The literature suggests that the moral sense is based on innate abilities. In fact, it has been shown that children show the capacity for moral discernment, emotions and prosocial motivations from an early age. However, the moral sense is a complex construct of an evolutionary and social nature that evolves under the influence of interpersonal relationships. The emergence and development of moral sense is a challenge that has prompted many research studies with the aim of achieving a clear comprehension of (...) moral development. However, success has been scarce, and studies relevant to this subject are limited. Thus, a systematic review of studies relevant to this topic was conducted to clearly establish how moral sense emerges and develops. An Ovid search was conducted to retrieve relevant items for this systematic review. The databases that were electronically visited are Cross-reference, Google Scholar and PubMed. Strict inclusion and exclusion criteria were imposed on the retrieved items to retain only relevant resources. Twenty-six studies were found valid for inclusion in this systematic review. The results of these studies were presented differently: In order to effectively analyze the selected papers and bring out the results more clearly, a categorization of the approaches adopted in the studies was carried out. The approaches identified were: “Natural Moral Sense,” “Social Relationships and Moral Development,” and “Environmental Factors and Moral Development.” The evidence that emerged from the analysis of the papers was collected to produce a general basic model that explains moral development while also serving as a link between the various studies. First, moral sense is found to be innate in humans; individuals can naturally respond morally to various dilemmas. As seen among children and young infants, moral sense naturally exists. Second, it can be socially nurtured through social interactions and exposure to various environmental factors. Various research studies were reviewed in this systematic review to obtain a consensus on how moral sense emerges and develops. From the systematic review, the moral sense is found to be innate. However, moral development is fostered by social interactions and environmental factors. (shrink)

Adjusting for covariates is a well-established method to estimate the total causal effect of an exposure variable on an outcome of interest. Depending on the causal structure of the mechanism under study, there may be different adjustment sets, equally valid from a theoretical perspective, leading to identical causal effects. However, in practice, with finite data, estimators built on different sets may display different precisions. To investigate the extent of this variability, we consider the simplest non-trivial non-linear model of a v-structure (...) on three nodes for binary data. We explicitly compute and compare the variance of the two possible different causal estimators. Further, by going beyond leading-order asymptotics, we show that there are parameter regimes where the set with the asymptotically optimal variance does depend on the edge coefficients, a result that is not captured by the recent leading-order developments for general causal models. As a practical consequence, the adjustment set selection needs to account for the relative magnitude of the relationships between variables with respect to the sample size and cannot rely on purely graphical criteria. (shrink)

The volume explores the relationship of artists and intellectuals from ancient Greece to modern times.

Background Informed consent is often cited as the “cornerstone” of research ethics. Its intent is that participants enter research voluntarily, with an understanding of what their participation entails. Despite agreement on the necessity to obtain informed consent in research, opinions vary on the threshold of disclosure necessary and the best method to obtain consent. We aimed to investigate Australian researchers’ views on, and their experiences with, obtaining informed consent. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 researchers from NSW institutions, working (...) in various fields of research. Interviews were analysed and coded to identify themes. Results Researchers reported that consent involved information disclosure, understanding and a voluntary decision. They emphasised the variability of consent interactions, which were dependent on potential participants’ abilities and interests, study complexity and context. All researchers reported providing written information to potential participants, yet questioned the readability and utility of this information. The majority reported using signed consent forms to ‘operationalise’ consent and reported little awareness of, and lack of support in implementing more dynamic informed consent procedures, such as verbal informed consent, that was fit for the purposes of their studies. Views on Human Research Ethics Committees varied. Some reported inconsistent, arduous inputs on the information form and consent process. Others expressed reliance on HRECs for guidance, viewing them as institutional safeguards. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of transparent relationships, both between researchers and participants, and between researchers and HRECs. Where the relationship with study participants was reported as more robust, researchers felt that they were better able to ensure participants made better, more informed decisions. Where the relationship with HRECs was reported as more robust, researchers were more likely to view them as institutional safeguards, rather than as bureaucratic hindrances. Conscientious and mindful researchers are paramount to ensuring the procedure accommodates individual requirements. This study advocates that when designing ethical informed consent practices, researchers should be integrated as autonomous players with a positive input on the process, rather than, in the worst case, predatory recruiters to be curtailed by information forms and oversight. (shrink)

Just as bodily actions are things you do with your body, mental actions are things you do with your mind. Both are different from things that merely happen to you. Where does the idea of mental action come from? What are mental actions? And why do they matter in philosophy? These are the three main questions answered in this paper. Section 1 introduces mental action through a brief history of the topic in philosophy. Section 2 explains what it is to (...) be a mental action in terms of intentional action. Section 3 argues that the fact that we can perform mental actions has some striking consequences concerning mental content. Section 4 shows how mental action helps to explain some important facts about self-knowledge and the normativity of thought. The conclusion mentions two further fruitful avenues for philosophical research on mental action. (shrink)

Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...) aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection. (shrink)

Basic actions are those intentional actions performed not by doing any other kind of thing intentionally. Complex actions involve doing one kind of thing intentionally by doing another kind of thing intentionally. There are both basic and complex mental actions. Some complex mental actions have a striking feature that has not been previously discussed: they have several distinct contents at once. This chapter introduces and explains this feature, here called “content plurality.” This chapter also argues for the philosophical significance of (...) this feature. The existence of content plurality offers a new explanation of transparent self-knowledge and suggests a new theory of inference. It also opens up a new conception of the relation between decisions to act and judgments about what ought to be done. (shrink)

Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, best known for his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, challenged education plans that contributed to the marginalization of minorities and the poor. Freire believed that education should be used for liberation by helping learners reflect on their experiences historically, giving immediate reality to issues of racism, sexism, and the exploitation of workers. Known as one of the most influential theoretical innovators of the twentieth century, his views have left a significant mark on progressive thinkers about education (...) and liberation. Reinventing Paulo Freire is an homage to him by protégé Antonia Darder. Here, she explores the legacy of Freire, interviews eight former students who studied him-- now teachers themselves, and reflects on the teaching practice as demonstrated by Freire himself. The interviews take the form of first person narratives; the epilogue consists simply of a letter and a poem. (shrink)

The current study provides data about the immediate risk perceptions and psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic among Italian participants. A sample of 1034 volunteers answered a web-based survey which aimed to investigate the many facets of risk perceptions connected to COVID-19 (health, work, economy, social and psychological), and risk-related variables such as knowledge, news seeking, perceived control, efficacy of containment measures, and affective states. Socio-demographic characteristics were also collected. Results showed that although levels of general concern are relatively high (...) among Italians, risk perceptions are highest with regards to the economy and work, and lowest concerning health. Cognitive and affective risk-related variables affected the several risk perception domains differently. COVID-19 knowledge did not affect any risk perception while the perceived control decreased health risk likelihood. The other risk-related variables amplified risk perceptions: News seeking increased work-economy risk; efficacy of containment measures increased all perceived risks; negative affective states of fear, anger and sadness increased health and psycho-social risks; anxiety increased only health risk, and uncertainty increased work-economy and psycho-social risk perceptions. Finally, positive affective states increased health risk perception. Socio-psychological implications are discussed. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This article focuses on student teachers' professional identity formation inspired by the tension between two layman points of view namely: being born as a teacher (i.e. based on demographics and personality traits) and becoming a teacher (i.e. based on experience). Besides demographics, personality traits and experience, the teacher preparation context is considered as a crucial aspect in professional identity formation as well. The authors adopted a multiple theoretical approach to guide the empirical study. Using hierarchical regression analyses the relative influences (...) of demographics and personality traits, context variables and teacher education variables on professional identity variables are explored. (shrink)

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure “the transparency method for belief.” How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one mental (...) action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude’s being known transparently. (shrink)

Aesthetic value is not as peculiar as we might think. We do not walk into museums expecting to find there a good so refined that it bears no continuity with the.

Background Euthanasia is a controversial practice in many countries. Since Spain’s Euthanasia Law came into effect on March 24, 2021, healthcare providers have faced a new challenge since they must inform patients, provide care, accompany them, and implement the law. It also represents a new stumbling block at universities, which must adapt to regulatory changes and educate future professionals accordingly. Little is known about the attitude of nursing students in Spain toward euthanasia since this law was implemented. Objective This study (...) aims to answer the following research questions: What is the attitude of nursing students toward euthanasia? What factors influence this attitude? Research design A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online questionnaire. Participants and research context The study population comprised all nursing students at a public university in Barcelona ( n = 444), Spain, during the 2022–2023 academic year. The validated Spanish version of the Euthanasia Attitude Scale was employed. A bivariate analysis was performed. Ethical considerations The university Ethics Committee (CEEAH 6247) approved this study. All participating students signed an informed consent form. Participation was voluntary, and data anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed. Results Two hundred and forty-four nursing students responded to the questionnaire. The mean total score was 79.64. Participants with religious beliefs presented lower scores, indicating a more negative attitude toward euthanasia. Participants in their second, third, or fourth year of the nursing degree scored higher, demonstrating a more positive attitude. Conclusions The attitude of nursing students toward euthanasia was remarkably positive. Working on ethical content during the degree course and clinical practice are factors that help to develop a more positive attitude. In addition, nursing education should encourage professional aspects to prevail over religious beliefs in euthanasia situations. (shrink)

Every day we experience relationships with artefacts, which describe material objects made by humans in order to reach a goal and exploit the human feature to plan ahead. Artefacts bring together cognitive evolution and technical enhancement. Although artefacts are conceived as technical, we are now facing a relationship with Information Technology artefacts. IT artefacts include both hardware and software, as a two-sided entity. The definition of IT artefact corresponds with the Saussurean linguistic sign: a two-sided entity constituted by the signifier (...) and the signified. I claim that IT artefacts share this ontological trait with the linguistic sign. I will show that IT artefacts are the result of design and planning, while language—which is an institution—is not the fabrication of one human but linked to collective human activity. (shrink)

To this day no consensus has been reached concerning the authorship of the 3rd book of Philoponus’ on the Soul. I will begin this article by surveying the discussion of the authorship. In this first section I go into some detail concerning the arguments of scholars who attribute the DAC 3 to Philoponus, and those who do not believe that it is by Philoponus, including those who attribute it to Stephanus of Alexandria. The second section of the paper consists in (...) an analysis and evaluation of the arguments involved in the debate. Finally, I conclude by presenting my own position, including new arguments in favor of the attribution of the DAC 3 to John Philoponus. (shrink)

The notion of spirit was a central notion of two ancient traditions: the medical and the philosophical tradition of ancient Greece and the neoplatonic philosophical one. In this paper we will examine the way in which a Byzantine philosopher of the 6th century, John Philoponus, handled this notion from a neoplatonic point of view, and how he assimilated the Aristotelian, the medical and the neoplatonic “πνεῦμα” theory in a single conception. Philoponus’ career can be divided into two periods: the one (...) during which he was studying under Ammonius and the one during which he was writing in his own name, expressing his Christian convictions as a Byzantine philosopher, and criticizing neoplatonic doctrines opposed to the Christian dogma. We shall, thus, also present the refutation he gives to the neoplatonic theory of “πνεῦμα”, during the second period of his career. (shrink)

In October 2013, the Declaration of Helsinki was revised a seventh time in its 50 year history. While it is the most widely accepted set of ethical principles for the protection of patients participating in medical research, the Declaration of Helsinki has also been subject of constant controversy. In particular, its paragraph on the use of placebo controls in clinical trials divides the research community into active-control and placebo orthodox proponents, both continuously demanding revisions of the Declaration of Helsinki in (...) favour of their position. The goal of the present project is to compare the mainly theoretical controversy with regulatory implementation. We distributed a questionnaire to national drug regulatory authorities from different countries to collect information on the authorities’ respective approaches to interpretation and implementation of the Declarations’ placebo paragraph in the conduct of medical research. Our findings suggest that the majority of drug regulatory authorities have established a practice of a middle ground, allowing placebo controls in some instances. Various interpretations of “serious harm” and “methodological reasons” are proposed as well as safeguards to avoid abuse of the option to use placebo-controls. Leaving the placebo paragraph open to various interpretation is a result of the Declaration of Helsinki’s character as a guidance document. With the current version controversy will continue. The Declaration should be continued to be strengthened to enforce the appreciation of conducting medical research with the highest ethical standard. (shrink)

What does it mean to encounter a literary work of art? When we talk about them, we refer to literary works as characterizable entities. In a genuine encounter with a literary work, instead, our focus shifts to “what it is about”: we bring to mind the intentional objects it invites us to direct our attention to, typically through reading. If what we encounter is a work of art, however, we are invited to do something beyond that even, namely to attune (...) ourselves to disclose something more profound. Through shifting our focus from the individual to the typical and affectively responding to a work’s characteristics, we disclose a qualitative character that presents itself as of general relevance insofar as it characterizes a specific kind of thing potentially experienced in the world. Our focus shifts from individual intentional objects, such as a character’s view of her partner as standing in need of salvation, to the kinds of values and things manifested therein, such as the peculiar kind of ambiguity inhering a specific kind of commitment. To encounter a literary work of art, I conclude, means to follow the invitation to disclose value essentials, and thus to find a specific kind of truth. (shrink)

In his fascinating new book Games: Agency as Art, Nguyen endorses an experiential requirement on aesthetic judgment: apt aesthetic judgment requires phenomenal experience. His own aesthetics of agency captures three phenomenally manifest and aesthetically significant harmonies (and corresponding disharmonies). But his view can be significantly extended to capture much more of the rich texture of human agency. In this discussion, I argue that emotions of agency, patterns of attention, and affordances all can be phenomenally experienced as aspects of agency, and (...) that each has genuine aesthetic significance. (shrink)

Paulo Friere is considered to be one of the most influential educational philosophers of the twentieth century. Within many progressive circles, he would be considered the most important radical educational philosopher of our times, given his contribution to a revolutionary understanding of education and his certainty and faith that education can function as one of the most significant empowering and democratizing forces in the lives of the disenfranchised. In this deeply personal introduction to the man,and his ideas and their contribution (...) to ideas of progressive schooling, Antonia Darder reflects on her personal memories of time spent with Freire and his influence on her own work. (shrink)

Piccolo, Toto Today few would deny that the Quaestio Fidei is the major challenge for bishops, presbyters and Catholics around the world: in fact in October 2012 the Synod of Bishops in Rome will be concerned with 'The New Evangelization for the Transmission of Christian Faith'. The questions have to be faced: What is faith? Who has faith? How can faith be transmitted? However it is intriguing that almost fifty years ago in Spain some young adults already had this (...) Quaestio Fidei clear in their mind, at a moment when the Second Vatican Council was in progress, and parishes in Spain, Italy and also Australia were still full of families across several generations. (shrink)

Edgar Morin is one of the most important contemporary European philosophers. His name has recently also become well known on the American continent, especially in South America, where his works have given rise to several interesting cultural initiatives. The analysis of his pedagogical proposal can be a stimulating adventure for educators and teachers alike. Morin's proposal to link methodologically what is disjoined suggests re-establishing the connection between thought and action, in order to re-establish on rational and critical bases the ethical (...) principles of solidarity and responsibility and enable us to face the challenges of our times. (shrink)

Research on adolescent-to-parent violence associates specific psychosocial characteristics with adolescents who assault their parents, whether they are within or outside the juvenile justice system, or whether these characteristics are shared by other adolescents convicted of other crimes. The aim of this paper is to compare three groups of adolescents. Those who have been sentenced for APV are compared with adolescents who have committed other crimes, and with a group who have not been involved in the justice system. The sample used (...) consists of 148 male participants between the ages of 14 and 21. A comparison is made regarding type of self-reported behavior, frequency of drug use, academic performance, exposure to violence, self-concept, and parents’ conflict resolution tactics. The results obtained indicate that adolescents with judicial measures, regardless of the crime committed, differ from those who have not been in trouble with the justice system in terms of them having suffered violence in the street, the frequency with which they use drugs and in their academic achievement. Likewise, adolescents convicted of APV differ from the other two groups in the frequency with which they are victims of violence at home, in that their mothers use the tactic of asking somebody else for help as a way of solving marital conflicts, and in having a more negative family self-concept. The results are discussed highlighting the importance of taking into account whether a sample is judicial, clinical, or community, and the specific APV behaviors which are measured. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas asked the essential philosophical question which continues to resound to the modern day: what constitutes a human being? This volume looks at Aquinas's views on bodily and spiritual identity through a lens of theological concerns, pagan and Arabic authoritative sources, and contemporary polemic with dualist heresy.

The scene takes place in O'Higgins Park, in Santiago, Chile, on 1 October 1995. Some women have just taken their place on the stage and the enthusiastic audience is applauding, the women have started singing accompanied by a guitar, but they cannot be heard, for the audience is still applauding. One of the women gets up. Like the others, she is wearing a white blouse and a long black skirt, she is old and her hair is grey. She moves to (...) the front of the stage, chooses her place and stops, her eyes search the horizon but do not wander aimlessly, her eyes are fixed somewhere between the here and the hereafter. When she finds what she is looking for, she raises her right hand to wave a white handkerchief, and the dance begins. The audience, suddenly attentive, watches. And what do they see? Not the woman alone on the stage, but the empty space which she traces. The empty space disturbs us, as Chilean spectators, because the cueca, the national folklore dance, is danced by two people, or it is not danced at all. The invisible other is invoked by this woman's every gesture and we do not smile when faced with the absence of her man because we have a premonition that she is not pretending, we have a premonition that she can see him. The image of women dancing alone has become one of the symbols of the struggle of the families of the disappeared under the dictatorship of General Pinochet. The families are commemorating, on 1 October 1995, the twentieth anniversary of their organization into an association in 1975. The term “the disappeared” has progressively become accepted to indicate the victims of a novel, coercive practice in Chile, since the coup d’état on 11 September 1973. The forced disappearance of people differs from political assassination, as Amnesty International never ceases to indicate in the various reports which it commissions on them. In the Chilean case, this speciality is in part due to the security system which has taken on the responsibility of destroying all organized opposition to the military dictatorship: the DINA, the intelligence service created by the military junta, which is only answerable for its actions to the junta. More fundamentally, the special character of disappearance is due to the invisibility of the victim's body and to the doubt that this invisibility arouses within the victim's family circle: the disappeared is not identified as dead because his death is never certified, on the other hand his sudden and unexplained absence indicates that he is a person in danger and that this danger extends to all those who notice his absence. (shrink)

Any contextualist approach to knowledge has to provide a plausible definition of the concept of context and spell out the mechanisms of context changes. Since it is the dynamics of context change that carry the main weight of the contextualist position, not every mechanism will be capable of filling that role. In particular, I argue that one class of mechanisms that is most popularly held to account for context changes, namely those that arise out of shifts of conversational parameters in (...) discourses involving knowledge claims, are not suited to the job because they cannot account for the genuinely epistemic nature of the context shift. A form of epistemic contextualism that defines the context through the structure of our epistemic projects is suggested. Context changes in this account are linked to changes in the background assumptions operative in our epistemic projects and the methods used to carry out our inquiries. (shrink)