In a recent unit of study in an undergraduate Health Sciences pathway course, we identified a set of essays which exhibited similarity of content but demonstrated the use of bizarre and unidiomatic language. One of the distinct features of the essays was the inclusion of unusual synonyms in place of expected standard medical terminology.We suspected the use of online paraphrasing tools, but were also interested in investigating the possibility of the use of online language translation tools. In order to test (...) the outputs of these tools, we used as a seed document a corpus of text which had been provided to the students as prompt for the essay. This document was put through six free online paraphrasing tools and six separate iterative language translations through the online Google Translate™ tool.The results demonstrated that free online paraphrasing tools did not identify medical terminology as standardised or accepted nomenclature and substituted synonyms, whereas Google Translate™ largely preserved medical terminology.We believe that textual indicators such as the absence of standard discipline-based terminology may be of assistance in the identification of machine paraphrased text. (shrink)

This book offers a provocative account of interdisciplinary research across the neurosciences, social sciences and humanities. Setting itself against standard accounts of interdisciplinary 'integration,' and rooting itself in the authors' own experiences, the book establishes a radical agenda for collaboration across these disciplines. Rethinking Interdisciplinarity does not merely advocate interdisciplinary research, but attends to the hitherto tacit pragmatics, affects, power dynamics, and spatial logics in which that research is enfolded. Understanding the complex relationships between brains, minds, and environments requires a (...) delicate, playful and genuinely experimental interdisciplinarity, and this book shows us how it can be done. This book is open access under a CC-BY license and funded by The Wellcome Trust. (shrink)

It is well known that, for example, the Continuum Hypothesis can’t be proved or disproved from the standard axioms of set theory or their familiar extensions. Some think it follows that CH has no determinate truth value; others insist that this conclusion is false, not because there is some objective world of sets in which CH is either true or false, but on logical grounds. Claims of indeterminacy have also been made on the basis of such considerations as the existence (...) of non-standard models of arithmetic, with similar rejoinders. We’ll read some representative examples of the various positions and replies. (For background on second-order logic, see Stewart Shapiro. (shrink)

The direct protection of civilians from the violence and harms of armed conflict is most often understood in fixed, identity-centred terms: of what protection is, where it is located, of who provid...

In practice, scoring rules elicit good probability estimates from individuals, while betting markets elicit good consensus estimates from groups. Market scoring rules combine these features, eliciting estimates from individuals or groups, with groups costing no more than individuals. Regarding a bet on one event given another event, only logarithmic versions preserve the probability of the given event. Logarithmic versions also preserve the conditional probabilities of other events, and so preserve conditional independence relations. Given logarithmic rules that elicit relative probabilities of (...) base event pairs, it costs no more to elicit estimates on all combinations of these base events. (shrink)

This article argues that despite individual Fellows’ interest in artistic practices, and similarities between a philosophical and a connoisseurial appreciation of art, the Royal Society as an institution may have been wary of image-making as a way of conveying knowledge because of the power of images to stir the passions and sway the intellect. Using Robert Hooke as a case study it explores some of the connections between philosophers and makers in Restoration London. It goes on to suggest that some (...) epistemic images were in fact designed to elicit an emotional response in their viewers in order to force them to re-evaluate the subject-matter by presenting it in a new and surprising way. (shrink)

More than any other early modern text, Montaigne's Essais have come to be associated with the emergence of a distinctively modern subjectivity, defined in opposition to the artifices of language and social performance. Felicity Green challenges this interpretation with a compelling revisionist reading of Montaigne's text, centred on one of his deepest but hitherto most neglected preoccupations: the need to secure for himself a sphere of liberty and independence that he can properly call his own, or himself. Montaigne and (...) the Life of Freedom restores the Essais to its historical context by examining the sources, character and significance of Montaigne's project of self-study. That project, as Green shows, reactivates and reshapes ancient practices of self-awareness and self-regulation, in order to establish the self as a space of inner refuge, tranquillity and dominion, free from the inward compulsion of the passions and from subjection to external objects, forces and persons. (shrink)

A friend of mine recently lent me a little book entitled What a Young Wife Ought to Know, by Mrs. Emma F. Angell Drake, M.D., of Denver, Colorado. It was published in 1902 and is one of the Self and Sex series of “pure books on avoided subjects.” Its premise is that “Woman [is] fitted by the creator for wifehood and motherhood,” and it has chapters entitled “Home and Dress,” “Marital Relations,” “The Mother the Teacher,” and so on. My friend (...) had come across it in, of all places, the library of a mental hospital where his wife was being treated for postpartum depression. He stole it as a matter of principle. What a Young Wife Ought to Know has its late-medieval equivalent in a poem of around two hundred lines known as “What the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter,” which has been used quite often by medieval historians as evidence for aspects of female behavior in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are problems with this, though, as a comparison with Mrs. Emma F. Angell Drake's book shows. Historians of the early twentieth century would not, I assume, use What a Young Wife Ought to Know as evidence of social practice; rather, its interest is ideological. The same is true of “What the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter”: it is a poem that speaks for the special interests that have shaped its form and content. (shrink)

"The Foundations is for the general reader who possesses 'common rational knowledge of morality' but lacks a philosophical theory of it."--Translator's introduction.

To what extent does the construction of any curriculum framework have to contain axiological assumptions? Educators have been made aware of tacit epistemological assumptions underlying existing curricular frameworks by the continual demands for their revision. Eisner suggested that curriculum policy should be centred around imagination; economic rationalists have suggested that it be made more functional and accountable than traditional university disciplines allow for. Is it possible, as Efland suggests, to combine competing traditional ideologies of education in a complex postmodern pastiche (...) which can nonetheless provide standards of assessment and evaluation without presuming a grand narrative? Brown suggests not. This paper examines the challenge of maintaining principled standards and recognising postmodern relativities, making particular reference to the notion of the sublime and the arts curriculum. (shrink)

This article investigates how the turn to affect within the humanities and social sciences re-imagines the relationship between cultural theory and science. We focus on how the writings of two neuroscientists (Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux) and one developmental psychologist (Daniel Stern) are used in order to ground certain claims about affect within cultural theory. We examine the motifs at play in cultural theories of affect, the models of (neuro)biology with which they work, and some fascinating missteps characterizing the taking (...) up of scientific literature. While neuroscience frames the affective as part of a system of regulation that makes both self and social coherence possible, in cultural theory’s narratives, by contrast, affectivity becomes a placeholder for the inherent dynamism and mutability of matter. The article interrogates the consequences of cultural theory’s strange borrowings from neuroscience and developmental psychology in their institution of a model of subjectivity preoccupied with a lived present in excess of the hold of habit and embodied history. (shrink)

Human beings talk to themselves; sometimes out-loud, other times in inner speech. In this paper, I present a resolution to the following dilemma that arises from self-talk. If self-talk exists then either, we know what we are going to say and self-talk serves no communicative purpose, and must serve some other purpose, or we don’t know what we are going to say, and self-talk does serve a communicative purpose, namely, it is an instance of us communicating with ourselves. Adopting was (...) the strategy taken by Bart Geurts, who claims that the primary purpose of self-talk is to entrain commitments, and is not communicative. While accepting that self-talk can usefully play this role, I criticise the view that entraining commitments is self-talk’s fundamental role. I argue that adopting the view that we are self-blind, at least to a significant degree, means that we can accept that self-talk does play a communicative role. (shrink)

A complete guide to the creation of compelling science photographs.

This essay develops the concept of the “social body” as a metaphorical representation of hierarchical relationships in Thailand, as well as the physical embodiment of social, religious, and political structures. To do so, I trace the symbolic coordinates of groups that correspond to conceptions of individual bodies, along with the habituated means of perceiving as part of a collective. I argue that conventional Thai social interactions involve active attention to and care of the “social body,” in which differential roles are (...) necessary for group functioning. Ethnographic descriptions of social interactions in public and semi-private arenas depict the spontaneous and embodied root of moral action in these contexts. The values thus enacted, however, challenge normative ideals of distributive justice and open up questions about “care” for a social body that validates unequal power and resource distribution. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLocke's account of belief formation poses a number of philosophical and practical difficulties. As John Passmore and others have shown, Locke appears to hold both that belief is involuntary...

The ancient practice of chanting typically takes place within a community as a part of a live ceremony or ritual. Research suggests that chanting leads to improved mood, reduced stress, and increased wellbeing. During the global pandemic, many chanting practices were moved online in order to adhere to social distancing recommendations. However, it is unclear whether the benefits of live chanting occur when practiced in an online format. The present study assessed the effects of a 10-min online chanting session on (...) stress, mood, and connectedness, carried out either in a group or individually. The study employed a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Participants were pseudo-randomly allocated across the four conditions. Before and after participation, individuals completed the Spielberg’s State Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, the Social Connectedness Scale and Aron’s Inclusion of Self in Other Scale. Online chanting led to a significant reduction in stress and an increase in positive affect when compared to the online control task. Participants who took part in group chanting also felt more connected to members of their chanting group than participants in the control group. However, feelings of general connectedness to all people remained similar across conditions. The investigation provides evidence that online chanting may be a useful psychosocial intervention, whether practiced individually or in a group. (shrink)

To what extent does the construction of any curriculum framework have to contain axiological assumptions? Educators have been made aware of tacit epistemological assumptions underlying existing curricular frameworks by the continual demands for their revision., ) suggested that curriculum policy should be centred around imagination; economic rationalists have suggested that it be made more functional and accountable than traditional university disciplines allow for. Is it possible, as ) suggests, to combine competing traditional ideologies of education in a complex postmodern pastiche (...) which can nonetheless provide standards of assessment and evaluation without presuming a grand narrative? ) suggests not. This paper examines the challenge of maintaining principled standards and recognising postmodern relativities, making particular reference to the notion of the sublime and the arts curriculum. (shrink)

In 1972, Matthew Lipman founded the Institute of Advancement for Philosophy for Children, producing a series of novels and teaching manuals promoting philosophical inquiry at all levels of schooling. The programme consisted of stories about children discussing traditional topics of ethics, values, logic, reality, perception, and politics, as they related to their own daily experiences. Philosophy for Children has been adapted beyond the IAPC texts, but the process remains one of an open community of inquiry in which teachers promote respect, (...) conceptual clarity, critical judgement, and active listening without imposing their own ideas. Philosophy in Schools describes the successes and difficulties in implementing this community of inquiry model. The book covers topics including the formation of non-didactic courses in ethics, the difficulties of fitting a post-compulsory philosophy course into a standard curriculum framework, and the political assumptions of adopting this model in a low socio-economic school. The contributions also ask deeper questions about how a genuine community of inquiry model is incompatible with conventional models of schooling, with their positioning of the discipline of philosophy in the curriculum. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Educational Philosophy and Theory. _. (shrink)

This book presents and discusses an approach to action research to help reverse discriminatory and exclusionary practices in education. Insider accounts of action research will help challenge assumptions about the limits of inclusive education, and offer examples of how change can be realistically achieved through processes of collaboration and participation. Written by a team of practitioner researchers drawn from a wide range of schools and services, this book addresses a wide range of real-life situations by exploring ways in which teachers (...) have tackled inequalities in the school environment through action research based on principles of equality and democracy. These include: * the co-ordination of services for minority ethnic groups, including refugee and asylum seeking children * young children with autism working with peers in the literacy hour * action research and the inclusion of gay students * developing the role of learning support assistants in inclusion * reducing exclusion of children with challenging behaviour * listening to the voices of young people with severe learning difficulties * developing links between special and mainstream schools * challenging marginalising practices in Further Education. (shrink)