Selecting a large and diverse sample of 5–6-year-old preschool children, we aimed to extend previous findings on variability in children’s home math environment and its association with children’s mathematical skills. We operationalized mathematics in a broader way than in previous studies, by considering not only children’s numerical skills but also their patterning skills as integral components of early mathematical development. We investigated the effects of children’s gender and socioeconomic status on their home math environment, examined the associations between children’s home (...) math environment and their mathematical skills, and verified whether these associations were moderated by children’s gender and/or SES. Parents of 353 children completed a home math environment questionnaire and all children completed measures of their numerical and patterning skills. Results indicated no effect of children’s gender on their home math environment. There was no effect of SES on the performed home math activities, but small SES differences existed in parents’ math-related expectations and their attitudes. We found no evidence for associations between children’s home math environment and their mathematical skills. Furthermore, there were no moderating effects of gender or SES on these associations. One explanation for these findings might relate to the characteristics of the general preschool system in the country of the present study. Future studies should consider the effect of the preschool learning environment because it might explain differences between studies and countries with regard to the home math environment and its association with mathematical skills. (shrink)

Expanded universal carrier screening (EUCS) entails a population‐wide screening offer for multiple disease‐causing mutations simultaneously. Although there is much debate about the conditions under which EUCS can responsibly be introduced, there seems to be little discussion about its aim: providing carrier couples with options for autonomous reproductive choice. While this links in with current accounts of the aim of foetal anomaly screening, it is different from how the aim of ancestry‐based carrier screening has traditionally been understood: reducing the disease burden (...) in the population. The reasons why the aim of EUCS is presented in terms of ‘autonomy’ rather than ‘prevention’ have not been spelled out in the literature. This paper seeks to fill this gap by considering the morally relevant similarities and dissimilarities between foetal anomaly screening, ancestry‐based carrier screening and EUCS. When carrier screening is performed in the prenatal period, enhancing autonomy appears the most appropriate aim of EUCS, as the alternative of ‘prevention through selective abortion’ would urge women to terminate wanted pregnancies. However, when screening is conducted in the preconception period, carrier couples can avoid the birth of affected children by other means than selective abortion, for instance preimplantation genetic diagnosis. To the extent that this increased control over passing on a genetic disorder raises questions of parental responsibility, it seems necessary that the account of the aims of EUCS is wider than only in terms of enhancing reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

Male piglets in Belgium are still castrated unanesthetized in the first week of life, but animal rights organizations, supermarkets, and some consumers no longer accept this method in terms of animal welfare, and are pushing the pig industry to apply available alternative methods. This major change in pig husbandry will increase production costs without a guarantee for return of investment by consumers. Therefore, it is important to know the opinion of consumers on this matter. A questionnaire was used to collect (...) data from 1,018 people through face to face interviewing in Flanders. A Chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test were used to analyze the data. Results show that in spite of several media campaigns of animal welfare organizations over the past few years, still half of the Flemish respondents were not aware of the problem of unanesthetized piglet castration. However, after being informed, the majority wanted unanesthetized castration to be banned. Although the concern about animal welfare implications was very high, the willingness to pay extra for alternatives was low. (shrink)

This article uncovers the current discursive practices concerning socially vulnerable people in Danish society. A discourse analytical approach inspired by Michel Foucault, along with contributions from Erving Goffmann's work ‘Stigma’, is utilized throughout the analysis. First, the dominant discursive formations are described across the data material, consisting of sociopolitical and health policy documents. Second, we uncover how problematizations and mechanisms of power along with the emergence of the competition state push socially vulnerable people out into the periphery of society. Finally, (...) we discuss responsibility regarding social vulnerability and the structural injustice that follows. Our aim is to facilitate critical awareness of how socially vulnerable people are constructed and contribute to destabilizing accepted meanings and perceptions of social vulnerability. This study shows that being categorized as socially vulnerable is associated with poor health behavior and perceived as being in a dependent relationship with superior systems. The analysis points to a focus on strengthening and developing the work capacity of socially vulnerable people. Thus, the objective of the analyzed documents revolves around securing socially vulnerable people's contribution to society's economy. This article contributes with a perspective on how society, and therefore also healthcare professionals, perceive and interact with socially vulnerable people. (shrink)

Moral ideals should not be seen as simple and purely personal, but as complex values with a social dimension that transcend attempts to formulate or realize them. Orientation towards ideals needs a realistic component: people should identify with the quest for an ideal, not with the ideal itself, and consider the possibility of negative consequences of their pursuit. Such realism about ideals includes acknowledging that ideals are not the only, nor the most important, motivating force of morality.

Low‐back pain can be invalidating physically as well as mentally. Despite professional help to treat and prevent low‐back pain, the pain often persists, and so do the problems related to low‐back pain. An intervention that made it possible for a significant part of patients with low‐back pain to improve health and well‐being raised the question: Why was it possible to help some and not others? The aim of the present paper was to achieve a deeper understanding of factors patients experienced (...) as helpful in professional support related to low‐back pain. This was explored using a hermeneutic‐phenomenological approach while analysing 20 interviews with patients with low‐back pain purposively chosen interviews conducted in relation to the intervention. An analysis was made using Ricoeur's interpretation theory. Data on both positive and negative experiences were read and reflected upon. We found that healthcare professionals’ adoption of a narrative approach facilitating the patient's perspective was perceived as helpful. Patients experienced this as being taken seriously; an experience that could be explained at a deeper, more nuanced level using Heidegger's philosophy. Facilitating the patient's perspective was conditional not only on the professional obtaining access to the patient's perspective but also on understanding and acknowledging the patient's existence. The challenge for healthcare professionals in this respect is to bridge the gap between the consultation's fact‐focused concern with the medical implications of low‐back pain and the patient's concern with the implications low‐back pain has for his or her personal identity and life. Listening to the patient's perspective in itself supports the subjective recovery process, while also supporting the quality of patient‐centred support and strengthening the patient's trust in its helpfulness. (shrink)

The findings of our experiments showed that social network sites such as Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter, have the ability to acquire knowledge about their users’ movements not only within SNSs but also beyond SNS boundaries, particularly among websites that embedded SNS widgets such as Google’s Plus One button, Facebook’s Like button, and Twitter’s Tweet button. In this paper, we analysed the privacy implication of such a practice from a moral perspective by applying Helen Nissenbaum’s decision heuristic derived from her (...) contextual integrity framework in order to answer the question of whether or not an online user’s privacy is being violated by this practice. (shrink)

This study investigates the underlying mechanisms of how young adolescents process social advertising (i. e., advertising on social networking sites which shows how many and which of the user’s friends have ‘liked’ the brand’s page). Particularly, two experiments examined the role of brand trust in adolescents’ attitude formation and how brand trust is predicted by theories of social proof and persuasion knowledge. In addition, the moderating role of brand familiarity and brand value is investigated. The first experiment (N = 142) (...) showed that higher brand trust was induced for social advertising for unfamiliar but not for familiar brands through the principle of social proof. This means that friends’ likes may reduce uncertainty and increase trust in unfamiliar brands through social advertising, something which enhances brand attitudes. Persuasion knowledge could not explain the effects of social advertising. The second experiment (N = 72) showed that social advertisements are more effective for brands that are symbolic (versus non-symbolic). Managerial and policy implications regarding social advertising targeting adolescents are discussed. (shrink)

There are remarkable behavioral, neural, and genetic similarities between the way songbirds learn to sing and human infants learn to speak. Furthermore, the brain regions involved in birdsong learning, perception, and production have been identified and characterized in detail. In particular, the caudal medial nidopallium (the avian analog of the mammalian auditory‐association cortex) has been found to contain the neural substrate of auditory memory, paving the way for analyses of the underlying molecular mechanisms. Recently, the zebra finch genome was sequenced, (...) and annotated cDNA databases representing over 15,000 unique brain‐expressed genes are available, enabling high‐throughput gene expression analyses. Here we review the involvement of immediate early genes (e.g. zenk and arc), their downstream targets (e.g. synapsins), and their regulatory signaling pathways (e.g. MAPK/ERK) in songbird memory. We propose that in‐depth investigations of zenk‐ and ERK‐dependent cascades will help to further unravel the molecular basis of auditory memory. (shrink)

Toward the end of Light in August, in the climactic scene in Chapter 1 where the authorities of justice pursue the elusive Joe Christmas through the streets of Jefferson, William Faulkner introduces a new character, Percy Grimm, a twenty-five-year-old captain in the State National Guard who has relentlessly acquired the rank of a special deputy for the search. As the town closes for the weekend, Grimm keeps vigil at a downtown store where other townsfolk have begun a poker game to (...) stay awake through the night as the search goes on. In their zeal to uphold law and justice, his men revel in their fantastic make-believe that they are doing the work of “a hidden and unsleeping and omnipotent eye watching the doings of men.” The poker game goes on through Saturday night until Christmas is spotted and given chase. As Grimm runs through the streets after the fleeing man, Faulkner presents to us the deputy's stream of thought from an omniscient point of view: “There was nothing vengeful about him either, no fury, no outrage. He was moving again almost before he had stopped, with that lean, swift, blind obedience to whatever Player moved him on the Board” (437). Through the rest of the chapter, Grimm, who has not participated in the poker game at all, thinks and acts as if he is engaged in a chess game, not as a player but as the stake or the pawn in a board game in which Jefferson is the board on which he and Christmas are being moved from place to place by two larger forces, he by the benevolent Providence and Christmas by the powers opposed to God. Finally, when Christmas is cornered and fatally shot in Reverend Hightower's kitchen, this fantasized game seems to end. (shrink)

When Bayesian estimation is used to analyze Structural Equation Models, prior distributions need to be specified for all parameters in the model. Many popular software programs offer default prior distributions, which is helpful for novel users and makes Bayesian SEM accessible for a broad audience. However, when the sample size is small, those prior distributions are not always suitable and can lead to untrustworthy results. In this tutorial, we provide a non-technical discussion of the risks associated with the use of (...) default priors in small sample contexts. We discuss how default priors can unintentionally behave as highly informative priors when samples are small. Also, we demonstrate an online educational Shiny app, in which users can explore the impact of varying prior distributions and sample sizes on model results. We discuss how the Shiny app can be used in teaching; provide a reading list with literature on how to specify suitable prior distributions; and discuss guidelines on how to recognize behaving priors. It is our hope that this tutorial helps to spread awareness of the importance of specifying suitable priors when Bayesian SEM is used with small samples. (shrink)

Every civilized society treasures through its folk tales and folk myths the elements of its native tribal life as points of cultural reference. The tribe not only acts as a foil to our culture, but also sustains its very being and gauges the degree of progress and change in the civilization that we uphold. This interdependence has a vital force: insofar as civilized societies define themselves by the distance they have built up between themselves and their respective primitive societies, a (...) civilized culture without its indigenous tribal past risks the authenticity of its process of change to challenge and doubt. Hence, our adulation of distance in both time and space between ourselves and our tribal forefathers, and our eagerness to recognize, maintain, and even glorify our tribes—a necessary syllogism in our postulation of a self-preserving argument. In a peculiarly chiastic way, we thrive on our existential reliance on the very primitiveness that we seek to repudiate as characteristic of a world past. We celebrate our present by eulogizing our past, and to fit the tribes in the large scheme of our self-definition we iconize them. These idealized images hide a creative mask through which we embrace the romantic myths of our respective origins and progress; the parades we arrange for our tribal history—through performance on our streets, or through semantics in our literature—subtly embody this dependence. (shrink)

Young migrants – particularly refugees – are commonly the object of stereotypical visual media representations and often have no choice but to position themselves in response to them. This article explores whether making young migrants aware of the politics of representation through media literacy education contributes to strengthening their participation and resilience. We reflect on a media literacy program developed with teachers and 100 students at a Dutch “International Transition Classes” school. The educational program focuses on visual media production using (...) smartphones, raising critical consciousness and promoting civic engagement. Ethnographic data analyzed include field notes, a focus group with teachers, in-depth and informal interviews, student-produced footage, and a 10-minute ethnographic film. In our increasingly polarized mediatized world, better recognition of how the needs of certain young people diverge depending on how they are situated in racialized, gendered, and classed structures of power is needed to work towards inclusive media literacy education. (shrink)

In this article, I first problematize the concept of rationality as educational ideal through the use of feminist philosophy. I then offer an alternative concept of rationality as educational ideal based on my reading of Catherine Malabou’s work on plasticity, epigenesis, and rationality. In a last part, I explore the ontological and normative dimensions of this new concept of rationality through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “hyper-dialectics.”.

The increasing use of virtual laboratories in education raises new philosophical—and perhaps especially phenomenological—questions related to how this type of technological mediation affects the user’s sense of situated embodied being: sensory perception. The empirical basis of this phenomenological inquiry is a case study conducted in a Danish school setting. This allows us to compare analog laboratory work with virtual. Inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we describe how pupils’ bodily and multisensory interactions with laboratory tools differ across physical and virtual settings. Virtual (...) laboratories are complex, sociotechnical, often opaque practices that affect the pupils’ sense of embodiment, thus prompting the need for in situ development of hermeneutical strategies for bridging the gap between the simulated laboratory and the physical world. In the final section, we discuss how these strategies can be considered posthuman learning processes. (shrink)

Talk about law often includes reference to ideals of justice, equality or freedom. But what do we refer to when we speak about ideals in the context of law? This book explores the concept of ideals by combining an investigation of different theories of ideals with a discussion of the role of ideals in law. A comparison of the theories of Gustav Radbruch and Philip Selznick leads up to a pragmatist theory of legal ideals, which provides an interesting new position (...) in the debate about values in law between legal positivists and natural law thinkers. Attention for law's central ideals enables us to understand law's autonomous character, while at the same time tracing its connection to societal values. Essential reading for anyone interested in the role of values or ideals in law. (shrink)

The most of Christian traditions embrase the notion of sacrament. This notion deals with the church directives in a narrow meaning. According to Saint Augustine, the sacrament is a visible action of an invisible grace thus the Church, the Christ, the Bible, being material phenomena where two natures combine, are also considered to be sacraments. Therefore, the author of the article presents the Bible as the most outstanding and the most visible example of a sacrament in a broad meaning. Using (...) the examples of the attitude change to the Bible in the Catholic tradition, the author studies the move from the sacral perception of the text in the decisions made at the Council of Trent to its open sacramental understanding in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and its post-council decisions. Due to the fact that Ukrainian scholars and local clergy theologically poorly interpreted the Bible as a Word of God in the Catholic tradition, the goal of this article is to make a diachronic comparison of the results of the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council, which allows to show the change dynamics in the attitude of the Catholic Church to the Bible. The Council of Trent was a reaction of the Catholic Church to the emergence and achievements of the Reformation and its important principle Sola Scriptura. The Council approved two doctrinal documents on the Sacred Scripture: the first one deals with the Scripture canon and the relations between the Scripture and the Sacred Tradition, and the second one defines which text of the Scripture is to be considered sacred and official and how to interpret this text. The author concludes that the Council limited the Sacred Tradition only with faith and moral issues, meaning spheres of doctrines and piety, and recognized Latin translation of the Bible - Vulgate - to be the only official version to have a sacred meaning and "a sacred book per se". The Bible is admitted to be a closed book, separated from the readers and receivers of the Gospel, which is prohibited for an autonomous interpretation. On the contrary, the Second Vatican Council and its documents, in their essence, had a pastoral task, manifested in an attempt of giving a comprehensible overview of the Catholic Church doctrine for the world community. Therefore, the author asserts that the last 400 years of the history of the Catholic doctrine show serious changes in its attempt of contextualization and mark its main peculiarity: reaction to the modern society challenges and needs. The task of the Second Vatican Council was to clarify the nature of the Sacred Scripture, which had to balance the Tradition and a new approach to the Scripture. Based on the analysis of the documents of the mentioned Councils and the commentaries of the authoritative Catholic preachers, the author concludes that the new approach to the Sacred Scripture essentially points to the open sacral and sacramental character of the Bible. The author emphasizes the modern approach to the sacrality of the Bible not only as to a "sacral book per se", but also in its sacral effect on the reader. The researcher asserts that new changes declared in Dei verbum and Verbum Domini, which emphasize the pastoral effect of the Bible as a way of knowing Jesus Christ, are crucial for the building relations between various Christian movements, especially for the Catholic and Protestant traditions. (shrink)

The article carries out a systematic analysis of the sacramental dimension of missionary activity and proves that the corresponding concepts are based on modern theological concepts that interpret the mission as the work of God, and not the work of the church. This interpretation of the mission is designed to overcome the crisis of missionary activity in the West and in the Ukrainian context. Transformations of the theological interpretation of the mission lead to the discovery of the significance of missionary (...) action as a sacramental act of God-human communication. Accordingly, the theological interpretation of the mission ceases to be subjective, but draws attention to the objective and intersubjective nature of the mission as a universal activity of God and the church. (shrink)

The paper displays the religious and theological foundations, which initiated the reformation process with the help of nowadays popular markers known as 5 Sola of Reformation. It demonstrates the main theological principles which identify Protestantism among other religious groups. But simultaneously the hermeneutics of these principles divides Protestantism into many currents, which forms this religious movement heterogeneity. The main focus of the article lays on the comparative description of each of five features of the theological system of Reformed theology in (...) the understanding of masters and radical reformation. The history of formation of 5 Sola and its theological meaning are analyzed as well. The paper's main interest is focused on the basic formal principle of all the Protestant movement - Sola Scriptura. The author of the article describes the Postmodern society challenges faced by this principle, he demonstrates what it does and what it does not mean in contemporary Evangelical movement. The meaning of Sola gratia as a formation point of Lutheran theological system is exposed, a different understanding of faith and interpretation of the principle of Sola fide in magisterial and radical Protestantism is exposed, the peculiarities of application of the principles of Solus Christus and Soli Deo Gloria in Eastern and Western Christian traditions. (shrink)

Rule of law is a concept that is regularly debated by legal philosophers, often in connection to discussion of the concept of law. In this article, the focus is not on the substance of the conceptual claims, but on the methodologies employed by legal philosophers, investigating seminal articles on the rule of law by Joseph Raz and Jeremy Waldron. I argue that their philosophical argumentations often crucially depend on empirical or legal doctrinal arguments. However, these arguments remain underdeveloped. I explore (...) how these arguments could be linked to approaches related to rule of law in different fields of legal scholarship and investigate how the methodologies of these fields may complement each other. Thus, the article aims to provide an argument for a specific form of triangulation of three kinds of approaches to the rule of law: philosophical, social-scientific and legal doctrinal. This method of triangulation is illustrated by a discussion of the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index. (shrink)

This volume deals with the normative challenges and the ethical questions imposed by, and through, the developments and changes in everyday life, culture and society in the context of media change. We are thus concerned with the questions of whether and how the central concept of ethics must evolve under these premises—or in other words: what form do ethics take in mediatized societies? In order to address this question and to stimulate and initiate a debate, we have focused on two (...) concepts: responsibility and resistance. (shrink)

With the themed issue “The Critical Phenomenology of Borders and Migration,” we at Puncta wish to highlight the need for a continued systematic reflection on the lived experiences of migrants in relation to the political and social structures that inform these experiences. By claiming that critical phenomenology can be a fruitful approach to this work, we insist that the complex lived experience of migrants should not only be acknowledged and included in the form of examples and anecdotes, but systematically integrated (...) and interrogated in philosophical conversations on migration-related matters. The hope is that critically attuned phenomenological analyses of migrant lived experiences may contribute to offer new knowledges indispensable for understanding what is actually at stake—philosophically, politically, ethically, and existentially—with the particular situations that migrants, border-crossers and border-dwellers continually negotiate. (shrink)

The Management Centre for Human Values along with the participants of the Post-Graduate Program for Executives and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta arranged a seminar on Socially Conscious Leadership, or the Lattice 2010, on 19 December 2010. The seminar debate on the role of Corporate Social Responsibility in contemporary business makes for an interesting note that would befit the Journal of Human Values. This is (...) so because the invitees to the seminar, through their singular and idiosyncratic narration of experiences, have inevitably problematized the basic concepts of CSR itself. Concepts like ‘human values’, ‘ethics’, ‘social consciousness’ no longer exist as water-tight compartments of traditional or even autonomous sanctuaries of humane goodness. These concepts have been transformed from ‘value-adding’ propositions to ‘value-appropriating’ propositions, or in other words, social issues have become business issues. A wide spectrum of views coming from Gen. Bajwa, representing the army; Prof. Chaudhuri and Prof. Bhatta, representing administrative academia; Sri Salvi and Sri Tyagi, endorsing real-life CSR; Mr Ahir and Mr Rayaprolu, representing the corporate; Ms Vatsa and Ms Swami, representing NGOs; and Prof. Sarkar, Prof. Mohanty and Prof. Chatterjee, representing the academicians; along with the presence of Ms M. Bhattacharya from ONGC—all of them have aided and abetted in establishing the contemporary position of CSR as a successful and competitive business proposition. The note addresses the issues developed from their individual experiences and opinions, and attempts to establish, but on an individual level, an intellectual point of departure for an academic discussion of CSR that would initiate further potent research and theorization in this regard. (shrink)

Working in an urban safety net facility, my colleagues and I daily face any number of challenges. In some respects, an undocumented immigration status is just another one of those challenges. However, it is a particularly interesting one given the context created by political, social, and ethical debate about immigration.

Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath greifen zentrale Fragen der heutigen Zeit auf: Was ist Glück? Woher kommt Glück? Wie kann man Glück erreichen? Zunächst geht es um klassische philosophische Ansätze – was verstehen antike Denker wie Demokrit, Platon, Aristoteles und Epikur sowie neuzeitliche Philosophen wie Montaigne, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud und Adorno darunter? Es zeigt sich die Historizität der Glückskonzepte und die Notwendigkeit einer Kritik am »falschen« Glück. Psychologische Konzepte von Glück sind ebenso schillernd. Sie untersuchen empirisch, wie subjektive Glücksgefühle (...) zustande kommen, welche emotionalen, kognitiven und handlungsbezogenen Prozesse ihnen zu Grunde liegen und in welchen Situationen sich Menschen glücklich fühlen. Auch hier erscheint ein kritischer Standpunkt notwendig: Kritik an unterschiedlichen Glücksdefinitionen, Kritik an Erhebungsinstrumenten und Kritik an der Instrumentalisierung und Kommerzialisierung von Forschungsergebnissen. Gerade im Blick auf eine neuerdings weit verbreitete Positive Psychologie besteht ein Ideologieverdacht: Könnte es sich hier um kaum einlösbare Versprechungen einer affirmativen psychologischen Glücksforschung handeln? Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath gehen diesen Fragen im Dialog zwischen Philosophie und Psychologie nach. Trotz der unterschiedlichen Herangehensweisen und Perspektiven der beiden Autoren zeigen sich erstaunliche Übereinstimmungen hinsichtlich einer kritischen Theorie des Glücks. (shrink)

Bibudhendra Narayan Patnaik, Life’s Little Tales. Bhubhaneswar: Sikshasandhan, 2022. 175 pp., ₹195.

Conflict framing is key in political communication. Politicians use conflict framing in their online messages (e.g., criticizing other politicians) and journalists in their political coverage (e.g., reporting on political tensions). Conflicts can take a variety of forms and can provoke different reactions. However, the literature still lacks a systematic and theoretically-grounded conceptual framework that accounts for the multi-dimensionality of political conflict frames. Based on literature from political epistemology, political communication, and related fields such as psychology, we present four conceptual dimensions (...) of political conflicts: (1) the style (civil/uncivil); (2) the subject (personal/substantive); (3) whether it is about underlying moral/epistemic principles or not (deep/superficial conflict); and (4) whether it concerns a normative or factual issue. Results of a content analysis of newspaper articles and politicians’ tweets confirm the usage of these conflict dimensions in the Netherlands during a non-election period. Interestingly, most of the conflicts are civil, substantive, and do not highlight deep fundamental clashes. In light of the current societal concerns about the lack of respect in political debates and the deepening of our political divides, these findings can be considered encouraging. (shrink)