Metacognition – the ability to represent, monitor and control ongoing cognitive processes – helps us perform many tasks, both when acting alone and when working with others. While metacognition is adaptive, and found in other animals, we should not assume that all human forms of metacognition are gene-based adaptations. Instead, some forms may have a social origin, including the discrimination, interpretation, and broadcasting of metacognitive representations. There is evidence that each of these abilities depends on cultural learning and therefore that (...) cultural selectionmight shape humanmetacognition. The cultural origins hypothesis is a plausible and testable alternative that directs us towards a substantial new programme of research. (shrink)

UNESCO in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development establishes respect for the environment and sustainability education as key elements for the challenges of society in the coming years. In the educational context, physical education can have a vital role in sustainability education, through Traditional Sporting Games. The aim of this research was to study from an ethnomotor perspective the different characteristics of two different groups of TSG in the Canary Islands, Spain. The corpus of this investigation was made up of (...) 513 TSG, identified by two analysis techniques and collected in a database. The categories corresponding to the variables of the internal logic of the game were the type of motor interaction, related to space, relationships with time, and relationships with objects. The study also examined the variables of external logic or sociocultural conditions such as the protagonists, playing areas, and game moments. The data analysis was carried out using descriptive and inferential statistics: cross-tables, effect sizes, classification trees, and the identification of frequency areas. Of the total number of playful activities identified, most were physical activities. These activities were Quasi-games without rules and TSG as well as activities with Objects and without material. This research confirms that the TSG in the Canary Islands is a mirror of traditional culture and, from a pedagogical approach, shows great potential for material and social sustainability. (shrink)

Patient outcome after serious brain injury is highly variable. Following a period of coma, some patients recover while others progress into a vegetative state (unresponsive wakefulness syndrome) or minimally conscious state. In both cases, assessment is difficult and misdiagnosis may be as high as 43%. Recent advances in neuroimaging suggest a solution. Both functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography have been used to detect residual cognitive function in vegetative and minimally conscious patients. Neuroimaging may improve diagnosis and prognostication. These techniques (...) are beginning to be applied to comatose patients soon after injury. Evidence of preserved cognitive function may predict recovery, and this information would help families and health providers. Complex ethical issues arise due to the vulnerability of patients and families, difficulties interpreting negative results, restriction of communication to “yes” or “no” answers, and cost. We seek to investigate ethical issues in the use of neuroimaging in behaviorally nonresponsive patients who have suffered serious brain injury. The objectives of this research are to: (1) create an approach to capacity assessment using neuroimaging; (2) develop an ethics of welfare framework to guide considerations of quality of life; (3) explore the impact of neuroimaging on families; and, (4) analyze the ethics of the use of neuroimaging in comatose patients. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to analyze the impact of work performance on companies in Latin America and the Caribbean. The methodology used was a qualitative approach, a literature review was carried out through the documentary analysis of scientific articles, triangulation was also used as a technique for the analysis of information. Among the main results are: Job performance has a significant impact on productivity, effectiveness of public management and work performance in the region, human resource management is fundamental (...) in the performance and productivity of workers; and motivation, satisfaction and commitment influence organizational performance. It was concluded that work performance impacts sustainable development and organizational growth in the region, likewise, selection, training, well-being, motivation and communication in human resources management optimize work performance. (shrink)

The present study aimed at investigating the heavy metals concentrations in the soils around “Larga de Sus” abandoned mine (Zlatna, Romania), evaluating the potential ecological risk of heavy metal pollution and highlighting ethical aspects related to risk assessment, ecological restoration, and soil remediation. The results of the chemical analysis showed that the soil in the study area is highly polluted with heavy metals since the average concentrations of Pb (32.4–2318.1 mg/kg), and Ni (321.6–562.8 mg/kg) in soil exceed their corresponding threshold (...) established by the Romanian legislation. The potential ecological risk index method developed by Hakanson was used to assess the potential risk of heavy-metal pollution. The results indicated that Pb and Ni showed severe and considerable potential ecological risk, while Cr had lightly ecological risk. In this case, remediation should be focused only on Pb or on all heavy metals even if they have lightly ecological risk? A scientific management technique cannot logically prescribe which choices should be selected. The interaction between human activity and the environment is complicated and difficult to quantify and risk management cannot and should not be based simply on risk assessment results. What is needed to make the right choice of the most appropriate alternative that fits our personality, culture, religion, and desires? The moral and ethical implications of ecological restoration and soil remediation (e.g. tolerance of uncertainty, responsibility, moral duty, etc.) have to be incorporated within the decision-making process in order to make optimum sustainable decisions and to achieve real environmental protection. (shrink)

Las crisis económicas están generando desigualdades, producto de la violencia estructural; éstas están derivando en las maneras en que los jóvenes construyen y dibujan los sentidos sociales. Los jóvenes deberían ser sujetos que se mueven en toda una temporalidad sin embargo, sus condiciones materiales de vida, no les permiten pensar en un futuro con certezas. Más bien, éstas se desdibujan para ellos y hoy más que nunca aparecen sus sueños postergados y aplazados por la propia violencia de la que son (...) objeto. De ahí, nuestro interés en ver cómo los jóvenes egresados de la universidad, están construyendo dichos sentidos.Economic crises are generating inequalities resulting from structural violence; they are drifting in the ways in which young people build and draw social senses. Young people should be the subjects of movement along temporariness; nevertheless, their material living conditions do not allow them to think in their future with certainty. For our young generations these conditions are blurred, and now more than ever their dreams are deferred and delayed by the violence they are subjected to. Hence, our interest in finding out how young university graduates are building these senses. (shrink)

RESUMEN La pesquisa tuvo como objetivo precisar las prácticas que caracterizan la elaboración de los fundamentos teóricos en las investigaciones en ciencias pedagógicas. A partir de una muestra de artículos publicados en revistas científico pedagógicas certificadas, se evaluó la actualidad de la bibliografía empleada, su correspondencia con el objeto de la investigación, las relaciones de contenido por la naturaleza de los referentes, el lugar de la cultura en el análisis de esos referentes, y la capacidad del autor para captar esencias. (...) El resultado alcanzado fue la precisión de las tendencias predominantes en la elaboración del marco teórico, frecuentemente caracterizada por la dispersión conceptual y teórica. ABSTRACT The study was aimed at identifying the educational researchers' current practice in constructing theoretical framework. By comparing a sample of articles published in well-established education scientific journals, the authors appraise the update character or references, its correspondence to the research objective, the redundant, developmental or contrasting character of references included the place of culture in the framework construction and the researchers' capacity to figure out salient points and conclusions. The main finding is the identification of current trends in framework construction mainly characterized by a scattering of concepts and theories. (shrink)

Conflicts are commonplace in human relationships. The Bible is replete with narratives and proverbial statements which border on conflict scenarios and conflict resolution strategies. Conflict cannot be severed from relationships between biological brothers and sisters, Christians, friends, colleagues and husbands and wives. In this qualitative study, the researchers examined the menace 'conflict between husbands and wives'. There is no husband and wife relationship which is devoid of disputes and conflicts. In husband and wife relationship, conflict situations could arise from lack (...) of sexual discipline, lack of sexual satisfaction, finance, lack of communication and other areas. The thrust of this article was to examine conflict resolution principles in the light of biblical proverbs. Biblical proverbs refer to concise and wise sayings in the Bible, which give pieces of advice about everyday life. This article utilised the descriptive research methodology to analyse the primary and secondary data. The major finding of this work are numerous biblical proverbs which are veritable means for resolving conflicts between husbands and wives. CONTRIBUTION: The article brought to fore the major factors which lead to conflict between husbands and wives. The authors exegetically studied the chosen proverbs in order to ascertain its relevance to conflict situations. The major contribution of this article is that the messages of certain proverbs in the Book of Proverbs are very useful in resolving conflicts between husbands and wives. (shrink)

Franciscus Sanchez ist profunder Kenner der erkenntnistheoretischen Auseinandersetzungen seiner Zeit. Sein konsistentes skeptisches Denken und der hohe Grad der Argumentativität seiner Ausführungen machen Sanchez zu einem herausragenden Vertreter des frühneuzeitlichen Skeptizismus.

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – in (...) modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it. (shrink)

This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of observation; the scientific transformation (...) of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate. But perhaps most important, this book shows what a study of the past has to offer the interdisciplinary investigation of current environmental problems. (shrink)

Plotinus on the Soul is a study of Plotinus' psychology, which is arguably the most sophisticated Platonist theory of the soul in antiquity. Plotinus offers a Platonist response to Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of the soul that is at the same time an innovative interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. He considers the notion of the soul to be crucial for explaining the rational order of the world. To this end, he discusses not only different types of individual soul but also an (...) entity that he was the first to introduce into philosophy: the so-called hypostasis Soul. This is the first study to provide a detailed explanation of this entity, but it also discusses the other types of soul, with an emphasis on the human soul, and explains Plotinus' original views on rational thought and its relation to experience. (shrink)

Con el surgimiento de las teorías del razonamiento rebatible ha sido creada una nueva clasificación de argumentos que distingue entre argumentos deductivos y argumentos derrotables. Tal distinción conlleva dos supuestos básicos: los argumentos derrotables son no monotónicos, y los deductivos no son derrotables. En este trabajo se muestran los problemas a los que conducen tales supuestos, como así también los que surgen de la definición usual de “argumento derrotable”. Para ello, se adopta la postura metodológica de distinguir entre el aspecto (...) lógico y el aspecto dialéctico del fenómeno argumentativo. Por último, se propone un criterio alternativo de clasificación de argumentos que evite los mencionados problemas. (shrink)

This is the first of two papers responding to ‘recent’ commentary on various aspects of hyperplane dependence by several authors. In this paper I focus on the issues of the relations of HD to state reduction and unitary evolution. The authors who’s comments I address here are Maudlin and Myrvold. In the second paper of this set I focus on HD dynamical variables and localizable properties and measurements and address comments of de Koning, Halvorson, Clifton and Wallace. Each paper ends (...) with some reflections on the implications of HD for the ontology of Minkowski space-time. To set the stage for my responses, I begin this paper with some general position statements designed to correct what seem to be widespread and erroneous construals of some of my views. Two central points are argued for in this first paper. First, dynamical evolution occurs not only within foliations of Minkowski space-time. Rather the transition from the physical state of affairs on any one hyperplane to any other, whether the hyperplanes intersect or are parallel, is always an instance of dynamical evolution between them, generated by some active combination of boost-like transformations and/or time-like translations and/or state reductions and ‘reconstructions’. This point gives rise to a generalized conception of a history of dynamical evolution, allowing for the use of parameterized families of hyperplanes that multiply cover some portions of space-time. Nevertheless, and this is the second central point, for any two generalized histories, H and H’, the quantum states for a system on all the hyperplanes of H from the asymptotic past up to some hyperplane, h, determine the quantum states for the system on all the hyperplanes of H’ from the asymptotic past up to any hyperplane, h’, such that h’ lies to the past of all those state reduction regions that lie to the future of all hyperplanes of H that are ‘earlier’ than h. Consideration of these results should defuse concerns that have been voiced about the coherence and consistency of HD. A position closely related to the second point has already been argued for by Myrvold. (shrink)

Wagering contingent on a previous decision, or post-decision wagering, has recently been proposed to measure conscious awareness. Whilst intuitively appealing, it remains unclear whether economic context interacts with subjective confidence and how such interactions might impact on the measurement of awareness. Here we propose a signal detection model which predicts that advantageous wagers placed on the identity of preceding stimuli are affected by loss aversion, despite stimulus visibility remaining constant. This pattern of predicted results was evident in a psychophysical task (...) where we independently manipulated perceptual and economic factors. Changes in wagering behaviour induced by changes in wager size were largely driven by changes in criterion, consistent with the model. However, for near-threshold stimuli, a reduction in wagering efficiency was also evident, consistent with an apparent but potentially illusory decrease in awareness of the stimulus. These findings challenge an assertion that post-decision wagering provides a direct index of subjective awareness. (shrink)

While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an “uncanny” spectral presence. The encompassing ethico-philosophical question (...) is this: what is it about spectral space and the feeling of absence with regard to the university that is important to understand? The Spectral University is characterized by the absence of what used to give the university its constitutive form and structure; of what is essential to the university as an important place of learning and growth. What is gone is the ability to pursue the academic virtues. (shrink)

The Reeh-Schlieder theorem asserts the vacuum and certain other states to be spacelike superentangled relative to local fields. This motivates an inquiry into the physical status of various concepts of localization. It is argued that a covariant generalization of Newton-Wigner localization is a physically illuminating concept. When analyzed in terms of nonlocally covariant quantum fields, creating and annihilating quanta in Newton-Wigner localized states, the vacuum is seen to not possess the spacelike superentanglement that the Reeh-Schlieder theorem displays relative to local (...) fields, and to be locally empty as well as globally empty. Newton-Wigner localization is then shown to be physically interpretable in terms of a covariant generalization of the center of energy, the two localizations being identical if the system has no internal angular momentum. Finally, some of the counterintuitive features of Newton-Wigner localization are shown to have close analogues in classical special relativity. (shrink)

This book examines the centrality of integrity in relation to a variety of philosophical and psychological concerns that impinge upon the ethical life.

How should business deal with society's increasing demands for ethical and social responsibility? In plain language this book considers these and other ethical questions of direct relevance to business in the 1990s. It discusses the nature of ethics, ethical reasoning, the use of stakeholder analysis, and other central concepts used in business ethics. Using mainly, but not exclusively, Australian cases and specific examples, the book covers issues such as fairness in business dealings, advertising ethics, discrimination, and codes of ethics.

From climate change to fossil fuel dependency, from the uneven effects of natural disasters to the loss of biodiversity: complex socio-environmental problems indicate the urgency for cross-disciplinary research into the ways in which the social, the natural and the technological are ever more entangled. This ground breaking text moves between environmental sociology and environmental geography, political and social ecology and critical design studies to provide a definitive mapping of the state of environmental social theory in the age of the anthropocene. (...) Environments, Natures and Social Theory provokes dialogue and confrontation between critical political economists, actor network theorists, neo-Malthusians and environmental justice advocates. It maps out the new environmental politics of hybridity moving from hybrid neo-liberals to end times ecologists, from post environmentalists to cyborg eco-socialists. White, Rudy and Gareau insist on the necessity of a critical but optimistic hybrid politics, arguing that a more just, egalitarian, democratic and sustainable anthropocene is within our grasp. This will only be brought into being, however, by reclaiming, celebrating and channeling the reconstructive potential of entangled hybrid humans as inventive hominids, creative gardeners, critical publics and political agents. Written in an accessible style, Environments, Natures and Social Theory is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students across the social sciences. (shrink)

We prove that if $$\mathcal {A}$$ A is an infinite Boolean algebra in the ground model V and $$\mathbb {P}$$ P is a notion of forcing adding any of the following reals: a Cohen real, an unsplit real, or a random real, then, in any $$\mathbb {P}$$ P -generic extension V[G], $$\mathcal {A}$$ A has neither the Nikodym property nor the Grothendieck property. A similar result is also proved for a dominating real and the Nikodym property.

The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism's most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature's Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late (...) capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx's ninteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism's blind faith in "natural law." However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and social phenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin's social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question. (shrink)

This paper articulates a conception of organizational justice based on the promise of a mode of organizing that does not violate the particularity of each and every other person. It argues that the decisive condition for such a form of justice resides in the realities of the cultural practices of an organization as they are apparent in the conduct of people in relation to multiple others. These are practices that can only seek justification in the primary right of each person (...) to be regarded with absolute alterity. It also argues that a degree of violence is unavoidable within any practical ordering of justice and that any consideration of ethics and justice in organizations must account for such violence and seek to negotiate its existence on ethical terms. The organizational justice that is referred to is one sensitive to the exercise of its own power and authority in the context of its unavoidable violation of its basis in ethics. This is a justice that is ethically necessary, but is never sure of itself. (shrink)

This book sets out in plain language ethical questions of direct relevance to business today. This new edition expands the range of issues covered and includes a chapter on international business ethics, drawing extensively from Asian examples.

The commentators expressed concerns regarding the relevance and value of non-computational non-symbolic explanations of cognitive performance. But what counts as an “explanation” depends on the pre-theoretical assumptions behind the scenes of empirical science regarding the kinds of variables and relationships that are sought out in the first place, and some of the present disagreements stem from incommensurate assumptions. Traditional cognitive science presumes cognition to be a decomposable system of components interacting according to computational rules to generate cognitive performances (i.e., component-dominant (...) dynamics). We assign primacy to interaction-dominant dynamics among components. Though either choice can be a good guess before the fact, the primacy of interactions is now supported by much recent empirical work in cognitive science. Consequently, in the main, the commentators have failed so far to address the growing evidence corroborating the theory-driven predictions of complexity science. (shrink)

Abraham Flexner delivered his eponymous report 100 years ago. The Report had an immediate and profound impact on medical education in North America that resonated for several decades afterwards. Its impact was less immediate in the United Kingdom, but over time the major principles have been assimilated (GMC 1993). However, which—if any—of these principles are still relevant today? No doubt there will be debate about this, but in my view, Flexner's principle of academic and scientific excellence as one of the (...) most fundamental underpinnings of medical education is even more relevant today than it was in 1910. To illustrate this, I shall highlight two aspects of current medical education in the United Kingdom: the .. (shrink)