Background Respect for human rights and bioethical principles in prisons is a crucial aspect of society and is proportional to the well-being of the general population. To date, these ethical principles have been lacking in prisons and prisoners are victims of abuse with strong repercussions on their physical and mental health. Methods A systematic review was performed, through a MESH of the following words (bioethics) AND (prison), (ethics) AND (prison), (bioethics) AND (jail), (ethics) AND (jail), (bioethics) AND (penitentiary), (ethics) AND (...) (penitentiary), (prison) AND (human rights). Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined and after PRISMA, 17 articles were included in the systematic review. Results Of the 17 articles, most were prevalence studies (n.5) or surveys (n.4), followed by cross-sectional studies (n.3), qualitative studies (n.1), retrospective (n.1) and an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study design (n.1). In most cases, the studies associated bioethics with prisoners’ access to treatment for various pathologies such as vaccinations, tuberculosis, hepatitis, HIV, it was also found that bioethics in prisons was related to the mental health of prisoners, disability, ageing, the condition of women, the risk of suicide or with the request for end-of-life by prisoners. The results showed shortcomings in the system of maintaining bioethical principles and respect for human rights. Conclusions Prisoners, in fact, find it difficult to access care, and have an increased risk of suicide and disability. Furthermore, they are often used as improper organ donors and have constrained autonomy that also compromises their willingness to have end-of-life treatments. In conclusion, prison staff (doctors, nurses, warders, managers) must undergo continuous refresher courses to ensure compliance with ethical principles and human rights in prisons. (shrink)

We prove a categoricity transfer theorem for tame abstract elementary classes. Theorem 0.1. Suppose that K is a χ-tame abstract elementary class and satisfies the amalgamation and joint embedding properties and has arbitrarily large models. Let λ ≥ Max{χ.LS(K)⁺}. If K is categorical in λ and λ⁺, then K is categorical in λ⁺⁺. Combining this theorem with some results from [37], we derive a form of Shelah's Categoricity Conjecture for tame abstract elementary classes: Corollary 0.2. Suppose K is a χ-tame (...) abstract elementary class satisfying the amalgamation and joint embedding properties. Let μ₀:= Hanf(K). If χ ≤ ‮ב‬(2μ0)+ and K is categorical in some λ⁺ > ‮ב‬(2μ0)+, then K is categorical in μ for all μ > ‮ב‬(2μ0)+. (shrink)

We prove that from categoricity in λ+ we can get categoricity in all cardinals ≥ λ+ in a χ-tame abstract elementary classe [Formula: see text] which has arbitrarily large models and satisfies the amalgamation and joint embedding properties, provided [Formula: see text] and λ ≥ χ. For the missing case when [Formula: see text], we prove that [Formula: see text] is totally categorical provided that [Formula: see text] is categorical in [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text].

Although remote working can involve positive outcomes both for employees and organizations, in the case of the sudden and forced remote working situation that came into place during the COVID-19 crisis there have also been reports of negative aspects, one of which is technostress. In this context of crisis, leadership is crucial in sustainably managing and supporting employees, especially employees with workaholic tendencies who are more prone to developing negative work and health outcomes. However, while research on the role of (...) the positive aspects of leadership during crises does exist, the negative aspects of leadership during the COVID-19 crisis have not yet been studied. The present study aimed to explore the role of authoritarian leadership in a sample of 339 administrative university employees who worked either completely from home or from home and the workplace. The study examined the moderating effect of a manager on this relationship and the connections between workaholism and technostress through conditional process analysis. Results pointed out that high authoritarian leadership had an enhancing effect, whereas low authoritarian leadership had a protective effect on the relationship between workaholism and technostress, only in the group of complete remote workers. Thus, authoritarian leadership should be avoided and training leaders to be aware of its effect appears to be essential. Limitations, future directions for the study, and practical implications are also discussed. (shrink)

Philosopher Judith Butler has influenced how people talk about vulnerable bodies and sees vulnerability as universal, existential, and relational. Being vulnerable is part of the human condition. The main theoretical areas that run across Butler’s work; power, knowledge and subjectivity, performativity, and ethics—are of particular relevance to nursing practice. This review aims to explore how Butler’s theoretical work is reflected in research literature within a nursing context. We conducted a scoping review guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework. A systematic (...) literature search of CINAHL (EBSCOhost), MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), PsycINFO (Ovid), and Web of Science identified 15 papers. Butler’s theoretical work was applied at an individual and social level in research literature within a nursing context. Nurses need to reflect on their clinical practice and role as health professionals in relation to power and performativity in encounters with patients who are marginalized. Nurses’ working conditions, recognition, and understanding are strongly influenced by society, and calling nurses heroes undermines their capacity to challenge and resist the hero identity. The healthcare system’s impact on patient-nurse encounters challenges patients’ and nurses’ subjectivity, performativity, and power relations. The review allowed us to describe how Butler’s theoretical work can facilitate a reflection on nursing practice which is a prerequisite for caring, ethical relationships, and working conditions within a nursing context. Butler’s concepts can provide useful perspectives on how nurses understand, communicate with, and care for patients, as well as a nuanced understanding of the nursing role and power relations and structures. (shrink)

Spatial memory relies on encoding, storing, and retrieval of knowledge about objects’ positions in their surrounding environment. Blind people have to rely on sensory modalities other than vision to memorize items that are spatially displaced, however, to date, very little is known about the influence of early visual deprivation on a person’s ability to remember and process sound locations. To fill this gap, we tested sighted and congenitally blind adults and adolescents in an audio-spatial memory task inspired by the classical (...) card game “Memory.” In this research, subjects had to find pairs among sounds displaced on an audio-tactile device composed of loudspeakers covered by tactile sensors. To accomplish this task, participants had to remember the spatialized sounds’ position and develop a proper mental spatial representation of their locations. The test was divided into two experimental conditions of increasing difficulty dependent on the number of sounds to be remembered. Results showed that sighted participants outperformed blind participants in both conditions. Findings were discussed considering the crucial role of visual experience in properly manipulating auditory spatial representations, particularly in relation to the ability to explore complex acoustic configurations. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo describe reporting of informed consent in pragmatic trials, justifications for waivers of consent and reporting of alternative approaches to standard written consent. To identify factors associated with (1) not reporting and (2) not obtaining consent.MethodsSurvey of primary trial reports, published 2014–2019, identified using an electronic search filter for pragmatic trials implemented in MEDLINE, and registered in ClinicalTrials.gov.ResultsAmong 1988 trials, 132 (6.6%) did not include a statement about participant consent, 1691 (85.0%) reported consent had been obtained, 139 (7.0%) reported a (...) waiver and 26 (1.3%) reported consent for one aspect (eg, data collection) but a waiver for another (eg, intervention). Of the 165 trials reporting a waiver, 76 (46.1%) provided a justification. Few (53, 2.9%) explicitly reported use of alternative approaches to consent. In multivariable logistic regression analyses, lower journal impact factor (p=0.001) and cluster randomisation (p<0.0001) were significantly associated with not reporting on consent, while trial recency, cluster randomisation, higher-income country settings, health services research and explicit labelling as pragmatic were significantly associated with not obtaining consent (all p<0.0001).DiscussionNot obtaining consent seems to be increasing and is associated with the use of cluster randomisation and pragmatic aims, but neither cluster randomisation nor pragmatism are currently accepted justifications for waivers of consent. Rather than considering either standard written informed consent or waivers of consent, researchers and research ethics committees could consider alternative consent approaches that may facilitate the conduct of pragmatic trials while preserving patient autonomy and the public’s trust in research. (shrink)

Tragedy feels disempowering and the confluence of tragedies since the beginning of 2020 can overwhelm one’s sense of agency. This paper describes how we use a civic engagement (CE) project to nurture radical hope for our students. Radical hope involves a desire for a positive outcome surpassing understanding, as well as an activity to strive to achieve that outcome despite its uncertainty. Our CE project asks students to identify ethical issues they care about and respond in a fitting way, questioning (...) the assumption that their efforts do not matter, and imagining creative ways to make a difference that are in their power. We scaffold our CE project in order to nurture hopeful possibilities for students by offering real-world, feasible pathways for addressing systemic problems. -/- . (shrink)

Resumen Se estudia comparativamente el desempeño de adultos mayores y de adultos jóvenes en una tarea concurrente que consiste en leer oraciones ecuacionales mientras, al mismo tiempo, se retienen en la memoria tres palabras. El propósito del experimento es averiguar si existe un efecto de las variables edad, memoria operativa, complejidad sintáctica e interferencia de una carga concurrente de memoria en el procesamiento y comprensión de oraciones de sintaxis compleja. El análisis estadístico multinivel realizado revela que tanto el procesamiento en (...) línea de las oraciones ecuacionales como su comprensión se ven afectados significativamente por la edad de los participantes cuando opera una carga de memoria concurrente. Las variables memoria operativa y complejidad sintáctica, por su parte, afectan también significativamente el desempeño de los sujetos, pero independientemente de su edad.The performance of older and young adults in a concurrent task -to read equational sentences while at the same time the subjects retain in memory three words- is comparatively studied. The purpose of the experiment is to find out if there is an effect of the variables of age, working memory, syntactic complexity and interference of a concurrent memory load processing on the comprehension of syntactically complex sentences. The multilevel statistical analysis reveals that both online processing of cleft sentences as their understanding is significantly affected by the age of participants when operating a concurrent memory load. The working memory variables and syntactical complexity, meanwhile, also significantly affect the performance of subjects, but regardless of age. (shrink)

Between the Spiritualistic tendency, which characterizes itself for seeing man as rational soul, and the body as its cage; and, on the other hand, the Materialistic tendency of viewing man as a body, the Thomistic Anthropology conceives man as compound of body and soul, matter and spirit. Thomas of Aquinas, within an ontological analysis of the sensible real, establishes from the ontological unity between body and soul, the possibility for one to observe the external movement of the body as evidence (...) of its deep structure, where sensations, memories, feelings, desires and thoughts are wrought and reflected the latter’s way of acting. The intelligible being is involved in the sensitive existence. (shrink)

This article presents a dialogue between Roland Barthes and Paolo Fabbri, which took place on 18 December 1965 in Florence, Italy. Barthes offers an engaging account of his structuralist approach to narrative, as was later published in essay form, ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’, included in a special issue of Communications (Issue 8, 1966). In a cordial exchange with Fabbri, Barthes provides a more candid presentation of method than found in print, along with critical reflection of the underlying (...) importance of the structuralist approach, as perceived at the time. The interview took place as part of a small conference on narrativity. Participants included Algirdas Julien Greimas, Claude Bremond, Umberto Eco, Jules Gritti, Violette Morin, Christian Metz, and Tzvetan Todorov. Subsequently, a number of these participants contributed articles to the same issue of Communications, on the structural analysis of narrative. (shrink)

Desde la publicación de la encíclica Laudato si ‘(LS) del Papa Francisco en 2015, se han llevado a cabo múltiples acciones para fomentar una visión integral de la ecología en la Iglesia Católica. El objetivo fue el desarrollo de una propuesta curricular que incluye el desarrollo sostenible e integral en la enseñanza de la religión católica. El curso CHANCES ofrece un nuevo paradigma de la enseñanza de la religión católica, mostrando cómo desde ella se pueden descubrir motivaciones profundas, y potenciar (...) actitudes y virtudes, que pueden contribuir al desarrollo de competencias en sostenibilidad. (shrink)

Research based on construal level theory (CLT) suggests that thinking about the distant future can prime people to solve problems by insight (i.e., an “aha” moment) while thinking about the near future can prime them to solve problems analytically. In this study, we used a novel method to elucidate the time-course of temporal priming effects on creative problem solving. Specifically, we used growth-curve analysis (GCA) to examine the time-course of priming while participants solved a series of brief verbal problems. Participants (...) were tested in two counterbalanced sessions in a within-subject experimental design; one session featured near-future priming and the other featured far-future priming. Our results suggest high-level construal may temporarily enhance analytical thinking; far-future priming caused transient facilitation of analytical solving while near-future priming induced weaker, transient facilitation of insightful solving. However, this effect is short-lived; priming produced no significant differences in the total number of insights and analytical solutions. Given the fleeting nature of these effects, future studies should consider implementing methodology that allows for aspects of the time-course of priming effects to be examined. A method such as GCA may reveal mild effects that would be otherwise missed using other types of analyses. (shrink)

This paper examines folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify in order to make visible the cultural specificities of data assemblages in the global South. The study was conducted in Costa Rica and draws on triangulated data from 30 interviews, 4 focus groups with 22 users, and the study of “rich pictures” made by individuals to graphically represent their understanding of algorithmic recommendations. We found two main folk theories: one that personifies Spotify and another one that envisions it as a (...) system full of resources. Whereas the first theory emphasizes local conceptions of social relations to make sense of algorithms, the second one stresses the role of algorithms in providing a global experience of music and technology. We analyze why people espouse either one of these theories and how these theories provide users with resources to enact different modalities of power and resistance in relation to recommendation algorithms. We argue that folk theories thus offer a productive way to broaden understanding of what agency means in relation to algorithms. (shrink)

Significant scientific and technological advances in intensive care have been made. However, patients in the intensive care unit may experience discomfort, loss of control, and surreal experiences. This has generated relevant debates about how to humanize the intensive care units and whether humanization is necessary at all. This paper aimed to explore how humanizing intensive care is described in the literature. A scoping review was performed. Studies published between 01.01.1999 and 02.03.2020 were identified in the CINAHL, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus (...) databases. After removing 185 duplicates, 363 papers were screened by title and abstract. Full-text screening of 116 papers led to the inclusion of 68 papers in the review based on the inclusion criteria; these papers mentioned humanizing or dehumanizing intensive care in the title or abstract. Humanizing care was defined as holistic care, as a general attitude of professionals toward patients and relatives and an organizational ideal encompassing all subjects of the healthcare system. Technology was considered an integral component of intensive care that must be balanced with caring for the patient as a whole and autonomous person. This holistic view of patients and relatives could ameliorate the negative effects of technology. There were geographical differences and the large number of studies from Spain and Brazil reflect the growing interest in humanizing intensive care in these particular countries. In conclusion, a more holistic approach with a greater emphasis on the individual patient, relatives, and social context is the foundation for humanizing intensive care, as reflected in the attitudes of nurses and other healthcare professionals. Demands for mastering technology may dominate nurses’ attention toward patients and relatives; therefore, humanized intensive care requires a holistic attitude from health professionals and organizations toward patients and relatives. Healthcare organizations, society, and regulatory frameworks demanding humanized intensive care may enforce humanized intensive care. (shrink)

Amid now extensive debates about cosmopolitanism in political theory, this article explores the implications of Axel Honneth’s recognition theory for issues in international justice, not least the dire situation of poverty in the world. In contrast with a purely resource-distributive approach, the essay turns particularly to Honneth’s recent revival of the Lukácsian concept of reification as a process of self-distancing from the elementary humanity of others. Specifically, Honneth re-formulates reification as a failure of an elementary or ‘antecedent’ form of recognition. (...) From the perspective of his theory, reification connotes the forgetfulness of others’ fundamental humanity. While Honneth takes such forgetfulness to become most readily apparent in dramatic violations such as the Holocaust, the article interprets his theory to explain, and eventually to challenge, the passive acceptance by many of dire material injustices. The article develops the implications of this challenge by interpreting from Honneth’s framework a duty to question international policies which tend to reify and objectify the least well off in the world, whilst remaining cognizant of the limits of de-reification to the more extensive, meaningful alleviation of poverty globally. (shrink)

After two years of global pandemic, it is no surprise that immunization is now at the center of our experience. From the medicalization of politics to the disciplining of individuals, from lockdowns to mass vaccination programs, contemporary societies seem to be firmly embedded in a syndrome of immunity. To understand the ambivalent effects of this development, it is necessary to go back to its modern genesis, when the languages of law, politics, and medicine began to merge into the biopolitical regime (...) we have been living under for some time. This regime places a high priority on immunization and security: no security is more important than health security. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken the dynamic of immunization to a new level: for the first time in history, we see societies seeking to achieve generalized immunity in their entire populations through vaccination. This allows us to glimpse the possibility of a “common immunity” that strengthens the relation between community and immunity. The dramatic tensions we have experienced in recent years between security and freedom, norm and exception, power and existence, all refer to the complex relationship between community and immunity, the decisive features of which are reconstructed in this book. Building on the prescient argument originally developed two decades ago in Immunitas, Roberto Esposito demonstrates in this new book how the pandemic and our responses to it have brought into sharp relief the fundamental biopolitical conditions of our contemporary societies. (shrink)

For some while we have been witnessing a series of destructive phenomena which seem to indicate a full-fledged return to the negative on the world stage – from terrorism and armed conflict to the threat of environmental catastrophe. At the same time, politics seems increasingly impotent in the face of these threats. In this book, the leading Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito reconstructs the genealogy of the reciprocal intertwining of politics and negation. He retraces the intensification of negation in the (...) thought of various thinkers, from Schmitt and Freud to Heidegger, and examines the negative slant of some of our fundamental political categories, such as sovereignty, property and freedom. Against the centrality of negation, Esposito proposes an affirmative philosophy that does not negate or repress negation but radically rethinks it in the positive cipher of difference, determination and opposition. The result is a rigorous and original pathway which, in the tension between affirmation and negation, recognizes the disturbing traumas of our time, as well as the harbingers of what awaits at its limits. This highly original and timely book will be of great value to students and scholars in philosophy, cultural theory and the humanities more generally, and to anyone interested in contemporary European thought. (shrink)

While the right to freedom of expression is of great importance in liberal societies, liberal governments should be wary of speech that disparages minority groups. This issue is particularly problematic when minority women publicly criticise gender oppression within their communities. By focusing on the controversy over the play Behzti in 2004, this article explores the difficulties involved in protecting individual women’s rights to criticise injustice, when doing so risks perpetuating negative stereotypes in society at large. If liberal polities wish to (...) preserve an ethos in society that enables minority women to speak out about their experience of oppression, then there is sometimes a case for restricting the right to free speech in these cases. By comparing Behzti with two other works, the article proposes a three-part test to indicate when liberals should seriously consider informal restrictions on free speech when this problem arises. (shrink)

Employee social network strategies play a key role in firm strategies and organizational performance. Currently, scholars underestimate the contributions of employee social strategies in firm strategies. Little is known how informal employee social networks, group entitativity and competition could shape and direct firm strategies and organizational performance. The article examines social network theory and strategic management’s content, process and open schools of thought to propose a new interpretation for managing firm strategies. More specifically, the author examines alternate causal paths, underlying (...) processes and structures as mechanisms in employee social network strategies within a theoretical framework. The article proposes 4 theoretically driven propositions and makes two contributions. First, the article contributes to organizational behavior literature by focusing on the literature gap in network dynamics and competitive actions through employee social networks. Second, although there is immense literature on positive and negative employee competition in business, the article makes a contribution to the strategic management literature by moving beyond formalized structures and roles within an organization to focus on the multilevel informal workplace social interactions and processes that impact strategizing activities. Overall, the article extends strategy research in relation to how employee social networks operate through competition and group entitativity in firm strategies. (shrink)

The results in this paper are in a context of abstract elementary classes identified by Shelah and Villaveces in which the amalgamation property is not assumed. The long-term goal is to solve Shelah’s Categoricity Conjecture in this context. Here we tackle a problem of Shelah and Villaveces by proving that in their context, the uniqueness of limit models follows from categoricity under the assumption that the subclass of amalgamation bases is closed under unions of bounded, -increasing chains.

O estudo filosófico da ética sobre as interações entre os seres humanos e as tecnologias que empregam a Inteligência Artificial se tornou um tópico popular e importante como nunca antes. O estudo dos problemas que concernem essas interações justifica-se por conta das transformações tecnológicas pelas quais as sociedades humanas têm passado, e que ainda podem acarretar profundas mudanças legais, políticas e sociais. O artigo tem como objetivo principal identificar o papel da ética, enquanto disciplina filosófica, com relação ao recente e (...) promissor domínio de investigação sobre a ética da Inteligência Artificial. Após apresentar a posição do filósofo Peter Railton na ética aplicada à Inteligência Artificial, o artigo reconstitui as suas explicações na ética normativa e na metaética. Ao ilustrar as conexões entre a ética aplicada à Inteligência Artificial e a teoria moral, o artigo argumenta que o papel da ética na ética da Inteligência Artificial pode ser explicitado com o auxílio da engenharia conceitual. Essa abordagem mostra que conceitos como ‘agente’ e ‘interesse’, que são cruciais para a ética, como pode ser visto nas explicações de Railton, não devem ser pensados exclusivamente pela ética, ou mesmo somente pela filosofia, mas necessitam ser informados pelas ciências naturais e humanas. O artigo enfatiza a necessidade de realizar a tarefa filosófica de pensar a ética para além da ética, em um contexto interdisciplinar capaz de lidar com os complexos problemas práticos que impactam as sociedades humanas. (shrink)

A serious problem confronting discourses on recognition is that of showing equal respect for citizens’ diverse cultural identities whilst at the same time attending to feminist concerns. This article focuses on the complex issues emerging from the recent legislation prohibiting the Muslim veil in French state schools. I respond to these problems by defending two conditions of a postcolonial and feminist approach to the politics of recognition. This approach should be, first, transformative, in the sense of widening its conception of (...) core values through an engagement with cultural difference. Second, it should be critical in its orientation to practices affecting women adversely within any social group. An integration of these concerns is proposed in terms of ‘affective citizenship’. This approach supports the different components of women’s autonomous functioning, through a universalistic commitment to the creative expression of their hybrid identities. (shrink)

Esta reflexão pretende mostrar o discurso racional cartesiano na segunda prova da existência de Deus. Para tanto, Descartes se depara com uma pergunta central: qual a causa da existência da res cogitans que é finita e possui a ideia de infinito? A resposta é encontrada na desproporcionalidade ontológica entre o finito e o infinito. Essa desproporcionalidade é elucidada mediante dois conceitos: o princípio de causalidade que determina que a causa deve ser igual ou superior a coisa causada e o princípio (...) de criação contínua em que a causa que criou o ser não é menor do que aquela que o conserva em sua existência. As objeções destacadas no texto contra os argumentos cartesianos foram escolhas deliberadas que servem para elucidar a importância da racionalidade como fundamento para a prova da existência de Deus. A relação entre o entendimento e a liberdade, apresentada no texto sucintamente, justifica a impossibilidade da res cogitans ser causa de si mesma. Palavras-chave: Infinito; finito; causalidade; criação contínuaThis essay aims to show the rational Cartesian discourse on the second proof of God’s existence. In order to do so, Descartes faces a core question: which is the cause for the existence of the res cogitans that is finite in front of the idea of the infinite? The answer is found in the ontological disproportionality between the finite and the infinite. This disproportionality is elucidated through a couple crucial concepts: the principle of causality, which determines that the cause must be equal or superior to the caused thing and the principle of continuous creation, in which the cause that created the being is not inferior than the one that preserves its existence. The objections highlighted in the text against the Cartesian arguments were deliberated choices, to elucidate the relevance of rationality as the foundation for the proof of God’s existence. The relation between the understanding and the liberty, showed on the text even if succinctly, justifies the impossibility of the res cogitans to be the cause of itself. Key words: Infinite; finite; causality; creation continuous. (shrink)

In this chapter, we offer a reconstruction of the evolution of Leibniz’s thought concerning the problem of the infinite divisibility of bodies, the tension between actuality, unassignability, and syncategorematicity, and the closely related question of the possibility of infinitesimal quantities, both in physics and in mathematics.Some scholars have argued that syncategorematicity is a mature acquisition, to which Leibniz resorts to solve the question of his infinitesimals – namely the idea that infinitesimals are just signs for Archimedean exhaustions, and their unassignability (...) is a nominalist maneuver. On the contrary, we show that syncategorematicity, as a traditional idea of classical scholasticism, is a feature of young Leibniz’s thinking, from which he moves away in order to solve the same problem, as he gains mathematical knowledge.We have divided Leibniz’s path toward his mature view of infinitesimals into five phases, which are especially significant for reconstructing the entire evolution. In our reconstruction, an important role is played by Leibniz’s text De Quadratura Arithmetica. Based on this and other texts, we dispute the thesis that fictionality coincides with syncategorematicity, and that unassignability can be bypassed. (In this chapter, we employ “syncategorematic” as a shorthand for “eventually identifiable with a procedure of exhaustion” and, as a consequence, “involving only assignable quantities.” We also identify syncategorematicity with potentiality, as suggested by some part of the scholastics, and in Sect. 2.2, we show that the two characterizations are equivalent, provided that “potentiality” is intended in the correct way: namely as in the unending iterative procedures of Greek mathematics.) On the contrary, we maintain that unassignability, as incompatible with the principle of harmony, is the ultimate reason for the fictionality of infinitesimals. (shrink)

This article has, as an end in itself, the latent and pulsating objective of serving as a tool for introductory awakening to the process of racial literacy. As a further objective, I seek to point out the importance of this process in the family, institutional and social spheres, in order to minimally incite people to an anti-racist education. To this end, I start from the precision of concepts related to literacy and literacy systems, working with some concepts that are part (...) of this literacy repertoire such as race, racism and racial discrimination, in order to clarify them, so that they can be better understood in their applicability. In the second moment, to address the literacy, I start from a first question: who are the literate? Responding to this implies recognizing the place of white privilege with its implications. The other steps that make up this process are investigated throughout the article. I mainly use the elaborations of the Martinican philosopher, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon, from the work Pele Negra, Máscaras Brancas (1952), in order to, with this resumption, enter into the theme of the book by the New Zealand philosopher Annette Baier, Reflections On How We Live (2009) as a way of thinking about its feasibility, with a view to anti-racist education through racial literacy. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory.

Through cultural transmission, repeated learning by new individuals transforms cultural information, which tends to become increasingly compressible . Existing diffusion chain studies include in their design two processes that could be responsible for this tendency: learning and reproducing . This paper manipulates the presence of learning in a simple iterated drawing design experiment. We find that learning seems to be the causal factor behind the increase in compressibility observed in the transmitted information, while reproducing is a source of random heritable (...) innovations. Only a theory invoking these two aspects of cultural learning will be able to explain human culture's fundamental balance between stability and innovation. (shrink)

A leading philosopher examines the enigmatic relationship between institutions and human life.

In this paper, I present a framework where possible relations between learning and mental models are explored. In particular, I’ll be concerned with non-symbolic gestures accompanying discourse and their role in inducing the construction of models and therefore deep comprehension and learning in the listener. Also, I’ll be concerned with cognitive and socio-cognitive conflicts and their roles in inducing construction of alternative models of a problem and therefore in learning to reason. Human ability to learn is of great importance for (...) individuals interested in change. Indeed, to learn both declarative and procedural knowledge means to change, and in order to be able to intervene on change in a desired way it is necessary to have a theory of the mental representations and processes involved in learning and a theory of the communication and contexts that favour learning. (shrink)