This study develops a biosemiotic framework for a descriptive phenomenology. We incorporate the set _utterance-genre-lifeworld_ in biosemiotic theory by paralleling it with the Peircean-Uexküllean notions of _sign_, _habit_, and _Umwelt_ (respectively). This framework for empirical semiotic studies aims to complement the concepts of _affordance_ and _scaffold_, as applied in studies on learning. The paper also contributes to bridging Bakhtinian-Hallidayian-Habermasian views on utterance, genre, and lifeworld with biosemiotics. We exploit the possibility that biosemiotics offers to bring together hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis. (...) We relate these views to integrated _levels_ in a systemic framework for communication. Signs are seen as inter-dependent construction elements in utterances. Repeated use of utterances in shifting contexts generates shared recognizable _kinds_ of communication, or genres. ‘Life-genre’ is used in a zoo-communication context, to avoid anthropocentrism. _Life-genre_ serves animals’ life-functions. Genres make up a systemic network of communicational resources, along with the related concepts of event, affordance, and scaffold. Utterance, genre, and lifeworld have five aspects, constituting an integrative approach to communication: form, content, act, time, and space. Semiosis and positioning are _processes_ that connect aspects and levels. Levels, aspects, and processes make up the framework as a system. While biosemiotics supports a phenomenological notion of life-genre, in turn, this notion also contributes to the development of the former, bridging a gap between organisms’ sign experience on a micro-level and organisms’ phenomenal lifeworld/Umwelt. Comparisons of _lifeworld_ and _Umwelt_ reveal that, although not identical, these are sufficiently similar to be perceived as an overall _macro-_level for signs and communication. Starting from a construal of utterance and genre as dynamic, dialogical, and reciprocal, genre is positioned as _meso_-level, mediating between signs in utterances and the lifeworld/Umwelt level. We propose _genres_, understood as semiotic scaffoldings built through affordances, as an analytical concept to capture meso-level phenomena. Scaffolding is determined by both ongoing events and (pre-)available genres. Events are manifestations of these scaffolding processes. Identifying animal and educational communication as two particularly relevant fields for future applications, we compare key socio-semiotic concepts to the notions of sign, habit, and Umwelt. The notions affordance and scaffolding are particularly important to think of learning as continuous with adaptation. An overall aim is to broaden as well as finetune semiotic _phenomenology_ as a platform for empirical analyses of communication. We conclude by exemplifying and summarizing how the framework facilitates this. (shrink)

Interest in proportionalism as an important trend in Catholic moral theology seems to have faded in the recent decade. This has led some to view it as a movement that was somehow defeated. I suggest that proportionalism's influence can still be seen in contemporary Catholic ethics, most noticeably in the current interest in virtue ethics, casuistry, and feminist ethics. I argue that proportionalism encouraged a reappraisal of the methodology for evaluating moral action in a direction that was more hospitable to (...) concerns about the particularity and context of the agent. (shrink)

At workplaces where nanomaterials are produced or used, risk assessment and risk management are extremely difficult tasks since there is still limited evidence about the risks of nanomaterials. Measurement methods for nanoparticles are contested and safety standards have not yet been developed properly. To support compliance with the legal obligation of the employer to care for safe workplaces a large number of ‘soft’ regulatory tools have been proposed (e.g. codes of conduct, benchmarks, standards). However, it is not clear whether and (...) under which conditions soft regulation is complied with. This article discusses the potential advantages and drawbacks of soft regulation. It explores compliance issues when exposure measurement devices and other technology-related factors are involved. The exploration of three examples of soft regulation on occupational health and safety (a ministerial recommendation on preliminary exposure benchmarks, a nano-specific guidance of a chemical company and a public–private OHS guideline) shows that the capacity of the regulated parties to comply depends on the availability of appropriate technological devices and methods, technical expertise and other resources. When technological prerequisites are met, compliance is likely to increase. (shrink)

In this response to Christian Smith's What Is a Person?, I raise questions about his conception of the human life as a narrative quest and his account of change in social structures and institutions. The metaphor of life as a quest suggests a solid, isolated, and integrated moral agent. I wonder whether the experiences of most moral agents render a different picture—one where life is fragmented and characterized by complex webs of relationships. Smith provides a detailed account of how social (...) institutions change. I pose examples of more subtle and complex types of change as a way to press him to think about whether his account of change is too linear. (shrink)

O teórico Michael Löwy afirmou que o campo científico é social e politicamente condicionado, não sendo viável estabelecer um distanciamento entre ciência e ideologia. No atual momento, é possível visualizar a clareza dessa afirmação, na medida em que o campo científico se demonstra obstruído diante do cenário político vivenciado. O pensamento crítico e problematizador é tido como um perigo eminente perante a conjuntura conservadora e antidemocrática que se acentua. Com isso, a produção de pensamento crítico e o posicionamento de resistência, (...) diante da formação conservadora, assume a denominação de doutrinação, e o debate gerador de reflexão tende a ser calado, sobretudo se não confirmar a lógica dominante. Ao compreendermos a necessidade de reafirmar o teor questionador da produção de conhecimento, como elemento central na formação social, entende-se sua relevância na construção de um caminho democrático do pensamento social. Neste trabalho, buscamos levantar reflexões a partir de uma revisão bibliográfica, procurando entender produção de conhecimento em um período de anti-intelectualismo. Em contraposição ao conceito positivista de neutralidade do conhecimento, pretende-se investigar a relação dialética entre representação política e formação intelectual. Nossa concepção de pesquisa científica situa-se em um campo que não é neutro, mas permeado de diferentes concepções de mundo, de ser humano e de conhecimento, bem como engendrada por relações que ocorrem entre sujeitos, que propendem a produzir conhecimentos científicos a partir do seu lugar social, um lugar suficientemente privilegiado. Este trabalho se propõe examinar essas questões, ao referenciar a formação social como aspecto determinante na produção de conhecimento. Aponta-se à figura do intelectual orgânico como elemento essencial para pensar essa questão, ao salientar a contraposição ao retrocesso científico imposto no último período e a valorização do pensamento crítico, mais do que nunca como pensamento que resiste no campo da pesquisa e diante do sistema produtivista que o concebe. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Digital literature presents new ways of constructing aesthetic and emotional experience for child readers. This article reflects on emotion and affect in digital literature through the analysis of three literary apps for children. To deal with the complex phenomenon of the affective and emotional experience in digital reading, an interdisciplinary theoretical framework is proposed, relating Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to Kress and van Leeuwen’s multimodal social semiotics. The corpus includes the apps Little Red Riding Hood, by producer Nosy Crow, The Monster (...) at the End of This Book, by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin, and Hat Monkey, by Chris Haughton. It discusses how different semiotic resources are used in the representation of emotions and in suggesting emotional tension to the child reader, with embodiment and the intrinsic relationship between reader’s bodies and their emotional experience as a central part of apps’ textual construction. (shrink)

Les nouveaux facteurs-clefs du succès de l'ère post-révolution numérique incluent la maîtrise de nouveaux outils de marketing, le niveau d'investissements technologiques et la compréhension de tendances globales et mondiales. La régulation pourrait être proactive pour anticiper et préparer la transition numérique dans des champs aussi décisifs que la régulation de la concurrence et des critères de concentration.New key factors in the success of the post-digital revolution include the mastery of new marketing tools, the level of investment in technology and understanding (...) of global trends and global. Regulation could be proactive to anticipate and prepare for the digital transition in fields as decisive as the regulation of competition and concentration criteria. (shrink)

As narrativas fabulísticas foram transmitidas, no início, oralmente, pelos antigos. Assim que o homem começou a falar e a observar o que acontecia à sua volta, sentiu a necessidade em expor, através das fábulas, o comportamento humano. A presente pesquisa tem como objeto a exposição de alguns instrumentos, na fábula de Fedro “O boieiro e a Lebre”, que possibilitam em maior ou menor grau aproximar-se da oralidade. Julgamos que o texto, apesar de todas as limitações, não deixa de sugerir alguns (...) conceitos da análise da conversação através do diálogo, ou seja, há vestígios da oralidade no texto selecionado, embora o latim não seja mais falado. Convém enfatizar que a língua falada não deixa de estar refletida na fábula. (shrink)

This commentary addresses the concept of learning stemming from Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg’s theory of the emergence of consciousness. Jablonka and Ginsburg find strong support in biosemiotics for their argument that learning offers an evolutionary transition marker for the emergence of consciousness. Indeed, biosemiotics embraces a view on evolution that integrates both phylogeny and ontogeny. It does not polarize learning and evolving. At the same time, Jablonka and Ginsburg’s argument gives both biosemiotics and learning theory a shake, forcing scholarship (...) in these fields to tackle difficult questions on agency, selfhood, consciousness and anthropological difference. I explore some of the main questions that arise from this theoretical development, particularly in reference to Andrew Stables’ semiotic learning theory, which has been easily nested in a biosemiotic framework. (shrink)

Cet article interroge la place de l’esthétique dans la philosophie générale d’Étienne Souriau. Faut-il voir dans l’esthétique, comme le suggèrent certains passages et exemples chers à Souriau, le paradigme de l’activité créatrice et le ressort-même de l’instauration, concept central de la philosophie sourialienne? Ou, au contraire, l’esthétique et les créations artistiques ne fourniraient-elles que des exemples, certes particulièrement nets, de processus appelés « cosmiques » par Souriau que seule la philosophie serait à même d’explorer pleinement? L’article cherche à apporter une (...) réponse nuancée à cette question en se penchant à la fois sur des ouvrages philosophiques majeurs de Souriau et sur des articles plus méconnus. Une autre question se pose en conclusion : et si les interactions de l’esthétique et de la philosophie générale de Souriau nous incitaient à repenser la fonction de l’esthétique en lui conférant un rôle expérimental, directement connecté à la construction dramatique de la philosophie sourialienne? (shrink)

This book offers a conceptual history of compromise that demonstrates the connection between different understandings of compromise and corresponding differences in understandings of political representation.

The principle of energy conservation is widely taken to be a se- rious difficulty for interactionist dualism (whether property or sub- stance). Interactionists often have therefore tried to make it satisfy energy conservation. This paper examines several such attempts, especially including E. J. Lowe’s varying constants proposal, show- ing how they all miss their goal due to lack of engagement with the physico-mathematical roots of energy conservation physics: the first Noether theorem (that symmetries imply conservation laws), its converse (that conservation (...) laws imply symmetries), and the locality of continuum/field physics. Thus the “conditionality re- sponse”, which sees conservation as (bi)conditional upon symme- tries and simply accepts energy non-conservation as an aspect of interactionist dualism, is seen to be, perhaps surprisingly, the one most in accord with contemporary physics (apart from quantum mechanics) by not conflicting with mathematical theorems basic to physics. A decent objection to interactionism should be a posteri- ori, based on empirically studying the brain. (shrink)

L’ouvrage de B. Collette propose une reconstruction inédite de la doctrine stoïcienne de la providence. Il apporte en cela une contribution majeure et sans précédent, puisqu’aucune étude n’avait jusqu’alors été consacrée à la question. La notion de providence a généralement été délaissée par les exégètes. Ceux-ci s’intéressent plus volontiers au concept voisin et complémentaire de destin, dont on s’imagine, à tort, que lui seul constitue un véritable enjeu et problème philosophique. Or l’idée...

A Short Modern History of Studying Sacrobosco’s De sphaera. The treatise generally known as De sphaera offered at the beginning of the 13th century a general image of the structure of the Cosmos. In this paper I’m first trying to present a triple stake with which this treaty of Johannes de Sacrobosco (c. 1195 - c. 1256). This effort is intended to draw a context upon the treaty on which I will present in the second part of this paper namely, (...) a short modern history of studying this treaty starting from the beginning of the 20th century up to this day. The first stake consists in the well-known episode of translation of the XI-XII centuries in the Latin milieu of the Greek and Arabic treaties. The treatise De sphaera taking over, assimilating and comparing some of the new translations of the texts dedicated to astronomy. The second consists in the fact that Sacrobosco`s work can be considered a response to a need of renewal of the curriculum dedicated to astronomy at the University of Paris. And the third consists in the novelty and the need to use the De sphaera treatise in the Parisian University’s curriculum of the 13th century. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 44-45, September 2011.

L’article montre tout d’abord, à travers l’étude de deux corpus de contes et de la gestion de faits récents de transsexualisme, en quoi la musique est constitutive de l’identité féminine dans l’ethnie maure de Mauritanie. La problématique est élargie au champ du religieux de l’aire arabo-musulmane, qui voit dans ce lien une menace pour l’ordre social et symbolique qu’il défend, avant d’être explicitée par le recours à des concepts issus de la psychanalyse. Puis il est question, à travers la description (...) d’un orchestre de musique confrérique uniquement composé de femmes, de l’ébranlement de ce schéma dans le Maroc contemporain, sous l’effet des idées féministes et de la généralisation de pratiques d’égalité entre les sexes. (shrink)

Background Professors of nursing sometimes experience specific situations in their daily practice that conflict with their values and ethical principles and may culminate in moral distress. Moral distress occurs when one is prevented from acting according to his or her knowledge or values, or what one considers to be ethically sound. Objectives To identify the profile of professors of nursing through grouping sociodemographic characteristics and intensity of moral distress. Method Cross-sectional and exploratory study addressing 373 nurses teaching in Brazilian federal (...) public higher education institutions. Data were collected from June to December 2018 through email, using the Google Docs tool. A moral distress scale directed to nurse educators was used. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, variance analysis, and cluster analysis. Ethical considerations The Institutional Review Board at the Federal University of Rio Grande approved this study. Findings Initially, four clusters emerged for each variable predicting the profile of Brazilian professors of nursing: sex; whether the individual worked in a graduate program; age; experience in years in their respective higher education institution; and intensity of moral distress. The profile of Brazilian professors of nursing was represented by the largest cluster, 36.5% (n = 136), composed of women working in graduate programs, aged 37 years old on average, having worked in their respective institutions for approximately 5 years, and presenting a moderate intensity of moral distress. Conclusion Assigning individuals into groups facilitates seeing similarities among the predictors that compose the profile of Brazilian professors of nursing, thus recognizing those workers experiencing moral distress in their daily work routine. In addition, this study’s results are expected to encourage reflection on the planning of efficacious interventions directed to the context of education and health. (shrink)

Background: Little is known about case managers’ ethical issues and professional values. Objectives: This article presents an overview of ethical issues in case managers’ current practice. Findings are examined in the light of nursing ethics, social work ethics and principle-based biomedical ethics. Research design: A systematic literature review was performed to identify and analyse empirical studies concerning ethical issues in case management programmes. It was completed by systematic content analysis of case managers’ national codes of ethics. Findings: Only nine empirical (...) studies were identified, eight of them from North America. The main dilemmas were how to balance system goals against the client’s interest and client protection against autonomy. Professional codes of ethics shared important similarities, but offered different responses to these two dilemmas. Discussion: We discuss the respective roles of professional and organizational ethics. Further lines of research are suggested. (shrink)

When we use so-called predicates of personal taste to talk about an object, we express our subjective experience of the object. There is no objective truth about whether a given thing is, say, funny. I shall argue that it can make sense to argue about matters of taste anyway because (a) there are good reasons to want to change our interlocutor’s relevant experience, and (b) disputes about taste can bring about such a change. These reasons can be moral or political. (...) My argument serves to connect debates in the philosophy of language, social epistemology, and ideology theory in illuminating ways. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the changes that the implementation of artificial wombs would bring to society, the family, and the concept of motherhood and fatherhood through the lens of two recent books: Helen Sedgwick’s The Growing Season and Rebecca Ann Smith’s Baby X. Each of the two novels, set in a near future, follows the work of a scientist who develops artificial womb technology. Significantly, both women experience concerns about the technology and its long-term effects (...) that make both of them leave their laboratories and rethink the technology they invented, while considering its many ethical implications. Both novels can be seen as feminist revisionary rewritings of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, rejecting the vision of rows of mass-produced, anonymous babies in artificial wombs, stressing instead the closeness of the parents to their offspring. They nevertheless critically evaluate not only the many potential benefits for women of ectogenetic technology but also the possible disadvantages and pitfalls. (shrink)

Purpose As Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) proliferate, calls have emerged for ethical reflection. Ethics guidelines have played a central role in this respect. While quantitative research on the ethics guidelines of AI/Big Data has been undertaken, there has been a dearth of systematic qualitative analyses of these documents. Design/methodology/approach Aiming to address this research gap, this paper analyses 70 international ethics guidelines documents from academia, NGOs and the corporate realm, published between 2017 and 2020. Findings The article presents (...) four key findings: existing ethics guidelines (1) promote a broad spectrum of values; (2) focus principally on AI, followed by (Big) Data and algorithms; (3) do not adequately define the term “ethics” and related terms; and (4) have most frequent recourse to the values of “transparency,” “privacy,” and “security.” Based on these findings, the article argues that the guidelines corpus exhibits discernible utilitarian tendencies; guidelines would benefit from greater reflexivity with respect to their ethical framework; and virtue ethical approaches have a valuable contribution to make to the process of guidelines development. Originality/value The paper provides qualitative insights into the ethical discourse surrounding AI guidelines, as well as a concise overview of different types of operative translations of theoretical ethical concepts vis-à-vis the sphere of AI. These may prove beneficial for (applied) ethicists, developers and regulators who understand these guidelines as policy. (shrink)

Semiotics and education -- Charles S. Peirce's list of categories and taxonomy of signs -- Semiotics as pragmatic logic -- Education in Peirce's divisions of science -- Suprasubjective being and suprasubjective learning -- From icon to argument -- Diagrammatic reasoning and learning -- Agapic learning -- The Peircean theory of learning and phenomenology -- Possible objections.

This paper aims to explain how semiotics and constructivism can collaborate in an educational epistemology by developing a joint approach to prescientific conceptions. Empirical data and findings of constructivist research are interpreted in the light of Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce’s semiotics is an anti-psychologistic logic and relational logic. Constructivism was traditionally developed within psychology and sociology and, therefore, some incompatibilities can be expected between these two schools. While acknowledging the differences, we explain that constructivism and semiotics share the assumption of realism (...) that knowledge can only be developed upon knowledge and, therefore, an epistemological collaboration is possible. The semiotic analysis performed confirms the constructivist results and provides a further insight into the teacher-student relation. Like the constructivist approach, Peirce’s doctrine of agapism infers that the personal dimension of teaching must not be ignored. Thus, we argue for the importance of genuine sympathy in teaching attitudes. More broadly, the article also contributes to the development of postmodern humanities. At the end of the modern age, the humanities are passing through a critical period of transformation. There is a growing interest in semiotics and semiotic philosophy in many areas of the humanities. Such a case, on which we draw, is the development of a theoretical semiotic approach to education, namely edusemiotics. (shrink)

Although Rousseau did not care much about the Americans, the Americans did and still do care a lot about Rousseau. Surprisingly, for someone so eager to offer advice about how to form or reform a c...

In order to understand how Deleuze's method of dramatization is ‘not privileging mankind in any way’, this article turns to the figure of the marionette as it is discreetly, but consistently, developed thorough Deleuze's books. Inspired by Kleist's On the Marionette Theatre, this marionette figure claims for a rhizomatic approach to the subject, defined by the lines it draws into space and exercising its freedom in the present of Aion through spatio-temporal dynamisms similar to those of Leibniz's monads. The strange (...) freedom developed by marionettes also leads to an examination of Nietzsche's ‘eternal return’, which is at the core of Deleuze's elaboration of the method of dramatization. Combining Nietzsche's eternal return with the characteristics of Deleuzian marionettes then requires us to revisit the famous concept of ‘becoming’: becomings are selective, both methodologically and ontologically. (shrink)

The authors of the three essays featured in this focus challenge assumptions that are central to the official Catholic teachings on sexual ethics. Elizabeth Antus and Megan McCabe do so by taking on topics that have not received much attention from the magisterium. Cristina Traina urges us to think differently about the way we usually frame the moral issue of abortion. Although they address different moral problems, I argue in this introduction that they highlight common themes—social sin, interruption, and solidarity—share (...) methodological commitments to using empirical data and to valuing human experiences, and push us to imagine a sexual ethic grounded in a just vision of human sexual flourishing. (shrink)

The article argues that by the 17th century, despite the increased intellectual exchanges of the time, two different kind of individualism were developing across the Channel — one labeled here as ‘centripetal’, the other one as ‘centrifugal’. On the French side, one witnesses a focus on forum internum, as the only site of uniqueness and authenticity. On the British side, the emphasis switched to forum externum and the equality of wills. The article explores the consequences of these different self-apprehensions of (...) the individual in terms of different understandings of political representation. I claim that, despite today’s general consensus, representing ‘the people’ was not naturally assimilated with an ascending theory of representation. ‘The people’, understood as a whole, was apprehended in France as still higher than its representatives — kings, Estates, or Parlements. The idea of individuals willingly delegating their rights and/or authority to a representative remained for more than a century a peculiar British development. The consequences of this ascending understanding of representation are to be seriously reevaluated. (shrink)

TOTALITY AND COMPLEMENTARITY ARE PROMINENT TERMS IN CATHOLIC discussions of sexuality and gender. In this essay I explore these terms as they relate to the concept of integrity. I argue that although these terms were originally intended to describe the importance of physical integrity or wholeness, recent moves toward a more personalistic sexual ethic have rendered them problematic. More precisely, although these two terms appear to have integrity as their goal, uncertainty about the object of integrity results in fragmentation.

The Catholic Church, as part of the year 2000 Jubilee celebrations, issued a prayer of confession for sins committed in the past. Most notable was the confession for "actions that may have caused suffering to the people of Israel." In this paper I identify two prominent metaphors in the magisterial literature associated with this act of contrition—the metaphor of Church as mother, and the metaphor of repentance as purification of memory. I analyze these metaphors and place them in the context (...) of important conversations about the Catholic Church and the Holocaust, and about collective responsibility and repentance. (shrink)

O Jornalismo Esportivo utiliza-se da memória como forma de fortalecer conceitos e ideias associadas ao futebol, aos clubes e seus torcedores. No Brasil, o diário esportivo Lance! recorreu ao passado na cobertura anterior da final do Campeonato Carioca de 2009, como parte da estratégia de lançamento de uma promoção. O trabalho avalia a produção, nesta circunstância, do discurso para atrair o torcedor do Botafogo.