Shifts of attention within working memory based on retroactive (retro-) cues were shown to facilitate performance in working memory tasks. Although posterior asymmetries in the EEG, such as the contralateral delay activity (CDA), have been used to study the active storage of lateralized working memory representations, results on the relation of such asymmetric effects to retro-cue benefits remain inconclusive. We recorded EEG in a retro-cue working memory task with lateralized items and a continuous performance response. Following either a selective or (...) neutral retro-cue, participants adjusted the orientation of a central memory probe to the cued item. Selective retro-cues elicited an early posterior contralateral negativity (PCN), anterior directing attention negativity (ADAN) and a later modulation of CDA indicating that active storage was concentrated on the cued information. By dividing all trials into three within-condition performance quantiles, we could further show that high working memory accuracy was associated with a sustained increase of the CDA effect following the retro-cue. These results suggest that focusing resources on the active storage of relevant representations is an important factor regarding retro-cue benefits in working memory tasks. (shrink)

Evaluating the Knowledge and Practice of Limitation of Therapeutic Effort in Health Workers at a Health Care Institution for Cancer Patients in Medellín, 2018Avaliação do conhecimento e da prática da limitação de esforço terapêutico em equipe de atendimento de uma instituição prestadora de serviços de saúde para pacientes oncológicos de Medellín, 2018Limitation of therapeutic effort is any action that involves suspending or not initiating medical treatment or therapeutic measures in patients who will not receive any clinical benefit. In Latin America, (...) some research has proven a lack of familiarization and disagreement with the subject and its practices. The present study tried to objectify the knowledge of LTE of healthcare personnel at an institute in Medellín using a self-administered survey that allowed conducting a cross-sectional descriptive study with non-probabilistic sampling. Within the results, 56.5 % of respondents understood the concept of LTE, and 90 % applied it actively. However, there were discrepancies regarding the core concepts of the definition and practice.Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigoVallejo LI, Palacio AM, Marulanda V, Restrepo A, Yepes LA, Valencia NL, Cruz MA. Evaluación del conocimiento y práctica de la limitación del esfuerzo terapéutico en personal asistencial de una institución prestadora de servicios de salud para pacientes oncológicos de Medellín, 2018. 2020;24:177-87. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2020.24.2.5Recibido: 19/07/2019Aceptado: 08/08/2020Publicado: 27/11/2020. (shrink)

In this article, an attempt was made to identify the level of community social participation according to age, gender and the structural characteristics of the personal support networks in a population displaced by floods in the Colombian Caribbean. The research was based in a non-experimental methodology with an associative-relational strategy. An intentional non-probabilistic sample of 151 people affected by the winter wave in the south of the Department of Atlántico (Colombia) was selected. In total, the study included 42 males (27.8 (...) %) and 109 females (72.2 %) participants, with an average age of 37.48 (±14, Range 18 - 80) and average relocation time of 21.79 months (± 8.22, Range 5-36). The Arizona Social Support Interview Schedule (ASSIS) and Community Empowerment instruments were responded to with an instrument adapted from the leadership competence factor. The results show lower rates of intermediation in the older population, and the relationship between social participation and gender shows equally cohesive social support networks in men and women. This evidence is discussed to promote psychosocial interventions aimed to increase community engagement and empowerment of people that have experienced non-voluntary mobility processes. (shrink)

Investigating the causes of unethical behaviors in academia, such as scientific misconduct, has become a highly important research subject. The current performance measurement practices (e.g., equating research performance with the number of publications in top-tier journals) are frequently referred to as being responsible for scientists’ unethical behaviors. We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders of the higher education system (e.g., professors and policy makers; N = 43) to analyze the influence of performance measurement on scientists’ behavior. We followed a (...) three-step coding procedure and found (1) that the participants described a variety of positive behavioral consequences (e.g., higher productivity) but mainly negative behavioral consequences (e.g., questionable publishing practices) of current performance measurement practices in academia; (2) that scientists’ behavior can be described as gaming performance measurement (i.e., achieving performance goals by reducing performance quality and focusing on those tasks that are measured); and (3) that gaming performance measurement shares the same characteristics as deviant workplace behavior (i.e., a voluntary violation of organizational norms that harms the university). We discuss that gaming performance measurement has not been considered as a type of deviant workplace behavior in the previous literature. Furthermore, we draw from research on deviant workplace behavior and goal setting to discuss psychological processes that may underlie gaming performance measurement. Our results indicate the importance of connecting literature on deviant workplace behavior and goal setting to advance our understanding of gaming performance measurement. (shrink)

Background A combination of theoretical and practical approaches is required to learn and acquire ethical competencies in caring. Occasionally, reflection on practical action differs from theoretical learning. In the context of reflective learning, issues such as ethical values can be discussed since they evoke conflict among nursing students. Aim To identify ethical conflicts encountered by nursing students during clinical placements and to determine their cooperation strategies. Research design Qualitative study with a content analysis according to Elo and Kinglas framework. Participants (...) and research context Students enrolled in a nursing program at a Spanish university aged between 22 and 35, mainly women. Methodology The study includes 134 ethical reflections from nursing students in the last year of the nursing program, written during their clinical practices in a variety of learning environments. The research team analyzed the reflections using an inductive content analysis method. Ethical considerations Ethical permission was obtained by the management center according to Law 3/2028, and all the participants accepted to participate through the informed consent form. Findings Three main categories emerged from the analysis of the ethical reflections: (1) evaluation of professional performance and patient care; (2) the student as the protagonist of the dilemma; (3) student coping. Student dilemmas and concerns are related to ignorance, student-patient communication, mistakes made and self-confidence. Some situations conflict with the autonomy of patients and their rights, and can contribute to stressful situations for patients. Stress factors include hospital routines, which the patient cannot modify, and asymmetric relationships with staff, which encourage passivity. Conclusion All ethical problems detected by the students begin with the professional-patient relationship, including issues related to bad news, errors or malpractice. Reflection on the ethical values of nursing, both in the classroom and in clinical practices, allows students to develop a greater ethical awareness of care, enhancing their decision-making skills in ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Resumen Las opiniones que aparecen en la página web TripAdvisor, como muestra relevante de la promoción del Turismo 2.0, se convierten, dadas las características de este discurso, en macroactos de habla directivos en los que convergen actos de distinta naturaleza. Si bien se presentan como opiniones, trascienden los límites de la mera información para convertirse en actos directivos, ya que el opinante se ve implicado en la construcción de una especie de guía de ayuda a otros viajeros. Por tanto, el (...) objetivo de este trabajo es categorizar los distintos tipos de las denominadas por la página web TripAdvisor “opiniones” como sugerencias, consejos, recomendaciones y advertencias, y analizar las estrategias de atenuación a las que se recurre en su formulación al servicio de distintas actividades de imagen. Los resultados muestran una tendencia que nos lleva a proponer la distinción entre estos tipos de actos directivos sobre la base de: la recurrencia a estrategias de atenuación, factores como el poder o la voluntad del opinante, el coste-beneficio para el destinatario, así como las propias calificaciones de las opiniones – en las categorías “excelente”, “muy bueno”, “normal”, “malo” y “pésimo”– establecidas por la propia página web. Tener en cuenta todas estas variables nos ha permitido constatar la existencia de un continuo de los actos de habla que se corresponden con diferentes grados de estrategias de atenuación, también en función de las categorías de evaluación y de los mecanismos utilizados para producir el acto. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a critical reflection on the concept of social capital. We argue that there is no such idea of an umbrella concept of social capital. Instead, two overarching conceptualizations of social capital exist, namely individual social capital and collective social capital. As these conceptualizations of social capital are completely different, we emphasize that studies using social capital as a theoretical lens should clarify the concept as well as be consistent in the interpretation of the concept, from (...) its definition to its methodological operationalization. In this article, we first map the two different conceptualizations of social capital. Next, these conceptualizations are illustrated with well-known teacher research studies, followed by examples of studies in which individual and collective social capital are mixed. Finally, we discuss the consequences of the use and the mix of these different conceptualizations in terms of measurement methods. Additionally, implications for teacher education are presented. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 3, Page 823-845, July 2022.

It is assumed that social bonds in humans have consequences for virtually all aspects of behavior. Social touch-based contact, particularly hand caressing, plays an important role in social bonding. Pre-programmed neural circuits likely support actions (or predispositions to act) towards caressing contacts. We searched for pre-set motor substrates towards caressing by exposing volunteers to bonding cues and having them gently stroke a very soft cloth, a caress-like movement. The bonding cues were pictures with interacting dyads and the control pictures presented (...) non-interacting dyads. We focused on the readiness potential, an electroencephalographic marker of motor preparation that precedes movement execution. The amplitude of the readiness potential preceding the grasping of pleasant emotional-laden stimuli was previously shown to be reduced compared with neutral ones. Fingers flexor electromyography measured action output. The rationale here is that stroking the soft cloth when previously exposed to bonding cues, a compatible context, would result in smaller amplitudes of readiness potentials, as compared to the context with no such cues. Exposure to the bonding pictures increased subjective feelings of sociability and decreased feelings of isolation. Participants who more frequently engage in mutual caress/groom a “significant other” in daily life initiated the motor preparation earlier, reinforcing the caress-like nature of the task. As hypothesized, readiness potentials preceding the caressing of the soft cloth were significantly reduced under exposure to bonding as compared to control pictures. Furthermore, an increased fingers flexor electromyographic activity was identified under exposure to the former as compared to the latter pictures. The facilitatory effects are likely due to the recruitment of pre-set cortical motor repertoires related to caress-like movements, emphasizing the distinctiveness of neural signatures for caress-like movements. (shrink)

8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

Background: Serious games have shown positive results in increasing motivation, adherence to treatment and strengthening the therapeutic alliance in multiple psychiatric disorders. In particular, patients with impulse control disorders and other disorders in which the patient suffers from inhibitory control deficits have been shown to benefit from serious games.Aim: The aim of this study was to describe the characteristics and to evaluate the usability of a new serious videogame, e-Estesia. This serious videogame was designed to improve emotion regulation in patients (...) with gambling disorder. Preliminary results from a pilot sample are also reported.Method: A pilot sample of 26 patients undergoing treatment for GD was recruited. Participants used e-Estesia on a tablet, which was connected to a thoracic band that sent heart rate and heart rate variability data to the videogame platform in order to provide biofeedback. The System Usability Scale was completed by patients to determine the usability of e-Estesia.Results and Discussion: e-Estesia performed comparatively well for all the explored groups. Around 84.6% of the patients endorsed that it was easy to use. Female patients with GD presented higher HRV during the use of the serious videogame compared to men. (shrink)

La sección de literatura de esta edición N.° 32, nos trae una selección alegremente subjetiva y, por lo tanto, abierta a controversias, de la poesía de la guatemalteca Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano. Esta escritora, periodista y docente, nació en 1945 y se le otorgó el Premio Nacional de Literatura Miguel Ángel Asturias, en el año 2001, pese a esto, su obra ha tenido escasa divulgación, no más allá de los mismos diez o quince poemas publicados por doquier. Por ello, (...) en esta sección reproducimos textos más bien poco conocidos de los poemarios publicados de la autora: Cariátides (1967, México DF: Ecuador OO’O) y Canto de Amor a la Ciudad de Guatemala (1988, Guatemala: CENALTEX, Ministerio de Educación), incluidos en la antología Torres y Tatuajes (1988, Guatemala: Grupo Literario Editorial RIN-78), así como de los poemarios publicados por primera vez en dicha antología, según lo describe Ruano en su prólogo a esta obra, los cuales son: Tratados de los Ritmos, Tratados de las Olas, Poemas de Arena, Los Muros Perdidos, Iconografía del Tiempo, El Mar y Tú, Cantar Indio, Retablo Lírico y Cartas de Fuego, estos dos últimos, una colecciónde sonetos. Igualmente, la autora ha publicado los poemarios: Los del viento (1999, Guatemala: Óscar de León Palacios), Café Express (2002, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura), Versos dorados (2006, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura), Poemas grises (2010, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura) y El perro ciego (2020, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura). A fines de la década de 1980, Ruano comenzó a padecer trastornos mentales, desde entonces es vendedora ambulante, posteriormente cambia su expresión de género y en la actualidad reside ‒con gran estrechez económica‒ en la Zona 21 de Ciudad Guatemala. (shrink)

In recent years, the postulation that deception is necessary for placebos to have an effect on pain relief or increased well-being has come into question. Latest studies have shown that an openly administered mock drug works just as well as a deceptively administered placebo on certain complaints. This open-label placebo effect has primarily been used in the area of pain treatment so far. This study is the first to examine the effect of such placebos on healthy individuals with the use (...) of drinking water. In two experiments, participants were required to use certain specified water bottles for their daily drinking water consumption. At the beginning of Experiment 1, all participants received one bottle of water, which they were asked to refill themselves each day during a 2-week intervention period. In Experiment 2, participants received a new sealed water bottle every day. In both experiments, participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups: no treatment, open-label placebo without rationale, open-label placebo with rationale, and open-label placebo with additional rationale in a suggested relaxed state. We conducted baseline and post-treatment measurements of the subjective perceived physical and mental well-being of the participants. In Experiment 1, only the OPR++ group reported enhanced vitality at the post-treatment level compared to the other groups. In Experiment 2, post-treatment measurements showed improvements for the OPR++ group in the Physical Performance Capability, Mental Performance Capability, Emotional Balance, Overall Recovery, Negative Emotional State, and Overall Stress categories compared to the other groups. Our results support the idea that placebos with an additional rationale in a suggestive relaxed state are more effective than with just a rationale in a normal state. Furthermore, our study shows the tendency that OLP++ in the form of water with health claims may be more effective when the water is given in several sealed bottles separately than in one sealed but refillable bottle. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent., was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention. The editors recommend that to experience the drifiting thought (...) that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN SPACE & PLACE thread: April Vannini, Those Between the Common * Laura Dean & Jesse McClelland, Ballard: A Portrait of Placemaking * Amara Hark Weber, Crossroad * Isaac Linder & Berit Soli-Holt, The Call of the Wild: Terror Modulations * Ashley D. Hairston, Momma taught us to keep a clean house * Sean Smith, The Garage * * * * Instead of beginning with radical doubt, we start from naiveté. —Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. —Jack London, The Call of the Wild The figure of the feral remains a perpetual enigma, but the parameters remain relatively consistent. A person, usually a child, enters civilization after having been raised by wolves or kept in some kind of cruel captivity. The outsider perspective on domestication ensuing in an edge of a culture's self-recognition of its clumsier attributes, what has been taken for granted becomes apparent, is brought to the foreground with the stranger and made questionable. Amusement follows naïve questions or observations such as Kaspar Hauser in the Herzog film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, when Kaspar notes that while in his room he is engulfed by it, but when he looks at the tower he can turn away and it disappears. Ergo, the room is larger than the tower. How entertaining. The aberrant one destabilizes the comforting cultural normative. Places become seen as mere impressions out of space, a patterning, a rut that not everyone lives in like us. This is one figure of the feral. The naiveté that begs all the questions. As a figure for a certain philosophical disposition, the rapidity of one’s saccade scans the environment, intuits it’s space, not from an initial thaumazein or a Critchlean sense of disappointment, but from a child-like naiveté bent on survival. To serve the naïve is merely one form of critique, and it is not nearly used enough in lieu of the critique that provides answers. How dull. It is not necessary to be an outsider to entrench a critique with naiveté. After having forced to suffer in the most parched and rocky terror, itself for so long rooted upwards of fifty feet into the ground upon which it grows, even a grapevine can spontaneously produce a white grape on a red vine. The curious feral can arise from within, and like pinot grigio, it adds variety without admonishing its roots. There is also the feral dog. Not raised by wolves, but humans. Founded in place the figure of this feral denies this place. The trajectory of this feral roves from the cultivated to uncultivated, or in speaking of plants from controlled to volunteer, finding the necessary nutrients and survival patterns on its own. Finding other places, reaching out into space testing its fertility. And when introduced into a foreign environment, it withers or flourishes. We would like to attempt a thesis at this juncture and to accept neither feral figure in its entirety, but to argue for the intimate conjunction between a cultivated place and its resonance with the space it procures for its nest and kin. I'm not a biter, I'm a writer for myself and others. —Jay-Z, What More Can I Say? I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers. —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans There is no subjective disposition outlining an unambiguous individual of the para-academy. There is no para-academic. We all have day jobs. 'Para-academic' seeped through the cracks as an adjective in the call to frame publishing dedicated to the critical rigor expected by academic publishing, but to deny the limitations of guarded legitimation through capital means. Open-access holds hands with this parasitic descriptor. Para-academic publishing's refusal to adhere to the valuation of locked access of a site, the site “of a desperate initiation to the empty form of value,” 1 seeks to recognize not merely an inclusive interpretation of significance, but the significance of thinking practice. The practice inside the paywalls of academic 'education' is held in a deathgrip by its infatuation with value and information, both empty without the apprehension of human experience, the barbaric yawp. “I can't breathe in here.” It is not that a para-academic practice leads one to the childish wonder of Kaspar Hauser who wonders about the spatiality of his room. It is the academic legitimation that distorts that one can hold the understanding of both in a constellation of place and space. Led to believe there is only a place for things, we are led to disillusionment. It is also not that a para-academic practice relinquishes itself to the invasive growth outside of careful cultivation, an abandonment of pleasantries for the toothy growl of a predator. It is the academy's fear that thought does not require capital to signify value. Some of the most nutritious meals can be foraged. Defining a para-academic practice is not outlining a place of accreditation of the practice, it is the recognition that any place is subject to modulation by the space it inhabits as well as creates. The para-academic practice keeps an eye of the creation of spaces, follows those paths that eat themselves in the name of academia. This is not unlike Red Peter's report to the academy, only successful if we report in idle idiosyncratic banalities that we have once again become victorious in our acculturation and nullification within the confines of accredited mush and our trajectory of wild rigor is defeated in our desire for recognition as recognizable in this place. Weeds are integral to the functioning of a large ecosystem. The manicured garden is entirely reliant on its keeper. The pansy can also go wild once neglected, the daisy definitely does.... a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please. At this stage the universe cannot be distinguished from how we act upon it, and the world may seem like shifting sand beneath our feet. —George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form Two edges are created: an obedient, conformist, plagiarizing edge, and another edge, mobile, blank, which is never anything but the site of its effect: the place where the death of language is glimpsed. These two edges, the compromise they bring about, are necessary. —Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text Between these two epigraphs, interminable questions of where and questions of happening, gesture, and interface. To stay buoyed between a site of visible happening and haptic perspicacity. Bounded by one or the other leads to a desiccation of potential knowledge. The tumbleweed tumbles until met with mud, a bare structure moving but not movement. A tumbleweed tumbleweeds, propagates only at a place. It becomes significant again, continues. Significance, the site where meaning is made known through kinesthetic apprehension. 2 The feral founds a gestural horizon; an outsider’s scrawl-becoming-law; Deleuze teaching Meno’s dog geometry. Place as marked, outlined, recognized, territorialized. The academies marked by their peculiar disciplines, outlined by their rigid boundaries, recognized as factories of value. This far from ensures complete purchase on the space of thought, but it has made an undeniably elaborate means of making work significant. The academy is a muddy spot, it is fertile, but its gates are high and its dogs are barking. The coordinates of concept and experience. Already claimed by a stabilizing suspension, the terms enter specificity of ‘this is this’. Another correlation: activity and the individual. The individual, a placeholder in the crosshairs of juridical identification. Activity, what expands and surrounds this location, but utterly indebted to the node of “one who”. What's happening in this oscillation of nature and nurture is practice. Practice, as Stengers tells us “is not the activity of an individual or the product of that activity. It is the ingredient without which neither that activity nor this product would exist as such.” 3 Moving outward from our own honing, we're curious about the ingredient creating the place for holding conceptual and experiential engagements in each hand. And we'd like to argue that this place is not a limiting specification, but a practice undulating daily, by the minute. And we call this practice the para-academic practice. I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason. —Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limit it discovers in itself—a limit where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist. — Albert Camus, The Rebel Anyone is a para-academic or practicer of such means. The academic can, and we argue should, be active para-academically, to escape the bounds, recognizing no site specific place as a place to rest on or the place to grab the Kafka's top and wonder at its disobedience not to continue. Yet, the para-academic practice must maintain the desire for rigor in scholarship. Indeed desiring past itself to claim a more naïve rigor, one that does not take its form for granted. Without a para-academic practice, the scholar spends half the time merely working on behalf of a hierarchy, to maintain it, and the other measly amounts of time are in the name of thinking, but only in name. Not to mention the amount of debt it takes to attend the halls of higher education. Not to mention the snoring tenures. Not to mention the barely scraping by adjuncts. Not to mention the materials that shake the very force of producible theory. Not to mention when swimming in texts becomes slogging through data. Academia is a barbaric food chain and it is our claim that there is, as always, an imperative for thought to move, with Heidegger, beyond the logics of calculation and planning, to a time of its own. The path, into the panic of the dark wood of this space can be followed by any; any who let the silence and the rigor enter the play. Where the little theater is larger when inhabited ; where the data of the tutor asymptotically refutes; and where, as much as one wouldn’t expect it here, ballet may turn out to be the most feral of forms… NOTES Jean Baudrillard, “Value's Last Tango” Simulacra and Simulation trans. Sheila Faria Glaser,. “What is significance? It is meaning, insofar as it is sensually produced.” Roland Barthes in The Pleasure of the Text. Isabelle Stengers, “The Science Wars” Cosmopolitics I trans. Robert Bononno, 47. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. (...) Reading the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

Dans ce livre, l’auteur élabore une critique de la notion de « banalité du mal » forgée par Hannah Arendt à partir du procès Eichmann en vue d’expliquer les crimes de masse. En reconnaissant, certes, que la banalité du mal est une formule qui a le mérite d’affirmer la dimension humaine du mal extrême « par opposition à l’idée de l’indicible d’un mal absolu et transcendant » (p. 117), Isabelle Delpla la qualifie néanmoins de « faux concept ». Del..

The performance and the success of a group working as a team on a common goal depends on the individuals’ skills and the collective coordination of their abilities. On a perceptual level, individual gaze behavior is reasonably well investigated. However, the coordination of visual skills in a team has been investigated only in laboratory studies and the practical examination and knowledge transfer to field studies or the applicability in real-life situations have so far been neglected. This is mainly due to (...) the fact that a methodological approach along with a suitable evaluation procedure to analyze the gaze coordination within a team in highly dynamic events outside the lab, is still missing. Thus, this study was conducted to develop a tool to investigate the coordinated gaze behavior within a team of three human beings acting with a common goal in a dynamic real-world scenario. This team was a basketball referee team adjudicating a game. Using mobile eye-tracking devices and an indigenously designed software tool for the simultaneous analysis of the gaze data of three participants, allowed, for the first time, the simultaneous investigation of the coordinated gaze behavior of three people in a highly dynamic setting. Overall, the study provides a new and innovative method to investigate the coordinated gaze behavior of a three-person team in specific tasks. This method is also applicable to investigate research questions about teams in dynamic real-world scenarios and get a deeper look at interactions and behavior patterns of human beings in group settings. (shrink)

Forgiveness education has demonstrated psychological, social and academic benefits; however, it has not been discussed as a means of promoting character development for children and adolescents. In this paper, we discuss forgiveness as a moral concept and explain how forgiveness can contribute to current discussions of character education. After reviewing relevant literature we describe how a forgiveness programme can be an effective form of character education and attempt to clarify the contributions the forgiveness literature can make to the field of (...) character education. We argue that forgiveness provides those interested in character development with a programme that can enhance educational initiatives and advance the character education research agenda. (shrink)

Research in penalty kicking has primarily focused on spatial decision making, while temporal decision making has largely been neglected, even though it is as critical for success. Temporal decision making concerns goalkeepers choosing when to initiate their jump to the ball during the penalty taker's run-up, and penalty takers deciding where to kick the ball, either prior to the run-up or after the goalkeeper has committed to one side. We analyzed penalty takers' and goalkeepers' behavior during penalty shoot-outs at FIFA (...) World Cups and UEFA European Championships to scrutinize if temporal aspects of decision making have an impact on penalty kick success. Results indicate that the likelihood of a penalty kick being scored depends on the combination of penalty takers' and goalkeepers' temporal decision-making strategies. Hence, moving early more often seems fruitful for goalkeepers, while penalty takers should consider varying penalty kick strategy between attempts. (shrink)

Laura Nader is a towering figure as anthropologist, teacher, and public intellectual. Her letters give a glimpse of academic life mostly unseen by academics and by the general public. The collection includes letters from academic colleagues, but it also contains correspondence from lawyers, politicians, citizens, people on death row, Peace Corps workers, members of the military, scientists, and more.

Este libro es un homenaje a la trayectoria intelectual y académica de la profesora María Teresa López de la Vieja, Catedrática emérita de la Universidad de Salamanca. En él se trazan algunos de los caminos que, con su obra, nos invita a transitar. El volumen recoge contribuciones de colegas de varias nacionalidades y procedentes de diversos ámbitos de reflexión que le son afines: la filosofía moral y política, la literatura, la teoría de la argumentación, los estudios feministas, las éticas aplicadas, (...) la bioética. Los capítulos que componen este libro dan voz a varias generaciones de investigadoras e investigadores que han acompañado y acompañan su andadura académica y que aquí dialogan con ella haciendo propias sus preocupaciones intelectuales. Con su participación contribuyen al justo reconocimiento de su dedicación a la labor docente e investigadora. (shrink)

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.

People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played a (...) game then she didn't play soccer. Two experiments corroborated this prediction for three sorts of ‘paradox’, including a disjunctive paradox. (shrink)

Many scholars study the global diffusion of culture, looking at how institutions spread culture around the world or at how intermediaries adapt foreign culture in the local context. This research can tell us much about brokers’ “cultural-matching” or “congruence-building” strategies. To date, however, few scholars have examined brokers’ interpretive work. In this article, the author argues that globalization research needs to pay more attention to interpretation. Building on translation studies, the author shows that brokers’ work is shaped by how they (...) imagine their dual roles, how they imagine different parts of the world, how they interpret a text’s intertextuality, and how their audience imagines the foreign Other. In this way, the author lays the groundwork for a hermeneutic model of cultural globalization. (shrink)

"The Invention of Modern Science proposes a fruitful way of going beyond the apparently irreconcilable positions, that science is either "objective" or "socially constructed." Instead, suggests Isabelle Stengers, one of the most important and influential philosophers of science in Europe, we might understand the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists."--pub. desc.

Dans le De fato, Alexandre construit une théorie péripatéticienne du destin et réfute les Stoïciens, partisans dune conception dure du destin. Par là il offre un document majeur sur le déterminisme dans lAntiquité. Louvrage montre comment lexégèse dAristote lui permet de proposer une conception nouvelle de la responsabilité.

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

Virginia Woolf, to whom university admittance had been forbidden, watched the universities open their doors. Though she was happy that her sisters could study in university libraries, she cautioned women against joining the procession of educated men and being co-opted into protecting a “civilization” with values alien to women. Now, as Woolf's disloyal daughters, who have professional positions in Belgian universities, Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret, along with a collective of women scholars in Belgium and France, question their academic (...) careers and reexamine the place of women and their role in thinking, both inside and outside the university. They urge women to heed Woolf's cry—Think We Must—and to always make a fuss about injustice, cruelty, and arrogance. (shrink)

Depuis qu'elles existent, les sciences dites exactes se prétendent différentes des autres savoirs. Comment comprendre cette prétention? Faut-il, à la manière des épistémologues anglo-saxons ou de Karl Popper, tenter d'identifier les critères qui la justifient? Peut-on, suivant le modèle nouveau des études sociales des sciences, y voir une simple croyance? Ce livre propose un dépassement fructueux de l'opposition, apparemment irréconciliable, entre ces deux approches des sciences. Et si la tension entre objectivité scientifique et croyance était justement constitutive des sciences, enjeu (...) des pratiques inventées et réinventées par les scientifiques? Réussir à parler des sciences avec humour, sans en faire un objet de vénération, ni de dénonciation, en restant au plus proche de la passion des scientifiques, tel est ici le pari d'Isabelle Stengers. Mais ce livre ne se limite pas à un discours sur les sciences. Il s'agit bien plutôt de prolonger l'histoire de leur invention. Comment comprendre les liens multiples entre la science et les pouvoirs qui la mobilisent aujourd'hui? Comment concevoir les rapports entre science, expertise et démocratie? La nouveauté de L'invention des sciences modernes est de faire de ces différents problèmes intellectuels, pratiques et politiques les enjeux du processus par où pourrait s'inventer et se renouveler l'identité même des sciences. (shrink)

Habermas est un des philosophes contemporains vivants les plus célèbres. Cet héritier de l'Ecole de Francfort a participé aux grandes controverses du XXe siècle, celle opposant Adorno à Popper, mais aussi à la querelle des historiens allemands. L'oeuvre abondante d'Habermas croise morale, sociologie, politique et épistémologie. Isabelle Aubert en découvre la profonde unité dans l'intersubjectivité, cette notion que l'on trouve chez Fichte et Husserl mais qu'Habermas s'est efforcé de détourner. Il ne s'agit pas d'éliminer toute forme de subjectivité mais (...) de déplacer la perspective sur le social en mettant au centre une notion qui appréhende la réalité de sujets situés et en relation. Ce modèle alternatif d'intelligibilité s'effectue sur le mode de la participation au dialogue, de l'échange de paroles et non selon le mode de l'observation entre un pôle de représentation et un environnement extérieur. Ainsi naît une nouvelle anthropologie sociale fonctionnelle, à l'écart du mouvement post-moderne. (shrink)

As a neoplatonic philosopher for whom the intellect alone connects man with God, Nicholas of Cusa has without doubt a critical attitude towards the affective and emotional constitution of man. Accordingly, the deification of man is only imaginable as an interior quiet of all passions. But in analyzing his texts we can see that Nicholas, in order to describe the status of intellectual perfection, does not neglect affective and emotional categories and concepts. Not only the etymological deduction of sapientia as (...) a tasting and delicious science, but also his speaking of gaudium intellectuale und dulcedo intellectualis paints a different picture. (shrink)

John Dewey coined the imperative that what we do in philosophy «must take effects in conduct» if it is not to be a sentimental indulgence for a few. This article asks whether it suffices when an insight only makes a difference in someone’s mind, to make it a legitimate aim of research. Four kinds of insights are distinguished: meta- physical insights, ethical insights, practical insights, and trivial insights. Metaphysical insights are those that bring us purely cognitive benefits – no other (...) benefits than a change in our thoughts. This article argues that metaphysical insights, properly demarcated, entail a particular kind of significance, which makes them worthy of pursuit, despite only yielding cognitive benefits. The article also points out, however, that we need to think carefully about how these cognitive benefits are socially distributed, and how we make the decision about which metaphysical inquiries are to be pursued. (shrink)