with an eye to the two structuralist modes of inquiry that it inspired, French structuralism and British structuralism. French structuralism comes from Levi-Strauss's inverting the basic ideas of Durkheim and others in the French circle, including Marcell Mauss, Robert Hertz, and Ferdinand de Saussure. British structuralism comes from A.R. Radcliffe-Brown's adoption of Durkheimian ideas to ethnographic interpretation and theoretical speculation. French structuralism produced a broad intellectual movement, whereas British structuralism culminated in network analysis, (...) which is beginning only now to become a broad intellectual movement. In both cases, the intellectual children and grandchildren of functionalism may prove to be more influential in sociology and elsewhere than Durkheimian functionalism, the parent. (shrink)

The paper develops an inductive extension of AGM-style belief base revision theory with the aim of formally implementing Freitag’s :254–267, 2015, Dialectica 70:185–200, 2016) solution to Goodman’s paradox. It shows that the paradox dissolves once belief revision takes place on inductively closed belief bases, rather than on belief sets.

It is frequently claimed that the human mind is organized in a modular fashion, a hypothesis linked historically, though not inevitably, to the claim that many aspects of the human mind are innately specified. A specific instance of this line of thought is the proposal of an innately specified geometric module for human reorientation. From a massive modularity position, the reorientation module would be one of a large number that organized the mind. From the core knowledge position, the reorientation module (...) is one of five innate and encapsulated modules that can later be supplemented by use of human language. In this paper, we marshall five lines of evidence that cast doubt on the geometric module hypothesis, unfolded in a series of reasons: (1) Language does not play a necessary role in the integration of feature and geometric cues, although it can be helpful. (2) A model of reorientation requires flexibility to explain variable phenomena. (3) Experience matters over short and long periods. (4) Features are used for true reorientation. (5) The nature of geometric information is not as yet clearly specified. In the final section, we review recent theoretical approaches to the known reorientation phenomena. (shrink)

Empirical studies indicate that business compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act is disappointing, but they struggle to make sense of this phenomenon. This article offers a novel framework to understand how business organizations construct the meaning of compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act. Our analysis builds on the endogeneity of law theory developed by Edelman. Empirically, our study is based on the analysis of the modern slavery statements of 10 FTSE 100 (Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index) companies (...) in the food and tobacco sector, backed by interviews with business, civil society, and public officers. We offer a dynamic model that draws attention to the role of compliance professionals in framing ambiguous rules and devising a variety of organizational responses to modern slavery law. Contrary to extant research that tends to praise organizations for going “beyond compliance”, our study underlines the risks of managerialization of modern slavery law, whereby merely symbolic structures come to be associated with legal compliance, even when they are ineffective at tackling modern slavery. (shrink)

The three papers in this dissertation attempt to explore and defend a kind of middle ground with respect to the question of moral objectivity. In the first paper I use the case of disgust to show how not to go about raising skepticism about moral judgment; in doing so, I argue that disgust can be vindicated with an account on which it tracks social contagion as well as physical contamination. Therefore, the question of whether disgust is an appropriate reaction to (...) moral wrongness can sometimes be answered in the affirmative. In the second paper, I use empirical data from anthropology and psychology to argue that moral disagreement makes trouble for the claim that morality is objective, but I don’t reject objectivity entirely— in the third paper I go on to argue that moral relativism best makes sense of a morality that appears to be objective with respect to some questions but not others. (shrink)

The paper provides a new argument against the classical invariance criterion for logical terms: if all terms with a permutation invariant extension qualify as logical, then for any arbitrary true contingent sentence K of the meta-language, there would be a logically true object-language sentence 'φ' such that K follows from the sentence 'φ is true'. Thus, many logically true sentences would be a posteriori. To prevent this fatal consequence, we propose to alter the invariance criterion: not only the term's extension, (...) but also its semantic clause must satisfy certain invariance conditions. The paper ends with the observation that the new criterion makes explicit the dependency of the classification of terms into logical and non-logical ones at the different levels of the Tarskian hierarchy of languages. (shrink)

Empowerment, an already central concept in public health, has gained additional relevance through the expansion of mobile health (mHealth). Especially direct-to-consumer self-testing app companies mobilise the term to advertise their products, which allow users to self-test for various medical conditions independent of healthcare professionals. This article first demonstrates the absence of empowerment conceptualisations in the context of self-testing apps by engaging with empowerment literature. It then contrasts the service these apps provide with two widely cited empowerment definitions by the WHO, (...) which describe the term as a process that, broadly, leads to knowledge and control of health decisions. We conclude that self-testing apps can only partly empower their users, as they, we argue, do not provide the type of knowledge and control the WHO definitions describe. More importantly, we observe that this shortcoming stems from the fact that in the literature on mHealth and in self-testing marketing, empowerment is understood as a goal rather than a process. This characterises a shift in the meaning of empowerment in the context of self-testing and mHealth, one that reveals a lack of awareness for relational and contextual factors that contribute to empowerment. We argue that returning to a process-understanding of empowerment helps to identify these apps’ deficits, and we conclude the article by briefly suggesting several strategies to increase self-testing apps’ empowerment function. (shrink)

The development of empathy is central to positive social adjustment. However, issues remain with integrating empathy research conducted with children, adolescents, and adults. The current article (...

Mother and daughter Alexandra and Maureen point to the great thinkers who have shaped their beliefs and practices in education, and who continue to influence teachers today. 19 essays from Dewey to Delpit offer parents and new educators an overview of education. These touchstone texts are framed by commentary, as the Milettas include both personal readings with wider contextual value and brief biographies.