Transhumanism is a challenging movement that invites us to rethink what defines humanity, including what we value and regret the most about our existence. Vulnerability is a key concept that require thorough philosophical scrutiny concerning transhumanist proposals. Vulnerability can refer to a universal condition of human life or, rather, to the specific exposure to certain harms due to particular situations. Even if we are all vulnerable in the first sense, there are also different sources and levels of vulnerability depending on (...) concrete social circumstances. Recently, Michael Hauskeller argued about a fundamental incompatibility between transhumanism and vulnerability. He understands vulnerability as an existential category, linked to woundability and mortality. This idea is akin to ontological vulnerability, but it does not notice some important features of social vulnerability. On the other side, transhumanism is a complex and non-homogeneous movement. Here we distinguish between a strong and a weak version of transhumanism. We will propose that the salience of vulnerability is only diminished in the radical one, while a moderate version can reconcile vulnerability with human enhancement. Thus, vulnerability, a concept that has recently gained much importance as an anthropological category in contemporary ethics, is not necessarily at odds with any transhumanist project. (shrink)

In this article, I propose an ethical analysis of assistive domestic robots for older users. In doing so, I illustrate my inquiry with the example of ROB-IN assistive robot. ROB-IN is a Spanish project which is devoted to developing a robot that will perform in the private home of nondependent, aged users. It is aimed to help people in their daily activities and contribute to appropriate health monitoring. One of their potentially most useful features is related to data gathering and (...) sharing. For the inquiry on the ethical underpinnings of this case, I develop a framework for domestic assistive robots for competent older adults drawn on the ethics of care. I assess that this type of robots could be ethically appraised attending to their impact on the well-being and autonomy of users. I approach autonomy from a relational perspective, and I delve into the relationship between autonomy and well-being through the concept of paternalism. I argue that this type of assistive robots should never act paternalistically. Given ROB-IN great implications regarding privacy, I subsequently explore the ways in which the privacy of users should be respected in their interaction with assistive robots, focusing on the relation with autonomy and well-being. Lastly, I highlight the need for avoiding ageism. This investigation focuses on aged users, but it is suggested that the situation of caregivers should be also the object of further investigations. (shrink)

Sorority has gained relevance in latest feminist discourses, in Spain and in the wide world. While in Spain its use is recent, other historical periods of feminism have already produced important reflections on the subject that can illuminate the contemporary analysis. The idea of sorority that is currently used can be examined through several components: the trust in the testimonies of all women, the appeal to emotionality, to care and to shared vulnerability, and the appreciation of the unity between women (...) over and above their differences. The political strength of the women's alliance, however, is not without drawbacks. All these aspects deserve a careful consideration in order to construct a politically fruitful concept of sorority. (shrink)

Care ethics has been advanced as a suitable framework for evaluating the ethical significance of assistive robotics. One of the most prominent care ethical contributions to the ethical assessment of assistive robots comes through the work of Aimee Van Wynsberghe, who has developed the Care-Centred Value-Sensitive Design framework (CCVSD) in order to incorporate care values into the design of assistive robots. Building upon the care ethics work of Joan Tronto, CCVSD has been able to highlight a number of ways in (...) which care practices can undergo significant ethical transformations upon the introduction of assistive robots. In this paper, we too build upon the work of Tronto in an effort to enrich the CCVSD framework. Combining insights from Tronto’s work with the sociological concept of _emotional labor_, we argue that CCVSD remains underdeveloped with respect to the impact robots may have on the emotional labor required by paid care workers. Emotional labor consists of the managing of emotions and of emotional bonding, both of which signify a demanding yet potentially fulfilling dimension of paid care work. Because of the conditions in which care labor is performed nowadays, emotional labor is also susceptible to exploitation. While CCVSD can acknowledge some manifestations of unrecognized emotional labor in care delivery, it remains limited in capturing the structural conditions that fuel this vulnerability to exploitation. We propose that the idea of _privileged irresponsibility,_ coined by Tronto, helps to understand how the exploitation of emotional labor can be prone to happen in roboticized care practices. (shrink)

The commons and care are two topics that have gained presence in public and political discourses in recent years and seem to have a special affinity to one another. In this article, I propose that there are two different approaches to the relationship between the commons and care, arguing in favor of one of them: care in common or community care. In this way, I claim that care can be defined as what is done to maintain certain commons, forging the (...) bonds that shape communities according to ethical standards. These standards can be established in accordance with the ethics of care and in continuity with the political tradition of the commons. (shrink)

Transparency is a quality of corporate social responsibility communication that enhances the relationship between the investors and the company. The objective of this paper is to analyze if the transparency of the sustainability reports is affected by the relationship of companies in different industries with their stakeholders. If this were the case, it would indicate that the pressure of significant stakeholders determines the required level of transparency of the reports. We find that the pressure of some groups of stakeholders improves (...) the quality of transparency of the reports. We extend previous research by studying the effect of stakeholder group pressure on transparency when reporting sustainability. Our results show that transparency is affected by ownership, along with size and global region. (shrink)

With size, voting discipline, and technical resources superior to those of most Brazilian parties, in the last two decades, the support of the Agrarian Caucus has become crucial for the realization of presidents’ legislative agenda. In a country where 87 percent of the population is urban, how have representatives of the agrarian elites become key players in bargaining on nonagrarian issues? This article argues that Brazilian agrarian elites have been so successful because they have devised an electoral strategy that maximizes (...) their leverage in a fragmented party system with ideologically weak right-wing parties. Empirically, I show how agrarian elites in Brazil finance legislative campaigns, mobilize voters, and subsidize the legislative work of politicians from their ranks, independently of their partisan affiliation. Theoretically, I discuss the advantages of a candidate-centered electoral strategy: self-representation and multipartisanship. While self-representation has granted agrarian elites direct access to agenda-setting positions within Congress, having members in many parties has increased the number of agenda-setting positions they can control and guaranteed their presence in the legislative coalition of right- and left-wing presidents alike. (shrink)

Blanca Rodríguez López, Nuria Sánchez Madrid and Adriana Zaharijević, 2021, Rethinking Vulnerability and Exclusion. Historical and Critical Essays, Palgrave Macmillan, 232 pp.

Research on salesperson creativity remains as one of the most under-researched topics in the sales literature despite the evidence that encouraging creativity in the sales domain is a source of competitive advantage. This paper aims to fill this research gap by exploring the influence of perceived ethical climate on salesperson creative performance, paying special attention to the role that emotions play in this process. Data provided by 176 supervisor–salesperson dyads confirm that the trust/responsibility dimension of an ethical climate is positively (...) related to salesperson creative selling by increasing salespeople's organizational pride. Similarly, the perception of unethical selling practices negatively affects salesperson organizational pride, reducing the expression of creative behaviors. Moreover, the negative effect of unethical selling practices on creative performance is stronger (more negative) when salespeople's identification with an organization increases. Managerial implications and future research directions are also addressed. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta investigación es poner de manifiesto la importancia de las imágenes de vestir marianas y, también, las joyas y accesorios que presentan. Se plantearán las bases y claves de un lenguaje no verbal que actúa como testimonio de la devoción además de las relaciones sociales y económicas del momento que las marcan. Merced a los casos analizados, se comprobará cómo, con gran frecuencia, se une a la piedad popular de pueblos y de las culturas de determinados acontecimientos (...) de la zona. Los resultados demostrarán la importancia dada y valores atribuidos a este tipo de iconografía. (shrink)

This article analyses the determinants associated with the use of the Integrated Report as a corporate reporting model for sustainability information. IRs provide information regarding the use and interdependence of different company resources. The previous literature has identified determinants behind the presentation of IRs at the country level as well as at the company level. Our work contributes to the literature by using a novel statistical approach that addresses the likelihood of the non-independence of data: companies in the same country (...) are more similar to one another than are companies from different countries. Our results confirm significant inter-country variance, which may be partially explained by the existence of specific regulations and the individualism vs. collectivism dimension. Although we confirm the effect of company-level determinants, our results do not support the role of specific variables tested as determinants. (shrink)

Environmental protection presents a challenge for commodity-producing democracies. To account for the enforcement of environmental laws in decentralized systems, this article proposes a multilevel approach that highlights the importance of national laws and subnational implementation rules to the politics of enforcement. This approach contrasts with prominent scholarship that focuses on sanctions and the electoral incentives and bureaucratic resources of enforcers. The advantages of the multilevel approach are demonstrated by the enforcement of the native forest protection regime in the Argentine Chaco (...) Forest, which is shaped not only by whether sanctions on illegal deforestation are applied by subnational authorities but also by the design of both the national law and subnational regulations. The article employs quantitative data and case studies based on extensive fieldwork to show how affected subnational organized interests influenced the design of the NFPR and the provincial regulations that weaken or strengthen enforcement. (shrink)

La educación patrimonial crítica es un enfoque didáctico que facilita al alumnado reconsiderar su relación con el entorno. Busca promover el sentido de pertenencia, la empatía y el respeto por la diversidad de perspectivas, empoderando a los estudiantes como agentes de cambio social, a través del ejercicio de la ciudadanía democrática. De este modo, favorece el cuestionamiento de narrativas dominantes y la recuperación de la memoria democrática, dándole voz a todas aquellas historias ocultas y sometidas al olvido. Con el presente (...) estudio se pretende contribuir a la reparación de pasados difíciles mediante una situación de aprendizaje que emplea métodos activos de enseñanza y se lleva a cabo en las aulas de Bachillerato de un centro educativo rural, localizado en la Ribeira Sacra ourensana. Los resultados que se muestran parecen indicar que además de recuperar patrimonializar la memoria democrática de la zona, se promovió el diálogo intergeneracional y se favoreció el desarrolló de pensamiento crítico en el alumnado. (shrink)

Disability has been traditionally understood as a medical condition. However, people with disabilities have claimed in recent decades for a dephatologized social model of disability—i.e. the functi...

Altruism and solidarity are concepts that are closely related to organ donation for transplantation. On the one hand, they are typically used for encouraging people to donate. On the other hand, they also underpin the regulations in force in each country to different extents. They are often used indistinctly and equivocally, despite the different ethical implications of each concept. This paper aims to clarify to what extent we can speak of altruism and solidarity in the predominant models of organ donation. (...) It also raises the ethical question of whether these categories are adequate as a basis for such models, bearing in mind that organs are a scarce resource and that a shortage of them may mean that fewer lives are saved or improved. (shrink)

Considering public moral attitudes is a hallmark of the anticipatory governance of emerging biotechnologies, such as heritable human genome editing. However, such anticipatory governance often overlooks that future morality is open to change and that future generations may perform different moral assessments on the very biotechnologies we are trying to govern in the present. In this article, we identify an ’anticipatory gap’ that has not been sufficiently addressed in the discussion on the public governance of heritable genome editing, namely, uncertainty (...) about the moral visions of future generations about the emerging applications that we are currently attempting to govern now. This paper motivates the relevance of this anticipatory gap, identifying the challenges it generates and offering various recommendations so that moral uncertainty does not lead to governance paralysis with regard to human germline genome editing. (shrink)

Rationale, aims and objectives Given the increasing prevalence of cataract and demand for cataract extraction surgery, patients must often wait to undergo this procedure. We validated a previously developed priority scoring system in terms of clinical variables, pre-intervention health status, appropriateness of surgery and gain in visual acuity (VA) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL).Methods Explicit prioritization criteria for cataract extraction created by a variation of the Research and Development (RAND) and University of California Los Angeles appropriateness methodology were retrospectively (...) applied to a prospective cohort of 5257 patients on waiting lists to undergo cataract by phacoemulsification at 17 hospitals in Spain. Demographic data, clinical data and data related to surgical technique were collected by trained ophthalmologists. Patients were evaluated by their ophthalmologist before the intervention and 6 weeks afterward. They also completed, by mail, the Visual Function Index (VF-14) before the intervention and 3 months afterward.Results High-priority patients experienced greater improvement in VA and HRQoL than those classified as intermediate or low-priority (P < 0.0001), even after adjusting by VA and the VF-14 score at baseline. The time to intervention was the same for high-priority patients as it was for intermediate and low-priority patients.Conclusions The priority score we developed identified patients most likely to experience the greatest improvements from cataract extraction. Use of this tool could provide a fairer and more rational way to prioritize patients for cataract extraction. (shrink)

Mindreading capacity has been widely understood as the human ability to gain knowledge about the inner processes and states of others that bring about the behavior of these agents. This paper argues against this epistemic view of mindreading on the basis of different empirical studies in linguistics and social and developmental psychology: we are systematically biased in attributing mental states, and many everyday uses of mental ascription sentences do not reflect an epistemic function in our social interactions. We introduce an (...) alternative view of mental ascriptions, the social cover view, which is consistent with the evidence. The social cover view holds that the main function of mental ascriptions is to cover the social status and reputation of an agent rather than to gain knowledge about her inner processes and states. Finally, we discuss two possible objections to our proposal. (shrink)

The revised Common Rule includes a new option for the conduct of secondary research with identifiable data and biospecimens: regulatory broad consent. Motivated by concerns regarding autonomy and trust in the research enterprise, regulators had initially proposed broad consent in a manner that would have rendered it the exclusive approach to secondary research with all biospecimens, regardless of identifiability. Based on public comments from both researchers and patients concerned that this approach would hinder important medical advances, however, regulators decided to (...) largely preserve the status quo approach to secondary research with biospecimens and data. The Final Rule therefore allows such research to proceed without specific informed consent in a number of circumstances, but it also offers regulatory broad consent as a new, optional pathway for secondary research with identifiable data and biospecimens. In this article, we describe the parameters of regulatory broad consent under the new rule, explain why researchers and research institutions are unlikely to utilize it, outline recommendations for regulatory broad consent issued by the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections, and sketch an empirical research agenda for the sorts of questions about regulatory broad consent that remain to be answered as the research community embarks on Final Rule implementation. (shrink)

Según la liturgia, mi vida, es decir, la de cada cual, en su realidad concreta, no es «cosa» alguna, sino proyecto, empresa, misión; acontece, se va haciendo. La tradicional perspectiva cris-tiana reclama una intensificación del conocimiento, relativamente descuidado, de lo que significa ser persona. Un peso del pensamiento helénico, ajeno al cristianismo, ha orientado al pensamiento poste-rior, filosófico y también teológico, a un «sustancialismo» que ha lle-vado a reducir la persona a un tipo muy particular de «cosa».

Monitoring health is one of the basic principles of Occupational Health and Safety. The main objective of this monitoring will be the detection of possible damage to health arising from work. They try to discover the effects that the inherent risks with the work may cause the worker, which will show, given the case, through an alteration of health or the state of organic and functional state, both physically and mentally. Regarding the monitoring of health, there are many and varied (...) issues to be raised concerning the right to personal privacy. Thus, notably, whether there was effective consensus, and whether, in particular, the object and the purpose of the medical examination meant a disregard of the statutory scheme, an excess or even a failure to comply with the terms of the Spanish Constitution. The limits imposed by the law makers to the productive unit will play a key role in identifying the content of the company obligation to monitor health, being in many cases guarantees of constitutional rights. Therefore, the methods of health monitoring and control of workers will always be carried out respecting the privacy and dignity of the worker as well as the confidentiality of all information related to their health. (shrink)

Secondary findings for adult-onset diseases in pediatric clinical sequencing can benefit parents or other family members. In the absence of data showing harm, it is ethically reasonable for parents to request such information, because in other types of medical decision-making, they are often given discretion unless their decisions clearly harm the child. Some parents might not want this information because it could distract them from focusing on the child's underlying condition that prompted sequencing. Collecting family impact data may improve future (...) policy determinations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend the view that judgments based on episodic memory are immune to error through misidentification. I will put forward a proposal about the contents of episodic memories according to which a memory represents a perception of a past event. I will also offer a proposal about the contents of perceptual experiences according to which a perceptual experience represents some relations that its subject bears to events in the external world. The combination of the (...) two views will yield the outcome that the subject is always an intentional object of her own memories: In episodic memory, one remembers being the subject whose extrinsic properties were experienced in some past perception. For that reason, one cannot misidentify oneself in memory unless one is having an inaccurate memory. Thus, the source of immunity to error through misidentification in memory lies in the nature of mnemonic content. (shrink)

Kripke’s most important arguments in Naming and Necessity against the description theory of reference of proper names are the arguments from ignorance and error concerning names of historical figures. The aim of this paper is to put forward a reply to these arguments. The answer to them is grounded on the development of one component of the version of the description theory proposed by the authors that are regarded as the classical contemporary advocates of this theory, namely Searle and Strawson; (...) one of the targets of Kripke’s arguments is precisely the version of the description theory of reference submitted by these authors. The development of that component results in a sort of description theory of reference not affected by Kripke’s arguments from ignorance and error concerning the names of historical figures, deferential descriptivism. (shrink)

& Awareness of change within a visual scene only occurs in subjects were aware of, replicated those attentional effects, but the presence of focused attention. When two versions of a.

Ranchers and pastoralists worldwide manage and depend upon resources from rangelands across Earth’s terrestrial surface. In the Great Plains of North America rangeland ecology has increasingly recognized the importance of managing rangeland vegetation heterogeneity to address conservation and production goals. This paradigm, however, has limited application for ranchers as they manage extensive beef production operations under high levels of social-ecological complexity and uncertainty. We draw on the ethics of care theoretical framework to explore how ranchers choose management actions. We used (...) modified grounded theory analysis of repeated interviews with ranchers to compare rancher decision-making under relatively certain and uncertain conditions and describe a typology of practices used to prioritize and choose management actions that maintain effective stewardship of these often multi-generational ranches. We contrast traditional decision-making frameworks with those described by interviewees when high levels of environmental and market uncertainty or ecological complexity led ranchers toward use of care-based, flexible and relational frameworks for decision-making. Ranchers facing complexity and uncertainty often sought “middle-ground” strategies to balance multiple, conflicting responsibilities in rangeland social-ecological systems. For example, ranchers’ care-based decision-making leads to conservative stocking approaches to “manage for the middle,” e.g. to limit risk under uncertain weather and forage availability conditions. Efforts to promote heterogeneity-based rangeland management for biodiversity conservation through the restoration of patch burn grazing and prairie dog conservation will require increased valuation of ranchers’ care work. (shrink)

Reflecting the current turn in curriculum work that underscores the relationship between theory and practice, this volume brings together the voices of curriculum theorists working within academic setting and practitioners working in schools and other educational settings. The book traces their collaborative work, challenging the assumption that practitioners should be only consumers of the theory produced by academics. Thus, this collection engages readers in the complicated conversation about the relationship between theory and practice, between theoreticians and practitioners. Although every author (...) is, to some degree, a practitioner as well as a theorist, their collaboration emerges from the particular positions and identification that each assumes in the practice of their craft. From working with homeless youth to deepening one's personal commitment to antiracist pedagogy in schools, each author's experience implodes the false binary of the theory/practice dichotomy, illuminating a different dimension of the challenges therein. (shrink)

Pocas veces ha habido mayor afinidad entre un filósofo y un científico. Este libro (de 191 páginas) descubre cómo Julián Marías conoció a Jérôme Lejeune en 1980, y ambos resultan muy afines: los dos afirman la unicidad (calidad de único) de cada persona, algo que durante la Edad Media se reservaba a muy pocos seres de este mundo: el Sol, la Luna o la Tierra, pero no se aplicaba a cada persona, considerada como miembro de una especie única porque se (...) creía que su principio de individuación era la materia señalada por la cantidad (estos huesos y esta carne, no agotados en cada individuo). Además, se consideraba que solo había persona cuarenta días después de la concepción en el caso del varón, y noventa en el caso de la mujer. El presente libro (que traduce por primera vez al español algunos textos en francés tanto de Lejeune como de Marías y que parte de la genética moderna descubierta por Lejeune, así como de la metafísica de Marías, la cual considera "mi vida" como la realidad radical) muestra cómo estos dos grandes humanistas supieron ir a contracorriente, usando la razón y la ciencia, para proteger al no nacido. Índice: Un filósofo y un científico ante el aborto- Angustia ante la monstruosidad- Lo más grave que ha ocurrido en el siglo XX- Deshumanización- Diversas hipocresías- El caso de Jérôme Lejeune- El informe que Marías le pidió a Lejeune- Del cigoto a Pulgarcito- Unicidad desde la concepción- Teoría de la animación retardada- «Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia»- La nueva metafísica- De las “cosas” a la “persona”- De la “naturaleza” al “hombre”- De la “sustancia” al “hacerse”- De la “materia signata” a las “experiencias radicales”- Del “qué” o “algo” al “quién” o “alguien”- Del “algo corporal” al “alguien corporal”- Del “embrión” a la “criatura”- Del “aborto” a la “perduración”- Del “parecer” a la “verdad”-. (shrink)

El llamado “Humanismo del Renacimiento” se presentaba como luz disipadora de la barbarie. Ante los inquietantes síntomas de decadencia actual, este libro invita a hacer el “Renacimiento del Humanismo”. El gran dilema de nuestro tiempo es: “Humanidades” o “barbarie”. Si se opta por las Humanidades, por el Humanismo, nuestro mundo conocerá otro Renacimiento. La Filosofía, tan postergada hoy, es indispensable para vencer la barbarie que nos amenaza. Con la expresión “Renacimiento del Humanismo” se hace referencia también a la necesidad de (...) renovar muchos conceptos filosóficos —anquilosados, arcaicos— usados hasta ahora, que cosifican a la persona porque están pensados para entender las cosas, y que no siempre tienen en cuenta la entera realidad del hombre. Esta “humanización” de la Filosofía permitirá iluminar otras disciplinas, incluyendo la Teología, y dentro de ella la Liturgia. (shrink)

¿Es posible ser nacionalista y cristiano a la vez? ¿Hasta qué punto se han influido y se influyen de forma mutua nacionalismo y Cristianismo, especialmente en España? ¿Debe el Cristianismo orientar acerca del nacionalismo? ¿Acaso no tiene la competencia o los suficientes recursos para hacerlo? Las respuestas a esas preguntas suelen tratarse, en general, con bastante torpeza, sin el requerido conocimiento histórico; hay muchos intereses creados a los que no interesa la verdad. Los lectores de este libro (de 292 págs.) (...) encontrarán datos históricos apenas conocidos, esenciales para una reflexión liberal, necesaria a la hora de comprender tanto el Cristianismo y el nacionalismo, por un lado, como para darse cuenta de hasta qué punto son incompatibles, por otro. "La verdad os hará libres". En Europa, todo nacionalismo tiene su origen en el absolutismo decimonónico, surgido como reacción violenta contra el liberalismo, lo cual no interesa que se conozca a los nacionalistas, profundamente descontentos de su propia historia a la que, mintiendo, quieren ocultar o inventarse otra en su lugar. Índice: Prólogo de Jaime Mayor Oreja- Introducción- I. La inmoralidad del nacionalismo- II. Cristianismo, Humanismo, liberalismo- III. Nacionalismo y Cristianismo- IV. Católicos liberales- V. Nacionalismo y clericalismo- VI. Política nacionalista y política cristiana- VII. Los españoles, amigos- Epílogo de Josep Tarradellas, Presidente de la Generalitat de Catalunya (de una carta suya al autor de este libro, fechada en Barcelona, en el Palau de la Generalitat, el 28 de noviembre de 1977). (shrink)

A los extranjeros les gusta odiar España. Los españoles odian amarla. Sin embargo, millones de personas la recorren, seducidos por aquello que critican. El pensamiento de Julián Marías ofrece claves para comprender este fenómeno.

El objetivo de este texto es investigar sobre los posibles puntos de encuentro entre la psicoterapia existencial, un paradigma psicológico arraigado en las filosofías de la existencia, y el posicionamiento del profesor Marino Pérez Álvarez, quien se define a sí mismo como conductista radical, respecto a su manera de entender la existencia humana y el modelo más adecuado de psicoterapia. Para ello se proponen seis puntos de encuentro: necesidad de una fundamentación filosófica para la psicología, crítica al cientificismo y al (...) modelo médico, interpretación de los trastornos mentales como problemas de la vida cotidiana, recuperación del paciente como protagonista de la terapia, crítica a la psicología positiva y crítica al dualismo cartesiano. (shrink)

Este trabajo se centra en la acción dialógica y comunicativa entre las personas con la intención de mejorar su educación. Para ello se ha adaptado el formato de las tertulias literarias dialógicas al contenido de las obras musicales. Los principales objetivos han sido: desarrollar las competencias comunicativa, lingüística y musical a través del diálogo interactivo; aumentar el grado de motivación e incrementar la cultura musical de los futuros docentes hacia la música clásica. Se combina una metodología cualitativa con cuantitativa y (...) el método investigación-acción. La muestra han sido 136 estudiantes, futuros docentes en formación. Los principales resultados ofrecen datos positivos. (shrink)

Training animals such as apes, gray parrots, or dolphins that communicate via arbitrary symbols with humans has revealed astonishing mental capacities that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. Albeit bats have not yet been trained to communicate via symbols with humans, we are convinced that some species, especially captive Pteropodid bats (“flying foxes”), show the potential to master this cognitive task. Here, we briefly review what is known about bats’ cognitive skills that constitute relevant prerequisites for symbolic communication with humans. We (...) focus on social learning in general, trainability by humans, associative learning from humans, imitation, vocal production learning and usage learning, and social knowledge. Moreover, we highlight potential training paradigms that could be used to elicit simple “symbolic” bat-human communication, i.e., training bats to select arbitrary symbols on a touchscreen to elicit a desired behavior of the human caregiver. Touchscreen-proficient bats could participate in cognition research, e.g., to study their numerical competence or categorical perception, to further elucidate how nonhuman animals learn and perceive the world. (shrink)

Background: Publication of ethically uncertain research occurs despite well-published guidelines set forth in documents such as the Declaration of Helsinki. Such guidelines exist to aide editorial staff in making decisions regarding ethical acceptability of manuscripts submitted for publication, yet examples of ethically suspect and uncertain publication exist. Our objective was to survey journal editors regarding practices and attitudes surrounding such dilemmas. Methods: The Editor-in-chief of each of the 103 English-language journals from the 2005 Abridged Index Medicus list publishing original research (...) were asked to complete a survey sent to them by email between September-December 2007. Results: A response rate of 33% (n = 34) was obtained from the survey. 18% (n = 6) of respondents had published ethically uncertain or suspect research within the last 10 years. 85% (n = 29) of respondents stated they would always reject ethically uncertain articles submitted for publication on ethical grounds alone. 12% (n = 4) of respondents stated they would approach each submission on a case-by-case basis. 3% (n = 1) stated they would be likely to publish such research, but only with accompanying editorial. Only 38% (n = 13) give reviewers explicit instruction to reject submissions on ethical grounds if found wanting. Conclusions: Editorial compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki in rejecting research that is conducted unethically was difficult to ascertain because of a poor response rate despite multiple attempts using different modalities. Of those who did respond, the majority do reject ethically suspect research but few explicitly advise reviewers to do so. In this study editors did not take advantage of the opportunity to describe their support for the rejection of the publication of unethical research. (shrink)

PURPOSE: The offer to return research results to participants is increasingly recognized as an ethical obligation, although few researchers routinely return results. We examined the needs and attitudes of parents of children with cancer and of adolescents with cancer to the return of research results. METHODS: Seven experts in research ethics scored content validity on parent and adolescent questionnaires previously developed through focus group and phone interviews. The questionnaires were revised and provided to 30 parents and 10 adolescents in a (...) tertiary care oncology setting. RESULTS: The content validity index for individual questions and the overall questionnaires scored as 0.86 for both questionnaires. All 30 parents and 10 adolescents who agreed to participate returned questionnaires. The majority (>95%) indicated that they had a strong or very strong right to receive results. Letter or e-mail was a satisfactory means to return results described as good or neutral (66% parents, 100% adolescents) but more participants wished face-to-face disclosure of results with negative implications (50% parents, 60% adolescents). Very few wanted results disseminated through a Web site. The majority acknowledged the need for peer-review before disclosure (60% of adolescents and parents) but did not want "to be the last to know." CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that pediatric oncology patients and parents of children with cancer strongly feel that they have a right to research results, and that they wish to receive these in a timely manner. (shrink)

This paper assesses two different approaches to inner speech that can be found in the literature. One of them regards inner speech as a vehicle of conscious thought. The other holds that inner speech is better characterised as an activity derived from social uses of its outer counterpart. In this paper I focus on the explanatory power of each approach to account for the control of attention and behaviour in the context of executive tasks. I will argue that the vehicle (...) view cannot capture some central cases of inner speech in executive tasks because they cannot be described as cases of bringing thought into consciousness. Then I will offer a revised version of the activity view and I will apply it to some examples so as to show that it is better posited to account for them. I end by considering two objections to the activity view and a possible way to address them. (shrink)