The aim of this study was to identify the ethical problems that nurse managers encounter in their work and the role of codes of ethics in the solutions to these difficulties. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analysed statistically. The target sample included all nurse managers in 21 specialized health care or primary health care organizations in two hospital districts in Finland (N = 501; response rate 41%). The most common ethical problems concerned resource allocation as well (...) as providing and developing high quality care. This was the case in different managerial positions as well as in types of organization. Professional codes of ethics were used more often for problems related to patients’ care compared with issues of resource allocation. Nurse managers at middle or strategic management levels used codes of ethics more often than those in charge of a ward. More research is required to investigate ethical decision making in nursing management, especially with regard to problem solving. In addition, new guidelines and continuing education in ethics are important for management personnel. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the relationship between ethical organisational culture and organisational innovativeness. A quantitative empirical analysis is based on a survey of a total of 719 respondents from all levels of three Finnish organisations, both general staff and managers. The organisations belong to both the private and public sectors. The results of this study show that organisations’ ethical culture is associated with their organisational innovativeness, and that different dimensions of ethical culture are associated with different dimensions of organisational (...) innovativeness. The ethical culture of the organisation had a specific role in process and behavioural innovativeness. It was found that congruency of management was the single dimension with the highest effect on organisational innovativeness overall and specifically on process and behavioural innovativeness. These findings suggest that when organisations are aiming for specific outcomes, such as organisational innovativeness, they need to be aware of what dimensions of ethical culture are particularly relevant. (shrink)

Norms are a pervasive yet mysterious feature of social life. In Explaining Norms, four philosophers and social scientists team up to grapple with some of the many mysteries, offering a comprehensive account of norms: what they are; how and why they emerge, persist and change; and how they work.

This study participates in the discussion of the ethical culture of organizations by deepening the knowledge and understanding of the meaning of organizational ethical virtues in organizational innovativeness. The aim in this study was to explore how an organization’s ethical culture and, more specifically, organization’s ethical virtues support organizational innovativeness. The ethical culture of an organization is defined as the virtuousness of an organization. Organizational innovativeness is conceptualized as an organization’s behavioral propensity to produce innovative products and services. The empirical (...) data consisted of a total of 39 interviews from specialist organizations. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that the organizational ethical virtues of feasibility, discussability, supportability, and congruency of management are those that support organizational innovativeness. The findings also show which specific elements of these virtues and related organizational practices are important to innovativeness. In addition, this study showed that the features of organizational innovativeness are not necessarily dichotomous but rather follow the ideas of virtues and are versatile in nature. (shrink)

This study investigated the reasons that leaders have given for their leader role occupancy. By using a mixed-method approach and large leader data, we aimed to provide a more nuanced picture of how leader positions are occupied in real life. We examined how individual leadership motivation may associate with other reasons for leader role occupancy. In addition, we aimed to integrate the different reasons behind leader role occupancy into the framework of sustainable leader careers and its two indicators: leader’s health (...) and performance. The survey data consisted of 1,031 leaders from various sectors of working life. Qualitative analysis revealed that leaders mention various factors behind their leader role occupancy, resulting 26 themes. After inductive investigation of the data, theory-driven analysis focused on the sustainable career components and agency vs. non-agency. Qualitative data was quantitized based on the theory-driven categories for statistical analysis. Based on the these analysis, we found out that only Affective-Identity MTL predicted all of the studied reasons behind leader role occupancy, whereas the other motivation types did not. All of the reasons for leader role occupancy except non-agentic ones were related to both leaders’ own and their followers’ occupational well-being. Leaders with more person-related and agentic reasons for leader role occupancy experienced better occupational well-being. Person- and context-related and agentic reasons behind leader role occupancy associated also with followers’ occupational well-being, but the associations differed from those of leaders’ well-being: person-related and agentic reasons associated with followers’ exhaustion, but this association was not found among leaders. Our study provided important information for practitioners in the field of human resources and development, as it has shown that if the reasons for leader role occupancy mainly reflect circumstances or other non-person-related reasons, the experienced occupational well-being and person-career fit may remain weak. It is necessary to try to support the leadership motivation for those leaders, or to shape the job description in such a way that it can also offer the experiences of meaningfulness from aspects other than self-realization through a managerial role. (shrink)

Theologians speak of the silence of churches' prophetic voice in the 'new' South Africa, whilst the country features amongst the socio-economically most unequal countries in the world, and the urban areas in particular continue to be characterised by segregation. In this context I ask: where is liberation theology? I spell out my reading of some of the recent voices in the liberationist discourse. In dialogue with these scholars I, firstly, argue for the faith community to be made a conscious centre (...) of liberationist debates and praxis. Secondly, I do this by suggesting two theoretical building blocks for local faith communities that wish to grow in a liberationist fashion. (shrink)

We here develop a concept of an individualized niche in analogy to Hutchison’s population-level concept of the ecological niche. We consider the individualized niche as the range of environmental conditions under which a particular individual has an expected lifetime reproductive success of ≥ 1. Our concept has primarily an ecological function, as it refers to the match of an individual phenotype to its contemporary environment while we discuss evolutionary fitness as an evaluative parameter of this fit. We address four specific (...) challenges that occur when scaling the niche down from populations to individuals. In particular, we discuss the consequences of uniqueness of individuals in a population and the corresponding lack of statistical replication, the dynamic nature of individualized niches and how they can be studied either as time-slice niches, as prospective niches or as trajectory-based niches, the dimensionality of the individualized niche, that is greater than the population niche due to the additional dimensions of intra-specific niche space, how the boundaries of individualized niche space can be defined by expected lifetime reproductive success and how expected reproductive success can be inferred by marginalizing fitness functions across phenotypes or environments. We frame our discussion in the context of recent interest in the causes and consequences of individual differences in animal behavior. (shrink)

En este trabajo abordamos la figura de Helena como rival amorosa en la Heroida 5, cuya redacción –en el plano ficcional– Ovidio atribuye a Enone. A través del análisis de distintos lexemas y sintagmas intentaremos demostrar que la voz enunciativa construye un relato con la intención de realzar su imagen y conmover al héroe para que regrese; y que, en contraste, pone en juicio las acciones de su rival con términos que cuestionan sus cualidades morales, su naturaleza fiable y sus (...) deberes matrimoniales, centrando toda la responsabilidad del abandono en las acciones de la espartana. Asimismo, mostraremos cómo, de acuerdo con el entramado de referencias intra e intertextuales que operan en torno a la figura de Helena en la tradición literaria, la voz de Enone construida por Ovidio no se limita a presentar a la rival como la causante de una desgracia personal, sino también como el motivo del padecimiento de pueblos y héroes. (shrink)

Caribbean women writers (such as Erna Brodber and Opal Palmer Adisa, who are discussed in this article) often include men in women's liberatory quests as participants: helpers, healers or caregivers. The close connection between sexuality and emotions in this body of writing can be read through a new model of affective feminist reader theory, which embraces and redefines from a feminist perspective the affective fallacy (over-interpreting a text based on one's feelings) so dreaded by the New Critics. This article interrogates (...) how to read through affects across multiple intersecting differences between the text and the reader (such as race, class, culture and gender). A self-reflective negotiation between an outsider reader and a text's healing communities reveals the limits of the reader's ability to participate. The affective fallacy in this context becomes a useful tool for reading, but here it seeks a very different goal from that for which it was previously used. The transcultural feminism of difference relies on affectivity and emotions as a political force and a method for meaning; however, knowing the boundaries of one's affects prevents one from intrusively taking on the other's suffering through sympathetic reading. Women's sexual healing processes in the novels discussed in this article are not self-evidently or solely gynocentric in the Caribbean context: men are often active participants in these processes, and thus also in gender reconfigurations. Participation in these affective moments between the novels’ women and healing men is made possible by the reader's parallel process of embracing and curtailing her affective responses to the suffering of the other. (shrink)

University students seek counseling to discuss concerns about their academic skills, motivation, time management and well-being. This article examines the conversational activity of normalizing recurrently used by counselors to manage students’ negative emotions and troubles-telling. Normalizing refers to an activity in which something in the interaction is made normal by labeling it ‘normal’ or ‘commonplace’ or by interpreting it in an ordinary way. Three uses for normalizing were identified in a sample of 16 videotaped counseling sessions: supporting the student’s position, (...) challenging the student and presenting the student’s problem as workable. We argue that normalizing is a means of addressing students’ problematic emotions and offering support, yet in a way that maintains an orientation toward problem solving. Furthermore, while normalizing seems to serve affiliation, suggesting that the problems are not unique, it can be treated either as delicate or as problematic by the counselors and by the students. (shrink)

This paper analyses and criticizes the idea that powers are representable as vectors. Mumford and Anjum have recently developed a vector model of powers as part of their account of dispositional causation. The purpose of this model is to represent dispositionality, i.e. a sui generis type of modality introduced by their power-based ontology, as well as to explain various features of their account of causation. In this paper, we criticise both the claim that powers are vectors and the concomitant claim (...) that the composition of causes can be understood as vector addition. We argue that powers cannot be thought of as even analogous to vectors, and that the vector model is simply misleading. We show that the root of the problem is in Mumford and Anjum’s thought that powers have magnitude and direction. (shrink)

Although organizational and situational factors have been found to predict burnout, not everyone employed at the same workplace develops it, suggesting that becoming burnt out is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. The aim of this study was to elucidate perceptions of conscience, stress of conscience, moral sensitivity, social support and resilience among two groups of health care personnel from the same workplaces, one group on sick leave owing to medically assessed burnout (n = 20) and one group who showed no indications (...) of burnout (n = 20). The results showed that higher levels of stress of conscience, a perception of conscience as a burden, having to deaden one’s conscience in order to keep working in health care and perceiving a lack of support characterized the burnout group. Lower levels of stress of conscience, looking on life with forbearance, a perception of conscience as an asset and perceiving support from organizations and those around them (social support) characterized the non-burnout group. (shrink)

Public officials rely on performance data that are self-reported by organizations to evaluate progress on a wide range of prosocial outcomes. Policies that require public disclosure of performance in health care are thought to enable patients to select high-quality providers, which in turn may spur quality improvements as providers seek to protect their reputation or increase economic returns. Drawing on institutional theory that examines how conflicting institutional pressures influence organizational decisions, we theorize how profit orientation may mediate the response of (...) health care providers to disclosure mandates in a public health crisis. We focus on measures of data quality—completeness and accuracy—in self-reported data on COVID-19 status and outcomes generated by thousands of long-term care facilities. Using pooled regressions and a difference-in-differences style design, we find that overall, for-profit and not-for-profit facilities report similarly complete data but that for-profit facilities report less accurate data than their not-for-profit counterparts. Our results suggest that it may be important to incentivize each dimension of data quality separately to address differential institutional pressures that affect reporting practices. (shrink)

This paper applies conceptual engineering to deal with four objections that have been levelled against operationalism in psychology. These objections are: operationalism leads to harmful proliferation of concepts, operationalism goes hand-in-hand with untenable antirealism, operationalism leads to arbitrariness in scientific concept formation, and operationalism is incompatible with the usual conception of scientific measurement. Relying on a formulation of three principles of conceptual engineering, I will argue that there is a useful form of operationalism that does not fall prey to these (...) four objections. (shrink)

Due to constraints on institutional capacity and financial resources, the road to universal health coverage (UHC) involves difficult policy choices. To assist with these choices, scholars and policy makers have done extensive work on criteria to assess the substantive fairness of health financing policies: their impact on the distribution of rights, duties, benefits and burdens on the path towards UHC. However, less attention has been paid to the procedural fairness of health financing decisions. The Accountability for Reasonableness Framework (A4R), which (...) is widely applied to assess procedural fairness, has primarily been used in priority-setting for purchasing decisions, with revenue mobilization and pooling receiving limited attention. Furthermore, the sufficiency of the A4R framework’s four criteria (publicity, relevance, revisions and appeals, and enforcement) has been questioned. Moreover, research in political theory and public administration (including deliberative democracy), public finance, environmental management, psychology, and health financing has examined the key features of procedural fairness, but these insights have not been synthesized into a comprehensive set of criteria for fair decision-making processes in health financing. A systematic study of how these criteria have been applied in decision-making situations related to health financing and in other areas is also lacking. This paper addresses these gaps through a scoping review. It argues that the literature across many disciplines can be synthesized into 10 core criteria with common philosophical foundations. These go beyond A4R and encompass equality, impartiality, consistency over time, reason-giving, transparency, accuracy of information, participation, inclusiveness, revisability and enforcement. These criteria can be used to evaluate and guide decision-making processes for financing UHC across different country income levels and health financing arrangements. The review also presents examples of how these criteria have been applied to decisions in health financing and other sectors. (shrink)

The article Organizational Ethical Virtues of Innovativeness, written by Elina Riivari and Anna-Maija Lämsä, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 3 March 2017 without open access. With the author’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 7 February 2019 to © The Author 2019 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in (...) any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. (shrink)

In 2017, the Finnish Immigration Service received approximately 1,000 asylum applications and appeals based on conversion from Islam to Christianity. The applications claimed that converted asylum seekers would face mortal danger if returned to their countries of origin. The applications posed an unprecedented dilemma for the Finnish Immigration Service: how was it, as a secular state institution, to evaluate these claims of conversion? This question also became an object of significant public and media debate. In this article, I examine how (...) journalists writing for a religious media publication, Kirkko ja kaupunki, the newspaper of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Helsinki region, sought to intervene in the debate on asylum seekers’ conversions. I focus my analysis on one central line of argument in their reporting: a call for the better- inclusion of and engagement with religious expertise on Christianity by the Finnish Immigration Service when evaluating conversion-based asylum applications and appeals. I show that this call both positioned religious expertise as an antidote to the challenges that efforts to evaluate conversion-based asylum appeals posed to Finnish Immigration Service employees in this time period, and constituted expertise as a site for negotiations over the ‘proper’ relationship between religion and state. (shrink)

Переважну кількість сучасних наукових досліджень, присвячених феномену самотності, здійснюють у рамках психології, соціології та літературознавчої критики. Однак ці пошуки мають справу з конкретними проявами багатовимірного явища самотності, залишаючи поза увагою його природу й фундаментальну філософсько-антропологічну сутність, що ховається за вторинними нашаруваннями емпірики. Завданням цієї розвідки є розгляд феномену самотності у представників світової філософської думки новітніх часів, у вченнях яких він отримав найповніший вияв, зокрема у представників екзистенціалізму, філософії життя, феноменології та психодинамічної теорії, серед яких К. Ясперс, М. Бердяєв, М. Бубер, (...) М. Гайдеґґер, Е. Левінас. Відчутний спалах інтересу до феномену самотності у філософії був у середині ХІХ – ХХ ст., однак зацікавленість ним не зникла, про що свідчать сучасні праці, покликані заповнити лакуни, означені попередниками. Попри розбіжності у поглядах на характер самотності та її вплив на особистість, а також щодо моменту, коли відбувається зіткнення людини з її самотністю, у цих мислителів є й дещо спільне: усі вони самотність неодмінно розглядають крізь призму Іншого (чи то конкретної особистості, чи то цілого суспільства), як необхідну умову і для істинного пізнання речей, і для самопізнання. Що ж до розбіжностей у поглядах на самотність, то вони можуть бути породжені «термінологічним хаосом», що й досі панує при розгляді цього питання. На позначення різних проявів цього феномену використовують поняття «усамітнення», «відчуження», «ізоляція» та власне «самотність», часто не розрізняючи їх; вибудовують класифікації шляхом описових визначень. Неясність має бути подолано завдяки розмежуванню споріднених, але відмінних понять і виробленню єдиного підходу щодо взаємозв’язку між сутністю поняття і його різноманітними лексичними виявами. Ця стаття є спробою такого прояснення – шляхом виявлення спільного й відмінного в доробках філософів новітніх часів, які найбільше цікавилися феноменом самотності, відводячи їй важливе місце у власних філософських розвідках. (shrink)

_Good Teachers for Tomorrow’s Schools_ explores purpose of education, values in education and talents in education to map foundational, pedagogical and practical aspects of good teaching. It provides valuable research-based perspectives for scholars, teacher candidates, teacher educators and professional teachers.

abstract ‘Time is money’, Benjamin Franklin's ‘Poor Richard’ tells us. But instead of converting time expenditures into monetary equivalents, it makes more sense in many cases to convert money into temporal equivalents. The difficulty in putting a monetary value on time in unpaid household labour, when adjusting the National Accounts, points to the problems of the first approach. The advantages of the latter approach are illustrated by the Swedish system of specifying criminal fines in terms of the number of days (...) the offender would have to work to pay them off. (shrink)

Psychometrics and the representational theory of measurement are widely used in social scientific measurement. They are currently pursued largely in isolation from one another. I argue that despite their separation in practice, RTM and psychometrics are complementary approaches, because they can contribute in complementary ways to the establishment of what I argue is a crucial measurement property, namely, representational interpretability. Because RTM and psychometrics are complementary in the establishment of representational interpretability, the current separation of measurement approaches is unfounded. 1Introduction2Two (...) Approaches to Measurement 2.1Representational theory of measurement2.2Psychometrics2.3Representational interpretability3Complementarity, Conceptually 3.1Representational theory of measurement: Conditions of representational interpretability3.2Psychometrics: Evidence of representational interpretability4Complementarity in Action 4.1What is the Rasch model?4.2Rasch and conjoint measurement5Conclusion: Critics and Fruits of Complementarity. (shrink)

Psychometrics is one of the main approaches to social scientific measurement. It is relied upon in drug testing, economic policymaking, recruitment, and other decision-making contexts. The first aim of this article is to introduce philosophers to key aspects of psychometrics, namely, classical test theory, item response theory, and construct validity. The second aim is to show how a debate on the nature of psychological attributes manifests in psychometrics. In this debate, realists claim that psychometric measures are indicators of independently existing (...) qualities, while operationalists argue that a measure defines its target attribute. The third and final aim is to argue that despite its poor reputation among philosophers, operationalism is a viable approach to psychometrics. (shrink)

Reviews work on moral judgment motivational internalism from the last two decades.

Due to investments in interdisciplinary research endeavors, the number and variety of interdisciplinary research centers have grown exponentially during the past decades. While interdisciplinary research centers rely on varied organizational arrangements, we know little about the conditions and processes that mediate collaborative arrangements and interdisciplinary research outcomes. This study examines how different collaborative arrangements shape scholars’ experiences of interdisciplinary research and understandings of interdisciplinary knowledge culminations in the context of university-based research centers. We conducted three in-depth qualitative case studies on (...) different centers, which recruited researchers from natural sciences, medicine, and social sciences. We refer to them as the Biotech Center, the Environmental Center, and the Premature Birth Center. Our analysis of 53 interviews with interdisciplinary scholars across the three centers demonstrates that the scholars perceive particular features of the centers’ collaborative arrangements as meaningful for interdisciplinary collaboration. Specifically, the center’s mission, physical architecture, and leadership and task structure were seen as affecting scholars’ motivation, interaction, and inclusion in the centers, which then shaped the interdisciplinary knowledge culminations. At the Biotech Center, knowledge was translated towards concrete products, at the Environmental Center knowledge was pooled together from varied fields to create new problem framings, and at the Premature Birth Center, interdisciplinary collaboration was crafted through top-down knowledge brokerage. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the status of relations in two prominent views in metaphysics of science, i.e. dispositionalism and structuralism, and argue that the current consensus about the metaphysics of relations, according to which relations are to be viewed as internal and as constituting no addition of being over and above their relata, needs to be re-examined. After discussing what we call internalism and externalism about relations, we show that dispositionalism and structuralism lead to opposite but equally controversial accounts (...) of the metaphysics of relations. While we criticise some widespread versions of those views, we identify versions of dispositionalism and structuralism that we deem more promising. A core feature of both of these more promising variants is an externalist view about relations. Against the current internalist consensus, we claim that a version of externalism about relations is the view that best combines metaphysical rigour with a naturalistic stance. (shrink)

Erik Angner has argued that simultaneous endorsement of the representational theory of measurement and psychometrics leads to inconsistency. His claim rests on an implicit assumption: RTM and psychometrics are full-fledged approaches to measurement. I argue that RTM and psychometrics are only partial approaches that deal with different aspects of measurement, and that therefore simultaneous endorsement of the two is not inconsistent. The argument has implications for the improvement of measurement practices.

People taking part in research vary in the extent to which they understand information concerning their participation. Since they may choose to limit the time and effort spent on such information, lack of understanding is not necessarily an ethical problem. Researchers who notice a lack of understanding are in the quandary of not knowing whether this is due to flaws in the information process or to participants’ deliberate choices. We argue that the two explanations call for different responses.A tool for (...) identifying those research participants who want limited information is presented. This consists of a restricted number of questions about trust in and appraisal of research, priority of time and privacy, and perception of a duty to participate. It is argued that an important group of participants who purposely lack understanding of the study can be identified with this tool. Some limitations to this approach are also discussed. (shrink)

This study examines the tension between the academic evaluation system and the development of unconventional research agendas. While scholars have studied the evaluation of research that crosses disciplinary boundaries from the perspective of peer reviewers, they have paid comparatively little attention to the experiences of the performers of unconventional science. This study asks how researchers develop unconventional research agendas to address a long-standing health problem and, in the process, make sense of the actions of a site visit committee organized to (...) advise a foundation funding the project. This study develops a process narrative on the development of a specific transdisciplinary team proposing to study premature birth. The findings show that when the performers and the evaluators of unconventional science developed competing understandings of the research agenda, transdisciplinary discovery became limited as a particular research topic became taboo. Yet, the study also reveals how the performers of unconventional science challenged the power of the site visit committee by making it seem as though they followed the committee’s decisions. These findings raise questions about the role of private foundations as funders of academic research and the suitability of traditional evaluation procedures for assessing transdisciplinary discovery. (shrink)

This World Bank Report offers a new conception of fair decision processes in health financing. It argues that such procedural fairness can contribute to fairer outcomes, strengthen the legitimacy of decision processes, build trust in authorities, and promote the sustainability of reforms on the path to health coverage for all.

For over four decades, feminist studies of assisted reproductive technologies have been interested in the ethical, political and personal implications of in vitro fertilization and other infertility treatments. Most work on the implications of ART for women has focused on the demanding cyclical process of trying to become pregnant by using the technology. However, less attention has been paid to the implications of experiencing IVF after the conception phase. This article tackles the under-researched topic of the aftermath of IVF, and (...) discusses the temporality of affective embodied experiences of infertility after one has stopped IVF. Drawing on an ethnographic study of peer support groups for the involuntarily childless in Finland, and on in-depth interviews with women suffering from infertility, this article juxtaposes two groups of women who have had IVF: those who have had children as a result of the procedure, and those who have not. The article proposes an exploration of experiences of childlessness after IVF as ‘lingering technological entanglements’ – that is, as affective and embodied experiences of the effects of IVF, including after the cessation of treatment. It argues that the lingering of these entanglements manifests itself in the enactment of childlessness in relation to the available technology. Furthermore, this results in parents identifying themselves as childless, even after they have gained temporal distance from IVF practices. (shrink)

The purpose of the research was to study Finnish people's attitudes towards biomedical research and whether the research sponsor makes a difference to those attitudes. A survey questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 25-64 years old. Respondents had a positive attitude towards biomedical research and there were only small variations by population group. When asked whether one's own clinical blood samples could be used in scientific biomedical research, 84 per cent of the respondents would allow it. The most (...) important reasons for giving routinely collected samples to a biobank were altruistic. Attitudes were strongly dependent on the sponsor of the research. Domestic research was looked at more positively than international research. Whether research was made by a public or private actor had less impact. The results suggest that people want to be research participants to help such research of their own free will, and to choose whom they help. This has an impact on the way participants are informed, on the criteria used by ethics committees and other research regulators, and also on transparency and access to research results. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on how Finnish young women construct their transitions to adulthood and how they imagine their futures as women. Tensions in this process are analysed: many young women want to accelerate their shifts towards independent adult status. At the same time, some of them attempt to postpone the point of being locked into the lives of adult women. They look forward to acquiring the legal status of an adult citizen and to moving to homes of (...) their own. But they want to stay young, which means time for relationships, studying, work and travel, and definitely not children at an early age. Being an adult woman does not seem to be a very tempting position for some young women; being a girl is considered by them to open more possibilities. Those young women who are keener to embrace female adulthood are also discussed, focusing on ways in which they envisage their futures, and what contradictions they experience. These tensions are explored drawing from the research project ‘Tracing Transitions — Follow-Up Study of Post-16 Students’. In the study, 40 young women and 23 young men aged around 18 years were interviewed individually, in paris or in groups of three. The project is grounded on ethnographic research in which the same young people were followed when they started secondary school at the age of 13 years. (shrink)

The author investigates the content of the notion of subject from the evolutionary-epistemological point of view. She claims that evolutionary epistemology does not clarify this problem by itself and argues that this state of affairs raises a number of problems such as absolutization of adaptationism, biologism in knowledge, lack of a clear demarcation between animal cognition and human cognitive activity. It is argued that a man is the only subject of cognition in evolutionary epistemology. Inasmuch as person constructs and enriches (...) the environment he becomes a pressure factor by himself. This claim is argued to counter the thesis of adaptation. So adaptationist interpretation of the evolution of human cognitive activity is insufficient. The phenomenon of environmental change through the development of cognitive abilities by the person is represented in society, communication and culture. Cognition is determined by anticipating the result of purpose. In this connection, the constructive activity of the cognitive person confronted with the limitations of her own cognitive capabilities and environmental restricting factors. Thus, the evolution of man is considered as self-development, which is carried out through the creative overcoming external and internal constraints through the constructive activity of the agent of cognition. (shrink)

It is essential for an introductory book, addressed to the reader who is new to the philosophical discourse, not only to give a representative picture of the main issues of the philosophical area which it studies, but also to be clear about its aims and its methodological approach. Furthermore, ideally it would not only refer to the literature for further independent investigation, but it would inspire the reader to pursue such an investigation too. Effingham’s Introduction to Ontology meets all the (...) aforementioned aims. Its light, yet careful and systematic, way of introducing the field of ontology and also presenting some background metaphysical concepts certainly does not scare off the uninitiated reader. In what follows I will present Effingham’s approach, focusing especially on some of the features of the book that reveal its contribution to the ontology educational literature.The book is comprised of ten chapters, which can be categorised into three parts: an introductory part (Ch .. (shrink)

The religious and cultural situation of the late twentieth - early twentieth centuries is connected with the change of many world-view dominant. The need to study religious issues is linked to the geopolitical and denominational position of Ukraine between East and West; with those changes in the self-identification of Ukrainians after the Orange Revolution; with the need to preserve the spirit of tolerance of different denominations and cultures existing in the multinational country, which is characteristic of the Ukrainian people. All (...) of this paves the way for some opportunities to join the global community. (shrink)

RESUMO O artigo é dedicado a um dos problemas centrais da ciência filológica moderna - o problema da palavra artística, no entendimento do qual vemos a interseção e interação frutífera da crítica literária e da linguística. O trabalho sistematiza conceitos relevantes para o estudo moderno da palavra artística, revelando sua natureza específica, bem como define as tendências gerais que são características de cada uma das abordagens existentes. A autora enfoca no conceito de palavra de Mikhail Bakhtin, que supera os extremos, (...) próprios do signo e das abordagens ontológicas, e esclarece as diferenças básicas entre as categorias de comunicação e diálogo presentes em Bakhtin. O artigo corrobora com a definição da palavra artística como uma estrutura semântica de dois vetores, na qual a comunicação-existência consiste e se desdobra. АННОТАЦИЯ Статья посвящена одной из центральных проблем современной филологической науки - проблеме художественного слова, в осмыслении которого плодотворно пересекаются и взаимодействуют литературоведение и лингвистика. В работе систематизированы актуальные для современного изучения художественного слова концепции, выявляющие его специфику, и определены общие тенденции, характерные для каждого из существующих подходов. В центре внимания автора - концепция слова М. М. Бахтина, в которой преодолеваются крайности, характерные для знакового и онтологического подходов, прояснены базовые отличия бахтинских категорий общения и диалога. Обосновано определение художественного слова как двухвекторной смысловой структуры, в которой заключается и развертывается бытие-общение. ABSTRACT The article is devoted to one of the central problems of modern philological science - the problem of the artistic word, in the understanding of which we see the fruitful intersection and interaction of literary criticism and linguistics. The work systematizes the concepts relevant for the modern study of the artistic word, revealing its specific nature, and defines the general tendencies characteristic of each of the existing approaches. The author focuses on the word concept by M. M. Bakhtin, which overcomes the extremes, characteristic of the sign and ontological approaches, and clarifies the basic differences between Bakhtin's categories of communion and dialogue. The article substantiates the definition of the artistic word as a two-vector semantic structure, in which being-communion consists and unfolds. (shrink)

The aim of this Swedish study was to develop the concept of moral sensitivity in health care practice. This process began with an overview of relevant theories and perspectives on ethics with a focus on moral sensitivity and related concepts, in order to generate a theoretical framework. The second step was to construct a questionnaire based on this framework by generating a list of items from the theoretical framework. Nine items were finally selected as most appropriate and consistent with the (...) research team’s understanding of the concept of moral sensitivity. The items were worded as assumptions related to patient care. The questionnaire was distributed to two groups of health care personnel on two separate occasions and a total of 278 completed questionnaires were returned. A factor analysis identified three factors: sense of moral burden, moral strength and moral responsibility. These seem to be conceptually interrelated yet indicate that moral sensitivity may involve more dimensions than simply a cognitive capacity, particularly, feelings, sentiments, moral knowledge and skills. (shrink)