Agamben’s notion of the ‘paradigm’ has far-reaching implications for educational thinking, curriculum design and pedagogical conduct. In his approach, examples—or paradigms—deeply engage our powers of analogy, enabling us to discern previously unseen affinities among singular objects by stepping outside established systems of classification. In this way we come to envision novel groupings, new patterns of connection—that nonetheless do not simply reassemble those singular objects into yet another rigidly fixed set or class. Agamben sees this sort of ‘paradigmatic understanding’ as our (...) richest source of intelligibility. For Agamben the paradigm is ultimately about learning to see again, starting not with already perfectly known and categorized objects (or ideas), but rather with a fresh experience of one individual object and the analogical relations it may have to others, and to novel groupings that may arise. The paradigm is a method, a way in which educators might respond to a wide range of educational challenges. For a paradigmatic relation suspends while exposing, deactivates while revealing, complicates while clarifying. But articulating the enigmatic paradigmatic relation between example and class is far more than a method. It is epistemological (a way of knowing and conception of knowledge), ethical (a fostering of freedom from presupposed categories and reified principles) and ontological (a type of being that exposes the potential of knowing and communicating—their intelligibility and communicability). In these qualities, paradigms exhibit to educators a free, a new use of singularities. (shrink)

Differences in family factors in determining academic achievement were investigated by testing 432 parents in nine independent, coeducational Melbourne schools. Schools were ranked and categorized into three groups , based on student achievement scores in their final year of secondary school and school improvement indexes. Parents completed a questionnaire investigating their attitudes towards the school environment, their aspirations, expectations, encouragement and interest in their child’s education . They also responded to six open‐ended questions on their attitudes to achievement and to (...) their school. Multiple regression analyses revealed that parental expectations of their children’s educational level made the strongest unique prediction of high achievement followed by the length of time they had maintained their expectations. Limitations discussed include the disparity in meaning associated with the definition of school success and whether these results can be generalized to all students considering the biased sample. (shrink)

In this article we examine the specific contributions Native American thought can make to the ongoing search for a Western ecological consciousness. We begin with a review of the influence of Native American beliefs on the different branches of the modem environmental movement and some initial comparisons of Western and Native American ways of seeing. We then review Native American thought on the natural world, highlighting beliefs in the need for reciprocity and balance, the world as a living being, and (...) relationships with animals. We conclude that Native American ideas are important, can prove inspirational in the search for a modem environmental consciousness, and affirm the arguments of both deep ecologists and ecofeminists. (shrink)

In this article we examine the specific contributions Native American thought can make to the ongoing search for a Western ecological consciousness. We begin with a review of the influence of Native American beliefs on the different branches of the modem environmental movement and some initial comparisons of Western and Native American ways of seeing. We then review Native American thought on the natural world, highlighting beliefs in the need for reciprocity and balance, the world as a living being, and (...) relationships with animals. We conclude that Native American ideas are important, can prove inspirational in the search for a modem environmental consciousness, and affirm the arguments of both deep ecologists and ecofeminists. (shrink)

In this article we examine the specific contributions Native American thought can make to the ongoing search for a Western ecological consciousness. We begin with a review of the influence of Native American beliefs on the different branches of the modem environmental movement and some initial comparisons of Western and Native American ways of seeing. We then review Native American thought on the natural world, highlighting beliefs in the need for reciprocity and balance, the world as a living being, and (...) relationships with animals. We conclude that Native American ideas are important, can prove inspirational in the search for a modem environmental consciousness, and affirm the arguments of both deep ecologists and ecofeminists. (shrink)

The manifest appearance of function and purpose in living systems is responsible for the prevalence of apparently teleological explanations of organismic structure and behavior in biology. Although the attribution of function and purpose to living systems is an ancient practice, teleological notions are largely considered ineliminable from modern biological sciences, such as evolutionary biology, genetics, medicine, ethology, and psychiatry, because they play an important explanatory role. Historical and recent examples of teleological claims include the following: The chief function of the (...) heart is the transmission and pumping of the blood through the arteries to the extremities of the body. (Harvey 1616 [1928: 49]) The Predator Detection hypothesis remains the strongest candidate for the function of stotting [by gazelles]. (Caro 1986: 663) The geographic range of human malaria is much wider than the range of the sickle-cell gene. As it happens, other antimalarial genes take over the protective function of the sickle-cell gene in … other warm parts. (Diamond 1994: 83) Despite the substantial amount of data we now have on theropod dinosaurs, more information is necessary in order to determine the likelihood that early feathers served an adaptive function in visual display as opposed to other proposed adaptive functions such as thermoregulation. (Dimond et al. 2011: 62) The ubiquity of claims such as these raises the question: how should apparently teleological notions in biology be understood? Most post-Darwinian approaches attempt to naturalize teleology in biology, in opposition to nineteenth-century viewpoints which grounded it theologically. Nevertheless, biologists and philosophers have continued to question the legitimacy of teleological notions in biology. For instance, Ernst Mayr (1988), identified four reasons why teleological notions remain controversial in biology, namely that they are: vitalistic (positing some special ‘life-force’); requiring backwards causation (because goal-directed explanations seem to use future outcomes to explain present traits); incompatible with mechanistic explanation (because of 1 and 2); mentalistic (attributing the action of mind where there is none). A fifth complaint is that they are not empirically testable (Allen & Bekoff 1995). The current philosophical literature offers both Darwinian and non-Darwinian accounts of teleology in biology that aim to avoid these concerns. In this article, we hope to bring some clarity to the contemporary debates over the role of teleological notions in biology by sketching a taxonomy of the various accounts of biological function on offer (see Allen & Bekoff 1995 for a more comprehensive taxonomy that forms the basis of this presentation). We primarily focus on naturalistic accounts of biological function, since this is where we see the most lively and productive current debates (see, e.g., Garson 2016 for an extended survey). We also briefly discuss the notion of goal-directedness in section 2. (shrink)

Early Syriac Christianity presents two notable paradigms for understanding liturgy as a means for the ethical formation of the congregation. Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) in his hymns for the Nativity vigil, and Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) in his verse homilies, each addressed their congregations in ways that utilized ritual participation in the liturgy for ethical and moral cultivation. Ephrem sought to instill his congregation with a biblical and theological understanding of the Nativity that would yield ethical enactment in (...) the world. Jacob worked to use the experience of liturgical participation to mold the Christian’s moral disposition. For both, God’s salvation enabled the healing of the human condition in its various dimensions: physical, social, ecclesial. Liturgy as disciplined ritual activity provided the tools by which their congregations could learn, experience, and enact that healing. (shrink)

A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalism and structuralism, as well as current perspectives in (neuro)cognitive poetics has investigated structural and functional aspects of literature reception. Despite a wealth of literature published in specialized journals like Poetics, however, still little is known about how the brain processes and creates literary and poetic texts. Still, such stimulus material might be suited better than other genres for demonstrating the complexities with which our brain constructs the world (...) in and around us, because it unifies thought and language, music and imagery in a clear, manageable way, most often with play, pleasure, and emotion (Schrott and Jacobs, 2011 ). In this paper, I discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literary reading together with pertinent results from studies on poetics, text processing, emotion, or neuroaesthetics, and outline current challenges and future perspectives. (shrink)

Despite advances in feminism, the "law of the father" remains the dominant model of Western psychological and cultural analysis, and the law of the mother continues to exist as an underdeveloped and marginal concept. In her radical rereading of the Greek myth, _Oresteia_, Amber Jacobs hopes to rectify the occlusion of the mother and reinforce her role as an active agent in the laws that determine and reinforce our cultural organization. According to Greek myth, Metis, Athena's mother, was Zeus's (...) first wife. Zeus swallowed Metis to prevent her from bearing children who would overthrow him. Nevertheless, Metis bore Zeus a child-Athena-who sprang forth fully formed from his head. In Aeschylus's _Oresteia_, Athena's motherless status functions as a crucial justification for absolving Orestes of the crime of matricide. In his defense of Orestes, Zeus argues that the father is more important than the mother, using Athena's "motherless" birth as an example. Conducting a close reading of critical works on Aeschylus's text, Jacobs reveals that psychoanalytic theorists have unwittingly reproduced the denial of Metis in their own critiques. This repression, which can be found in the work of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein as well as in the work of more contemporary theorists such as André Green and Luce Irigaray, has resulted in both an incomplete analysis of Oresteia and an inability to account for the fantasies and unconscious processes that fall outside the oedipal/patricidal paradigm. By bringing the story of Athena's mother, Metis, to the forefront, Jacobs challenges the primacy of the Oedipus myth in Western culture and psychoanalysis and introduces a bold new theory of matricide and maternal law. She finds that the Metis myth exists in cryptic forms within Aeschylus's text, uncovering what she terms the "latent content of the Oresteian myth," and argues that the occlusion of the law of the mother is proof of the patriarchal structures underlying our contemporary social and psychic realities. Jacobs's work not only provides new insight into the Oresteian trilogy but also advances a postpatriarchal model of the symbolic order that has strong ramifications for psychoanalysis, feminism, and theories of representation, as well as for clinical practice and epistemology. (shrink)

Can an action cease to be required of a moral agent solely because it comes too costly ? Can self-sacrifice or risk of self-sacrifice serve as a limit on our moral obligations? Two recent articles in Philosophy , concerned primarily with the possibility of supererogatory action, suggest very different answers to these questions.

How do Dutch people let each other know that they disagree? What do they say when they want to resolve their difference of opinion by way of an argumentative discussion? In what way do they convey that they are convinced by each other’s argumentation? How do they criticize each other’s argumentative moves? Which words and expressions do they use in these endeavors? By answering these questions this short essay provides a brief inventory of the language of argumentation in Dutch.

In Educating Reason, Harvey Siegel presented the case regarding rationality and critical thinking as fundamental education ideals. In Rationality Redeemed? , a collection of essays written since that time, he develops this view, responds to major criticisms raised against it, and engages those critics in dialogue. In developing his ideas and responding to critics, Siegel addresses main currents in contemporary thought, including feminism, postmodernism and multiculturalism.

This article examines literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence for the Christian reidentification of statuary and reliefs as biblical scenes and protagonists, saints and angels. It argues that Christian identifications were promulgated, amongst others by local bishops, to make sense of imagery of which the original identity had been lost and/or was no longer meaningful. Three conditions for a new identification are discussed: the absence of an epigraphic label, geographical and/or chronological distance separating the statue from its original context of display, (...) and the presence of a specific attribute or characteristic that could become the prompt for reidentification. In their manipulation and modernization of older statuary, Christians showed a much greater appreciation of the statuary medium than generally assumed. (shrink)

Beginning with a discussion of the Informal Logic Movement and the renewed interest in critical thinking in education, this book critically assesses the work of Robert Ennis, Richard Paul and John McPeck.

Shifts are a well-known feature of the literature on spacetime symmetries. Recently, discussions have focused on so-called dynamic shifts, which by analogy with static and kinematic shifts enact arbitrary linear accelerations of all matter (as well as a change in the gravitational potential). But in mathematical formulations of these shifts, the analogy breaks down: while static and kinematic shift act on the matter field, the dynamic shift acts on spacetime structure instead. I formulate a different, `active' version of the dynamic (...) shift which does act on matter. (shrink)

This article presents the framework Capability Sensitive Design (CSD), which consists of merging the design methodology Value Sensitive Design (VSD) with Martha Nussbaum's capability theory. CSD aims to normatively assess technology design in general, and technology design for health and wellbeing in particular. Unique to CSD is its ability to account for human diversity and to counter (structural) injustices that manifest in technology design. The basic framework of CSD is demonstrated by applying it to the hypothetical design case of a (...) therapy chatbot for mental health. By applying CSD to a design case, the merits of this new framework over the standard VSD approach become apparent. Also, the application demonstrates what a technology design would look like when attention is paid to capabilities right from the start of the design process. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this journal, Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez argue that absolute velocity is measurable, contrary to the received wisdom. Specifically, they claim that ‘there exists at least one reasonable analysis of measurement according to which the speedometer in [a world called “the Basic World”] measures the absolute velocity of the car.’ In this note, I critically respond to that claim: the analysis of measurement that Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez propose is not reasonable; nor does it entail that absolute velocities are (...) measurable. (shrink)

Kant's lectures on anthropology capture him at the height of his intellectual power. They are immensely important for advancing our understanding of Kant's conception of anthropology, its development, and the notoriously difficult relationship between it and the critical philosophy. This 2003 collection of essays by some of the leading commentators on Kant offers a systematic account of the philosophical importance of this material that should nevertheless prove of interest to historians of ideas and political theorists. There are two broad approaches (...) adopted: a number of the essays consider the systematic relations of the anthropology to critical philosophy, especially speculative knowledge and ethics. Other essays focus on the anthropology as a major source for the clarification of both the content and development of Kant's work. The volume also serves as an interpretative complement to the translation of the lectures in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

The 'Discussion' section of this issue contains the following responses to Wilfred Beckerman's article 'Sustainable Development: Is it a Useful Concept?' Environmental Values 3,3 (1994): 191-209. Herman Daly, 'On Wilfred Beckerman's Critique of Sustainable Development'; Michael Jacobs, 'Sustainable Development, Capital Substitution and Humility: A Response to Beckerman'; and Henryk Skolimowski, 'In Defence of Sustainable Development'. These criticisms are answered by Beckerman in Environmental Values 4,2.

In this new book, David Harvey seeks to determine what is meant by the term in its different contexts and to identify how accurate and useful it is as a description of contemporary experience.

Reading is not only “cold” information processing, but involves affective and aesthetic processes that go far beyond what current models of word recognition, sentence processing, or text comprehension can explain. To investigate such “hot” reading processes, standardized instruments that quantify both psycholinguistic and emotional variables at the sublexical, lexical, inter-, and supralexical levels (e.g., phonological iconicity, word valence, arousal-span, or passage suspense) are necessary. One such instrument, the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) has been used in over 50 published studies (...) demonstrating effects of lexical emotional variables on all relevant processing levels (experiential, behavioral, neuronal). In this paper, we first present new data from several BAWL studies. Together, these studies examine various views on affective effects in reading arising from dimensional (e.g., valence ) and discrete emotion features (e.g., happiness ), or embodied cognition features like smelling. Second, we extend our investigation of the complex issue of affective word processing to words characterized by a mixture of affects. These words entail positive and negative valence, and/or features making them beautiful or ugly. Finally, we discuss tentative neurocognitive models of affective word processing in the light of the present results, raising new issues for future studies. (shrink)

Among political philosophers - and indeed public officials - it is generally believed that some sort of general principle of distributional equality can provide solid moral foundations for universal access to health care. In fact, this belief is so widely received that even among those who are very critical of egalitarianism, few have expressed doubts about the prospects for an egalitarian defense of universal access to health care. The purpose of this paper is to put pressure on this received view.

This paper investigates what the source of time-asymmetry is in thermodynamics, and comments on the question whether a time-symmetric formulation of the Second Law is possible.

Opponents of male circumcision have increasingly used human rights positions to articulate their viewpoint. We characterize the meaning of the term “human rights.” We discuss these human rights arguments with special attention to the claims of rights to an open future and to bodily integrity. We offer a three-part test under which a parental decision might be considered an unacceptable violation of a child's right. The test considers the impact of the practice on society, the impact of the practice on (...) the individual, and the likelihood of adverse impact. Infant circumcision is permissible under this test. We conclude that infant circumcision may be proscribed as violating local norms, even though it does not violate human rights. (shrink)

According to a predominant view, reflection is constitutive of personhood. In this paper I first indicate how it might seem that such an account cannot do justice to the socially embedded nature ofpersonhood. I then present a phenomenologically-inspired account of reflection as critical stance taking and show how it accommodates the social embeddedness of persons. In concluding, I outline how this phenomenological account is also not vulnerable to a number of additional challenges that have been raised against accounts that consider (...) reflection to be constitutive of personhood and what matters for responsibility. (shrink)

Attention is given to a background idea that is often invoked in discussions about reasonable partiality: the idea of a moral division of labour. It is not only a right, but also a duty for professionals to attend (almost) exclusively to the interests of their own clients, because their partial activities are part of an impartial scheme providing for an allocation of professional help to all clients. To clarify that idea, a difference is made between two kinds of division of (...) labour, a technical one and a social one. In order to assess the applicability of the idea of a moral division of labour to professional ethics, journalism is contrasted with other professions. (shrink)

It is argued that Minkowski space-time cannot serve as the deep structure within a ``constructive'' version of the special theory of relativity, contrary to widespread opinion in the philosophical community.

The history of the Frankfurt School cannot be fully told without examining the relationships of Critical Theorists to their Jewish family backgrounds. Jewish matters had significant effects on key figures in the Frankfurt School, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse. At some points, their Jewish family backgrounds clarify their life paths; at others, these backgrounds help to explain why the leaders of the School stressed the significance of antisemitism. In the post-Second World War (...) era, the differing relationships of Critical Theorists to their Jewish origins illuminate their distinctive stances toward Israel. This book investigates how the Jewish backgrounds of major Critical Theorists, and the ways in which they related to their origins, impacted upon their work, the history of the Frankfurt School, and differences that emerged among them over time. (shrink)

In a review of the cell biology and heredity studies of 1900–1910, Bernardino Fantini argues that the choice of an experimental subject or organism was crucial in opening up new discoveries and new theories for specific fields of research.69 Thinking on a broader level, Bütschli expressed a similar view when he stated that an understanding of the true nature and structure of the “elementary organism” was crucial to the whole of biology. In this article we have traced the impact of (...) Bütschli's unicellular model of protozoa up to the general acceptance of the eukaryotic cell as nature's primary organism. We have also seen that Bütschli's vision in the Studien gave birth to Protistenforschung and Zellforschung, sister sciences whose task it was to further and integrate knowledge of the living cell. Of necessity, we have confined ourselves to German scientific developments. However, our attempt to recapture and define the unity and meaning of a biology of the “cell-microcosm” has given us pause to reconsider the development and nature of Wilhelmian biological science. (shrink)

Moral sensitivity is known to be the starting point for moral competence and even is a core concept in the curricula for bachelor’s-level nursing students in the Netherlands. While the development of moral sensitivity in nursing is commonly agreed to be important, there is no clear understanding of how to develop moral sensitivity through nursing education and what components of nursing education contribute to moral sensitivity. Studies on educational interventions could build knowledge about what works in developing moral sensitivity and (...) how to achieve this outcome. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore if and how educational interventions contribute to the development of moral sensitivity in nursing students. A scoping review was conducted. Four electronic databases were searched: CINAHL, PubMed, MEDLINE and SpringerLink. Articles that were not about formal or initial nursing education and that had no link to moral development or moral sensitivity were excluded. After the final selection on educational interventions, 10 articles out of the initial 964 resources were included in the review. Three different but related dimensions of moral sensitivity emerged from the literature: (1) raising moral awareness, (2) providing the ability to frame and name ethical issues and (3) improving moral reasoning ability. Half of the studies used quantitative measures to evaluate the educational intervention, in particular the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire; the other half used diverse qualitative evaluation methods. None of the studies presented teaching methods that included all three dimensions of moral sensitivity. Moral awareness of self appears to be more loosely connected to the other two dimensions, which raises the question of whether it can be seen as a prerequisite for them. To encompass all dimensions of moral sensitivity, a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures seems most appropriate to study that topic. (shrink)

It is often claimed that one can avoid the kind of underdetermination that is a typical consequence of symmetries in physics by stipulating that symmetry-related models represent the same state of affairs (Leibniz Equivalence). But recent commentators (Dasgupta 2011; Pooley 2021; Pooley and Read 2021; Teitel 2021a) have responded that claims about the representational capacities of models are irrelevant to the issue of underdetermination, which concerns possible worlds themselves. In this paper I distinguish two versions of this objection: (1) that (...) a theory’s formalism does not (fully) determine the space of physical possibilities, and (2) that the relevant notion of possibility is not physical possibility. I offer a refutation of each. (shrink)

Several theorists have observed that attitude reports have what we call “revisionist” uses. For example, even if Pete has never met Ann and has no idea that she exists, Jane can still say to Jim ‘Pete believes Ann can learn to play tennis in ten lessons’ if Pete believes all 6-year-olds can learn to play tennis in ten lessons and it is part of Jane and Jim’s background knowledge that Ann is a 6-year-old. Jane’s assertion seems acceptable because the claim (...) she reports Pete as believing is entailed by Pete’s beliefs if they are revised in light of Jane and Jim’s background knowledge. We provide a semantic theory of revisionist reports based on this idea. We observe that the admissible “revisions” are limited in a striking way. Jane cannot say ‘Pete thinks Ann is a 6-year-old and can play tennis in ten lessons’ in the same context that she can say ‘Pete believes Ann can learn to play tennis ten lessons’, even though this too follows from Jane and Jim’s background knowledge together with what Pete believes. Our theory predicts the infelicity of these latter reports. It also has the resources to predict the truth of “exported” attitude reports and casts the relationship between these reports and “singular thought” in a new light. We conclude by discussing how revisionist reports make trouble for a simplistic view of the connection between the relations expressed by attitude verbs in natural language and the relations of most interest to philosophers of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

This book provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the potential conflict between a government’s duty to protect children and a parent’ right to raise children in a manner they see fit. Using philosophical, bioethical, and legal analysis, the author engages with key scholars in pediatric decision-making and individual and religious rights theory. Going beyond the parent-child dyad, the author is deeply concerned both with the inteests of the broader society and with the appropriate limits of government interference in the private sphere. (...) The text offers a balance of individual and population interests, maximizing liberty but safeguarding against harm. Bioethics and law professors will therefore be able to use this text for both a foundational overview as well as specific, subject-level analysis. Clinicians such as pediatricians and gynecologists, as well as policy-makers can use this text to achieve balance between these often competing claims. The book is written by a physician with practical and theoretical knowledge of the subject, and deep sympathy for the parental and family perspectives. As such, the book proposes a new way of evaluating parental and state interventions in children's’ healthcare: a refreshing approach and a useful addition to the literature. (shrink)

We provide a general argument against value incomparability, based on a new style of impossibility result. In particular, we show that, against plausible background assumptions, value incomparability creates an incompatibility between two very plausible principles for ranking lotteries: a weak "negative dominance" principle (to the effect that Lottery 1 can be better than Lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of Lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of Lottery 2) and a weak form of ex ante Pareto (to (...) the effect that, if Lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better prospect to some individuals than Lottery 2, and equally good prospects to everyone else, then Lottery 1 is better than Lottery 2). After spelling out our results, and the arguments based on them, we consider which principle the proponent of incomparability ought to reject. (shrink)