Although in Italy there is currently no effective law on physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, Decision No. 242 issued by the Italian Constitutional Court on September 25, 2019 established that an individual who, under specific circumstances, has facilitated the implementation of an independent and freely-formed resolve to commit suicide by another individual is exempt from criminal liability. Following this ruling, some citizens have submitted requests for assisted suicide to the public health system, generating a situation of great uncertainty in the application (...) processes. As a matter of fact, shared and defined procedures are lacking as Decision 242/2019 merely added some principles on which the legislature will have to base its future intervention. This paper analyses the advisory role that the Decision attributes to territorial ethics committees with the aim of stimulating discussions on their role in oversight mechanisms. The proposed conclusion is that the envisaged role does not appear consistent with the functions of these bodies and is ultimately substantially undefined and unjustified. (shrink)

In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 schools around the world have been closed to protect against the spread of coronavirus. In several countries, homeschooling has been introduced to replace classroom schooling. With a focus on individual differences, the present study examined 138 schoolers regarding their self-control and boredom proneness. The results showed that both traits were important in predicting adherence to homeschooling. Schoolers with higher levels of self-control perceived homeschooling as less difficult, which in turn increased homeschooling adherence. In (...) contrast, schoolers with higher levels of boredom proneness perceived homeschooling as more difficult, which in turn reduced homeschooling adherence. These results partially hold when it comes to studying in the classroom. However, boredom threatened adherence only in the homeschooling context. Our results indicate that boredom proneness is a critical construct to consider when educational systems switch to homeschooling during a pandemic. (shrink)

Collective dilemmas have attracted widespread interest in several social sciences and the humanities including economics, sociology and philosophy. Since Hardin’s intuitive example of the Tragedy of the Commons, many real-world public goods dilemmas have been analysed with a wide ranging set of possible and actual solutions. The plethora of solutions to these dilemmas suggests that people make different kinds of decision in different situations. Rather than trying to find a unifying kind of reasoning to capture all situations, as the paradigm (...) of rationality has done, this article develops a framework of agent decision-making for social simulation, that takes seriously both different kinds of decision making as well as different interpretations of situations. The Contextual Action Framework for Computational Agents allows for the modelling of complex social phenomena, like dilemma situations, with relatively simple agents by shifting complexity from an agent’s cognition to an agent’s context. (shrink)

Flow is a gratifying state of deep involvement and absorption that individuals report when facing a challenging activity and they perceive adequate abilities to cope with it. The flow concept was introduced by Csikszentmihalyi in 1975, and interest in flow research is growing. However, to our best knowledge, no scoping review exists that takes a systematic look at studies on flow which were published between the years 2000 and 2016. Overall, 252 studies have been included in this review. Our review (...) provides a framework to cluster flow research, gives a systematic overview about existing studies and their findings, and provides an overview about implications for future research. The provided framework consists of three levels of flow research. In the first “Individual” level are the categories for personality, motivation, physiology, emotion, cognition, and behavior. The second “Contextual” level contains the categories for contextual and interindividual factors and the third “Cultural” level contains cultural factors that relate to flow. Using our framework, we systematically present the findings for each category. While flow research has made progress in understanding flow, in the future, more experimental and longitudinal studies are needed to gain deeper insights into the causal structure of flow and its antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

Written with insight and humor, College Sex - Philosophy for Everyone investigates a broad array of philosophical issues relating to student sex. Examines the ethical issues of dating, cheating, courtship, homosexual experimentation, and drug and alcohol use Considers student-teacher relationships, sexual experimentation, the meaning of sex in a college setting and includes two essays based on influential research projects on ‘friends with benefits’ Many of the authors teach classes that explore the philosophy of love and sex, and most are scholars (...) from the Society of the Philosophy of Sex and Love. (shrink)

From June 26 to 27, the workshop Ironists, Reformers, or Rebels? The Role of the Social Sciences in Participatory Policy Making took place at the Collegium Helveticum of the UZH/ETH in Zurich. The organisers’ motivation was the apparently missing involvement of social scientists in public engagement processes. This impression persists because, while social scientists often observe public debates or develop participatory methods for public policy-making, they rarely take part in those processes themselves. A closer look at ethics commissions, expert committees (...) or public hearings concerned with science and technology issues shows natural scientists, physicians, lawyers and the occasional philosopher. Sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists, on the other hand, are often not involved. Because of this imbalance, the organisers’ aim was to bring together scholars and researchers from different areas of the social sciences to consider the role of their disciplines in public policy making. This article will focus on some of the ideas about specific roles of social scientists in participatory policy-making, discussed at the workshop, and their implications and give a commentary on some future prospects of the social sciences. (shrink)

An educational provision for young children with autism that offers intensive behavioural intervention based on the principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), within an early years mainstream school setting in the UK, is described. The ABA Class at Westwood School is a collaborative project between the School of Psychology, Bangor University, two Local Education Authorities in North East Wales (Flintshire and Wrexham) and the local NHS Trust. Using two case examples, two important features of mainstream education for children with autism (...) are considered: access to the National Curriculum, and inclusion with peers in mainstream settings. Standardised test data on outcomes for these children over the initial 12 months of their educational placements are also provided. (shrink)

Based on an ethnographic study of fingerprint and DNA evidence practices in the Swedish judicial system, this article analyses the materialization of forensic evidence. It argues that forensic evidence, while popularly understood as firmly rooted in materiality, is inseparably technoscientific and cultural. Its roots in the material world are entangled threads of matter, technoscience and culture that produce particular bodily constellations within and together with a particular sociocultural context. Forensic evidence, it argues further, is co-materialized with crimes as well as (...) with particular bodily and social constellations. Consequently, the article suggests that an analysis of how forensic evidence is produced can contribute to feminist understandings of the inseparability of sex and gender: understanding bodies as ongoing technoscientific-material-cultural practices of materialization may be a fruitful approach to analysing their complexity, and the relationships in which they are placed, without surrendering to either cultural or biological determinism. Taking a theoretical point of departure not only in an STS-informed approach, but also in material feminist theorizations, the article also underlines that the suggested theoretical conversations across borders of feminist theory and STS should be understood as a two-way-communication where the two fields contribute mutually to each other. (shrink)

We all know vampires. Count Dracula and Nosferatu, maybe Blade and Angel, or Stephenie Meyer’s sparkling beau, Edward Cullen. In fact, the Euro-American vampire myth has long become one of the most reliable and bestselling fun-rides the entertainment industries around the world have to offer. Quite recently, however, a new type of fanged villain has entered the mainstream stage: the American Indian vampire. Fully equipped with war bonnets, buckskin clothes, and sharp teeth, the vampires of recent U.S. film productions, such (...) as Blade, the Series or the Twilight Saga, employ both the Euro-American vampire trope and denigrating discourses of race and savagery. It is also against this backdrop that American Indian authors and filmmakers have set out to renegotiate not only U.S. America’s myth of the racially overdrawn “savage Indian,” but also the vampire trope per se. Drawing on American Indian myths and folklore that previous scholarship has placed into direct relationship to the Anglo-European vampire narrative, and on recent U.S. mainstream commodifications of these myths, my paper traces and contextualizes the two oppositional yet intimately linked narratives of American Indian vampirism ensuing today: the commodified image of the “Indian” vampire and the renegotiated vampire tropes created by American Indian authors and filmmakers. (shrink)

El principal objetivo de este estudio consiste en dar cuenta de cómo se enmarca la forma de tratamiento nominal marico en el habla de jóvenes universitarios de Caracas, Venezuela, dentro de la Teoría de la cortesía, según la perspectiva ofrecida por los hablantes. Igualmente, se busca documentar qué cambios está presentando en los contextos de uso así como en sus funciones pragmáticas. Los participantes fueron 60 estudiantes universitarios, 30 mujeres y 30 hombres, de 17 a 21 años. Tradicionalmente, la palabra (...) marico se ha usado como agresión verbal vulgar y ha sido, generalmente, considerada un insulto. Luego del análisis cualitativo de los datos, se plantea que esta FTN se halla en una fase de transición de insulto a marcador pragmático anticortés que indica solidaridad dentro de un grupo etario específico y está perdiendo su carácter agraviador. En la actualidad, la juventud caraqueña emplea esta FTN no solo para implicar lazos de amistad, sino para expresar emociones como sorpresa y enojo, crear efectos de intriga, hacer bromas, abrir y cerrar oraciones e, incluso, sustituir otras FTN que nunca han sido consideradas insultos en el español de Venezuela. La metodología empleada fue el cuestionario y el análisis cualitativo de reportes en primera persona. Las variables de edad y sexo son factores determinantes, puesto que parece haber tendencia entre los jóvenes entrevistados a no emplear esta forma nominal con hablantes que están fuera de su grupo etario y las mujeres siguen siendo conservadoras al restringir, más que los hombres, el uso de este vocablo. (shrink)

La relación entre lengua y sexualidad recién ha comenzado a cobrar importancia dentro de los estudios socioculturales. Este trabajo explora las distintas pistas lingüísticas encriptadas en el cuento La búsqueda de Elizabeth, de Marta Pessarrodona, para desenmascarar la velada identidad sexual del personaje central. Un análisis referente al proceso de reconocimiento, búsqueda y aceptación de una identidad sexual no canónica de la protagonista validará los cuatro principios propuestos por Bucholtz y Hall : afloramiento, indexicalidad, relacionalidad y parcialidad.

Recent developmental models assume a higher tendency to take risks in mid-adolescence, while the empirical evidence for this assumption is rather mixed. Most of the studies applied quite different tasks to measure risk-taking behavior and used a narrow age range. The main goal of the present study was to examine risk-taking behavior in four task settings, the Treasure Hunting Task (THT) in a gain and a loss domain, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and the STOPLIGHT task. These task settings (...) differ in affective task moderators, like descriptive vs. experienced outcomes, anticipation of gains vs. losses, static vs. dynamic risk presentation and time pressure vs. no-time pressure and were applied in a sample of 187 participants from age 9 to 18. Beneath age trends, we were interested in their association with individual differences in approach behavior, venturesomeness, impulsivity and empathy above age, gender and fluid intelligence. Our findings revealed that risk-taking behavior is only low to moderately correlated between the four task contexts, suggesting that they capture different aspects of risk-taking behavior. Accordingly, a mid-adolescent peak in risk-propensity was only found under time pressure in the STOPLIGHT that was associated with higher impulsivity and empathy. In contrast, risky decisions decreased with increasing age in task settings, in which losses were anticipated (THT Loss), and this was associated with higher cognitive abilities. We found no age differences when gains were anticipated, neither in a static (THT Gain) nor in a dynamic task setting (BART). These findings clearly suggest the need to consider affective task moderators, as well as individual differences in temperament and cognitive abilities, in actual models about adolescent development. (shrink)

The creation of biobanks depends upon people’s willingness to donate their samples for research purposes and to agree to sample storage. Moreover, biobanks are a public good that requires active participation by all interested stakeholders at every stage of development. Therefore, knowing public’s attitudes towards participation in a biobank and biobank management is important and deserves investigation.

The proposal of the new criteria for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease based on biomarker data is making possible a diagnosis of AD at the mild cognitive impairment or predementia/prodromal– stage. Given the present lack of effective treatments for AD, the opportunity for the individuals to personally take relevant decisions and plan for their future before and if cognitive deterioration occurs is one the main advantages of an early diagnosis. Advance directives are largely seen as an effective tool for planning (...) medical care in the event the subject becomes incompetent. Nevertheless, their value has been questioned with regard to people with dementia by scholars who refer to the arguments of personal identity and of patient’s changing interests before and after the onset of dementia. In this paper, I discuss the value of advance directives in Alzheimer’s disease and other kind of dementia. Despite critics, I argue that advance directives are especially advisable in dementia and provide reasons in favor of their promotion at an early stage of the disease as a valuable tool to respect patients’ values and preferences on medical treatment, including participation in research and end of life decisions. I mainly support advance directives that include both decisions regarding health care and the appointment of an attorney in fact. I conclude that patients with AD at a prodromal or early stage should be offered the opportunity to execute an advance directive, and that not to honor a demented individual’s directive would be an unacceptable form of discrimination towards those patients. (shrink)

This article explores the elaboration of differences through the use of concepts of categories and policies with regard to the Other in France, Germany and the United States. It analyses three approaches in the definition of Otherness: The first one is interactive, that is the interaction between states and groups in search of political recognition. Through interactions one can measure the dynamics and the mechanisms of boundary construction and justify its legitimacy The second approach is normative. It is based on (...) justice and equality as means of recognition. And the third approach is political. It is based both on empirical reality and normative perception and leads to institutional adjustments. All the three approaches come to show how explicitly or implicitly how an element of identity becomes a "permanent difference", and is perceived ad the main source of cleavage in one society; and how this difference change from one society to another but also it switches over the time within one society. (shrink)

The question of immigration and its corollary community and minority formation has always been analysed in relation to states. However, the increasing importance of solidarity beyond national borders on the grounds of one or several identities – national, religious, ethnic, regional – removes the claim of recognition of a collective identity from a national level to an international level and, in the European Union, to a supranational level. Such an evolution places territory at the core of the analysis of citizenship (...) and nationhood, for communities as well as states. This article will attempt to show that in this new configuration, negotiations between states and immigrants are brought beyond borders in order for states to maintain the ‘power’ of incorporation and citizenship while expanding their influence beyond their territories and to compete with transnational communities in their engagement in the process of globalization. (shrink)

Los fondos de inversión se han convertido en los últimos años en un mecanismo frecuente que los clubes de fútbol utilizan para financiar el fichaje de jugadores. Aunque muchos autores han destacado sus efectos beneficiosos al permitir que los clubes adquieran jugadores que de otra manera no podrían conseguir, en este trabajo nos centramos en enfatizar dos problemas que pueden plantear. En primer lugar, hemos tratado de mostrar que pueden generar un progresivo alejamiento de los aficionados. En segundo lugar, a (...) través del dilema del prisionero nos hemos propuesto mostrar que pueden contribuir a aumentar a largo plazo la deuda de los clubes y amenazar el fair play financiero.Investment funds have become in recent years a frequent mechanism football clubs use to finance signing of football players. Although many authors have highlighted their beneficial effects by allowing clubs to acquire players who otherwise they would not get, in this paper we focus on two problems. First, we have tried to show that they can generate a progressive distancing from the fans. Secondly, through the prisoner’s dilemma we intend to show that they can contribute to increasing long-term clubs debt and threaten the financial fair play. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Immanuel Kant - two important pillars of contemporary philosophy-were proficient critics of traditional metaphysics in their time. They were known to be critical of a sort of metaphysical striving predisposed to grounding or representing an elusive concept of the universal.. Kant had earlier deconstructed a pre-eminent feature of Western metaphysics, namely, the socalled essence of thing, had it consigned to the noumenon evocative of the paradoxical nature of human knowing: it regulates the boundaries according to which any (...) notion of the infinite, the universal or the absolute can be reflexively thematized, or, thus strategically said, problematized. (shrink)

In this chapter we argue that poverty should be seen as a violation of dignity, drawing on two of Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative – the formula of humanity and the formula of the kingdom of ends. In our view, poverty should not be seen primarily in terms of exploitation, nor of failures to help people in need. A Kantian perspective should give proper weight to the actual and potential agency of those who suffer poverty. This is a question (...) about power, not just the distribution of material resources. Theoretically, we will place particular emphasis on the rarely remarked reference to “ends and means” in the formula of the kingdom of ends. People are sometimes treated merely as means, which is one sort of disrespect for their equal moral status. Another form of disrespect, deeper and more general in form, is the denial of decent opportunities to act as means for others. The resulting powerlessness, we suggest, should be central to an adequate understanding of poverty and its violations of dignity. (shrink)

La autora explica el consumo adolescente por su sentido reafirmador en esa etapa, analiza el impacto de ellas en el sistema nervioso, postula que a población tiende a autorregular su consumo, distingue el abuso de la dependencia a las drogas y lo vincula al contexto de la vida adolescente, en particular en los sectores pobres. Finalmente aborda el tema de la rehabilitación y debate el contexto social en sus estrategias ante los jóvenes consumidores.