In the past few years, investors from different European countries have become increasingly interested in the new opportunities that socially responsible investing (SRI) can offer. Empirical research into this subject has often assumed as 'given' the meaning attributed to the terms 'ethical' or 'socially responsible', thus concentrating more on other elements (particularly financial performance). This paper, through the analysis of the characteristics of ethical funds traded in Italy, investigates the possible contents that the terms 'ethical' and/or 'socially responsible' can assume (...) in practice, with particular attention to the underlying values and to how these values are integrated into the selection process. This analysis brings to light the impressive variety of ethical funds traded in Italy. In particular, it reveals the 'Italian model', whose distinguishing characteristics seem to be the following: recentness of issue, options for charitable donations, almost exclusive use of screening strategies, use of 'best in class' and 'minimum tolerance quota' indications, preference for ethical indices, application of commissions no higher than the national average, presence of ethical committees and the utilization of consulting or rating agencies. (shrink)

One of the most challenging issues, essential for the actual state of science, is the search for a fragile balance between scientific normativity, openness, methodological proliferation and other key concepts, associated with the modern world of research. Paul Feyerabend understood science not as a detached and hermetic self-sufficient reality, but as a structural part of the social world, liable to politicization, discrepancies and inconsistency. His analysis of science, its strategies and institutions involved and, in a way, undermined a long living (...) concept of science as an objective, rational and neutral domain. Following his discoveries, today researchers in general, philosophers of science and social epistemologists in particular, face the problem of corrupted practices, which jeopardize the acquisition of true knowledge. According to the ideas of professor S. Turner, there are two strategies of approaching epistemic coercion: conformity or resistance. Aimed at scientific progress and sustainable development the scientists strive to overcome obstacles of technological, organizational and administrative nature. It presents the case of epistemic resistance. In other circumstances, when the mechanisms of epistemic coercion function without recognition and impediment, the epistemic environment conforms. Professor S. Turner’s article gives an in-depth analysis of epistemic coercion as a ubiquitous phenomenon, pervading intellectual and institutional practices of science and public life. Having stated the existence of the new instruments of epistemic control, he also sheds light on the requirement of the new forms of resistance. In the following article the author consequently scrutinizes the types of epistemic coercion offered by S. Turner. In order to highlight a technological perspective on all three types of epistemic coercion (information deprivation, normalizing/stigmatizing, legitimating/delegitimizing), the author places the emphasis on algorithm – based practices as a distinctive type of information deprivation. Presented from the standpoint of technological design, an algorithm could be seen as a technologically embodied form of epistemic coercion. Further on, the author argues that some of the means of resistance, given by prof. S. Turner, are more suitable to perform epistemic coercion, rather than resisting it. For instance, transparency has compromised itself as an untrustworthy concept put in use to conceal more information than to reveal. Tribalism is proven to be another arguable means of resistance because of its limiting effect on practices of open internal and external scientific communication. Finally, the author augments the list of means of epistemic coercion with construction of ignorance and coercive effect of expertise. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Review of Ingvild Flaskerud’s, Visualizing Belief and Piety in Iranian Shiism , (New York: Continuum, 2010).

The article describes the historical-critical method within the field of philosophy and the issues to which it is related, such as the role of the history of philosophy in the development of theoretical philosophy and thedistinction between historiography and history. First, it highlights the relevance of the historical-critical method for philosophy, which is based on the knowledge philosophers should have about the genesis of thinking. Then it analyzes the original sense of the method, understood as a search for historical, cultural, (...) external, and internal factors that influence philosophical works. It, also, addresses history of philosophy as a rational reconstruction of previous doctrines. Finally, it considers the distinction between Historie and Geschichte, which comes from biblical studies, to evaluate the limitations to applying the historical-critical method. To sum up, the article goes from mere documentarism, as a primary form of preserving and recovering information about the progression of philosophical doctrines, through historiography, as a systematic undertaking for chronological ordering with the assistance of specific instruments, to history, as rational and critical reconstruction of thinking, and what in theology -but also in philosophy- is known as Geschichte, that is, the profound happening that provides the fabric of thinking with real meaning. (shrink)

Science fiction cinema proposal for Bioethic education Proposta do cinema de ficção científica para educar em Bioética Posthumanism state that technologies will eliminate aging, improve cognitive, physical and psychological skills and keep alive human minds by uploading them in machines as artificial intelligence. These beliefs, as constant features in science fiction films, could be useful to educate medical students in Bioethics. We propose some of these science fiction films related with technological changes of humans and the noxious consequences: Being turned (...) into a humanoid created by genetic engineering; a slave or a merchandize without rights; discrimination because of eugenesic genetic manipulation; and/or the creation of cyborgs of mass destruction. Also, the movies can show the reader issues of ethnic supremacy dilemmas, identity impersonate and ambition, impersonal intelligence and conscience and identity transpass after death. These films will help teachers to analyze with students the moral limits of science and technologies. Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Alerm-González AJ, González-Pérez U. Propuesta del cine de ciencia ficción para educar en Bioética. Pers Bioet. 2019; 22: 14-33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.1.2 Recibido: 10/11/2017 Aceptado: 20/10/2018. (shrink)

The article substantiates the need for the creation of local integrated social services in the system of social protection of the population. The paper studies the essence of the organization of work on the principle of "single window" and field work "social mobile office".

Review of Sorin Şipoş, Silviu Dragomir – istoric, (Oradea: Editura Universităţii din Oradea and Chişinău: Editura Cartdidact, 2009), 547 p.

Gaze following is the ability to use others’ gaze to obtain information about the environment. As such, it may be highly adaptive in a variety of socio-ecological contexts, and thus be widespread across animal taxa. To date, gaze following has been mostly studied in primates, and partially in birds, but little is known on the gaze following abilities of other taxa and, especially, on the evolutionary pressures that led to their emergence. In this study, we used an experimental approach to (...) test gaze following skills in a still understudied taxon, ungulates. Across four species, we assessed the individual ability to spontaneously follow the gaze of both conspecifics and human experimenters in different conditions. In line with our predictions, species followed the model’s gaze both with human and conspecific models, but more likely with the latter. Except for guanacos, all species showed gaze following significantly more in the experimental conditions. Despite the relative low number of study subjects, our study provides the first experimental evidence of gaze following skills in non-domesticated ungulates, and contributes to understanding how gaze following skills are distributed in another taxon—an essential endeavor to identify the evolutionary pressures leading to the emergence of gaze following skills across taxa. (shrink)

Research shows that goal-relevant objects are rated positively, which results from their functionality towards the aim. In previous studies these objects were always external to the agent. However, relevant knowledge of self is also potentially accessible during goal pursuit, as self-esteem is an indicator of aim’s feasibility. In two experimental studies we tested whether goal activation affects temporal changes in automatic evaluations of personality traits related to the dimensions of agency and communion. We administered affect misattribution procedure where participants rated (...) neutral Chinese hexagrams proceeded by words describing traits. The list of words comprised agentic and communal traits. The rating took place twice - before and after introducing a manual task. In the first study, goal activation led to slightly more positive implicit evaluations of agentic and more negative evaluation of communal traits, which is consistent with empirical data on self-perception depending on agentic knowledge rather than communal one. In the second study we showed that goal activation led to changes only for promotion-, but not prevention-oriented individuals, which is explained by motivation strength. The results indicate that valuation of traits changes temporarily along with goal pursuit. (shrink)

Over the last few years, there has been an exaggeratedly widespread and frequently confused use of the concepts of 'stakeholder' and 'corporate social responsibility'. However, some interesting insights of both these notions can be found in traditional European business administration studies. In this article, the Italian view will be examined. In particular, this paper investigates the teachings of some of the historical masters of the Italian "Economia Aziendale", with particular attention to the concept of the azienda, its finalism and its (...) essential characteristics, in order to verify some consistencies with the more recent Stakeholder Management Theory. Principles and considerations seem to emerge from EA scholars' seminal works that unequivocally connect ethics with business decisions. EA fits in with SMT in many ways, and the former seems, moreover, to suggest a specific normative point of view from which the role of ethics in business activities can be approached. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Ontologies play a major role in life sciences, enabling a number of applications, from new data integration to knowledge verification. SNOMED CT is a large medical ontology that is formally defined so that it ensures global consistency and support of complex reasoning tasks. Most biomedical ontologies and taxonomies on the other hand define concepts only textually, without the use of logic. Here, we investigate how to automatically generate formal concept definitions from textual ones. We develop a method that uses (...) machine learning in combination with several types of lexical and semantic features and outputs formal definitions that follow the structure of SNOMED CT concept definitions. RESULTS: We evaluate our method on three benchmarks and test both the underlying relation extraction component as well as the overall quality of output concept definitions. In addition, we provide an analysis on the following aspects: How do definitions mined from the Web and literature differ from the ones mined from manually created definitions, e.g., MeSH? How do different feature representations, e.g., the restrictions of relations' domain and range, impact on the generated definition quality?, How do different machine learning algorithms compare to each other for the task of formal definition generation?, and, What is the influence of the learning data size to the task? We discuss all of these settings in detail and show that the suggested approach can achieve success rates of over 90%. In addition, the results show that the choice of corpora, lexical features, learning algorithm and data size do not impact the performance as strongly as semantic types do. Semantic types limit the domain and range of a predicted relation, and as long as relations' domain and range pairs do not overlap, this information is most valuable in formalizing textual definitions. CONCLUSIONS: The analysis presented in this manuscript implies that automated methods can provide a valuable contribution to the formalization of biomedical knowledge, thus paving the way for future applications that go beyond retrieval and into complex reasoning. The method is implemented and accessible to the public from: https://github.com/alifahsyamsiyah/learningDL. (shrink)

Silvana de Souza Ramos and Iracy Ferreira dos Santos Junior’s interview with Emmanuel de Saint Aubert explores the history and role of the Husserl Archives (Paris) in fostering multidisciplinary research in phenomenology. Saint Aubert clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Husserl’s manuscripts, describing the situated and complex reading he undertook not only of these manuscripts but also of Husserl’s work as a whole. This aspect is particularly significant for contemporary French philosophical studies, as Merleau-Ponty played a pivotal role in introducing Husserl’s (...) ideas into French thought. This clarification allows us to show the originality of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, as it reveals that he was not merely an exegete of Husserl, but a restless and multifaceted thinker, deeply involved in the intellectual and political debates of his time. If he cannot be reduced to a mere reader of Husserl, neither can his later ontology be simply attributed to Heidegger’s influence. Once engaged in a meticulous study of the unfinished manuscripts that Merleau-Ponty left behind due to his premature death, which were drafts for a new book, Saint Aubert conducted a thorough investigation of Merleau-Ponty’s use of key terms in his ontology – chair, Leib, empiétement, chiasmi – showing that these terms do not literally translate or express concepts derived from Husserl or Heidegger. On the contrary, these terms acquire a multifaceted range of meanings in Merleau-Ponty’s writings, nourished by his philosophical readings and meditations, by his scientific and literary refinement, as well as his ethical and political concerns. Saint Aubert’s research, dedicated to the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s so-called “unpublished” works, resulted in the publication of five books by Vrin, all guided by a transversal genetic reading of Merleau-Ponty’s work. Additionally, with the help of other researchers, Saint Aubert carefully edited and published several volumes of Merleau-Ponty’s manuscripts. This material, made available in an organized and contextualized manner, is of incomparable richness, allowing for a more precise understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s role in contemporary thought, while also illuminating the meaning of his ontological project. (shrink)

O presente artigo investiga o impacto da recepção da obra de K. Goldstein – Der Aufbau des Organismus – sobre o pensamento francês do final dos anos 1930 e início dos anos 1940. Especificamente, trata-se de explorar três diferentes paradigmas segundo os quais a noção de vida pôde ser pensada. De um lado, a teoria bergsoniana do elã vital – apresentada em L’évolution créatrice –, a qual fornece uma compreensão precisa da evolução geral da vida, entendida sob as prerrogativas da (...) intuição, tal como o filósofo a compreende. De outro lado, a partir da recepção do pensamento de K. Godstein, a noção de elã vital é criticada, de forma que o pensamento francês produz duas novas abordagens da vida, as quais buscam enfatizar o vivente e sua singularidade (e não a generalidade do impulso vital): a filosofia da normatividade vital – defendida por G. Canguilhem em Le normal et le pathologique – e a fenomenologia da vida, tal como aparece nas diferentes fases da obra de M. Merleau Ponty. Nosso trabalho pretende explicitar as dificuldades enfrentadas pela filosofia francesa contemporânea – especialmente pela fenomenologia – para dar conta da criatividade e da interioridade expressa pela estrutura vivente, uma vez que ela abre novos horizontes para a abordagem da gênese da racionalidade. (shrink)

En sus últimos años Foucault dedicó su trabajo a los aspectos de una ética de sí en las relaciones entre sujeto y verdad en la Antigüedad Clásica y Grecorromana, y presentada como una “estética de la existencia”. Este es un giro en la obra de Foucault hacia el plano de la subjetivación, es decir hacia los procesos mediante los cuales el sujeto se constituye a sí mismo, en una relación de sí consigo. Abordaremos esta cuestión tomando la noción de bios (...) como bisagra entre sus estudios sobre el biopoder y sus nuevos trabajos en torno a las tekhne tou biou o artes de la vida, en los que se apunta el estudio sobre las técnicas de sí. Para ello, será necesario comprender las modificaciones que Foucault introduce en Historia de la sexualidad II. Este desplazamiento problemático y metodológico, lejos de ser una salida estetizante a la cuestión del sujeto es, por el contrario, un modo de dar respuesta a la inquietud política de Foucault relativa al presente. Esbozamos a partir de esto último un posible análisis respecto de los modos de constitución del sujeto moral en nuestra contemporaneidad. (shrink)

The present study sets out to discuss a literary work as a reflection of topophrenia, a space of anguish, which contains the data of both the abandoned space and of the new home, which are hypostasized in positive or negative emotions that the exiled writer experiences. Focusing on the exile and the space in Norman Manea’s works, this article proves the existence of an original view about this experience. Manea’s last novel, The Exiled Shadow (2021) is also included in our (...) analyses. (shrink)

This book considers the aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical facets of a temporal paradox in the works of French novelist Claude Simon, and its broader implications for the study of narrative, and for cultural and post-modern theory.

The employee motivation at the organizational level is naturally quantified in achieving performance goals. In this paper are studied the motivational factors from the perspective of employee work performance reflected, vertically, in the organizational performance and further in the macroeconomic performance. Using an empirical study in which the observed data were obtained through a survey conducted in this year among the Romanian employees, in this paper we validate three hypotheses that establish the association of employee performance, on the one hand (...) with proactive personality traits and on the other hand with certain motivational factors. As well, we highlight some managerial implications that can contribute to increasing workplace performance by using of appropriate motivational factors. (shrink)

Diese Arbeit untersucht Improvisationsprozesse (creativity in performance) aus einer soziologischen Perspektive unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Dimensionen von Handeln, Interagieren und Wissen. Die Soziologie entwickelte in den letzten Jahren ein zunehmendes Interesse am Phänomen der Improvisation, wobei weniger die Resultate improvisatorischen Handelns im Zentrum standen, als vielmehr die Improvisationsprozesse selbst. Eine solche Fokussierung nimmt auch diese Untersuchung vor. Basierend auf der empirischen, qualitativen und vergleichenden Untersuchung von Free Jazz- und Flamenco-Praktiken sowie in Auseinandersetzung mit der bestehenden Improvisations-, Handlungs-, Interaktions- und Kreativitätsforschung (...) wird hier ein neuartiges Modell des Improvisierens vorgeschlagen, das die diesbezüglichen Handlungs- und Interaktionsprozesse erklärt und die Anschlussfähigkeit für weitere Bereiche der künstlerischen Praxis eröffnet. (shrink)

Así como en San Pablo, Heidegger cree encontrar en San Agustín la expresión de la existencia humana como acontecida históricamente y de la historia como advenir no objetivable ni dispo-nible. Esta facticidad radical del yo se muestra como propia de la experiencia protocristiana que surge con nitidez..

La noción de ley moral natural ha sido en buena medida descubierta por los griegos. Aunque formulada recién por los estoicos, registra importantes antecedentes en filósofos y escritores trágicos anteriores. Sin embargo, el advenimiento del cristianismo, en virtud de su concepción creacionista, compo..

La crisis acontecida a partir de los avances del averroísmo latino y sus sucesivas condenaciones (particularmente la de 1277) produjo una creciente separación de razón y fe, por lo que los vínculos entre metafísica, teología natural y teología sobrenatural se volvieron cada vez más problemáticos. La doctrina escotista de la univocidad del ser tuvo como motivación tratar de superar el hiato, ya evidente, entre el conocimiento metafísico del ente y el conocimiento de Dios intentando fundar la posibilidad de este último. (...) Siglos más tarde, el pensamiento posmoderno, que asume como punto de partida la caída de la metafísica, retoma la doctrina de la univocidad con un propósito diferente: señalar que un orden metafísico de lo real es inexistente. (shrink)

Diese Untersuchung behandelt die Auseinandersetzung aus systematisch-theologischer Perspektive mit einem «unsystematischen» Denker, Emil Cioran. Sie versucht im Sinne einer dialogischen Kulturtheologie einen Dialog zwischen der christlichen Theologie orthodoxer Prägung und Cioran zu führen. Dieser Versuch soll von Toleranz als Anerkennung der Legitimität des Anderen und dem Respekt des Fremden als Fremden geprägt sein. Methodologisch untersucht die Arbeit drei Hauptcharakteristika von Ciorans Denken: den Dualismus, die Skepsis und die Mystik. Sie versucht diese mit Hilfe von zwei Strukturierungsprinzipien - dem hermeneutische Dreieck (...) Gott-Mensch-Welt und den sieben Leitebenen zu systematisieren. (shrink)

RESUME Dans cet article, j’aborde la perspective idéaliste de la « Phénoménologie de la perception » pour montrer que, dans cet ouvrage, l’expérience du corps propre est décrite à partir de la vision du cogito. Pour expliciter cet idéalisme, j’analyse la principale voix donnée au corps au début de la pensée de Merleau-Ponty: la voix pathologique. Les troubles de Schneider rendent explicite son impuissance symbolique, et cette impuissance est vraiment l’impuissance du corps. Le sujet malade est un être soumis à (...) la normativité immédiate de la vie, raison par laquelle il peut découvrir à chaque moment la finitude et la fragilité de l’existence. J’évoque par contre les notes du cours au Collège de France, de 1954-1955, sur la passivité et les cours sur la Nature, de 1957-1958, lorsque Merleau-Ponty examine la vie et la naissance du sens à partir d’une perspective tout à fait différente. J’analyse aussi la lecture qu’il a faite du « cas Dora » pour montrer que le philosophe trouve dans l’hystérie une expérience symbolique très particulière. Cette expérience exige la compréhension de la puissance symbolique du corps propre, l’abandon de la position idéaliste et la découverte du pouvoir de l’hystérique de narrer l’expérience de l’être. ABSTRACT In this article, I approach the idealistic perspective of the “Phenomenology of Perception” to show that in that work the experience of the body is described from a vision of the cogito. To explain this idealism, I asses the main voice given to the body in the beginning of the thought of Merleau-Ponty: the pathological voice. Schneider’s disturbances make explicit its symbolic powerlessness, and that powerlessness is in fact the body’s powerlessness. The sick is a being submitted to the immediate normativity of life, reason by which he can find out at every moment the finitude and fragility of existence. On the other hand, I evoke the course notes from Collège de France, of 1954-1955, about passivity, and the courses about Nature, of 1957-1958, when Merleau-Ponty analyses life and the birth in the sense from an entirely different perspective. Also, I analyze the reading of what he to “case Dora” to show that the philosopher finds in hysteria a very particular symbolic experience. This experience requires understanding the symbolic power of the body itself, the abandonment of the idealist position and the discovery of the power of the hysteric of narrating the experience of being. (shrink)

Texto escrito em homenagem a Marilena Chaui, onde destaco o papel da pensadora em questão na minha formação intelectual no intuito de esclarecer a concepção de filosofia desenvolvida por ela, tanto em seus escritos quanto em sua prática didática. Trata-se de destacar o caráter democrático da produção do saber, bem como a exigência de multiplicidade expressa por essa concepção.

Por meio de uma apresentação sucinta da ontologia de Merleau-Ponty, a qual é de certo modo retomadapela concepção simondoniana de individuação, o artigo analisa as estratégias teóricas utilizadas por Simondonem Deux leçons sur l’animal et l’homme. Trata-se de fornecer ao leitor uma chave de leitura dessa obra por meio desua vinculação com os debates empreendidos por Merleau-Ponty quando este investiga o conceito de naturezaem sua ontologia tardia. Nos dois casos, não se concebe nem a natureza nem o humano por meio (...) de substâncias,o que resulta na possibilidade de pensar uma comunicação entre estes diferentes níveis de individuação. Porém,diferentemente de Merleau-Ponty, Simondon não escreve uma ontologia, mas sim uma ontogênese. (shrink)