Introduction The influence of family factors on the academic performance of nursing students in group B of the University Foundation of the Andean Area 2022 was characterized. Methodology: This is a descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional study. Non-random sample of 50 students. Results: The results of this research show that there is a significant relationship between the Family Social Climate and the School Performance of fourth-semester students, group B, of the Nursing program of the University Foundation of the Andean Area Pereira (...) Sectional in the second semester of 2022. It is concluded that the Low Academic Performance demonstrated by the students of the Institution in the year 2022 is related to the inadequate Family Social Climate in which the students live. Conclusion: Families do not identify high family risk even with adverse conditions such as weakness with the social support network. It is necessary to intensify actions that involve the health of the family. (shrink)

Greenwashing is a phenomenon that is linked to scandals that often occur at the supply-chain level. Nevertheless, research on this subject remains in its infancy; much more is needed to advance our understanding of stakeholders’ reactions to greenwashing. We propose here a new typology of greenwashing, based on the locus of discrepancy, i.e. the point along the supply-chain where the discrepancy between ‘responsible words’ and ‘irresponsible walks’ occurs. With three experiments, we tested how the different forms of greenwashing affect stakeholders’ (...) reactions, from both ethical and business perspectives. We developed our hypotheses by building on attribution theory, which seeks to account for how observers construct perceptions about events. We had anticipated that the more internal, controllable and intentional the discrepancy is, the greater the blame attributed to a company is, and the lower the intention to invest will be. When greenwashing occurs at a company level, this results in a higher level of blame attribution, while the intention to invest falls. Indirect greenwashing refers to a misbehaviour perpetrated by a supplier who claims to be sustainable, and which results in a less negative impact on a supplied company. We also propose the vicarious greenwashing, which occurs when the behaviour of a supplier is in breach of a company’s claims of sustainability. This type of greenwashing is nevertheless detrimental to investment. The findings here advance our understanding of how greenwashing shapes stakeholders’ reactions, and highlight the need for the careful management of the supply-chain. (shrink)

Contrary to spontaneous yawning, which is widespread in vertebrates and probably evolutionary ancient, contagious yawning—yawning triggered by others’ yawns—is considered an evolutionarily recent phenomenon, found in species characterized by complex sociality. Whether the social asymmetry observed in the occurrence of contagious yawning is related to social and emotional attachment and may therefore reflect emotional contagion is a subject of debate. In this study we assessed whether yawn contagion was enhanced in pregnant women, a cohort of subjects who develop prenatal emotional (...) attachment in preparation for parental care, via hormonal and neurobiological changes. We predicted that if yawn contagion underlies social and emotional attachment, pregnant women would be more likely to contagiously yawn than nonpregnant, nulliparous women of reproductive age. We gathered data in two different settings. In the experimental setting, 49 women were exposed to video stimuli of newborns either yawning or moving their mouth and we video-recorded the women during repeated trials to measure their yawning response. In the naturalistic setting, 131 women were observed in a social environment and their yawning response was recorded. We tested the factors influencing the yawning response, including the reproductive status. In both settings, yawn contagion occurred significantly more in pregnant than nonpregnant women. By showing that pregnant women were most likely to respond to others’ yawns, our results support the hypothesis that the social variation observed in yawn contagion may be influenced by emotional attachment and that yawning in highly social species might have been coopted for emotional contagion during evolution. (shrink)

The goal of this study is analyse the influence of perceived supervisor support (PSS) by employees at a micro level and the role of the cultural values of “power distance” and “masculinity” at a macro level on direct employee participation in decision making (PDM). Furthermore, the influence of the gender of managers and employees is taken into account. The analysis is based upon the Sixth European Working Conditions Survey carried out by Eurofound in 2016. The results of a Hierarchical linear (...) model indicate that all predictors significantly influenced PDM and PSS positively and cultural values negatively. When the gender of managers and employees is considered, the findings suggest that PSS has a larger impact on PDM when male managers address female employees. Regarding the moderating effect of PSS on cultural values, it is shown that masculinity and power distance lose importance when employees have the support of their supervisors. (shrink)

Considering the transformation of educational scenarios, we recognize the need to train foreign language teachers with high pedagogical, research, and technological skills. This recognition considers the new challenges of education and aligns with the educational discourses and commitments that are shaped by the curricular proposals of foreign language programs in higher education. It is necessary to know the level of competencies of teacher trainers, university lecturers, to identify possible ongoing training needs. This research uses a mixed-methods design with an exploratory-descriptive (...) approach that contributes to the educational instructions to start continuous training plans for their teachers under the policies, global dynamics, and demands of education. The research shows that there are still challenges to confront, as teachers still have opportunities to strengthen their pedagogical, educational, and new technology competencies. This is a challenge that institutions should address in the rigorous implementation of lifelong learning programs. (shrink)

Drawing on many areas of expertise, from paleontology to psychology, Tomasello offers a plausible, evolutionary story abouthow our ancestors are likely to have developed cooperative behaviors and collaborative lifeways in order to survive and thrive.He also claims that this narrative explains why they would have begun to think in characteristically cooperative and moral ways,developing a “we is greater than me” [we>me] psychological orientation. Do the arguments offered support this extra claim? Thisarticle suggests that they do not. It seeks to alleviate (...) this shortcoming by drawing upon some conceptual resources offered bySartre’s Theory of Practical Ensembles. The centerpiece of the article consists of a detailed analysis of Sartre’s account of the genesisof the “group-in-fusion,” seeking to show that the genesis of a we-way of thinking in a group made up of many requires themediation of what Sartre calls a “third party” (le tiers). After closely examining Sartre’s treatment of the “third party” in theapocalyptic genesis of the “group-in-fusion,” I evaluate the success of this notion in resolving those questions that Tomasello’saccount raises while, at the same time, addressing the ontological question concerning the nature of the individual-grouprelation, in a way that suggests new and significant alternatives to standard dilemmas in contemporary social philosophy. (shrink)

In late February and early March 2020, Italy became the European epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite increasingly stringent containment measures enforced by the government, the health system faced an enormous pressure, and extraordinary efforts were made in order to increase overall hospital beds’ availability and especially ICU capacity. Nevertheless, the hardest-hit hospitals in Northern Italy experienced a shortage of ICU beds and resources that led to hard allocating choices. At the beginning of March 2020, the Italian Society of Anesthesia, (...) Analgesia, Resuscitation, and Intensive Care issued recommendations aimed at supporting physicians in prioritizing patients when the number of critically ill patients overwhelm the capacity of ICUs. One motivating concern for the SIAARTI guidance was that, if no balanced and consistent allocation procedures were applied to prioritize patients, there would be a concrete risk for unfair choices, and that the prevalent “first come, first served” principle would lead to many avoidable deaths. Among the drivers of decision for admission to ICUs, age, comorbidities, and preexisting functional status were included. The recommendations were criticized as ageist and potentially discriminatory against elderly patients. Looking forward to the next steps, the Italian experience can be relevant to other parts of the world that are yet to see a significant surge of COVID-19: the need for transparent triage criteria and commonly shared values give the Italian recommendations even greater legitimacy. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study aims to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the activities of a Bioethics Unit (BU) 5 years since its implementation (2016–2020). The BU is a research unit providing empirical research on ethical issues related to clinical practice, clinical ethics consultation, and ethical education for health care professionals (HPS).MethodsWe performed an explanatory, sequential, mixed-method, observational study, using the subsequent qualitative data to explain the initial quantitative findings. Quantitative data were collected from an internal database and analyzed by descriptive analysis. Qualitative evaluation (...) was performed by semi-structured interviews with 18 HPs who were differently involved in the BU’s activities and analyzed by framework analysis.ResultsQuantitative results showed an extensive increment of the number of BU research projects over the years and the number of work collaborations with other units and wards. Qualitative findings revealed four main themes, concerning: 1. the reasons for contacting the BU and the type of collaboration; 2. the role of the bioethicist; 3. the impact of BU activities on HPs, in terms of developing deeper and more mature thinking; 4. the need to extend ethics support to other settings. Overall, our results showed that performing both empirical bioethics research and more traditional clinical ethics activities at the same unit would produce an impetus to increase collaboration and spread an 'ethical culture' among local HPs.ConclusionsOur findings contribute to a growing body of literature on the models of clinical ethics support services and the role of empirical research in bioethics internationally. They also prepare the ground for the implementation of a multidisciplinary Clinical Ethics Committee (CEC) that aims to support the BU’s ethics consultation service within the local context. (shrink)

Political theorists have written a great deal about the ethics of “intervention,” defined as states using coercion or force to interfere in foreign societies’ politics. But this work leaves much of global politics un-analyzed—both because non-state actors play an increasingly significant role in it and because its practitioners use many tactics besides force and coercion.We need an ethics of foreign influence to help us navigate the global political arena in all its complexity. Here, I begin to develop a unified theory (...) of the ethics of deliberate attempts to promote justice in foreign societies, whether undertaken by state or non-state actors, and whatever tactics they employ. I identify two important but under-appreciated dimensions along which instances of foreign influence can differ and argue that, once we appreciate the full range of forms foreign influence can take, we’ll see it’s often immune to the common moral objections against intervention. (shrink)

The “we” is not only a way of calling people together. The “we” tends also to perform acts of exclusion. According to political studies, the antagonism resulting from this process is ineradicable and leads by necessity to fragmentation both _within_ and _between_ groups — the ultimate example of the friend/enemy divide conceptualized by Carl Schmitt. Nowadays, however, the increasing great migratory processes produced by globalization intensifying the formation of multicultural societies demand a re-examination of such a political view and call (...) for new pathways for the future. Once this is recognized, the problem we encounter is the following: can we think of nothing else along the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ but an antithesis, nothing else but an antagonism? Under what conditions, “from within what axiomatic” (Derrida, The politics of friendship. Verso, 2005), can political thinkers be assured that the us/them relation is by necessity one of hostility and exteriority? How does contemporary philosophy offer new viewpoints coming from old insights? With a view to address these questions, this paper set up a dialogue between Bernhard Waldenfels and Jacques Derrida around the limit-experience of the stranger and probe their reflections on its _in-between_ position — in-between the enemy and the guest — as a challenge to the antagonistic view of the “us/them” divide as well as to the logic of binary opposition that informs it. (shrink)

The rise of the idea of the Anthropocene is promoting multiple reflections on its meaning. As we consider entering this new geological epoch, we realize the pervasiveness of humankind’s deconstruction and reconstruction of the Earth, in both geophysical and discursive terms. As the body of the Earth is marked and reshaped, so is its idea. From a hostile territory to be subjugated and exploited through sovereign commands, the Earth is now reframed as a vulnerable domain in need of protection. The (...) mode of sovereignty, which has accompanied human and legal history and practice during modernity and its project of mastery, is no longer useful. Humanity’s control of the Earth is being reimagined and reconfigured along biopolitical coordinates of thought and action. Biopolitics shifts the focus of power, changes its modalities of interventions, and rearticulates its legitimacy on the idea of taking responsibility for the Earth, for nature. A biopolitical re-orientation of law captures the fundamental aim of caring for nature, of fostering its vital possibilities and of enhancing its productive potential. Yet, biopolitics engulfs nature in its entirety under its framework of control, where protection and subjugation, vulnerability and productivity, life and death are constantly entangled in a reciprocal and inevitable relation of indistinguishability. Sovereignty becomes thus a key modality of biopolitical intervention, when nature is recalcitrant, wild, spontaneous, unpredictable, violent, dangerous. Biopolitics, thus, remains caught in an undecidable dilemma, where in order to protect the Earth, it must subjugate it; to save it, it must condemn it. In this respect, biopolitics remains utterly modern, or as argued by Roberto Esposito, modernity has always been biopolitical, insofar as modernity has emerged as a framework for the protection of life against life’s own excesses. But how can we escape the biopolitical reframing and enframing of the Earth and its total subsumption under its matrix of control? How can we rethink the encounter between law and nature without remaining entangled in the aporetic dilemma of biopolitics? An aesthetics of wonder may offer a way. (shrink)

Self-medication behaviour is the use of natural materials or chemical substances to manipulate behaviour or alter the body’s response to parasites or pathogens. Self-medication can be preventive, performed before an individual becomes infected or diseased, and/or therapeutic, performed after an individual becomes infected or diseased. We summarized all available reports of self-medication in mammals and reconstructed its evolution. We found that reports of self-medication were restricted to eutherian mammals and evolved at least four times independently. Self-medication was most commonly reported (...) in primates. Detailed analyses of primates suggest that self-medication is a life-history trait associated with body size, absolute brain size and longevity, but we found no support for the hypothesis that self-medication evolved to reduce the costs of social living. Large, longer-lived species might thus benefit uniquely from self-medication. (shrink)

The intentionality of improvisation represents surely one of the most pressing and controversial issues in contemporary action theory: how do we find the way to characterize the proper intentionality of improvisation, which is an unplanned yet intentional action? This article will address this question bringing together Merleau-Ponty’s motor intentionality and Bergson’s conception of duration. My argument will unfold in three main stages. First, I will briefly describe the traditional scheme that is used to think of intentional action in contemporary action (...) theory and discuss how the phenomenon of improvisation casts doubts on it. Second, I will outline an initial, and provisional account of improvisation by crossing the descriptions of musical improvisation provided by Jankélévitch with the testimonials of two improvisatory composers—Enrico Pieranunzi and Keith Jarrett—and reports from Charles Rosen, an American pianist and Roger Sessions, an American composer. Finally, I will refine the basic concepts and lay out a phenomenological account of improvisation, by extending and applying the phenomenological notion of motor intentionality to the examples and testimonials gathered from the observation of a specific kind of improvisatory activity—musical composition. This methodology is intended to contrast both with more standard philosophical approaches based on hypothetical examples, and with more standard laboratory-based methodologies in cognitive sciences, psychology, and experimental philosophy. Overall, this approach is intended to redress the balance of action theory—one-sided directed towards planning, as a key aspect of human agency—with an analysis of the bodily and responsive aspect of intentionality. (shrink)

Cet article explore l’expérience esthétique particulière que nous procurent les promenades sonores. En partant d’une étude d’un cas paradigmatique – les tournées audio Remote X du collectif Rimini Protokoll – et par le biais d’une réflexion sur la perception opérant à partir de Husserl et Merleau-Ponty, je m’intéresse en particulier aux renversements perceptifs qui émaillent le parcours déambulatoire du spectateur ainsi qu’au brouillage entre le réel et l’imaginaire, qu’il éprouve au niveau même de son inscription corporelle dans l’espace. Une telle (...) approche mène à la conclusion que la notion de perception synesthésique offerte par Merleau-Ponty permet non seulement de dépasser le défi posé à la théorie husserlienne de l’imagination ( phantasia ) par l’expérience esthétique ici en question, mais aussi et, de surcroît, de penser le paradoxe d’une affinité du divers sensoriel qui affleure dans les performances contemporaines lorsque de multiples dispositifs médiatiques sont en jeu. (shrink)

Presentamos la traducción con comentario de un fragmento en lengua armenia, publicado por primera y única vez, con traducción al inglés, por Abraham Terian, en 1984, sin paralelo en el corpus griego de Filón. Describimos el largo camino que recorrió el texto desde su traducción desde la lengua original al armenio en el siglo VI hasta llegar a nuestro conocimiento y hacemos una breve referencia a la importancia de la concepción filónica sobre la década propia de la aritmología pitagórica. Concluimos (...) con las razones de la adscripción de este fragmento al tratado perdido _De numeris_. (shrink)

RESUMEN En este artículo se analizan las ideas contrapuestas de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento y José Martí sobre el binomio "civilización-barbarie", categoría medular de los discursos políticos e intelectuales del siglo XIX, con el fin de explorar sus concepciones sobre el nuevo sujeto político. Se exploran los "contextos de enunciación" desde los cuales desarrollaron sus posiciones ético-políticas; la opción por el hombre natural (Martí) frente al sujeto político ideal (Sarmiento); y la apelación y desmontaje de las categorías raciales en ambos autores. (...) El estudio de estas categorías revela una dialéctica de persistencia y abandono de imaginarios coloniales. ABSTRACT This article analyzes the conflicting ideas of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and José Martí about the binomial "civilization-barbarism", a core category of political and intellectual discourses of the 19th century, to explore their conceptions of the new political subject. The "enunciation contexts" from which they developed their ethical-political positions; the option for the "natural man" (Martí) versus the ideal political subject (Sarmiento); and the appeal and dismantling of racial categories in both authors. The study of these categories reveals a dialectic of persistence and abandonment of colonial imaginaries. (shrink)

During early embryonic development in several metazoans, accurate DNA replication is ensured by high number of replication origins. This guarantees rapid genome duplication coordinated with fast cell divisions. In Xenopus laevis embryos this program switches to one with a lower number of origins at a developmental stage known as mid‐blastula transition (MBT) when cell cycle length increases and gene transcription starts. Consistent with this regulation, somatic nuclei replicate poorly when transferred to eggs, suggesting the existence of an epigenetic memory suppressing (...) replication assembly origins at all available sites. Recently, it was shown that histone H1 imposes a non‐permissive chromatin configuration preventing replication origin assembly on somatic nuclei. This somatic state can be erased by SSRP1, a subunit of the FACT complex. Here, we further develop the hypothesis that this novel form of epigenetic memory might impact on different areas of vertebrate biology going from nuclear reprogramming to cancer development. (shrink)

This essay explores figurations of death in Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. and Água Viva. As the other side of life, death in these novels is tied to the work of the unconscious desire that introduces generative rupture to the narrators’ experience of being, thinking, and writing. In making one wander at the limits of thought, language, and being, death also signals the encounter with femininity which leads to the disintegration of the human montage. While in Água Viva the (...) encounter with death unfolds through the instant – as the fleeting yet irreducible nowness – in The Passion it manifests through a gustatory and aural encounter with the mute cockroach and the absent maid’s mural. Along the way, the essay explores the specific savoir coming from death in Lispector’s novels alongside the clinic of psychoanalysis, primarily the recent work of the Freudian School of Quebec that has placed special focus on the links between the death drive and the aesthetic experience. I bring Lispector’s novels into conversation with psychoanalysis to propose that Clarice’s writing – just like the psychoanalytic clinic – fundamentally arises from the desire to uphold the unsayable dimension of death whose creative unfolding enables new modes of being, hearing, and thinking in – and with – the world. Indeed, in Clarice’s novels, to be on the side of writing is to be on the side of death that is both the herald of writing and the ravaging reverberation of the force of writing itself. (shrink)

El artículo es una introducción al conoci­miento de “Todo hombre bueno es libre”, poco conocido y citado solo parcialmente en los estudios filonianos. Empezamos sintetizando el tema del tratado y realiza­mos algunas consideraciones sobre su género literario. Cuando desarrollamos brevemente la estructura de la obra, ofrecemos al mismo tiempo un resumen de su contenido parte por parte. Dedicamos un subtítulo a la comunidad de los esenios, porque es el fragmento más citado y comprende una porción importante del tratado (§§73-91). Finalmente, (...) para dilucidar si la obra es de autoría de Filón marcamos diferencias y similitudes con la posición teológica del alejandrino en otros tratados y listamos ciertos tópicos y figuras retóricas que aparecen en nuestro texto. (shrink)

El transhumanismo o el movimiento a favor del mejoramiento humano a través de la tecnología vive, actualmente, un momento álgido. Los avances en Inteligencia Artificial e ingeniería genética permiten que soñemos con seres capaces de vencer a la muerte y poseer capacidades hasta ahora desconocidas. Sin embargo, en este artículo veremos que no todo el mundo está de acuerdo con estas ideas y hay quienes consideran las promesas del transhumanismo más como pesadillas que como sueños. Estos son los conservadores. Los (...) conservadores consideran que las mejoras prometidas por el transhumanismo conllevarán el fin de la especie humana. Frente al transhumanismo, los conservadores defienden la conservación y protección de la esencia y la naturaleza humana. También se rebelan contra la manipulación ilimitada del ser humano y la limitación de estas prácticas a aquellas contenidas en la esencia humana. Todo ello les otorga cierta reminiscencia aristotélica en la que muchos de ellos se amparan y la cual vale la pena estudiar. (shrink)

The kind of collective improvisation attained by free jazz at the beginning of the sixties appears interesting from the perspective of contemporary debates on collective intentionality for several reasons. The most notable of these, is that it holds a mirror up to what analytical philosophers of action identify as “the complexly interwoven sets of collective intentions” that make a group more than the sum of its parts. But at the same time, free jazz poses a challenge to these philosophical theories (...) of collective intentionality, because what happens is not planned in advance but arises from spontaneous interactions in the group. The second and no less decisive reason is that jazz musicians act together in a very distinctive way, which casts into clear relief the interplay between togetherness and agonism, individual freedom and group commitment, which is contained in every human interaction. In other words, in free jazz we find what Hannah Arendt calls the “paradoxical” or “twofold” character of “human plurality.” Starting with the analysis of two paradigmatic case studies—Charles Mingus’s Folk Forms No. 1 and Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation—my main concern in this paper is to provide a phenomenological account of the individual-yet-plural intentionality that emerges and runs through the improvisatory process in the free jazz case. After having made the negative point that this phenomenon represents a challenge to the analytical theories of collective intentionality, I shall argue that it can be accounted for from a phenomenological perspective. My basic thesis is that the overall cohesiveness of the improvisatory process must be regarded as a meaningful realization of an overall feeling, shared and shaped together by musicians over time—and not as the execution of an advanced plan. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) a, tout au long de son chemin philosophique, maintenu le cap d'une interrogation centrée autour de la question dite de la "communauté", ou bien encore, et comme ses travaux ont incité à le dire le plus souvent, de l'"être-en-commun", de l'"être-ensemble", et finalement de l'"être-avec". Philosophe pleinement engagé dans son temps, il en a tout à la fois vécu les bouleversements et pensé les nouvelles articulations à l'ère de la mondialisation, les dérives les plus dangereuses de nos (...) jours, en réaffirmant en toute circonstance le fort caractère éthicopolitique qui caractérise sa manière unique de faire de la philosophie depuis ses premiers écrits. Fruit d'un travail collectif, cet ouvrage explore différents aspects de la question de la communauté, envisagée à la fois comme la question essentielle de la philosophie de Jean-Luc Nancy et comme la question philosophique majeure de notre temps. Au croisement de multiples voix singulières, qui font dialoguer Jean-Luc Nancy avec Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Hans Jonas, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan et bien d'autres, les essais qui composent ce volume explorent la cartographie complexe et variée des questionnements que la réflexion philosophique de Jean-Luc Nancy sur la communauté a contribué à faire émerger et à nourrir."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza los fundamentos doctrinales del derecho penal eclesiástico calviniano, asentado teóricamente en la teología del pecado original y cuyo ejercicio toma forma en la práctica del Consistorio ginebrino. Asimismo, explora las razones de la diferencia entre derecho penal eclesial y civil. Yes que, aunque en el calvinismo la Iglesia y el Estado son titulares de un ius gladii, sólo uno de estos sistemas penales puede reivindicar el ejercicio de la pena corporal, el otro tan sólo puede reclamar un (...) castigo espiritual: en esto haremos radicar la diferencia entre derecho y disciplina. El derecho de coacción propiamente dicho pertenece en exclusiva al Estado como tal y ni el individuo ni la Iglesia pueden reclamarlos para sí. Estamos ante una aportación fundamental de la Reforma a la historia del derecho. (shrink)

Aristotle’s notion of deduction (syllogism) differs from the conception of logical consequence in classical logic in two essential features, which are required by Aristotle’s definition of syllogism and are incorporated into his formalisation of deduction: in addition to the standard necessary truth-preservation, Aristotle requires relevance of premises for the conclusion and non-repetition of premises in the conclusion. These requirements, together with Aristotle’s conception of simple propositions, lead to the result that valid deductive steps (syllogisms) must have very specific forms, namely (...) the well-known syllogistic shape. All other kinds of deduction lacking this shape, such as “syllogisms based on a hypothesis”, can be considered “syllogisms” only in a relative sense: they are based on an assumption of the existence of genuine syllogistic deductions in the syllogistic shape. Aristotle’s demands should cover all kinds of deduction: all valid deduction must be relevant and non-repetitive. This brings Aristotle’s definition much closer to the intuition associated with the notion of logical consequence. (shrink)

Here is a prima facie plausible view: since the metaethical error theory says that all positive moral claims are false, it makes no sense for error theorists to engage in normative ethics. After all, normative ethics tries to identify what is right or wrong (and why), but the error theory implies that nothing is ever right or wrong. One way for error theorists to push back is to argue for “concept preservationism,” that is, the view that even though our ordinary (...) moral discourse is deeply flawed, we should nevertheless continue to engage in moral thought and talk. However, in this article, I pursue a different strategy. I argue that even if we completely abandon moral discourse, thus endorsing “concept abolitionism,” the discipline of normative ethics survives. While traditional normative ethics uses as its “starting points” moral claims and beliefs, instead, concept abolitionists can make use of alternative utterances and attitudes that share salient characteristics with moral claims and beliefs, allowing for a kind of theorizing that is practically oriented, impartial, involves the traditional subject matters and methods of normative ethics, and allows engagement with the arguments of traditional moral philosophers. (shrink)

This book validates the claim that the process of reproduction of social inequalities in teacher education is not a perfect, static process, but on the contrary, the real “seeds of transformation” within teacher education departments are abundant.

Modern humans are probably a product of social and anatomical preadaptations on the part of our Miocene australopithecine ancestors combined with the increasingly high amplitude, high frequency climate variation of the Pleistocene. The genus Homo first appeared in the early Pleistocene as ice age climates began to grip the earth. We hypothesize that this co-occurrence is causal. The human ability to adapt by cultural means is, in theory, an adaptation to highly variable environments because cultural evolution can better track rapidly (...) changing environments than can genes. High resolution ice and sediment cores published in the early 1990s showed the last ice age was characterized by high amplitude millennial and submillenial scale variation, exactly the sort of variation mathematical models suggest should favor a costly capacity for culture. More recent cores suggest that over the last several 100 thousand year glacial cycles the amount of millennial scale variation has increased rather dramatically in parallel with increases in hominin brain size and sophistication of the artifacts they made. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege rozlišuje mezi smyslem a významem výrazů, přičemž smyslem rozumí to, co je výrazem vyjadřováno, významem pak to, co je jím označováno. Toto rozlišení se týká jak singulárních, tak obecných výrazů, ovšem Fregovy rozbory týkající se významu obecných výrazů jsou všeobecně méně známy. Chci zdůraznit skutečnost, že Frege považuje za význam obecných výrazů pojem, který chápe jako tzv. nenasycenou funkci, nikoli jako množinu nebo zobrazení. To mu umožňuje zachovat některé podstatné intuice týkající se obecnin – můžeme např. mít obecný (...) pojem (znát nějakou vlastnost či relaci), aniž bychom věděli, jaké předměty pod něj spadají. Zároveň se snažím ukázat, že není jasné, nakolik Frege skutečně zastával tezi, která mu bývá obvykle přičítána, totiž že identita pojmů je dána jejich koextenzivitou. Gottlob Frege distinguished between sense and reference of expressions. 'Sense' according to him is that what the expression means, 'reference' is that what is designated by it. This distinction concerns both singular and general terms but Frege’s analyses focused on general terms are much less known. It is crucial, I argue, to appreciate the importance of the fact that the reference of a general term is, according to Frege, a concept – identified with an unsaturated function in the Fregean sense, i.e. not a set, and not a mapping. In this way Frege can keep some important intuitions about universals – for instance that we can have a general concept (know a property or a relation) even if we don’t know which objects fall under it. I also try to show that it is not clear whether Frege really defended the thesis usually attributed to him that the identity of concepts is guaranteed solely by their coextensivity. (shrink)

Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet, by Donal S. Lopez Jr. and Thupten Jinpa. Harvard University Press, 2017. 320 pp. Hb and e-book. £23.95. ISBN- 13: 9780674659704.

Cantor's diagonal proof is sig­nificant both because the central method of proof used in it has been subsequently applied in a number of other proofs, and because it is considered to confirm the existence of infinite sets whose size fun­ damentally and by an order of magnitude exceeds the size of the "classical" infinite set represented by all natural numbers, while their size can theoretically exceed every conceivable limit. Although Can­tor's proof is generally accepted by the scientific community, some experts (...) are somewhat reserved about it. The aim of this paper is to present Cantor's proof in an accessible way, while pointing out its (hidden) assumptions and possible problematic points, and pointing out that some of its underlying assumptions are not indisputable mathematical truths, but rather postulated propositions that may or may not be accepted. (shrink)

Las normas del Derecho Internacional Humanitario establecen límites al uso de los medios y métodos de combate en el desarrollo de las hostilidades. Si bien en su origen el DIH no fue elaborado teniendo en cuenta los desafíos planteados por el desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial en ese contexto, es una realidad que en la actualidad la evolución de esta inteligencia, los algoritmos y su aplicación militar emergente constituyen un desafío a la luz de las normas humanitarias. Ese desafío comprende (...) tres ámbitos fundamentales: el técnico, el legal y el ético. Si bien se puede decir que la IA, en la etapa actual de desarrollo, permite que un programa computerizado basado en algoritmos realice ciertas tareas en un entorno complejo e incierto, a menudo con mayor precisión que los seres humanos, también debemos destacar que no hay tecnología que haga que una máquina se comporte como un ser humano, quien puede determinar si una acción es lícita o ilícita y decidir no continuar con lo programado, teniendo como objetivo primordial la protección de las víctimas. Los Estados deben adoptar regímenes de verificación, prueba y monitoreo como parte del proceso para determinar e imponer limitaciones o prohibiciones de acuerdo a los principios esenciales de distinción y proporcionalidad que el DIH establece en la utilización de armas durante los conflictos armados internacionales o no internacionales. Tanto desde una perspectiva legal como ética el ser humano está en el centro de esta problemática, ya que la responsabilidad por el uso de la fuerza no puede transferirse a sistemas de armas o algoritmos, y sigue siendo una responsabilidad humana. (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano presents in his work Wissenschaftslehre a definition of derivability among sentences. Tarski publishes his well-known definition of logical consequence almost one hundred years later. This article intends to prove that the Bolzano´s definition is fully satisfactory compared to the Tarski´s one, even though no attention was drawn to Bolzano´s definition at that time.

Research question and aim Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs) aim to support healthcare professionals (HPs) and healthcare organizations to deal with the ethical issues of clinical practice. In 2020, a CEC was established in an Oncology Research Hospital in the North of Italy. This paper describes the development process and the activities performed 20 months from the CEC’s implementation, to increase knowledge about CEC’s implementation strategy. Research design We collected quantitative data related to number and characteristics of CEC activities carried out (...) from October 2020 to June 2022 using the CEC internal database. Data were reported descriptively and compared with data from the literature to provide a complete overview of the CEC’s development and implementation process. Participants and research context The study has been conducted at the local health authority (LHA) of Reggio Emilia. It is a report of the activities provided by the CEC, where no HPs or patients were involved. Ethical Considerations The report is part of a larger study named EVAluating a Clinical Ethics Committee implementation process (EvaCEC), which has been approved by the Local Ethics Committee (AUSLRE Protocollo n° 2022/0026554 of 24/02/2022). EvaCEC is also the first author's PhD project. Findings In total, the CEC performed 7 ethics consultations (EC), published three policies related to particular ethical questions of clinical and organizational practice, provided one educational online course on ethics consultation targeting employed HPs, and promoted a specific dissemination process among the different departments of the LHA. According to our results, the CEC widely fulfilled the standard threefold set of clinical ethics support services tasks (namely, ethics consultation, ethics education, and policy development), but further investigations are needed to evaluate the CEC’s impact on clinical practice. Conclusion Our findings may increase knowledge regarding the composition, role, and tasks of a CEC in an Italian setting, informing future strategies and efforts to regulate these institutions officially. (shrink)

Coordination between speakers in dialogue requires balancing repetition and change, the old and the new. Interlocutors tend to reuse established forms, relying on communicative precedents. Yet linguistic interaction also necessitates adaptation to changing contexts or dynamic tasks, which might favor abandoning existing precedents in favor of better communicative alternatives. We explored this tension using a maze game task in which individual participants and interacting pairs had to describe figures and their positions in one of two possible maze types: a regular (...) maze, in which the grid‐like structure of the maze is highlighted, and an irregular maze, in which specific parts of the maze are salient. Participants repeated this task several times. Both individuals and interacting pairs were affected by the different maze layouts, initially using more idiosyncratic description schemes for irregular mazes and more systematic schemes for regular mazes. Interacting pairs, but not individuals, abandoned their unsystematic initial descriptions in favor of a more systematic approach, which was better adapted for repeated interaction. Our results show communicative conventions are initially shaped by context, but interaction opens up the possibility for change if better alternatives are available. (shrink)

The structure as well as the themes of theSymposiumsuggest that Eryximachus’ speech plays a fundamental role in the dialogue. The problem is that what he says in praise of love is far from clear and continues to be a subject of debate. The aim of our article is to re-examine this speech to clarify its meaning and determine its contribution to Plato’s theory of love. First, we will analyse thetextof theSymposium, then we will investigate itsmedicalback-ground, and finally we will evaluate (...) itsphilosophicalimpact. We will argue that Eryximachus’ speech, which draws inspiration from the Hippocratic Collection and the Pre-Socratic thought, is based on the concept of ‘harmony’: a balanced and organised unity of opposites. According to Eryximachus, love – conceived of as harmony – is the key to thehealthand thevirtueof human beings, as well as to the cosmic order and justice. Thereby the specificity of Eryximachus’ speech will become clear: Plato tries to combinescienceandmoralityby proposing, among other things, some considerations onbioethics. (shrink)

This article examines the particular aesthetic experience brought about by soundwalks. In each case, the point of departure is the phenomenological analysis of two case study: Janet Cardiff’s Walks and the audio-tours Remote x by Rimini Protokoll. Drawing upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, I will examine the conflicts of perception and the peculiar shift from one order of perception to another that punctuate the spectator’s walking, as well as the intertwining of the real and the imaginary coming into being in such (...) performances and experienced at the very level of his bodily inscription in space. More specifically, my aim is to address the challenge that the aesthetic experience here in question sets to Husserl’s phenomenology of perception and to show how the extension of the notion of perception achieved by Merleau-Ponty makes it possible to overcome the paradox. (shrink)