Over the last decade many emerging economies, and in particular Brazil, have established themselves as major players in global food animal production. Within these countries much of the increase in food animal production has been achieved by the adoption of intensive housing systems similar to those found in most industrialized countries. However, it is now well established that many of these systems are associated with numerous welfare problems, particularly with respect to restriction of movement. Previous work has shown that people (...) living in industrialized’ countries broadly support farm animal welfare reform, and that similar criticisms may be voiced from citizens living in developing countries as they become more aware of confinement housing and potentially contentious husbandry practices. Given the developments that have taken place in other countries, there are lessons that could be learned and applied by emerging economies that would undoubtedly ease or prevent the challenges observed in other countries. Thus, we briefly describe the vehicles used by different countries when addressing animal welfare that may provide insights into identifying possible challenges and potential solutions for Brazil and other emerging economies. Where available we review the associated science and identify gaps where more research is needed. We conclude by providing a possible roadmap on how farm animal welfare reform may be addressed in emerging countries. Solutions will need to be tailored, culturally relevant, and science must play a key role in supporting animal welfare reform in the emerging countries. (shrink)

Tal vez el problema más difícil de esa disciplina llamada bioética es el de la fundamentación o justificación de sus prescripciones y recomendaciones, así como el de la elección de los criterios por los cuales un individuo decide seguir o no seguir adelante con sus accio nes. La misma definición de "dilema de la bioética " depende de la que deci damos que está siendo violado o no por las nuevas tecnologías médicas o cien tíficas. Pero un problema adicional consiste (...) en establecer si una fundamenta ción de carácter filosófico posee la fuerza suficiente para imponerse como política de salud pública. Por la general, nuestras intuiciones morales encuen tran su expresión en las decisiones jurídicas y en las intenciones del legislador. No obstante, en la que concierne a las decisiones autónomas de los miembros de una sociedad, las políticas públicas como era de esperarsese inclinan decididamente en favor de medidas de carácter paternalista, que sacrifican las diferencias entre los individuos al interés común. (shrink)

(2013). Hope and Fear: The Theological Side of Framing Environmental Change. Ethics, Policy & Environment: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 152-155. doi: 10.1080/21550085.2013.801187.

People positively appraise odors of individuals who are genetically different from themselves. Here we analyzed the relationship between perceived similarity of body odor to the judges’ relatives and their partners, and characteristics attributed to the odor donor. Seventy-six women were asked to smell one of the scents of twenty-nine men, and rate variables related to potential sexual interest in odor donor. We hypothesized that characteristics related to potential sexual interest would be associated with odor donors smelling similar to a partner, (...) rather than with odor donors smelling similar to a relative. We found that perceived similarity to a partner’s scent was positively correlated with ratings of variables related to potential sexual interest in odor donor, whereas the resemblance to a close relative’s scent did not correlate with these assessments. (shrink)

Although Boyle has been regarded as a champion of the seventeenth century Cartesian mechanical philosophy, I defend the position that Boyle’s views conciliate between a strictly mechanistic conception of fundamental matter and a non-reductionist conception of chemical qualities. In particular, I argue that this conciliation is evident in Boyle’s ontological distinction between fundamental corpuscles endowed with mechanistic properties and higher-level corpuscular concretions endowed with chemical properties. Some of these points have already been acknowledged by contemporary scholars, and I actively engage (...) with their ideas in this paper. However I attempt to contribute to the debate over Boyle’s mechanical philosophy by arguing that Boyle’s writings suggest an emergentist, albeit still mechanistic, notion of chemical properties. I contrast Boyle’s views against those of strict reductionist mechanical philosophers, focusing on the famous debate with Spinoza over the redintegration of niter, and argue that Boyle’s complex chemical ontology provides a more satisfactory understanding of chemical phenomena than is provided by a strictly reductionist and Cartesian mechanical philosophy. (shrink)

El propósito de este ensayo es discutir si existe una tal cosa como una moral cristiana “específica” y cómo hemos de definirla y comprenderla. Sugiero que si existe, ella no debería ser entendida como un sistema moral que sería válido en un sentido realista, “objetivista” o convencional, sino que más bien su especificidad debería basarse en la clase de motivación a la que daría lugar. Esto quiere decir que lo que pudiéramos definir como una moral cristiana genuina es una nueva (...) ontología, una nueva manera de concebir a los seres humanos, más que un sistema normativo cuya interpretación descansaría en la autoridad y no en su validez interna o intrínseca. Su fundamentación ha de ser, entonces, “postconvencional”. Intento mostrar este punto apoyada en distintas fuentes teológicas, tales como en la teología paulina y en su impacto en distintos teólogos contemporáneos de la moral. Todos los teólogos contemporáneos citados por mí están de acuerdo en que la revelación evangélica hace posible una motivación moral autónoma que se apoya en el discernimiento personal, más que en una pretendida opinión autorizada. (shrink)

Loris Malaguzzi was one of the most important figures in 20th century early childhood education, achieving world-wide recognition for his educational ideas and his role in the creation of municipal schools for young children in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia, the most successful example ever of progressive, democratic and public education. Despite Malaguzzi’s reputation, very little of what he wrote or said about early childhood education has been available in English. This book helps fill the gap, presenting for the (...) first time in English, writings and speeches spanning 1945 to 1993, selected by a group of his colleagues from an archive established in Reggio Emilia. They range from short poems, letters and newspaper articles to extended pieces about Malaguzzi’s early life, the origins of the municipal schools and his ideas about children, pedagogy and schools. This material is organised into five chronological chapters, starting at the end of World War Two and ending just before his death, with introductions to each chapter providing background, including the historical context, the main events in Malaguzzi’s life and the rationale for the selection of documents. The book provides a unique insight into the background, thinking and work of Malaguzzi, revealing, in his own words, how his thinking developed, how he moved between theory and practice, how he border-crossed many disciplines and subjects, and how he combined many roles ranging from administrator and campaigner to researcher and pedagogue. Academics, students and practitioners alike will find this landmark publication provides rich insights into his life and work. (shrink)

Research suggests that the reaching hand automatically deviates toward a target that changes location during the reach. In the current study, we investigated whether movement intention can influence the target jump’s impact on the hand. We compared the degree of trajectory deviation to a jumped target under three instruction conditions: GO, in which participants were told to go to the target if it jumped, STOP, in which participants were told to immediately stop their movement if the target jumped, and IGNORE, (...) in which participants were told to ignore the target if it jumped and to continue to its initial location. We observed a reduced response to the jump in the IGNORE condition relative to the other conditions, suggesting that the response to the jump is contingent on the jump being a task-relevant event. (shrink)

This essay proposes to discuss the manner in which Jan Baptista van Helmont helped to transform the Neoplatonic notions of vital spirit and of ferment by giving these notions an unambiguously chemical interpretation, thereby influencing the eventual naturalization of these ideas in the work of late seventeenth century chymists. This chemical interpretation of vital spirit and ferment forms part of Helmont’s hybrid ontology, which fuses a corpuscular conception of minima naturalia with a non-corporeal conception of semina rerum. For Helmont, chemical (...) alterations involve the minima as physical units but also depend upon ferments that are contained in the semina, which function as formative spiritual agents. Helmont’s nuanced ontology ultimately contributes to the development of modern corpuscularian theory by explaining many chemical reactions in fundamentally corpuscular terms, as the addition and subtraction of particles. (shrink)

La obra incluye legislación de quince países, así como diversos documentos de la ONU, la UNESCO, el Consejo de Europa, la Unión Europea, Comités Nacionales de Ética, dictámenes y resoluciones de Instituciones Internacionales, jurisprudencia española y una selección bibliográfica con unas 1.300 referencias, clasificada por materias. Algunas leyes nacionales y los documentos del Consejo de Europa se publican traducidos al español y en su idioma original, cuando éste se ha considerado fácilmente asequible, con el fin de facilitar el acceso a (...) la fuente directa. (shrink)

The Extent of the Literal develops a strikingly new approach to metaphor and polysemy in their relation to the conceptual structure. In a straightforward narrative style, the author argues for a reconsideration of standard assumptions concerning the notion of literal meaning and its relation to conceptual structure. She draws on neurophysiological and psychological experimental data in support of a view in which polysemy belongs to the level of words but not to the level of concepts, and thus challenges some seminal (...) work on metaphor and polysemy within cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics and analytical philosophy. (shrink)

A Bioética, que podemos qualificar, sem a menor dúvida, como uma ciência jovem - embora cheia de vigor, dinamismo e em plena expansão - se ocupa, desde as multifacetadas óticas das grandes perguntas que se formula a cada dia, o homem moderno, em torno da vida. Neste livro, os autores tratam de alguns aspectos conceituais que, às vezes, são obliterados no discurso bioético. Por exemplo, quais as relações que se interpõem entre Bioética e Direito, começando por delimitar cada uma destas (...) disciplinas. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 2 Seiten: 725-754.

We explore different ways in which the human visual system can adapt for perceiving and categorizing the environment. There are various accounts of supervised (categorical) and unsupervised perceptual learning, and different perspectives on the functional relationship between perception and categorization. We suggest that common experimental designs are insufficient to differentiate between hypothesized perceptual learning mechanisms and reveal their possible interplay. We propose a relatively underutilized way of studying potential categorical effects on perception, and we test the predictions of different perceptual (...) learning models using a two‐dimensional, interleaved categorization‐plus‐reconstruction task. We find evidence that the human visual system adapts its encodings to the feature structure of the environment, uses categorical expectations for robust reconstruction, allocates encoding resources with respect to categorization utility, and adapts to prevent miscategorizations. (shrink)

Investigating school performance and competencies, especially on leadership, received a considerable attention in the past. In fact, there have been multitudes of evidence that leadership can impact school performance, student achievement, or outcome. Also, there was no single measurement of school performance. This study examined the influence of leadership and core behavioral competencies on the school performance of school heads. This was to build a new model of school performance. Using an explanatory research design, it administered a survey questionnaire to (...) 192 randomly chosen school heads from the 37 districts of Department of Education Division of Surigao del Sur. Also, it used data mining for the performance ratings of school heads from the division office. Regression analysis tested three hypothesized models of school performance where leadership and core behavior competencies serve as independent variables. Results showed that leading people was a significant predictor of school performance. Thus, leading people can best explain the school improvement as a proposed model. The results have implications for future research, leadership practice, and theoretical development of school performance model among school heads. (shrink)

Mainstream accounts of responsible agency either overlook or discount wanton agents as plausible candidates for responsible agency. This is largely due to the compatibilist project of such accounts, and to their deemphasis of historical and modal considerations. I argue that wantons – those who are indifferent to the desires that move them to act – can and ought to be counted as responsible agents. Indeed, they deserve special blame for the acts of wrong doing that issue from their wanton behavior.

The paper aims at investigating external factors influencing organizational corporate social responsibility -related decision making. Two theoretical perspectives—stakeholder theory and institutional theory—have been applied to compile a list of external factors that might affect a company's CSR choices. As a result, a framework built on the government-related, society-related, and business-related groups of external factors is being suggested. This framework is used in the paper to answer to what extent do different external factors influence CSR-related decisions in large Danish companies and (...) how has that influence changed over the years. The research takes a qualitative approach and is designed as a multiple-case study. Empirically, the paper relies on data collected from semi-structured interviews with CSR specialists and managers and presents a dynamic perspective on the pressure exercised by the external factors on CSR decisions and choices. (shrink)

This article considers the value of adopting a code of professional ethics for teachers. After having underlined how a code of ethics stands to benefits a community of educators – namely, by providing a mechanism for regulating autonomy and promoting a shared professional ethic – the article examines the principal arguments against codes of ethics. Three arguments are presented and analyzed in light of the codes of teacher ethics in place elsewhere in Canada. We conclude that a code of ethics (...) must meet three conditions in order for it to be favorable to autonomous judgment rather than blind adhesion to pre-established norms: openness of meaning, space for dissidence, and avoidance of moralistic language. (shrink)

Marina McCoy explores Plato's treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of philosophy. However, the philosopher and the sophist are distinguished by (...) the philosopher's love of the forms as the ultimate objects of desire. It is this love of the forms that informs the philosopher's rhetoric, which he uses to lead his partner to better understand his deepest desires. McCoy's work is of interest to philosophers, classicists, and communications specialists alike in its careful yet comprehensive treatment of philosophy, sophistry, and rhetoric as portrayed through the drama of the dialogues. (shrink)

We present here for the first time an italian translation of Rang’s Vom Weg messianischer Deutung : the introductory essay on the work on Shakespeare’s sonnets. This work remained unfinished and was only partially published posthumously by Rang’s son, Bernhard, in 1954, with the title Shakespeare der Christ. Eine Deutung der Sonette. The translation is accompanied by a comment essay on Rang’s text. This comment essay firstly aims to contextualize both the work on Shakespeare and the very complex and still (...) little researched figure of Florens Christian Rang; secondly, it addresses the most important conceptual issues that the essay presents. With a strongly programmatic nature and, at the same time, with an expressionistic style, which is as obscure as it is visionary, Vom Weg messianischer Deutung presents the method of messianic interpretation in contrast with the classical-romantic one of the pneumatic interpretation. What is at stake is a perspective that challenges the autonomy of art in order to place the Kunstwerk in the series of all the works of divine creation to transform it in faith work. It is the point of view of the Last Judgment that leads the way. The messianic critique of art reveals to be only a particular case of messianic world critique, literally a critique of the world, which redirects itself to the world. It is the movement of conversion which breaks with the false dualism of Romanticism, according to which the spirit is divided in two: on the one hand, there are the experience, the world, the science, on the other hand, there is the art as pure mirroring of forms. Through the messianic interpretation, the spirit returns to be body, flesh. It follows the permanent movement of creation, namely the continuous conversion from God to the world and from the world to God. In this sense, according to Rang, Shakespeare’s sonnets exemplify the faith work: their poetic word names the messianic unity of body and spirit. They are crystals within which all creatural life, the great stages of the divine creation, are concentrated. (shrink)

Against those who dismiss Kant's project in the "Religion" because it provides a Pelagian understanding of salvation, this paper offers an analysis of the deep structure of Kant's views on divine justice and grace showing them not to conflict with an authentically Christian understanding of these concepts. The first part of the paper argues that Kant's analysis of these concepts helps us to understand the necessary conditions of the Christian understanding of grace: unfolding them uncovers intrinsic relations holding between God's (...) justice and grace. Parts two and three provide an analysis of two concepts of grace used by Kant. Getting clear on their differences is the key to understanding why Kant's account is not Pelagian. (shrink)