La peinture de Caravage occupe une position stratégique entre l'art religieux du XVIe siècle, dont le naturalisme, ainsi chez Carracci, est imprégné de présence divine, et le réalisme sécularisé qui triomphera au XIXe siècle. Aussi a-t-elle été l'objet d'incessants conflits d'interprétation, commencés déjà de son temps. Elle ne paraissait pas d'accord, en effet, avec les consignes d'orthodoxie données aux artistes par les théologiens de la Contre-Réforme, et clairement rappelées à Caravage dans le contrat qui lui avait été fixé en 1565 (...) pour représenter les scènes de la vie de S. Matthieu dans l'église S. Louis des Français à Rome. Il interpréta ce contrat selon des critères tout nouveaux et personnels. La composition de l'espace et de la lumière, la disposition des personnages et des clairs-obscurs sont significatives de la vision moderne du monde et de l'homme qui commence à se mettre en place à cette époque. Le rayon de lumière qui traverse une scène sans noblesse plongée dans l'obscurité immobilise un instant de vérité et de choix, l'événement de la rencontre de Jésus et de Matthieu, l'instant d'une communication de parole entre Dieu et l'homme, l'heure où chacun est appelé à décider du sens de son existence personnelle, sans autre intervention divine, dans la banalité de sa vie quotidienne. Ce monde n'est pas vide de Dieu, mais Dieu ne fait qu'y passer ; il se retire, pour laisser le monde à son autonomie, et l'homme à la conscience de sa liberté.Caravaggio's painting holds a strategic position between the religions art of the sixteenth century, the naturalism of which is pervaded by divine presence – e.g. in Carracci's art –, and the secularized realism which is to flourish in the nineteenth century. It has therefore been the subject of unceasing controversies in its interpretation, beginning in Caravaggio’s times already. Indeed, Caravaggio’s painting did not seem in line with the instructions given to the artists by Counter-Reformation’s theologians, urging them to follow the Orthodox line. Caravaggio had been clearly reminded of those instructions in the contract he had signed in 1565 to portray the scenes of Saint Matthew’s life in Saint Louis des Français’Church in Roma. He interpretated this contract according to very innovative and personal criteria. The composition of space and light, the layout of characters and chiaroscuros are revealing of the modern vision of the world and of the man that was emerging in those times. The light ray that crosses a scene devoid of nobleness and plunged into darkness, immobilises a moment of truth and choice : the event of Jesus meeting Matthew, the instant of an oral communication between God and man, the time when everyone is called to decide his of her personal existence in the triviality of his or her daily life, without God intervening in the process. This world is not void of God’s presence, but God only passes through it. He withdraws to let the world face its autonomy, and man face the awareness of his freedom. (shrink)

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of a (...) social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response-dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds. (shrink)

The article outlines some aspects of the civil law in Lithuania, an Eastern European country, which underwent an essential transformation in the last decades. The author outlines the development of the Lithuanian civil law from the oldest written sources up to the adoption of the new Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania in 2000. The author is critical about the denomination of Lithuania as a “new” state and draws attention to the history of Lithuanian law, which spans hundreds of (...) years. The article emphasizes the continuity of the legal tradition and the heterogeneity of law – the coexisting of several legal systems in the territory of one state. The article discusses the role of Roman Law in the legal system of Lithuania. Even though Roman Law has never been applied in Lithuania, the author argues that it nevertheless had an indirect influence on Lithuanian private law. Roman Law and Canonical Law were among the main sources while drafting the three codified acts, the Statutes of Lithuania, in 1529, 1566 and 1588. The knowledge of Roman Law acquired by lawyers at universities in other European countries was transmitted through drafting of the laws and the jurisdictional and administrative practices. (shrink)

The subject of this chapter is to what extent a feminist should embrace naturalist commitments. I characterize naturalism as involving two commitments: a rejection of normativity and a commitment to philosophy as a descriptive discipline consisting of empirical questions to be answered by empirical methods. I argue that a feminist should not be a naturalist about normativity, because feminists need to engage in an inherently normative enquiry. On the other hand, a naturalist move, wherein one offers a causal explanation to (...) undercut a normative claim, is an essential part of a good ideology critique, which is a feminist staple. As feminists believe that our lived experiences and social and material conditions are relevant to our theorizing, empirical questions should play an integral role in normative enquiry, but since philosophy is not exhausted by such empirical enquiry, philosophy isn't an empirical science. (shrink)

Supervision is widely acknowledged as influencing the quality of postgraduate theses, and thus, by implication, of postgraduates. Despite this, the literature on conducting research offers little guidance in respect of managing the supervision relationship. This paper opens a window onto the relationship - and particularly the power relationship - between a particular supervisor of postgraduate research, Howard, and his Master's student, Ray. It draws on research that explores how contemporary influences in the university domain intersect with individual agency and with (...) power relations to produce knowledge on two levels: the thesis as an extrinsic product of processes of education, and the person as an intrinsic product of processes of learning.Selections of Michel Foucault's insights are used to explore the notion of power and how it operates through rules of discourse to construct knowledge and identity. Accordingly, the research describes and tracks the functioning of two discourses pivotal to Howard and Ray's experience of supervision: anarchic educational leadership discourse, and humanistic discourse. The research on which the paper is based is constructivist, and as such it is underpinned by the assumption, or rather belief, that the discursive construction of reality is mediated by individual agency. In order to analyse how power operates between individuals, and between them and their broader educational contexts, a conceptual tool capable of accommodating manifest strategic processes - identified along a positional continuum as ‘push',' allow' and ‘pull' - was devised.The case study yields several thematic correlations in interpersonal and institutional power. These are: the significance of supervisor-student matching; links between expectations, abilities, the way participants negotiate power, and the quality of professional and pastoral care they experience; the impact of personal affinity on supervision; and the influence of ontology on thesis-as-product and person-as-product. (shrink)

After the London bombings in July 2005, the concern of terrorism scholars and policy makers has turned to “home-grown” terrorism and potential for political violence from within the states. “Radicalization” became a new buzz word. This article follows a number of reviews of the literature on radicalization and offers another angle for looking at this research. First, it discusses the term “radicalization” and suggests the use of the following definition of radicalization as a process by which a person adopts belief (...) systems which justify the use of violence to effect social change and comes to actively support as well as employ violent means for political purposes. Next, it proposes to see the theories of radicalization focusing on the individual and the two dimensions of his/her motivation: whether that motivation is internal or external and whether it is due to personal choice or either internal or external compulsion. Though not all theories fall neatly within these categories, they make it possible to make comparisons of contributions from a variety of different areas thus reflecting on the interdisciplinary nature of the study of terrorism in general and radicalization as a part of it. (shrink)

This is a response to the critical comments by Åsa Burman, Esa Díaz-León, Aaron Griffith, and Katharine Jenkins.

Realist essentialists face a prima facie challenge in accounting for our knowledge of the essences of things, and in particular, in justifying our engaging in thought experiments to gain such knowledge. In contrast, conferralist essentialism has an attractive story to tell about how we gain knowledge of the essences of things, and how thought experiments are a justified method for gaining such knowledge. The conferralist story is told in this essay.

Two kindred glossaries, Affatim and the Second Amplonian, have been shown to derive their materials mainly from the Abstrusa and Abolita glossaries, but partly also from Virgil marginalia. This Virgil thread is most clearly seen in the I-section of Affatim. The Affatim compiler tells us that the exemplar had lost four leaves at this point: ‘Here the exemplar lacks four leaves in the H–I portion’ . We find the following unmistakable Virgil batches:Affatim 525, 41 sqq. Infandum: inenarrandum, nee loquendum ; (...) Inpar: inaequalis uiribus ; Iamdudum: iam pridem, iam olim ; In arce: in excelso ; Infabricata: inperfecta ; Iam uertitur: iam transit ; : iam ualidum minus, minus fortem ; Imago: uultus ; In iaculis: in armis, in telis. (shrink)

The purpose of professional education programs is to prepare aspiring professionals for the challenges of practice within a particular profession. These programs typically seek to ensure the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills, as well as providing opportunities for their application. While not denying the importance of knowledge and skills, this paper reconfigures professional education as a process of becoming. Learning to become a professional involves not only what we know and can do, but also who we are (becoming). It (...) involves integration of knowing, acting, and being in the form of professional ways of being that unfold over time. When a professional education program focuses on the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills, it falls short of facilitating their integration into professional ways of being. In addition, through such a focus on epistemology (or theory of knowing), ontology (or theory of being) is overlooked. This paper explores what it means to develop professional ways of being where the focus is becoming, not simply knowing as an end in itself. (shrink)

The article deals with the issue of initial impossibility of performance of an obligation and the influence of such impossibility of performance on the validity of the legal transaction that establishes such an obligation. The legal doctrine convincingly demonstrates that for Roman lawyers the rule Impossitionbilium nulla obligatio est merely meant that nobody can be obliged to perform something that cannot be performed; however, it did not necessarily follow that a contract establishing such an obligation was void. Modern civil codifications (...) overlook another significant feature of the Roman law – the uncontested application of the principle Impossibilium nulla obligatio est only in case of stipulatio, whereas modern contract law has its origins in the Roman law of consensual contracts. (shrink)

Resumo: Neste artigo, argumento que a neuroética possui uma base cientificista equivocada dificultando a compreensão da ética necessária para a neurociência e suas aplicações tecnológicas. Por isso, defendo que a neuroética deve ser transformada em neurobioética para tratar problemas morais a partir de princípios tais como o respeito pela pessoa, justiça social etc. Para ilustrar, discuto alguns temas específicos daquilo que chamo ‘neurobioética.’ Abstract: In this paper I argue that neuroethics has a problem in its scientificist assumptions making difficult to (...) understand the ethics needed for the neurosciences e their technological applications. I maintain that neuroethics must be transformed into neurobioethics in order to better discuss moral problems in this domain using principles such as respect for persons, social justice etc. To illustrate, I examine some specific issues in the domain of ‘neurobioethics.’. (shrink)

The present study investigates how laughter features in the everyday lives of 3-5-year old children in Swedish preschools. It examines and discusses typical laughter patterns and their functions with a particular focus on children’s and intergenerational (child-adult/educator) laughter in early education context. The research questions concern: who laughs with whom; how do adults respond to children’s laughter, and what characterizes the social situations in which laughter is used and reciprocated. Theoretically, the study answers the call for sociocultural approaches that contextualize (...) children’s everyday social interaction, e.g., in different institutions or homes, to study the diverse conditions society forms for learning, sociality and socialization and development of shared norms. Methodologically, the study makes use of mixed methods: it uses descriptive statistics that identify prevalent patterns in laughter practices and, on the basis of these results, examines social-interactional situations of children’s laughter in detail. It was found that children’s laughter tended to be directed to children and adults’ laughter tended to be directed to adults. 87% of children’s laughter was directed to other children, and adults directed their laughter to other adults 2,7 times as often as to children. The qualitative interaction analysis shows that children and adults exhibited different patterns of laughter. Children primarily sought and received affiliation through laughter in the peer group, and the adults were often focused on the institutional and educational goals of the preschool. Overall, the study shows that intergenerational reciprocal laughter was a rare occurrence and suggests that laughter between generations is interesting in that it can be seen as indicative of how children and adults handle alterity in their everyday life. By deploying multiple methods, the present study points to the importance of viewing emotion and norm sharedness in social interaction not just as a matter of communicating an emotion from one person to another, but as an intricate process of inviting the others into or negotiating the common emotional and experiential ground. (shrink)

La politique d'accessibilité par le numérique a ouvert aux personnes sourdes un service national d'écoute et de secours, par fax et SMS depuis 2011, par e-mail, texte en temps réel (TTR) et vidéo depuis 2019. Cet article analyse comment les spécificités des interactions textuelles, numériques, et du « français sourd » sont prises en compte dans les appels d'urgence par SMS, et quelles « prises », ou indices, sont mobilisés par les agents pour percevoir le niveau de détresse ou la (...) gravité d'une urgence. Dans ce contexte et au regard de ces enjeux, comment se jouent le dévoilement de l'identité et de la situation singulière de ces requérants? L'analyse de ces pratiques de communication, a fortiori de ces pratiques professionnelles, révèle la prise en compte incontournable des compétences linguistiques, langagières et interactionnelles en jeu. (shrink)

: I argue that a response‐dependence account of a concept can yield metaphysical results, and not merely epistemological or semantical results, which has been a prevalent view in the literature on response‐dependence. In particular, I show how one can argue for a conferralist account of a certain property by arguing that the concept of the property is response‐dependent, if certain assumptions are made.

The present study examines 1- to 5-year-old children’s emotion socialization in an early childhood educational setting (a preschool) in Sweden. Specifically, it examines social situations where teachers respond to children’s negative emotional expressions and negatively emotionally charged social acts, characterized by anger, irritation and distress. Data consist of 14 hours of video observations of daily activities, recorded in a public Swedish preschool, located in a suburban middle-class area and include 35 children and five preschool teachers. By adopting a sociocultural perspective (...) on children’s development and socialization, the study examines the communicative practices through which the expressions of negative emotions are responded to and the norms and values that are communicated through these practices. The data are analysed by using multimodal analysis of interaction that provides a tool for detailed analysis of participants’ verbal and embodied actions and sense-making. The analyses show that teachers responded to children’s negatively charged emotional expressions as social acts (that were normatively evaluated) and the adults instructed children how to modify their social conduct (rather than deploying explicit discussions about emotions). The teachers used communicative genres that prioritized general moral principles and implemented the non-negotiability of norms over individual children’s emotional-volitional perspectives and individual preferences. The teachers’ instructive socializing activities were characterized by movement between multiple temporal horizons, i.e., general (emotional) discourse that transcended the here-and-now, and specific instructions targeting the children’s conduct in a current situation. The study discusses how emotion socialization can be related to the institutional characteristics and collective participatory social conditions of early childhood education. (shrink)

In this chapter I offer an interpretation of Judith Butler’s metaphysics of sex and gender and situate it in the ontological landscape alongside what has long been the received view of sex and gender in the English speaking world, which owes its inspiration to the works of Simone de Beauvoir. I then offer a critique of Butler’s view, as interpreted, and subsequently an original account of sex and gender, according to which both are constructed—or conferred, as I would put it— (...) albeit in different ways and subject to different constraints. (shrink)

The article deals with a specific type of contract that an heir is entitled to conclude—the transfer (or sale) of the rights of succession. As a starting point, the author of the article analyses the formation and further development of the transfer of succession as a whole (hereditas) in the Roman law. Two major proceedings used by Roman lawyers for the purposes of the alienation of hereditas are analysed, one being in iure cessio hereditatis and the second taking the form (...) of emptio venditi hereditatis. The interrelations between this kind of transfer and the recognition of the possibility of the assignment of rights (cessio) under the Roman law are pointed out. The author traces the impact of the principles developed by the Roman law on the legal regulation of the contract in question in modern codification by drawing attention to the French Civil Code and the Civil Code of Quebec. The author states that the legal rules on the sale of the rights of succession contained in the new Lithuanian Civil Code adopted in 2000 have been transposed, to a large extent, from the two abovementioned codes. After analysing the object of this contract, the author concludes that it is the sale of a certain incorporeal property (res incorporales) that is meant by the terms ‘succession’ (hereditas) or the ‘rights of succession’. This feature distinguishes the analysed contract from the ordinary contracts that an heir may conclude for the purposes of the alienation of specific objects making part of the succession. (shrink)

Conferralism about race is a version of social constructivism about race, where the agents of construction seem to be individual agents. However, an important aspect of racism is systemic or structural, and seemingly not about the behavior of individual agents. Can conferralism account for that? In this paper, I begin to address that question by focusing on recent criticism of conferralism by Linda Martín Alcoff and Aaron Griffith.

What is social construction? This essay offers a survey of the various ways in which something could be socially constructed and then addresses briefly the questions whether social constructionism involves an untenable anti-realism and what, if anything, unifies all social construction claims.

In this article I introduce a certain kind of anti-realist account of what makes a property essential to an object and defend it against likely objections. This account, which I call a ‘conferralist’ account, shares some of the attractive features of other anti-realist accounts, such as conventionalism and expressivism, but I believe, not their respective drawbacks.

Many studies have highlighted a substantial "bureaucracy domination" in procedures relating to migrants’ access to territory. This form of domination is marked by highly discretionary and arbitrary practices, enacted by the administrative authorities of the state. Only minor attention, however, has been devoted to the arbitrariness of judicial decisions and to the judicial role in general in the numerous proceedings that increasingly affect the path of migrants. This path is the main object of this paper. The study focuses on Italian (...) case law in expulsion and detention proceedings of irregular third country national citizens and asylum seekers and presents qualitative empirical research on decisions issued by the competent national authorities. The results have been analysed using a selection of theoretical tools, all referable to the general concept of the rule of law. The judicial decisions on pre-removal detention proceedings in two case studies are examined: the jurisprudence on detention of irregular migrants, in different offices of the Justice of the Peace in Italy; and the case law on detention of asylum seekers in the Ordinary Tribunal of Rome. The assumption underlying the research is that various conceptions of the rule of law may have different explanatory power when it comes to explaining the empirical results. To verify this hypothesis, the study proposes an overview of the main rule of law doctrines in the Western tradition of political and legal thought and applies the method of historical-conceptual analysis. As a result, the explanatory power of six theoretical models of the rule of law was verified against the data with the view to highlight the virtues and vices of the respective explanatory frameworks. This article reaches a two-fold conclusion. First, as far as the explanatory frameworks are concerned: the results of the two case studies cannot be fully explained by any of the models considered in this study. This fact alone casts doubts on the explanatory power of these theories and calls for further research on judicial decision-making more generally. Secondly, a key finding of the study regarding the notions of discretion and arbitrariness is that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that is most easily influenced by arbitrariness. The author argues that this paradox can be easily dissolved by paying attention to the plural dimensions of arbitrariness. If we consider arbitrariness from a legal point of view, i.e. as an illegal decision, it is unsurprising that the authority that most uses its discretionary powers is also the one most at risk of abusing these discretionary powers and hence of exercising arbitrary power. However, if we consider arbitrariness from the point of view of philosophical-political theory, i.e. as a form of domination characterised by the absence of sufficient justification, it is unsurprising that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that takes its own role as guarantor of these rights and of the constitutional democratic legal order as such most seriously. This judicial approach thus most often risks exercising its power in criticisable ways, as compared to an authority much more in line with the requirements of law enforcement agencies. Keywords: migration, discretion, justice, arbitrariness, civil rights, Rechtsstaat, expulsion, mixed constitution. (shrink)

We are living in times where there is considerable debate over what sex and gender are and who gets to be of what sex and what gender. These are questions that impact people’s lives greatly, some more than others. They are metaphysical questions, but they also concern what principles we should be guided by when allocating resources, services, and protections to people with potentially different needs. There are also methodological questions in the vicinity. In this essay, I draw on my (...) work in Categories We Live By (2018) to suggest a certain approach to navigating some of these thorny issues. I call this approach “ontic descent”. (shrink)

This paper tries to rethink the notion of human rights and to evaluate whether we should redefine them in light of the main challenges presented by advances in technoscience (genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology etc.). It claims that there are basic, intrinsic rights to personhood, which, on the one hand, allow us to justify a moral claim to a posthuman existence (should it become possible) and to attribute rights to artificial agents, while, on the other hand, granting the moral entitlement to (...) remain human. This shows that the notion of human rights is far from becoming obsolete, as claimed by some scholars. The paper is divided into five parts. It (1) presents reasons for rethinking the notion of “a right” in order to apply it to beings other than humans (e.g., nonhuman animals, robots etc.); (2) discusses the metaethical problem concerning the meaning of “a right”; (3) presents a basic system of rights that are intrinsic to personhood and that can be attributed to different kinds of agents (human or not); (4) analyzes whether there is a right to a posthuman existence or a right to remain human; and finally, (5) presents some reasons to justify such a system of rights. (shrink)

Several groups of large DNA viruses successfully utilise the rich resource provided by insect hosts. Defining the mechanisms that enable these pathogens to optimise their relationships with their hosts is of considerable scientific and practical importance, but our understanding of the processes involved is, as yet, rudimentary. Here we describe an informatics-based approach that uses comparison of viral genomic sequences to identify candidate genes likely to be specifically involved in this process. We hypothesise that such genes should satisfy two essential (...) criteria, namely, that they should be (i) present in those members of a virus family that infect insects, but absent from those that infect other hosts, and (ii) found in at least two unrelated taxa of insect viruses. These criteria currently identify six groups of viral genes, including one that encodes the fusolin/gp37 proteins. Demonstration that the fusolin/gp37 proteins can enhance oral infectivity of insect viruses provides a primary validation of this approach to the examination of insectvirus relationships. BioEssays 23:184–193, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This paper explores the interconnections between philosophical wisdom and bioethical expertise, arguing that the latter can be enlightened by the former. First, it analyses the arguments of those who think that philosophy has nothing to say to bioethics, and afterwards, it shows that philosophical wisdom has an irreducible ethical component, which in turn helps bioethics to reach its aims. Thus, this paper shows that some Wittgensteinian commentators (e.g., Paul Johnston) did not grasp the contributions the author of the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (...) and even his later work made to ethics (and potentially to bioethics as a subfield) as an autonomous domain of investigation independent of logic, the empirical sciences, and metaphysics. (shrink)

This article offers a philosophical-empirical account of embodied skilful performance in the practice of plant biotechnology. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and others, we elaborate how skilful performance emerges from and through reciprocal relations encompassing the body-in-the-world and the world-in-the-body. The contribution of this article lies in offering an account of skilful performance that is attentive to a perceiving, motile, feeling body entwined with world. In genetically modifying plants, scientists direct their senses of touch and vision to manipulating plant (...) materials and matter, ‘reading’ subtle changes in tissue cultures, plantlets and so on. In rhythmic movements, they extend their bodies through skilful use of complex equipment, while calling on ‘intuition’ to guide their work. Skilful performance, then, relies on our lived body that is not merely a physical object among other objects, nor a passive instrument for the mind, but dynamic and inescapably entwined with people and things in a world in flux. Bringing to the fore how perceiving, motile, feeling bodies are implicated in skilful performance has significant implications for education and workplace training. (shrink)

In a legal sense, a proprietary complex is comprehended as a totality of the objects of civil rights having common purpose which is referred to as a self-sufficient object having separate monetary value. In contemporary doctrine of private law, wherein the pluralistic theory of civil relationship is prevalent, the object of the civil relationship as well as the object of civil rights is considered the values regarding which of the civil relationship emerged. Proprietary complexes as the multipartite objects of civil (...) rights are comprised of various units of asset. In a legal sense, assets are considered as the objects of civil rights having economic value and capacity to participate in civil turnover, i.e. the owner is able to transfer such object to another person. While forming proprietary complexes, different units of assets (tangible and intangible) are united into a totality which is considered as one object of civil rights. So, if the positive law constitutes a possibility to form proprietary complexes and to participate in civil turnover, it becomes possible to capitalize assets, whereas proprietary complexes are formed in order to gain additional monetary value. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyse the formation of proprietary complexes, the genesis and theoretical grounding of proprietary complexes and different kinds of proprietary complexes. The subject matter of the research is the analysis of the concept of proprietary complex, the identification of the features of proprietary complexes and the analysis of particular proprietary complexes. The main methods used in this research are document (content of source), linguistic, systematic and critical analyses as well as historical, comparative and teleological analyses. (shrink)

The purpose of professional education programs is to prepare aspiring professionals for the challenges of practice within a particular profession. These programs typically seek to ensure the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills, as well as providing opportunities for their application. While not denying the importance of knowledge and skills, this paper reconfigures professional education as a process of becoming. Learning to become a professional involves not only what we know and can do, but also who we are. It involves (...) integration of knowing, acting, and being in the form of professional ways of being that unfold over time. When a professional education program focuses on the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills, it falls short of facilitating their integration into professional ways of being. In addition, through such a focus on epistemology, ontology is overlooked. This paper explores what it means to develop professional ways of being where the focus is becoming, not simply knowing as an end in itself. (shrink)

The Civil Code of Lithuania (1964), in force until 2000, did not regulate the objects of civil rights, thus Chapter V of Part III of Book I of the Civil Code of Lithuania is a significant novelty. Several approaches to an abstract definition of the objects of civil rights still exists in the legal doctrine: whether the object of civil rights and the object of the civil relationship coincide; is the object of civil rights an element of the civil relationship (...) and can separate objects (e.g. actions) be considered as the objects of civil rights. Some authors consider such discussion useless to the practical implementation of the law, however, other authors emphasise that the lack of attention of the theory to this subject causes methodological problems while analysing the functional and systemic links among different types of civil relationships. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyse the link between the concepts of the object of civil rights and the object of civil relationship, the link between the objects of civil rights and property objects and the types of objects of civil rights in order to reveal the system of objects of civil rights. The subject-matter of the research is the analysis of legal regulation and legal doctrine of the objects of civil rights and their types and their interrelation with the property objects in order to identify the abstract definition of the object of civil rights and examine the system of objects of civil rights. (shrink)

The article attempts to present a thorough analysis of intelectual property, as main property of a modern company, from the perspective of private law. The article anlyzes the essence of the intangible resources that form the intellectual capital and discusses whether the modern institutes of law allow the universal protection of companies‘ intellectual capital. The first part of the article analizes the conception of intangible resources and provides their qlassification. The second part of the article discusses the understanding of intellectual (...) capital and importance thereof to modern companies. In the third part of the article, the possibility to financially account all intellectual property of a company is analyzed. The forth and fifth parts of the article reveal the possibilities of legal protection of intellectual capital. The law on intelectual property is not sufficient to protect all intelectual capital because it protects only that part of intangibles, which become the onjects of the intelectual property. (shrink)

Participant rights and voices are protected through institutional ethical considerations in the social sciences and applied linguistics. Yet, several ethical concerns remain. In addition to adhering to institutional macroethics, researchers should develop microethics to address contextual issues within their research. The need for the development of microethics is particularly important in the qualitative research process where researchers engage in studies with participants rather than treating them merely as data sources. Drawing on key concepts in philosophical hermeneutics, the current study discusses (...) an ethical framework for data collection and analysis that embraces participants’ rights and voices through reflexive questioning, reciprocal dialogues, unbiased listening, and rightful analysis of participants’ data with and from two multilingual families in Norway. Participatory diagramming was employed in a collaborative participatory approach to present the collected data and initial data analysis to the participants, allowing them to review and validate the data analysis conducted by the researchers. Using thematic analysis to analyze participants’ experiences and reflections, our findings indicate that the ethical framework of interview and analysis enhanced researchers’ understanding, empowered participants in the research process, facilitated member-checking, created beneficial collaboration opportunities for the participants, and facilitated reaffirmation of informed consent. (shrink)

Development of methods to reawaken the semi‐dormant regenerative potential that lies within adult human tissues would hold promise for the restoration of diseased or damaged organs and tissues. While most of the regeneration potential is suppressed in many vertebrates, including humans, during adult life, urodele amphibians (salamanders) retain their regenerative ability throughout adulthood. Studies in newts and axolotls, two salamander models, have provided significant knowledge about adult limb regeneration. In this review, we present a comparative analysis of salamander and mammalian (...) regeneration and discuss how evolutionarily altered properties of the regenerative environment can be exploited to restore full regenerative potential in the human body. (shrink)

The Civil Code of Lithuania re-established enterprise (business) as a self-sufficient object of civil rights and introduced several legal transanctions with it, the so- called asset deals (sale-purchase of enterprise and lease of enterprise). Since every transfer of enterprise comprises the transfer (delegation) of debts to the new owner, the legal regulation on asset deals must be orientated to the protection of creditors’ rights. However, the legal practice showed that the existing legal regulation regarding asset deals, in particular the mechanism (...) of the protection of creditors’ rights, is complex, and thus unappealing to legal practitioners. Therefore, this research focuses on an analysis of the legal regulation of the mechanism of the protection of creditors’ rights applicable to asset deals and its impact on the civil turnover of enterprise as an object of civil rights. In order to thoroughly examine the problem of the efficient mechanism of the protection of creditors’ rights, the national legal regulation is analysed in comparison to the legal systems of France, Germany and Russia. (shrink)

Despite an increasing array of ‘quality indicators’ and substantial investments in educating professionals, there continues to be clear evidence of discordant, or even negligent, practice by accredited professionals. We refer to discordant professional practice as being ‘out of tune’ with what is accepted as good practice. In a conceptual/theoretical analysis, we use discordant practice as a backdrop to exploring ways of being professionals. Our analysis is grounded in Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world. We explore how being-in-the-world can be uncanny and discordant, (...) while at the same time, dwelling in the world implies familiarity and a sense of being ‘at home’. We also draw upon Merleau-Ponty’s arguments that know-how is performed, settling in the body to become habitual, while also incorporating others and things in the accomplishment of practice. We argue that conceiving know-how as knowing/being provides insights into what is entailed in learning to be professionals. (shrink)

In higher education, the conventional design of educational programs emphasises imparting knowledge and skills, in line with traditional Western epistemology. This emphasis is particularly evident in the design and implementation of many undergraduate programs in which bodies of knowledge and skills are decontextualised from the practices to which they belong. In contrast, the notion of knowledge as foundational and absolute has been extensively challenged. A transformation and pluralisation has occurred: knowledge has come to be seen as situated and localized into (...) various 'knowledges', and the status of the body has taken on renewed significance in epistemological debates. Rather than thinking of knowledge as transcending the body, the embodiment of knowledge has become a key factor in understanding the nature of knowledge and what it means to know. In this paper, we adopt a phenomenological perspective in exploring the notion of embodied knowing as it relates to higher education programs and, more specifically, the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used in these programs. (shrink)

The dead donor rule (DDR) originally stated that organ donors must not be killed by and for organ donation. Scholars later added the requirement that vital organs should not be procured before death. Some now argue that the DDR is breached in donation after circulatory determination of death (DCDD) programs. DCDD programs do not breach the original version of the DDR because vital organs are procured only after circulation has ceased permanently as a consequence of withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy. We (...) hold that the original rendition of the DDR banning killing by and for organ donation is the fundamental norm that should be maintained in transplantation ethics. We propose separating the DDR from two other fundamental normative rules: the duties to prevent harm and to obtain informed consent. (shrink)

Background How often does refractory suffering, which is suffering due to symptoms that cannot be adequately controlled, occur at the end of life in modern palliative care? What are the causes of such refractory suffering? Should euthanasia be offered for refractory suffering at the end of life? We sought to shed light on these questions through interviews with palliative care specialists. Methods Semi-structured interviews with six nurses and six doctors working in palliative care in five Norwegian hospitals. Transcripts were analysed (...) with systematic text condensation, a qualitative analysis framework. Results Informants find that refractory suffering is rare, and that with palliative sedation satisfactory symptom control can nearly always be achieved at the end of life. However, the process of reaching adequate symptom control can be protracted, and there can be significant suffering in the meantime. Both somatic, psychological, social and existential factors can contribute to refractory suffering and potentiate each other. However, informants also place significant weight on factors pertaining to the organization of palliative care services as contributing to insufficient symptom control. Conclusions If refractory suffering is indeed rare, then this arguably weakens a common prima facie argument for the legalization of assisted dying. However, the process of reaching adequate symptom control can be protracted and involve significant suffering. The experiences of palliative care clinicians constitute important empirical premises for the assisted dying debate. The study points to several areas in which palliative care can be improved. (shrink)

This book explores the resurgence of interest in phenomenology as a philosophy and research movement among scholars in education, the humanities and social sciences. Brings together a series of essays by an international team of philosophers and educationalists Juxtaposes diverse approaches to phenomenological inquiry and addresses questions of significance for education today Demonstrates why phenomenology is a contemporary movement that is both dynamic and varied Highlights ways in which phenomenology can inform a broad range of aspects of educational theorising and (...) practice, including learning through the body, writing online, being an authentic teacher, ambiguities in becoming professionals, and school transition. (shrink)