Group work is a very common practice in higher education when it comes to developing key competences for students’ personal and professional growth. The goals that students pursue when working in teams determine how they organize and regulate their behavior and how they approach the tasks. The academic goals are a relevant variable that can condition the success of the group, as they guide and direct the students towards involvement in the task, the effort they make, and the desire to (...) increase their academic competence, and their learning. Thus, the need arises to create new evaluation instruments to help us understand the importance of academic goals when students work as a team. The purpose of this paper is to corroborate the construct validity of the Questionnaire on Teamwork Learning Goals (QTLG) based on the Achievement Goal Questionnaire (3x2 AGQ) of Elliot, Murayama & Pekrun (2011) in the context of teamwork, and to determine if the model 3X2 offers a better fit to the data than other models, such as: 2x2; Trichotomous; Definition; Valence, among others. The results obtained from a sample of 700 students from 6 Spanish universities confirm that, in the context of teamwork, the 3x2 model fits the data better than the rest of the models subjected to confirmatory analysis, with contrasting evidence of validity and reliability. Therefore, we considered it a useful instrument for studying motivation in the group work context. The QTLG has practical applications, allowing us to explore in detail the academic goals of university students. (shrink)

This collection broadens the scientific discussion of modularity by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, including artificial life, ...

Morphological EvoDevo is a field of biological inquiry in which explicit relations between evolutionary patterns and growth or morphogenetic processes are made. Historically, morphological EvoDevo results from the coming together of several traditions, notably Naturphilosophie, embryology, the study of heterochrony, and developmental constraints. A special feature binding different approaches to morphological EvoDevo is the use of formalisms and mathematical models. Here we will introduce anatomical network analysis, a new approach centered on connectivity patterns formed by anatomical parts, with its own (...) concepts and tools specifically designed for the study of morphological EvoDevo questions. Riedl’s concept of burden is tightly related to the use of anatomical networks, providing a nexus between the evolutionary patterns and the structural constraints that shape them. (shrink)

Morphospaces are theoretical tools to explore the morphological organization of living and fossil organisms. They have been used mostly by the paleontological community in an effort to get the most out of one of the only pieces of evidence that fossil material usually provide: the morphology of hard parts. The expectation with the establishment of theoretical morphospaces is that, by abstracting and modeling the fundamental parts of form, the multiple processes that generate the phenotypes of embryonic and adult structures will (...) be better understood. In this essay, we suggest that ontogenetic trajectories can be used as the generative functions that build morphospaces, and propose approaches to build theoretical models for the establishment of left–right asymmetries during vertebrate heart embryogenesis. BioEssays 26:405–412, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The theory of Punctuated Equilibria challenges the neo‐Darwinian tenet that evolution is a uniform process. Recently, an article by Hunt1 has found that directional change during the evolution of a lineage is relatively small (occurring only in 5% of 250 analyzed traits). Of those traits that were shown to follow a trend, size was more likely to show gradual changes, whereas shape changes were more random. Here, we provide a short view of the nature of evolutionary trends, showing that directional (...) change within lineages and among clades provides valuable evolutionary information about the processes involved in their generation. BioEssays 30:521–525, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In September 2008, 10 years after the untimely death of Pere Alberch (1954–1998), the 20th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology gathered a group of Pere’s students, col- laborators, and colleagues (Figure 1) to celebrate his contribu- tions to the origins of EvoDevo. Hosted by the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) outside Vienna, the group met for two days of discussion. The meeting was organized in tandem with a congress held in May 2008 at the Cavanilles Institute (...) for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (ICBiBE) in Valencia, Spain. The talks at the KLI were equal parts: nostalgic remembrance, excitement over new ways of thinking about old problems, and an unrepressed vitriol against the resurgence of reductionist thinking in EvoDevo. Here we highlight some of the key aspects of Pere’s life and work that informed and infused the talks. (shrink)

The question "Where do we come from?" has fascinated philosophers, scientists, and artists for generations. This book reorients the question of the matrix as a place where everything comes from (_chora_, womb, incubator) by recasting it in terms of acts of "matrixial/maternal hospitality" producing space and matter of and for the other. Irina Aristarkhova theorizes such hospitality with the potential to go beyond tolerance in understanding self/other relations. Building on and critically evaluating a wide range of historical and contemporary (...) scholarship, she applies this theoretical framework to the science, technology, and art of ectogenesis (artificial womb, neonatal incubators, and other types of generation outside of the maternal body) and proves the question "Can the machine nurse?" is critical when approaching and understanding the functional capacities and failures of incubating technologies, such as artificial placenta. Aristarkhova concludes with the science and art of male pregnancy, positioning the condition as a question of the hospitable man and newly defined fatherhood and its challenge to the conception of masculinity as unable to welcome the other. (shrink)

We critically reconsider an old hypothesis of the role of the dekad in Pythagorean philosophy. Unlike Zhmud, we claim that: 1) the dekad did play a role in Philolaus’ astronomical system, and 2) Aristotle did not project Plato’s theory of the ten eidetic numbers onto the Pythagoreans. We claim that the dekad, as the τέλειος ἀριθμός, should be understood in Philolaus’ philosophy as completeness and the basis of counting in Greek – as in most other languages – in a decimal (...) system. Additionally, we argue that the number ten is not even a candidate for the τέλειος ἀριθμός in Plato’s philosophy. As a final result of our discussion, we compare and contrast Philolaus’, Plato’s, and Speusippus’ accounts of completeness in relation to numbers. (shrink)

The offer-and-acceptance analysis has long been questioned as not (easily) applicable to certain methods of contracting. This paper looks at this analysis through the prism of normative powers and identifies much deeper problems with the analytic explanation of how such unilateral normative powers as offer and acceptance can generate such a normative result as concluding a contract. It argues that even if the powers to offer and accept are exercised, as they are in certain methods of contracting, these are not (...) the normative powers that create contractual obligations; such obligations are always created by the jointly exercised power to contract. The paper substantiates an account of the power to contract as a sui generis normative power and explains the role the unilateral powers to offer and to accept play when they are exercised, while also explaining why there is no need to ‘invent’ offering and accepting where there are none. (shrink)

The word excellence is derived from the Latin word excellentia, and it means the quality of being extremely good. Human excellences could be defined as those human qualities that make a person outstanding, exceptional, superior, or, in one word, the best of one's kind in any field of human activities. Frequently, it is synonymously used with the word virtue, narrowly meaning moral excellence.

Based on a dual process view of ethical judgment, we examine the role of empathic concern and perspective taking on the acceptability of lying to protect the company. We hypothesize that these traits will matter to a different extent under conditions of high and low perceived time hurriedness. Our research hypotheses are tested in a survey of 134 US workers. Results show that empathic concern reduces the acceptability of lying to protect the company for individuals who tend to do things (...) quickly and feel in a hurry at work. On the other hand, perspective taking reduces the acceptability of lying for individuals who experience low levels of time hurriedness. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

We suggest that understanding unethical behavior in organizations involves understanding how people view themselves and their relationships with others, a concept known as self-construal. Across multiple studies, employing both field and laboratory settings, we examine the impact of three dimensions of self-construal (independent, relational, and collective) on unethical behavior. Our results show that higher levels of relational self-construal relate negatively to unethical behavior. We also find that differences in levels of relational self for men and women mediate gender differences in (...) unethical behavior. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (shrink)

As in science and philosophy, thought experiments in mathematics link a problem to new epistemic resources that are unavailable in a given practice, e.g., Euclidean geometry. Thought experiments invite us to perform an imaginary scenario involving counterfactual, deductive and sensory elements. This chapter aims to pinpoint the beneficial peculiarities of thought experiments in mathematics in comparison with inferences, diagrams and calculative procedures. Reflection about thought experiments assists us to realize both the limits and opportunities in mathematical thinking. Henceforth, the analysis (...) of examples suggests a broader understanding of mathematical, thought and experiment. (shrink)

As a cognitivist about emotions, Socrates takes the fear of death to be a belief that death is a bad thing for the one who dies. Socrates, however, thinks there are reasons for thinking death is not a bad thing at all, and might even be a blessing. So the question considered in this paper is: how would Socrates explain the fact that so many people believe death is bad?

The debates between various Buddhist and Hindu philosophical systems about the existence, definition and nature of self, occupy a central place in the history of Indian philosophy and religion.

The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software solutions ‘Leximancer’, ‘Crawdad’, and (...) ‘Wordle’, and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed‐method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three‐step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results. (shrink)

Invertebrate animals are frequently lumped into a single category and denied welfare protections despite their considerable cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary diversity. Some ethical and policy inroads have been made for cephalopod molluscs and crustaceans, but the vast majority of arthropods, including the insects, remain excluded from moral consideration. We argue that this exclusion is unwarranted given the existing evidence. Anachronistic readings of evolution, which view invertebrates as lower in the scala naturae, continue to influence public policy and common morality. The (...) assumption that small brains are unlikely to support cognition or sentience likewise persists, despite growing evidence that arthropods have converged on cognitive functions comparable to those found in vertebrates. The exclusion of invertebrates is also motivated by cognitive-affective biases that covertly influence moral judgment, as well as a flawed balancing of scientific uncertainty against moral risk. All these factors shape moral attitudes toward basal vertebrates too, but they are particularly acute in the arthropod context. Moral consistency dictates that the same standards of evidence and risk management that justify policy protections for vertebrates also support extending moral consideration to certain invertebrates. Moving beyond a vertebrate-centered conception of welfare can also clarify foundational moral concepts in their own right. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal that significant changes are taking place in the agricultural sector in the processes of management and organization of production, since the digitalization of the economy itself and other spheres of public life, in fact, is a kind of stimulus for the structural and technological transformation of the agro-industrial complex. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the article examines the modern realities and the immediate prospects of the digital agricultural revolution taking (...) place in the world, and its impact on the process of forming human resources has not yet been sufficiently studied. As a result, it was revealed that the development of rural areas and agriculture in the context of the introduction of digital technologies is unrealistic without highly professional specialists and workers with the potential for training and development. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the origin, development and nature of human beings as it is described in Plato’s Protagoras myth. My main claim is that, according to this story, the human is a multi-dimensional being with various aspects and dispositions. After the creation of mortals had been finished, the human dispositions were further developed and differentiated through time. The creation and further development of living beings is to be divided into four stages, out of which the (...) pre-political and political are of particular significance for humans. I will attempt to show that each of these stages can be better accounted for by using the different hermeneutical models, or by finding out which theory underlines each of them. (shrink)

We apply the “wisdom of the crowd” idea to human category learning, using a simple approach that combines people's categorization decisions by taking the majority decision. We first show that the aggregated crowd category learning behavior found by this method performs well, learning categories more quickly than most or all individuals for 28 previously collected datasets. We then extend the approach so that it does not require people to categorize every stimulus. We do this using a model‐based method that predicts (...) the categorization behavior people would produce for new stimuli, based on their behavior with observed stimuli, and uses the majority of these predicted decisions. We demonstrate and evaluate the model‐based approach in two case studies. In the first, we use the general recognition theory decision‐bound model of categorization (Ashby & Townsend, ) to infer each person's decision boundary for two categories of perceptual stimuli, and we use these inferences to make aggregated predictions about new stimuli. In the second, we use the generalized context model exemplar model of categorization (Nosofsky, ) to infer each person's selective attention for face stimuli, and we use these inferences to make aggregated predictions about withheld stimuli. In both case studies, we show that our method successfully predicts the category of unobserved stimuli, and we emphasize that the aggregated crowd decisions arise from psychologically interpretable processes and parameters. We conclude by discussing extensions and potential real‐world applications of the approach. (shrink)

Introduction. Innovationism in various areas of society has changed both the natural and social environment. The change speed in the new infor- mation and communication field is the reason for many questions related to studying the problems of society and the machine, finding out the place of artificial intelligence in social relations. These pro- cesses stimulated the philosophical research, the subject of which was man, modern technologies, scenarios for the development of society, socio- cultural and political-legal forms of its organization. (...) Since the 90s of the twentieth century in the West and later in Russia, a transhumanistic concept has been formed, which connects man, society and technology in a special way. Representatives of transhumanism study the technical develop- ments of human immortality and build models of the perfect man, pursuing as a goal, his deliver- ance from suffering and disease. Transhumanistic perspectives actualize the need for a thorough, constructive and critical assessment of the possible advantages and risks of technological development, and its impact on the political and legal structure. In this regard, the ability to see and isolate the features of this process and subsequent reflection is fundamentally important. The purpose of the article is to consider political and legal transformations in the context of the interaction of modern technologies and soci- ety through the prism of transhumanistic perspec- tives, to identify possible directions of philosophical reflection of political and legal modes of modernity. Methods. To achieve the research goal, general scientific methods of cognition were used: analysis and synthesis, induction, deduction, comparison, abstraction. The article also applied institutional- functional and system-structural approaches, the method of interpretation and content analysis. The analysis of public opinion and special labeling of artificial intelligence was carried out with the help of appealing to network content (social networks, blogs, and forums). Communication channels reproduce messages mentioning modern technolo- gies from the point of view of the philistine world- view based on stereotypes broadcast in society and the influence of popular culture. Content analysis revealed the relevance of the spectrum of labeling, relative to artificial intelligence systems, includ- ing the verbs “create”, “destroy”, “help”, “enslave”. Regarding the sphere of labor, law and politics, the positions differ, from outright alarmism to utopian images of social well-being. Scientific novelty of the study. The article analyzes the prospects of considering the phenom- enon of social transformations, the forms of their representation through political and legal views as exemplified by transhumanism. Results. The author attempts to give a comprehen- sive description of social changes in the field of public administration, legal regulation, legal per- sonality and legal responsibility, social equality of participants in legal relations through the specific refraction of these social phenomena in transhu- manistic ideas. The spectrum of the main problems in the sphere of interests of the transhumanistic worldview is listed. Conclusion. Turning to modernization strategies on the example of transhumanism is a natural and necessary need in the political and legal sphere, in particular. In the course of the analysis, a wide range of problems were identified that actualize the social and axiological and anthropological optics of the research. Diverse forms of transhumanistic political trends act as manifestations of socio-legal reflection on the intensification of innovation- ism, which is capable of radically changing human nature. (shrink)

The question of whether object recognition is orientation-invariant or orientation-dependent was investigated using a repetition blindness (RB) paradigm. In RB, the second occurrence of a repeated stimulus is less likely to be reported, compared to the occurrence of a different stimulus, if it occurs within a short time of the first presentation. This failure is usually interpreted as a difficulty in assigning two separate episodic tokens to the same visual type. Thus, RB can provide useful information about which representations are (...) treated as the same by the visual system. Two experiments tested whether RB occurs for repeated objects that were either in identical orientations, or differed by 30, 60, 90, or 180°. Significant RB was found for all orientation differences, consistent with the existence of orientation-invariant object representations. However, under some circumstances, RB was reduced or even eliminated when the repeated object was rotated by 180°, suggesting easier individuation of the repeated objects in this case. A third experiment confirmed that the upside-down orientation is processed more easily than other rotated orientations. The results indicate that, although object identity can be determined independently of orientation, orientation plays an important role in establishing distinct episodic representations of a repeated object, thus enabling one to report them as separate events. (shrink)

En el Gran Discurso de Protágoras, en el diálogo platónico que lleva su nombre, Platón pone en boca de Protágoras un mito acerca del origen, desarrollo y naturaleza del ser humano, que es de gran relevancia filosófica. Se expresa que los dioses crearon a los seres mortales desde dos elementos: la tierra y el fuego. A su vez, también asignaron dos titanes, Epimeteo y Prometeo, para que proveyeran a los mortales de sus facultades. ¿Acaso esto implica que la creación no (...) fue terminada por los dioses? ¿Hasta qué punto los dioses crearon enteramente al ser humano? ¿Podría afirmarse que este es un mito creacionista? El desarrollo de los seres vivientes puede dividirse en cuatro instancias. A lo largo de este artículo, se proponen distintos modelos hermenéuticos para responder los interrogantes mencionados anteriormente. (shrink)

This paper investigates the role of pictures in mathematics in the particular case of Cayley graphs—the graphic representations of groups. I shall argue that their principal function in that theory—to provide insight into the abstract structure of groups—is performed employing their visual aspect. I suggest that the application of a visual graph theory in the purely non-visual theory of groups resulted in a new effective approach in which pictures have an essential role. Cayley graphs were initially developed as exact mathematical (...) constructions. Therefore, they are legitimate components of the theory (combinatorial and geometric group theory) and the pictures of Cayley graphs are a part of practical mathematical procedures. (shrink)

This article engages the concept of hospitality as it relates to the maternal. I critically evaluate the current conceptions of hospitality by Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, focusing on their dematerialized definition of the feminine found at the heart of hospitality, and Derrida's aporia of hospitality that deals with ownership. The foundation of hospitality, I show, is the maternal relation and its specific acts of hospitality that encompass the notions of gift and generosity. While remaining unthought in philosophy, however, maternal (...) acts of hospitality are appropriated when hospitality is defined as interiority, habitation, expectancy, and unconditional welcoming of the other within oneself. I argue that hospitality would remain Derrida's and his proponents' “impossible” ethic as long as it undercuts its own promise, does not fully think through its foundation in the maternal, and fails to welcome the mother unconditionally. (shrink)