Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is tasked with facing the hundred-year history of Indian Residential Schools. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is frequently invoked in relation to the Canadian TRC, perhaps because this is one of the few TRCs worldwide that Canadians know. Whilst the South African TRC is mainly applauded as an international success, I argue that loose analogizing is often more emotive than concise. Whilst much indeed can be drawn from the South African experience, it (...) is important to specify the Canada–South Africa analogy. In this article, I do so by focussing on the institutional approach to truth and how this relates to issues of settler/White denial. The South African experience teaches that narrow approaches to truth collude with superficial views of reconciliation that deny continuities of violence. Consequently, I argue that Indigenous–settler reconciliation requires a broad truth that locates residential schools on a continuum of violence, linking extraordinary abuses with structural injustices and historic colonization with lived relationships. (shrink)

This study investigated how problem solvers get into and out of a state of impasse while solving difficult problems. 47 participants had to decipher the secret method behind 33 magic tricks while r...

This paper compares the heuristic potential of three metaphorical paired concepts used in the relevant literature to characterise global relationships between the anthroposphere and the ecosphere. Methodologically, the guiding question is whether and to what extent metaphorical theses can support an arrival at hypotheses which accurately reflect reality and possess explanatory force. The predator-prey model implies that the populations of two species in such a relationship in principle exhibit coupled oscillations, giving prey populations the possibility of periodic regeneration. For some (...) time, however, the most important indicators of human destruction of nature have been showing a relentless upward trend which appears to render the tumour-host metaphor more appropriate. Another fact which favours this analogy is that a tumour develops within its host and from its host's normal cells, in a similar way to the emergence of the anthroposphere from within the biosphere. But the parasite-host analogy also allows the formulation of fruitful hypotheses, since ecological parasitology is equally familiar with varieties of autoaggressive interaction and provides a means of focusing particularly on the adelphoparasitic hierarchy within the anthroposphere. (shrink)

The diverse and paradoxical nature of globalization processes has given rise to new social constellations that shape transnational, national and local spaces. The historicity of identities, their past and present conditions, the changes they went through, the ways they influence the feeling of full membership in a community and the differentiation derived from cultural diversity and pluralism underscore the need for revisiting theoretical explorations. This paper addresses past and present social, cultural and religious processes in an era of transformations derived (...) from the complexity of today’s interconnected world and on the light of historical encounters. The need for revising the singularity of social and cultural trajectories and the religious trends gravitating in society is approached through snapshots of a twofold historical encounter: between Modernity and Latin America, and between Judaism and Modernity. Both express entrenched dilemmas of the binaries periphery-center and universal-particular. While one of them raised the issue of the dominant program of Modernity as a Western project, the other was entailed in the assumptions of one hegemonic religious constellation. (shrink)

Multiple authorship is the universal solution to multi-tasking in the sciences. Without a team, each with their own set of expertise, and each involved mostly in complementary ways, a research project will likely not advance quickly, or effectively. Consequently, there is a risk that research goals will not be met within a desired timeframe. Research teams that strictly scrutinize their modus operandi select and include a set of authors that have participated substantially in the physical undertaking of the research, in (...) its planning, or who have contributed intellectually to the ideas or the development of the manuscript. Authorship is not an issue that is taken lightly, and save for dishonest authors, it is an issue that is decided collectively by the authors, usually in sync with codes of conduct established by their research institutes or national ministries of education. Science, technology and medicine publishers have, through independent, or sometimes coordinated efforts, also established their own sets of guidelines regarding what constitutes valid authorship. However, these are, for the greater part, merely guidelines. A previous and recent analysis of authorship definitions indicates that the definitions in place regarding authorship and its validity by many leading STM publishers is neither uniform, nor standard, despite several of them claiming to follow the guidelines as set forward by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors or ICMJE. This disparity extends itself to ghost and guest authorship, two key authorship-related issues that are examined in this paper to assess the extent of discrepancies among the same set of STM publishers and what possible influence they might have on publishing ethics. (shrink)

Most departments in any field of science that have a sound academic basis have discussion groups or journal clubs in which pertinent and relevant literature is frequently discussed, as a group. This paper shows how such discussions could help to fortify the post-publication peer review movement, and could thus fortify the value of traditional peer review, if their content and conclusions were made known to the wider academic community. Recently, there are some tools available for making PPPR viable, either as (...) signed or anonymous comments, or in a hybrid format. Thus, limited platforms are currently in place to accommodate and integrate PPPR as a supplement to traditional peer review, allowing for the open and public discussion of what is often publicly-funded science. This paper examines ways in which the opinions that emerge from journal clubs or discussion groups could help to fortify the integrity and reliability of science while increasing its accountability. A culture of reward for good and corrective behavior, rather than a culture that protects silence, would benefit science most. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 72-74.

The 1924 Church reform, through which the Romanian Orthodox Church decided to adopt the Revised Julian Calendar, led to dissent movements, mostly comprised of peasants, especially in the villages of Moldavia and Bessarabia. Considering the calendar change a heresy, these groups soon developed into religious communities that came to be known as Old Calendarists, or “stylists,” followers of “the old-style calendar.” Led by defrocked priests and monks who rejected the reform, the groups very quickly became the target of the secret (...) police and the Gendarmerie. What also drew the attention of the authorities and the Orthodox Church was that women, especially the younger ones, seemed to play important roles within the communities, not only in terms of membership, but also in preserving and spreading the Old Calendarists’ beliefs and religious ideas. As many members of the communities were being arrested, and their churches were destroyed, these women also suffered imprisonment, monastic incarceration, or were forced to hide from the authorities in caves or huts that they built in the woods. Though subjected to various forms of persecution, which continued through the communist period, the majority of them held strong to their beliefs and contributed to the forging of a religious identity. Using archival documents, in the forms of letters, postcards, photos, and declarations as primary sources, and drawing on interviews conducted with contemporary nuns and members of the Old Calendarist communities, the present article explores the personal stories of young Old Calendarist women. Building upon the work of Anca Șincan, this article challenges the notion that transmission of religion was the exclusive prerogative of older women. (shrink)

In this article, using the recent work by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age as my point of departure, I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to think past the competing binary of atheistic and religious experience and allows us to surpass the present narratives of secularism. In A Secular Age, Taylor himself seeks a middle ground between atheism and religion, arguing that it is possible to open ourselves to the cross-pressures of modern existence that find us caught between (...) scientific atheism and a need for spiritual and religious guidance. Here, Taylor finds a way of picturing ourselves within a secular age, remaining faithful to scientific rationalism, but still open to religion and a sense of a higher good. However, as I shall demonstrate, in his thesis Taylor misrepresents the Continental philosophical tradition (particularly Nietzsche and post-structuralism) that has itself sought to understand these cross-pressures of existence. Taking this misrepresentation, and specifically his reductive and colloquial analysis of Nietzsche, Camus, and Derrida, as my point of departure, I provide an alternative manner of thinking through the work of these writers, one that leads to a detailed analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy and his project the deconstruction of Christianity. In this analysis I argue that Nancy provides a manner of thinking that remains open and allows an experience of freedom, without seeking to close that sense of openness with explanation, nor maintaining that sense of openness with a conception of the divine. (shrink)

In the present study, we explored the effects of high arousal on cognitive performance when facing a situation of risk. We also investigated how these effects are moderated by either positive or ne...

Die ursprüngliche ethische und gesellschaftliche Situation des Menschen in einer seiner frühen Schriften untersuchend sagt Fichte über die französische Revolution, dass das Sittliche dahingehend zu unterscheiden sei, ob es sich auf die Geisteswelt beziehe oder auf gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse.

Die ursprüngliche ethische und gesellschaftliche Situation des Menschen in einer seiner frühen Schriften untersuchend sagt Fichte über die französische Revolution, dass das Sittliche dahingehend zu unterscheiden sei, ob es sich auf die Geisteswelt beziehe oder auf gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse.

The main aim of this study is to test the validity of the Motivation, Engagement, and Thriving in User Experience model in higher education. We propose a process model in which we investigate how the need-satisfaction of digital learning tools within the interface sphere and task sphere accounts for engagement, learning, and well-being. A total of 426 higher education students drawn from two subsamples participated in this cross-sectional study. A structural equation model shows that interface autonomy and competence satisfaction positively (...) predict task autonomy and competence. Task competence, in turn, negatively predicts focused attention and positively predicts perceived usability and well-being. Task autonomy positively predicts perceived usability and reward. Based on our results, we provide some initial support for the METUX model in higher education. However, more validation work is needed to improve the scale that measures need-satisfaction in the interface and task spheres. Moreover, we find no support for the effect of task sphere on learning. Further investigations are needed into how METUX can be used in domain- and situation-specific contexts to account for increases in engagement, learning, and well-being. Finally, future studies need to include all aspects of the METUX model in order to fully test its validity. (shrink)

In my paper I examine the question of tolerance. In the first part of the discussion I follow up the process in the course of which the problem of tolerance appearing in connection to the practice of religious freedom in the 17th-18th centuries leaves the territory of religious morality and the relation of church and state, and is placed into the empirical sphere of a general human relation to the otherness of the other, and with it to the private sphere (...) of the individual. However, the intolerance continuously present in our life world still keeps the question in the forefront of theoretical interest. In the second part of the paper I examine the relationship of tolerance and intolerance, proving that the tolerance conceived as the experience of being tolerated induced intolerance. This situation can be exceeded by a change of attitude outlined by philosophical hermeneutics, the essence of which is the practical and behavioral application of the principle of “being thoughtful of the other”. (shrink)

The paper explores the status of NATURE metaphors in Hungarian folk songs with respect to their representation and transmission of folk culture and worldview. Employing a Cultural Linguistic analysis, metaphors are observed from three perspectives: in relation to cultural schemas, generic-level conceptual metaphors, and experiential motivation. NATURE metaphors are to a large extent framed by cultural experience regarding their experiential basis, conceptual structure and relation with other cultural conceptualizations.