Objective: To analyze the empathic profile and the empathy scores of freshmen of the nursing course. Design and participants: Descriptive study involving 399 freshmen students of two modalities of nursing courses: Bachelor and Bachelor and Teaching Diploma, in the period from 2012 to 2015. A sociodemographic questionnaire and the Empathy Inventory were applied. Ethical considerations: The research received approval from the Research Ethics Committee of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing. The students registered their acceptance (...) to participate in the research by signing the Free and Informed Consent Form and anonymity was guaranteed. Findings: The mean age of the participants was 19 years, being 85.5% female. The students were grouped by course modality and all groups presented high empathy scores. A significant difference (p < 0.001) was found, which indicates that students of the Bachelor and Teaching Diploma program presented a higher degree of empathy for the General Score, Domain 2 (Interpersonal Flexibility), and Domain 3 (Altruism) in relation to students in the Bachelor program. Conclusion: Results show that nursing undergraduate freshmen are emphatic, with minimum differences between the two courses. This profile is relevant for the development of future professionals capable to demonstrate a balance between instrumental and expressive competences. (shrink)

Objective: This study aims to compare the acoustic vocal analysis results of a group of transgender women relative to those of cisgender women.Methods: Thirty transgender women between the ages of 19 and 52 years old participated in the study. The control group was composed of 31 cisgender women between the ages of 20 and 48 years old. A standardized questionnaire was administered to collect general patient data to better characterize the participants. The vowel /a/ sounds of all participants were collected (...) and analyzed by the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program advanced system.Results: Statistically significant differences between cisgender and transgender women were found on 14 measures: fundamental frequency, maximum fundamental frequency, minimum fundamental frequency, standard deviation of fundamental frequency, absolute jitter, percentage or relative jitter, fundamental frequency relative average perturbation, fundamental frequency perturbation quotient, smoothed fundamental frequency perturbation quotient, fundamental frequency variation, absolute shimmer, relative shimmer, voice turbulence index, and soft phonation index. The mean fundamental frequency value was 159.046 Hz for the cases and 192.435 Hz for the controls.Conclusion: Through glottal adaptations, the group of transgender women managed to feminize their voices, presenting voices that were less aperiodic and softer than those of cisgender women. (shrink)

Several countries maintain universal health coverage, which implies responsibility to organize delivery formats of healthcare services and products for citizens. In Brazil, the health system has a principle of universal access for more than 30 years, but many deficiencies remain and the country observes a day practice for those seeking judicial decisions to determine provision of healthcare.

Background The practice of health advocacy in nursing has been defined as a process aimed at promoting the independence and autonomy of users of health services, in addition to providing information on healthcare decision-making and offering support for decisions taken. Ethical considerations Ethics approval was not required to conduct this review. Aim This integrative review aims to synthesize evidence in the literature on health advocacy in professional nursing practice. Methods An integrative review methodology guided by Whittemore and Knalf was used. (...) Studies were identified by conducting searches on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, and LILACS databases. Of 2179 records, 34 studies matched the inclusion criteria. Results The main aspects involved in the practice of health advocacy by professional nurses are related to the ethical principles of the nursing profession, such as protecting patients seeking autonomy and care. Furthermore, the practice of health advocacy by nurses requires an empathetic attitude, responsibility, and assertive communication. Conclusion The diverse possibilities for the practice of advocacy synthesized in this study allow nurses to approach and become familiarized with the topic, being able to acquire and complement knowledge that will reflect on their professional practice in different work environments such as the educational field, in hospital practice, or basic health care. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the association between over-indebtedness and two facets of well-being – life satisfaction and emotional well-being. Although prior research has associated over-indebtedness with lower life satisfaction, this study contributes to the extant literature by revealing its effects on emotional well-being, which is a crucial component of well-being that has received less attention. Besides subjective well-being, reported health, and sleep quality were also assessed. The findings suggest that over-indebted consumers have lower life satisfaction and emotional well-being, as (...) well as poorer health and sleep quality. Furthermore, over-indebtedness impacts life satisfaction and emotional well-being through different mechanisms. Consumers decreased perceived control accounts for the impact of over-indebtedness on both facets of well-being. Financial well-being, partly mediates the impact of indebtedness status on overall life satisfaction. The current study contributes to research focusing on the relationship between indebtedness, well-being, health, and sleep quality, and provides relevant theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Aim: To analyze the empathizing and systemizing profiles of Brazilian and Portuguese nursing undergraduates. Background: Empathy is a fundamental skill for nursing practice and should be analyzed during the student’s education. Methods: Descriptive study with cross-sectional design. Participants were 968 undergraduate students, including 215 (22.2%) Brazilians from a university in the state of São Paulo and 753 (77.8%) Portuguese students from a higher education institution in central Portugal. The Portuguese and Brazilian versions of the Empathizing/Systemizing Quotient have good internal consistency (...) and reliability. Ethical considerations: In Brazil, approval for the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing (protocol 191/2016) and in Portugal, from the Ethics Committee of the Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing, Coimbra Higher School of Nursing (protocol P362-09/2016). Results: Most (86%) participants were female and aged between 20 and 24 years. In the general profile analysis between both groups, the domains “Social Skills,” “Contents,” and “Processes” scored higher. Gender differences exist for the feeling of empathy and systemizing, as women scored better on the short version of the Empathy Quotient and men on the Systemizing Quotient. Conclusion: As demonstrated in the domain scores for “Social Skills,” “Contents,” and “Processes,” the undergraduate nursing students analyzed have the ability to deal intuitively and spontaneously with social situations; they are also characterized as methodical people, who like to follow rules, and experience practice better than theory, and the women have a higher empathetic level than men, who in turn are more systemizing. (shrink)

Economic and sanitary crises have great repercussions on access to food and the health of the population. In this context, austerity policies can have devastating effects on social rights. The purpose of this essay is to reflect on the impact of various types of crises on the Human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition (DHANA) and on Food and Nutritional Security (SAN) of vulnerable populations and to identify of public policies, programs and actions developed based on the relief of the (...) damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. From the collection of information carried out in a non-systematic way on government websites and scientific databases, documents were read in full, categorized, and critically analyzed. Three different contexts, Africa, Latin America, and Portugal, are presented by the authors who work in these realities, with the intention of contributing to mitigate the food problems that worsen and are derived from the pandemic situation. (shrink)

Dissertação de Mestrado OLIVEIRA, Carla Bianca Costa de. Dioniso e o crucificado : estudo sobre o divino a partir das perspectivas trágica e ascética segundo Nietzsche. 2012. 142 folhas. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte. Palavras-chave : Filosofia trágica. Ascetismo. Dionisíaco. Deus. Nietzsche. Religião e contemporaneidade. Keywords : Philosophy tragic. Asceticism. Dionysiac. God. Nietzsche. Religion and contemporaneity.

Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her discovery of mobile genetic elements. Her Nobel work began in 1944, and by 1950 McClintock began presenting her work on "controlling elements." McClintock performed her studies through the use of controlled breeding experiments with known mutant stocks, and read the action of controlling elements (transposons) in visible patterns of pigment and starch distribution. She taught close colleagues to "read" the patterns in her maize kernels, "seeing" pigment and starch genes turning (...) on and off. McClintock illustrated her talks and papers on controlling elements or transposons with photographs of the spotted and streaked maize kernels which were both her evidence and the key to her explanations. Transposon action could be read in the patterns by the initiated, but those without step by step instruction by McClintock or experience in maize often found her presentations confusing. The photographs she displayed became both McClintock's means of communication, and a barrier to successful presentation of her results. The photographs also had a second and more subtle effect. As images of patterns arrived at through growth and development of the kernel, they highlight what McClintock believed to be the developmental consequences of transposition, which in McClintock's view was her central contribution, over the mechanism of transposition, for which she was eventually recognized by others. Scientific activities are extremely visual, both at the sites of investigation and in communication through drawings, photographs, and movies. Those visual messages deserve greater scrutiny by historians of science. (shrink)

El presente trabajo propone un análisis sobre las políticas educativas y de inserción social destinadas a los y las jóvenes pertenecientes a una configuración neo-colonial, agraria y periférica. Para este fin se estudia el caso del distrito de Costa de Araujo, ubicado en la provincia de Mendoza (Argentina), el cual se caracteriza por ser un territorio marginal que ha sufrido las transformaciones propias de las actuales estructuras capitalistas agrarias. Para alcanzar el objetivo, se estudia el papel creciente que ha (...) asumido el sistema educativo en la implementación de políticas de formación para jóvenes rurales. En este sentido, presentamos un análisis sobre el único centro de Capacitación para el Trabajo de la zona y de su propuesta que contiene como metas institucionales: ofrecer la terminalidad educativa secundaria y capacitar la fuerza de trabajo de los y las jóvenes del lugar. De esta manera se pretende reflexionar sobre estas propuestas educativas a la luz de la realidad social y particular que asume la juventud rural en Costa de Araujo. (shrink)

“Enthusiastically acclaimed in Europe, Cornelis Verhoeven’s The Philosophy of Wonder starts with the premise that any authentic philosophy begins as a posture of wonder before reality. “Wonder is the foundation of the whole of philosophy,” he states. “It is not the beginning of thought in the sense that it might lead on to something better founded, something like philosophical principles, which could be cheerfully manipulated without any ambiguity. Nor does the philosopher begin by wondering, proceed to an examination, and thus (...) rid himself of a tiresome guest. It is not the beginning but the principle, the basic structure. It is not only the beginning but also the end; it guides and accompanies thought. It has not only the first but also the last word” Verhoeven develops his posture-the posture of one who thinks rather than one who merely learns a system-from the starting point of a striking reverence for reality. Wonder is possible only to one who is truly open to what reality is, is ruled by it, and who stands in fascination of the fact that what is there is there. Verhoeven’s approach to authentic thought and philosophy implies a rebellion against prevailing attitudes, against the tyranny of mediocrity that today’s world often imposes. Wonder is a rebellion against certitude and security. Authenticity demands that one remove himself from the tyranny of the revenge, that one slow down in a past-moving world. It demands that one receive reality with reverence and in a mood of contemplation rather than manipulation.The Philosophy of Wonder is neither a textbook nor a do-it-yourself philosophy book with “foundations” and “concepts.” Rather, it is a prod that engenders wonder. Wonder is not a quasi-romantic, wide-eyed passivity; it is an aggressive action, an exciting adventure, an exercise in free fall. Whenever philosophy has become a system, says Verhoeven, it has surrendered its birthright.”- Publisher. (shrink)

The solemnity, sacrifice, and concern for the state of the soul portrayed at Opie's funeral seems out of place among anarchists on motorcycles. The chapter analyzes if Opie's wake should be regarded as a religious rite as Sons of Anarchy are not a Christian sect, nor do they belong to any religious body that Americans commonly embrace. The chapter touches upon gender inequality in religious rites, and male bonding that becomes a primary good and maybe even something like a religious (...) duty. German classicist Walter Burkert terms such a group is a Männerbund (or MB), literally an “all‐male society.” The chapter explains the significance of ubiquitous symbol for the Sons of Anarchy MC – the Grim Reaper logo. Like the image of Santa Muerte, the Reaper logo is what scholars of religion call a hierophany. Finally, the chapter talks about the tragic flaws in the faith of SAMCRO. (shrink)

Human neoplasms develop following the progressive accumulation of genetic and epigenetic alterations to oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. These alterations confer a growth advantage to the cancer cell, leading to its clonal proliferation, invasion into surrounding tissues, and spread to distant organs. Genes that are altered in neoplasia affect three major biologic pathways that normally regulate cell growth and tissue homeostasis: the cell cycle, apoptosis, and differentiation. While each of these pathways can be defined by a unique set of molecular (...) events, they are not biologically separate. Rather, they function more as an integrated molecular network, and perturbations in one pathway can have profound consequences on another. Insights into what distinguishes the regulation of growth and differentiation in a normal cell versus a cancer cell have led to the development of novel anticancer therapies. BioEssays 24:83–90, 2002. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Celebrated yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn shares pivotal accounts of her life with raw honesty—enriched with in-depth spiritual teachings—to help us heal, evolve, and change the world “My first lessons in spirituality and yoga had nothing to do with a mat, but everything to do with waking up. They included angels, seeing God, and being in Heaven. But, believe me, not the way you might think.” So begins Revolution of the Soul. What comes next reads like a riveting memoir (...) filled with uncensored moments of joy, pain, wonder, and humor. Except, this book is so much more than that. Seane's real purpose is to guide us into a deep, gut-level understanding of our highest Self through yoga philosophy and other tools for emotional healing—not just as abstract ideas but as embodied, fully felt wisdom. Why? To spark a "revolution of the soul" in each of us, so we can awaken to our purpose and become true agents of change. Just a few of the stops along the way include: The everyday "angels" Seane finds in the gritty corners of New York's 1980s East Village; her early struggles as a total yoga-class misfit; the profound shadow work and body-based practices that helped her to heal childhood trauma, OCD, unhealthy behaviors, and relationship wounding; hard-earned lessons from some of the most heartbreaking places on the planet; and many other unforgettable teaching stories. (shrink)

Colleges, gegveven in het Studium generale aan de Vrije universiteit van Amsterdam in het eerste semester van het academiejaar 1977-'78.

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This paper seeks to provide an approach for achieving a more socially and environmentally sustainable life by reframing the rules of engagement with the planet and with each other by setting minimum standards on essential criteria i.e., by defining “off-limits”zones for corporate action. For a more humanistic and socially just way of living life that would sustain the planet, a set of moral boundaries that cannot be breached are conceived. We offer a set of possible normative leverage points that must (...) not be violated by business in the long-term. Our paper takes a forward-looking view beyond the current generational targets for sustainability. We operate on the premise that sustainability involves preserving the future generations of the planet in both an environmental and human sense. The Moral Boundaries for Business framework embraces the Seventh Generation Principle. The moral boundaries we offer in this paper, if followed, are meant to have positive implications for humanity and the planet in the next seven generations. (shrink)

The Aristotelian view of universals, according to which each universal generically depends for its existence on its instantiations, has recently come under attack by a series of ground-theoretic arguments. The last such arguments, presented by Raven, promises to offer several significant improvements over its predecessors, such as avoiding commitment to the transitivity of ground and offering new reasons for the metaphysical priority of universals over their instantiations. In this paper, we argue that Raven's argument does not effectively avoid said commitment (...) and that Raven's new reasons fail. Moreover, we present a novel ground-theoretic interpretation of the Aristotelian view, referred to as strong immanence, and introduce a new argument against the Aristotelian view, intended to sidestep any commitment to the transitivity of ground. (shrink)

: We offer a response to four themes that result from the commentators’ inquiries and critiques: the psychodynamic perspective in contemplative research; the limitations of self-….

The recent global outspread of the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the lives of people across multiple countries including athletes, coaches, and supporting staff. Along with everybody else, coaches found themselves constrained to an at-home self-isolation, which limited their ability to normally engage with their profession and to interact with their athletes. This situation may also have impacted their own psychological well-being. With this study, we explored coaches’ perceptions of stress in relation to their emotion regulation strategies depending upon their gender (...) and competitive level. A sample of 2272 Italian coaches were surveyed during the period of lockdown. Mean values for perceived stress and emotion regulation strategies were compared to normative data of the two instruments as reported in the original studies. Furthermore, two Multivariate analyses of variance were completed to observe the potential differences in the coaches’ emotion regulation strategies and perception of stress. Finally, a blockwise regression analysis was run to assess how coaches’ emotion regulation strategies impacted upon their perception of stress. Both women and men reported higher levels of perceived stress than those reported in the normative data. Similarly, average scores for emotion regulation strategies were significantly different from those reported for normative data, in particular, coaches reported slightly higher use of emotion regulation strategies than participants in the original study. Significant gender-based differences emerged in terms of emotional regulations, with men adopting more suppression than women. No differences by competitive level were found. In terms of perceived stress, male coaches and elite coaches showed to be more in control of the situation than female coaches and non-elite coaches, respectively, while women experienced more negative stress than men. The blockwise regression evidenced how reappraisal resulted to be predictive in helping coaches to reduce their perception of stress, while suppression predicted higher stress perceptions. (shrink)

forthcoming in Studies on Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford.

This paper aims to show that the ‘I'm thinking’, to really be the awareness of an act of thought, must refer to or indicate particular thought‐contents that are not actually being focused on in the consciousness. A consequence of this is that the ‘I'm thinking’ lacks the absolute incorrigibility necessary to justify its role as a premise for the cogito.

Building on work that we reported at ISIPTA 2005 we revisit claims made by Fox and Tversky concerning their "comparative ignorance" hypothesis for decision making under uncertainty.

Background: The phenomenon of forceful physical restraint in pediatric care is an ethical issue because it confronts professionals with the dilemma of using force for the child’s best interest. This is a paradox. The perspective of healthcare professional working in pediatric wards needs further in-depth investigations. Purpose: To explore the perspectives and behaviors of healthcare professionals toward forceful physical restraint in pediatric care. Methods: This qualitative ethnographic study used focus groups with purposeful sampling. Thirty volunteer healthcare professionals (nurses, hospital aids, (...) physiotherapists, and health educators) were recruited in five pediatric facilities in four hospitals around Paris, France, from March to June 2013. The data were processed using NVIVO software (QSR International Ltd. 1999–2013). The data analysis followed a qualitative methodological process. Ethical Considerations: The research was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was collected systematically from participants. Findings: This study provides elements to help understand why restraint remains common despite its contradiction with the duty to protect the child and the child’s rights. All participants considered the use of forceful physical restraint to be a frequent difficulty in pediatrics. Greater interest in the child’s health was systematically used to justify the use of force, with little consideration for contradictory or ethical aspects. Raising the issue of forceful restraint always triggered discomfort, unease and an outpour of emotions among healthcare professionals. The findings have highlighted a form of hierarchy of duties that give priority to the execution of the technical procedure and legitimize the use of restraint. Professionals seemed to temporarily suspend their ability to empathize in order to apply restraint to carry out a technical procedure. This observation has allowed us to suggest the concept of “transient empathic blindness.” Conclusion: Using physical restraint during pediatric care was considered a common problem by participants. This practice must be questioned, and professionals must have access to training to find alternatives to strong restraint. Conceptualizing this phenomenon with the concept of “transient empathic blindness” could help professionals understand what happens in their minds when using forceful restraint. (shrink)

Pragmatism, taken not just as a philosophical movement but as a way of addressing problems, strongly influenced the debate on the foundations of probability during the first half of the twentieth century. Upholders of different interpretations of probability such as Hans Reichenbach, Ernest Nagel, Rudolf Carnap, Frank Ramsey, and Bruno de Finetti, acknowledged their debt towards pragmatist philosophers, including Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Clarence Irving Lewis, William Dewey and Giovanni Vailati. In addition, scientist-philosophers like Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Henri (...) Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, and Karl Pearson, who heralded a conception of science and knowledge at large that was close to pragmatism, were very influential in that debate. Among the main interpretations of probability – frequentism, propensionism, logicism and subjectivism -, the latter is no doubt the closest to the pragmatist outlook. This paper concentrates on three representatives of the subjective theory, namely Frank Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti and Émile Borel. (shrink)

To understand Lacan’s thinking process on vision, the entirety of his teaching must be taken into consideration. Until the 60s, the visual field is the imaginary, the constitutive principle of reality in its phenomenal giving to the experience of a subject. This register is the opposite of the field of the word with the L schema and, subsequently, as subordinated to the symbolic system according to the model of the optical schema of the inverted flower vase of Bouasse. It is (...) only with the 1964 seminar that Lacan makes a daring turnaround through which the visual becomes a sign of the emergence of a real that is irreducible to both reality and the mediation of the subject of knowledge. The split that separates reality and the real is reproduced in Lacan within the visual field, which is, on the one hand, the cardinal principle of the consistency of the experience of reality, and on the other, it is an element of irreducibility to reality. This produces a cascade of consequences: first of all, the modification of the presentation of the mirror stage. Unlike the voice, which through prosody, tone, and volume, finds some strips with which anchor itself imaginatively to reality, the gaze, invisible and elusive, escapes the imaginary grasp. Captured in myths, it reveals its power and ability to annihilate—as in the myth of Medusa’s gaze—or to make people fall in love but only with a narcissistic love that leads inexorably to death as in the myth of Narcissus. The gaze is elusive because the subject is dependent on it in the field of desire. Like the voice, it is about the desire on which the subject is supported; it is one of the objects on which the phantom depends. In our opinion, thanks to this characteristic, the gaze object can make remote psychoanalytic treatment possible through easily accessible videoconferencing tools and, at the same time, create new conditions within it that should be carefully evaluated to understand its implications in the session itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:141 HUME AND CAUSAL INFERENCE Hume held that any time we reach by inference a belief about the existence or qualities of some object or event that we have not actually perceived, the inference is grounded in beliefs about causal relations holding between the object of belief and some other object or objects that have actually been experienced. I will examine here Hume's account of such causal inferences. There (...) are many places in the Treatise of Human Nature at which Hume seems to claim that causal inferences take place when and only when the percipient has had an extensive previous experience of objects of the respective types as regularly conjoined in relations of contiguity and temporal priority. It seems to me that reliance on these passages alone gives a distorted view of Hume's theory of causal inference. Contrary to appearances, Hume did not hold that extensive previous experiences of objects of the same types as properly conjoined is either necessary or sufficient for causal inference. Hume's view is more subtle and complicated, and there are important considerations of coherence and holism present in it. Getting Hume's view on this matter clear is important because it shows how he can escape some of the objections that have been laid against his theory, and it makes possible a reading of Hume as a causal realist. Hume's theory of inference provides the resources for drawing a distinction between accidental and genuine causal regularities and it is compatible with the view that causal relations (and not mere de facto regularities) hold among events in the world independently of their being perceived. The examination begins by looking at a different, but related, issue. Why does Hume think 142 that of the three types of association, only cause and effect association is capable of producing belief? Hume puts the question in the form of a possible objection to his account. For it may be said, that if all the parts of that hypothesis be true, viz. that these three species of relation are deriv'd from the same principles; that their effects in inforcing and inlivening our ideas are the same; and that belief is nothing but a more forcible and vivid conception of an idea; it shou'd follow, that that action of the mind may not only be deriv'd from the relation of cause and effect, but also from those of contiguity and resemblance. But as we find by experience, that belief arises only from causation, and that we can draw no inference from one object to another, except they be connected by this relation, we may conclude, that there is some error in that reasoning, which leads us into such difficulties. (T 107) It is important to note that Hume is talking here only about beliefs about the existence or situations of objects that have not been intuited or experienced. Beliefs about relations of ideas (e.g., that 2 + 2 = 4) are intuitions (or perhaps memories 2 of intuitions). Beliefs in the existence of things as experienced or in the previous existence of things as previously experienced automatically have the 3 vivacity of impressions or memory ideas. What Hume takes himself to need to explain is why cause and effect association allows for a transfer of this vivacity to an idea of an object or situation that has not itself been intuited or experienced and why 4 resemblance and contiguity association do not. If I see a green ball next to a red sweater, then I will normally subsequently believe that the green ball existed next to the red sweater at that time (at 143 least until my memories begin to lose vivacity). This is purely a matter of sense experience and memory. Now if I subsequently see a different red sweater (or the same sweater in a different location), I may be led to think of a green ball existing next to it purely through contiguity and resemblance association. But presumably I would not believe that a green ball existed next to the currently perceived red sweater unless I currently perceived a green ball or my belief was based on some 5 form of causal inference... (shrink)

We present a decision-theoretically motivated notion of contraction which, we claim, encodes the principles of minimal change and entrenchment. Contraction is seen as an operation whose goal is to minimize loses of informational value. The operation is also compatible with the principle that in contracting A one should preserve the sentences better entrenched than A (when the belief set contains A). Even when the principle of minimal change and the latter motivation for entrenchment figure prominently among the basic intuitions in (...) the works of, among others, Quine and Ullian (1978), Levi (1980, 1991), Harman (1988) and Gärdenfors (1988), formal accounts of belief change (AGM, KM – see Gärdenfors (1988); Katsuno and Mendelzon (1991)) have abandoned both principles (see Rott (2000)). We argue for the principles and we show how to construct a contraction operation, which obeys both. An axiom system is proposed. We also prove that the decision-theoretic notion of contraction can be completely characterized in terms of the given axioms. Proving this type of completeness result is a well-known open problem in the field, whose solution requires employing both decision-theoretical techniques and logical methods recently used in belief change. (shrink)

After mentioning the cogent connection between pure semantics and the particular set theoretical framework in which it is formulated, some issues regarding the conceptual status of semantics itself, as well as its relationship to logic, are concisely raised.