Difetto di informazione e danno da prodotto

“Difetto di Informazione e danno da prodotto” è un tema di grande interesse ed attualità, in un momento storico in cui si è riacceso il dibattito sulla disciplina della responsabilità per danni da prodotto difettoso. Complice è “il difetto di informazione”, da sempre rimasto ai margini della casistica giurisprudenziale, ma che improvvisamente “ruba la scena” imponendosi all'attenzione della Cassazione (nn. 6007/2007 e 20985/2007) e rivelando nodi interpretativi di forte impatto pratico nelle cause di responsabilità del produttore. Di qui l’esigenza di approfondire la complessa tematica degli information defects, sotto il profilo della nozione di “difetto” e della sua prova, nonché dell’incidenza di eventuali carenze informative sulla responsabilità del produttore. Muovendo dall’analisi della Direttiva e della sua attuazione italiana, il lavoro individua i punti nodali di tale disciplina ed i vari limiti posti – sia a livello interpretativo che applicativo - alla tutela del danneggiato, suscettibili di renderla meno “appetibile” di quanto potrebbe sembrare. Affronta, quindi, criticamente le questioni trattate nelle due sentenze di legittimità del 2007 in ordine sia alla distribuzione tra le parti dell'onere probatorio, sia alla rilevanza delle informazioni fornite dal produttore. Peculiare interrogativo cui si cerca di dare risposta è se, ed in che misura, l’“informazione” consenta al produttore di andare esente da responsabilità. Il lavoro passa ad esplorare i nuovi scenari offerti dalla interazione tra la disciplina della responsabilità del produttore e quella sulla sicurezza generale dei prodotti, la cui coesistenza all’interno del medesimo corpo di norme pone nuovi interrogativi, quali la sussistenza della responsabilità del produttore di un bene “conforme” ed il ruolo dell’informazione nell’ipotesi di prodotti non difettosi e/o “conformi”. La ricerca affronta tali interrogativi con sguardo critico e provocatorio sollevando il dubbio se la “conformità alle norme armonizzate” non rischi di diventare una “nuova” clausola di esonero della responsabilità del produttore.

Functional and neural mechanisms of intertemporal choice

People are daily faced with intertemporal choice, i.e., choices differing in the timing of their consequences, frequently preferring smaller-sooner rewards over larger-delayed ones, reflecting temporal discounting of the value of future outcomes. This dissertation addresses two main goals. New evidence about the neural bases of intertemporal choice is provided. Following the disruption of either the medial orbitofrontal cortex or the insula, the willingness to wait for larger-delayed outcomes is affected in odd directions, suggesting the causal involvement of these areas in regulating the value computation of rewards available with different timings. These findings were also supported by a reported imaging study. Moreover, this dissertation provides new evidence about how temporal discounting can be modulated at a behavioral level through different manipulations, e.g., allowing individuals to think about the distant time, pairing rewards with aversive events, or changing their perceived spatial position. A relationship between intertemporal choice, moral judgements and aging is also discussed. All these findings link together to support a unitary neural model of temporal discounting according to which signals coming from several cortical (i.e., medial orbitofrontal cortex, insula) and subcortical regions (i.e., amygdala, ventral striatum) are integrated to represent the subjective value of both earlier and later rewards, under the top-down regulation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The present findings also support the idea that the process of outcome evaluation is strictly related to the ability to pre-experience and envision future events through self-projection, the anticipation of visceral feelings associated with receiving rewards, and the psychological distance from rewards. Furthermore, taking into account the emotions and the state of arousal at the time of decision seems necessary to understand impulsivity associated with preferring smaller-sooner goods in place of larger-later goods.

La coazione all'adempimento mediante la tecnica delle misure coercitive indirette

La tesi intende offrire una riflessione in merito all’utilizzo della tecnica delle misure coercitive indirette quali strumenti di coartazione della volontà dell’obbligato al fine di indurlo all’esatto adempimento in presenza di statuizioni giudiziali il cui contenuto si sostanzi in prestazioni a carattere infungibile o in un dovere di astensione dal porre in essere determinati comportamenti, che non possono trovare esecuzione secondo le ordinarie forme previste dal Libro Terzo del Codice di procedura civile. Il lavoro prende le mosse dall'analisi storico-comparatistica dello sviluppo dell'esecuzione processuale indiretta nei principali ordinamenti giuridici europei, per poi soffermarsi sulle singole misure coercitive indirette disciplinate dal legislatore italiano nel corso degli anni al fine di far fronte alle esigenze di tutela emergenti in specifici settori del diritto. Segue un'attenta disamina in ordine alla disposizione di cui all'art. 614-bis c.p.c., con cui è stata introdotta per la prima volta nel nostro ordinamento una misura coercitiva indiretta a carattere generale in materia di esecuzione degli obblighi di fare infungibile e di non fare.

Charakteristika und zeitliche Merkmale des Blickrichtungsnacheffekts

In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden verschiedene, insbesondere zeitliche Aspekte des Blickrichtungsnacheffekts (gaze aftereffect) untersucht. Dieser Effekt besagt, dass nach längerer Betrachtung von Bildern, die Personen mit abgewandtem Blick zeigen, die Wahrnehmung von Blickrichtungen in Richtung des adaptierten Blickes verschoben ist. Betrachter halten dann zugewandte Blicke fälschlicherweise für in die Gegenrichtung verschoben, und Blicke in die Adaptationsblickrichtung fälschlicherweise für geradeaus, d.h. sie fühlen sich angeschaut, obwohl sie es nicht werden. In dieser Dissertation wird der Blickrichtungsnacheffekt mit vier psychophysischen Experimenten untersucht, in denen die Probanden einfache kategoriale Urteile über die Blickrichtung der Testbilder abzugeben hatten.rnrnDas erste Experiment untersucht die Induktion des Blickrichtungsnacheffekts. Es wird gezeigt, dass keine separate Adaptationsphase für die Induktion des Nacheffekts notwendig ist. Auch die alleinige, relativ kurze Darbietung des zur Adaptation verwendeten Reizes (TopUp-Display) vor der Präsentation eines Testbildes führt im Laufe wiederholter experimenteller Darbietungen zu einer Verschiebung der allgemeinen Blickrichtungs-Tuningkurve, sowie zu ihrer Verbreiterung. In einem zweiten Experiment wird nachgewiesen, dass die Ausprägung des Blickrichtungsnacheffekts von der jeweiligen Darbietungszeit des Adaptationsreizes abhängt. Zwar ist der Nacheffekt umso stärker, je länger das TopUp-Display gezeigt wird. Aber auch bei sehr kurzen Darbietungszeiten von einer Sekunde kommt der Effekt bereits zustande, hier zeigt sich eine lokal begrenztere Wirkung. Die Auswertung des zeitlichen Verlaufs ergibt, dass sich der Effekt rasch vollständig aufbaut und bereits innerhalb der ersten Darbietungen entsteht. Das dritte Experiment zeigt, dass dem Nacheffekt sowohl kurzfristige Einwirkungen der direkt vor dem Testbild erfolgten Reizung zugrunde liegen, als auch langfristige Memory-Effekte, die über die im Laufe des Experiments gegebenen Wiederholungen akkumuliert werden. Bei Blickwinkeln von 5° halten sich kurzfristige und langfristige Einwirkungen in etwa die Waage. Bei Blickwinkeln von 10° aber sind nur knapp 20% kurzfristig, und etwa 80% langfristige Einwirkungen für den Effekt verantwortlich. In einem vierten Experiment wird die zeitliche Rückbildung des Effekts untersucht und gezeigt, dass sich der Blickrichtungsnacheffekt im Kontrast zu seiner schnellen Entstehung langsam, nämlich innerhalb mehrerer Minuten zurückbildet.rnrnDie Diskussion der Ergebnisse kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die hier gefundene zeitliche Dynamik des Blickrichtungsnacheffekts Adaptationsprozesse auf höheren Schichten der visuellen Informationsverarbeitung als die zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen nahe legt.

Reserva de ley y transposición de directivas europeas

La presente tesis analiza el problema de la validez de las disposiciones de transposición de las Directivas Europeas en los ordenamientos nacionales desde la perspectiva del principio constitucional de reserva de ley. En el primer capítulo se desarrolla un análisis del estado de la cuestión en las jurisprudencias española e italiana. En el segundo se afronta el estudio de los requisitos impuestos por la jurisprudencia del TJUE en relación con las normas por las que se procede a la incorporación en los ordenamientos internos del contenido de las Directivas; teniendo en cuenta que ha de partirse del principio de autonomía institucional y procedimental de los Estados Miembros y que las Directivas, en tanto carentes por razón de su forma de directa aplicabilidad, no pueden sustituir a la ley nacional, el principio de reserva de ley ha de aplicarse en este tipo de operaciones siempre que así lo exija la Constitución nacional. En el tercer capítulo se estudian los efectos que han producido en los ordenamientos italiano, francés y alemán las cláusulas constitucionales "europeas", alcanzándose la fundamental conclusión de que las mismas no han supuesto quiebra alguna de la disciplina general de producción normativa en lo que se refiere a las operaciones de ejecución interna del Derecho Europeo. En el cuarto y último capítulo, en fin, se analiza el sistema italiano de ejecución de las políticas europeas mediante normas reglamentarias y la posible toma en consideración del mismo para la formulación de propuestas de lege ferenda en relación con el Derecho Español.

What users think about the differences between caffeine and illicit,prescription stimulants for cognitive enhancement

Pharmacological cognitive enhancement (CE) is a topic of increasing public awareness. In the scientific literature on studentrnuse of CE as a study aid for academic performance enhancement, there are high prevalence rates regarding the use ofrncaffeinated substances (coffee, caffeinated drinks, caffeine tablets) but remarkably lower prevalence rates regarding the usernof illicit/prescription stimulants such as amphetamines or methylphenidate. While the literature considers the reasons andrnmechanisms for these different prevalence rates from a theoretical standpoint, it lacks empirical data to account for healthyrnstudents who use both, caffeine and illicit/prescription stimulants, exclusively for the purpose of CE. Therefore, wernextensively interviewed a sample of 18 healthy university students reporting non-medical use of caffeine as well as illicit/rnprescription stimulants for the purpose of CE in a face-to-face setting about their opinions regarding differences in generalrnand morally-relevant differences between caffeine and stimulant use for CE. 44% of all participants answered that there is arngeneral difference between the use of caffeine and illicit/prescription stimulants for CE, 28% did not differentiate, 28% couldrnnot decide. Furthermore, 39% stated that there is a moral difference, 56% answered that there is no moral difference andrnone participant was not able to comment on moral aspects. Participants came to their judgements by applying threerndimensions: medical, ethical and legal. Weighing the medical, ethical and legal aspects corresponded to the students’rnindividual preferences of substances used for CE. However, their views only partly depicted evidence-based medical aspectsrnand the ethical issues involved. This result shows the need for well-directed and differentiated information to prevent thernpotentially harmful use of illicit or prescription stimulants for CE.

Problem of Tragedy and Tragic Consciousness in Russia at the turn of the 19th Century

This project intertwines philosophical and historico-literary themes, taking as its starting point the concept of tragic consciousness inherent in the epoch of classicism. The research work makes use of ontological categories in order to describe the underlying principles of the image of the world which was created in philosophical and scientific theories of the 17th century as well as in contemporary drama. Using these categories brought Mr. Vilk to the conclusion that the classical picture of the world implied a certain dualism; not the Manichaean division between light and darkness but the discrimination between nature and absolute being, i.e. God. Mr. Vilk begins with an examination of the philosophical essence of French classical theatre of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The history of French classical tragedy can be divided into three periods: from the mid 17th to early 19th centuries when it triumphed all over France and exerted a powerful influence over almost all European countries; followed by the period of its rejection by the Romantics, who declared classicism to be "artificial and rational"; and finally our own century which has taken a more moderate line. Nevertheless, French classical tragedy has never fully recovered its status. Instead, it is ancient tragedy and the works of Shakespeare that are regarded to be the most adequate embodiment of the tragic. Consequently they still provoke a great number of new interpretations ranging from specialised literary criticism to more philosophical rumination. An important feature of classical tragedy is a system of rules and unities which reveals a hidden ontological structure of the world. The ontological picture of the dramatic world can be described in categories worked out by medieval philosophy - being, essence and existence. The first category is to be understood as a tendency toward permanency and stability (within eternity) connected with this or that fragment of dramatic reality. The second implies a certain set of permanent elements that make up the reality. And the third - existence - should be understood as "an act of being", as a realisation of permanently renewed processes of life. All of these categories can be found in every artistic reality but the accents put on one or another and their interrelations create different ontological perspectives. Mr. Vilk plots the movement of thought, expressed in both philosophical and scientific discourses, away from Aristotle's essential forms, and towards a prioritising of existence, and shows how new forms of literature and drama structured the world according to these evolving requirements. At the same time the world created in classical tragedy fully preserves another ontological paradigm - being - as a fundamental permanence. As far as the tragic hero's motivations are concerned this paradigm is revealed in the dedication of his whole self to some cause, and his oath of fidelity, attitudes which shape his behaviour. It may be the idea of the State, or personal honour, or something borrowed from the emotional sphere, passionate love. Mr. Vilk views the conflicting ambivalence of existence and being, duty as responsibility and duty as fidelity, as underlying the main conflict of classical tragedy of the 17th century. Having plotted the movement of the being/existence duality through its manifestations in 17th century tragedy, Mr. Vilk moves to the 18th century, when tragedy took a philosophical turn. A dualistic view of the world became supplanted by the Enlightenment idea of a natural law, rooted in nature. The main point of tragedy now was to reveal that such conflicts as might take place had an anti-rational nature, that they arose as the result of a kind of superstition caused by social reasons. These themes Mr. Vilk now pursues through Russian dramatists of the 18th and early 19th centuries. He begins with Sumarakov, whose philosophical thought has a religious bias. According to Sumarakov, the dualism of the divineness and naturalness of man is on the one hand an eternal paradox, and on the other, a moral challenge for humans to try to unite the two opposites. His early tragedies are not concerned with social evils or the triumph of natural feelings and human reason, but rather the tragic disharmony in the nature of man and the world. Mr Vilk turns next to the work of Kniazhnin. He is particularly keen to rescue his reputation from the judgements of critics who accuse him of being imitative, and in order to do so, analyses in detail the tragedy "Dido", in which Kniazhnin makes an attempt to revive the image of great heroes and city-founders. Aeneas represents the idea of the "being" of Troy, his destiny is the re-establishment of the city (the future Rome). The moral aspect behind this idea is faithfulness, he devotes himself to Gods. Dido is also the creator of a city, endowed with "natural powers" and abilities, but her creation is lacking internal stability grounded in "being". The unity of the two motives is only achieved through Dido's sacrifice of herself and her city to Aeneus. Mr Vilk's next subject is Kheraskov, whose peculiarity lies in the influence of free-mason mysticism on his work. This section deals with one of the most important philosophical assumptions contained in contemporary free-mason literature of the time - the idea of the trinitarian hierarchy inherent in man and the world: body - soul - spirit, and nature - law - grace. Finally, Mr. Vilk assess the work of Ozerov, the last major Russian tragedian. The tragedies which earned him fame, "Oedipus in Athens", "Fingal" and "Dmitri Donskoi", present a compromise between the Enlightenment's emphasis on harmony and ontological tragic conflict. But it is in "Polixene" that a real meeting of the Russian tradition with the age-old history of the genre takes place. The male and female characters of "Polixene" distinctly express the elements of "being" and "existence". Each of the participants of the conflict possesses some dominant characteristic personifying a certain indispensable part of the moral world, a certain "virtue". But their independent efforts are unable to overcome the ontological gap separating them. The end of the tragedy - Polixene's sacrificial self-immolation - paradoxically combines the glorification of each party involved in the conflict, and their condemnation. The final part of Mr. Vilk's research deals with the influence of "Polixene" upon subsequent dramatic art. In this respect Katenin's "Andromacha", inspired by "Polixene", is important to mention. In "Andromacha" a decisive divergence from the principles of the philosophical tragedy of Russian classicism and the ontology of classicism occurs: a new character appears as an independent personality, directed by his private interest. It was Katenin who was to become the intermediary between Pushkin and classical tragedy.

The experimental combination of rTMS and fMRI reveals the functional relevance of parietal cortex for visuospatial functions

We combined repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the functional relevance of parietal cortex activation during the performance of visuospatial tasks. fMRI provides information about local transient changes in neuronal activation during behavioural or cognitive tasks. Information on the functional relevance of this activation was obtained by using rTMS to induce temporary regional deactivations. We thereby turned the physiological parameter of brain activity into an independent variable controlled and manipulated by the experimenter and investigated its effect on the performance of the cognitive tasks within a controlled experimental design. We investigated cognitive tasks that were performed on the same visual material but differed in the demand on visuospatial functions. For the visuospatial tasks we found a selective enhancement of fMRI signal in the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and a selective impairment of performance after rTMS to this region in comparison to a control group. We could thus show that the parietal cortex is functionally important for the execution of spatial judgements on visually presented material and that TMS as an experimental tool has the potential to interfere with higher cognitive functions such as visuospatial information processing.

Semiotic Analysis in the Study of Social Work

Research and professional practices have the joint aim of re-structuring the preconceived notions of reality. They both want to gain the understanding about social reality. Social workers use their professional competence in order to grasp the reality of their clients, while researchers’ pursuit is to open the secrecies of the research material. Development and research are now so intertwined and inherent in almost all professional practices that making distinctions between practising, developing and researching has become difficult and in many aspects irrelevant. Moving towards research-based practices is possible and it is easily applied within the framework of the qualitative research approach (Dominelli 2005, 235; Humphries 2005, 280). Social work can be understood as acts and speech acts crisscrossing between social workers and clients. When trying to catch the verbal and non-verbal hints of each others’ behaviour, the actors have to do a lot of interpretations in a more or less uncertain mental landscape. Our point of departure is the idea that the study of social work practices requires tools which effectively reveal the internal complexity of social work (see, for example, Adams & Dominelli & Payne 2005, 294 – 295). The boom of qualitative research methodologies in recent decades is associated with much profound the rupture in humanities, which is called the linguistic turn (Rorty 1967). The idea that language is not transparently mediating our perceptions and thoughts about reality, but on the contrary it constitutes it was new and even confusing to many social scientists. Nowadays we have got used to read research reports which have applied different branches of discursive analyses or narratologic or semiotic approaches. Although differences are sophisticated between those orientations they share the idea of the predominance of language. Despite the lively research work of today’s social work and the research-minded atmosphere of social work practice, semiotics has rarely applied in social work research. However, social work as a communicative practice concerns symbols, metaphors and all kinds of the representative structures of language. Those items are at the core of semiotics, the science of signs, and the science which examines people using signs in their mutual interaction and their endeavours to make the sense of the world they live in, their semiosis. When thinking of the practice of social work and doing the research of it, a number of interpretational levels ought to be passed before reaching the research phase in social work. First of all, social workers have to interpret their clients’ situations, which will be recorded in the files. In some very rare cases those past situations will be reflected in discussions or perhaps interviews or put under the scrutiny of some researcher in the future. Each and every new observation adds its own flavour to the mixture of meanings. Social workers have combined their observations with previous experience and professional knowledge, furthermore, the situation on hand also influences the reactions. In addition, the interpretations made by social workers over the course of their daily working routines are never limited to being part of the personal process of the social worker, but are also always inherently cultural. The work aiming at social change is defined by the presence of an initial situation, a specific goal, and the means and ways of achieving it, which are – or which should be – agreed upon by the social worker and the client in situation which is unique and at the same time socially-driven. Because of the inherent plot-based nature of social work, the practices related to it can be analysed as stories (see Dominelli 2005, 234), given, of course, that they are signifying and told by someone. The research of the practices is concentrating on impressions, perceptions, judgements, accounts, documents etc. All these multifarious elements can be scrutinized as textual corpora, but not whatever textual material. In semiotic analysis, the material studied is characterised as verbal or textual and loaded with meanings. We present a contribution of research methodology, semiotic analysis, which has to our mind at least implicitly references to the social work practices. Our examples of semiotic interpretation have been picked up from our dissertations (Laine 2005; Saurama 2002). The data are official documents from the archives of a child welfare agency and transcriptions of the interviews of shelter employees. These data can be defined as stories told by the social workers of what they have seen and felt. The official documents present only fragmentations and they are often written in passive form. (Saurama 2002, 70.) The interviews carried out in the shelters can be described as stories where the narrators are more familiar and known. The material is characterised by the interaction between the interviewer and interviewee. The levels of the story and the telling of the story become apparent when interviews or documents are examined with the use of semiotic tools. The roots of semiotic interpretation can be found in three different branches; the American pragmatism, Saussurean linguistics in Paris and the so called formalism in Moscow and Tartu; however in this paper we are engaged with the so called Parisian School of semiology which prominent figure was A. J. Greimas. The Finnish sociologists Pekka Sulkunen and Jukka Törrönen (1997a; 1997b) have further developed the ideas of Greimas in their studies on socio-semiotics, and we lean on their ideas. In semiotics social reality is conceived as a relationship between subjects, observations, and interpretations and it is seen mediated by natural language which is the most common sign system among human beings (Mounin 1985; de Saussure 2006; Sebeok 1986). Signification is an act of associating an abstract context (signified) to some physical instrument (signifier). These two elements together form the basic concept, the “sign”, which never constitutes any kind of meaning alone. The meaning will be comprised in a distinction process where signs are being related to other signs. In this chain of signs, the meaning becomes diverged from reality. (Greimas 1980, 28; Potter 1996, 70; de Saussure 2006, 46-48.) One interpretative tool is to think of speech as a surface under which deep structures – i.e. values and norms – exist (Greimas & Courtes 1982; Greimas 1987). To our mind semiotics is very much about playing with two different levels of text: the syntagmatic surface which is more or less faithful to the grammar, and the paradigmatic, semantic structure of values and norms hidden in the deeper meanings of interpretations. Semiotic analysis deals precisely with the level of meaning which exists under the surface, but the only way to reach those meanings is through the textual level, the written or spoken text. That is why the tools are needed. In our studies, we have used the semiotic square and the actant analysis. The former is based on the distinctions and the categorisations of meanings, and the latter on opening the plotting of narratives in order to reach the value structures.

Climate Engineering: gesellschaftliches Konfliktpotenzial und öffentliche Partizipationsmöglichkeiten

Aufbauend auf den Ergebnissen einer Literatur- und Medienanalyse wurde erstmals zum Thema Climate Engineering ein sogenanntes Gruppen-Delphi durchgeführt, um aktuelle und argumentativ fundierte Einschätzungen von Experten zu den möglichen sozialen und kulturellen Folgen von Climate Engineering, insbesondere auch in Deutschland, zu erhalten. Die Ergebnisse dieser diskursiven Form der Expertenbefragung zeigen deutlich, dass die Verfahren des Climate Engineering differenziert betrachtet und bewertet werden müssen. Auf Akzeptanzprobleme stoßen vor allem Maßnahmen, bei denen hohe Unsicherheit über die potenziellen Nebenwirkungen besteht. In der Literatur und unter den Experten besteht Einigkeit darüber, dass es bereits jetzt, in der Frühphase der Entwicklung von Climate Engineering-Strategien, notwendig sei, die Bürger über diese Technologien und Strategien aufzuklären.

Children's and adolescents' moral emotion attributions and judgments about exclusion of peers with hearing impairments

Children and adolescents with hearing impairments are at risk of being excluded from activities with hearing peers. Moral emotion attributions may represent important indicators for children’s identification with the moral norm not to exclude peers based on disability. Against this background, we investigated how 10-, 12- and 15-year-olds (N = 215) feel and judge about social exclusion of peers with hearing impairments. Emotion attributions and moral judgements were assessed using four different hypothetical scenarios about the exclusion of peers with hearing impairments (school vs. leisure time, group vs. dyad). Moreover, children’s and adolescents’ inclusive behaviour was assessed by a peer nomination procedure. Results revealed that moral emotion attributions differed as a function of exclusion context and grade. Moreover, participants with inclusive behaviour attributed moral emotions more often than participants with less inclusive behaviour. Implications of the results for moral education are discussed.

Ein Autor von ›hypertropher Virilität‹. Geschlecht in der Musil-Rezeption der 1920er und 1930er Jahre

Adopting "The Man Without Qualities" as a decisively masculine novel, contemporary literary criticism passed on a trope with which reviewers such as Alfred Döblin, Robert Müller and Franz Blei had already characterised Musil’s earlier texts. The reviews of the novel are therefore typical of how evaluations in terms of originality in the literary-critical and poetological debates of the 20s and 30s were regularly translated into the established gender hierarchy. The need to make such judgements can be seen as much as the symptom of a modern consciousness of crisis in masculinity as the hyper-athletics of the novel’s hero himself and the pitiful figure cut by the other men in "The Man Without Qualities".

Understanding the Sharing Economy: The Role of Response to Negative Reviews in the Peer-To-Peer Accommodation Sharing Network?

Recognizing the potentially ruinous effect of negative reviews on the reputation of the hosts as well as a subjective nature of the travel experience judgements, peer-to-peer accommodation sharing plat-forms, like Airbnb, have readily embraced the “response” option, empowering hosts with the voice to challenge, deny or at least apologize for the subject of critique. However, the effects of different re-sponse strategies on trusting beliefs towards the host remain unclear. To fill this gap, this study focus-es on understanding the impact of different response strategies and review negativity on trusting be-liefs towards the host in peer-to-peer accommodation sharing setting utilizing experimental methods. Examination of two different contexts, varying in the controllability of the subject of complaint, re-veals that when the subject of complaint is controllable by a host, such strategies as confession / apol-ogy and denial can improve trusting beliefs towards the host. However, when the subject of criticism is beyond the control of the host, denial of the issue does not yield guest’s confidence in the host, where-as confession and excuse have positive influence on trusting beliefs.

Conventionalism and the World as Bare Sense-Data

We are confident of many of the judgements we make as to what sorts of alterations the members of nature’s kinds can survive, and what sorts of events mark the ends of their existences. But is our confidence based on empirical observation of nature’s kinds and their members? Conventionalists deny that we can learn empirically which properties are essential to the members of nature’s kinds. Judgements of sameness in kind between members, and of numerical sameness of a member across time, merely project our conventions of individuation. Our confidence is warranted because apart from those conventions there are no phenomena of kind-sameness or of numerical sameness across time. There is just “stuff” displaying properties. This paper argues that conventionalists can assign no properties to the “stuff” beyond immediate phenomenal properties. Consequently they cannot explain how each of us comes to be able to wield “our conventions”.

Reglas y conciencia de las reglas : Significado, ontología y escepticismo

La tesis analiza dos objeciones corrientes a la interpretación del problema de las reglas por el Wittgenstein de Kripke: el PROBLEMA DE LA OBJETIVIDAD DE LA REGLA, ¿puede un individuo estar acertado en contra de la opinión comunitaria consensuada?; y el PROBLEMA DE LAS RELACIONES INTERNAS entre reglas y casos, presuntamente violentada por el rol de la noción de acuerdo en la misma. La estrategia general de la tesis es examinar las vías de ataque al lenguaje privado (LP) previas a la de Kripke. El contraste con las mismas permite conceptualizar adecuadamente la propuesta de Kripke, para mostrar que las objeciones mencionadas no se le aplican. En el marco de la tesis, comprendemos por LP a cualquier tesis que sostenga que las condiciones de significatividad del lenguaje pueden ser provistas por estados mentales subjetivos, p.e. creencias, de ahí el solapamiento de la tesis del lenguaje privado con el escepticismo epistemológico y con posiciones solipsistas, y la convicción de que la refutación del LP acarrea la ruina del escepticismo epistemológico. Hay dos versiones clásicas del argumento del LP. Las versiones epistemológicas (Malcom, Fogelin son los representantes que examinamos) derivan la imposibilidad del LP de la imposibilidad de establecer la verdad/corrección de un uso en el contexto de privacidad. La crítica a estas versiones (Ayer, thomson) muestra un círculo justificatorio entre oraciones subjetivas y objetivas. Las versiones semánticas (Kenny, Canfield, Tugendhat) intentan evitar el círculo, elucidando las presuposiciones que le subyacen. Esta respuesta no es satisfactoria ya que o bien regenera el círculo en un nuevo nivel, o bien no logran derrocar al círculo de la justificación. Con Stroud identificamos el fallo común de estas estrategias en el hecho de que en su intento de derrotar al escéptico-privatista, requieren o bien una PREMISA FÁCTICA que indica que conocemos, o bien la especificación del conocimiento como una NOTA DEFINICIONAL de los criterios/condiciones de significatividad que el argumento trascendental elucida en la pregunta del escéptico. Kripke impone un cambio de rumbo en el argumento, al plantear el desafío como una forma de ESCEPTICISMO SEMÁNTICO ONTOLÓGICO, el cual ya no se basa en las limitaciones cognitivas de la privacidad, sino justamente en las presuntas ventajas que presenta. El desafío de Kripke pregunta por las razones que podemos aportar para sostener que no ha ocurrido un cambio en el uso, lo cual equivale a preguntar ¿cómo sabes que tu uso actual CORRESPONDE con tu intención/significado previo? De la imposibilidad de responder a la cuestión clave del realismo clásico (correspondencia) en el caso del significado, Kripke concluye que no puede haber condiciones de verdad para las oraciones semánticas. Esto motiva una paradoja escéptica y una SOLUCIÓN ESCÉPTICA de la paradoja en términos de condiciones de aseverabilidad. Tener en cuenta el abandono de las condiciones de verdad es la clave para responder al problema de la objetividad, mientras que la forma del desafío y el funcionamiento de la concordancia en los juicios como base de atribución, es la clave para la solución del problema de las relaciones internas.