One of the more prominent early childhood interventions focused on the development of executive function skills is Tools of the Mind. Intervention studies comparing Tools classrooms with control classrooms, however, reveal inconsistent findings for children’s EF outcomes. The current study utilizes Head Start CARES teachers assigned to the Tools of the Mind enhancement intervention and the children in their classrooms. Relations between teachers’ characteristics, training attendance and implementation, and the interaction among these factors were examined as predictors of classroom-level gains (...) in EF. Results revealed several significant moderation effects indicating that Tools implementation is related to classroom EF gains for some but not all teachers. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Priscilla Alderson discusses how she came to research parental and childhood consent and became a sociologist and how, late in her career, she became convenor of the critical realism group started by Roy Bhaskar at the Institute for Education in London. She discusses aspects of her seminal research over the years on multiple subjects, such as the rights of children, and reflects on what critical realism has added to her social research.

On the face of it, normative conflicts are commonplace. Yet standard deontic logic declares them to be logically impossible. That prompts the question, What are the proper principles of normative reasoning if such conflicts are possible? This paper examines several alternatives that have been proposed for a logic of 'ought' that can accommodate normative conflicts, and finds all of them unsatisfactory as measured against three criteria of adequacy. It then introduces a new logic that does meet all three criteria, and (...) so allows for the possibility of genuine normative conflicts. (shrink)

Editorial introduction to the Special Issue by Erika Goble, editor.

This multiplex semantics incorporates multiple relations of deontic accessibility or multiple preference rankings on alternative worlds to represent distinct normative standards. This provides a convenient framework for deontic logic that allows conflicts of obligation, due either to conflicts between normative standards or to incoherence within a single standard. With the multiplex structures, two general senses of "ought" may be distinguished, an indefinite sense under which something is obligatory when it is enjoined by some normative standard and a core sense for (...) when something is enjoined by all normative standards. Multiple normative standards may themselves be given a preferential order; this leads to a concept of ranked obligation. This paper presents the foundations of this multiplex semantics and the propositional deontic logics they define. (shrink)

This volume presents a definitive introduction to twenty core areas of philosophical logic including classical logic, modal logic, alternative logics and close examinations of key logical concepts.

The sociology of literature, in the first of many paradoxes, elicits negations before assertions. It is not an established field or academic discipline. The concept as such lacks both intellectual and institutional clarity. Yet none of these limitations affects the vitality and rigor of the larger enterprise. We use the sociology of literature here to refer to the cluster of intellectual ventures that originate in one overriding conviction: the conviction that literature and society necessarily explain each other. Scholars and critics (...) of all kinds congregate under this outsize umbrella only to differ greatly in their sense of what they do and what sociology of literature does. They subscribe to a wide range of theories and methods. Many would not accept the sociology of literature as an appropriate label for their own work; other would refuse it to their colleagues. Nevertheless, every advocate agrees that a sociological practice is essential to literature. For the sociology of literature does not constitute just one more approach to literature. Because it insists upon a sociology of literary knowledge and literary practice within the study of literature, the sociology of literature raises questions basic to all intellectual inquiry.The sociology of literature begins in diversity. The way that is combines the ancient traditions of art with the modern practices of social science makes the very term something of an oxymoron. There is not one sociology of literature, there are many sociological practices of literature, each of which operates within a particular intellectual tradition and specific institutional context. These practices cross basic divisions within the contemporary intellectual field, especially within the university. Inherently interdisciplinary, the sociology of literature is subject to constant reformulation as scholars re-evaluate their disciplines. In consequence, disciplinary boundaries seem less rigid, less logical, and, hence, less authoritative than ever before. Even so—and this is another paradox of the sociology of literature—any sociological conception of literature is best situated in terms of an original discipline and its institutional setting. However frequently individual scholars cross over disciplinary lines, the fundamental divisions retain their force. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson is professor of French at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she is author of Literary France: The Making of a Culture. Philippe Desan, whose Naissance de la method: Machiavelle, la Ramée, Bodin, Montaigne, Descartes was published in 1987, is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. Wendy Griswold, associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, recently published Renaissance Revivals: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre, 1576-1980. (shrink)

This Article doDespite obvious differences in the Aristotelian and Stoic theories of responsibility, there is surprisingly a deeper structural similarity between the two. The most obvious difference is that Aristotle is (apparently) a libertarian and the Stoics are determinists. Aristotle holds adults responsible for all our "voluntary" actions, which are defined by two criteria: the "origin" or cause of the action must be "in us" and we must be aware of what we are doing. An "involuntary" action, for which we (...) are not responsible, is one that fails to meet either one of these two criteria. Aristotle is a libertarian insofar as he insists that all voluntary actions are "in our power" to perform or not. As determinists the Stoics cannot admit this sort of freedom, but they still consider the agent to be a vital link in the chain of events, so they redefine what is "in our power" as what comes about "through us." The terminology is different, but I argue that these actions, for which the Stoics hold us responsible, are in fact coextensive with Aristotle's voluntary actions. An "impression" is the first necessary condition for action, and is a sort of visual image of the object stimulating one to act. The right sort of impression activates the agent's "impulse," an internal movement of soul or mind, which is the direct cause of action. But impulse is always accompanied by "assent," which is the mind's affirming the truth of the proposition that we ought to go after the object stimulating our impulse. Thus, since assent is a necessary condition for action, we always act knowing what we are doing. This means that all actions caused by our own impulse and assent are by Aristotle's criteria voluntary, where impulse provides the internal origin of the action and assent provides the awareness of what is being done. I conclude that the Stoic and Aristotelian classes of what one is responsible for are coextensive, their criteria defining responsible actions are nearly identical, and the only substantial difference is that Aristotle claims such actions are in our power to do or not do while the Stoics say that such actions are necessitated (by our internal nature as well as external factors). es not have an abstract. (shrink)

This discussion paper considers how seldom recognised theories influence clinical ethics committees. A companion paper examined four major theories in social science: positivism, interpretivism, critical theory and functionalism, which can encourage legalistic ethics theories or practical living bioethics, which aims for theory–practice congruence. This paper develops the legalistic or living bioethics themes by relating the four theories to clinical ethics committee members’ reported aims and practices and approaches towards efficiency, power, intimidation, justice, equality and children’s interests and rights. Different approaches (...) to framing ethical questions are also considered. Being aware of the four theories’ influence can help when seeking to understand and possibly change clinical ethics committee routines. The paper is not a research report but is informed by a recent study in two London paediatric cardiac units. Forty-five practitioners and related experts were interviewed, including eight members of ethics committees, about the work of informing, preparing and supporting families during the extended process of consent to children’s elective heart surgery. The mosaic of multidisciplinary teamwork is reported in a series of papers about each profession, including this one on bioethics and law and clinical ethics committees’ influence on clinical practice. The qualitative social research was funded by the British Heart Foundation, in order that more may be known about the perioperative views and needs of all concerned. Questions included how disputes can be avoided, how high ethical standards and respectful cooperation between staff and families can be encouraged, and how minors’ consent or refusal may be respected, with the support of clinical ethics committees. (shrink)

With the increase in the costs of providing education and concerns about financial responsibility, heightened consideration of accountability and results, elevated awareness of the range of teacher skills and student learning styles and needs, more focus is being placed on the promises offered by online software and educational technology. One of the most heavily marketed, exciting and controversial applications of edtech involves the varied educational programs to which different students are exposed based on how big data applications have evaluated their (...) likely learning profiles. Characterized most often as ‘personalized learning,’ these programs raise a number of ethical concerns especially when used at the K-12 level. This paper analyzes the range of these ethical concerns arguing that characterizing them under the general rubric of ‘privacy’ oversimplifies the concerns and makes it too easy for advocates to dismiss or minimize them. Six distinct ethical concerns are identified: information privacy; anonymity; surveillance; autonomy; non-discrimination; and ownership of information. Particular attention is paid to whether personalized learning programs raise concerns similar to those raised about educational tracking in the 1950s. The paper closes with discussion of three themes that are important to consider in ethical and policy discussions. (shrink)

Coming from a prosperous London Quaker family, the author Priscilla Wakefield wrote educational books for children, and one work for adults, Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex, also reissued in this series. This 1796 book on botany, a science which 'contributes to health of body and cheerfulness of disposition' but is difficult to study because of its Latin nomenclature and the cost of textbooks, offers a simple introduction for children through the medium of letters between sisters, (...) as 'Felicia' shares with 'Constance' her growing understanding of plant science. Felicia's governess is a follower of Linnaeus, whose classificatory system is described as 'the one universally adopted', and by the twenty-eighth and final letter, Felicia is describing the class Cryptogamia. This illustrated account in simple language gives an insight into the level of education thought appropriate for young girls at the end of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

In the past three decades a number of narrative self-concepts have appeared in the philosophical literature. A central question posed in recent literature concerns the embodiment of the narrative self. Though one of the best-known narrative self-concepts is a non-embodied one, namely Dennett’s self as ‘a center of narrative gravity’, others argue that the narrative self should include a role for embodiment. Several arguments have been made in support of the latter claim, but these can be summarized in two main (...) points. Firstly, a logical one: without taking the body into account Dennett’s theory becomes self-refuting. Secondly, a more practical/phenomenological point: a disembodied self-concept overlooks how personal the body is, and as such should be considered part of the self. In this paper I endorse these criticisms of non-embodied narrative self-concepts, but I argue that the relationship between the narrative self and the body is far from sufficiently fleshed out. I claim that the narrative self and the body are much more interwoven than the above criticisms suggest. What I aim to show in this paper is that the relationship between the body and the narrative self is interactive rather than unidirectional: not only does our body shape our narrative self, but our narrative self also shapes our body. The upshot of this is a better conception of the self is as a dynamic interaction between its various aspects. (shrink)

Recent studies of semantic memory have investigated two theories of optimal search adopted from the animal foraging literature: Lévy flights and marginal value theorem. Each theory makes different simplifying assumptions and addresses different findings in search behaviors. In this study, an experiment is conducted to test whether clustering in semantic memory may play a role in evidence for both theories. Labeled magnets and a whiteboard were used to elicit spatial representations of semantic knowledge about animals. Category recall sequences from a (...) separate experiment were used to trace search paths over the spatial representations of animal knowledge. Results showed that spatial distances between animal names arranged on the whiteboard were correlated with inter-response intervals during category recall, and distributions of both dependent measures approximated inverse power laws associated with Lévy flights. In addition, IRIs were relatively shorter when paths first entered animal clusters, and longer when they exited clusters, which is consistent with marginal value theorem. In conclusion, area-restricted searches over clustered semantic spaces may account for two different patterns of results interpreted as supporting two different theories of optimal memory foraging. (shrink)

The results of this paper extend some of the intimate relations that are known to obtain between combinatory logic and certain substructural logics to establish a general characterization theorem that applies to a very broad family of such logics. In particular, I demonstrate that, for every combinator X, if LX is the logic that results by adding the set of types assigned to X (in an appropriate type assignment system, TAS) as axioms to the basic positive relevant logic B∘T, then (...) LX is sound and complete with respect to the class of frames in the Routley-Meyer relational semantics for relevant and substructural logics that meet a first-order condition that corresponds in a very direct way to the structure of the combinator X itself. (shrink)

The views of parents and staff about physical and symbolic space and its effects on ethical clinical practice are reported. Researchers observed four neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in southern England, and interviewed 40 senior staff and the parents of 80 babies. The adults' concerns include: how space affects the sharing of information and responsibility for the babies; respect and welcoming policies; access, freedom of movement and accessibility of staff; family friendly space and privacy; aesthetic values; and 'baby-led' space. The (...) paper concludes that abstract principles of respect for autonomy and attitudes towards the baby's biological and personal space take on practical embodied meanings in clinical spaces and practices. NICU design and aesthetics convey powerful ethical messages of welcome or exclusion that endorse or undermine partnerships between staff and parents. Helping premature and impaired babies to reach their space at the centre of their family involves sensitive management. (shrink)

It is frequently, but incorrectly, claimed that Socrates said “All I know is that I know nothing.” The source of this misquote is Plato’s dialogue the Apology, where there are five Socratic claims that may appear to justify it. I review these five claims in their context to prove that they are not equivalent to, nor do they imply, the infamous quote. What Socrates does say is that he does not think that he knows anything that he does not in (...) fact really know. He is skeptical in a certain sense; but he is not the dogmatic and self-contradicting skeptic that he is often made out to be. (shrink)

La dialectique entre art et engagement interroge la possibilité et les moyens d’esthétisation des sujets politiques et sociaux. En Allemagne, un genre artistique explore particulièrement cette problématique : le théâtre documentaire dont les formes contemporaines montrent la nette évolution des médias de masse et de leur rôle dans notre société. Cette approche documentaire soulève plusieurs questionnements quant à la véracité des faits et théories exposés, aux limites floues entre fiction et réalité, mais aussi quant à la pseudo-objectivité des propos diffusés. (...) Par ailleurs, l’intrication de l’emploi esthétique de médias divers et d’une volonté de popularisation de discours politiques rapproche de facto l’art documentaire d’un art de la propagande non-officielle et interroge sur les motivations des dramaturges impliqués, entre détournement distancié et manipulation du public. Les expressions contemporaines héritées du théâtre documentaire se retrouvent dans des cadres dépassant la scène, prenant plutôt la forme de « projets » multi-supports et plurimédiaux présentés par des collectifs artistiques tels Zentrum für politische Schönheit (Centre pour la beauté politique) ou The International Institute for Political Murder de Milo Rau. Ceux-ci interrogent les utilisations contemporaines des médias dans une société du spectacle poussée à l’extrême et jouent du concept de fake news pour continuer d’interpeller leur public sur des problématiques politiques et citoyennes dans un contexte d’une nouvelle remontée des fascismes. Dans ce contexte, jusqu’où peut mener une telle spectacularisation du politique? (shrink)

This paper presents a neighborhood semantics for logics of entailment. It begins with a minimal system Min that expresses the most fundamental assumptions about the entailment relation, and continues by examining various extensions that reflect further assumptions that might be made about entailment. This leads first to the logic B that is the basic relevant logic, and then to more powerful systems. All of these logics are proved to be sound and strongly complete. With B the neighborhood semantics meets the (...) Routley-Meyer relational semantics for relevant logic; these connections are examined. The minimal and basic entailment logics are shown to have the finite model property, and hence to be decidable. (shrink)

Background:While there have been studies exploring moral habitability and its impact on the work environments of nurses in Western countries, little is known about the moral habitability of the work environments of nurses and midwives in resource-constrained settings.Research objective:The purpose of this research was to examine the moral habitability of the work environment of nurses and midwives in Ghana and its influence on their moral agency using the philosophical works of Margaret Urban Walker.Research design and participants:A critical moral ethnography was (...) conducted through the analysis of interviews with 30 nurses and midwives, along with observation, and documentary materials.Ethical considerations:After receiving ethics approval, signed informed consent was obtained from participants before data collection.Results:Five themes were identified: (1) holding onto the values, identities, and responsibilities of being a midwife/nurse; (2) scarcity of resources as limiting capacity to meet caring responsibilities; (3) gender and socio-economic inequities shaping the moral-social context of practice; (4) working with incoherent moral understandings and damaged identities in the context of inter- and intra-professional relationships; and (5) surviving through adversity with renewed commitment and courage.Discussion:The nurses and midwives were found to work in an environment that was morally uninhabitable and dominated by the scarcity of resources, overwhelming and incoherent moral responsibilities, oppressive conditions, and workplace violence. These situations constrained their moral agency and provoked suffering and distress. The nurses and midwives negotiated their practice and navigated through morally uninhabitable work environment by holding onto their moral values and commitments to childbearing women.Conclusion:Creating morally habitable workplaces through the provision of adequate resources and instituting interprofessional practice guidelines and workplace violence prevention policies may promote safe and ethical nursing and midwifery practice. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza sentencias de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos para detectar si en ellas se ha realizado una interpretación intercultural que pudiera salvar aquellas críticas referidas al etnocentrismo de estos derechos. La reflexión se sitúa desde la filosofía hermenéutica y desarrolla una metodología cualitativa de investigación que como técnica utiliza la revisión documental. Se concluye que existe una interpretación intercultural y un diálogo interpretativo entre los textos de derechos humanos y la cosmovisión de las culturas indígenas, aun (...) cuando se requiere de un mayor desarrollo para advertir un criterio general de interculturalidad. (shrink)

The following short contributions add to the debate on transplantation: one describes the distress of a woman recently widowed when asked for the organs of her dead husband for transplantation, and the other the eagerness with which a boy awaits the death of a potential kidney donor - not a heartless emotion but the longing for a new lease of life.

The Archaeology of Cyprus: From Earliest Prehistory through the Bronze Age. By A. Bernard Knapp. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xx + 640. $38.99.

The forensic speechs are excellent source for the knowledge of Athenian law. The laws were used in the speeches to make them more persuasive. The Demosthenes’s speech Against Meidias is an example of the persuasive use of the law. The orator uses the laws to guarantee a legal base for the process and to characterize he and his enemy as good and bad citizens, respectively. The text will analyse the different uses of law made by Demosthenes in the referred speech.

This article explores the relations between autobiography, fiction and history in the recent texts of Hélène Cixous. It examines the uses and limits of a range of generic categorizations in accounting for these relations. We suggest that most categorizations tend to rely on an underlying oppositionary and exclusive dynamic between autobiography and fiction in which one or the other may be privileged. Our contention is that Cixous's work should rather be understood within an inclusive dynamic in which all three elements, (...) the fictional, autobiographical and the historical coexist in a complex relation which cannot be disentangled. This inclusive dynamic, we suggest, is not only central to an understanding of the texts’ generic dimensions, but also to the specifics of the pact which Cixous establishes with her readers, as well as to the ethical thinking which underlies her oeuvre. (shrink)

Early in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle claims that the goal pursued by that work is not knowledge but action; a bit later he says that reading / studying the lessons therein contained would be useless if it did not serve to somehow make us better. The aim of this paper is to present what I take as being the practical understanding that Aristotle requires from the reader / student of the NE , as opposed to a purely theoretical understanding of (...) the issues addressed by that work. One can read the NE as a purely theoretical treatise, considering irrelevant the question of whether or not we are motivated to pursue a virtuous life. But one should not read it that way, according to Aristotle. To understand that the virtuous life is the best means to pursue that life. As I intend to show, the Aristotelian requirement that students of the NE have been educated in good habits in order to follow its lessons properly is a strong indication supporting the idea above. Aristotle had in mind the fact that it is only in a mature character that moral arguments, even if very general ones such as those in the NE, can motivate action. (shrink)

We use the construct of the “other” to explore how hate operates rhetorically within the virtual conclave of Stormfront, credited as the first hate Web site. Through the Internet, white supremacists create a rhetorical vision that resonates with those who feel marginalized by contemporary political, social, and economic forces. However, as compared to previous studies of on-line white supremacist rhetoric, we show that Stormfront discourse appears less virulent and more palatable to the naive reader. We suggest that Stormfront provides a (...) “cyber transition” between traditional hate speech and “reasonable racism,” a tempered discourse that emphasizes pseudo-rational discussions of race, and subsequently may cast a wider net in attracting audiences. (shrink)

As a study involving diabetes care demonstrates, children sometimes have a much more sophisticated capacity for taking charge of their own health care decisions than is usually recognized in bioethics. Protecting these children from their disease means involving them in their treatment as much as possible, helping them to understand it and take responsibility for it so that they can navigate the multitude of daily decisions that become part of the diabetes medical regimen.

El artículo analiza el desarrollo de la interseccionalidad como concepto presente en el proceso de juzgar con perspectiva de género, en particular, su impacto en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Corte IDH). La metodología utilizada es cualitativa, principalmente, revisión de sentencias de la Corte IDH. De las 13 sentencias seleccionadas en el período 2015-2022 se concluye que la Corte IDH ha incorporado progresivamente la perspectiva interseccional y la ha usada como categoría analítica para estudiar, entender y (...) hacer frente a las discriminaciones que constituyen una forma agravada de discriminación y barreras de acceso a la justicia. (shrink)

This review begins with a detailed focus on the Turnaway Study, which addresses associations among early abortion, later abortion, and denied abortion relative to various outcomes including mental health indicators. The Turnaway Study was comprised of 516 women; however, an exact percentage of the population is not discernable due to missing information. Extrapolating from what is known reveals a likely low of 0.32% to a maximum of 3.18% of participants sampled from the available the pool. Motivation for conducting the Turnaway (...) Study, methodological deficiencies (sampling issues and others), and bias are specifically addressed. Despite serious departures from accepted scientific practices, journals in psychology and medicine have published dozens of articles generated from the study’s data. The high volume of one-sided publications has stifled dialogue on potential adverse psychological consequences of this common procedure. Following a critical analysis of the Turnaway Study, an overview of the strongest studies on abortion and mental health is offered. This comprehensive literature comprised of numerous large-scale studies from across the globe has been largely overlooked by scientists and the public, while the Turnaway Study dominates the media, information provided to women, and legal challenges involving abortion restrictions. In the final section of this article, literature reviews by professional organizations are considered, demonstrating that the biased science characterizing the Turnaway Study is aligned with a pervasive and systemic phenomenon wherein deriving reliable and valid results via careful attention to methodology and scrutiny by the scientific community have been supplanted by politics. (shrink)

In _Encounters with Melanie Klein: Selected Papers of Elizabeth Spillius_ the author argues that her two professions, anthropology and psychoanalysis, have much in common, and explains how her background in anthropology led her on to a profound involvement in psychoanalysis and her establishment as a leading figure amongst Kleinian analysts. Spillius describes what she regards as the important features of Kleinian thought and discusses the research she has carried out in Melanie Klein's unpublished archive, including Klein's views on projective identification. (...) Spillius's own clinical ideas make up the last part of the book with papers on envy, phantasy, technique, the negative therapeutic reaction and otherness. Her writing has a clarity which is very particular to her; she conveys complicated ideas in a most straightforward manner, well illustrated with pertinent clinical material. This book represents fifty years of the developing thought and scholarship of a talented and dedicated psychoanalyst. (shrink)