In 2000, the world of anthropology was rocked by a high-profile debate over the fieldwork performed by two prominent anthropologists, Napoleon Chagnon and James V. Neel, among the Yanamamo tribe of South America. The controversy was fueled by the publication of Patrick Tierney's incendiary Darkness in El Dorado which accused Chagnon of not only misinterpreting but actually inciting some of the violence he perceived among these "fierce people". Tierney also pointed the finger at Neel as the unwitting (...) agent of a deadly measles outbreak. Attracting a firestorm of attention, Tierney's book went straight to the heart of anthropology's most pressing questions: What are the right ways to study a tribal people? How can scientists avoid unduly influencing those among whom they live? What guidelines should govern the interactions - economic, social, medical, and sexual - between a scientist in the field and the people being studied? This volume represents anthropology's thoughtful, measured reply to the issues raised by this heated controversy. Placing the dispute within the context of ongoing debates over the ethics of biomedical research among human populations, the contributors to this volume discuss how the interaction between investigators and their subjects can most sensibly be governed. They consider the responsibility of the media in disseminating anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific views, and how scientists might best educate journalists to enable them to effectively educate others. In the wake of what was widely construed as a major scientific scandal, this landmark volume lays out in detail the principles and ground rules of anthropological and scientific fieldwork. (shrink)

Venturing into ethics -- Morality and ethics -- History of the development of ethics -- Formalization of ethics -- Institutional Review Boards -- Informal ethics -- Do no harm -- Transparency and accountability -- Informed consent -- Human terrsin system -- Future 1 -- Future 2 -- Yanomami -- Napoleon A. Chagnon -- Secrets of the tribe -- The Other.

In September 2000, the self-styled “anthropological journalist” Patrick Tierney began to make public his work claiming that the Yanomamö people of South America had been actively—indeed brutally—harmed by the sociobiological anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and the geneticist-physician James Neel. Following a florid summary of Tierney’s claims by the anthropologists Terence Turner and Leslie Sponsel, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) saw fit to take Tierney’s claims seriously by conducting a major investigation into the matter. This paper focuses on the AAA’s (...) problematic actions in this case but also provides previously unpublished information on Tierney’s falsehoods. The work presented is based on a year of research by a historian of medicine and science. The author intends the work to function as a cautionary tale to scholarly associations, which have the challenging duty of protecting scholarship and scholars from baseless and sensationalistic charges in the era of the Internet and twenty-four-hour news cycles. (shrink)

One fundamental healthcare issue brought to the fore by the current COVID-19 pandemic concerns the scope and nature of the right to healthcare. Given our increasing need for the usually limited healthcare resources, to what extent can we demand provision of these resources as a matter of right? One philosophical way of handling this issue is to clarify the nature of this right. Using the challenges of COVID-19 in the Philippines as the context of analysis, we argue for the view (...) that regards the right to healthcare as fundamentally moral in kind, which should thereby guide its legal and contractual appropriations. In particular, we respond to objections against this view stemming from issues concerning the universality and satisfiability of the right’s correlative duty. We deal with such issues by invoking the relative degree of incumbency of moral rights and the capability-relativity of positive duties. We further contend that as these factors define the scope of the moral right to healthcare, they thus constrain what we can demand as a matter of right to meet our healthcare needs in this time of the pandemic. (shrink)

The supposition that Wittgenstein's Tractatus advances a certain metaphysics has given rise to a controversy over the ontological status of his Tractarian objects. It has been debated, for instance, whether these objects consist only of particulars or of both particulars and universals; whether they are physical, phenomenal, or phenomenological entities; and whether they correspond to Russell's objects of acquaintance or Kant's phenomena and substance. In this essay, I endorse Ishiguro's view that these objects, being formal concepts, are ontologically neutral and (...) thus are not identifiable with any ontological kind of entities. I elaborate on the coherence of this view with the propositional dependence of the meaning of Tractarian names. After showing why some arguments for ascribing a Russellian theory of meaning to these names do not work, I demonstrate why Ishiguro's account of Tractarian objects and names provides a better explanation of the unalterability of these objects. (shrink)

This essay primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: (1) that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; (2) that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and (3) that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the latter over the former. I show the first to be (...) unwarranted owing to a lack of fundamental parallelisms between Searle’s and Husserl’s theories of intentionality. I show the second to be mistaken for failing to take into account Heidegger’s strategic handling of the concept of consciousness and for contradicting Heidegger’s concept of care as the essential meaning of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Lastly, I show the third to be highly problematic for lacking in textual evidence and explanatory power. (shrink)

With its use of the powerful technology of computer, the computational theory of mind or computationalism, which regards minds as computational systems, has been widely hailed as the most promising theory that will carry out the project of explaining the workings of the mind in purely scientific terms. While it continues to serve as the primary framework for scientifically inclined theorizing and investigations about the nature of minds, especially in the area of cognitive science, it, however, continues to face strong (...) objections from its critics. And with the growing complexity and sophistication of the arguments used to promote and reject the theory, the debate has become intractable. It has become quite difficult to assess which side of the dispute is gaining the upper hand. Such difficulty may be due to a variety of reasons. In this essay, I critically examine two of such reasons. The first concerns the ambiguity of the theory’s intended scope of application: whether it is limited to the mind’s cognitive features only or it also includes the mind’s phenomenal features. The second concerns the vagueness of how the so-called computer modelling of human cognitive processes is able to duplicate such processes. Accordingly, if insufficiently addressed, they remain as two roadblocks to the entire project of computationalism. (shrink)

One compelling argument challenging the tenability of physicalism, which sees reality as fundamentally comprised of physical facts, is Jackson's knowledge argument. Through a powerful thought experiment involving the case of Mary, the super neuroscientist, the argument demonstrates how knowledge of phenomenal facts cannot be deduced from knowledge of physical facts. For allegedly leaving out phenomenal facts in its account of reality, physicalism is shown to be incomplete and hence mistaken. Physicalists respond to this argument in a variety of ways, challenging, (...) in turn, some aspects of the knowledge argument. This paper focuses on the replies of the ability hypothesis and the phenomenal concept strategy, which respectively try to block the two crucial moves in the knowledge argument: the establishment of an epistemic gap and the inference from the occurrence of this gap to the existence of an ontological gap. The paper critically examines how proponents of these two replies to the knowledge argument respond to some objections to maintain the viability of physicalism. (shrink)

The article examines the formation of Nietzsche's view of Napoleon as a Renaissance man, and its importance for Nietzsche's thought. Stendhal, with his image of Napoleon, exercised a crucial influence on Nietzsche, who was, thanks to Burckhardt, already full of admiration for the Renaissance. Special attention is given to Stendhal's Vie de Napoleon, which provided Nietzsche with a key to Napoleon as the continuator of the Renaissance and the man who again revived antiquity, a hero of (...) Plutarchian proportions. Taine's influence is also analysed, for he provided the final stimulus for Nietzsche's concluding conception of Napoleon as a Renaissance man, as well as helping Nietzsche to realize the closeness between the Ubermensch and Napoleon. The significance of Napoleon for Nietzsche's conceptualization of historical greatness is emphasized, as well as the features of the Corsican hero that make him the embodiment of Nietzsche's emulative understanding of history: the mirror image of a model active man from the second Untimely Meditation. (shrink)

A large body of experience and expertise on the implementation of sustainable public school food procurement policies has developed in recent years. However, there has been little investigation of the values and motivations of the public officials implementing the policies. To address this gap, we examine how the city of Avignon took a step toward transition to local fresh food procurement for public schools, under French government calls for sustainable food products in public canteens. Our analysis combines the Multi-Level Perspective (...) on sustainable transitions with the Public Service Motivation construct. Unlike other studies addressing the MLP at a macro level, we focus on individual motivations behind public action. We demonstrate that staff motivations have a major impact on how policies supporting transition to local fresh food procurement for public schools are implemented. These public officials’ approach to food shows concern for the public interest regardless of financial return. It is not the rational choice that primarily drives the implementation of urban food policies, but normative conformity and affective bonding. Interestingly, we conclude that the success of Avignon’s politically-driven school food procurement policy is essentially due to the catering and procurement staff who overcame the barriers to its implementation. (shrink)

It has historically been assumed that comparative and superlative quantifiers can be semantically analysed in accordance with their core logical–mathematical properties. However, recent theoretical and experimental work has cast doubt on the validity of this assumption. Geurts & Nouwen have claimed that superlative quantifiers possess an additional modal component in their semantics that is absent from comparative quantifiers and that this accounts for the previously neglected differences in usage and interpretation between the two types of quantifier that they identify. Their (...) semantically modal hypothesis has received additional support from empirical investigations. In this article, we further corroborate that superlative quantifiers have additional modal interpretations. However, we propose an alternative analysis, whereby these quantifiers possess the semantics postulated by the classical model and the additional aspects of meaning arise as a consequence of psychological complexity and pragmatic implicature. We explain how this model is consistent with the existing empirical findings. Additionally, we present the findings of four novel experiments that support our model above the semantically modal account. (shrink)

Resumen: Las relaciones entre motricidad y corporeidad son fundamentales en una consideración de desarrollo humano. Mostrar las particularidades de cada una de ellas, así como de sus dimensiones, y analizar su fuerte articulación, nos resulta importante para comprender la naturaleza humanizadora de las mismas. El texto muestra las diferencias entre la motricidad y la corporeidad y argumenta desde la analogía de los magmas la posibilidad de comprender su imbricada relación y diferencia para poder desarrollar un concepto hacia el desarrollo de (...) lo humano del ser.: The relationships between motor skills and corporeality are fundamental in a consideration of human development. To show the particularities of each one of them, as well as their dimensions, and analyze their strong articulation, it is important for us to understand their humanizing nature. The text shows the differences between motor skills and corporeality and argues from the analogy of magmas the possibility of understanding their overlapping relationship and difference to develop a concept towards the development of the human being. (shrink)

The epic life of Pope John Paul II touches virtually all aspects of the human being in time and space. His successful world outreach achieves unprecedented superlative proportions in his search for universal harmonies among peoples, cultures and religions. Significantly, his death confirms the success of his positive mission on the Earth as his death caused an extraordinary unity of people, cultures, and religions during his funeral. No one else has unified such opposing opposites in a memorial service in a (...) millennium! Thus, Pope John Paul II by his calling served the sacred; his deeds achieve a synchronized symphony of the sacred and secular. This paper examines the views of Pope John Paul II, as expressed in Laborem Excercens, through the concept of the unity of oppositesin sacred and secular architecture. (shrink)

The damaging effects of the activities of corporations on the natural environment have given rise to the need to evaluate corporate policies, decisions, and actions affecting the natural environment on moral grounds. There are two important questions that need to be addressed in this regard. The first is whether corporations have a moral obligation to protect the natural environment, which is over and above their economic duty to maximize profits for their stockholders and their legal duty to obey environmental laws. (...) And the second is, given that they do have this moral obligation, what sort of environmental ethical theory (homocentrism, biocentrism, utilitarianism) ought to guide the exercise of such an obligation? This paper argues that corporations do have such moral obligations, for they are moral agents in virtue of their nonmetaphorical possession of rational capacities. This, however, implies that the corporations’ exercise of this obligation can only be properly guided by a rationalist type of ethics. (shrink)

The paper examines the bond between architecture and history on the premise that everybody is familiar with both architecture and history. The paper views architecture as a profession that is satiated with imaginative and creative thinking; and contends that architecture extends, historically, into wherever human beings live their life. The author opines that architecture easily extends its influence, as a vivid universal metaphor into every sphere of human activity as a synonym, in building either concrete or abstract forms. Thus, the (...) paper proceeds to demonstrate that architecture chronicles the achievements of peoples in creatively constructed concrete forms, which it infuses with the histories of abstract concepts in time and space. Conversely, the paper points out that history, which highlights the living memories of humanity, chronicles the antecedences, precedence, sequences, and consequences of man’s concrete achievements incogent abstract forms. Consequently, the paper concludes that while architecture builds conceptualized concrete forms from and for history; history builds its concrete abstract forms from and for architecture. Thus, the paper concludes that The Architecture of History and The History of Architecture ultimately coincides in their complementarity, as mutual witnesses to the activities of man in time and space. (shrink)

One of the most widely acknowledged Filipino cultural values is utang na loob. Sometimes translated as “debt of gratitude,” it refers to an informal form of reciprocal social obligation that arises when a person is significantly assisted by another during a difficult time. As it touches on the Filipino sense of human dignity and social responsibility, utang na loob is one critical theme in most research investigating the characteristics of the Filipino psyche, culture, and social behavior. Explaining the nature and (...) occurrence of utang na loob, however, has its challenges, foremost of which is how to appropriately account for its negative or morally problematic instantiations. This essay examines how some approaches that regard utang na loob as a moral virtue handle this challenge. After identifying several difficulties with these approaches, the essay argues for an alternative approach that maintains the status of utang na loob as a cultural value whose instantiating actions are subject to moral evaluation. (shrink)

This essay deals with the following issues: (1) whether corporations can have moral responsibilities; (2) whether, granting that corporations can have moral responsibilities, nature can be an object of these responsibilities; and (3) what moral theory can appropriately justify why corporations ought to contribute to the cause of environmental protection. It is here argued that while it can be shown that corporations can have moral responsibilities, such responsibilities are limited towards humans and other corporations. The main reason is that the (...) morally relevant functional capacities which corporations can be shown as possessing are limited to those functional capacities that give moral status to humans. As such, natural nonhumans are beyond the scope of these responsibilities. But this does not mean that it becomes justifiable for corporations to disregard environmental concerns. For part of the moral responsibilities of corporations towards humans is to respect the right of humans to a livable natural environment. In addition, because of their enduring existence and long-term goals, corporations can act as a bridge between humans of the present generation and those of future generations. This bridge makes it meaningful to speak of the moral responsibilities of humans of the present generation towards those of future generations. (shrink)

Due to his significant role in the development of computer technology and the discipline of artificial intelligence, Alan Turing has supposedly subscribed to the theory of mind that has been greatly inspired by the power of the said technology which has eventually become the dominant framework for current researches in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, namely, computationalism or the computational theory of mind. In this essay, I challenge this supposition. In particular, I will try to show that there is no (...) evidence in Turing’s two seminal works that supports such a supposition. His 1936 paper is all about the notion of computation or computability as it applies to mathematical functions and not to the nature or workings of intelligence. On the other hand, while his 1950 work is about intelligence, it is, however, particularly concerned with the problem of whether intelligence can be attributed to computing machines and not of whether computationality can be attributed to human intelligence or to intelligence in general. (shrink)

This essay is a critical examination of how Edmund Husserl, in his appropriation of Franz Brentano’s concept of intentionality into his phenomenology, deals with the very issues that shaped Brentano’s theory of intentionality. These issues concern the proper criterion for distinguishing mental from physical phenomena and the right explanation for the independence of the intentionality of mental phenomena from the existence or non-existence of their objects. Husserl disagrees with Brentano’s views that intentionality is the distinguishing feature of all mental phenomena (...) and that the mental status of intentional objects is what explains the said independence. The crucial concept in Husserl’s theory of intentionality is the noema of consciousness, which functions in the same way as Gottlob Frege’s sense in his theory of semantics. This essay argues that Husserl’s alternative solutions to the problems of Brentano run in conflict either with the desired rigor of his phenomenology or with the actual workings of language. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss some of the criteria that are widely used in the linguistic and philosophical literature to classify an aspect of meaning as either semantic or pragmatic. With regards to the case of scalar implicature (e.g. some Fs are G implying that not all Fs are G), these criteria are not ultimately conclusive, either in the results of their application, or in the interpretation of the results with regards to the semantics/pragmatics distinction (or in both). I propose (...) a psychologically relevant criterion, that of the primary or secondary role of context. This criterion applies to sub-personal processes that derive the interpretation of a scalar term rather than to the eventual interpretation of the term, and there exist well-established experimental paradigms that can generate quantitative data. I present recent studies on scalar implicature which employ such off-line and real-time paradigms, aiming to demonstrate how research on the semantics/pragmatics distinction can benefit from experimental investigation. (shrink)

Professor Orsini’s book enters the controversy that has marked the changing response to Coleridge’s work during the past forty years, stimulated recently by the accessibility of Coleridge manuscripts and by the publication of hitherto unpublished works. Professor Orsini himself contributes to our new knowl­edge by publishing here for the first time texts from the note­books. His book is of importance and interest because it examines problems which are rooted in world-wide intellectual developments of recent times. Counterposing his argument against the (...) theory that Col­eridge had anticipated Kant and Schelling, Professor Orsini marshalls impressive evidence that shows that Coleridge was familiar with the works of the German idealists and that they greatly influenced his thinking, to the extent that he was for a time an expounder of transcendental idealism, and should be credited with bringing it to England. Professor Orsini’s new findings will lead inevitably to reassessment of Coleridge’s status as a philosopher, though he insists that his report is an interim one, that a final estimate must wait until all Coleridge’s writings have been published and assessed. (shrink)

Social reality is configured and permanently re-configured from the meaning societies give to the world. From these meanings, people shape their social order; their ways of being, doing, represent in the world, organizing in this framework their daily lives. It is established as a social practice as far as it acquires enough roots, significance and objectification to give a transformative sense to its social actors and their environment. The purpose of this article is to question some perspectives from which social (...) practice has been set up, departing decisively from the functional dimension, showing the power of the concept of social practice in the human configuration as an expression of humanity from the social imaginary. The article analyses some trends in social practice, seeking to establish a synthesis as an expression of humanity; it confronts theories and support its proposal in the logic of social imaginary to overcome the practice as mere activity and place it as socio-historical and psychosomatic stage. La realidad social se configura y re-configura permanentemente a partir del sentido que las sociedades dan al mundo. Desde estas significaciones las personas configuran su orden social; sus formas de ser, hacer, representar en el mundo, organizando en este marco su vida cotidiana. Ella se establece como práctica social en la medida que adquiere el suficiente arraigo, significación y objetivación que les da un sentido transformador a sus actores sociales y su entorno. El objeto del presente artículo es abordar algunas perspectivas desde las cuales se ha configurado la práctica social, que se salen decididamente de la dimensión meramente funcional, y que evidencian la potencia de este concepto en la configuración de seres humanos como expresión de humanidad desde los imaginarios sociales. En el texto se propone un análisis de algunas tendencias de la práctica social buscando establecer una síntesis de consideraciones por las cuales esta adquiere una dimensión como expresión de humanidad; confronta teorías que la apoyan y soporta su propuesta en la lógica de los imaginarios sociales para superar la práctica como mera actividad y situarla como escenario socio-histórico y psicosomático. (shrink)

In this paper, we compare the formal semantics approach to genericity, within which genericity is viewed as a species of quantification, and a growing body of experimental and developmental work on the topic, mainly by psychologists rather than linguists, proposing that genericity is categorically different from quantification. We argue that this generics-as-default hypothesis is much less well supported by evidence than its supporters contend, and that a research program combining theoretical and experimental research methods and considerations in the same studies (...) is required to make progress. (shrink)

This paper primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the latter over the former. I show the first to be unwarranted owing to (...) a lack of fundamental parallelisms between Searle’s and Husserl’s theories of intentionality. I show the second to be mistaken for failing to take into account Heidegger’s strategic handling of the concept of consciousness and for contradicting Heidegger’s concept of care as the essential meaning of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Lastly, I show the third to be highly problematic for lacking in textual evidence and explanatory power. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether 4- and 5-year-old children are sensitive to whether the content of a generalization is about a salient or noteworthy property (henceforth “striking”) and whether varying the number of exceptions has any effect on children’s willingness to extend a property after having heard a generalization. Moreover, they investigated how the content of a generalization interacts with exception tolerance. Adult data were collected for comparison. We used generalizations to describe novel kinds (e.g., “glippets”) that had either a neutral (...) (e.g., “play with toys”) or a striking property (e.g., “play with fire”) and measured how willing participants were to extend the property to a new instance of the novel kind. Experiment 1 demonstrated that both adults and children show sensitivity to strikingness in that striking properties were extended less than neutral ones, although children extended less than adults overall. The responses of both age groups were significantly different from chance. Experiment 2 introduced varying numbers of exceptions to the generalization made (minimal: 1 exception; maximal: 3 exceptions). Both adults and children extended both types of properties even in the face of exceptions, but to a lower degree than in Experiment 1. Striking properties were extended less than neutral ones, as in Experiment 1. We observed that the greater the number of exceptions, the lower the rates of extension we obtained, for both types of properties in adults, but only with striking properties in children. Children seemed to keep track of varying numbers of exceptions for striking properties, but their performance did not differ from chance. The findings underscore that 4- and 5-year-old children are sensitive to strikingness and to exception tolerance for generalizations and are developing toward an adult-like behavior with respect to the interplay between strikingness and exception tolerance when they learn about novel kinds. We discuss the implications of these results with regards to how children make generalizations. (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the concepts by means of which we think about our (...) phenomenal experiences. In this essay, the author examines David Chalmers' master argument against the PCS and the objections raised against this argument by Peter Carruthers, Bénédicte Veillet and Katalin Balog in defending the PCS. While the author finds these objections to be successful defences of the PCS, the author shares Balog's belief that in this regard, the debate between the physicalists and anti-physicalists is a stalemate. (shrink)

The damaging and harmful effects of the activities of some corporations on the consumers, employees, and natural environment, have given rise to the need to subject corporate policies, decisions, and actions to a moral evaluation. But due to the peculiar nature of the corporation, being a collective and a legal creation engaged in the activity of business, such evaluation has become a controversial matter, at least among philosophers. This controversy can be formulated as a question of whether corporations have certain (...) moral obligations which are over and above their legal and economic duties. Among the various ways of approaching this question, I focus on two general ones. The first concerns the ethical nature of corporate acts. Here I show why the business nature of corporate acts is no reason to exempt corporations from having moral obligations. The second concerns the moral status of corporations. Here I show why it remains meaningful to regard corporations as moral agents and thus as appropriate bearers of moral obligations. On the whole, I therefore argue for the view that corporations have moral obligations of their own. (shrink)

The second article, in which the author suggests an analysis of other three authors' state of nature models and tries to define the role of the models in their respective law concepts. The analysis demonstrates that all three models share same basic idea, which is the concept of an independent reasonable individual; this very idea is what these different models are based upon. The concept of an individual itself does not have a substantiation.

This essay shows the presence of transcendence in the on-going attempt to come up with a purely scientific account of the workings of the human mind. At the center of the developmental stages of this attempt is the computational theory of mind, which regards the human mind as some kind of computer. With Wittgenstein’s analysis of the limits of linguistic representation in the Tractatus as a framework, it is argued that the various difficulties encountered by this attempt are primarily due (...) to the transcendental nature of the human mind, which eludes scientific explanation. (shrink)

Critical in the computationalist account of the mind is the phenomenon called computational or computer simulation of human thinking, which is used to establish the theses that human thinking is a computational process and that computing machines are thinking systems. Accordingly, if human thinking can be simulated computationally then human thinking is a computational process; and if human thinking is a computational process then its computational simulation is itself a thinking process. This paper shows that the said phenomenon—the computational simulation (...) of human thinking—is ill-conceived, and that, as a consequence, the theses that it intends to establish are problematic. It is argued that what is simulated computationally is not human thinking as such but merely its behavioral manifestations; and that a computational simulation of these behavioral manifestations does not necessarily establish that human thinking is computational, as it is logically possible for a non-computational system to exhibit behaviors that lend themselves to a computational simulation. (shrink)

The present study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of the Goal orientation Scales in a sample of 2,170 Ecuadorian undergraduate students. The Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported the four-factor structure of the GOS, and the scale exhibited an adequate factorial invariance for gender. The multidimensional Rasch analysis revealed that one item showed misfit, and the distribution of items did not correspond well with the levels of achievement goals. The current research addresses a formal gap related to (...) the validation of the GOS in a Latin American country and provides advanced psychometric information to further improve the scale for its application to Spanish-speaking samples. (shrink)

Excerpt from Benedetto Croce: Philosopher of Art and Literary Critic In Italian of course there are several aids to the study of Croce, including a full bibliography, completely indexed; see Appendix 2. But there are still a number of unsettled points concerning the development of Croce's thought and the chronology of his doctrines. The current view of this chronology as it refers to aesthetic theory is cited above, but each date may be pushed backwards. The theory of art as expression (...) is already outlined in a book of 1893. The lyrical intuition, announced in the Heidelberg lecture of 1908, was already formulated in the first draft of the Logic The first formulation of ex pression as an a priori synthesis is dated, even by some Italian scholars, in 1912, but it is to be found in the Logic of 1908. The cosmic intuition is dated 1918, but it is already found in a book which goes back to 1915. My book gives some attention to chronology, but does not attempt to solve all the relative problems. A complete study of Croce's intellectual develop ment still remains to be done. However, the ultimate aim of this work is not biographical or purely historical but critical. The goal has been to see whether there is a practical theory of literary criticism in Croce. Are the problems of criticism solved more clearly and satisfactorily when viewed from Croce's standpoint? Is the question I have asked myself throughout. Accordingly, I have endeavored to see things as much as possible from his point of View and to present his doctrines in the most favorable light. However, dissent will appear on three main points of doctrine: Croce's handling of the image in his theory of practical criticism (chapters III and VIII), his third or universalistic aesthetics (chapter XI) and his later criticism of contemporary writing (chapter XIV). In other words, Croce in this book has been criticized only from within, when his conclusions appeared to be inconsistent with his premises. Of course these premises themselves are sub jcet to discussion. But this discussion is profitable only when it arises out of complete knowledge of what Croce had to say. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Business is one of the most pervasive elements of society, whose effects on our lives are extensive. As such, business decisions and behaviors need to be guided not only by economic and legal considerations but also by ethical ones. But because of some mistaken views, the place of ethics in business has remained vague and dubious; and this serves as a rationalization for regarding unethical practices in business as mere strategies for a successful business endeavor. This essay aims to establish (...) the grounds for the application of ethical principles to the business activity by clarifying the moral dimensions of such activity and by demonstrating the possibility of benevolent business. Its arguments center around three basic points, namely: that business acts possess the relevant features that give them moral status, that the arguments purporting to establish the irrelevance of ethics to the conduct of doing business are untenable, and that business selfishness need not be vicious and can combine with the selflessness of benevolence to produce a decision that is both ethical and profitable at the same time. (shrink)

While generic generalisations have been studied by linguists and philosophers for decades, they have only recently become the focus of concentrated interest by cognitive and developmental psychologists, who propose the generics-as-default view. In this paper we focus on the ‘Generic Overgeneralisation’ (GOG) effect proposed by Leslie and colleagues and the native speaker judgments that have been used to support it, and by extension, the generics-as-default view. We take a step back to look at the history of the GOG effect in (...) order to contextualise it. We review existing experimental evidence and discuss four non-mutually exclusive explanations for the GOG effect: ignorance, subkind interpretation, atypical behaviour of all and quantifier domain restriction. We conclude that a closer look at the semantics and pragmatics of generics and universal quantifiers may provide a more nuanced explanation for the pattern of judgment data than that proposed by the generics-as-default view. (shrink)

_Yanomami_ raises questions central to the field of anthropology—questions concerning the practice of fieldwork, the production of knowledge, and anthropology's intellectual and ethical vision of itself. Using the Yanomami controversy—one of anthropology's most famous and explosive imbroglios—as its starting point, this book draws readers into not only reflecting on but refashioning the very heart and soul of the discipline. It is both the most up-to-date and thorough public discussion of the Yanomami controversy available and an innovative and searching assessment of (...) the current state of anthropology. The Yanomami controversy came to public attention through the publication of Patrick Tierney's best-selling book, _Darkness in El Dorado,_ in which he accuses James Neel, a prominent geneticist who belonged to the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Napoleon Chagnon, whose introductory text on the Yanomami is perhaps the best-selling anthropological monograph of all time, of serious human rights violations. This book identifies the ethical dilemmas of the controversy and raises deeper, structural questions about the discipline. A portion of the book is devoted to a unique roundtable in which important scholars on different sides of the issues debate back and forth with each other. This format draws readers into deciding, for themselves, where they stand on the controversy’s—and many of anthropology’s—central concerns. All of the royalties from this book will be donated to helping the Yanomami improve their healthcare. (shrink)

Children who grow up exposed to more than one language face a range of challenges and developmental environments which differ from those of monolinguals. Recently, studies have suggested that this may lead to differences in the development of pragmatic skills and sensitivity to socio-pragmatic cues. We investigate whether bilingually exposed children are able to make further use of these cues in an ostensive teaching setting for word learning in a sample of 110 children aged 4 to 6 years old and (...) find evidence that bilingual children do perform significantly better in ostensive teaching settings when asked to use pragmatic cues to derive the meaning of a novel word. We discuss implications for theories of pragmatics and bilingual development. (shrink)

This paper discusses two paradigms of risk communication that guide strategies for communicating food safety issues. Built on the principles of social utility and paternalism, the first paradigm heavily relies on science and technical experts to determine food safety regulations and policies. Risk communication, in this context, is a unidirectional process by which experts from the industry or government regulatory agencies inform or alert potentially affected publics about the hazards they face and the protective actions they can take. However, public (...) trust and confidence in government and industry have considerably declined. Experts are being questioned about the objectivity of their assessments of risks. Policy makers are being challenged on such risk management decisions as tolerance guidelines, food labeling laws, and emergency warning systems. Concomitantly, some segments of the public, especially consumer advocates and environmental groups, are demanding increased input into the decision making process as they call for the recognition of lay perceptions and interpretations of risk as a legitimate counterpart to technically-assessed risk. Hence, instead of the linear, persuasion-oriented communication process, there are evolving efforts to shape risk communication into a more dialogical, interactive, and democratic exchange of information among different stakeholders (i.e., technical experts, government policy makers, industry, interest groups, and the general public). Reflecting a more Jeffersonian approach, this second paradigm argues that decisions about food safety are so complex and multi-dimensional that they must not be left to experts alone.However, both paradigms present ethical dilemmas. Determining the risks and relative safety of foods is not a totally objective and concise process. Since it involves social, economic, political, and personal values, how can the public not be involved in the exchange of ideas and information concerning food risks and safety? On the other hand, can we afford to let public opinion govern decisions pertaining to food risks and safety without consideration for the merits of scientific risk assessment? This paper raises questions regarding some assumptions of these two risk communication paradigms, and explores and discusses some of the salient ethical questions inherent in each framework. (shrink)

The behaviour of presupposition triggers in human language has been extensively studied and given rise to many distinct theoretical proposals. One intuitively appealing way of characterising presupposition is to argue that it constitutes backgrounded meaning, which does not contribute to updating the conversational record, and consequently may not be challenged or refuted by discourse participants. However, there are a wide range of presupposition triggers, some of which can systematically be used to introduce new information. Is there, then, a clear psychological (...) distinction between presupposition and assertion? Do certain expressions vacillate between presupposing and asserting information? And is information backgrounding a categorical or a gradient phenomenon? In this paper we argue for the value of experimental methods in addressing these questions, and present a pilot study demonstrating backgrounding effects of presupposition triggers, and suggesting their gradience in nature. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical categorisations of presupposition triggers. (shrink)

Binary judgement on under-informative utterances is the most widely used methodology to test children’s ability to generate implicatures. Accepting under-informative utterances is considered a failure to generate implicatures. We present off-line and reaction time evidence for the Pragmatic Tolerance Hypothesis, according to which some children who accept under-informative utterances are in fact competent with implicature but do not consider pragmatic violations grave enough to reject the critical utterance. Seventy-five Dutch-speaking four to nine-year-olds completed a binary and a ternary judgement task. (...) Half of the children who accepted an utterance in Experiment A penalised it in Experiment B. Reaction times revealed that these children experienced a slow-down in the critical utterances in Experiment A, suggesting that they detected the pragmatic violation even though they did not reject it. We propose that binary judgement tasks systematically underestimate children’s competence with pragmatics. (shrink)