In his 2011 article “Global Bifurcation: The Decision Window” Ervin Laszlo notes that “we have reached a watershed in our social and cultural evolution. The sciences of systems tell us that when complex open systems … approach a condition of critical instability, they face a moment of truth: they either transform or break down.” In this article we provide our own vision of this Global Bifurcation. This work stems naturally from the research highlighted in the article titled “Transition to Crisis-Free (...) Development: A Myth or Reality?” that was published in World Futures in 2014. In our new article, we move forward suggesting that crises-free development is not only possible but is also very likely, and paradoxically the world is now going through the most challenging transition from one paradigm of development to another. Based on our previous research as well as the findings of the Fifth Report to the Club of Rome, we suggest reasons for the development and implementation of a megaproject featuring a new model of life so as to make the paradigm shift possible, exclude negative implications of the upcoming technological “singularity,” and foster the achievement of an objectively defined goal of development, and this should reasonably require support from and direct involvement of the United Nations. The mechanism for implementation of this model suggests coordinating interests of the government, society, and business communities on each level with interests of particular individuals. (shrink)

(2014). Transition to Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality? World Futures: Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 93-119.

Objetivo: Analizar los riesgos psicosociales sufridos durante la pandemia por docentes. Método: Análisis descriptivo correlaciones y de comparación de medias. Muestra: 265 docentes no universitarios. Instrumentos: Cuestionario validado extraído de UNIPSICO Battery, Evaluación del Burnout- BAT y Escala de Inseguridad Laboral y cuestionario ad-hoc para medir recursos, información, medidas e impacto. Resultados: Inequidad seguido de sobrecarga son los mayores riesgos. Perciben falta de justicia organizacional, conflicto de rol e interpersonal, mayor carga de trabajo. Apoyo social alto. Recursos, información y medidas (...) insuficientes y un impacto moderado-alto en su desempeño profesional. Valores no significativos en cuanto a burnout y salud. (shrink)

The outburst of antiracist protests in the USA in 2020 demonstrates how deeply this society’s present-day problems are rooted in its past. From this perspective, a study of the cultural memory of the time of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the key moment in the contemporary American nation formation, is especially relevant and important. The cultural frontier between the North and the South that had appeared as an outcome of differences in US history has not disappeared up (...) to now. By example of the complexity and inconsistency of the historical memory of the Civil War, slavery, and its abolition in the USA manifested in their visual representations, the article documents how through collective memory, history does not just invade modernity but is present in it, particularly in the form of memorials, monuments, museum expositions, and therefore determines the nation’s modernity to a large degree. (shrink)

Religious Remembrance. Professor Mykola Zakovych.

In spatial sequence synaesthesia ordinal stimuli are perceived as arranged in peripersonal space. Using fMRI, we examined the neural bases of SSS and colour synaesthesia for spoken words in a late-blind synaesthete, JF. He reported days of the week and months of the year as both coloured and spatially ordered in peripersonal space; parts of the days and festivities of the year were spatially ordered but uncoloured. Words that denote time-units and triggered no concurrents were used in a control condition. (...) Both conditions inducing SSS activated the occipito-parietal, infero-frontal and insular cortex. The colour area hOC4v was engaged when the synaesthetic experience included colour. These results confirm the continued recruitment of visual colour cortex in this late-blind synaesthetes. Synaesthesia also involved activation in inferior frontal cortex, which may be related to spatial memory and detection, and in the insula, which might contribute to audiovisual integration related to the processing of inducers and concurrents. (shrink)

Objective: Fertility loss due to cancer treatment can be a devastating experience for women and the couple. Undergoing fertility preservation can be a complex decision from both a medical and emotional point of view. The aim of the present study was to evaluate which socio-demographic and psychological factors predict a high motivation to undergo fertility preservation.Methods: Fifty-eight female cancer patients who accessed an Oncofertility Unit completed: a questionnaire to collect socio-demographic characteristics and the level of motivation, the Beck-Depression Inventory-II, the (...) State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y, and the Fertility Problem Inventory.Results: Almost half of the sample declared a high motivation. At multiple logistic regression analysis only the “Need for parenthood” subscale of the FPI predicted a high motivation. We alternatively evaluated as possible predictor the construct “Representations about the importance of parenthood” in place of the two separate subscales. At multiple logistic regression analysis, only this variable predicted a high motivation to undergo fertility preservation.Conclusion: The most important predictor of a high motivation to undergo fertility preservation is the individual desire for parenthood. This implies that, regardless of socio-demographic characteristics, any woman of childbearing age should receive an appropriate counseling about fertility preservation. (shrink)

Some philosophers claim that perception immediately and prima facie justifies belief in virtue of its phenomenal character (Huemer, Skepticism and the veil of perception. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2001; Pryor, There is immediate justification. In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, London (2014), pp. 181–202, 2005). To explain this special justificatory power, some appeal to perception’s presentational character: the idea that perceptual experience presents its objects as existing here-and-now (Chudnoff, Intuition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Berghofer, (...) Husserl Stud 34(2):145–170, 2018). As some philosophers have noted, if perception justifies in virtue of its presentational character alone, the kind of content perception has should not matter for perceptual justification; more precisely, it should not matter whether perceptual content is propositional or not (e.g., Smithies, The epistemic role of consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019; Kriegel, Australas J Philos, 2021). However, most philosophers tend to resist this conclusion, holding that perception must be propositional in order to justify, on the ground that all our model of justification are propositional (e.g., Gauker, Philos Perspect 26(1):19–50, 2012). This paper challenges this claim. The paper consists of a negative and a positive part. In the negative part, I discuss and reject the master argument for the propositionality of perception; the conclusion is that propositional content is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain perception’s justificatory power. In the positive part, I take this conclusion seriously and outline an objectual model of perceptual justification. I define objectual attitudes as mental states whose content is not a full proposition, but a sub-propositional representational item, such as the representation of objects, properties, and kinds (Grzankowski and Montague, Non-propositional intentionality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018), and show that it is plausible that some perceptions and some beliefs are attitudes of this kind. I then argue that objectual perceptual experiences have the right kind of phenomenal character and the right kind of structure to serve for immediate prima facie justification. I conclude by defending my objectual model from three objections. (shrink)

Primary progressive aphasia is a clinical syndrome in which patients progressively lose speech and language abilities. Three variants are recognized: logopenic, associated with phonology and/or short-term verbal memory deficits accompanied by left temporo-parietal atrophy; semantic, associated with semantic deficits and anterior temporal lobe atrophy; non-fluent associated with grammar and/or speech-motor deficits and inferior frontal gyrus atrophy. Here, we set out to investigate whether the three variants of PPA can be dissociated based on error patterns in a single language task. We (...) recruited 21 lvPPA, 28 svPPA, and 24 nfvPPA patients, together with 31 healthy controls, and analyzed their performance on an auditory noun-to-verb generation task, which requires auditory analysis of the input, access to and selection of relevant lexical and semantic knowledge, as well as preparation and execution of speech. Task accuracy differed across the three variants and controls, with lvPPA and nfvPPA having the lowest and highest accuracy, respectively. Critically, machine learning analysis of the different error types yielded above-chance classification of patients into their corresponding group. An analysis of the error types revealed clear variant-specific effects: lvPPA patients produced the highest percentage of “not-a-verb” responses and the highest number of semantically related nouns ; in contrast, svPPA patients produced the highest percentage of “unrelated verb” responses and the highest number of light verbs. Taken together, our findings indicate that error patterns in an auditory verb generation task are associated with the breakdown of different neurocognitive mechanisms across PPA variants. Specifically, they corroborate the link between temporo-parietal regions with lexical processing, as well as ATL with semantic processes. These findings illustrate how the analysis of pattern of responses can help PPA phenotyping and heighten diagnostic sensitivity, while providing insights on the neural correlates of different components of language. (shrink)

We consider embeddings of structures which preserve spectra: if g: M → S with S computable, then M should have the same Turing degree spectrum (as a structure) that g(M) has (as a relation on S). We show that the computable dense linear order L is universal for all countable linear orders under this notion of embedding, and we establish a similar result for the computable random graph G. Such structures are said to be spectrally universal. We use our results (...) to answer a question of Goncharov, and also to characterize the possible spectra of structures as precisely the spectra of unary relations on G. Finally, we consider the extent to which all spectra of unary relations on the structure L may be realized by such embeddings, offering partial results and building the first known example of a structure whose spectrum contains precisely those degrees c with c′ ≥T 0″. (shrink)

Introduction: Physical distancing under the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic had a significant impact on lifestyles, including exercise routines. In this study, we examined the relationship between mental health and addictive behaviors, such as excessive exercise and the use of image and performance enhancing drugs across 12 sport disciplines.Materials and methods: A large cross-sectional sample of the adult population was surveyed. The mean age was 33.09. The number of male participants was 668. The use of IPEDs was assessed in conjunction with (...) psychometric measures such as the Exercise Addiction Inventory and the Appearance Anxiety Inventory. The participants were grouped into activity group and non-activity group according to the presence or absence of their exercise habits. The results were compared between these groups, as well as across sport disciplines, while taking into account the relationship between different psychological measures and IPEDs consumption.Results: The frequency of IPEDs use was higher among AG than NAG, although AG participants reported less history of addictions than NAG. The logistic regression analysis revealed that scores equal to or above cutoff points, in both the EAI and AAI, predicted the IPEDs use. Regarding the differences across the various sport disciplines, those who were involved in practicing Weight Lifting and Cross Fit were found to be more at risk of excessive exercising and more inclined to use a wide range of IPEDs.Conclusions: Although exercise could help to increase well-being and prevent addictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, our results show that those in the AG are particularly vulnerable to excessive IPEDs use. Sport disciplines associated with higher EAI and AAI scores have also shown a higher tendency to excessive IPEDs use. Furthermore, the factor of having above the cutoff scores in EAI or AAI in each sport could indicate larger IPEDs consumption regardless of the discipline. In light of the current findings, it is necessary to better define the “non-excessive” levels of exercise in various sport disciplines and an adequate intake of IPEDs to ensure the safety and well-being of people during a pandemic. (shrink)

The value of a company’s ethical reputation has become a focal point for management researchers. We seek to join this conversation and extend the research centered on a firm’s ethical reputation. We accomplish this by shifting our focus away from its impact on external stakeholders to its impact on internal stakeholders. To this end, we rely on signaling theory to explain why a firm’s ethical reputation matters to its employees in an effort to bridge the macro–micro research gap. Across two (...) studies, we propose and demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation impacts employee subjective career success in form of career opportunities and work–life balance. Given our signaling theory framework, we also identify and explain when two industry-level characteristics operate as boundary conditions that distort a firm’s ethical reputation signaling properties. Specifically, the results demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation is positively related to employees’ perceptions of career opportunities and work–life balance. The results of our studies also demonstrate that the relatively high levels of industry competition and industry regulation weaken the positive impact of a firm’s ethical reputation on career opportunities and work–life balance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Reseña del libro Platón. Fedro. Traducción, notas, introducción y comentarios por M. A. Fierro.

Les débats sur la technique voient s'affronter souvent des positions tranchées entre technophiles et technophobes. On avancerait sans doute en déplaçant la question de la valeur et des dangers des artefacts techniques vers une réflexion philosophique plus profonde sur la technicisation de la vie et du monde, qui mérite généalogie et archéologie. Cet ouvrage, qui réunit plusieurs philosophes réputés de la question, veut à cet égard convoquer au débat les pensées de Martin Heidegger et de Michel Foucault qui ont permis (...) à travers leurs usages de la terminologie du Gestell et du dispositif de renouveler la question de la technique. Même si M. Foucault a été marqué par les analyses heideggériennes, il s'agit d'aller bien au-delà de la question des influences. Les langues d'appartenance de ces termes, leurs traductions deviennent aussi l'occasion d'explorer à nouveaux frais la complexité de la question. (shrink)

Since March 2020, many countries throughout the world have been in lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Italy, the quarantine began on March 9, 2020, and containment measures were partially reduced only on May 4, 2020. The quarantine experience has a significant psychological impact at all ages but can have it above all on adolescents who cannot go to school, play sports, and meet friends. In this scenario, this study aimed to provide a general overview of the perceived (...) risk related to COVID-19 and the psychological experience of quarantine in a large sample of Italian adolescents. 978 adolescents (males = 339; females = 639) living in 13 Italian regions and attending upper secondary school (age range: 13–20, M = 16.57, SD = 1.20), responded to an internet-based questionnaire about perceived health risk related to COVID-19, knowledge and information on measures to control the pandemic, beliefs and opinions on stage two of the quarantine, and psychological experiences related to quarantine. 31.1% of the participants lived in "red zones," which are places where the government has imposed stricter measures of containment due to exponential and uncontrolled growth in contagion cases compared to other areas in Italy. According to our results, Italian adolescents had a low perception of risk of COVID-19. Perceived comparative susceptibility and perceived seriousness were also very low. However, they were aware of the restriction measures necessary to contain the spread of the virus, and they agreed with the limitations imposed by the government. Females and adolescents living in a “red zone” showed more significant psychological negative feelings about the quarantine experience. However, no significant differences were found about the regions where the teenagers of our sample live and the other variables related to the COVID-19 experience. This is very interesting data, leading us to hypothesize that the participants' negative feelings may be more related to the adolescent period than to the pandemic itself. (shrink)

_Defenderse: Una filosofía de la violencia_ de Elsa Dorlin —profesora de filosofía política de París 8 actualmente dedicada al campo de los estudios decoloniales y de género— es un fantástico ensayo sobre la violencia donde la autora acomete una historia constelar de la autodefensa a través de un trabajo genealógico organizado en ocho capítulos precedidos por un prólogo. En este trabajo, la autora se preguntará cuál es el destino de nuestras resistencias en el contexto de técnicas de poder cuyo proverbio (...) es “Cuanto más te defiendas, más sufrirás y con seguridad, morirás”. Aún más, indagará y se preguntará qué le hace la violencia a nuestras vidas, a nuestros cuerpos y a nuestros músculos. Y ellos, a su vez, ¿qué pueden hacer y no hacer dentro de y a través de la violencia? (shrink)

Why should the work of the ancient and the medievals, so far as it relates to nature, still be of interest and an inspiration to us now? The contributions to this enlightening volume explore and uncover contemporary scholarship's debt to the classical and medieval past. Thinking About the Environment synthesizes religious thought and environmental theory to trace a trajectory from Mesopotamian mythology and classical and Hellenistic Greek, through classical Latin writers, to medieval Christian views of the natural world and our (...) relationship with it. The work also offers medieval Arabic and Jewish views on humanity's inseparability from nature. The volume concludes with a study of the breakdown between science and value in contemporary ecological thought. Thinking About the Environment will be a invaluable source book for those seeking to address environmental ethics from a historical perspective. (shrink)

Actuality of the conducted research is practically oriented character. Without the use of information and communication technologies in the field of higher education, it is impossible to carry out qualitative training of specialists in engineering, the results of which are necessary for the implementation of a national strategy for modernizing the economy and forming a progressive state of European type. Formulation of the task - the specificity of the use of ICT in the system of higher education has not been (...) studied sufficiently. ICT form a complex environment, which includes a lot of information objects and the links between them. It can be argued that the structural and functional analysis of the use of ICT in higher education is the basis of the theoretical justification in the formation of technical professionalism of future engineers. ICTs form a complex system, which includes not only technical and software-hardware capabilities, but also psycho-pedagogical, organizational, methodological. Without taking into account all of these components, as well as the needs of the subjects of the educational process, the use of ICT tools may be accompanied by risks and negatively affect the quality of high education. An analysis of recent research and publications-is actively exploring the experience of using ICT in high school, it is possible to distinguish the work of foreign specialists D. Stevenson, G. Reinhold, E. Wenger, S. Papierta, I. Zakharova, E. Patarakina, A. Khutorskogo, E. Polat The founders of this scientific direction in our country were M. I. Zhaldak, Y. I.Mashbits. The recent significant increase in the number of studies, the subject of which was the use of information and communication technologies in the educational process. Tsitemi in Ukraine is dedicated to the study of such scholars as V. Yu. Bykov, Ya.V. Bulakhova, O.M. Bondarenko, V.F. Zabolotny, G.O. Kozlakova, O. Moiko, O. Naumenko, Yu.Burovitskaya, I. Stavyts'ka, O.P. Pinchuk, O.V. Shestopal and others. Selection of unexplored parts of the general problem. The use of information technologies in the educational process is the foundation of innovative development of the educational system. The rapid development of ICT provides not only significant pace of innovative progress, but also requires the definition of information resources that guarantee the quality of learning, the choice of techniques that are in line with the general strategy for the formation of professional competences. Therefore, the problem of choosing an approach to the process of learning with the use of ICTs remains one of the main tasks of education. Research methods. In theory and practice, the study of the application of information and communication technologies in high school uses empirical methods of collecting and analyzing information based on the results of the survey of 120 students. Presenting main material. The essence of professionalism of future specialists of the technical direction is revealed. The scientific point of view on the professionalism of the engineer is presented. The peculiarities of formation of the basis of technical professionalism of future engineers in the process of studying at a higher school are theoretically grounded. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results of empirical researches of this problem is presented. The practical significance of the research topic is that the innovative approaches to the training of specialists in engineering specialties are differentiated, which differentiate in the educational concepts of teaching in higher educational institutions of European countries. (shrink)

The problem of functioning of the religious complex in the conditions of postmodern society is quite urgent both in theoretical and practical terms. The need for its scientific analysis, its comprehension in the context of the radical changes that take place under the influence of such an outlook in the religious sphere, becomes obvious. Considerable contribution to the study of this issue was made by Ukrainian religious scholars M. Babiy, V. Bondarenko, M. Zakovych, A. Kolodny, O. Sagan, P. Saukh, (...) L. Filippovych, etc. (shrink)

Is God's foreknowledge compatible with human freedom? One of the most attractive attempts to reconcile the two is the Ockhamistic view, which subscribes not only to human freedom and divine omniscience, but retains our most fundamental intuitions concerning God and time: that the past is immutable, that God exists and acts in time, and that there is no backward causation. In order to achieve all that, Ockhamists distinguish ‘hard facts’ about the past which cannot possibly be altered from ‘soft facts’ (...) about the past which are alterable, and argue that God's prior beliefs about human actions are soft facts about the past. (shrink)

Plato's Timaeus contains a powerful and influential myth, of the construction of the universe by a divine craftsman. A god imposes reason on necessity, to bring order from a primeval 'receptacle' of disordered matter. There results the 'child' that is the cosmos - a copy of an eternally-existing perfect model. Here eight new essays from a distinguished international cast, explore aspects of this challenging work: the principles of the mythical narrative, how the world soul and human body are formed, implications (...) for illness - mental and physical, the importance of music and harmonious proportion. Later developments are also treated: Aristotle's theory of generation, the commentary of Proclus and elements of modern evolutionary theory. (shrink)

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains (...) how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology. (shrink)