Surgical castration of sex offenders has been used in several countries to prevent sexual recidivism and is still practiced in several states in the United States. In Europe, it has remained in limited use in Germany and in the Czech Republic (Douglas et al. 2013). Since the 1960s, most jurisdictions have replaced irreversible surgical castration of sex offenders with reversible chemical castration with anti-androgen drugs. In Denmark, use of surgical castration was stopped in 1970, and since the late 1980s, serious (...) sex offenders have on a trial basis been treated with anti-androgen drugs (Hansen and Lykke-Olesen 1997). In 1997, an official treatment program for sex offenders was introduced on a trial basis, and in 2011 this scheme was made permanent (Nielsen 2001).The first part of the scheme covers persons with a suspended sentence with conditions of sexological treatment. This program serves as an alternative to suspended sentences of up to one and a half years of prison for crimina. (shrink)

In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of a contemporary approach to cognitive psychology known as 4E cognition. According to this ‘extracranial’ view of cognition, the mind is not ensconced in the head, but dynamically intertwined with a host of different entities, social as well as technological. The purpose of the present article is to raise a concern about 4E cognition. The concern is not about whether the mind is in fact extended, but about how this condition is currently (...) portrayed in the 4E literature. It is argued that 4E scholars tend to paint an overly idealized picture of human–technology relations in which all entities are presumed to cooperate and collaborate. The article first describes the basic tenets of extended cognition and distributed cognition, two of the most thingly approaches in this new wave of cognitive psychology. It then proceeds to discuss the twin notions of cognition and representation and argues that it may be time to leave these concepts behind. Finally, it sketches out the so-called ‘dogma of harmony’ in the 4E literature and argues for the importance of making analytical room for conflictual human–technology relations. Two examples of such conflictual relations are provided: bad habits and deskilling. (shrink)

Don Ihde’s paper “Stretching the in-between: Embodiment and beyond” appears to me as a stimulating, topical text with a number of important arguments about human embodiment as a dynamic and epistemically relevant dimension to scientific knowledge production. But, indirectly, the text also raises some basic questions about how to describe the (current) scope of technoscientific knowledge, and the potentials of postphenomenology to deal with this complicated, multi-stable issue.

This volume contributes to postphenomenological research into human-technology relations with essays reflecting on methodological issues through empirical studies of education, digital media, biohacking, health, robotics, and skateboarding. This work provides new perspectives that call for a comprehensive postphenomenological research methodology.

At the annual conference of The American Psychiatric Association (APA) in Miami, there was a workshop entitled "Family Crisis". The results of a study said that in the last 30 years, 60% of families in the United States ended in divorce, and 70% of their children did not develop well, behave deviant or antisocial. For example seen juvenile delinquency, abuse of NAZA (Narcotics, Alcohol, and other Addictive Substances), promiscuity, deviant sexual behavior and so on. It was also stated that divorce (...) rates are increasing, marriages are decreasing because many people choose to live together without marriage or single life and free sex. Disloyalty (abuse) among families in the US turned out not to be the monopoly of husbands alone, but 40% of the wives there were also involved in affair with third parties. Of the five marriages in the first five years, three divorces occurred. The author gives the purpose of writing to discuss the crisis in the household, rebuild the household and give Christian values ​​in counteracting divorce. The author uses descriptive literature research method data and provides research results: How a harmonious family can be established dynamically if we base our family building on the basis of strong Christian spirituality values ​​accompanied by a fabric of good communication between us and our children. Surprisingly few studies have explored the implications of divorce happened because family can not be established, especially in young adulthood. This study addresses several theoretical arguments linking divorce in the side of spiritual value with reduced religious involvement in young adulthood and tests relevant hypotheses using data from a unique sample. Results show that divorce in the side of spiritual value is associated with substantially lower communicate religious involvement among young adults in their families house. (shrink)

In recent decades there has been increasing demand for and considerable efforts to conduct cross-disciplinary research. However, assessment of research quality in such endeavours still is often based on mono-disciplinary criteria and not seldom carried out by reviewers without strong cross-disciplinary experience. The authors suggest a two-pronged approach to cross-disciplinary research evaluation. One part should comprise an individual review of all the disciplines involved based on their mono-disciplinary sets of criteria. The other part should be a separate evaluation of the (...) cross-disciplinary aspects based on the review of “problem formulation”, “integration and scope of the disciplines”, “parts and the whole”, “practical managerial aspects” and “the applied aspects”. The pros and cons of implementing this approach in a stepwise manner or simultaneously is discussed. It is suggested that funding agencies develop more fair sets of review procedures for cross-disciplinary research and show willingness to allocate extra funds and time to such forms of research that sometimes are regarded as relatively more “risky” than conventional mono-disciplinary types. (shrink)

Screen time has become a hot button issue in psychology with researchers fiercely debating its mental effects. If we want to understand the psychological dynamics of technology use, however, a numerical conceptualization of screen time will lead us to gloss over crucial distinctions. To make this point, the present article takes a hermeneutic approach to a negative form of screen time known as ‘phubbing’, which is the practice of snubbing conversational partners in favor of one’s phone. Using interview data, it (...) is demonstrated that whether or not phone use amounts to phubbing, that is, whether or not it tips over and becomes harmful, depends on a host of contextual factors such as relation (who), content (what), purpose (why), timing (when), and communication (how). These findings demonstrate that not all screen time is created equal: what is harmful and inappropriate in one context is benign in another, and vice versa. Simply put, screen time is not a numerical entity whose causal effects we can measure and explain, but a meaningful activity that we must try to understand. (shrink)

The notion of the sublime, used to describe a particular kind of overwhelming or exhilarating aesthetic experience, has garnered a great deal of attention by philosophers, critical theorists and literary scholars. In the midst of this growing body of literature, Professor Jane Forsey published an article asking whether an aesthetic theory of the sublime is even possible, and argued provocatively in the negative. Claiming that efforts to explain the sublime inevitably result in theories that are either contradictory or incoherent, Forsey (...) posed a challenge to anyone who takes the sublime seriously as an aesthetic category. This volume brings together an international slate of philosophers and scholars of the sublime, who have been invited to respond to, and critically engage with, Forseys article. Unlike other monographs and anthologies that deal broadly with the sublime in aesthetics, this collection examines specific conceptual problems with the very foundations of sublime theory in a manner that is tightly focused and rigorous. It represents a variety of approaches that defend the sublime, and concludes with an original response by Professor Forsey to her critics. (shrink)

Study on various aspects of yoga knowledge; includes Swami Narayanananda's teachings on new age yoga and Guruism.

Gli studi kierkegaardiani paiono oggi porre di fronte a un’alternativa che si potrebbe articolare nello stile del primo grande libro di questo pensatore: o i suoi scritti vengono interpretati come esposizione di un suo sistema filosofico, o vengono invece letti come scontri con il sistema hegeliano, e anzi con il sistema filosofico in generale. Se è questa la scelta di fronte a cui ci si trova, è perché la lettura di Kierkegaard si è a poco a poco cristallizzata, per non (...) dire bloccata, intorn... (shrink)

Three lessons in thinking about history -- The history of the subject -- Transcendental history.

Students often multitask with technologies such as computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones during class. Unfortunately, numerous empirical studies firmly establish a significant drop in academic performance caused by this media multitasking. In this paper it is argued that cognitive studies may have clarified the negative consequences of this activity, yet they struggle to address the processes involved in it. A cognitive characterization of attention as a mental phenomenon neglects the interaction between bodies and technologies, and it is suggested that a (...) postphenomenological understanding is necessary to account for the materiality of practice. Notions of embodied habits and technical mediation are introduced, and an example of a postphenomenological account of media multitasking is introduced. It is argued that this approach enables researchers to investigate media multitasking as it occurs in everyday educational practice. (shrink)

During the past decades, research collaboration between researchers from different disciplines has become more frequent. However, there is a need to look into the generic modalities and challenges. The article explores a series of potential obstructions to cross-disciplinary collaboration of methodological and epistemological nature. Furthermore, a number of contextual, inhibiting factors are outlined. As means of overcoming the obstacles, the importance of mutual knowledge, allocation of adequate time and conducive research management is emphasised. New teams may benefit from tutoring by (...) facilitators, who can help to make problem areas explicit and negotiate solutions. Owing to the training background of the author, most of the examples are drawn from the interface between biomedicine/natural science and applied medical anthropology. However, the issues raised basically apply to all sorts of cross-disciplinary research collaboration in various combinations. (shrink)

According to Clifford Geertz, the purpose of anthropology is not to explain culture but to explicate it. That should cause us to rethink our relationship with machine learning. It is, we contend, perfectly possible that machine learning algorithms, which are unable to explain, and could even be unexplainable themselves, can still be of critical use in a process of explication. Thus, we report on an experiment with anthropological AI. From a dataset of 175K Facebook comments, we trained a neural network (...) to predict the emoji reaction associated with a comment and asked a group of human players to compete against the machine. We show that a) the machine can reach the same accuracy as the players, b) it fails in roughly the same ways as the players, and c) easily predictable emoji reactions tend to reflect unambiguous situations where interpretation is easy. We therefore repurpose the failures of the neural network to point us to deeper and more ambiguous situations where interpretation is hard and explication becomes both necessary and interesting. We use this experiment as a point of departure for discussing how experiences from anthropology, and in particular the tension between formalist ethnoscience and interpretive thick description, might contribute to debates about explainable AI. (shrink)

Im Rahmen der Tönnies-Gesamtausgabe nimmt der Band 2 eine Sonderstellung ein. Er gehört ausschließlich dem bis auf heute wirkungsreichen Hauptwerk „Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft", zuerst erschienen 1887. Mit dieser Schrift begründet Ferdinand Tönnies die Soziologie erstmals als eigenständige deutsche Wissenschaft. Als „Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie" entfaltet er darin die Gegensätzlichkeit von Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft und erklärt das Auseinandertreten beider Formen des Soziallebens mit einer elaborierten Willenstheorie. Die kritische Edition dieses vielfach publizierten Klassikers der Soziologie dokumentiert erstmals alle einschlägigen Textzeugen vom ersten (...) handschriftlichen Konzept von 1880 bis hin zur Ausgabe letzter Hand von 1935. Besonders eindringlich spiegelt sich die wechselvolle Werkgeschichte in den stets neu verfassten Einleitungen, die Tönnies den acht Auflagen zwischen 1887 und 1935 voranstellt und die als gewichtige Werkbestandteile zusammen mit ihrem frühesten Entwurf und den zurückgehaltenen späteren Fassungen vollständig wiedergegeben werden. Im Zentrum der Edition steht der auf Basis der Handschrift erstmals kritisch annotierte und mit umfassendem Variantenapparat versehene Text der Ausgabe letzter Hand. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) - Mathematiker, Staatstheoretiker und Philosoph - gilt als der Begründer des aufgeklärten Absolutismus. Als Wunderkind hochgelobt, studierte Hobbes in Oxford Logik und Physik. Auf mehrfachen Auslandsreisen machte er unter anderem mit einflussreichen und wichtigen Persönlichkeiten wie Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Marin Mersenne und Pierre Gassendi Bekanntschaft. Ferdiand Tönnies (1855-1936), ein deutscher Soziologe und Philosoph, beleuchtet in diesem Werk das eindrucksvolle Leben und Werk eines Mannes, der die politische Ideengeschichte maßgeblich prägte.

Nella voce dello Handwörterbuch der Soziologie del 1931 Tönnies riprende in forma sintetica i temi di Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Definisce innanzitutto le modalità elementari di relazioni tra volontà: la conoscenza, la simpatia, la fi­ducia, fino al legame sociale e allo scambio; poi indica come oggetto proprio del­la sociologia le entità sociali che hanno un modo di esistenza simile a quell­lo degli dei. Torna la nota distinzione tra una volontà essenziale, immediata ma non irrazionale, e una volontà arbitraria, riflessiva e calcolatrice, (...) e tra due cor­rispondenti modi di azione. I rapporti sociali basati sui due generi di vo­lontà vengono riportati alle categorie di comunità e società. Il deperimento del­la vita sociale comunitaria coincide con il graduale avanzamento dell’in­di­vidualismo tipico della società civile.Tönnies resumes concisely the topics already discussed in Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in an entry of the Handwörterbuch der Soziologie . Firstly, he defines the elementary modes of relationship among wills: knowledge, sympathy, trust, up to social bond and exchange. He then indicates social entities, which have a way of being analogous to gods’ one, as the proper object of sociology. The well-known distinction between an essential will and an arbitrary will , and the two corresponding types of action, is also brought back. Social ties based on the two kinds of will are traced back to the categories of community and society. The decline of communitarian social life is seen as coincident with the gradual growth of individualism, which is characteristic of civil society. (shrink)

Various kinds of user and patient involvement are spreading in healthcare in most Western countries. The purpose of this study is to critically assess the actual conditions for patients’ involvement in healthcare practice in Greenland and to point to possibilities for development. Patients’ perspectives on their own conduct of everyday life with illness and their possibilities for participation when hospitalized are examined in relation to the conditions in a hospital setting dominated by biomedical practice. On a theoretical level, it is (...) argued that the concept of ‘participation’ is preferable to the concept ‘involvement’ in healthcare. The study shows that there are several interconnected areas for development: the structural frames of hospital practice, including professionals’ possibilities for handling patient participation, and the agency of the patients conducting their everyday lives when hospitalized. Consequences of the biomedical hegemony are discussed in relation to WHO ́s broader approach to disease, illness and health and the still existing postcolonial traces of power and hierarchy. Finally it is argued that patient participation during hospitalization will promote the patients ́ conduct of everyday life, the cultural knowledge of the professionals, and the democratization of the healthcare sector. Such changes might be connected to a more encompassing democratic societal development – in Greenland as well as globally. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the issue of ignoring conversational partners in favor of one’s phone, or what has also become known as phubbing. Prior research has shown that this behavior is associated with a host of negative interpersonal consequences. Since phubbing by definition entails adverse effects, however, it is interesting to explore why people continue to engage in this hurtful behavior: Are they unaware that phubbing is hurtful to others? Or do they simply not care? Building on interviews with (...) students in a Danish business college, the article reveals a pronounced discrepancy in young people’s relationship to phubbing: While they emphatically denounce phubbing as both annoying and disrespectful, they readily admit to phubbing others. In other words, they often act against their own moral convictions. Importantly, participants describe this discrepancy as a result of an unintentional inclination to divert attentional engagement. On the basis of these results, the article develops the notion of digital akrasia, which can be defined as a tendency to become swept up by ones digital devices in spite of better intentions. It is proposed that this phenomenon may be the result of bad technohabits. Further implications are discussed. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Danto, A. The artworld.--Dickie, G. What is art?--Margolis, J. Works of art are physically embodied and culturally emergent entities.--Kjørup, S. Art broadly and wholly conceived.--Meyer, L. B. Forgery and the anthropology of art.--Brunius, T. Theory and ideologies in aesthetics.--Tilghman, B. R. Artistic puzzlement.--Binkley, T. Deciding about art.--Alexander, H. G. On defining in aesthetics.--Iseminger, G. Appreciation, the artworld, and the aesthetic.--Glickman, J. Creativity in the arts.--Sclafani, R. The theory of art.--Lyas, C. Danto and Dickie on art.--Beardsley, M. C. Is art essentially (...) institutional? (shrink)

This volume offers an original and innovative collection of fresh approaches to the investigation of the idea of taste. It is divided into three sections: the concept of taste; taste and culture; and gustatory taste. The papers in all three parts deal with the way that aesthetics interpenetrates discussions of food, political conflict, art appreciation, aesthetic judgement, and education. These are fresh, never-before published contributions from a range of scholars, using the most recent literature in their areas of expertise. There (...) is no other book available that collects the latest research in this field, and, as such, it represents a key contribution to recent aesthetic, and more broadly philosophical, interest in matters of taste. (shrink)