The aim of this article is to investigate whether choosing the appropriate referring expression requires taking into account the hearer’s perspective, as is predicted under some versions of bidirectional Optimality Theory but is unexpected under other versions. We did this by comparing the results of 25 young and 25 elderly adults on an elicitation task based on eight different picture stories, and a comprehension task based on eight similar written stories. With respect to the elicitation task, we found that elderly (...) adults produce pronouns significantly more often than young adults when referring to the old topic in the presence of a new topic. With respect to the comprehension task, no significant differences were found between elderly and young adults. These results support the hypothesis that speakers optimize bidirectionally and take into account hearers when selecting a referring expression. If the use of a pronoun will lead to an unintended interpretation by the hearer, the speaker will use an unambiguous definite noun phrase instead. Because elderly adults are more limited in their processing capacities, as is indicated by their smaller working memory capacity, as speakers they will not always be able to reason about the hearer’s choices. As a result, they frequently produce non-recoverable pronouns. (shrink)

Purpose: This study explores social networkers' interest in and attitudes toward personal genome testing (PGT), focusing on expectations related to the clinical integration of PGT results. Methods: An online survey of 1,087 social networking users was conducted to assess 1) use and interest in PGT; 2) attitudes toward PGT companies and test results; and 3) expectations for the clinical integration of PGT. Descriptive statistics were calculated to summarize respondents' characteristics and responses. Results: Six percent of respondents have used PGT, 64% (...) would consider using PGT, and 30% would not use PGT. Of those who would consider using PGT, 74% report they would use it to gain knowledge about disease in their family. 34% of all respondents consider the information obtained from PGT to be a medical diagnosis. 78% of those who would consider PGT would ask their physician for help interpreting test results, and 61% of all respondents believe physicians have a professional obligation to help individuals interpret PGT results. Conclusion: Respondents express interest in using PGT services, primarily for purposes related to their medical care and expect physicians to help interpret PGT results. Physicians should therefore be prepared for patient demands for information and counsel on the basis of PGT results. (shrink)

This book is the first publication to devote serious attention to the history of home education from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. It brings together work by historians, literary scholars and current practitioners who shed new light on the history of home-schooling in the UK both as a practice and as a philosophy. The six historical case studies point to the significance of domestic instruction in the past, and uncover the ways in which changing family forms have (...) affected understandings of the purpose, form and content of education. At the same time, they uncover the ways in which families and individuals adapted to the expansion of formalised schooling. The final article - by philosopher and Elective Home Education practitioner and theorist Richard Davies - uncovers the ways in which the historical analysis can illuminate our understanding of contemporary education. As a whole, the volume offers stimulating insights into the history of learning in the home, and into the relationship between families and educational practice, that raise new questions about the objectives, form and content of education in the past and today. This book was originally published as a special issue of the _Oxford Review of Education_. (shrink)

Humanitarian healthcare work presents a range of ethical challenges for expatriate healthcare professionals, including tragic choices requiring the selection of a least-worst option. In this paper we examine a particular set of tragic choices related to the prioritization of care and allocation of scarce resources between individuals in situations of widespread and urgent health needs. Drawing on qualitative interviews with clinicians, we examine the nature of these choices. We offer recommendations to clinical teams and aid organizations for preparing and supporting (...) frontline clinicians in their efforts to determine the least-worst option, and in their responsibility for making such choices. (shrink)

Frustration in traffic is one of the causes of aggressive driving. Knowledge whether a driver is frustrated may be utilized by future advanced driver assistance systems to counteract this source of crashes. One possibility to achieve this is to automatically recognize facial expressions of drivers. However, only little is known about the facial expressions of frustrated drivers. Here, we report the results of a driving simulator study investigating the facial muscle activity that comes along with frustration. Twenty-eight participants were video-taped (...) during frustrated and non-frustrated driving situations. Their facial muscle activity was manually coded according to the Facial Action Coding System. Participants showed significantly more facial muscle activity in the mouth region. Thus, recording facial muscle behavior potentially provides traffic researchers and assistance system developers with the possibility to recognize frustration while driving. (shrink)

IntroductionSpatial navigation is a complex cognitive function that declines in older age. Finding one’s way around in familiar and new environments is crucial to live and function independently. However, the current literature illustrates the efficacy of spatial navigation interventions in rehabilitative contexts such as pathological aging and traumatic injury, but an overview of existing training studies for healthy older adults is missing. This scoping review aims to identify current evidence on existing spatial navigation interventions in healthy older adults and analyze (...) their efficacy.MethodsTo identify spatial navigation interventions and assessments and investigate their effectiveness, four electronic databases were searched. Two independent reviewers conducted a screening of title, abstract and full-texts and performed a quality assessment. Studies were eligible if published in English, the full text was accessible, at least one group of healthy older adults was included with mean age of 65 years or older, three or more spatial navigation-related training sessions were conducted and at least one spatial ability outcome was reported.ResultsTen studies were included, only healthy older adults were assessed further. Studies differed in sample size, type of training, total intervention duration, and intervention period.ConclusionThe spatial navigation abilities addressed and the measures applied to elicit intervention effects varied in quantity and methodology. Significant improvements were found for at least one spatial ability-related outcome in six of 10 interventions. Two interventions achieved a non-significant positive trend, another revealed no measurable post-training improvement, and one study did not report pre-post-differences. The results indicate that different types of spatial navigation interventions improve components of spatial abilities in healthy older adults. The existing body of research does not allow conclusions on transferability of the trained components on everyday life spatial navigation performance. Future research should focus on reproducing and extending the promising approaches of available evidence. From this, valuable insights on healthy aging could emerge.Trial RegistrationThis scoping review was preregistered at Open Science Framework. (shrink)

The basic idea of the particular way of understanding mental phenomena that has inspired the "cognitive revolution" is that, as a result of certain relatively recent intellectual and technological innovations, informed theorists now possess a more powerfully insightful comparison or model for mind than was available to any thinkers in the past. The model in question is that of software, or the list of rules for input, output, and internal transformations by which we determine and control the workings of a (...) computing machine's hardware. Although this comparison and its many implications have dominated work in the philosophy, psychology, and neurobiology of mind since the end of the Second World War, it now shows increasing signs of losing its once virtually unquestioned preeminence. Thus we now face the question of whether it is possible to repair and save this model by means of relatively inessential "tinkering", or whether we must reconceive it fundamentally and replace it with something different. In this book, twenty-eight leading scholars from diverse fields of "cognitive science"-linguistics, psychology, neurophysiology, and philosophy- present their latest, carefully considered judgements about what they think will be the future course of this intellectual movement, that in many respects has been a watershed in our contemporary struggles to comprehend that which is crucially significant about human beings. Jerome Bruner, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Boden, Ulric Neisser, Rom Harre, Merlin Donald, among others, have all written chapters in a non-technical style that can be enjoyed and understood by an inter-disciplinary audience of psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, and cognitive scientists alike. (shrink)

Inspiré de la pratique de l’auteure auprès de personnes en situation d’exil et de précarité rencontrées en centre d’hébergement pour demandeurs d’asile, cet article questionne la parentalité interne (Ciccone, 2012) dans l’économie psychique d’un homme confronté pendant son enfance aux mauvais traitements de son père et au départ définitif de sa mère, longtemps violentée. L’auteure s’intéresse à ses efforts pour se différencier des violences subies mais aussi à la reproduction inconsciente des rapports d’emprise et d’abandon, manifeste dans le lien transférentiel, (...) et à sa propre paternité dans un parcours d’exil et d’errance en quête d’objets parentaux. Le travail thérapeutique se focalise sur la restauration de ses capacités de contenance et de transformation dans une clinique du lien intersubjectif et intrapsychique. (shrink)

The catalogue contains lists of questions found in Latin commentaries on Aristotle’s De sensu, De memoria and De somno et vigilia composed between 1260 and 1320, approximately, plus a selection of commentaries by notable later medieval authors. Most of the texts included are inedita. The catalogue provides information about the title of each question and its location in the relevant manuscript.

Migrating Minds contributes to the prominent interdisciplinary domain of Cosmopolitan Studies with twenty innovative essays by humanities scholars from all over the world that re-examine theories and practices of cosmopolitanism from a variety of perspectives.

Brings together scholars who use literary interpretation and discourse analysis to read 18th-century British philosophy in its historical context. This work analyses how the philosophers of the Enlightenment viewed their writing; and, how their institutional positions as teachers and writers influenced their understanding of human consciousness.

"Time Will Tell” is a series of professional interviews with scholars, both within and outside of philosophy and all with a social justice conscience, all academics who work on some aspect of time and/or temporality and human consciousness. Having worked on the concept for my Master’s thesis in 2004, I’m very interested in everything related to time. We all think about time. The four scholars who graciously agreed to the interviews are doing important and often utterly fascinating work on these (...) topics. (shrink)

This study explored how women with a diagnosis of cancer (lymphoma) deal with moral concerns related to their responsibility as parents. Ten women with cancer and who had children living at home were interviewed. The interviews were analysed according to the constant comparative method used in grounded theory. In order to provide a focus for the analysis, the ethics of care and the concept of mothering were used as sensitizing concepts. The core concept ‘experience of dealing with moral responsibility of (...) being a parent with cancer by redefining oneself as a mother’ was identified. The processes involved were: interrupted mothering; facing the life-threatening illness and children’s reactions; striving to be a good mother; attempting to deal with moral responsibility; and coming to terms with being a mother. (shrink)

Although elementary schools are considered a fertile ground for promoting positive behaviors among students, to date, almost no study has examined the effectiveness of a cyberbullying prevention program among elementary school students of typical and non-typical development. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of such a school-based European funded preventive program among sixth graders with and without special educational needs. The study also examined the predictive role of self-esteem in students’ cyberbullying involvement. Overall, 240 students from randomly selected Greek schools (...) completed a self-report questionnaire, which included a scale on cyberbullying and self-esteem. Following an experimental longitudinal research design, the intervention was applied to the experimental but not to the control group of students. Each group consisted of both students with and without SEN. The evaluation was based on the completion of the self-report questionnaire before, immediately after, and 6 months after the intervention was completed by trained general and special education teachers. According to the findings, students’ cyberbullying engagement decreased significantly in the second and third phase, and especially for those with SEN. Additionally, self-esteem negatively predicted students’ involvement in cyberbullying in all three phases. The findings partially support the appropriateness of interventions within the elementary school context in order to enhance self-esteem and promote a safe online culture among students of typical as well as atypical development. (shrink)

The articles in this issue are a selection of the papers presented at the conference Knowledge as Assimilation, held at the University of Helsinki on 9-11 June 2017. The conference was the result of a collaboration between two research groups that have been established in Finland and Sweden from 2013 onwards: the research project Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250-1550, funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the University of Helsinki, and the research programme Representation (...) and Reality: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Aristotelian Tradition, funded by the Riksbankens jubileumsfond and located at the University of Gothenburg. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that ideas give us the rule for organizing experience and ideals serve as archetypes or standards against which one can measure copies. Further, he states that ideas and ideals can be practical. Understanding how precisely these concepts should function presents a challenging and understudied philosophical puzzle. I offer a reconstruction of how ideas and ideals might be practical in order to uphold, to my mind, a conceptually worthy distinction. A practical idea, I (...) argue, is best understood as a reference to the categorical imperative (and its various formulations), which guides conduct directly as a rule. A practical ideal, by contrast, I think is a substrate that serves two functions: one that (a) helps us gauge moral deficiencies and another that (b) reveals the potential for moral improvement. In response to well-grounded sceptical concerns, I argue that ideals are indirectly practical in that they ground the possibility to recognise moral states of affairs and be moral in the first place. (shrink)

In the *Science of Logic*, Hegel states unequivocally that the category of “life” is a strictly logical, or pure, form of thinking. His treatment of actual life – i.e., that which empirically constitutes nature – arises first in his *Philosophy of Nature* when the logic is applied under the conditions of space and time. Nevertheless, many commentators find Hegel’s development of this category as a purely logical one especially difficult to accept. Indeed, they find this development only comprehensible as long (...) as one simultaneously assumes that Hegel breaks his promise to let the logic do the leading. However, if Hegel were to in fact allow the logical development to be led by biological analogies at this point, problems would ensue. Not only would it contradict his own speculative method, which should secure the necessity of the categories, but it would also endanger the ontological generality of the category of life itself. Beyond undermining his method and the logical integrity of the category, however, I will argue that such a reading makes the transition to the next category of “cognition” unintelligible and problematic. My aim in the first part of this paper is to argue how logical life can be read as a pure category. I then argue in the second part how my reconstruction makes the transition to cognition intelligible without resorting to profane or supernatural interpretations. (shrink)

What is the highest good actually good for in Kant’s third Critique? While there are well-worked out answers to this question in the literature that focus on the highest good’s practical importance, this paper argues that there is an important function for the highest good that has to do exclusively with contemplation. This important function becomes clear once one notices that coherent [konsequent] thinking, for Kant, was synonymous with "bündiges" thinking, and that both are connected with the highest good in (...) the third Critique’s moral proof for God’s existence. I show that the original meaning of "bündig," which is from the carpentry trade and has been forgotten, illuminates the stakes of the highest good in Kant’s system. For us, as proverbial carpenters of reason, coherence is essential for the intellectual activity of constructing a philosophical worldview in his transcendental idealism. I motivate the reading further by showing how this function can neatly reconstruct Kant’s proof for God’s existence in the third Critique. I conclude by sketching Kant’s reasons for why the project of creating a coherent worldview grounded in the highest good is worth the labor costs. (shrink)

Kant’s accounts of the Highest Good and the moral argument for God and immortality are central features of his philosophy. But both involve lingering puzzles. In this entry, we first explore what the Highest Good is for Kant and the role it plays in a complete account of ethical life. We then focus on whether the Highest Good involves individuals only, or whether it also connects with Kant’s doctrines about the moral progress of the species. In conclusion, we look into (...) three ways of articulating the moral argument for God and immorality that take our commitment to the Highest Good as their point of departure. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of empirical tests of the free will, aiming at a presupposition underpinning the experiments’ methodology. The presupposition is that the artificial reporting of machines is prima facie directly congruent with the first-person perspectival report of the participant. A critique of the method reveals the problematic nature of this methodological set-up. The phenomenological critique, however, also carries implications for a theoretical framework dealing with ‘embodied’ religion; these implications will be dis-cussed via reference to the article by (...) Marcel Sarot. (shrink)

Kant’s claim that we must postulate the immortality of the soul is polarizing. While much attention has been paid to two standard arguments in its defense (one moral-psychological, the other rational), I contend that a favorite argument of Kant’s from the apogee of his critical period, namely, the teleological argument, deserves renewed attention. This paper reconstructs it and exhibits what makes it unique (though not necessarily superior) in relation to the other arguments. In particular, its form (as third-personal or descriptive, (...) beginning from observations) and related force of assent (as a subjectively universal reflective judgment) set it apart from the other arguments. My goal is to establish that any engagement with Kant’s immortality postulate must include equal consideration of the teleological argument in order to be complete. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to clarify the role wrong plays in Hegel ’s system of right, as both a form of freedom and the transition to morality. Two approaches will be examined to explore wrong in practical philosophical terms: First, one could take the transition to be descriptive in nature. The transition describes wrong as a realized fact of the human condition that one inherits from the outset. Second, one could see it as prescriptive. Actual wrongdoing would be (...) essential for the subject’s progression to becoming moral. Though both are most likely the case, emphasis is given to the latter since it represents the actualization of potential. Furthermore, it will be suggested that wrong plays a similar role as that which alienation does in the Phenomenology of Spirit; both bridge the will as abstract personality with the moral point of view. (shrink)

Freedom and the subject in Jean-Paul Sartre -- Freedom and necessity in Jacques Derrida -- Freedom and the subject in contemporary philosophy and theory -- Theorizing pathologies and therapeutics of freedom.

The philosophical work of Jean-Luc Marion has opened new ways of speaking about religious convictions and experiences. In this exploration of Marion’s philosophy and theology, Christina M. Gschwandtner presents a comprehensive and critical analysis of the ideas of saturated phenomena and the phenomenology of givenness. She claims that these phenomena do not always appear in the excessive mode that Marion describes and suggests instead that we consider degrees of saturation. Gschwandtner covers major themes in Marion’s work—the historical event, art, (...) nature, love, gift and sacrifice, prayer, and the Eucharist. She works within the phenomenology of givenness, but suggests that Marion himself has not considered important aspects of his philosophy. (shrink)

When Humpty-Dumpty had his great fall nobody could put him together again. A vastly more moderate challenge is to reunite the two partial beams of a Stern-Gerlach apparatus with such precision that the original spin state is recovered. Nevertheless, as we demonstrate, a substantial loss of spin coherence always occurs, unless the experimenter is able to control the magnetic field's inhomogeneity with an accuracy of at least one part in 105.

How do people decide which claims should be considered mere beliefs and which count as knowledge? Although little is known about how people attribute knowledge to others, philosophical debate about the nature of knowledge may provide a starting point. Traditionally, a belief that is both true and justified was thought to constitute knowledge. However, philosophers now agree that this account is inadequate, due largely to a class of counterexamples (termed ‘‘Gettier cases’’) in which a person’s justified belief is true, but (...) only due to luck. We report four experiments examining the effect of truth, justification, and ‘‘Gettiering’’ on people’s knowledge attributions. These experiments show that: (1) people attribute knowledge to others only when their beliefs are both true and justified; (2) in contrast to contemporary philosophers, people also attribute knowledge to others in Gettier situations; and (3) knowledge is not attributed in one class of Gettier cases, but only because the agent’s belief is based on ‘‘apparent’’ evidence. These findings suggest that the lay concept of knowledge is roughly consistent with the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief, and also point to a major difference between the epistemic intuitions of laypeople and those of philosophers. (shrink)

By exploring the writings of Mandeville, Hume and Smith, this book offers a critique of Hayek's theory of cultural evolution and explores the roots of his powerful defence of liberalism.

Kant and Fichte developed the concept of a worldview as a way of reflecting on experience as a whole. But what does it mean to form a worldview? And what role did it play in the German Idealist tradition? This paper seeks to answer these questions through a detailed analysis of the form of a philosophical worldview and its historical portent, both of which remain unexplored in the literature. The dearth of attention is partially to blame on Kant’s desultory development (...) of it, as well as its place in Fichte’s understudied lectures on religion. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s conception as the starting point and then trace it to Fichte who went on to evolve it further. Fichte endorses the basic conceptual shape pioneered by Kant, namely, a reflective process of positing an idea and then checking the coherence of necessary judgments relative to it. However, Fichte came to realize that its philosophical function needed expanding. Beyond recognizing the possibility for alternative worldviews, Fichte further fleshed out how worldview creation could lead to human flourishing. The common feature between both thinkers is that the formation of a worldview aims to turn philosophy into a life-orienting exercise. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the emerging field of Continental philosophy of religion by treating the philosophical thought of its most important representatives, including its appropriations by several thinkers in the US. Part I provides a context to the field by looking at the religious aspects of the thought of Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Lévinas, and Jacques Derrida. It contends that although the work of these thinkers is not apologetic in nature, it prepares the ground for the more religiously motivated (...) work of more recent thinkers by giving religious language and ideas some legitimacy in philosophical discussions. Part II devotes a chapter to each of the contemporary French thinkers who articulate a phenomenology of religious experience: Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Falque. This part argues that their respective philosophies can be read as an apologetics of sort, namely as making arguments for the coherence of thought about God and the viability of religious experience, though each does so in a different fashion and to a different degree. Part III considers the three major thinkers who have popularized and extended this phenomenology in the US context: Merold Westphal, John D. Caputo, and Richard Kearney. The book thus both provides an introduction to important contemporary thinkers many of whom have not yet received much treatment in English and also argues that their philosophies can be read as providing an argument for Christian faith. (shrink)

Was Menschen heute an Religion interessiert und vielleicht sogar fasziniert, hat immer weniger mit Religion als einem System von Glaubensinhalten zu tun, sondern eher mit deren asthetischen, emotionalen oder praktischen Qualitaten. Der Religionspadagoge Rudolf Englert erkundet, welche Rolle die auf die Reflexion von religiosen Inhalten und Uberzeugungen spezialisierte Theologie in diesem Prozess noch spielen kann.

We investigate homomorphisms of degree structures with various relations, functions and constants. Our main emphasis is on pseudolattices, i.e., partially ordered sets with a join operation and relations simulating the meet operation. We show that there are no finite quotients of the pseudolattice of degrees or of the pseudolattice of degrees 0′, but that many finite distributive lattices are pseudolattice quotients of the pseudolattice of computably enumerable degrees.

Reviewers of this book have praised Christina Hoff Sommer's well-reasoned argument against many feminists' reliance on misleading, politically motivated 'facts' about how women are victimised.