Recent work has shown that preschool-aged children and adults understand freedom of choice regardless of culture, but that adults across cultures differ in perceiving social obligations as constraints on action. To investigate the development of these cultural differences and universalities, we interviewed school-aged children (4–11) in Nepal and the United States regarding beliefs about people's freedom of choice and constraint to follow preferences, perform impossible acts, and break social obligations. Children across cultures and ages universally endorsed the choice to follow (...) preferences but not to perform impossible acts. Age and culture effects also emerged: Young children in both cultures viewed social obligations as constraints on action, but American children did so less as they aged. These findings suggest that while basic notions of free choice are universal, recognitions of social obligations as constraints on action may be culturally learned. (shrink)

In a number of very influential publications, Epstein and Hoover (among other authors) have recently argued that a thoroughly micro-foundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. However, as we show in this article, this metaphysical/social ontological approach to the debate fails to resolve the status of micro-foundations in the practice of economic modelling. To overcome this, we argue that endogenizing a model—that is, providing micro-foundations for it—correlates with making that model more complex. Specifically, we show that models with (...) more micro-foundations tend to have more parameters or variables. This matters, as there are well-established methodological reasons for preferring models with fewer parameters or variables—ceteris paribus. We therefore conclude that, from a practice-based point of view, micro-foundations are only defensible to the extent that they significantly improve the ability of the relevant model to fit the data of interest. In this way, we arrive at a practice-based, methodological reconceptualization of the debate surrounding the need for micro-foundations in economics. (shrink)

Since the COVID‐19 pandemic, ongoing reports have highlighted the urgency of addressing anti‐Black racism within Canada's healthcare system. The paucity of research within a Canadian context has created growing concerns among Millennials and Generation Zs for healthcare to address growing health disparities and health inequities that are attributed to institutional and structural racism. Recognizing the paradigm shift that has occurred because of the pandemic and the sleuth of racial killings, the nursing classroom has witnessed a change and a need for (...) nursing education to be relevant for the cohort of nursing students who are seeking answers. The scarcity of nursing literature addressing diverse forms of learning demonstrates the need for nursing education to explore new ways of being diverse, inclusive and innovative when teaching intergenerationally. In this paper, the author challenges nurse educators to revisit the student–educator relationship by introducing critical digital pedagogy to dismantle anti‐Black racism and promote student–educator engagement for transformative learning to occur. As an educator, the author implements the use of digital illustration as a tool of resistance for students and educators to assess, engage, act and reflect on creating change within nursing education. Using Black feminist thought and culturally responsive learning, the author introduces an arts‐based approach through the innovative design of an illustration, titled, ‘Ain't I a Nurse. Combining historical stories with contemporary socio‐political experiences, the author demonstrates how students and educators can enter a cognitive learning experience where they can connect mentally and emotionally, and in so doing re‐envision and recreate a new world that centralizes equity, diversity and inclusivity through critical discourses. Through the illustration anti‐Black racism is challenged and anti‐Black racism resistance is discovered as an antidote in dismantling anti‐Black racism within nursing education. (shrink)

Increasingly organizations have dedicated systems and personnel (recipients) to receive and handle internal whistleblower reports. Yet, the complexity of handling whistleblower reports is often underestimated, and there is a dearth of literature that attempts to describe or analyse the challenges internal recipients face. This paper uses an agency theory inspired lens to provide insight into the complexity of internal whistleblowing, with the aim to identify focal points for improving internal whistleblowing processes. We conceive of internal recipients as agents of two (...) principals in the event of whistleblowing: owner/top management as well as whistleblowers. We identify sources of agency problems and agency costs within these double-agent relationships. We provide avenues for solving these problems and reducing the agency costs. We close by offering paths for future research. (shrink)

In the last decade, a great variety and volume of scholarly work has appeared on mind-wandering, a mental process involving a vast range of human life, connected with “first-person perspective” and “personhood”, submental thinking, mental autonomy, etc. While different and emerging features that flow into and out of one another (second field, mental travel, visual imagery, inner speech, unspecific memory, autobiographical memory, fantasies, introspection, etc.) and negative and positive approaches seem to describe mind-wandering, we offer an interdisciplinary theoretical and empirically (...) informed and informative overview on mind-wandering studies and methodologies oriented toward the educational field. The aim is to transform and enrich the debate on mind-wandering but also to show how theoretical arguments and research findings could inform the teaching-learning context. This groundbreaking book, moves along three representations of developed scientific knowledge: imaginary lines, circles and spirals. The first section, “The Lines”, develops new lines of inquiry on attention (selective and sustained) and mind-wandering, the influence of age and mind-wandering, embodiment, consciousness and experience and mind-wandering. In the second section, the “Circles”, groups of Chapters on the same topic, methodology (tasks and measurement), intervention (auditory beat stimulation and mindfulness practices) and creativity, recreate a dance of interacting parts in which there are always profitable, decisive and retroactive exchanges between the information that each group or author activates. The last section, “The Spirals”, critically discusses the absence of a unified theoretical perspective, in the pedagogical field, attentive both to the processes of emergence and the interactions between parts. (shrink)

Introduction: "are you a feminist?" -- Three waves of feminism -- All things equal -- Violence against women -- Sex and beauty -- Reproductive justice -- What's next? -- Feminist terms -- Source notes -- Selected bibliography -- For further information -- Index.

In the light of postmodern debates in anthropology, ethnography offers anthropologists new ways of representing their objects of study. The politics involved in the production and consumption by feminist scholars and activists of women's representations in the Arab world, and Egypt specifically, provides the starting point of this article. Using an ethnographic text examining manifestations of ‘Islamic Feminism’ in Egypt, I explore problems in addressing the subject of veiling – a continuous favourite among researchers. Grappling with stereotypes, assumptions and pre-interpretations (...) based on what we read before going to the field and the questions we formulate in our minds, I look towards strategies of engagement with research subjects where anthropologists can express their commitments to them. Research ethics and reflexivity offer no formulaic guarantees of better representations, but pave the way towards understanding one's motivations and urges ethnographers to examine the impact of their work, both on the immediate community, and with regard to larger power politics. Given the fluid nature of identities and the relative fixedness of representations, solutions do not appear in abundance. Working outside of unnecessary dichotomies and searching for incongruities presents interesting possibilities for future ethnographic research. (shrink)

This essay reclaims a political proceduralist vision of democracy as the best normative defense of democracy in contemporary politics. We distinguish this vision from three main approaches that are representative in the current academic debate: the epistemic conception of democracy as a process of truth seeking; the populist defense of democracy as a mobilizing politics that defies procedures; and the classical minimalist or Schumpeterian definition of democracy as a competitive method for selecting leaders.

This article conceptualizes corporate accountability under international law and introduces an analytical framework translating corporate accountability into seven core elements. Using this analytical framework, it then systematically assesses four models that could be used in a future business and human rights treaty: the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights model, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights model, the progressive model, and the transformative model. It aims to contribute to the BHR treaty negotiation process by clarifying different options (...) and possible trade-offs between them, while taking into account political realities. Ultimately, the article argues in favour of the BHR treaty embracing a progressive model of corporate accountability, which combines ambitious development of international law with realistic prospects of state support. (shrink)

The COVID-19 emergency has hit the whole world, finding all countries unprepared to face it. The first studies focused on the medical aspects, neglecting the psychological dimension of the populations that were forced to face changes in everyday life and in some cases to stay forcedly at home in order to reduce contagion. The present research was carried out in Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic. The aim was to analyze the perception of happiness, mental health, (...) and the sense of loneliness experienced by adults during the lockdown due to the COVID pandemic. Specifically, the variables will be examined in relation to gender difference, living alone, with partner, or with partner and children. The research followed a quantitative approach using an online questionnaire. The project involved 1100 subjects from whom 721 participants were extrapolated. Of them, 17.3% claimed to live alone, 39.5% with their partner, and 43.1% with their partner and children. The results show that people in general experienced a lower level of happiness and mental health and higher levels of loneliness compared to normative sample. The lockdown and pandemic condition due to COVID-19 seems to have canceled the gender differences in the perception of happiness and mental health, while it seems to have increased the perception of loneliness experienced by males compared to the pre-pandemic condition. In addition, those who lived alone perceived a greater level of loneliness than those who lived with their partner or partner and children. Unexpectedly, no significant differences emerged regarding the level of happiness and mental health between those who had direct contact with the virus and those who did not. These data should make political decision-makers reflect on the need to pay more attention to the implications that such drastic measures as a lockdown can have on people’s psychological well-being. (shrink)

It is usually held that representative government is not strictly democratic, since it does not allow the people themselves to directly make decisions. But here, taking as her guide Thomas Paine’s subversive view that “Athens, by representation, would have surpassed her own democracy,” Nadia Urbinati challenges this accepted wisdom, arguing that political representation deserves to be regarded as a fully legitimate mode of democratic decision making—and not just a pragmatic second choice when direct democracy is not possible. As Urbinati (...) shows, the idea that representation is incompatible with democracy stems from our modern concept of sovereignty, which identifies politics with a decision maker’s direct physical presence and the immediate act of the will. She goes on to contend that a democratic theory of representation can and should go beyond these identifications. Political representation, she demonstrates, is ultimately grounded in a continuum of influence and power created by political judgment, as well as the way presence through ideas and speech links society with representative institutions. Deftly integrating the ideas of such thinkers as Rousseau, Kant, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Paine, and the Marquis de Condorcet with her own, Urbinati constructs a thought-provoking alternative vision of democracy. (shrink)

The phenomenon of malaise is on the rise at universities, reflecting a deteriorating psychological state that is a combination of anxiety and stress factors. This psychological and emotional upheaval within students is indicative of a fundamental existential issue. In fact, hidden behind the choice of an educational program is the significance given by the student to their life goals. It is this dimension of attributing meaning to one’s education and, more broadly, to one’s life (the existential dimension) that we have (...) sought to explore. We hypothesized that a stable investment in one’s life goals and a sense of psychological wellbeing during one’s studies could be fostered by reflective work done alongside the educational process. Our research took the form of a mixed methodological approach to the attribution of meaning to education, including an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), and the experimentation of support for the meaning of education. Four dimensions of meaning were found to be observable in varying degrees in all students, each playing a specific role. Moreover, this research has confirmed that the meaning of studies is not to be understood solely in terms of education, but is part of a singular life story. Reflective work, developing meaning, facilitated by others (advisor, teacher, etc.) can help preserve/restore the feeling of wellbeing. It should be noted that, as the work presented in this article predates the pandemic, we will not address the amplifying effects of this health crisis on existential issues, which some recent studies are beginning to highlight. (shrink)

This article traces the development of the theory and practice of what is known as ‘community of inquiry’ as an ideal of classroom praxis. The concept has ancient and uncertain origins, but was seized upon as a form of pedagogy by the originators of the Philosophy for Children program in the 1970s. Its location at the intersection of the discourses of argumentation theory, communications theory, semiotics, systems theory, dialogue theory, learning theory and group psychodynamics makes of it a rich site (...) for the dialogue between theory and practice in education. This article is an exploration of those intersections, and a prospectus of its possible role in the formation and reformulation of school curriculum. It will be argued here that, when formulated as community of philosophical inquiry in particular, it offers the possibility of ‘philosophising’ the school curriculum in general, by extending the concept-work that doing philosophy entails to all of the disciplines. The article begins with an attempt at an operational definition of the term as, move to an analysis of its dynamics, offers an example of its use in a mathematics classroom, and finishes with a schematic view of its whole-curriculum and whole-school possibilities. (shrink)

BackgroundThe German guidelines for liver transplantation stipulate that every patient with alcohol-related liver disease needs to prove evidence of a 6-month abstinence period before they can be admitted to the waiting list for liver transplantation. This internationally widespread abstinence rule has been criticised as it prevents patients at least temporarily from receiving an effective and potentially life-saving therapy. This poses the question of how this abstinence rule is depicted and justified by transplantation professionals.ArgumentsIn case of the 6‑month abstinence rule, guidelines (...) are used as a tool for rationing health care. Four frames of interpretation can be reconstructed from the ethical and medical literature. Each linguistically mediated frame offers a different representation of the 6‑month abstinence rule. According to these different framings, the 6‑month waiting period is depicted (1) as a diagnostic tool to determine the regenerative capacity of the liver, (2) as a prognostic tool to determine the prospects of success of a transplantation, and (3) to determine the drinking behaviour after transplantation. In a further context, the abstinence rule (4) is interpreted as an expression of an obligation to avoid behaviour harmful to health.ConclusionThese four frames provide linguistically mediated patterns of interpretation that are used by different actors to limit the indication for liver transplantation. They give rise to different ethical questions that allow a systematic ethical assessment of the 6‑month abstinence rule. (shrink)

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced its intent to strengthen enforcement of legal protections for health care providers' conscience rights. It proposed regulations that would give the DHHS Office of Civil Rights greater authority to ensure that recipients of federal funding comply with federal conscience laws. This recent development creates an opportunity for scholars and policy‐makers to revisit the perennial debate about whether and how law should protect health care providers' rights of conscience. Arguments (...) about who should be protected, what actions should be protected, and whether there should be any limitations on the exercise of conscience rights have brought us no closer to a resolution. However, there is one remaining avenue for analysis that has, surprisingly, received very little attention—the question of how providers are protected, and from what consequences. Existing U.S. conscience laws immunize health care providers from a wide range of adverse consequences—including civil liability, criminal prosecution, administrative penalties, adverse action by employers, and discrimination by private actors, among others. However, academic and public policy debates rarely acknowledge the breadth of these protections. It is essential to disentangle this network of possible protections. (shrink)

Redirecting attention to Mill as a political thinker, Nadia Urbinati argues that this claim misrepresents Mill's thinking.

This study explores the doctrine of the latency of forms in the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on Albert the Great’s elaboration through his theory of inchoatio formarum. The doctrine, whose origins date back to Anaxagoras and was further developed in the Arabic philosophical tradition, posits that matter contains all the manifest qualities of substances, though in a latent form. Albert reworks this doctrine, correcting the immanentist and paradoxical implications attributed to Anaxagoras’ error, and proposes an interpretation in which (...) matter, while potentially active, receives the perfection of forms from an external causal principle. The study highlights how Albert’s inchoatio formarum provides a response to the doctrine of the latency of forms and fits into the broader medieval debate on the relationship between matter and forms, both in philosophical and theological contexts. The discussion also examines the commentators of Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the connection with Augustine’s doctrine of rationes seminales. Lastly, Albert’s contribution to the debate on Augustine’s rationes seminales and his interaction with the Thomist tradition and other 15th-century authors are analyzed. (shrink)

The American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) “Opinion 1.1.7, Physician Exercise of Conscience” attempts to help physicians strike a reasonable balance between their own conscientious beliefs and their patients’ medical interests in an effort to minimize harms to both. However, some ambiguity still remains as to whether the severity of harms experienced by physicians and patients is to be assessed externally (by policy makers or by a professional body like the AMA), or internally by the subjects of those harms. Conflicts between conscientious (...) physicians’ self-assessments of the moral harm associated with various actions and the AMA’s external assessments of such harms are likely to lead to challenges in the implementation of some provisions of its opinion. This commentary argues, however, that provisions (b) and (e) of the opinion, which describe the information physicians should provide about their own scope of practice and about the existence of controversial procedures, are less likely to conflict with physicians’ subjective assessments of moral harm, and therefore will face fewer challenges in implementation. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the social philosopher Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, and use it to locate and examine dispositions in a larger constellation of related concepts, exploring their dynamic relationship within the social context, and their construction, manifestation, and function in relation to classroom mathematics practices. I describe the main characteristics of habitus that account for its invisible effects: its embodiment, its deep and pre-reflective internalization as schemata, orientation, and taste that are learned and yet unthought, and are (...) subsumed by our practices, which we understand as something that “goes without saying.” I also propose that, similarly to Bourdieu’s concept of linguistic habitus, a math habitus is made up of a complex intertwining of collective and individual histories that turn into “nature,” which structure all individual and collective action and inform mathematical classroom practice. I suggest that individual math dispositions may be liable to reconstruction through the reconstruction of the collective math habitus, which follows from opening spaces for dialogue, problematization and reconstruction of the unthought categories of the doxa. This requires that students acquire new concrete and symbolic means with which to challenge their current sense of mathematics as a discipline, and mathematical practice tout court. Finally, I argue that community of inquiry, employed as a pedagogical model, provides an avenue for both: for opening those spaces for reflective dialogical inquiry into concepts and questions whose meanings and references have so far been taken for granted, and for acquiring critical thinking and dialogical skills and dispositions that are a necessary means for participating in such reflective inquiry that offers significant promise for reconstructing individual and collective habitus in school settings. (shrink)

Jan-Werner Müller argues convincingly that any talk about institutions (and consequentially of the crisis of democracy today) takes us back to the principles they embody. ‘Return to the first princ...

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to examine the extent to which cognitive emotion regulation strategies were “common or transdiagnostic correlates” of symptoms of depression and anxiety and/or “specific correlates” distinguishing one problem category from the other. The sample comprised 582 13- to 16-year-old secondary school students. Symptoms of depression and anxiety were measured by the SCL-90, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies were measured by the CERQ, in a cross-sectional design. Multivariate regression analyses were performed. Before controlling for comorbidity, the (...) same cognitive emotion regulation strategies that were related to symptoms of depression were also related to symptoms of anxiety. However, after controlling for comorbid anxiety symptoms, rumination, self-blame, positive reappraisal, and positive refocusing were uniquely associated with depression symptoms; and after controlling for comorbid depression symptoms, ca... (shrink)

Brian Epstein has recently argued that a thoroughly microfoundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. Generally, Epstein argues that for an improvement in the methodology of social science we must adopt social ontology as the foundation of social sciences; that is, the standing microfoundationalist debate could be solved by fixing economics’ ontology. However, as I show in this paper, fixing the social ontology prior to the process of model construction is optional instead of necessary and that metaphysical-ontological commitments (...) are often the outcome of model construction, not its starting point. By focusing on the practice of modeling in economics the paper provides a useful inroad into the debate about the role of metaphysics in the natural and social sciences more generally. (shrink)

The practice of Islamic veiling has over the last ten years emerged into a popular site of investigation. Different researchers have focused on the various significations of this bodily practice, both in its gendered dimensions, its identity components, its empowering potentials, as a satorial practice or as part of a broader economy of bodily practices which shape pious dispositions in accordance with the Islamic tradition. Lesser, however, has this been the case for the practice of not veiling or unveiling. If (...) and when attention is accorded to the latter, it is often grasped as a product of integration or an effect secular governmentality, but only rarely as a bodily practice. Drawing on narratives of second generation secular and religious Maghrebi Muslims in Belgium, this paper pursues this second perspective by examining to which extent not-veiling can be understood as a technique of the self (Foucault) that is functional to shaping a liberal (Musilm) subject. While a first part of this article will unpack the ethical substance of such discursive interrogations and point to the ways in which they are intertwined with the enactment of a liberal self, the second part will examine the embodied contours of this problematization, which appeared through the labour upon one's affect and bodily dispositions that this refusal of the hijab, or the act of unveiling, implies. (shrink)

When individual patients' medical decisions contribute to population-level trends, physicians may struggle with how to promote justice while maintaining respect for patient autonomy. This article argues that this tension might be resolved by using the informed consent conversation as an opportunity to position patients as societal stewards.

This corpus analysis of linguistic and semantic features in French parliamentary debates concerning online hate speech regulation, highlights tensions between state powers and private rights. Two key themes are identified: first, the _problem of definition_: how such online content is defined in the debates, and second, the _problem of regulation_: how the debates negotiate the supra-jurisdictional and individual jurisdiction issues involved, in regulating both the global online content and the responsibilities of the owners of the platforms who manage the content. (...) For this analysis, the authors created a corpus of French National Assembly Examination Committee discussions and public sessions between July 2019 to January 2020 discussing the _Loi Avia _(Avia Law). The corpus was analysed using quali-quantitative methods. Overall, the study combines a top-down (global) and a bottom-up (local) analysis of the data, applying corpus semantic approaches (Lecolle et al. in Langages 210(2):35–54, 2018; Rastier in The Routledge handbook of semantics, Routledge, pp 507–522, 2015) to contextualize the analysis of the meta-discourse (Hyland in Meta-discourse: exploring interaction in writing, 1st ed. Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350063617 ). The analysis highlights the linguistic features revealing the power dynamics inherent within the discourse and counter-discourse of the dominant and opposition political parties respectively. (shrink)

The human genome is commonly regarded as a ‘natural’ connection between all human beings, as it has been handed down to us by our predecessors. As such, it is believed to represent common heritage of humanity, e.g. a resource of outstanding value that should be the object of special protection and international concern. Some critics argue that germline manipulation would disrupt this natural heritage and that we have a duty to preserve the integrity of the human germline. However, a closer (...) look reveals that the concept of common heritage of humanity does not necessarily imply the impermissibility of germline manipulation. If it is restricted to the prevention of severe diseases, germline manipulation does not represent a threat to the unity and identity of the human species, even though this would create a new form of relationship between human beings, namely that between a designer and a genetically designed person. (shrink)

Ce texte est tiré de la thèse de doctorat de Nadia Taïbi, présentée à l'Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, le 29 octobre 2007, sous la direction de Jean-Jacques Wunenburger : L'expérience ouvrière de Simone Weil. La philosophie au travail, pp. 28-33. N'ayant pas pu joindre Nadia Taïbi pour lui demander son autorisation, nous espérons qu'elle ne nous en tiendra pas rigueur. 1.1.2. La pensée comme résistance L'expérience de la vie d'usine telle que Simone Weil la traduit nous paraît (...) révéler ce qu'il faut - Philosophie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Many proposals for logic-based formalisations of argumentation consider an argument as a pair (Φ,α), where the support Φ is understood as a minimal consistent subset of a given knowledge base which has to entail the claim α. In case the arguments are given in the full language of classical propositional logic reasoning in such frameworks becomes a computationally costly task. For instance, the problem of deciding whether there exists a support for a given claim has been shown to be -complete. (...) In order to better understand the sources of complexity (and to identify tractable fragments), we focus on arguments given over formulæ in which the allowed connectives are taken from certain sets of Boolean functions. We provide a complexity classification for four different decision problems (existence of a support, checking the validity of an argument, relevance and dispensability) with respect to all possible sets of Boolean functions. Moreover, we make use of a general schema to enumerate all arguments to show that certain restricted fragments permit polynomial delay. Finally, we give a classification also in terms of counting complexity. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 553-554, July 2012.