La justicia interamericana de derechos humanos es un fenómeno de transnacional influencia sobre los ordenamientos jurídicos de los Estados nacionales. La creciente interacción de la Corte Interamericana con los jueces nacionales y su labor como intérprete de la Convención Americana de Derechos Humanos (CADH) ha promovido un excesivo optimismo que resulta necesario revisar críticamente en aras de una mejor comprensión de la justicia transnacional en derechos humanos. Para cumplir este cometido, el presente documento presentará las discusiones doctrinales sobre justicia, validez (...) y eficacia de la CADH a través del alcance, límites e impacto del ejercicio judicial Interamericano. (shrink)

O Transtorno do Espectro Autista (TEA) é caracterizado pela presença de déficits persistentes na comunicação e interação social, além de padrões restritos e repetitivos de comportamentos, interesses e atividades. Como forma de viabilizar a inclusão das crianças autistas no ambiente escolar, a orientação dos professores que atuam com este público é de suma importância. O objetivo do estudo é apresentar a experiência de orientação feita para os professores que lecionam para alunos autistas, acompanhados pelo Núcleo de Atenção ao TEA, da (...) cidade de Monte Alto-SP, no período de junho de 2022 a junho de 2023. Trata-se de um estudo descritivo, do tipo relato de experiência, embasado na ciência ABA (Análise do Comportamento Aplicada) e relacionado às vivências com os professores em orientações, realizadas mensalmente. Como resultado, observou-se a dificuldade dos docentes em acolher estes alunos, direcionar atividades, lidar com comportamentos disruptivos e no manejo das atividades de vida diária. Discute-se a importância de uma ferramenta de apoio para proporcionar aos docentes maior respaldo teórico à prática com alunos autistas, para contribuir na inclusão, aprendizagem e socialização no ambiente escolar. Esta experiência ampliou as vivências sobre a perspectiva do professor na inclusão escolar de crianças com TEA, lançando luz sobre a necessidade de formação teórica e instrumentalização dos docentes, considerando as particularidades de neurodesenvolvimento e comportamento desta população e contribuindo para a maior eficácia da assistência educacional inclusiva. (shrink)

Este artículo plantea un diálogo sobre la ficción y su relevancia narrativa dentro del relato histórico contemporáneo colombiano, a la luz de sus relaciones transversales. Tras el Acuerdo de Contribución a la Verdad Histórica y la Reparación y de la consolidación del trabajo llevado a cabo por el Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica iniciado hace casi una década con su primer informe, es pertinente volver sobre algunas ideas relacionadas con la manera en la que se narra la historia en Colombia. (...) En este sentido, se constata el valor histórico de la ficción, así como la vitalidad de sus diversos actores sociales y culturales, en sus intersecciones y recorridos por la memoria colectiva, en su materialidad y en su reinvención histórica. Los textos de ficción, por tanto, ofrecen caminos de reinvención de los relatos históricos, que no los sustituyen, pero sí empoderan a sus participantes/enunciantes, sus lectores/receptores y sus versiones/ relatos dentro de los procesos de memorias nacionales y humanas de la Colombia de hoy. Lo significativo de esta propuesta radica en que estos relatos son inclusivos, plurales y carecen del juicio moral hecho por una voz narradora autoritaria y única. (shrink)

RESENHA VILHENA, Maria Ângela. Salvação solidária : o culto às almas à luz da teologia das religiões. São Paulo: Paulinas, 2012. 173 p.

David Papineau’s _The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience_ is deep, insightful, refreshingly brisk, and very readable. In it, Papineau argues that sensory experiences are intrinsic and non-relational states of subjects; that they do not essentially involve relations to worldly facts, properties, or other items (though they do happen to correlate with worldly items); and that they do not have truth conditions simply in virtue of their conscious (i.e., phenomenal) features. I am in enthusiastic agreement with the picture as described so far. (...) But Papineau also argues that sensory experiences are in no interesting sense essentially representational and that what is responsible for their truth conditions is their correlations with the environment. Here, I disagree. Indeed, I think Papineau does not follow his arguments to their proper conclusions. For if sensory experiences are intrinsic, non-relational, and only contingently correlated with worldly conditions (as Papineau and I agree they are), then the phenomenal features of sensory states are representational in an important sense: they constitute what we think, perceptually experience, or otherwise entertain, making up how things seem to us from a first-person perspective. Because of this, the truth conditions of perceptual experiences cannot be entirely independent of their phenomenal features. They cannot merely be a matter of environmental correlations. If we follow Papineau’s arguments to their proper conclusions, we end up with a view much closer to a version of representationalism that Papineau dismisses, a view he calls “pure phenomenal intentionalism”. (shrink)

This paper compares tracking and phenomenal intentionality theories of intentionality with respect to the issue of naturalism. Tracking theories explicitly aim to naturalize intentionality, while phenomenal intentionality theories generally do not. It might seem that considerations of naturalism count in favor of tracking theories. We survey key considerations relevant to this claim, including some motivations for and objections to the two kinds of theories. We conclude by suggesting that naturalistic considerations may in fact support phenomenal intentionality theories over tracking theories.

This article presents a critical account of Agamben’s understanding of the logic of sovereignty and of the notion bare life, particularly Agamben’s approach to the paradox of sovereignty and its relation to Aristotle’s metaphysical category of potentiality. With regards to bare life, it brings together an analysis of the figure of the homo sacer with an account of Agamben’s use of paradigms as methodological tools. The first part of the paper argues that Agamben ontologises sovereignty by dramatising the paradox of (...) its structure as im-potentiality. The second part claims that even though an account of Agamben’s methodology serves to respond to the different critiques that his notion of bare life has raised, Agamben’s notions of sovereignty and of bare life ultimately rely on Schmitt’s decisionism. El artículo hace un recuento crítico de la forma en que Agamben entiende la lógica de la soberanía y la noción de nuda vida, particularmente su abordaje de la paradoja de la soberanía y su relación con la categoría metafísica aristotélica de la potencialidad. Con respecto a la nuda vida, combina el análisis de la figura del homo sacer con un recuento del uso que hace Agamben de los paradigmas como herramientas metodológicas. En la primera parte del ensayo, se argumenta que Agamben ontologiza la soberanía al dramatizar la paradoja de su estructura como im-potencialidad. En la segunda, se afirma que aunque la descripción de la metodología de Agamben sirve para responder a las diferentes críticas suscitadas por su noción de nuda vida, sus nociones de soberanía y de nuda vida dependen, en última instancia, del decisionismo de Schmitt. Este artigo apresenta a versão crítica do entendimento de Agamben sobre a lógica da soberania e da noção de vida nua. Em particular, a aproximação de Agamben para o paradoxo da soberania e da sua relação com a categoria metafísica da potencialidade de Aristóteles. No que diz respeito à vida nua, reúne uma análise da figura do homo sacer com uma explicação do uso de Agamben de paradigmas como ferramentas metodológicas. Na primeira parte deste artigo, argumenta-se que Agamben ontologiza a soberaniadramatizando o paradoxo de sua estrutura como im-potencialidade. Na segunda parte, será alegado que, apesar de uma explicação da metodologia de Agamben ter servido para responder às diferentes críticas que sua noção de vida nua tenha levantado, em última análise, duas noções da soberania e vida nua de Agamben dependem do "decisionismo schmittiano". (shrink)

Propositionalism is the view that all intentional states are propositional states, which are states with a propositional content, while objectualism is the view that at least some intentional states are objectual states, which are states with objectual contents, such as objects, properties, and kinds. This paper argues that there are two distinct ways of understanding propositionalism and objectualism: (1) as views about the deep nature of the contents of intentional states, and (2) as views about the superficial character of the (...) contents of intentional states. I argue that we should understand the views in the second way. I also argue that the propositionalism debate is fairly independent from debates over the deep nature of intentionality, and that this has implications for arguments for propositionalism and objectualism from claims about the nature of intentional content. I close with a short discussion of how related points apply to the debate over singular content. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, the dominant approach to explaining intentionality has been a naturalistic approach, one appealing only to non-mental ingredients condoned by the natural sciences. Karen Neander’s A Mark of the Mental (2017) is the latest installment in the naturalist project, proposing a detailed and systematic theory of intentionality that combines aspects of several naturalistic approaches, invoking causal relations, teleological functions, and relations of second-order similarity. In this paper, we consider the case of perceptual representations of colors, which (...) is a challenging case for Neander’s theory. This case will brings out a general methodological concern with Neander’s and other naturalistic theories: these theories generally rest on the assumption that the mental intentionality we are acquainted with in everyday life—the phenomenon exhibited by desires for cups of coffee, perceptual experiences of dogs playing in yards, and thoughts about the weather—is the very same kind of phenomenon that cognitive science studies under labels such as “mental representation” and, in some cases, “information processing.” This assumption is dubious, as the case of Neander’s theory illustrates. (shrink)

Moods and emotions are sometimes thought to be counterexamples to intentionalism, the view that a mental state's phenomenal features are exhausted by its representational features. The problem is that moods and emotions are accompanied by phenomenal experiences that do not seem to be adequately accounted for by any of their plausibly represented contents. This paper develops and defends an intentionalist view of the phenomenal character of moods and emotions on which emotions and some moods represent intentional objects as having sui (...) generis affective properties, which happen to be uninstantiated, and at least some moods represent affective properties not bound to any objects. (shrink)

The most pressing worry for panpsychism is arguably the combination problem, the problem of intelligibly explaining how the experiences of microphysical entities combine to form the experiences of macrophysical entities such as ourselves. This chapter argues that the combination problem is similar in kind to other problems of mental combination that are problems for everyone: the problem of phenomenal unity, the problem of mental structure, and the problem of new quality spaces. The ubiquity of combination problems suggests the ignorance hypothesis, (...) the hypothesis that we are ignorant of certain key facts about mental combination, which allows the panpsychist to avoid certain objections based on the combination problem. (shrink)

Debate about cognitive science explanations has been formulated in terms of identifying the proper level(s) of explanation. Views range from reductionist, favoring only neuroscience explanations, to mechanist, favoring the integration of multiple levels, to pluralist, favoring the preservation of even the most general, high-level explanations, such as those provided by embodied or dynamical approaches. In this paper, we challenge this framing. We suggest that these are not different levels of explanation at all but, rather, different styles of explanation that capture (...) different, cross-cutting patterns in cognitive phenomena. Which pattern is explanatory depends on both the cognitive phenomenon under investigation and the research interests occasioning the explanation. This reframing changes how we should answer the basic questions of which cognitive science approaches explain and how these explanations relate to one another. On this view, we should expect different approaches to offer independent explanations in terms of their different focal patterns and the value of those explanations to partly derive from the broad patterns they feature. (shrink)

Se intenta en este trabajo identificar y describir de algún modo, en caso de que exista, la contracultura digital de nuestro tiempo. Con tal propósito en mente, en primer lugar, el autor esboza sus presuposiciones con respecto la cultura, la tecnología digital, la cultura digital y la contracultura, bajo las ópticas que imponen la naturaleza de este artículo. Digital Culture and Counter-Culture: an Essay It is attempted in this work to identify and to describe somehow, in case it exists, the (...) digital counterculture of our time. With such a purpose in mind, first of all, the author sketches his presuppositions regarding culture, digital technology, digital culture and counterculture, under the optics that imposes the nature of this article. (shrink)

Levels of organization and their use in science have received increased philosophical attention of late, including challenges to the well-foundedness or widespread usefulness of levels concepts. One kind of response to these challenges has been to advocate a more precise and specific levels concept that is coherent and useful. Another kind of response has been to argue that the levels concept should be taken as a heuristic, to embrace its ambiguity and the possibility of exceptions as acceptable consequences of its (...) usefulness. In this chapter, I suggest that each of these strategies faces its own attendant downsides, and that pursuit of both strategies (by different thinkers) compounds the difficulties. That both kinds of approaches are advocated is, I think, illustrative of the problems plaguing the concept of levels of organization. I end by suggesting that the invocation of levels may mislead scientific and philosophical investigations more than it informs them, so our use of the levels concept should be updated accordingly. (shrink)

Explores the interplay between artistic values and social, political, and moral concerns in writings by African American and Native American women.

The descriptions and examples of unethical behaviors in sport in this book will challenge readers to rethink how they view sport and question whether participating in sport builds character--especially at the youth and amateur levels. * Describes and analyzes key ethical issues, such as cheating, fair play, violence, discriminatory actions, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs, in a single volume * Identifies how ethical problems in sport affect sport in the United States and internationally but also significantly impact society overall (...) * Examines significant events and influential individuals to provide a historical and sociological context for understanding how and why individuals behave unethically in sport * Provides a wealth of information and resources that describe how poor behaviors of athletes, coaches, and parents in sport can be changed through educational interventions and a reemphasis on values like integrity. (shrink)

Do the meanings of the innumerable fetish-signs appearing in recent artworks depend on the senders' intentions? Is the meaning of postfeminist glamour the celebration of femininity that its practitioners tout to counter ersatz macho posturing? To fully examine and clarify these and other issues involving gender, postcolonial, and artistic otherness, this book argues for a more adequate view of performativity than presently available from speech-act theory and certain strains of linguistic pragmatics. In drawing simultaneously on Charles Sander Peirce’s pragmatic analysis (...) of signs, Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic inquiry, and radical feminist thought, the concern of Beyond Fetishism is with the ethical and aesthetic import of the psychopragmatics resulting from this intermingling. (shrink)

Il testo si apre con una breve descrizione divulgativa della biologia della visione, dalla percezione delle linee complesse ai colori, e di come questa si sia evoluta nel corso dei millenni, da meccanismo pro-sopravvivenza legato all'analisi dell’ambiente naturale e dei propri simili, a strumento di valutazione e apprezzamento della composizione artistica. Indaga le analogie tra lo sviluppo del cervello nei bambini affetti da disturbi dello spettro affettivo e relazionale (autismo) e le rappresentazioni iconografiche degli uomini primitivi, dal paleolitico al neolitico. (...) Un’ampia sezione descrive dinamiche cerebrali dovute ai cosiddetti neuroni specchio e di come questi influiscono sull’espressione e la fruizione dell’opera d’arte, analizzando le produzioni di due degli artisti contemporanei più famosi: Damien Hirst e Jeff Koons, collegati da una complementarità culturale ancestrale, quella tra eros e thanatos, che affonda le radici nell’arte funeraria etrusca. Il testo continua con l’analisi neuroestetica della visione e i suoi effetti sull’organismo umano, seguendo l’evoluzione che ha subito il punto di visuale. Dal basso verso l’alto nel barocco, dal basso a “volo d’uccello” nell’arte futurista e dall’alto verso il basso nella produzione pittorica dell’archistar anglo-irachena Zaha Hadid. Lo stesso punto di vista che fugge i confini della rappresentazione pittorica, fino ad abbandonare totalmente i confini del corpo e le dinamiche cerebrali nell’arte riferita al metaumanesimo e transumanesimo. (shrink)

In recent years, a new factor for work stress has been studied along with stress as an offense to self-theory. Illegitimate tasks refer to assignments that are unnecessary or are not related to the employee’s role. Because of this, the Bern Illegitimate Tasks Scale was developed, which measures illegitimate tasks in terms of unreasonable tasks and unnecessary tasks. There are no studies in Latin America on illegitimate tasks, so the purpose of this research is to translate and validate the Bern (...) Illegitimate Tasks Scale. The study was performed with a sample of nursing staff from a hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Written informed consent was obtained from each of the participants. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated and its structural validity was verified by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The internal consistency of the whole scale, measured by Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.857. Moreover, the unnecessary and unreasonable subscales measure were 0.846 and 0.841, respectively. The exploratory factor analysis supported a two-factor model that explained 73.96% of the variance. Additionally, the confirmatory factor analysis showed good indexes of fit. The Spanish version of the Bern Illegitimate Tasks Scale presents good psychometric properties and can be applied to nurses in the Ecuadorian population. (shrink)

According to Lynne Rudder Baker’s Practical Realism, we know that we have beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes independent of any scientific investigation. Propositional attitudes are an indispensable part of our everyday conception of the world and not in need of scientific validation. This paper asks what is the nature of the attitudes such that we may know them so well from a commonsense perspective. I argue for a self-ascriptivist view, on which we have propositional attitudes in virtue of ascribing (...) them to ourselves. On this view, propositional attitudes are derived representational states, deriving their contents and their attitude types from our self-ascriptions. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are two distinct kinds of senses, immediate senses and reflective senses. Immediate senses are what we are immediately aware of when we are in an intentional mental state, while reflective senses are what we understand of an intentional mental state's (putative) referent upon reflection. I suggest an account of immediate and reflective senses that is based on the phenomenal intentionality theory, a theory of intentionality in terms of phenomenal consciousness. My focus is on the immediate (...) and reflective senses of thoughts and the concepts they involve, but it also applies to other mental instances of intentionality. (shrink)

Science is the study of our world, as it is in its messy reality. Nonetheless, science requires idealization to function—if we are to attempt to understand the world, we have to find ways to reduce its complexity. Idealization and the Aims of Science shows just how crucial idealization is to science and why it matters. Beginning with the acknowledgment of our status as limited human agents trying to make sense of an exceedingly complex world, Angela Potochnik moves on to explain (...) how science aims to depict and make use of causal patterns—a project that makes essential use of idealization. She offers case studies from a number of branches of science to demonstrate the ubiquity of idealization, shows how causal patterns are used to develop scientific explanations, and describes how the necessarily imperfect connection between science and truth leads to researchers’ values influencing their findings. The resulting book is a tour de force, a synthesis of the study of idealization that also offers countless new insights and avenues for future exploration. (shrink)

Previous literature has documented the general issues psychologists often face while balancing their personal and professional lives. The struggle stems from attempting to satisfy the need to maintain a life outside of work while having the professional obligation to follow the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Ethics Code) to prevent their personal lives from interfering with their professional roles and relationships. The present article analyzes the subject of psychologists taking a public position on (...) controversial public issues. Although the APA Ethics Code does not restrict how psychologists conduct themselves during their personal time, taking a public stance on a controversial issue could potentially strain professional relationships and inadvertently reflect negatively on the profession. The present article examines ethical issues that (a) should be taken into account before psychologists take a public position on a controversial issue and (b) are in conflict with APA’s Ethics Code or current research. (shrink)

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence of molecular structure (...) cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

This chapter argues that olfactory experiences represent either everyday objects or ad hoc olfactory objects as having primitive olfactory properties, which happen to be uninstantiated. On this picture, olfactory experiences reliably misrepresent: they falsely represent everyday objects or ad hoc objects as having properties they do not have, and they misrepresent in the same way on multiple occasions. One might worry that this view is incompatible with the plausible claim that olfactory experiences at least sometimes justify true beliefs about the (...) world. This chapter argues that there is no such incompatibility. Since olfactory experiences reliably misrepresent, they can lead to true and justified beliefs about putatively smelly objects. (shrink)

FEATURED IN EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS. In this article I ask: how to rescue “magical thinking” (a notion I inherit from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) in and from Hegel and imagine its possibilities for posthuman society, ethics, and aesthetics? To address this question, I read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit through Horkheimer and Adorno, who argue that Enlightenment’s program is “the disenchantment of the world”: with the end of magical thinking and the (...) beginning of enlightened thinking came chasm and disparity between subject and object and, for Horkheimer and Adorno, the onset of barbarism. Hegel himself speaks directly to the danger of failed recognition between two consciousnesses, a failure followed by a duel to the death, in which the two figures leave each other indifferently, like things. After reading a distinctly “magical thinking” into the shape of Hegel’s dialectic, I show how contemporary posthumanism and ecopoetics make use of Hegel’s thought in order to reimagine subject-object relations in and as response to ecological crisis. I discuss how Donna Haraway, following in the traditions of Hegel and Adorno, magically thinks her way toward new models for relating more ethically (to borrow Haraway’s own terminology) to human and other-than-human others in the new century. Then, I look at how such models are being adapted in and by aesthetic practice — specifically, in the experimental ecopoetics of contemporary poet Brenda Hillman. In the end, I argue that contemporary posthumanisms and ecopoetics in fact need magical thinking in order to begin reimagining the social and the ecological and resuscitate a devastatingly enlightened world. (shrink)

On our planet only the American continent has had the privilege, or the unhappiness perhaps, of being subjected to a sort of accounting of “anniversaries” or, let us say, “centennials.” But this does not mean, for all that, that these anniversaries serve to commemorate its birth. Geologists tell us the continents were formed hundreds of millions of years ago, making the commemoration of the American continent relatively recent. Moreover, the origins of this custom are foreign to it and are imbued, (...) it must be said, with perspectives that are by all evidence “Eurocentric.” Curiously, no one took any notice of the first or the second centennial of the American continent. (shrink)

Desde el punto de vista de los derechos humanos, el desplazamiento forzado no signif ica la violación puntual de un derecho, sino la vulneración múltiple, masiva y continua de muchos derechos fundamentales; fenómeno que ataca la titularidad de los derechos de la persona desplazada. Este ataque, en la mayoría de los casos, es provocado por el desplazador, y en algunas ocasiones por el Estado, siendo este, quien tiene la obligación primordial de prestar al desplazado la atención necesaria y de proporcionarle (...) una protección integral que frene la violación tanto de los derechos humanos, como del derecho humanitario, teniendo en cuenta siempre las diferentes aportaciones y elaboraciones que sobre el caso, proporcionan las organizaciones internacionales que trabajan al respecto. (shrink)

Scientific literacy is an essential aspect of an undergraduate education. Recipes for Science responds to this need by providing an accessible introduction to the nature of science and scientific methods appropriate for any beginning college student. The book is adaptable to a wide variety of different courses, such as introductions to scientific reasoning, methods courses in scientific disciplines, science education, and philosophy of science. -/- Recipes for Science ​​was first published in 2018, and a thoroughly revised second edition was published (...) in 2024. Special features include contemporary and historical case studies from many fields of physical, life, and social sciences; visual aids to clarify and illustrate ideas; text boxes to explore related topics; plenty of exercises to support student recall and application of concepts; suggestions for further readings at the end of each chapter; a glossary with helpful definitions of key terms; and a companion website with course syllabi, PowerPoint presentations, additional exercises, and original short videos on key topics. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently argued that we should interpret the debate over moral responsibility as a debate over the conditions under which it would be “fair” to blame a person for her attitudes or conduct. What is distinctive about these accounts is that they begin with the stance of the moral judge, rather than that of the agent who is judged, and make attributions of responsibility dependent upon whether it would be fair or appropriate for a moral judge (...) to react to the agent in various (negative) ways. This is problematic, I argue, because our intuitions about whether and when it would be fair to react negatively to another are sensitive to a host of considerations that appear to have little or nothing to do with an agent’s responsibility or culpability for her attitudes or behavior. If this is correct, then theories which make attributions of responsibility dependent upon the appropriateness of our reactions as moral judges will turn out to be fundamentally misguided. (shrink)

This article asks how one can rescue magical thinking in and from Hegel and imagines its possibilities for posthuman society, ethics, and aesthetics.

ABSTRACTIt has recently become fashionable among those who write on questions of moral responsibility to distinguish two different concepts, or senses, of moral responsibility via the labels ‘responsibility as attributability’ and ‘responsibility as accountability’. Gary Watson was perhaps the first to introduce this distinction in his influential 1996 article ‘Two Faces of Responsibility’ , but it has since been taken up by many other philosophers. My aim in this study is to raise some questions and doubts about this distinction and (...) to argue that it has led to confusion rather than clarification in debates over moral responsibility. In place of the attributability/accountability distinction, I propose that there is a single concept of moral responsibility underlying our actual moral practices. This core notion of moral responsibility, which I call ‘responsibility as answerability’, is well positioned to explain thos.. (shrink)

Why does performing certain tasks cause the aversive experience of mental effort and concomitant deterioration in task performance? One explanation posits a physical resource that is depleted over time. We propose an alternative explanation that centers on mental representations of the costs and benefits associated with task performance. Specifically, certain computational mechanisms, especially those associated with executive function, can be deployed for only a limited number of simultaneous tasks at any given moment. Consequently, the deployment of these computational mechanisms carries (...) an opportunity cost – that is, the next-best use to which these systems might be put. We argue that the phenomenology of effort can be understood as the felt output of these cost/benefit computations. In turn, the subjective experience of effort motivates reduced deployment of these computational mechanisms in the service of the present task. These opportunity cost representations, then, together with other cost/benefit calculations, determine effort expended and, everything else equal, result in performance reductions. In making our case for this position, we review alternative explanations for both the phenomenology of effort associated with these tasks and for performance reductions over time. Likewise, we review the broad range of relevant empirical results from across sub-disciplines, especially psychology and neuroscience. We hope that our proposal will help to build links among the diverse fields that have been addressing similar questions from different perspectives, and we emphasize ways in which alternative models might be empirically distinguished. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have begun to question the commonly held view that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of moral responsibility. According to these philosophers, what really matters in determining a person’s responsibility for some thing is whether that thing can be seen as indicative or expressive of her judgments, values, or normative commitments. Such accounts might therefore be understood as updated versions of what Susan Wolf has called “real self views,” insofar as they attempt to ground (...) an agent’s responsibility for her actions and attitudes in the fact (when it is a fact) that they express who she is as a moral agent. As such, they seem to be open to some of the same objections Wolf originally raised to such accounts, and in particular to the objection that they cannot license the sorts of robust moral assessments involved in our current practices of moral responsibility. My aim in this paper is to try to respond to this challenge, by clarifying the kind of robust moral assessments I take to be licensed by (at least some) non-volitional accounts of responsibility and by explaining why these assessments do not in general require the agent to have voluntary control over everything for which she is held responsible. I also argue that the limited applicability of the distinction between “bad agents” and “blameworthy agents” on these accounts is in fact a mark in their favor. (shrink)

Using data collected at two phases, this study examines why and how ethical leadership behavior influences employees’ evaluations of organization-focused justice, i.e., procedural justice and distributive justice. By proposing ethical leaders as moral agents of the organization, we build up the linkage between ethical leadership behavior and the above two types of organization-focused justice. We further suggest trust in organization as a key mediating mechanism in the linkage. Our findings indicate that ethical leadership behavior engenders employees’ trust in their employing (...) organization, which in turn promotes their justice perceptions toward the organization. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and some directions for future research are suggested. (shrink)

Nurses are responsible for the well-being and quality of life of many people, and therefore must meet high standards of technical and ethical competence. The most common form of ethical guidance is a code of ethics/professional practice; however, little research on how codes are viewed or used in practice has been undertaken. This study, carried out in six European countries, explored nurses’ opinions of the content and function of codes and their use in nursing practice. A total of 49 focus (...) groups involving 311 nurses were held. Purposive sampling ensured a mix of participants from a range of specialisms. Qualitative analysis enabled emerging themes to be identified on both national and comparative bases. Most participants had a poor understanding of their codes. They were unfamiliar with the content and believed they have little practical value because of extensive barriers to their effective use. In many countries nursing codes appear to be ‘paper tigers’ with little or no impact; changes are needed in the way they are developed and written, introduced in nurse education, and reinforced/implemented in clinical practice. (shrink)