The present qualitative study analyzes how a group of young people already involved in STEM fields perceive the prototypical person working in STEM. Gender differences between participants in technological and non-technological STEM fields were analyzed. A total of 27 young people (59.3% women) took part in the interviews (Mean Age = 25.48 years). Of them, 16 participants were working in STEM professions, and 11 were enrolled in the final courses of STEM degrees. The results of the content analysis were examined (...) in light of social role theory and the multidimensional structure of gender stereotypes. Men in these fields were therefore attributed an unappealing and weird physical appearance. Some female participants linked STEM professionals’ intellectual abilities to the stereotype that men have higher abilities in these fields. Whereas females attributed effort and perseverance to STEM professionals’ intellectual aptitudes, males referred to the development of soft skills. Participants in technological STEM fields connected the stereotype of being a ‘weirdo’ to a boring job, whereas those in non-technological fields linked it to their unconventional character. Some participants were disappointed by a lack of correspondence between expectations and the actual job STEM professionals do. Moreover, females in technological STEM fields commented on the job’s low social impact, while males mentioned low attainment of technical qualifications. Most referents in STEM fields were masculine, some of whom were present in the mass media. The practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Philosophers of science commonly connect ontology and science, stating that these disciplines maintain a two-way relationship: on the one hand, we can extract ontology from scientific theories; on the other hand, ontology provides the realistic content of our scientific theories. In this article, we will critically examine the process of naturalizing ontology, i.e., confining the work of ontologists merely to the task of pointing out which entities certain theories commit themselves to. We will use non-relativistic quantum mechanics as a case (...) study. We begin by distinguishing two roles for ontology: the first would be characterized by cataloging existing entities according to quantum mechanics; the second would be characterized by establishing more general ontological categories in which existing entities must be classified. We argue that only the first step is available for a naturalistic approach; the second step not being open for determination or anchoring in science. Finally, we also argue that metaphysics is still a step beyond ontology, not contained in either of the two tasks of ontology, being thus even farther from science. (shrink)

In this article the author will present various links between business and ethics. The idea of responsibility, used to describe legal, economic and ethical aspects, forms the main, unifying thread. The author uses it to analyze three aspects of human activity. The first, subjective, concerns self-responsibility, where individuals are striving to satisfy their needs and to achieve happiness. The second, the encounter with the Other, embraces two meanings: responsibility for and towards the Other. The third, social, extends the idea of (...) responsibility onto the historical community we belong to. The idea of co-responsibility is not confined to our life span but it embraces future generations as well. The author will pinpoint an important element in creating the foundations of a given community, i.e. regulations that form its basis, especially the principle of justice, encompassing the distribution of goods. Many contemporary authors underline this ethical, political and economic aspect (Rawls, communitarians, Ricoeur, Habermas). The main thesis the author would like to substantiate is as follows: in business activities the ethical conduct of the individual is not sufficient. It needs to be broadened to encompass other perspectives because contemporary societies are based on the idea of co-responsibility inhabiting many dimensions. (shrink)

Der Beitrag diskutiert die vielfältigen Askese-Traditionen und Vorstellungen einer neuen religiösen Gruppe im Osten Indiens, deren Zentren in asketischen Orden und der Laienbevölkerung in Stammesgebieten Odishas liegen.

The French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote provocatively about world civilization from his dual expertise as paleontologist and Catholic priest. This paper will extract from his many writings references to civilizational process in terms of his concept of the noosphere, that is, the transhuman accumulation of knowledge. Basing himself on the notion of a geogenetic process that he described in his important publication, Le Phenomenene Humain (1955), de Chardin considered the evolution of humankind to involve not merely the change (...) of individual members of the species, but in the development of the capacity to shape the earth and its forces by the invention of technology. He foresaw the human creation of a new level of understanding (some would say this is the cyberspace of the Internet) that would be the achievement of a unifying human civilization. The impulse to contribute to and benefit from this wealth of shared knowledge constituted for the Jesuit a quasi-magnetic force that brought together disparate human experiences. Borne in part by his religious faith, de Chardin described in a second masterpiece, Le Milieu Divin (1957) this unifying force as “love”. When a new world civilization learned to harness this kind of love in common purpose, said de Chardin, “for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire”. Possibly because of his religiously tinted language and mystical orientation, Teilhard has not always been viewed a contributor to the field. This paper will offer suggestions for ways to incorporate the French Jesuit among the sources for civilizational analysis. (shrink)

ExcerptNow that the Bush administration has left the White House, several questions emerge, not the least of which is the crucial question about its place in the longue durée of the American polity. A corollary of this question, which is perhaps even more vexing, regards the lasting effect of these years on the United States' political form. Not that versions of this question have not been posed. Books on the so-called new American empire, to be sure, have flooded the North (...) Atlantic publishing industry since 2003. In addition, midway through the Bush presidency pundits, journalists, and even academics mulled over…. (shrink)

- Presentación del número monográfico sobre Fronteras, democracia y justicia global.

We articulate a distinction between ontology, understood as involving existence questions, and metaphysics, understood as either providing for metaphysical profiles of entities or else as dealing with fundamentality and/or grounding and dependence questions. The distinction, we argue, allows a better understanding of the roles of metaontology and metametaphysics when it comes to discussing the relations between ontology and science on the one hand, and metaphysics and science on the other. We argue that while ontology, as understood in this paper, may (...) have reasonable perspectives for naturalization, given its relation to science, the same cannot be said for metaphysics, given that it is typically understood as an additional theoretical layer over science, not participating in the scientific investigation. That may result either in skepticism over metaphysics, or else on accepting that metaphysics is an autonomous branch of investigation, depending on one’s concern for metaphysics. (shrink)

We discuss the ‘Consciousness Causes Collapse Hypothesis’ (CCCH), the interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which consciousness solves the measurement problem. At first, it seems that the very hypothesis that consciousness causally acts over matter counts as a reductio of CCCH. However, CCCH won’t go so easily. In this paper we attempt to bring new light to the discussion. We distinguish the ontology of the interpretation (the positing of a causally efficacious consciousness as part of the furniture of reality) from (...) metaphysics (the metaphysical character of that consciousness). That distinction allows us to map the philosophical theories of consciousness compatible with quantum mechanics under the tenets of CCCH. Also, it indicates that the problem will have to be discussed at a metaphysical level rather than at the physical level. Our analysis corroborates recent arguments to the effect that this interpretation is not ruled out so easily. (shrink)

A interpretação da consciência processual (ICP), conforme desenvolvida em Arroyo (2024, cap. 5) e Arroyo; Nunes Filho; Moreira dos Santos (2024), propõe uma ontologia de processos como solução ao problema da medição. Este artigo apresenta a interpretação padrão levada às últimas consequências ontológicas (§2); apresenta a ICP (§3); propõe reflexões a partir das questões levantadas à IPC na ocasião do XX encontro da ANPOF, sessão do GT de Filosofia das Ciências Físicas (§4).

Scholars in the humanities and social sciences have turned to ethics to theorize politics in what seems to be an increasingly depoliticized age. Yet the move toward ethics has obscured the ongoing value of political responsibility and the vibrant life it represents as an effective response to power. Sounding the alarm for those who care about robust forms of civic engagement, this book fights for a new conception of political responsibility that meets the challenges of today's democratic practice. Antonio Y. (...) Vázquez-Arroyo forcefully argues against the notion that modern predicaments of power can only be addressed ethically or philosophically through pristine concepts that operate outside of the political realm. By returning to the political, the individual is reintroduced to the binding principles of participatory democracy and the burdens of acting and thinking as a member of a collective. Vázquez-Arroyo historicizes the ethical turn to better understand its ascendence and reworks Adorno's dialectic of responsibility to reassert the political in contemporary thought and theory. (shrink)

Whistleblowing is the most effective way to unveil wrongdoings. Indeed, whistleblowers often protect their organizations by providing crucial information. While existing research about whistleblowing focuses on the intentions of whistleblowers to report a wrongdoing _after_ a wrongdoing is observed, we seek to understand how individuals view whistleblowing _before_ a wrongdoing is observed. Drawing on self-determination theory our findings of 34 interviews at diverse Canadian nonprofit organizations support our framework and highlight that when a congruence of shared values exists, trust functions (...) as a core belief of the organization, which positively influences an autonomous view of whistleblowing. Based on our findings, we propose a conceptualization of whistleblowing mindset as the root of whistleblowing behaviours that can be influenced by shared or divergent values. We define a whistleblowing mindset as a mental disposition that predetermines individual interpretations and reactions to the witness of a wrongdoing. Our research contributes to the literature by establishing the importance of the whistleblowing mindset in the implementation of whistleblowing programs and providing insights into how shared values can influence the autonomous view in individuals’ whistleblowing mindsets. (shrink)

Phylogeography, a relatively new subdicipline of evolutionary biology that attempts to unify the fields of phylogenetics and population biology in an explicit geographical context, has hosted in recent years a highly polarized debate related to the purported benefits and limitations that qualitative versus quantitative methods might contribute or impose on inferential processes in evolutionary biology. Here we present a friendly, non-technical introduction to the conflicting methods underlying the controversy, and exemplify it with a balanced selection of quotes from the primary (...) biological literature, to invite the philosophy of biology community to pay attention to the elements that have played a primary role in its presumed resolution. We also present the basic features of our own metascientific take on the debate, and point out—as a preliminary step in preparation for upcoming, more detailed treatments—the importance that appeals to authority in fields external to phylogeography per se have played in the current status of this highly visible evolutionary biology dispute. (shrink)

In response to the paper by Cotnoir and Bacon published in RSL 2/2012, we would like to add some remarks regarding supplementation principles. It is known that in a classical mereology, the Strong Supplementation Principle (SSP) together with antisymmetry enforces the Weak Supplementation Principle (WSP). Instead, in the nonwellfounded mereology, the failure of extensionality causes the failure of antisymmetry (Cotnoir, 2010), hence the investigated model is also nonantisymmetric. Cotnoir supposes that the failure of antisymmetry implies the failure of (WSP) when (...) (PP1) is applied, however gives no explicit argument, which we would like to supply in this paper. Additionally, when (PP2) is applied, (SSP) implies (WSP), hence the failure of antisymmetry does not necessarily imply the failure of (WSP). (shrink)

Wird die Verbindung von Materie und Form, Begrifflichkeit und Sinnlichkeit, von Sinnlichem und Unsinnlichem zum Problem, so geistert in der Geschichte der Philosophie seit der Antike der Begriff des Schemas herum und ist auch heutzutage etwa in Theorien der Verkörperung zentral. Während Kant das Schema als Bedingung der Bedeutungsentstehung versteht und in kritischer Absicht von Bildern, Zeichen und Symbolen abgrenzt, ordnen Maimon, Hamann, Herder, Hegel und später Plessner dem Schematismus sinnliche und sprachliche Prozesse einer Morphogenese zu. Diese Revisionen geben Anlass (...) zu einer neuen Theorie des Schematismus, in welcher der Versinnlichung der Status einer transzendentalen Bedingung der Verkörperung zukommt. So verstanden hat Versinnlichung als systematischer Kern der aktuellen Sprach- und Erkenntnistheorie zu gelten. (shrink)

The authors investigate the contemporary idea of noosphere (the conceptual and ideological basis for considering the coming ecological crisis). The authors arrive at the conclusion that the concept of human plays the central role in ecology as all the ecological problems rest upon the problem of mankind’s moral imperative. Therefore the authors claim, applying among others Vernadsky’s views, that the idea of human in the field of ecology should be today revised.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, many universities influenced by Salamanca adopted the Summa theologiae as the textbook for teaching scholastic theology. At the same time, the universities decided that some minor chairs should teach one of the Sentences commentaries written by one of the following authors: Duns Scotus, Durand of Saint-Pourçain, or Gabriel Biel. As a result, some commentaries on these commentaries started to appear. This is most notably the case when it comes to the University of (...) Coimbra, where Aquinas’s Summa became the textbook only very late and where the chairs of Scotus, Durand and Biel were instituted in the second half of the century. This article provides a list of questions making up thirteen commentaries produced in Coimbra, where, unlike what happened in Salamanca, the professors belonged to different religious orders. It also presents the list of questions of one commentary connected with a Franciscan convent. Some reflections on the need to study late-scholastic manuscripts as well as on the structure of these commentaries are also offered. (shrink)

El De dogmatibus ecclesiasticis de Genadio de Marsella se encuentra próximo a la tradición de los símbolos, compilaciones doctrinarias de consulta ágil, por su estructura interna y contenidos. El examen del tratado genadiano contribuye a delimitar su contexto de composición, así como las preferencias dogmáticas de su autor. The De dogmatibus ecclesiasticis of Gennadius of Massilia is close to the tradition of symbols, easy to read doctrinal compilations, because of its structure and contents. The exam of Gennadius’ book contributes to (...) define its composition context and its author’s dogmatic choices. (shrink)

Los estudios acerca de la Antigüedad, la Tardoantigüedad y el Medioevo que se ofrecen en este libro contemplan aspectos retóricos, filosóficos y culturales de tan dilatado período que se hallan atravesados por discursos y representaciones en torno a diversas instituciones y personalidades. Los trabajos reunidos en el volumen, lejos de pretender cerrar o encauzar una perspectiva de abordaje y un contenido específico, promueven la apertura de las reflexiones hacia distintas realizaciones o aportes, en el seno de las humanidades, que instalen (...) o, incluso, reinstalen los debates y las especulaciones investigativas.Dada la constelación de temas que surgen de título y subtítulo, la secuencia del libro es cronológica: inicialmente aparecen los capítulos que se ocupan de la Antigüedad grecorromana; a continuación, se ubican las colaboraciones dedicadas a manifestaciones tardoantiguas y medievales y, finalmente, cierra el recorrido un capítulo referido a una fuente filosófica del siglo XX que analiza las épocas que nos interesan. Sin embargo, el cúmulo de fuentes, temas, intereses y ópticas de interpretación puestos en juego permitirá al lector otras formas de agrupación de los capítulos, a la hora de asignar un sentido global al libro, que darán cuenta, sin duda, de una hermenéutica más compleja que la mera sucesión temporal de los textos y discursos a los que cada una de las secciones se aplica. (shrink)

A influência da família no desenvolvimento da criança e do adolescente é um foco importante de pesquisa atualmente. Para estudar a relação entre a interação familiar e a auto-estima de adolescentes, 111 alunos (13 e 14 anos), de três escolas particulares de Porto União (SC) responderam a Escala de A..

Metaphysics is traditionally conceived as aiming at the truth — indeed, the most fundamental truths about the most general features of reality. Philosophical naturalists, urging that philosophical claims be grounded on science, have often assumed an eliminativist attitude towards metaphysics, consequently paying little attention to such a definition. In the more recent literature, however, naturalism has instead been taken to entail that the traditional conception of metaphysics can be accepted if and only if one is a scientific realist (and puts (...) the right constraints on acceptable metaphysical claims). Here, we want to suggest that naturalists can, and perhaps should, pick a third option, based on a significant yet acceptable revision of the established understanding of metaphysics. More particularly, we will claim that a fictionalist approach to metaphysics is compatible with both the idea that the discipline inquires into the fundamental features of reality and naturalistic methodology; at the same time, it meshes well with both scientific realism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTyphoon Haiyan damaged around a million houses in the Philippines in November 2013. It especially affected the poor. Using a realist laminated ontology, this paper explains how multiple cau...

Este artigo trata de aspectos abordados aspectos históricos e filosóficos do problema da medição em mecânica quântica, com ênfase na famosa formulação de Erwin Schrödinger conhecida como o “paradoxo do Gato de Schrödinger”. Pensado para o uso em sala de aula em cursos de filosofia da ciência a nível de graduação e pós-graduação, o artigo trata, em especial: da gênese do problema da medição (§ 1); sua conexão com os debates filosóficos sobre a localidade e separabilidade (§ 2); as consequências (...) para debates futuros na metafísica da ciência (§ 3). Palavras-chave: filosofia da mecânica quântica; gato de Schrödinger; metafísica da ciência; problema da medição; separabilidade. (shrink)

_Abstract: _The scholarship on deep disagreements presents us with a considerable number of seemingly disparate characterizations concerning the nature of these disputes. This paper is motivated by the desire to grasp what these characterizations are. An answer is provided through the method of reconstructive analysis. Two ideal and paradigmatic models of deep disagreements are defined initially. Then, individual characterizations found in the scholarship are examined against the background of such models. Special attention is given to Fogelin’s paper, the work that (...) initiates modern discussion on deep disagreements. According to the interpretation provided in the following paper, both models inadvertently coexist in this seminal work. _ _ _Résumé: _Les études sur les désaccords profonds nous présentent un nombre considérable de propriétés apparemment disparates concernant la nature de ces conflits. La rédaction de cet article est motivée par le désir de comprendre quelles sont ces propriétés. Une réponse est fournie par la méthode de l'analyse reconstructive. Deux modèles idéaux et paradigmatiques des désaccords profonds sont d'abord définis. Ensuite, les propriétés individuelles trouvées dans les études sont examinées dans le contexte de ces modèles. Une attention particulière est accordée à l'article de Fogelin, l'ouvrage qui initie la discussion moderne sur les désaccords profonds. Selon l'interprétation fournie dans l'article suivant, les deux modèles coexistent par inadvertance dans cet ouvrage fondateur. (shrink)

This review article discusses Erin McKenna’s pragmatist theory concerning the ethical treatment of companion animals, which she lays out in Pets, People and Pragmatism. McKenna develops a middle-ground view between the two opposite positions that frame the current debate on companion animals, focussing on the relationship between human and nonhuman animal beings. I suggest that the question of whether the domestication of nonhuman animals is not only a natural process, but also a desirable one, still remains unclear.

Recensione a Maddalena Bonelli (a cura di). (2020) Filosofe Maestre Imperatrici. Per un nuovo canone della storia della filosofia antica. Roma, Edizioni di Storia e letteratura.

Plato’s dialogues can be regarded as the most important documents of the extraordinary mimetic power of visual writing, i.e., writing capable of “showing” and “drawing images” by using words only. Thanks to the great lesson of the Attic theater, Plato makes his readers see: when reading the dialogues, they see not only the characters talking but owing to the visual power of mimetic writing, they also see that which the characters are actually talking about. There are numerous rhetorical devices employed (...) by Plato the writer that make this visual rendering of philosophy possible. In this text, I would like to bring an example from the Meno that illustrates the visual power of an implicit comparison. By “implicit comparison”, I mean the special kind of comparison that is not presented explicitly and fully in the text but that the text merely evokes and that, once evoked, contributes to determining the formation of the image. (shrink)