The article constitutes a detailed overview of the most important background literature on the topic of scientific representation. It gives a detailed outline of many of the important philosophical accounts of scientific representation. The primary division is between substantive accounts and deflationary/pragmatic accounts. Objections to each type of account are considered. Insights from the literature on modelling are discussed along with an overview of some of the insights from the sociology of science.

This article presents the development, validation and application of an instrument to measure everyday moral distress in different health care settings. The concept of moral distress has been discussed and developed over 20 years. A few instruments have been developed to measure it, predominantly in nursing. The instrument presented here consists of two factors: level of moral distress, and tolerance/openness towards moral dilemmas. It was tested in four medical departments and three pharmacies, where 259 staff members completed a questionnaire. The (...) two factors were found to be reliable. Differences in levels of moral distress were found between pharmacies and clinical departments, and between the youngest and oldest age groups; departmental staff and the youngest group experienced higher levels of moral distress. Departments reported less tolerance/openness towards moral dilemmas than pharmacies. The instrument needs to be tested further, but its strengths are the focus on everyday ethical dilemmas and its usefulness in different health care settings. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo analizo la distinción entre asuntos públicos y privados en el modelo democrático deliberativo. En primer lugar, explicito los distintos contextos en que es utilizada la distinción público-privado en la teoría democrática de corte deliberativo. Sostengo que, en cada uno de esos contextos, los términos público y privado adquieren sentidos diferentes y que muchos de ellos resultan discutibles. Luego, identifico y desarrollo lo que considero que son cuestiones problemáticas de la distinción entre asuntos públicos y privados como (...) prerrequisito del debate desde tres perspectivas distintas. En primer lugar, porque considero que tiene costos importantes en términos de igualdad en el debate. En segundo lugar, porque debilita el valor epistémico de la deliberación democrática que el modelo dice honrar. Por último, porque se compromete con una concepción de sujeto individualista con fuertes implicancias normativas. (shrink)

Increased work complexity and financial strain in the health care sector have led to higher demands on staff to handle ethical issues. These demands can elicit stress reactions, that is, moral distress. One way to support professionals in handling ethical dilemmas is education and training in ethics. This article reports on a controlled prospective study evaluating a structured education and training program in ethics concerning its effects on moral distress. The results show that the participants were positive about the training (...) program. Moral distress did not change significantly. This could be interpreted as competence development, with no effects on moral distress. Alternatively, the result could be attributed to shortcomings of the training program, or that it was too short, or it could be due to the evaluation instrument used. Organizational factors such as management involvement are also crucial. There is a need to design and evaluate ethics competence programs concerning their efficacy. (shrink)

Reseña de "Punto de inflexión: Crisis climática y ecológica” de Pamela Poo.

The issue of communicated accountability is particularly important in Faith-Based Charity Organisations as the donated funds and use of those funds are often meant to fulfil religious obligations for the well-being of society. Integrating Stewart’s (1984) ladder of accountability with the Statement of Recommended Practice guidance for charities, this paper examines communicated accountability practices of Muslim and Christian Charity Organisations in England and Wales. Our content analysis results indicate communicated accountability to be generally limited, focusing on providing basic descriptive information (...) rather than judgement-based information. Our interviews with trustees and preparers of Trustee Annual Reports in Muslim Charity Organisations identified the reasons being due to high donor trust and consequently weak demand by stakeholders for the latter type of information, as well as internal organisational issues related to the organisational structure and culture, lack of internal professional expertise and high accountability cost. (shrink)

Research ethics is increasingly formally regulated, but little is known about how ethical considerations are reported in dissertations. The aim of this literature study was to describe the status and trends of ethical considerations in Swedish doctoral dissertations written by registered nurses. A total of 77 dissertations from 1987, 1997, and 2007 met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed by descriptive statistics. Ethical considerations were mostly overlooked in 1987, but almost ubiquitous by 2007. All dissertations in 2007, except one, had (...) a section on ethical considerations; however, these were short, lacking in references, and short on content. The most common topic was informed consent and approval from research ethics review boards, followed by confidentiality and ethical aspects of methodological issues. Our results imply that the quantity and quality of ethical considerations must be improved in order to assure ethical soundness for participants, patients, researchers, and society. (shrink)

When interacting with other people, we assume that they have their reasons for what they do and believe, and experience recognizable feelings and emotions. When people act from weakness of will or are otherwise irrational, what they do can still be comprehensible to us, since we know what it is like to fall for temptation and act against one’s better judgment. Still, when someone’s experiences, feelings and way of thinking is vastly different from our own, understanding them becomes increasingly difficult. (...) Delusions and psychosis are often seen as marking the end of intelligibility. In this paper, I argue first for the importance of seeing other people as intelligible as long as this is at all possible. Second, I argue, based on both previous literature and my own lived experience, that more psychotic phenomena than previously thought can be rendered at least somewhat intelligible. Besides bizarre experiences like illusions, hallucinations and intense feelings of significance, I also explain what it is like to lose one’s bedrock, and how this loss impacts which beliefs one has reason to reject. Finally, I give an inside account of some disturbances of reason, and show that there are important similarities between certain psychotic reasoning problems and common non-pathological phenomena. (shrink)

In this commentary, as philosophers of evolutionary biology, we will consider the evolutionary framework used in the Target Article by: (i) emphasising the fruitfulness of the interdisciplinary approach employed; (ii) highlighting some potentially controversial aspects of the proposal; and finally (iii) outlining some ideas for further integration within the UAL framework. The critical analysis will focus on the relationship between learning and consciousness, on the assumed need for a function for consciousness, and on the type of phylogenetic demarcation introduced by (...) UAL. (shrink)

Representative democracy is often assessed from the standpoint of direct democracy. Recently, however, many theorists have come to argue that representation forms a democratic model in its own right. The most powerful claim in this direction is to be found within two quite different strands of thinking: the aesthetic theory of Frank Ankersmit and the savage theory of Claude Lefort. In this article, I show that while Ankersmit and Lefort converge in their critique of direct rule, they provide us with (...) two distinct models of democracy. Aesthetic democracy, I argue, in the end falls short as a democratic recuperation of representation. It reduces representation to delegation. Savage democracy proves more fruitful in this respect. It offers a representative view of politics without committing itself to the premises associated with political delegation. (shrink)

In political theory it goes without saying that the constitution of government raises a claim for legitimacy. With the constitution of the people, however, it is different. It is often dismissed as a historical question. The conviction is that since the people cannot decide on its own composition the boundaries of democracy must be determined by other factors, such as the contingent forces of history. This article critically assesses this view. It argues that like the constitution of government, the constitution (...) of the people raises a claim for legitimacy. The failure to see this is what makes many theorists run into the arms of history. They submit the legitimacy of the people to the arbitrary and asymmetrical forces of the present. (shrink)

How should we adjust our beliefs in light of the testimony of those who are in a better epistemic position than ourselves, such as experts and other epistemic superiors? In this paper, I develop and defend a deference model of epistemic authority. The paper attempts to resolve the debate between the preemption view and the total evidence view of epistemic authority by taking an accuracy-first approach to the issue of how we should respond to authoritative and expert testimony. I argue (...) that when we look at the debate through the lens of accuracy, it becomes clear that matters are more complicated than either the preemption view or the total evidence view are able to account for. Consequently, a deference model, outlined within a credence-based framework, does a better job of capturing the relevant phenomena, and explaining how we should update our beliefs in response to epistemically authoritative testimony. (shrink)

This study explores positive migrant storytelling in non-governmental organizations’ advocacy campaigns. We focus on the practices and implications of leveraging storytelling towards charity organizations’ institutional goals. Drawing upon critical discourse studies and narrative studies, we propose a critical storytelling approach that pays attention to the specific nature of storytelling as a discourse practice in itself. We focus on a UNHCR human-interest story of refugee displacement and subsequent integration into the UK. We employ the heuristic concept of positioning that calls for (...) analysis at different, though interrelated levels of narrative activity, to explore how affect is mobilized and the specific identity categories and affect types that are created for migrants and their hosts. We then situate these identity positions in wider dominant discourses of migrant integration. We show that the story foregrounds emblematic refugees, worthy of hosts’ support as well as relationships of dependence between migrants and the host society as requisites to successful integration. We argue that the ways in which an individual refugee story gets mobilized as an exemplary story reveals canonized forms of positive migrant storytelling emerging in the UK context that end up invoking dominant power asymmetries in relation to migration and British integration. (shrink)

Introduction. The lexeme “myth” is ordinary for a modern person, but its meaning is a vague circle of definition. The author sets the question — how does modern man understand the myth, how does he use it, and what approaches to studying the manifestations of the mythological are used in modern science. But in order to correctly answer these questions, it is necessary to clarify the concept of “modernity”. According to the author, it is possible to correctly substantiate the concept (...) of modernity by using the method of paradigm analysis by A.G. Dugin. In line with this approach, the concept of “modernity” is conceptually identical to the postmodern paradigm. The purpose of the study is to conduct a revision of modern literature (literature of the postmodern paradigm) devoted to the scientific study of the myth and the manifestations of the mythological in human existence, to analyze it in line with the paradigm approach. Introduce new sources into scientific circulation and, on the basis of a combination of new and existing sources, offer a detailed historiographic review of the literature. Methods. The main method used in this work is the paradigm analysis by A.G. Dugin. In addition to it, a systematic approach and general scientific methods were used — analysis and synthesis, induction, deduction, abstraction. Scientific novelty of the research. The main scientific novelty of the study is the use of the method of paradigm analysis in the study of the mythological. In addition, a number of new sources (published in the period from 2020 to 2022) dedicated to the topic of myth are being introduced into scientific circulation. Results. Within the framework of this article, more than 60 works were analyzed and, on their basis, an exhaustive historiographic review of the existing modern literature devoted to the study of myth and manifestations of the mythological in human being was made. Conclusion. Considering the presented literature in line with the paradigm approach, the author explicates the main aspects of the study of the mythological, which are characteristic of this paradigm and suggests further vectors of its development. According to the author, the myth is increasingly integrated into the digital and virtual environment, which actualizes the need to study it already in the mainstream of digital anthropology. The author also puts forward the thesis that digital literacy skills can help reduce the ideological load of the myth, which manifests itself in the digital environment in the form of fake news and other tools of hybrid wars. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of political readings of the right to have rights. The gist of the argument is that this right only comes into being in the act of claiming or taking it. At the same time, the political reading suffers from a normative lacuna which is difficult to ignore if right is not to collapse into might. The present article seeks to show that this normative lacuna can be accounted for if one situates the political reading (...) in relation to a certain form of government. Acknowledging Montesquieu’s influence on Arendt’s resort to the principles which guide political action, the article offers a new interpretation of the normative basis of the right to have rights. It argues, first, that this right is democratic, not political, and second, that the principle which sets the right in motion is responsibility, not freedom. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issues related to the contribution of archaeology along with other disciplines, mostly history and epigraphy, to the study of the re-structuring of religious life within the confines of post-classical synoecisms. Emphasis is placed on the religious interface of eastern coastal Thessaly, as it was configured after the local communities came together to form a new royal foundation, Demetrias, in 293.

Praise, unlike blame, is generally considered well intended and beneficial, and therefore in less need of scrutiny. In line with recent developments, we argue that praise merits more thorough philosophical analysis. We show that, just like blame, praise can be problematic by expressing a failure to respect a person’s equal value or worth as a person. Such patronizing praise, however, is often more insidious, because praise tends to be regarded as well intended and beneficial, which renders it harder to recognize (...) and object to. Among other things, a philosophical analysis of patronizing praise helps people on the receiving end articulate why they feel uncomfortable or offended by it, shows patronizing praisers how their praise is problematic, and provides input for further philosophical analysis of blame.In the first section of the paper, we discuss how hypocritical praise, just like hypocritical blame, can fail to respect the equality of persons by expressing that the praiser applies more demanding moral standards to the praisee than to themself. We further discuss obstructionist praise, which loosely corresponds to complicit blame, and can similarly express that certain moral standards apply to others but not to the praiser. In the second part of the paper, we discuss another variety of patronizing praise. Praise can be an inaccurate appraisal of a person based on irrelevant considerations – like race, gender, or class – and thereby constitute a failure to recognize their equal worth as a person. We identify three ways in which such praise can manifest. (shrink)

Feasting on a plethora of social media platforms, news aggregators, and online marketplaces, recommender systems (RSs) are spreading pervasively throughout our daily online activities. Over the years, a host of ethical issues have been associated with the diffusion of RSs and the tracking and monitoring of users’ data. Here, we focus on the impact RSs may have on personal autonomy as the most elusive among the often-cited sources of grievance and public outcry. On the grounds of a philosophically nuanced notion (...) of autonomy, we illustrate three specific reasons why RSs may limit or compromise it: the threat of manipulation and deception associated with RSs; the RSs’ power to reshape users’ personal identity; the impact of RSs on knowledge and critical thinking. In our view, however, notwithstanding these legitimate concerns, RSs may effectively help users to navigate an otherwise overwhelming landscape. Our perspective, therefore, is not to be intended as a bulwark to protect the _status quo_ but as an invitation to carefully weigh these aspects in the design of ethically oriented RSs. (shrink)

Questions of social justice and health-care costs are some of the concerns of society. The cost caused by cardiovascular diseases can have an enormous impact, and it is important to know what patients think about illness costs when they are hospitalized. Two interviews were realized in a longitudinal study, in a sample of 106 patients submitted to expensive techniques in Cardiology (Portugal), to understand the patients’ perception about the health costs and behavior changes based on awareness. We can conclude that (...) cardiovascular diseases are a global phenomenon that generally affects all social groups. From those interviewed, 83% of the patients agree about getting information concerning the treatments and intervention costs during hospitalization because the information about costs can bring the necessary tools for improvement in patients and health resources; 70.8% of the patients say that this information could bring awareness to the patient’s life, enhancing responsibility and personal autonomy. (shrink)

What is the connection between modern democratic thought and globalization? This article examines the rationale behind the present crisis of democracy. It demonstrates that the problem facing modern democratic thought has less to do with the asymmetries associated with the forces of globalization and more to do with an asymmetry within popular sovereignty itself: the fact that the boundaries of democracy cannot themselves be democratically legitimated. By making this argument the article seeks to move beyond the contemporary opposition between nationalism (...) and cosmopolitanism. It shows that the appeal to globalization among contemporary political theorists to a large extent is analogous to the appeal to the nation during the French Revolution. (shrink)

This paper goes beyond critiques of western philosophical notions of space as passive, feminine, and unintelligent by reconfiguring containment as an active process. The author draws on work in the history of technology, on a cybernetic epistemology that emphasizes the interdependence of organism and environment, and on intersubjectivist psychoanalytic theories of the maternal provision. A more unexpected ally is found in Heidegger, whose writings on holding and supply are read in ways that contribute to the development of an urgently required (...) philosophy of container technologies. (shrink)

Callender and Cohen argue that there is no need for a special account of the constitution of scientific representation. I argue that scientific representation is communal and therefore deeply tied to the practice in which it is embedded. The communal nature is accounted for by licensing, the activities of scientific practice by which scientists establish a representation. A case study of the Lotka-Volterra model reveals how licensure is a constitutive element of the representational relationship. Thus, any account of the constitution (...) of scientific representation must account for licensing, meaning that there is a special problem of scientific representation. (shrink)

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries worldwide have put lockdowns in place to prevent the virus from spreading. Evidence shows that lockdown measures can affect mental health; it is, therefore, important to identify the psychological characteristics making individuals more vulnerable. The present study aimed, first, to identify, through a cluster analysis, the psychological attributes that characterize individuals with similar psychological responses to the COVID-19 home confinement; second, to investigate whether different psychological characteristics, such as personality traits, alexithymia, and resilience, specifically (...) influence anxiety, stress, and depression, depending on the scope of the confinement. We analyzed data from 393 participants who completed an online survey on their experiences during two different phases of the Italian lockdown, characterized by more or less strict measures of confinement. Two clusters were identified which included participants reporting a better and worse emotional response to the lockdown, respectively. Individuals in the −ER group showed lower emotional stability, resilience, and higher alexithymia. Moreover, even if lifting part of the restrictions decreased psychological distress among all participants, a reduction in perceived stress was observed only among individuals with high resilience. Finally, personality traits, alexithymia, and resilience differently affected depression, anxiety, and stress. Our results suggest that different psychological interventions should be planned depending on the context: mental health professionals should focus on enhancing the individuals’ coping strategies to alleviate stress in emergencies, while long-term intervention aiming at alleviating anxiety and depressive symptoms should focus on alexithymic tendencies and personality constructs. (shrink)

Ante el panorama político doctrinario del siglo XIX caracterizado por dos filosofías opuestas y predominantes, como eran el liberalismo y el socialismo, en el presente artículo se sistematiza, por medio de una reconstrucción histórica y filosófica, la evolución del movimiento político de la Democracia Cristiana en Europa, en particular en Francia y Alemania, a través de las obras y acciones políticas de sus pioneros. Esta corriente ideológica se presenta como una �vía intermedia o alternativa� para un proyecto político fundado sobre (...) una visión cristiana de la vida y del hombre, equidistante de las posiciones del liberalismo y del socialismo radicales. (shrink)

Wouter Kusters argues that madness has much to offer philosophy, as does philosophy to madness. In this paper, i support both claims by drawing on a mad phenomenon which I label Radical Psychotic Doubt, or RPD. First, although skepticism is a minority position in epistemology, it has been claimed that anti-skeptical arguments remain unsatisfying. I argue that this complaint can be clarified and strengthened by showing that anti-skeptical arguments are irrelevant to RPD sufferers. Second, there's a debate about whether so-called (...) hinge commitments are beliefs or not. I argue that RPD can be used to strengthen the case that they are. Moreover, if hinges are beliefs, some madpeople are more epistemically rational than some sane philosophers. Third, drawing on my own mad experiences, I challenge evidentialism by presenting a better candidate for a truly forced cchoice about what to believe than William James' traditional religious example. I further show that in certain psychiatric contexts, evidentialism has more radical implications than Jamesian pragmatism, which comes out as more conservative. Finally, I discuss how philosophical theories like pragmatism and Pyrrhonism can provide inspiration for new and much-needed coping strategies for RPD sufferers. (shrink)

This book brings together analytically inspired philosophers working on the continent with English-speaking philosophers to address specific issues regarding subjectivity and consciousness.

A short autobiographical piece on madness and philosophy that I wrote for the Schizophrenia Bulletin's First Person Account section.

Nos proponemos estudiar las objeciones de Cavendish hacia la filosofía experimental desde una perspectiva no dicotómica para mostrar que, lejos de establecer un enfrentamiento entre la filosofía contemplativa y la experimental, la razón y la sensación, o la naturaleza y el arte, la autora plantea una cooperación organizada entre estos aspectos. La postura de Cavendish puede comprenderse adecuadamente si se tiene en cuenta que su epistemología se arraiga en su metafísica, en la que los grados de la materia y los (...) distintos seres vivos que conforman el universo ocupan un lugar determinado y cumplen cierta función conformando una totalidad orgánica y armónica. (shrink)

The international media recently reported the case of Eluana Englaro, a 38-year-old woman in a permanent vegetative state who died in February 2009 following withdrawal of her feeding tube. At the time of her death, she had been unconscious for 17 years. For many years, her father had been seeking permission to allow her to die. His request was rejected by the courts several times on different grounds, until the Italian Supreme Court finally granted it. The case caused considerable political (...) turmoil. The government, the president, the Constitutional Court, and the European Court of Human Rights got involved. This paper gives an account of the history of the case, enriched by personal communications with the people directly involved and a memoir by the father of Eluana. (shrink)

Proof requires a dialogue between agents to clarify obscure inference steps, fill gaps, or reveal implicit assumptions in a purported proof. Hence, argumentation is an integral component of the discovery process for mathematical proofs. This work presents how argumentation theories can be applied to describe specific informal features in the development of proof-events. The concept of proof-event was coined by Goguen who described mathematical proof as a public social event that takes place in space and time. This new meta-methodological concept (...) is designed to cover not only “traditional” formal proofs but all kinds of proofs and inference steps, including incomplete or purported proofs. Our approach attempts to make proof-events more comprehensive to express the complete trajectory of a mathematical proof-event until the ultimate validation of the proving outcome. Thus, we advance an extended version of proof-event calculus which is built on argumentation theories designed to capture the internal and external structure of collaborative mathematical practice and highlight the relationship between proof, human reasoning, and cognitive processes. In addition, another area in which argumentation can make a significant contribution is dealing with the defeasible knowledge of the Web which is a product of its open and ubiquitous nature. This approach seems to be sufficient for the presentation of Web-based proving processes as manifested in the case of the Mini-Polymath 4 project. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to determine the psychological meaning of coauthorship for a group of scientists, based on the assumption that the meaning of a concept is related to experience on “how a person behaves in a situation, depending on what the situation signifies to him”. The semantic meaning provides for an interpretation of action in beliefs, goals and intentions, following the idea that semantic meaning is a basis for inferring intentions to perform action. We used the Natural (...) Semantic Networks Method. We interviewed 162 scientists in the physical and natural sciences. Results show a cluster of the semantic meaning of coauthorship in which collaboration, teamwork, work, common interest, discussion and others, are retrieved from memory and represented as a natural semantic network of the concept of coauthorship. Collaboration and teamwork are the two concepts that have the highest semantic value and this holds true for various disciplines although teamwork is the most elicited word associated to coauthorship. We propose a model in which coauthorship represents the result of the experience, attitudes and behavior of a group process concerning collaboration and teamwork in science. (shrink)

Robots are increasingly being studied for use in education. It is expected that robots will have the potential to facilitate children’s learning and function autonomously within real classrooms in the near future. Previous research has raised the importance of designing acceptable robots for different practices. In parallel, scholars have raised ethical concerns surrounding children interacting with robots. Drawing on a Responsible Research and Innovation perspective, our goal is to move away from research concerned with designing features that will render robots (...) more socially acceptable by end users toward a reflective dialogue whose goal is to consider the key ethical issues and long-term consequences of implementing classroom robots for teachers and children in primary education. This paper presents the results from several focus groups conducted with teachers in three European countries. Through a thematic analysis, we provide a theoretical account of teachers’ perspectives on classroom robots pertaining to privacy, robot role, effects on children and responsibility. Implications for the field of educational robotics are discussed. (shrink)

Als ich vor zehn Jahren die Hand des Kopisten des Geschichtswerkes von Dukas in einigen Handschriften identifizierte, hatte ich mehr dazu tendiert, daß der Kopist in der 2. Hälfte des 15. Jh. in Norditalien lebte, wohin er eventuell aus dem Osten gekommen war. Eine spätere, zufällige Entdeckung im Kodex Laurentianus plut. 10.8 hat mich dazu veranlaßt, alle Gegebenheiten bezüglich der Persönlichkeit des Schreibers nochmals zu untersuchen.

Dominant development discourse and policy are based on crucial misconceptions about peasants and their livelihoods. Peasants are viewed as inherently poor and hungry and their farming systems are considered inefficient, of low productivity, and sometimes even environmentally degrading. Consequently, dominant development policies have tried to transform peasants into something else: industrialised commercial farmers, wage labourers, urban workers, etc. This article seeks to deconstruct three key misconceptions about peasants by explaining how and why marginalised peasants around the world face poverty and (...) hunger. An explanation of the process of marginalisation of peasants through the influence of five “mediating factors” is put forward. It is contended that by addressing the mediating factors through policies devised with the active participation of peasants, the marginalisation of peasants would be reduced or eliminated. This would allow peasants to forge an adequate livelihood in rural areas based on their independent farming, and thereby contribute to the achievement of food sovereignty. (shrink)