Governments are increasingly inviting patient organizations to participate in healthcare policymaking. By inviting POs that claim to represent patients, representation comes into being. However, little is known about the circumstances under which governments accept POs as patient representatives. Based on the analysis of relevant legislation, this article investigates the criteria that self-help organizations, a special type of PO, must fulfil in order to be accepted as patient representatives by governments in Austria and Germany. Thereby, it aims to contribute to the (...) discussion on the role of governments in steering SHOs. There are different degrees of regulation. Governments in both countries not only formulate explicit criteria for SHOs with respect to patient representation but also guide SHOs representing patients through implicit criteria for associations. We discuss the findings against concepts of responsiveness, authorization, and accountability. Our findings indicate that governmental steering is not negative per se as indicated by previous research but—depending on legislative criteria—can promote transparency and democratic quality in patient representation. (shrink)

Governments are increasingly inviting patient organizations to participate in healthcare policymaking. By inviting POs that claim to represent patients, representation comes into being. However, little is known about the circumstances under which governments accept POs as patient representatives. Based on the analysis of relevant legislation, this article investigates the criteria that self-help organizations, a special type of PO, must fulfil in order to be accepted as patient representatives by governments in Austria and Germany. Thereby, it aims to contribute to the (...) discussion on the role of governments in steering SHOs. There are different degrees of regulation. Governments in both countries not only formulate explicit criteria for SHOs with respect to patient representation but also guide SHOs representing patients through implicit criteria for associations. We discuss the findings against concepts of responsiveness, authorization, and accountability. Our findings indicate that governmental steering is not negative per se as indicated by previous research but—depending on legislative criteria—can promote transparency and democratic quality in patient representation. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen the facilitation of unconventional or even extraordinary reproductive endeavours. Sperm has been harvested from dying or deceased men at the request of their wives; reproductive tissue has been surgically removed from children at the request of their parents; deceased adults’ frozen embryos have been claimed by their parents, in order to create grandchildren; wombs have been transplanted from mothers to their daughters. What is needed for requests to be honoured by healthcare staff is that they align (...) with widely shared expectations about what people’s reproductive potential ought to be, what marital relationships ought to result in, and which kinds of ties are desirable between parents and children. Costly and invasive technologies are not considered excessive when they are used to support the building of appropriate families. However, deviations from dominant reproductive norms, even if technologically simple and convenient to the participants, are unlikely to receive support. In this paper, we offer examples of such deviations and explore their implications. If reproduction is important as a way of creating genetic relationships, should reproductive material in storage be offered to genetic relatives other than the people from whom it originated? And if parents are allowed to have reproductive material collected from their offspring, or even to use it to create babies, should offspring likewise be allowed to use their parents’ reproductive material? We tackle these questions and suggest ways in which interests in genetic ties could be operationalised in a more coherent and less-invasive manner than they currently are. (shrink)

'Cenários construtivistas - temas e problemas' pretende ampliar a esfera dos estudos literários com uma perspectiva que fundamenta a sua investigação em pressupostos epistemológicos construtivistas. Esta coletânea reúne textos de trabalhos discutidos no Colóquio Construtivismo, realizado em setembro de 2008 no âmbito do Programa de Pós-Graduação de Estudos de Literatura do Departamento de Letras da PUC-Rio. Os artigos reunidos oferecem pistas para outros modos de olhar a literatura através de lentes construtivistas.

Motivation und Ikonizität : Die Frage nach dem richtigen Wort -- Der Zusammenhang von Polysemie, Ikonizität und lexikalischer Motivation -- Empirische Ermittlung lexikalischer Motivation : Die Frage nach der richtigen Methode -- Der Einfluss konzeptueller Relationen auf intrinsische und extrinsische Motivierbarkeit -- Polysemie und Skalen diagrammatischer Transparenz : Ein formales und semantisches Transparenzmodell -- Zusammenfassung und Schlussbemerkungen.

The chapter starts with an exploration of what the family is in order then to move on to look at its parts. The family has been defined in terms of its form (e.g. a mother, a father, and their biological offspring) or its function (e.g. adults taking and/or sharing custodial responsibility for children). In both of these cases, children are a necessary ingredient for a unit to be called a family – but the chapter also briefly reviews proposals to extend (...) the accolade of “family” to beyond child-rearing. From a perspective concerned primarily with family form, biological and more specifically genetic parents have been seen as those to whom children should be born, and by whom they should be raised. From a perspective concerned with family function, this is not necessarily the case. Lastly, the chapter looks at the relation between parents and the requirements that co-parenting may generate in this regard. (shrink)

I-Language introduces the uninitiated to linguistics as cognitive science. In an engaging, down-to-earth style Daniela Isac and Charles Reiss give a crystal-clear demonstration of the application of the scientific method in linguistic theory. Their presentation of the research programme inspired and led by Noam Chomsky shows how the focus of theory and research in linguistics shifted from treating language as a disembodied, human-external entity to cognitive biolinguistics - the study of language as a human cognitive system embedded within the (...) mind/brain of each individual. The recurring theme of equivalence classes in linguistic computation ties together the presentation of material from phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The same theme is used to help students understand the place of linguistics in the broader context of the cognitive sciences, by drawing on examples from vision, audition, and even animal cognition.This textbook is unique in its integration of empirical issues of linguistic analysis, engagement with philosophical questions that arise in the study of language, and treatment of the history of the field. Topics ranging from allophony to reduplication, ergativity, and negative polarity are invoked to show the implications of findings in cognitive biolinguistics for philosophical issues like reference, the mind-body problem, and nature-nurture debates.This textbook contains numerous exercises and guides for further reading as well as ideas for student projects. A companion website with guidance for instructors and answers to the exercises features a series of pdf slide presentations to accompany the teaching of each topic. (shrink)

It is widely believed that we ought not to criticize others for wrongs that we ourselves have committed. The author draws out and challenges some of the background assumptions about the practice of criticism that underlie our attraction to this claim, such as the tendency to think of criticism either as a social sanction or as a didactic intervention. The author goes on to offer a taxonomy of cases in which the moral legitimacy of criticism is challenged on the grounds (...) that the critic him- or herself engages in the behavior that he or she criticizes in others. The author argues that, in each type of case, the would-be critics should not constrain their participation in moral discourse on the grounds that they are not themselves innocent of the wrongdoing they criticize in others. (shrink)

Die Frage, ob eine emphatische Bezugnahme auf nachhaltige Entwicklung in kritisch-emanzipatorischer Absicht uberhaupt noch moglich ist oder ob es nicht besser ware, sich von der Leerformel Nachhaltigkeit zu verabschieden, bildet den Ausgangspunkt des Bandes. Die Autorin analysiert die Gerechtigkeits-, Politik- und Okonomieverstandnisse verschiedener Strange im Nachhaltigkeitsdiskurs (politisch-institutionelle, feministische, herrschaftskritische und integrative) und zeigt, dass in ihnen ein emanzipatorisches Potenzial steckt. Dieses arbeitet sie mit Hilfe eines feministisch-gepragten, diskursanalytischen Ansatzes heraus. Die Verfasserin leistet damit einen Beitrag, Nachhaltigkeit neu und anders zu (...) denken und zieht dabei die Erkenntnisse der kritischen Debatten, die in den vergangenen zwanzig Jahren uber dieses Neu-, Anders- und Weiterdenken gefuhrt worden sind, kenntnisreich mit ein. Die Arbeit wurde mit dem Christiane Busch-Luty Forderpreis der Vereinigung fur Okologische Okonomie ausgezeichnet. (shrink)

Cultural practices and artifacts, in their multiple and varied forms, are grounded on values, which are so deeply internalized by people that usually remain in the background, as taken-for-granted guides for interpretations and decisions in everyday life. Shaping individual moral horizons is at the core of socialization processes, through which older generations aim to disseminate their culturally established values to the new ones, making use of suggestions mainly implicit in daily experiences and interactions. Despite the strength of these processes of (...) cultural canalization, people find particular ways of positioning and interpreting social suggestions, drawing singular life trajectories and developing themselves as unique beings. This is truthful also in case of highly institutionalized settings like the military, in which people play in many forms an agentic role in their own development, being prepared to perform their professional duties in very complex and challenging activity contexts. This book is an invitation to dive deeper into human experiences lived in the military through qualitative and in-depth approaches, observing their affective qualities, the meanings they acquire and how they shape individuals' identities, fostering the development and try-out of specific ethical and moral values. The present work can contribute to research and professional practice in fields related to human development, social processes, education and people management in the military, as well as in other institutional contexts, especially by highlighting the affective, meaningful and moral-ethical dimensions of cultural experiences. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is a major problem and is thus a highly relevant area of inquiry. Considerable research has shown that key traits from the Big Five model of personality are associated with various forms of anti-social behaviour. To date, however, relatively little research interest has been devoted to study the relationship between personality traits and plagiarism. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and the inclination to commit plagiarism by undergraduate (...) students. The main conclusion is that the inclination to plagiarize is negatively associated with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness traits. Neuroticism was not found to be related to the inclination to plagiarize. Implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

An extensive literature has focused on the impact of new public management oriented structural changes on academics’ practice and identity. These critical studies have been resolute in concluding that NPM inevitably leads to a degeneration of academics’ ethos and values. Drawing from the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we argue that these previous analyses have overlooked the moral agency of the academics and their role in ‘moralizing’ and consequently shaping the ethical nature of their practices. The paper provides a new (...) theoretical understanding of NPM-oriented reforms in light of the virtue ethics approach, thereby directing the attention to the moral character and moral agency of academics. Our analysis of interviews collected in the business department of a Danish university provides an example of how individuals have divergent ethical understandings of these structural changes and enact/resist pre-defined social roles in different ways. While in some cases the NPM agenda of the institutions has triggered internal moral conflict and a crisis of moral character, in other cases the new logic resonates with academics’ values and evaluative standards. Partially departing from the theoretical ground of MacIntyre, we conclude that academics can play a crucial role in shaping the morality of NPM-oriented institutions and in transforming these settings into suitable contexts for the cultivation of virtues. (shrink)

This paper explores a distinctive form of social interaction—interpersonal inquiry—in which two or more people attempt to understand one another by engaging in conversation. Like many modes of inquiry into human beings, interpersonal inquiry partly shapes its own objects. How we conduct it thus affects who we become. I present an ethical ideal of conversation to which, I argue, at least some of our interpersonal inquiry ought to aspire. I then consider how this ideal might influence philosophical conceptions of the (...) self. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a sharp reminder that large scale, unpredictable events always bring about profound changes with significant consequences on many levels. In light of lockdown measures taken in many countries across the world to control the spread of the virus, academics were “forced” to adapt and move to online settings all teaching, mentoring, research, and support activities. Academic leaders in higher education had to make decisions and to act quickly how were they to manage large educational communities, (...) addressing students', teachers', and staff's needs, as well as society's needs. Using an inductive approach, our study seeks to highlight the main challenges faced by university leaders and to understand their responses to those challenges. The current study aims to investigate perceptions and experiences of academic leaders in a University in Romania during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our foci were the processes underlying their leadership decisions and actions during the second part of the 2019–2020 academic year. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 11 university and faculty leaders in Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania. The findings from the thematic analysis revealed three main themes emerging from participants' responses: “the leader's personal attributes,” “unity through decentralization,” and “opportunities to reinvent the university.” Good practices to manage academic institutions in times of crises and changes are discussed, along with insights into strategies for supporting higher education development during crisis and post-crisis times resulting into recommendations for increasing management effectiveness. (shrink)

Background: Using the power of Internet, crowdfunding platforms are currently changing the traditional landscape of fundraising. Social media-based IT platforms in particular are bringing the creators of crowdfunding projects closer than ever to potential investors. A large variety of factors function as determinants of individuals' intention to participate in crowdfunding and have an intertwined impact on funding as the ultimate project goal.Objectives: For a better understanding of investor behavior in social media-based crowdfunding projects, this paper covers identifying, analyzing, and classifying (...) general and specific factors of investor motivation, based on the literature in the field.The main focus is the relationship between the affordances provided by social media-based crowdfunding platforms and the psychological determinants of investor motivation in innovative start-up projects.Methods: Using IEEE Explore, Clarivate Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Scopus, we conducted a systematic review of the existing research on the emerging role of crowdfunding as a disruptive technology in financing the start-up innovative projects. The paper explores the main determinants of investor motivation and aims to streamline the success factors in crowdfunding campaigns.Results: A total of 1,216 publications were identified after searching the aforementioned databases and, upon refining the results, 515 articles were considered for the final sample. After reading the titles and abstracts, the sample was reduced to 78 articles that were read in-depth and synthesized in accordance with the defined research questions. The selected articles were clustered into three main categories: general studies, determinants of investor behavior, and success factors.Conclusions: In the new global economy, crowdfunding platforms have become the nexus between the emerging creators of innovative products and services and the necessary funding sources. This connection is possible via a cumulative collection of contributions from multiple investors recruited from the audience of the selected platform, without time or space constraints. However, the determinants of the investment decision are very different in the case of social media-based crowdfunding platforms compared to determinants in the mainstream environment. This paper surveys these motivators and reveals how platform features can be used to persuade individuals to make a financial contribution toward the success of a project. (shrink)

Leading philosophical models of curiosity represent it as a desiderative attitude whose content is a question, and which is satisfied by knowledge of the answer to that question. I argue that these models do not capture the distinctive character of a form of curiosity that I call 'erotic curiosity'. Erotic curiosity addresses itself not to a question but to an object whose significance for the inquirer is affective as well as epistemic. This form of curiosity is best understood by analogy (...) to erotic love as theorized by Plato in the Symposium. (shrink)

Sensemaking has recently been identified as a driver of society developments, in particular in the context of designing a reasonable, valuable, and fair life. Since the construction of meaning is a crucial momentum in sensemaking processes, the authors investigate how meaning can be constructed in a sustaining form by utilizing digital means of expression, articulation, sharing of information, and creation of artscience artefacts. The authors report on results of exploring cyber-physical-systems with performative methodologies in the context of sensemaking to identify (...) sensemaking processes of entering digital environments and share meaning-making activities through interaction. The collected data from two artscience studies reveal that activities beyond cognition facilitate sensemaking. Aesthetics and embodiment in performing actions are understood to play a role in sensemaking and subsequently effect on the construction of meaning. To investigate the role of the body and aesthetics in sensemaking in digital environments, we were particularly interested in sensemaking through embodied agency and aesthetic awareness, drawing from kinesthetic awareness of performance artists. In the performative activities digital behavior recognition and human task behavior were coupled, on the one hand by performers exploring digital environments actively reflecting on their performative process, on the other hand by a performance artist and choreographer creating performative experiences for audiences. It has been demonstrated in cyber-physical settings and can be utilized in upcoming developments further integrating virtual and physical worlds. (shrink)

The phrase that titles the present article is radical for understanding how Spinoza comprehend the political problems, using Quinto Curcio Rufo’s quote, the dutch philosopher transmit to us, not as a political advice, but in a critical way, demonstrating that superstition is a political-affective dispositive that determine a specific form of practicing power through the affective manipulation and the perpetuation of the passives forms that this imply. Although there is no systematic treatment about this term, our analysis proposes an history (...) and etymology of superstitio, to then examine what Spinoza’s says about it, and finally our thesis that propose to think superstition as a determined affective configuration that operates in a parasitic way, because this could not exist except in relation with others affects, joined to power forms, overlapping the others in a meta-affective way. Of this way it is propose explaining the political efficacy of superstition in a renewed time, the one of the contemporaneity of capitalism as an ars affectandi that, just like theology, seats his power in superstition, considering also the ethical, political, epistemics and aesthetics consequences. (shrink)

Justified belief is a core concept in epistemology and there has been an increasing interest in its logic over the last years. While many logical investigations consider justified belief as an operator, in this paper, we propose a logic for justified belief in which the relevant notion is treated as a predicate instead. Although this gives rise to the possibility of liar-like paradoxes, a predicate treatment allows for a rich and highly expressive framework, which lives up to the universal ambitions (...) of investigating epistemological concepts. We start with a base theory for justified belief, and then systematically present putative additional axioms for justified belief. We provide an overview of consistency results when the additional principles are added to the base theory, and discuss their philosophical plausibility. (shrink)

Seed libraries are institutions that support the creation of semi-formal seed systems, but are often intended to address larger issues that are part of the “food movement” in the global north. Over 100 SLs are reported present in California. I describe a functional framework for studying and comparing seed systems, and use that to investigate the social and biological characteristics of California SLs in 2016 and how they are contributing to alternative seed systems based on interviews with 45 SL managers. (...) At a minimum, SLs function as new seed distribution institutions founded and overseen by dedicated, values-driven individuals and groups with goals including education, seed access, local adaptation, biodiversity conservation, community-building, and human health. Annually about 4776 people borrow seeds from, and 238 people return seeds to the SLs in this study, that operate through over 17,000 hours of work/year. These SLs distribute approximately 6456 packets of seed annually, mostly of commercial seeds from small seed companies, but some SLs emphasize local and culturally meaningful seeds. The significance of a 6% seed return rate depends on SL goals and can be investigated once appropriate indicators for those goals are identified and documented. Beyond distribution, the seed system functions accomplished by SLs differ, and all can have consequences for the processes shaping the diversity and adaptation of their crops. The SLs engaged in seed system functions beyond distribution are new forms of socially-motivated community science, poised to develop biological and social innovations reflecting their values and interests. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Models Analogy Metaphor Metaphorical Models Current Issues.

Self-referential sentences have troubled our understanding of language for centuries. The most famous self-referential sentence is probably the Liar, a sentence that says of itself that it is false. The Liar Paradox has encouraged many philosophers to establish theories of truth that manage to give a proper account of the truth predicate in a formal language. Kripke’s Fixed Point Theory from 1975 is one famous example of such a formal theory of truth that aims at giving a plausible notion of (...) truth by allowing truth value gaps. However, not only the concept of truth gives rise to paradoxes. A syntactical treatment of epistemic notions like belief and knowledge leads to contradictions that very much resemble the Liar Paradox. Therefore, it seems to be fruitful to apply the established theories of truth to epistemic concepts. In this paper, I will present one such attempt of solving the epistemic paradoxes: I adapt Kripke’s Fixed Point Theory and interpret truth, knowledge and belief within the framework of a partial logic. Thereby I find not only the fixed point of truth but also the fixed points of knowledge and belief. In this fixed point, the predicates of truth, belief and knowledge find their definite interpretation and the paradoxes are avoided. (shrink)

This article analyzes the autofigurative strategies of La travesía by Luisa Valenzuela in terms of the narratives of the self, the Argentine dictatorship and feminism. A correspondence is found between the disavowal of the voice, the structure of the autobiographical account and the portrait of the experience of the violence of the military regime and of gender. Initially, the novel is situated at the height of the narratives of the self that, with literary resources that are separated from the most (...) conservative autobiographical writings, denounce the impossibility of understanding the subject as univocal, while founding different approaches to the retelling of the experience. This location allows exploring the formal experiments that Valenzuela carries out around the autobiographical exercise and that highlight the crisis of the construction of memory and the exposure of contemporary subjectivity. In addition, it is shown how such strategies serve as a vehicle for reflection on feminism and dictatorship that permeate all of her work. For this, Valenzuela's notion of feminine writing is used, which puts the multiplicity of perspectives before the univocity of the autobiographical voice, the ambiguous before the precise, and the collective before the authoritarian. La travesía is, then, read as part of the works that come to the narration of the experience itself in a framework of the retelling of collective memory, with narrative games that point out the deictic futility of the self and the difficulty of recounting past time, without, therefore, abandoning the call for its reconstruction as a guarantee of non-repetition. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene por objeto delinear aquellos conceptos centrales de la narración en Walter Benjamin que se despliegan en las lecturas de los cuentos y relatos que forman parte del corpus central del movimiento jasídico. Para ello se analiza la concepción de la experiencia, el uso de las palabras y las alusiones del narrador en ese instante en que, a través del consejo, el maestro transmite sabiduría. El consejo no es una respuesta cerrada ni un saber exclusivo sobre los (...) aspectos metafísicos, sino que es –ante todo– la transmisión del aspecto de unificación del mundo, donde lo cotidiano devela su carácter inexplicable y lo trascendental –en un instante fugaz– se aproxima a la vida misma. Lo que narra el maestro jasídico sucede entre el cielo y la tierra, entre la vida práctica y la mística. La narración no abrevia: se despliega, da cuenta de lo inacabado, del requerimiento de la tarea del hombre en el mundo, de la labor paciente, insistente, del constructo de una artesanía que sólo la convicción –aquello más allá del mero y puro intelecto– y el amor a la letra del texto sagrado puede reavivar. (shrink)

O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar o bem-estar dos trabalhadores da saúde de um centro de reabilitação e readaptação, relacionando-o com a crença no mundo justo e com o lócus de controle. Participaram 146 profissionais que responderam a um questionário formado por perguntas sobre dados sócio-demog..