This paper proposes that human expression of pain in the presence or absence of caregivers, and the detection of pain by observers, arises from evolved propensities. The function of pain is to demand attention and prioritise escape, recovery, and healing; where others can help achieve these goals, effective communication of pain is required. Evidence is reviewed of a distinct and specific facial expression of pain from infancy to old age, consistent across stimuli, and recognizable as pain by observers. Voluntary control (...) over amplitude is incomplete, and observers can better detect pain that the individual attempts to suppress rather than amplify or simulate. In many clinical and experimental settings, the facial expression of pain is incorporated with verbal and nonverbal vocal activity, posture, and movement in an overall category of pain behaviour. This is assumed by clinicians to be under operant control of social contingencies such as sympathy, caregiving, and practical help; thus, strong facial expression is presumed to constitute an attempt to manipulate these contingencies by amplification of the normal expression. Operant formulations support skepticism about the presence or extent of pain, judgments of malingering, and sometimes the withholding of caregiving and help. To the extent that pain expression is influenced by environmental contingencies, however, could equally plausibly constitute the release of suppression according to evolved contingent propensities that guide behaviour. Pain has been largely neglected in the evolutionary literature and the literature on expression of emotion, but an evolutionary account can generate improved assessment of pain and reactions to it. (shrink)

The experience of pain appears to be associated, from early infancy and across pain stimuli, with a consistent facial expression in humans. A social function is proposed for this: the communication of pain and the need for help to observers, to whom information about danger is of value, and who may provide help within a kin or cooperative relationship. Some commentators have asserted that the evidence is insufficient to account for the consistency of the face, as judged by technical means (...) or in the perceptions of observers, or that facial expression is epiphenomenal to a gross behavioural defensive response to pain. The major criticism is that it is unnecessary to invoke evolutionary mechanisms beyond the emergence of an unconditioned facial response to pain in neonates, subsequently shaped and maintained by instrumental and social reinforcement throughout life. These criticisms are addressed, acknowledging the need for further data to address some, and elaborating the areas in which evolutionary and operant mechanisms would predict different behavioural interactions, rather than acting synergistically. Several supportive commentaries propose extending evolutionarily-based hypotheses to sex differences, the complexities of others' responses within the social relationship, and the role of empathy. A number of commentators provided valuable suggestions for experimental paradigms or methodological issues. Overall, addressing these issues indicates the need for further conceptual development and for collection of data specifically in relation to these hypotheses. (shrink)

Apresenta uma análise preliminar das manifestações dos autores das Ciências Sociais e Humanas dentro do campo da Biblioteconomia e da Ciência da Informação (B & C.I.), por meio do método bibliométrico e análise de citação. Com o objetivo de descortinar quais teóricos são convocados para a construção do conhecimento na produção científica dos campos supracitados, realizou-se uma pesquisa exploratória com vistas ao levantamento dos autores das Ciências Sociais e Humanas e, posteriormente, a verificação da ocorrência deles na produção indexada pela (...) Base de Dados em Ciência da Informação (BRAPCI). Foram identificados 180 autores, dos quais 91 apareceram pelo menos uma vez nas buscas empreendidas pelos nomes e sobrenomes desses autores das Ciências Sociais e Humanas. O resultado desta pesquisa demonstrou os dois autores mais citados, Michel Foucault e Pierre Bourdieu, bem como a presença de diversos autores das Ciências Sociais e Humanas na construção do conhecimento da Biblioteconomia e da Ciência da Informação, o que contribui para o fortalecimento e a consolidação de ambas. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a strong reaction perceptible amongst theologians against what has come to be regarded as traditional moral theology, a theology, namely, dealing with the notion of sin, examining not the way of perfection and of virtue, but the way rather of salvation alone. Theologians conscious of the need for something more positive have clamoured for something more positive, have called for a complete reorganization of moral science as taught to seminary students. Appeals have been made (...) for a so-called ‘kerygmatic’ and christocentric moral theology. Numerous attempts, more or less successful, have been made to elaborate such a new moral science. This small book of Father Tremeau is not at all meant to be a synthesis of moral philosophy; it is formally a work of theology. It contains what we might call all the elements of a sound fundamental moral theology. It is, in book form, the substance of a course in moral theology given by him at the Grand Seminaire of Langres 1955-1957. The work has its roots firmly planted in Sacred Scripture and Tradition; and at the same time the author shows himself to be fully aware of all modern problems, indicating them briefly and taking up a firm personal position with regard to them. We have here a first-class example of a theological work in the strictest sense of the term, of ‘fides querens intellectum’, and doing it with admirable success. (shrink)

Benedikt Stattler was born on January 30, 1728 in Kötzting in Bavaria. In 1745 he entered the Society of Jesus, to which he remained loyal in spirit and in deed until his death, in spite of its suppression in 1773 by Clement XIV From 1760 until 1781 he taught philosophy and theology in Staubing, Solothurn, Innsbruck and Ingolstadt, where the famous J. M. Sailer, Bishop of Regensburg, was his pupil. He died in Munich in 1797. Stattler, then, lived and worked (...) at the very height of the so-called Aufklarungszeit, a fact which had the deepest repercussions on his whole career. He was a zealous man and truly apostolic. Perhaps, if anything he was over-zealous and was in fact carried much too far in his spirit of accommodation and flexibility when faced with the rationalist enemies of the Church and Christianity. He was filled with the idea that they should be met on their own ground in order to win them for the Church. And in order to do that he decided that he must break with tradition. Modern modes of thinking must be used if there is to be even the possibility of discussion with present-day thinkers, was his principle. Accordingly he brushed aside Aristotle, St. Thomas and all the Scholastics and made his own the philosophy of Christian Wolff. For him that was the only way of preserving the Christian and Catholic faith and of safeguarding Christian morality, the Christian way of life. Filled with that idea he wrote indefatigably. Many of his works, however, very early fell foul of the Roman authorities and were put on the Index of forbidden books. And in fact, as Dr. Scholz rightly points out over and over again, Stattler became a victim of the Aufklärung which he sought to Christianize and he himself became a rationalist and, in morals, and out-and-out subjectivist. (shrink)

In this article, based on the most important William of Ockham’s O. Min. writings, we analyze his ideias concerning the origins of the imperial and secular power. Founded in the Paul’s doctrine omnis potestas a Deo, but enlarged, per homines, and also on the ideas of his Franciscan brothers which lived before, which articulated the concepts of proprietas and domininum, in order to explain the human origins of the both, on the one hand, Ockham refuses not only the hierocratic theory, (...) but also Marsilius of Padua thought about this subject, and, on the other hand, he offers his contribution for this subject, according with which, nor the Empire neither the Estates are completely subordinated to the Church, nor the Church is subordinated for the secular power, because, referring its origins, both, Church and Estates are different origins, the first has a divine proceeding, the others, are immediately a human provenance and, because, in its specific spheres of action the spiritual power and the secular power do not depend one of the other and vice versa.Neste artigo, fundamentado nos principais escritos de Guilherme de Ockham, O. Min., analisamos sua concepção a respeito das origens dos poderes imperial e secular. Ancorado no versículo paulino omnis potestas a Deo, mas ampliado, sed per homines e, igualmente, nas ideias dos confrades que o antecederam, os quais relacionaram entre si os conceitos proprietas e dominium, com vista a explicar as origens humanas dos mesmos, de um lado, ele rebate tanto a teoria hierocrata quanto a de Marsílio de Pádua, relativas ao tema em exame e, de outro, oferece sua contribuição ao mesmo, mediante a qual, nem o Império nem os Estados estão completamente subordinados à Igreja, nem esta está submissa ao poder terreno, porque, quanto às origens de ambos, a Igreja tem uma procedência divina e os Estados e o Império têm imediatamente uma origem humana e, ainda, porque nas esferas respectivas de atuação, os poderes espiritual e secular independem um do outro. (shrink)

Nota introductoria William James nació el 11 de enero de 1842 en Nueva York, Estados Unidos, para después convertirse en filósofo, psicólogo y médico de la Universidad de Harvard. En cuanto a sus aportes, se considera como el precursor de la psicología funcional y sus desarrollos en la epistemología pragmatista son aún relevantes dada la amplitud de sus tesis. En paralelo, James defendió un humanismo característico de su época y, en contra del canon filosófico tradicional, propuso una defensa para el (...) sentido común y una perspectiva pragmatista. Entre sus obras notables se encuentran Los principios de la psicología, Las variedades de la experiencia religiosa y Ensayos sobre empirismo radical, editada y publi­cada póstumamente, pues el autor murió el 26 de agosto de 1910. La siguiente traducción corresponde al octavo ensayo de James en el libro The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, compuesto por breves respuestas a las observaciones de los críticos del ensayo “Great Men and their Enviroment”. La significación de traducir este texto en la actualidad reside en la posibilidad de contrastar argumentos de la época que evidencien la importancia de las diferencias entre los individuos y la particular relación con los ambientes que les influencian. El texto fuente fue obtenido del proyecto Gutenberg. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world.

De moderne westerse cultuur wordt gekenmerkt door de bereidheid waarom-vragen te stellen en de dingen te onderzoeken. Daartegenover staat het spreken dat gedomineerd wordt door onderwerping. Deze tweede soort van spreken heerst in het huidige conservatisme in de VS.

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from (...) social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic. (shrink)