In recent years, after various scandals, the role of auditors has been called into question, even casting doubt on whether their reports reliably reflect the true financial situation of the auditee, especially when this situation is not good. Normative changes in the way auditors have to rate certain questions provide a good opportunity to study this problem. These changes have acquired great relevance among the factors involved in studying audit quality. Thus, the present study analyzed the effect of the normative (...) change that took place in Spain in December 2010, related to opinions modified for going-concern uncertainties. Until that date, the auditor’s uncertainty about the company’s going-concern status led to a qualified opinion. However, under the new regulation, it became an opinion that included an explanatory paragraph stating the reasons for concern, which was considered less serious. In all, 152 small- and medium-sized enterprises that had begun bankruptcy proceedings were studied. Expert systems were used for their analysis, based on classification trees assembled through boosting and bagging. In addition, the logistic regression was used as baseline to compare previous methods. The main result obtained was that a change in the norm that catalogs the going-concern issue as less serious made auditors more likely to report this situation, thus questioning the audit quality. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aims to analyze sociohistorically how the normative patterns of hegemonic masculinity produced impacts on men’s health/mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA qualitative study from a socio-historical perspective was conducted with 50 men based on an online survey. A semistructured form was applied. The data were analyzed by the Collective Subject Discourse method, interpreted in the light of the context of epidemic disease and hegemonic masculinity.ResultsThe experience of the pandemic exposed the normative patterns of masculinities from (...) the consummation of acts representative of the pandemic context, which incited men to deny the existence of COVID-19 disease and to delay the understanding and adoption of measures to protect and control COVID-19. As a repercussion, men presented conflicts in the regulation of emotions; presented emotional suppression; were more reactive; felt threatened regarding the loss of the role of family provider, virility; and revealed a sense of invulnerability, added to the weakening of self-care.ConclusionThe discourse revealed that the men’s behaviors are consistent with the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, but express signs of recognition that this behavior causes harm to themselves and their health. (shrink)

O presente artigo relata a experiência vivenciada por estudantes de graduação em Licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas da Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana durante uma viagem de campo às cidades de Cachoeira e São Félix, na Bahia, promovida pelo componente curricular Relações Étnico-raciais na Escola. Por meio da observação sensível, os estudantes registraram a realidade dessas cidades no formato de fotografias e discursos. Durante a viagem, foi possível constatar a predominância de uma população negra, cujas vidas diárias estão (...) intimamente ligadas a uma diversidade de religiões que, embora sejam percebidas como antagônicas no imaginário popular, coexistem de forma harmoniosa na realidade local. Além disso, observou-se um forte vínculo com figuras históricas relacionadas, ou não, à independência da Bahia e do Brasil, bem como à herança do período colonial. A partir dessas observações, teceu-se reflexões acerca das observações realizadas, apresentando dados relevantes sobre a história, estrutura, religião, cultura, entre outros aspectos das cidades. O trabalho contribuiu para ampliar a compreensão e estabelecer relações entre a experiência vivenciada e a formação decolonial de futuros professores de Ciências e Biologia, com o objetivo de promover um ensino descolonizado das Ciências da Natureza. (shrink)

We present a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the ACT‐R–based model of sentence processing developed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005) (LV05). The predictions of the model are compared with the results of a recent meta‐analysis of published reading studies on retrieval interference in reflexive‐/reciprocal‐antecedent and subject–verb dependencies (Jäger, Engelmann, & Vasishth, 2017). The comparison shows that the model has only partial success in explaining the data; and we propose that its prediction space is restricted by oversimplifying assumptions. We then implement a (...) revised model that takes into account differences between individual experimental designs in terms of the prominence of the target and the distractor in memory‐ and context‐dependent cue‐feature associations. The predictions of the original and the revised model are quantitatively compared with the results of the meta‐analysis. Our simulations show that, compared to the original LV05 model, the revised model accounts for the data better. The results suggest that effects of prominence and variable cue‐feature associations need to be considered in the interpretation of existing empirical results and in the design and planning of future experiments. With regard to retrieval interference in sentence processing and to the broader field of psycholinguistic studies, we conclude that well‐specified models in tandem with high‐powered experiments are needed in order to uncover the underlying cognitive processes. (shrink)

This paper discusses the pluralist theory of reparations for historical injustice offered by Daniel Butt (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24(5):1161–75, 2021). Butt attempts to vindicate purely past-regarding corrective duties in response to Alasia Nuti’s historical-structural model of reparations. I agree with Butt that reparative justice requires both past-regarding and future-looking structural duties. And I agree with him that Nuti’s model leaves out purely past-regarding duties. I argue, however, that Butt does not offer a genuinely pluralist account. I present minimal (...) necessary conditions for past-regarding (corrective) justice and demonstrate that the past-regarding duties Butt advocates do not meet these conditions. The past-regarding duties Butt offers collapse into the kinds of distributive (structural) duties from which he attempts to separate them. Yet, I suggest these shortcomings are instructive and sketch a path forward for a genuinely pluralist account of reparations. A genuinely pluralist account must follow this path in order to vindicate the intuitions that motivate both past-regarding duties and the structural injustice model. (shrink)

The notion of “individuality” in Plotinus is one of the most discussed. Throughout the Enneads, the problem of the individual subject arises from the complexity in understanding the relation between man and soul. To the intelligible man, also known as the inner or first man, a second man is added, so that “we have come to be the pair of them” 14.28-30). This question has been extensively addressed from different angles that lead either to a purely structuralist solution, or to (...) its criticism and the search for a more stable definition of subjective identity. The thesis that we will defend in this article, and that will indicate our position in the debate, tries to give a new perspective of the issue alluding to the sphere of life and its forms. The continuity between the different men will be determined by the continuity between their different forms of life, a primary issue to which the problem of individuality and the different modes of consciousness are subject. (shrink)

As donor trust legitimises research, trust is vital for research in the fields of biomedicine, genetics, translational medicine and personalised medicine. For parts of the donor community, the consent signature is a sign of trust in research. Many consent processes in biomedical research ask donors to provide their data for an unspecified future use, which introduces uncertainty of the unknown. This uncertainty can jeopardise donor trust or demand blind trust. But which donor wants to trust blindly? To reduce this uncertainty, (...) we explore first, which future-proof actors donors could trust when signing a consent form. Second, we discuss the question Can we know if donor trust expires? and what prevents donor trust from expiring. Finally, we present possible measures that can help to nurture trust in the far future. In this article, we draw on our previous research on trust in biomedical research, on trust in the broader healthcare system and Niklas Luhmann’s and Anthony Giddens’ trust theories. Our findings suggest that, in the far future, researchers will need to consider donor autonomy, as well as societal norms and values of the time period in which the data were donated. They will need to find mechanisms where possible to publicly announce the use of old data sets. However, foremost researchers will need to treat the data respectfully. It remains vital that professionals and the society continue to elaborate on the norms and values that shape the common understanding of what is morally right and wrong when researching data. (shrink)

This paper examines the paradoxical transparency involved in training machine-learning models. Existing literature typically critiques the opacity of machine-learning models such as neural networks or collaborative filtering, a type of critique that parallels the black-box critique in technology studies. Accordingly, people in power may leverage the models’ opacity to justify a biased result without subjecting the technical operations to public scrutiny, in what Dan McQuillan metaphorically depicts as an “algorithmic state of exception”. This paper attempts to differentiate the black-box abstraction (...) that wraps around complex computational systems from the opacity of machine-learning models. It contends that the degree of asymmetry in knowledge is greater in the former than the latter. In the case of software systems, software codes are difficult to understand as only software experts with sufficient domain knowledge are equipped to formulate a sound critique. In contrast, the meanings of trained parameters in a machine-learning model are obscure even to the data scientists who configure and train the model. Hence, the asymmetry of knowledge lies only in how data examples are collected, the choice and configuration of machine-learning models, and the specification of features in model design. Under the trend of algorithmic decision-making proliferating with machine-learning heuristics, the paper contends that the more symmetric distribution of knowledge in machine learning could lead to a more transparent production process if proper policies are in place. (shrink)

Less Erroneous Pictures. Whalers’ Knowledge in Nineteenth‐Century Natural History, Oceanography, and Literature. This paper uses the iconoclasm of Herman Melville's Moby‐Dick as a point of departure to examine the problem of representing whales pictorially. Focussing on the use of images in cetological works and whaling logbooks, the paper investigates how the whalers’ knowledge, which served the hunting, killing, and economic exploitation of whales, came to be inscribed in the antithetical work of natural historians who were increasingly interested in living organisms. (...) This paper argues that Melville's juxtaposition of whalers’ and naturalists’ knowledge runs parallel with a dichotomy, along which natural histories, travelogues, and thematic maps of oceanography constitute the whale as an object of knowledge. It concludes by suggesting that, at the same time, this dichotomy is repeatedly undermined for the sake of the whale's representation. (shrink)

Can arguments and their properties influence the development of issue polarisation in debates among artificial agents? This paper presents an agent-based model of debates with logical constraints based on the theory of dialectical structures. Simulations on this model reveal that the exchange of arguments can drive polarisation even without social influence, and that the usage of different argumentation strategies can influence the obtained levels of polarisation.

Starting from our attention to the systematic divisions of the KrV, we address the chapter III of Analytic of principles and its theses on the transgression of reason and the negative expansion. Our proposal is to show the specificity of the concept of noumenon in relation to the other categories of understanding without neglecting its place within Transcendental Analytic. The peculiarity of this concept expresses in a privileged way the relation of critique to the limits of knowledge, since noumenon is (...) a representation that is excluded from the possibility of intuition, but is included in the analysis of knowledge. We therefore intend to shed light on the arguments that, on the one hand, limit knowledge and, on the other hand, allow thought a way to go beyond experience. Thus, in the analysis activity that detaches itself from specific interests in favour of an impartial investigation, the critic’s position can embrace the inside and the outside of the delimitation of knowledge. (shrink)

Formulating a metaphysical definition of human play faces three main difficulties. First, for many years the very possibility, or need, for such a definition has been questioned. Second, very often...

Max Scheler and Siegfried Kracauer met during World War I and remained in correspondence until the early phase of the Weimar Republic. The two exchanged ideas and plans, and at times Kracauer sent his early essays for Scheler’s comments on and recommendations for publishing them. The correspondence brings to light some revealing philosophical similarities between the two authors: both Scheler and Kracauer were interested in material phenomenology, the philosophy of emotions, formal sociology; moreover, they also enthusiastically supported the German war. (...) In 1921, the conversation broke off, presumably because of the sharp criticism of Scheler’s study “Vom Ewigen im Menschen,” which Kracauer published in the Frankfurter Zeitung that same year. But even after the end of the exchange, Scheler remained an intellectual point of reference in Kracauer’s thinking. This becomes evident from the detailed reviews he wrote of Scheler’s works until the end of the Weimar period. The essay attempts to historically situate and philosophically reconstruct the correspondence between Scheler and Kracauer presented in this issue. In this way, a constellation of thought in the 1910s and 1920s becomes visible – one that that has received little attention to date. (shrink)

Sparked by a remarkable result due to Hemaspaandra et al. [9], the voting rule attributed to Charles Dodgson has become one of the most studied voting rules in computational social choice. However, the computer science literature often neglects that Dodgson's rule has some serious shortcomings as a choice procedure. This short note contains four examples revealing Dodgson's deficiencies.

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 239-263.

In this article, I address the ways in which debates in liberal, Marxist and postmodernist social theory have remoulded readings of emancipation – and how these reformulations have affected the organisation of emancipatory struggles by and in political parties and social movements. I focus on three conceptual ambiguities that have spurred theoretical disputes and restructured organisational imaginations of emancipation: who might struggle for liberation, to what end and in which ways. In all three respects, understandings of emancipation have become increasingly (...) individualised, contingent and process-oriented – both in theory and in its political-organisational correspondents. As a consequence, effective collective struggles for autonomy may become ever more difficult to organise. While occurring in the name of further liberation, the ongoing reinterpretation of emancipation and its impact on the political organisation of emancipatory struggles might in the end hamper or even undermine the very liberation and autonomy they had aimed to promote. (shrink)

Vocal music and spoken language both have important roles in human communication, but it is unclear why these two different modes of vocal communication exist. Although similar, speech and song differ in certain design features. One interesting difference is in the pitch intonation contour, which consists of discrete tones in song, vs. gliding intonation contours in speech. Here, we investigated whether vocal phrases consisting of discrete pitches (song-like) or gliding pitches (speech-like) are remembered better, conducting three studies implementing auditory same-different (...) tasks at three levels of difficulty. We tested two hypotheses: that discrete pitch contours aid auditory memory, independent of musical experience (“song memory advantage hypothesis”), or that the higher everyday experience perceiving and producing speech make speech intonation easier to remember (“experience advantage hypothesis”). We used closely matched stimuli, controlling for rhythm and timbre, and we included a stimulus intermediate between song-like and speech-like pitch contours (with partially gliding and partially discrete pitches). We also assessed participants' musicality to evaluate experience-dependent effects. We found that song-like vocal phrases are remembered better than speech-like vocal phrases, and that intermediate vocal phrases evoked a similar advantage to song-like vocal phrases. Participants with more musical experience were better in remembering all three types of vocal phrases. The precise roles of absolute and relative pitch perception and the influence of top-down vs. bottom-up processing should be clarified in future studies. However, our results suggest that one potential reason for the emergence of discrete pitch–a feature that characterises music across cultures–might be that it enhances auditory memory. (shrink)

While a narratological reading of the Gospels is relatively well accepted, their characterisation as parts of the genre of ancient biography was much antagonised in former times. Although things have changed thanks to seminal monographs on the problem from the second half of the 20th century and to continuing work, some questions remain open. Therefore, a narratological comparison of Gospels with concrete representatives of the ancient bios could possibly help to clarify the relations between both. In what follows, the oldest (...) Gospel is read simultaneously with Plutarch’s Biography of the Younger Cato. Three observations are made: a) The structures of the narratives of Cato and of Jesus match to a high degree. Both protagonists carry out certain duties while operating in public. In most instances, they achieve great successes. From a certain point on, however, they irrevocably approach failure and ruin. This structure of story seems to form the basis both of the Gospel and of the biography of Cato, written ca. three decades later. b) Obviously, both works narrate the life of a man, his exceptional character, his extraordinary operations in public and his non-natural violent dead. In Plutarch’s version, the Younger Cato fails in the end. At first sight, also Mark’s Jesus fails to accomplish his mission. By God’s action he is turned into the saviour of the faithful however. This claimed unsurpassed relevance of the story is contrasted with the laconism of the narration. c) Both narrations are composed out of both factual and fictional elements. Thus, readers cannot separate both elements precisely in every instance. Both stories are imagined worlds designed for the in narratology so called game of fiction. As can be learned in Plutarch, authors of stories like the Life of Cato or the Gospel of Mark guarantee a certain sense of responsibility in their work. Summed up, the narratological comparison has illustrated both the close affinity and the individual specifications of both narratives. It thus helps to clarify the position- fixing of the Early Christian literature within its Graeco-Roman context. (shrink)

Theorizing about “what is x?” is the primary task of any study that seeks a “philosophy about x”. In the case of the philosophy of measurement this problem is multifaceted, as it involves notions whose restrictions are formulated because of metaphysical assumptions and epistemic consequences. Concerning the understand of what it is to measure, there are problems derived from the relationship between measurement and knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. This relationship raises broad epistemological questions that can be broken down into more (...) specific epistemic problems. Would there be, then, a way to understand and characterize measurements that would make it possible to identify and clarify a set of these problems? This article proposes a framework for the act of measuring that is fruitful in the sense of giving a useful starting point in this field. (shrink)