This study draws on achievement goal theory and self-determination theory to examine the associations among two motivational climates (i.e. mastery and performance) and two indicators of energy at work (i.e. vigour and emotional exhaustion), as well as the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction (i.e. autonomy, relatedness, and competence). A two-wave longitudinal study was conducted collecting data from 1081 engineers and technologists. We applied previously validated instruments to assess the variables of interest. Structural equation modeling analyses were conducted to (...) test the hypotheses. Our findings show that mastery climate is positively and significantly related to each of the three basic needs, while a performance climate is negatively and significantly related to each of the three basic needs. Further, the results indicate that the basic needs are significantly associated with both measures of energy, negatively with emotional exhaustion and positively with vigour. This pattern of results suggests that basic psychological need satisfaction mediates the relationship between motivational climates and energy at work. (shrink)

Although few studies examine the implications of breakthrough innovations in the exporting context, we have little understanding about how contingent factors in the developing countries shape the breakthrough innovations–export performance link. Thus, this study aims at examining the impact of breakthrough innovations on the export performance of SMEs in developing countries, while studying the role of contingent factors, i.e., institutional environment specificity and enforceability. The data were collected from a sample of 410 SMEs in Pakistan. Hypotheses were tested through structural (...) equation modeling in AMOS 20. The results reveal that both technology-based and market-based innovations have a positive impact on the export performance of SMEs in terms of strategic export performance and economic export performance. Second, institutional environment specificity and enforceability enhance the impact of breakthrough innovations on the export performance of SMEs. (shrink)

Nurses find themselves in a unique position - between patient and physicians, and in close proximity to the patient. Moral sensitivity can help nurses to cope with the daily turmoil of demands and opinions while delivering care in concordance with the value system of the patient. This article aims to reconsider the concept of moral sensitivity by discussing the function of emotions in morality. We turn to the ideas of historic and contemporary authors on the function of emotions in morality (...) to expand our understanding of moral sensitivity. Ancient philosophers and contemporary psychologists uphold different strategies on the orientation of morality being (a) personal growth or (b) community living, and the primordial function of (c) reason and (d) emotions in the creation of judgements about good and bad. The theoretical discussion on the function of emotions in morality shows that by focusing on reason alone, one leaves out an essential part of morality. The concept of moral sensitivity should (1) include an initial judgment of good and bad based on emotions, (2) hold the ability to reflect on the initial judgement and the associated emotions, (3) include the ability to understand other stakeholders' perspectives based on the ideal-types and (4) include a personal decision on the right course of action. (shrink)

De traditionele causaliteitsleer - een hoofdstuk der filosofie, - kent slechts oorzaken en gevolgen. Dit boek rekent daar mee af en voert in wetenschap de begrippen middel en doel in. Een zaak van logica. De auteur is van zeer goeden huize en de kwaliteit straalt ook van dit manuscript af. Schrijver weet waar hij het over heeft Ik acht de probleemstelling oorspronkelijk en, belangrijker nog, ook zeer relevant. Het boek kan zeer goed gebruikt worden voor onderwijsdoeleinden. Het kan ook richting (...) geven aan nieuw onderzoek. R. van Woudenberg, hoogleraar theoretische filosofie, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Het manuscript is boeiend doordat het duidelijk maakt hoezeer een strikt causale benadering (zoals in de natuurwetenschappen gebruikelijk is) ontoereikend is wanneer er sprake is van menselijk handelen. Bedoelde oorzaken en beoogde gevolgen blijven oorzaak en gevolg. G. Nienhuis, hoogleraar natuurkunde, Universiteit Leiden Dit boek is serieus en zeer origineel. Het is van belang dat het wordt uitgebracht en - vooral ook - dat het wordt gelezen. A.C. Hemerijck, decaan Faculteit der sociale wetenschappen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Table of Contents Inleiding Hoofdstuk 1. Wetenschap in vogelvlucht Hoofdstuk 2. Juiste vragen en goede antwoorden Hoofdstuk 3. Weten waardoor en weten waarvoor Hoofdstuk 4. Versta onder een doel niet een begeren Hoofdstuk 5.. Van causalisme naar finalisme Hoofdstuk 6. Verklaren, voorspellen, ontwerpen Hoofdstuk 7. Vanwaar dat odium op het doelbegrip? Hoofdstuk 8. Alle analyse is empirisch Hoofdstuk 9. Wetenschap en het onbewuste Hoofdstuk 10. Mimesis als breed verschijnsel Hoofdstuk 11, Ministerie ontwikkelt beleidsanalyse Hoofdstuk 12. Opvoeding als voorbeeld Hoofdstuk 13 Toepassingen per discipline Uitleiding Index Personen en Zaken About the Author Gijs Kuijpers is emeritus hoogleraar politicologie aan de Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam. (shrink)

Western societies today are coming unmoored in the face of an earth-shaking ethical and cultural paradigm shift. At its core is the question of what it means to be human and how we are meant to live. The old answers are no longer accepted; a dizzying array of options are offered in their stead. Underpinning this smorgasbord of lifestyles is a thicket of unquestioned assumptions, such as the separation of gender from biological sex, which not so long ago would have (...) been universally rejected as radical notions. In the spring of 2019, a group of Orthodox Christian scholars drawn from a wide variety of academic disciplines met together to offer responses to the moral crisis our generation faces, elaborating upon its various forms and facilitating a fuller understanding of some of its theological and philosophical foundations. In doing so they offer support to all those who question the claims that are so forcefully insisted upon today--a clarity that will aid them in standing up and resisting trends that have already shown to be the cause of great suffering and unhappiness. (shrink)

Scientific theories do much more than answer empirical questions. This can be understood along empiricist lines only if those other aspects are instrumental for the pursuit of empirical strength and adequacy, or serving other aims subordinate to these. This chapter accordingly addresses four main questions: Does the rejection of realism lead to a self‐defeating scepticism? Are scientific methodology and experimental design intelligible on any but a realist interpretation of science? Is the ideal of the unity of science, or even the (...) practice of using distinct theories in conjunction, intelligent on an empiricist view? What sense can an empiricist position accord to those theoretical virtues––such as simplicity, coherence, explanatory power––that are not reducible to empirical strength or adequacy? The answers to these questions rely strongly on the pragmatics of scientific inquiry, and advocate a ‘Clausewitz doctrine’ of experimentation as a continuation of theorizing by other means. (shrink)

This chapter parodies Aquinas’ Five Ways to prove the existence of God by displaying similar arguments reminiscent of those often given in support of scientific realism. This is followed by a parody of scientific realists’ attempts to defend themselves against objections to such arguments.

The opposition between empiricism and realism with respect to science is old: it appeared clearly in the seventeenth century sense of superiority of the ‘mechanical philosophy’ to Scholastic metaphysics, and continued for the next three centuries’ debates over the philosophical foundations of physics. Empiricist views developed by the logical positivists of Vienna and Berlin were defeated by the emergence of scientific realism in the mid‐twentieth century. This defeat was largely due to the inadequacy of the positivist theories of meaning and (...) language. To present a viable empiricist account of science, we need conceptions of theory structure, truth, and empirical adequacy that are essentially independent of a theory's linguistic formulation. Correlative to this discussion of the relationship between theory and world is the question what it is to accept a scientific theory––how much belief is involved? And what is involved other than belief? The position to be developed here will view scientific activity as one of construction rather than discovery: construction of models that must be adequate to the observable phenomena, and not discovery of the truth about postulated unobservable parts of nature. Acceptance of a scientific theory so viewed will have an irreducible pragmatic dimension in addition to involving only a modest amount of belief. (shrink)

The Aristotelian tradition in science, dominant before the advent of modern science, saw real modalities in nature: necessity, possibility, contingency, potentiality, and essence. Throughout the modern period and the early twentieth century, empiricists struggled to maintain that there was nothing to be found between matters of actual fact on the one hand and relations between ideas or words on the other. Probability has the logical form of a modality, but until the twentieth century, it could be construed as a measure (...) of ignorance, or of actual proportions and frequencies, not a basic parameter in nature itself. That changed with the advent of quantum mechanics and the admission of indeterminism as a theoretical possibility. The legitimacy of irreducible probabilities was admitted in the modelling of natural processes. The challenge to the empiricist now is to interpret probability as it appears there, and this includes the larger challenge of displaying an empiricistically acceptable role for modalities in general in the scientific image. This chapter provides a systematic critique of frequentist and propensity interpretations of physical probability, but also characterizes the models of probability theory as constructible from families of sequences constrained by limiting frequencies. This formal agreement with a certain kind of ’ideal frequency’ account is embedded in a philosophical view of modalities in general that turns on an account of the language of science on the level of pragmatics. (shrink)

What is the empirical content of a theory? If a theory is identified with one of its linguistic formulations, the only available answers allow for no non‐trivial distinction between empirical and non‐empirical content. The restriction of such a formulated theory to a narrow ‘observational’ vocabulary is not a description of the observable part of the world but a hobbled and hamstrung description of its entire domain, still with non‐empirical implications. Viewing a theory as identified through the family of its models––the (...) structures it makes available for modelling the phenomena––yields a new approach. The distinctions so made are illustrated with Newton's physics, absolute versus relative motion, nineteenth‐ century ether theory of electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics. A hermeneutic circle in the interpretation is noted, and the theory‐independence of the observable/unobservable distinction maintained. (shrink)

What is compassion? I suggest that it is, as Adam Smith and David Hume once argued, a moral sentiment that is subject to a great many constraints and variations but is nonetheless “natural.” I also consider Nietzsche's rather vehement attack on Mitleid and current social psychological literature on empathy.

There seems to be no end to moralizing about the vices, but there is too little appreciation of them as mere human foibles and an essential part of the “human circus.” There are also serious questions about whether some of the so-called deadly sins are sinful at all.

Too often, since the 19th century, sensitivity is dismissed as mere “sentimentality” in philosophy and in literature. It is charged that sentimentality is distorting, self-indulgent, self-deceptive. I argue that all of these charges are misplaced or themselves distorted and betray a suspicion of emotions and the tender sentiments that is unwarranted.

Do we love for reasons? Most romantics would insist not. In fact, we love despite good reasons not to love. I argue that love necessarily involves reasons. I discuss the problem of loving someone for his or her looks and what I call Plato's Problem, loving only the properties of a person. I end by discussing some dubious and perverse reasons for love.

Spirituality is often dismissed as mere sentimentality. It is also often opposed to science and the scientific worldview, as if the one is anathema to the other. I suggest that spirituality has distinct advantages over religion and is not at all opposed to science or scientific thinking.

Basic Cartesian intuitions are directed at simple natures, not truths; but intuitions are also a foundation for propositional knowledge. There are two basic objectives of this chapter: to show how Descartes gets from intuitions to propositional knowledge, and to show how his solution to this problem structures his thinking on the main issues in Cartesian epistemology. I maintain that the solution to is to be found in the principle if we perceive the presence of an attribute A, there must be (...) an actually existing substance to which A is attributed. This principle gets its clearest expression in the Principles of Philosophy but also appears in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind and in the Meditations where, I argue, it appears in the form of the Rule of Truth. I show how this principle is derived from the cogito, understood both as inference and as intuition, how this principle plays a role in Descartes theory of consciousness and self‐knowledge, in the case for substance dualism, and in the theory of clear and distinct ideas. (shrink)

The leading idea of this chapter is that, for Descartes, intellectual ideas make it obvious what metaphysical category the properties they disclose to the mind fall into but not whether they are actually exemplified; sensations make it obvious whether the properties they disclose to the mind are exemplified but not what their metaphysical category is. This idea is worked out through a discussion of three stages in the development of Descartes's doctrine of the material falsity of sensory ideas, the core (...) concept of his error explanation of the senses. Material falsity is a set of three defects that sensations have in comparison with intellectual ideas, ideas that fully discharge the role, which Descartes assigns to ideas in his philosophical system. The first stage, reflected in Meditation III, identifies material falsity with two defects: nonrepresentation and misrepresentation ; the second stage, reflected in the Reply to Arnauld, identifies material falsity with obscure ideas ; the third stage, reflected in the Principles of Philosophy I, sees the terminology of material falsity disappear and the terminology of clear but not distinct ideas appear. Other topics discussed include a special application of the rule of truth and skepticism. (shrink)

How can a Cartesian idea represent ordinary physical objects? One possibility is that Descartes holds a theory of natural signs according to which ideas, including sensations, represent states of the external world that are correlated with them. I deny that Descartes has a theory of natural signs in this sense, arguing, instead, that our perception of ordinary physical objects is achieved not through ideas, properly speaking, but through a special act of the mind which projects its sensations onto objects in (...) the external world, objects truly represented by ideas of primary qualities alone. This ”projection” comprises referral judgments that account for the characteristic phenomenology of experience of the physical world but in a way that misleads us to think that our ideas bear a resemblance to the underlying metaphysical reality of the physical world. Other issues discussed include Descartes's taxonomy of ideas. (shrink)

Cartesian epistemology comprises three main divisions: an a priori theory, discussed in Chs. 1–3, a psychological theory of error explanations in judgment induced by features of our sense experience discussed in Chs. 4, 5 and 7, and a theory of natural reasons, discussed here. The theory of natural reasons, based on Descartes's notion of natural inclinations, is expressed here in terms of a series of warrant principles of which there are two main kinds: those that warrant action and those that (...) warrant claims for what is true. This chapter traces Descartes's epistemically ambivalent attitude to cognitive dispositions from the early treatment in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind through to the final treatment in The Passions of the Soul. The chapter focuses special attention on the appearance of one kind of natural reason, reasons of truth, in the proof of the external world in Meditation VI and the striking absence of same in the proof of the external world in the Principles of Philosophy II. The chapter also considers whether natural reasons apply to particular aspects of corporeal things, concluding with a discussion of the Cartesian Circle. (shrink)

Louis Bautain (1796–1867) has been described as the “French Newman” because of the resemblances between their lives and writings. This essay compares three aspects of the thought of Newman and Bautain: their respective understanding of faith, reason, and development. Both thinkers understood faith and reason in relation to conversion and the realities of life and viewed faith and reason as functioning in tandem with doctrinal development.

In 1839 and 1840, Newman preached four Oxford University Sermons, which critiqued the evidential apologetics advocated by John Locke (1632-1704) and William Paley (1743-1805) and subsequently restated by Richard Whately (1787-1863). In response, Newman drew upon Whately’s earlier works on logic and rhetoric to develop an alternative account of the reasonableness of religious belief that was based on implicit reasoning from antecedent probabilities. Newman’s argument was a creative response to Whately’s contention that evidential reasoning is the only safeguard against superstition (...) and infidelity. (shrink)

Local food systems can have economic and social benefits by providing income for producers and improving community connections. Ongoing global climate change and the acute COVID-19 pandemic crisis have shown the importance of building equity and resilience in local food systems. We interviewed ten stakeholders from organizations and institutions in a U.S. midwestern city exploring views on past, current, and future conditions to address the following two objectives: 1) Assess how local food system equity and resilience were impacted by the (...) COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) Examine how policy and behavior changes could support greater equity and resilience within urban local food systems. We used the Community Capitals Framework to organize interviewees’ responses for qualitative analyses of equity and resilience. Four types of community capital were emphasized by stakeholders: cultural and social, natural, and political capital. Participants stated that the local food system in this city is small; more weaknesses in food access, land access, and governance were described than were strengths in both pre- and post-pandemic conditions. Stakeholder responses also reflected lack of equity and resilience in the local food system, which was most pronounced for cultural and social, natural and political capitals. However, local producers’ resilience during the pandemic, which we categorized as human capital, was a notable strength. An improved future food system could incorporate changes in infrastructure (e.g., food processing), markets (e.g., values-based markets) and cultural values (e.g., valuing local food through connections between local producers and consumers). These insights could inform policy and enhance community initiatives and behavior changes to build more equitable and resilient local food systems in urban areas throughout the U.S. Midwest. (shrink)

In 2011 the English Court of Protection ruled that it would be unlawful to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from a woman, M, who had been in a minimally conscious state for 8 years. It was reported as the first English legal case concerning withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration from a patient in a minimally conscious state who was otherwise stable. In the absence of a valid and applicable advance decision refusing treatment, of other life-limiting pathology or excessively burdensome (...) suffering, the judgement makes it clear that the obligation on health professionals falls strongly in favour of preserving life. Although the Court sought to limit the judgement as closely as possible to the facts of the case, it is likely to have a significant impact on life-sustaining treatment decisions for people in states of low awareness. This paper outlines the main legal features of the judgement. (shrink)

A defining characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease is difficulty in retrieving semantic memories, or memories encoding facts and knowledge. While it has been suggested that this impairment is caused by a degradation of the semantic store, the precise ways in which the semantic store is degraded are not well understood. Using a longitudinal corpus of semantic fluency data, we derive semantic network representations of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and of healthy controls. We contrast our network-based approach with analyzing fluency data with (...) the standard method of counting the total number of items and perseverations in fluency data. We find that the networks of Alzheimer’s patients are more connected and that those connections are more randomly distributed than the connections in networks of healthy individuals. These results suggest that the semantic memory impairment of Alzheimer’s patients can be modeled through the inclusion of spurious associations between unrelated concepts in the semantic store. We also find that information from our network analysis of fluency data improves prediction of patient diagnosis compared to traditional measures of the semantic fluency task. (shrink)