To support the claim that the approximate number system represents rational numbers, Clarke and Beck argue that number perception is abstract and characterized by a second-order character. However, converging evidence from visual illusions and psychophysics suggests that perceived number is not abstract, but rather, is perceptually interdependent with other magnitudes. Moreover, number, as a concept, is second-order, but number, as a percept, is not.

The transition and adaptation of students to higher education involve a wide range of challenges that justify some institutional practices promoting skills that enable students to increase their autonomy and to face the difficulties experienced. The requirements for this adaptation were particularly aggravated by the containment and sanitary conditions associated with coronavirus disease 2019. With the aim of promoting academic success and preventing dropout in the first year, a support program was implemented for students enrolled in two courses in the (...) area of education at a public university in northern Portugal during the first semester of 2020/2021. Three sessions of 50/60 min were implemented, namely, the first session focused on the verbalization of the demands, challenges, and difficulties of the transition, and the second and third sessions focused on the difficulties of academic adaptation and academic performance. Data from a dropout risk screening instrument and from the activities performed during sessions were analyzed. The main results point to student satisfaction with the content and the activities of the sessions and their usefulness. Students report not only high satisfaction levels with HE attendance, but also some emotional exhaustion due to academic activities. The continuity of the program is recommended with some improvements in its planning to ensure a more definitive version of the program in the next two years. (shrink)

The world of work has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic due to the high instability observed in the labor market, bringing several new challenges for leaders and employees. The present study aims to analyze the role of organizational and job resources in predicting employees’ job insecurity during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak, through the mediating role of work engagement. A sample of 207 Portuguese employees participated, of which 64.7% were women. Data was collected using an online (...) survey, including self-report measures of organizational resources, job resources, job insecurity, and work engagement. Data showed that job and organizational resources negatively influenced job insecurity. Moreover, work engagement was a significant mediator of the relation between performance feedback and job insecurity. Findings suggest that investing in job and organizational resources can act as protective factors to minimize feelings of job insecurity. Likewise, leaders should foster work engagement among employees to help them balance the relation between these resources and job insecurity, especially in crisis situations. Overall, this study takes a new, underexplored perspective, theoretically bridging organizational and job resources with job insecurity and work engagement during a time of great uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Embora algumas posições filosóficas de Gödel sejam bem conhecidas, como o platonismo, a sua teoria do conhecimento é, em comparação, menos divulgada. A partir do «Problema da Evidência» de Hilbert-Bernays, I, pg. 20 seq., apresento a seguir os traços essenciais da posição de Gödel sobre a caracterização epistemológica da evidência finitista, com especial relevo para a história dos conceitos utilizados.

This study investigates whether employees attribute different motives to their organization's corporate social responsibility efforts and if these motives influence employee performance. Specifically, we investigate whether employees could distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic CSR motives by surveying 229 employee–supervisor dyads from various industries , and the impact of these perceptions on in-role and extra-role performance of subordinates. We found that employee task performance increases when employees attribute both intrinsic and extrinsic motives for CSR. Moreover, when employees perceive that their organization (...) invests in a CSR practice that is both intrinsic and extrinsic, they also tend to exert extra effort in their work. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed alongside future research directions. (shrink)

The present study aimed to explore and map the views of Portuguese laypersons regarding the acceptability of downsizing and restructuring measures during a recession. Two hundred and seven participants with various levels of training in economics were presented with a number of realistic scenarios depicting various measures, and were asked to indicate the extent to which they considered them to be acceptable. The scenarios were created by varying three factors likely to have an impact on people’s views: the magnitude of (...) a company’s reduction in net sales, the magnitude of planned downsizing, and the way in which downsizing would be implemented, either through layoffs, job alliances or both. Six qualitatively different personal positions were found. Four of these following positions were expected: never acceptable, mainly depends on the magnitude of downsizing, mainly acceptable and job alliance. Two unexpected positions were also observed: drastic measures and undetermined. (shrink)

A intencionalidade é um conceito fundamental na Filosofia de Emmanuel Levinas. Partindo de Husserl, o filósofo lituano entende este conceito não apenas como objectivador e, enquanto tal, como identificação e representação, mas também como sentido, e, então, a relação sujeito-objecto apresenta-se como transitividade. Anunciando este sentido novo da intencionalidade, Levinas liberta-se da filosofia tradicional do ser, do mesmo, e afirmando o tempo sujectivo como descontínuo, assume a relação euoutro como fruição, por um lado, e como responsabilidade, por outro, ao mesmo (...) tempo que a alteridade se impõe e radicaliza. Inverte-se então o sentido da intencionalidade, ganhando uma nova dimensão, já que agora é responsabilidade, heteronomia, chamamento do Outro, que surge deforma sensível como rosto e que é Enigma, Infinito. É o primado da Ética. /// Intentionality is a fundamental concept in Emmanuel Levinas' Philosophy. Based on Husserl, the Lithuanian philosopher understands this concept not only as objectifying, and, as such, as identification and representation, but also as sense: the relation subject-object appears, therefore, as transitivity. In proclaiming this new sense of intentionality, Levinas departs from the traditional philosophy of being, of same, and in affirming the discontinuity of subjective time he assumes the relation I-Other as fruition, on the one hand, and as responsibility, on the other hand. At the same time, alterity affirms itself and becomes more radical. The sense of intentionality is then reversed and acquires a new dimension, since it now becomes responsibility, heteronomy, the Other's call. The Other appears in its concrete aspects as face and as Enigma, Infinite. Ethics becomes acquires primacy. (shrink)

This study investigates the significant relationship between mental health and academic motivation among graduating students. Thus, the study employed a correlational design to determine if there is a significant relationship between mental health and academic motivation among 150 graduating college students. Hence, the Mental Health Inventory 38 (MHI-38) and Academic Motivation Scale (AMS-C28) were employed to measure the study variables. Moreover, statistical analysis reveals that the r coefficient of 0.35 indicates a low positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of (...) 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:So Close and Other EssaysOn Hélène Cixous’s writingJoana Masóce n’est jamaispar l’intérieurni par le centreque je passe—Antonin Artaud, Cahiers d’Ivry, (1947–1948)At the end of the sixteenth century, the genre of the essay transformed the relationship between the subject and object of writing, since the essay emerged as a reaction against other literary forms—such as the commentary, the gloss or the treatise—in which the object of study is not problematized. (...) The gloss, the commentary, or the treatise deal with disciplines or thematic topics—astronomy, agronomy, theology, physics, history—in the proper sense, whereas the essay tends to focus on the approach to those issues. To put it differently, the essay is not strictly concerned with these issues or topics in themselves, but with the approach to them by means of writing.With Michel de Montaigne, specifically in his Essays published between 1580 and 1595, we are faced with writing where the knowledge of the object is no longer the sole center of the text. Despite being actually concerned with the Greek philosophical tradition, sixteenth-century religious wars, and, among many other topics, European colonialism in America, Montaigne’s Essays try to contest the privilege of the object, the privilege of the referent of writing, in [End Page 131] favor of its subject: the subject of writing and the writing itself, what we call in French une écriture de soi.As is well known, in his Essays Montaigne’s writing conveys neither message nor knowledge regarding things and topics, but what he calls “la continuelle mutation et branle” des êtres [“nostre estre”] et des objects [“ des objects”]: “the continual and perpetual mutation” of “beings” and “objects” (257).This epistemological crisis of the essay—abandoning the privilege of the object or theme for an emphasis on questioning the subject of writing and the modalities of the approach to the object—is explicit in the etymology of the word essay. Beyond the notion of attempt—in French, essayer means “to try,” “to attempt to do something”—essayer, from the Latin verb ex-agere, is a compound word of the verb agere, “to act,” in French agir. In Latin, the meaning of agere—“to act”—differs from facere, as agir does in French from faire, “to do”; it is in this way that these two verbs designate a different relationship between the subject and the object of the action. Although agere and facere both refer to action, the verb agere at the origin of the word essay designates an action accomplished by a subject, whereas facere is a transitive verb whose emphasis is placed on the object.While, on the one hand, facere is to be read in the register of transitivity—as is explicit in the following Latin phrases: facere litteram, “to write a letter,” or facere furtum, “to commit theft”—on the other hand, agere, although a transitive verb in Latin, underscores and anticipates the kind of intransitivity of action we will later find in Roman languages. In these Latin phrases, one can see that in Latin, at the same time that, the syntactic construction of agere requires an object, this object is not, strictly speaking, the real object produced by the verb, because in the phrases agere vitam, agere aetatem, or agere aevum, “to spend time or to live,” time is not the real object produced by the verb “to spend.” In Latin, “life,” vitam, “age,” aetatem, or “lifetime,” aevum, are not the real objects produced by the verb agere. This perhaps explains the evolution of the verb in French, or in English, where “to act” and agir have become intransitive verbs, reinforcing the idea that the essay appears to be a genre where whatever has to be done or said is not simply presented as an object.Moreover, instead of the conclusive verb facere, which designates the action as a result or an achievement—the letter is already written, or the theft is already commited—the temporality of agere, in Latin, is a durative one, as in the phrases agere vitam, aetatem, or aevum, “to live.” By its emphasis, not on the object... (shrink)

Evangelization in the present contemporary context, transmission of faith, and the new architecture of communication are this article’s central axes. Just as interconnected cogwheels, they need to function together to hand on faith appropriately in today’s world. Our society, marked by unprecedented experiences in the field of digital culture, gave rise to a “new person”, who lives and relates within a new architecture of communication altogether. In the communicative process of digital culture, the modality of communication has changed from a (...) unilinear mode of transmission to networked, interactive, collaborative forms of interaction. Based on the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and in an effort to rethink the present modalities of faith transmission, this study concerns both the convergence and continuity of the Magisterium of the Church on evangelization and the urgency for her to engage in a dialogue between faith and culture. This requires an attitude of courage to consider more deeply the relation between faith, Church life, and the current transformations as experienced today. For in the digital culture, a new perception and understanding of faith has grown and developed. New languages have challenged conventional paradigms and prompted us into a change of mentality and pastoral practice. (shrink)

The present study aimed to explore and map the views of Portuguese laypersons regarding the legitimacy of bonuses for senior executives. Two hundred eight participants, with various levels of training in economics, were presented with a number of concrete scenarios depicting the circumstances in which senior executives have received bonuses of variable amounts, and they were asked to indicate the extent to which such bonuses may be considered as legitimate. The scenarios were created by varying four factors likely to have (...) an impact on people’s views: the extent to which the objectives fixed by the company have been met or not, the global economic context in which the company has performed, the availability of experienced senior executives in the sector under consideration, and the amount of money that has been awarded, in terms of both the euros and multiples of the average worker’s pay. Five qualitatively different personal positions were found. The most common positions were that executive bonuses were either never legitimate or not very legitimate. People without any background in economics were more likely to hold these views than people with a background in economics. The remaining 45 % of the participants supported the awarding of bonus, but their support was conditional, and the main condition was the extent to which the company’s objectives were met. Thus for most participants, the practice of awarding extra pay to senior executives was either never legitimate, or legitimate only when the company’s objectives have been attained, or legitimate only when, even in a time of economic crisis, the company’s objectives have been surpassed. (shrink)

Agent-causal theories of free will, which rely on a non-reductionist account of the agent, have traditionally been associated with libertarianism. However, some authors have recently argued in favor of compatibilist agent-causal accounts. In this essay, I will show that such accounts cannot avoid serious problems of implausibility or incoherence. A careful analysis of the implications of non-reductionist views of the agent (event-causal or agent-causal as they may be) reveals that such views necessarily imply either the denial of the principle of (...) supervenience or the assumption of bottom-level indeterminism. I will contend that the former alternative comes at a high cost, while the latter is quite plausible. Therefore, providing that they accept the condition of the truth of indeterminism, non-reductionist accounts of the agent do not have to contradict our scientific worldview. Interestingly, while they should be taken seriously by anyone who is concerned with the passivity of the agent’s role under a reductionist scenario, non-reductivist accounts end up contributing an extra incompatibilist argument to the free will debate. (shrink)

In the context of the free will debate, both compatibilists and event-causal libertarians consider that the agent’s mental states and events are what directly causes her decision to act. However, according to the ‘disappearing agent’ objection, if the agent is nothing over and above her physical and mental components, which ultimately bring about her decision, and that decision remains undetermined up to the moment when it is made, then it is a chancy and uncontrolled event. According to agent-causalism, this sort (...) of problem can be overcome if one realizes that the agent herself, as an irreducible substance, is the true originator of her actions. I’ll present arguments that favor this view. Event-causalists have countered that if the agent identifies with some of the inner states that play the self-determining causal role in bringing about the action, then it is as though the action was directly caused by herself. I’ll object that this is not a distinctive aspect of free agency. Agent-causalism has been criticized from most naturalistically inclined fronts, and it must address risks of implausibility, contradiction and unintelligibility. Even though I’ll acknowledge these challenges, I’ll still argue that libertarian free will cannot be defended by any reductionist alternative, and that agent-causalism does not conflict with contemporary science but only with some of its unproven assumptions. (shrink)

University program dropout is a problem that has important consequences not only for the student that leaves but also for the institution in which the withdrawal occurs. Therefore, higher education institutions must study the problem in greater depth to establish appropriate prevention measures in the future. However, most research papers currently focus primarily on the characteristics of students who leave university, rather than on those who choose to pursue alternative courses of study and therefore fail to take into account the (...) different kinds of abandonment. The aim of this paper is to identify the different types of dropout to define their characteristics and propose some recommendations. Thus, an ex post facto study was carried out on a sample of 1311 freshmen from a university in the north of Spain using data gathered using an ad-hoc designed questionnaire, applied by telephone or an online survey, and completed with data available in the university data warehouse. A descriptive analysis was performed to characterize the sample and identify five different groups, including 1. Students persisting in their initiated degree 2. Students who change of program (within the same university) 3. Students transferring to a different university 4. Students enrolling in non-higher-education studies 5. Students that quit studying. Also, data mining techniques (decision trees) were applied to classify the cases and generate predictive models to aid in the design of differentiated intervention strategies for each of the corresponding groups. (shrink)

-/- Irony is an intriguing topic, central to the study of meaning in language. This book provides an introduction to the pragmatics of irony. It surveys key work carried out on irony in a range of disciplines such as semantics, pragmatics, philosophy and literary studies, and from a variety of theoretical perspectives including Grice's approach, Sperber and Wilson's echoic account, and Clark and Gerrig's pretense theory. It looks at a number of uses of irony and explores how irony can be (...) misunderstood cross-culturally, before delving into the key debates on the pragmatics of irony: is irony always negative? Why do speakers communicate via irony, and which strategies do they usually employ? How are irony and sarcasm different? Is irony always funny? To answer these questions, basic pragmatic notions are introduced and explained. It includes multiple examples and activities to enable the reader to apply the theoretical frameworks to actual everyday instances of irony. (shrink)

Spontaneous actions are preceded by brain signals that may sometimes be detected hundreds of milliseconds in advance of a subject's conscious intention to act. These signals have been claimed to reflect prior unconscious decisions, raising doubts about the causal role of conscious will. Murakami et al. (2014. Nat Neurosci 17: 1574–1582) have recently argued for a different interpretation. During a task in which rats spontaneously decided when to abort waiting, the authors recorded neurons in the secondary motor cortex. The neural (...) activity and relationship to action timing was parsimoniously explained using an integration-to-bound model, similar to those widely used to account for evidence-based decisions. In this model, the brain accumulates spontaneously occurring inputs voting for or against an action, but only commits to act once a certain threshold is crossed. The model explains how spontaneous decisions can be forecast (partially predicted) by neurons that reflect either the input or output of the integrator. It therefore presents an explicit hypothesis capable of rejecting the claim that such predictive signals imply unconscious decisions. We suggest that these results can inform the current debate on free will but must be considered with caution. (shrink)

Despite its recent popularity, Emergence is still a field where philosophers and physicists often talk past each other. In fact, while philosophical discussions focus mostly on ontological emergence, physical theory is inherently limited to the epistemological level and the impossibility of its conclusions to provide direct evidence for ontological claims is often underestimated. Nevertheless, the emergentist philosopher’s case against reductionist theories of how the different levels of reality are related to each other can still gain from the assessment of paradigmatic (...) examples of discontinuity between models in physics, even though their implications must be handled with care. (shrink)

This article discusses Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha’s theories on multiculturalism and diaspora as alternative epistemological references to confront racist revivals across Europe. Edward Said’ s defence of inclusive academic curricula is equally revisited as a parallel strategy to deconstruct Eurocentric ideas. These three thinkers also represent nationalism as an obsolete paradigm, inadequate to perceive a globalized world. The point of this article is to revisit established postcolonial thinkers and see how their discourses have been reinterpreted by committed artists/writers whose (...) works seem to share with the invoked thinkers the aim of challenging their audiences to think differently about race, cultural difference, invisibility of oppression and right of ‘belonging’. The invoked theoretical discourse is used as a platform to discuss four artistic interventions – a poem by Eunice de Souza, Raimi Gabdamosi’s performance in Cadiz, the collective installation Return to Hansala at MUSAC museum and a sculpture by Portuguese visual artist Ana Vieira. Two of the selected works address gender issues in articulation with domesticity and patriarchal genealogies while the other two pieces address race and marginalization without any particular gender inflection. The choice is deliberate. Feminist discussions cannot be isolated from other discourses that expose related forms of oppression and marginalization even if they are not primarily formed by feminist awareness. (shrink)

This study investigates whether the market valuation of the two summary accounting measures, book value of equity and net income, is higher for firms with reputation for sustainability leadership, when compared to firms that do not enjoy such reputation. The results are interpreted through the lens of a framework combining signalling theory and resource-based theory, according to which firms signal their commitment to sustainability to influence the external perception of reputation. A firm’s reputation for being committed to sustainability is an (...) intangible resource that can increase the value of a firm’s expected cash flows and/or reduce the variability of its cash flows. Our findings are according to expectations and show that the net income of firms with good sustainability reputation has a higher valuation by the market, when compared to their counterparts. (shrink)

Neste trabalho procuramos compreender as ideias que nortearam a ação de Frei Manuel do Cenáculo, enquanto reformador de estudos para diferentes níveis e bispo empenhado na formação do clero e dos fiéis da sua diocese. Tomamos como ponto de partida os anteriores trabalhos sobre a atuação política e pastoral de Cenáculo, para sistematizar a ação em defesa do ensino e o seu pensamento pedagógico. Como textos fundamentais para esta análise, salientamos os Cuidados Literários (1791), os documentos relativos ao plano de (...) estudos para a Terceira Ordem de S. Francisco e algumas das cartas pastorais, quer as que o bispo dirigiu para o clero, quer as dirigidas a todos os diocesanos. (shrink)

The interest in ethical leadership has grown in the past few years, with an emphasis on the mechanisms through which it affects organizational life. However, research on the boundary conditions that limit and/or enhance its effectiveness is still scarce, especially concerning one of the main misconceptions about ethical leadership, its incompatibility with effectiveness . Thus, the present study examines the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational deviance via affective commitment to the organization, as a reflection of the quality of the (...) employee–organization relationship and proposes this relationship is conditional on the supervisor’s personal reputation for performance . Using a sample of 224 employees and their respective supervisors from 18 organizations, we confirmed our hypotheses . Our findings suggest that ethical leadership is positively related to employees’ affective commitment to the organization, particularly when supervisor’s reputation for performance is high, which in turn is associated with decreased organizational deviance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings conclude the paper. (shrink)

This paper presents arguments in defense of the hypothesis that general proprer names are impossible in the context of Stuart Mill's philosophy of language. My thesis is contrary to John Skorupski's position to this subject. I offer two arguments related, respectively, to two different perspectives: the pragmatic and the systematic. In the first one I analyze the problem of general proper names in the context of natural language. In the second one I discuss this problem in the inner context of (...) Mill's System of logic.O presente artigo apresenta argumentos em defesa da hipótese de que nomes próprios gerais são impossíveis no contexto da filosofia geral de Stuart Mill. Minha tese é contrária à posição de John Skorupski sobre esta questão. Ofereço dois argumentos que representam, respectivamente, duas diferentes perspectivas: pragmático e sistemático. No primeiro, analiso o problema dos nomes próprios gerais no contexto da linguagem natural. No segundo, discuto o problema no contexto interno do Sistema de Lógica de Mill. (shrink)

O presente artigo apresenta argumentos em defesa da hipótese de que nomes próprios gerais são impossíveis no contexto da filosofia geral de Stuart Mill. Minha tese é contrária à posição de John Skorupski sobre esta questão. Ofereço dois argumentos que representam, respectivamente, duas diferentes perspectivas: pragmático e sistemático. No primeiro, analiso o problema dos nomes próprios gerais no contexto da linguagem natural. No segundo, discuto o problema no contexto interno do Sistema de Lógica de Mill.

In this paper, I discuss how the principle of identifying knowledge which Strawson advances in ‘Singular Terms and Predication’ (1961), and in ‘Identifying Reference and Truth-Values’ (1964) turns out to constrain communication. The principle states that a speaker’s use of a referring expression should invoke identifying knowledge on the part of the hearer, if the hearer is to understand what the speaker is saying, and also that, in so referring, speakers are attentive to hearers’ epistemic states. In contrasting it with (...) Russell’s Principle (Evans 1982), as well as with the principle of identifying descriptions (Donnellan 1970), I try to show that the principle of identifying knowledge, ultimately a condition for understanding, makes sense only in a situation of conversation. This allows me to conclude that the cooperative feature of communication (Grice 1975) and reference (Clark andWilkes-Gibbs 1986) holds also at the understanding level. Finally, I discuss where Strawson’s views seem to be unsatisfactory, and suggest how they might be improved. (shrink)