The category of expressive speech acts has traditionally proven elusive of definition in contrast to other types of speech acts. This might explain why this group of speech acts has been less researched. The present paper aims to redress this imbalance by analysing the expressive speech acts performed by two groups of university students in two educational chats, carried out in English or in Spanish, respectively. The main purpose of the study is to find out if students express their emotions (...) when interacting online and, if the use of their mother tongue or not affects their performance of expressive speech acts in terms of frequency and type. To this purpose, Weigand’s taxonomy of speech acts was followed, since it provides a more systematic delimitation of the traditional category of “expressive acts”. Her distinction between emotives and declaratives was thus applied to the dataset under scrutiny. Results show that students opt for performing declarative acts but refrain from expressing their own emotions in an educational setting. As for the use of English or Spanish, no significant differences were observed, which reveals that the use of their mother tongue does not seem to affect the kind of acts performed. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse Spanish conversational structure, more concretely, to investigate in depth the role of the third move, or follow-up, outside classroom discourse. Since first introduced by Sinclair and Coulthard, the follow-up move has attracted a great deal of attention, as proved by numerous studies. However, these studies have mostly focused on English while Spanish has been neglected. The present study intends to fill in this gap by analysing a corpus of 50 conversational exchanges in (...) Peninsular Spanish. The analysis is qualitative and based on Tsui’s conversational framework, which has proved methodologically useful. As results will show, the presence or absence of the third move in Spanish conversations seems to rely heavily on a gender-based distinction. (shrink)

El artículo revisa el concepto de sustentabilidad, para explicar críticamente las lógicas que han dirigido la “evolución” de la humanidad, lo que en visión del autor ayudará a definir nuevos valores que guíen la construcción de nuevas formas de vida y un nuevo estilo de desarrollo. Argumenta que el incorporar la equidad en las políticas de desarrollo sólo será posible en la medida que se pueda entender e incorporar la relación sociedad (género), medio ambiente y desarrollo, bajo criterios de sustentabilidad.

Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin argue for a revolution in our cosmological ideas. Ideal for non-scientists, physicists and cosmologists.

The present work has as objective to analyse the embodied dimension of language, reviewing the conceptual issues of cognition, mind and language. Starting from the emerging of new data and knowledge that come from different disciplinary areas and taking Merlau-Ponty’s phenomenology as epistemologica..

Posthumanism is the key to interpreting the twenty-first century and represents an international research program on the relationship with technology and the biosphere and new forms of citizenship and identity. This book clarifies the common denominators that differentiate posthumanism from other proposals.

Researchers working in the field of ecosystem services (ES) have long acknowledged the importance of recognising multiple values in ecosystems and biodiversity. Yet the operationalisation of value pluralism in ES assessments remains largely elusive. The aim of this research is to present a taxonomy of values and valuation methods to widen the evaluative space for ES. First, we present our preanalytic positions in regards to the values and valuation of ES. Second, we review different value definitions that we deem relevant (...) for the discussion of ES valuation. Third, we propose a taxonomy of ES values based on different conceptions of human-nature relationships. Finally, we present a taxonomy of different methods that can be used to recognise plural values in ES. This taxonomy for a plural valuation can help ES scientists and practitioners with their aim of representing people's multiple and context-specific ways of valuing nature. The taxonomy can also serve to pay broader attention to ES values that are overlooked or misrepresented in assessments that restrict their focus to monetary valuations. (shrink)

In this paper we present BTC, which is a complete logic for branchingtime whose modal operator quantifies over histories and whose temporal operators involve a restricted quantification over histories in a given possible choice. This is a technical novelty, since the operators of the usual logics for branching-time such as CTL express an unrestricted quantification over histories and moments. The value of the apparatus we introduce is connected to those logics of agency that are interpreted on branching-time, as for instance (...) Stit Logics. (shrink)

The theory of the firm initially developed by Ronald Coase has made explicit the political nature of firms by putting hierarchy at the heart of the economic process. Theories of workplace democracy articulate this intuition in the normative terms of the conditions under which this political power can be legitimate. This paper presents an organizational theory of workplace democracy, and contends that the democratization of firms requires that we take their organizational dimension explicitly into account. It thus construes democracy as (...) an organizational principle and juxtaposes it to market, hierarchy, and norm-compliance as rival principles for the organization of economic activities. Attempts to construe democracy as an organizational principle with unique features in the tradition of transaction-cost economics are discussed before proposing an innovative solution based on an updated version of grid/group cultural theory of politics, adjusted to accommodate the basic requirements of democratic theory. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory.

Although the influence of social support in health is a widely acknowledged factor, there is a significant gap in the understanding of its role on cognition. The purpose of this systematic review was, therefore, to determine the state-of-the-art on the literature testing the association between social support and cognition. Using six databases, we identified 22 articles published between 1999 and 2019 involving an empirical quantitative focus which meet the inclusion criteria. Data extraction was performed following PRISMA recommendations. To summarize the (...) extracted data, we used a narrative synthesis approach. Despite limitations, there is overall preliminary evidence of a relevant positive association between social support and cognition. Our results demonstrate there is enough information for an outbreak of experimental research in the area and an expansion of this body of knowledge. We argue that the present evidence lays the foundations for a more comprehensive theoretical model, one that corresponds with the complexity of the topic and possibly considers models derived from social interaction and active inference theories. (shrink)

In the 10 years after the launch of the United Nations Global Compact (GC), there have been very few empirical assessments of the initiative in the academic literature. In this study, drawing from institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm, we examine motivations of business participants to adopt the GC principles in the Spanish context. Using survey data from Spain – the country reporting the highest volume of business participants in the GC – we find that external institutional (...) forces as well as internal organisational resources shape motivations for adopting GC principles. In particular, we find that early and late adopters are motivated similarly by the perceived opportunity of achieving image gains, while late adopters are motivated more by economic gains than early adopters. We further find that regardless of the extent of internal intangible resources possessed, firms are similarly motivated by economic gains. The results also show that companies with more intangible resources are motivated more by image gains than those with fewer resources. Our findings indicate that contrary to its earlier days, economic gains have emerged as an important motivator for the adopters of the GC principles with image gains still being an important motivator. (shrink)

In the 10 years after the launch of the United Nations Global Compact (GC), there have been very few empirical assessments of the initiative in the academic literature. In this study, drawing from institutional theory and the resource‐based view of the firm, we examine motivations of business participants to adopt the GC principles in the Spanish context. Using survey data from Spain – the country reporting the highest volume of business participants in the GC – we find that external institutional (...) forces as well as internal organisational resources shape motivations for adopting GC principles. In particular, we find that early and late adopters are motivated similarly by the perceived opportunity of achieving image gains, while late adopters are motivated more by economic gains than early adopters. We further find that regardless of the extent of internal intangible resources possessed, firms are similarly motivated by economic gains. The results also show that companies with more intangible resources are motivated more by image gains than those with fewer resources. Our findings indicate that contrary to its earlier days, economic gains have emerged as an important motivator for the adopters of the GC principles with image gains still being an important motivator. (shrink)

Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies.

This book by Roberto Esposito - a leading Italian political philosopher - is a highly original exploration of the relationship between human bodies and societies. The original function of law, even before it was codified, was to preserve peaceful cohabitation between people who were exposed to the risk of destructive conflict. Just as the human body's immune system protects the organism from deadly incursions by viruses and other threats, law also ensures the survival of the community in a life-threatening (...) situation. It protects and prolongs life. But the function of law as a form of immunization points to a more disturbing consideration. Like the individual body, the collective body can be immunized from the perceived danger only by allowing a little of what threatens it to enter its protective boundaries. This means that in order to escape the clutches of death, life is forced to incorporate within itself the lethal principle. Starting from this reflection on the nature of immunization, Esposito offers a wide-ranging analysis of contemporary biopolitics. Never more than at present has the demand for immunization come to characterize all aspects of our existence. The more we feel at risk of being infiltrated and infected by foreign elements, the more the life of the individual and society closes off within its protective boundaries, forcing us to choose between a self-destructive outcome and a more radical alternative based on a new conception of community. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy: accent. Accent is a fallacy of pragmatics. The fallacy of accent takes place when a premise in an argument seems to rely for its meaning on one possible vocal emphasis, but a conclusion is drawn that relies on an extrapolation from a different vocal emphasis of the same phrase. Such ambiguities are often the result of unacknowledged differences in background beliefs, attitudes, and expectations that people may implicitly bring (...) to the reading of a passage. The fallacy of accent can also be committed, therefore, when a passage is quoted without its original context, and erroneous inferences are drawn based on this (often deliberate) distortion. A classic example of this kind of deliberate form of quote mining is often used by creationists in their attempt to discredit Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

Problems of distributive justice throughout the lifespan are not new. Yet, the increased aging rate of contemporary societies and an array of new life‐extending technologies (LETs) make these problems more and more urgent and complicated. This chapter analyzes the moral and political impact of the LET. There are three kinds of “intergenerational” justice: justice between non‐coexisting generations, justice between partially co‐existing generations, and justice between coexisting generations. The advantage of considering LETs in the light of justice between age groups is (...) that we can assume a complete‐life view. LETs significantly modify the duration and the features of each stage of life. A consideration of the specific needs and features of each stage of life in a lifespan‐enhanced society is needed to regulate policies and offer fair equality of opportunity to each age group. (shrink)

Facebook claims that it is building a “global community.” Whether this sounds utopian, dystopian, or simply self-promotional, there is no denying that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. In this book, Roberto Simanowski takes Facebook as a starting point to investigate our social-media society—and its insidious consequences for our concept of the self. Simanowski contends that while they are often denounced as outlets for (...) narcissism and self-branding, social networks and the practices they cultivate in fact remake the self in their image. Sharing is the outsourcing of one’s experiences, encouraging unreflective self-narration rather than conscious self-determination. Instead of experiencing the present, we are stuck ceaselessly documenting and archiving it. We let our lives become episodic autobiographies whose real author is the algorithm lurking behind the interface. As we go about accumulating more material for the platform to arrange for us, our sense of self becomes diminished—and Facebook shapes a subject who no longer minds. Social-media companies’ relentless pursuit of personal data for advertising purposes presents users with increasingly targeted, customized information, attenuating cultural memory and fracturing collective identity. Presenting a creative, philosophically informed perspective that speaks candidly to a shared reality, Facebook Society asks us to come to terms with the networked world for our own sake and for all those with whom we share it. (shrink)

Comment ne pas désespérer? Comment maximiser notre capacité d'agir et de penser? Comment défaire tous les efforts et les dispositifs qui visent à séparer la multitude de sa puissance?00L'urgence de ces questions traverse l'oeuvre d'Antonio Negri depuis ses commencements dans les années 1960 et 1970, alors qu'un mouvement d'insurrection ouvrière soulevait l'Italie jusqu'à ses plus récents développements avec l'altermondialisation et l'émergence dans l'espace public des questions écologiques. À travers différents ouvrages devenus des classiques de la théorie politique notamment La Classe (...) ouvrière contre l'État, Marx au-delà de Marx, L'Anomalie sauvage, Le Pouvoir constituant, mais aussi, en collaboration avec Michael Hardt, Empire, Multitude, Commonwealth et Assembly--, Antonio Negri a proposé l'une des contributions les plus marquantes à la pensée critique contemporaine. À l'heure de la contre-révolution néolibérale et du renouvellement des modalités de l'exploitation, il s'agit pour lui de prendre acte de la péremption des formes anciennes de la lutte des classes et de contribuer à l'ouverture d'un nouvel horizon révolutionnaire, à hauteur des enjeux du temps présent."--Back cover. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'amphiboly'. More formally speaking, the fallacy of amphiboly occurs when the meaning of a phrase or sentence is indeterminate or ambiguous, particularly as a result of poor syntax, and especially when further inferences are drawn based on the acceptance of an unintended meaning of the passages. Amphibolies can also have the potential to either threaten political careers or make them indefinitely memorable. The ambiguities found in cases of (...) amphiboly usually arise from mistakes in grammar but also from various forms of linguistic booby traps. It is important to note, however, that not all instances of amphiboly are trivial. The interpretation of carelessly constructed legal contracts and wills, for instance, has been known to produce unnecessary and painful conflicts. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'poisoning the well' (PTW). There are some forms of ad hominem varieties that are usually a response to an interlocutor's claims. Unlike them, PTW occurs when we illegitimately prime our audience with a pre‐emptive strike against, or with adverse information about, an argumentative opponent before the latter has had a chance to say anything in her own defense, or in defense of her point of view. This has (...) the insidious effect of creating a conceptual framework according to which the audience – and maybe even the interlocutor herself – will interpret her claims as 'fulfilling' and 'confirming' the presumptions buried inside this conceptual trap. Most of the time Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability is still quite a useful tool and one that can help us gain a firmer understanding of PTW. (shrink)