BackgroundInformed consent is a key element of ethical clinical research. Addicted population may be at risk for impaired consent capacity. However, very little research has focused on their comprehension of consent forms. The aim of this study is to assess the capacity of addicted individuals to provide consent to research.Methods53 subjects with DSM-5 diagnoses of a Substance Use Disorder and 50 non psychiatric comparison subjects participated in the survey from December 2014 to March 2015. This cross-sectional study was carried out (...) at a community-based Outpatient Treatment Center and at an urban-located Health Centre in Spain. A binary judgment of capacity/incapacity was made guided by the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research and a clinical interview. Demographics and clinical characteristics were assessed by cases notes and the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Global Assessment Functional Scale and the Clinical Global Impression Scale.ResultsNPCs performed the best on the MacCAT–CR, and patients with SUD had the worst performance, particularly on the Understanding and Appreciation subscales. 32.7 % SUD people lacked research-related decisional capacity. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in terms of capacity to consent to research.ConclusionsThe findings of our study provide evidence that a large proportion of individuals with SUD had decisional capacity for consent to research. It is therefore inappropriate to draw conclusions about capacity to make research decisions on the basis of a SUD diagnosis. In the absence of advanced cognitive impairment, acute withdrawal or intoxication, we should assume that addicted persons possess decision-making capacity. Thus, the view that people with SUD would ipso facto lose decision-making power for research consent is flawed and stigmatizing. (shrink)

Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the U.S. and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of Black feminist sociology, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the (...) pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book's key themes. (shrink)

In the context of multidimensional measures of well-being, a key question for policy is whether particular groups have differing priorities and are therefore likely to react differently to given economic or social shocks. We explore this issue by presenting the results of two related analyses that suggest positive answers on both counts. First, we apply reference class weights to unique data on adult capabilities in the UK and show that relative weights vary across some groupings. Furthermore, in some cases, deprivation (...) rankings of groups vary depending on which weights are used. Second, we explore possible behavioural consequences of different weights by examining the extent to which groups respond differently to three economic and social shocks (unemployment, widowhood and ill health). In this case, we find that weights and responses vary noticeably with age and region and sometimes with gender. We conclude that whilst equal weighting may be practically unavoidable when constructing indices of welfare in the absence of information on weights, their estimation from survey or experimental data is likely to be justified and may change views about policy needs or efficacy. (shrink)

O presente estudo parte da compreensão de que a sexualidade é uma dimensão de grande importância na constituição educacional da personalidade e na emancipação humana, e visa levantar possibilidades de compreendê-la a partir do pensamento ontológico de György Lukács. Para tal, apresenta e articula os conceitos de ontologia, ser social e trabalho, discute o lugar da subjetividade no ser social, e propõe uma reflexão sobre a sexualidade como dimensão que, mesmo originária de uma pré-disposição biológica, se reveste de sentido social (...) e se faz central no processo de constituição da sociedade. This study is based on the understanding that sexuality is a very important dimension in the educational constitution of personality and in human emancipation, and intends to raise possibilities of comprehending it from the point of view of György Lukács´ onthological thinking. It therefore introduces and articulates the concepts of ontology, social being and work, discusses the room for subjectivity in the social being, and proposes a reflection about sexuality as a socially meaningful dimension, which is central for the constitution of society, even though originating from a biological predisposition. (shrink)

Interweaving personal narrative and theory, this essay frames the valorization of female virginity in Guatemalan ladino society within the context of ethnic conflict between ladinos and Mayan Indians. A consideration of what is at stake in the premarital loss of virginity for ladino women can illuminate interrelationships among nationalism, the engendering of ethnicity, and women’s bodies.

The “straw man” prior expectation of the dominant social psychology paradigm is that humans should behave with perfect rationality and high ethical standards. The more modest claim of evolutionary psychologists is that humans have evolved specific adaptations for adaptive problems that were reliably present in the ancestral environment. Outside that restricted range of problems, one should not expect optimal behavior.

Este artículo intenta ―desde la perspectiva de la moral social― poner en evidencia el giro antropológico de la Encíclica Caritas in veritate que, coherentemente con las contemporáneas filosofías de la alteridad y del don, reconoce la fragilidad como nota distintiva de lo humano y clave metodológica de la moral social. Asimismo, señala la necesidad de completar esta reflexión con una adecuada teoría de las emociones en la esfera pública. This article tries ―from the perspective of social― moral highlight the anthropological (...) turn of the Encyclical Caritas in veritate that, consistent with the contemporary philosophies of otherness and of the gift, recognizes the fragility of the human hallmark and key methodological of social morality. It also notes the need to complete this reflection with an adequate theory of emotions in the public sphere. (shrink)

We present a psychometric test of life history theory as applied to human individual differences using MIDUS survey data (Brim et al. 2000). Twenty scales measuring cognitive and behavioral dimensions theoretically related to life history strategy were constructed using items from the MIDUS survey. These scales were used to construct a single common factor, the K-factor, which accounted for 70% of the reliable variance. The scales used included measures of personal, familial, and social function. A second common factor, Covitality, was (...) constructed from scales for physical and mental health. Finally, a single general factor, Personality, was constructed from scales for the “Big Five” factors of personality. The K-factor, covitality factor, and general personality factor correlated significantly with each other, supporting the prediction that high K predicts high somatic effort and also manifests in behavioral display. Thus, a single higher-order common factor, the Super-K factor, was constructed that consisted of the K-factor, covitality factor, and personality factor. (shrink)

In this article I examine some proposals for modification of ethical documents regulating research, particularly, the problems that introducing certain economic clauses may pose. I evaluate suggestions that reject the notion of providing the ‘best proven diagnostic and therapeutic method’ in favor of ‘the highest attainable therapeutic method’ or ‘the proven effective prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic methods’. I analyze the plausibility and problems of introducing a double standard and the consequences it may have in developing countries. Finally I highlight the (...) impact these changes may imply for these countries. (shrink)

The title of this volume A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic. Essays in honour of Aurelio Pérez Jiménez is first and foremost a coalescing homage to Plutarch and to Aurelio, and to the way they have been inspiring (as master and indirect disciple) a multitude of readers in their path to knowledge, here metonymically represented by the scholars who offer their tribute to them. The analysis developed throughout the several contributions favors a philological (...) approach of wide spectrum, i.e., stemming from literary and linguistic aspects, it projects them into their cultural, religious, philosophical, and historical framework. The works were organized into two broad sections, respectively devoted to the Lives and to the Moralia. Contributors are: Frances Titchener, Carlos Alcalde Martín, José Luis Calvo, Delfim Leão, Judith Mossman, Anastasios G. Nikolaidis, Christopher Pelling, Philip Stadter, Paola Volpe, Francesco Becchi, Israel Muñoz Gallarte, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Geert Roskam, Vicente M. Ramón Palerm, Frederick Brenk, John Dillon, Franco Ferrari, Aristoula Georgiadou, Luc van der Stockt, Luisa Lesage Gárriga. (shrink)

The strong law of large numbers and considerations concerning additional information strongly suggest that Beauty upon awakening has probability 1/3 to be in a heads-awakening but should still believe the probability that the coin landed heads in the Sunday toss to be 1/2. The problem is that she is in a heads-awakening if and only if the coin landed heads. So, how can she rationally assign different probabilities or credences to propositions she knows imply each other? This is the problem (...) I address in this article. I suggest that ‘p whenever q and vice versa’ may be consistent with p and q having different probabilities if one of them refers to a sample space containing ordinary possible worlds and the other to a sample space containing centred possible worlds, because such spaces may fail to combine into one composite probability space and, as a consequence, ‘whenever’ may not be well defined; such is the main contribution of this article. 1The Sleeping Beauty Game2Groisman’s and Peter Lewis’s Approaches3Discussing Beauty’s Credences4The Principle of Equivalence's Failure5Making Sense of the Principle of Equivalence's Failure6Elga’s and Lewis’s Approaches7ConclusionAppendix. (shrink)

This article examines the phenomenology of body shame in the context of the clinical encounter, using the television program ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ as illustrative. I will expand on the insights of Aaron Lazare’s 1987 article ‘Shame and Humiliation in the Medical Encounter’ where it is argued that patients often see their diseases and ailments as defects, inadequacies or personal shortcomings and that visits to doctors and medical professionals involve potentially humiliating physical and psychological exposure. I will start by outlining a phenomenology (...) of shame in order to understand more clearly the effect shame about the body can have in terms of one’s personal experience and, furthermore, one’s interpersonal dynamics. I will then examine shame in the clinical encounter, linking body shame to the cultural stigma attached to illness, dysfunction and bodily frailty. I will furthermore explore how shame can be exacerbated or even incited by physicians through judgment and as a result of the power imbalance inherent to the physician-patient dynamic, compounded by the contemporary tendency to moralise about ‘lifestyle’ illnesses. Lastly, I will provide some reflections for how health care workers might approach patient shame in clinical practice. (shrink)

A common argument in support of a beginning of the universe used by advocates of the kalām cosmological argument (KCA) is the argument against the possibility of an actual infinite, or the “Infinity Argument”. However, it turns out that the Infinity Argument loses some of its force when compared with the achievements of set theory and it brings into question the view that God predetermined an endless future. We therefore defend a new formal argument, based on the nature of time (...) (just as geometrical reasoning is based on the nature of space), which addresses more directly the question of beginningless time. (shrink)

Experiences of shame are not always discrete, but can be recurrent, persistent or enduring. To use the feminist phenomenologist Sandra Lee Bartky’s formulation, shame is not always an acute event, but can become a “pervasive affective attunement” (Bartky, 1990 : 85). Instead of experiencing shame as a discrete event with a finite duration, it can be experienced as a persistent, and perhaps, permanent possibility in daily life. This sort of pervasive or persistent shame is commonly referred to as “chronic shame” (...) (Pattison, 2000 ; Nathanson, 1992 ; Dolezal, 2015 ). Chronic shame is frequently associated with political oppression and marginalization. In chronic shame, it is the potentiality of shame, rather than the actuality, that is significant. In other words, the anticipation of shame (whether explicit or implicit) comes to be a defining feature of one’s lived experience. Living with chronic shame has important socio-political consequences. Thus far, chronic shame has eluded simple phenomenological analysis, largely because chronic shame often does not have a clear experiential profile: it is frequently characterised by the _absence_ rather than the _presence_ of shame. The aim of this article is to provide a phenomenology of chronic shame, drawing from Edmund Husserl’s formulation of the ‘horizon’ as a means a to discuss structural aspects of chronic shame experiences, in particular how chronic shame is characterised by structures of absence and anticipation. (shrink)

This book investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity, providing phenomenological reflections on how the body is shaped by social forces.

Through positing that our capacity for physical vulnerability is at the core of original shame, Sartre’s account in Being and Nothingness reveals shame as an essential structure of human existence. Reading Sartre’s ontological account of ‘pure shame’ alongside recent writing about shame in early child development, particularly Martha Nussbaum’s account of ‘primitive shame,’ this article will explore the inherent links between shame, the body and vulnerability, ultimately positing that our human need for belonging is the fundamental driving force behind shame, (...) and what gives it its ontological status. In short, this article will argue that shame is not merely about a painful awareness of one’s flaws or transgressions with reference to norms and others, but about a deeper layer of relationality through our bodily vulnerability. (shrink)

Se critica el nuevo artículo de Ulises Moulines, «Crispaciones hispánicas », publicado en este mismo número como réplica al mío, «Un nacionalista en apuros», éste en respuesta a su inicial «Manifiesto nacionalista». En la primera parte, ilustro con detalle los múltiples modos como mi adversario incumple los requisitos morales mínimos que deben regir un debate teórico. Se enumera así su recurso al victimismo, sus argucias para tergiversar mis tesis explícitas y, en fin, su evasión sistemática de casi todas mis objeciones. (...) La segunda parte pretende probar la inconsistencia del silogismo que condensa las proposiciones centrales de Moulines. La premisa ontológica, más que la existencia de las naciones, demuestra la de los nacionalismos empeñados en construirlas y dotarlas de soberanía; la premisa axiológica, o «principio del valor intrínseco de la pluralidad del ser», resulta estética y éticamente indefendible; su conclusión práctica, en pro del nacionalismo, será por fuerza inconsecuente además de temeraria. En la tercera parte, frente a las propuestas moulineanas sobre la España actual, sugiero un par de reflexiones: de un lado, acerca del significado del carácter «multinacional» de nuestro país y por qué es preferible denominarlo «España» y no «Estado español»; del otro, y tras rechazar la alternativa «o resignación o secesión», muestro la falta en Moulines de razones que legitimen las consultas de autodeterminación, amén del sinsentido y probables efectos desastrosos de su ejercicio en la España de nuestros días. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Yoga for Women? The Yoga Body as ‘Capital’ Yoga as a Beauty Practice Conclusion: Yoga for Everybody.

It is anthropomorphic to speak of Nature designing adaptations for a specific function, as if with conscious intent. Any effect constitutes an adaptive function if it contributes to survival and to reproduction. Natural selection is blind to what might have been the original function. Mutations arise by purest accident and are selected based on whatever fortuitous effects they might produce.

Problematizing the production of gender -and specifically of the feminine in the school context- is particularly complex. For some time now, it has been the students themselves who have pointed out the disagreement with an educational system that persists in implementing both institutional and daily actions that shape and produce sexist differences in a significant way. The school has thus become a space of dispute and territory in conflict, where new perspectives of girls and young women coexist in relation to (...) the demands for rights, to make their voices heard and to publicly express their disagreement, in the current context of mobilizations that question the prevailing neoliberalism. From the above framework and context, ethnographies conducted in two educational establishments, during 2014-2018, will be analyzed. In them, it is possible to identify two relevant argumentative axes that account for the production of women as second-class subjects, accentuating the analysis in the crossing between the forms of economization of life in a neoliberal key, and the implications of this from a gender perspective. (shrink)

This work is an effort to philosophize about the scientific words we must use to describe behaviors. It was written as an essay thus it is left here for further development; the issue before us is an ethological one, it addresses the question: which words are the most convenient to use in rigorous behavioral studies in order to produce scientific knowledge? We discuss the historical and philosophical roots of this behavioral-scientific problem. We admit anthropomorphic inference of organisms’ behaviors, as a (...) mean to create scientific-novel knowledge. We present two examples –based on the ethological study of triatomines –, where our anthropomorphic approach resulted in the discovery of novel meanings. (shrink)

Llamo marxismo después del marxismo en Balibar a la reconstrucción que este autor realiza de algunos conceptos clave del marxismo: clase obrera/lucha de clases, ideología/lucha ideológica, filosofía/materialismo y comunismo/comunistas. En el artículo, intento delinear las características principales del marxismo después del marxismo de Balibar recorriendo el examen crítico que realiza de tales conceptos. De la lectura de sus textos resultan otras nociones. Así la multitud compleja surge como la clase obrera después de la clase obrera. La rebelión ideológica de masas (...) figura como la lucha ideológica después de la ideología. El realismo de la teoría desarrolla la filosofía materialista después de la filosofía. Y los comunistas de la ciudadanía representan al comunismo después del comunismo. (shrink)

Psychological characteristics of athletes play a key role in sport performance and may moderate and mediate the influence of technical, tactical, and physical abilities athletes show. Different authors have emphasized the special attention such psychological characteristics should receive considering the extent they can influence athletes’ behavior either in training or in competition. This paper is aimed at describing the psychological profiles of two cycling sports: triathlon and road cycling. One hundred and twenty-nine male and female professional and amateur cycling athletes (...) (35.74 years old average age ±12.79; 14.94 average number of years practicing cycling ±11.20) were assessed on different psychological characteristics. For that purpose, the Psychological Characteristics related to the Sport Performance (CPRD) Questionnaire and the Psychological Skills Inventory for Sports (PSIS) was used. Results showed significant differences among triathlon and road cyclists (Stress control = t 116 =-3.711, p = 0.000, d = 0.48 ; Influence of Performance Evaluation = t 115 =-3-115, p = 0.002, d = 0.49; Motivation = t 124 =-5.520, p = 0.000, d = 0.82; Mental Skills = t 119 =-4.985, p = 0.000, d = 1.02). There were no significant differences between men and women though there were differences among pros and amateur athletes. Triathlon professional, compared to amateurs, showed higher scores in all the psychological dimensions assessed (Stress control = t 85 = 3.005, p = 0.003, d = 1.07; Influence of Performance Evaluation = t 83 = 2.858, p = 0.005, 0.77; Motivation = t 91 = 2.721, p = 0.008, d = 0.26; Mental Skills = t 87 = 2.556, p = 0.012, d = 0.77). The results of this descriptive study contribute to establishing a model of optimal psychological profiling applied to the different cycling groups that can be used by sport psychologist, trainers, and coaches in order to promote peak performance of these athletes. (shrink)

We use two logical resources, namely, the notion of recursively defined function and the Benardete-Yablo paradox, together with some inherent features of causality and time, as usually conceived, to derive two results: that no ungrounded causal chain exists and that time has a beginning.

In this musing we consider how social distancing, the primary public health measure introduced to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus, is creating social encounters characterized by a self-and-other-consciousness and an atmosphere of suspicion, leading to what we call “alienated embodied communication.” Whilst interaction rituals dominated by avoidance, fear and distrust are novel for many individuals who occupy positions of social privilege, Black and ethnic minority writers have demonstrated that the alienated bodily communication of COVID-19 social distancing is “nothing (...) new” for people who routinely experience marginalization as a result of racism. Our aim in this musing, then, is to reflect on how on-going experiences of stigma, shame, and marginalization can shape how social distancing is registered on an embodied and existential level, and therefore how social distancing may differentially impact individuals with lived experiences of racism. (shrink)

In this article, the authors focus on Argentina's activity in the developing field of regenerative medicine, specifically stem cell research. They take as a starting point a recent article by Shawn Harmon (published in this journal) who argues that attempts to regulate the practice in Argentina are morally incoherent. The authors try to show first, that there is no such ‘attempt to legislate’ on stem cell research in Argentina and this is due to a number of reasons that they explain. (...) Second, by examining the role played by different values, conflicting legal and moral views, and the influence of various actors, they attempt to show that the legislative silence regarding stem cell research may not necessarily be a manifestation of a legal/moral disconnection but rather a survival strategy for navigating the long and heated battle on the moral status of the embryo and the kind of treatment it deserves. (shrink)