In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered remain (...) perfectly plausible ways of addressing unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. So far from undermining the credibility of naïve realism, Berger and Nanay simply draw our attention to an important question to be considered by naïve realists in future work. Namely, which of the approaches considered is most likely to provide an accurate account of unconscious perception in each of its purported incarnations? (shrink)

Aulis Aarnio addresses the question of how legal interpretations should be justified. Aarnio considers a justification to be rational only if the justification process has been conducted in a rational way, and if the final result of this process is acceptable to the legal community. According to Aarnio, a theory concerning the justification of legal interpretations should contain a procedural component specifying the conditions of rationality for legal discussions, and a substantial component specifying the material conditions of acceptability for the (...) final result. The procedural component of Aarnio’s theory formulates rules for the rationality of legal discussions. The substantial component specifies when the result of a legal interpretation can be called acceptable. Aarnio considers such a result acceptable if it is acceptable to a particular legal community in which there is consensus with respect to certain norms and values. (shrink)

Health Wearable Devices enhance the quality of life, promote positive lifestyle changes and save time and money in medical appointments. However, Wearable Devices store large amounts of personal information that is accessed by third parties without user consent. This creates ethical issues regarding privacy, security and informed consent. This paper aims to demonstrate users’ ethical perceptions of the use of Wearable Devices in the health sector. The impact of ethics is determined by an online survey which was conducted from patients (...) and users with random female and male division. Results from this survey demonstrate that Wearable Device users are highly concerned regarding privacy issues and consider informed consent as “very important” when sharing information with third parties. However, users do not appear to relate privacy issues with informed consent. Additionally, users expressed the need for having shorter privacy policies that are easier to read, a more understandable informed consent form that involves regulatory authorities and there should be legal consequences the violation or misuse of health information provided to Wearable Devices. The survey results present an ethical framework that will enhance the ethical development of Wearable Technology. (shrink)

In this contribution the prototypical argumentative patterns are discussed in which pragmatic argumentation is used in the context of legal justification in hard cases. First, the function and implementation of pragmatic argumentation in prototypical argumentative patterns in legal justification are addressed. The dialectical function of the different parts of the complex argumentation are explained by characterizing them as argumentative moves that are put forward in reaction to certain forms of critique. Then, on the basis of an exemplary case, the famous (...) Holy Trinity case, the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court uses pragmatic argumentation in this case is discussed by showing how the court instantiates general prototypical argumentative patterns in light of the institutional preconditions of the justification in the context of the specific case. (shrink)

This article describes a case study on the Machiguenga, a remote Indigenous tribe affected by the Camisea Gas Project in the Peru. We introduce the anthropological concept of ‘glocalization’ and integrate this with organizational knowledge of ‘identity work’. Our findings demonstrate that identity work is a multi-faceted and boundary spanning process that significantly affects stakeholder relations and contributes to conflict between local communities and oil and gas companies. Indigenous identity can be both threatened and strengthened in response to natural gas (...) development and is related to how individuals, communities and the Machiguenga engage in identity work. We also discuss broader implications for management ethics, including a discussion of how Indigenous self-identify processes create a challenge for stakeholder theory. (shrink)

This essay proposes a review of the conceptual basis of the Complex Paradigm o Complex Thought. It reviews its core assumptions and give examples in the social sciences.

Considering the importance of research in the development of nursing, we examine the ethical principles governing nurses' investigative activity, as well as the different codes regulating biomedical investigation with human beings, amongst which are the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Human Rights, and the Declaration of Helsinki. From the perspective of the central points of the article reference is made to different codes proposed by international nursing associations, as well as reviewing the Deontological Code of Spanish Nursing. The ethical principles (...) a nurse has to bear in mind in research are analysed, with respect to patients, society and the profession. Finally, we refer to certain ethical aspects to be considered in the elaboration and development of a research project, as well as publication of the results. (shrink)

Een van de recente ontwikkelingen binnen evolutiepsychologie is het onderzoek naar evolutionaire esthetica, of darwinistisch geïnspireerd onderzoek naar de kwalitatieve beoordeling van natuurlijke en artificiële stimuli. Esthetica wordt in de westerse traditie echter traditioneel vanuit filosofisch en speculatief oogpunt benaderd. Ik illustreer de ontwikkeling van evolutionaire esthetica binnen een groter kader van wetenschappelijk en empirisch onderzoek, en argumenteer dat schijnbare tegenstellingen zoals deze tussen objectiviteit en subjectiviteit in esthetische oordelen geen stand houden. De kritieken die ten aanzien van evolutionaire esthetica (...) worden geuit, gaan verkeerdelijk uit van de vermeende onverzoenbaarheid van de filosofische en wetenschappelijke studie van esthetica. One of the more recent developments in the field of evolutionary psychology is research on evolutionary aesthetics, otherwise stated: darwinian inspired inquiries into qualitative judgements of natural and aesthetic stimuli. Western thought traditionally approaches aesthetics from a philosophical and conjectural point of view. I illustrate the development of evolutionary aesthetics within a broader framework of scientific and empirical research, and argue that apparent contrasts such as objectivity and subjectivity in aesthetic judgement do not turn out to be valid. Critiques of evolutionary aesthetics wrongly assume the conflicting nature of philosophical and evolutionary aesthetics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century fuelled heated debates about the nature and perception of spirits appearing to people. According to Protestant theology, apparitions of spirits were not souls of the dead but either diabolical illusions, natural phenomena, or ‘mere fantasies’ of a deluded mind. Swiss church minister Louis Lavater (1527–1586) emphasized that particularly melancholic people were prone to devilish deceits and thus inclined to imagine ghosts and other spirits. This paper traces the close connection between early modern (...) concepts of melancholy, imagination, and discourses on ghosts in then-normative perspectives before contrasting theological ideals and legal arguments raised in a 1681 Basel trial featuring an allegedly melancholic woman implicated in necromancy. This paper argues that scholarly discussions about imagination and melancholy regarding ghosts in Post-Reformation Switzerland were less concerned with ontological questions about the reality of ghostly phenomena than with possible sinful interactions with ghost, which in turn mirrored ideas about diabolical temptation. (shrink)

Among various case studies addressing the reception of relativity, very few deal with Portugal at either the international or the national level. The national literature on the topic has mainly concentrated on the reactions to relativity of the Portuguese mathematical community. The absence of Portuguese astronomers alongside Eddington during the 1919 expedition to Principe, then a Portuguese island, has been implicitly equated with the astronomical community's lack of interest in the event. In reception studies dealing with general relativity, analysis has (...) tended to focus on the physics and mathematics communities, less on the astronomers. Given that relativity was born at the interface of physics, mathematics and astronomy, reactions of members of these scientific communities depended on differences in shared traditions, values, problems and expectations, as well as on individual practitioners' idiosyncrasies. This paper addresses the contributions of the overlooked Portuguese astronomical community, evaluates the actions and reactions of its members to the expedition and assesses their role in the process of appropriation of relativity. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology is among the various evolutionary and cognitive perspectives that have been used to account for the origins of art. It sets out to explain modern human psychology by means of the evolutionary history of the species, and by determining why and how our extant cognitive machinery evolved as adaptations to past environmental surroundings or by-products of such adaptations. In the case of art, evolutionary psychologists seek to track down its cognitive foundations and establish its evolutionary rationale, for instance (...) by determining which function artistic behaviour as a whole might have performed. However, several methodological issues and gaps currently impede evolutionary psychological research on art: empirical support is often lacking, adaptationist claims are not adequately substantiated, and the definition and scope of basic aspects of evolutionary psychology often remain underspecified. This paper reviews the central themes that evolutionary psychology currently advances to account for the emergence of visual arts, music and fiction, addresses the most relevant methodological issues, and provides some suggestions that might help to develop evolutionary research on art. (shrink)

Neste artigo argumentamos que os temas da ação e da história presentes em alguns contos de Jorge Luis Borges antecipam alguns pontos que apareceram nas discussões pós-estruturalistas - nos campos da história, filosofia, antropologia - das últimas décadas do século XX. No seu labirinto literário-filosófico, especialmente por meio da ideia de destino, Borges explora elementos chave que se tornaram parte da noção de crítica que enfatiza as ideias de contingência e da impossibilidade de controle deliberado dos efeitos da ação humana (...) em seu curso temporal. It is argued in this paper that the themes action and history present in some of Jorge Luis Borges's short stories have anticipated certain aspects of the post-structuralist debates - on history, philosophy, and anthropology - in the last decades of the twentieth century. In his literary and philosophical labyrinth, especially through the idea of destiny, Borges explores key elements that became part of the notion of critique that emphasize the idea of contingency and the impossibility of deliberated control of the effects of human action in its temporal course. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo discute la tesis negativa de Hume sobre la religión; en segundo lugar, examina el intento kantiano de refutarlo con un argumento que apela a una supuesta superación del conflicto entre virtud moral y felicidad, y finalmente retoma la tesis humeana con Kierkegaard, para quien el cristianismo auténtico está fundado en la aceptación del absurdo. Esa dialéctica entre los tres pensadores es crucial: primero, la tesis del filósofo escocés de que la religión descansa sobre una paradoja; en seguida, (...) la antítesis kantiana asociada a cierta reinterpretación nouménico-ética del cristianismo, y, por último la restauración kierkegaardiana de la posición de Hume a través de una interpretación existencial del cristianismo.: This paper discusses, first, Hume’s negative thesis about religion; secondly, it deals with Kant’s attempt to refute him with an argument which appeals to a supposed elimination of the conflict between moral virtue and happiness; finally, it revisits Hume’s thesis with Kierkegaard, for whom authentic Christianity is founded on the absurd. This dialectic among the three thinkers is crucial: first, the Scottish philosopher’s thesis that religion rests upon a paradox; then the Kantian antithesis associated with a certain noumenic-ethical reinterpretation of Christianity; and finally Kierkegaard’s restauration of Hume’s position by means of an existential interpretation of Christian faith. (shrink)

This article draws on Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential theory of practice and employs it as a framework to analyze community organizing, focusing on the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky. As a practice in MacIntyre’s sense, it argues, community organizing constitutes a teleological form of social activity that is oriented toward distinctive kinds of “internal goods” and that functions to develop new capacities within its practitioners to recognize, desire, and attain those goods, relying on standards of excellence, characteristic institutions, and its own (...) “tradition” of practice. Such a MacIntyrean analysis of organizing foregrounds its ethical character as a practice and tradition of practice, informed by larger moral-cultural traditions. It also shows how organizing embodies, in practice, the core principles of the Catholic social tradition. Thus, it enables a clearer articulation of the conceptual and historical relationship between community organizing and the Catholic social tradition, and lays a theoretical foundation for further dialogue. (shrink)

It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve realism, broadly construed, doesn’t make (...) phenomenological predictions of the required sort. So, as a result, opponents must resign themselves to attacking specific incarnations of naïve realism, or approach matters quite differently. (shrink)

Accountability is a quality often demanded of the church and its leaders today, and especially so within the Roman Catholic Church. But how should accountability itself be understood, and how might a more accountable church be achieved? This essay explores these questions from a new angle by offering a detailed ethical analysis of how accountability operates within broad-based community organizing (BBCO), a form of democratic politics with a highly developed theory and practice of accountability in which many churches already participate. (...) In dialogue with BBCO, the essay develops a constructive framework for conceptualizing accountability. It makes a case for understanding accountability principally as a property of reciprocal relationships between persons, and stresses the need to proactively cultivate and sustain relationships of accountability through ongoing democratic practices of accountability. It also highlights the role played by moral authority, power, and virtue in these relationships and practices. The essay concludes by using this framework to propose a new interpretation of the Catholic Church’s accountability crisis. It suggests a more accountable church may only be achieved when the whole people of God begin organizing themselves to build it. (shrink)

Summary In the period between the two World Wars, the Portuguese Geological Survey (Serviços Geológicos de Portugal: PGS) was legally dependent on the General Directorate of Mines and Geological Survey (Direcção Geral de Minas e Serviços Geológicos: GDMGS). Portugal was then living through troubled times, and the PGS struggled with financial problems and a lack of technical personnel. This situation did not allow the PGS to work properly as a scientific institution, and achieve its main function: the making and publication (...) of geological maps and research papers. (shrink)

O que aqui se pretende é analisar a forma voltairiana de relacionar arte e política presente em sua obra, apontando seus alcances e limites a partir da noção da relação entre arte e política em Jacques Rancière. Para tal, este trabalho se divide em três momentos: no primeiro, expor a proposta voltairiana de relacionar arte e política; em seguida, entender como essa relação se dá a partir de categorias de Rancière – “partilha do sensível”, “estética da política”, “política”, “polícia”, “dissenso” (...) etc – e, por fim, aplicar essas categorias à proposta de Voltaire de relacionar arte e política com o fim de verificar se sua obra efetiva a relação almejada. (shrink)

« Le vieil original si intelligent, si fou » que Marcel Proust évoque à travers les autoportraits de Chardin, s'est-il dépeint lui-même sous le masque projectif du sage, dans l'un de ses tableaux les plus célèbres, le Philosophe du Louvre? Le maître de la nature morte, voulant s'élever dans la hiérarchie des rangs de I' Académie, a semble-t-il cherché, dans cette oeuvre de jeunesse, à suppléer à « son défaut d'instruction» dans «les humanités», par la représentation d'un personnage au goût (...) du jour, d'un moderne philosophe. Philosophe, Chimiste dans son laboratoire, Souffleur ou Philosophe occupé de sa lecture, le tableau du Louvre (1734) est-il un emblème? L'hypothèse retenue, que cette peinture donne figure à un philosophe chimiste et non à un charlatan ou à un alchimiste, se construit sur le rapprochement du tableau et du libelle anonyme intitulé Philosophe, mis en circulation d'après Voltaire dans les années 1730. (shrink)

Public pressure is essential for providing multinational enterprises (MNEs) with motivation to follow the standards of human rights conduct set in soft-law instruments, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. But how does the public judge MNE involvement in human rights violations? We empirically answer this question drawing on an original survey of American adults. We asked respondents to judge over 12,000 randomly generated scenarios in which MNEs may be considered to have been involved in (...) human rights violations. Our findings reveal substantial gaps between public judgments and the standards set in soft law and the normative literature. We identify the attributes of episodes of human rights violations involving MNEs that influence public judgments, including the relationship between the MNE and the perpetrator, the practice of due diligence, and the type of abuse. These results provide insights as to when we might expect public pressure to drive MNE compliance with soft-law instruments, and they direct attention to specific standards that will likely require stronger, ‘hard’ law approaches or broader efforts to shift the public’s view. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é, primeiro, apresentar e considerar as críticas de Paley com mais detalhes e, em seguida, discutir algumas das aplicações significativas da fenomenologia que muitas vezes foram negligenciadas pelos pesquisadores qualitativos. Como foi amplamente demonstrado ao longo dos anos, a fenomenologia pode não apenas fazer a diferença no manuseio, análise e interpretação dos dados disponíveis, mas também em como os dados são obtidos em primeiro lugar, por exemplo, através de técnicas especiais de entrevista. Consideraremos algumas figuras centrais (...) da psicologia fenomenológica clássica e da psiquiatria fenomenológica e apresentaremos alguns dos desenvolvimentos mais recentes na ciência cognitiva. Em seguida, discutiremos três casos concretos que demonstram como a fenomenologia foi aplicada no trabalho clínico com pacientes com esquizofrenia, paralisia cerebral e negligência hemispatial. (shrink)

At the dawn of the Upper Palaeolithic era around 45,000 BP, Homo sapiens migrated into Europe. This process was accompanied by the extinction of Neanderthals, which has led many to believe that this species was cognitively and behaviorally inferior to anatomically modern humans. In recent years, however, this view has been challenged. This paper focuses on art and aesthetic practices among Neanderthals, as one of the exponents of modernity. It explores to what extent central cognitivist accounts of differences with Homo (...) sapiens are supported by both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence. The commonly cited cognitive capacity for symbolism may be less crucial for art than hitherto assumed, and several other variables, such as demography and ecology, adapt the mainstream idea that the crucial difference between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans is of a cognitive nature. As such, Neanderthals may have been artists as well, challenging longstanding ideas about the uniqueness of our species. (shrink)

RESUMO A crítica de Hume ao contrato social admite um alcance para além do debate com o contratualismo de Locke: nosso autor tem em vista, sobretudo, desconstruir os princípios filosóficos que são a base da prática política dos Whigs. Uma vez que o contrato original organiza esses princípios, Hume se dedicará a analisá-lo em termos filosóficos e históricos, na tentativa de modernizar o pensamento político de sua época. ABSTRACT Hume's criticism of the social contract allows a range beyond the debate (...) with Locke's theory: our author aims mainly to deconstruct the philosophical principles that are the basis of the political practice of the Whigs. Since the original contract organizes these principles, Hume will be devoted to evaluating it in philosophical and historical terms, in an attempt to modernize the political thought of his time. (shrink)