Aquí se presenta la primera traducción española del texto kantiano Sobre el mal radical tratado como el artículo que fue originalmente publicado en una revista y, por consiguiente, no tanto como el primer capítulo de La Religión dentro de los límites de la sola razón. Se intenta hacer ver que, tal como cuando trata el argumento moral sobre la existencia de Dios, Kant nos habla del ateo virtuoso como héroe moral de su formalismo ético, aquí la religión sólo (...) sirve para dibujar mejor los contornos de las piezas claves del pensamiento ético kantiano: la libertad y la responsabilidad o imputabilidad moral, que constituyen el auténtico credo kantiano y sólo se dejan asociar con una fe “reflexiva”. (shrink)

RESUMENEn el presente artículo se analiza la fundamentación leibniziana de la voluntad libre entendida como capacidad de autodeterminación, a partir de sus notas esenciales: espontaneidad, deliberación y contingencia. Al estar la voluntad determinada por la serie de percepciones que brotan de la naturaleza de la sustancia, el dominio de esta sobre sus propios actos es indirecto y diacrónico. Si bien Leibniz elude el necesitarismo mediante la atribución a la voluntad de la posibilidad lógica de obrar de forma que como obra, (...) la imputabilidad moral de las acciones queda seriamente comprometida. El artículo concluye con una valoración crítica de la postura de Leibniz desde una perspectiva de la naturaleza de la voluntad como apertura trascendental al bien en cuanto tal.PALABRAS CLAVELIBERTAD, AUTODETERMINACIÓN, IMPUTABILIDAD, DETERMINISMO, LEIBNIZABSTRACTIn the present article we analyze Leibniz’s foundation of free will, understood as a potency of self-determination, examining it from its essential features: spontaneity, deliberation and contingency. Since will is determined by the series of perceptions which flow from the nature of substance, its dominion over its own acts is indirect and diachronic. Even if Leibniz avoids necessitarianism by attributing the logical possibility of doing otherwise to the will, the actions’ moral imputability is seriously compromised. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of Leibniz’s position, from a perspective in which the nature of will is considered as a transcendental openness towards good as such.KEY WORDSFREE WILL, SELF-DETERMINATION, IMPUTABILITY, DETERMINISM, LEIBNIZ. (shrink)

ResumoO presente artigo inscreve-se numa pesquisa constituída de duas etapas, das quais apenas a primeiraé aqui contemplada. Essa etapa consiste essencialmente num esforço por chamar a atenção para o queconsidero uma dificuldade conceitual relativa à noção de liberdade prática no pensamento de ImmanuelKant. Proponho que Kant trabalha com duas acepções distintas da liberdade que deve caracterizar oarbítrio humano, que são acepções dificilmente conciliáveis e cuja confusão torna problemático o projetofundamental de sua filosofia prática. Uma delas, conquistada argumentativamente nos seus textosfundacionais (...) de filosofia prática, assimila liberdade a moralidade, dando ocasião ao problema da imputabilidadedas escolhas imorais. A outra, aparentemente pressuposta ao longo de todos os seus escritossobre o tema da liberdade e preferida quase unanimemente pelos intérpretes, equivale a uma concepçãomoralmente neutra de livre arbítrio. Contra ela, há de saída a explícita recusa do próprio filósofo quandochamado a se manifestar ex professo sobre sua legitimidade na Metafísica dos Costumes. Mas tento mostrarque, mais grave que isso, se trata de um conceito de liberdade que, a fim de garantir a imputabilidadede escolhas imorais, acaba tornando qualquer escolha inimputável.Palavras-chave: Liberdade, moralidade, imputabilidade, vontade, arbítrio.AbstractIn this paper, corresponding to the first of two parts of my current research, I endeavor to lay out aconceptual difficulty concerning the notion of practical freedom in Kant`s thought. I argue that the philosopherdeals with two distinct and conflicting meanings of the freedom of human choice, which rendersproblematic the fundamental project of his practical philosophy. The one, conceptually rooted in hisgrounding texts on freedom of the will, assimilates freedom and morality and ends up by making, primafacie, unconceivable free choices against morality, hence, renders impossible the imputation of immoralchoices. The other, apparently presupposed throughout most of Kant`s writings on freedom and almostunanimously cheered by the interpreters, amounts to a morally neutral conception of free choice. Againstit raises Kant`s declared refusal when provoked to express himself about it in the Metaphysics of Morals.Moreover, I argue it`s a concept of freedom that, meant to guarantee the accountability of immoral choices,ends up by making all choices unaccountable. (shrink)

El texto examina los problemas de la moralización de la política a partir de la categoría “incapacidad moral permanente”, la cual se ha utilizado en el Perú para deponer a tres presidentes en los últimos años. Se interpreta dicha categoría en dos momentos: primero, como la evaluación ética de la conducta del mandatario, y, segundo, como la ausencia o daño de alguna capacidad constitutiva de la agencia moral. En el primer caso, se exponen tres posibles contenidos de la (...) moral desde la cual evaluar el accionar del gobernante. En el segundo caso, acudiendo a tres tradiciones éticas, se presentan tres capacidades -cognitiva, volitiva y empática- que pudieran ser esenciales para considerar un sujeto como moralmente responsable. Luego, se revisan algunas aporías a las que conlleva el uso indiscriminado de la “incapacidad moral permanente”, cuya solución supondría una reforma constitucional. (shrink)

Apresentamos aqui a tradução de uma pequena seleção das notas kantianas sobre ética. A maioria dos fragmento traduzidos é parte das chamadas Reflexões de Filosofia Moral publicadas no tomo XIX de Kants gesammelte Schriften, que se constituem, em sua maior parte, como as anotações de Kant (algumas em folhas soltas) na margem de um dos exemplares de referência para seus cursos de ética17, a Initia philosophiae practicae primae de Alexander Baumgarten, em sua edição de 1760. Acrescentamos à mesma seleção, (...) no entanto, algumas Reflexões presentes em outros volumes do Legado Manuscrito que, de alguma maneira, abordam os mesmos temas. As Reflexões foram dispostas em ordem numérica e separadas de acordo com seus respectivos assuntos. Considerando a diversidade dos temas comentados por Kant, de acordo com o manual, tais como obrigação, coerção, imputação, lei, justiça, punição etc, tentamos selecionar alguns tópicos que assumem uma função basilar dentro da teoria moral kantiana. Dessa forma, o primeiro grupo de Reflexões contém algumas notas que tratam com o problema da liberdade e da lei moral. O segundo é um compilado contendo comentários sobre o sentimento moral. O terceiro apresenta algumas reflexões esparsas sobre imputabilidade e o mal moral e o quarto grupo traz algumas notas comentadas sobre o problema do sumo bem, sendo, em alguns casos, apenas trechos de anotações maiores. As traduções foram realizadas diretamente a partir dos fragmentos originais, embora, em alguns casos, tenha sido feito o cotejamento com outras versões, dentre as quais cito a tradução para o espanhol, Reflexiones sobre Filosofia Moral, publicada por J. Herceg, a seleção de notas da Cambridge Edition intitulada Notes and Fragments e a tradução francesa de Luc Langlois, Réflexions Sur La Philosophie Morale. Com o objetivo de dar mais clareza aos apontamentos, facilitando a interpretação, optei por completar, em alguns casos, as sentenças de Kant nas quais certas palavras ficam subentendidas. Este complemento está apresentado entre colchetes. Para fins comparativos, todas as Reflexões traduzidas são acompanhadas por sua correspondente original nas notas de rodapé. Ciente de todas as dificuldades desse tipo de trabalho, desde já, deixo aberto à comunidade acadêmica o espaço para críticas, sugestões e correções. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur believes that the intended absolute distance relationship between the self and the other should be overlapped by a reciprocal relationship by which one opens up to the other and his voice is interiorized in the same. The reciprocity model is in the language by changing the personal pronoun I for self, mainly, on the act of the promise speech. Ricoeur thinks the meaning of responsibility as accountability, that is, the self becomes responsible for his/her acts from the awareness (...) of being a capable subject conscious of being the narrator of his/her own story. (shrink)

Na última fase da sua evolução, Feuerbach propõe um materialismo que não anule a originalidade do sujeito e lhe reconheça um âmbito de liberdade. Confrontando-se com Schopenhauer e com Kant, ele examina o sentimento de remorso e de arrependimento, bem como as condições de imputabilidade de um ato. Enquanto aqueles recorriam à distinção entre a esfera inteligível e a esfera sensível do homem, Feuerbach procura reconduzir tudo ao único principio da sensibilidade. Esta, mudando no tempo, torna possível reconhecer como erro (...) um ato realizado e operar em si uma mudança. Contra Schopenhauer, Feuerbach afirma que o caráter do homem não é inato, nem imodificável, por isso é equivocada a pena de morte. O fundamento da liberdade é o eu que age no jogo das paixões e é essencialmente em relação com os outros. As sugestões no campo moral e jurídico são interessantes, mas permanecem abertas algumas questões éticas, como aquela do fundamento absoluto da obrigação moral, já posta por Kant na explicação da consciência moral. (shrink)

Os três artigos seguintes correspondema três aulas proferidas pelo Prof. Dr. ErnstTugendhat. No primeiro artigo, o autor trata doconceito de moral em Kant. Na Segunda aula,Prof. Tugendhat concentra-se no problema daliberdade em Kant. Por último, no terceiro artigo,aborda o conceito de liberdade como imputabilidade.

ABSTRACT In this paper I attempt to show how an important traditional line of interpretation of Kantian philosophy went astray by the fact that Kant works in its practical philosophy with two distinct and apparently conflicting conceptions of the freedom of human will, namely, freedom as noumenal causality and freedom as the power of choice between alternative possibilities. Firstly, I argue that no conception of freedom in Kant`s philosophy can possibly conflict with that asserted in his most foundational works on (...) practical philosophy, which defines freedom as the actual exercise of moral rationality. I next endeavor to show, by means of both textual and conceptual arguments, the inconsistency of the dominant adoption of a wrong version of the second alternative, namely that of freedom of choice as a supposed free power of choosing for or against morality. Finally, I defend that the only consistent way of conceiving Kant’s freedom of choice in accordance with his freedom as the actual exercise of morality reveals a real conceptual difficulty in Kant`s practical philosophy, namely, the problem of the accountability of immoral decisions. The guiding-thread of this exposition is an interpretation of Karl Ameriks’s article of 2002: “Pure Reason of Itself Alone Suffices to Determine the Will”. (shrink)

El artículo plantea el problema de si la filosofía kantiana es un humanismo o un antihumanismo. El autor se propone defender una lectura humanista de dicha filosofía, pues en esa lectura se fundamentan los valores de la libertad y la democracia. Heidegger dio lugar a una lectura antihumanista de Kant, la cual quebrantaría a lo humano como origen de toda norma para actuar y juzgar. Reemplazar a la razón humana como fundamento de la libertad por una trascendencia que dicta leyes (...) a las cuales se obedece por venir del Ser o de Dios es la abolición de la libertad y, por ende, de la responsabilidad, de la imputabilidad y de la posibilidad de todo juicio moral. El antihumanismo es la tumba de la libertad. The paper raises the question whether Kantian philosophy is humanism or an anti-humanism. The author proposes a humanist interpretation of Kantian philosophy, in which the values of freedom and democracy are grounded. Contrariwise, Heidegger's interpretation of Kant runs opposite to humanism as the origin of patterns of action and judgement. The replacement of human reason as basis for freedom, for a trascendentality that dictates rules which must be obeyed since they originate in the Being or in God, amounts to abolition of freedom as well as of human responsibility, imputation and even moral judgement. Therefore, anti-humanism is the tomb of freedom. (shrink)

Este trabajo se ocupa de algunas ideas éticas del filósofo latinoamericano Andrés Bello (1781-1865), en especial de su “teoría de los sentimientos morales”. En la polémica del siglo XIX entre el llamado racionalismo ético (representado por Théodore Jouffroy) y el utilitarismo (Bentham), Bello adopta una postura intermedia, que pudiera calificarse de “hedonismo moderado” o de “eudemonismo”. Sus puntos de vista sobre la motivación moral o la manera en que la razón y el sentimiento se entrelazan para formar nuestras creencias (...) morales, se revelan como muy próximos a las doctrinas de Aristóteles y de algunos autores contemporáneos. (shrink)

Challenges to Legal Theory offers the reader a fascinating journey though a variety of multi-disciplinary topics, ranging from law and literature, and law and religion, to legal philosophy and constitutional law. The collection reflects some of the challenges that the field of legal theory currently faces. It is compiled by a selection of international and Spanish scholars, whose essays are made available in English translation for the first time. The volume is based on a collection of essays, published in Spanish, (...) in honour of Professor José Iturmendi Morales, of Complutense University, Madrid, and brings the rich scholarship of pre-eminent Spanish scholars of law and legal theory to an international audience. (shrink)

Current frameworks on ethical decision-making process have some limitations. This paper argues that the consideration of moral competencies, understood as moral virtues in the workplace, can enhance our understanding of why moral character contributes to ethical decision-making. After discussing the universal nature of four moral competencies (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance), we analyse their influence on the various stages of the ethical decision-making process. We conclude by considering the managerial implications of our findings and proposing further (...) research. (shrink)

Crisis requires society to renew itself, albeit in a disruptive way. The current Covid-19 pandemic is transforming ways of working, living, and relating to each other on a global level, suddenly and dramatically. This paper focuses on the field of education to show how higher education institutions are undergoing radical transformations driven by the need to digitalize education and training processes in record time with academics who lack innate technological capabilities for online teaching. The university system must strive to overcome (...) this situation to be competitive and provide high-quality education in a scenario of digital transformation, disruptive technological innovations, and accelerated change. To achieve these goals, this paper explains some barriers and challenges that universities encounter, as well as technological resources and methodologies they have used in the current scenario to transform higher education to face Covid-19 disruption. The discussion and conclusion synthesize significant insights that can be applied to the digitalization of education in the foreseeable future. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to carry out a genetic study on the Husserlian concept of noema based in the givenness of the real body in the passive experience of pain. The development focuses, either, on the delimitation of the painful body given in its physical sphere in attention to its material properties, and in the eventual integration of this passively given body in the so-called noetic-noematic structure regarding the intentional revelation that pain implies. To do this, pain will (...) first be briefly examined in light of "original" passivity. Secondly, the way in which the body is given in its real disposition and its understanding as a bodily ego in experiencing pain will be contemplated. Thirdly, considering the “original” constitution of the body in pain in a broad sense, emphasis will be placed on its correspondence with intentionality, a matter that only confirms that pain is a form of perception. Finally, the deployment of the genetically viewed noema is given on the basis of the determination of the real body as a noematic object. (shrink)

The COVID-19 global health emergency has greatly impacted the educational field. Faced with unprecedented stress situations, professors, students, and families have employed various coping and resilience strategies throughout the confinement period. High and persistent stress levels are associated with other pathologies; hence, their detection and prevention are needed. Consequently, this study aimed to design a predictive model of stress in the educational field based on artificial intelligence that included certain sociodemographic variables, coping strategies, and resilience capacity, and to study the (...) relationship between them. The non-probabilistic snowball sampling method was used, involving 337 people from the university education community in south-eastern Spain. The Perceived Stress Scale, Stress Management Questionnaire, and Brief Resilience Scale were administered. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used to design the architecture of artificial neural networks. The results found that stress levels could be predicted by the synaptic weights of coping strategies and timing of the epidemic, with a predictive capacity of over 80% found in the neural network model. Additionally, direct and significant associations were identified between the use of certain coping strategies, stress levels, and resilience. The conclusions of this research are essential for effective stress detection, and therefore, early intervention in the field of educational psychology, by discussing the influence of resilience or lack thereof on the prediction of stress levels. Identifying the variables that maintain a greater predictive power in stress levels is an effective strategy to design more adjusted prevention programs and to anticipate the needs of the community. (shrink)

This article provides a comparative and interpretative analysis of the emerging projects in Latin America after the crisis of the neoliberal modernity project. It offers a critical interpretation of the current tendencies in Latin American politics at the national level, while suggesting some hints to understand the current neoliberal crisis in Western countries after Trump’s electoral triumph. The purpose is to figure out the collective meanings behind the new national projects in Latin America (postcolonial indigeneity, confrontational populism, defective neoliberalism, and (...) social liberalism) that are constructing a new regional order. The work examines how the neoliberal modernity project came to be dominant in the late 1980s, only to enter into a period of crisis in the current century. That crisis, in turn, provides the basis for exploring four different alternative projects of modernity, based on the kind of rationality and agency promoted by them. (shrink)

In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for (...) class='Hi'>moral responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms--including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts--is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want--natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities--would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition. (shrink)

People disagree about whether “moral facts” are objective facts like mathematical truths (moral realism) or simply products of the human mind (moral antirealism). What is the impact of different meta-ethical views on actual behavior? In Experiment 1, a street canvasser, soliciting donations for a charitable organization dedicated to helping impoverished children, primed passersby with realism or antirealism. Participants primed with realism were twice as likely to be donors, compared to control participants and participants primed with antirealism. In (...) Experiment 2, online participants primed with realism as opposed to antirealism reported being willing to donate more money to a charity of their choice. Considering the existence of non-negotiable moral facts may have raised the stakes and motivated participants to behave better. These results therefore reveal the impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making: priming a belief in moral realism improved moral behavior. (shrink)

In recent years, character traits in general and virtue-related concepts in particular have been of considerable interest to philosophers, psychological researchers, and practitioners in the business ethics field. Three approaches to character traits can be used to incorporate ethics into organizations: virtues, character strengths, and competencies. The aim of this article is to clarify the concept of character traits, or virtues, and provide a unified operational version of it for incorporation into management. To this end, we first discuss the analogy (...) among virtues, character strengths, and competencies. Then, we propose a list of moral competencies that can be implemented in competency-based human resource management. (shrink)

Metacognition is the capacity to evaluate the success of one's own cognitive processes in various domains; for example, memory and perception. It remains controversial whether metacognition relies on a domain-general resource that is applied to different tasks or if self-evaluative processes are domain specific. Here, we investigated this issue directly by examining the neural substrates engaged when metacognitive judgments were made by human participants of both sexes during perceptual and memory tasks matched for stimulus and performance characteristics. By comparing patterns (...) of fMRI activity while subjects evaluated their performance, we revealed both domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive representations. Multivoxel activity patterns in anterior prefrontal cortex predicted levels of confidence in a domain-specific fashion, whereas domain-general signals predicting confidence and accuracy were found in a widespread network in the frontal and posterior midline. The demonstration of domain-specific metacognitive representations suggests the presence of a content-rich mechanism available to introspection and cognitive control. (shrink)

Positive Psychology has turned its attention to the study of emotions in a scientific and rigorous way. Particularly, to how emotions influence people’s health, performance, or their overall life satisfaction. Within this trend, Flow theory has established a theoretical framework that helps to promote the Flow experience. Flow state, or optimal experience, is a mental state of high concentration and enjoyment that, due to its characteristics, has been considered desirable for the development of the performing activity of performing musicians. Musicians (...) are a population prone to health problems, both psychological and physical, owing to different stressors of their training and professional activity. One of the most common problems is Musical Performance Anxiety. In this investigation, an electronic intervention program was carried out for the development of psychological self-regulation skills whose main objective was to trigger the Flow response in performing musicians and the coping mechanism for Musical Performance Anxiety. A quasi-experimental design was used with a control group in which pre- and post-measures of Flow State, Musical Performance Anxiety and, also, Social Skills were taken. Sixty-two performing musicians from different music colleges in Spain participated in the program. Results indicated that the intervention significantly improved Flow State, and Sense of Control, and decreased Music Performance Anxiety, and self-consciousness of the participants in the EG but not CG. The changes in the EG after the program showed the inverse relationship between Flow and Anxiety. Two important theoretical factors of both variables, such as worry and the feeling of lack of control, could be involved. The results are under discussion and future lines of research are proposed. (shrink)

This paper copes with a real-world classification problem related to the management of claims received in an insurance company. The way to obtain the classifier is not easy due to the high amount of missing values as well as the inherent imbalanced scenario within class labels. Once the data partition has been done, the training set is submitted to an intensive double grid search in order to obtain the most promising type of missing value imputation approach and then a step (...) ahead is done using the best method and it starts the next round of data mining strategies which now falls into data rebalancing umbrella. Again, a grid search from an undersampling and oversampling family with different settings is done taking into account only seen data. The training data obtained after the first grid search are now submitted to the second step according the second grid search in order to get the ready training set for the further classifier training. The main objective of the work is to find the best combination of data mining techniques that suits the data set with a pipeline containing two types of data preparation methods coming from different families. As an outcome, first the problem of the presence of missing values has been addressed and then the data rebalancing techniques has been applied. The study focuses on obtaining classifiers based on Bayesian and lazy approaches as well as decision trees, evaluated on metrics such as the area under the ROC curve (AUC), Cohen’s kappa, Accuracy and the F-measure, among others. The imputation by the mean the mode is preferable to the Expectation Maximization Imputation in the scenario faced in this paper taking into account that the amount of missing values is higher than a forty percent for many features. (shrink)

Este texto se centra en la génesis de las ciencias sociales a través de una reflexión analítico- descriptiva sobre la sistematización de la ciencia. La ciencia es una creación del ser humano y constituye la mejor herramienta para adquirir conocimientos acerca de su entorno, de sí mismo, del universo... Debe ser interdisciplinaria y para dar soporte a este empeño, hemos tenido que elegir, y hemos optado por comparar la sociología con la filosofía buscando aportaciones (implícitas o explícitas) de prestigiosos pensadores.

El objetivo de este artículo es realizar una revisión del estado de la cuestión sobre el concepto de estado de naturaleza en el pensamiento de Thomas Hobbes. Dicha revisión permite articular una comprensión de la naturaleza humana, puesto que a diferencia del realismo político el estado de naturaleza en Hobbes no tiene un rol meramente hipotético. Precisamente, la idea de naturaleza humana articula una proto-moralidad que permite comprender la transición hacia el estado civil. Las investigaciones Kavka, Gauthier y Hampton han (...) construido una compleja compresión de la naturaleza humana, la cual permite entender cierto sustrato de proto-moralidad en el pensamiento hobbesiano. (shrink)

La figura popular del mendigo se define por su alegría, comicidad y autoexclusión social. En el siglo xix, surgió una nueva visión, de carácter realista, en torno a este personaje. El objetivo del presente artículo es rescatar la obra poética del colombiano Joaquín Pablo Posada, ya prácticamente olvidada, para estudiar cómo conforma la figura del mendigo en un tiempo de transición. Los resultados señalan la existencia de un imaginario híbrido y de carácter joco-serio. Por un lado, se mantienen los rasgos (...) tradicionales, que incluyen al mendigo dentro de la tendencia festiva; por otro lado, se introduce una denuncia moderna sobre los padecimientos físicos y morales del mendigo, lo que cuestiona el discurso de las élites burguesas, sin salirse de su esquema central. En las conclusiones, se compara la complejidad del personaje de Posada frente a otros sujetos poéticos construidos durante los siglos xix y xx, que suelen adherirse a una sola faceta de esta figura. (shrink)

L'idée principale qui articule le présent article est la compréhension et la description du phénomène de la liberté à partir de la perspective phénoménologique merleau-pontyenne, donnée par l'explication et la défense du l_ien _comme _empiétement_. Cela nous fait nous situer dans une expérience ambiguë qui révélera une _liberté située_, conséquence de son projet et explication de _l'origine_ des sujets eux-mêmes, ce qui signifiera l'ipséité comme commencement ou nouveau commencement. Par conséquent, les libertés des sujets eux-mêmes, dans cette perspective, seront liées (...) à une coexistence qui est, en même temps, violence et conflit. (shrink)

In this essay, the hypothesis that biliverdin pigment plays an antioxidant role in the avian eggshell is proposed. Due to its ability to scavenge free radical species and to reduce mutation, biliverdin potentially counteracts the oxidative action of pathogens that penetrate the eggshell and/or protects the shell membrane from oxidation, thus promoting the proven antioxidant and antimicrobial capacities of the shell membrane itself. Additionally, biliverdin may be able to inhibit viral replication in the eggshell due to its ascribed antiviral properties. (...) Moreover, previous results in other taxa leave open the question of whether biliverdin can be absorbed by the embryo from the eggshell and play a role in embryogenesis. These mechanisms of antioxidant action of eggshell biliverdin remain totally unexplored in birds and in other oviparous animals. The main assumptions and predictions of the antioxidant hypothesis are developed, and directions for future research are proposed. (shrink)

Arguably the most foundational principle in perception research is that our experience of the world goes beyond the retinal image; we perceive the distal environment itself, not the proximal stimulation it causes. Shape may be the paradigm case of such “unconscious inference”: When a coin is rotated in depth, we infer the circular object it truly is, discarding the perspectival ellipse projected on our eyes. But is this really the fate of such perspectival shapes? Or does a tilted coin retain (...) an elliptical appearance even when we know it’s circular? This question has generated heated debate from Locke and Hume to the present; but whereas extant arguments rely primarily on introspection, this problem is also open to empirical test. If tilted coins bear a representational similarity to elliptical objects, then a circular coin should, when rotated, impair search for a distal ellipse. Here, nine experiments demonstrate that this is so, suggesting that perspectival shapes persist in the mind far longer than traditionally assumed. Subjects saw search arrays of three-dimensional “coins,” and simply had to locate a distally elliptical coin. Surprisingly, rotated circular coins slowed search for elliptical targets, even when subjects clearly knew the rotated coins were circular. This pattern arose with static and dynamic cues, couldn’t be explained by strategic responding or unfamiliarity, generalized across shape classes, and occurred even with sustained viewing. Finally, these effects extended beyond artificial displays to real-world objects viewed in naturalistic, full-cue conditions. We conclude that objects have a remarkably persistent dual character: their objective shape “out there,” and their perspectival shape “from here.”. (shrink)

As professionals, nurses are engaged in a moral endeavour, and thus confront many challenges in making the right decision and taking the right action. When nurses cannot do what they think is right, they experience moral distress that leaves a moral residue. This article proposes a theory of moral distress and a research agenda to develop a better understanding of moral distress, how to prevent it, and, when it cannot be prevented, how to manage it.

Prior research has shown the relationship between objective economic inequality and searching for positional goods. It also investigated the relationship between social class and low income with conspicuous consumption. However, the causal relationship between economic inequality has been less explored. Furthermore, there are also few studies looking for the psychological mechanisms that underlie these effects. The current research’s main goal is to analyze the consequences of perceived economic inequality on conspicuous and status consumption and the possible psychological mechanisms that could (...) explain its effects. Furthermore, the current research aims to examine whether there is a causal relationship between PEI and materialism preferences and attitudes toward indebtedness. This work includes two preregister experimental studies. In the Study 1, we manipulated PEI and its legitimacy through a 2 × 2 between-participants experiment. Results showed a main effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, status anxiety, materialism, and attitude toward indebtedness. No interaction effect between legitimacy and inequality was found. In the Study 2, we manipulated the PEI through the Bimboola Paradigm. We replicated the effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, and materialism and found that status seeking mediated the relationship between PEI and status and conspicuous consumption. Economic inequality affects consumer behavior and favors consumption preferences for products that provide desirable symbolic values associated with status. These results could have important implications in the interpersonal and intergroup processes, including those related to consumption and purchase. (shrink)