A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they willing to sacrifice it for other attributes, such as income and health? Tackling this question has largely been the preserve of philosophers. In this article, we find out just how much happiness matters to ordinary citizens. Our sample consists of nearly 13,000 members of the UK and US (...) general populations. We ask them to choose between, and make judgments over, lives that are high in different types of happiness and low in income, physical health, family, career success, or education. We find that people by and large choose the life that is highest in happiness but health is by far the most important other concern, with considerable numbers of people choosing to be healthy rather than happy. We discuss some possible reasons for this preference. (shrink)

In this article, the author describes sweeping changes in the gender system and offers explanations for why change has been uneven. Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have had little incentive to take on female activities or jobs. The gender egalitarianism that gained traction was the notion that women should have access to upward mobility and to all areas of schooling and jobs. But persistent (...) gender essentialism means that most people follow gender-typical paths except when upward mobility is impossible otherwise. Middle-class women entered managerial and professional jobs more than working-class women integrated blue-collar jobs because the latter were able to move up while choosing a “female” occupation; many mothers of middle-class women were already in the highest-status female occupations. The author also notes a number of gender-egalitarian trends that have stalled. (shrink)

According to the authors of Populism and Civil Society, ‘populism is situated within the democratic imaginary’ but its logic is authoritarian. This article agrees with the first but challenges the second argument by focussing on the question of representation. In the case of ‘populism as government’ the tensions between bottom-up and top-down articulations seem to be more or less resolved by the repression of bottom-up organization, but in so doing, so the argument of this article, populism is mutating into something (...) else. Furthermore, ‘populist dictatorship’ seems to be closer to a dictatorship strategically using populist tools than to an intrinsic populist logic. While I agree with the authors on the authoritarian cases of populism in government, my argument diverges from the book when it comes to populism as government and introduces a discussion about the nature of populism. To this purpose, I first propose a complex definition of populism which understands populism not as the essence, but as one component of hybrid authoritarian formations, thus enabling the disentanglement of populism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. Second, I examine two components of populism that Arato and Cohen lay out in the book: the specific representation pars pro toto and embodiment. Building on Lefort, I argue that these components are not populist but totalitarian and that the empirical manifestations of populism are always hybrid, mixing populist and authoritarian or even totalitarian components. (shrink)

“Neither doth our Sex delight or understand Philosophy.”.

Este texto é um ensaio hermenêutico sobre as reflexões epistemológicas do habitar as cidades contemporâneas a partir de um sentido fenomenológico. Ao destacar as crises de natureza ambiental, social e econômica que se manifestam na modernidade, reflito como essas crises podem se apresentar como inseguranças existenciais do ser-na-cidade, retratadas aqui com a metáfora de “distopias urbanas”. Procuro ponderar como uma postura ontológica, a partir da fenomenologia existencial de Heidegger, pode revelar outras perspectivas epistêmicas sobre as bases das ciências humanas que (...) fundam a compreensão da crise da vida nas cidades. Para isso, traço um fio reflexivo e epistemológico que se inicia desde os postulados e categorias kantianas de conhecimento científico em contraposição aos fundamentos existenciais heideggerianos sobre o tema. (shrink)

Este artículo parte de la perspectiva del materialismo posthumano, una línea de investigación que asume el presente como un contexto postantropocéntrico y postnatural en el que se ha vuelto indispensable volver a considerar las diversas lógicas de existencia que pueblan la Tierra. Es decir, se trata de pensar el espacio post/inhumano que se abre con la interacción, la hibridación y la co-emergencia de todo lo existente en la que los actores humanos están presentes pero no ya en el centro de (...) la acción, sino en una mezcla de agencialidades diversas. En esta oportunidad se presentará una lectura de Las aventuras de la China Iron, de Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, desde una estética materialista posthumana. Por un lado, en la medida en que la narradora es un animal humano, la novela será entendida como una descripción horizontal y no jerárquica del lugar de la “humanidad” en el planeta; y, por el otro, como la exploración de las mutuamente contaminadas potencias de actuar, pensar y sentir de lo existente en general: lo animal, lo vegetal y lo mineral no ya taxonomizados en reinos sino mezclados en el “compost” sin alambrado, ingobernable y fértil que podría ser el “desierto” argentino. De esta forma, en tanto que reescritura del Martín Fierro, texto considerado fundacional de la identidad nacional argentina, la novela de Cabezón Cámara podría ser la fabulación de una “matria” queer y holoéntica que alberga criaturas de múltiples especies y reinos. (shrink)

This article aim to show the aesthetics and ethics values whose relation traces could be found in theological text studies. We use bibliographic review as methodology to this research. Considering these elements and how it was found we ask: how can we validate such elements to understand the theological text? When we are analyzing ethics behaviors can we consider the found results as intrinsic values in such discoveries and can it be compared in different times, in other words, it is (...) available if we bring it out to our time without prejudice considering criteria. We know values and beliefs can change according different times, but the main question that translates our doubt is: how can we consider the ethical and aesthetical values described in different times avoiding damage then to be impartial in the research? In spite of lots of doubts rose, what can support on our research reading are historic and current images we can validate as support line to comparative analysis considering ethics and aesthetics values found. This text will be presented as communication in this event.Key Words: Methodology. Ethics and research. Aesthetics and research. Theological methodology. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt disavowed the title of “philosopher,” and is known above all as a political theorist. But the relationship between philosophy and politics animates her entire oeuvre. We find her addressing the topic in The Human Condition (1958), in Between Past and Future (a collection of essays written in the early 1960s), and in Men in Dark Times (another collection of essays, this one from the late sixties). It is treated in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, composed during the (...) seventies, and also in the posthumous Life of the Mind, two of three projected volumes of which were complete when she died in 1975. Certainly, Arendt’s thought cannot be understood without taking into account her deep suspicion of and equally deep commitment to philosophy in the context of political reflection. For all that, her writings on this abiding preoccupation do not gel into a systematically articulated theory or programmatic statement. Instead, they reflect Arendt’s appreciation of what remained for her a “vital tension” – an enigma. (shrink)

Scarce healthcare resources can be allocated in many ways. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the UK focuses on the size of the benefit relative to costs, yet we know that there is support among clinicians and the general public for reducing inequalities in health. This paper shows how the UK general public trade-off these sometimes competing objectives, and the data we gather allow us to show the weight given to different population groups, for example, 1 extra (...) year of life in full health to someone who would otherwise die at the age of 60 years is worth more than twice as much as an additional year of life to someone who would otherwise die at the age of 70 years. Such data can help inform the rationing decisions faced by all healthcare systems around the world. (shrink)

A growing trend toward knowledge workers and more highly educated employees has made effective human resource management a key metric separating the corporate wheat from the chaff. Studies confirm that the way people are managed and developed delivers a higher return on investment than new technology, R&D, competitive strategy or quality initiatives. In this book, the authors contend that the broader management models of Management by Instructions and Management by Objectives fail to position organizations for competitive success. What is needed (...) is a strategic leadership tool whose practical application will mine market potential through its relevance to individual organizational members. With a step by step guide to implementation, Managing by Values is just such a tool. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, spontaneous, ‘initiatory’ human action and interaction are suppressed by the normalizing pressures of society once ‘life’ - that is, sheer life - becomes the primary concern of politics, as it does, she finds, in the modern age. Arendt’s concept of the social is indebted to Martin Heidegger’s analysis of everyday Dasein in Being and Time , and contemporary political philosophers inspired by Heidegger, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Giorgio Agamben, tend to reproduce her account of (...) the withdrawal of the political in modernity. In this article, I complicate Arendt’s theory by turning to Michel Foucault’s parallel but diverging understanding of the nature of power in modern society to show, surprisingly, that Foucault’s narrative of the emergence of modern power pictures a society that is more, not less, politicized. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • bio-power • Michel Foucault • Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe • modernity • Jean-Luc Nancy • pastoral power • the social • rulership. (shrink)

Imagine if, when broken-hearted by their romantic partner leaving them, a person could continue the relationship with a chatbot or avatar version of them. This might seem like a far-fetched scenario but a little thought reveals that, first, this is a product that could plausibly make its way to the market and, second, it would be harmful for both parties of the former relationship and plausibly abusive for the person who has been ‘bot-ed’ without their consent.

Testimony is a source of knowledge. A speaker asserts what a hearer may therefore come to know. Assertion has widely been treated as the exclusive or at least the paradigmatic vehicle for testimony. I argue that we testify not only by asserting something, but also by taking something for granted within some other utterance. In philosophy of language, this is called semantic presupposition. The very reasons leading theorists of testimony have for thinking that assertion can be testimony are equally reasons (...) for thinking semantic presupposition can be testimony. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci is one of the major social and political theorists of the 20th century whose work has had an enormous influence on several fields, including educational theory and practice. Gramsci and Education demonstrates the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's thought for contemporary educational debates. The essays are written by scholars located in different parts of the world, a number of whom are well known internationally for their contributions to Gramscian scholarship and/or educational research. The collection deals with a broad range (...) of topics, including schooling, adult education in general, popular education, workers' education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate among a group of non-profit organizations: a) the effect of ethical leadership on volunteers’ satisfaction, affective organizational commitment and intention to stay in the same organization; b) the role played by job satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between ethical leadership and volunteers’ intentions to stay in the same organization, as well as between ethical leadership and affective commitment. An anonymous questionnaire was individually administered to 198 Italian volunteers of different non-profit (...) organizations. The questionnaire contained the Ethical Leadership Scale, the Volunteers Satisfaction Index, the Affective organization Scale, as well as questions regarding the participants’ age, sex, type of work, level of education, length of their volunteer works, intention to volunteer in the following months in the same organization. The construct as well the effects of EL on volunteers is approached in light of the Social Exchange Theory and the Social Learning Theory. Structural equation models were used to test hypothesized relationships. The results confirm the role of mediation of volunteer satisfaction in the relationships between the variables studied. In particular, ethical leadership was found to be positively associated both with volunteers’ intention of staying and with their affective commitment. In the first case this relationship is fully explained by the mediation of the volunteers’ satisfaction, while the latter is explained by both direct and indirect factors. To the authors’ knowledge, this the first attempt to understand the role played by ethical leadership on volunteers’ behavior and, more in general, in the management of non-profit organizations. Findings are relevant both for practitioners and managers of non-profit organization, since they suggest the relevance of the perception of ethical leadership by volunteers, as well as for scholars, since they further deepen the knowledge on EL and its effects on the followers. Limits of the study: the questionnaire was administered only among a group of non-statistical sample of volunteers. Furthermore, the study reached only volunteers from Italian non-profit organization. (shrink)

According to one of the most powerful paradigms explaining the meaning of the concept of natural number, natural numbers get a large part of their conceptual content from core cognitive abilities. Carey’s bootstrapping provides a model of the role of core cognition in the creation of mature mathematical concepts. In this paper, I conduct conceptual analyses of various theories within this paradigm, concluding that the theories based on the ability to subitize (i.e., to assess anexactquantity of the elements in a (...) collection without counting them), or on the ability to approximate quantities (i.e., to assess anapproximatequantity of the elements in a collection without counting them), or both, fail to provide a conceptual basis for bootstrapping the concept of an exact natural number. In particular, I argue that none of the existing theories explains one of the key characteristics of the natural number structure: the equidistances between successive elements of the natural numbers progression. I suggest that this regularity could be based on another innate cognitive ability, namely sensitivity to the regularity of rhythm. In the final section, I propose a new position within the core cognition paradigm, inspired by structuralist positions in philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge's Global Resources Dividend relies on a flat tax on the use of natural resources to fund the eradication of world poverty. Hillel Steiner's Global Fund taxes the full rental value of owned natural resources and distributes the proceeds equally. The paper compares the Dividend and the Fund and defends the Global Share, a novel proposal that taxes either use or ownership, does so (when possible) progressively, and distributes the revenue according to a prioritarian rather than a sufficientarian or (...) egalitarian principle. (shrink)

Aristotle's discussion of the motivation of the good person is both complicated and cryptic. Depending on which passages are emphasized, he may seem to be presenting a Kantian style view according to which the good person is and ought to be motivated primarily by reason, or a Humean style view according to which desires and feelings are or ought to be in charge. In this book, Paula Gottlieb argues that Aristotle sees the thought, desires and feelings of the good (...) person as interdependent in a way that is sui generis, and she explains how Aristotle's concept of choice is an innovative and pivotal element in his account. Gottlieb's interpretation casts light on Aristotle's account of moral education, on the psychology of good, bad and half-bad people, and on the aesthetic and even musical side to being a good person. (shrink)

This paper provides a description of the role of the clinical ethicist as it is generally experienced in Canada. It examines the activities of Canadian ethicists working in healthcare institutions and the way in which their work incorporates more than ethics case consultation. The Canadian Bioethics Society established a Taskforce on Working Conditions for Bioethics (hereafter referred to as the Taskforce), to make recommendations on a number of issues affecting ethicists and to develop a model role description. This essay carefully (...) assesses this model role description. (shrink)

Turing and Church formulated two different formal accounts of computability that turned out to be extensionally equivalent. Since the accounts refer to different properties they cannot both be adequate conceptual analyses of the concept of computability. This insight has led to a discussion concerning which account is adequate. Some authors have suggested that this philosophical debate—which shows few signs of converging on one view—can be circumvented by regarding Church’s and Turing’s theses as explications. This move opens up the possibility that (...) both accounts could be adequate, albeit in their own different ways. In this paper, I focus on the question of whether Church’s thesis can be seen as an explication in the precise Carnapian sense. Most importantly, I address an additional constraint that Carnap puts on the explicative power of axiomatic systems—an axiomatisation explicates when it is clear which mathematical entities form the theory’s intended model—and that implicitly applies to axiomatisations of recursion theory used in Church’s account of computability. To overcome this difficulty, I propose two possible clarifications of the pre-systematic concept of “computability” that can both be captured in recursion theory, and I show how both clarifications avoid an objection arising from Carnap’s constraint. (shrink)

The post‐embryonic architecture of higher plants is derived from the activity of two meristems that are formed in the embryo: the shoot meristem and the root meristem. The epidermis of the shoot is derived from the outermost layer of cells covering the shoot meristem through repeated anticlinal divisions. By contrast, the epidermis of the root is derived from an internal ring of cells, located at the centre of the root meristem, by a precise series of both periclinal and anticlinal divisions. (...) Each epidermis has an independent origin. In Arabidopsis the mature shoot epidermis is composed of a small number of cell types: hair cells (trichomes), stomatal guard cells and other epidermal cells. In shoots, hairs take the form of branched trichomes that are surrounded at their base by a ring of accessory cells in a sheet of epidermal cells. The root epidermis is composed of two cell types: trichoblasts that form root hair cells and atrichoblasts that form non‐hair cells. Mutations affecting both the patterning and the morphogenesis of cells in both shoot and root epidermis have recently been described. Most of these mutations affect development in a single epidermis, but at least one, ttg, is involved in development in both epidermal systems. (shrink)