Transparency is a quality of corporate social responsibility communication that enhances the relationship between the investors and the company. The objective of this paper is to analyze if the transparency of the sustainability reports is affected by the relationship of companies in different industries with their stakeholders. If this were the case, it would indicate that the pressure of significant stakeholders determines the required level of transparency of the reports. We find that the pressure of some groups of stakeholders improves (...) the quality of transparency of the reports. We extend previous research by studying the effect of stakeholder group pressure on transparency when reporting sustainability. Our results show that transparency is affected by ownership, along with size and global region. (shrink)

El trabajo versó en torno a las competencias socioemocionales y su trascendencia para la investigación. Se develaron referentes teóricos relativos a tales competencias, que permitieron aportar una conceptualización y una sistemática estructurada en cinco grandes bloques: conciencia emocional, regulación emocional, autonomía emocional, competencia social y competencias de vida y bienestar. La pesquisa estuvo dirigida al diseño y aplicación preliminar de una intervención educativa, desde la actividad de postgrado, destinada a favorecer el desarrollo de las competencias socioemocionales en másteres y doctores (...) en formación. Se obtuvieron resultados parciales positivos, a partir de su introducción en la práctica. The paper deals with socio-emotional competencies and their importance inconducting research. It discloses a framework of references around competencies related concepts and structured into a fivefold grouping: emotional awareness, emotional regulation, emotional autonomy, social competence and powers of life and wellbeing. The research was aimed to design and attempting the education of socio-emotional competencies at masters and Ph. D. training in the field of education. The initial application of the proposal proved to be effective. (shrink)

El presente trabajo presenta el proceso completo para la creación de una escala. Se pretende elaborar un esquema que aglutine el proceso por seguir para la construcción de una escala y su posterior validación. Para ello nos centraremos en un estudio de caso que será la elaboración de una escala de prevención del sinhogarismo relacionada con los sucesos vitales estresantes que las personas sin hogar han vivido antes de la situación de sinhogarismo, así como en ella para observar sus dificultades (...) de inclusión. (shrink)

8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

Background: Waiving parent permission can be an option in some epidemiological and social research with adolescents. However, exemptions have not been uniformly considered or applied. Our aim is to critically assess the different factors that could be taken into account when making decisions about waiving active parental permission in observational research with adolescents.DiscussionIn some cases alternatives to parental permission could be applied to protect the rights of both adolescents and parents and also to assure the benefits to adolescents as a (...) group that can come from appropriately conducted studies. However, the criteria of ensuring minimal risk can be difficult to define and apply and a distinction between harm and discomfort is reviewed. Waiving active parental permission could be acceptable when the risk of harm is minimal; when the research questions are related to an activity for which adolescents are not legally considered to be children; when the risk of harm or discomfort may increase if parental permission is required; and when risk of discomfort is low because the questionnaire is not potentially offensive for some adolescents and/or for some parents.SummaryStringent rules concerning parental permission in some studies could be detrimental to adolescents. A framework and a decision tree guide are proposed to help researchers and Research Ethics Committees in their decisions on whether active parental permission must be obtained. (shrink)

This article analyses the determinants associated with the use of the Integrated Report as a corporate reporting model for sustainability information. IRs provide information regarding the use and interdependence of different company resources. The previous literature has identified determinants behind the presentation of IRs at the country level as well as at the company level. Our work contributes to the literature by using a novel statistical approach that addresses the likelihood of the non-independence of data: companies in the same country (...) are more similar to one another than are companies from different countries. Our results confirm significant inter-country variance, which may be partially explained by the existence of specific regulations and the individualism vs. collectivism dimension. Although we confirm the effect of company-level determinants, our results do not support the role of specific variables tested as determinants. (shrink)

Aims: Attentional bias, alcohol craving, and anxiety have important implications in the development and maintenance of alcohol use disorder. The current study aims to test the effectiveness of a Virtual Reality Cue-Exposure Therapy to reduce levels of alcohol craving and anxiety and prompt changes in AB toward alcohol content.Method: A 49-year-old male participated in this study, diagnosed with severe AUD, who also used tobacco and illicit substances on an occasional basis and who made several failed attempts to cease substance misuse. (...) The protocol consisted of six VR-CET booster sessions and two assessment sessions over the course of 5 weeks. The VR-CET program consisted of booster therapy sessions based on virtual reality exposure to preferred alcohol-related cues and contexts. The initial and final assessment sessions were focused on exploring AB, alcohol craving, and anxiety using paper-and-pencil instruments and the eye-tracking and VR technologies at different time points.Results: Pre and post assessment sessions indicated falls on the scores of all instruments assessing alcohol craving, anxiety, and AB.Conclusions: This case report, part of a larger project, demonstrates the effectiveness of the VR-CET booster sessions in AUD. In the post-treatment measurements, a variety of instruments showed a change in the AB pattern and an improvement in craving and anxiety responses. As a result of the systematic desensitization, virtual exposure gradually reduced the responses to significant alcohol-related cues and contexts. The implications for AB, anxiety and craving are discussed. (shrink)

El doble filo crítico que caracteriza la posición de Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui ayuda a hacer un tratamiento de la modernidad hegemónica y sus expresiones por medio de dos movimientos reflexivos simultáneos: el epistemológico y el político. Silvia no realiza su trabajo de investigación a través de las categorías y las herramientas tradicionales, nacidas en la academia elitista que promueve la esterilización política de las reflexiones gracias a investigaciones hiperespecializadas, o realizadas bajo la lógica del mercado de saberes y (...) que es la lógica imperante en las instituciones universitarias. La pensadora andina se dedica a usar instrumentos teóricos cuya base política sea ya de por sí crítica, es decir, no aborda al colonialismo o al patriarcado sólo como temas, sino que lo hace con posiciones anticolonialistas y antipatriarcales. Palabras clave: sociología de la imagen, epistemología ch’ixi, anticolonialismo. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recently, the hypothesis that purely evaluative disputes are metalinguistic negotiations has gained traction. I resist a strong version of that hypothesis, and argue that some of those disputes are not metalinguistic negotiations. To defend that claim, I argue that metalinguistic negotiations have three linguistic properties that some purely evaluative disputes lack. First, in a metalinguistic negotiation it is felicitous to embed the dispute-initial statement under the subjective attitude verb consider; second, a speaker can reply to that initial statement by (...) using a metalinguistic comparative; and, third, such negotiations address metalinguistic questions under discussion. Some purely evaluative disputes lack these properties, which suggests that they are not metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

The first part of this paper will provide a reconstruction of Francis Bacon’s interpretation of Academic scepticism, Pyrrhonism, and Dogmatism, and its sources throughout his large corpus. It shall also analyze Bacon’s approach against the background of his intellectual milieu, looking particularly at Renaissance readings of scepticism as developed by Guillaume Salluste du Bartas, Pierre de la Primaudaye, Fulke Greville, and John Davies. It shall show that although Bacon made more references to Academic than to Pyrrhonian Scepticism, like most of (...) his contemporaries, he often misrepresented and mixed the doctrinal components of both currents. The second part of the paper shall offer a complete chronological survey of Bacon’s assessment of scepticism throughout his writings. Following the lead of previous studies by other scholars, I shall support the view that, while he approved of the state of doubt and the suspension of judgment as a provisional necessary stage in the pursuit of knowledge, he rejected the notion of acatalepsia. To this received reading, I shall add the suggestion that Bacon’s criticism of acatalepsia ultimately depends on his view of the historical conditions that surround human nature. I deal with this last point in the third part of the paper, where I shall argue that Bacon’s evaluation of scepticism relied on his adoption of a Protestant and Augustinian view of human nature that informed his overall interpretation of the history of humanity and nature, including the sceptical schools. (shrink)

Pluralist mathematical realism, the view that there exists more than one mathematical universe, has become an influential position in the philosophy of mathematics. I argue that, if mathematical pluralism is true (and we have good reason to believe that it is), then mathematical realism cannot (easily) be justified by arguments from the indispensability of mathematics to science. This is because any justificatory chain of inferences from mathematical applications in science to the total body of mathematical theorems can cover at most (...) one mathematical universe. Indispensability arguments may thus lose their central role in the debate about mathematical ontology. (shrink)

This article presents the first, systematic analysis of the ethical challenges posed by recommender systems through a literature review. The article identifies six areas of concern, and maps them onto a proposed taxonomy of different kinds of ethical impact. The analysis uncovers a gap in the literature: currently user-centred approaches do not consider the interests of a variety of other stakeholders—as opposed to just the receivers of a recommendation—in assessing the ethical impacts of a recommender system.

euroscience of Rule-Guided Behavior brings together, for the first time, the experiments and theories that have created the new science of rules. Rules are central to human behavior, but until now the field of neuroscience lacked a synthetic approach to understanding them. How are rules learned, retrieved from memory, maintained in consciousness and implemented? How are they used to solve problems and select among actions and activities? How are the various levels of rules represented in the brain, ranging from simple (...) conditional ones if a traffic light turns red, then stop to rules and strategies of such sophistication that they defy description? And how do brain regions interact to produce rule-guided behavior? These are among the most fundamental questions facing neuroscience, but until recently there was relatively little progress in answering them. It was difficult to probe brain mechanisms in humans, and expert opinion held that animals lacked the capacity for such high-level behavior. However, rapid progress in neuroimaging technology has allowed investigators to explore brain mechanisms in humans, while increasingly sophisticated behavioral methods have revealed that animals can and do use high-level rules to control their behavior. The resulting explosion of information has led to a new science of rules, but it has also produced a plethora of overlapping ideas and terminology and a field sorely in need of synthesis. In this book, Silvia Bunge and Jonathan Wallis bring together the worlds leading cognitive and systems neuroscientists to explain the most recent research on rule-guided behavior. Their work covers a wide range of disciplines and methods, including neuropsychology, functional magnetic resonance imaging, neurophysiology, electroencephalography, neuropharmacology, near-infrared spectroscopy, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. This unprecedented synthesis is a must-read for anyone interested in how complex behavior is controlled and organized by the brain. (shrink)

Public engagement is one of the fundamental pillars of the European programme for research and innovation _Horizon 2020_. The programme encourages engagement that not only fosters science education and dissemination, but also promotes two-way dialogues between scientists and the public at various stages of research. Establishing such dialogues between different groups of societal actors is seen as crucial in order to attain epistemic as well as social desiderata at the intersection between science and society. However, whether these dialogues can actually (...) help attaining these desiderata is far from obvious. This paper discusses some of the costs, risks, and benefits of dialogical public engagement practices, and proposes a strategy to analyse these argumentative practices based on a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange. As a case study, we discuss the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, arguably a result of suboptimal public engagement, and show how the proposed model can shed new light on the problem. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to deflect Access Problems for realism about a priori domains such as mathematics, logic, morality, and modality using arguments from evolution result in two kinds of explanatory overkill: the Access Problem is eliminated for contentious domains, and realist belief becomes viciously immune to arguments from dispensability, and to non-rebutting counter-arguments more generally.

En Los Cuatro Acuerdos, un éxito de ventas en todo el mundo, don Miguel Ruiz revelaba cómo el proceso de educación, o «domesticación», nos hace olvidar nuestra sabiduría innata. A lo largo de la vida establecemos muchos acuerdos que van en nuestra contra y nos causan un sufrimiento innecesario. Los Cuatro Acuerdos nos ayudan a romper estos acuerdos limitadores y a substituirlos por otros que nos aportan libertad, felicidad y amor. Ahora don Miguel Ruiz, junto con su hijo (...) don Jose Ruiz, nos ofrece una nueva perspectiva de Los Cuatro Acuerdos y un acuerdo nuevo y poderoso para transformar nuestra vida en nuestro cielo personal: el quinto acuerdo. El Quinto Acuerdo nos permite adquirir una conciencia más profunda del poder del yo verdadero y recuperar la autenticidad con la que nacimos. En esta absorbente continuación del libro que ha cambiado la vida de millones de personas de todo el mundo, se nos recuerda el mejor regalo que podemos hacernos: la libertad de ser quienes realmente somos. Más sobre el libro Imagínate llevando una vida totalmente nueva: una vida en la que eres libre de ser quien realmente eres. Ya no te riges por lo que los demás piensan de ti. Imagínate viviendo sin juzgarte a ti mismo ni juzgar a los demás, sin temer ser juzgado. Te aceptas tal como eres y aceptas a los demás tal como son. Imagínate viviendo sin estar en conflicto contigo ni con la gente. Te respetas a ti mismo y a los demás, y a cambio ellos te respetan a ti. Imagínate viviendo sin miedo a expresarte ni a explorar la vida. Vives sin temor, sin culparte, sin avergonzarte, sin arrepentirte. Imagínate que te encanta ser como eres. Te gusta tu cuerpo tal como es, te gustan tus emociones tal como son. Imagínate siendo tú mismo. Eres feliz y disfrutas verdaderamente de tu vida. ¡Imagínate viviendo con esta clase de libertad personal! Esta manera de vivir es completamente posible. Otros lo han conseguido y tú también lo harás. Sólo necesitas hacer de los Cinco Acuerdos tu estilo de vida y pronto vivirás tu sueño personal del cielo. (shrink)

The existence of fundamental moral disagreements is a central problem for moral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence of disagreement in mathematics. However, mathematicians do in fact disagree on fundamental questions, for example on which set-theoretic axioms are true, and some philosophers have argued that this increases the plausibility of moral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical and moral disagreement is not as straightforward as those arguments present it. In particular, I argue (...) that pluralist accounts of mathematics render fundamental mathematical disagreements compatible with mathematical realism in a way in which moral disagreements and moral realism are not. 11. (shrink)

El artículo presenta los principales resultados de un estudio realizado entre 1998 y 2000 con hombres jóvenes de la Ciudad de Cali, Colombia, profundizando en sus prácticas de distinción en torno al cuerpo, la vestimenta, los espacios de sociabilidad, las mujeres como objetos de ostentación y sus dinámicas de prestigio. El estudio es desarrollado en base a observación participante y a la implementación de entrevistas con grupos de jóvenes entre 14 y 22 años, tanto de sectores medios bajos, como medios (...) altos, e indaga en sus opiniones sobre la moda, el prestigio, la distinción social y los comportamientos que otorgan o quitan el estatus. (shrink)

A tendência de algumas visões naturalistas de deduzir o sentido da ação humana da sua natureza biológica conduz a naturalizar a violência como fenômeno político inexorável. A violência naturalizada leva a sociedade para a dinâmica da inexorável violência, cuja única solução é a legitimação de uma violência total. Propomos, neste ensaio, a desconstrução crítica dos determinismos naturalistas por meio da análise da ação humana e da especificidade de sua potência que se manifesta como potência criadora (Cornelius Castoriadis) e potência do (...) não (Giorgio Agamben). A potência da ação humana transcende os determinismos da sua natureza biológica, embora por eles esteja condicionada. The tendency some naturalist visions have to deduce the meaning of human action from their biological nature, leads to a naturalization of violence as an inexorable political phenomenon. Naturalized violence leads the society towards the dynamics of inexorable violence, whose only solution is legitimazing total violence. In this article we propose the critical deconstruction of naturalistic determinism by means of the analysis of human action and the specificity of its power, which is manifested as creative power (Cornelius Castoriadis) and power of no (Giorgio Agamben). The power of human action transcends the biological determinisms of its biologic nature, although the power of human action is conditioned by them. (shrink)

El presente artículo desarrolla una reflexión acerca de los ideales de belleza femenina promovidos por el mercado y los mass-media, dando cuenta de datos estadísticos e informes periodísticos de los trastornos que generan, en términos de mortalidad y morbilidad en la población femeninaLa primera parte del análisis responde, desde una perspectiva psicológica, a la pregunta ¿cómo se constituye como sujeto una mujer? La segunda parte aborda desde una perspectiva sociocultural la pregunta ¿cómo debe ser una mujer?, desde la premisa de (...) que las prácticas de educación y moldeamiento del cuerpo tienen sentido en la modernidad como una forma de control social. Finalmente se busca, desde una perspectiva política, señalar cómo el “boom” de la estética corporal es un mecanismo de dominación principalmente dirigido a la mujer, al cual las políticas públicas y la legislación no logran dar respuesta, manteniendo a éstas en un lugar pasivo como sujeto y actor político. (shrink)

En este volumen se reúne una serie de textos que responden desde diferentes perspectivas a las características principales de la Estética hoy. Cine, poesía, traducción, teorías y fundamentos de las artes, historia de las artes y de las ideas estéticas, estudio de las metodologías, "los procedimientos técnicos de creación y conservación de las obras de arte", teoría y filosofía de la música o estudios de las manifestaciones artísticas relacionadas más directamente con nuestro presente son algunos de los temas que aparecen (...) aquí tratados por diferentes especialistas. El objetivo que se pretende con ello es enmarcar la Estética en un ámbito caracterizado por la variedad, la transversalidad y la interdisciplinariedad. (shrink)

Presents advice on how to gain personal freedom by following the wisdom of the Toltecs.

I defend a metalinguistic account of Mates's puzzle: sentences where synonymous expressions cannot be substituted salva veritate. If Andrea thinks that attorneys are different from lawyers, and she thinks that Fiona is the former but not the latter, we may hesitate to substitute ‘lawyer’ for ‘attorney’ in ‘Andrea believes that Fiona is an attorney’, even though ‘lawyer’ and ‘attorney’ are synonymous. I argue that these sentences report de re beliefs about linguistic expressions, thereby blocking such substitutions, and I offer a (...) compositional derivation of their meaning. (shrink)

I argue against the view that metalinguistic usage is a form of conversational implicature. That view, suggested by Thomasson (Anal Philos 57(4):1-28, 2016) and Belleri (Philos Stud 174(9):2211–2226, 2017), has been most recently fleshed out by Mankowitz (Synthese 199:5603–5622, 2021). I provide two types of criticism to the implicature view. From an empirical point of view, metalinguistic usage differs in key respects from standard cases of conversational implicature. From a conceptual standpoint, I argue that the calculation algorithm provided by the (...) implicature view makes undesirable predictions. Although my main objective is negative, I end the paper by sketching an alternative neo-Stalnakerian view of metalinguistic usage, that can be gathered from work by Barker (Linguist Philos 25(1):1–36, 2002; Inquiry 56(2–3):240–257, 2013) and others. (shrink)

It is well-established that algorithms can be instruments of injustice. It is less frequently discussed, however, how current modes of AI deployment often make the very discovery of injustice difficult, if not impossible. In this article, we focus on the effects of algorithmic profiling on epistemic agency. We show how algorithmic profiling can give rise to epistemic injustice through the depletion of epistemic resources that are needed to interpret and evaluate certain experiences. By doing so, we not only demonstrate how (...) the philosophical conceptual framework of epistemic injustice can help pinpoint potential, systematic harms from algorithmic profiling, but we also identify a novel source of hermeneutical injustice that to date has received little attention in the relevant literature: epistemic fragmentation. Epistemic fragmentation is a structural characteristic of algorithmically-mediated environments that isolate individuals, making it more difficult to develop, uptake and apply new epistemic resources. This, in turn, can impede the identification and conceptualisation of emerging harms in these environments. We trace the occurrence of hermeneutical injustice back to the fragmentation of the epistemic experiences of individuals, who are left more vulnerable by the inability to share, compare, and learn from shared experiences. (shrink)

Can art, religion, or philosophy afford ineffable insights? If so, what are they? The idea of ineffability has puzzled philosophers from Laozi to Wittgenstein. In Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion and Philosophy, Silvia Jonas examines different ways of thinking about what ineffable insights might involve metaphysically, and shows which of these are in fact incoherent. Jonas discusses the concepts of ineffable properties and objects, ineffable propositions, ineffable content, and ineffable knowledge, examining the metaphysical pitfalls involved (...) in these concepts. Ultimately, she defends the idea that ineffable insights as found in aesthetic, religious, and philosophical contexts are best understood in terms of self-acquaintance, a particular kind of non-propositional knowledge. Ineffability as a philosophical topic is as old as the history of philosophy itself, but contributions to the exploration of ineffability have been sparse. The theory developed by Jonas makes the concept tangible and usable in many different philosophical contexts. (shrink)

It has been argued that moral assertions involve the possession, on the part of the speaker, of appropriate non-cognitive attitudes. Thus, uttering ‘murder is wrong’ invites an inference that the speaker disapproves of murder. In this paper, we present the result of 4 empirical studies concerning this phenomenon. We assess the acceptability of constructions in which that inference is explicitly canceled, such as ‘murder is wrong but I don’t disapprove of it’; and we compare them to similar constructions involving ‘think’ (...) instead of ‘disapprove’—that is, Moore paradoxes (‘murder is wrong but I don’t think that it is wrong’). Our results indicate that the former type of constructions are largely infelicitous, although not as infelicitous as their Moorean counterparts. (shrink)

What are the relevant values to the appraisal of research programs? This question remains hotly debated, as philosophers have recently proposed many lists of values potentially relevant to scientific appraisal. Surprisingly, despite being mentioned in many lists, little attention has been paid to fruitfulness. It is unclear how fruitfulness should be explicated, and whether it has any substantial role in scientific appraisal. In this paper, I argue we should explicate fruitfulness as the capacity to develop of research programs. Moreover, I (...) provide a novel strategy to assess and compare the fruitfulness of programs focused on their research questions and heuristics. To illustrate how this strategy would work, I will discuss a case study, namely the adaptationist program in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

En Suárez no se encuentra un tratamiento sistemático del derecho en sentido subjetivo, pero el Dr. Eximio dispuso de una elaborada doctrina sobre esta cuestión. Suárez entiende el derecho en sentido subjetivo como una potestad o facultad moral del sujeto que se funda en su naturaleza racional. Su pensamiento sobre el particular, especialmente su doctrina sobre el derecho a la propiedad privada, parece haber ejercido una amplia influencia en la Inglaterra del siglo XVII.

ABSTRACT:Ethical research on consumption has focused mainly on the obligations, principles and values guiding consumers' actions and reasons for action. In doing so, it has concerned itself mostly with such bounded contexts as voluntary simplifiers, anti-consumption movements or so-called ‘ethical consumers,’ thereby fostering an artificial opposition between ethical and non-ethical consumption. This paper proposes virtue ethics as a more apt conceptual framework for the ethical analysis of consumption because it takes into account the developmental dynamic triggered by engagement in consumption (...) practices. We build on MacIntyre's goods-virtues-practices-institutions framework and Beabout's concept of a domain-relative practice and argue that when engaging in consumption activities, agents may pursue goods internal to practices, further their individual life narratives and contribute to the good of their communities, thus developing virtues that perfect themselves both as consumers and as ethical agents. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Ethical research on consumption has focused mainly on the obligations, principles and values guiding consumers' actions and reasons for action. In doing so, it has concerned itself mostly with such bounded contexts as voluntary simplifiers, anti-consumption movements or so-called ‘ethical consumers,’ thereby fostering an artificial opposition between ethical and non-ethical consumption. This paper proposes virtue ethics as a more apt conceptual framework for the ethical analysis of consumption because it takes into account the developmental dynamic triggered by engagement in consumption (...) practices. We build on MacIntyre's goods-virtues-practices-institutions framework and Beabout's concept of a domain-relative practice and argue that when engaging in consumption activities, agents may pursue goods internal to practices, further their individual life narratives and contribute to the good of their communities, thus developing virtues that perfect themselves both as consumers and as ethical agents. (shrink)

The Feeling Brain — The Thinking Soul Recent advances in neuroscience have dramatically improved our understanding of human emotional states. With the help of new technologies and models, scholars are beginning to unravel the "mystery" of emotional life. Confusions in contemporary emotion studies are due to the traditional model of a person as a rational conscious agent. The paper highlights two problematic aspects of this prevailing model: the relation between emotion and reason and the relation between emotion and consciousness. Firstly, (...) it is claimed that the difference between emotions and thoughts does not transcend their mutual interconnectivity. Secondly, conscious content and emotional responses are both products of specialized emotion systems that operate unconsciously. Both claims are supported by experimental findings and clinical practice. (shrink)

Modulating connectivity measures in EEG-based neurofeedback studies is assumed to be a promising therapeutic and training tool. However, little is known so far about its effects and trainability. In the present study, we investigated the effects of up- and down-regulating SMR coherence by means of neurofeedback training on EEG activity and memory functions. Twenty adults performed 10 neurofeedback training sessions in which half of them tried to increase EEG coherence between Cz and CPz in the SMR frequency range, while the (...) other half tried to down-regulate coherence. Up-regulation of SMR coherence led to between- and within-session changes in EEG coherence. SMR power increased across neurofeedback training sessions but not within training sessions. Cross-over training effects on baseline EEG measures were also observed in this group. Up-regulation of SMR coherence was also associated with improvements in memory functions when comparing pre- and post-test results. Participants were not able to down-regulate SMR coherence. This group did not show any changes in baseline EEG measures or memory functions comparing pre- and post-test. Our results provide insights in the trainability and effects of connectivity-based neurofeedback training and indications for its practical application. (shrink)

In two studies, children's concepts of various types of ordinarily unobservable entities were examined. Study 1 confirmed earlier findings in showing that children aged 4–9 years are confident of the existence of scientific entities such as germs as well as religious beings such as God. At the same time, both age groups are skeptical of the existence of various mythical beings such as mermaids. In Study 2, older children aged 10–12 years were probed for their concepts of religious as compared (...) to scientific phenomena. Despite considerable confidence in each type, older children differentiated between them, both with respect to their level of confidence and their pattern of justification. (shrink)

A Steiner triple system (STS) is a set S together with a collection B of subsets of S of size 3 such that any two elements of S belong to exactly one element of B. It is well known that the class of finite STS has a Fraïssé limit M_F. Here, we show that the theory T of M_F is the model completion of the theory of STSs. We also prove that T is not small and it has quantifier elimination, (...) TP2, NSOP1, elimination of hyperimaginaries and weak elimination of imaginaries. (shrink)