We consider a modification of the pigeonhole principle, M P H P, introduced by Goerdt in [7]. M P H P is defined over n pigeons and log n holes, and more than one pigeon can go into a hole (according to some rules). Using a technique of Razborov [9] and simplified by Impagliazzo, Pudlák and Sgall [8], we prove that any Polynomial Calculus refutation of a set of polynomials encoding the M P H P, requires degree Ω(log n). We (...) also prove a simple Lemma giving a simulation of Resolution by Polynomial Calculus. Using this lemma, and a Resolution upper bound by Goerdt [7], we obtain that the degree lower bound is tight. Our lower bound establishes the optimality of the tree-like Resolution simulation by the Polynomial Calculus given in [6]. (shrink)

In the present article, I introduce Husserl’s analyses of ‘natural causality’ and ‘volitional causality’, which are collected in the volume ‘Wille und Handlung’ of the Husserliana edition Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins. My aim is to show that Husserl’s insight into these phenomena enables us to understand more clearly both the specificity of, and the relation between, the motivational nexus belonging to the sphere of the will in contrast with the causal laws of nature. In light of this understanding, in (...) the last part of the article I reflect on whether and to what extent there is, in fact, an ontological and epistemological compatibility between volitional causality and natural causality. (shrink)

World food production is facing exorbitant challenges like climate change, use of resources, population growth, and dietary changes. These, in turn, raise major ethical and political questions, such as how to uphold the right to adequate nutrition, or the right to enact a gastronomic culture and to preserve the conditions to do so. Proposals for utopic solutions vary from vertical farming and lab meat to diets filled with the most fanciful insects and seaweeds. Common to all proposals is a polarized (...) understanding of food and diets, famously captured by Warren Belasco in the contraposition between technological fixes and anthropological fixes. According to the first, technology will deliver clean, just, pleasurable, affordable food; future generations will not need to adjust much of their dietary cultures. According to the second, future generations should dramatically change their dietary habits (what they eat and how they eat it) to achieve a sustainable diet. The two fixes found remarkably distinct perspectives over dietary politics and the ethics of food production and consumption. In this paper we argue that such polarized thinking rests on a misrepresentation of the ontological status of food, which in turn affects the underlying ethical and political issues. Food is a socially constructed object that draws in specific ways on habits, norms, traditions, geographical, and climatic conditions. Although this thesis seems somewhat obvious, its consequences on the ethical and political perspectives on the future of food have not been derived properly. After introducing the issue at stake (¤1), we point out the polarities that characterize food utopias (¤2) and their ontological faults (¤3). We hence suggest that a socio-ontological analysis of food can better deliver the principles for a foundation of food utopias (¤4). (shrink)

We present in this paper a novel ontological theory of events whose central tenet is the Aristotelian distinction between the object that changes and the actual subject of change, which is what we call an individual quality. While in the Kimian tradition events are individuated by a triple ⟨ o, P, t ⟩, where o is an object, P a property, and t an interval of time, for us the simplest events are qualitative changes, individuated by a triple ⟨ o, (...) q, t ⟩, where q is an individual quality inhering in o or in one of its parts. Detaching the individuation of events from the property they exemplify results in a fine-grained theory that keeps metaphysics and semantics clearly separate, and lies between the multiplicative and the unitarian approaches. We discuss then the way language refers to events, observing that, in most cases, event descriptions refer to complex, cognitively relevant clusters of co-occurring qualitative changes, which exhibit a synchronic structure depending on the way they are described. Contra Bennett, who famously argued that the semantics of event names ultimately depends on “local context and unprincipled intuitions”, we show how the lexicon provides systematic principles for individuating such clusters and classifying them into kinds. Finally, we address some open challenges in the semantics of locative and manner modifiers. (shrink)

In its formlessness and potentiality, prime matter is a problematic entity of medieval metaphysics and its ontological limitations drastically affect human possibility of conceiving it. In this article, I analyse three influential strategies elaborated to justify an epistemic access to prime matter. They are incidental perception, negative abstraction, and analogy. Through a systematic and historical analysis of these procedures, the article shows the richness of interpretations and theoretical stakes implied by the conundrum of how prime matter can be known by (...) human beings. In particular, the reasons behind the later medieval acceptance of analogy as the main way to unveil prime matter become clearer by pointing out the correlation between the ontological and epistemological levels of the medieval examination of prime matter. (shrink)

A common view is that self-identity is essential to objects if anything is. Itself a substantive metaphysical view, this is a position of some import in wider debates, particularly in connection with such problems as physicalism and personal identity. In this article I challenge the view. I distinguish between two accounts of essence, the modal and the definitional, and argue that self-identity is essential to objects on the former but not on the latter. After laying out my case, I deal (...) with a number of objections. (shrink)

We propose a novel ontological analysis of relations and relationships based on a re-visitation of a classic problem in the practice of knowledge repre- sentation and conceptual modeling, namely relationship reification. Our idea is that a relation holds in virtue of a relationship's existence. Relationships are therefore truthmakers of relations. In this paper we present a general theory or reification and truthmaking, and discuss the interplay between events and rela- tionships, suggesting that relationships are the focus of events, which emerge (...) from the context (the scene) they occur in. (shrink)

In the present article, I discuss Husserl’s analysis of the genesis of action in the Husserliana edition Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. My aim is to clarify how a “voluntary action” has its...

Fuzzy logics are many-valued logics that are well suited to reasoning in the context of vagueness. They provide the basis for the wider field of Fuzzy Logic, encompassing diverse areas such as fuzzy control, fuzzy databases, and fuzzy mathematics. This book provides an accessible and up-to-date introduction to this fast-growing and increasingly popular area. It focuses in particular on the development and applications of "proof-theoretic" presentations of fuzzy logics; the result of more than ten years of intensive work by researchers (...) in the area, including the authors. In addition to providing alternative elegant presentations of fuzzy logics, proof-theoretic methods are useful for addressing theoretical problems and developing efficient deduction and decision algorithms. Proof-theoretic presentations also place fuzzy logics in the broader landscape of non-classical logics, revealing deep relations with other logics studied in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Philosophy. The book builds methodically from the semantic origins of fuzzy logics to proof-theoretic presentations such as Hilbert and Gentzen systems, introducing both theoretical and practical applications of these presentations. (shrink)

Moral and legal philosophy are too entangled: moral philosophy is prone to model interpersonal moral relationships on a juridical image, and legal philosophy often proceeds as if the criminal law is an institutional reflection of juridically imagined interpersonal moral relationships. This article challenges this alignment and in so doing argues that the function of the criminal law lies not fundamentally in moral blame, but in regulation of harmful conduct. The upshot is that, in contrast to interpersonal relationships, the criminal law (...) cannot lose its standing to blame through institutional analogues of hypocrisy, complicity, and meddling. Rather, certain forms of structural and severe historical and contemporary injustice point to the question of the overall legitimacy of state authority. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend an account of the nature and the epistemology of religious beliefs loosely inspired by Wittgenstein´s remarks on the structure of reason and on the nature of religious beliefs. I argue that following and developing his account we can not only make a strong case for the prima facie rationality of religious beliefs but also, and more importantly, cast new light on the epistemology of religious disagreement. Keywords: Wittgenstein. Hinges. Epistemic warrant. Religious disagreement.

Husserl’s official account of essence is modal. It is also, I submit, incompatible with the role that essence is supposed to play, especially relative to necessity, in his overall philosophy. In the Husserlian framework, essence should rather be treated as a non-modal notion. The point, while not generally acknowledged, has been made before (by Kevin Mulligan for one); yet the arguments given for it, though perhaps sound, are not Husserlian. In this paper I present a thoroughly Husserlian argument for that (...) claim, as well as a Husserlian essentialist account of necessity. I also discuss the role of grounding within the account. (shrink)

The study investigates how board cultural diversity (BCD) affects bank stakeholder engagement through improved corporate social performance (CSP) and whether banks' corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy mediates the relationship between BCD and banks' social performance. Adopting an international sample of 379 banks from 2010 to 2019, we found that BCD improves engagement in socially responsible issues in the banking sector. Moreover, we show a mediating role of strategic CSR on the relationship between BCD and banks' social performance. Hence, we contribute (...) to the research on the role of corporate governance mechanisms as drivers of CSR engagement. Furthermore, based on the mediation effect of strategic CSR, we advance the discussion on the link between BCD and banks' social performance. Our findings provide implications for banks and policy-makers, indicating the opportunity to promote cultural diversity, which supports socially responsible banking, while a CSR strategy positively impacts the stakeholder approach in the banking industry. (shrink)

In the present article I aim to make a new contribution to our phenomenological understanding of the foundation between intentional experiences. In order to accomplish this goal, I discuss Husserl’s effort to avoid the conflation of the class of non-objectifying acts, i.e., evaluations and volitions, with the class of objectifying acts, i.e., cognitions. Through the analysis of the transition from his early to his mature account, I explore how Husserl, by readdressing the idea of foundation in relation to the shift (...) from the practical-evaluative to the theoretical attitude, clarifies how evaluations and volitions can exert their intentionality only on the basis of a foundation on cognitions without thereby being reduced to a mere special case of founded representations. (shrink)

This paper investigates the regulation of ethical behavior of professionals. Ethical perceptions of South African professionals operating in the business community (specifically accountants, lawyers and engineers) concerning their need for and awareness of professional codes, and the frequency and acceptability of peer contravention of such codes were sought. The existence of conflict between corporate codes and professional codes was also investigated. Results, based on 217 replies, indicated that the professionals believe that codes are necessary and are relatively aware of the (...) contents of such codes. Despite these ethical tendencies, respondents (particularly lawyers) believe that their peers contravene their professional codes relatively often. No significant differences in ethical tendencies between professionals consulting to and those working in business were found. Many respondents were regulated by more than one code of ethics, but few experienced conflict between such codes. In the events of conflict occurring professionals chose to adhere to their professional code above others. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that entities have essences. What are we to make of the view that essences are themselves entities? E.J. Lowe has put forward an infinite regress argument against it. In this paper I challenge that argument. First, drawing on work by J.W. Wieland, I give a general condition for the obtaining of a vicious infinite regress. I then argue that in Lowe’s case the condition is not met. In making my case, I mainly (but not exclusively) consider definitionalist (...) accounts of essence. I make a re￾quirement to which definitionalists such as Lowe are committed and which, I venture, should also be palatable to non-naïve modalists. I call it the Relevance Principle. The defence trades on it, as well as on the distinction, due to K. Fine, between mediate and immediate essence. (shrink)

In 2005, IOS Press published the first issue of applied Ontology. At the time, we argued that, at the core of the journal, there was “a desire to understand the nature of reality and how people construe their world”. We declared that ontology was both “fundamental to human thought” and “to translating our thoughts into computational artifacts” (Guarino & Musen,2005). With an editorial board of distinguished scholars representing the fields of computer science, informatics, information science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and social (...) science, we had the firm belief that applied Ontologywould fulfill an important academic niche, becoming an essential forum for discussion on topics such as ontological analysis, conceptual modeling, and the role of domain models in building and managing information systems. The facts now show that we were correct. (shrink)

Im März 2020 änderte sich das Leben für viele (nicht nur in Deutschland) radikal. Das Virus SARS-CoV-2, besser bekannt als „COVID-19-“ oder „Corona-Virus“, breitete sich als Verursacher einer zwischenzeitlich global virulenten Pandemie in unvermuteter Geschwindigkeit aus. Es verwundert nicht, dass viele in dieser unsicheren Zeit auf der Suche nach Orientierung nach scheinbar bekannten Mustern fahnden. Ein solches Muster glaubten offenbar einige, in Camus’ Roman "Die Pest" finden zu können, ein Roman, der – dem Titel nach – auch von einer Seuche (...) zu erzählen scheint. Befasst man sich mit dem Werk von Albert Camus, dem Philosophen und Literaturnobelpreisträger, kommt man schwerlich umhin, eines der Grundprobleme der Philosophie als einer akademischen Disziplin zu thematisieren, an der zweifelsohne ein öffentliches Interesse besteht, die sich aber in der Rolle des Um-Rat-Gefragten notorisch unwohl zu fühlen scheint. In diesem Beitrag werden die Thesen Albert Camus’ zur Relevanz der Kunst, zu deren Spannungsverhältnis zur akademischen Philosophie und zur Rolle beider in unserer krisengeschüttelten Gesellschaft untersucht. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the social value of health research should be conceptualized as a function of both the expected benefits of the research and the priority that the beneficiaries deserve. People deserve greater priority the worse off they are. This conception of social value can be applied for at least two important purposes: in health research priority setting when research funders, policy-makers, or researchers decide between alternative research projects; and in evaluating the ethics of proposed research proposals (...) when research ethics committees assess whether the social value of the research is sufficient to justify the risks and burdens to research participants and others. In assessing how far a proposed research project will advance the interests of people who are more disadvantaged, research priority setters and RECs should examine the diseases that the research targets and the type of research. Just as certain diseases impose a greater burden on people who are more disadvantaged, so certain types of intervention and forms of research are more likely to benefit people who are more disadvantaged. We outline which populations are likely to be representative of the global worst off and identify what types of health research, and which disease categories, are priorities for these populations. (shrink)

Ackrill’s Problem is a tension between Aristotle’s alleged view that the matter of a living being is a body that is essentially ensouled, and his view that the matter of a substance preexists its generation. Most interpreters solve the tension by claiming that the subject of substantial generation is not the organic body of the living being, but its non-organic matter. I defend a different solution by showing that the embryological theory ofOn the Generation of Animalsimplies that the organic body (...) of a living being already exists before acquiring the soul in actuality. (shrink)

This research aims to examine access to medical treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic for people living with disabilities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the practical and ethical problems of allocating limited medical resources such as intensive care unit beds and ventilators became critical. Although different countries have proposed different guidelines to manage this emergency, these proposed criteria do not sufficiently consider people living with disabilities. People living with disabilities are therefore at a higher risk of exclusion from medical treatments as physicians (...) tend to assume they have poor quality of life, whereas access to medical treatment should be based on several parameters, including clinical data and prognosis. However, the COVID-19 pandemic shifts the medical paradigm from person-centred medicine to community-centred medicine, challenging the main ethical theories. We reviewed the main guidelines and recommendations for resources allocation and examined their position toward persons with disabilities. Based on our findings, we propose criteria for not discriminating against people with disabilities in allocating resources. The shift from person-centred to community-centred medicine offers opportunities but also risks sacrificing the most vulnerable people. The principle of reasonable accommodation must always be considered to guarantee the rights of persons with disabilities. (shrink)

In the present article I discuss, in confrontation with the most recent studies on Husserl’s phenomenology of acting and willing, the taxonomy of action that is collected in the volume ‘_Wille und Handlung_’ of the Husserliana edition _Studien zur Struktur des Bewussteins_. In so doing, I first present Husserl’s universal characterization of action (_Handlung_) as a volitional process (_willentlicher Vorgang_). Then, after clarifying what it means for a process to have a character of volitionality (_Willentlichkeit_), I illustrate the various types (...) of actions, which Husserl distinguishes as ‘straightforward’ (_schlicht_) or ‘deciding’ (_entscheidend_), ‘primary’ (_primär_) or ‘secondary’ (_sekundär_), ‘inner’ (_innere_) or ‘outer’ (_äußere_), ‘immediate’ (_unmittelbar_) or mediate (_mittelbar_), ‘simple’ (_einfach_) or ‘compound’ (_zusammengesetzt_). Finally, I consider Husserl’s discussion of the direction and foundation of action. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the role that individual and collective acts of interpretation play in shaping a metaphysics of food. Our analysis moves from David Kaplan’s recent contention that food is always open to interpretation, and substantially expands its theoretical underpinnings by drawing on recent scholarship on food and social ontology. After setting up the terms of the discussion (§1), we suggest (§2) that the contention can be read subjectively or structurally, and that the latter can be given three (...) sub-readings. We then lay out (§3) three case studies that, we submit, any viable theory of a metaphysics of food should be able to account for. We show that one structural reading—based on the idea of negotiation—swiftly accommodates for the three case studies. We thus conclude that this reading is most promising for charting a metaphysics of food. (shrink)

In his latest monograph, The Realm of Criminal Law, Antony Duff gives us a further, magisterial statement of the vision of criminal law, its procedural framework, and its sanctioning system, which he has been developing over the past 35 years. This is Duff’s own book-length contribution to the tremendously fruitful collaborative Criminalization project. That project has already generated four edited volumes and two fine monographs by Farmer and Tadros. It will shape the field for decades to come; and it has (...) decisively laid to rest a longstanding puzzle about why, within criminal law theory, the principles underlying criminalisation had received relatively little attention as compared with those underlying, most obviously, criminal responsibility. (shrink)

This paper is about a certain view of intentionality, a problem faced by the view, and two ways in which, it has been proposed, the problem might be solved. The view is that every intentional state has an intentional object. The problem is that the putative intentional objects of some intentional states do not, or even cannot, exist. The two strategies to solve the problem and secure the view are those implemented by Tim Crane in his article “Intentional Objects”. In (...) this paper I argue that both Crane’s implementations and the strategies in general are unsuccessful. By way of overview, I also discuss other ways in which the problem has been addressed. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that according to Edmund Husserl “tendency” does not designate a specific class of intentional experiences but rather, on par with “consciousness-of,” a universal mode of intentionality essential for any constitution of sense. In doing so, I explicate Husserl’s distinction between intentionality as tendency (_Tendenz_), which he describes as a striving (_Streben_), and intentionality as consciousness-of (_Bewusstsein-von_), which he describes as a presentation (_Vorstellung_) of an intentional object. Then, I discuss Husserl’s problematic way of relating these (...) two universal modes of intentionality. Although he claims that intentionality as tendency presupposes intentionality as consciousness-of, I argue that the universal validity of this presupposition is put into question by the consideration of drives (_Triebe_), which Husserl describes as passive tendencies that originally lack any consciousness of the end strived toward, and, hence, do not seem to presuppose any presentation of it. I show that the lack of intentionality as consciousness-of poses two major problems in Husserl’s account, in that it makes drives seemingly unintelligible as (i) strivings and as (ii) motivated experiences. Lastly, to find a possible solution to these problems and better clarify the relation between intentionality as tendency and intentionality as consciousness-of at the level of drives, I explore Edith Stein’s account of drives as aimless strivings governed by experiential causality (_Erlebniskausalität_), discussing its advantages and potential drawbacks, as well as its compatibility with Husserl’s account. (shrink)

Substance addiction has been historically conceived and widely researched as a brain disease. There have been ample criticisms of brain-centred approaches to addiction, and this paper aims to align with one such criticism by applying insights from phenomenology of psychiatry. More precisely, this work will apply Merleau-Ponty’s insightful distinction between the biological and lived body. In this light, the disease model emerges as an incomplete account of substance addiction because it captures only its biological aspects. When considering addiction as a (...) brain disorder, it will be shown that research fails to account for the contextual, functional, and emotional aspects inherent to subjective health. It is concluded that, while the disease model is fundamental to our understanding of what happens in the brain, its brain-centred approach is cure-oriented. Instead, we suggest a care-orientated approach, which understands and treats the psychological feel as bodily experience situated in an environment, allowing for a more encompassing therapeutic perspective. (shrink)

Wellner’s article aims at changing an essential element within phenomenology by introducing the idea of digital imagination. Assuming her thesis, I aim to raise two possible kinds of questions generated by the introduction of a technologically embedded imagination which is externalized.

There are many ways in which biases can enter processes of scientific reasoning. One of these is what Ludwik Fleck has called a “harmony of illusions”. In this paper, Fleck’s ideas on the relevance of social mechanisms in epistemic processes and his detailed description of publication processes in science will be used as a starting point to investigate the connection between cognitive processes, social dynamics, and biases in this context. Despite its usefulness as a first step towards a more detailed (...) analysis, Fleck’s account needs to be updated in order to take the developments of digital communication technologies of the 21st century into account. Taking a closer look at today’s practices of science communication shows that information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a major role here. By presenting a detailed case study concerning the database SCOPUS, the question will be investigated how such ICTs can influence the division of epistemic labour. The result will be that they potentially undermine the epistemic benefits of social dynamics in science communication due to their inherent tendency to reduce the diversity of scientific hypotheses and ideas. (shrink)

In this paper, the author suggest that the historical and institutional conditions of existence of the concepts which animate legal argumentation – like the historical and institutional conditions of existence of certain forms of law – are of interest not only in their own right, but also because they raise methodological issues for jurisprudence. These include questions about the relationship between concepts and the social phenomena which they purport to categorise; about the relationship between philosophical and other forms of legal (...) theory; and about how a jurisprudence largely dominated by philosophical methods may be brought into productive dialogue with other forms of theoretical analysis. Only by broadening both its horizons and its methods, the author argues, will jurisprudence be capable of illuminating not only doctrinal analysis within particular jurisdictions at particular times, but also comparative and historical scholarship. (shrink)

East Asians have been found to reason in relatively holistic fashion and Americans in relatively analytic fashion. It has been proposed that these cognitive differences are the result of social practices that encourage interdependence for Asians and independence for Americans. If so, cognitive differences might be found even across regions that are geographically close. We compared performance on a categorization task of relatively interdependent southern Italians and relatively independent northern Italians and found the former to reason in a more holistic (...) fashion than the latter. Furthermore, as it has been argued that working class social practices encourage interdependence and middle class practices encourage independence, we anticipated that working class participants might reason in a more holistic fashion than middle class participants. This is what we found – at least for southern Italy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects on the everyday world of actual Augmented Reality games which introduce digital objects in our surroundings from a phenomenological point of view. Augmented Reality is a new technology aiming to merge digital and real objects, and it is becoming pervasively used thanks to the application for mobile devices Pokémon Go by Niantic. We will study this game and other similar applications to shed light on their possible effects on our lives (...) and on our everyday world from a phenomenological perspective. In the first part, we will show how these digital objects are visualised as merged in the surroundings. We will point out that even if they are visualised as part of the everyday world, they are not part of it because they are still related to the fictional world generated by the game. In the second part, we will show how the existence of these objects in their fictional world has effects on the everyday world where everybody lives. The goal of Augmented Reality is not reached yet because these objects are not part of the everyday world, but it already makes our lives embedded with digital elements. We will show if these new objects have effects on our world and on how we live our lives. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the computer ethics debate on software ownership protection by examining the ontological, methodological, and ethical problems related to property right infringement that should come prior to any legal discussion. The ontological problem consists in determining precisely what it is for a computer program to be a copy of another one, a largely neglected problem in computer ethics. The methodological problem is defined as the difficulty of deciding whether a given software system is a copy of another (...) system. And the ethical problem corresponds to establishing when a copy constitutes, or does not constitute, a property right infringement. The ontological problem is solved on the logical analysis of abstract machines, and the latter are argued to be the appropriate level of abstraction for software at which the methodological and the ethical problems can be successfully addressed. (shrink)

This paper provides a review of Raymond Turner’s book Computational Artefacts. Towards a Philosophy of Computer Science. Focus is made on the definition of program correctness as the twofold problem of evaluating whether both the symbolic program and the physical implementation satisfy a set of specifications. The review stresses how these are not two separate problems. First, it is highlighted how formal proofs of correctness need to rely on the analysis of physical computational processes. Secondly, it is underlined how software (...) testing requires considering the formal relations holding between the specifications and the symbolic program. Such a mutual dependency between formal and empirical program verification methods is finally shown to influence the debate on the epistemological status of computer science. (shrink)

Technology always provides a new perception of the world. However, it is not clear when technology produces “mere” new informations and when it provides something more such as a production of new objects in our world which start to “live” around us. The aim of this paper is to study how technology shapes our surrounding world. The questions which we are going to answer are: Is it really adding new objects to our world? If yes, does every technology have this (...) potentiality? We are going to tackle the problem using a phenomenological and post-phenomenological approach focussing our attention on the perceptual level. Using Husserl’s philosophy we will study how technology are deeply involved in our perception and, thanks to post-phenomenology and its concept of “embodiment relations,” we will be able to determine which kind of technologies have the potentiality to change our surrounding world introducing and producing new objects in it. (shrink)

Analyzing and evaluating legal case reports are labor-intensive tasks for judges and lawyers, who usually base their decisions on report abstracts, legal principles, and commonsense reasoning. Thus, summarizing legal documents is time-consuming and requires excellent human expertise. Moreover, public legal corpora of specific languages are almost unavailable. This paper proposes a transfer learning approach with extractive and abstractive techniques to cope with the lack of labeled legal summarization datasets, namely a low-resource scenario. In particular, we conducted extensive multi- and cross-language (...) experiments. The proposed work outperforms the state-of-the-art results of extractive summarization on the Australian Legal Case Reports dataset and sets a new baseline for abstractive summarization. Finally, syntactic and semantic metrics assessments have been carried out to evaluate the accuracy and the factual consistency of the machine-generated legal summaries. (shrink)

Background: Compassion fatigue is recognized as impacting the health and effectiveness of healthcare providers, and consequently, patient care. Compassion fatigue is distinct from “burnout.” Reliable measurement tools, such as the Professional Quality of Life scale, have been developed to measure the prevalence, and predict risk of compassion fatigue. This study reviews the prevalence of compassion fatigue among healthcare practitioners, and relationships to demographic variables. Methods: A systematic review was conducted using key words in MEDLINE, PubMed, and Ovid databases. Data were (...) extracted from a total of 71 articles meeting inclusion criteria, from studies measuring compassion fatigue in healthcare providers using a validated instrument. Quantitative and qualitative data were extracted and compiled by three independent reviewers into an evidence table that included basic study characteristics, study strength and quality determination, measurements of compassion fatigue, and general findings. Meta-analysis, where data allowed, was stratified by Professional Quality of Life version, heterogeneity was quantified, and pooled means were reported with 95% confidence interval. A table of major study characteristics and results was created. Ethical consideration: This paper contains no primary data obtained directly from research participants. Data obtained from previously published resources have been acknowledged within references. Psychological distress, particularly compassion fatigue, can be insidious, no health profession is immune, and may significantly impact the ability to provide care. Results: A total of 71 studies were included. Compassion fatigue was reported across all practitioner groups studied. Relationships to most demographic variables such as years of experience and specialty were either not statistically significant or unclear. Variability in reporting of Professional Quality of Life results was found. Interpretation: Compassion fatigue exists across diverse practitioner groups. Prevalence is highly variable, and its relationship with demographic, personal, and/or professional variables is inconsistent. Questions are raised about how to mitigate compassion fatigue. (shrink)