This article aims to compare the national legal systems that regulate biomedical research in an industrialized country (United States) and a developing country (Venezuela). A new international order is emerging in which Europe, Japan and the United States (US) are revising common guidelines and harmonizing standards. In this article, we analyze – as an example – the US system. This system is controlled by a federal agency structured to regulate research funded by the federal government uniformly, either in the US (...) or abroad. In contrast, in Venezuela, a developing country, the creation of a centralized system is a slow process. Different types of ethical committees review research projects using non-uniform criteria. Consequently, various parallel organizations that conduct biomedical research, such as universities, research institutes and private hospitals have diverse regulations operating at a local level. Thus, the most relevant difference between the Venezuelan and the US systems is the degree of standardization. In the US, the review process is performed by institutional review boards (IRBs), which have a similar organization and maintain relationships with a centralized agency, following standard regulations. Although new proposals for establishing national regulations are currently being considered in Venezuela, the success of these initiatives will depend on promoting governmental efforts to create a more structured centralized system supported by a national regulatory framework. This system will need governmental financial support at all levels. This article proposes an integrated system to regulate research with human participants in Venezuela and other developing countries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to compare the national legal systems that regulate biomedical research in an industrialized country (United States) and a developing country (Venezuela). A new international order is emerging in which Europe, Japan and the United States (US) are revising common guidelines and harmonizing standards. In this article, we analyze – as an example – the US system. This system is controlled by a federal agency structured to regulate research funded by the federal government uniformly, either in the (...) US or abroad. In contrast, in Venezuela, a developing country, the creation of a centralized system is a slow process. Different types of ethical committees review research projects using non‐uniform criteria. Consequently, various parallel organizations that conduct biomedical research, such as universities, research institutes and private hospitals have diverse regulations operating at a local level. Thus, the most relevant difference between the Venezuelan and the US systems is the degree of standardization. In the US, the review process is performed by institutional review boards (IRBs), which have a similar organization and maintain relationships with a centralized agency, following standard regulations. Although new proposals for establishing national regulations are currently being considered in Venezuela, the success of these initiatives will depend on promoting governmental efforts to create a more structured centralized system supported by a national regulatory framework. This system will need governmental financial support at all levels. This article proposes an integrated system to regulate research with human participants in Venezuela and other developing countries. (shrink)

We suggest a model that describes how counterfactuals are constructed and justified. The model can describe how counterfactual beliefs are updated given the unfolding of actual history. It also allows us to examine the use of counterfactuals in prediction, and to show that a logically omniscient reasoner gains nothing from using counterfactuals for prediction.

Number processing abilities are important for academic and personal development. The course of initial specialization of ventral occipito-temporal cortex sensitivity to visual number processing is crucial for the acquisition of numeric and arithmetic skills. We examined the visual N1, the electrophysiological correlate of vOTC activation across five time points in kindergarten, middle and end of first grade, second grade, and fifth grade. A combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal EEG data of a total of 62 children at varying familial risk for (...) dyslexia were available to form groups of 23, 22, 27, 27, and 42 participants for each of the five time points. The children performed a target detection task which included visual presentation of single digits, false fonts, and letters to derive measures for coarse and fine digit sensitive processing across development. The N1 amplitude analyses indicated coarse and fine sensitivity characterized by a stronger N1 to digits than false fonts across all five time points, and stronger N1 to digits than letters at all but the second time point. In addition, lower arithmetic skills were associated with stronger coarse N1 digit sensitivity over the left hemisphere in second grade, possibly reflecting allocation of more attentional resources or stronger reliance on the verbal system in children with poorer arithmetic skills. To summarize, our results show persistent visual N1 sensitivity to digits that is already present early on in pre-school and remains stable until fifth grade. This pattern of digit sensitivity development clearly differs from the relatively sharp rise and fall of the visual N1 sensitivity to words or letters between kindergarten and middle of elementary school and suggests unique developmental trajectories for visual processing of written characters that are relevant to numeracy and literacy. (shrink)

Es indudable que Edith Stein representa, en nuestros días, una figura tan atractiva como compleja, debido a su multifacético itinerario existencial caracterizado por la presencia de distintos registros tanto a nivel personal como a nivel profesional. En el presente artículo nos interesa destacar los principales legados de Edith Stein al mundo, a 130 años de su nacimiento. De manera general, nos proponemos dar cuenta de los legados que consideramos fundamentales por la potencia de sus propuestas, por la pertinencia para nuestro (...) mundo actual y por la recepción que de ellos se haga. Los legados seleccionados son: 1) el legado filosófico; 2) el legado pedagógico; 3) el legado femenino y 4) el legado personal y espiritual. Esperamos que durante la exposición de los legados puedan emerger los motivos de nuestra elección, así como las razones de inclusión y exclusión de temas en determinado legado, o la ausencia de alguna otra herencia importante que se haya dejado pasar. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse the most important documents establishing the criteria for the treatment and exclusion of COVID-19 patients, especially in regard to the giving of respiratory support, in Italy and Spain. These documents reflect a tension that stems from limited healthcare resources which are insufficient to save lives that, under normal conditions, could have been saved, or at least could have received the best possible treatment. First, we analyse the healthcare systems of these two countries before the spread (...) of the virus, both of which have seen decreases in the number of intensive care beds and have been marked by financial cuts during the last ten years. It is a fact that a greater number of people, especially those over 70 years of age, have been left without respiratory support treatment, and therefore, there have been a greater number of deaths. It is also a fact that there has been a higher infection rate among healthcare professionals due to the delay in the management of protective measures and the inability to provide adequate care for those in nursing homes, as recognised by WHO. In the context of this health emergency, healthcare professionals have suffered a real ‘moral distress’ because, knowing first-hand the causes of the limitation of resources, they have had to put triage protocols into practice. Finally, we set forth a series of concrete ethical proposals with which to face the successive waves of COVID-19 infection, as well as other future pandemics. (shrink)

The spread of COVID-19 in Italy resulted in the implementation of a lockdown that obligated the first time the general populace to remain at home for approximately two months. This lockdown interrupted citizens’ professional and educational activities, in addition to closing shops, offices and educational institutions. The resulting changes in people’s daily routines and activities induced unexpected changes in their thoughts, feelings and attitudes, in addition to altering their life perceptions. Consequently, the present study explores how young adults perceived their (...) lives under lockdown during the final week of March 2020, when the reported number of daily coronavirus infections reached its peak in Italy. The research was carried out among 293 university students (234 women and 59 men) with an average age of 20.85 years old (SD = 3.23). The researchers asked participants to describe the emotions, thoughts and experiences that characterized their time under lockdown. The study analyzed specific narratives related to time and space using grounded theory methodology, which was applied using Atlas 8 software, leading to the creation of 68 codes. The study organized these codes into three specific categories: confined in the present, confined in the past, and striving toward one’s goals. Finally, the researchers also created a core-category labeled “continuity of being.” The results showed that the closure of open spaces caused a division in participants’ perceptions of time continuity, with many viewing themselves as feeling fragmented and as living the present in a static and fixed way. Additionally, participants also saw the present as being discontinuous from the past, while, simultaneously, projecting toward the future and the changes it might bring. Finally, this study examined further implications surrounding individual projecting among young people in greater depth. (shrink)

We present a novel argumentation-based method for finding and analyzing communities in social media on the Web, where a community is regarded as a set of supported opinions that might be in conflict. Based on their stance, we identify argumentative coalitions to define them; then, we apply a similarity-based evaluation method over the set of arguments in the coalition to determine the level of cohesion inherent to each community, classifying them appropriately. Introducing conflict points and attacks between coalitions based on (...) argumentative (dis)similarities to model the interaction between communities leads to considering a meta-argumentation framework where the set of coalitions plays the role of the set of arguments and where the attack relation between the coalitions is assigned a particular strength which is inherited from the arguments belonging to the coalition. Various semantics are introduced to consider attacks’ strength to particularize the effect of the new perspective. Finally, we analyze a case study where all the elements of the formal construction of the formalism are exercised. (shrink)

Este artículo examina cómo la separabilidad y unidad mente-cuerpo resultan clave para poner de manifiesto lo inapropiado del “teatro cartesiano”, metáfora creada por Daniel Dennett para criticar la experiencia consciente unificada en Descartes. La primera sección introduce al problema de la separabilidad cartesiana. La segunda examina cómo mente y cuerpo, separables mediante lo concebible según Descartes, resultan ser cosas metafísicamente distintas. La tercera enfatiza como separables no implica separados. La última sección enfatiza el argumento de la dis-analogía del piloto y (...) el navío, y cómo, según el filósofo francés, aunque separables, mente y cuerpo son substancias estrechamente unidas, formando un ens per se. En vista de este, criticamos la metáfora del “teatro cartesiano” de Dennett: es imposible que la mente sea un espectador, puesto que la experiencia consciente ya es unificada e incluso somatizada. Notamos, por último, que pese a Dennett, hay investigadores de la Ciencia Cognitiva que coinciden con Descartes en relación con la estrecha unión mente-cuerpo, i.e., quienes defienden que la mente es encarnada, incrustada o incluso extendida. (shrink)

Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società Università di Torino, 9 ottobre 2020.

Abstract. Following the tracks of Ryle and based upon the theory of complex systems, we shall develop a characterization of action-based consciousness as an embodied, embedded, selforganized process in which action and dispositions occupy a special place. From this perspective, consciousness is not a unique prerogative of humans, but it is spread all around, throughout the evolution of life. We argue that artificial systems such as robots currently lack the genuine embodied embeddedness that allows the type of self-organization that is (...) relevant to consciousness. -/- Sommario. Seguendo la linea tracciata da Ryle e basata sulla teorie dei sistemi complessi, svilupperemo una caratterizzazione della coscienza basata sull’azione come un processo incarnato, situato e auto organizzante nel quale le azioni e le disposizioni occupano un ruolo decisivo. Da questo punto di vista, la coscienza non è una prerogativa esclusiva degli esseri umani, ma è diffusa nel mondo naturale grazie ai processi evolutivi. Noi sosteniamo che i sistemi artificiali come i robot attualmente sono carenti del tipo di relazione con la corporeità e con l’ambiente che consente quel tipo di auto-organizzazione indispensabile per l’emergenza della coscienza. (shrink)

La realización de homenajes a figuras apreciadas del mundo académico impone el reto de seleccionar cuál sea el contenido de lo presentado en el evento para que éste se constituya en una auténtica muestra de reconocimiento de sus méritos.En ocasión de la mesa de homenaje a Gregorio Klimovsky, organizada por la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella a instancias de Guillermo Ranea, y convocada en el seno de las XX Jornadas de Epistemología e Historia de la Ciencia, el 26 de noviembre de (...) 2009, en La Falda (Córdoba), Alberto Moretti y Alejandro Cassini, plasmaron la mejor opción. Ambos eligieron analizar tesis filosóficas defendidas por el recordado y querido maestro, tanto en su obra como en las distintas ocasiones de diálogo que mantuvo con pares y discípulos. Se trató de la mejor elección porque de este modo no sólo ambos contribuyen a la difusión de las ideas de Klimovsky sino también, y con gran cuidado analítico, las conjugan con otras doctrinas presentes en el escenario filosófico contemporáneo, destacando así su actualidad y valía. (shrink)

En este trabajo realizo un examen crítico del reciente libro de Silvana Gabriela Di Camillo sobre la crítica de Aristóteles a la teoría platónica de las Ideas. El libro de Di Camillo es un trabajo muy serio cuya lectura recomiendo ampliamente. Sin embargo, considero que cuatro de las principales tesis que la autora defiende tienen varias dificultades y mi objetivo aquí es presentar argumentos detallados en contra de ellas: la interpretación de la distinción entre argumentos más y menos rigurosos del (...) tratado Sobre las Ideas; la tesis de que la separación es el blanco esencial de las críticas aristotélicas a las Ideas; la interpretación de las opciones que Platón tiene para responder al argumento del tercer hombre, y la tesis de que la separación de las Ideas debe entenderse como homonimia. In this paper I examine Silvana Gabriela Di Camillo's recent book on Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's theory of Ideas. Di Camillo's book is a very serious work that I highly recommend. Nevertheless, I consider that four of the main theses that the author defends face several difficulties and my aim here is to offer detailed arguments against them: the interpretation of the distinction between more and less accurate arguments of the treatise On Ideas; the thesis that separation is the essential target of Aristotle's criticisms against Plato's Ideas; the interpretation of the options available to Plato to reply to the third man argument; and the thesis that the separation of Ideas should be understood as homonymy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone; and: Oralità e scrittura in PlatoneFrancisco J. GonzalezFranco Trabattoni. Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone. Firenze: La Nouva Italia Editrice, 1994. Pp. 396. Paper, 24000 Lire.Franco Trabattoni. Oralità e scrittura in Platone. Milano: Università Degli Studi di Milano, 1999. Pp. 125. Paper, 16000 Lire.Trabattoni's masterful 1994 book, which the shorter 1999 book supplements in important ways, offers nothing (...) less than a refreshingly new and provocative interpretation of Plato's philosophy as a whole that makes it neither "conclusive-dogmatic" nor "problematic-sceptical" (7, 41-47, 161, 361-3). For Plato, on Trabattoni's account, while objective truth exists, any logos is incapable of fully expressing it and therefore refutable (158). On the other hand, dialectic can arrive at a logos sufficient (hikanos) for persuading a particular interlocutor in the context of a particular discussion (119-120), and thus for ethical and political action (330). Truth is therefore to be found onlyin dialogue (75-6, 338): that is, only where one person persuades another (249, 252, 328-9; 1999, 75). Persuasion and homologia are thus a necessary, though not sufficient condition of truth: only when capable of responding repeatedly to a wide variety of questions and objections does a persuasion deserve to be called "true" (158-9, 252, 329). This view rejects both the sophistical identification of truth with persuasion as such and the dogmatic identification of truth with universal doctrines.Because persuasion and homologia are thus essential to it, philosophy cannot be an objective science but must always be at its core a form of rhetoric (239, and thus protreptic and ad hominem, 165-6, 355, 359), which is what Trabattoni takes the Phaedrus to show (48-99). In 1999 Trabattoni brilliantly demonstrated the unity of the Phaedrus by showing how both the discussion of eros and the critique of writing are closely linked to this conception of philosophy as rhetoric (54-93). Philosophy is not, however, the kind of rhetoric that, focused on words rather than truth, fails to persuade in a way that is stable and enduring (87; 1999, 75-6).In the course of defending his "dialectical-dialogical" interpretation, Trabattoni provides an extraordinarily thorough and insightful critique of another interpretation that claims to offer a new Plato and that has become very influential in Trabattoni's native Italy: the "esotericist" interpretation, according to which fundamental questions left open by the dialogues are answered by a doctrine of principles which Plato communicated only orally. Trabattoni's 1999 book provides a very helpful account of the history and motives of the debate surrounding Plato's unwritten teachings, with regard to both their content and their significance (1-42). I see the following points of Trabattoni's critique as seriously challenging and, if unanswered, even discrediting the esotericist position: [End Page 269]1) While the esotericists interpret the critique of writing in the Phaedrus as arguing for the superiority of oral discourse as such, Trabattoni interprets it as arguing instead for the superiority of the dialogical situation in which interlocutors can be chosen and their questions and objections addressed (19-26; 1999, 83). Fixed oral doctrines would be no more dialogical than written doctrines and thus no more capable of engendering knowledge "in the soul" (63), much less of constituting this knowledge (25). What would be superior to Plato's writings, according to the Phaedrus, is a dialogue with Plato, not what Plato said orally, lifted out of its dialogical context and reported in writing by Aristotle (115; 1999, 84-5, 124). Trabattoni interprets the Seventh Letter, in his complementary accounts of 1994 and 1999, as similarly contradicting, rather than confirming, the esotericist interpretation (210-11; 1999, 116-9).2) Thomas Szlezàk has interpreted those passages where the main interlocutor deliberately leaves something out of the discussion ("Aussparungstellen") as referring to unwritten doctrines. Trabattoni argues that they are instead meant to indicate to the unknown reader, whose possible objections and questions cannot be anticipated, the possibility of proceeding further in the discussion (112-3, 182; 1999, 124). "[W]hen the dialogues are silent, they are silent always where there no... (shrink)

It is always possible to construct a real function φ, given random quantities X and Y with continuous distribution functions F and G, respectively, in such a way that φ(X) and φ(Y), also random quantities, have both the same distribution function, say H. This result of De Finetti introduces an alternative way to somehow describe the `opinion' of a group of experts about a continuous random quantity by the construction of Fields of coincidence of opinions (FCO). A Field of coincidence (...) of opinions is a finite union of intervals where the opinions of the experts coincide with respect to that quantity of interest. We speculate on (dis)advantages of Fields of Opinion compared to usual `probability' measures of a group and on their relation with a continuous version of the well-known Allais' paradox. (shrink)

It is always possible to construct a real function f, given random quantities X and Y with continuous distribution functions F and G, respectively, in such a way that f(X) and f(Y), also random quantities, have both the same distribution function, say H. This result of De Finetti introduces an alternative way to somehow describe the `opinion' of a group of experts about a continuous random quantity by the construction of Fields of coincidence of opinions (FCO). A Field of coincidence (...) of opinions is a finite union of intervals where the opinions of the experts coincide with respect to that quantity of interest. We speculate on (dis)advantages of Fields of Opinion compared to usual `probability' measures of a group and on their relation with a continuous version of the well-known Allais' paradox. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone; and: Oralità e scrittura in PlatoneFrancisco J. GonzalezFranco Trabattoni. Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone. Firenze: La Nouva Italia Editrice, 1994. Pp. 396. Paper, 24000 Lire.Franco Trabattoni. Oralità e scrittura in Platone. Milano: Università Degli Studi di Milano, 1999. Pp. 125. Paper, 16000 Lire.Trabattoni's masterful 1994 book, which the shorter 1999 book supplements in important ways, offers nothing (...) less than a refreshingly new and provocative interpretation of Plato's philosophy as a whole that makes it neither "conclusive-dogmatic" nor "problematic-sceptical" (7, 41-47, 161, 361-3). For Plato, on Trabattoni's account, while objective truth exists, any logos is incapable of fully expressing it and therefore refutable (158). On the other hand, dialectic can arrive at a logos sufficient (hikanos) for persuading a particular interlocutor in the context of a particular discussion (119-120), and thus for ethical and political action (330). Truth is therefore to be found onlyin dialogue (75-6, 338): that is, only where one person persuades another (249, 252, 328-9; 1999, 75). Persuasion and homologia are thus a necessary, though not sufficient condition of truth: only when capable of responding repeatedly to a wide variety of questions and objections does a persuasion deserve to be called "true" (158-9, 252, 329). This view rejects both the sophistical identification of truth with persuasion as such and the dogmatic identification of truth with universal doctrines.Because persuasion and homologia are thus essential to it, philosophy cannot be an objective science but must always be at its core a form of rhetoric (239, and thus protreptic and ad hominem, 165-6, 355, 359), which is what Trabattoni takes the Phaedrus to show (48-99). In 1999 Trabattoni brilliantly demonstrated the unity of the Phaedrus by showing how both the discussion of eros and the critique of writing are closely linked to this conception of philosophy as rhetoric (54-93). Philosophy is not, however, the kind of rhetoric that, focused on words rather than truth, fails to persuade in a way that is stable and enduring (87; 1999, 75-6).In the course of defending his "dialectical-dialogical" interpretation, Trabattoni provides an extraordinarily thorough and insightful critique of another interpretation that claims to offer a new Plato and that has become very influential in Trabattoni's native Italy: the "esotericist" interpretation, according to which fundamental questions left open by the dialogues are answered by a doctrine of principles which Plato communicated only orally. Trabattoni's 1999 book provides a very helpful account of the history and motives of the debate surrounding Plato's unwritten teachings, with regard to both their content and their significance (1-42). I see the following points of Trabattoni's critique as seriously challenging and, if unanswered, even discrediting the esotericist position: [End Page 269]1) While the esotericists interpret the critique of writing in the Phaedrus as arguing for the superiority of oral discourse as such, Trabattoni interprets it as arguing instead for the superiority of the dialogical situation in which interlocutors can be chosen and their questions and objections addressed (19-26; 1999, 83). Fixed oral doctrines would be no more dialogical than written doctrines and thus no more capable of engendering knowledge "in the soul" (63), much less of constituting this knowledge (25). What would be superior to Plato's writings, according to the Phaedrus, is a dialogue with Plato, not what Plato said orally, lifted out of its dialogical context and reported in writing by Aristotle (115; 1999, 84-5, 124). Trabattoni interprets the Seventh Letter, in his complementary accounts of 1994 and 1999, as similarly contradicting, rather than confirming, the esotericist interpretation (210-11; 1999, 116-9).2) Thomas Szlezàk has interpreted those passages where the main interlocutor deliberately leaves something out of the discussion ("Aussparungstellen") as referring to unwritten doctrines. Trabattoni argues that they are instead meant to indicate to the unknown reader, whose possible objections and questions cannot be anticipated, the possibility of proceeding further in the discussion (112-3, 182; 1999, 124). "[W]hen the dialogues are silent, they are silent always where there no... (shrink)

An engineer who becomes an educator in a school of software engineering has the mission to teach how to design and construct software systems, therein applying his or her knowledge and expertise. However, due to their engineering background, engineers may forget that educating a person is not the same as designing a machine, since a machine has a well-defined goal, whilst a person is capable to self-propose his or her own objectives. The ethical implications are clear: educating a free person (...) must leave space for creativity and self-determination in his or her own discovery of the way towards personal and professional fulfillment, which cannot consist only in achieving goals selected by others. We present here an argument that is applicable to most fields of engineering. However, the dis-analogy between educating students and programming robots may have a particular appeal to software engineers and computer scientists. We think the consideration of three different stages in the educational process may be useful to engineers when they act as educators. We claim that the three stages are essential to engineering education. In particular, education is incomplete if the third stage is not reached. Moreover, mentoring is incompatible with an educational assessment framework that considers the goals of the engineer are always given by others. In our view, then, an integral education is not only beyond programming the behavior of students, but also beyond having them reach those given goals. (shrink)

The computation of both Scalar Implicatures (SI) and Association with Focus (AF) is characterized with reference to sets of alternatives. However, it has generally been assumed that the relevant alternatives are determined in different ways for the two processes. Specifically, it has been assumed that the alternatives for SI – scalar alternatives – are computed by a special procedure specifically designed for implicatures, whereas the alternatives for AF – focus alternatives – are determined by the general theory of association with (...) focus – focus semantics. As far as we know, the only attempt to connect the two is Krifka (1995), under which scalar alternatives and focus alternatives are identical and determined by focus semantics. However, Krifka’s result is based on a specific stipulation about scalar items, which he borrows from Horn and incorporates into focus semantics, namely that scalar items are inherently focused and have their Horn Scale as their lexically specified focus values. (shrink)

There is ample discussion of MBA self-serving values in the corporate social responsibility literature, and yet empirical studies regarding the corporate manifestations and consequences of those values are scant. In a comprehensive study of major US public corporations, we find that MBA CEOs are more apt than their non-MBA counterparts to engage in short-term strategic expedients such as positive earnings management and suppression of R&D, which in turn are followed by compromised firm market valuations.

The article examines the compatibility of agonistic democracy and populism as well as their relationship to the idea of constitutionalism. The first part shows that Chantal Mouffe’s recent attempts to reconcile her normative approach of an agonistic pluralism with a populist style of politics are not fully convincing. Although there are undeniable commonalities between an agonistic and a populist understanding of politics – the appreciation of conflict, the rejection of moralistic and juridical modes of conflict resolution etc. – the populist (...) mode of the construction of the people (and the denunciation of political opponents as enemies of the people) risks impeding the transformation of antagonistic into agonistic modes of political contest. The tensions between agonism and populism are especially evident in matters of constitutionalism. This topic is examined in the second part of the article, which provides some ideas for reducing the normative and institutional blind spots of contemporary theories of agonistic democracy. It focuses on elementary principles for an agonistic concept of democratic constitutionalism that differs from the populist view of the relationship between politics and law, especially in respect of its interpretation of the concept of ‘resistibility’ of legal norms. (shrink)

In this paper, the process for firms to decide whether or not to invest in corporate social responsibility is treated from a real option perspective. We extend the Husted framework with an important extra parameter that allows us to understand the timing of CSR investment and explain why some companies drag their feet over CSR investments. Our model explicitly allows for the impact of the opportunity cost of delaying the CSR investment decision, providing firms with tools to determine the optimal (...) moment of exercising the CSR investment option. We illustrate our timing model through a case study and analyze governmental support strategies for CSR from a real options perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning Through ServingDanny ReedI am a male CNA currently registered in Wisconsin since 1991, having worked as such since 1980 when I left high school. I have worked with ten different employers and many precious people I remember very well.I remember virtually everyone I have cared for in my over 30 years of work and yet there is not one person, place or moment that characterizes them all except (...) perhaps, May. She died within 24-hours of admission and we never spoke, except with the eyes. May had end-stage nerve and muscle wasting disease that left her mind intact but her body immobile and in pain. Her boyfriend brought her in after taking care of her at home, but he was wasted on some kind of drug, maybe her pain medication, feeling he needed it more than her. We ordered morphine and got her settled and she finally relaxed. She was gone by morning.May reminded me of Mary, another woman with a similar disease. Mary's husband Harold came to visit drunk. She could just point to a letter board similar to an Ouija board and spell out words and phrases with her right hand and then use her eyes to indicate if we were correct. Mary was a refined woman but very patient with me because I was an 18-year-old boy trying to be a man, sensitive but having a lot to learn. Mary taught me how to communicate without words—just using the eyes.These women are the core of understanding the meaning of what I have done for 30 years. Whether imprisoned by hearing loss, loss of sight or mobility, failing bodies and minds or simply being alone—the challenge was the same, to know when to reach into another's soul and touch them, to stay out of the way, and have the good sense to know the difference. Can I honestly say I fell in love with the woman that quietly said, "I'm tired of being old?" These were largely rhetorical questions without an answer.The men and women of this generation were far superior to me. I could only stand by and watch them die. Oh, I did the necessary things like I was paid to do, trained to do, but they were the ones patiently trying to teach me. I will spend the rest of my life trying to decipher their encrypted message because I am trapped here, too. Imprisoned by the ignorance of believing I understand what my eyes have seen, what I have heard, and experienced. That it can all be regulated and catalogued in journals of medicine.Is it not ironic that primary caregivers struggle to stay alive while money movers make millions, even billions tax free, moving money from here to there and acquiring the power and influence to change the world, but will not lift a finger unless they can make more money doing it? Ironic because I have taken care of them in their final hours and they would give me it all had I the power to give them more life. Yes, I have turned down a fortune because in their grief they wanted to pay me money for an hour of genuine kindness that in reality they could not afford. If you must ask how much it is worth you cannot afford it. Sincere kindness is priceless so I don't charge for it.It is not my intent to humiliate the achievements and status of professionals and others fallen upon hard times due to aging and disease because no one deserves these indignities. Indeed, I delight in restoring dignity to every human in need of it regardless of cause. I do not wish such suffering upon my worst enemy. Bill wanted one more hour. The cancer was sudden, painful, and terminal. Being sidetracked into a cozy hospice in the country is hardly comforting when given less than six months to live just when retirement promised the rewards earned from a life of hard work and sacrifice. Bill had spirituality and strong beliefs but it seemed to make matters worse because he cried every day begging God... (shrink)

The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective, we examine a potentially vital relationship between corporate conduct and pro-social behavior demanding sacrifice from individuals. Drawing on Weber ), we theorize that organizations in a community legitimize personal social conduct in three ways—by serving as role models, imparting norms and values, and routinizing forms of interaction. We study the relationship between corporate social responsibility behavior by local firms (...) and the social distancing of citizens in US counties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a core ethical outcome. We argue and find that the residents of communities in which firms exhibit higher levels of CSR engaged in more SD during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true when firms were long-established, isomorphic in their CSR, and major employers and vendors. Moreover, CSR relating to the treatment of employees as well as positive and negative extremes in CSR bore especially strong relationships with SD. Implications are drawn for the study of business ethics, as modeled by CSR, as a force for ethical personal behavior and public health in communities. (shrink)

This paper will be concerned with the conjunctive interpretation of a family of disjunctive constructions. The relevant conjunctive interpretation, sometimes referred to as a “free choice effect,” (FC) is attested when a disjunctive sentence is embedded under an existential modal operator. I will provide evidence that the relevant generalization extends (with some caveats) to all constructions in which a disjunctive sentence appears under the scope of an existential quantifier, as well as to seemingly unrelated constructions in which conjunction appears under (...) the scope of negation and a universal quantifier. (shrink)

L’argomento proposto da Haselager, Broens e Quilici Gonzalez in The Importance of Sensing One’s Movements in the World for the Sense of Personal Identity consta di tre tesi fondamentali, che possono essere così riassunte: al cuore dell’autocoscienza umana sta il linguaggio o il pensiero, ma il senso del corpo; la dicotomia tradizionale tra sensi esterni e sensi interni è falsa; non c’è un primato del cervello sul resto del corpo in rapporto al senso di identità che ogni essere umano (...) possiede. Il presente studio si propone di mostrare che, mentre la tesi è perfettamente convincente, le tesi e devono essere parzialmente rivisitate, poiché troppo compromesse con un tipo di anti-rappresentazionalismo à la Brook. Difatti, molti risultati sperimentali mostrano, diversamente da quanto sostenuto in, che anche a livello puramente percettivo il cervello distingue tra sé e mondo esterno. Esistono inoltre esperimenti che confermano l’“importanza”del corpo per la cognizione e l’interazione costante tra corpo e cervello anche per quel che concerne l’esecuzione di compiti cognitivi, questi stessi esperimenti mostrano al contempo, diversamente da quanto sostenuto in, che l’influenza del movimento corporeo sulle aree associative della corteccia non è direttamente dovuta agli schemi motori che dirigono il movimento corporeo ma a rappresentazioni cerebrali di “alto livello” delle azioni, ognuna delle quali può essere eseguita da schemi motori differenti. (shrink)

We present an argument for revising the theory of alternatives for Scalar Implicatures and for Association with Focus. We argue that in both cases the alternatives are determined in the same way, as a contextual restriction of the focus value of the sentence, which, in turn, is defined in structure-sensitive terms. We provide evidence that contextual restriction is subject to a constraint that prevents it from discriminating between alternatives when they stand in a particular logical relationship with the assertion or (...) the prejacent, a relationship that we refer to as symmetry. Due to this constraint on contextual restriction, discriminating between alternatives in cases of symmetry becomes the task of focus values. This conclusion is incompatible with standard type-theoretic definitions of focus values, motivating our structure-sensitive definition instead. (shrink)

Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition allows us to derive a number of generalizations, such as, in particular, the ‘Implicature Focus Generalization’: scalar implicatures can be embedded under a downward-entailing operator only if the scalar term bears pitch accent. Our economy condition also derives specific predictions regarding (...) the licensing of so-called Hurford disjunctions. (shrink)

The notion of measurement plays a central role in human cognition. We measure people’s height, the weight of physical objects, the length of stretches of time, or the size of various collections of individuals. Measurements of height, weight, and the like are commonly thought of as mappings between objects and dense scales, while measurements of collections of individuals, as implemented for instance in counting, are assumed to involve discrete scales. It is also commonly assumed that natural language makes use of (...) both types of scales and subsequently distinguishes between two types of measurements. This paper argues against the latter assumption. It argues that natural language semantics treats all measurements uniformly as mappings from objects (individuals or collections of individuals) to dense scales, hence the Universal Density of Measurement (UDM). If the arguments are successful, there are a variety of consequences for semantics and pragmatics, and more generally for the place of the linguistic system within an overall architecture of cognition. (shrink)

Recently there has been a lively revival of interest in implicatures, particularly scalar implicatures. Building on the resulting literature, our main goal in the present paper is to establish an empirical generalization, namely that SIs can occur systematically and freely in arbitrarily embedded positions. We are not so much concerned with the question whether drawing implicatures is a costly option (in terms of semantic processing, or of some other markedness measure). Nor are we specifically concerned with how implicatures come about (...) (even though, to get going, we will have to make some specific assumptions on this matter). The focus of our discussion is testing the claim of the pervasive embeddability of SIs in just about any context, a claim that remains so far controversial. While our main goal is the establishment of an empirical generalization, if we succeed, a predominant view on the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics will have to be revised. A secondary goal of this paper is to hint at evidence that a revision is needed on independent grounds. But let us first present, in a rather impressionistic way, the reasons why a revision would be required if our main generalization on embedded SIs turns out to be correct. In the tradition stemming from Grice (1989), implicatures are considered a wholly pragmatic phenomenon and SIs are often used as paramount examples. Within such a tradition, 㳊 semantics is taken to deal with the compositional construction of sentence meaning (a term which we are using for now in a loose, non technical way), while pragmatics deals with how sentence meaning is actually put to use (i.e. enriched and possibly modified through reasoning about speakers’ intentions, contextually relevant information, etc.). Simply put, on this view pragmatics takes place at the level of complete utterances and pragmatic enrichments are a root phenomenon (something that happens globally to sentences) rather than a compositional one.. (shrink)

Many contemporary legal positivists have argued that legal theory is evaluative because it requires the theorist to make judgments of importance. At the same time they argue that it is possible to know without resort to evaluative considerations. I distinguish between two senses of : in one sense it refers to legal validity, in another to the content of legal norms, and I argue that legal positivism is best understood (as indeed some legal positivists have explicitly said) as a claim (...) about legal content. Understood this way, however, it is open to the objection that knowing the content of legal norms requires evaluative considerations for reasons similar to those offered by positivists for thinking that legal theory is requires evaluative considerations. I then distinguish between evaluative considerations in general and moral considerations and argue that because of the subject-matter of legal norms, there are good reasons for thinking that it is moral considerations, and not just any other evaluative considerations, that are required for knowing the content of legal norms. (shrink)

The article inquires about the role of language in Cristina Peri Rossi’s Panic Signs [Indicios pánicos]. The hypothesis of the work is that language, as a mimetic instrument of representation and creation, established itself as a way to upgrade the relations of power during the Uruguayan pre-dictatorship. Being a qualitative research based on a hermeneutical approach, the article has the following aims: i) reconstruct the background to the dictatorship leaded by Juan Maria Bordaberry, ii) frame the work within the tradition (...) of dictator novel following Lukács’ socio-critical approach and Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, iii) explain how language works as an instrument of representation and power, iv) analyze Peri Rossi’s work in the light of the aforementioned framework. It concludes, first, that the work responds to a mimetic language of representation, which involves taking a stance that is based on the notions of hegemony or counter-hegemony; and, second, that provided the scarce studies concerning the circumstantial situations of the work, the article might be regarded as a significant contribution to literary criticism. (shrink)