This study presents findings from an ontological and contextual determination of the concept of dignity. The study had a caritative and caring science perspective and a hermeneutical design. The aim of this study was to increase caring science knowledge of dignity and to gain a determination of dignity as a concept. Eriksson’s model for conceptual determination is made up of five part-studies. The ontological and contextual determination indicates that dignity can be understood as absolute dignity, the spiritual dimension characterized by (...) responsibility, freedom, duty, and service, and relative dignity, characterized by the bodily, external aesthetic dimension and the psychical, inner ethical dimension. Dignity exists in human beings both as absolute and relative dignity. (shrink)

In developed countries, companies are now substantially reliant on the skills and abilities of their leaders to tackle a variety of complex issues. There is a growing consensus that leadership development training and assessment methods should adopt more holistic methodologies, including those associated with the emotional and neuroendocrine aspects of learning. Recent research into the assessment of leadership competencies has proposed the use of objective methods and measurements based on neuroscience. One of the challenges to be faced in the development (...) of a performance-based methodology to measure leadership skills is how to generate real-life situations with triggers that allow us to study management competencies under controlled laboratory conditions. A way to address this question is to take advantage of virtual environments to recreate real-life situations that might arise in performance-based assessments. We propose virtual reality (VR) as a very promising tool to observe various leadership related behavioral patterns during dynamic, complex and realistic situations. By seamlessly embedding assessment methods into virtual learning environments, VR can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity. VR also holds unlimited opportunities for leadership training providing subjects with intelligent tutoring systems that adapts situations in real time according to the observed behaviors. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to understand how mothers experienced midwives' uncaring behaviour and actions during birth. Sixty-seven first-time mothers took part in the study, in which data were collected through interview. The interview text was analysed using hermeneutic text analysis. Nearly half of the mothers interviewed (n = 32) said that midwives did not care for them. The findings show that midwives' behaviour was humiliating when they ignored mothers and held them in contempt. The mothers felt further humiliated (...) when the midwives did not believe them, treated their bodies in a careless manner and tended to put blame on them. Through their behaviour and actions, some midwives have shown that they no longer have a caring attitude as an element of their professional practice and that they have ignored ethics by offending mothers' sense of dignity. (shrink)

En un momento de gran efervescencia feminista, se entremezclan las reclamaciones políticas del movimiento con las peligrosas reapropiaciones que de sus núcleos de lucha hace el neoliberalismo. Las tensiones que se presentan en este contexto son muchas y variadas, algunas evidentes y otras invisibles, pero todas contribuyen a la torsión actual del feminismo. En el presente artículo se abordarán algunas de estas tensiones que nacen en la intersección entre feminismo y neoliberalismo: desde la publicidad como posible herramienta feminista hasta los (...) discursos sobre el emprendimiento y el empleo, pasando por el diseño de políticas públicas, y la mercantilización de los cuerpos femeninos. También se abordarán algunas de las posibles rearticulaciones y respuestas políticas feministas ante esta realidad, mostrando la complejidad de los retos a los que tienen que hacer frente los feminismos hoy.In times of great feminist effervescence, the political claims of the movement are intermingled with the dangerous reappropriations that neoliberalism makes of its struggle nuclei. The tensions that appear in this context are many and varied, some obvious and some invisible, but all of them contribute to the torsion of feminism. This article will address some of the tensions that arise from the intersection between feminism and neoliberalism: from advertising as a possible feminist tool, to speeches on entrepreneurship and employment, through the design of public policies, and the commodification of female bodies. Some of the possible re-articulations and feminist political responses to this reality will be addressed, showing the great complexity of the challenges that feminisms face today. (shrink)

This article is based on an online ethnographic study of Dutch women who use YouTube as a medium to document their contested illness experiences. During 13 months of observations between 2017 and 2019, we followed a sample of 16 YouTubers, and conducted an in-depth analysis of 30 YouTube videos and of 7 interviews. By adopting a ‘praxiographic’ approach to social media, and by utilising insights from phenomenological theory, this study teases out how bodies are ‘done’ in (the making of) these (...) YouTube videos. We describe three types of bodies: (1) inert bodies, (2) experienced bodies, and (3) authentic bodies. Ultimately, this study shows how vlogging about contested illness is a practice in which bodies are continually (re)configured, and through which the ‘invisibility’ of a sufferer’s condition can obtain social visibility. (shrink)

Corporate success is understood as stakeholder value, which is based on three licenses: the licenses to innovate, to compete, and to operate. Stakeholders contribute to these three licenses through their benefit and risk potentials. Based on four cases, a stakeholder value management system is developed which provides managers with a tool to systematically use the benefit potentials that lie in stakeholder relations. The links between corporate value creation and stakeholders are identified.

In dieser Schrift begründet Dante die Priorität der Volks- und Muttersprache vor der lateinischen Gelehrtensprache und fordert eine italienische Hochsprache. Er untermauert seine Ausführungen durch eine anthropologische Erörterung der menschlichen Sprachfähigkeit. Dank einer originellen Interpretation des biblischen Mythos vom Turmbau von Babel legt er eine vernünftig begründete Neubewertung der Vielfalt und der historischen Entwicklung der Sprachen vor. Das Problem der Sprache stellt sich im Denken Dantes in zweifacher Weise: als Problem der Sprache der Philosophie und unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Philosophie (...) der Sprache. In "De vulgari eloquentia" bietet Dante ein ganzes Arsenal metaphysischer Paradigmen auf, um der sprachlichen Verständigung der Menschen eine unvordenkliche Dignität zu geben. Er stellt die gesamte Philosophie in den Dienst des Menschen als sprechendes Wesen. Auch wenn Dante die Doppelbestimmung der Sprache als sinnliches Zeichen, das den Gedanken des einen Menschen einem andern zu vermitteln fähig ist, von der Tradition übernimmt, setzt er andere Akzente. Die Sprache der Menschen ist nicht nur eine im Vergleich zur Transparenz der reinen Geister unvollkommenere Form der Kommunikation, sondern sie wird positiv als die dem Menschen gänzlich angemessene und entsprechende Form der Kommunikation interpretiert: Das Sprechen ist der "herausragende Akt des menschlichen Geschlechts". Mit dem Erscheinen von "De vulgari eloquentia" liegt die vierbändige Ausgabe der Philosophischen Werke Dante Alighieris vollständig vor. Bislang erschienen Bd. 1: Das Schreiben an Cangrande (PhB 463) Bd. 2: Disputation über das Wasser und die Erde (PhB 464) Bd. 4: Das Gastmahl I-IV (PhB 466a-d). (shrink)

To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to test different theoretical models of working memory in childhood based on a computerized assessment. We tested this across several countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Italy, and UK. The present study addressed the wider macro-cultural context and how this impacts working memory. We used two economic indices to characterize the participating countries and ranked the countries based on the Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment. Children between 5 and 10 (...) years completed the same set of short-term and working memory tests. There were two main findings. First, there was a similar pattern in verbal working memory across countries, which suggests that this skill may be relatively consistent across different cultural groups. In contrast, the pattern for visuo-spatial working memory was different across countries, which may explained by cultural differences and educational rankings of the countries. The second main finding was that both a domain-general model and a domain-specific model provided a reasonably good fit with the data, there was the high relationship between the verbal and visuo-spatial working memory constructs across the countries in the latter model. Thus, it may be a more parsimonious choice to rely on a three-factor model. The data also suggest culture-similar patterns in a computerized assessment of working memory. (shrink)

Research from behavioural sciences shows that people reach decisions in a much less rational and well-considered way than was often assumed. The doctrine of informed consent, which is an important ethical principle and legal requirement in medical practice, is being challenged by these insights into decision-making and real-world choice behaviour. This article discusses the implications of recent insights of research on decision-making behaviour for the informed consent doctrine. It concludes that there is a significant tension between the often non-rational choice (...) behaviour and the traditional theory of informed consent. Responsible ways of dealing with or solving these problems are considered. To this end, patient decisions aids are discussed as suitable interventions to support autonomous decision-making. However, current PDAs demand certain improvements in order to protect and promote autonomous decision-making. Based on a conception of autonomy, we will argue which type of improvements are needed. (shrink)

The “nature” of an artifact is often equated with its function. Clearly, an artifactual function must be an extrinsic property. This feature of functions has important implications on the semantics of artifactual kind terms: it enables us to vindicate that artifactual kind terms have an externalist semantics. Any alleged externalist theory, indeed, must show that the referents of the considered terms share a common nature (i.e., an extrinsic property), whether we know or could possibly ever know what that nature is. (...) However, the state of the art shows that function is not enough to represent such “nature”: function does not exhaustively account for important phenomena that characterize artifacts and artifactual kinds, nor does it thoroughly define what they are. Thus, extending the scope of externalism to artifactual kind terms seems doomed to fail. Pace opposite views, it could even be argued that artifacts are a sub-class of social kinds. If so, not only social but also artifactual kind terms cannot refer externalistically, since their referents constitutively depend on human intentions and norms. Either way, externalism fails to apply to those kinds of terms. (shrink)

Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to semantics as applied to transformational grammars of the ...

The opaque use of data collection methods on the WWW has given rise to privacy concerns among Internet users. Privacy policies on websites may ease these concerns, if they communicate clearly and unequivocally when, how and for what purpose data are collected, used or shared. This paper examines privacy policies from a linguistic angle to determine whether the language of these documents is adequate for communicating data-handling practices in a manner that enables informed consent on the part of the user. (...) The findings highlight that corporate privacy policies obfuscate, enhance and mitigate unethical data handling practices and use persuasive appeals to increase companies’ trustworthiness. The communicative strategies identified provide starting points for redesigning existing privacy statements with a view to communicating data handling practices in a more transparent and responsible manner, laying the groundwork for informed consent. (shrink)

Background The aim was to explore how the clinical ethics committees in Norway have worked and functioned within mental health care and addiction treatment services. Methods Analysis of 256 annual reports from clinical ethics committees from 2003 to 2012 and a survey to clinicians who had used a clinical ethics committee. Results Dilemmas related to coercion, confidentiality, information, and patient autonomy dominated. The committees established only for psychiatric hospitals, had received more cases from mental health and addiction services than the (...) committees also serving somatic services. Many of the case discussions involved both somatic and mental health care, complicated legal issues as well as ethical dilemmas. Mental health care professionals that have used the clinical ethics committees evaluated the clinical ethics committees deliberation as useful. Conclusion Given the many difficult ethical dilemmas in mental health care ethics work need to be strengthened. The complexity of the cases requires varied and interdisciplinary competence and training among the clinical ethics committee members. (shrink)

This article adds to the conversation analytic literature on repair and on preference structure by examining a previously-undescribed otherinitiated repair practice, using the form of an alternative question, and the various actions that this practice is used to accomplish. Alternative question repair initiations can present alternate hearings or understandings of a prior utterance for clarification. They can also be used to initiate error correction by targeting a trouble source in a prior utterance with the first alternative and providing a candidate (...) correction with the second. In the latter case, rejection of the candidate preference can be done as a dispreferred response. Recipients can make use of both turn design and context to interpret the actions being done through this form of repair. (shrink)

En la presente nota crítica nos aproximaremos a la obra de Roswitha Scholz y a sus tesis sobre la teoría de la escisión del valor, estudiando las implicaciones que esta tuvo en la escisión del antiguo Grupo Krisis con el objetivo de reflexionar sobre la compleja intersección entre el marxismo y el feminismo que supone su obra. Para ello, nos centraremos especialmente en su libro Capital y patriarcado. La teoría de la escisión del valor, si bien nos apoyaremos además en (...) otras autoras que han ayudado a divulgar su pensamiento y traducir sus textos al español. (shrink)

Plato and the Metaphysical Feminine offers a new interpretation of the role of the female and the feminine in Plato's political dialogues--the Republic, Laws, and Timaeus--informed by Deleuze's film theory and Irigaray's psychoanalytic feminism. Irene Han reads Plato against the grain in order to close the gap between the vitalists and Plato, instead of magnifying their differences. Han explores the ambivalence that the vitalist tradition, Irigaray, and Derrida have towards Platonism. The application of Deleuzian and Irigarayan concepts to the (...) ancient texts produces a new reading of Plato, focusing on the centrality and importance of motion, change, sensuality, and becoming to Platonic philosophy and, thereby, reinterprets Platonic philosophy in the direction of Heraclitus rather than Parmenides: as feminist rather than masculinist, and as mimetic. It therefore prioritizes Heraclitean principles of movement and flux over Form, the feminine over masculine, and materiality, feeling, or sensation over abstraction and universal essence. Han's exploration illustrates how, in Plato's thought, the feminine maps itself onto the plane of phenomena--a plane associated with vitalist themes such as motion, tactility, and change (metabolē). Platonic metaphysics is recontextualized by illustrating how Being expresses itself through processes of (feminine) becoming. With this reformulation, the resulting account of Platonic Being destabilizes any purported Platonic dualism. (shrink)

Putnam’s suggestion of extending the scope of his semantic theory has opened an ongoing debate. The majority seem to agree with Putnam as long as he restricts his analysis to natural kind terms, whereas many doubts have arisen about whether or not it can be applied to artifactual kind terms as well. Specifically, this disagreement originated with the thought experiment that Putnam laid out in order to prove his controversial thesis. Here I analyze it in detail in order to evaluate (...) whether it proves what it has been alleged to prove. Unlike the other authors engaged in the debate, I point out that this particular argument cannot demonstrate that artifactual words refer externalistically. I claim that, on closer inspection, Putnam’s thought experiment only shows that an artifactual term like ‘pencil’ can turn out to be a natural kind word, but, in the end, it tells us little about how our “actual” artifactual kind terms work. In order to make my point, I also bring out the two fundamental requirements that a genuine externalist argument about artifactual words ought to meet. Finally, I report, albeit briefly, the main externalist accounts in this respect, illustrating how none of them actually meet the challenge. (shrink)

SCHOFIELD I, TOLSON D and FLEMING V. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 165–176 [Epub ahead of print]How nurses understand and care for older people with delirium in the acute hospital: a Critical Discourse AnalysisDelirium is a common presentation of deteriorating health in older people. It is potentially deleterious in terms of patient experience and clinical outcomes. Much of what is known about delirium is through positivist research, which forms the evidence base for disease‐based classification systems and clinical guidelines. There is little (...) systematic study of nurses’ day‐to‐day practice of nursing patients with delirium. The aim was to uncover the kinds of knowledge that informs nurses’ care and to explicate the basis of that knowledge. Critical Discourse Analysis is underpinned by the premise that powerful interests within society mediate how social practices are constructed. Links were made between the grammatical and lexical features of nurses’ language about care in interviews and naturalistic settings, and the healthcare context. Care focused on the continuous surveillance of patients with delirium by nurses themselves or vicariously through other patients, and containment. Nurses influenced by major discourses of risk reduction and safety, constructed patients with delirium as risk objects. The philosophy of person‐centred and dignified care advocated in nursing literature and government policy is an emerging discourse, though little evident in the data. The current dominant discourses on safety must give space to discourses of dignity and compassion. (shrink)

Aesthetically appealing stimuli can improve performance in demanding target localisation tasks compared to unappealing stimuli. Two search-and-localisation experiments were carried out to examine t...

The proliferation of religious heritage seems to flow self-evidently from the processes of de-churching and secularization taking place in many European societies. Although having become redundant or outdated, certain religious buildings, objects or practices may be revalued as religious heritage. This selective setting apart of religious places or practices considered ‘redundant’ as heritage – a value-adding process – involves a form of sacralization. Such processual perspective helps religious heritage to be seen as not just ‘existing’, but, like all heritage, as (...) made. Importantly, the sacredness of religious heritage diverges from the sacredness of religion. With multiple sacralites attributed to it, religious heritage may speak to much larger and diverse audiences as global, national or cultural heritage. (shrink)

Medieval Sephardi literature was a catalytic presence in the Jewish intellectual landscape of the eighteenth century. In _Sepharad in Ashkenaz_, a celebrated group of contributors provides the first, comprehensive evaluation of the medieval Sephardi canon in the Ashkenazi world. These essays explore the introduction of Sephardi texts into Jewish discourse, the Ashkenazi reception of the Sephardi masters, and the resulting literary innovations that forever changed Jewish scholarship. Through a series of case studies and analyses of works by Maimonides, Spinoza, and (...) Kant, among others, this volume unravels an intricate diasporic network that led to Jewish modernity. (shrink)

Introduction: Time and the shared world -- The "subject" of inquiry -- Mineness and the practical first-person -- Being and otherness: Sartre's critique -- Heideggerian aprioricity and the categories of being -- The temporality of care -- Fursorge: acknowledging the other Dasein -- Authenticity, inauthenticity, and the extremes of Fursorge -- Conclusion.

Information technology and the Internet have added a new stakeholder concern to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda: online privacy. While theory suggests that online privacy is a CSR, only very few studies in the business ethics literature have connected these two. Based on a study of CSR disclosures, this article contributes to the existing literature by exploring whether and how the largest IT companies embrace online privacy as a CSR. The findings indicate that only a small proportion of the (...) companies have comprehensive privacy programs, although more than half of them voice moral or relational motives for addressing online privacy. The privacy measures they have taken are primarily compliance measures, while measures that stimulate a stakeholder dialogue are rare. Overall, a wide variety of approaches to addressing privacy was found, which suggests that no institutionalization of privacy practices has taken place as yet. The study therefore indicates that online privacy is rather new on the CSR agenda, currently playing only a minor role. (shrink)

This essay is a critical review of two recent collections, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby and Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. While the collections differ in their manner of addressing the critical sources that have inspired them-the former relying upon a single theorist, the latter attempting to move through some of the philosophical history that constitutes our present theoretical terrain-both attempt to (...) think through and thus revisualize some of the categories of difference which we have inherited. Though the best essays from these collections are celebrated for demonstrating how "feminism as critique" can work to move us toward a clearer and more inclusive feminist theory, questions are raised about what the inattention to race in these volumes suggests about our own role in the construction of power and knowledge, and the erasures that help to secure them both. (shrink)

Thought experiments are fictional narratives that widen our cognitive horizons both in the sciences and in philosophy. In the present paper we argue that they can perform this function by bringing one’s perspective into view. Despite being traditionally conceived as devices that transmit true propositions to their readers, thought experiments are also particularly apt to express a specific theoretical perspective through the use of imagination. We suggest that this is a significant epistemic feature that is often overlooked in the debate. (...) After presenting our analysis of thought experiments (Section 2) and of the role that imagination plays in them (Section 3), we revisit Galileo Galilei’s use of imaginary cases in light of our account (Section 4). We show that the main aims of Galileo’s thought experiments are to highlight how different perspectives endorsed by fictional characters affect imagination and to invite readers to actively engage in perspectives that are different from their own. This results in a clash of perspectives which plays a crucial epistemic role (Section 5). Readers of thought experiments do not passively absorb information, but critically assess the other’s perspective. In the final part of the paper, we individuate different ways in which readers can react to thought experiments. (shrink)

El objetivo principal del presente artículo es explorar el papel de los Códigos Éticos en el contexto turístico. Para ello, se realiza un análisis de la aplicación de Códigos Éticos en el sector turístico a partir de examinar y categorizar el contenido y sistema de gestión de códigos éticos turísticos existentes en el estado español. A partir de este primer análisis, se realiza un focus group y entrevistas en profundidad a académicos y profesionales turísticos para obtener una aproximación crítica a (...) los contenidos y del sistema de gestión para, por un lado, revisar el contenido de los códigos éticos turísticos y, por otro lado, su gestión para convertirlos en elementos de transformación de la realidad turística. A partir de ello, se ofrecen una serie de bases y recomendaciones para la elaboración de un Código Ético en el contexto de un destino turístico. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

The automatic prediction of court case judgments using Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing is challenged by the variety of norms and regulations, the inherent complexity of the forensic language, and the length of legal judgments. Although state-of-the-art transformer-based architectures and Large Language Models (LLMs) are pre-trained on large-scale datasets, the underlying model reasoning is not transparent to the legal expert. This paper jointly addresses court judgment prediction and explanation by not only predicting the judgment but also providing legal experts (...) with sentence-based explanations. To boost the performance of both tasks we leverage a legal named entity recognition step, which automatically annotates documents with meaningful domain-specific entity tags and masks the corresponding fine-grained descriptions. In such a way, transformer-based architectures and Large Language Models can attend to in-domain entity-related information in the inference process while neglecting irrelevant details. Furthermore, the explainer can boost the relevance of entity-enriched sentences while limiting the diffusion of potentially sensitive information. We also explore the use of in-context learning and lightweight fine-tuning to tailor LLMs to the legal language style and the downstream prediction and explanation tasks. The results obtained on a benchmark dataset from the Indian judicial system show the superior performance of entity-aware approaches to both judgment prediction and explanation. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.