Exploring Practical Knowledge investigates professional practices from a hermeneutic perspective. The book presents, discusses and applies notions such as practical knowledge, practical wisdom, tacit knowledge, and normativity to the professional lifeworld. These contributions focus on both specific practices and more general questions concerning theories and investigations of practice. This volume comes as the result of a cooperation of three research centres: The two Centres for Practical Knowledge in Bodø, Norway and in Södertörn, Sweden, as well as the Research Group Value-Oriented (...) Professionalisation at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It offers empirical studies of professionals as well as discussing the underlying theories, approaches and methods of exploring practical knowledge - including the limits to any articulation of these aspects of professional action. In contrast to the objectivist paradigm that otherwise dominates professional studies, each chapter presents central perspectives and possibilities drawing from humanistic and interdiscipkinary research traditions. The book explores professions in a style accessible to scholars and practitioners alike. It is interesting for those studying practices within these professions and for vocational studies in education, social work, health care, police work, journalism, etc. (shrink)

Interest in a hydrogen economy has grown significantly in the past decade. However, the success of old technologies that are being re-engineered to work on hydrogen, as well as the creation of new hydrogenbased technologies, hinges upon public interest in and demand for such technologies. With increasing investments in the research and development of hydrogen technologies, there exists a need to monitor public attitudes toward hydrogen to ensure its success as an alternative energy carrier. To address this need, two surveys (...) were conducted. The results of the first survey give insights about how colored information influences the public acceptance of hydrogen, and the results of the second survey elucidate what trade-offs the public is willing to accept during the transition to a hydrogen economy. Furthermore, the research highlights how hydrogen knowledge and acceptance differ among age, education, and gender groups. (shrink)

Since the Opium War, the traditional Chinese society has been increasingly subject to the crushing impact of the modern Western civilization. Confucianism, as the normative discourse that had prevailed over the Chinese society for more than two thousands years, had inevitably to face the Western challenge head-on. From the end of the nineteenth century onward, the influence of Confucianism as regards the actual life of the Chinese people continues to diminish, and its normative place has almost been completely taken up (...) by the modern social theories imported from the West. Some Chinese scholars, therefore, has declared that Confucianism has become a "wandering ghost". But at the same time, there are also many contemporary Confucians who try to find a new body for the "ghost" of Confucianism. At the academic domain, this kind of attempt is usually based upon some sort of "modern interpretation" of Confucianism. But paradoxically, this kind of modern interpretation usually borrows its interpretative frameworks from the West. It goes without saying that the respective backgrounds upon which Confucianism and those modern West theories arose are gravely different. Hence, these modern interpretations generally tend to abstract the discourse of Confucianism from its social and historical background and treat it as some sorts of purely abstract concepts. But even after the abstraction, this kind of modern interpretations could still hardly fit well into the discourse of Confucianism. The aim of the present treatise is to re-interpret the discourse of Confucius, by means of both careful scholarship and detailed philosophical arguments, based upon the words of Confucius himself and other informations concerning his social and historical surroundings, in order to show that the discourse of Confucius is intricately involved with its living background. The author is going to point out that the discourse of Confucius is actually not so much concerned with "metaphysics of morals" of whatsoever sort as with the order and disorder of the society. At the end of the treatise, the author will also try to re-evaluate, with reference to the recent results of scientific research, the significance of Confucianism in the modern world. (shrink)

Die Beiträge des Bandes, die aus den Vorträgen der 4. Jahrestagung,,Diskurs - interdisziplinär" 2014 hervorgehen, fokussieren in unterschiedlicher disziplinärer Perspektivierung die diskursanalytische Konstante der Historizität. Das im Titel genannte historische Apriori indiziert gleichermaßen die Diskursivität sprachlichen Handelns als kontextuelles Bedingt-Sein von Aussagen wie auch die Geschichtlichkeit und damit Relativität sprachlicher Artefakte, für die hier Texte als eine weite Kategorie von Kommunikaten stehen. Im ersten Bandabschnitt,,Historische Semantik und Pragmatik" werden sprachliche Phänomene und, auf einer Metaebene, linguistische Kategorien unter dem Vorzeichen diskursiver (...) Varianz in den Blick genommen. Die Beiträge des zweiten Abschnitts,,Literatur und Texte" reflektieren die Historizität und soziale Wirksamkeit literarischer Formen. Im dritten Teil,,Gesellschaft und Politik" werden Wissens- und Normbildungsprozesse in den Diskursen verschiedener sozialer Felder fokussiert. (shrink)

This text is a remix of an archival engagement with recordings/performances of 'freedom songs' or 'liberation songs' in a south or southern African context. The authors began this collaborative research project as part of a course in the Masters in History degree programme at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). The essay includes a re-edited, updated transcript of dialogue the authors shared along with two mix(tap)es they produced together. The conversation speaks of songs as archives, archives of song(s), and (...) memory/ies pertaining to anti-Apartheid struggle and ongoing Fallism. (shrink)

Articles on Sikh philosophy and history.

Critical review of theory of re-enchantment by Darius Shayegan, a prominent thinker, cultural theorist and comparative philosopher.

Collected articles on Burmese linguistic and literature.

On concepts of current existence of Burmese Theravada Buddhists.

De Husserl à Patocka, en passant par Heidegger, la phénoménologie s’interroge sur le phénomène tel qu’il s’offre, se donne pour être saisi, recueilli, rassemblé en une proposition, un énoncé dit apophantique. Comment une telle ouverture à la phénoménalité, au donné, est-elle possible? Comment dire ce qui se donne, dans son caractère le plus originaire, sans le déformer ni l’écraser sous les schèmes ou les catégories hérités d’une longue tradition aristotélicienne? L’entreprise qui tend, avec Heidegger, à accéder à une strate « (...) archaïque », en deçà de la logique et de la grammaire de l’être, passe par une « destruction de la logique » et la ré-ouverture d’un rapport herméneutique aux choses et au monde. Herméneutique, non pas au sens d’une théorie de l’interprétation des textes ou documents lestés de sens, mais comme le trait fondamental qui rapporte l’homme au monde. Le propos de la phénoménologie ainsi radicalisé peut alors s’entendre comme « Weltlogik », logique-du-monde. (shrink)

Jacques Rancière hat die Frage der Gleichheit in den Mittelpunkt der Kunstbetrachtung gestellt und damit international gerade an Kunsthochschulen Furore gemacht. Volkmar Mühleis widmet sich eingehend Rancières ästhetischem Denken und befragt es erstmals kritisch im Rahmen der Kunstpraxis. Dabei zeigt sich zum einen die besondere Qualität von Rancières Ansatz für den Kunstdiskurs -- der stets die Freiheit, aber kaum ihre Bedingung, die Gleichheit, verhandelte --, zum andern aber auch seine Schwächen. So operiert Rancière mit einem medialen Begriff, der kaum den (...) Anforderungen technologischer Kritik heutzutage standhält. Wenn er ästhetische Erfahrung in Anspruch nimmt, ohne zu klären, was Erfahrung hier im Einzelnen heisst, so verbleibt er seinem emanzipatorischen Gedankengut nach in einer rationalistischen Tradition. Mit Blick auf die Schriften von Bernard Stiegler, Bernhard Waldenfels und Käte Meyer-Drawe zeigt Volkmar Mühleis, wie diese besondere Qualität von Rancières ästhetischem Denken auf ganz andere Art die gegenwärtige Debatte bereichern kann. (shrink)

Influential in shaping the practice of Chinese medicine, acupuncture is an ancient form of healing based on theories of traditional medicine. The clashes between western science and traditional knowledge have ushered Chinese medicine into a new era, so has acupuncture. The major challenges facing researchers are whether it is feasible to scientificize acupuncture and how to do so if feasible. Causing unprecedented responses at home and abroad, the publication of The New Acupuncture ( Xin zhenjiu xue ???? ) by Zhu (...) Lian (1909-1987) in 1951 dramatized the already heated discussion. This medical treatise was considered as the pioneer in scientification of acupuncture in mainland China since 1949. The purpose of this paper is to (1) put Zhu Lian’s The New Acupuncture and its relevant discussions back into the historical context of Chinese medicine in mainland China and Hong Kong in the 1950s, and (2) analyze the arguments set forth by her and other practitioners so as to get a clearer picture of how the issue on scientificizing acupuncture was being dealt with. (shrink)

Bringing together Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Jan Patocka, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the central role that questioning plays in phenomenology. Joel Hubick not only offers a phenomenological analysis of the activity of asking questions, but further traces the development of this form of questioning in the early stages of the phenomenology movement. Starting with Husserl's motto 'to the matters themselves', Hubick examines how the phenomenological method utilizes questioning as a means to both return to and to (...) preserve the phenomena in order to re-experience them anew. He then demonstrates how Heidegger takes up Husserl's phenomenology as presented in the Logical Investigations and, in doing so, develops phenomenology into a philosophy of possibility, one that seeks in equal measure to preserve questions while also answering them. Continuing this questioning philosophy, this volume showcases how Patocka explicitly advances what had remained implicit in both Husserl and Heidegger's works; namely, phenomenology understood as a set of questions - from 'what is history?' to 'who am I?' - all of which elicit original experiences for future generations of thinkers. With a close focus on the primary material of these three fundamental figures, The Phenomenology of Questioning affords a crucial insight into the history of phenomenological reasoning, as well as a reminder to today's phenomenologists to continue asking questions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis study examined the performance of sixth graders in Hong Kong on a number sense three-tier test and identified their possible misconceptions about number sense. The NSTTT compri...

Social theories are heavily context-embedded, and their creation is naturally interwoven with particular contexts. Once they are disseminated within a new societal landscape, adjustments and adaptation should be made. This paper investigates the entangled contexts of the social quality theory and its applicability to Asian societies. rough a comparative analysis of the key questions that this theory purports to answer, as well as its proposed answers and solutions, the study evaluates the purpose, features and functions of the theory. Moreover, in (...) relation to four sorts of 'conditional factors', this article also proposes extending social quality studies into four approaches that should lead the studies beyond the level of description into new forms of theory. The article also explores the theory's power to explain the Asian social quality systems and their implications for global social development. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a critique of taxonomic pluralism, namely the view that there are multiple correct ways to classify entities into natural kinds within a given scientific domain. I argue that taxonomic pluralism, as an anti-essentialist position, fails to provide a realist alternative to taxonomic monism, i.e., the view that there is only one correct way to classify entities into natural kinds within a given scientific domain. To establish my argument, I first explain why the naturalist approach to (...) natural kinds adopted by pluralists requires them to give up the mind-independence criterion of reality presupposed by monists. Next, I survey two types of pluralist account. I argue that, while the modest pluralist account is not pluralistic enough, the radical pluralist account fails to come up with an alternative criterion of reality that is robust enough to differentiate its position from anti-realism about natural kinds. I conclude by drawing out the implications of my critique for the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate about natural kinds. (shrink)

How do cognitive neuroscientists explain phenomena like memory or language processing? This book examines the different kinds of experiments and manipulative research strategies involved in understanding and eventually explaining such phenomena. Against this background, it evaluates contemporary accounts of scientific explanation, specifically the mechanistic and interventionist accounts, and finds them to be crucially incomplete. Besides, mechanisms and interventions cannot actually be combined in the way usually done in the literature. This book offers solutions to both these problems based on insights (...) from experimental practice. It defends a new reading of the interventionist account, highlights the importance of non-interventionist studies for scientific inquiry, and supplies a taxonomy of experiments that makes it easy to see how the gaps in contemporary accounts of scientific explanation can be filled. The book concludes that a truly empirically adequate philosophy of science must take into account a much wider range of experimental research than has been done to date. With the taxonomy provided, this book serves a stepping-stone leading into a new era of philosophy of science—for cognitive neuroscience and beyond. (shrink)

We present a Revised Projectivity Calculus that extends the scope of inclusion and exclusion inferences derivable under the Projectivity Calculus developed by Icard :705–725, 2012). After pointing out the inadequacies of C, we introduce four opposition properties which have been studied by Chow Proceedings of the 18th Amsterdam Colloquium, Springer, Berlin, 2012; Beziau, Georgiorgakis New dimensions of the square of opposition, Philosophia Verlag GmbH, München, 2017) and are more appropriate for the study of exclusion reasoning. Together with the monotonicity properties, (...) the OPs will form the basis of RC instead of the additive/multiplicative properties used in C. We also prove some important results of the OPs and their relation with the MPs. We then introduce a set of projectivity signatures together with the associated operations and conditions for valid inferences, and develop RC by inheriting the key features of C. We then show that under RC, we can derive some inferences that are not derivable under C. We finally discuss some properties of RC and point to possible directions of further studies. (shrink)

In the first half of this paper, we present a fragment of relational syllogisms named RELSYLL consisting of quantified statements with a special set of numerical quantifiers, and introduce a number of concepts that are useful for the later sections, including indirect reduction, quantifier transformations and equivalence of syllogisms. After determining the valid and invalid syllogisms in RELSYLL, we then introduce two Derivation Methods which can be used to derive valid relational syllogisms based on known valid simple syllogisms. We also (...) show that the two Methods are sound and complete for RELSYLL. In the second half of this paper, we discuss ways to extend the Derivation Methods, including the use of more valid syllogisms and the use of existential assumptions. In this way, we are able to derive more relational syllogisms that contain other types of non-classical quantifiers, including “only” and proportional quantifiers. Finally, we state and prove a proposition concerning the relationship between the two Methods. (shrink)

This book compiles and reviews the most prominent linguistic theories into a single source that serves as an essential reference for future solutions to one of the most important challenges of our age.

President Victor Yushchenko has issued a decree to the Ministry of Education and Science to develop and introduce the Ethics of Faith course in schools on September 1. What prompted him to do so is difficult to say. However, with his statement, he has given impetus to a new round of discussions on the religious education of students, which have been going on for several years.

An almost unheard-of analogy : Derrida reading Levinas -- This monstrous figure without figure or face -- Ça me regarde : regarding responsibility in Derrida -- The ghost of Jacques Derrida -- Phantasmaphotography -- By the board : Derrida approaching Blanchot -- Salutations : between Derrida and Nancy.