When, in the year 1516, Sir Thomas More wrote his book about the ideal state, he located it on the Island of Utopia, which was supposed to have been discovered by Raphael Hythlodaeus, a companion of Vespucci on his fourth voyage. At first a fictitious geographical name, the term “utopia” continues to live in the minds of men, although it no longer is relevant to geography or to voyages of discovery and is by no means necessarily connected with the description (...) of ideal states. Today, according to dictionaries and encyclopedias, “utopian” describes any plan which seems impossible to realize; the word is weighted either with resigned regret or with the forbearance of the sensible soul who well knows that the ideal state would in the end prove no better than the existing one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rita Gross as Colleague and CollaboratorNancy Auer FalkWhen this panel in honor of Rita was first listed in the AAR Annual Meeting program, I found myself listed as Rita's "colleague." This was accurate only in the broadest sense of the term "colleague." I have never worked on the same faculty as Rita or watched her teaching her students. A more appropriate description of my relationship (...) to her would be "collaborator," and perhaps, for a time, mentor—although Rita never needed mentoring for very long. I coedited with Rita three editions of the volume Unspoken Worlds and was in frequent communication with her during the several years in which she chaired the AAR's Women's Studies Section.I knew Rita best during a very early stage of both our lives' work when I was the one doing Buddhist studies and she was still a convert to Judaism, busily castigating every male scholar who had written about Australian Aborigines for their failure to recognize the secret and sacred religious practices of women. Many years later, by the way, I had the privilege of visiting the Pitjantjatjara cultural center at the Australian site called Uluru/Ayers Rock and discovered that Rita had been right on target with that criticism. The center's exhibits are full of references to women's important roles and practice, while the path to the women's sacred cave at the rock's base is clearly marked and barred to casual visitors.Although I am well aware of Rita's contributions to women's studies in general, to Buddhist studies, and to the American Buddhist community, I shall leave those for others to discuss. I want to point to three aspects of her contributions that might otherwise be missed, because hardly anyone other than myself is aware of them. These are her initial critique, while still a graduate student, of our mutual field of study, History of Religions; her work with me in conceiving and editing Unspoken Worlds; and her work as AAR Women's Studies chair.To me, it has been especially fitting that I was asked to discuss my collaboration with Rita at a panel convening in Atlanta. This is because it was at an AAR annual meeting in Atlanta that my link to Rita began—as did the constellation of circumstances that would make her a major force in women's studies. It was in 1971 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. That year the annual meeting program held an announcement of a meeting for women scholars, scheduled within a room so tiny that many who [End Page 63] came could not get all the way in. I was one of those left standing in the doorway, craning my neck and trying hard to hear what was going on. That meeting planned a coup that challenged the AAR's previously all-male leadership. One of its decisions was to pack the annual business meeting with women. At that time AAR officers were elected at that meeting. A slate of nominees was presented, with the provision that additional nominations could be made from the floor. Normally very few members attended that business meeting. But this time the AAR women showed up in force, and then nominated and elected Christine Downing, the first AAR woman to become a line officer and therefore, in succession, an annual meeting program chair and AAR president. Rosemary Reuther of this panel was one of that coup's ringleaders. A second component of the original meeting, more relevant for Rita and myself, was establishment of a working group on women and religion, to begin its deliberations at the following year's annual meeting.As I left that original meeting in its tiny room and walked into the Hyatt's immense central atrium, I heard a voice behind me: "Hello, Nancy." I turned and found myself looking at a young woman whom I could have sworn I had never seen before. She introduced herself—Rita Gross, a first-year student at Chicago when I had been a last-year student, preoccupied with exams, job interviews, and dissertation and oblivious to everything else—including the group of entering students. We sat down... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:I Am Speechless:Thank You, Colleague FriendsRita M. GrossBecause I had not seen half of these tributes before the session at which they were presented, I did not have a written paper, or even prepared notes, with which to respond to these colleagues. I was so touched by the care with which each person had prepared their remarks—a fully written paper in each case—and the wonderful things they said, that (...) when finally it was my turn to get up and take the podium, all I could say was, "I am speechless." That was my first response, but I am also very used to public speaking, so I did come up with some comments, which I reproduce here with some degree of faithfulness.I have known most of these friends for most of my professional life. I have traveled in India with two of them (Nancy and Kathleen), coedited or coauthored books with three of them (Nancy, Rosemary, and Terry), and cotaught with one of them (Paul). With everyone except Rosemary, we have visited each other's homes as well. One of the blessings of the academic life is sharing deep interests and concerns with one's colleagues, and I certainly have experienced that blessing. In person, I decided to respond to each person in the order in which they entered my life and I will also follow that format in these written comments.Nancy Auer FalkThe first person in this group whom I encountered was Nancy Falk, though, as she said, she doesn't remember me from those very early days. I entered the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1965, and because there were so few of us in those days, I clearly noticed a woman who was finishing her work in the same field I was entering—the history of religions. There were twelve women among some four hundred students at the Divinity School and six of us had entered that year! I remember that the professors were very worried about what to do with "all these women who now want to study religion." One of my professors said that he was changing some of the material he lectured on because of the presence of women in his class.In such an environment, I should have known better than to do a dissertation [End Page 89] studying women in religion and using feminist methodologies, which had not yet been developed, but which I did develop in my dissertation! It has taken me a long time to learn that telling the truth can exact a heavy price. I've often commented that all I've ever tried to do in my scholarship and in my thinking is to tell the truth. It's been hard to understand how that could be so controversial or so resented by so many people. But my dissertation was very controversial even though Mircea Eliade, who was still revered in those days, encouraged me to write the dissertation I did. But what I was doing was so controversial, largely I think, because I claimed that the sacrosanct University of Chicago methodology in the history of religions was inadequate, given that it simply had no tools with which to study the religious lives of at least half of humanity. Even years later I heard via some gossip train that students of the professor who most opposed my work were telling people that I was not supposed to have gotten a degree, but somehow, it had slipped though anyway. Now, some thirty-five years later, I am amazed at the level of insight I had as a graduate student in my mid to late twenties.During these graduate school battles, Nancy was already teaching at Western Michigan University, so I did not have her as an ally. But, as soon as I finished my degree, as she narrates in her comments, we began to work together on Unspoken Worlds, which, having been put together before computers, was extremely labor intensive. I really enjoyed the process of working together on that book. I enjoyed not having to hold back on anything. I enjoyed the give and take, the way we could put... (shrink)

Cet ouvrage, récemment traduit de l’anglais, a été coordonné par deux universitaires américaines parties de cette constatation que l’histoire des religions a toujours été observée sous l’angle masculin et qu’il n’existait pas d’étude approfondie concernant l’approche féminine de la religion et le comportement religieux spécifique des femmes. L’ouvrage met donc les femmes sur le devant de la scène pour les aborder en tant que sujet et non objet d’étude, avec leurs propres expériences et aspira...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rita Gross as Pioneer in the Study of Women and ReligionRosemary Radford RuetherRita Gross has been a pioneer in shaping both the theory and practice of women and religion and in Feminist theology. Her pathbreaking work in these fields has received insufficient recognition among both feminists and scholars of religion. This session at the 2010 AAR meeting devoted to her work is a small rectification of this neglect. (...) Rita has written more than 150 articles and written or edited around ten books. Three of these volumes—Beyond Androcentrism (1977), Feminism and Religion (1996), and A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religion Explorations (2009)—span her writing career and exemplify her contributions to the field of women and religion.As Rita Gross makes clear, she went to the University of Chicago in the 1960s to explore the field of comparative religion, not to study women in religion explicitly. She was forced into this focus on women and has continued to return to this concern because of the resistance of the scholars in this field to paying attention to the ways in which half of humanity—women—participates in religion. Her concerns with women's roles in religion were shaped in response to the attitude of her mentors at the University of Chicago who insisted that what women did in religion was unimportant and was, in any case, covered by studying what men did in religion. One of these mentors ridiculed her by asking if she did not realize that the masculine is generic for humanness as a whole and so "includes the feminine." At most one might mention men's view of women. What women themselves think and do is irrelevant. At that time there were very few women in doctoral studies in religion at Chicago, and their teachers made clear that any concern with women as subjects of religion was a sure way to terminate their careers in the field.It was in responding to these kinds of messages from her teachers that Rita began to craft, in the late 1960s and 1970s, a fundamental shift in the methodology of religious studies. This would shape her decision to write her doctoral thesis on women in Australian Aboriginal religion, to edit a group of essays in her 1977 volume, Beyond Androcentrism, as well as doing pioneering work with Nancy Falk in the volume Unspoken Worlds, where they demonstrated the transformative understanding of religions that opens up when scholars focused on women's roles.This methodological shift, which Rita Gross has returned to again and again [End Page 75] through her writings, she called the movement from androcentrism to androgyny. Androcentrism as a bias in religious studies, or any other field, means quite simply the assumption that the male (usually the elite male) is the normative human being. To understand the "essence" of the human in any field it is sufficient to study what this elite male thinks and does. For Rita this is not only an injustice to women, but it also means turning a blind eye to at least half of what is actually going on in this or any other field. In other words, what is wrong about androcentrism as a way of doing study in religion is that it gives one a partial and distorted picture of reality. It is bad empiricism.The shift to androgyny means really looking equally at what women are doing as subjects of religion, not simply adding information about what men think of women. It is not that this information is totally absent or impossible to get. Often it is right there in the primary data, but is ignored by the scholars because of their androcentric bias. Bringing in women's activities and viewpoints as equal does not merely add a missing corner to the picture; it means transforming the whole picture. What men are thinking and doing is relativized and put in a larger context. For example, in understanding Australian Aboriginal religion one discovers not only that are women excluded from men's key rituals, but also that men are excluded from women's key rituals. The whole religion shifts from being understood as male dominant to being... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies:Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 29-30 October 2010Sandra Costen KunzThis past fall the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) presented two sessions at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in Atlanta, Georgia. On Friday afternoon, 29 October, an extremely well-attended and in many ways inspiring session titled "The Scholarly Contributions of Rita M. Gross" was presented. The second panel, (...) titled "Can/Should Buddhists and Christians Do Theology/ Buddhology Together?" was presented on Saturday morning, 30 October. It also drew a considerable crowd.Each of the six members of Friday's panel addressed a different aspect of the work of Rita Gross, longtime SBCS leader and now professor emerita of comparative studies in religion, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She is also a senior teacher (lopon) in Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche's U.S. Lotus Garden center. The session was organized and moderated by current SBCS president Miriam M. Levering, professor of religious studies and Asian studies at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an international advisor at Rissho Ko-Sekei in Tokyo. I will give highlights from the panelists' presentations in the order in which they spoke.Kathleen Erndl, associate professor of religion at Florida State University, focused on Gross's work as teacher and mentor. Although she taught primarily undergraduates, Gross, in her writing, speaking, and generous conversation with rising scholars, not only moved the field toward taking religious practices and women's religious experience more seriously but also had a huge influence on how "women in religion" is taught. Gross was one of the first scholars to use the term "androcentric." Nancy Auer Falk, professor emerita of comparative religion at Western Michigan University, coedited Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives (1981) with Gross. Now in its third edition, this groundbreaking collection of case studies watered the flowering of cross-cultural studies in the lived religion of women. Falk reminded us of Gross's role in the election of the first female member of the AAR's board and the establishment of its working group on women and religion. Judith Simmer-Brown, professor of religious [End Page 221] studies at Naropa University, focused on Gross's work in Tibetan Buddhist studies, especially her pointing out the discrepancy between the prophetic voices about women's roles in early Buddhist texts and Tibetan monasticism's institutionalized androcentrism. Simmer-Brown emphasized the importance of Gross's work in Buddhist theology—for example, her deconstructing "Theravada/Mahayana/Vajrayana put-downs" and "incipient fundamentalisms" in Western Buddhism.The fourth panelist, Paul F. Knitter, professor of theology, world religions, and culture at Union Theological Seminary, described Gross's contributions to Buddhist-Christian dialogue, recounting that they met at the Society's founding conference in 1980. He said, "Rita is the Christian theologians' friendly gadfly, always asking questions that make us very uncomfortable." Particularly provocative has been her insistence that claims on the part of religious communities to religious superiority or exclusive truth are incompatible with support of religious diversity. SBCS vice president Terry Muck, dean of the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary, spoke about Gross's contributions to the society, noting that she has held every office except treasurer. He and Gross coedited Buddhist-Christian Studies from 1995-2005, in part because the society had decided— after founding editor David Chappell retired—that the ideal would be one male and one female editor and one Buddhist and one Christian editor. He usually handled the work with the publisher while she usually worked with article selection along with the reviewers. Rosemary Radford Ruether, professor emerita at the Pacific School of Religion, reviewed Gross's contributions to feminist scholarship. She reminded us that while still a student at the University of Chicago, Gross crafted a fundamental methodology for studying women and religion and insisted that turning a blind eye to 80 percent of the religious practice in various cultures is simply bad empiricism. Gross has consistently pointed out that colonialism is connected with privileging males and texts, Reuther claimed, and that no one studies religion with "objectivity."Gross's response to these presentations focused on... (shrink)

This article describes the feasibility of researchinto the relation between values of farmers andsustainability for the Dutch Ministry of Agricultureand the Dutch Federation of Agricultural andHorticultural Organisations.Firstly, a theoretical framework describes differentlevels of motivation behind conduct and choices. Itenables exploration and analysis of individualinterviews with small groups of conventional andecological farmers. The aim is to find out what theirbasic convictions regarding nature and sustainabilityare, and to analyze the relation between theseconvictions and the actual choices they make in theirfarming practice. The (...) research shows that for somefarmers, differences in farming practice go back to themotivation level of moral convictions about what is`good farming'. For others, the motivations for aspecific farming practice are more pragmatic or`superficial'. This knowledge can be of significancefor the process of policy making. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is twofold. On a methodological level we explore the way classic literary texts can be used as a resource for analysis and reflection in the field of business ethics. On the level of substance we use the story of the Grand Inquisitor to analyze the problem of hypocrisy in business ethics and leadership. To overcome the problem of hypocrisy we look for some clues in the work of Dostoyevsky himself.

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Professor Judea Pearl won the 2011 Turing Award "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning." This book contains the original articles that led to the award, as well as other seminal works, divided into four parts: heuristic search, probabilistic reasoning, causality, first period (1988-2001), and causality, recent period (2002-2020). Each of these parts starts with an introduction written by Judea Pearl. The volume also contains original, contributed articles by leading researchers (...) that analyze, extend, or assess the influence of Pearl's work in different fields: from AI, Machine Learning, and Statistics to Cognitive Science, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences. The first part of the volume includes a biography, a transcript of his Turing Award Lecture, two interviews, and a selected bibliography annotated by him. (shrink)

This essay is about experience, and not only about ideas. I have been drawn to write about John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus for a number of reasons: First, I find his work to be part of a new turn in LGBT art and media that take queer lives as a point of departure, and not only as narrative focus, for their work. These areworks that are not just about being queer, but cross the line into being queer works. Of those who (...) can be said to be a part of this recent turn, I find Mitchell’s work to be both especially philosophical and formally interesting. Not only does his work take up philosophical questions over what it means to be human, and the nature of love and sex, but also his works are produced through an organic, cooperative process that re-frames what it could mean to queer representation, political or otherwise. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that all-inclusive superordinate categories, such as “citizens of the world” and “humans,” may represent different socio-psychological realities. Yet it remains unclear whether the use of different categories may account for different psychological processes and attitudinal or behavioral outcomes. Two studies extended previous research by comparing how these categories are cognitively represented, and their impact on intergroup helping from host communities toward migrants. In a correlational study, 168 nationals from 25 countries perceived the group of migrants as more (...) prototypical of the superordinate category “citizens of the world” than their national group, whereas no differences in prototypicality occurred for the category “humans.” Identification with “citizens of the world” was positively associated with a disposition to oppose helping migrants and to offer dependency-oriented help. However, identification with “humans” was positively associated with helping in general, and with offering dependency- and autonomy-oriented help; and negatively associated with opposition to helping. The experimental study manipulated the salience of “citizens of the world” vs. “humans” vs. control category, among 224 nationals from 36 countries. Results showed that the salience of “humans” triggered higher entitativity and essentialist perceptions, and dual-identity representations. No differences due to salience were found for representations of relative ingroup prototypicality or helping responses. Overall, these findings suggest that the interchangeable use of different labels is problematic, considering these might activate different representations, and thus, are likely to lead, in some circumstances, to different attitudinal or behavioral outcomes. (shrink)

This study compares the coverage of coping strategies and emotions portrayed in news regarding COVID-19 by The New York Times in the U.S. and People’s Daily of China via social media. By employing corpus assisted discourse analysis to scrutinize the text corpora, our study uncovered prominent keywords and themes. Findings indicate that a comprehensive range of themes relating to coping strategies was more common in People’s Daily while a relatively smaller number of themes was apparent in The New York Times. (...) In terms of emotions exhibited in the news coverage, positive emotions such as cheer, gratitude, and good wishes predominated in People’s Daily whereas in The New York Times, negative emotions in the form of fears and anxiety were salient. The differences are explained with reference to the political context intertwined with the news environment and prior experiences in handling epidemics, with practical implications. (shrink)

In this article I analyze the connection between the concepts of “actuality”, “upcoming” and “origin” found in the early reflections of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno to expose some of the defining borders of the transposition of criticisms made by both philosophers. Through the identification of “actuality” as a reflection on the conditions in which philosophy is legitimate, “upcoming” as a requisite for self-justification of philosophical knowledge, and “origin” as the claim of the historically unfinished, I show in what (...) sense a critical horizon is recovered by Benjamin and Adorno as an inexorable exercise of philosophical praxis. (shrink)

This article is a within- and cross-country examination of the impact of fair trade certification on consumers’ evaluations and attitudes toward ethically certified products. Across three experimental studies, the authors analyze how different levels of brand familiarity and fair trade expertise impact consumer decisions. The authors study this phenomenon across markets with different social orientation cultures to analyze potential dissimilarities in the way consumers evaluate and behave toward ethically certified products. Findings suggest that fair trade certifications enhance product valuations. However, (...) this effect is especially observed for low familiar brands, once the level of fair trade expertise increases. Findings also suggest that there are individual cultural differences with respect to social and environmental labeling expertise that may account for some of the unexplained variation in choice behaviors observed across countries. Results indicate that especially in more (mature) individualistic markets (vs. collectivistic) consumer ethical behavior seems to be greatly influenced by consumers’ perceptions about the eligibility of brands using (or not) fair trade. This effect is strengthened by the significant mediating role of consumers’ ethicality perceptions on the relationship between fair trade and the willingness to pay for brands. (shrink)

Thought experiments play an important epistemic, rhetorical and didactic function in Galileo’s dialogues. In some cases, Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio agree about what would happen in an imaginary scenario and try to understand whether the predicted outcome is compatible with their respective theoretical assumptions. There are, however, also situations in which the predictions of the three interlocutors turn out to be theory-laden. Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio not only disagree about what would happen, but they reject each other’s solutions as question-begging (...) and somtimes even dismiss each other’s thought experiments as misleading or nonsensical. (shrink)

In der modernen Medizin kommt es zunehmend zu Entscheidungskonflikten zwischen Intervention und Interventionsverzicht dort, wo nicht die medizinisch-technischen Möglichkeiten handlungsleitend sein sollen, sondern die am individuellen Patientenwohl sich orientierende bioethische Prognose entsprechend den klassischen arztethischen Prinzipien des primum nil nocere und des salus aegroti suprema lex. Schadensverbot und Heilauftrag sollen nicht heteronom und uniform vorgegeben werden, sondern sich am Willen des Patienten orientieren. Nicht selten macht jedoch die Ermittlung des mutmaßlichen Patientenwillens große Schwierigkeiten, vor allem bei Demenz, Koma, schwerem Trauma (...) und Multimorbidität in der Nähe des Todes. Vorsorgliche Betreuungsvollmachten und Behandlungsverfügungen, fälschlich oft 'Patiententestament' genannt, sind als Instrumente für stellvertretende Entscheidungen und zur Ermittlung des Patientenwohles in solchen Situationen vorgeschlagen worden. Der Beitrag analysiert die entscheidungstheoretischen, ethischen, rechtlichen und medizinischen Aspekte prospektiver Entscheidung über eine medizinische Behandlung in einem transkulturellen und interdisziplinären Vergleich von Entscheidungen und Diskussionen in den USA, Japan und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Es werden verschiedene Modelle und Betreuungsverfügungen mit unterschiedlicher rechtlicher und medizinischer Validität und Präzision sowie unterschiedlicher kultureller und individueller Akzeptanz entwickelt und diskutiert. (shrink)

Bering's argument that human beings are endowed with a cognitive system dedicated to forming illusory representations of psychological immortality relies on the claim that children's beliefs in the afterlife are not the result of religious teaching. We suggest four reasons why this claim is unsatisfactory.

This paper analyzes the process of perceptual recalibration in light of two cases of technologically-mediated cognition: sensory substitution and perceptual modification. We hold that PR is a very useful concept — perhaps necessary — for explaining the adaptive capacity that natural perceptive systems display as they respond to functional demands from the environment. We also survey critically related issues, such as the role of learning, training, and nervous system plasticity in the recalibrating process. Attention is given to the interaction between (...) technology and cognition, and the case of epistemic prostheses is presented as an illustration. Finally, we address the following theoretical issues: the dynamic character of spatial perception; the role of functional demands in perception; the nature and interaction of sensory modalities. We aim to show that these issues may be addressed empirically and conceptually — hence, the usefulness of sensory-substitution and perceptual-modification studies in the analysis of perception, technologically-mediated cognition, and cognition in general. (shrink)

Over the past years, one of the most contentious topics in policy debates on genetics has been the use of genetic testing in insurance. In the rush to confront concerns about potential abuses of genetic information, most countries throughout Europe and the US have enacted genetics-specific legislation for insurance. Drawing on current debates on the pros and cons of a genetics-specific legislative approach, this article offers empirical insight into how such legislation works out in insurance practice. To this end, ethnographic (...) fieldwork was done in the underwriting departments of Belgian insurance companies. Belgium was one of the first European countries introducing genetics-specific legislation in insurance. Although this approach does not allow us to speak in terms of ‘ the causal effects of the law’, it enables us to point to some developments in insurance practice that are quite different than the law’s original intentions. It will not only become clear that the Belgian genetics-specific legislation does not offer adequate solutions to the underlying issues it was intended for. We will also show that, while the legislation’s focus has been on the inadmissibility of genetic discrimination, at the same time differences are made in the insurance appraisal within the group of the asymptomatic ill. In other words, by giving exclusive legal protection to the group of genetic risks, other non-genetic risk groups are unintendedly being under-protected. From a policy point of view, studying genetics-specific legislation is especially valuable because it forces us to return to first principles: Which risks deserve our legal protection in insurance? Who do we declare our solidarity with? (shrink)

Background Little is known about the attitudes and practices of intensivists working in Lebanon regarding withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments. The objectives of the study were to assess the points of view and practices of intensivists in Lebanon along with the opinions of medical, legal and religious leaders regarding withholding withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments in Lebanese intensive care units. Methods A web-based survey was conducted among intensivists working in Lebanese adult ICUs. Interviews were also done with Lebanese medical, legal and (...) religious leaders. Results Of the 229 survey recipients, 83 intensivists completed it, i.e. a response rate of. Most respondents were between 30 and 49 years old, Catholic Christians, anesthesiologists, working in Beirut. Ninety-two percent of them were familiar with the withholding and withdrawal concepts and 80% applied them. Poor prognosis of the acute and chronic disease and futile therapy were the main reasons to consider withholding and withdrawal of treatments. Ninety-five percent of intensivists agreed with the “Principle of Double Effect”. The main withheld therapies were vasopressors, respiratory assistance and CPR. Most of the respondents reported the decision was often to always multidisciplinary, involving the family, and the patient, or his advance directives or his surrogate and the nurses. The interviewees agreed there was a law governing withholding and withdrawal decisions/practices in Lebanon. Christians and Muslim Sunni leaders declared accepting those practices. Conclusion Withholding and withdrawal of LSTs in the ICU are known concepts among intensivists working in Lebanon and are being practiced. Our results could be used to inform and optimize therapeutic limitation in ICUs in the country. (shrink)

Meaning of place is usually approached as slow social cognitive construction. However, grounded on the theory of affordances, it may also stem from direct perception-action processes, which enable the formation of immediate perceived functional, social or symbolic meaning of place (Raymond, Kyttä, & Stedman, 2017). In the present study, affordances of places, which are perceived by a specific perceiver in a specific place, were mapped using a web-map survey. Each place offers opportunities for interaction, behavior, use, feeling or meaning, which (...) is directly perceived and actualized there. This paper aims at identifying the degree of youth-friendliness of urban neighborhoods using the hypothetical intertwined model of independent mobility and actualized affordances (Kyttä, 2004) combined with place use and meaning (Broberg, Kyttä, & Fagerholm, 2013). SoftGISchildren methodology (Broberg, Kyttä, et al., 2013) was adopted to carry out a cross-sectional research, involving 145 sixth to ninth graders of the Great Lisbon area. SoftGIS integrates Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS), enabling collection and place mapping of daily subjective environmental experiences in the physical environment, consequently allowing for individuals to be actively engaged in public processes of participation (Brown & Kyttä,2014). A place based web survey called “Ideal City: a game of graphic imagination” was adopted. Participants were asked to map their home place, select and mark social, functional, leisure and emotional place transactions, and report actual and ideal mobility to these places. Findings on mobility showed that shorter distances to meaningful affordances of places promote active and independent travel; ideally, youths would like to be more frequently active and more frequently autonomous. As for meaningful places, a total of 1632 affordances were localized, with a higher number on social category. Neighborhood area (500 meters around home place) was assessed as youth-friendly, where active and independent travel occurred more frequently, and social affordances were the most expressive type. Relational and affectional experience in the neighborhood places was meaningful for youth. Municipalities should consider these features when planning, designing and managing residential areas aiming for the well-being and health of young citizens; and include youths as specialists of space (spatialists) in planning participatory processes (PPGIS). (shrink)

We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

The goal of our target article is to establish that electrophysiological data constrain models of short-term memory retention operations to schemes in which activated long-term memory is its representational basis. The temporary stores correspond to neural circuits involved in the perception and subsequent processing of the relevant information, and do not involve specialized neural circuits dedicated to the temporary holding of information outside of those embedded in long-term memory. The commentaries ranged from general agreement with the view that short-term memory (...) stores correspond to activated long-term memory (e.g., Abry, Sato, Schwartz, Loevenbruck & Cathiard [Abry etal.], Cowan, Fuster, Grote, Hickok & Buchsbaum, Keenan, Hyönä & Kaakinen [Keenan et al.], Martin, Morra), to taking a definite exception to this view (e.g., Baddeley, Düzel, Logie & Della Sala, Kroger, Majerus, Van der Linden, Colette & Salmon [Majerus et al.], Vallar). (shrink)

É que nada é mais imutável, nada é mais firme do que um povo unido pela concórdia e que tudo reporta à sua preservação e à sua liberdade. Em tal Estado é facílimo alcançar a concórdia, na qual a todos con­vém a mesma coisa. Da variedade de interesses, quando a cada um agrada uma coisa diferente, nascem as discórdias. (Cícero, Tratado da República, I. 49) Preâmbulo Cícero, uma das figuras incontornáveis da história de Roma, tem sido admirado pelo seu percurso (...) pessoal e profissional, bem como... (shrink)

Williams (WS) and Down (DS) syndromes are neurodevelopmental disorders with distinct genetic origins and different spatial memory profiles. In real-world spatial memory tasks, where spatial information derived from all sensory modalities is available, individuals with DS demonstrate low-resolution spatial learning capacities consistent with their mental age, whereas individuals with WS are severely impaired. However, because WS is associated with severe visuo-constructive processing deficits, it is unclear whether their impairment is due to abnormal visual processing or whether it reflects an inability (...) to build a cognitive map. Here, we tested whether blindfolded individuals with WS or DS, and typically developing (TD) children with similar mental ages, could use path integration to perform an egocentric homing task and return to a starting point. We then evaluated whether they could take shortcuts and navigate along never-traveled trajectories between four objects while blindfolded, thus demonstrating the ability to build a cognitive map. In the homing task, 96% of TD children, 84% of participants with DS and 44% of participants with WS were able to use path integration to return to their starting point consistently. In the cognitive mapping task, 64% of TD children and 74% of participants with DS were able to take shortcuts and use never-traveled trajectories, the hallmark of cognitive mapping ability. In contrast, only one of eighteen participants with WS demonstrated the ability to build a cognitive map. These findings are consistent with the view that hippocampus-dependent spatial learning is severely impacted in WS, whereas it is relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

Today's college students have more knowledge available to them than can be absorbed; mastery of a subject area creates siloes where nearly every course is tailored to comprehending subject matter that may be outdated before they graduate. But learning is more than subject-matter expertise. Our fast-paced environment requires instantaneous reactions to complex questions. Our instant-messaging age champions quick response over reflection or thought--even the president governs by Twitter. Yet the ethical dilemmas are no less complex than the subject matter; cyber (...) security, prison reform, labor rights, abortion, artificial intelligence, or gun laws are common table topics over lunch. Struggling through that complexity is central to understanding its implications for our culture. This book brings together some of the leading ethicists in the country to consider the rightful place of ethics in the university today. The authors make the case that higher education has a special duty to empower students to cultivate their character, ethically assess situations, and prepare them for an increasingly complex world. -- back cover. (shrink)

Este artículo sostiene que, a partir del contraste tácito entre obra de arte y naturaleza, Walter Benjamin y Theodor Adorno exploran una estética en la que el proceder antropocéntrico y subjetivista asociado al desencantamiento del mundo retrocede. El propósito del texto, entonces, consiste en articular diversos elementos provenientes de las filosofías de ambos pensadores para configurar un montaje conceptual que evidencie un tratamiento de la relación entre el objeto artístico y el natural, relación que fundamenta la potencia de la experiencia (...) estética como enclave crítico de la razón moderna. A tal fin, en primer lugar, se indica la determinación antropocéntrica de la razón moderna y la especificidad que cobra el objeto artístico en relación a ella. Luego, se señala la remisión de la experiencia estética al objeto natural. Finalmente, se explica la dinámica entre objeto artístico y naturaleza, ampliando su noción. Así, se espera explicitar algunas de las discusiones en relación a la tensión arte-naturaleza a partir de las cuales Adorno y Benjamin buscan desmontar las aporías del antropocentrismo racional. (shrink)

En este trabajo busco exponer que la crítica de la modernidad de Walter Benjamin ampara una dimensión natural en tanto material residual y arruinado de la dialéctica sujeto-objeto. Para ello, primero, aludo la crisis racional moderna en función del empobrecimiento de la experiencia y el conocimiento, cuya consecuencia se traduce en la tristeza natural y un desbalance subjetivista. A continuación, exploro el materialismo benjaminiano en función de la configuración mercantil de los objetos en el marco del capitalismo. Finalmente, presento la (...) modalidad dual de la técnica y la cuestión de la historia natural. Así, espero mostrar que el materialismo benjaminiano no se detiene en la exposición de la objetividad arruinada, sino que abre una vía racional en la que la naturaleza derruida constituye una materia inacabada de la objetividad, índice de un conocimiento del porvenir no antropocéntrico y, por eso, fundamento para una experiencia histórica divergente. (shrink)