A corpus of 60 articles published in Spanish, English, and Portuguese was analyzed to account for the integrative literature review on the concept of vulnerability from bioethics, identifying the following thematic trends: risk, susceptibility, autonomy, and culture in people and communities. The methodological approach has been mainly qualitative. We found that the disciplines that most addressed the concept belong to the human and social sciences. The authors recommend conducting studies of the concept from people’s perspectives and that ethics committees review (...) the informed consent and information guides according to these results. The categories give way to the concept of vulnerability, which must be analyzed beyond principlism in bioethics. (shrink)

Objetivo: analizar las tendencias de la formación bioética e intercultural en los programas de enfermería, y establecer los aspectos que deben contemplarse para mejorar la formación. Materiales y método: búsqueda de información en bases de datos científicas de acceso libre y repositorios de tesis doctorales de universidades; se utilizaron las palabras clave: “Bioética”, “Educación”, “Formación”, “Enfermería”, “Cultura”, en español e inglés. No se establecen límites según la fecha de publicación. Resultados: la mayoría de investigaciones se enfocan en el currículo académico, (...) hay poca información sobre interculturalidad, pero se retoma el tema de transculturalidad. Conclusión: es necesario hacer de la ética y la bioética un tema trasversal en los currículos académicos, además de incluir la interculturalidad en los planes de estudio. (shrink)

Many published instruments for assessing adolescent adjustment can be implemented in the school context. However, most of them fail to include a comprehensive and positive theoretical perspective of adolescent development and, even when they do, priority is often given to the clinical perspective, or problems with ecological validity and cost-effectiveness emerge. The Magallanes Adaptation Scale is a 90-item Likert-instrument designed for Spanish-speaking adolescents in order to screen several adjustment areas from a holistic and positive perspective of development. Although some evidence (...) of its psychometric robustness has been tested, no confirmatory analysis of its structure has been published. This paper analyzes the items and the factor structure (exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, using the split-half method) of the scales. Participants were 948 Spanish adolescents (49.84% girls) aged between 11 and 17 and stratified sampled. Thirty-six items were removed from the item analysis. The results of the exploratory factor analysis revealed five factors, excluding mother’s adaptation. Several models were tested during the confirmatory factor analyses, with a 24-item second-order four-factor solution being found to have the best adjustment indicators. The short version proposed in this paper can constitute a helpful tool with screening purposes to help school teachers to assess students’ overall development beyond mere academic performance, although further validity research is needed. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view”. On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind-making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the (...) mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: the problem of “first-person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and the problem of “reactive.. (shrink)

In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to moral considerations. But how do these (...) accounts relate to one another? Though I find much that is appealing in Vargas’s general approach, I challenge his insistence that these accounts should be treated as ‘conceptually independent’, arguing that this generates an objectionable “justification gap”: on his analysis, someone could remain an appropriate target of our responsibility practices and yet fail to be a morally responsible agent. In closing, I offer a potential solution to this problem, though it means re-visioning how the account of moral responsibility is conceptually tied to the justification of our responsibility practices. (shrink)

What is hope? Though variously characterized as a cognitive attitude, an emotion, a disposition, and even a process or activity, hope, more deeply, a unifying and grounding force of human agency. We cannot live a human life without hope, therefore questions about the rationality of hope are properly recast as questions about what it means to hope well. This thesis is defended and elaborated as follows. First, it is argued that hope is an essential and distinctive feature of human agency, (...) both conceptually and developmentally. The author then explores a number of dimensions of agency that are critically implicated in the art of hoping well, drawing on several examples from George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The article concludes with a short section that suggests how hoping well in an individual context may be extended to hope at the collective level. (shrink)

We show that the theory, consisting of the usual axioms of but with the power set axiom removed—specifically axiomatized by extensionality, foundation, pairing, union, infinity, separation, replacement and the assertion that every set can be well‐ordered—is weaker than commonly supposed and is inadequate to establish several basic facts often desired in its context. For example, there are models of in which ω1 is singular, in which every set of reals is countable, yet ω1 exists, in which there are sets of (...) reals of every size, but none of size, and therefore, in which the collection axiom fails; there are models of for which the Łoś theorem fails, even when the ultrapower is well‐founded and the measure exists inside the model; there are models of for which the Gaifman theorem fails, in that there is an embedding of models that is Σ1‐elementary and cofinal, but not elementary; there are elementary embeddings of models whose cofinal restriction is not elementary. Moreover, the collection of formulas that are provably equivalent in to a Σ1‐formula or a Π1‐formula is not closed under bounded quantification. Nevertheless, these deficits of are completely repaired by strengthening it to the theory, obtained by using collection rather than replacement in the axiomatization above. These results extend prior work of Zarach. (shrink)

The republican revival in political philosophy, political theory, and legal theory has produced an impressive range of novel interpretations of the historical figures of the republican tradition. It has also given rise to a variety of contemporary neo-republican theories that build on its historical themes. Although there have been some feminist discussions of its historical representatives, neo-republicanism has not generated a great deal of enthusiasm among feminists. The present paper examines Phillip Pettit's theory of freedom as nondomination in order to (...) assess its potential usefulness for those with feminist goals. It defends Pettit's account of interpersonal domination from certain feminist objections, but argues that his account of state domination needs to be amended if it is fully to protect the interests of women and other groups. (shrink)

The generic Vopěnka principle, we prove, is relatively consistent with the ordinals being non-Mahlo. Similarly, the generic Vopěnka scheme is relatively consistent with the ordinals being definably non-Mahlo. Indeed, the generic Vopěnka scheme is relatively consistent with the existence of a \-definable class containing no regular cardinals. In such a model, there can be no \-reflecting cardinals and hence also no remarkable cardinals. This latter fact answers negatively a question of Bagaria, Gitman and Schindler.

One of the numerous characterizations of a Ramsey cardinal κ involves the existence of certain types of elementary embeddings for transitive sets of size κ satisfying a large fragment of ZFC. We introduce new large cardinal axioms generalizing the Ramsey elementary embeddings characterization and show that they form a natural hierarchy between weakly compact cardinals and measurable cardinals. These new axioms serve to further our knowledge about the elementary embedding properties of smaller large cardinals, in particular those still consistent with (...) V = L. (shrink)

Until recently philosophy of religion has been almost exclusively focused upon the analysis of western religious ideas. The central concern of the discipline has been the concept God , as that concept has been understood within Judaeo-Christianity. However, this narrow remit threatens to render philosophy of religion irrelevant today. To avoid this philosophy of religion should become a genuinely multicultural discipline. But how, if at all, can philosophy of religion rise to this challenge? The paper considers fictionalism about religious discourse (...) as a possible methodological standpoint from which to practice a tradition-neutral form of philosophy of religion. However, after examining some of the problems incurred by fictionalism, the paper concludes that fictionalism and religious diversity are uneasy bedfellows; which implies that fictionalism is unlikely to be the best theory to shape the practice of philosophy of religion in a multicultural context. (shrink)

Few seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between religious and secular institutions, yet there is widespread disagreement regarding what "religion" actually means. Indeed, some go so far as to question whether there is anything at all distinctive about religions. Hence, formulating a definition of "religion" that can command wide assent has proven to be an extremely difficult task. In this article I consider the most prominent of the many rival definitions that have been proposed, the majority falling within three basic (...) types: intellectual, affective and functional definitions. I conclude that there are pragmatic reasons for favouring the formerly popular view that essentialist definitions of "religions" are inadequate, and that religions should be construed, instead, as possessing a number of "family resemblances". In so arguing, I provide a response to the view that there is nothing distinctive about religions, as well as to the recent claim that religions do not exist. (shrink)

Prenatal screening, consisting of maternal serum screening and nuchal translucency screening, is on the verge of expansion, both by being offered to more pregnant women and by screening for more conditions. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have each recently recommended that screening be extended to all pregnant women regardless of age, disease history, or risk status. This screening is commonly justified by appeal to the value of autonomy, or women's (...) choice. In this paper, I critically examine the value of autonomy in the context of prenatal screening to determine whether it justifies the routine offer of screening and the expansion of screening services. I argue that in the vast majority of cases the option of prenatal screening does not promote or protect women's autonomy. Both a narrow conception of choice as informed consent and a broad conception of choice as relational reveal difficulties in achieving adequate standards of free informed choice. While there are reasons to worry that women's autonomy is not being protected or promoted within the limited scope of current practice, we should hesitate before normalizing it as part of standard prenatal care for all. (shrink)

One of the more radical transhumanist proposals for future human being envisions the uploading of our minds to a digital substrate, trading our dependence on frail, degenerating “meat” bodies for the immortality of software existence. Yet metaphor studies indicate that our use of metaphor operates in our bodily inhabiting of the world, and a phenomenological approach emphasizes a “hybridity” to human being that resists traditional mind/body dichotomies. Future scenarios envisioning mind uploading and disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) share an apocalyptic category (...) with more traditional religious eschatologies, though they differ markedly in content; therefore, the insights of embodied cognition and their uptake in technological innovation are considered as they apply to theological concerns. Theology often functions in debates over the technological future to critique or to caution. However, theologians may learn from their technological dialogue partners when it comes to the future of embodiment and its implications for the construction and practice of theology. (shrink)

Whilst previous studies indicate perceived company ethicality as a driver of job seekers’ job-pursuit intentions, it is poorly understood how and why ethical market signals actually affect their application decisions. Perceptions of company ethicality result from market signals that are either within the control of the company and from market signals that are beyond the company’s control. Building on communication and information processing theories, this study therefore considers both types of ethical market signals, and examines the psychological mechanisms through which (...) they affect job seekers’ intention to apply for a job. The results from a controlled online experiment show that both types of ethical market signals increase job seekers’ job-pursuit intentions. These relationships are mediated by applicants’ attitude towards the job advertisement, their perceptions of corporate employment image and self-referencing. Consequently, the present study alerts practitioners to consider the effects of company-controlled and non-company-controlled ethical market signals, particularly when aiming to recruit highly-qualified millennial candidates. (shrink)

This book selectively examines a range of ideas and arguments drawn from the philosophical traditions of South and East Asia, focusing on those that are especially relevant to the philosophy of religion. The book introduces key debates about the self and the nature of reality that unite the otherwise highly diverse philosophies of Indian and Chinese Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The emphasis of the book is analytical rather than historical. Key issues are explained in a clear, precise, accessible manner, and (...) with a view to their relevance to contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

Increasing public concern for the welfare of fish species that human beings use and exploit has highlighted the need for better understanding of the cognitive status of fish and of their ability to experience negative emotions such as pain and fear. Moreover, studying emotion and cognition in fish species broadens our scientific understanding of how emotion and cognition are represented in the central nervous system and what kind of role they play in the organization of behavior. For instance, on a (...) macro neuro-architecture level the brains of fish species look dramatically different from those of mammals, while such a dramatic difference does not (always) occur at the level of emotion- and cognition-related behavior. Here, therefore, we discuss the evidence of emotion and cognition in fish species related to underlying neuro-architecture and the role that emotion and cognition play in the organization of behavior. To do so we use a framework encompassing a number of steps allowing a systematic approach to these issues. Emotion and cognition confer on human and non-human animals the capacity to compliment and/or override immediate reflexes to stimuli and so allow a large degree of flexibility in behavior. Systematic research on behavior that in mammals is indicative of emotion and cognition has been conducted in only a few fish species. The data thus far indicate that in these species brain-behavior relationships are not fundamentally different from those observed in mammals. Furthermore, data from other studies show evidence that behavior patterns related to emotion and cognition vary between fish species as well within fish species, related to sex and life history stage for example. From a welfare perspective, knowledge of such variability will potentially help us to design optimal living conditions for fish species kept by humans. (shrink)

This paper examines developing trust in two related senses: (1) rationally overcoming distrust, and (2) developing a mature capacity for trusting/distrusting. In focussing exclusively on the first problem, traditional philosophical discussions fail to address how an evidence- based paradigm of rationality is easily co-opted by (immature) agents in support of irrational distrust (or trust) - a manifestation of the second problem. Well-regulated trust requires developing a capacity to tolerate the uncertainties that chracterise relationships among fully autonomous self-directed agents. Early relationships (...) lack this uncertainty since care-givers take primary responsibility for determining a child's interests, reducing the scope (if not the intensity) of potential conflict between self and other. Once agents recognize that adulthood demands foregoing the security embedded in such relationships of dependency, they are free to embrace a more appropriate paradigm of rationality for guiding their thought and action in interactions with others. (shrink)

Scholars agree that the environmental and societal impacts of consumption require greater attention, and need examining in more diverse market contexts. This editorial essay focuses on the nascent area of ethical/sustainable luxury, and critically considers how the scope of ethical/sustainable consumption can be broadened in the luxury sector. We address the compatibility of ethicality/sustainability and luxury by examining a range of opportunities and inherent tensions in relation to improving the ethical/sustainable consumption practices within the luxury sector. We also introduce several (...) original articles published as part of this Thematic Symposium, whose arguments underscore both the merits, and flaws, of ethical/sustainable luxury. On the basis of this and prior research, we present a balanced perspective by identifying various factors that facilitate or inhibit the acceptance and furtherance of ethicality/sustainability within sector. Thus, this essay serves as a springboard for further research and development in ethical/sustainable luxury whilst simultaneously highlighting the importance of the topic in general. (shrink)

Internalist pluralism is an attractive and elegant theory. However, there are two apparently powerful objections to this approach that prevent its widespread adoption. According to the first objection, the resulting analysis of religious belief systems is intrinsically atheistic; while according to the second objection, the analysis is unsatisfactory because it allows religious objects simply to be defined into existence. In this article, I demonstrate that an adherent of internalist pluralism can deflect both of these objections, and in the course of (...) so arguing, I deploy a distinction between “conceptual-scheme targetability” and “successful conceptual-scheme targeting”. (shrink)

Increasing public concern for the welfare of fish species that human beings use and exploit has highlighted the need for better understanding of the cognitive status of fish and of their ability to experience negative emotions such as pain and fear. Moreover, studying emotion and cognition in fish species broadens our scientific understanding of how emotion and cognition are represented in the central nervous system and what kind of role they play in the organization of behavior. For instance, on a (...) macro neuro-architecture level the brains of fish species look dramatically different from those of mammals, while such a dramatic difference does not (always) occur at the level of emotion- and cognition-related behavior. Here, therefore, we discuss the evidence of emotion and cognition in fish species related to underlying neuro-architecture and the role that emotion and cognition play in the organization of behavior. To do so we use a framework encompassing a number of steps allowing a systematic approach to these issues. Emotion and cognition confer on human and non-human animals the capacity to compliment and/or override immediate reflexes to stimuli and so allow a large degree of flexibility in behavior. Systematic research on behavior that in mammals is indicative of emotion and cognition has been conducted in only a few fish species. The data thus far indicate that in these species brain-behavior relationships are not fundamentally different from those observed in mammals. Furthermore, data from other studies show evidence that behavior patterns related to emotion and cognition vary between fish species as well within fish species, related to sex and life history stage for example. From a welfare perspective, knowledge of such variability will potentially help us to design optimal living conditions for fish species kept by humans. (shrink)

Hackles have been raised in biosemiotic circles by T. L. Short’s assertion that semiosis, as defined by Peirce, entails “acting for purposes” and therefore is not found below the level of the organism (2007a:174–177). This paper examines Short’s teleology and theory of purposeful behavior and offers a remedy to the disagreement. Remediation becomes possible when the issue is reframed in the terms of the complexity sciences, which allows intentionality to be understood as the interplay between local and global aspects of (...) a system within a system. What is called “acting for purposes” is not itself a type of behavior so much as a relationship between a dynamic system that “exists for a purpose” and its microprocesses that “serve purposes.” The “intentional object” of philosophy is recast here as the holistic self-organized dynamics of a system, which exists for the purpose of self-maintenance, and that constrains the parts’ behaviors, which serve the purpose of forming the system. (A “system” can be any emergent, e.g. an abiotic form, an adapted species, a self, a conditioned response, thought, or a set of ideas.) The self-organized whole, which is represented to the parts in their own constrained behaviors, assumes the guiding function so long attributed to the mysterious “intentional object.” If emergent self-causation is not disallowed, creative originality, as well as directionality, becomes part of the definition of purposeful behavior. Thus, key tools used here, required for understanding emergence, come from poetics rather than semoitics. In the microprocesses of self-organization, I find what I call “accidental” indices and icons — which are poetic in the sense that they involve mere metonymic contiguity and metaphoric similarity — and which are preferentially selected under constrained conditions allowing radically new connections to habituate into an “intentional” self-organized system that, not coincidentally, has some of the emergent characteristics of a conventional symbolic system. (shrink)

Our objective is to understand how parents and children perceive their roles in decision making about research participation. Forty-five children (ages 4-15 years) with or without a chronic condition and 21 parents were the participants. A semistructured interview assessed perceptions of up to 4 hypothetical research scenarios with varying levels of risk, benefit, and complexity. Children were also administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition, to assess verbal ability, as a proxy for the child's cognitive development. The audiotaped interviews (...) were transcribed and analyzed for themes related to parent and child decision-making roles. Both parents and children varied in their perceptions of decision-making roles. Child perceptions of parental influence on decision making as knowledge-based increased with cognitive development, whereas perceptions of parental influence as power-based decreased. Both children and parents commented that they would collaborate with each other when making decisions. Collaborative decision making appeared to increase with cognitive development. These findings suggest that approaches to child assent and parent permission should consider the parent-child relationship and how children and families typically make decisions. Future research is necessary to explain variation in the process of research decision making across children and families, explore the role of collaboration on children's decision-making skills, and understand developmental trajectories and mechanisms related to research decision making. (shrink)

One of the most urgent debates of our time is about the exact role that new technologies can and should play in our societies and particularly in our public decision-making processes. This paper is a first attempt to introduce the idea of CrowdLaw, defined as online public participation leveraging new technologies to tap into diverse sources of information, judgments and expertise at each stage of the law and policymaking cycle to improve the quality as well as the legitimacy of the (...) resulting laws and policies. First, we explain why CrowdLaw differs from many previous forms of political participation. Second,we reproduce and explain the CrowdLaw Manifesto that the rising CrowdLaw community has elaborated to foster such approaches around the world. Lastly, we introduce some preliminary considerations on the notions of justice, legitimacy and quality of lawmaking and public decision-making, which are central to the idea of CrowdLaw. (shrink)

Can Levinas be of any use for a radical political project beyond the liberal horizon? By illustrating the irreconcilability of Levinas’ ethico-politics to liberal conception of the individual, its rational peace and economic arrangement, this article argues that there is a radical distance between Levinas’ thought and the western liberal tradition. Yet demonstrating this irreducibility by itself does not expose the underlying radical possibilities of Levinas’ ethics. This task is accomplished by providing a new reading of the ‘third’ in which (...) this concept, instead of merely expressing the betrayal of ethics, points to two simultaneous orders of justice: formal and ethical. The ethical order of justice indicates that the formal justice exists so that the state fulfills its promise of furnishing the human condition with a face-to-face relation. The ethical order of justice simultaneously contains and transcends formal justice, exposing the structural inability of liberalism to offer a fundamental conception of human liberation. (shrink)

‘Optimistic’ normative theories of criminal justice aim to justify criminal sanction in terms of its reprobative/rehabilitative value rather than its punitive nature as such. But do such theories accord with ordinary intuitions about what constitutes a ‘just’ response to wrongdoing? Recent empirical work on the psychology of punishers suggests that human beings have a ‘brutely retributive’ moral psychology, making them unlikely to endorse normative theories that sacrifice retribution for the sake of reprobation or rehabilitation; it would mean, for example, that (...) we cannot expect people to support such optimistic theories democratically, calling their feasibility into question. Taking the civic republican theory as an exemplar of optimistic theories, we argue that it does not fail this feasibility test. We review recent empirical research, including studies of our own, to support the claim that, far from being brute retributivists, human beings are generally satisfied only with punishment that delivers something other than mere retribution. And we show that this coheres very closely with the goals and policies that civic republicanism would support, as it may be expected to cohere also with other optimistic proposals. (shrink)

The need for research to advance scientific understanding must be balanced with ensuring the rights and wellbeing of participants are safeguarded, with some research topics posing more ethical quandaries for researchers than others. Moral injury is one such topic. Exposure to potentially morally injurious experiences can lead to significant distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and selfinjury. In this article, we discuss how the rapid expansion of research in the field of moral injury could threaten the wellbeing, dignity and (...) integrity of participants. We also examine key guidance for carrying out ethically responsible research with participants’ rights to self-determination, confidentiality, non-maleficence and beneficence discussed in relation to the study of moral injury. We describe how investigations of moral injury are likely to pose several challenges for researchers including managing disclosures of potentially illegal acts, the risk of harm that repeated questioning about guilt and shame may pose to participant wellbeing in longitudinal studies, as well as the possible negative impact of exposure to vicarious trauma on researchers themselves. Finally, we offer several practical recommendations that researchers, research ethics committees and other regulatory bodies can take to protect participant rights, maximise the potential benefits of research outputs and ensure the field continues to expand in an ethically responsible way. (shrink)

This book develops and applies a unified interpretation of John Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness in order to clarify the account of citizenship that Rawls relies upon, and the kind of educational policies that the state can legitimately pursue to promote social justice. Costa examines the role of the family as the "first school of justice" and its basic contribution to the moral and political development of children. It also argues that schools are necessary to supplement the education that (...) families provide, teaching the political virtues that support just social institutions. The book also examines the questions of whether civic education should aim at cultivating patriotic feelings, and how it should respond to the deep cultural pluralism of contemporary democratic societies. (shrink)

Some 40 years ago, Dana Scott proved that every countable Scott set is the standard system of a model of PA. Two decades later, Knight and Nadel extended his result to Scott sets of size ω₁. Here, I show that assuming the Proper Forcing Axiom (PFA), every A-proper Scott set is the standard system of a model of PA. I define that a Scott set X is proper if the quotient Boolean algebra X/Fin is a proper partial order and A-proper (...) if X is additionally arithmetically closed. I also investigate the question of the existence of proper Scott sets. (shrink)

In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary approach to the semiotics of emotion offers insights on emotion as a semantic category organising an array of feelings, thoughts and sensations into meaningful (communicable) terms. This is achieved via an exploration of the role of perspective-taking in making meanings that are felt rather than expressly articulated through words. Forming a semiotic system based on embodied experiences and their contexts, emotions, as semantic categories, are the first stage in processes of expression and communication. I lay the groundwork for (...) an interdisciplinary semiotics of emotion in accordance with findings and stances taken in the fields of literary and cultural studies, neuroscience, and cognitive and comparative psychology. Narrative empathy (sometimes called narrative emotion), like emotion per se, stands upon processes of communication involving the interpretive capacities of feeling, cognitive processes of identification, and perspective-taking. Feeling, beginning as an interpretation of sensorial and neurologically driven values, intensifies through the cognitive-affectual interpretative processes of perspective-taking. With recursive (multi-perspectival) feeling resulting in intensifications of feeling we recognise as emotion, I define emotion as a complex recursive pattern of feeling and affect that calls attention to itself in terms that are readily identifiable with semantic categories such as love, hate, shame, sadness, and anger. (shrink)

Reeves condemns the recruitment of scientific methods by representative theologians to lend credibility to their theological claims. His treatment of Nancey Murphy's use of Lakatosian research programme methodology is focused on here, and his proposal that science and religion scholars might act as “historians of the present” to advance the field is explored. The “credibility strategy” is set in historical context with an exploration of some of the science and religion field's original commitments and goals, particularly in terms of the (...) emphasis on rationalism and corresponding neglect of the imagination, and the value of more creative input in promoting better dialogue between science and religion is highlighted. (shrink)

The differences in clinical bioethics between the Mediterranean and Latin American cultures have not been analyzed. The objective of the study is to compare the ethical conflicts that internists in Spain, Mexico and Argentina have. Cross-sectional observational study through a survey directed at internists from Spain, Argentina and Mexico. The survey was administered to affiliated members of the National Societies of Internal Medicine across three countries via an online platform. 762 internists participated, 261 from Spain, 154 from Argentina and 347 (...) from Mexico. The main ethical conflicts that internists in Spain, Argentina and Mexico have are related (in order) to the end of life, to the clinical relationship and to the patient’s autonomy. Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment is the most frequent conflict in Spain and Argentina and the second in Mexico. Internists from Spain and Argentina identify very similar ethical conflicts. Furthermore, they consider them more frequent and difficult than in Mexico. In Argentina they are less satisfied with the way they are resolved. To explain these differences, socio-cultural factors are postulated, among others: paternalism, individualism, masculinity, organization of the health system, formal training in bioethics and assessment of death. (shrink)

In the context of technological dissemination sessions aimed at prospective students at the Polytechnic University of Baja California in the city of Mexicali, Baja California, the importance of engineering and its role in scientific and technological progress was stressed, as well as its role in scientific and technological progress as drivers of economic development in the region. A group of 2,154 students from 20 different institutions of public high school education answered a survey designed as an evaluation tool for a (...) career path or technology area of interest. The survey results show that students have a low preference for engineering careers. Moreover, these results were augmented with an additional study on the high attrition of students in engineering schools in the city of Mexicali, Baja California, also conducted by the authors. It raises the importance of teaching science in the early education levels, which aims to prepare scientists and technologists needed for the development of research and innovation as a foundation for economic prosperity and welfare of an emerging economy such as Mexico. (shrink)