The neural correlates of software programming skills have been the target of an increasing number of studies in the past few years. Those studies focused on error-monitoring during software code inspection. Others have studied task-related cognitive load as measured by distinct neurophysiological measures. Most studies addressed only syntax errors. However, a recent functional MRI study suggested a pivotal role of the insula during error-monitoring when challenging deep-level analysis of code inspection was required. This raised the hypothesis that the insula is (...) causally involved in deep error-monitoring. To confirm this hypothesis, we carried out a new fMRI study where participants performed a deep source-code comprehension task that included error-monitoring to detect bugs in the code. The generality of our paradigm was enhanced by comparison with a variety of tasks related to text reading and bugless source-code understanding. Healthy adult programmers participated in this 3T fMRI experiment. The activation maps evoked by error-related events confirmed significant activations in the insula [p < 0.05]. Importantly, a posterior-to-anterior causality shift was observed concerning the role of the insula: in the absence of error, causal directions were mainly bottom-up, whereas, in their presence, the strong causal top-down effects from frontal regions, in particular, the anterior cingulate cortex was observed. (shrink)

Error-related electroencephalographic signals have been widely studied concerning the human cognitive capability of differentiating between erroneous and correct actions. Midfrontal error-related negativity and theta band oscillations are believed to underlie post-action error monitoring. However, it remains elusive how early monitoring activity is trackable and what are the pre-response brain mechanisms related to performance monitoring. Moreover, it is still unclear how task-specific parameters, such as cognitive demand or motor control, influence these processes. Here, we aimed to test pre- and post-error EEG (...) patterns for different types of motor responses and investigate the neuronal mechanisms leading to erroneous actions. We implemented a go/no-go paradigm based on keypresses and saccades. Participants received an initial instruction about the direction of response to be given based on a facial cue and a subsequent one about the type of action to be performed based on an object cue. The paradigm was tested in 20 healthy volunteers combining EEG and eye tracking. We found significant differences in reaction time, number, and type of errors between the two actions. Saccadic responses reflected a higher number of premature responses and errors compared to the keypress ones. Nevertheless, both led to similar EEG patterns, supporting previous evidence for increased ERN amplitude and midfrontal theta power during error commission. Moreover, we found pre-error decreased theta activity independent of the type of action. Source analysis suggested different origin for such pre- and post-error neuronal patterns, matching the anterior insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, respectively. This opposite pattern supports previous evidence of midfrontal theta not only as a neuronal marker of error commission but also as a predictor of action performance. Midfrontal theta, mostly associated with alert mechanisms triggering behavioral adjustments, also seems to reflect pre-response attentional mechanisms independently of the action to be performed. Our findings also add to the discussion regarding how salience network nodes interact during performance monitoring by suggesting that pre- and post-error patterns have different neuronal sources within this network. (shrink)

This paper proposes that we read a late work of Georg Lukács, The Ontology of Social Being, as an indispensable contribution to ontological investigation in general and particularly to the understanding of social reality. As the ontology of Lukács tends not to be familiar even to those who have foregrounded ontological issues in recent decades, it seems to be extremely fruitful to bring it into discussion. Comparing the analysis of Lukács with the ontology of critical realism, we argue that it (...) is not only possible to identify obvious convergences but also to shed light on many questions that still demand a proper treatment from an ontological perspective. (shrink)

O Estado Novo, corporativo, ancorou toda a sua vasta produção legislativa na área laboral nos princípios, constantes da Constituição de 1933 e do Estatuto do Trabalho Nacional, de proscrição da luta de classes e de solidariedade entre o capital e o trabalho, o que levou a uma forte distorção do direito colectivo de trabalho, marcada pela imposição de sindicatos únicos, pela proibição da greve e pelo forte condicionamento da acção sindical e da negociação colectiva. Nos últimos anos, assistiu-se a uma (...) certa "liberalização" do regime, que se tentava modernizar, até por necessidade do próprio capitalismo português. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin is heralded as one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and this editied work by a group of distinguished scholars is an examination of an Humean liberal intellectual. Isaiah Berlin's legacy still excites intense scholarly debate.

Resumo O texto explora as afinidades que podem ser encontradas entre o pensamento de Nietzsche e o de Rousseau a partir da análise do interesse de ambos pela música. Não escamoteando o que os separa, procura-se esclarecer as razões deste interesse e a sua relação quercom a preocupaçãoque partilham acerca da cultura ocidental moderna, quer com crise da subjectividade que essa cultura parece acarretar.The text aims at exploring the affinities that might be found between Nietzsche’s and Rousseau’s thought through an (...) analysis of their common interest in music. Without ignoring the discrepancies between both of them, it tries to enlighten the reasons behind this interest and their shared concern for modern western culture, as well as for the subjective crisis that this culture seems to cause. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What Animals Really Think, that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.

In this article, we analyse the symbolic meaning of the Thomas Mann's novel, The Magic Mountain. We try to see the scope of the interpretations that consider the metaphors of death, time and culture as the main subject of the novel. Finally, we sustain the idea that Thomas Mann wants to tell us that beauty and perfection are the reverse of death and suffering.

American Trypanosomiasis, known as Chagas disease, was discovered in 1909 under peculiar circumstances: its discoverer, Carlos Chagas, was sent to a small village of Central Brazil to carry out an anti-malaria campaign when he came across a blood sucking insect—the vector for the parasite infection. He had been alerted to the coincidence of peculiar symptoms and the presence of this insect in the wood and earth dwellings of the region. He was deeply involved in theoretical controversies in international protozoology; he (...) was engaged in the consolidation of a scientific role and corresponding institutional conditions in Brazil, and equally immersed in the nationalist sanitary struggles of his days. In these contexts, Chagas assembled a remarkable discovery discourse, regarding the biology of the parasite, its life cycle and mode of transmission. Furthermore, he provided the clinical description of a new disease. Despite immediate international recognition, however, the unstable institutional arrangements surrounding his work damaged its local legitimacy for decades. His authority was widely recognized abroad, but rejected at home. (shrink)

A violência é um dos conceitos mais importante do pensamento político de Arendt. No entanto, ela observa a falta de um estudo sistemática, bem como a banalização desse conceito, escondendo assim o seu caráter instrumental. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a compreensão de Arendt desse conceito no campo da política, como aparece em sua obra sobre a violência.

Aim: To analyze the empathizing and systemizing profiles of Brazilian and Portuguese nursing undergraduates. Background: Empathy is a fundamental skill for nursing practice and should be analyzed during the student’s education. Methods: Descriptive study with cross-sectional design. Participants were 968 undergraduate students, including 215 (22.2%) Brazilians from a university in the state of São Paulo and 753 (77.8%) Portuguese students from a higher education institution in central Portugal. The Portuguese and Brazilian versions of the Empathizing/Systemizing Quotient have good internal consistency (...) and reliability. Ethical considerations: In Brazil, approval for the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing (protocol 191/2016) and in Portugal, from the Ethics Committee of the Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing, Coimbra Higher School of Nursing (protocol P362-09/2016). Results: Most (86%) participants were female and aged between 20 and 24 years. In the general profile analysis between both groups, the domains “Social Skills,” “Contents,” and “Processes” scored higher. Gender differences exist for the feeling of empathy and systemizing, as women scored better on the short version of the Empathy Quotient and men on the Systemizing Quotient. Conclusion: As demonstrated in the domain scores for “Social Skills,” “Contents,” and “Processes,” the undergraduate nursing students analyzed have the ability to deal intuitively and spontaneously with social situations; they are also characterized as methodical people, who like to follow rules, and experience practice better than theory, and the women have a higher empathetic level than men, who in turn are more systemizing. (shrink)

During the last few decades we have witnessed a proliferation of exercises dealing with the public participation of citizens in various different dimensions of their societies, including issues of science and technology. On the one hand, these mechanisms provide more robust forms of public engagement with matters that were traditionally dealt with by experts; on the other hand, they raise concerns relating to their design, efficiency or potential for the empowerment of citizens. As part of the EC-funded project DEEPEN (Deepening (...) Ethical Engagement and Participation in Emerging Nanotechnologies) a research team in Coimbra, Portugal, was put in charge of identifying the ethical and social “impacts” of emerging nanotechnologies, transforming the traditional focus groups through the incorporation of two methodological innovations: the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the Theatre of the Oppressed. This article reflects on the outcomes and complexities of the introduction of these two methodologies. Since the participants had little or no information on nanotechnologies, we reflect on the politics of these focus groups by exploring how issues of intervention, subjectivity, representation and agency were interconnected during this exercise of public participation in Science and Technology, analyzing the role of social sciences in developing nanoethics. (shrink)

Background: Essential for the help relation, empathy is the ability to understand, share, and perceive the subjective experience of other human beings. Objective: The objective in this non-experimental, exploratory, and descriptive research was to verify, observe, and document empathy in nursing professionals. Research design: Non-experimental, exploratory, and descriptive research. Participants and research context: the study was conducted at two large hospitals, one public and the other private, across all shifts. The sample included 159 individuals. A questionnaire was used to identify (...) sociodemographic characteristics and the empathy inventory was applied. Ethical considerations: This study received approval from the Research Ethics Committee at the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing, opinion 1348/2011, and authorization from the health institutions involved. Findings: The association tests demonstrated that professionals working in the night shift and in a work scale rotation scheme, older professionals, and professionals with longer professional experience are less empathetic. On the other hand, professionals working in the day shift and in a single shift are more empathetic. Other influential factors are the time on the job, education, and work shift. Conclusion: There is a lack of empathy studies in professional practice contexts, in human resource development programs, and throughout the professional education process. (shrink)

The Second Vatican Council was built within a solidly constituted tradition in the Catholic Church. All councils were held within the traditional and legal parameters of the Church. The question about the condition of possibility of a renewal Council under this tradition shows relevant. The Vatican II is the result of a negotiation between renewal and preservation. Pope John XXIII personally coordinated the construction of the legitimacy of the new event, following steps which may be rescued during the preparatory stages (...) of the great assembly. The reading of this process from sociological parameters may elucidate its plausibility within the tradition and the Church's bureaucratic organization. Pope John started ably a church renewal process, opening a new phase in the long Catholic tradition. Under his Pope condition, he knew how to seed the idea of a revamping event in the name of a divine inspiration and with the set of bishops’ participation of the Church. (shrink)

Objective: To analyze the empathic profile and the empathy scores of freshmen of the nursing course. Design and participants: Descriptive study involving 399 freshmen students of two modalities of nursing courses: Bachelor and Bachelor and Teaching Diploma, in the period from 2012 to 2015. A sociodemographic questionnaire and the Empathy Inventory were applied. Ethical considerations: The research received approval from the Research Ethics Committee of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing. The students registered their acceptance (...) to participate in the research by signing the Free and Informed Consent Form and anonymity was guaranteed. Findings: The mean age of the participants was 19 years, being 85.5% female. The students were grouped by course modality and all groups presented high empathy scores. A significant difference (p < 0.001) was found, which indicates that students of the Bachelor and Teaching Diploma program presented a higher degree of empathy for the General Score, Domain 2 (Interpersonal Flexibility), and Domain 3 (Altruism) in relation to students in the Bachelor program. Conclusion: Results show that nursing undergraduate freshmen are emphatic, with minimum differences between the two courses. This profile is relevant for the development of future professionals capable to demonstrate a balance between instrumental and expressive competences. (shrink)

Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil’s big cities—places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the “dictionary” she is compiling; and to trace (...) the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form. As Biehl painstakingly relates Catarina’s words to a vanished world and elucidates her condition, we learn of subjectivities unmade and remade under economic pressures, pharmaceuticals as moral technologies, a public common sense that lets the unsound and unproductive die, and anthropology’s unique power to work through these juxtaposed fields. _Vita’s_ methodological innovations, bold fieldwork, and rigorous social theory make it an essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought and ethics in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Ao longo da história, a relação entre a filosofia e a política tem-se revelado espinhosa, denunciando a dificuldade em se conceptualizar sobre o que é por natureza antagónico à cristalização, porque particular e pluralista. Na esfera da opinião, o filósofo deve restringir-se a analisar, criticar, rever e aperfeiçoar os valores políticos coevos, a explicar aos seus conterrâneos o universo de acepções sociais partilhadas, consciente de que a sua concepção fundamenta uma via entre as muitas poss...

Our present moral traits are unable to provide the level of large-scale co-operation necessary to deal with risks such as nuclear proliferation, drastic climate change and pandemics. In order to survive in an environment with powerful and easily available technologies, some authors claim that we need to improve our moral traits with moral enhancement. But this is prone to produce paradoxical effects, be self-reinforcing and harm personal identity. The risks of moral enhancement require the use of a safety framework; such (...) a framework should guarantee practical robustness to moral uncertainty, empirical adequacy, correct balance between dispositions, preservation of identity, and be sensitive to practical considerations such as emergent social effects. A virtue theory can meet all these desiderata. Possible frameworks incorporate them to variable degrees. The social value orientations framework is one of the most promising candidates. (shrink)

An overcomplete logic is a logic that ‘ceases to make the difference’: According to such a logic, all inferences hold independently of the nature of the statements involved. A negation-inconsistent logic is a logic having at least one model that satisfies both some statement and its negation. A negation-incomplete logic has at least one model according to which neither some statement nor its negation are satisfied. Paraconsistent logics are negation-inconsistent yet non-overcomplete; paracomplete logics are negation-incomplete yet non-overcomplete. A paranormal logic (...) is simply a logic that is both paraconsistent and paracomplete. -/- Despite being perfectly consistent and complete with respect to classical negation, nearly every normal modal logic, in its ordinary language and interpretation, admits to some latent paranormality: It is paracomplete with respect to a negation defined as an impossibility operator, and paraconsistent with respect to a negation defined as non-necessity. In fact, as it will be shown here, even in languages without a primitive classical negation, normal modal logics can often be alternatively characterized directly by way of their paranormal negations and related operators. So, instead of talking about ‘necessity’, ‘possibility’, and so on, modal logics could be seen just as devices tailored for the study of (modal) negation. This paper shows how and to what extent this alternative characterization of modal logics can be realized. (shrink)

In this paper, we intend to discuss if and in what sense semiosis (meaning process, cf. C. S. Peirce) can be regarded as an "emergent" process in semiotic systems. It is not our problem here to answer when or how semiosis emerged in nature. As a prerequisite for the very formulation of these problems, we are rather interested in discussing the conditions which should be fulfilled for semiosis to be characterized as an emergent process. The first step in this work (...) is to summarize a systematic analysis of the variety of emergence theories and concepts, elaborated by Achim Stephan. Along the summary of this analysis, we pose fundamental questions that have to be answered in order to ascribe a precise meaning to the term "emergence" in the context of an understanding of semiosis. After discussing a model for explaining emergence based on Salthe's hierarchical structuralism, which considers three levels at a time in a semiotic system, we present some tentative answers to those questions. (shrink)

While ontic structural realism (OSR) has been a central topic in contemporary philosophy of science, the relation between OSR and the concept of emergence has received little attention. We will argue that OSR is fully compatible with emergentism. The denial of ontological emergence requires additional assumptions that, strictly speaking, go beyond OSR. We call these _physicalist closure assumptions._ We will explain these assumptions and show that they are independent of the central commitments of OSR and inconsistent with its core goals. (...) Recognizing the compatibility of OSR and ontological emergence may contribute to the solution of ontological puzzles in physics while offering new ways to achieve the goals that advocates of OSR set for their view. (shrink)

What is the fundamental insight behind truth-functionality ? When is a logic interpretable by way of a truth-functional semantics? To address such questions in a satisfactory way, a formal definition of truth-functionality from the point of view of abstract logics is clearly called for. As a matter of fact, such a definition has been available at least since the 70s, though to this day it still remains not very widely well-known. A clear distinction can be drawn between logics characterizable through: (...) (1) genuinely finite-valued truth-tabular semantics; (2) no finite-valued but only an infinite-valued truthtabular semantics; (3) no truth-tabular semantics at all. Any of those logics, however, can in principle be characterized through non-truth-functional valuation semantics, at least as soon as their associated consequence relations respect the usual tarskian postulates. So, paradoxical as that might seem at first, it turns out that truth-functional logics may be adequately characterized by non-truth-functional semantics . Now, what feature of a given logic would guarantee it to dwell in class (1) or in class (2), irrespective of its circumstantial semantic characterization? (shrink)

This innovative volume is an extended intellectual conversation about the ways personal lives are being undone and remade today. Examining the ethnography of the modern subject, this preeminent group of scholars probes the continuity and diversity of modes of personhood across a range of Western and non-Western societies. Contributors consider what happens to individual subjectivity when stable or imagined environments such as nations and communities are transformed or displaced by free trade economics, terrorism, and war; how new information and medical (...) technologies reshape the relation one has to oneself; and which forms of subjectivity and life possibilities are produced against a world in pieces. The transdisciplinary conversation includes anthropologists, historians of science, psychologists, a literary critic, a philosopher, physicians, and an economist. The authors touch on how we think and write about contingency, human agency, and ethics today. (shrink)

We say that things happen accidentally when they do indeed happen, but only by chance. In the opposite situation, an essential happening is inescapable, its inevitability being the sine qua non for its very occurrence. This paper will investigate modal logics on a language tailored to talk about essential and accidental statements. Completeness of some among the weakest and the strongest such systems is attained. The weak expressibility of the classical propositional language enriched with the non-normal modal operators of essence (...) and accident is highlighted and illustrated, both with respect to the definability of the more usual modal operators as well as with respect to the characterizability of classes of frames. Several interesting problems and directions are left open for exploration. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the widespread use of online hearings in arbitral proceedings, raising questions about the impact of such proceedings on the determination of facts underlying a dispute. This article explores the extent to which online hearings may hinder arbitrators’ ability to assess witness credibility by drawing upon the cognitive psychology literature on truthfulness determination and lie detection. A survey of the literature suggests that the ability to differentiate truthful from dishonest statements through verbal and nonverbal cues (...) is limited, leading to the notion that observing behaviors like fidgeting, gaze aversion, vocal pitch, or body posture is not particularly relevant in assessing the credibility of a witness. Instead, focusing on the content of what is reported appears to be the most relevant strategy to determine credibility. Therefore, research does not support the idea that face-to-face contact with witnesses is essential to determine the facts of a dispute. Still, the use of in-person hearings may, in practice, continue to be preferred due to underlying cultural assumptions regarding the nature of hearings, the facilitation of communication between parties, counsel, and the tribunal, and a general sense of _Zoom fatigue_. (shrink)

Recently several authors have proposed proxies of welfare that equate some (as opposed to all) choices with welfare. In this paper, I first distinguish between two prominent proxies: one based oncontext-independent choicesand the other based onreason-based choices. I then propose an original proxy based on choices that individuals state they would want themselves to repeat at the time of the welfare/policy evaluation (confirmed choices). I articulate three complementary arguments that, I claim, support confirmed choices as a more reliable proxy of (...) welfare than context-independent and reason-based choices. Finally, I discuss the implications of these arguments fornudgesandboosts. (shrink)