BackgroundThe impact of a cancer diagnosis may be traumatic, depending on the psychological resources used by patients. Appropriate coping strategies are related to better adaptation to the disease, with coping flexibility, corresponding to the ability to replace ineffective coping strategies, demonstrated to be highly related with self-efficacy to handle trauma. The Perceived Ability to Cope with Trauma scale is a self-rated questionnaire that assesses the perceived ability to cope with potentially traumatic events, providing a measure of coping flexibility. The current (...) study aimed at examining the psychometric properties of the PACT Scale in Portuguese patients with breast cancer.MethodsThe study included 172 patients recently diagnosed with early breast cancer. Participants completed a Portuguese version of the PACT scale, and instruments of self-efficacy for coping with cancer, of quality of life, and of psychological distress that were used as convergent and divergent measures, thus assessing construct validity. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the factor structure of the Portuguese version of PACT scale and reliabilities were examined.ResultsResults from the CFA confirmed the two-factor structure, consistent with the original Forward and Trauma focus subscales. The two subscales demonstrated high internal consistencies. Convergent and divergent validities were confirmed: the PACT scale was related to high self-efficacy to cope with cancer, to high perceived quality of life, and to low psychological distress.DiscussionOverall, the current results support and replicate the psychometric properties of the PACT scale. The scale was found to be a valid and reliable self-reported measure to assess Portuguese breast cancer patients regarding beliefs about their capabilities in managing the potentially traumatic sequelae of cancer. The PACT is a simple and brief measure of coping flexibility to trauma, with potential relevance for application in clinical and research settings. (shrink)

People in extraordinary situations are vulnerable. As research participants, they are additionally threatened by abuse or exploitation and the possibility of harm through research. To protect people against these threats, informed consent as an instrument of self-determination has been introduced. Self-determination requires autonomous persons, who voluntarily make decisions based on their values and morals. However, in nursing research, this requirement cannot always be met. Advanced age, chronic illness, co-morbidity and frailty are reasons for dependencies. These in turn lead to limited (...) abilities or opportunities for decision-making and self-determination. Exclusion of vulnerable people from research projects would disadvantage them by not covering their needs, which would violate the ethical principles of justice and beneficence. Commonly, vulnerability is attributed to social groups. The consequence for individuals, attributed as belonging to such a vulnerable group, is that the principles of respect for autonomy, justice and beneficence are subordinated to the principle of non-maleficence, understood as avoiding the risk to cause more harm than good. In addition, group-specific attribution could lead to stigmatizing because labelling a person as deviation from a norm violates integrity. For clinical nursing research, the question arises how the protection of vulnerable people could be granted without compromising ethical principles. The concept of relational ethics provides a possible approach. It defines vulnerability as the relation between a person’s health status and the extent to which this person is dependent on the researcher and the research context. Vulnerability is not attributed solely to a person but to a situation, meaning the person is viewed in context. By combining vulnerability as a context-related and situational concept with existing approaches of informed consent, the different ethical principles can be balanced and preserved at every step of the research process. (shrink)

One important issue in moral psychology concerns the proper characterisation of the folk understanding of the relationship between harmful transgressions and moral transgressions. Psychologist Elliot Turiel and associates have claimed with a broad range of supporting evidence that harmful transgressions are understood as transgressions that are authority independent and general in scope which, according to them, characterises these transgressions as moral transgressions. Recently many researchers questioned the position advocated by the Turiel tradition with some new evidence. We entered this debate (...) proposing an original, deflationary view in which perceptions of basic-rights violation and injustice are fundamental for the folk understanding of harmful transgressions as moral transgressions in Turiel's sense. In this article we elaborate and refine our deflationary view, while reviewing the debate, addressing various criticisms raised against our perspective, showing how our perspective explains the existent evidence, and suggesting new lines of inquiry. (shrink)

My hypothesis is that the cognitive challenge posed by death might have had a co-evolutionary role in the development of linguistic faculties. First, I claim that mirror neurons, which enable us to understand others’ actions and emotions, not only activate when we directly observe someone, but can also be triggered by language: words make us feel bodily sensations. Second, I argue that the death of another individual cannot be understood by virtue of the mirror neuron mechanism, since the dead provide (...) no neural pattern for mirroring: this cognitive task requires symbolic thought, which in turn involves emotions. Third, I describe the symbolic leap of the human species as a cognitive detachment from the here and now, allowing displaced reference: through symbols the human mind can refer to what is absent, possible, or even impossible (like the presence of a dead person). Such a detachment has had a huge adaptive impact: adopting a coevolutionary standpoint can help explain why language is as effective as environmental inputs in order to stimulate our bodily experience. In the end I suggest a further coevolutionary reversal : if language is necessary to understand the death of the other, it might also be true that the peculiar cognitive problem posed by the death of the other (the corpse is present, but the other is absent) has contributed to the crucial transition from an indexical sign system to the symbolic level, i.e., the cognitive detachment . Death and language, as Heidegger claimed, have an essential relation for humans, both from an evolutionary and a phenomenological perspective: they have shaped the symbolic consciousness that make us conceive of them. (shrink)

Plural Logic is an extension of First-Order Logic which has, as well as singular terms and quantifiers, their plural counterparts. Analogously, Higher-Level Plural Logic is an extension of Plural Logic which has, as well as plural terms and quantifiers, higher-level plural ones. Roughly speaking, higher-level plurals stand to plurals like plurals stand to singulars; they are pluralised plurals. Allegedly, Higher-Level Plural Logic enjoys the expressive power of a simple type theory while committing us to nothing more than the austere ontology (...) of First-Order Logic. Were this true, Higher-Level Plural Logic would be a useful tool, with various applications in philosophy and linguistics. However, while the notions of plural reference and quantification enjoy widespread acceptance today, their higher-level counterparts have been received with a lot of scepticism. In this paper, I argue for the legitimacy of Higher-Level Plural Logic by providing evidence to the effect that natural languages contain higher-level plural expressions and showing that it is likely that they do so in an indispensable manner. Since the arguments I put forward are of the same sort advocates of Plural Logic have employed to defend their position, I conclude that the commonly held view that Plural Logic is legitimate, but not so its higher-level plural extensions is untenable. (shrink)

Weakness of will violates practical rationality; but may also be viewed as an epistemic failing. Conflicts between strategic and epistemic rationality suggest that we need a superordinate standard to arbitrate between them. Contends that such a standard is to be found at the axiological level, apprehended by emotions. Axiological rationality is sui generis, reducible to neither the strategic nor the epistemic. But, emotions are themselves capable of raising paradoxes and antinomies, particularly when the principles they embody involve temporality. They constitute (...) an ultimate court of appeal, yet their biological origin allows little hope that these antinomies can be resolved. (shrink)

À quoi bon la pensée? Pour de nombreux chercheurs, inspirés par les théories évolutionnistes, la pensée réfléchie est utile à notre espèce. Elle lui confère des avantages importants et contribue à son succès reproductif. Pourtant ses avantages ne sont pas si évidents. La pensée ne figure ni dans les mécanismes de l'évolution qui ont façonné la vie, ni parmi les procédés dont se servent la plupart des organismes pour s'y maintenir. Dans Évolution et rationalité, Ronald de Sousa montre que, (...) pour comprendre les avantages de la pensée réfléchie, il faut changer nos présupposés relatifs à la rationalité et reconnaître la multiplicité de ses dimensions. La rationalité ne nous sert pas seulement à avoir des croyances vraies et à agir de manière efficace dans un environnement changeant. Elle nous aide à gérer nos plaisirs et nos peines dans le temps et nous permet d'envisager des situations qui n'existent pas. En général, le statut de la rationalité comme ensemble de capacités ayant évolué dans le cours de l'histoire naturelle de notre espèce, passant des tropismes aux désirs et de la détection à la représentation, n'a pas été pris suffisamment au sérieux. Suivre ce processus d'évolution de la rationalité permet de comprendre comment elle est devenue une norme, mais aussi pourquoi il lui arrive aussi souvent d'échouer. Ronald de Sousa a profondément modifié nos façons de concevoir les émotions. Avec Évolution et rationalité, il pourrait avoir une influence aussi décisive sur nos façons de concevoir la rationalité. (shrink)

The introduction of and the commitment to evidence-based nursing in all care settings have led to a rapid increase of intervention and outcome-based research programs. Yet, the topics of nursing research are not only affected by interventions and outcomes but also affected by the concept of caring derived from humanistic philosophy. Considering this twofold orientation of nursing science, nuanced ethical regulations for nursing research programs are called for. In addition to the different research approaches, further arguments for ethical regulations are (...) as follows: first, the different degrees of contextualization and the variety of participation models regarding the target groups; second, the capacities and opportunities of participants; and third, the caring relationship between nurses and research subjects. To capture these special features of nursing science, four approaches to fill the gaps in existing ethical regulations for nursing research are proposed: (a) process orientation, (b) community orientation, (c) context orientation, and (d) relation orientation. (shrink)

Cuando hablamos de iconos nos referimos a representaciones que producen un cierto impacto en nosotros aunque no sean perfectas; del icono se esperan armonía, belleza, simplicidad. Cuando el icono no es una imagen sino una persona humana, se convierte en referente: observamos aspectos de su personalidad con los que nos identificamos aunque nos coincidan exactamente con los nuestros. A lo largo de la historia de la ciencia, las mujeres han sido iconos referenciales fundamentalmente por dos cosas, su calidad humana y (...) su excelencia científica. (shrink)

Cada vez más, la medida de los estándares educativos está arrojando luz a las Reformas emprendidas en los distintos países. En el caso español, y concretamente en lo relativo a la enseñanza de las Ciencias, el paso a dar está en la transferencia de los aprendizajes hacia situaciones de vida.

Este escrito pretende examinar el papel de la estética en el pensamiento de Schiller y Schelling en 1795 para rastrear el modo en que el pensamiento estético comienza a constituirse como un camino desde el que afrontar la problemática de la libertad planteada por la modernidad y, en especial, por la filosofía práctica de Kant. En el primer apartado se tratará de aclarar el sentido en el que la reflexión estética de ambos autores en 1795 no se puede disociar de (...) la problemática servida por la filosofía kantiana. En primer lugar intentaré mostrar las razones por las que las premisas mismas del sistema crítico hacen necesaria la Crítica del Juicio, cuya primera parte, como es sabido, constituye precisamente una ¿crítica del juicio estético¿ y, desde aquí, defenderé que la obra se hace cargo de cierta ambivalencia inherente al kantismo y que, precisamente por ello, expresa del modo más perspicuo el problema que plantea el concepto kantiano, formal, de libertad. Con ello se insiste evidentemente en la relevancia de esta obra para la primera recepción de Kant en general, esto es, para el primer Idealismo postkantiano en tanto que preocupado por elevarse a la verdad del espíritu kantiano, pero, sobre todo, se comenzarán a iluminar las razones por las que la orientación estética del pensamiento, orientación que en 1795 exploran tanto Schiller como Schelling, podrá considerarse un camino privilegiado de cara tanto a la ¿recuperación¿ de la consistencia del kantismo como a la elaboración de un concepto satisfactorio de libertad. Es decir, se intentará fundamentar así, aun cuando sólo sea indirectamente, que la conexión de la ética, de la filosofía práctica, con la estética resulta prometedora aun desde una óptica estrictamente kantiana. Pero el núcleo de este trabajo se desarrollará en los apartados segundo y tercero donde, partiendo de este suelo común compartido por Schiller y Schelling, se examinarán las diferencias entre los modos en que la reflexión estética de cada uno responde a la problemática planteada por el kantismo. En relación a esto último será fundamental determinar si sus respuestas, en tanto que soluciones, realmente se mantienen fieles a la complejidad que nace de la ambivalencia del espíritu kantiano o si, antes bien, pagan el precio de optar por uno sólo de los hilos que tejen el sistema crítico. (shrink)

Taking the Critique of Judgement for an answer to the problem raised by the kantian dualisms, I offer a reading of this work according to which in the part devoted to the teleological judgement Kant practices a Hegelian way of resolution, whereas, in the “critique of the aesthetic judgement”, he thinks the relation between the opposites of such dualisms in a new way that opens up the possibility of a dialectical thought rid of the absolutness of the Hegelian reason.

Introduction -- Function and destiny -- What's the good of thinking? -- Rationality, individual and collective -- Irrationality.

What is the difference between the discriminations made by a home appliance able to distinguish salt from sugar, and my sensations of salty and sweet? It is never taken into consideration that, in contrast to the appliance, I can have offline sensations, i.e., phenomenal experiences in the absence of direct environmental stimuli, mainly evoked by words occurring into thought, conversation, reading, etc. If we put this detachment stimuli/sensations in relation with the correlative detachment signs/referents inaugurated by the cognitive revolution of (...) symbolic language , we might rethink the role played by language in our phenomenal experience as a whole. Qualia can be defined as forms of relationship between organisms and environment, given that human environment is extended to the linguistic dimension, and that the latter has ignited a coevolutionary process with human cognition. The very same properties we attribute to qualia, even when conceiving of them as pre-linguistic phenomenal traits, rely on the cognitive resources that language has made available. The substantialist notion of qualia, I argue, is formed by an online sensation on which the focus shifts from the perceived object to the sensory quality by virtue of linguistic modes of thinking, which are systematically neglected. (shrink)

During the last decades the special literature has paid relatively much attention to the problematic of speech acts. However, in Slovakia it still remains underdeve-loped. Therefore the author decided to examine it from the points of view of its establishment, gradual development and interactional communication. The paper offers a survey of all philosophical-linguistic views on this problematic. Further, it gives a more detailed analysis of the theory of the founders of the speech acts theory , comparing their main ideas with (...) those of other philosophers and linguists. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos analizar las relaciones entre exilio, lengua y territorio en una lectura de poemas seleccionados de los libros Vicio de Miami (1997) y Confesiones del estrangulador de Flagler Street (1998), de Néstor Díaz de Villegas (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1956). El eje propuesto pretende comprender, por un lado, algunos aspectos de su poética, como aparece en sus primeros libros publicados; por otro, ponerla en perspectiva respecto a la condición del exilio cubano en los Estados Unidos en la época (...) de la crisis de Mariel (1980), especialmente desde sus repercusiones en el campo de la cultura. (shrink)

Neste livro, psicanalistas procuram mostrar possíveis efeitos da história colonial do Brasil. Foram também convidados a dialogar com a psicanálise intelectuais de outras áreas como a sociologia, a antropologia, a literatura, as artes, a filosofia e a história do Brasil.

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer, al hilo de un análisis del texto de la Fenomenologíadel Espíritu que comenta la Antígona de Sófocles, una interpretación del concepto hegeliano de acciónque pone en cuestión la tesis, defendida habitualmente, según la cual Hegel habría pretendido que elconflicto trágico resulta superado por la acción moderna.Ese texto revela que la acción, que comparece ahí como principio absoluto, posee sin embargo unaestructura quebrada y paradójica: necesariamente presupone y niega una instancia en sí, inmediata ysustantiva (...) que, finalmente, oculta la negatividad de la muerte. En la medida en que esa vinculación ala sustancia se demuestra así consustancial a la acción, el trabajo concluye, frente a otras lecturas, que,aun cuando la historia del espíritu haya dejado atrás la “sustancia ética” antigua, la acción nopuede liberarse para Hegel del carácter trágico. Por último, defiende el sentido en el que precisamenteesta condición trágica la determina a la vez como destructiva y productiva, capaz de abrir la historia. (shrink)

ResumoTrata-se de resenha da tradução inglesa da Ethica Eudemia, realizada por Anthony Kenny e publicada em 2011. Contém uma perspectiva geral da tradução (caracterização e contexto), bem como aspectos específicos, sem pretensão de análise exaustiva: a tradução de certos termos centrais à ética aristotélica, e trechos pontuais nos quais o argumento central do tratado se desenvolve, aquele a respeito da vida feliz. AbstractThe paper reviews the english translation of the Eudemian Ethics made by Anthony Kenny, which was published in 2011. (...) The Review presents a general overview of the translation (its context and general traits), as well as a non exaustive analysis of some aspects of the work: the translation of some key concepts of aristotelian ethics, and of some phrases containing the main argument of the treatise, that concerning the happy life. (shrink)

Resenha do livro The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care.

In this paper we report a study conducted in Mongolia on the scope of morality, that is, the extent to which people moralize different social domains. Following Turiel’s moral-conventional task, we characterized moral transgressions (in contrast to conventional transgressions) in terms of two dimensions: authority independence and generality of scope. Different moral domains are then defined by grouping such moral transgressions in terms of their content (following Haidt’s classification of morally relevant domains). There are four main results of the study. (...) First, since all five Haidtian domains were moralized by the Mongolian participants, the study provides evidence in favour of pluralism about moral domains. However, the study also suggests that the domain of harm can be reduced to the fairness domain. Furthermore, although the strong claim about reduction of all moral domains to the domain of fairness does not seem to hold a significant number of participants did indicate considerations of fairness across domains. Finally, a significant amount of participants moralized conventional transgressions a la Turiel, but it did not reach a statistical significance. (shrink)

O ficcionalismo, geralmente classificado como um tipo de nominalismo, apresenta como perspectiva precípua a tese de que os entes matemáticos são ficções. Para o ficcionalista, o discurso matemático é desprovido de conteúdo. Hartry Field, que é o principal defensor dessa concepção ontológica da matemática, contesta, em Science Without Numbers, a utilização de entes matemáticos na redação de teorias da física, alegando que a defesa mais plausível do realismo ontológico matemático é o argumento da indispensabilidade de Quine-Putnam. O ficcionalismo defendido por (...) Field nos permite, de acordo com Shapiro, classificá-lo no grupo filosofia-primeiro, ou seja, entre os filósofos que defendem que a filosofia deve ser responsável por legislar a respeito da prática matemática. Dessa forma, podemos considerar Field um revisionista epistemológico. Como se sabe, a dependência da ciência moderna em relação ao discurso matemático coloca a tese ficcionalista em xeque. Ainda assim, se partirmos dos pressupostos filosóficos da vertente formalista da filosofia da matemática, que concebe a matemática como constituída de um conjunto de regras sem significado que podem ser manipuladas de maneira puramente sintática, poderemos traçar importantes analogias entre matemática e ficção, tal como também entre metamatemática e metaficção. Para um formalista simpático à tese ficcionalista, o estatuto ontológico da matemática é semelhante ao das regras de um jogo de xadrez. (shrink)

Ivan Domingues é professor do Departamento de Filosofia da Universi­dade Federal de Minas Gerais. Seu livro, “Filosofia no Brasil: legados e perspectivas” foi publicado pela Editora UNESP, ele traz em sua obra um forte e pertinente problema que muitos estudiosos se debruçam afim de entender e esclarecer pontos sobre a filosofia no Brasil, e todo contexto histórico envolto dela.

In this paper I present a formalization of the theory of ideal concepts applied to the concept of God. It is done within a version of the Simplest Quantified Modal Logic (SQML) and attempts to solve three meta-problems related to the concept of God: the unicity of extension problem, the homogeneity/heterogeneity problem and the problem of conceptual unity.