This study explores the efficacy of a specific tool – the articulation of the ideal self – in job engagement, psychological well-being, and organizational citizenship behavior. We hypothesized that employees who can visualize their jobs as part of their ideal self – in particular how it helps in its development and realization – would feel higher levels of engagement and fulfillment in their lives, as well as engage in greater amounts of helping and voice OCB. A total of 239 full (...) time employees from five companies in Costa Rica filled out the ideal self questionnaire, the job engagement, and psychological well-being surveys, and were evaluated by their peers on task behavior and helping and voice OCB. Results of the SEM model showed that the ideal self was positively related to job engagement, psychological well-being and helping and voice. These findings contribute to the research on the impact and importance for organizations to help employees find meaningfulness in their work. (shrink)

We examine the comportment of the global trajectory of a piecewisely conceived single species population growth model. Formulation relies on what we develop as the principle of limiting factors for population growth, adapted from the law of the minimum of Liebig and the law of the tolerance of Shelford. The ensuing paradigm sets natality and mortality rates to express through extreme values of population growth determining factor. Dynamics through time occur over different growth phases. Transition points are interpreted as thresholds (...) of viability, starvation, and intraspecific competition. In this delivery, we focus on the qualitative study of the global trajectory expressed on continuous time and on exploring the feasibility of analytical results against data on populations growing under experimental or natural conditions. All study cases sustained fittings of high reproducibility both at empirical and interpretative slants. Possible phase configurations include regimes with multiple stable equilibria, sigmoidal growth, extinction, or stationarity. Here, we also outline that the associating discrete-time piecewise model composes the logistic map applied over a particular region of the phase configuration. Preliminary exploratory analysis suggests that the logistic map’s chaos onset could surpass once the orbit enters a contiguous phase region. (shrink)

Job satisfaction is a core variable in the study and practice of organizational psychology because of its implications for desirable work outcomes. Knowledge of its antecedents is abundant and informative, but there are still psychological processes underlying job satisfaction that have not received complete attention. This is the case of employee emotion regulation. In this study, we argue that employees’ behaviors directed to manage their affective states participate in their level of job satisfaction and hypothesize that employee affect-improving and -worsening (...) emotion regulation behaviors increase and decrease, respectively, job satisfaction, through the experience of positive and negative affect. Using a diary study with a sample of professionals from diverse jobs and organizations, for the most part, the mediational hypotheses were supported by the results albeit a more complex relationship was found in the case of affect worsening emotion regulation. This study contributes to expanding the job satisfaction and emotion regulation literatures and informs practitioners in people management in organizations about another route to foster and sustain positive attitudes at work. (shrink)

The paper discusses Dr. Floris Tomasini's paper “What Is Bioethics: Notes toward a New Approach?”. Based on Tomasini's account of methodological and ethical pluralism, the paper explores the demarcation problem of bioethics and suggests a full methodological laissez-faire.

Inter-organizational models are both a well-documented phenomena and a well-established domain in management and business ethics. Those models rest on collaborative capabilities. However, mainstream theories and practices aimed at developing these capabilities are based on a narrow set of assumptions and ethical principles about human nature and relationships, which constrain the very development of capabilities sought by them. This article presents an Aristotelic–Thomistic approach to collaborative entrepreneurship within and across communities of firms operating in complementary markets. Adopting a scholarship of (...) integration approach and evaluating the six studies of communities of organizations, we contribute an inter-organizational network model based on the assumptions about human motives and choice offered by Aristotle. We argue that the sustainability of inter-organizational communities depends on how rich is the set of assumptions about human nature upon which they are based. In order to develop and sustain collaborative capabilities in inter-organizational communities, a set of assumptions that takes both self-regarding and others’-regarding preferences as ends is required to avoid any kind of instrumentalization of collaboration, which is an end in itself. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

A Computable Universe is a collection of papers discussing computation in nature and the nature of computation, a compilation of the views of the pioneers in the contemporary area of intellectual inquiry focused on computational and informational theories of the world. This volume is the definitive source of informational/computational views of the world, and of cutting-edge models of the universe, both digital and quantum, discussed from a philosophical perspective as well as in the greatest technical detail. The book discusses the (...) foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? How does nature compute? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and their philosophical implications. The volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of technical papers and non-technical essays representing a field that takes information and computation to be key to understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. It also includes a new edition of Konrad Zuse's "Calculating Space", and a panel discussion transcription on the topic, featuring worldwide experts (including a Nobel prize) in quantum mechanics, physics, cognition, computation and algorithmic complexity.A Computable Universe is a collection of papers discussing computation in nature and the nature of computation, a compilation of the views of the pioneers in the contemporary area of intellectual inquiry focused on computational and informational theories of the world. This volume is the definitive source of informational/computational views of the world, and of cutting-edge models of the universe, both digital and quantum, discussed from a philosophical perspective as well as in the greatest technical detail. The book discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? How does nature compute? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and their philosophical implications. The volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of technical papers and non-technical essays representing a field that takes information and computation to be key to understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. It also includes a new edition of Konrad Zuse's "Calculating Space", and a panel discussion transcription on the topic, featuring worldwide experts (including a Nobel prize) in quantum mechanics, physics, cognition, computation and algorithmic complexity. (shrink)

Ao analisar a teoria da memória mecânica de Hegel, a maioria dos intérpretes considerou apenas dois aspectos da memorização mecânica: o desaparecimento do significado nas palavras mecânicamente memorizadas ou a internalização totalmente abstrata da mente que as memoriza. No primeiro caso, a interpretação concentrou-se na relação entre o significante e o significado das palavras; no segundo caso, concentrou-se na relação entre o signo linguístico como um todo e a mente. Entretanto, a posição específica da memória mecânica na sistematização das atividades (...) cognitivas de Hegel não se baseia nessas duas relações, mas na relação entre o significado de cada palavra e o significado das outras palavras. Ao memorizar de cor fileiras de palavras que não estão conectadas umas às outras por seus significados, mas apenas pela força da mente que decide memorizá-las juntas, a mente se liberta de qualquer conteúdo dado externamente e sublima a referência linear do conteúdo representacional de cada significado à intuição em sua origem. A atualização do poder da mente de interconectar conteúdos de acordo com as próprias regras lógicas da mente realiza, para Hegel, a transição para o pensamento propriamente dito. (shrink)

This is an investigation into the fundamental connections between the referential use of language and our rich human experience. All types of experience — perceptual, practical, scientific, literary, esthetic, ludic,... — are tightly unified into one total experience by the structure of reference to real or possible items. Singular reference is essential for locating ourselves in our own corner of the world. General reference, by means of quantifiers, is our main tool in ascertaining the accessible patterns of the world. Both (...) are primitive and mutually irreducible. (Often this has been denied.) The unity of total experience is constructed through the biographical unity of a person, and the sociological unity of the communications across a community. This unity of experience is wrought out by an underlying unitary system of reference. We need, therefore, a comprehensive theory of individuation, existence, predication, and truth. One such a theory is Guise Theory. (shrink)

The psychological work environment is composed of both stressful and motivational work conditions at different levels of analysis. However, most relevant theory and research lack an integrative conceptualization and appropriate instrumentation to account for this work context structure. These limitations are particularly present in non-mainstream populations, such as the Spanish community of researchers and practitioners. In this study, based on the job demands–resources model, we present an updated conceptualization in which stressful and motivational psychosocial factors are integrated and defined at (...) the job, the group, and the organizational level of analysis into a single conceptualization. Furthermore, derived from this conceptualization, we present a study of the development and validation of a questionnaire to account for the psychosocial work environment in Spanish, labeled Psychosocial Factors Questionnaire 75, which provides measures for 23 different psychosocial factors. The results of this study supported the questionnaire’s construct, convergent, divergent, and predictive validity, together with its reliability. Thus, this conceptualization and questionnaire provides researchers and partitioners with a more comprehensive approach to the assessment of the psychosocial work environment and promises benefits for interventions in the workplace. (shrink)

Thinking, Language, and Experience was first published in 1989.Hector-Neri Castañeda's intricate and provocative essays have been widely influential, especially his work in epistemology and ethics, and his theory on the relation of thought to action. The fourteen essays in Thinking, Language, and Experience -- half of them written expressly for this volume -- demonstrate the breadth and richness of his recent work on the unitary structure of human experience.A comprehensive, unified study of phenomena at the intersection between experience, thinking, language, (...) and reality, this book focuses on singular reference -- that is, reference to individuals insofar as they are thought of as individuals: indicators, quasi-indicators, proper names, singular descriptions. Castañeda establishes a large number of new facts -- linguistic, semantic, psychological, and sociological -- about the workings of language in human experience, and from them develops a network of new theories, all grounded in his comprehensive Guise Theory.These theories offer a systematic account for: the structure of human experience and the world at large; the mental powers required to think of the world and to undergo experiences; self-consciousness; the language for thinking of other minds; perception and the interaction between indexical reference and perceptual fields; and the role of subjectivity in perception and intentional action. (shrink)

El presente escrito trata de abordar la relación entre el ser humano y su mundo de productos técnicos mediante la exploración del concepto de desnivel prometeico, acuñado por Günther Anders. De este modo, se llevará a cabo un análisis de correspondencia entre las nociones de Anders y la enajenación marxiana y feuerbachiana, alumbrando así un estudio comparativo de vocación extemporánea y crítica.

This is an investigation into the fundamental connections between the referential use of language and our rich human experience. All types of experience — perceptual, practical, scientific, literary, esthetic, ludic,... — are tightly unified into one total experience by the structure of reference to real or possible items. Singular reference is essential for locating ourselves in our own corner of the world. General reference, by means of quantifiers, is our main tool in ascertaining the accessible patterns of the world. Both (...) are primitive and mutually irreducible. (Often this has been denied.) The unity of total experience is constructed through the biographical unity of a person, and the sociological unity of the communications across a community. This unity of experience is wrought out by an underlying unitary system of reference. We need, therefore, a comprehensive theory of individuation, existence, predication, and truth. One such a theory is Guise Theory. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza, de una manera introductoria, el concepto de prejubilación. A partir de una perspectiva psicosocial, se señalan los problemas derivados de esa expulsión prematura del mercado laboral que padecen personas mayores de cincuenta y cinco años. Son trabajadores cualificados, con una experiencia acumulada que, para muchas empresas, deja de ser un valor añadido y se convierte en una carga. La identificación con el trabajo y la percepción de la nueva situación son los factores principales que determinan la adaptación (...) positiva o negativa de esas personas prejubiladas, en un mundo global donde los antiguos esquemas de sentido se han derrumbado. (shrink)

Building on a model first proposed by Gary Johnson, it is hypothesized that religious institutions demanding celibacy and other forms of altruism from members take advantage of human predispositions to favor genetic relatives in order to maintain and reinforce these desired behaviors in non-kin settings. This is accomplished through the institutionalization of practices to manipulate cues through which such relatives are regularly identified. These cues are association, phenotypic similarity, and the use of kin terms. In addition, the age of recruits (...) and their contact with actual kin are factors that relate to kinship recognition and that are similarly manipulated by institutions in order to reinforce altruistic behavior directed toward non-kin. Support for this set of predictions is presented from historical and ethnographic sources on monastic life in Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, as well as Islamic dervish groups, the Essenes, Shakers, and others. Potential implications of the model for understanding the development of religious institutions are preliminarily explored by reviewing Joachim Wach's model of religious developmental stages as well as some of the literature on the relationship between individualism and communalism in incipient religious organizations, in light of the kin-cue manipulation model. (shrink)

Kant explicitou, talvez com maior clareza que qualquer outro filósofo antes do que ele, a essência do conflito que implica a relação da causalidade natural e a causalidade livre. Hegel assevera que com o dualismo fenômeno-coisa em si Kant deixa intacta como tal a incompatibilidade entre as noções de causalidade natural e causalidade livre, já que, conserva sua contraposição mesma para simplesmente localizá-la na estrutura do sujeito. Hegel aspira precisamente a fechar o ciclo da metafísica dualista que definiu a filosofia (...) dos seus começos e, com isso, a dar solução definitiva às dificuldades que lhe são inerentes; para esse fim exige o abandono do paradigma que a constituiu como tal e propõe no seu lugar uma autêntica revolução no campo da ontologia e a teoria do conhecimento. Neste contexto geral, Hegel oferece uma solução inovadora ao problema da incompatibilidade entre causalidade natural e causalidade livre, entre determinismo e liberdade. (shrink)

IntroductionArticles published in scientific journals, concerning the present and future of the lecture format in university education in the twenty-first century are framed within organizational settings that drive teaching methodologies in line with educational policies. The following two research questions have arisen from articles in which debate the continuity of this teaching modality and propose improvements of a different nature: Is there an interest in renovating the lecture format among the international research community whose remit is university teaching methods? and (...) What improvements to the lecture format do the reviewed articles suggest, within the framework of the communicative matrix of interactive learning?MethodWe have carried out a systematic review guided by the PRISMA approach, emphasizing the interest in methodological conceptual commitment, paying attention to documents published in journals with an impact factor. The search strategy was applied homogeneously in three databases: ERIC, PsycInfo, and Web of Science, following the systematic process of inclusion/exclusion.ResultsForty-five articles were selected with a range of 0–78 quotations, from different fields of knowledge and five continents; 12 articles are from journals with a JCR impact factor. The journal articles cover communicative, cognitive and active-practical perspectives ; the predominant governing aim of the analyzed improvements is connected with the attendees’ academic performance results ; the reviewed studies belong mainly to the quantitative paradigm. The considerations derived from the results cover formative, technical and/or critical aspects.Discussion and conclusionsWhilst positively valuing all these efforts promoted by the European Higher Education Area, we have also verified the lack of contributions in line with our concerns that embrace the need to develop an in-depth conceptualization, supported by a methodology that is sensitive to the complexity of the oral communication format between an expert actor and non-specialized actors who wish to connect and collaborate with the expert in the production of knowledge. (shrink)

In his The Uses of Argument (Cambridge University Press, 1958), S. Toulmin presents serious charges against ordinary logical theory, e.g., that it does not distinguish between analytic or formally valid or conclusive or warrant-using arguments, that the distinction between premises and conclusion is a bad oversimplification, that "major premise" conceals the distinction between inference-warrant and inference-backings, that logicians have been mistakenly working under an ideal of geometrical form. The paper argues that none of the charges is proven, that most of (...) them cannot be proven, that Toulmin's new logic is at best only vaguely hinted at and that his suggestions are positively obscure or mistaken. (shrink)

This book describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. The idea of knowledge bases lies at the heart of symbolic, or "traditional," artificial intelligence. A knowledge-based system decides how to act by running formal reasoning procedures over a body of explicitly represented knowledge—a knowledge base. The system is not programmed for specific tasks; rather, it is (...) told what it needs to know and expected to infer the rest. This book is about the logic of such knowledge bases. It describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. Assuming some familiarity with first-order predicate logic, the book offers a new mathematical model of knowledge that is general and expressive yet more workable in practice than previous models. The book presents a style of semantic argument and formal analysis that would be cumbersome or completely impractical with other approaches. It also shows how to treat a knowledge base as an abstract data type, completely specified in an abstract way by the knowledge-level operations defined over it. (shrink)

No processo do conhecimento a imaginação desempenha para Hegel o estágio no qual a mente humana dissocia o objeto em dois diferentes conteúdos, o conteúdo-coisa do mundo externo e o conteúdo interno da própria mente, de tal modo que ambas as versões do mesmo devem corroborar-se mutuamemente ao modo de uma síntese simples de elementos heterogéneos que apenas em seu cotejamento reconhecem sua identidade. Na atividade de compreensão, ao contrário, este dualismo é suprassumido e, com ele, o empirismo e a (...) teoria correspondista da verdade que, aos olhos de Hegel, está em sua base. (shrink)

Some scholars claim that in Derrida's Of Grammatology the author presents China and its script as essentially and radically Other when compared to the West. In this paper, I argue that Derrida's discussion of Leibniz, his critique of the notions of ‘phonetic writing’ and ‘ideograph’, and the distinction he makes between ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phonocentrism’, enables him to deconstruct an essentialist conception of China or Chinese writing. However, far from conceiving China in a relativist or ethnocentric manner, Derrida also pays attention (...) to the historicity of the encounter between European philosophy and China. In order to underline the transcultural potential of deconstruction, I discuss the concept of ‘crypt’ in light of the Chinese translation of the word ‘ différance’. This allows me to reinterpret what I claim to be Derrida's problematic reference to Chinese writing as ‘outside of all logocentrism’ from the point of view of his philosophy of translation. 1. (shrink)

We propose a test based on the theory of algorithmic complexity and an experimental evaluation of Levin's universal distribution to identify evidence in support of or in contravention of the claim that the world is algorithmic in nature. To this end statistical comparisons are undertaken of the frequency distributions of data from physical sources--repositories of information such as images, data stored in a hard drive, computer programs and DNA sequences--and the output frequency distributions generated by purely algorithmic means--by running abstract (...) computing devices such as Turing machines, cellular automata and Post Tag systems. Statistical correlations were found and their significance measured. (shrink)

En este trabajo se estudia la concepción escotista del universal entendido como universallógico y accidente intencional, cuya función cognitiva se entiende como modo de aprehensión oconcepción de la esencia o naturaleza. El artículo se concentra en analizar las cuestiones 4 y 5 del comentario de Duns Escoto a la Isagoge. Se subraya la relación de los análisis escotistas con lateoría aviceniana del triple estatuto de la esencia sobre el telón de fondo de la teoría boeciana de los universales. Al final (...) del artículo se presenta brevemente el momento ontológico del universal tal comose puede ver en la teoría de la naturaleza común. (shrink)