Previous research suggests that exposure to nature may reduce delay discounting and thereby facilitate healthier dietary intake. This pre-registered study examined the impact of online exposure to images of natural scenes on delay discounting and food preferences. It was predicted that exposure to images of natural scenes would be associated with: lower delay discounting; higher desirability for fruits and vegetables ; and delay discounting would mediate the effect of nature-image exposure on food desirability. Adult participants were recruited to an online (...) between-subjects experiment in which they viewed a timed sequence of six images either showing natural landscape scenes or urban scenes. They then completed measures of mood, delay discounting and rated their momentary desire to eat four fruits and vegetables, and four energy-dense foods. There was no statistically significant effect of experimental condition on delay discounting or food desirability. Bayes factors supported the null hypothesis for discounting, and energy-dense food desirability, but provided no strong evidence for either hypothesis for F&V desirability. These findings indicate that brief online exposure to images of nature does not affect momentary impulsivity or energy-dense food preference, whereas for preference for less-energy dense foods, the evidence was inconclusive. (shrink)

This volume sets out to re-imagine the theoretical and epistemological presuppositions of existing scholarship on identities. Despite a well-established body of scholarly texts that examine the concept from a wide range of perspectives, there is a surprising dearth of work on multiple, heterogeneous forms of identity. Numerous studies of ethnic, linguistic, regional and religious identities have appeared, but largely in isolation from one another. Rethinking 'Identities' is a multi-authored project that is original in providing - in distributed and granular mode (...) - a hyper-contemporary and wide-ranging applied analysis that questions notions of identity based on nation and region, language, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion or even 'the human'. The volume achieves this by mobilizing various contexts of identity (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation) and medium (art, cinema, literature, music, theatre, video). Emphasizing the extreme contemporary (the twenty-first century) and the challenges posed by an increasingly global society, this collection of essays builds upon existing intellectual investigations of identity with the aim of offering a fresh perspective that transcends cognitive and geographical frontiers. (shrink)

"À l'ère postmoderne des incertitudes économiques et des défis identitaires qui sont ceux du XXIe siècle, penser l'être humain, c'est aussi explorer ou définir les univers non humains qui l'entourent. Toutefois, cette exploration est le plus souvent abstraite, figurative ou illustrative et reflète quasi exclusivement des intérêts humains. Elle instrumentalise ainsi les animaux, relégués à un rôle accessoire ou symbolique au profit d'une analyse concernée par l'humain et sa 'différence'. Cet ouvrage se départ de cette tendance pour considérer les responsabilités (...) humaines en regard des souffrances animales. Ce thème est en effet négligé par la pensée contemporaine, qui suit la trace anthropocentrique des priorités humaines d'une part, et par ailleurs rechigne à mener de front réflexion et militantisme. À travers une approche interdisciplinaire audacieuse, philosophes, vétérinaires, juristes, artistes, critiques littéraires, sociologues et historiens font ici part de leur désir de bouleverser les traditions humaines qui perpétuent l'oppression des animaux. Ils communiquent le fruit de leur expérience et de leur réflexion tout en exprimant l'urgence de leur engagement. En rompant le silence qui légitimise l'exploitation insensée de tous les êtres non humains, ils examinent certaines des conséquences de ces traditions, mais montrent également comment de nouvelles voies/x peuvent être prises, clamées et entendues afin de rendre possible la connexité de 'différents modes d'existence' (Bruno Latour)." [Source : 4e de couv.]. (shrink)

The large-scale and intensive collection and analysis of digital data (commonly called “Big Data”) has become a common, popular, and consensual research method for the social sciences, as the automation of data collection, mathematization of analysis, and digital objectification reinforce both its efficiency and truth-value. This article opens with a critical review of the literature on data collection and analysis, and summarizes current ethical discussions focusing on these technologies. A semiotic model of data production and circulation is then introduced to (...) problematize the view that digital data has ceased to stand for a formalization method (a possible kind of representation among others), and effectively “becomes the world itself” (a direct presentation of the world outperforming all other modes of representation). Following Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticist philosophy, we characterize digitalization as a hypersymbolic semiotic process, and we highlight the naturalization of meaning, the illusion of iconicity, and rhetorical efficiency on which data’s truth value relies within the context of its large-scale, profit-driven, and results-oriented research uses. This outlines some epistemological and ethical implications of data’s visualization, use, and authority, and indicates avenues for critical semiotics of contemporary data science and analysis. (shrink)

Gynaecological self-help, a well-known and historical feminist practice from the Second Wave movements which aims at embodying a radical alternative to traditional reproductive politics, is resurging today in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Drawing on empirical observations and interviews, this article questions the links between feminist memory of self-help, the shaping of nostalgia and the production of a political feminist ‘we’. Born at the end of the 1960s in the United States, feminist self-help travelled internationally and was appropriated differently depending on (...) national contexts. This ‘glorious’ history of self-help and, more importantly, its narrated memory, is central to contemporary European self-help activism, as observed in the three national contexts. Drawing on this insight, this article reveals the active memory-oriented emotional work of self-help activists. It examines the ways in which nostalgia for an imagined and lost past is actively and practically produced and encouraged in social movement practices, and highlights the specificity of the kind of collective feminist identity that it shapes and promotes in contemporary self-help politics. (shrink)

This research details a pilot study of Finnish college students and their views on the academic ethics. Finland is an unexamined population on this issue. In the current project, we surveyed students in the spring of 2014. We found unethical behavior is common on projects but less common on exams. We also found students are unwilling to report wrongdoing by other students. We examined differences between students’ attitudes on cheating based on several demographic factors, including gender, age and major. We (...) conclude by discussing the implications for further research in this area. (shrink)

Antropología y filosofía Los textos aquí reunidos son sólo pensamientos en voz alta, a la vez que propuestas para pensar, que más que aportar soluciones presentan problemas. Todos son textos programáticos, sin pretensión dogmática, dirigidos a mostrar que la reflexión científica sobre el ser humano pide, si ha de ser auténtica, su continuidad en la filosofía.

Inner speech has been shown to vary in form along several dimensions. Along condensation, condensed inner speech forms have been described, that are supposed to be deprived of acoustic, phonological and even syntactic qualities. Expanded forms, on the other extreme, display articulatory and auditory properties. Along dialogality, inner speech can be monologal, when we engage in internal soliloquy, or dialogal, when we recall past conversations or imagine future dialogues involving our own voice as well as that of others addressing us. (...) Along intentionality, it can be intentional (when we deliberately rehearse material in short-term memory) or it can arise unintentionally (during mind wandering). We introduce the ConDialInt model, a neurocognitive predictive control model of inner speech that accounts for its varieties along these three dimensions. ConDialInt spells out the condensation dimension by including inhibitory control at the conceptualization, formulation or articulatory planning stage. It accounts for dialogality, by assuming internal model adaptations and by speculating on neural processes underlying perspective switching. It explains the differences between intentional and spontaneous varieties in terms of monitoring. We present an fMRI study in which we probed varieties of inner speech along dialogality and intentionality, to examine the validity of the neuroanatomical correlates posited in ConDialInt. Condensation was also informally tackled. Our data support the hypothesis that expanded inner speech recruits speech production processes down to articulatory planning, resulting in a predicted signal, the inner voice, with auditory qualities. Along dialogality, covertly using an avatar’s voice resulted in the activation of right hemisphere homologues of the regions involved in internal own-voice soliloquy and in cerebellar deactivation, consistent with internal model adaptation. Switching from first-person to third-person perspective resulted in activations in precuneus and parietal lobules. Along intentionality, compared with intentional inner speech, mind wandering with inner speech episodes was associated with greater bilateral inferior frontal activation and decreased activation in left temporal regions. This is consistent with the reported subjective evanescence and presumably reflects condensation processes. Our results provide neuroanatomical evidence compatible with predictive control and in favor of the assumptions made in the ConDialInt model. (shrink)

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of "nature ethics," offering an alternative ecofeminist approach. Seeking to heal the divisions between the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

I show the relevance of feminist thought to some of the major debates within the field of environmental ethics. The feminist vision of a holistic universe is contrasted with the dualistic notions inherent in both the “individual rights” and traditionally defined “holist” camps. I criticize the attempt in environmental ethics to establish universal, hierarchical rules of conduct for our dealing with nature (an up-down dualism) as weIl as the attempt to derive an ethic from reason alone (the dualism of reason (...) and emotion). I maintain that the division between the “holist” and “individual rights” camps is yet another form of dualist thinking, and propose in its stead a holistic vision that concerns itself both with the individual and with the whole of which the individual is apart. (shrink)

The 21st International Climate Conference (COP21) demonstrated that a global consensus is possible among 195 countries. For this reason, we could say that climate change is a chance (perhaps the last) for humanity.It is indeed the only area where worldly governance now seems possible, although it also is needed to fight, for example, against global terrorism or to regulate international migration. - Through the ongoing experience concerning climate policy, a triple dynamic, which would establish a genuine global governance, can be (...) drawn: recognizing interdependencies, regulating contradictions, making actors aware of their responsibilities. It is therefore urgent we learn the lessons of the COP 21. (shrink)

This article explores the critical role of emotions and bodies in the individual dynamics of engagement as well as the construction of collective identities and action in women’s groups in the 1970s in France. Much literature on emotion work in feminist organizations has tended to discuss emotions stemming from women’s dominant socialization processes as, above all, alienating, thereby as barriers to their activism. The Movement for the liberty of abortion and birth control offers essential insights into how gendered dispositions can (...) be primary determinants of feminist collective identity formation, and even spur innovative protest practices. With their specific organizational settings and action, some ‘dissident MLACs’ in Aix-en-Provence, Lille, Lyon and Paris – those which continued to practice abortion despite its legalization and in defiance of the 1975 law which forbade them to do so – mobilized reciprocal emotions and bodily experiences to sustain engagement and serve a political project. Drawing on a wide array of biographical interviews and archival sources centred on abortion practices, the article examines the distinctive emotion culture these groups constructed. Its anchoring in bodies, commitment to emotions like tenderness and compassion, but also domestic and relational skills consecrated a gendered repertoire of action which therefore notably appealed to women whose social properties did not predispose them to collective action. (shrink)

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Saving Animals, a study of three different kinds of animal sanctuaries, is the first major ethnography to describe how sanctuaries “unmake” the notion of animals as property that reduces them to “bare life.” The study relies on numerous engaging narratives about rescue animals, their mutual interactions, and their interactions with the people who care for them—narratives that illustrate how the sentience and subjectivity of animals provide a firm ground for the author's ethical considerations. An animal sanctuary is ideally an intentional (...) community of cocitizens whose pragmatic and symbolic value resides in its ability to lay the foundation for a broad challenge to all violent practices of exploitation “targeted at a range of different others.” The patient, incremental work of sanctuaries has implications not only for the future of human-animal relations but more broadly for the future of humans on the planet. The ultimate vision of sanctuaries is a world outside that mirrors the world inside, a pantopia where there will be no “others,” only “us.”. (shrink)

In the semantic revolution that has led many philosophers of language away from Fregeanism and towards the acceptance of direct reference, the notion of rigidity introduced by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity has played a crucial role. The notions of rigidity and direct reference are indeed different, but proponents of new theories of reference agree that there is a one way connection between them: although not all rigid terms are directly referential (witness rigid definite descriptions), all directly referential terms (...) are rigid. My purpose in this paper is to contest this widely held view. I will argue that, on a certain conception of what direct reference is (a conception present in the works of the main proponents of the theory), the fact that a term is directly referential does not entail that it is rigid. From this conclusion, I will argue, we can learn some substantial lessons about the assumptions and commitments of new theories of reference. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young fue una de las pensadoras feministas más importantes del último cuarto del siglo pasado. Su obra es reconocida internacionalmente como una de las aportaciones más creativas e influyentes de nuestra época. Con el objeto de celebrar su aporte único y su novedad y de mantener vivo su pensamiento, Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán desarrolla un riguroso análisis crítico de su obra desde las cuestiones de justicia social, democracia deliberativa y su relación con la teoría de la opresión, hasta el enfoque (...) metodológico con el que Young aproxima su estudio sobre la experiencia corporal femenina llevando a diálogo las ideas de Simone de Beauvoir y Merleau-Ponty. Se examinan sus herramientas conceptuales articuladas desde la teoría crítica (Habermas y Marcuse), junto con el postestructuralismo psicoanalítico (Kristeva e Irigaray). Asimismo, el libro trata de plasmar las fructíferas controversias teóricas que Iris Young llevó a cabo con autores y autoras de relevancia internacional como lo son Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, John Rawls o el propio Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

This article focuses on subtle energies (those energies that fall outside the four regularly recognized energy forces of gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Research and insights from the social, physical, and healing sciences are discussed. Key concepts from these disciplines are explored creating a cross-disciplinary analysis of recent research. A case is made for building upon the growing understanding of the influence and importance of the subtle energies in our daily lives as well as the ongoing (...) evolution of our species and planet. The author advocates for increased explorations in the use of these energies for positive social transformation and healing. (shrink)

Resumen: La vida en un mas. Tal vez pueda ser una imagen utópica, especialmente ahora que se habla de la España vaciada. Pero durante siglos fue una realidad. El aprovechamiento de los recursos naturales que un ámbito montañés podía ofrecer configuró un sistema de poblamiento con una amplia presencia de pequeños núcleos diseminados y aislados, autosuficientes. En ocasiones su tamaño permite hablar de poblas. En otras ocasiones se trata de simples masías. Recuperamos ahora la historia de un mas poco conocido: (...) Fraximeno. La novedad radica en la presentación de más de 70 documentos regestados, datados entre los siglos XIV y XV que permiten reconstruir la historia de este lugar y de sus habitantes, y sus relaciones con Cinctorres y con el monasterio de Benifassá. Palabras clave: masada, reino medieval de Valencia, Els Ports de Morella, siglos xiv-xv: Life in a farm. Perhaps it can be a utopian image, especially now that there is talk of emptied Spain. But for centuries it was a reality. The use of natural resources that a mountainous area could offer configured a population system with a large presence of small, scattered and isolated, self-sufficient villages. Sometimes its size allows to speak of Poblas. At other times they are simple farmhouses. We now recover the story of a farm little known one: Fraximeno. The novelty lies in the presentation of more than 70 regestated documents, dated between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that allow us to reconstruct the history of this place and its inhabitants, and its relations with Cinctorres and with the Benifassá monastery. Key words: farm, medieval kingdom of Valencia, Els Ports de Morella, 14-15th centuries. (shrink)

Gut microbiome plays a significant role in defining the health status of subjects, and recent studies highlight the importance of using time series strategies to analyse microbiome dynamics. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian model for microbiota longitudinal data, based on Dirichlet distribution with time-varying parameters, that take into account the compositional paradigm and consider principal balances. The proposed model can be effective for predicting the future dynamics of a microbial community in the short term and for analysing the (...) microbial interactions using the value of the estimated parameters. The usefulness of the proposed model is illustrated with six different datasets, and a comparison study with four alternative models is provided. (shrink)

v. 1. Introduction -- v. 2. Comparaison -- v. 3. Conclusion.