El objetivo general de esta investigación se ha basado en analizar y comprender una parte de los resultados de una investigación mayor que se centra en el propio sujeto como actor principal de su relato. Se indaga el papel que la música desempeña dentro de los contextos de aprendizaje no formales e informales como vía para crear relaciones de empoderamiento de aquel alumnado en situación de abandono escolar, para así procurar medidas de renganche positiva con el sistema educativo a partir (...) de sus experiencias fuera del mundo curricular. (shrink)

No presente artigo pretendemos descrever os conceitos heideggerianos apresentados no ensaio A origem da obra de arte, no qual o filósofo alemão destaca que o campo instaurador da obra de arte é a verdade. Para tanto, reconstruiremos os passos argumentativos realizados por Heidegger na investigação da origem da obra de arte, a saber, a coisa, o utensílio e a obra. E, por fim, mostraremos que a verdade em Heidegger se dá no embate entre Terra e Mundo, que se caracterizam pelo (...) encobrimento e desencobrimento do ser do ente. Após tais considerações, procuramos investigar a verdade que se pôs em obra nos quadros da artista plástica Marina Rodrigues, que ressaltou o embate entre Terra e o Mundo no período pandêmico. A artista retira da terra o material para a obra de arte, instaurando um mundo em suas telas. Nos quadros de Rodrigues nos deparamos com a finitude da existência humana e o caos urbano. (shrink)

Slaughter sets the debate about what is acceptable to do to animals at an extremely low bar. Recently, there has been considerable investment in developing cell-based meat, an alternative meat production process that does not require the raising and slaughtering of animals, instead using muscle cells cultivated in a bioreactor. We discuss the animal ethics impacts of cell-based and plant-based meat on human-animal interactions from animal welfare and rights perspectives, focusing on industrial meat production scenarios. Our hypothesis is that the (...) insertion of cell-based meat in the global meat market may alleviate farm animal suffering and potentially restore resources for wild fauna. We employed a conservative estimation of the cell-based meat contribution to the global meat market in the year 2040 to analyze the consequences for human-animal relationships for both wild animals and farmed domesticated animals. We discuss possible effects of an animal cell domestication process, previously described as the second domestication, on human-animal relationships. We consider its potential to reduce the impact of human demographic changes and land use on animal life, in particular whether there would be increased biomass availability and free land for wild animals. We anticipate a major reduction in animal suffering due to the decrease in the number of individual animals involved in food production, which justifies the adoption of cell-based meat from a utilitarian perspective. For the conventional animal food production that remains, further consideration is needed to understand which systems, either high or low welfare, will be retained and the impact of the innovation on the average farm animal welfare. Additionally, it seems likely that there will be less acceptance of the necessity of animal suffering in farming systems when meat production is uncoupled from animal raising and slaughter, supported by a deontological perspective of animal ethics. Consequent to this is anticipated the mitigation of relevant barriers to animal protection and to the recognition of animals as subjects by legislation. Thus, the development of the alternative meats may be related to a significant change in our relationship with non-human animals, with greater benefits than the prima facie effects on farm animals. (shrink)

Os modos como cada sociedade ou grupo pondera sobre o consumo do álcool e seus efeitos nos múltiplos contextos culturais é bastante distinto, em especial quando os discursos se referem a este consumo com as atenções voltadas aos gêneros. Assim, as associações entre o consumo de bebidas alcoólicas e as alterações dos comportamentos sexuais de cada gênero, embora estejam presentes desde a antiguidade, devem ser entendidas nos contextos culturais em que foram produzidas, de modo a compreender como cada grupo social (...) lida com determinados aspectos fisiológicos e a partir dissoconstrói seus discursos e interdições. Desta forma, torna-se fundamental, um retorno cuidadoso às fontes antigas, evitando interpretações baseadas no senso comum ou na tradição, considerando as possíveis diferenças entre o discurso normativo e a prática cotidiana. (shrink)

The DNA of all species is constantly under threat from both endogenous and exogenous factors, which damage its chemical structure. Probably the most common lesion that arises in cellular DNA is the loss of a base to generate an abasic site, which is usually referred to as an apurinic or apyrimidinic (AP) site. Since these lesions are potentially both cytotoxic and mutagenic, cells of all organisms express dedicated repair enzymes, termed AP endonucleases, to counteract their damaging effects. Indeed, many organisms (...) consider it necessary to express two or more of these lesion‐specific endonucleases, underscoring the requirement that exists to remove AP sites for the maintenance of genome integrity and cell viability. Most AP endonucleases are very versatile enzymes, capable of performing numerous additional repair roles. In this article, we review the AP endonuclease class of repair enzymes, with emphasis on the evolutionary conservation of structural features, not only between prokaryotic and eukaryotic homologues, but also between these enzymes and the RNase H domain of one class of reverse transcriptase. (shrink)

El tema del fin de la vida está entre aquellos afrontados por la revista Medicina e Morale con mayor amplitud y profundización. Desde la fundación de la Revista hasta hoy se cuentan más de 70 publicaciones en la materia entre contribuciones científicas, editoriales y artículos colocados en la rúbrica El debate en Bioética. Las temáticas tratadas pueden ser de este modo clasificadas: muerte en general; eutanasia; muerte cerebral ; ensañamiento terapéutico; cuidados paliativos y asistencia al moribundo; rechazo actual de los (...) tratamientos; estados vegetativos; declaraciones anticipadas de tratamiento ; testamento biológico. Diversas son las perspectivas de reflexión y la integración entre los diversos conocimientos que se descubren en la lectura de las numerosas contribuciones presentes en la revista. Las cuestiones del "fin de la vida" han sido afrontadas desde un punto de vista ético, pero también clínico y médico-legal, biojurídico, deontológico, antropológico-filosófico, con una mirada siempre atenta a las controversias que han suscitado el debate público en el curso de los años.The theme about the end of life is discussed fullness and with deep analysis by the review Medicina e Morale. Over 70 articles, editorial and paper about end of life are published form the review foundation. The themes discussed may be classified like that: death, euthanasia, brain death, aggressive therapy, palliative cares, treatment refusal, post coma unresponsiveness, advanced directives, living will. Reading several articles published on this review is possible to find various useful remarks and integration between different branch of learning. The issues about end of life are discussed ethical, clinical, legal, juridical, deontological, philosophical point of view, paying attention to public events. (shrink)

The genre of the ‘historical film’, or ‘history film’, is protean to such a degree that it is possible to grasp its true nature only by studying the relationships it entertains with history, which is the sole common denominator capable of validating it and of providing an angle of attack for dealing with questions (such as ‘Does this film conform to historical reality?’ and ‘Is it a faithful reconstruction?’) that have more to do with movie-buff criticism or erudition than with (...) a process of reasoning properly seeking to establish a semiotics of the cinematographic representation of history. (shrink)

The article examines the problem of correlation between the “knowledge society” and “knowledge practice,” based on analysis of the phenomenon of security expertise as a part of political expertise. In the article, we consider the relationship between politics and security and demonstrate under what circumstances security becomes politics. It is noted that at present the concept of security has become very multifaceted and includes various spheres, from military-political to informational and humanitarian. We defines security expertise, list its key parameters, origin, (...) its institutionalization and practices. Special attention is paid to the characteristics of the main schools in the study of security expertise problems. Their general ideology and inherent problems are analyzed, including the correspondence of the quality of the expertise to recognized standards of scientific knowledge. We explain why security issues appeal to experts and result in numerous studies. We raise an issue of causes that may lead to possible deprofessionalization of security expertise. We identify a number of institutions with an expert status in the field of security and explain the global growth of analytical centers specializing in security expertise. A brief description of such analytical centers and their main features is given. We look into examples of practical impact of expertise on political decision-making, and possible mechanisms of expert support. It is concluded that expert analysis can exercise direct impact on political processes, and the experts become influential shadow participants. On the one hand, this may contribute to adopting more balanced decisions, but, on the other hand, it may result in deprofessionalization of experts who will try to adjust to the demands of politicians. Thus, in the sphere of security expertise, one of the results of the formation of a “knowledge society” is a decrease in the autonomy of the scientific sphere, which has a side effect in the form of deprofessionalization of knowledge. (shrink)

Osip Mandel''tam (1891–1938?) belongs among the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. During the thirties, when he led a tragic existence and felt a premonition of his inevitable violent death, Mandel''tam saw in Dante not only the greatest poet, but also his own superior teacher, and his poems of that period contain a tormented meditation on the masterpiece of Dante''s genius — theDivine Comedy.Epic poetry of Dante, Homer, Virgil and others was possible because the inner world of each poet (...) was essentially at one with the ethos of the society in which he lived. (shrink)

In Mandel'tam's writing, artistic creativity is described as based on the indispensable yet contradictory modes of compliance and deviation. The artist, by his artistic nature, must be an obedient disciple to the tradition that inspires him, and, at the same time, a violator who renders what inspires him in an individual form. Thus, art implies iterability through novelty. In the totalitarian state, this double nature of art acquires a sinister context and brings the artist to an unavoidable conflict with the (...) state. He has a choice between a servile compliance with the state's command and artistic independence. If the artist complies, he loses his ingenuity; if, on the other hand, he has the courage to break away from the established order, his fate is martyrdom. The criteria of truth and falsehood, the issue of loyalty, of compromise and collaboration or resistance become most relevant. Such words as outcast or non-contemporary acquire the meaning of non-collaborationist or enemy of the people. In the totalitarian state a genuine artist is viewed as a law-breaker, and his art leads him to crime. The notions of compliance and deviation cease being merely aesthetic terms and assume in Mandel'tam's poetry complex, subtle and tragic overtones. (shrink)

APLICAÇÃO DA ANÁLISE ECONÔMICA DO DIREITO AO NOVO MARCO REGULATÓRIO DO PRÉ-SAL.

Marina McCoy explores Plato's treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of philosophy. However, the philosopher and the sophist are distinguished by (...) the philosopher's love of the forms as the ultimate objects of desire. It is this love of the forms that informs the philosopher's rhetoric, which he uses to lead his partner to better understand his deepest desires. McCoy's work is of interest to philosophers, classicists, and communications specialists alike in its careful yet comprehensive treatment of philosophy, sophistry, and rhetoric as portrayed through the drama of the dialogues. (shrink)

Against those who dismiss Kant's project in the "Religion" because it provides a Pelagian understanding of salvation, this paper offers an analysis of the deep structure of Kant's views on divine justice and grace showing them not to conflict with an authentically Christian understanding of these concepts. The first part of the paper argues that Kant's analysis of these concepts helps us to understand the necessary conditions of the Christian understanding of grace: unfolding them uncovers intrinsic relations holding between God's (...) justice and grace. Parts two and three provide an analysis of two concepts of grace used by Kant. Getting clear on their differences is the key to understanding why Kant's account is not Pelagian. (shrink)

Lies are typically defined as believed falsehoods asserted with the intention of deceiving the hearer. A particularly problematic case for this definition is that of false implicatures. These are prototypically cases where the proposition expressed by the speaker's utterance is true, yet an implicature conveyed by this proposition in context is false. However, implicature is a diverse category and whether a blanket statement such as “false implicatures are lies,” as some have argued can account for all of them is open (...) to investigation. We present an experimental investigation of whether naïve participants define different types of implicatures as lies. Our results show that only a couple of types of implicatures were strongly rated as lies by participants. These results suggest that participants distinguish between different types of communicated meanings on linguistic grounds, contributing both to the literature on lying, as well as to theoretical discussions of how different types of meaning are communicated. (shrink)

The paper aims at investigating external factors influencing organizational corporate social responsibility -related decision making. Two theoretical perspectives—stakeholder theory and institutional theory—have been applied to compile a list of external factors that might affect a company's CSR choices. As a result, a framework built on the government-related, society-related, and business-related groups of external factors is being suggested. This framework is used in the paper to answer to what extent do different external factors influence CSR-related decisions in large Danish companies and (...) how has that influence changed over the years. The research takes a qualitative approach and is designed as a multiple-case study. Empirically, the paper relies on data collected from semi-structured interviews with CSR specialists and managers and presents a dynamic perspective on the pressure exercised by the external factors on CSR decisions and choices. (shrink)

When we dream, we feel emotions in response to objects and events that exist only in the dream. One key question is whether these emotions can be said to be “essentially unfitting”, that is, always inappropriate to the evoking scenario. However, how we evaluate dream emotions for fittingness may depend on the model of dreams we adopt: the imagination or the hallucination model. If fittingness requires a match between emotion and evaluative properties of objects or events, it is prima facie (...) plausible that dream emotions could fail to fit under the imagination model because it is unfitting to have an emotion toward an object we do not believe to be real. Under the hallucination model, dream emotions could be unfitting because their objects do not exist but we believe them to be real. More nuance, however, is required. By comparing dream emotions with the emotions we experience while imagining, engaging with fiction, and hallucinating, we conclude that although there are compelling arguments in support of the claim that dream emotions are essentially unfitting, these arguments are not entirely convincing, and it is more plausible that particular dream emotions can be assessed for fittingness under either model of dreaming. (shrink)

While ontic structural realism (OSR) has been a central topic in contemporary philosophy of science, the relation between OSR and the concept of emergence has received little attention. We will argue that OSR is fully compatible with emergentism. The denial of ontological emergence requires additional assumptions that, strictly speaking, go beyond OSR. We call these _physicalist closure assumptions._ We will explain these assumptions and show that they are independent of the central commitments of OSR and inconsistent with its core goals. (...) Recognizing the compatibility of OSR and ontological emergence may contribute to the solution of ontological puzzles in physics while offering new ways to achieve the goals that advocates of OSR set for their view. (shrink)

What, if anything, do the ‘square’ protests and ‘occupy’ movements of 2011 bring to contemporary democratic theory? And how can we, as political theorists, analyse their discourse and do justice to it? We address these questions through an analysis of the Greek and Spanish protest movements of the spring and summer of 2011, the so-called aganaktismenoi and indignados. We trace the centrality of the critique of representation and politics as usual as well as the ideas about horizontality and autonomy in (...) the protesters’ discourse. These ideas are not only important to their critique of the contemporary liberal democratic regimes in the two countries, but also important to the way in which the protesters organise themselves. Nonetheless, as we shall argue, the protesters are caught within a tension between horizontality and verticality, between autonomy and hegemony, or between moving beyond representation and accepting representational structures. Given this tension, we examine how the protesters negotiate it in three key areas: politics, representation and organisation. Drawing on Jacques Rancière, we further argue that the protesters can be seen as making a claim to equal voice. This is what Rancière refers to as politics proper, and the question is then whether such a politics is possible without falling back into traditional forms of politics. (shrink)

Hume's discussion of the idea of space in his Treatise on Human Nature is fundamental to an understanding of his treatment of such central issues as the existence of external objects, the unity of the self, the relation between certainty and belief, and abstract ideas. Marina Frasca-Spada's rich and original study examines this difficult part of Hume's philosophical writings and connects it to eighteenth-century works in natural philosophy, mathematics and literature. Focusing on Hume's discussions of the infinite divisibility of (...) extension, the origin of the idea of space, geometry, and the notion of a vacuum, she shows that the central questions of Hume's 'science of human nature' - what does the 'science of human nature' reveal about the mind and its operations? what is experience? - underlie all of these discussions. Her analysis points the way to a reassessment of the central current interpretative problems in Hume studies. (shrink)

This essay revisits the drafting of the first UNESCO Statement on Race in order to reorient historical understandings of mid-twentieth-century anti-racism and science. Historians of science have primarily interpreted the UNESCO statements as an oppositional project led by anti-racist scientists from the North Atlantic and concerned with dismantling racial typologies, replacing them with population-based conceptions of human variation. Instead of focusing on what anti-racist scientists opposed, this article highlights the futures they imagined and the applied social-science projects that anti-racist science (...) drew from and facilitated. The scientific experts who participated in drafting the first UNESCO Statement on Race played important roles in late colonial, post-colonial and international projects designed to modernize, assimilate and improve so-called backward communities – typically indigenous or Afro-descendent groups in the global South. Such connections between anti-racist science and the developmental imaginaries of the late colonial period indicate that the transition from fixed racial typologies to sociocultural and psychological conceptualizations of human diversity legitimated the flourishing of modernization discourses in the Cold War era. In this transition to an economic-development paradigm, ‘race’ did not vanish so much as fragment into a series of finely tuned and ostensibly anti-racist conceptions that offered a moral incentive for scientific elites to intervene in the ways of life of those deemed primitive. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper is a response to the articles published in the current issue analysing Rorty’s philosophy of hope. In these articles, Bianca Thoilliez, Stefano Oliverio and Kai Wortmann highlight the pragmatist characteristics of post-critical pedagogy. Taking a poststructuralist perspective, I propose to examine some limits of the association between Rorty’s philosophy of hope and post-critical pedagogy. I will discuss, in turn, their take on the definition of hope, on the place of critique in post-critical pedagogy and on the affirmative ethos (...) of post-critical pedagogy. (shrink)

Taking its departure from the destruction of ethicality (Sittlichkeit), as envisioned by Hegel in the Phänomenologie des Geistes (PG §443–475), this paper constructs a concept of a contemporary subject whose self-reliant autonomy fractures in the face of the truth. This truth is revealed as an upsurge of nature, whose role and significance has been denied in favor of comfort and security of the subject. The move to yoke and subdue nature by placing science—as Bacon saw fit—in service of technology, and (...) by placing technology in service of human comfort and safety, proved to bear fruit. However, this subjugation, and also the abuse of nature, in one and the same move, results in a subjugation and a denigration of the human self. (shrink)

Łukasiewicz’s infinite-valued logic is commonly defined as the set of formulas that take the value 1 under all evaluations in the Łukasiewicz algebra on the unit real interval. In the literature a deductive system axiomatized in a Hilbert style was associated to it, and was later shown to be semantically defined from Łukasiewicz algebra by using a “truth-preserving” scheme. This deductive system is algebraizable, non-selfextensional and does not satisfy the deduction theorem. In addition, there exists no Gentzen calculus fully adequate (...) for it. Another presentation of the same deductive system can be obtained from a substructural Gentzen calculus. In this paper we use the framework of abstract algebraic logic to study a different deductive system which uses the aforementioned algebra under a scheme of “preservation of degrees of truth”. We characterize the resulting deductive system in a natural way by using the lattice filters of Wajsberg algebras, and also by using a structural Gentzen calculus, which is shown to be fully adequate for it. This logic is an interesting example for the general theory: it is selfextensional, non-protoalgebraic, and satisfies a “graded” deduction theorem. Moreover, the Gentzen system is algebraizable. The first deductive system mentioned turns out to be the extension of the second by the rule of Modus Ponens. (shrink)

1 Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH, UK.

The global environmental and social-economic crises of industrialized agriculture have led to the emergence of agroecology as an alternative approach aiming to increase the ecological, social and economic sustainability of agri–food systems. The ‘multi-level perspective’ is now a widely used framework to understand and promote the upscaling of local innovation niches, such as agroecology, to broader scales (e.g., regional, national, international), thus reconfiguring the dominant socio-technical regimes. Additionally, emergent ‘hybrid forums’ can provide a space between niche and regime where niche (...) innovators can become important actors in scaling up and out emergent innovations. In this paper, we examine a university training program (Postgraduate Diploma in Local Agroecological Dynamization at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), to better understand its role as a ‘hybrid forum’. Our analysis focuses especially on how the program, as an example of a hybrid forum, worked to reconfigure practices, concepts, and tools of local development practitioners. We also assess to what extent the program contributed to transitioning local development institutions toward agroecology. An online survey (n = 46) and in-depth interviews (n = 16) were carried out to determine how the training program has impacted the student’s opinions and their respective institutions. The results show that most of the students consider that they have acquired new theoretical frameworks and useful methods to re-framing their local development projects, that new alliances with multi-actor networks have been perceived, and that some internal changes of the local development practices have taken place. We conclude that the training program, as a hybrid forum, is capable of outscaling niche innovations through linkages with different kind of actors both from the niche and the regime. Political changes in the socio-technical landscape level offer an opportunity to amplify the impact of the innovations which are being generated by those multi-actor networks, but with a limited multi-level impact as far as institutional regime-actors not aligned with agroecological transition keep the most of the competencies on agri–food systems. (shrink)

Background The practice of health advocacy in nursing has been defined as a process aimed at promoting the independence and autonomy of users of health services, in addition to providing information on healthcare decision-making and offering support for decisions taken. Ethical considerations Ethics approval was not required to conduct this review. Aim This integrative review aims to synthesize evidence in the literature on health advocacy in professional nursing practice. Methods An integrative review methodology guided by Whittemore and Knalf was used. (...) Studies were identified by conducting searches on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, and LILACS databases. Of 2179 records, 34 studies matched the inclusion criteria. Results The main aspects involved in the practice of health advocacy by professional nurses are related to the ethical principles of the nursing profession, such as protecting patients seeking autonomy and care. Furthermore, the practice of health advocacy by nurses requires an empathetic attitude, responsibility, and assertive communication. Conclusion The diverse possibilities for the practice of advocacy synthesized in this study allow nurses to approach and become familiarized with the topic, being able to acquire and complement knowledge that will reflect on their professional practice in different work environments such as the educational field, in hospital practice, or basic health care. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against two prevailing views of Kant’s Religion. Against commentators such as Michalson and Quinn, who have argued that Kant’s project in Religion is riddled with inconsistencies and circularities, I show that a proper understanding of Kant’s views on grace reveals these do not exist. And contra commentators that attribute to Kant at best a minimalist conception of grace, I show that Kant’s view of it is remarkably robust. I argue that Kant works with three different (...) conceptions of grace. These are: a) grace and the God within, b) grace and the transformation of the fundamental orientation, and c) grace that can be laid hold of; the first and the last play a significant role in his philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

We generalise the Blok–Jónsson account of structural consequence relations, later developed by Galatos, Tsinakis and other authors, in such a way as to naturally accommodate multiset consequence. While Blok and Jónsson admit, in place of sheer formulas, a wider range of syntactic units to be manipulated in deductions (including sequents or equations), these objects are invariablyaggregatedvia set-theoretical union. Our approach is more general in that nonidempotent forms of premiss and conclusion aggregation, including multiset sum and fuzzy set union, are considered. (...) In their abstract form, thus,deductive relationsare defined as additional compatible preorderings over certain partially ordered monoids. We investigate these relations using categorical methods and provide analogues of the main results obtained in the general theory of consequence relations. Then we focus on the driving example of multiset deductive relations, providing variations of the methods of matrix semantics and Hilbert systems in Abstract Algebraic Logic. (shrink)

As a result of a spate of studies geared to investigating Brazilian racial categories, it is now believed by many that Brazilians reason about race in a manner quite different to that of Americans. This paper will argue that this conclusion is premature, as the studies in question have not, in fact, investigated Brazilian categories. What they have done is elicit sorting tasks on the basis of appearances, but the cognitive models of respondents have not been investigated in order to (...) determine what are the boundaries of their concepts. Sorting based on appearances is not sufficient to infer the boundaries of concepts whenever appearance is not a defining criterion for the concepts in question, as the case appears to be for racial and ethnic categories. Following a critique of the methods used, I review a terminological and theoretical confusion concerning the use of the terms 'emic' and 'etic' in anthropology that appears directly responsible for the failure so far to choose methods appropriate to parsing the conceptual domain of 'race' in Brazil. (shrink)

Gil R, Arroyo-Anllo EM, Ingrand P, Gil M, Neau JP, Ornon C, Bonnaud V. Self-consciousness and Alzheimer’s disease. Acta Neurol Scand 2001: 104: 296–300. # Munksgaard 2001. Objectives – To propose a neuropsychological study of the various aspects of self-consciousness (SC) in Alzheimer’s disease. Methods – Forty-five patients with probable mild or moderate AD were included in the study. Severity of their dementia was assessed by the Mini Mental State (MMS). Fourteen questions were prepared to evaluate SC. Results – No (...) significant correlations were found between SC score and educational level, age, and duration of disease. A significant correlation was found between SC score and the severity of dementia, whereas frontal disturbances were just short of the significance threshold. The various aspects of SC were not impaired to the same degree. The most disturbed ones were awareness of cognitive deficiencies, moral judgements and prospective memory. The least disturbed aspects were awareness of identity and of mental representation of the body. Items relating to anosognosia and moral judgements were significantly correlated with the MMS score, whereas affective state, body representation disorders, prospective memory, and capacities for introspection were not related to the severity of the dementia. Consciousness of identity was sound, regardless of MMS score. Conclusions – AD clearly induces an heterogeneous impairment of SC. SC requires a convergence of many neural networks. In AD, neuronal alterations involve many cortical areas and information sent to the associative frontal cortex from memory, language and visuospatial areas is lacking or disturbed. Thus, the sequential order of successive stimuli cannot be maintained by the heteromodal associative cortex (dorsal convexity of the prefrontal cortex), and the supramodal associative cortex (located rostrally in the frontal lobes) is unable to provide reliable monitoring and assessment of simultaneous neural cognitive networks carrying insufficient and inadequate input. The core deficiency in AD patients might be impaired SC equated with the disability to maintain sequential and simultaneous ‘‘attention to life’’. The Self-Consciousness Questionnaire, a clinical scale providing multidimensional measurement, indicates that different aspects of consciousness are not correlated with overall cognitive deficiency as determined by the MMSE. (shrink)

Innovation is strongly associated with survival and growth of all kind of organizations in a global competitive economy. Moreover, nowadays companies are increasingly questioned on how they deliver innovative solutions to deep-seated problems, such as poverty. Our research aims to understand how Economy of Communion companies respond to this challenge by applying the logic of gratuitousness and giving. This paper examines the altruistic behaviour of EoC leaders and the connection with organizational innovation, necessary for firm’s survival in the long-term. We (...) analyse these connections through a qualitative descriptive case study of three Spanish EoC companies. The findings reveal altruistic behaviours of leaders seeking the Common Good. Innovation derives from the desire to help others, such as employees and customers. Moreover, the findings reveal that a culture of dialogue among employees, managers and the whole organisation enhances risk-taking and, therefore, innovation The paper contributes to our understanding of how EoC companies are able to reconcile innovation with the ideal of altruism, distinctive of the Economy of Communion. We believe that this study opens up a wide range of future research opportunities on the antecedents of an innovative organizational culture. (shrink)