Contents: Foreword. Wolfgang BALZER and C. ULISES MOULINES: Introduction. José A. DÍEZ CALZADA: Structuralist Analysis of Theories of Fundamental Measurement. Adolfo GARCÍA DE LA SIENRA and Pedro REYES: The Theory of Finite Games in Extensive Form. Hans Joachim BURSCHEID und Horst STRUVE: The Theory of Stochastic Fairness - its Historical Development, Formulation and Justification. Wolfgang BALZER and Richard MATTESSICH: Formalizing the Basis of Accounting. Werner DIEDERICH: A Reconstruction of Marxian Economics. Bert HAMMINGA and Wolfgang BALZER: The Basic Structure of Neoclassical (...) General Equilibrium Theory. Klaus MANHART: Balance Theories: Two Reconstructions and the Problem of Intended Applications. Rainer WESTERMANN: Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: A Structuralist Theory-Net. Rainer REISENZEIN: Wundt's Three-Dimensional Theory of Emotion. Pablo LORENZANO: Classical Genetics and the Theory-Net of Genetics. Hinne HETTEMA and Theo A.F. KUIPERS: The Formalisation of the Periodic Table. C. ULISES MOULINES: The Basic Core of Simple Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Thomas BARTELBORTH: An Axiomatization of Classical Electrodynamics. Author's Index. Subject Index. (shrink)

On a Dreyfusian account performers choke when they reflect upon and interfere with established routines of purely embodied expertise. This basic explanation of choking remains popular even today and apparently enjoys empirical support. Its driving insight can be understood through the lens of diverse philosophical visions of the embodied basis of expertise. These range from accounts of embodied cognition that are ultra conservative with respect to representational theories of cognition to those that are more radically embodied. This paper provides an (...) account of the acquisition of embodied expertise, and explanation of the choking effect, from the most radically enactive, embodied perspective, spelling out some of its practical implications and addressing some possible philosophical challenges. Specifically, we propose: an explanation of how skills can be acquired on the basis of ecological dynamics; and a non-linear pedagogy that takes into account how contentful representations might scaffold skill acquisition from a radically enactive perspective. (shrink)

This paper based on the distinction between the instrumental and normative views of stakeholder management explores how business education and personal moral philosophies may influence the orientation adopted by an individual. A mediated regression analysis using survey information collected from 206 Spanish university students showed that those exposed to management theories were less willing to consider stakeholders when making business decisions if the consequent economic impacts on the firm were omitted. The results also provided support for a negative effect of (...) business education on idealism and a mediating effect of the latter on the relationship between education and stakeholder management orientation. This study thus raises awareness on the influence of business education on individuals’ ethical decision-making processes and suggests some possible changes for business education. (shrink)

To Shh, or not to Shh: that is the question. Paraphrasing Hamlet, one of the main ethical dilemmas for workers and organisations can be represented: to blow the whistle or to remain silent when facing a wrongdoing. Whistleblowing is analysed from psychological, normative and organisational points of view, but the implementation in the company is less represented. And it should not be like that, since internal whistleblowing mechanisms allow organisational wrongdoing staying inside the organisation, where it can be remedied and (...) its reputational effects, alleviated. With a content analysis methodology, this paper analyses disclosed information about the implementation of whistleblowing mechanisms in Spanish listed companies (Ibex35), a country where corruption scandals have once again brought to the fore the problem of reporting wrongdoing. The implementation of whistleblowing mechanisms is heterogeneous in terms of denominations, channels and procedures, identifying weak points in the reporting of irregularities in CSR and sustainability reports. (shrink)

Una parte de la explicación del gran florecimiento en los EE. UU. de la filosofía analítica, particularmente la filosofía analítica del lenguaje, después de la segunda guerra mundial está sin duda en la amplitud de la comunidad de filósofos que un país grande en dimensiones permite. Pues conseguir un buen nivel de excelencia en la práctica de este modo de entender la filosofía requiere una amplia comunidad de colegas en que difundir y contrastar nuevas ideas. Conscientes de esto, los filósofos (...) analíticos continentales estamos embarcados en la tarea de ampliar recíprocamente nuestras comunidades, aprovechando el impulso del proyecto de mayor unión política europea. Aunque, a diferencia de lo que ocurría en EE. UU. en el tiempo a que nos hemos referido antes, existen importantes obstáculos culturales, hay buenas razones para ser optimistas. Existe claramente la voluntad, lo que ha permitido en la última década llevar a cabo con éxito proyectos tales como los de la European Society for Philosophy and Psychology y la European Society for Analytic Philosophy, así como establecer importantes lazos de conocimiento mutuo a través de pequeños seminarios bilaterales. Y existe también algo muy importante: el que los temas que más interesan a los filósofos del lenguaje continentales son muy próximos; algo que, aventuramos, lo explica parcialmente una formación que presta más atención a la tradición filosófica que la de nuestros colegas americanos. Estos temas incluyen típicamente la referencia, particularmente la referencia de expresiones indéxicas, así como cuestiones relativas a la objetividad, las condiciones de verdad, el realismo y el antirrealismo. (shrink)

Starting from the data contained in a survey carried out by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas in 2002 , this paper analyses three issues connected to social participation and voluntary organizations in Spain. First, how do the citizens link to the voluntary associations? Secondly, which are the empirical dimensions that underlie a variety of forms of participation that citizens execute in order to express their opinions or protest about any social issue? In this direction, finally, the paper examines the influence (...) of each dimension on the degree of involvement of the citizens in a variety of voluntary organizations. (shrink)

Sport is an emotional experience. Studies have shown that high emotional intelligence (EI) is associated with better sports performance, though different aspects of sports experience and their relationship with EI are still unclear. This study examined the possible relationships between sports experience and EI dimensions of undergraduate athletes. Likewise, according to the differences described in the literature between men and women, the secondary aim was to identify the possible relationship between EI and sports experience in both subgroups. A total of (...) 1784 [712 men (39.9%), 1072 women (60.1%); mean age = 21.3 years, SD = 4.2)] undergraduate athletes completed the Trait Meta Mood Scale and a sports experience questionnaire. Comparisons between groups were performed using Mann–Whitney-Uand H-Kruskal–Wallis tests and correlations between variables were analyzed using Spearman correlation. We found that the number of different sports practiced and the number of years practicing sports were positively associated with emotional repair (ER). However, the number of years practicing sports was negatively associated with emotional attention (EA). Male athletes who trained more and had a higher competitive level were more likely to show higher ER. In any case, it is necessary to take into account that all the associations were weak. Our study suggested that athletes tend to attend to and value their feelings and use positive thinking to repair their negative moods. (shrink)

A new approach to landscape ecology involves the application of the eco-field hypothesis and the General Theory of Resources. In this study, we describe the putative eco-field of bark beetles as a spatial configuration with a specific meaning-carrier for every organism-resource interaction. Bark beetles are insects with key roles in matter and energy cycles in coniferous forests, which cause significant changes to forestry landscapes when outbreaks occur. Bark beetles are guided towards host trees by the recognition of semiotic signals using (...) a specific eco-field. These signals mainly comprise a group of scents, which are called the odourtope. Their interactions with other organisms occur by sharing relevant information from the eco-field networks in the forest ecosystem. The eco-field networks modulate the expansion of the realized semiotic niche of the bark beetle towards the potential semiotic niche. Moreover, the niche construction process can be initiated by interchanging signals among species living in the same place, where these signals allow the exploitation of the required resources. If different organisms are interdependent on signals in eco-field networks, then this process may result in the establishment of mutualistic relationships. This is an example of how evolutionary processes are initiated by the recognition of signals in a network of eco-fields. (shrink)

Retrieval practice, relative to further study, leads to long-term memory enhancement known as the “testing effect.” The neurobiological correlates of the testing effect at retrieval, when the learning benefits of testing are expressed, have not been fully characterized. Participants learned Swahili-English word-pairs and were assigned randomly to either the Study-Group or the Test-Group. After a week delay, all participants completed a cued-recall test while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. The Test-Group had superior memory for the word-pairs compared to the Study-Group. (...) While both groups exhibited largely overlapping activations for remembered word-pairs, following an interaction analysis the Test-Group exhibited differential performance-related effects in the left putamen and left inferior parietal cortex near the supramarginal gyrus. The same analysis showed the Study-Group exhibited greater activations in the dorsal MPFC/pre-SMA and bilateral frontal operculum for remembered vs. forgotten word-pairs, whereas the Test-Group showed the opposite pattern of activation in the same regions. Thus, retrieval practice during training establishes a unique striatal-supramarginal network at retrieval that promotes enhanced memory performance. In contrast, study alone yields poorer memory but greater activations in frontal regions. (shrink)

El texto que presentamos recoge las principales conclusiones que han derivado de los estudios sobre la Colección de documentos árabes del Archivo Histórico Provincial de Granada. Compuesta principalmente por documentos de carácter jurídico, el análisis del contenido de cada uno de ellos en relación con la materialidad del soporte y las tintas así como la coincidencia en el diseño y planificación de la página revelan el uso de idénticos protocolos de ejecución. Esta investigación nos está permitiendo, además, establecer coincidencias relevantes (...) relacionadas con los procesos de elaboración del papel entre los últimos años de permanencia de los árabes en la Península Ibérica y los primeros tras la incorporación del territorio a la Corona de Castilla y, sobre todo, con el modo de ejecutar el documento de archivo en sus formas externa e interna. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

Objective: To present a narrative review of the history of bioethics in Latin America and of scientific output in this interdisciplinary field. Methods: This was a mixed-methods study. Results: A total of 1458 records were retrieved, of which 1167 met the inclusion criteria. According to the Web of Science classification, the predominant topics of study were medical ethics, social sciences and medicine, and environmental and public health topics. Four themes of bioethics output in the Latin American literature have emerged: issues (...) involving the beginning and end of life, ethics in human research, patient–provider relationships, and ethics training for health professionals. Conclusion: Although bioethics is a growing interdisciplinary field in Latin America, its academic impact is still very low, and programmes are highly concentrated in large urban centres in a few countries. Challenges includes the regional and international impact of local scientific output. (shrink)

The history of communication is a new subject in mass communication and journalism curricula, one for which there has been only scattered published research and no adequate text. Communication History attempts to remedy both of these problems by providing a challenging new approach to the study of communication over time. Moving away from a tradition that focuses merely on major communication personalities or institutions, the authors instead encourage the reader to see the interrelated processes by which information in diffused. The (...) authors utilize social science concepts and techniques to enlarge and enrich our understanding of communication in historical perspective. (shrink)

In contrast to most Western countries, routine offer of prenatal screening is considered problematic in the Netherlands. The main argument against offering it to every pregnant woman is that women would be brought into a moral dilemma when deciding whether to use screening or not. This paper explores whether the active offer of a prenatal screening test indeed confronts women with a moral dilemma. A qualitative study was developed, based on a randomised controlled trial that aimed to assess the decision-making (...) process of women when confronted with a test offer. A sample of 59 women was interviewed about the different factors balanced in decision-making. Participants felt themselves caught between a need for knowledge and their unwillingness to take on responsibility. Conflict was reported between wishes, preferences and ethical views regarding parenthood; however, women did not seem to be caught in a choice between two or more ethical principles. Participants balanced the interests of the family against that of the fetus in line with their values and their personal circumstances. Therefore, we conclude that they are not so much faced with an ethical dilemma as conflicting interests. We propose that caregivers should provide the opportunity for the woman to discuss her wishes and doubts to facilitate her decision. This approach would help women to assess the meaning of testing within their parental duties towards their unborn child and their current offspring. (shrink)

The idea that democracy is under threat, after being largely dormant for at least 40 years, is looming increasingly large in public discourse. Complex systems theory offers a range of powerful new tools to analyse the stability of social institutions in general, and democracy in particular. What makes a democracy stable? And which processes potentially lead to instability of a democratic system? This paper offers a complex systems perspective on this question, informed by areas of the mathematical, natural, and social (...) sciences. We explain the meaning of the term 'stability' in different disciplines and discuss how laws, rules, and regulations, but also norms, conventions, and expectations are decisive for the stability of a social institution such as democracy. (shrink)

Online crowdsourcing platforms have rapidly become a popular source of data collection. Despite the various advantages these platforms offer, there are substantial concerns regarding not only data validity issues, but also the ethical, societal, and global ramifications arising from the prevalent use of online crowdsourcing platforms. This paper seeks to expand the dialogue by examining both the “internal” aspects of crowdsourcing research practices, such as data quality issues, reporting transparency, and fair compensation, and the “external” aspects, in terms of how (...) the widespread use of crowdsourcing data collection shapes the nature of scientific communities and our society in general. Online participants in research studies are informal workers who provide labor in exchange for remuneration. The paper thus highlights the need for researchers to consider the markedly different political, economic, and socio-cultural characteristics of the Global North and the Global South when undertaking crowdsourcing research involving an international sample; such consideration is crucial for both increasing research validity and mitigating societal inequities. We encourage researchers to scrutinize the value systems underlying this popular data collection research method and its associated ethical, societal, and global ramifications, as well as provide a set of recommendations regarding the use of crowdsourcing platforms. (shrink)

Kwaku Marfo, Danielle Garcia, Saira Khalique, Karen Berger, Amy LuMontefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, USABackground: Medication errors are a prime concern for all in healthcare. As such the use of information technologies in drug prescribing and administration has received considerable attention in recent years, with the hope of improving patient safety. Because of the complexity of drug regimens in renal transplant patients, occurrence of medication errors is inevitable even with a well adopted computerized physician order entering system. Our objective (...) was to quantify medication error type and frequency in an inpatient renal transplant unit.Methods: Systemic evaluation of all medication errors during an initial 10-day audit and a 28-day follow-up audit in an inpatient renal transplant unit. Each error was concurrently evaluated for potential to result in adverse patient consequences, error type and associated medication class.Results: A total of 103 clinically significant medication errors were detected during the 10-day and 28-day audit time periods. The most common errors were wrong medication dose ordered and wrong time of drug administration. Thirty-six out of 66 prescribing/ordering errors reached the patient.Conclusions: Even with utilization of computerized physician order entry system in an inpatient renal transplant unit, post-kidney transplant patients are at risk for adverse outcomes due to medication errors. The risk factors may be multifactorial and will require both organizational and technical approaches to resolve.Keywords: medication errors, CPOE, inpatient, renal transplant patients. (shrink)

Relationships between degree/area of academic formation and religious and Darwinian views are controversial. This study aimed to compare the religious beliefs and acceptance of Darwinian evolution between two contrasting South American scientific communities (Chile and Colombia), accounting for different degrees and areas of academic formation. In 2018, 115 last year bachelor students (surveyed as freshmen in 2014 for a previous study) from Chile, and 283 first/last year bachelor students, graduate students, and professors from Colombia, all belonging to biology, chemistry, or (...) physics, were surveyed. Chilean students/faculty were significantly more agnostic/atheist, more accepting of Darwinian evolution, and less creationist than their Colombian counterparts. Academic degree and area differently affected these views in both countries, as only in Chile there was a clear tendency among biologists and physicists with higher degrees to hold less religious and creationist views. Marked differences between the history, socioeconomic contexts, and especially in high school and university curricula of both countries might explain these results. (shrink)

Intuition or rational trust? Resumen: Según la concepción tradicional, la justificación de las creencias lógicas básicas —entendida tanto inferencial como no-inferencialmente— no logra evitar ni la circularidad, ni la regresión al infinito. Justificar reglas básicas lógicas inferencialmente conlleva usar principios lógicos con lo que se genera un círculo vicioso. Apelar a fuentes básicas como la intuición, no sortea todas las dificultades. Argumentaré que es preciso recurrir a una “habilitación”, una sub-clase dentro de las garantías epistémicas. Si además aceptamos que intuir (...) es algo que hacemos y no algo que nos pasa, podemos sostener que la intuición, de hecho, se apoya en una confianza racional. Palabras clave: justificación, conocimiento lógico, garantía racional, intuición, habilitación.: According to the traditional conception, the justification of basic logical beliefs —understood both inferentially and non-inferentially— cannot avoid either circularity or regression to infinity. To justify logical basic rules inferentially involves using logical principles, so a vicious circle is generated. Appealing to basic sources such as intuition, does not avoid such problems. I will argue that it is necessary to resort to an entitlement, a sub-class within the epistemic warrants. If we also accept that intuiting is something that we do and not something that happens to us, we can sustain that intuition, indeed, is based on a rational trust. Keywords: justification, logical knowledge, rational warrant, intuition, entitlement. (shrink)

Marriage patterns of California's eighteenth and nineteenth century Spanish-Mexican families are analysed using data from genealogies and mission records. A shortage of women among the military based colonists led to an unusual marriage pattern with a large age differential between husbands and wives. The average age at marriage was 18·4 years for women and 28·4 years for men. Spatial mobility was high for both sexes, particularly for men. More husbands than wives were born in Mexico. The Monterey presidial district of (...) central California was the birthplace of a disproportionate number of husbands and the southern California districts were a source of wives. The transition between a founding population predominantly composed of Mexican immigrants and a population of native-born Californians occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Understanding how the chordate body plan originated and evolved is still controversial. The discovery by Spemann and Mangold in 1924 of the vertebrate organizer and its inductive properties in patterning the AP and DV axis was followed by a long gap until the 1960s when scientists started characterizing the molecular events responsible for such inductions. However, the evolutionary origin of the organizer itself remained obscure until very recently; did it appear together with the origin and radiation of vertebrates, or was (...) it a chordate affair? A recent study by Yu and collaborators,1 which analyses the expression of several organizer‐specific genes in amphioxus together with recent phylogenetic data that reversed the position of invertebrate extant chordates (e.g. urochordates and cephalochordates), indicates that the organizer probably appeared in early chordates. It likely had separate signalling centres generating BMP and Wnt signalling gradients along the DV and AP axis. The organizer was then lost in the urochordate lineage, most probably as an adaptation to a rapid and determinate development. BioEssays 29:619–624, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Economies of scale and equivalent consumption units, which are present in households, must be considered in the measurement of monetary poverty, in order to obtain indicators that approximate the reality of each household. Therefore, in this research, monetary poverty in Ecuador is measured and analyzed at the provincial level for the period 2009–2016. It works with data from the National Survey of Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment and the INEC methodology is used to measure poverty, but per-capita income is replaced by (...) equivalent income, generated by applying a one-parameter scale and two two-parameter scales. The main results show that monetary poverty rates are significantly lower when equivalent income is applied, that there is high poverty sensitivity depending on the equivalence scale used and that the provinces with the highest levels of poverty are located in the Amazon region. (shrink)

Appeals to the moral authority of nature play an important role in ethical discussions about the acceptability of prenatal testing. While opponents consider testing a dangerous violation of the moral inviolable course of nature, defenders see testing as a new step in improving dominion over nature. In this study we explored the meaning of appeals to nature among pregnant women to whom a prenatal screening test was offered and the impact of these appeals on their choices regarding the acceptance of (...) screening. Contrary to theoretical debates we found that appeals to the moral authority of nature do not prevent women from welcoming the possibilities of controlling the outcomes of pregnancy, neither do they provide prima facie justification for (not) intervening in the natural course of events. Both acceptors and decliners believed in an inherent morality in nature that must be respected. They welcome the possibility of knowing more about the health of the fetus and to make their own reproductive decisions. Concerns for the quality of their child's life and for their capacity to assure a good life for their family and disabled child appear to play a central role in the decision regarding the use of screening. Appeals to nature can be interpreted as an attempt to justify beliefs regarding suffering that must be avoided and the impact that family interests may have on the decision. These findings have significant implications for ethical guidance in debates about the acceptability and boundaries of control of offspring characteristics by prenatal testing. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)