In adapting Husserl’s philosophical phenomenological method to conduct research in psychology I included Husserl’s two methodical steps, the epochē and the reduction, as part of the scientific procedure. Zahavi objected to my use of those steps. This article is a response to his objections and it is a reaffirmation of the necessity of the epochē and reduction for Husserlian phenomenological psychological research. A description of Husserl’s acknowledged types of psychology and a description of his transcendental phenomenology are also presented along (...) with two outlines of how Husserlian phenomenological research could be conducted. (shrink)

This paper constructs a cirquent calculus system and proves its soundness and completeness with respect to the semantics of computability logic. The logical vocabulary of the system consists of negation \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\neg}}$$\end{document}, parallel conjunction \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\wedge}}$$\end{document}, parallel disjunction \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\vee}}$$\end{document}, branching recurrence ⫰, and branching corecurrence ⫯. The article is published in two parts, with (the previous) (...) Part I containing preliminaries and a soundness proof, and (the present) Part II containing a completeness proof. (shrink)

Cirquent calculus is a novel proof theory permitting component-sharing between logical expressions. Using it, the predecessor article ‘Elementary-base cirquent calculus I: Parallel and choice connectives’ built the sound and complete axiomatization $\textbf{CL16}$ of a propositional fragment of computability logic. The atoms of the language of $\textbf{CL16}$ represent elementary, i.e. moveless, games and the logical vocabulary consists of negation, parallel connectives and choice connectives. The present paper constructs the first-order version $\textbf{CL17}$ of $\textbf{CL16}$, also enjoying soundness and completeness. The language of (...) $\textbf{CL17}$ augments that of $\textbf{CL16}$ by including choice quantifiers. Unlike classical predicate calculus, $\textbf{CL17}$ turns out to be decidable. (shrink)

The concept of scaffolding has wide resonance in several scientific fields. Here we attempt to adopt it for the study of development. In this perspective, the embryo is conceived as an integral whole, comprised of several hierarchical modules as in a recurrent circularity of emerging patterns. Within the developmental hierarchy, each module yields an inter-level relationship that makes it possible for the scaffolding to mediate the production of selectable variations. A wide range of genetic, cellular and morphological mechanisms allows the (...) scaffolding to integrate these modular variations into a functionally coordinate unit. A genetic scaffolding accounts for the inherited invariance of pattern formation during the embryo’s growth. At higher level, cells behave as agents endowed with the capacity to interpret any scaffolding variation as signs. The full hierarchy of a multi-level scaffolding is eventually attained when the embryo acquires the capacity to impose a number of developmental constraints on its constituting parts in a top-down direction. The acquisition of this capacity allows a semiotic threshold to emerge between the living cellular world and the underlying non-living molecular world. As this boundary is gradually defined during development, cells enter into new functional relationships, while, at the same time, are relieved from their physical determinism. The resulting constraints can thus become the driving forces that upgrade embryonic scaffolding from the simple molecular signalling to the complexity of sign recognition proper of a cellular community. In this semiotic perspective, the apparent goal directness of any developmental strategy should no longer be accounted for by a predetermined genetic program, but by the gradual definition of the relationships selected amongst the ones historically explored. (shrink)

Computability logic (CL) is a recently launched program for redeveloping logic as a formal theory of computability, as opposed to the formal theory of truth that logic has more traditionally been. Formulas in it represent computational problems, "truth" means existence of an algorithmic solution, and proofs encode such solutions. Within the line of research devoted to finding axiomatizations for ever more expressive fragments of CL, the present paper introduces a new deductive system CL12 and proves its soundness and completeness with (...) respect to the semantics of CL. Conservatively extending classical predicate calculus and offering considerable additional expressive and deductive power, CL12 presents a reasonable, computationally meaningful, constructive alternative to classical logic as a basis for applied theories. To obtain a model example of such theories, this paper rebuilds the traditional, classical-logic-based Peano arithmetic into a computability-logic-based counterpart. Among the purposes of the present contribution is to provide a starting point for what, as the author wishes to hope, might become a new line of research with a potential of interesting findings—an exploration of the presumably quite unusual metatheory of CL-based arithmetic and other CL-based applied systems. (shrink)

This book considers the semantic and syntactic nature of indexicals - linguistic expressions, as in I, you, this, that, yesterday, tomorrow , whose reference shifts from utterance to utterance.There is a long-standing controversy as to whether the semantic reference point is already present as syntactic material or whether it is introduced post-syntactically by semantic rules of interpretation. Alessandra Giorgi resolves this controversy through an empirically grounded exploration of temporal indexicality, arguing that the speaker's temporal location is specified in the (...) syntactic structure. She supports her analysis with theoretical and empirical arguments based on data from English, Italian, Chinese, and Romanian. Professor Giorgi addresses some difficult and longstanding issues in the analysis of temporal phenomena - including the Italian imperfect indicative, the properties of the so-called future-in-the-past, and the properties of Free Indirect Discourse - and shows that her framework can account elegantly for all of them. Carefully argued, succinct, and clearly written her book will appeal widely to semanticists in linguistics and philosophy from graduate level upwards and to linguists interested in the syntax-semantics interface. (shrink)

Cirquent calculus is a proof system with inherent ability to account for sharing subcomponents in logical expressions. Within its framework, this article constructs an axiomatization $$\text{ CL18 }$$ CL18 of the basic propositional fragment of computability logic—the game-semantically conceived logic of computational resources and tasks. The nonlogical atoms of this fragment represent arbitrary so called static games, and the connectives of its logical vocabulary are negation and the parallel and choice versions of conjunction and disjunction. The main technical result of (...) the article is a proof of the soundness and completeness of $$\text{ CL18 }$$ CL18 with respect to the semantics of computability logic. (shrink)

Hájek and Montagna proved that the modal propositional logic ILM is the logic of -conservativity over sound theories containing I (PA with induction restricted to formulas). I give a simpler proof of the same fact.

Discusses the phenomenological foundations for qualitative research in psychology which operates out of the intersection of phenomenological philosophy, science, and psychology; challenges long-standing assumptions about the practice of grounding the science of psychology in empiricism and asserts that the broader philosophy of phenomenological theory of science permits more adequate psychological development"--Provided by publisher.

This article points out the criteria necessary in order for a qualitative scientific method to qualify itself as phenomenological in a descriptive Husserlian sense. One would have to employ description within the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, and seek the most invariant meanings for a context. The results of this analysis are used to critique an article by Klein and Westcott , that presents a typology of the development of the phenomenological psychological method.

Cell communication plays a key role in multicellular organisms. In developing embryos as in adult organisms, cells communicate by coordinating their differentiation through the establishment and/or renewal of a variety of cell communication channels. Under both these conditions, cells interact by either receptor signalling, surface recognition of specific cell adhesion molecules or transfer of cytoplasmic components through junctional coupling. In recent years, it has become apparent that cells may also communicate through the extracellular release of microvesicles. They may originate as (...) either exosomes from the endosomal compartment upon fusion of multivesicular bodies with the plasma membrane or be shed directly from the plasma membrane via extensions of the cell surface. Microvesicles may disperse over long distances through body fluids and deliver their molecular cargo onto a variety of target cells. As a general rule, the metabolic fate of these cells is determined by the molecular nature of the vesicular cargo, while targeting itself depends on the affinity of the molecules expressed on the enclosing membrane. In this paper, we will be arguing that intercellular vesicular transfer is substantially different from other types of cell communication, allowing cells and molecules to interact on varying levels. Cells interacting via ligand signalling owe their specificity to the steric coupling with cognate receptor molecules. As such, it is a pure molecular process that affects target cells only upon integration into their responding repertoire. In this relationship, coupled cells are reciprocally adapted to each other through the selection of their respective signalling capacities, following exploration of their receptor specificity. Interaction by intercellular vesicles realizes a substantially different type of cell communication. Vesicular traffic allows donor cells to carry out a horizontal type of gene transfer and target this information over long distances via independently controlled mechanisms. Because of this independence, cells interacting via vesicular traffic are not expected to adapt their signalling correspondences, but to control instead the efficiency of their cargo delivery irrespective of the receptor repertoire expressed by the target tissue. In this paper, the multifaceted functions of the intercellular vesicular traffic will be discussed in a multilevel biosemiotic perspective with the aim of unravelling the cellular mechanisms devised by nature to accomplish communication. (shrink)

This paper presents a soundness and completeness proof for propositional intuitionistic calculus with respect to the semantics of computability logic. The latter interprets formulas as interactive computational problems, formalized as games between a machine and its environment. Intuitionistic implication is understood as algorithmic reduction in the weakest possible — and hence most natural — sense, disjunction and conjunction as deterministic-choice combinations of problems , and “absurd” as a computational problem of universal strength.

Within the program of finding axiomatizations for various parts of computability logic, it was proven earlier that the logic of interactive Turing reduction is exactly the implicative fragment of Heyting’s intuitionistic calculus. That sort of reduction permits unlimited reusage of the computational resource represented by the antecedent. An at least equally basic and natural sort of algorithmic reduction, however, is the one that does not allow such reusage. The present article shows that turning the logic of the first sort of (...) reduction into the logic of the second sort of reduction takes nothing more than just deleting the contraction rule from its Gentzen-style axiomatization. The first sort of interactive reduction is also shown to come in three natural versions. While those three versions are very different from each other, their logical behaviors turn out to be indistinguishable, with that common behavior being precisely captured by implicative intuitionistic logic. Among the other contributions of the present article is an informal introduction of a series of new — finite and bounded — versions of recurrence operations and the associated reduction operations. (shrink)

In this article the phenomonelogical approach to qualitative research is compared with certain other qualitative approaches following other paradigms. The thesis is that a deepened understanding of phenomenological philosophy can provide the alternative framework that many of these authors have been seeking. The comparison with other approaches is made in terms of theoretical and methodical consistency. Theoretically, the argument is that the situation known as "mixed discourse" exists because practitioners have not sufficiently freed themselves from the criteria and practices of (...) traditional paradigms in which most qualitative researchers have been trained. The shift from the collection of numerical data to linguistic data takes place without appropriate shift in theoretical context. This state of affairs should be overcome in order to strengthen qualitative research. On the other hand, many qualitative researchers carry on practices that seem to be analogous to phenomenological prescriptions which are explicitly usually misunderstood or resisted when stated directly and generically. Thus, greater theoretical clarity and consistency as well as deeper reflection or better utilization of imaginative possibilities still seem to be called for in order to bring better theoretical conceptualization and more consistent practices to qualitative research. (shrink)

I present a semantics for the language of first-order additive-multiplicative linear logic, i.e. the language of classical first-order logic with two sorts of disjunction and conjunction. The semantics allows us to capture intuitions often associated with linear logic or constructivism such as sentences = games, SENTENCES = resources or sentences = problems, where “truth” means existence of an effective winning strategy.The paper introduces a decidable first-order logic ET in the above language and gives a proof of its soundness and completeness (...) with respect to this semantics. Allowing noneffective strategies in the latter is shown to lead to classical logic.The semantics presented here is very similar to Blass's game semantics. Although there is no straightforward reduction between the two corresponding notions of validity, my completeness proof can likely be adapted to the logic induced by Blass's semantics to show its decidability, which was the main problem left open in Blass's paper.The reader needs to be familiar with classical logic and arithmetic. (shrink)

A nonempty sequence T1,...,Tn of theories is tolerant, if there are consistent theories T 1 + ,..., T n + such that for each 1 i n, T i + is an extension of Ti in the same language and, if i n, T i + interprets T i+1 + . We consider a propositional language with the modality , the arity of which is not fixed, and axiomatically define in this language the decidable logics TOL and TOL. It is (...) shown that TOL (resp. TOL) yields exactly the schemata of PA-provable (resp. true) arithmetical sentences, if (A1,..., An) is understood as (a formalization of) PA+A1, ..., PA+An is tolerant. (shrink)

Dzhaparidze, G., A generalized notion of weak interpretability and the corresponding modal logic, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 61 113-160. A tree Tr of theories T1,...,Tn is called tolerant, if there are consistent extensions T+1,...,T+n of T1,...,Tn, where each T+i interprets its successors in the tree Tr. We consider a propositional language with the following modal formation rule: if Tr is a tree of formulas, then Tr is a formula, and axiomatically define in this language the decidable logics TLR (...) and TLRω. It is proved that TLR yields exactly the schemata of PA-provable sentences, if Tr is understood as “Tr is tolerant”. In fact, TLR axiomatizes a considerable fragment of provability logic with quantifiers over ∑1-sentences, and many relations that have been studied in the literature can be expressed in terms of tolerance. We introduce and study two more relations between theories: cointerpretability and cotolerance which are, in a sense, dual to interpretability and tolerance. Cointerpretability is a characterization of ∑1-conservativity for essentially reflexive theories in terms of translations. (shrink)

The author explains that his background was in experimental psychology but that he wanted to study the whole person and not fragmented psychological processes. He also desired a non-reductionistic method for studying humans. Fortunately he came across the work of Edmund Husserl and discovered in the latter’s thought a way of researching humans that met the criteria he was seeking. Eventually he developed a phenomenological method for researching humans in a psychological way based upon the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (...) This article briefly describes the method. (shrink)

This work is an attempt to lay foundations for a theory of interactive computation and bring logic and theory of computing closer together. It semantically introduces a logic of computability and sets a program for studying various aspects of that logic. The intuitive notion of computational problems is formalized as a certain new, procedural-rule-free sort of games between the machine and the environment, and computability is understood as existence of an interactive Turing machine that wins the game against any possible (...) environment. The formalism used as a specification language for computational problems, called the universal language, is a non-disjoint union of the formalisms of classical, intuitionistic and linear logics, with logical operators interpreted as certain—most basic and natural—operations on problems. Validity of a formula is understood as being “always computable”, and the set of all valid formulas is called the universal logic. The name “universal” is related to the potential of this logic to integrate, on the basis of one semantics, classical, intuitionistic and linear logics, with their seemingly unrelated or even antagonistic philosophies. In particular, the classical notion of truth turns out to be nothing but computability restricted to the formulas of the classical fragment of the universal language, which makes classical logic a natural syntactic fragment of the universal logic. The same appears to be the case for intuitionistic and linear logics . Unlike classical logic, these two do not have a good concept of truth, and the notion of computability restricted to the corresponding two fragments of the universal language, based on the intuitions that it formalizes, can well qualify as “intuitionistic truth” and “linear-logic truth”. The paper also provides illustrations of potential applications of the universal logic in knowledgebase, resourcebase and planning systems, as well as constructive applied theories. The author has tried to make this article easy to read. It is fully self-contained and can be understood without any specialized knowledge of any particular subfield of logic or computer science. (shrink)

Any living organism interacts with and responds specifically to environmental molecules by expressing specific olfactory receptors. In this paper, this specificity will be first examined in causal terms with particular emphasis on the mechanisms controlling olfactory gene expression, cell-to-cell interactions and odor-decoding processes. However, this type of explanation does not entirely justify the role olfactory receptors have played during evolution, since they are also expressed ectopically in different organs and/or tissues. Homologous olfactory genes have in fact been found in such (...) diverse cells and/or organs as spermatozoa, testis and kidney where they are assumed to act as chemotactic sensors or renin modulators. To justify their functional diversity, homologous olfactory receptors are assumed to share the same basic role: that of conferring a self-identity to cells or tissues under varying environmental conditions. By adopting this standpoint, the functional attribution as olfactory or chemotactic sensors to these receptors should not be seen either as a cause conditioning receptor gene expression, or as a final effect resulting from genetically predetermined programs, but as a direct consequence of the environmental conditions olfactory receptor genes have explored during evolution. The association of odorant patterns with specific environmental or contextual situations makes their relationship semiotically triadic, due to the emergence of an interpretant capable of perceiving odorants as meaningful signs out of a noisy background. This perspective highlights the importance of odorant-receptor relationships as respect to the properties of the interacting partners. It is our contention that only when taken together can these different explanatory strategies provide a realistic account of how olfactory receptor genes have been structurally and functionally modified during evolution. (shrink)

Empiricism had dominated scientific activities for about three centuries but beginning with the 20th Century a new philosophy, phenomenology, began to develop and certain scientists who conducted research with humans began to turn to phenomenology as the basis for their scientific work rather than empiricism. What was known as the Utrecht School in Holland just after World War II, psychologists at Duquesne University during mid-twentieth century, pedagogists in Canada at about the same time and nurses later in the twentieth century (...) all began to base their research on phenomenological philosophical principles rather than on empiricism. Certain philosophers criticized the approach of these scientists and offered their own praxis based directly on phenomenological philosophy. However, one of the members of the Duquesne University’s group strongly criticized the evaluation of his approach by the philosophers and demonstrated the significant errors of their criticism. The psychologist then clarified his scientific phenomenological approach toward psychological phenomena and emphasized the role of the phenomenological epoche’ and reduction for Husserlian scientific phenomenology. (shrink)

While it is heartening to see that more researchers in the field of the social sciences are using some version of the phenomenological method, it is also disappointing to see that very often some of the steps employed do not follow phenomenological logic. In this paper, several dissertations are reviewed in order to point out some of the difficulties that are encountered in attempting to use some version of the phenomenological method. Difficulties encountered centred on the phenomenological reduction, the use (...) of imaginative variation and the feedback to subjects. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)

This article is a response to Jonathan Smith’s attempted rebuttal to the accusations I had made that Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’s methodical procedures did not meet generally accepted scientific criteria. Each of Smith’s defenses was carefully examined and found to be lacking. IPA’s claim to have roots in contemporary phenomenological philosophy was found to be seriously deficient and its claim that it has a basis in hermeneutics was superficial. IPA’s hesitation to proclaim fixed methods makes the possibility of replication of IPA (...) studies impossible and thus it makes the fulfillment of an important scientific criterion impossible. Its claim that its findings are subjective fails to meet the important scientific criterion of objectivity or even intersubjectivity. Consequently, the claims that I made in my original article were basically sustained and repeated. (shrink)

The paper introduces a semantics for the language of classical first order logic supplemented with the additional operators and . This semantics understands formulas as tasks. An agent , working as a slave for its master , can carry out the task αβ if it can carry out any one of the two tasks α, β, depending on which of them was requested by the master; similarly, it can carry out xα if it can carry out α for any particular (...) value for x selected by the master; an agent can carry out α→β if it can carry out β as long as it has, as a slave , an agent who carries out α; finally, carrying out P, where P is an atomic formula, simply means making P true; in particular, is a task that no agent can carry out. When restricted to the language of classical logic, the meaning of formulas is isomorphic to their classical meaning, which makes our semantics a conservative extension of classical semantics.This semantics can claim to be a formalization of the resource philosophy associated with linear logic, if resources are understood as agents carrying out tasks. The classical operators of our language correspond to the multiplicative operators of linear logic, while and correspond to the additive conjunction and universal quantifier, respectively.Our formalism may also have a potential to be used in AI as an alternative logic of planning and action. Its main appeal is that it is immune to the frame problem and the knowledge preconditions problem.The paper axiomatically defines a logic L in the above language and proves its soundness and completeness with respect to the task semantics in the following intuitive sense: L α iff α can be carried out by an agent who has nothing but its intelligence for carrying out tasks. This logic is shown to be semidecidable in the full language and decidable when the classical quantifier is forbidden in it. (shrink)

It is often asserted that a liberal theory of political obligation is unattainable. This is, largely, because liberalism revolves around consent and hence, is supposed to be intrinsically inimical to the existence of state authority. However, there is at least one liberal proposal – the argument of fair play, that makes a plausible case for justifying the establishment of a coercive entity. The most popular contemporary version of it, which is offered by George Klosko, turns on the fact that non-excludable (...) goods cannot be exchanged based on consent. Instead, there must be enforceable, independent, objective standards of fairness that should govern the distribution of the effects of such goods. In this article, I argue that if Klosko’s account is correct, then not only the existence of non-excludable goods but also, the production and exchange of existentially significant excludable goods warrant an establishment of coercive authority. I argue that in this way, we can take an important step towards establishing a full-blown liberal theory of political obligation. (shrink)

Un tema transversal que aparece en la obra de la filósofa Judith Butler, especialmente en Vida precaria y Marcos de guerra, tiene que ver con la experiencia afectiva que tienen los sujetos. Por esta razón, el objetivo del presente artículo teórico es analizar la manera como la filósofa norteamericana trata el tema de los afectos o las emociones. El texto se centra en demostrar la pertinencia de la reflexión en torno a los afectos, ya que es un elemento crítico-social que (...) ayuda a comprender la constitución de la subjetividad y la agencia, tanto individual como colectiva; asimismo, pretende ofrecer nuevos aportes para el entendimiento de las situaciones contemporáneas de discriminación y opresión, pero también de resistencia en contextos democráticos. Aun cuando el sujeto, desde sus experiencias afectivas, se encuentra condicionado por los marcos normativos sociales, es posible pensar en luchas desde el afecto, como una salida ante los efectos restrictivos que este genera. (shrink)

Predicate modal formulas with non-modalized quantifiers (call them Q-formulas) are considered as schemata of arithmetical formulas, where is interpreted as the provability predicate of some fixed correct extension T of arithmetic. A method of constructing 1) non-provable in T and 2) false arithmetical examples for Q-formulas by Kripke-like countermodels of certain type is given. Assuming the means of T to be strong enough to solve the (undecidable) problem of derivability in QGL, the Q-fragment of the predicate version of the logic (...) GL, we prove the recursive enumerability of the sets of Q-formulas all arithmetical examples of which are: 1) T-provable, 2) true. In. particular, the first one is shown to be exactly QGL and the second one to be exactly the Q-fragment of the predicate version of Solovay's logic S. (shrink)

This article considers the problem of how employees and observers of business ethics behaviors often do not know how to safely and effectively engage with business ethics issues and cases. The ameliorative method of social situational business ethics framing was analyzed. Key parts of the related literature from philosophy, sociology, organizational studies, and business ethics are reviewed. A literature gap between general framing theory and business ethics was identified with respect to the need for social situational framing in business ethics (...) at the micro individual, meso organizational, and macro institutional levels. Theoretical propositions for bridging the literature gap and a wide variety of business ethics engagement case examples are developed as illustrations of and support for the propositions. Practical social situational business ethics framing implications for safe and effective business ethics engagement are considered. (shrink)

According to the thesis of powerism, our world is pervaded by causal powers which are metaphysically basic. The aim of this paper is to defend the existence of the self, defined as a substantial entity, and its mental powers. This claim, which may seem a bold one, should not be deemed as inconsistent with scientific evidence. In fact, this approach does not ignore empirical knowledge, but is not bound only to it in order to understand entities, properties, and the relationship (...) between them. Aristotelian powerism may show that the self, as the subject of one’s mental acts, is a substance that has an essential nature. Firstly, we shall analyze the immediate evidence we have in support of the existence of the self as a substantial entity. We will show that the self is a substance because it possesses an essential character, i.e. an individual essence. We will take into account the Aristotelian perspective of substance, trying to show how the presence of a necessary property that makes every subject identical to itself and the phenomenal features of one’s private experience point to the existence of a substantial entity that corresponds to the self. Secondly, we will try to justify the adoption of a metaphysical theory of causation based on powers, analyzing it in comparison with the main competing theories, namely hypotheticalism and nomism. Then, we shall proceed to show the causal properties of the substance in question, namely the mental powers. In fact, thirdly, we will embrace the thesis of powerism by defending the existence of a set of mental powers that should be attributed to the self. We will describe the main features of mental powers and we will show that they are conceivable as the pure intentional acts we perform by directing an intentional state towards an intentional object. In this way we show how a classic problem of philosophy of mind, relevant to science as well, can be addressed in an original way by a metaphysical approach involving powers. (shrink)

Developing a plausible theory of political obligation is crucial for understanding our current political lives or constructing new ones. However, it proved to be hard to arrive at a theory that is universalistic and logically consistent. Without adherence to certain universalistic principles, such as freedom and equality, one might be tempted to justify individuals’ allegiance to authoritarian regimes based on particularistic reasons. Also, one may argue that if a general theory of political obligation cannot be devised, we are justified to (...) resort to anarchism. Despite such high political stakes involved, a contention arose that universalistic approaches to political obligation are logically inconsistent because they run afoul of a particularity requirement. The latter is a demand that any plausible theory of individuals’ obligations toward a political entity should account for the reasons why they should obey the rules and orders of a specific authority. In this article, drawing on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s post-structuralist theory, I demonstrate that the dichotomy of universalism vs. particularism need not have destructive effects for a successful theory of political obligation. Indeed, it is possible to accept a particularity requirement but at the same time, argue that political obligations have a universalistic thrust. (shrink)

The majority of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) self-assemble in the form dimeric/oligomeric complexes along the plasma membrane. Due to the molecular interactions they participate, GPCRs can potentially provide the framework for discriminating a wide variety of intercellular signals, as based on some kind of combinatorial receptor codes. GPCRs can in fact transduce signals from the external milieu by modifying the activity of such intracellular proteins as adenylyl cyclases, phospholipases and ion channels via interactions with specific G-proteins. However, in spite of (...) the number of cell functions they can actually control, both GPCRs and their associated signal transduction pathways are extremely well conserved, for only a few alleles with null or minor functional alterations have so far been found. This would seem to suggest that, beside a mechanism for DNA repairing, there must be another level of quality control that may help maintaining GPCRs rather stable throughout evolution. We propose here receptor oligomerization to be a basic molecular mechanism controlling GPCRs redundancy in many different cell types, and the plasma membrane as the first hierarchical cell structure at which selective categorical sensing may occur. Categorical sensing can be seen as the cellular capacity for identifying and ordering complex patterns of mixed signals out of a contextual matrix, i.e., the recognition of meaningful patterns out of ubiquitous signals. In this context, redundancy and degeneracy may appear as the required feature to integrate the cell system into functional units of progressively higher hierarchical levels. (shrink)

Recently, a book was published, the sole purpose of which was to discourage researchers from using the scientific phenomenological method. The author had previously been critical of nurses who had used the scientific phenomenological method but in the new book he goes after the originators of different methods of scientific phenomenological research and attempts to criticize them severely. In this review I defend only the scientific phenomenological method that is strictly based upon the thought of Edmund Husserl. Given the entirely (...) negative project of only critiquing phenomenologically grounded scientific research, one would expect the author to be sensitive to the cautions historians and philosophers of science speak about when one attempts to criticize concepts and procedures that belong to a different research community. Paley, an empiricist, uses empirical criteria to criticize phenomenological work.Moreover, given the entirely negative project of critiquing phenomenologically grounded scientific research one would expect the author to be knowledgeable about phenomenology and the innovative research practices used by a new research community. However, the author has only a thin, superficial understanding of phenomenology. One gets the impression that he only reads phenomenology in order to critique it. He displays an outsider’s understanding of it which means that his criticisms of it are faulty because he does not know how to think and dwell within the phenomenological framework; he does not understand “discovery-oriented” research and he keeps judging such research according to criteria from the “context of verification” perspective which are the wrong criteria for “discovery-oriented” research; he denigrates and reduces nursing research strategies because he interprets them to be based on pragmatic motivations only. He does not even grant that nurses can have authentic scientific motivations for seeking phenomenologically based methods; he uses unfair rhetorical strategies in the sense that he uses strategies himself that he criticizes when others use them. The review below documents what has been summarized here. (shrink)

The present paper constructs three new systems of clarithmetic : CLA8, CLA9 and CLA10. System CLA8 is shown to be sound and extensionally complete with respect to PA-provably recursive time computability. This is in the sense that an arithmetical problem A has a τ-time solution for some PA-provably recursive function τ iff A is represented by some theorem of CLA8. System CLA9 is shown to be sound and intensionally complete with respect to constructively PA-provable computability. This is in the sense (...) that a sentence X is a theorem of CLA9 iff, for some particular machine M, PA proves that M computes X. And system CLA10 is shown to be sound and intensionally complete with respect to not-necessarily-constructively PA-provable computability. This means that a sentence X is a theorem of CLA10 iff PA proves that X is computable, even if PA does not “know” of any particular machine M that computes X. (shrink)

Since the early 1990s, increasing attention has been paid to the impact of workplace bullying on employees’ well-being and job attitudes. However, the relationship between workplace bullying and job satisfaction remains unclear. This study aims to shed light on the nature of the bullying-job satisfaction relationship in the Italian context. As expected, the results revealed a U-shape curvilinear relationship between workplace bullying and job satisfaction after controlling for demographic variables. In contrast to the curvilinear model, the results support a negative (...) linear relationship between workplace bullying and psychological well-being, in which higher exposure to negative acts at work is associated with diminished well-being. In addition, gender and job position significantly predicted mental health scores where men and managers reported a better psychological well-being than women, blue-collar, and white-collar employees. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed according to these results. (shrink)