The aging of the population presents modern Western society with a variety of different challenges, especially in the areas of health and medicine. On the one hand, there is the demand of the elderly patients to receive medical treatments that are supposed to improve or preserve the existing quality of life and to prevent the extension of a life without quality, with suffering and pain. On the other hand, aging is accompanied by the appearance and exacerbation of chronic illnesses, reduces (...) the treatment benefits of medical activities and increases the risks of irreversible physical dependence. Furthermore, the lack of consensus among the physicians regarding the willingness of treatment and the proper timing of the treatment of the elderly – pose questions about the quality of the treatment for the elderly. Thus, in the opinion of different care-providers and in comparison to other age groups in modern Western society, the elderly do not enjoy the treatment advantages of medical activities proven in the treatment of other age groups in society. (shrink)

The decision to undertake this volume was made in 1971 at Lake Como during the Varenna summer school ofthe Italian Physical Society, where Professor Leon Rosenfeld was lecturing on the history of quantum theory. We had long been struck by the unique blend of epistemological, histori cal and social concerns in his work on the foundations and development of physics, and decided to approach him there with the idea of publishing a collection of his papers. He responded enthusiastically, and (...) agreed to help us select the papers; furthermore, he also agreed to write a lengthy introduction and to comment separately on those papers that he felt needed critical re-evaluation in the light of his current views. For he was still vigorously engaged in both theoretical investigations of, and critical not reflections on the foundations of theoretical physics. We certainly did conceive of the volume as a memorial to a 'living saint', but rather more practically, as a useful tool to place in the hands of fellow workers and students engaged in wrestling with these difficult problems. All too sadly, fate has added a memorial aspect to our labors. We agreed that in order to make this book most useful for the con temporary community of physicists and philosophers, we should trans late all non-English items into English. (shrink)

At conceptual and linguistic levels of cognition, events are said to be represented in terms of abstract categories, for example, the sentence Jackie cut the bagel with a knife encodes the categories Agent (i.e., Jackie) and Patient (i.e., the bagel). In this paper, we ask whether entities such as the knife are also represented in terms of such a category (often labeled “Instrument”) and, if so, whether this category has a prototype structure. We hypothesized the Proto-instrument is a tool: a (...) physical object manipulated by an intentional agent to affect a change in another individual or object. To test this, we asked speakers of English, Dutch, and German to complete an event description task and a sentence acceptability judgment task in which events were viewed with more or less prototypical instruments. We found broad similarities in how English, Dutch, and German partition the semantic space of instrumental events, suggesting there is a shared concept of the Instrument category. However, there was no evidence to support the specific hypothesis that tools are the core of the Instrument category—instead, our results suggest the most prototypical Instrument is the direct extension of an intentional agent. This paper supports theoretical frameworks where thematic roles are analyzed in terms of prototypes and suggests new avenues of research on how instrumental category structure differs across linguistic and conceptual domains. (shrink)

A collection of provocative, in-depth debates between Jurgen Habermas and a wide range of his critics relating to the philosopher's contribution to legal and democratic theory as published in his book BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS. Essential reading for philosophers, legal scholars, and political and social theorists concerned with understanding the work of one of the leading philosophers of our age.

This paper contends that impression management is not inherently a threat to fairness in employment interviews. Rather, regarding impression management as unfair is based on an outdated, narrow view of impression management as conscious, manipulative, and deceptive. A broader, expansive model of impression management is described which sees these behaviors as falling on a continuum from deceptive and manipulative on the one hand, to accurate, positive and beneficial on the other. While organizations may want to eliminate or discount the negative (...) aspect of the impression management continuum, the ability to positively 'sell' oneself is often a desirable attribute both in the employment interview and in later on-the-job settings. This expansive view of impression management contends that organizations can make employment interviews more fair by: viewing impression management as a skill and not a deficit, training interviewers to be wary of manipulative and deceptive impression management, reducing the ambiguity and uncertainty of interview settings and increasing the verifiability of candidate responses by focusing the interview on a candidate's long-term identities and accomplishments rather than their short-term, spur-of-the-moment attempts to please the interviewer. (shrink)

One of the most lively debates on scientific understanding is standardly presented as a controversy between the so-called factivists, who argue that understanding implies truth, and the non-factivists whose position is that truth is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding. A closer look at the debate, however, reveals that the borderline between factivism and non-factivism is not as clear-cut as it looks at first glance. Some of those who claim to be quasi-factivists come suspiciously close to the position of their (...) opponents, the non-factivist, from whom they pretend to differ. The non-factivist, in turn, acknowledges that some sort of ‘answering to the facts’ is indispensable for understanding. This paper discusses an example of convergence of the initially rival positions in the debate on understanding and truth: the use of the same substitute for truth by the quasi-factivist Kareem Khalifa and the non-factivists Henk de Regt and Victor Gijsbers. It is argued that the use of ‘effectiveness’ as a substitute for truth by both parties is not an occasional coincidence of terms, it rather speaks about a deeper similarity which have important implications for understanding the essential features of scientific understanding. (shrink)

This article evaluated the effects of an interpersonal skills program based on artistic expressions to reduce intimate partner violence in college students. The research was of explanatory type, quasi-experimental design and used the Dating Abuse questionnaire (adapted by Osorio, 2014), the Interpersonal Skills questionnaire with reliability of 0.81 having as results in the entry test in terms of violence a mean of 88. 16 and after the program was applied it decreased to 81.2, in interpersonal skills the mean of 46.6 (...) increased to 53.3 with large effect size according to Cohen's d 7.889 CI95% (6.246-9.532), statistically significant differences were found in terms of violence. (shrink)

In a series of recent publications Jerry Fodor has attacked what many believe is the core of Darwinian theory of evolution – the theory of natural selection. Not surprisingly, Fodor’s attack has provoked a strong negative reaction. Fodor’s critics have insisted both that his main argument is unsound and that his central claim that the theory of natural selection “can’t explain the distribution of phenotypic traits in biological populations” is untenable. I can generally agree with the first part of the (...) launched criticism: Fodor’s “putative argument” does rely on controversial premises which make it unsound. However, I don’t think that Fodor’s critics have succeeded in their attempts to refute his central claim. The refutation strategy that most of them have undertaken is to show examples of successful evolutionary explanations by natural selection. In what follows, two of these examples are put into scrutiny. The analysis reveals that: (1) The theory of natural selection should be only partially credited with the explanatory success of evolutionary explanations by natural selection because these explanations rely on additional empirical hypotheses which might be true or false. That means that the selectionist explanations are fallible statements the truth value of which depends crucially on the truth value of the empirical assumptions which have been premised. (2) In both cases alternative non-selectionist explanations can be found that fit the same empirical data and no reason has been given (or could be given) why these alternative explanations should be ignored a priori as inferior. The observations (1) and (2) stand against the claim that theory of natural selection is the only legitimate explanance for the distribution of phenotypic traits. This does not mean, of course, that natural selection does not play any explanatory role or that the theory of natural selection is a false theory (as Fodor is inclined to argue for). This only means that there is indeed a problem of understanding the proper explanatory role of natural selection and that this problem is not only Fodor’s problem. The paper ends with a suggestion of what should be admitted in order to get to a better understanding of the proper role that the theory of natural selection plays in evolutionary explanations. (shrink)

The article offers an account of the author's participation in secret filming in three small residential care homes for older people. The author gained access to the homes as a resident and made video-recordings that were used as part of a television documentary in 1994 that exposed the poor practice and lack of regulation in these types of homes in England at that time. The author discusses her motivations for taking on this undercover role, and some of the unexpected ethical (...) challenges she faced when considering the impact of the exposure of these homes for the residents, their families, the owners and the staff. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 5, May 2022.

The prevalence of the term post-truth suggests that we have, in the last few years, moved from being members of societies dedicated to truth to being members of ones that cannot agree on truth’s parameters and, even worse, have given up trying. But is this really what has happened? The author argues that, under the sway of the Enlightenment, truth has actually been unstable and a source of contention in public life ever since the founding moment for modern democracies in (...) the late eighteenth century; the ‘post’ in ‘post-truth’ elides this complex history even as it accurately describes some of the conditions of our moment. What that means, though, is that rather than attempt to turn the clock back to past models and practices for restoring the reign of truth, we should be looking for new, post-Enlightenment paradigms for how to define and locate truth in the context of democracy, as well as new mechanisms for making this possible. (shrink)

Studies of heteronormativity have emphasized its normative content and repressive functions, but few have considered the strategic use of heteronormative and homonormative precepts to shape sexual selves, public identities, and social relations. Adopting an interactionist approach, this article analyzes interviews with homosexual elders to uncover their use of heteronormative premises to pass as heterosexual. Informants also used homonormative precepts, grounded in a postwar, pre-gay liberation assimilationist homosexual politics they adopted in their early years and maintained in later life, to justify (...) passing and to frame their understanding and evaluation of past and present homosexual practices. Viewed through a homonormative lens, heteronormativity provided the tools for personal survival in a hostile society and for the collective production of a respectable homosexual culture. Informants’ strategic use of heteronormativity can help explain heteronormativity’s survival despite the incoherence and fragility of its content. (shrink)

The central argument in this paper is the following: if we agree that one of the aims of explanation is to provide or increase understanding, and if we assess understanding on the basis of the inferences one can draw from the knowledge of the phenomenon which is understood, then the value of an explanation, i.e. its capacity to provide or increase understanding of the explained phenomenon, should be assessed on the basis of the extra-inferences which this explanation allows for. The (...) extra-inferences which a given explanation allows for constitute its inferential content. The analysis of the explanation’s inferential content could be applied to all kinds of explanations with the aim of assessing their goodness. I show how such an analysis helps us to better understand a number of difficulties that have puzzled contemporary philosophers of explanation: the flagpole counterexample to the deductive-nomological model of explanation, the conjunction problem, the difference between good and bad circular explanations. (shrink)

On observe une nouvelle tendance dans la philosophie des sciences cognitives, manifeste dans les écrits de Betchel et al. qui met en avant l’importance des explications mécanistes au détriment du rôle explicatif des principes. Cet article est un plaidoyer pour rétablir l’équilibre. Il met l’accent sur l’effort d’explication des effets du niveau de base, l’une des plus importantes découvertes empiriques dans l’histoire de la recherche en catégorisation. L’analyse de trois différentes périodes de cette histoire révèle que le recours aux principes (...) y a joué un rôle crucial. Cependant, afin de reconnaître pleinement le rôle explicatif des principes, nous devrions nous préparer à admettre que les explications déductives-nomologiques ne sont pas les seuls types d’explications basées sur des principes. (shrink)

ResumoO objetivo deste artigo é produzir uma reflexão crítica sobre a produção de Gilberto Freyre, mais verticalizada em dois aspectos. Em primeiro lugar, buscar-se-á entender a seleção feita por esse antropólogo de uma certa mestiçagem e adaptação cultural, símbolos da singularidade brasileira. Em segundo lugar, procura-se entender de que maneira esse tipo de interpretação desloca a análise de fenômenos mais sociais e econômicos, investindo profundamente na esfera privada. Como se costuma dizer, Freyre teria descrito a escravidão brasileira, tendo como foco (...) apenas os cativos domésticos. Para tanto, começar-se-á com a análise do clássico Casa Grande & Senzala, mas a insistência se dará na interpretação do livro Novo mundo nos trópicos, obra em que o estudioso procura sintetizar suas conclusões para um público estrangeiro. Aí estariam condensadas as suas máximas e grandes linhas de interpretação.Palavras-chave: Adaptação. Mestiçagem. Novo mundo nos trópicos. Gilberto Freyre. AbstractThe aim of this paper is to produce a critical reflection on Gilberto Freyre’s work, which is more vertical in two respects. First, I will seek to understand the selection made by the anthropologist of a certain cultural miscegenation and adaptation, symbols of Brazilian singularity. Second, I’ll try to understand how such an interpretation shifts the analysis of rather social and economic phenomena, deeply invested in the private. As it is said, Freyre would have described Brazilian slavery focusing only on the domestic slaves. Thus, the analysis begins with the classic Casa Grande & Senzala, but the emphasis will be in the interpretation of the book in the New world in the tropics [Novo mundo nos Trópicos], a work in which the scholar seeks to synthesize his findings to a foreign audience. There it would be condensed his maxima and broad lines of interpretation.Key words: Adaptation. Miscegenation. New world in the tropics. Gilberto Freyre. (shrink)

Prispevek predstavi sklop evholoških besedil na čast svetemu Hieronimu: od prvih omemb v Gelazijevem zakramentarju do prenovljenega rimskega misala Pavla vi. Orisan je potek kompozicije temeljnih zakramentarjev in misalov rimskega obreda, ki so vir, iz katerega se je bogato razširil obstoječ misal. Predstavljeni so vidiki, ki bi jih za zvest prenos misli, izraženih v latinski evhologiji, v drug jezik, lahko upoštevali. Razširjeni konteksti umeščenega besedila namreč v bogoslužju omogočajo liturgičnemu besedilu, da lahko postane učinkovit dogodek vere. Njihovo neupoštevanje pa učinkovitost (...) besedila omejuje. Zaradi pretežno filološke metode prevedeno evhološko besedilo uporabnika lahko doseže šele s katehezo, homilijo ali komentarjem. Tak pristop je neprimerljivo hitrejši in zaradi še neizdelanih študij za vsak posamezni formular se ohranja vtis, da je zahtevni proces inkulturacije rimskega obreda nujno potrebno centralno nadzorovati. Predstavljena so tudi obvezujoča navodila, s katerimi Cerkev že desetletja usmerja prevajanje in iz katerih postaja še bolj očitna teža in preroškost odločitev, ki jih je v korist vernikov naredila na drugem vatikanskem koncilu. (shrink)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held, in Brader v. Allegheny General Hospital, 167 E3d 832, that the Health Care Quality Improvement Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 11101-11152, shields a Pennsylvania hospital from a surgeon's claims of contract violations.The plaintiff, Alan Brader, M.D., joined Allegheny General Hospital's provisional medical staff in July 1988. During the next two years, he performed several abdominal aortic aneurysm repairs and various other operations. Several of Brader's patients sustained serious injuries or died during (...) surgery from complications. In 1989, Brader's supervisors, Drs. Daniel Diamond and George Magovern, met to discuss their dissatisfaction with Brader's behavior, his departures from hospital protocol, as well as his disruptive presence in the hospital. From 1989 to 1990, Brader continued to perform surgical procedures on incoming patients, and he continued to violate hospital notification protocol and lost a patient during surgery. In spring 1990, the Quality Assurance Department compiled data on AAA procedures for the hospital's physicians. (shrink)

O leitor encontrará, neste volume, o crítico e o pensador arrojado procurando destrinçar questões filosóficas como o irracionalismo, o homem e a técnica, temas políticos e culturais relacionados ao racismo e à atual cultural das gangs, bem como reflexões estéticas acerca da pseudo-arte e do kitsch, para integrá-los plenamente nos seus contextos filosóficos, sociais e humanos.

The constitutional subject : singular, plural or universal? -- The constitutional subject and the clash of self and other : on the uses of negation, metaphor, and metonymy -- Reinventing tradition through constitutional interpretation : the case of unenumerated rights in the United States -- Recasting and reorienting identity through constitution-making : the pivotal case of Spain's 1978 Constitution -- Constitutional models : shaping, nurturing, and guiding the constitutional subject -- Models of constitution making -- The constitutional subject and clashing (...) visions of citizenship : can we be beyond what we are not? -- Can the constitutional subject go global? imagining a convergence of the universal, the particular, and the singular. (shrink)

The first comprehensive reference resource on comparative constitutional law, the Oxford Handbook provides a road map to the field. Leading experts examine the history and development of the discipline, its core concepts, institutions, rights, and emerging trends.