Intentional Action Research Articles

Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity

Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity

Naming Others: Translation and Subject Constitution in the Central Highlands of Angola (1926–1961)

AbstractThis paper proposes an ethnographic theorization of the relationship between naming, translation, and subject constitution via the analysis of forms of interpellation in colonial Angola. It engages critically with systemic/structural renderings of colonial society that portray social positions as oppositional to argue for a deconstructive approach attentive to historical disjunctions between naming and social positioning. Dwelling on core signifiers in Portuguese and Umbundu, the paper describes the iterative chain of substitutions through which subjects have been constituted, that is, reduced and transformed. For instance, how are the Umbundu status signifiersocimbunduandocindelereduced in their respective translations as “black” and “white”? How can translation both re-enact and challenge the constitution of racialized and ethnicized categories of difference? How is this related to transformations in Angolan history? The argument put forth challenges the conventional understanding of social categories in the context of Portuguese colonialism in Angola by arguing that the performativity of naming and translation constitutes subjects via both fixation and displacement. Therefore, the possibility of transformation does not lie in the intentional action of subjects, but in their capacity to operate within the fractures of the relationship between language and society by drawing on disjunctions between signifier and signified, names and social positioning, subjective constitution and sociopolitical context.

Addressing the Habitual Practice Issue: The Role of Unlearning in Promoting Evidence-Based Practice and Lifelong Learning

Context Habits play a large role in health care professionals' behaviors. Although habitual practice patterns limit cognitive overload, routinized approaches can compromise the provision of quality and contemporary patient care. To address the issue of habit, unlearning has been suggested across health care fields but remains a relatively new concept in athletic training. Objectives This commentary aims to (1) describe the concept of unlearning, including barriers to and facilitators of this process, (2) discuss the steps in the unlearning process via a published unlearning framework, (3) highlight the role of unlearning on improving evidence-based practice and lifelong learning among clinicians, and (4) apply a context-specific example to the unlearning framework to highlight the role of unlearning on improving patient care. Background Although evidence-based practice can result in improved quality of care, literature suggests that routine uptake and incorporation of evidence into patient care is limited. The reason for this gap is likely multifactorial, but may, in part, be related to the need for unlearning. Synthesis Rapid changes in health care delivery require medical professionals to adapt their practice behaviors to maintain competence over time. Unlearning facilitates behavior change because it involves an intentional act of moving away from knowledge and skills that are no longer effective. As such, unlearning may also improve evidence-based practice efforts. Recommendation(s) To abide by changing recommendations, clinicians must unlearn outdated behaviors first before replacing them with evidence-based techniques. As new knowledge is acquired, it is important to reflect on its applicability to one's practice setting and identify what, if any, outdated practices the new knowledge could replace. Conclusion(s) Self-reflection is essential for successful unlearning to occur. Identifying the overall effectiveness of various practice behaviors and acting on areas of improvement can help ensure the care provided to patients is evidence-based while simultaneously optimizing patient outcomes.

Trust Prediction: Use of Decision Tree in Training & Evaluation

The growth of Cloud Computing is the outcome of numerous benefits associated with this technology. Like: Reduce Energy consumption, waste & carbon emission and affluence & Comfort of its working apparatus. At the same point of time its security concern is making vibrations in the research Community and regulating organizations to find the means of making it a secure and reliable stream where consumers’ interests are ensured & protected. More uncertainty arises in this sector, when data theft cases are cracked up and consumers have compromised some confidential details due to intentional or unintentional action of Cloud providers. It leads the need of Trust evaluation of the provider. This trust evaluation should be in the quantitative terms and completed before selection & registration with the provider for cloud services. This paper is using predictive modeling technique to predict the trust level of the provider. Classification, a supervised Machine Learning technique that uses certification attainment status of the provider to predict its trust level.

The anatomy of change in urban infrastructure landscapes: cooking landscapes in Maputo, Mozambique

Rapid urbanisation and global environmental transformations require rethinking the material and social configurations of cities. The concept of ‘transitions’ has gained traction to guide such processes of infrastructure change towards net-zero, resilient societies both in academic and policy conversations. In this paper, we examine what notions of change are deployed in these debates. Specifically, we argue that transition theory conceptualises change as triggered by intentional actions and innovations by emphasising the functional drivers leading change. While deliberate actions cause changes, not all change follows strategic intent. Instead, transitions also depend on contingent relations between social actors and material objects, which cannot always be planned or anticipated. The concept of ‘urban infrastructure landscape’ helps reveal the non-strategic aspects of transitions. The example of improved cookstoves in Maputo, Mozambique, demonstrates the change envisaged in current energy policy and the changes on the ground.

Transgression vs the Politically Correct: Phases and Faces of a Core Category in Children’s Literature

It seems that in recent years criticism has been eagerly focusing on ‘transgression’ and ‘transgressive’ as keywords that enlarge the epistemic horizon, allowing the scholar’s gaze to descry areas previously untouched, or explored with a different cultural bias. In the literary domain, as an intentional act that involves trespassing, and the breaking of rules performed in explicit ways, transgression is often linked to language and form, and also to questions of gender, politics, social behaviour. The following articles, while dwelling on transgression, locate it within the area of children’s fiction, thus operating a first preliminary transgression, inasmuch as this kind of literature has been traditionally moulded by the romantic and pastoral fallacy of childhood as an innocent, untainted, happy condition, and, in turn, by the Victorian cult of the child that thrived on aesthetically idealized representations of childhood and youth, teeming with sound moral principles, healthy didacticism, excellent examples of virtue.

Attribution of intentions in autism spectrum disorder: A study of event-related potentials.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social cognition deficits, including difficulties inferring the intentions of others. Although deficits in attribution of intentions (AI) have been consistently replicated in ASD, their exact nature remains unexplored. Here we registered the electrophysiological correlates of a nonverbal social cognition task to investigate AI in autistic adults. Twenty-one male autistic adults and 30 male neurotypical volunteers performed a comic strips task depicting either intentional action (AI) or physical causality with or without human characters, while their electroencephalographic signal was recorded. Compared to neurotypical volunteers, autistic participants were significantly less accurate in correctly identifying congruence in the AI condition, but not in the physical causality conditions. In the AI condition a bilateral posterior positive event-related potential (ERP) occurred 200-400 ms post-stimulus (the ERP intention effect) in both groups. This waveform comprised a P200 and a P300 component, with the P200 component being larger for the AI condition in neurotypical volunteers but not in autistic individuals, who also showed a longer latency for this waveform. Group differences in amplitude of the ERP intention effect only became evident when we compared autistic participants to a subgroup of similarly performing neurotypical participants, suggesting that the atypical ERP waveform in ASD is an effect of group, rather than a marker of low-task performance. Together, these results suggest that the lower accuracy of the ASD group in the AI task may result from impaired early attentional processing and contextual integration of socially relevant cues. LAY SUMMARY: To understand why autistic people have difficulties in inferring others' intentions, we asked participants to judge the congruence of the endings of comic strips depicting either intentional actions (e.g., fetching a chair to reach for something) or situations solely following physical rules (e.g., an apple falling on someone's head), while their electrical brain activity was recorded. Autistic individuals had more difficulties in inferring intentions than neurotypical controls, which may reflect impaired attention and contextual integration of social cues.

Financial Fraud Detection by Analyzing online Transaction

–Financial fraud is commonlyrepresented by the use of illegal practices wherethey can intervene from senior managers until payroll employees, becoming a crime punishable by law. There are many techniques developed to analyze, detect and prevent this behavior, being the most important the fraud triangle theory associated with the classic financial audit model. In order to perform this research, a survey of the related works in the existing literature was carried out, with the purpose of establishing our own framework. In this context, this paper presents Financial FraudDetection Scheme, a conceptual framework that allows to identify and outline a group of people inside an banking organization who commit fraud, supported by the fraud triangle theory. Financial Fraud Detection Scheme works in the approach of continuous audit that will be incharge of collecting information of agents installed in user’s equipment. It is based on semantic techniques applied through the collection of phrases typed by the users under study for later being transferred to ar epository for later analysis. This proposal encourages to contribute with the field of cybersecurity, in the reduction of cases of financial fraud. Index Terms- financial fraud, Cyber security, NTRODUCTION Fraud is a worldwide phenomenon that affects public and private organizations, covering a wide variety of illegal practices and acts that involve intentional deception ormisrepresentation. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners(ACFE) [1] fraud includes any intentional or deliberate act of depriving another of property or money by cunning, deception or other unfairacts.

Unsettledness and the intentionality of practical decisions

ABSTRACT Say that a ‘practical decision’ is a momentary intentional mental action of intention formation. According to what I’ll call the ‘Decisional Prior Intention Thesis’ (‘DPIT’), each practical decision is intentional at least partly in virtue of the representational content of some previously acquired intention. DPIT is entailed by the following widely endorsed thesis that I’ll call the ‘General Prior Intention Thesis’ (‘GPIT’): each intentional action is intentional at least partly in virtue of the representational content of some previously acquired intention. Alfred Mele argues that a certain kind of case impugns DPIT. I defend DPIT from Mele’s argument by showing that his focal case is impossible. I then develop a new argument for an important portion of DPIT – viz., the thesis that, necessarily, if at t you decide to A, then just before t you have an intention whose representational content enables it to play an intentionality-grounding role relative to an act of deciding to A. The defense of DPIT and argument for the indicated portion of it jointly foreground and shed new light on the phenomenon of practical unsettledness – i.e. the felt unsettledness about what to do that precedes a practical decision.

Linguistic Transgression in Society as Seen Through Spanish Linguistic Landscapes

The term “transgression” is traditionally associated with the infringement of what is prescribed. However, a closer look at its nature suggests that it is an integral part of the norm, as well as a starting point for innovation, in this case linguistic. The study focuses on the linguistic landscape (LL) of Spain, where five official languages share regional official status with Castilian Spanish. Further, these languages coexist in the LL with immigrant ones and English as an international language. In this environment, the article explores how linguistic transgression is reflected in the LL and what motivations underlie such non-normative uses. Given the spatial and grammatical limitations of the texts in the LL, the study focuses on aspects of code preference and orthography. To this end, we work on photographs taken in different Spanish regions which reflect the range of transgressive linguistic practices present in the public space. The evidence gathered allows us to suggest the grouping of these techniques under the categories of code (or variant) choice/elimination, exoticisation, re-representation and re-signification. The subsequent analysis presents linguistic transgression in LL as a voluntary, motivated and intentional social act that reflects identity, socio-cultural, but also commercial motivations. These motivations lead street-text authors to force the linguistic norm in their texts in order to claim their identity, show their solidarity with ideologies, resist linguistic policies or seek identification with their audience’s sensitivities for trade purposes.

The organization of the movement depends mainly on the anticipation of its sensory and emotional consequences

Two sources of emotions influence directed actions, namely, those associated with the environment and those that are consequences of the action. The present study examines the impact of these emotions on movement preparation. It invokes theories from psychology, i.e., ideomotor theory and motor control's cognitive approach through movement analysis. In addition to their action readiness, emotions related to the environment can interfere with actions directed towards a goal. However, intentional action involves a goal that will cause satisfaction when achieved. While most studies consider each emotion's influence separately, few studies confront them to study their respective impact. In the current study, thirty-two right-handed young adults reach for a left target with a stylus that will reduce or enlarge an emotional picture that is initially present (nontarget stimulus). Kinematic analyses show that anticipating the pointing's emotional consequences impacts the final pointing position. All other results emphasize the impact of reducing or enlarging on the preparation and control of movement depending on the direction of movement. The emotional consequences of the action is a weighting factor that is relevant to the action goal and subject's intention, but it is less important than the action's visual consequences.

Neural correlates of successful costly punishment in the Ultimatum game on a trial-by-trial basis.

Costly punishment describes decisions of an interaction partner to punish an opponent for violating rules of fairness at the expense of personal costs. Here, we extend the interaction process by investigating the impact of a socio-emotional reaction of the opponent in response to the punishment that indicates whether punishment was successful or not. In a modified Ultimatum game, emotional facial expressions of the proposer in response to the decision of the responder served as feedback stimuli. We found that both honored reward following acceptance of an offer (smiling compared to neutral facial expression) and successful punishment (sad compared to neutral facial expression) elicited a reward positivity, indicating that punishment was the intended outcome. By comparing the pattern of results with a probabilistic learning task, we show that the reward positivity on sad facial expressions was specific for the context of costly punishment. Additionally, acceptance rates on a trial-by-trial basis were altered according to P3 amplitudes in response to the emotional facial reaction of the proposer. Our results are in line with the concept of costly punishment as an intentional act following norm-violating behavior. Socio-emotional stimuli have an important influence on the perception and behavior in economic bargaining.

Stories of intentional action mobilise climate policy support\xa0and action intentions

What makes a climate story effective? We examined if short fiction stories about everyday pro-environmental behaviours motivate climate policy support, and individual and collective climate action in a nationally representative experiment (N = 903 UK adults). The story featuring protagonists driven by pro-environmental intentions (i.e., the intentional environmentalist narrative) increased participants’ support for pro-climate policies and intentions to take both individual and collective pro-environmental actions, more so than did stories featuring protagonists whose pro-environmental behaviours were driven by intentions to gain social status, to protect their health, and a control story. Participants’ stronger feelings of identification with the protagonist partially explained these effects of the intentional environmentalist narrative. Results highlight that narrating intentional, rather than unintentional, pro-environmental action can enhance readers’ climate policy support and intentions to perform pro-environmental action. Therefore, the intentions driving pro-environmental action may have implications for the extent to which observes identify with the actor and take pro-environmental action themselves.

Synthesis essence in contemporary architectural production

The research dealt with a crucial topic” Synthesis” in various fields of knowledge, that led the research to define the concept linguistically and idiomatically and in most important fields associated with it reaching to architecture, by presenting studies show most important aspects associated with it in contemporary architecture by a general study in addition to studies that dealt with the concept within the contemporary architectural eras (modern, postmodern, deconstructive, digital) architecture to show formula specificity in these eras, and to determine accordingly research problem, which was represented in “knowledge lack about synthesis essence in contemporary architectural production”, And research aim was to clarify the specificity of the synthesis formula that achieved permanence of contemporary architectural production in terms of its essence and basic components. To achieve this goal, a two-stage approach was adopted. The first consisted in structuring a comprehensive theoretical framework included several items related to synthesis essence (Source type invested for synthesis, Spatio-temporal affiliation of the synthesized source, Synthesized source characteristics, Harmonic and total nature of the synthesized source), with an explanation of its possible values. The second stage was to apply the framework to elected architectural projects, which were represented by three projects (Foreign, Arab, local) to demonstrate formula specificity. Finally, Research emphasized the importance of adopting synthesis to achieve permanent in architecture - as an intentional act - that included new architectural products achievement while maintaining relationship with the assets (original sources synthesized) according to determinants that meet basic requirements of the new situation data.

Challenges experienced by community health workers and their motivation to attend a self-management programme.

BackgroundCommunity health workers (CHWs) are change agents expected to assist in decreasing the global burden of disease in the communities they serve. However, they themselves have health risk behaviours, which predispose them to non-communicable diseases and thus need to be empowered to make better health choices. There is a gap in literature detailing the challenges faced by CHWs in addressing their own health risk behaviours.AimThis study aimed to explore the challenges experienced by CHWs in carrying out their daily duties and the motivating factors to join a self-management programme.SettingThe study was conducted in a low socio-economic urban area of the Western Cape, South Africa.MethodsThis study used a qualitative exploratory design using in-depth interviews to obtain rich data about the personal and professional challenges that CHWs experience on a daily basis.ResultsFive themes emerged with regard to professional challenges (social conditions, mental health of patients, work environment, patient adherence and communication). This cadre identified ineffective self-management as a personal challenge and two themes emerged as motivation for participating in a self-management programme: empowerment and widening perspective.ConclusionThe challenges raised by the CHWs have a direct impact on their role in communities. This study therefore highlights an urgent need for policymakers and leaders who plan training programmes to take intentional strategic action to address their health challenges and to consider utilising a self-management intervention model to improve their overall health status.

Motivational determinism

AbstractPhysical determinism is a metaphysical thesis about the natural world whose consequences for freedom and moral responsibility have been widely discussed. In this paper, I articulate a different form of determinism, motivational determinism, which claims that all intentional action is causally determined by the prior motivational state of the agent. Motivational determinism was defended in a simple form by Hume, but has been neglected in recent philosophical literature. I show that there are important reasons that support the plausibility of MD. I then compare MD with libertarian and physical deterministic theories of agency and note that MD has various attractive features. I show that MD is much more threatening to moral responsibility than physical determinism. I conclude that MD is an interesting theory of human agency that deserves wide attention.

Recent Experimental Philosophy on Joint Action: Do We Need a New Normativism About Collective Action?

Abstract There are two general views that social ontologists currently defend concerning the nature of joint intentional action. According to ‘non-normativists’, for a joint action to be established, we need to align certain psychological states in certain ways. ‘Normativists’ argue that joint action essentially involves normative relations that cannot be reduced to the intentional states of individuals. In two ground-breaking publications, Javier Gomez-Lavin and Matthew Rachar empirically investigate the relation between normativity and joint action in several survey studies. They argue that people's intuitions support neither current normativists nor current non-normativists. They suggest that there is a need for a ‘new normativism of joint action’. I first explore what a new normativism could amount to and conclude that the authors’ findings cannot support a demand for such a view. Finally, I suggest some ideas about how to move the field forward.

Cultivating intentional action out of unintentional injury disparities: A call to action for hospitalists

Cultivating intentional action out of unintentional injury disparities: A call to action for hospitalists

Intention and Intentional Action in Philosophy of Law

The article examines K.A. Rodin’s thesis on the possibility of including Wittgenstein’s remarks on intention and action in the context of legal philosophy research. It is shown that although the concepts of intention and intentional action are relevant to the philosophy of law, Wittgenstein’s own ideas did not have a significant impact on their relevance (and some of them did not have it at all). This influence is confined to the fact that, like Wittgenstein, many jurists and legal theorists, mainly those who were influenced by the ideas of H.L.A. Hart, also objected to the causal theory of action. However, the influence is limited to this approach.

Norms, rationality, and relevance under the “guise of the good”

In several works, Veronica Rodríguez-Blanco has proposed an approach to the normativity of legal rules and intentional rule-following in the frame of the “guise of the good” model of intentional action. She argues that, on this approach, Raz’s conception of legal authority implies that legal rules cannot be rational guides for intentional actions. I will argue that Rodríguez-Blanco’s proposal does not succeed in addressing the practical relevance of legal rules. However, I shall argue that a weak version of her criticism of Raz still holds. Thus, this discussion provides a suitable framework from which I will propose a reflection on the normativity of legal rules. This reflection aims to show how legal norms can count as rational guides for intentional agents without being irrelevant in practical reasoning.