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)

Most current criticisms against the intervention in Iraq have tackled the two justifications articulated by the members of the coalition: that the United States had to neutralize the threats that Iraq generated for their own security and to the political stability in the Middle Eastand that the war in Iraq can be justified as a necessary stage in the war against international terrorism. The principal objection against justification is that it was, and remains, unfounded. Against justification, many have replied that (...) the intervention in Iraq had no connection,or at best had merely an indirect connection, with the fight against terrorism. In a recent text,Fernando Tesón claims that the American intervention in Iraq can nevertheless be morally justified as a case of humanitarian intervention. By “humanitarian intervention”, one must understand a coercive action taken by a state or a group of states inside the sphere of jurisdiction of an independent political community, without the permission of the latter, in order to preventor to end a massive violation of individual rights perpetrated against innocent persons which are not co-nationals inside this political community. I argue in this article that the American intervention in Iraq does not satisfy the conditions of a legitimate humanitarian intervention, as opposed to what Fernando Tesón claims. (shrink)

Individuals exposed to dieting-related environmental cues have been repeatedly shown to be better able to resist tempting food. This especially applies to restrained eaters who hold a chronic dieting goal. Thus far, mainly short-term effects of environmental dieting cues have been examined and the individuals were typically unaware of being influenced. Yet, it is unclear whether individuals can deliberately apply environmental dieting cues for themselves to facilitate the pursuit of the longer-term goal of losing weight. The present longitudinal study applied (...) a 2 × 2 between-subjects design for 6 months. Our results provide preliminary indications that cue, awareness, and restrained eating interact. The results suggest that high restrained eaters could deliberately apply environmental dieting cues for themselves to facilitate losing weight. However, further studies are needed to explore the effects of environmental dieting cues over a longer period of time. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders semiotic modelling in light of recent scholarship on Charles Peirce, particularly regarding his concept of proposition. Conceived in the vein of Peirce’s phenomenological categories as well as of his taxonomy of signs, semiotic modelling has mostly been thought of as ascending from simple, basic sign types to complex ones. This constitutes the backbone of most currently accepted semiotic modelling theories and entails the further acceptance of an unexamined a priori coherence between complexity of cognition and complexity of (...) signification. Following recent readings of Peirce’s post-1900 semiotic, we engage in a discussion as to what are the limits of this approach. From Stjernfelt’s conception of the dicisign in nature, we derive a perspective that affords understanding the practice of modelling as a reciprocal interplay between decomposition of complexity and recombination into further complexity. This discussion is facilitated by the recent extrapolation of the constructivist concept of scaffolding in biosemiotics research. Cognition, we argue, begins with a fundamental irritation of trying to make sense of a structure that is more complex than what can directly be derived from experience and, in so doing, urges meaning-seeking processes. The yet unknown object is decomposed into more tangible objects and is subsequently reassembled from these more manageable conceptions of the object. In support of our argument, we discuss the notions of semiotic competences and resources in light of such a naturalized account of meaning-making. (shrink)

Physicalists typically believe that neurophysiology has refuted the thesis that non-physical minds can interact with the brain. In this paper, I argue that it is precisely a closer look at the neurophysiology of volitional actions that suggests otherwise. I start with a clarification of how the present inquiry relates to the main argument for physicalism, and how the most common alternative views relate to the findings of my study. I then give a brief overview of the neurophysiological research about volitional (...) actions, finding that there is no research specifically directed at the pertinent question. I proceed by pointing out what it would take for a complete physical explanation of volitional actions to be true: namely a complete physical explanation of the increase in the firing rate of the neurons with which the sequence leading up to volitional actions starts. Since no dedicated research about this question is available, I offer a study of the known mechanisms of neuronal excitation as a substitute, finding that there is no plausible biochemical or physical mechanism that could explain the causal initiation of volitional actions – at least none that upholds energy conservation. But non-conservation is precisely what interactive dualism, in its most plausible version, predicts. Thus, rather than buttressing physicalism, our empirical knowledge of volitional actions points toward interactive dualism. (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.

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)

According to Deleuze and Guattari ([1972] 2009), the Oedipus complex is a historically produced social symptom that captures desire in neurotic and familial, capitalist, and Christian forms. From this perspective, narcissism is not a primordial condition, which precedes the Oedipus complex phase, but is its consequence and effect, reversing the logic of human development postulated by Psychoanalysis. The aim here is to carry on with Deleuze and Guattari’s criticisms of Psychoanalysis, approaching narcissism as a phenomenon manufactured by this same civilization (...) that aims to combat it. If in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari demonstrate that the Oedipus complex is not a natural and universal path to the formations of the unconscious, but is produced by the civilized capitalist machine, Narcissus is now placed in the spotlight, unfolding the narratives of psychoanalytic theory about a supposed anti-social human nature. (shrink)

McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier’s call for a renewal of open and honest dialogue between secular and theologically grounded bioethics is admirable. Yet, their essay argues for more than mere dia...

This article examines the claim recently put forward by Terry Nardin, Kok-Chor Tan, and Carla Bagnoli that humanitarian intervention ought to be conceived, not as an imperfect duty (a duty of assistance to the victims of crimes against humanity left to the discretion of the members of the international community), but—assuming that the permissibility conditions have been satisfied—as a perfect duty (an unconditional obligation demanded by justice). After explaining why such a position can be considered as legitimate, it underlines some (...) of its difficulties and provides the elements of a response in order to overcome them. (shrink)

‘Hated in the Nation’ invites us to reflect about our social media responsibility: in this episode, the hashtag #DeathTo sends a swarm of killing bee‐drones to the most unpopular candidate of the day. But, although there are no tiny bee drones yet in real life, it is not uncommon to shame someone online for a variety of reasons, and the consequences can be life‐changing. But, is this online trial truly fair? In this chapter I take some central points from the (...) philosophy of John Rawls and Hannah Arendt to explore under what conditions these online trials might be adequate. (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)

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)

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)

Physicalists typically believe that neurophysiology has refuted the thesis that non-physical minds can interact with the brain. In this paper, I argue that it is precisely a closer look at the neurophysiology of volitional actions that suggests otherwise. I start with a clarification of how the present inquiry relates to the main argument for physicalism, and how the most common alternative views relate to the findings of my study. I then give a brief overview of the neurophysiological research about volitional (...) actions, finding that there is no research specifically directed at the pertinent question. I proceed by pointing out what it would take for a complete physical explanation of volitional actions to be true: namely a complete physical explanation of the increase in the firing rate of the neurons with which the sequence leading up to volitional actions starts. Since no dedicated research about this question is available, I offer a study of the known mechanisms of neuronal excitation as a substitute, finding that there is no plausible biochemical or physical mechanism that could explain the causal initiation of volitional actions – at least none that upholds energy conservation. But non-conservation is precisely what interactive dualism, in its most plausible version, predicts. Thus, rather than buttressing physicalism, our empirical knowledge of volitional actions points toward interactive dualism. (shrink)

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 church mission and objectives are more and more difficult to accomplish because of the secularization of the today’s society. Church’s use of marketing is a sensitive issue that has both supporters and critics. This article subscribes to the positive point of view that suggests that religious organizations can apply marketing in order to fulfill their mission and to obtain better results. It also claims that the use of marketing by the church and clergy does not contradict the religious core (...) values and that church marketing should develop a theoretical framework of its own and a specific set of methods, techniques and instruments. The present paper reveals the complexity of religious marketing. It presents a holistic view of the church marketing and proposes a specific conceptual framework for it. The article demonstrates that religious organizations’ marketing should be regarded as a form of social marketing and it briefly describes the church marketing process. (shrink)

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)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 212 Seiten: 59-79.

The article aims at assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the objections to Habermas’s epistemic conception of democracy raised by Thomas McCarthy in some of his essays. The author defends two ideas. First, he contends that McCarthy is mistaken in believing that democratic debates would not be a matter of consensus. In this regard, two arguments are raised, showing that the search for agreement and consensus by citizens in public forums can hardly be dismissed and that consensus can be invested (...) with many meanings in democratic life. Secondly, however, the author approves McCarthy when challenging Habermas’s epistemic claims regarding his theory of democracy. Not all democratic deliberations can be analysed in epistemic terms, in particular, debates on values. The pitfalls of any epistemic account of this form of deliberation are pointed out in the end of the essay. (shrink)

Background: Mismatch between the perception of one’s moral duty and one’s real social contribution may trigger moral distress, especially when no specific resistance strategies are used to counteract morally distressing situations. Considering a philosophical-ethical conception, individuals need to first reflect upon themselves to later turn to the world and confront their current situation in order to change it. Objectives: To understand moral distress experienced by nursing professors teaching in higher education institutions and the use of parrhesia as a coping strategy. (...) Method: This qualitative exploratory-descriptive study addressed 33 nursing professors working in Brazilian federal public universities using an open-ended question form. Data were collected between June and December 2018 and analyzed using discursive textual analysis. Ethical considerations: The Institutional Review Board at the Federal University of Rio Grande approved this study. Findings: Three categories emerged: performance of nursing professors and potentially distressing situations, the experience of moral distress, and parrhesia as a strategy to deal with moral distress. Nursing professors face situations that cause moral distress in the context of higher education, however, those who adopt parrhesia as a coping strategy find it easier to express their beliefs from the perspective of moral duty, even in the face of conflicts. Conclusion: When the nursing professors in this study acknowledge elements in the power structure that hinder their actions, they express parrhesia, as an essential virtue in an attempt to modify unsymmetrical power relations that can trigger moral distress. (shrink)

This paper explores a semiotic notion of body as starting point for bridging biosemiotic with social semiotic theory. The cornerstone of the argument is that the social semiotic criticism of the classic view of meaning as double articulation can support the criticism of language-centrism that lies at the foundation of biosemiotics. Besides the pragmatic epistemological advantages implicit in a theoretical synthesis, I argue that this brings a semiotic contribution to philosophy of mind broadly. Also, it contributes to overcoming the polemic (...) in linguistics between, loosely put, cognitive universalism and cultural relativism. This possibility is revealed by the recent convergence of various semiotic theories towards a criticism of the classic notion of meaning as double articulation. In biosemiotics, the interest to explicate meaning as multiply articulated stems from the construal of Umwelt as relying on the variety of sense perception channels and semiotic systems that a species has at its disposal. Recently, social semiotics developed an unexplored interest for embodiment by starting from the other end, namely the consideration of the modal heterogeneity of meaning. To bridge these notions, I employ the cognitive semantic notion of embodiment and Mittelberg’s cognitive semiotic notion of exbodiment. In light of these, I explore the possible intricacies between the biosemiotic notion of primary modeling system and concepts referring to preconceptual structures for knowledge organization stemming from cognitive linguistics. Further, Mittelberg’s concept of exbodiment allows for a construal of meaning articulation as mediation between the exbodying and embodying directions of mind. (shrink)

The recent development of biosemiotics has revealed the achievement of knowledge and the development of science to be the results of the semiosis of all life forms, including those commonly regarded as cultural constructs. Education is thus a semiosic structure to which evolution itself has adapted, while learning is the semiotic phenomenon that determines the renewal of life itself. Historically, it was a semiotic paradigm that determined the emergence of institutions such as universities and that underpinned the development of liberal (...) education. The present article considers the history of education in terms of sign emergence and evolution, regarding education as currently being conceived and practised as a stage in the general evolutionary action of signs. This approach differs from the prevailing modern approaches to education, which are mostly applied psychology and sociology. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

One of the most serious challenges (if not the most serious challenge) for interactive psycho-physical dualism (henceforth interactive dualism or ID) is the so-called ‘interaction problem’. It has two facets, one of which this article focuses on, namely the apparent tension between interactions of non-physical minds in the physical world and physical laws of nature. One family of approaches to alleviate or even dissolve this tension is based on a collapse solution (‘consciousness collapse/CC) of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics (...) (QM). The idea is that the mind brings about the collapse of a superposed wave function onto one of its eigenstates. Thus, it is claimed, can the mind change the course of things without violating any law figuring in physical theory. I will first show that this hope is premature because energy and momentum are probably not conserved in collapse processes, and that even if this can be dealt with, the violations are either severe or produce further ontological problems. Second, I point out several conceptual difficulties for interactionist CC. I will also present solutions for those problems, but it will become clear that those solutions come at a high cost. Third, I shall briefly list some empirical problems which make life even harder for interactionist CC. I conclude with remarks about why no- collapse interpretations of QM don’t help either and what the present study has shown is the real issue for ID: namely to find a plausible integrative view of dualistic mental causation and laws of nature. (shrink)

Prior to having its authenticity and transparency examined the openness of human existence may be said to need preservation as is, regardless of its receptivity and responsiveness to the truth of Being. Paradoxically, in self-sacrifice the fulfilment of Dasein’s ownmost potentiality-for-being is dependent upon a most radical disowning of itself. This investigation approaches self-sacrifice on the basis of its analogy with the creation of the work of art – as the peculiar fixation of the existing, already disclosed world of everydayness (...) within Dasein’s final absence. Finally, the suggestion is made that the incommensurable greatness of the heroic self-sacrifice needs to be itself preserved from the degradation brought about by massive and compulsive reproduction. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (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.

There is ample evidence that in classical truth table task experiments false antecedents are judged as ?irrelevant?. Instead of interpreting this in support of a suppositional representation of conditionals, Schroyens (2010a, 2010b) attributes it to the induction problem: the impossibility of establishing the truth of a universal claim on the basis of a single case. In the first experiment a truth table task with four options is administered and the correlation with intelligence is inspected. It is observed that ?undetermined? is (...) chosen in one third of the judgements and ?irrelevant? in another third. A positive correlation is revealed between intelligence and the number of ?irrelevant? and ?undetermined? judgements. The data do not exclude that a part of the ?irrelevant? judgements in classical truth table task experiments might be caused by the induction problem. In the second experiment participants are presented with a simplified four-option truth table task and asked for a justification of their judgements. These justifications show the induction problem is not the reason for choosing the ?irrelevant? or ?undetermined? option, which is supportive for a suppositional representation of conditionals. (shrink)