For billions of people, the internet has become a second home. It is where we meet friends and strangers, where we organise and learn, debate, deceive, and do business. In some respects, it is like the town square it was once claimed to be, while in others, it provides a strange new mode of interaction whose influence on us we are yet to understand. This collection of papers aims to give a short indication of some of the exciting philosophical work (...) being carried out at the moment that addresses the novel aspects of online communication. The topics range from the expressive functions of emoji to the oppressive powers of search engines. (shrink)

Problems of gender communication are researched in the article. Communication is considered to be an independent process of interaction and interrelation. An importance of gender enlightenment used on the basis of new methodological approaches and re-comprehension of the relation “a woman – a man” are distinguished in the article. It is un-derlined that gender consensus is an organic integration of feminine and masculine in all spheres of activity. Key words: communication, gender discourse, tolerance, feminism, consensus.

This article focuses on an advertisement campaign run in Danish national newspapers promoting Boeing’s combat aircraft F 18 Super Hornet. The campaign received extensive media attention due to its scale and unconventional methods. On the basis of pragmatic text analysis we describe three features in the advertisements: Genre problems, a controversial depiction of sender and recipient, and problems relating to argumentation. We conclude that the analyzed text is predominantly commercial in intent, although framed as information by a sender (...) position that is partly ambiguous in terms of identity, and the campaign’s main arguments are flawed, since decisive justification is not accessible. Based on the findings, the conclusion suggests that the campaign is best understood as a hybrid between public relations and public affairs. (shrink)

Legislating comprehensive sex education curricula has long been believed to be essential to aligning education about sex, sexuality and human relationships with the values of equality, inclusivity and autonomy. Defences of the need for ‘good’ sex education in public schools are contingent upon arguments about whose experiences ought to guide us in determining what sufficient alignment with such values might look like. The aim of this paper is to explore the assumptions underlying one prevailing norm in such defences: what I (...) call parental deference or the practice of heeding to the rights of parents in debates about sex education. The question at the heart of this paper is, then, who in our communities does this deference exclude? I begin with a brief consideration of the appeal of parental deference within theories of education in general, and sex education in particular, before problematising its normalisation through a consideration of the exclusions such deference creates. In the process, I aim to explore the limits of parental deference for addressing the intersection of sexuality, sex, gender and race with violence in curricula and argue instead that one way of mitigating the consequences of these limits is to take seriously what I call sex education's community problem: If schools are to serve communities, why are so many community members’ experiences excluded? (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently suggested that the reason mathematics is useful in science is that it expands our expressive capacities. Of these philosophers, only Stephen Yablo has put forward a detailed account of how mathematics brings this advantage. In this article, I set out Yablo’s view and argue that it is implausible. Then, I introduce a simpler account and show it is a serious rival to Yablo’s. 1 Introduction2 Yablo’s Expressionism3 Psychological Objections to Yablo’s Expressionism4 Introducing Belief Expressionism5 Objections and (...) Replies5.1 Yablo’s likely response5.2 Charity6 Conclusion. (shrink)

When plastic surgeons meet with new cosmetic surgery clients, they routinely try to get patients to `sign up' for elective surgery without forcing or pressuring them to do it. On rare occasions, they face a prospective client who, in the course of interaction, signals possible legal or medical risks, thereby calling on the surgeon to screen the client more vigilantly to determine whether embarking on cosmetic surgery will be reasonable. Grounded against nine-month field work at a cosmetic surgery center, combined (...) with 30+ hours of videotaped data of initial consultations, this article investigates a unique situation in which a 74-year-old woman seeking rhinoplasty and rhytidectomy is perceived as a difficult customer. Why this moment was interpreted and emerged as difficult is the analytic focus of the article. Using action-implicative discourse analysis, the analysis describes five communication challenges the plastic surgeon faced in the course of the 60-minute encounter. In the article's conclusion, I reflect on what seems to be a central issue for plastic surgeons: to act as gatekeepers of a fully elective and pricy surgery in a service-oriented business. (shrink)

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and guided (...) by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

We tested if the newly designed ToMotion task reflects a single construct and if the atypical groups differ in their performance compared to typically developing peers. Furthermore, we were interested if ToMotion maps a developmental sequence in a Theory of Mind performance as exemplified by increasing difficulty of the questions asked in every item. The sample consisted of 13 adolescents that have been diagnosed with a developmental language disorder and 14 adolescents that are deaf or hard of hearing. All of (...) these adolescents were in special schools for secondary vocational education. The control group existed of 34 typical developing adolescents who were in regular intermediate vocational education, ranging from level 2 to 4. The ToMotion, available in a spoken Dutch version and in a version in Sign Language of the Netherlands, was used to map ToM abilities. An attempt has been made to fill the gap of missing studies of ToM in adolescents by developing a new measuring instrument. In conclusion, assessing ToM with the ToMotion results in a picture that DHH adolescents score lower than TD peers. However, their scores are as consistent as those of the TD peers. The picture of DLD adolescents is the reverse. They show no differences in ToM scores, but seem to be somewhat more inconsistent compared to TD peers. We provide a discussion on those results and its implications for future research. What this paper adds? The current study introduces a new visual Theory of Mind task, ToMotion, designed specifically to assess ToM in adolescents in an ecologically valid way and adapted to the needs of adolescents with language and communication difficulties. (shrink)

The project of veristic social epistemology is based on the evaluation of social practices directed at acquiring knowledge and avoiding error. This research aims to analyse the social and technological dimensions of information processes. A number of practices in the network environment have a significant impact on the cognitive processes of individuals. They give rise to the acquisition of both true and false beliefs, ranging from reliable information practices to unreliable disinformation practices. The prevalence of phenomena such as echo chambers, (...) fake news, clickbait or deepfakes indicates that the condition of the contemporary infosphere is under serious threat. Disinformation processes, reinforced by technological progress, prompt reflection on the reliability of social practices. In addition to the strictly veristic consequences, the importance of the phenomenon of epistemic injustice should also be pointed out. (shrink)

In the aftermath of World War II, the government of the United States provided considerable funding for military projects that promised to provide a technological edge during the nascent Cold War. The most famous example is likely the V-2 rocket-testing program that began in the late 1940s. The 67 rockets launched from White Sands developed a knowledge base that was critically important to the launch of the first U.S. satellite in 1958 and to the subsequent manned space program. Less well (...) known are the large-scale information technology projects, undertaken in the 1950s and early 1960s, that provided a significant catalyst for research into digital computing, information processing, and the. (shrink)

A bold new interpretation of Aristotelian thought is central to Bernard Yack's provocative new book. He shows that for Aristotle, community is a conflict-ridden fact of everyday life, as well as an ideal of social harmony and integration. From political justice and the rule of law to class struggle and moral conflict, Yack maintains that Aristotle intended to explain the conditions of everyday political life, not just, as most commentators assume, to represent the hypothetical achievements of an idealistic "best regime." (...) By showing how Aristotelian ideas can provide new insight into our own political life, Yack makes a valuable contribution to contemporary discourse and debate. His work will excite interest among a wide range of social, moral, and political theorists. (shrink)

The species problem is the longstanding puzzle regarding the nature of species. This paper aims to describe how biologists experience little communication breakdown when they have different conceptions of species. For this purpose, I analyze two debates on species and speciation between Guy Bush and Jerry Coyne & H. Allen Orr. Although they have radically different ideas on species, they experience little communication difficulty. I will argue that this is because they implicitly agreed on the referent of the (...) group of organisms being addressed and possible causal factors of the speciation process. This analysis confirms a leading account in the general philosophy of science on the way in which scientists avoid the incommensurability threat. (shrink)

Generic generalisations like ‘Opioids are highly addictive’ are very useful in scientific communication, but they can often be interpreted in many different ways. Although this is not a problem when all interpretations provide the same answer to the question under discussion, a problem arises when a generic generalisation is used to answer a question other than that originally intended. In such cases, some interpretations of the generalisation might answer the question in a way that the original speaker would not (...) endorse. Rather than excising generic generalisations from scientific communication, I recommend that scientific communicators carefully consider the kinds of questions their words might be taken to answer and try to avoid phrasing that might be taken to provide unintended answers. (shrink)

This article examines the problem of the specificity and functions of mental control from two main perspectives: (1) from the standpoint of natural scientific explanation; (2) within a socio-psychological and socio-humanitarian context. The first approach employs an information-based framework to address the question of how phenomena of subjective reality can serve as causes of physical changes. The distinction between informational and physical causality is elucidated, providing a justification for psychic (mental) causality as a form of informational causality. Within this context, (...) the article discusses issues of information encoding and decoding, recent advances in neuroscience regarding the deciphering of brain codes for mental phenomena, and pertinent results from genomics. The author explores the significance of these developments for substantiating free will and self-determination processes, as well as for developing new artificial intelligence systems capable of emulating natural intelligence functions. Building upon these foundations, the second aspect of the discussion examines the role of mental control in interpersonal and mass communications, as well as in the functioning of institutional entities. To this end, the article investigates the relationships between individual consciousness and mass, institutional consciousness, the importance of national leadership in extreme situations, the phenomenon of polysubjectivity, and related questions concerning the optimal balance between centralization and autonomization of control mechanisms. The author demonstrates the inevitability of overcoming the principle of monopolarity, which inhibits autonomization functions and thereby undermines the foundations of global social self-organization. Finally, the article briefly addresses a number of salient issues pertaining to the meaning, objectives, and outcomes of mental control acts, as well as their socio-humanitarian implications and evaluation. (shrink)

The problem of communication in de se thoughts is the problem of communication of first-person or self-locating thoughts across the speakers of a conversation. The problem mainly stems from the lack of a proper account of attitude and content — an account that is supposed to explain whether or how the context of linguistic utterances is related to the semantic content of a sentence, assertion and belief. In this paper, after introducing two new semantic items, namely, almost-impossible and (...) almost-necessary propositions, that could be taken as theoretically primitive entities in the semantic framework I wish to draw, I propose an account of modified Lewisian-centered content and attitude based on the metaphysical framework of the Lewisian counterpart-theoretic semantics for quantified modal logic to the extent that the modification relies on those new semantic items. I then show that we can solve the problem by using our modified account. (shrink)

Exactly what makes an interaction between two organisms a case of communication is contentious. Historically, debate has taken place between definitions of communication invoking information transmission vs definitions invoking causal influence. More recently, there has been some convergence on a hybrid definition: invoking causal influence mediated via the transmission of information. After proposing an understanding of what it means to say that a receiver is causally influenced by the transmission of information, I argue that an information-mediated influence definition (...) overextends to include most, indeed maybe all, co-adapted interactions. This is because the transmission of correlational information is actually a feature of most, if not all, co-adapted interactions. I end by considering whether adding an arbitrariness criterion to an information-mediated influence definition helps. After giving an account of what arbitrariness amounts to, I argue that it swings things too far in the opposite direction: we go from a definition of communication that is too liberal to one that is too restrictive. This is because many signal kinds are not arbitrary. It turns out to be extremely difficult to capture what makes communication unique. (shrink)

The issue of advocacy has dominated discussion of the ethical dilemmas facing nurses. However, despite this, nurses seem to be no further towards a solution of how they can be effective advocates for patients without compromising their working identity or facing conflicts of loyalty. This article considers some of the problems around advocacy and, by the use of critical incidents written by nurses involved in a diploma module, attempts to highlight where the problem could lie. A communications model is (...) outlined, using a theoretical framework taken from the work of Jürgen Habermas, and applied to nursing practice. Finally, two examples are given from the research, which illustrate how the model could be used, highlighting the problems and pitfalls that still have to be overcome. The conclusion is a positive one, in that it suggests that advocacy is possible if nurses re-examine their practice in the light of the model proposed. (shrink)

Adolescents' community violence exposure has been demonstrated with a range of behavioral and psychological problems, but the processes that explain these correlations are not clear. In our 2017 study, the mediating role of deviant peer affiliation in the relationship between CVE and externalizing problem behaviors has been confirmed. However, the moderating effect of parental factors is still unclear. Therefore, a new group was adopted in this study to further explore the moderating effect of parental knowledge based on also confirming (...) the mediating effect of deviant peer affiliation. Stratified-cluster sampling was used to recruit 1,797 volunteers who completed questionnaires on CVE, deviant peer affiliation, parental knowledge, and externalizing problem behaviors. The results of the structural equation modeling were: on the basis of our previous research, we further analyzed the mediating role of deviant peer affiliation, and the mediated association was moderated by parental knowledge. Especially when the school climate is added as a covariate, the moderating effect of parental knowledge has changed, that is, the positive association between CVE and externalizing problem behaviors was much stronger for adolescents who reported lower levels of parental knowledge than for those who reported higher levels of parental knowledge. The results support the assumptions of social learning theory and have implications for interventions of community violence. (shrink)

Holistic accounts of the natural environment in environmental ethics fail to stress the distinction between the concepts of comnlunity and organism. Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic” adds to this confusion, for it can be interpreted as promoting either a community or an organic model of nature. The difference between the two concepts lies in the degree of autonomy possessed by constituent entities within the holistic system. Members within a community are autonomous, while the parts of an organism are not. Different moral (...) conclusions and environmental policies may result from this theoretical distinction. Treating natural entities as parts of an organism downgrades their intrinsic value as individual natural beings, since the only relevant moral criterion in an organic environmental ethic is the instrumental value that each natural entity has for the system. This ethic allows instances of the “substitution problem”-the replacement of one entity in an ecosystem by another provided that the overall functioning of the system is notharmed. However, since substitution violates environmentalist principles, for example, calling for respect for the integrity of the entities in a natural system, an organic environmental ethic must be rejected. A community model focuses on both the functional value and the autonomous intrinsie value of natural entities in a system. A community environmental ethic thus avoids the substitution problem. (shrink)

This article focuses on emergency medical care in black urban populations, suggesting that the classification of a "community" within clinical trial language is problematic. The article references a cultural history of black Americans with pre-hospital emergency medical treatment as relevant to contemporary emergency medicine paradigms. Part I explores a relationship between "autonomy" and "community." The idea of community emerges as a displacement for the ethical principle of autonomy precisely at the moment that institutionalized medicine focuses on diversity. Part II examines (...) a clinical trial for the blood substitute PolyHeme® (Northfield Laboratories, Inc., Evanston, IL). It illustrates the ways in which bias in research paradigms and Institutional Review Board decisions attach to the notion and utility of the language of "community." The conclusion's contemporary anecdote makes apparent the vitality of the issues of prehospital emergency medical care and the ways in which decisions and practices fall too easily into a narrative of culturally biased treatment. (shrink)

Informatization of postmodern society is a promising path to economic, social and educational development. The informatization of education is aimed at the formation and development of the intellectual potential of the nation, the improvement of the forms and content of the educational process, the introduction of computer teaching and testing methods, allows solving problems at the highest level, taking into account world requirements. One of the important directions in the development of informatization of education in the context of a (...) pandemic is new computer technologies. Interactivity, intensification of the learning process, feedback - are the real advantages of these technologies, which necessitated their application in various fields of human activity, primarily in those related to education and professional training. Now, in a pandemic, the number of studies has noticeably increased, the subject of which was the use of information and communication technologies in the educational process. The article deals with the problem of psychological and didactic aspects of the introduction of information communication technologies in the process of teaching students of higher educational institutions. An analysis of the problems and prospects of using information communication technologies in higher educational institutions was carried out, as a guarantee of building an intensive process of assimilating knowledge, skills, and abilities of students of higher educational institutions. (shrink)

Communication in a collaborative problem-solving activity plays a pivotal role in the success of the collaboration in both academia and the workplace. Computer-supported collaboration makes it possible to collect large-scale communication data to investigate the process at a finer granularity. In this paper, we introduce a conditional transition profile (CTP) to characterize aspects of each team member's communication. Based on the data from a large-scale empirical study, we found that participants in the same team tend to show (...) similar CTP compared to participants from different teams. We also found that team members who showed more “negotiation” after the partner “shared” information tended to show more improvement after the collaboration while those who continued sharing ideas while their partners were negotiating tended to improve less. (shrink)

This paper concerns the problem for conceptual engineering of changing the subject. I emphasize the parallels between the continuity of inquiry, the truth-conditions of attitude reports, and the conditions of communicative success. After that, I consider in more detail the proposed solution to this problem by Herman Cappelen. I argue against it, by appeal to the communication considerations. The paper concludes with some methodological comments.

A negative image of community care prevails. This method of care is perceived to be a relatively novel phenomenon and has received mixed media coverage. The negative image of community care has led to the growing belief that this care method has failed. This failure has largely been ascribed to the lack of powers available to control patients in the community and to the method's relative novelty. However, this paper contends that there are two flaws to the above assertion: first, (...) community care is far from new, and second, the inherent problem is not the lack of powers available to control patients in the community, but, essentially, the absence of a secure and stable environment within the community. (shrink)

The author analyses the problem of the communication from the epistemological point of view, noting that the interest to the theme is obviously determined by the enormous ambiguity and by the disciplinary vagueness of the communication's notion itself. It is argued that it is the philosophical conceptualization of the communication that allows in a certain sense to «save» philosophy itself. The author notes that the philosophical studies of communication as if return the relevance to the classical (...) philosophical problems: to the (communicative) sphere, (communicative) time, (social) causality, (collective) subject and object, filling them with the meaningful characteristics and testing their concepts by the experience of the functioning of real society and communication. He concludes that the epistemological content of the concept of communication is comes together with several aspects of human cognition. The first aspect has to do with the dimensions for defining the adequacy for determination of the statement made by the Other (i.e. the other participant), given that the content of the Other's consciousness is unavailable. The second aspect is related to the principle of a double purpose of any communication: on the one hand, integration and mutual understanding and, on the other, informational description of the subject of the message. The third aspect is that communication is based on the most important epistemological distinction between knowledge and ignorance, i.e. on the predominance of any information to one participant of the communication and of its uncertainty to the other participant, and that such a situation actually conditions the formation of communication systems, as well as of a wide variety of forms of sociality. The author also addresses the problem of whether contemporary media make communication at all possible since they decrease the impact that the secrecy of the Other's consciousness has on communication by triggering a communicative act. (shrink)

This paper concerns the problem for conceptual engineering of changing the subject. I emphasize the parallels between the continuity of inquiry, the truth-conditions of attitude reports, and the conditions of communicative success. After that, I consider in more detail the proposed solution to this problem by Herman Cappelen. I argue against it, by appeal to the communication considerations. The paper concludes with some methodological comments.

Early childhood development intervention has gained considerable achievements in eliminating intergenerational transmission of poverty in rural areas. Paying further attention to rural children’s community inclusion can also promote the sustainable development of the village. However, there is a lack of systematic theoretical constructs on the village inclusion of rural children. In this study, an attempt was made to explore the problem mechanism and solution strategy of community inclusion of rural children using a grounded theory approach of in-depth interviews. Seventeen parents (...) of children in a national-level poverty-stricken county in Inner Mongolia of China were investigated, adopting the strategy of intensity sampling. The results revealed that the content of rural children’s activities demonstrates enhanced participation in the virtual environment and weakened participation in the real community environment. That is, the activities are characterized by more virtualization and individualization. Rural parents and community peers are two major channels for children’s community inclusion, while both the community peer environment and parental community participation show a weakening trend. This may be an important reason for the virtualization and individualization of the children’s psychological development environment. Developmental intervention programs for rural children in poverty-stricken areas should focus on the reconstruction of children’s community peer environment, encourage the community participation of parents, and fully mobilize local-based educational resources. (shrink)

Due to the development of the Chinese economy, the consolidation of national power worldwide, and the increasing frequency of economic and cultural exchanges with foreign countries, the number of people from various countries who travel to China to engage in exchanges has increased significantly. Given the development of economic globalization, the acceleration of the process of educational internationalization represents a general trend in higher education development and a common requirement for universities. In addition to education, international students also experience cross-cultural (...) adaptation, that is, behavioral adaptation or changes that occur in people in response to changes in their home country, whether in the form of external or internal cultural adaptation. For international students, the problem of cross-cultural adaptation not only hinders their learning progress but also affects their psychology and living conditions. This article explains the construction of Habermas’s theory of communication action. According to this theory, the purpose of communication is to coordinate the common actions of actors, and this coordination is achieved through mutual communication, which is mediated by language. The article also discusses the cross-cultural adaptation experienced by international students in Chinese universities and highlights the importance of developing educational services for international students in the context of international education. Studies have shown that female students exhibit slightly worse psychological adaptation than male students and female students have a slightly higher rate of depression rate than male students. An interpersonal study of 120 international students traveling to China found that most of these students were able to adapt in terms of their interpersonal relationships. To solve the problems associated with cross-cultural adaptation of international students in China, some countermeasures have been proposed, mainly including active participation in interpersonal communication, an enhanced understanding of the new culture, and the amplification of cultural identity. (shrink)

The arguments presented in this discussion point to some problems in the theory of communicative action considered as a starting point for a sociological theory with both normative and explanatory aspirations. It is argued that Habermas's notion of consensus is not sufficiently developed to constitute a foundation of the ethics of public debates; that both social action and communicative action are grounded in social actors' references to the same three worlds, which makes the coordination of actions by means of (...) understanding achieved in speech possible; that the criteria of rationality underlying use of language in the communicative action are ultimately those that are made explicit and consciously worked out in science; and that, finally, it is Parsons' solution to the Hobbesian problem and his concept of social action that provide a possible foundation for universalistic ethics. (shrink)

In this paper, the author analyzes and discusses the communicative approach used in the philosophy of science developed by N. Luhmann. He shows how Luhmann's communicative approach can be used to discuss a wide range "the classical problems" of knowledge: criteria for scientific knowledge, its autonomy and tools for achieving it, the problem of the foundation and structure of the scientific knowledge, the relationship between concepts and words, theories and methods.The author also analyzes the problem of the communication (...) constraints imposed on the process of systematic organization of science (i.e. the delimitation principle): the specificity and opportunity of the social theory, its differences and similarities with the settled classic examples of the theorizing; the peculiarities of the particular types of the scientific observation. (shrink)

In a thought experiment we want to test how the emergence of adult neural stem cells could constitute an example for a scientific revolution in the sense of Thomas Kuhn. In his major work, The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd edn, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (Kuhn 1996), the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, states that scientific progress is not a cumulative process, but new theories appear by a rather revolutionary sequence of events. Kuhn built his theory on landmark events (...) taken from chemistry and physics, lacking examples from biology. Beginning with Ramon y Cajal’s famous quote, no new neurons after birth, from the early years of the twentieth century, and Reynolds and Weiss’s conflicting finding in 1992 of adult neural stem cells giving rise to new neurons, we will test how the finding of neural stem cells in the adult brain matches with Kuhn’s theory. The pivotal problem of defining a paradigm will be our main focus, since the emergence of adult neural stem cells has been acclaimed by the scientific community as the rebuttal of Ramon y Cajal’s paradigm. (shrink)

The notion of tolerance in the context of the Philosophy of Communication is considered in the article. The role and place of tolerance in the structure of values of modern society are elucidated. The effectiveness of tolerance in the process of intercourse between I and the Other is shown. The principle of tolerance is analysed in the definition of ideal values in the attitude to the Other. The indispensability of including it in the process of communication is accentuated. (...) The effectiveness of the principle of tolerance in the solution of the conflicts is emphasized. The problems arising in the process of establishing tolerance in society are analysed, an attempt has been made to define the conformity of the organization of communication on the ground of the principle of tolerance. Key words: Tolerance, communication, dialogue, the I, the Other, identity. (shrink)

Nowadays, on national and international levels, the law has been increasingly considering local and traditional communities’ role for achieving conservation. In Brazil, for instance, one can see how recent legal rules promote benefits for those local groups who practice low environmental impact activities. Nevertheless, regarding traditional fishing communities that live on the coastal zone, a region where many protected areas have been created lately in Brazil, the positive social effects of those measures are often undermined by the economic and political (...) pressure they suffer. This becomes particularly clear when the problem is seen under the different grades of citizenship people face in Brazil: that is, considering how people can be over-included in the legal system to have mainly access to its benefits, while others are under-included to be mainly dependent on it. It seems that Brazilian coastal fishing communities fall into the latter case, and that would explain how they are subject to many different types of restrictions and responsibilities due to the new legal instruments that are being developed to protect such areas, sometimes causing, for instance, a pressure to remove them from their homes. Conservation in this context, then, is to be understood beyond legal texts and, especially, under the evaluation of the social conditions these populations are submitted to. Therefore, this paper sketches the legal development of Brazilian marine protected areas, points out some examples of conflicts involving traditional fishing communities affected by conservation policies, and conceptualizes the relations of over- and under-inclusion they can be considered as part of. (shrink)

This paper deals with certain ethical problems inherent in psychological research based on internet communication as stored information. Section 1 contains an analysis of research on Internet debates. In particular, it takes into account a famous example of deception for psychology research purposes. In section 2, the focus is on research on personal data in texts published on the Internet. Section 3 includes an attempt to formulate some ethical principles and guidelines, which should be regarded as fundamental in (...) research on stored information. (shrink)

Recent research indicates that interpersonal communication is noisy, and that people exhibit considerable insensitivity to problems in communication. Using a dyadic referential communication task, the goal of which is accurate information transfer, this study examined the extent to which interlocutors are sensitive to problems in communication and use other‐initiated repairs (OIRs) to address them. Participants were randomly assigned to dyads (N = 88 participants, or 44 dyads) and tried to communicate a series of recurring (...) abstract geometric shapes to a partner across a text–chat interface. Participants alternated between directing (describing shapes) and matching (interpreting shape descriptions) roles across 72 trials of the task. Replicating prior research, over repeated social interactions communication success improved and the shape descriptions became increasingly efficient. In addition, confidence in having successfully communicated the different shapes increased over trials. Importantly, matchers were less confident on trials in which communication was unsuccessful, communication success was lower on trials that contained an OIR compared to those that did not contain an OIR, and OIR trials were associated with lower Director Confidence. This pattern of results demonstrates that (a) interlocutors exhibit (a degree of) sensitivity to problems in communication, (b) they appropriately use OIRs to address problems in communication, and (c) OIRs signal problems in communication. (shrink)

As noted In Part II of this series, perhaps the most critical elements to define in deciding when treatment Is futile are the goals of therapy from, both the physician's and the patient's point of view. A patient's personal goals are based upon value system., life goals, and personal definition of “quality of life.” These personal goals must then be interpreted and applied in a reasonable and realistic fashion against what the physician has previously described as the legitimate, objective, and (...) attainable therapeutic goals. As far as possible, both, parties must work together to eliminate the uncertainties in their discussion. The ideal situation includes a competent, alert patient and a prudent, caring physician who have had a long-term ongoing relationship. The key to collaboration is communication: a sincere interest in and professional concern for the patient; a willingness to be honest and open; a commitment to talk and to listen; an attempt to make one another feel comfortable in the collaboration; and an effort to recognize and to overcome barriers to communication, whether barriers are personal to either the patient or the physician or are professional, institutional, or societal. (shrink)

This is one of a series of reports of a case study of the convergence of molecular neurobiology and cognitive studies of Pavlovian conditioning. Here, I examine a fundamental disagreement between major centers of research representing each of these two domains and analyze it in terms of a hybrid historical, sociological, and philosophical concept of effective scientific communication. The specific example considered is found to fall short of the criteria for effective communication because of the absence of explicit, (...) published reciprocity in the exchange of critical appraisal of results and in requests for reformulation of investigative priorities, research designs, and criteria of scientific adequacy. The situation is dramatized and a remedy proposed by means of an imaginary dialogue linking the two research centers. The paper raises a number of key issues. (1) means for appraising the epistemic status of explanations putatively linking domains in the absence of effective scientific communication; (2) the influence of socially contingent features of the cognitive perspectives of the relatively small number of scientific translators responsible for such communication between domains; and (3) the status of dialogues of the sort presented here, e.g., as idealized philosophical critique or conjectural history of the future of science. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt es sin duda una de las grandes defensoras de la comunidad política, la cual es integrada por ciudadanos que ejercen su libertad mediante la palabra y la acción en el espacio público. Los elementos fundamentales de la comunidad son la justicia y la igualdad. Pero, aunque Arendt fue teóloga, ella acusa al cristianismo primitivo de haber reducido la libertad pública a lo privado de la persona, realzando el amor y la compasión. Sin embargo, Tönnies y Leroux recuperan la (...) importancia de los lazos fraternos y familiares que pueden formar comunidades sólidas, y cohesionar la vida social para que puedan aflorar el dialogo, los consensos y la opinión ciudadana. Hannah Arendt is undoubtedly one of the great defenders of the political community, which is made up of citizens exercising their freedom through word and action in public space. The key elements of the community are justice and equality. But although Arendt was a theologian, she accuses the primitive Christianity have reduced public release private person, enhancing the love and compassion. However, Tönnies and Leroux recover the importance of family and fraternal bonds that can form strong communities, social life and unite so that they can emerge dialogue, consensus and public opinion. (shrink)

While it is often taken for granted that the concepts of property and of distributive justice are capable of working together to generate norms which can enhance positive social and political relations, in particular the value of community, this Article argues otherwise. Relying on critical tools deriving from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Marx’s notion of fetishism, the author claims that the Rawlsian conception of distributive justice fetishizes the institution of property, and claims to "distribute" participation in society amongst its (...) members as if this amounted to a distribution of so many objects. Taken in this way, the concept of distributive justice has no respectable content. What social justice requires is a means to ensure that people are not "socially excluded," which requires each individual’s participation in the social and cultural enterprise. This sort of participation can no more be "distributed" than can life itself, and the realization of this point undermines the cogency of most discussions of distributive justice. (shrink)

Social externalism must allow that subjects can misunderstand the content of their own thoughts. I argue that we can exploit this commitment to create a dilemma for the view’s account of communication. To arrive at the first horn of the dilemma, I argue that, on social externalism, it is understanding which is the measure of communicative success. This would be a highly revisionary account of communication. The only way that the social externalist can salvage the claim that mental (...) content is central to explaining communicative success is by adopting an account which gives unacceptable diagnoses as to the success of communicative exchanges. This is the second horn of the dilemma. Contrastingly, certain internalist views of content, which deny that subjects share thought content, do not face the dilemma. I argue that, as such, we should prefer accounts of communication which deny that subjects speak the same language. (shrink)