This study examines the implications of practical reason for entrepreneurial activities. Our study is based on Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of such virtue, with a particular focus on the partition of practical reason in potential parts such as synesis, or common sense, and gnome, or perspicacity. Since entrepreneurial acts and actions deal with extremely uncertain situations, we argue that only this perspicacity, as the ability of correctly judging in exceptional cases, has the power to find wisdom under such blurred conditions. Perspicacity (...) frees entrepreneurs from their cognitive schemata rendering them able to be truly entrepreneurial. Based on this vision and thanks to a semantic analysis of the meaning of the Greek word gnome, we construct an interpretative model for entrepreneurial judgment composed of three dimensions, specifically, knowledge-cognitive, external-affective and personal-reflective. The model highlights how a ‘successful’ entrepreneurial judgment is also such from a holistic point of view. (shrink)

Recent theories on cognitive science have stressed the significance of moral intuition as a counter to and complementary part of moral reasoning in decision making. Thus, the aim of this paper is to create an integrated framework that can account for both intuitive and reflective cognitive processes, in order to explore the antecedents of ethical decision making. To do that, we build on Scholasticism, an important medieval school of thought from which descends the main pillars of the modern Catholic social (...) doctrine. Particularly, the focus will be on the scholastic concept of synderesis, which is an innate human faculty that constantly inclines decision makers toward universal moral principles. Managerial implications are discussed, stressing how a rediscovery of decision makers’ intuitive moral judgments could be relevant in the reflective thinking practice of managers’ ethical reasoning, thus saving them from rational insensitivity to ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

The abundance of literature on ethical concerns regarding artificial intelligence (AI) highlights the need to systematize, integrate, and categorize existing efforts through a systematic literature review. The article aims to investigate prevalent concerns, proposed solutions, and prominent ethical approaches within the field. Considering 309 articles from the beginning of the publications in this field up until December 2021, this systematic literature review clarifies what the ethical concerns regarding AI are, and it charts them into two groups: (i) ethical concerns that (...) arise from the design of AI and (ii) ethical concerns that arise from human–AI interactions. The analysis of the obtained sample highlights the most recurrent ethical concerns. Finally, it exposes the main proposals of the literature to handle the ethical concerns according to the main ethical approaches. It interprets the findings to lay the foundations for future research on the ethics of AI. (shrink)

This case study can serve as an instrument to help students and practitioners develop their ethical decision-making ability, in particular practical wisdom within a virtue ethics framework. St. Albans Family Enterprises is a group of companies with three business lines: petrol stations, flower exportation and women´s fashion retail establishments, with around 300 employees and 20 stores in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol. Apparently, an alleged leakage of sensitive information took place at the Head Office, involving several employees who found (...) themselves in a delicate professional situation and who happened to be relatives. Senior management are facing ethical dilemmas with respect to these employees but also with respect to themselves who feel partly responsible for having generated such compromising situation for some employees. (shrink)

Teaching business ethics effectively may prepare future leaders and managers to better deal with delicate situations that they might face in the workplace. However, such an aim is one of the biggest challenges that educators at universities are called on to solve. An increasing number of scholars are invoking the role of prudence in the virtue ethics context as a viable approach to teach students how to manage ethical dilemmas. In this regard, this paper discusses the “St. Albans Family Enterprises” (...) case study that can serve as an instrument to help students and practitioners develop their ethical decision-making ability and to foster a disposition towards applying sound judgment or what can be called in classical terms, prudence. The teaching note that accompanies the case study offers guidance to educators about how the case can be used for teaching purposes, and explains the implications of exercising practical wisdom within a virtue ethics framework. (shrink)

In 1930, in Anfänge der bürgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie, Horkheimer analyzes utopia in bourgeois philosophy of history and identifies two aspects: the criticism of what is, and the representation of what should be. Utopia therefore plays a revolutionary role in history. In 1937, in Traditionelle und kritische Theorie, Horkheimer changes opinion. Utopia is criticized as misleading, acquiescent to reality. In later writings, in a pessimistic view, the Director of the Frankfurt School describes contemporary society as a dystopia.

Exposure to environmental contextual changes, such as those occurring after an earthquake, requires individuals to learn novel routes around their environment, landmarks and spatial layout. In this study, we aimed to uncover whether contextual changes that occurred after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake affected topographic memory in exposed survivors. We hypothesized that individuals exposed to environmental changes—individuals living in L’Aquila before, during and after the earthquake (hereafter called exposed participants, EPs)—improved their topographic memory skills compared with non-exposed participants (NEPs) who moved (...) to L’Aquila after the earthquake, as only EPs had to modify their previous cognitive map of L’Aquila. We also hypothesized that memory improvement was selective for the navigational space and did not generalize across other spatial and verbal domains. To test these hypotheses, we compared the topographic and spatial memory skills of 56 EPs without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms to the skills of 47 NEPs using the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT; memory test in the navigational space) and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test (CBT; visuospatial memory test in the reaching space); EPs and NEPs were matched for gender, education and general navigational skills. A sub-group of participants also underwent the Rey-Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT; verbal memory test). The results showed that only EPs had better performances on topographic learning (TL) assessed using the WalCT rather than spatial learning assessed by the CBT. This outcome suggests the possibility that EPs specifically improved topographic memory. This effect may be due to continuous exposure to environmental changes that have required individuals to learn novel paths within the city and integrate novel information, such as “new towns,” into their pre-existing mental representation of the city. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed. (shrink)

A large number of studies, including single case and case series studies, have shown that patients with different types of frontotemporal dementia are characterized by the emergence of artistic abilities. This led to the hypothesis of enhanced creative thinking skills as a function of these pathological conditions. However, in the last years, it has been argued that these brain pathologies lead only to an augmented “drive to produce” rather than to the emergence of creativity. Moreover, only a few studies analyzed (...) specific creative skills, such as divergent thinking, by standardized tests. This Mini-Review aimed to examine the extent to which DT abilities are preserved in patients affected by FTD. Results showed that DT abilities are altered in different ways according to the specific anatomical and functional changes associated with the diverse forms of FTD. On the one hand, patients affected by the behavioral form of FTD can produce many ideas because of unimpaired access to memory stores, but are not able to recombine flexibly the information to produce original ideas because of damages in the pre-frontal cortex. On the other hand, patients affected by the semantic variant are impaired also in terms of fluency because of the degradation of their semantic memory store. Potential implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

All around the world in March, due to COVID-19, competitive sport calendars were suddenly canceled, jeopardizing the training programs of athletes. Moreover, in Italy, the government banned all non-essential travel across the entire country from the beginning of March. Consequently, Italian cyclists were banned from leaving their homes and therefore unable to perform their ordinary training activities. The Italian Association of Professional Cyclists early on during that period noticed that several cyclists were experiencing a worrying decrease in their mental well-being (...) and asked the authors to set up an online Sport Psychology Intervention during lockdown to enhance the athletes' mental health. Through a number of unprecedented events and considerations, the aim of the current investigation was to assess the Italian cyclists' mental health during the lockdown and its changes after the SPI. We validated the Italian version of the Sport Mental Health Continuum Short Form —presented in Study 1—and then applied it to a sample of Italian professional cyclists—presented in Study 2—prior to and after the SPI. To achieve these objectives, the reliability and construct validity of the Italian version of the Sport MHC-SF were tested in Study 1. RM-MANOVA tests were run to evaluate the effect of SPI on cyclists in Study 2. A total of 185 Italian athletes were involved in the validation of the MHC in Study 1 and 38 professional cyclists in Study 2. Results from Study 1 suggested a three-factor higher order model of Sport MHC-SF [Model fit: χ2 = 471.252, p < 0.000; CFI = 0.951; RMSEA = 0.049; RMR= 0.048]. MCFA showed that the default model kept invariance among groups of athletes. Results from Study 2 highlighted that professional cyclists who followed the SPI were able to cope better with psychological stressors, showing improved well-being compared to the athletes that did not. No significant differences were found for emotional and social well-being. The present multi-study paper contributes to the theoretical field with a validated measure of Sport MHC-SF translated in the Italian language and culture. It also provides practical implications related to cases of reduced mental health due to injury, illness, or similar situations of home confinement in the future. (shrink)

Aging is characterized by the decline and deterioration of functional cells and results in a wide variety of molecular damages and reduced physical and mental capacity. The knowledge on aging process is important because life expectancy is expected to rise until 2050. Aging cannot be considered a homogeneous process and includes different trajectories characterized by states of fitness, frailty, and disability. Frailty is a dynamic condition put between a normal functional state and disability, with reduced capacity to cope with stressors. (...) This geriatric syndrome affects physical, neuropsychological, and social domains and is driven by emotional and spiritual components. Sarcopenia is considered one of the determinants and the biological substrates of physical frailty. Physical and cognitive frailty are separately approached during daily clinical practice. The concept of motoric cognitive syndrome has partially changed this scenario, opening interesting windows toward future approaches. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to provide an excursus on current clinical practice, enforced by aneddoctical cases. The analysis of the current state of the art seems to support the urgent need of comprehensive organizational model incorporating physical and cognitive spheres in the same umbrella. (shrink)

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Preliminary remarksSince John Capistran is among the most relevant figures of the fifteenth century, not only for the Franciscan Order but more generally for political and religious life , the very substantial corpus of his correspondence has a long history as well as a long historiography. The approximately seven hundred letters he sent or received beginning in 1418 until his death in 1456, were discovered and studied one at (...) a time over the centuries, for quite different reasons and with different aims.Certainly the gradual process of discovering and studying these documents is marked by some milestones. For example, there is the celebration of his canonization process in 1623 , as well as the works of the so-called Capistran Commission. This commission was a team established in 1952 in Rome by the leadership of the Franciscan Order , which was located first in Grottaferrata, College of Quaracchi, then in the Antonianum, and was managed by friars Ottokar Bonmann and Paulis Bédrune.The research archive of Capistrano materials that is housed at the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University was brought together through the efforts of Gedeon Gál, OFM. Gedeon had been heading up work on the critical edition of the theological and philosophical writings of William of Ockham at the Institute. His interest in John Capistran came from the fact that he was a member of the Hungarian Franciscan Province of St. John Capistran. The greater part of the material came from the research files of Ottokar Bonmann who died before being able to start any actual editing work for an edition of Capistran. Knowing of Bonmann's work Gedeon asked Conrad Harkins, O.F.M., then director of the Franciscan Institute, to request that Bonmann's research be shipped to the Institute from Rome where it was being stored. Also while Conrad was on sabbatical in Italy, Gedeon asked him to photocopy the manuscript of Capistran's letters copied in the 1600s by Antonio Sessa of Palermo that resides in the library of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome. That being done the copies were sent to the Franciscan Institute and joined with the Bonmann materials to form the archive. It is a heritage that deserves to be retrieved by scholars, in order to accomplish the work according to modern criteria, where accomplish means to create a final edition.Bonmann was very familiar with the earlier research on these letters and his work reinforces the fact that the edition was an obstacle course. This is the case not only because scholars' sensibilities regarding these kinds of documents changed throughout the centuries, previously viewed as a relic of a saint or an attestation of his sainthood, and – more recently – as a precious source about European history in the first half of the fifteenth century. Despite scholarly interest in the correspondence, it remains unpublished.In fact, the first to have the intention to publish all of the correspondence was Lucas Wadding, who received some materials about these letters at St. Isidore College in Rome, but he could not complete his project although he mentions it in his Annales Minorum. After Wadding many scholars tried to work on the same project but using criteria that – in several cases – are no longer helpful because their methods are out-of-date.For example, as we will soon see, collections such as those provided by Antonio Sessa in the seventeenth or by Atanasio Masci in the eighteenth century, are inspired by hagiographical criteria or, at least, not philological criteria. All of these collections were acquired by the Capistran Commission and then by Ottokar Bonmann who wrote an article on the subject in which.. (shrink)

In English, discourse reference to time involves grammatical tenses interpreted as temporal anaphors. Recently, it has been argued that conditionals involve modal discourse anaphora expressed by a parallel grammatical system of anaphoric modals. Based on evidence from Kalaallisut, this paper argues that temporal and modal anaphora can be just as precise in a language that does not have either grammatical category. Instead, temporal anaphora directly targets eventualities of verbs, without mediating tenses, while modal anaphora involves anaphoric moods and/or attitudinal verbs.

Despite the economic relevance and distinctiveness of family firms, little attention has been devoted to researching their nature and functioning. Traditionally, family firms have been associated both to positive and negative features in their relationships with the stakeholders. This can be linked to different orientations toward corporate social responsibility. Thus, this research aims to identify the approaches that Spanish family firms maintain about social responsibility, based on the model developed by Quazi and O' Brien Journal of Business Ethics 25, 33-51 (...) (2000). An empirical study carried out for 112 Spanish family firms gives support to our initial assumption about these organizations not being a homogeneous group in terms of their orientation towards corporate social responsibility. The differences in perceptions do not seem to be associated to biographical characteristics. These results lead to some relevant academic and practical implications that suggest interesting lines for future research. (shrink)

A range of themes—race and gender, sexuality, otherness, sisterhood, and agency—run throughout this collection, and the chapters constitute a collective discourse at the intersection of Black feminist thought and continental philosophy, converging on a similar set of questions and concerns. These convergences are not random or forced, but are in many ways natural and necessary: the same issues of agency, identity, alienation, and power inevitably are addressed by both camps. Never before has a group of scholars worked together to examine (...) the resources these two traditions can offer one another. By bringing the relationship between these two critical fields of thought to the forefront, the book will encourage scholars to engage in new dialogues about how each can inform the other. If contemporary philosophy is troubled by the fact that it can be too limited, too closed, too white, too male, then this groundbreaking book confronts and challenges these problems. -/- Table of Contents -/- Foreword Beverly Guy-Sheftall Acknowledgments Introduction: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, Kathryn T. Gines, and Donna-Dale L. Marcano -/- 1. Black Feminism, Poststructuralism, and the Contested Character of Experience Diane Perpich -/- 2. Sartre, Beauvoir, and the Race/Gender Analogy: A Case for Black Feminist Philosophy Kathryn T. Gines -/- 3. The Difference That Difference Makes: Black Feminism and Philosophy Donna-Dale L. Marcano -/- 4. Antigone’s Other Legacy: Slavery and Colonialism in Tègònni: An African Antigone Tina Chanter -/- 5. L Is for . . . : Longing and Becoming in The L-Word’s Racialized Erotic Aimee Carrillo Rowe -/- 6. Race and Feminist Standpoint Theory Anika Maaza Mann -/- 7. Rethinking Black Feminist Subjectivity: Ann duCille and Gilles Deleuze Maria del Guadalupe Davidson -/- 8. From Receptivity to Transformation: On the Intersection of Race, Gender, and the Aesthetic in Contemporary Continental Philosophy Robin M. James -/- 9. Extending Black Feminist Sisterhood in the Face of Violence: Fanon, White Women, and Veiled Muslim Women Traci C. West -/- 10. Madness and Judiciousness: A Phenomenological Reading of a Black Woman’s Encounter with a Saleschild Emily S. Lee -/- 11. Black American Sexuality and the Repressive Hypothesis: Reading Patricia Hill Collins with Michel Foucault Camisha Russell -/- 12. Calling All Sisters: Continental Philosophy and Black Feminist Thinkers Kathy Glass -/- Afterword: Philosophy and the Other of the Second Sex George Yancy Contributor Notes Index. (shrink)

Various authors hold that what is wrong with risk imposition is that being at risk diminishes the opportunities available to an agent. Arguably, even when risk does not result in material or psychological damages, it still represents a setback in terms of some legitimate interests. However, it remains to be specified what those interests are. This article argues that risk imposition represents a diminishment of overall freedom. Freedom will be characterized in empirical terms, as the range of unimpeded actions available (...) to an agent. After briefly outlining the main characteristics of overall freedom as defended by Hillel Steiner and Ian Carter, the article shows that this notion is able to capture many of our intuitions about when and how risk imposition disadvantages an agent, without reference to welfare indicators. The article argues that if this non-welfarist perspective can be defended, then it would be easier to approach a number of applied questions about risk, including the questions of when risk imposition is permissible or legitimate, in which ways risk can be an object of distributive justice and how one can be compensated for being subject to a risk. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a grammar of lifting (i.e., resistance training) and compare it to that of language. I approach lifting as a system of generating complex meaning–form correspondences from regularized elements and describe the levels of mental representations and relationships between them that are involved in full command of this system. To be able to do so, I adopt a goal-based conception of meaning, which allows us to talk about mappings from complex goals to complex surface outputs in (...) systems of intentional action, signaling and non-signaling, interactive and non-interactive, in a unified way, and show how it applies in lifting. I then proceed to argue that the grammar of lifting is architecturally very similar to that of language. First, I show that both involve stable (idiomatized/lexicalized) pairings of regularized forms with regularized meanings. Second, I argue that in both lifting and language, meaning–form mapping is mediated by syntax, which, crucially, operates on non-linearized hierarchical structures of abstract objects that include both content morphemes and functional morphemes. I conclude, following and expanding on some insights from prior literature and offering further evidence for them, that neither of these architectural phenomena (idiomatized meaning–form pairings and abstract syntax) is specific to language, with both of them likely emerging in skilled action that does not necessarily involve social interaction, due to considerations of repeatability and reusability of elements in new contexts. (shrink)

The notion of “individuality” in Plotinus is one of the most discussed. Throughout the Enneads, the problem of the individual subject arises from the complexity in understanding the relation between man and soul. To the intelligible man, also known as the inner or first man, a second man is added, so that “we have come to be the pair of them” 14.28-30). This question has been extensively addressed from different angles that lead either to a purely structuralist solution, or to (...) its criticism and the search for a more stable definition of subjective identity. The thesis that we will defend in this article, and that will indicate our position in the debate, tries to give a new perspective of the issue alluding to the sphere of life and its forms. The continuity between the different men will be determined by the continuity between their different forms of life, a primary issue to which the problem of individuality and the different modes of consciousness are subject. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to argue for a position holding that epigenetic responsibility primarily should be a political and not an individual responsibility. Epigenetic is a rapidly growing research field studying regulations of gene expression that do not change the DNA sequence. Knowledge about these mechanisms is still uncertain in many respects, but main presumptions are that they are triggered by environmental factors and life style and, to a certain extent, heritable to subsequent generations, thereby reminding of aspects (...) of Lamarckism. Epigenetic research advances give rise to intriguing challenges for responsibility relations between the society and the individual. Responsibility is commonly understood in a backwards-looking manner, identifying causally responsible actors to blame for a bad outcome. If only a backwards-looking responsibility model is applied, epigenetics might give rise to arduous responsibility ascriptions to individuals for their health and the health of their future descendants. This would put heavy responsibility burdens on actors constrained by unequal social and economic structures. In contrast, a forward-looking responsibility notion takes account of structural conditions and pay attention to who is best placed to do something about conditions contributing to bad outcomes. A forward-looking responsibility notion would partly free disadvantaged individuals from responsibility, and identify actors with power and capacity to do something about structural factors constraining genuine choice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Many scholars have contended that Clare of Assisi’s original intention upon leaving her family home to take up religious life sometime around 1211 was to lead a life essentially like that of the mendicant friars.1 She and the women who soon joined her would be not only poor and penitential, but also itinerant and apostolic. Like the friars their life would be marked by both insertion into the world (...) and seclusion from it as they alternated between active service and recollected contemplation. The important proof text for this claim is a passage in a letter composed by Jacques de Vitry in 1216, just five years after Clare’s conversion. Many scholars, including Paul Sabatier, Luigi Pellegrini, Roberto Rusconi, Marco Bartoli, Ingrid Peterson, Chiara Frugoni, Giovanni Boccali, and Chiara Augusta Lainati believe the text to be the earliest witness to the manner of life led by Clare and her followers during their initial years.2 The letter has been used to argue further that the women were explicitly grouped together with the Lesser Brothers, were known by the parallel title of “Lesser Sisters,” and had the freedom to come and go as they wished during their early years in San Damiano.Since claims about the women’s early likeness to the friars’ mendicant way of life are often made as brief assertions resting on Jacques’s letter, I think it important to consider in a more detained fashion the provocative passage thought to support them. Closer scrutiny of Jacques’s text shows that while none of these claims can be entirely ruled out, importantly, none can be supported with any solid evidence. I agree essentially with scholars such as Lilly Zarncke, Ernest McDonnell, Maria Pia Alberzoni, Jacques Dalarun, and Lezlie Knox who consider the letter’s language too general to know if it refers specifically to Clare and her sisters.3 I suggest, furthermore, that there are reasons to conclude that this is certainly unlikely if the passage is interpreted to mean, specifically, that Clare and her sisters carried on an active apostolate outside of San Damiano.Jacques de Vitry is generally recognized as one of the most astute and forward-thinking observers of his time in terms of recognizing the importance of new religious groups. A Parisian master, canon regular, and bishop, Jacques had the opportunity to live in a variety of settings, including his native France, the Low Countries, Italy, and the holy land.4 In 1216, he traveled from Liège in the Low Countries to Perugia to be consecrated bishop by Honorius III, who himself had just been elevated to the papacy.5 Along with observations about other matters, Jacques shared the following comment about religious men and women in a letter that he sent almost certainly to a group of his friends back in Liège. He was writing in the early days of October 1216 as he was leaving Italy on a boat that would carry him to his new episcopal see in Acre. The letter, the first of six that survive, is prized not only for its reference to the Lesser Sisters, but also as the very first written testimony regarding the Franciscan movement in general. The great nineteenth-century historian Paul Sabatier thought it provided a more vivid and precise description of Francis’s ministry than any single passage contained in his early biographies.6 The passage, which represents less than seven percent of the entire letter, is rendered thus in a widely available English translation:I found one consolation in those parts, nevertheless: many men and women [multi enim utriusque sexus], rich and worldly, after renouncing everything for Christ, fled the world. They are called Lesser Brothers and Lesser Sisters [fratres minores et sorores minores]. They are held in great esteem by the Lord Pope and the cardinals. They do not occupy themselves with temporal affairs, but work each day with great desire and.. (shrink)

So far, we have focused on discourse reference to atomic individuals and specific times, events, and states. The basic point of the argument was that all types of discourse reference involve attention-guided anaphora (in the sense of Bittner 2012: Ch. 2). We now turn to discourses involving anaphora to and by quantificational expressions. Today, we focus on quantification over individuals but the analysis we develop will directly generalize to other semantic types. The basic idea is that quantification is one more (...) species of top-level anaphora--to wit, anaphora to top-ranked sets. (shrink)

This article explores the proposal offered by Ian Hacking for the distinction between natural and social sciences—a proposal that he has defined from the outset as complex and different from the traditional ones. Our objective is not only to present the path followed by Hacking’s distinction, but also to determine if it constitutes a novelty or not. For this purpose, we deemed it necessary to briefly introduce the core notions Hacking uses to establish his strategic approach to social sciences, under (...) the assumption that they are less well known that the ones corresponding to his treatment of natural sciences. (shrink)

Many advocates of the Everettian interpretation consider that theirs is the only approach to take quantum mechanics really seriously, and that this approach allows to deduce a fantastic scenario for our reality, one that consists of an infinite number of parallel worlds that branch out continuously. In this article, written in dialogue form, we suggest that quantum mechanics can be taken even more seriously, if the many-worlds view is replaced by a many-measurements view. This allows not only to derive the (...) Born rule, thus solving the measurement problem, but also to deduce a one-world non-spatial reality, providing an even more fantastic scenario than that of the multiverse. (shrink)

The concept of heterotopia challenges political theory, which has often focused on utopic thinking. Foucault describes a heterotopia as a heterogenous space that juxtaposes in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Streets, squares and parks form heterotopias when their utopic purity as public space is juxtaposed with the private spaces created by the cardboard boxes and other temporary shelters of homeless people. Since citizenship has traditionally been thought of as participation in a democratic (...) public sphere, how do heterotopias of homelessness challenge the ideas about citizenship? Based on narrative research with homeless people in Poland, I show how the homeless conceive of their marginality. Their participation or non-participation in democracy is not hidden but, on the contrary, very visible in public spaces where they are included as excluded. (shrink)

This work proposes an analysis of the cognitive and motivational components of hope, its basic properties, and the affective dispositions and behaviors it is likely to induce. In our view current treatments of hope do not fully account for its specificity, by making hope overlap with positive expectation or some specification of positive expectation. In contrast, we attempt to highlight the distinctive features of hope, pointing to its differences from positive expectation, as well as from a sense of successful agency, (...) optimism, trust, and faith. Fear and anxiety are also addressed, and the latter is analyzed as a state of mind implying both fear and hope. Finally, the relationship between hope and motivation is explored, and “active” hope is compared with “passive” hope. Some concluding remarks summarize the results of our analysis, and stress the role of hope in fostering the individual’s well-being. (shrink)

Psychological research on emotion perception anchors heavily on an object perception analogy. We present static “cues,” such as facial expressions, as objects for perceivers to categorize. Yet in the real world, emotions play out as dynamic multidimensional events. Current theoretical approaches and research methods are limited in their ability to capture this complexity. We draw on insights from a predictive coding account of neural activity and a grounded cognition account of concept representation to conceive of emotion perception as a stream (...) of synchronized conceptualizations between two individuals, which is supported and shaped by language. We articulate how this framework can illuminate the fundamental need to study culture, as well as other sources of conceptual variation, in unpacking conceptual synchrony in emotion. We close by suggesting that the conceptual system provides the necessary flexibility to overcome gaps in emotional synchrony. (shrink)

Implikatura skalarna jest bardzo powszechnym typem wnioskowania pragmatycznego, które polega na uznaniu przez odbiorcę za nieprawdziwe zdań zawierających terminy bardziej informatywne niż termin użyty przez mówcę, kiedy wszystkie te terminy można umieścić na jednej skali. Pierwsza część tekstu stanowi przegląd podstawowych teoretycznych podejść do implikatur skalarnych. Druga część oferuje krótki przegląd badań empirycznych na temat rozwoju implikatur skalarnych u dzieci. Ostatnia część jest bazującą na przykładzie implikatur skalarnych próbą refleksji nad wzajemnymi stosunkami między pragmatyką teoretyczną a eksperymentalną.

This paper investigates the effect of enacted ethical and instrumental values on corporate governance effectiveness. It further considers whether and how compliance with formal corporate governance codes influences the effect of these organizational values on governance effectiveness. Empirical evidence based on a sample of firms listed in the Athens Stock Exchange shows that strong ethical values are the key element for effective corporate governance, while instrumental values play a significant role only in the presence of compliance. Compliance, although not sufficient (...) by itself, serves as a complementary mechanism strengthening the effects of ethical values and creating the conditions by which instrumental values can act in favor of corporate governance. The results highlight that governance benefits can emanate from maintaining high ethical standards as well as from synergies between compliance and a focus on organizational values. Overall, our findings provide important implications for managers regarding how to utilize behavioral along with structural governance mechanisms to enhance corporate governance. The findings add to the behavioral perspective of corporate governance bringing aspects of the social fabric into the corporate governance puzzle. (shrink)

Although the STS literature on boundary-work recognizes that such work unfolds within a “terrain of uneven advantage” vis-à-vis gender, race, and other inequalities, reflection about that uneven advantage has been strikingly underdeveloped. This article calls for a retheorizing of boundary-work that engages more actively with feminist, critical race, and postcolonial scholarship and examines more systematically the relation between scientific boundary-work, broader structures of sociopolitical inequality, and boundary-workers’ positionality. To demonstrate the need for this retheorization, I analyze ethnographic and interview data (...) on scientific boundary-work in the natural and social sciences in Portugal, showing that scholars’ gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nationality affect the success of their boundary-work. I suggest, therefore, that in unequal societies where credibility is unevenly distributed, the conditions are not in place for some scholars’ boundary-work to work. I draw on Sara Ahmed to argue that we must conceptualize scientific boundary-work as always potentially performative, but not always successfully so, and explicitly interrogate the actual conditions of performativity. Recognizing the links between inequality, embodiment, and non-performativity in scientific boundary-work will enable STS to better understand, and hopefully transform, the relations between contingent struggles over scientificity and entrenched structures of power. (shrink)