The Gait Deviation Index is a multivariate measure of overall gait pathology based on 15 gait features derived from three-dimensional kinematic data. GDI aims at providing a comprehensive, easy to interpret, and clinically meaningful metric of overall gait function. It has been used as an outcome measure to study gait in several conditions: cerebral palsy, post-stroke hemiparetic gait, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and Parkinson’s disease, among others. Nevertheless, its use in population with Spinal Cord Injury has not been studied yet. The (...) aim of the present study was to investigate the applicability of the GDI to SCI through the assessment of the relationship of the GDI with the Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury II. 3D gait kinematics of 34 patients with incomplete SCI was obtained. Besides, 3D gait kinematics of a sample of 50 healthy volunteers was also gathered with Codamotion motion capture system. A total of 302 and 446 strides were collected. GDI was calculated for each stride and grouped for each WISCI II level. HV data were analyzed as an additional set. Normal distribution for each group was assessed with Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Afterward, ANOVA tests were performed between each pair of WISCI II levels to identify differences among groups. The results showed that the GDI was normally distributed across all WISCI II levels in both iSCI and HV groups. Furthermore, our results showed an increasing relationship between the GDI values and WISCI II levels in subjects with iSCI, but only discriminative in WISCI II levels 13, 19, and 20. The index successfully distinguished HV group from all the individuals with iSCI. Findings of this study indicated that the GDI is not an appropriate multivariate walking metric to represent the deviation of gait pattern in adult population with iSCI from a normal gait profile when it is compared with the levels of walking impairment described by the WISCI II. Future work should aim at defining and validating an overall gait index derived from 3D kinematic gait variables appropriate for SCI, additionally taking into account other walking ability outcome measures. (shrink)

In Unruly Words, Diana Raffman advances a new theory of vagueness which, unlike previous accounts, is genuinely semantic while preserving bivalence. According to this new approach, called the multiple range theory, vagueness consists essentially in a term's being applicable in multiple arbitrarily different, but equally competent, ways, even when contextual factors are fixed.

Diana Tietjens Meyers examines the political underpinnings of psychoanalytic feminism, analyzing the relation between the nature of the self and the structure of good societies. She argues that impartial reason--the approach to moral reflection which has dominated 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy--is inadequate for addressing real world injustices. ____Subjection and Subjectivity__ is central to feminist thought across a wide range of disciplines.

How is women’s conception of self affected by the caregiving responsibilities traditionally assigned to them and by the personal vulnerabilities imposed on them? If institutions of male dominance profoundly influence women’s lives and minds, how can women form judgments about their own best interests and overcome oppression? Can feminist politics survive in face of the diversity of women’s experience, which is shaped by race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, as well as by gender? Exploring such questions, leading feminist thinkers have (...) reinvigorated work on the concept of self and personal identity, as demonstrated by the discussions in this insightful volume.The concerns that animate feminist scholarship have prompted feminist philosophers to sideline the theme of individualism and to focus on the theme of intersubjectivity. In conceptualizing the self, the contributors to this volume highlight emotional bonds among people, the stories people tell one another, and the systems of categories and behavioral norms that unite and divide groups of people. Topics addressed include sexual violence and the self, the social self and autonomy, the narrative self and integrity, self-ownership and the body, forgetting yourself and your race, group membership and personal identity, grief and gender, sympathy and women’s diversity, emotion and emancipatory epistemology, and dependency and justice. This volume will be important reading for students of feminist theory, ethics, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This study provides empirical evidence on how corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones sustainability index, is reflected in the market value of equity. Using a theoretical framework combining institutional perspectives, stake-holder theory, and resource-based perspectives, we develop a set of hypotheses that relate the market value of equity to CSP. For a sample of North American firms, our preliminary results show that CSP has significant explanatory power for stock prices over the traditional summary accounting (...) measures such as earnings and book value of equity. However, further analyses suggest that we should not focus on corporate sustainability itself. Our findings suggest that what investors really do is to penalize large profitable firms with low level of CSP. Firms with incentives to develop a high level of CSP not engaging on such strategy are, thus, penalized by the market. (shrink)

En el presente artículo analizamos la Internet desde su origen hasta la actualidad considerándola como una unidad integrada por otras tecnologías de comunicación e información, donde todos tienen la posibilidad de hablar. A partir de esta condición inicial dividimos el análisis en dos direcciones: la red como tecno-capitalismo, y la red como «comunista», «comunitaria», «solidaria», «socialista», «democrática».

We are currently seeing a revival of interest in Aquinas's moral thought among Christian ethicists, both Protestant and Catholic. Although recent studies of his moral thought have touched on a number of topics, the majority of these have focused on his account of the virtues and their place in the Christian life. Probing the questions of the relation of virtue and law, the role of reason and will, and the place of the passions in Aquinas's moral theology, I will examine (...) recent studies by Diana Cates, Pamela Hall, Simon Harak, James Keenan, Daniel Nelson, Daniel Westberg, and Paul Waddell. In different ways these studies return us repeatedly to the vexed and unresolved question of the scope of human freedom. (shrink)

To put one of Jordan's central thoughts briefly, forms or relations through the act become "clots" or plexus, i.e., intertwinings, and thus concrete things. Jordan has several descriptions of the act, the perfect act, the creative act, the cosmic act, the integrative act, the subjective act, and the intelligent act. Of these the integrative act is the most important metaphysically, and has many of the characteristics of the other acts.

In this paper, I argue that Huw Price’s widely read “Truth as Convenient Friction” overstates the onerousness, and underrates the utility, of the ontological commitments involved in Charles S. Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth. This argument comes in three parts. First, I briefly explain Peirce’s view of truth, and relate it to his account of assertion. Next, I articulate what I take Price’s grievance against Peirce’s view to be, and suggest that this criticism misses the target. Finally, (...) I argue that Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth has greater explanatory power than the narrowly linguistic version put forward by Price, such that even the ontology-averse should accept it. (shrink)

This study investigates whether the market valuation of the two summary accounting measures, book value of equity and net income, is higher for firms with reputation for sustainability leadership, when compared to firms that do not enjoy such reputation. The results are interpreted through the lens of a framework combining signalling theory and resource-based theory, according to which firms signal their commitment to sustainability to influence the external perception of reputation. A firm’s reputation for being committed to sustainability is an (...) intangible resource that can increase the value of a firm’s expected cash flows and/or reduce the variability of its cash flows. Our findings are according to expectations and show that the net income of firms with good sustainability reputation has a higher valuation by the market, when compared to their counterparts. (shrink)

In this essay, I have rejected the inductive interpretation of the paradigm of contextual implication (to say “p”; is to imply that one believes that ) and proposed in its stead an explicatory model according to which a speaker in making a statement contextually implies whatever one is entitled to infer on the basis of the presumption that his act of stating is normal. In developing this model, I show how contextual implication depends on three distinct matters: a stating context, (...) presumptions of normality, and rules for the correct use of expressions. (shrink)

The popular media has repeatedly pointed to pride as one of the key factors motivating leaders to behave unethically. However, given the devastating consequences that leader unethical behavior may have, a more scientific account of the role of pride is warranted. The present study differentiates between authentic and hubristic pride and assesses its impact on leader ethical behavior, while taking into consideration the extent to which leaders find it important to their self-concept to be a moral person. In two experiments (...) we found that with higher levels of moral identity, authentically proud leaders are more likely to engage in ethical behavior than hubristically proud leaders, and that this effect is mediated by leaders’ motivation to act selflessly. A field survey among organizational leaders corroborated that moral identity may bring the positive effect of authentic pride and the negative effect of hubristic pride on leader ethical behavior to the forefront. (shrink)

This paper compares the results of large-scale U.S. and U.K. surveys designed to identify managers' major ethical concerns and to investigate how firms are formulating and communicating ethics policies responsive to these concerns.Our findings indicate some important differences between U.S. and U.K. firms in perceptions of what are important ethical issues, in the means used to communicate ethics policies, and in the issues addressed in ethics policies and employee training. U.K. companies tend to be more likely to communicate ethics policies (...) through senior executives, whereas U.S. companies tend to rely more on their Human Resources and Legal Departments. U.S. firms consider most ethical issues to be more important than do their U.K. counterparts, and are especially concerned with employee behavior which may harm the firm. In contrast, the issues which U.K. managers consider more important tend to be concerned with external corporate stakeholders rather than employees. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how argumentation schemes can be used in decision support systems that help clinicians in making treatment decisions. The work builds on the use of computational argumentation, a rigorous approach to reasoning with complex data that places strong emphasis on being able to justify and explain the decisions that are recommended. The main contribution of the paper is to present a novel set of specialised argumentation schemes that can be used in the context of a clinical decision support (...) system to assist in reasoning about what treatments to offer. These schemes provide a mechanism for capturing clinical reasoning in such a way that it can be handled by the formal reasoning mechanisms of formal argumentation. The paper describes how the integration between argumentation schemes and formal argumentation may be carried out, sketches how this is achieved by an implementation that we have created and illustrates the overall process on a small set of case studies. (shrink)

In this article I shall propose María Zambrano's poetic reason as a suitable method for developing a knowledge of animal being. To do so, I will follow the analyses (Derrida, Coetzee) that place animal thinking in the poetic sphere, thus showing the need for a poetic/literary knowledge to make a philosophical knowledge of the animal possible. Animal writing expresses our nature in relation to animal nature; it discloses our animal interbeingness. Finally, I will point to some of the principles of (...) ecofeminist/animal ethics, like care and empathy, which arise both in what I propose to call animal writing and in Zambranian poetic reason. (shrink)

Should philosophy help address the problems of non-philosophers or should it be something isolated both from other disciplines and from the lay public? This question became more than academic for philosophers working in UK universities with the introduction of societal impact assessment in the national research evaluation exercise, the REF. Every university department put together a submission describing its broader impact in case narratives, and these were graded. Philosophers were required to participate. The resulting narratives are publicly available and provide (...) a unique resource permitting a more comprehensive, empirically based consideration of philosophy’s influence outside the academy than has hitherto been possible. This paper takes advantage of this data to develop a cartography of the ways in which philosophers engage society in their work. We identify five approaches: dissemination, engagement, provocations, living philosophy, and philosophy of X. We compare these along the six dimensions proposed by Frodeman and Briggle to characterize the ideal field philosopher. We conclude that there are multiple ways of being a field philosopher, which vary in their emphasis. This pluralism bodes well for the expansion of philosophy’s societal influence, since there are routes available to suit different preferences. (shrink)

This exploratory study is part of a post-doctoral project investigating how Brazilian and Portuguese textbooks present slavery and the slavery trade, as well as how Portuguese students interpret these issues, particularly when they use the sources in their textbooks. A group of 8th-grade students (aged 13–14) from a school in northern Portugal was asked to reflect on the meaning of slavery and its potential consequences for Brazil and Portugal, drawing on evidence related to the slave trade and labour during the (...) 16th century, as presented in their textbooks. The students’ responses were analysed inductively, and the findings are discussed in terms of (a) the specific analytical process employed and (b) the insights gained regarding the relationship between textbook representations and students’ perceptions, framed within the context of situated learning. This framework suggests that prior knowledge, personal experience, and the specific task at hand may influence students' ideas and outcomes. (shrink)

En este artículo consideramos la pobreza extrema como un caso de violación de los derechos humanos en tanto que la situación de las personas que la padecen vulnera el mínimo de dignidad o justicia que permitiría reconocerlos como seres valiosos. La respuesta internacional en esos casos no puede entenderse como una cuestión de beneficencia sino que debe ir orientada prioritariamente con medidas de justicia que busquen el reconocimiento de la dignidad y las libertades de esas personas. En este sentido consideramos (...) la posibilidad de defender una propuesta de justicia global distributiva como la de Thomas Pogge y, por otra parte, reconocemos el valor de los derechos humanos como imperativos éticos globales para la fundamentación y la defensa de una justicia global desde el enfoque de la capacidad de Amartya Sen.In this article we consider extreme poverty as a case of violation of human rights as the situation of people who suffer it do not have the minimum of dignity or justice that would recognize them as valuable beings. The international response in such cases cannot be understood as a matter of charity but should be oriented primarily with justice measures seeking the recognition of the dignity and freedoms of those people. In this regard we consider the possibility of presenting a proposal for distributive global justice as Thomas Pogge does and, on the other hand, we recognize the value of human rights as global ethical imperatives for foundation and defense of a proposal of global justice from the perspective of the capability approach by Amartya Sen. (shrink)

Well into the 1940s, many French biologists rejected both Mendelian genetics and Darwinism in favour of neo-transformism, the claim that evolution proceeds by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In 1931 the zoologist Maurice Caullery published Le Problème d’évolution, arguing that, while Lamarckian mechanisms could not be demonstrated in the present, they had nevertheless operated in the past. It was in this context that Raymond Aron expressed anxiety about the relationship between biology, history, and human autonomy in his 1938 Introduction à (...) la philosophie de l’histoire: essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique, in which he rejected both neo-Kantian and biological accounts of human history. Aron aspired to a philosophy of history that could explain the dual nature of human existence as fundamentally rooted in the biological, and at the same time, as a radical transcendence of natural law. I argue that Aron’s encounter with evolutionary theory at this moment of epistemic crisis in evolutionary theory was crucial to the formation of his philosophy of history, and moreover that this case study demonstrates the importance of moving beyond the methodological divisions between intellectual history and history of science. (shrink)

Drawing on the self-determination framework, the study examined the effect of coaches’ autonomy support on the leisure experience of young male football players. Specifically, a model was tested analyzing the long-term predictive power of the players’ perception of coach-autonomy support at the beginning of the season on the subjective vitality of young football players at the end of the season through needs satisfaction and intrinsic motivation. Moreover, we tested whether the effects of coach-autonomy support on the aforementioned variables (needs satisfaction, (...) intrinsic motivation, and subjective vitality) at the end of the season remained at the beginning of the following season. Because the coach in the second season was not the same one as in the first season, the perception of coach-autonomy support at the beginning of the second season was used as a control variable. Three hundred and sixty football players (M age = 12.60 years; SD = 0.52) completed a questionnaire on the variables of interest at the beginning of the first season (T1), at the end of the first season (T2), and at the beginning of the second season (T3). The results of the path analyses showed that player’ perceptions of coach autonomy support at the beginning of the season (T1) positively predicted needs satisfaction at the end of the first season (T2), which in turn predicted intrinsic motivation at the end of the first season (T2). Additionally, intrinsic motivation significantly and positively predicted subjective vitality at the end of the first season (T2). Finally, needs satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and subjective vitality at the end of the second season (T2) positively predicted these same variables at the beginning of the second season (T3). Results emphasized the importance of the autonomy support offered by the coach in promoting the quality of young people’s leisure experience playing football and its benefits for their well-being. (shrink)

While innovations have fostered the mass production of food at low costs, there are externalities or side effects associated with high-volume food processing. We focus on foodborne illness linked to two commodities: ground beef and bagged salad greens. In our analysis, we draw from the concepts of risk, reflexive modernization, and techniques of ethical neutralization. For each commodity, we find that systems organized for industrial goals overlook how production models foster cross-contamination and widespread outbreaks. Responses to outbreaks tend to rely (...) on technological fixes, which do not constitute the reflexive change needed to holistically and effectively address foodborne illness in the long term. We contend that powerful anti-reflexivity movements resist calls for reform and successfully maintain industrial goals and organization. Actions that thwart changes in agrifood systems to better protect consumers are unethical, yet they continue to be successful. We argue that specific techniques of ethical neutralization play an important part in their success. Research on anti-reflexivity and techniques of neutralization will serve to further expose the ethical issues associated with the industrial agrifood system and foster new guiding principles and organizational designs for food production. (shrink)

My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also at stake. (...) I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)