How do teachers' practices contribute to students well-being in the classroom? Do teachers' views of student well-being match students' views? We seek to apprehend the subjective well-being of students in the classroom, and to compare it with the views of teachers. We show that teachers' practices associated with students' well-being are mainly linked to the following dimensions: allowing students to participate in the lesson, making the lesson explicit, and developing a positive relationship with students. Student success and reduced pressure to (...) work are also mentioned. (shrink)

In this paper I propose an explanation for the impulsivity displayed by some of our emotional experiences. I begin by looking for such an account in the psychological and philosophical literatures. After expressing doubts regarding some approaches’ resources to account for the phenomenon at issue, I outline an account of emotional impulsivity by focusing on (1) its independence from judgment and deliberation; (2) its felt strength; and (3) its relationship to action. Following the intuition that there is a strong connection (...) between the possession of skills and the ability to entertain certain representational states, I propose that the impulsivity of some emotional experiences can be explained by their characteristic inseparability from sets of sensorimotor skills. (shrink)

Open Access: This paper will connect literature on epistemic injustice with literature on victims and perpetrators, to argue that in addition to considering the credibility deficit suffered by many victims, we should also consider the credibility excess accorded to many perpetrators. Epistemic injustice, as discussed by Miranda Fricker, considers ways in which someone might be wronged in their capacity as a knower. Testimonial injustice occurs when there is a credibility deficit as a result of identity-prejudicial stereotypes. However, criticisms of Fricker (...) have pointed out that credibility is part of a more complex system that includes both deficits and excesses. I will use these points to argue that we should look closer at sources of credibility excess in cases of sexual assault. This means that in addition to considering sources of victim blaming by looking at ways in which “ideal” victims are constructed, we also need to consider ways in which “ideal” perpetrators are constructed. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se hace un análisis del cuento “¡Tierra!”, de Pedro Gómez Valderrama, desde dos perspectivas: la de cuento histórico y la del erotismo. El análisis, que evalúa los aspectos históricos recreados por el autor en el relato, confronta las fuentes históricas que éste utiliza para la construcción de su cuento e intenta indagar en la posición desde la que se interpretan literariamente los hechos, en la cual el erotismo es fundamental. Para, finalmente, señalar que el cuento presenta (...) el descubrimiento de América como el hallazgo de una utopía. (shrink)

We conjecture that corporate social responsibility can be indicative of managerial ethics and integrity and examine whether equity investors and financial analysts consider CSR performance when they assess firms’ disclosures of actual and forecasted earnings. We find that only adverse CSR performance affects investors’ assessments of these disclosures. In contrast, we find that both positive and adverse CSR performance affect analysts’ forecast revisions in response to firms’ disclosures. We also find that firms with adverse CSR performance exhibit lower disclosure quality (...) and earnings persistence, but do not find that firms with positive CSR performance exhibit higher levels of both measures. This asymmetric result is consistent with investors’, but not analysts’, assessments of the effect of CSR performance on corporate disclosures. Our results are robust to using a three-stage least squares approach to address endogeneity concerns and to a battery of robustness and sensitivity analyses. Overall, our findings suggest that investors and analysts consider CSR when assessing the information in earnings-related corporate disclosures. (shrink)

Keisha Ray and Jane Falls Cooper’s article “Bioethics of Environmental Injustice: Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Implications of Unhealthy Environments” seeks to give environmental concerns greater p...

Criticism can sometimes provoke defensive reactions, particularly when it implicates identities people hold dear. For instance, feminists told they are upholding rape culture might become angry or upset, since the criticism conflicts with an identity that is important to them. These kinds of defensive reactions are a primary focus of this paper. What is it to be defensive in this way, and why do some kinds of criticism, or implied criticism, tend to provoke this kind of response? What are the (...) connections between defensiveness, identity, and active ignorance? What are the social, political, and epistemic consequences of the tendency to defensiveness? Are there ways to improve the situation? (shrink)

The current crisis has come at a cost not only for big business but also for business schools. Business schools have been deemed largely responsible for developing and teaching socially dysfunctional curricula that, if anything, has served to promote and accelerate the kind of ruthless behavior and lack of self-restraint and social irresponsibility among top executives that have been seen as causing the crisis. As a result, many calls have been made for business schools to accept their responsibilities as social (...) institutions and to work toward becoming more socially embedded and better attuned to public interests. In this paper, however, we point to some of the barriers there may be in the way of business schools developing into responsible organizational citizens proper. We argue that there are lines of resistance against responsibilization operating at epistemological, institutional, and organization levels and that we need to take account of barriers on all these levels in order to properly capture the challenges that are involved in making the modern business school amenable to demands for more social responsibility. In terms of working toward overcoming such barriers, we discuss how business education can become more socially embedded via the inclusion of ethical reflection and critical thinking. (shrink)

In ancient Greece and Rome magical and religious healing continued to be practised at the same time as a burgeoning of research and learning in the natural sciences was promoting a seemingly more rational and scientific approach to medicine. Was there, then, a dichotomy in medical treatment or was the situation more complex? This paper draws on historical textual sources as well as archaeological research in examining the question in more detail. Some early texts, such as the Egyptian papyri from (...) about 2,600 bc and the Hippocratic Corpus from the third and fourth centuries bc, contain an intriguing mixture of scientific and religious material. Archaeological evidence from, for example, sites of healing sanctuaries from ancient times, show medical prescriptions used as part of votive offerings and religious inscriptions on surgical instruments, while physicians were prominent among donators to shrines. Other archaeological finds such as the contents of rubbish tips, buried hoards, sepulchral deposits and stray artefacts from occupation levels, have also added to the archive of medical material available for discussion. The paper concludes that such intertwinings of religion and science were not only common in Roman medicine but, in fact, continue into the present time. (shrink)

An ad hominem fallacy is committed when an individual employs an irrelevant personal attack against an opponent instead of addressing that opponent’s argument. Many discussions of such fallacies discuss judgments of relevance about such personal attacks, and consider how we might distinguish those that are relevant from those that are not. This paper will argue that the literature on bias and testimony can helpfully contribute to that analysis. This will highlight ways in which biases, particularly unconscious biases, can make ad (...) hominem fallacies seem effective, even when the irrelevance is recognized. (shrink)

The logical empiricists often appear as a foil for feminist theories. Their emphasis on the individualistic nature of knowledge and on the value-neutrality of science seems directly opposed to most feminist concerns. However, several recent works have highlighted aspects of Carnap's views that make him seem like much less of a straightforwardly positivist thinker. Certain of these aspects lend themselves to feminist concerns much more than the stereotypical picture would imply.

Feminist epistemologies consider ways in which gender influences knowledge. In this article, I want to consider a particular kind of feminist empiricism that has been called feminist radical empiricism. I am particularly interested in this view's treatment of values as empirical, and consequently up for revision on the basis of empirical evidence. Proponents of this view cite the fact that it allows us to talk about certain things such as racial and gender equality as objective facts: not just whether we (...) have achieved said equality in our society, but whether we are, in fact, all equal. I will raise the concern that the way in which they model the role of values in epistemology may be a problematic idealization of the open-mindedness of human agents. In some cases, resistance to value-change cannot be diagnosed as a failure to respond adequately to evidence. If so, the strategy of empirically testing our values that some feminist radical empiricists suggest may not be as useful a tool for social change as they think. (shrink)

La confianza ciega ya no corre. Estamos en tiempos de crisis. La pérdida de confianza está generalizada, va desde lo privado a lo público. Pasa por las desconfianzas políticas, los organismos financieros y llega hasta nuestros líderes espirituales. La ruptura de la confianza, sobre todo ante situaciones de abuso, muchas veces parece definitiva, pero vivir en la total desconfianza es imposible. Conocido por haber denunciado públicamente los abusos de un poderoso sacerdote chileno, el filósofo José Andrés Murillo ha creado (...) el concepto de confianza lúcida, que limita con la desconfianza por un lado y con la confianza ciega por el otro. La confianza lúcida es el centro de este libro que surge en días marcados por el rechazo a los abusos de poder, la desconfianza, el miedo y la obsesión por la seguridad. Una declaración de principios según la cual ningún abuso tiene derecho a robar lo más preciado del ser humano: Confiar en otros y en uno mismo. (shrink)

This paper is a response to the opening of new lines of research on CSR and SMEs (Thompson & Smith, 1991; Spence, 1999; Moore & Smith, 2006; Spence, 2007). It seeks to explore the business case for CSR in this corporate segment. The paper, which is based on four case studies of medium-sized firms in the automotive sector, took the distinctive approach of trying to understand the nature of CSR-like activities developed not by best-in-class CSR-driven companies but by purely competitiveness-driven (...) firms. The case studies provide explicit evidence that the CSR activities of SMEs and the notion of social capital are interrelated, turning social capital into a powerful instrument to better explain what academic literature has called silent CSR practices . The analysis that follows questions some of the basic tenets that underpin the branch of business ethics that deals with the nature of SMEs' approach to CSR. Four basic concerns, which take the form of propositions for further research, serve as the basis for this analysis: a) A definition of CSR that includes most of the actions taken by all companies in the territory contributes no academic value to the discipline b) Any study of the motivation behind these CSR actions must reflect their essentially pragmatic nature. Actions are linked to social values but also, more importantly, to the nature of the competitive environment c) Business ethics must seek common ground with other more sociological disciplines if it is to explain the reasons behind this type of action d) Any study of this kind of practice requires a dual approach: a) normative when using tools developed by CSR; and b) descriptive and instrumental using the notion of social capital. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study explored the proportion of variance in depressive symptoms explained by processes targeted by BA, and processes targeted by cognitive control training.MethodsFive hundred and twenty adults were recruited. They completed a spatial cueing task as a measure of attentional biases and a cognitive task as a measure of cognitive control and completed self-report measures of activation, behavioral avoidance, anticipatory pleasure, brooding, and depressive symptoms. With path analysis models, we explored the relationships between these predictors and depressive symptoms.ResultsBA processes were (...) significant predictors of depressive symptoms, and activation partially predicted anticipatory pleasure, which in turn predicted depressive symptoms. However, cognitive control and attentional biases predicted neither brooding nor depressive symptoms. A comprehensive model including all processes fit the data but did not explain more of the variance in brooding or depressive symptoms than a model including only BA processes.LimitationsThe spatial cueing task was associated with low reliability and the use of a non-clinical sample limited the generalizability of the conclusions.ConclusionActivation, behavioral avoidance, brooding, and anticipatory pleasure are relevant processes to target in order to reduce depressive symptoms, while cognitive control and attentional biases are not. (shrink)

Platón puede ser considerado el iniciador de la antropología como disciplina filosófica. El estudio filosófico del hombre aparece en el seno de la discusión ontológica cuando se cae en la cuenta de que tiene una consistencia propia y que presenta unos problemas que no pueden ser decididos por la mera ontología. Ante todo, el tema del hombre aparece como un problema gnoseológico: cuál es la relación del hombre con el intelecto, entendido como la capacidad de conocer lo real como real.

Contemporary Biology shares with modern science the same understanding of knowledge. This implies a reduction in its objectives. Nevertheless, in order to describe properly its object it had to move from a mechanistic model to more refined theories, as cybernetics and theory of systems. This allows us to formulate a better account of the time of living beings. But only philosophy, which exmines reality without restrictions, can really explain biological time.

Many criticisms of epistemic logic have centered around its use of devices such as idealized knowers with logical omniscience and perfect self-knowledge. One possible response to such criticisms is to say that these idealizations are normative devices, and that epistemic logic tells us how agents ought to behave. This paper will take a different approach, treating epistemic logic as descriptive, and drawing the analogy between its formal models and idealized scientific models on that basis. Treating it as descriptive matches the (...) way in which some philosophers, including one of its founders, Jaako Hintikka, have thought about epistemic logic early in its history. Further, the analogy between the two fields will give us a way to defuse criticisms that see epistemic logic as unrealistic. For example, criticizing models of epistemic logic in which agents know all propositional tautologies as being unrealistic would be like criticizing frictionless planes in physics for being unrealistic. Each one would certainly be an unsuitable model for studying some kinds of phenomena, but is entirely appropriate for others. After outlining the analogy between epistemic and scientific models, we will discuss some ways in which idealizations are used by different research programs in epistemic logic. (shrink)

Although women have long been participants in martial arts and other contact sports, the introduction of a women’s division in the Ultimate Fighting Challenge in 2012 brought women in combat sports into the media spotlight in an arguably unprecedented way. Yet, the increasing acceptance of women’s participation in combat sports does not necessarily mean that these sports are equally accessible to people of all genders. This article, extending insights from Iris Marion Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl,” will argue that the (...) modalities of feminine bodily existence pose barriers to women’s success in combat sports. Young discusses ways in... (shrink)

The academic literature reveals the need to undertake more in-depth field studies in order to discover the organisational culture, the difficulties and the perceptions surrounding CSR in SMEs. This study presents the results of analysis of four case studies on Catalan companies that stand out for their social and environmental practices. The conclusions of this paper are the result of dialogue with the main actors – four medium-sized companies – focusing on their actions, understandings and resistance with regard to CSR. (...) The methodological perspective used was Grounded Theory, with the aim of the study being to contribute towards formalising CSR in SMEs, in their daily practices, by analysing some primary data. The results obtained show how difficult it is for SMEs to understand CSR, beyond the explanation of the specific practices carried out by the companies. They highlight the role played by the values of the founding director in the implementation of CSR programmes; they reveal that SMEs still have a long way to go towards learning how to inform both internal and external stakeholders of their best practices, and; finally, they show the interesting links that SMEs establish between responsible practices, improved competitiveness and economic results. Finally, the text points out the implications that the results of this analysis may have on creating ways of promoting CSR in SMEs. We believe that, in light of the opinions expressed by the companies, public organisations should try to concentrate on creating a favourable framework for responsible competitiveness, as a way to deal with CSR when addressing SMEs. (shrink)

Prof. Brague explores in this interview the usefulness of the study of medieval thought in order to understand the problems of our time. He reflects on the different approaches to reason, politics and religion in Islam and Christianity, and the problems which derivate from the radical modern separation between society and religion. Is it correct to ascribe the casuse of social conflicts to religion or to a strong rationality? Is it possible in the long run to build a society without (...) any religion? Why is the notion of natural law controversial in modern times? And what is the relation between natural law and the law of God, as proposed by certain religions? (shrink)

There are many good reasons to learn about the lives of people who have less social privilege than we do. We might want to understand their circumstances in order to have informed opinions on social policy, or to make our institutions more inclusive. We might also want to cultivate empathy for its own sake. Much of this knowledge is gained through social scientific or humanistic research into others' lives. The entitlement to theorize about or study the lives of marginalized others (...) is often granted under the presumption of academic freedom. This paper will not question whether academic freedom licenses us to do so in the first place ; instead, I will... (shrink)

Education moves in the space of distance between those who are coming into the world and the world that they arrive. Since Modern Age, this distance formed by the opposing subject and object, has tended to be an impassable abyss. In this way, the world unfolds in two: the world whose image under investigation in the field of Education is the blackboard, and the world of everyday life. In front of the blackboard the student is installed, constituted as a subject, (...) which should curtail the reality until it fits with the security and accuracy of mathematical world-object-blackboard. The world of ordinary life is there and education does not know what to deal with it, and have it for non-existent. The reality held by non-existent prevents people’s existential integration. But there’s another kind of Educations that integrates and includes subjective and objective world and needs the courage to accept and even demand the new perspectives of those who are coming to build a more complete and always risky world. (shrink)

There are two general questions which many views in the philosophy of mathematics can be seen as addressing: what are mathematical objects, and how do we have knowledge of them? Naturally, the answers given to these questions are linked, since whatever account we give of how we have knowledge of mathematical objects surely has to take into account what sorts of things we claim they are; conversely, whatever account we give of the nature of mathematical objects must be accompanied by (...) a corresponding account of how it is that we acquire knowledge of those objects. The connection between these problems results in what is often called "Benacerraf's Problem", which is a dilemma that many philosophical views about mathematical objects face. It will be my goal here to present a view, attributed to Richard Dedekind, which approaches the initial questions in a different way than many other philosophical views do, and in doing so, avoids the dilemma given by Benacerraf's problem. (shrink)

It is a commonly held view that Dedekind's construction of the real numbers is impredicative. This naturally raises the question of whether this impredicativity is justified by some kind of Platonism about sets. But when we look more closely at Dedekind's philosophical views, his ontology does not look Platonist at all. So how is his construction justified? There are two aspects of the solution: one is to look more closely at his methodological views, and in particular, the places in which (...) predicativity restrictions ought to be applied; another is to take seriously his remarks about the reals as things created by the cuts, instead of considering them to be the cuts themselves. This can lead us to make finer-grained distinctions about the extent to which impredicative definitions are problematic, since we find that Dedekind's use of impredicative definitions in analysis can be justified by his philosophical views. (shrink)

Dedekind's major work on the foundations of arithmetic employs several techniques that have left him open to charges of psychologism, and through this, to worries about the objectivity of the natural-number concept he defines. While I accept that Dedekind takes the foundation for arithmetic to lie in certain mental powers, I will also argue that, given an appropriate philosophical background, this need not make numbers into subjective mental objects. Even though Dedekind himself did not provide that background, one can nevertheless (...) be found in the work of the neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer on mathematical concept formation. (shrink)

Audrey Rousseau La recherche de formes de rétablissement à la suite d’événements difficiles, voire traumatiques, implique souvent de considérer la parole comme un moteur de transformation personnelle et sociale. À partir de préoccupations éthiques et épistémologiques d’une chercheuse non autochtone menant une recherche collaborative au sujet des disparitions et des assassinats de femmes et de filles autochtones en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, cet article interroge plus précisément l’association fréquente entre l’expression du souvenir et la recherche d’un « mieux-être ». Après avoir introduit (...) les assises de cette recherche, qui se fonde sur l’oralité comme mode de transmission des savoirs entre générations, j’explorerai certaines conceptions du mieux-être et de la guérison tirées de la littérature scientifique autochtone. Puis, à partir du postulat relationnel au fondement du pouvoir du storytelling chez les Premières Nations, je révélerai deux conceptions des récits-histoires : l’une les concevant comme des « médecines » qui rassemblent les forces des ancêtres, l’autre les traitant comme des enseignements valorisant l’identité culturelle et les savoirs traditionnels. En terminant, j’aborderai certaines tensions relatives à la volonté d’éclairer des problèmes complexes, tout en réfléchissant aux conditions de l’écoute de ces récits-histoires et aux défis de représenter et d’interpréter ces savoirs expérientiels. (shrink)

This article, based on a socio-cognitive approach, deals with the professional training of student teachers in French agricultural education during their practical work experience. The main objective is to demonstrate that the student teacher’s social interaction with his academic advisor allows him to use and develop his professional knowledge relating to practical matters. Based on a qualitative analysis this study presents the results of an investigation of seven students and six academic advisors. The article studies the interrelations between the nature (...) of the professional knowledges in question and the processes of construction in the work. (shrink)

During a qualitative survey we made among AIDS prevention campaigners in France, respondents stated in particular that they believed in the effectiveness of activities that prompt subjects to accomplish « mini-acts » before and after receiving persuasive arguments. As their opinion does not derive from scientific literature, we carried out an experiment, in an everyday environment with 196 subjects chosen at random and based on theories of persuasive communication and commitment, to investigate the validity of representations concerning these « mini-acts (...) » accomplished via the Internet. The results show, in particular, that the campaigners’ intuitive beliefs are sound, since these mini-acts effectively contribute to AIDS prevention. (shrink)