O impacto para a saúde mental dos filhos da gravidade da depressão materna (DM), em comorbidade com outros transtornos, carece de estudos. Objetivou-se comparar indicadores de saúde mental de escolares, considerando grupos diferenciados pela gravidade da DM com e sem comorbidade com Transtorno de Personalidade Borderline (TPB). Foram avaliadas 90 díades mães-crianças, distribuídas em três grupos, sistematicamente avaliados: Grupo Depressão (GD) - mães com indicadores de sintomas atuais de depressão e histórico de episódios anteriores, sem indicadores de TPB, Grupo Depressão (...) em Comorbidade com TPB (GD-TPB) - mães com sintomas depressivos atuais e histórico de episódios anteriores com comorbidade com indicadores de TPB, e Grupo de Comparação (GC) - mães sem histórico de sintomas depressivos nem indicadores de TPB. As crianças, de ambos os sexos, tinham idade entre seis e 10 anos. Procedeu-se às avaliações em sessões individuais: a) com as mães - Questionário Geral e Questionário Sobre a Saúde do Paciente, Entrevista Clínica TPB e Questionário de Capacidades e Dificuldades (SDQ); e b) com as crianças - Teste das Matrizes Progressivas Coloridas de Raven. Tratou-se os dados por procedimentos estatísticos (p ≤0,05). As crianças do GD-TPB apresentaram, com significância estatística, média maior que GD e GC quanto ao escore de problemas total, conduta, hiperatividade e problemas de relacionamento. Verificou-se associação da gravidade da DM com TPB com mais problemas de saúde mental infantil, caracterizando um grupo clínico preferencial para intervenções em saúde mental. (shrink)

As religiosidades de matriz africana tem um importante papel na condução das práticas de saúde de seus devotos a partir de uma visão integral do corpo da pessoa que considera o ser humano em suas diferentes esferas, a espiritual, a social, a mental e a biológica. No candomblé, a cabeça, denominada de _Orí_, é entendida como a sede da individualidade do sujeito, possui um conteúdo espiritual, tem _status_ de divindade, e guia os filhos e filhas de santo em sua jornada (...) no Ayê. Se enfraquecida, ela pode trazer enfermidades, o que exige uma série de procedimentos rituais para o fortalecimento de _Orí_, como o _bori_, que se traduz no ritual de dar comida e bebida à cabeça, essencial para o restabelecimento da saúde espiritual ou física. A partir desse contexto, a pesquisa buscou compreender a importância de _Orí_ para o processo saúde-doença de pessoas filiadas ao candomblé, entrevistando sujeitos de diferentes terreiros. Os resultados apontam para a capacidade de _Orí_ em fortalecer o caráter das pessoas, seus valores e atitudes positivas diante da vida, como sendo fundamental para se fazer boas escolhas em prol da saúde, e evitar as enfermidades. Ter uma cabeça boa é ter uma saúde boa. (shrink)

As religiosidades de matriz africana tem um importante papel na condução das práticas de saúde de seus devotos a partir de uma visão integral do corpo da pessoa que considera o ser humano em suas diferentes esferas, a espiritual, a social, a mental e a biológica. No candomblé, a cabeça, denominada de _Orí_, é entendida como a sede da individualidade do sujeito, possui um conteúdo espiritual, tem _status_ de divindade, e guia os filhos e filhas de santo em sua jornada (...) no Ayê. Se enfraquecida, ela pode trazer enfermidades, o que exige uma série de procedimentos rituais para o fortalecimento de _Orí_, como o _bori_, que se traduz no ritual de dar comida e bebida à cabeça, essencial para o restabelecimento da saúde espiritual ou física. A partir desse contexto, a pesquisa buscou compreender a importância de _Orí_ para o processo saúde-doença de pessoas filiadas ao candomblé, entrevistando sujeitos de diferentes terreiros. Os resultados apontam para a capacidade de _Orí_ em fortalecer o caráter das pessoas, seus valores e atitudes positivas diante da vida, como sendo fundamental para se fazer boas escolhas em prol da saúde, e evitar as enfermidades. Ter uma cabeça boa é ter uma saúde boa. (shrink)

Entre os desafios postos para as pesquisas em ciências humanas e sociais está a compreensão do cotidiano como espaço para a captura das formas de apropriação da realidade objetiva por parte dos sujeitos e, ao mesmo tempo, a identificação das respostas dos sujeitos diante das condições postas. Como categoria analítica, destacamos as reflexões de Lukács acerca da categoria alternativa, tomando-a como mediação entre teleologia e reflexo, no processo de objetivação da teleologia em causalidade posta.

Resumo: Vivendo os momentos contemporâneos da sociedade, da ciência,da tecnologia, da virtualidade e do quadro de giz; me ponho como uma sintomatologista desses tempos. Para isso, eventualmente, me desnudo do ser professora, para, assim, poder olhar o que não vejo quando estou nas vestes dessa identidade. Os sintomas fazem com que escreva e trace muitas linhas para transitar nesse cosmo da “didática no currículo”. Algumas dessas linhas são lisas, sinuosas, umas ainda não ditas, outras ainda têm que ser esfaceladas, porém (...) elas estão sendo experimentadas com as forças da vida. Ponho-me a escrever e a estudar as questões de didática e de currículo,fazendo interlocuções com outras áreas do conhecimento como a filosofia, a história da ciência, a história e a arte. É claro que não pretendo esgotar questões dessa temática nem que o quisesse, pois são estudos de muitas vertentes conceituais. O leitor vai encontrar duas forças que produzem e produziram as didáticas: as vertigens da modernidade e as da pós-modernidade. Essas forças vertiginosas traçaram territórios diferenciados nas propostas de currículos e de planejamentos. O que quero e faço são bricolagens teóricas para encaminhar algumas teses e descrições que trago a este ensaio. Palavras-chaves: Didática. Planejamento. Pós-currículo.: Surviving the contemporary moments of Society, Science, Technology, Virtuality and also the picture of a chalk, I describe myself as a symptomatologyst of this time, and to do so, I eventually undress myself of being a teacher in order to be able to see what I cannot when I am in the garments of this identity. The symptoms make me write and draw lines to go into the cosmos of “Didacticism in the curriculum”. Some of these lines are still smooth and winding, some have not been stated yet, and some need to be wrecked. However they are being tried by the strength of life. Issues about Education and Curriculum will go through inter-phrases with other areas of knowledge like Philosophy, History of Science, History and Art. I clearly do not intend to exhaust this issue, since these studies are conceptualized from a great variety of origins. The reader is going to find two strengths which have produced didacticism: the dizziness of Modernity and Pos-modernity. These dizzy strengths drew differentiated territories to curriculum and planning proposals. What I am going to do is a theoretical bricolage to direct some theories and descriptions. Keywords: Didacticism. Planning. Poscurriculum. (shrink)

O artigo apresenta duas contribuições para o interessante debate sobre a qualidade de vida,a subjetividade e os riscos na área de Meio Ambiente e Sociedade. Por um lado permite um melhor conhecimento da importância dos sujetos. E por outro lado contribui para uma forma sistemática de trabalhar com dados da América Latina.

This article presents an analytic critique of the predominant revisionist theoretical paradigm of just war (henceforth: revisionism). This is accomplished by means of a precise description and explanation of the practicability problem that confronts it, namely that soldiers that revisionism would deem “unjust” are bound to fail to fulfil the duties that revisionism imposes on them, because these duties are overdemanding. The article locates the origin of the practicability problem in revisionism’s overidealized conception of a soldier as an individual rational (...) agent analogous to the aggressor or defender in a case of lethal self-defense, who is capable of reflecting on the morality of his status in war and of the killing he performs and thus of recognizing his revisionist duties. Revisionism, however, ignores the following fact: Killing in war is not a natural human behavior. This is why training soldiers to kill is—and arguably always has been—a necessity for the existence of war and the killing that occurs in it. Moreover, this training involves a certain level of moral desensitization to violence whose goal is to prevent soldiers from thoroughly reflecting on the morality of the killing they engage in. Hence, war and killing can only exist if soldiers are trained in such a way that they do not reflect on whether they could be addressees of revisionist duties in the first place. This means that military training is a “constitutive condition” of soldiers and war, which is why it cannot excuse their noncompliance with revisionist duties, thus making these duties categorically overdemanding. The argument here draws on the paradigmatic example of modern US military killing conditioning (MC), but embeds it into a broader military-historical perspective that describes how soldiers have always needed to be mentally and morally influenced in order to enable war and killing. The article’s explanation of revisionism’s practicability problem has a constructive consequence for future theory-building in the ethics of war: It implies that a potentially revised ethical theory of war must necessarily analyze the institutions that allocate belligerent resources, if it aims to morally assess battlefield behavior in a practicable manner. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged all societal domains, including education. Home confinement, school closures, and distance learning impacted students, teachers, and parents’ lives worldwide. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on Italian and Portuguese students’ academic motivation as well as investigate the possible buffering role of extracurricular activities. Following a retrospective pretest–posttest design, 567 parents reported on their children’s academic motivation and participation in extracurricular activities. We used a multi-group latent change score model to (...) compare Italian and Portuguese students’: pre-COVID mean motivation scores; rate of change in motivation; individual variation in the rate of change in motivation; and dependence of the rate of change on initial motivation scores. Estimates of latent change score models showed a decrease in students’ motivation both in Italy and in Portugal, although more pronounced in Italian students. Results also indicated that the decrease in students’ participation in extracurricular activities was associated with changes in academic motivation. Furthermore, students’ age was significantly associated with changes in motivation. No significant associations were found for students’ gender nor for parents’ education. This study provides an important contribution to the study of students’ academic motivation during home confinement, school closures, and distance learning as restrictive measures adopted to contain a worldwide health emergency. We contend that teachers need to adopt motivation-enhancing practices as means to prevent the decline in academic motivation during exceptional situations. (shrink)

A filosofia moral tradicional estabelece o critério da posse da razão como exigência para a definição da pertinência ou não de um sujeito à comunidade moral humana, e, pois, a ser considerado digno de respeito ético e justiça. Contrariando a tradição moral, Kenneth E. Goodpaster, Tom Regan e Paul W. Taylor redefinem a constituição da comunidade moral e o alcance da justiça, estabelecendo a perspectiva dos que são afetados pelas ações morais, não a dos sujeitos morais agentes, como a referência (...) para se tomar decisões éticas relativas à justiça. Enquanto a filosofia moral tradicional considera apenas a categoria dos sujeitos morais agentes, estes autores desdobram a sujeição moral em duas possibilidades: a da agência e a da paciência moral. Com este desdobramento, mantêm-se a estatura dos agentes racionais como responsáveis pela moralidade, enquanto a vulnerabilidade às ações e decisões dos sujeitos morais agentes é levada em conta, permitindo a inclusão na comunidade moral e da justiça de interesses nãoracionais, de animais e ecossistemas nãoanimados, por exemplo. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Agentes morais. Pacientes morais. Agência moral. Paciência moral. Responsabilidade. Vulnerabilidade. Kenneth E. Goodpaster. Tom Regan. Paul W. Taylor. ABSTRACT Traditional moral philosophy establishes reason as the only criterion for someone being morally considerable or recognized as member of the moral community. In contrast, Kenneth E. Goodpaster, Tom Regan and Paul W. Taylor do not agree with the moral tradition. On their perspective, the standpoint not of the agent but of the “patient” should be the central question of ethics in defining to whom principles of morality apply. While traditional philosophy operates only with the category of moral agents, these authors operates with both categories, moral agent and moral patient. They maintain that responsibility is the most significant question in defining the framework of human morality, a necessary condition to someone being considered a moral agent, possible only for rational beings, while vulnerability is the condition of being subjected to moral decisions and actions, independently of being rational or non rational. Being subjected to human morality is not a prerogative of rational beings. There are non rational interests common to humans, animals and plants, the inherent worth of life, for example, that are continuously subjected to human decisions. So, those have to be considered by ethics and justice. In order to be morally considerable it is not necessary to be rational, it is sufficient to be vulnerable to moral agency. KEY WORDS – Moral agent. Moral patient. Moral agency. Moral patience. Responsibility. Vulnerability. Kenneth E. Goodpaster. Tom Regan. Paul W. Taylor. (shrink)

We begin this article by delineating the explanatory gaps left by prevailing gene‐focused approaches in our understanding of phenotype determination, inheritance, and the origin of novel traits. We aim not to diminish the value of these approaches but to highlight where their implementation, despite best efforts, has encountered persistent limitations. We then discuss how each of these explanatory gaps can be addressed by expanding research foci to take into accountbiological agency—the capacity of living systems at various levels to participate in (...) their own development, maintenance, and function by regulating their structures and activities in response to conditions they encounter. Here we aim to define formally what agency and agents are and—just as importantly—what they are not, emphasizing that agency is an empirical property connoting neither intention nor consciousness. Lastly, we discuss how incorporating agency helps to bridge explanatory gaps left by conventional approaches, highlight scientific fields in which implicit agency approaches are already proving valuable, and assess the opportunities and challenges of more systematically incorporating biological agency into research programs. (shrink)

Using a prototype approach, we assessed people’s lay conceptions of intuition and analysis. Open-ended descriptions of intuition and analysis were generated by participants (Study 1) and resulting exemplars were sorted into features subsequently rated in centrality by independent participants (Study 2). Feature centrality was validated by showing that participants were quicker and more accurate in classifying central (as compared to peripheral) features (Study 3). Centrality ratings suggested a single-factor structure describing analysis but revealed that participants held lay conceptions of intuition (...) as involving two different types of processes: (1) as an automatic, affective, and non-logical processing, and (2) as a holistic processing that can assist in problem-solving. Additional analyses showed that the centrality ratings of intuition’s facets were predicted by participants’ self-reported intuitive style, suggesting intuition is differently perceived by intuitive and non-intuitive people. We discuss the implications of these results for the study of intuition and analysis. (shrink)

With the shift toward online environments due to COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for educational sector, employees’ performance has been affected by an array of different factors. Personal aspects as well as organizational focus on individuals’ wellbeing are the main focus of this study through inclusion of job autonomy and work-life conflict alongside other factors, such as informational support that can aid academic staff regarding their wellbeing during times of crisis. In response to the effects of COVID-19 on employees, this study aims (...) to provide tangible data to protect university teachers during crises and establish key points that can improve their wellbeing. For this purpose, we used interviews to provide in-depth understanding of the subject. A total of 16 teachers as interviewees have provided qualitative data that was analyzed with MAXQDA. This study highlights the importance of work-life conflict and vitality of job autonomy on academic staffs’ performance and overall wellbeing through a conceptual analysis. We emphasize the role of organizations in maintaining a work environment where university teachers’ wellbeing is prioritized and various elements such as training and support are used to help stabilizing work-life balance. The current findings can be beneficial for both scholars and decision-makers in schools and universities to enhance elements of remote work for their staff. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Jakob Hohwy argues that the emerging predictive processing perspective on cognition requires us to explain cognitive functioning in purely internalistic and neurocentric terms. The purpose of the present paper is to challenge the view that PP entails a wholesale rejection of positions that are interested in the embodied, embedded, extended, or enactive dimensions of cognitive processes. I will argue that Hohwy’s argument from analogy, which forces an evidentiary boundary into the picture, lacks the argumentative resources to (...) make a convincing case for the conceptual necessity to interpret PP in solely internalistic terms. For this reason, I will reconsider the postulation and explanatory role of the evidentiary boundary. I will arrive at an account of prediction error minimization and its foundation on the free energy principle that is fully consistent with approaches to cognition that emphasize the embodied and interactive properties of cognitive processes. This gives rise to the suggestion that explanatory pluralism about the application of PP is to be preferred over Hohwy’s explanatory monism that follows from his internalistic and neurocentric view of predictive cognitive systems. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

Contemporary and emerging chatbots can be fine-tuned to imitate the style, tenor, and knowledge of a corpus, including the corpus of a particular individual. This makes it possible to build chatbots that imitate people who are no longer alive — deathbots. Such deathbots can be used in many ways, but one prominent way is to facilitate the process of grieving. In this paper, we present a framework that helps make sense of this process. In particular, we argue that deathbots can (...) serve as affective scaffolds, modulating and shaping the emotions of the bereaved. We contextualize this affective scaffolding by comparing it to earlier technologies that have also been used to scaffold the process of grieving, arguing that deathbots offer some interesting novelties that may transform the continuing bonds of intimacy that the bereaved can have with the dead. We conclude with some ethical reflections on the promises and perils of this new technology. (shrink)

Drawing on managerial discretion and conflicting institutional logics literature, this study investigates the relation between the personal sustainability behaviors of owner–managers and the corporate sustainability practices of SMEs. The research proposes a contingency model that assesses the moderating effects of perceived economic advantages and environmental hostility on this relationship. Based on linear hierarchical multiple regression analyses of a cross-sectoral sample of French SMEs, the results suggest a positive influence of the manager's PSB on the SME's CS practices that appears to (...) be differently moderated depending on the type of practice considered. The influence on environmental practices is fostered through the perception of economic advantages. The influence on workplace practices is only effective when the business environment is deemed benign and the influence on community practices is dampened by the perception of environmental hostility. Highlighting the trade-off between the manager's personal values and the SME's economic constraints, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the critical antecedents of sustainability in small businesses. (shrink)

This article explores gender inequities and sexual double standards in teens’ digital image exchange, drawing on a UK qualitative research project on youth ‘sexting’. We develop a critique of ‘postfeminist’ media cultures, suggesting teen ‘sexting’ presents specific age and gender related contradictions: teen girls are called upon to produce particular forms of ‘sexy’ self display, yet face legal repercussions, moral condemnation and ‘slut shaming’ when they do so. We examine the production/circulation of gendered value and sexual morality via teens’ discussions (...) of activities on Facebook and Blackberry. For instance, some boys accumulated ‘ratings’ by possessing and exchanging images of girls’ breasts, which operated as a form of currency and value. Girls, in contrast, largely discussed the taking, sharing or posting of such images as risky, potentially inciting blame and shame around sexual reputation (e.g. being called ‘slut’, ‘slag’ or ‘sket’). The daily negotiations of these new digitally mediated, heterosexualised, classed and raced norms of performing teen feminine and masculine desirability are considered. (shrink)

Populism and Civil Society: The Challenge to Democratic Constitutionalism (2022) by Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen is an important book that addresses a widespread and ominous phenomenon around the world: The challenge of populism. This book forms a symposium by renowned authors which gathers commentaries on Arato and Cohen’s book. From different points of view, comments, suggestions and queries are put forward, to which the authors respond. The authors’ illuminating rejoinders not only present some of their arguments in a new (...) light but also arrive at a clarifying interpretation of their approach. (shrink)

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports. LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, (...) “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications. (shrink)

Recent work on enculturation suggests that our cognitive capacities are significantly transformed in the course of the scaffolded acquisition of cognitive practices such as reading and writing. Phylogenetically, enculturation is the result of the co-evolution of human organisms and their socio-culturally structured cognitive niche. It is rendered possible by evolved cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily learning mechanisms that make human organisms apt to acquire culturally inherited cognitive practices. In addition, cultural learning allows for the intergenerational transmission of relevant knowledge and skills. (...) Ontogenetically, enculturation is associated with neural plasticity and the development of new motor routines and action schemas. It relies on scaffolded learning that structures novice-teacher interactions. The acquisition of reading and writing are paradigm examples of enculturation. Based on an empirically informed analysis of the components of enculturation, I will apply the emerging account of enculturated cognition to narrative practices. To date, research on the impact of narratives on the constitution of the self and our understanding of folk psychology has not paid much attention to the question how narratives are influenced by cumulative cultural evolution and our capacity to acquire reading and writing during ontogeny. I will argue that textual narratives, above and beyond oral narratives, provide genuinely new ways of narration. Therefore, the enculturated interaction with textual narratives has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of ourselves and other cognitive agents. (shrink)

Major depression is a prevalent mental disorder that leads to persistent negative mood and tremendous suffering in affected individuals. However, the biological realization of this disorder and associated symptom clusters remain poorly understood. Recently, phenomenological accounts of major depressive disorder and contributions to the emerging predictive processing account have provided valuable insights into the phenomenological and neuro-functional components that lead to manifestations of major depressive episodes. The purpose of this paper is to weave together these different strands of research to (...) develop a predictive processing account of major depressive disorder. In doing so, I will relate personal-level descriptions of associated phenomenal experiences to a sub-personal-level predictive processing account of the functional realization of major depression. I will argue that pervasive symptoms of the disorder, which include a diminished sense of agency, fatigue, social withdrawal, and rumination, are integrated by existential feelings of loss and impossibility. These phenomenal experiences, I will argue, are associated with dysfunctional processes of prediction error minimization, which are characterized by an overall decrease of the causal contributions of active inference and by distorted precision estimates. The emerging account promises to contribute to a better understanding of the complex processes that give rise to depressive experiences. (shrink)

Cognitive innovation has shaped and transformed our cognitive capacities throughout history. Until recently, cognitive innovation has not received much attention by empirical and conceptual research in the cognitive sciences. This paper is a first attempt to help close this gap. It will be argued that cognitive innovation is best understood in connection with cumulative cultural evolution and enculturation. Cumulative cultural evolution plays a vital role for the inter-generational transmission of the products of cognitive innovation. Furthermore, there are at least two (...) important functions of enculturation for cognitive innovation. First, enculturation is responsible for the ontogenetic acquisition of cognitive practices governing the interaction with innovative products. Second, successful processes of enculturation provide opportunities for subsequent innovative processes. The trans-generational trajectory of calculation from mathematical symbol systems to the first digital computers will serve as a paradigm example of the delicate interplay of cognitive innovation, cumulative cultural evolution, and enculturation. (shrink)

This paper examines the scholarship, evidence, and assumptions that place the origins of Chinese drama in shamanic ritual. The paper is roughly divided in two parts: the first contextualizes the use of shamanism within the theories of art and literature of one of the first scholars to link the origins of Chinese theatre to shamanism, Wang Guowei, to show that Wang’s view of the relationship between shamanism and drama differs from mainstream interpretations. The second part assesses the views of modern (...) ethnographers and historians of China on the role of shamanism in theater, with a focus on the work of the scholar Piet van der Loon. (shrink)

In some of the Aristotelian accounts, Parmenides’ thesis is construed in opposition to the philosophy of nature; on the other hand, he is also depicted, in a different context, as a cosmologist, to whom the Stagirite (and a long tradition afterwards, ending with Simplicius) ascribes a theory of becoming and its principles. In this paper, I exhibit and analyse the relevant passages from Physics I 1-3, Metaphysics I 3 and 5 and On generation and corruption I 3, providing an interpretation (...) that aims to solve the apparent paradox, making sense of the information we can gather from Aristotle’s and Simplicius’ testimonies. Eventually, I propose a construal of the Two Ways of fr. 2 with an emphasis on the predicative reading of einai, which could hint at the Parmenidean approach to cosmology that runs in parallel with the argument on Being. (shrink)

In recent years, the changing landscape for the conduct and assessment of research and of researchers has increased scrutiny of the reward systems of science. In this context, correcting the research record, including retractions, has gained attention and space in the publication system. One question is the possible influence of retractions on the careers of scientists. It might be assessed, for example, through citation patterns or productivity rates for authors who have had one or more retractions. This is an emerging (...) issue today, with growing discussions in the research community about impact. We have explored the influence of retractions on grant review criteria. Here, we present results of a qualitative study exploring the views of a group of six representatives of funding agencies from different countries and of a follow-up survey of 224 reviewers in the US. These reviewers have served on panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and/or a few other agencies. We collected their perceptions about the influence of self-correction of the literature and of retractions on grant decisions. Our results suggest that correcting the research record, for honest error or misconduct, is perceived as an important mechanism to strengthen the reliability of science, among most respondents. However, retractions and self-correcting the literature at large are not factors influencing grant review, and dealing with retractions in reviewing grants is an open question for funders. (shrink)

We report the results of one visual‐world eye‐tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns er and der in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, or (...) accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first‐mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' “prominence” / “accessibility” / “salience.” The results showed an overall subject preference for er, whereas der was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of er, suggesting that “prominence” or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronoun resolution. (shrink)

The standards for translating texts in specialized fields have become particularly rigorous with the increasing complexity of material and growing demand for its translation. While translations simply aimed at communication and produced by machine translation are proliferating, the need for reliable and high-quality translations is also increasing. The demand for expert-dependable legal translation is higher than ever, requiring competence-based training in the field of legal translation. This paper describes a guided-task framework for developing subject area competence at the earliest stage (...) of an English–Arabic legal translation course. It presents the three most problematic phases of concept processing in legal translation in terms of: legal systems; branches of law; and genre-based phraseology. The approach presented below is part of a more general study that aims to describe the first course in a series of three graduate courses on legal translation, each of them motivated by a guided-task framework that has the aim of developing three specific competences in legal translation: legal concept processing => subject area competence; documentary research => instrumental competence; and legal rhetorics => communicative and textual competence. In this paper we intend to focus on the first course of legal concept processing as a key prerequisite for legal knowledge development. We illustrate the relevance of addressing specific variables when analysing legal concepts in the text that is to be translated, before proceeding to the information search and communication, according to established formulae and conventions. (shrink)

Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of general problem‐solving methods in acquiring rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, methods that focus on reaching specific goals, such as means‐ends analysis, are assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under an alternative view such methods are believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that the role of general methods in learning varies with both the (...) specificity of the problem solver's goal and the systematicity of the strategies used for testing hypotheses about rules. In the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule‐induction learning strategy, whereas provision of a specific goal fosters use of difference reduction, which tends to be a non‐rule‐induction strategy. We performed two experiments to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule‐induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that during free exploration of a problem space, greater learning occurred if participants adopted more systematic strategies for rule induction, and that participants come to favor such strategies. Experiment 2 revealed that participants who were provided with a specific goal performed well on the initial problem but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal. Instruction on a systematic rule‐induction strategy facilitated solution for both the initial and transfer problems, but participants' use of this strategy declined if they had a specific goal. Our results support Sweller's (1988) proposal that general problemsolving methods applied to a specific goal foster acquisition of knowledge about an isolated solution path but do not provide an effective way of learning the overall structure of a problem space. We interpret these results in terms of dualspace theories of search through problem space. (shrink)