Adolescent young carers (AYCs) are a sub-group of young carers who carry out significant or substantial caring tasks and assume a level of responsibility which would usually be associated with an adult. They are a potentially vulnerable group of minors because of the risk factors associated with their caring role. AYCs face a critical transition phase from adolescence to adulthood often with a lack of tailored support from service providers. The recently completed European funded ‘ME-WE’ project, which forms the focus (...) of this paper, aimed to change the ‘status quo’ by advancing the situation of AYCs in Europe, via responsive research and knowledge translation actions. This paper outlines the participatory, co-creation approach employed in the project to optimise AYC’s involvement. It describes the ethical framework adopted by the project consortium to ensure the wellbeing of AYCs within all project activities. Ethical issues that arose in the field study work in all six countries are presented, followed by a discussion of the level of success or otherwise of the consortium to address these issues. The paper concludes with lessons learned regarding ethically responsible research with and for AYCs that are likely transferable to other vulnerable research groups and pan-European projects. (shrink)

The purpose of this scoping review is to investigate the value of creative arts therapies in healthy older adults. This article aims to shed light on current knowledge concerning the effectiveness of art therapies for the prevention of common age-related conditions using the definition of art therapy provided by the American Art Therapy Association, as well as Cohen’s conceptual framework for the psychological conceptualization of the relationship between the arts and health in later life. The objective is to carefully capture (...) subthreshold situations of distress, which are often not taken into account and primarily involve psychological aspects that are crucial in the multidimensional perspective of healthy aging. Twelve articles were selected and examined following an initial electronic search on 3 databases. A thematic analysis of the results identified four major themes: improving cognitive performance and proprioception; enhancing self-identity and meaningful life; reducing feelings of loneliness and depressive symptoms; and the importance of socialization. All these aspects constitute the basis for preventing psychological distress and enhancing mental well-being for healthy aging. (shrink)

The debate on love's reasons ignores unrequited love, which—I argue—can be as genuine and as valuable as reciprocated love. I start by showing that the relationship view of love cannot account for either the reasons or the value of unrequited love. I then present the simple property view, an alternative to the relationship view that is beset with its own problems. In order to solve these problems, I present a more sophisticated version of the property view that integrates ideas from (...) different property theorists in the love literature. However, even this more sophisticated property view falls short in accounting for unrequited love's reasons. In response, I develop a new version of the property view that I call the experiential view. On this view, we love a person not only in virtue of properties shaped by and experienced in a reciprocal loving relationship, but also in virtue of perspectival properties, whose value can be properly assessed also outside of a reciprocal loving relationship. The experiential view is the only view that can account not only for reciprocated love's reasons, but also for unrequited love's reasons. (shrink)

The increasing application of network models to interpret biological systems raises a number of important methodological and epistemological questions. What novel insights can network analysis provide in biology? Are network approaches an extension of or in conflict with mechanistic research strategies? When and how can network and mechanistic approaches interact in productive ways? In this paper we address these questions by focusing on how biological networks are represented and analyzed in a diverse class of case studies. Our examples span from (...) the investigation of organizational properties of biological networks using tools from graph theory to the application of dynamical systems theory to understand the behavior of complex biological systems. We show how network approaches support and extend traditional mechanistic strategies but also offer novel strategies for dealing with biological complexity. (shrink)

This paper aims to reconfigure the place of memory in epistemology. I start by rethinking the problem that memory systems solve; rather than merely functioning to store information, I argue that the core function of any memory system is to support accurate and relevant retrieval. This way of specifying the function of memory has consequences for which structures and mechanisms make up a memory system. In brief, memory systems are modeling systems. This means that they generate, update and manage a (...) series of overlapping, simplified, relational representations that map out features of the world. Succeeding at building and maintaining models requires the kind of active knowledge generation traditionally associated only with deliberative reasoning. (shrink)

Evolutionary systems biology (ESB) aims to integrate methods from systems biology and evolutionary biology to go beyond the current limitations in both fields. This article clarifies some conceptual difficulties of this integration project, and shows how they can be overcome. The main challenge we consider involves the integration of evolutionary biology with developmental dynamics, illustrated with two examples. First, we examine historical tensions between efforts to define general evolutionary principles and articulation of detailed mechanistic explanations of specific traits. Next, these (...) tensions are further clarified by considering a recent case from another field focused on developmental dynamics: stem cell biology. In the stem cell case, incompatible explanatory aims block integration. Experimental approaches aim at mechanistic explanation while dynamical system models offer explanation in terms of general principles. We then discuss an ESB case in which integration succeeds: search for general attractors using a dynamical systems framework synergizes with the experimental search for detailed mechanisms. Contrasts between the positive and negative cases suggest general lessons for achieving an integrated understanding of developmental and evolutionary dynamics. The key integrative move is to acknowledge two complementary aims, both relevant to explanation: identifying the space of possible dynamic states and trajectories, and mechanistic understanding of causal interactions underlying a specific phenomenon of interest. These two aims can support one another in a joint project characterizing dynamic aspects of evolving lineages. This more inclusive project can lead to insights that cannot be reached by either approach in isolation. (shrink)

Design thinking in general, and optimality modeling in particular, have traditionally been associated with adaptationism—a research agenda that gives pride of place to natural selection in shaping biological characters. Our goal is to evaluate the role of design thinking in non-evolutionary analyses. Specifically, we focus on research into abstract design principles that underpin the functional organization of extant organisms. Drawing on case studies from engineering-inspired approaches in biology we show how optimality analysis, and other design-related methods, play a specific methodological (...) role that is tangential to the study of adaptation. To account for the role of these reasoning strategies in contemporary biology, we therefore suggest a reevaluation of the connection between design thinking and adaptationism. (shrink)

Where do values live in thought? A straightforward answer is that we (or our brains) make decisions using explicit value representations which are our values. Recent work applying reinforcement learning to decision-making and planning suggests that more specifically, we may represent both the instrumental expected value of actions as well as the intrinsic reward of outcomes. In this paper, I argue that identifying value with either of these representations is incomplete. For agents such as humans and other animals, there is (...) another place where reward can be located in thought: the division of the space of possibilities or ‘state space’. (shrink)

Proofs and countermodels are the two sides of completeness proofs, but, in general, failure to find one does not automatically give the other. The limitation is encountered also for decidable non-classical logics in traditional completeness proofs based on Henkin’s method of maximal consistent sets of formulas. A method is presented that makes it possible to establish completeness in a direct way: For any given sequent either a proof in the given logical system or a countermodel in the corresponding frame class (...) is found. The method is a synthesis of a generation of calculi with internalized relational semantics, a Tait–Schütte–Takeuti style completeness proof, and procedures to finitize the countermodel construction. Finitizations for intuitionistic propositional logic are obtained through the search for a minimal derivation, through pruning of infinite branches in search trees by means of a suitable syntactic counterpart of semantic filtration, or through a proof-theoretic embedding into an appropriate provability logic. A number of examples illustrates the method, its subtleties, challenges, and present scope. (shrink)

The aim of this volume is to offer an updated account of the transcendental character of phenomenology. The main question concerns the sense and relevance of transcendental philosophy today: What can such philosophy contribute to contemporary inquiries and debates after the many reasoned attacks against its idealistic, aprioristic, absolutist and universalistic tendencies—voiced most vigorously by late 20th century postmodern thinkers—as well as attacks against its apparently circular arguments and suspicious metaphysics launched by many analytic philosophers? Contributors also aim to clarify (...) the relations of transcendental phenomenology to other post-Kantian philosophies, most importantly to pragmatism and Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations. Finally, the volume offers a set of reflections on the meaning of post-transcendental phenomenology. (shrink)

This is a comment on a translation of Franz von Kutschera's paper ‘Ein verallgemeinerter Widerlegungsbegriff für Gentzenkalküle’, which was published in German in 1969. The paper is an important predecessor of what is nowadays called ‘proof-theoretic semantics’, which describes the view that the meaning of logical connectives is determined by the rules governing their use in a proof system. Von Kutschera adopts this view in this paper, and more specifically, a bilateralist view on this subject in that his aim is (...) to give a general framework that provides generalized rule schemata for arbitrary connectives both for proving and refuting and to use this as a reference to prove completeness of certain systems of operators purely proof-theoretically. The main logical system in focus here has been shown to be equivalent to N4, Nelson's constructive logic with strong negation. In order to understand the translated paper better, a contextualizing comment is offered referring and relating it to a preceding paper by von Kutschera. (shrink)

Explores the complex nature of truth in Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

Se analizan las políticas medio ambientales e indígenas durante el período 1990- 2010 de gobiernos de la Concertación, los tratados internacionales sobre el medio ambiente que inciden en el uso de recursos naturales en territorios huilliche. Se concluye que la política pública medioambiental, por su naturaleza reactiva, en el contexto de los mercados globales, se ha visto sobrepasada por la hegemonía del poder de las transnacionales que invierten en los commodities forestal, minero, agropecuario, amparadas por una legislación ambiental débil y (...) un discurso político obsecuente. (shrink)

A national survey of CEOs of manufacturing firms was conducted to identify factors explaining CEOs' intentions to engage in two questionable business practices: soliciting a competitor's technological secrets and making payments to foreign government officials to secure business. Drawing on research in corporate misconduct, ethical decision making, and strategic management, the authors analyzed ethical intentions by looking at hostile environmental conditions, opportunity-rich situations, and/or personal characteristics. Based on responses to scenarios, their findings suggest that the ethical intentions of CEOs may (...) be more affected by the decision maker's predisposition than by environmental pressures or organizational/situational characteristics. (shrink)

In the present study we elucidate the emotional and executive control interactions that might underlie optimism and pessimism. Participants completed a self-report measure of optimism/pessimism and performed an emotion faces categorisation task and an emotion n-back task in which they indicated whether each of a series of faces had the same or a different emotional expression (happy, sad, neutral) as the face presented two trials before. Trials were structured to measure latency to update emotional content in working memory (WM). More (...) pessimistic individuals formed connections among positive stimuli, and broke connections among positive and sad stimuli, in WM more slowly than did less pessimistic individuals; levels of optimism/pessimism did not affect the rate with which individuals formed and broke connections among neutral representations in WM. It appears, therefore, that levels of pessimism are related to specific affective cognitive mechanisms in WM that may be involved in emotion regulation. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the acknowledgement that individual reasoning, understood as inner dialogue, and social argumentation, albeit they are two different phenomena, share some similarities. On this basis, this paper sets out to apply instruments from argumentation theory to inner dialogue in order to better explain it. Within this framework, some limitations to the study of inner dialogue are also discussed; and methodological suggestions are provided in order to grasp what could be considered data on “inner dialogue” (...) starting from social research interviews. The ultimate aim is to go beyond a mere recognition of a similarity between inner dialogue and argumentation and start analysing inner dialogue empirically using tools from argumentation theory. The findings show that the analytic overview help shed light on how inner dialogue within processes of individual decision-making develops and what it means to have an internal difference of opinion, in which one and the same person adopts opposing standpoints and argues for them. On the opposite, it is shown that the notion of strategic manoeuvring per se cannot be applied to inner dialogue. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the role of ostracism in democratic Athens. I argue that the frequent expulsion of aristocrats by rival aristocrats in the predemocratic polis is the key to understanding the function of ostracism in the democratic polis. I show that aristocratic "politics of exile" was a fundamental political problem in the archaic polis and that democratic political power, symbolized by the institution of ostracism, was the polis' solution to the problem. In the archaic polis, the expulsion (...) of aristocrats often led to an endless cycle of exiles and returns and consequent political instability. In 508/7, the Athenian demos usurped the power over decisions of exile by banishing Isagoras and recalling Cleisthenes from exile. By taking control of decisions of exile, the Athenian demos took over political power insofar as power over decisions of exile had become synonymous with political power. The creation of the institution of ostracism, whereby the people decided collectively whether to banish a single citizen for ten years, provided not only a mechanism for the symbolic expression of democratic power, but also a means for the practical and ideological distinction between oligarchic and democratic rule. While aristocrats had banished their opponents without limit in numbers and duration of exile, the Athenian democracy decided each year whether to banish a single individual for a limited time period. In most years, the Athenian demos chose not to exercise the power of exile. Nevertheless, the annual question in the assembly served to remind aristocrats that the demos held the fundamental political power, and hence deterred aristocrats from attempting to overthrow the democracy. The limited nature of ostracism further deterred exiled aristocrats from attempting to return by force. Finally, the infrequent and moderate use of exile as a means of resolving political conflict helps to explain the extraordinary stability of the Athenian democracy. (shrink)

Illuminates the emergence of race as a central concept in philosophy and the social sciences.

I raise three challenges for Wu's project. First, are mental actions really relevantly similar to ordinary bodily actions? I suggest that it may be hard to capture commonalities between them while still being grounded in the cognitive structure of action. Second, might long-term memory have a greater role to play than Wu allows? This influence might be observed on top of an indirect connection that flows through activated long-term memories in working memory. Finally, where do spontaneous memories fit in to (...) Wu's picture? We end with an exchange about spontaneity, seriality, and control. (shrink)

Feminist science studies scholars have documented the historical and cultural contingency of scientific knowledge production. It follows that political and social activism has impacted the practice of science today; however, little has been done to examine the current cultures of science in light of feminist critiques and activism. In this article, I argue that, although critiques have changed the cultures of science both directly and indirectly, fundamental epistemological questions have largely been ignored and neutralized through these policy reforms. I provide (...) an auto-ethnography of my doctoral work in a neuroscience program to a) demonstrate how the culture of science has incorporated critiques into its practices and b) identify how we might use these changes in scientific practices to advance feminist science agendas. I critically analyze three areas in current scientific practice in which I see obstacles and opportunities: 1) research ethics, 2) diversity of research subjects and scientists, and 3) identification of a project's significance for funding. I argue that an understanding of the complicated and changing cultures of science is necessary for future feminist interventions into the sciences that directly challenge science's claim to epistemic authority. (shrink)

It has been argued that reduction procedures are closely connected to the question about identity of proofs and that accepting certain reductions would lead to a trivialization of identity of proofs in the sense that every derivation of the same conclusion would have to be identified. In this paper it will be shown that the question, which reductions we accept in our system, is not only important if we see them as generating a theory of proof identity but is also (...) decisive for the more general question whether a proof has meaningful content. There are certain reductions which would not only force us to identify proofs of different arbitrary formulas but which would render derivations in a system allowing them meaningless. To exclude such cases, a minimal criterion is proposed which reductions have to fulfill to be acceptable. (shrink)

In von Kutschera 1968 a propositional semantics was outlined which takes valid inferences to be defined by derivability relations in calculi.1 It was pointed out that from this approach it is desir...

Stone representation theorems are a central ingredient in the metatheory of philosophical logics and are used to establish modal embedding results in a general but indirect and non-constructive way. Their use in logical embeddings will be reviewed and it will be shown how they can be circumvented in favour of direct and constructive arguments through the methods of analytic proof theory, and how the intensional part of the representation results can be recovered from the syntactic proof of those embeddings. Analytic (...) methods will also be used to establish the embedding of subintuitionistic logics into the corresponding modal logics. Finally, proof-theoretic embeddings will be interpreted as a reduction of classes of word problems. (shrink)

Experience and research teach us that hope, optimism and faith are crucial aspects in how a person deals with a medical situation. One ancient source of wisdom which deals with Hope – the myth of Pandora – can be interpreted in different ways, pointing to different aspects of the way hope influences the human experience. In this paper I will try to demonstrate and discuss how this pertains to medical-psychology work with patients: A short case description will be brought to (...) demonstrate the complexity of the work of hope in (difficult) medical situations. The therapeutic work in these situations will be discussed. (shrink)

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)