Purpose:Human navigation skills are essential for everyday life and rely on several cognitive abilities, among which visual-spatial competences that are impaired in subjects with cerebral palsy. In this work, we proposed navigation tasks in immersive virtual reality to 15 children with CP and 13 typically developing peers in order to assess the individual navigation strategies and their modifiability in a situation resembling real life.Methods:We developed and adapted to IVR an application based on a 5-way maze in a playground that was (...) to be navigated to find a reward. The learning process, navigation strategies, and adaptation to changes were compared between participants with CP and their TD peers and correlated with visual-spatial abilities and cognitive competences.Results:Most participants with CP needed more attempts than TD participants to become proficient in navigation. Furthermore, the learning phase was correlated to visual-spatial memory but not with cognitive competences. Interestingly, navigation skills were comparable between groups after stabilization. While TD participants mainly relied on allocentric strategies based on environmental cues, egocentric strategies based on body motion prevailed in participants with CP. Furthermore, participants with CP had more difficulties in modifying their navigation strategies, caused by difficulties in executive processes beyond the visual-perceptual impairment, with an inefficient shift between implicit and explicit competences.Conclusions:The navigation abilities in participants with CP seem to be different from their TD peers in terms of learning and adaptation to new conditions; this could deeply affect their everyday life and ultimately participation and inclusion. A regular assessing and focused rehabilitative plans could help to better navigate the environment and affect self-perception. (shrink)

It has been well documented how language-specific cues may be used for word segmentation. Here, we investigate what role a language-independent phonological universal, the sonority sequencing principle (SSP), may also play. Participants were presented with an unsegmented speech stream with non-English word onsets that juxtaposed adherence to the SSP with transitional probabilities. Participants favored using the SSP in assessing word-hood, suggesting that the SSP represents a potentially powerful cue for word segmentation. To ensure the SSP influenced the segmentation process (i.e., (...) during learning), we presented two additional groups of participants with either (a) no exposure to the stimuli prior to testing or (b) the same stimuli with pauses marking word breaks. The SSP did not influence test performance in either case, suggesting that the SSP is important for word segmentation during the learning process itself. Moreover, the fact that SSP-independent segmentation of the stimulus occurred (in the latter control condition) suggests that universals are best understood as biases rather than immutable constraints on learning. (shrink)

Today’s food production and consumption go hand in hand with immense damages to humans and nature. Change is needed, but where to start and which direction to go? This article tries to give an interdisciplinary answer by taking recourse to a vision, that is, an ideal image of the future which is drawn upon ethical reflection and beyond the limits of actual political and economic constraints. The main purpose of this paper is to show that generating and discussing visions can (...) be a powerful process in order to regain ability to act in the face of the complex challenges of our time and that Education for Sustainable Development plays an important role to enable current and future generations to become actors of change. First, a students vision on agriculture and society in 2050 is presented, followed by a theoretical examination of visions, their potentials, limits and practical implications. Subsequently, the results of a field analysis of current innovative solutions to local agriculture are given. These include intercultural gardens and community supported agriculture. Claiming that a sustainable development can only be reached if people are not only able to envision a desirable future, but to develop small scale, locally adapted solutions as answers to challenges such as climate change, this paper then focuses on the competence oriented educational concept of ESD. Here, an approach of integrating ethics in the course of studies of agricultural sciences implemented by a student’s initiative serves as practice example. (shrink)

Discute a pertinência do quanto o uso dos conceitos de mal banal e mal radical se esboçam como potenciais referências analíticas para a compreender os processos de desinformação que circulam na esfera pública, em especial nas plataformas de rede social, como forma de fomentar uma problematização que defende que essas manifestações encontram-se fundamentadas tanto na pauperização interpretativa dos sujeitos e coletividades, quanto no ódio reproduzido de forma instrumental, perpetuado em razão de interesses políticos, econômicos e religiosos. Dessa forma, o presente (...) estudo apresenta aspectos relativos às noções de mal radical (Kant) e sua rearticulação na obra de Arendt (mal banal e mal radical), os relacionando, aos conceitos de desinformação, de esfera pública e de mundo da vida como forma de teorizar o quanto a desinformação inviabiliza a ampliação de atos inter locucionários e o entendimento intersubjetivo no âmbito da política. (shrink)

Psychotic-like experiences are a phenomenon that occurs in the general population experiencing delusional thoughts and hallucinations without being in a clinical condition. PLEs involve erroneous attributions of inner cognitive events to the external environment and the presence of intrusive thoughts influenced by dysfunctional beliefs; for these reasons, the role played by metacognition has been largely studied. This study investigates PLEs in a non-clinical population and discriminating factors involved in this kind of experience, among which metacognition, as well as psychopathological features, (...) seems to have a crucial role. The aim of this study was to extend the knowledge about the relationship between metacognition, psychopathology, and PLEs, orienting the focus on metacognitive functioning. The sample consisted of 207 Italian participants voluntarily recruited online, who gave consent to participate in the study. The average age of the sample was 32.69 years. Subjects affected by psychosis, neurological disease, and drug addiction were excluded from the analyses. The following scales were used to investigate PLEs: Peters et al. Delusions Inventory, Launay-Slade Hallucinations Scale-Extended Revised, Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief, and Revised Hallucination Scale. To assess general psychopathological features, the Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale was administrated. The Metacognition Self-Assessment Scale was chosen to evaluate metacognitive functioning. From hierarchical regression analyses, it emerged that the presence of anxiety, depression, and impulsive/addictive symptoms constitute a remarkable vulnerability factor for PLEs, in line with previous evidence regarding the relationship between general psychopathology and PLEs. Metacognition negatively predicts PLEs, and its presence does not affect the significance of psychopathological variables, suggesting that metacognitive abilities seem to play a protective role for the occurrence of PLEs among non-clinical individuals, and such ability operates as an independent predictor along with other variables. These results are explained by the role of metacognitive functions, which allow individuals to operate many mental processes such as interpreting sensorial events as real or illusory, understanding behaviors, thoughts, and drives of others, and questioning the subjective interpretation of facts. (shrink)

Neoliberal ideology and exclusionary policies based on racialized identities characterize the current contexts in North America and Western Europe. Nursing knowledge cannot be abstracted from social, political and historical contexts; the task of examining the influence of race and racial ideologies on disciplinary knowledge and inquiry therefore remains an important task. Contemporary analyses of the role and responsibility of the discipline in addressing race‐based health and social inequities as a focus of nursing inquiry remain underdeveloped. In this article, we examine (...) nursing's engagement with ideas about race and racism and explore the ways in which nursing knowledge and inquiry have been influenced by race‐based ideological discourses. Drawing on Henry and Tator's framework ofdemocratic racism, we consider how strategic discursive responses—the discourses of individualism, multiculturalism, colour‐blindness, political correctness and denial—have been deployed within nursing knowledge and inquiry to reinforce the belief in an essentially fair and just society while avoiding the need to acknowledge the persistence of racist discourses and ideologies. Greater theoretical, conceptual and methodological clarity regarding race, racialization and related concepts in nursing inquiry is needed to address health and social inequities. (shrink)

Resumo: O presente artigo tem como objetivo propor uma hipótese para superação das críticas feitas por Robert Nozick e Michael Sandel à teoria da justiça de John Rawls, no que concerne à necessidade de se considerar aspectos históricos e práticos, na formulação de princípios na posição original. Para tanto, é preciso analisar inicialmente as correntes filosóficas do liberalismo, do libertarianismo e do comunitarismo, a fim de fundar as bases necessárias ao desenvolvimento do estudo. Na sequência, será apresentada a teoria da (...) justiça de John Raws, seguida das críticas formuladas pelo libertário Robert Nozick, no que se refere à necessidade de se levar em conta o princípio histórico. Nozick comprova, por meio do exemplo de Wilt Chamberlain, como aspectos históricos podem alterar as estruturas pré-estabelecidas pelas teorias de estado final. Após, serão examinados os apontamentos feitos por Michael Sandel, especialmente no que concerne ao individualismo metodológico. Sandel também chama a atenção para o fato de que, para garantir efetividade aos princípios, é preciso que os indivíduos se utilizem de sua experiência e das particularidades da comunidade e de seus integrantes. Ao final, será sugerida uma proposta de superação das críticas dirigidas a Rawls, mediante a relativização da abstração da posição original.: The present article aims to overcome the criticisms made by Robert Nozick and Michael Sandel of John Rawls’ theory of justice, specifically with regard to the need for considering historical and practical aspects in the formulation of principles in the original position. We first analyze the philosophical currents of liberalism, libertarianism, and communitarianism, in order to lay the foundations necessary for the development of the study. Next, Rawls’ theory of justice is presented, followed by the critique made by the libertarian Robert Nozick of the need to consider the historical principle. Nozick proves, through the example of the American basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, how historical aspects can alter structures that are pre-established by theories of final state. Michael Sandel’s observations are then analyzed, especially with regard to methodological individualism. Sandel draws attention to the fact that to ensure the effectiveness of principles, individuals need to draw on their experience and on the particularities of the community and its members. Finally, a proposal is made for overcoming the criticisms directed at Rawls; this is achieved by relativizing the abstraction of the original position. (shrink)

O artigo verificou se após um programa de alfabetização, pessoas adulto-idosas com doenças crônicas apresentaram capacidade cognitiva à autonomia e autoconfiança aos cuidados de saúde. De método qualitativo na transversalidade com a pesquisa-ação, realizado no interior da Bahia com um grupo de mulheres, idade entre 53 a 73 anos, de um núcleo interdisciplinar de cuidados à saúde, todas com déficit de autocuidado potencializado pelo analfabetismo. Os resultados demonstraram que no ciclo vital tardio, mães/avós encontraram na alfabetização o empoderamento da cidadania (...) a da autogestão dos cuidados de si próprios. A prática educacional então, se tornou uma estratégia-chave à potencialização do letramento ao cuidado humano das pessoas relacionado à promoção de sua saúde. Palavras-chave: Alfabetização, Empoderamento, Pessoa Idosa, Cuidado de si. (shrink)

This paper addresses whether overindebted and non-overindebted consumers differ in their attitude toward money (specifically, the degree to which consumers care about money and feel difficulties keeping track of their money) and how this attitude impacts three different financial behavior categories: record keeping (e.g., recording spending in writing), adjusting balance (e.g., trying to find ways to decrease one’s expenses to match income), and monitoring balance (e.g., monitoring one’s spending to see if it is in line with what is expected). Overindebted (...) consumers were recruited via an NGO for consumer defense and were categorized (whenever possible) into two subgroups: consumers who became overindebted due to internal causes (e.g., bad financial management) and consumers who became overindebted due to external causes (e.g., unemployment). Non-overindebted consumers were a convenience sample. Non-overindebted consumers showed more positive attitudes toward money than both groups of overindebted consumers and overindebted due to external causes showed more positive attitudes than overindebted consumers due to internal causes. All groups share similar financial management behaviors except for monitoring balance, which was more frequent among non-overindebted consumers. Furthermore, a regression analysis indicates that money attitudes helped explain financial behavior differences between consumers above and beyond their indebtedness status. Consumers’ attitude predicted financial behaviors, even when controlling for relevant socioeconomic variables (education, income, age, and gender). Further analyses comparing money attitudes and financial behavior for the three subgroups (non-overindebted, overindebted due to internal causes, and overindebted due to external causes) showed no differences. (shrink)

The extracellular‐signal regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK or ERKs) are involved in the regulation of important neuronal functions, including neuronal plasticity in normal and pathological conditions. We present findings that support the notion that the kinetics and localization of ERK are intrinsically linked, in that the duration of ERK activation dictates its subcellular compartmentalization and/or trafficking. The latter, in turn, dictates whether ERK‐expressing cells would enter a program of cell death, survival or differentiation. We summarize experimental data showing that chronic activation (...) of ERK plays a role in the mechanisms that trigger neurodegeneration. We also discuss how MKPs, members of the subclass of dual specificity phosphatases, might be the link between ERK kinetics and its subcellular localization. BioEssays 25:1085–1095, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Rational agents often make progress by revisiting their previous judgments about what to believe and what to do. In fact, practical reasoning in general may be thought to be a complex activity by which we bring what matters into view. On this construal of practical reasoning, the process of revision takes center stage, and it often includes (even though it is not limited to) rethinking and re-describing the facts of the matter. Sensitivity to facts is thus an important aspect of (...) practical and theoretical rationality. However, it is far from obvious what “sensitivity to facts” consists in, and what sorts of capacities it requires rational agents to exercise. I will argue that among these capacities, emotional engagement figures prominently. This occurs when agents are actively—though emotionally—involved with aspects of the scenario they are thinking about. Emotional engagement importantly contributes to practical reasoning in general insofar as it contributes to changing view and revising judgment and decision. In particular, emotional engagement with the circumstances of action is a crucial component of deliberation. The upshot of this argument is that to account for the impact of emotional engagement and, consequently, to make sense of ordinary functions of reasoning, one has to overcome the sharp distinction between facts and values. In this chapter, I offer a constructivist account of practical reasoning as an activity that is transformative, taking up the plea for the study of reasoning as an activity of revision and change in view, argued by philosophers as diverse as Iris Murdoch and Gilbert Harman. Within this context, I account for the role of sensitivity to facts, claiming that sensitivity to facts, understood as emotional engagement, is partially constitutive of facts. I consider both the epistemological and ontological aspects of this claim. (shrink)

Philip Pettit is the most important contemporany advocate of the republican tradition in political philosophy. He advances a concept of freedom as non-domination, and constrasts it with the liberal conception of freedom as non-interference. He claims that two features distinguish domination from interference: The capacity of interference , and the fact that the interference is arbitrary. I shall argue that Pettit´s republicanism is not sufficiently differente from liberalism, certainly not from John Rawls´s liberalism. The only relevant difference between republicanism and (...) liberalism is related to : the notion of arbitrariness. Yet this difference makes republicanism an unattractive version of liberalism, insofar as it, paradoxically, allows for republicanism to legitimize a grave form of domination, paternalism, and, in general, domination coming from the state. This problem gets exacerbated by Pettit´s consequentialist framework. (shrink)

Nesse trabalho será analisado o tratamento teórico apresentado por Hannah Arendt sobre o tema da desobediência civil em sua obra Crises da República, traçando um paralelo com as práticas do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra no que tange à legitimidade dos seus atos de desobediência civil. Sob esse enfoque a luta pelo acesso a terra se apresenta como uma possibilidade de que seus integrantes integrem-se em comunidade fundando um espaço público e desenvolvendo sua capacidade de ação política, característica essencial da (...) vida humana. (shrink)

This volume collects articles in realism, anti-realism, and constructivism.

According to a traditional account, moral cognition is an achievement gained over time by sharing a practice under the guidance and the example of the wise, in analogy with craft and apprenticeship. This model captures an important feature of practical reason, that is, its incompleteness, and highlights our dependence on others in obtaining moral knowledge, coherently with the socially extended mind agenda and recent findings in empirical psychology. Insofar as it accords to exemplars decisive authority to determine the standard of (...) correctness for moral cognition, however, the model does not offer protection against arbitrariness and discrimination. The article argues that to understand the socially distributed nature of practical knowledge, we have to discard the notion of exemplars and reconceive of others as peers, i.e. having equal normative standing. This claim allows us to revisit the conception of autonomy as key to distributed practical knowledge. While autonomy does not amount to self-sufficiency and self-reliance, it does demand independence of judgment and stands in contrast to servility, submission, and other sorts of defective ways of relying on others. The requirement of equal standing provides the basis or distinguishing between proper and improper reliance on others. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida delivered the basis of The Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International as a plenary address at the conference ‘Whither Marxism?’ hosted by the University of California, Riverside, in 1993. The longer book version was published in French the same year and appeared in English and Portuguese the following year. In the decade after the publication of Specters, Derrida’s analyses provoked a large critical literature and invited both consternation and (...) celebration by figures such as Antonio Negri, Wendy Brown and Frederic Jameson. This forum seeks to stimulate new reflections on Derrida, deconstruction and Specters of Marx by considering how the futures past announced by the book have fared after an eventful quarter century. In this fifth group of contributions, three philosophers explore the specters of colonialidade, the specifically Brazilian legacies of Portuguese and European coloniality. Carla Rodrigues opens the dialogue by exploring the haunting and melancholy provoked by colonial forms of violence and shows how confronting Brazilian necropolitics sustains the Derridean legacy; Rafael Haddock-Lobo offers a meditation on the difficulties of being before the law and standing before specters as a means of being justly haunted by the others of European philosophy in Brazil; finally, Marcelo Moraes continues the theme of Europe as a specter-producing machine and invokes specifically the presences of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian political resistances with the aim of deconstructing coloniality. (shrink)

Se è un difetto della ragione essere incapaci di adottare certi mezzi, allo stesso modo è un difetto della ragione essere incapaci di adottare certi fini, dicono i kantiani. Secondo Blackburn questa tesi non-strumentalista deve la sua apparente validità ad una fallacia modale. Dal condizionale «Se si adotta il fine X, è necessario adottare il mezzo Y», si deriva il conseguente «Si deve adottare il mezzo Y», ci si interroga sulla natura del modale che occorre nel conseguente, poi si ricostruisce (...) l’antecedente come «E’ necessario adottare il fine X» e infine si ricostruisce il condizionale come «Se è necessario adottare il fine X, è necessario adottare il mezzo Y». Il non-strumentalista è così portato a credere che la stessa normatività che è contenuta nel principio strumentalista deve essere derivata dalla normatività dei fini (p. 242). (shrink)

Sembra esserci almeno un punto di accordo tra i filosofi morali: i giudizi etici, così come li usiamo nelle nostre conversazioni quotidiane, condividono una certa aspirazione all’oggettività. Vi è invece un disaccordo piuttosto acerbo rispetto alla questione se questa aspirazione sia giustificata o non sia invece una mera pretesa. Il disaccordo filosofico riguarda, cioè, la questione se i giudizi etici debbano e possano aspirare all’oggettività. Ma ancor più fondamentale è il disaccordo rispetto ai criteri con cui valutare se questa aspirazione (...) all’oggettività sia legittima. (shrink)

Feminist critiques of the social sciences are based on the assumption that because the social sciences were developed for the most part by white, middle-class, Western men, the perspectives of women were ignored. This book offers an approach for integrating gender-related content into the social work curriculum. The distinguished contributors discuss the shortcoming of dominant knowledge, address the pressing need for a gender-integrated curriculum, consider the pedagogies consistent with the implementation of an integrate curriculum, address specific areas in social work (...) education, assessing content, and assumptions, and discuss strategic issues for the implementation of curricular knowledge. (shrink)

While foregrounding the historiography of HIV and AIDS in the South African context, this article analyses AIDS as simultaneously existing in three spheres: first, virtually – as the subject matter of electronically measurable research; second, academically – as a topic of research in the discipline of History; and third, actually – as a complex health concern and signifier that, via the field of Medical and Health Humanities, could allow for new collaborations between historians and others interested in understanding AIDS. Throughout, (...) the central focus is the discipline of History and the global trends that become evident when examining metrics about AIDS research, particularly those that show the hierarchies of knowledge ‘production’, the reinforcement of disciplinary boundaries, and the discrepancy between the amount of research ‘produced’ by scientific and humanities disciplines. Overall, the article suggests that ‘post-AIDS’ is not currently helpful to health historians working on South African and other majority world contexts. More specifically, the article reflects on what AIDS histories still need to be written, and I argue that Medical and Health Humanities could provide a space for historians to work within and across disciplinary boundaries given the ever evolving remit of AIDS histories, temporalities, and narratives. (shrink)

In this paper, I characterize a new kind of testimonial injustice, a phenomenon I call ‘testimonial void’, which involves a substantial extension of the limits of the original concept put...

In this chapter, I offer a constructivist account of practical reasoning as both generative and transformative in response to calls from philosophers as diverse as Iris Murdoch and Gilbert Harman, who have urged the development of a more nuanced picture of reasoning that incorporates revisionary and revelatory changes in viewpoint. Within this context, I describe sensitivity to facts as a form of emotional engagement that is also partially constitutive of facts. I consider both the epistemological and ontological aspects of this (...) claim. From an epistemological point of view, my claim is that agents strengthen their discernment of relevant facts through emotional engagement. From an ontological point of view, my claim is that, through emotional engagement, agents alter their immediate relationship to objects, changing not only “what matters” but also the “facts of the matter”. To an important extent, then, facts are inseparable from the subjective concerns of the agent. This is not to say that there are no subject-independent facts of the matter, nor that objects are mere projections of an agent’s sensibility onto the cold, colorless canvass of valueless reality. Rather, my claim is that the ontological boundary between facts and values—and the normative status of facts—are both internal to the practical perspective, defined by an agent’s particular concerns and within shared practices of mutual recognition. The most relevant implications of the constructivist view are found at the level of prospective rationality, that is, within the temporal dimension of rationality. Emotional engagement fosters changes in perspective, but this should not be read as simply arbitrary fluctuations. Despite being perspectival, such changes are applied to a subject-independent field, which gains further intelligibility through the agent’s altered relationship to those circumstances. By examining the dynamics of such changes, we acquire a more nuanced theoretical vocabulary to help make sense of the prospective dimension of practical reasoning within which ordinary agents are engaged. (shrink)