Given the ubiquitous nature of love, numerous theories have been proposed to explain its existence. One such theory refers to love as a commitment device, suggesting that romantic love evolved to foster commitment between partners and enhance their reproductive success. In the present study, we investigated this hypothesis using a large-scale sample of 86,310 individual responses collected across 90 countries. If romantic love is universally perceived as a force that fosters commitment between long-term partners, we expected that individuals likely to (...) suffer greater losses from the termination of their relationships—including people of lower socioeconomic status, those with many children, and women—would place a higher value on romantic love compared to people with higher status, those with fewer children, and men. These predictions were supported. Additionally, we observed that individuals from countries with a higher (vs. lower) Human Development Index placed a greater level of importance on romantic love, suggesting that modernization might influence how romantic love is evaluated. On average, participants worldwide were unwilling to commit to a long-term romantic relationship without love, highlighting romantic love’s universal importance. (shrink)

Using a conceptual framework and method combining ethical enquiry and phenomenology, we asked 73 senior baccalaureate nursing students to answer two questions: (1) What is nursing students’ experience of an ethical problem involving nursing practice? and (2) What is nursing students’ experience of using an ethical decision-making model? Each student described one ethical problem, from which emerged five content categories, the largest being that involving health professionals (44%). The basic nature of the ethical problems consisted of the nursing students’ experience (...) of conflict, resolution and rationale; 85% of the students stated that using an ethical decision-making model was helpful. Although additional research is needed, these findings have important implications for nursing ethics education and practice. (shrink)

Although older persons (aged 65 years and older) experience stressful ethical problems involving their health, research is lacking about this phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to describe and examine the content and basic nature of older persons’ ethical problems concerning their health. The conceptual framework and method combined ethical enquiry and phenomenology. The participants were 18 older persons and 12 of their children or grandchildren (for contextual understanding). The 19 women and 11 men, 73% of whom were Caucasian, (...) described 184 ethical problems, from which emerged 10 content categories. The basic nature of the ethical problems consisted of conflict, resolution and rationale. The results could assist health professionals to promote older persons’ ethical decision making, quality of life, and good death. (shrink)

This Korean study replicated a previously published American study. The conceptual framework and method combined ethical enquiry and phenomenology. The research questions were: (1) What is nursing students’ experience of ethical problems involving nursing practice? and, (2) What is nursing students’ experience of using an ethical decision-making model? The participants were 97 senior baccalaureate nursing students, each of whom described one ethical problem and chose to use one of five ethical decision-making models. From 97 ethical problems, five content categories emerged, (...) the largest being health professionals (69%). The basic nature of the ethical problems was the students’ experience of conflict, resolution and rationale. Using an ethical decision-making model helped 94% of the students. A comparison of the Korean and American results yields important implications for nursing ethics education, practice and research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rebirth of Cool:Toward a Science SublimeE. David Wong (bio)We love and hate "the cool." As educators, few things are more coveted than being recognized as teaching the "coolest" class in the school. We look forward to the rare moment when students gasp in awe or scream in amazement. However, in the quiet that returns after the last student rushes out the classroom door, we may feel an (...) uneasy ambivalence. Perhaps we admonish ourselves that serious science is substantial, enduring, and intellectual. We wonder whether our "cool" class was merely superficial, fleeting, and mindless.In this article I examine the cool—this idea we love and hate—and assert its importance in science education. I acknowledge that some experiences can be engaging but are superficial and unimportant—this is the "merely cool." By contrast, some experiences are deeply moving because we feel a growing capacity to perceive meaning and value in the world—this is the "sublimely cool." I draw from philosophy, literature, psychology, and aesthetics to build connections between cool and sublime experiences. By highlighting the surprisingly substantial connection between the cool and sublime, I hope to bring greater depth to the meaning of "cool," this imprecise, but honest, term. I also take care to define sublimely cool experiences in science as having a direct relationship with subject-matter understanding. It is true that the full meaning of aesthetic experiences extends beyond the grasp of words and conceptualization; however, it is equally true that knowledge and reason are central to all worthwhile experiences. The expansion of meaning and perception, not just intense sensation or emotion, is the heart of the sublimely cool experience. Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman provides a personal example of how his knowledge of science enhances his sublimely cool experience of Nature: "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere.' I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The [End Page 67] vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light."1Cool as a Sign of Compelling Experience"Cool" is an intriguing expression for it is at once both crude and incisive. On the one hand, "cool" is a colloquial term used by people of all ages and backgrounds in many contexts to describe many things. So wide and informal is its use that "cool" may seem trite and banal. "Cool" is rarely chosen carefully when used: indeed, it is more often an unintentional, reflexive utterance.Thus, the more one thinks before speaking, the less likely "cool" will be used. Nonetheless, because it is an impulsive expression, "cool" may be all the more honest. Dewey made a similar point in his observation of the word "beauty": "Beauty... is properly an emotional term, though one denoting a characteristic emotion. In the presence of a landscape, a poem or a picture that lays hold of us with immediate poignancy, we are moved to murmur or to exclaim 'How beautiful.' The ejaculation is a just tribute to the capacity of the object to arouse admiration that approaches worship."2 With "just tribute" Dewey emphasizes the honesty of the term. By "admiration that approaches worship," Dewey reminds us that the spontaneous uttering of "beautiful" is a sign that a powerful experience has been had. I will make a similar argument that the term "cool"—although common and ordinary—can signal the having of a compelling experience. As a compelling experience, the cool becomes an important resource for teachers.Dewey goes on to describe how the meaning of "beauty" has, unfortunately, lost its value to aesthetic theoreticians: "Beauty is at the furthest remove from an analytic term, and hence from a conception that can figure in theory as a means of explanation or classification. Unfortunately, it has been hardened into a peculiar object; emotional rapture has been subjected to what philosophy calls hypostatization, and the concept of beauty as an essence of intuition has resulted. For purposes of theory, it then becomes an obstructive term."3Because of the way they are... (shrink)

The six commentaries raise five issues about multi-level selection theory that we attempt to address: (1) replicators without vehicles, (2) group selection and movement between groups, (3) absolute versus relative fitness, (4) group-level psychological adaptions, and (5) multi-level selection as a predictive theory.

The informal business sector has made enormous contributions to Nigeria's economic growth and development, but this sector is not given the necessary attention to transforming these businesses toward sustainability. This study explores the depth of informal business sector practices in Nigeria. It underscores the inputs of stakeholders in the transformation of businesses in the Nigerian informal sector to increase tax remittances and employment generation for job security in the Nigerian economy. Also, it underpins value chain performances to transform the informal (...) sector and rescue it from liquidation through voluntary company arrangements, administration, merger, takeover, and acquisition schemes. The study adopts a conceptual review. The research relies on extant literature relating to the antecedence of informal business sector activities in Nigeria. It relies on reports from tertiary data sources such as academic articles, books, newspapers, the Internet, and website sources. It further explores the views of researchers, covering the informal sector development and the support of the provisions of the social services in Nigeria. There is the absence of a model for the transformation and sustainability of the informal sector enterprises in Nigeria. This study recommends a model approach to address informal sector enterprises' issues and challenges necessary to transform the businesses into a formal status while supporting their sustainability and resilience. (shrink)

In some recent papers, the authors and Peter Gärdenfors have defined and studied two different kinds of formal operation, conceived as possible representations of the intuitive process of contracting a theory to eliminate a proposition. These are partial meet contraction (including as limiting cases full meet contraction and maxichoice contraction) and safe contraction. It is known, via the representation theorem for the former, that every safe contraction operation over a theory is a partial meet contraction over that theory. The purpose (...) of the present paper is to study the relationship more finely, by seeking an explicit map between the component orderings involved in each of the two kinds of contraction. It is shown that at least in the finite case a suitable map exists, with the consequence that the relational, transitively relational, and antisymmetrically relational partial meet contraction functions form identifiable subclasses of the safe contraction functions, over any theory finite modulo logical equivalence. In the process of constructing the map, as the composition of four simple transformations, mediating notions of bottom and top contraction are introduced. The study of the infinite case remains open. (shrink)

The organism is one of the fundamental concepts of biology and has been at the center of many discussions about biological individuality, yet what exactly it is can be confusing. The definition that we find generally useful is that an organism is a unit in which all the subunits have evolved to be highly cooperative, with very little conflict. We focus on how often organisms evolve from two or more formerly independent organisms. Two canonical transitions of this type—replicators clustered in (...) cells and endosymbiotic organelles within host cells—demonstrate the reality of this kind of evolutionary transition and suggest conditions that can favor it. These conditions include co-transmission of the partners across generations and rules that strongly regulate and limit conflict, such as a fair meiosis. Recently, much attention has been given to associations of animals with microbes involved in their nutrition. These range from tight endosymbiotic associations like those between aphids and Buchnera bacteria, to the complex communities in animal intestines. Here, starting with a reflection about identity through time, we consider the distinctions between these kinds of animal–bacteria interactions and describe the criteria by which a few can be considered jointly organismal but most cannot. (shrink)

This collection highlights such issues as how the nature of time is relevant to the question of whether God is temporal and how God's other attributes are ...

This article offers a critical examination of the notion of the common good in Catholic social ethical teaching, comparing this concept with utilitarianism and examining parallels between them and common critiques of both. Rather than focusing on the common good and trying to reach agreement on its content as a maximum standard for persons and communities in society, we argue that it is preferable to focus on the common harm. The common harm serves as a minimum standard of what causes (...) harm to individuals and communities in society and should be avoided. The common harm provides both a conceptually sound and practically achievable construct for contributing positively to the social ethical discussion in an increasingly secular society. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.4 : 617–623. (shrink)

The following values have no corresponding Zotero field: PB - Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd Hove,, UK.

The authors argue that an understanding of human agency based on Spinoza's views can resolve the apparent conflict between the demands of happiness and the dictates of morality without damaging the unique values associated with the moral form of life espoused by Kant.

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process Physics (...) [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence. (shrink)

The Ebola epidemic in Western Africa has highlighted issues related to weak health systems, the politics of drug and vaccine development and the need for transparent and ethical criteria for use of scarce local and global resources during public health emergency. In this paper we explore two key themes. First, we argue that independent of any use of experimental drugs or vaccine interventions, simultaneous implementation of proven public health principles, community engagement and culturally sensitive communication are critical as these measures (...) represent the most cost-effective and fair utilization of available resources. Second, we attempt to clarify the ethical issues related to use of scarce experimental drugs or vaccines and explore in detail the most critical ethical question related to Ebola drug or vaccine distribution in the current outbreak: who among those infected or at risk should be prioritized to receive any new experimental drugs or vaccines? We conclude that healthcare workers should be prioritised for these experimental interventions, for a variety of reasons. (shrink)

A partir da fenomenologia, os textos que compõem esta obra pretendem apresentar questões como a popularização da Biomedicina, as experiências do viver com HIV/AIDS e de recomposição do cotidiano após situações de violência sexual e reflexões sobre habilidades sensoriais na contemporaneidade. Apresenta dois capítulos que buscam tratar do Candomblé e os processos de autoidentificação e orientação das relações pessoas e orixás.

This substantial anthology comprises the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of readings in analytic philosophy of the twentieth century. It provides a survey and analysis of the key issues, figures and concepts.

: In this paper, I lay out a case for why those objects of aesthetic attention which are principally characterized as natural objects should be understood not statically, as existing in merely a three-dimensional fixed state, but as dynamic, as existing in a space-time context, complete with change, movement, and flux. After this, I explain why this is important, how the dynamic nature of natural objects raises a concern for aesthetically evaluating natural objects, and how that concern may be addressed.

The paper asks whether gardens may be objects of ‘serious’ (in Ronald Hepburn's sense) and distinctive appreciation. Dismissive attitudes to the possibility of such appreciation, including Hegel's, are rejected, as is the view—Kant's, for example—that garden appreciation is ‘factorizable’ into the modes appropriate for artworks and ‘raw’ nature respectively. That view entails that there is nothing distinctive in garden appreciation. Attention then turns to the idea that it is the representational/symbolic capacities of gardens that render them objects of distinctive appreciation. (...) That idea is criticized, but a related one, appealing to more ‘penumbral’ semantic notions like evocation, is defended. It is argued, in particular, that gardens may distinctively evoke the ‘creative receptivity’, to cite Gabriel Marcel, of human beings. Gardens, more perhaps than any other artworks, vividly testify to the dependence of their makers on what is beyond human artifice and control. (shrink)