The Protein Ontology provides terms for and supports annotation of species-specific protein complexes in an ontology framework that relates them both to their components and to species-independent families of complexes. Comprehensive curation of experimentally known forms and annotations thereof is expected to expose discrepancies, differences, and gaps in our knowledge. We have annotated the early events of innate immune signaling mediated by Toll-Like Receptor 3 and 4 complexes in human, mouse, and chicken. The resulting ontology and annotation data set has (...) allowed us to identify species-specific gaps in experimental data and possible functional differences between species, and to employ inferred structural and functional relationships to suggest plausible resolutions of these discrepancies and gaps. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the existence of moral distress among nurses in Lilongwe District of Malawi. Qualitative research was conducted in selected health institutions of Lilongwe District in Malawi to assess knowledge and causes of moral distress among nurses and coping mechanisms and sources of support that are used by morally distressed nurses. Data were collected from a purposive sample of 20 nurses through in-depth interviews using a semi-structured interview guide. Thematic analysis of qualitative data was (...) used. The results show that nurses, irrespective of age, work experience and tribe, experienced moral distress related to patient/nursing care. The major distressing factors were inadequate resources and lack of respect from patients, guardians, peers and bosses. Nurses desire teamwork and ethics committees in their health institutions as a means of controlling and preventing moral distress. There is a need for creation of awareness for nurses to recognize and manage moral distress, thus optimizing their ability to provide quality and uncompromised nursing care. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that it is possible to understand Waismann’s notion of open texture through the paradigm of prototype theory stemming from cognitive linguistics. Indeed, prototype theory conceives concepts as functioning according to a prototype whose concrete application remains indeterminate and flexible. Prototype theory entails thus the possibility that cases that challenge the familiar use of a concept may be encountered in experience, which is precisely at stake with the notion of open texture. At the same time, prototype (...) theory explains the creative dimension of human language that is also mentioned by Waismann: human language is creative precisely because its concepts are flexible and have subsequently the capacity of expressing new types of experience. This new perspective on the notion of open texture presents a double interest. First, it allows highlighting the innovative scope of this notion, since it shows that it has the potential to challenge traditional theories of concepts, which consider concepts as a set of characteristics. Second, it opens the possibility for an extension of the notion of open texture to most if not to all concepts. Several research works have been carried out in this direction. Reconsidering open texture through prototype theory offers a new theoretical tool for this purpose: proving that other, non-empirical concepts also function according to prototypes would indeed prove that open texture is an essential feature of most if not all concepts. (shrink)

Computational creativity has gained in the recent years momentum as an established interdisciplinary field, whose aim is to investigate, design and foster artificial creativity. This article analyses whether artificial outputs can appear to as being creative and assesses thus computational creativity from the standpoint of the receiver. While taking Boden’s distinction between several forms of creativity as a starting point, I argue that creativity implies besides surprise and value an additional essential feature, namely the creative intention, not only from the (...) standpoint of the creator but also of the receiver. Following the notion that I propose, creative intention cannot be identified to the mere absence of randomness, but implies the possibility of interpreting the intention, as well as volition and the expression of personal lived experiences. Subsequently I reflect on the possibility of attributing creativity to computer programs while being aware of their lack of creative intention. I argue that the best solution for this purpose is considering computer programs as co-creative partners, which can be credited as contributors to the creative process. In my conclusive remarks, I assess the implications of this possibility for the notion of creative subject. More precisely, I raise the question whether the latter should necessarily be linked to the notion of creativity, and hence, whether co-creative artificial programs should necessarily be considered as creative subjects. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to unveil the Kantian echoes of Fink’s idea of a constructive phenomenology by deepening the common points of this idea with Kant’s transcendental dialectic, among which the fact that both unveil structures of totality and are oriented towards a form of ungivenness. At the same time, the article shows some important differences and highlights a polysemy of the notions of given and ungiven characteristic of Kant’s thought which Fink seems to have overlooked or at (...) least to have passed under silence. This polysemy has nevertheless the potential to interrogate the meaning of these notions in Fink’s thought and in phenomenology more generally. (shrink)

Democracy is an essential part of the political dimension of our existence. Since its ancient origins, however, different ideas have successively introduced new patterns of democratic experience, making it an exciting phenomenon. In the nineteenth century,John Stuart Mill became famous for his engagement with the relevant issues of his time, standing out in defense of unpopular social agendas such as the workers' cause and women's rights. Mill developed a new way of reading the modern democratic phenomenon, emphasizing the historical genesis (...) of institutions and their relationship to social forces. “Democracy”came to describe a specific society characterized by equality. The recognition of the social dimension of democracy led Mill to an inescapable conclusion: the demand for women's rights should be a necessary condition for social development and, more generally, for human progress. As a result, women's rights were no longer defended from the point of view of individual struggles but emerged as a fundamental countervailing force to ensure the quality of democracy. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to describe organizational commitment between type A personality’s and type B is personality’s workers on three companies. Organizational commitment is define as the degree of psychological identification with or attachment to the organization for which we work. Participant of this study was 108 workers from three different companies. Data was obtained by questionnaire and processed with SPSS for Windows ver. 12. Using Mann-Whitney independent t-test for non parametric, the result of organizational commitment U = (...) 1183, p > 0.05, showed that there is no difference of organizational commitment between type A personality and type B personality on company X, Y, and Z. (shrink)

Commentary on José Eduardo Porcher's Afro-Brazilian Religions (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

The study was aimed at ascertaining the level of awareness of parental roles in curbing adolescent sexual abuse among parents in Akpo community Anambra-state, In line with the objectives of the study, three research questions and two null hypotheses were postulated. Descriptive survey research design was adopted. A sample frame of six hundred parents were drawn by the use of multistage sampling procedure. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The test re-test reliability was applied to obtain a correlation (...) co-efficient of. 70 which was considered high for the study. Descriptive statistics of frequency, percentage and grand average as well as inferential statistics of chi-square were used for data analysis. The result among others is that the level of awareness of parental roles in curbing adolescent sexual abuse based on sexuality issues, guidance during puberty and parent's personal sexual discipline. Statistics analyses revealed that there is significant relationship between male and female parents in their level of awareness of parental roles in curbing adolescent sexual abuse. Significant relationship also existed among parents of various religious affiliations in their level of awareness of parental roles in curbing adolescent sexual abuse. Based on the finding and conclusions recommendations are made pertinent among which is Health educators should enlighten parents on their roles towards the growth of adolescents by organizing seminars, workshops or educating them during men's meeting or women's meeting in the community. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that that the best system account of lawhood ((Mill (1843), Ramsey (1978)[fp. 1928], Lewis (1973)) makes available a nice explanation for why laws are ‘distinctively appropriate targets of scientific inquiry’ (Hall, 2015). The explanation takes the following general form: laws are especially valuable for agents like us because they efficiently encode a lot of valuable (non-nomic) information in a tractable format. The goal of this paper is to challenge this style of explanation: I argue that the (...) general principle it presupposes is in conflict with our best account of practical rationality. After considering and rejecting a number of proposals for dissolving the tension, I conclude that BSA proponents may need to scale back the explanatory ambitions of their theory; in particular, they may need to give up the hope of non-circular explanations of the value of nomic information. I end by outlining some challenges for the humean world-view that results after this shift. (shrink)

Raymond Geuss asserts that there are fragmented views on what human rights are and that there is no unifying principle underlying such notion. I think that this view has its merits. It conveys the particularity of our perspectives, attitudes, desires and selfunderstandings. It rejects abstractness and is committed to a thick, perspectivist, historical understanding of personhood. To understand who we are, is to understand how we arrive at being who we are. By contrast, the notion of human rights deploys abstractness, (...) unification of agency, necessity and a thin view of personhood. In this paper, I attempt to bring into focus these two aspects of the notion of human rights. I will first analyse the genealogical method advocated by Geuss and argue that it has the merit of elucidating our historical contingencies; however, it is argued that any view in favour of the genealogical method relies on the idea that evaluative or normative concepts cannot be defined in terms of a common denominator. We reconstruct the Aristotelian idea of ‘focal meaning’ as core-resemblance and show that there is a unifying concept of human rights. We conclude that the perspectivist spirit of genealogy is not far from the Aristotelian tradition. Aristotle’s inquiry into a concept that could grasp different perspectives and contingencies as opposed to a Platonic understanding of abstract and universal forms shows that genealogical worries are germane to the tradition. (shrink)

Digital humanities research has developed haphazardly, with substantive contributions in some disciplines and only superficial uses in others. It has made almost no inroads in philosophy; for example, of the nearly two million articles, chapters, and books housed at philpapers.org, only sixteen pop up when one searches for ‘digital humanities’. In order to make progress in this field, we demonstrate that a hypothesis-driven method, applied by experts in data-collection, -aggregation, -analysis, and -visualization, yields philosophical fruits. “Call no one happy until (...) they are dead.” “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.” These ancient norms still inform how we speak of the dead. From their beginnings in the nineteenth century, modern obituaries have been both practical and honorary. They are written with two aims: to pay respect to the deceased and to inspire the living to follow in their footsteps. The obituary of William Custis of Virginia exemplifies these aims, say that “it is due to his memory publicly to record his virtues,” and that “There is in the life a noble, independent and honest man, something so worthy of imitation, something that so strongly commends itself to the approbation of the virtuous mind, that his name should not be left to oblivion” (Daily National Intelligencer, 18 November 1838). Likewise, philosophers have emphasized that we can determine what counts as a virtue for a given type of person in a given community by analyzing what people say about the dead (Zagzebski, L. Virtues of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 135). By adhering to norms of praise, admiration, and respect, obituaries reveal what counts as a virtue, value, or constituent of wellbeing (VVC) for a particular type of person in a particular community. One way to explore this insight would be to close-read a small number of obituaries of people from intersecting demographics, crossing dimensions such as gender, age, race, class, educational attainment, veteran status, religion, and location. Another, which we demonstrate in this chapter, is to harness digital humanities resources to distance-read a much larger number of obituaries, extracting both demographic meta-data and first-order content expressive of VVC. We then analyze and visualize this information to establish the structures of VVC associated with different types of people in different communities, arguing that data-science measures such as eigenvector centrality can be used to identify cardinal virtues. We also explain the rudiments of our text- and meta-data mining, our method of aggregating and comparing texts, and our visualization techniques. In so doing, we pave the way for researchers in philosophy and related fields to generate similar analyses and visualizations. (shrink)

In the present essay, we are going to develop a concept of contemplative walking in light as an aesthetic attitude that can be linked to somaesthetics. My understanding of this type of aesthetic activity is underpinned by the broader framework developed in my PhD thesis, which is based on the poetics of light, to explain how the spectator experiences light installations. So, we are going to analyse what we understand by contemplative walking in light and how it is made possible (...) through a perception based on corporeality and movement. To do this, we are going to analyse two installations – Your Rainbow Panorama (2011) by Olafur Eliasson and YellowBluePink (2015) by Ann Veronica Janssens- to see how they instantiate this type of aesthetic attitude and how it can be related to somaesthetics. (shrink)

Law and Authority Under the Guise of the Good, by Rodriguez-BlancoVeronica. Oxford : Hart Publishing, 2014. Pp. 215.

This paper deals with Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco’s answer to the paradox of the normativity of law: How can autonomous self-legislating persons act, without compromising their autonomy and their will, following legal rules? Regarding Rodriguez-Blanco’s answer, I offer two main critiques. The first one is based on Rodriguez-Blanco’s comments to David Enoch’s paper in which I argue against the idea that a descriptive theoretical account of law can, and should, give an answer to general problems of normativity due to the fact (...) that a theoretical approach that engages in questions about the normativity of law cannot be purely descriptive, therefore against Rodriguez-Blanco I conclude that Enoch’s answer is the only response a descriptive account is able to offer. The second criticism focuses on Rodriguez-Blanco’s response to the paradox and argues that her solution is not, in fact, a descriptive one, but one that relies on strong normative premises, which as it turns out defend a perfectionist perspective towards the law.Resumen:Este trabajo analiza la respuesta que Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco propone para resolver la paradoja de la normatividad del derecho: ¿Cómo es posible que una persona autónoma actúe siguiendo los mandatos de normas jurídicas sin comprometer su autonomía ni su voluntad? El autor ofrece dos críticas a la respuesta de Rodriguez-Blanco. La primera de ellas está basada en los comentarios que Rodriguez-Blanco ha hecho sobre la propuesta de David Enoch. En este punto, el autor argumenta en contra de la idea según la cual una perspectiva descriptiva del derecho puede, y debe, tratar de responder a los problemas generales de la normatividad del derecho. De acuerdo con el autor, una perspectiva que pretenda dar respuesta a los problemas de la normatividad del derecho no puede ser una perspectiva puramente descriptiva. En este sentido, el autor sostiene que la respuesta que ofrece Enoch es la única respuesta que una perspectiva descriptiva del derecho puede dar. La segunda crítica está dirigida a la respuesta que Rodriguez-Blanco da sobre la paradoja de la normatividad. En este segundo punto el autor argumenta que la perspectiva de Rodriguez-Blanco no es una perspectiva descriptiva como ella presume, sino que adopta una perspectiva normativa la cual, además, está comprometida con una idea perfeccionista del derecho. (shrink)

Since the inception of their discipline, anthropologists have studied virtually every conceivable aspect of other peoples' morality - religion, social control, sin, virtue, evil, duty, purity and pollution. But what of the examination of anthropology itself, and of its agendas, epistemes, theories and praxes? Conceived as a response to Patrick Tierney's hugely inflammatory book Darkness in El Dorado, whose allegations of immoral and negligent anthropological research in South America caused a storm of protest and debate, the book combines theoretical papers (...) and case studies from eminent scholars including Steven Nugent, Marilyn Silverman and Veronica Strang. Showing how the topic of ethics goes to the heart of anthropology, it raises the controversial question of why - and for whom - the anthropological discipline functions. (shrink)

L’édition a été conçue et réalisée grâce à la collaboration des trois éditeurs, qui ont défini ensemble la structure générale et qui ont approuvé chaque page après une riche discussion commune depuis 2009, à la fois en présence à Paris ou en visioconférence. Depuis 2023, la discussion commune s’est élargie à Veronica Revello. Plus précisément, pour ce qui concerne l’introduction générale, toute la première partie (« Les idées et les mots des Académiques ») est de Carlos Lévy, alors que (...) la deuxième (« L’espace-temps des Académiques ») est la somme des contributions d’E. Malaspina (« I. Localiser les villas » et « II. La ‘pré-histoire’ de la tradition des Académiques »), à nouveau de C. Lévy (« Introduction » et « III. La réception des Académiques, de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance », sauf le § III.1.2) et de Terence Hunt (« III.1.2. Qui d’autre lisait les Académiques dans l’Antiquité? » et « IV. Introduction philologique »). C. Lévy a traduit le texte des Academici libri et, dans le deuxième tome, les Fragments et le Lucullus, tout comme il a rédigé toutes les notes philosophiques présentes dans les deux tomes. Il a également veillé à la correction du français dans les deux tomes. T. Hunt est responsable du Conspectus siglorum, du texte critique et de l’apparat à la fois de l’Academicus primus et des Testimonia dans ce tome et des Fragments dans le tome II. Il a également rédigé les notes philologiques de l’Academicus primus signalées par la mention « TH » et, à la fin de ce tome, l’Annexe I (« Extraits de la Correspondance de Cicéron concernant la composition du Lucullus et de l’Academicus primus »). Enfin, dans le tome II, il a écrit l’Annexe concernant les éditions imprimées des deux traités. Dans le présent tome, E. Malaspina est l’auteur également des notes signalées par « EM » et des paragraphe I.2 « Une objection préliminaire : Philon le philosophe fils d’un Philon stratège thessalien? » et I.4 « Le philosophe de Larissa dans le Lucullus » de l’Annexe II « Philon ou Philion? ». Dans le tome II, il est l’auteur de l’introduction, du Conspectus siglorum, du texte critique et de l’apparat du Lucullus, de toutes les notes signalées par « EM » et enfin des deux listes de leçons (Orthographica et Recentiores et Editiones) à la suite du texte. Veronica Revello est l’auteur de l’Annexe « Philon ou Philion? » (sauf les § I.2 et I.4) et de la note bibliographique dans ce tome, ainsi que des notes signalées par la mention « VR » dans les deux volumes. Elle a également rédigé la Bibliographie générale et tous les Indices dans le tome II. En l’absence de toute autre précision, les traductions sont celles de la Collection des Universités de France. (shrink)

In “What Makes a Transnational Rule of Law? Understanding the Logos and Values of Human Action in Transnational Law”, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco explores the possibility—and opportunity—of the existence of a Rule of Law (from now on, RoL) on a transnational level. The aim of this paper is to briefly discuss some points related to various facets of Rodriguez-Blanco’s proposal: the correct question about the RoL and her particular view of human action (section 2); the type of explanation about rules, standards, (...) regulations and principles (section 3); the definitions of RoL, coercion, and freedom (section 4); the parties of the relevant relationship and the notion of transnational law (section 5); and the structure of relevant relationships in national and transnational contexts (section 6). I will try, on the one hand, to show how these points could appear quite problematic and thus seem to undermine the integrity of Rodriguez-Blanco’s proposal, and on the other hand, to offer some suggestions as to how these problems could be solved to strengthen her proposal. With these comments, I will also try to indicate what I think are the most important points that should be considered in any sound discourse or proposal on these subjects. I will then conclude with some final remarks (section 7). (shrink)