This article extends a framework for conceptualizing, designing, and managing planned change-systems. The framework argues that the adoption of social innovations is best facilitated when change organizations manage how target adopters perceive and enact the entire adoption experience. This process is accomplished by defining three critical components of the change-system and applying the principles of synergy to their design and management.

There are growing concerns that increased screen device usage may have a detrimental impact on classroom behaviour and attentional focus. The consequences of screen use on child cognitive functioning have been relatively under-studied, and results remain largely inconsistent. Screen usage may displace the time usually spent asleep. The aim of this study was to examine associations between screen use, behavioural inattention and sustained attention control, and the potential modifying role of sleep. The relations between screen use, behavioural inattention, sustained attention (...) and sleep were investigated in 162 6- to 8-year-old children, using parent-reported daily screen use, the SWAN ADHD behaviour rating scale, The sustained attention to response task and the children’s sleep habits questionnaire. Tablet use was associated with better sustained attention performance but was not associated with classroom behavioural inattention. Shorter sleep duration was associated with poorer behavioural inattention and sustained attention. Sleep quality and duration did not act as mediators between screen usage and behavioural inattention nor sustained attention control. These findings suggest that careful management of the amount of time spent on electronic screen devices could have a beneficial cognitive impact on young children. The results also highlight the critical role of sleep in enhancing both behavioural attention and sustained attention, which are essential for supporting cognitive development and learning. (shrink)

Moral rationalism takes human reason and human rationality to be the key elements in an explanation of the nature of morality, moral judgment, and moral knowledge. This volume explores the resources of this rich philosophical tradition. Thirteen original essays, framed by the editors' introduction, critically examine the four core theses of moral rationalism: (i) the psychological thesis that reason is the source of moral judgment, (ii) the metaphysical thesis that moral requirements are constituted by the deliverances of practical reason, (iii) (...) the epistemological thesis that moral requirements are knowable a priori, and (iv) the normative thesis that moral requirements entail valid reasons for action. The five essays in Part I ('Normativity') offer contemporary defences or reconstructions of Kant's attempt to ground the normative thesis, that moral requirements entail valid reasons for action, in the nature of practical reason and practical rationality. The four essays in Part II ('Epistemology & Meaning') consider the viability of claims to a priori moral knowledge. The authors of all four essays are sympathetic to a realist moral metaphysics, and thus forgo the straightforward constructivist road to apriority. The four essays in Part III ('Psychology') each grapple with the implications for rationalism of the role of emotions and unconscious processes in moral judgement and action. Together the essays demonstrate that moral rationalism identifies not a single philosophical position but rather a family of philosophical positions, which resemble traditional rationalism, as exemplified by Kant, to varying degrees. (shrink)

Moral rationalism takes human reason and human rationality to be the key elements in an explanation of the nature of morality, moral judgment, and moral knowledge. This volume explores the resources of this rich philosophical tradition. Thirteen original essays, framed by the editors' introduction, critically examine the four core theses of moral rationalism: (i) the psychological thesis that reason is the source of moral judgment, (ii) the metaphysical thesis that moral requirements are constituted by the deliverances of practical reason, (iii) (...) the epistemological thesis that moral requirements are knowable a priori, and (iv) the normative thesis that moral requirements entail valid reasons for action. The five essays in Part I ('Normativity') offer contemporary defences or reconstructions of Kant's attempt to ground the normative thesis, that moral requirements entail valid reasons for action, in the nature of practical reason and practical rationality. The four essays in Part II ('Epistemology & Meaning') consider the viability of claims to a priori moral knowledge. The authors of all four essays are sympathetic to a realist moral metaphysics, and thus forgo the straightforward constructivist road to apriority. The four essays in Part III ('Psychology') each grapple with the implications for rationalism of the role of emotions and unconscious processes in moral judgement and action. Together the essays demonstrate that moral rationalism identifies not a single philosophical position but rather a family of philosophical positions, which resemble traditional rationalism, as exemplified by Kant, to varying degrees. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing acknowledgement of the importance of recognising the ethical dimension of clinical decision-making. Medical professional regulatory authorities in some countries now include ethical knowledge and practice in their required competencies for undergraduate and post graduate medical training. Educational interventions and clinical ethics support services have been developed to support and improve ethical decision making in clinical practice, but research evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions has been limited. We undertook a systematic review of (...) the published literature on measures or models of evaluation used to assess the impact of interventions to improve ethical decision making in clinical care. We identified a range of measures to evaluate educational interventions, and one tool used to evaluate a clinical ethics support intervention. Most measures did not evaluate the key impact of interest, that is the quality of ethical decision making in real-world clinical practice. We describe the results of our review and reflect on the challenges of assessing ethical decision making in clinical practice that face both developers of educational and support interventions and the regulatory organisations that set and assess competency standards. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between the expulsion of Jews from medieval England and France and state building, geo-politics, regime styles, and taxation in these countries. Jews were evicted as a result of attempts by kings to manage royal insecurity, refashion relations between state and society, and build more durable systems of taxation within the territories they claimed as theirs. As they engaged in state building and extended their ties, often conflictual, to key societal and political actors, Jews became (...) financially less important but more visible as outsiders, becoming a liability for the crown. Similar mechanisms were at work despite important differences distinguishing England’s growing regime of rights and representation and France’s emergent absolutist patrimonialism. (shrink)

During the eighteenth century, elite women participated in the philosophical, scientific, and political controversies that resulted in the overthrow of monarchy, the reconceptualisation of marriage, and the emergence of modern, democratic institutions. In this comprehensive study, Karen Green outlines and discusses the ideas and arguments of these women, exploring the development of their distinctive and contrasting political positions, and their engagement with the works of political thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville and Rousseau. Her exploration ranges across Europe from (...) England through France, Italy, Germany and Russia, and discusses thinkers including Mary Astell, Emilie Du Châtelet, Luise Kulmus-Gottsched and Elisabetta Caminer Turra. This study demonstrates the depth of women's contributions to eighteenth-century political debates, recovering their historical significance and deepening our understanding of this period in intellectual history. It will provide an essential resource for readers in political philosophy, political theory, intellectual history, and women's studies. (shrink)

Certaines ont affirmé que le concept de gender était une invention américaine, intraduisible par le mot français « genre ». Pourtant, au-delà des distinctions grammaticales, il existe depuis longtemps - bien avant Beauvoir, Oakley, et l'usage postmoderniste construit par Joan Scott et Judith Butler - un usage français du terme « genre », qui spécifie dans le vocabulaire sociopolitique - notamment féministe - la construction sociale et culturelle des sexes. L’objet de cet article est d’en rétablir les trajectoires historiques et (...) de contribuer peut-être à balayer les dernières réticences manifestées en France à son égard. (shrink)

On dit souvent que, tandis que la biologie de l'évolution utilise un concept étiologique de fonction (la fonction d'un trait biologique n'est autre que son effet sélectionné), la physiologie prend appui sur un autre concept de fonction, celui de rôle causal. Cependant, un examen plus attentif montre que le concept non normatif de rôle causal n'est pas ce dont la physiologie générale ou la neurophysiologie ont besoin. Ces disciplines font un large usage de notions comme celles de bon fonctionnement, de (...) fonctionnement normal, de fonctionnement perturbé ou de trouble fonctionnel. Il semble ainsi qu'un concept normatif comme le concept étiologique n'est pas seulement utile dans le contexte d'explications téléologiques ou évolutionnistes, mais aussi dans celui d'explications mécanistes ou opérationnelles telles qu'elles sont couramment proposées par la physiologie. La différence entre types d'explication n'est pas une différence entre deux concepts de fonction. En particulier, l'analyse physiologique serait une tâche impossible si elle devait prendre en compte toutes les relations causales à l'intérieur de l'organisation fonctionnelle de chaque système biologique. Pour résoudre ce problème, la physiologie doit être une analyse du fonctionnement normal du système, quelle que soit la part d'idéalisation nécessaire. La notion de bon fonctionnement, conçu comme le produit de l'histoire évolutive, nous aide en particulier à comprendre pourquoi les systèmes qui fonctionnent bien se ressemblent, et pourquoi les systèmes qui dysfonctionnent peuvent le faire de tant de façons différentes. It is often claimed that although evolutionary biology uses an etiological concept of function (according to etiological theory, the function of a biological feature is its selected effect), physiology relies on a different concept of function, the causal role concept. However, upon closer scrutiny, it appears that the non-normative causal role concept is not what is needed by physiology or neurophysiology. These disciplines make a wide use of normative notions like proper functioning, normal functioning, impaired functioning, or functional disorders. In this case, it seems that a normative concept like the etiological concept is not only useful in the context of teleological or evolutionary explanations, but also in the context of mechanical or operational explanations as they are routinely offered by physiology. The difference between types of explanations is not a difference between two kinds of concepts of function. In particular, physiological analysis would be an impossible task if it had to take into account all causal links within the functional organization of each biological system. To solve this problem, physiology has to be the analysis of the proper or normal functioning of the system, even if normal functioning is usually obtained through a process of idealization. The notion of proper functioning, conceived as the product of evolutionary history, helps us understand, among other things, why properly functioning systems tend to be similar, and why malfunctioning systems may differ in so many different ways. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the mistaken ways in which Beauvoir's work is interpreted by some of France's leading feminists. It counterposes their reception by arguing that Beauvoir's concept of the free ethical way of life is Hegelian rather than Kantian in character. In The Ethics of Ambiguity she outlines ethics as an always situated, embodied life project, a perspective that is the theoretical framework of The Second Sex as well and that calls for a plural feminism in world perspective.

Comments on Karen Neander's A Mark of the Mental.

C’est toujours une joie de découvrir l’existence d’un réseau transnational. Dans ce cas précis, il s’agit d’un réseau de spécialistes en France et Outre-Manche travaillant sur l’histoire politique et institutionnelle des femmes britanniques. Ils ont produit un livre de qualité : en plus de l’éditrice du volume, les auteurs comptent Pat Thane, Lori Maguire, Linda Walker, Julia Bush, Gillian Scott, June Hannam, Philippe Vervaecke, Susan Trouvé-Finding et Lucy Delap. Neuf articles excellents sui...

Frances Kamm's characteristically subtle paper in response to Michael Sandel is an intriguing intervention in the long-standing and increasingly frustrating debate over the morality of enhancement...

Christine de Pizan, one of the earliest known women authors, wrote the Livre de paix (Book of Peace) between 1412 and 1414, a period of severe corruption and civil unrest in her native France. The book offered Pizan a platform from which to expound her views on contemporary politics and to put forth a strict moral code to which she believed all governments should aspire. The text's intended recipient was the dauphin, Louis of Guyenne; Christine felt that Louis had (...) the political and social influence to fill a void left by years of incompetent leadership. Drawing in equal parts from the Bible and from classical ethical theory, the Livre de paix was revolutionary in its timing, viewpoint, and content. This volume, edited by Karen Green, Constant J. Mews, and Janice Pinder, boasts the first full English translation of Pizan's work along with the original French text. The editors also place the Livre de paix in historical context, provide a brief biography of Pizan, and offer insight into the translation process. (shrink)

The ‘celebrated’ Catharine Macaulay was both lauded and execrated during the eighteenth century for her republican politics and her unconventional life. This comprehensive biography in the “life and letters” tradition situates her works in their political and social context and offers an unprecedented, detailed account of the content and influence of her writing, the arguments she developed in her eight volume history of England, and her other political, ethical, and educational works. Her disagreements with conservative opponents, David Hume, Edmund Burke, (...) and Samuel Johnson are developed in detail, as is her influence on more progressive admirers such as Thomas Jefferson, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Mercy Otis Warren, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Macaulay emerges as a coherent and influential political voice, whose attitudes and aspirations were typical of those enlightenment republicans who based their progressive politics in rational religion. She looked back to the seventeenth century levelers and parliamentarians as important precursors of the struggles for liberty and political rights that she advocated for Great Britain, America, and France. Her defence of republican liberty and the equal rights of men offers an important corrective to certain misleading contemporary accounts of the origins of democratic republicanism during this crucial period. (shrink)

Grounded in a close reading of the records of Joan's trial and rehabilitation, on the early letters announcing her arrival at Chinon, and on three literary works; Christine de Pizan's Ditié, Martin le Franc's Le Champion des dames, and Alain Chartier's, Traité de l’Esperance, this controversial work argues that serious historians should accept that Joan was trained. It proposes that she was identified and taught how to behave in the expectation of the fulfillment of the Charlemagne Prophecy and other prophecies (...) from the Joachite tradition. It explores the possibility that Christine de Pizan, who had been promoting these prophecies from the beginning of the century, had some hand in the process that resulted in Joan's appearance and demonstrates, at the very least, that there are many links connecting Christine de Pizan to the knights who fought with Joan. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage collectif est le fruit de la conférence qui s’est tenue au Portugal en 1999 sur ce thème, rassemblant des historiennes de cinq pays d’Europe du Sud (Portugal, Espagne, Italie, Grèce et France). Il s’agit, pour l’essentiel, de sept articles à caractère historiographique, dont un en anglais, puis d’un ensemble de neuf articles très courts nous donnant accès à la production historiographique portugaise récente sur l’histoire des femmes. Ce livre s’inscrit dans la lignée d’ouvrages t...

Ces deux ouvrages offrent un remarquable ensemble d'articles écrits par deux des plus importantes promotrices de l'histoire des femmes en France, codirectrices du volume 4 de la collection Histoire des femmes en Occident.. Michelle Perrot, venue à l'histoire des femmes par l'histoire sociale, s'est d'abord intéressée au mouvement ouvrier français ; Geneviève Fraisse, venue à l'histoire des femmes par une quête du contexte historique de la philosophie européenne, a posé à l'histoire des...

À la croisée de la philosophie et de l’histoire de l’art, Bernard Teyssèdre a ouvert des champs de recherche très divers, ce qui a suscité l’enthousiasme de ses étudiants, mais aussi déconcerté ceux qui restaient attachés à leur pré carré disciplinaire. Présenter aujourd’hui son parcours intellectuel revient à faire redécouvrir certains de ses travaux oubliés en esthétique afin de montrer leur singularité et leur cohérence profondément hégélienne, bien que ses recherches aient pris des formes très différentes et abordés avec érudition (...) des domaines très éloignés les uns des autres. Sans oublier de situer philosophiquement des aspects moins connus de ses activités, littéraires, artistiques et aussi institutionnelles avec sa contribution déterminante au développement de la discipline esthétique et à l’introduction des arts plastiques à l’université. Ce panorama n’aurait pas été complet si n’était pas signalée la place de ses recherches en paléontologie restées longtemps secrètes et a priori fort éloignées de l’esthétique. Alors que Bernard Teyssèdre avait publié en 2007 une nouvelle édition de son Roman de l’Origine revue et augmentée (et que Thierry Savatier était sur le point de publier une nouvelle édition de L’Origine du monde, Histoire d’un tableau de Gustave Courbet ), Jean Da Silva lui apprit qu’une photographie du tableau exposé au musée d’Orsay avait circulé en France pendant une vingtaine d’années avant d’être publiée en 1953 dans des revues oubliées ; ce qui bouleversait l’idée que l’on avait encore en 2009 de la connaissance de ce tableau. S’ensuivit ensuite un jeu de piste à deux, sur le blog, par courriels et au téléphone. (shrink)

Comments on Karen Neander's A Mark of the Mental.

Ces deux excellents ouvrages forment un continuum bien qu’ils puissent être lus séparément. En effet, ils portent sur des périodes différentes : 1400-1870 et 1870-1920 mais qui se suivent et traitent du même thème : « The Woman Question in France ». De plus, l’architecture de chaque livre est identique et débute par plusieurs pages de citations de protagonistes de l’époque, ce qui d’emblée rend la lecture vivante et nous fait comprendre que l’accent est mis sur les voix des (...) femmes et dans une... (shrink)

This paper deals with causal analysis in the social sciences. We first present a conceptual framework according to which causal analysis is based on a rationale of variation and invariance, and not only on regularity. We then develop a formal framework for causal analysis by means of structural modelling. Within this framework we approach causality in terms of exogeneity in a structural conditional model based which is based on (i) congruence with background knowledge, (ii) invariance under a large variety of (...) environmental changes, and (iii) model fit. We also tackle the issue of confounding and show how latent confounders can play havoc with exogeneity. This framework avoids making untestable metaphysical claims about causal relations and yet remains useful for cognitive and action-oriented goals. (shrink)

According to Margaret Cavendish the entire natural world is essentially rational such that everything thinks in some way or another. In this paper, I examine why Cavendish would believe that the natural world is ubiquitously rational, arguing against the usual account, which holds that she does so in order to account for the orderly production of very complex phenomena (e.g. living beings) given the limits of the mechanical philosophy. Rather, I argue, she attributes ubiquitous rationality to the natural world in (...) order to ground a theory of the ubiquitous freedom of nature, which in turn accounts for both the world's orderly and disorderly behavior. (shrink)

Over 700,000 copies of the original hardcover and paperback editions of this stunningly popular book have been sold. Karen Armstrong's superbly readable exploration of how the three dominant monotheistic religions of the world—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have shaped and altered the conception of God is a tour de force. One of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs, Armstrong traces the history of how men and women have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present. From classical (...) philosophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism into one compelling volume. (shrink)

A theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, Karen Barad elaborates her theory of agential realism, a schema that is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics.

We frequently speak of certain things or phenomena being built out of or based in others. Making Things Up concerns these relations, which connect more fundamental things to less fundamental things: Karen Bennett calls these 'building relations'. She aims to illuminate what it means to say that one thing is more fundamental than another.

Between 1653 and 1655 Margaret Cavendish makes a radical transition in her theory of matter, rejecting her earlier atomism in favour of an infinitely-extended and infinitely-divisible material plenum, with matter being ubiquitously self-moving, sensing, and rational. It is unclear, however, if Cavendish can actually dispense of atomism. One of her arguments against atomism, for example, depends upon the created world being harmonious and orderly, a premise Cavendish herself repeatedly undermines by noting nature’s many disorders. I argue that her supposed difficulties (...) with atomism expose a deeper tension in her work between two fundamental metaphysical commitments each of which has substantial philosophical support: her monist theory of the material world (which maintains that there exists just one natural substance which is the single principal cause) and her occasional theory of causation (which requires multiple finite principal causes in nature -- causes that might be considered individual substances). Her monism undermines atomism while her theory of occasional cause seems to rest on a conception of nature that would be especially friendly to atomism. I argue further that we can solve this tension within a Cavendishian framework in such a way as to preserve her theory of causation and her monism, but that this solution depends upon our taking her monism in a particular (and weak) form. I finally note that we can best make sense of her unique and interesting form of monism by acknowledging her social-political motivations in addition to her motivations in natural philosophy. (shrink)

Causal analysis in the social sciences takes advantage of a variety of methods and of a multi-fold source of information and evidence. This pluralistic methodology and source of information raises the question of whether we should accordingly have a pluralistic metaphysics and epistemology. This paper focuses on epistemology and argues that a pluralistic methodology and evidence don’t entail a pluralistic epistemology. It will be shown that causal models employ a single rationale of testing, based on the notion of variation. Further, (...) I shall argue that this monistic epistemology is also involved in alternative philosophical theories of causation. (shrink)

In 1964, the young Walter Kasper (born in 1933) was granted by the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Tübingen the licence to teach dogmatic theology on the basis of a thesis on Philosophie und Theologie der Geschichte in der Spätphilosophie Schellings (Philosophy and Theology of History in Schelling’s Late Philosophy). Kasper’s interest in Schelling, himself a student at the Evangelisches Stift at Tübingen, thus originated in the context of his university studies in the school of J.R. Geiselmann and developed in (...) parallel with his theological education. For this reason, it is impossible to form a correct idea of Kasper and his whole theology unless one is willing to take into account this background, not least because he himself has always consciously and forcefully recognised this fact and seen in it his own centre of gravity. Kasper’s work and thought were shaped in a lasting manner during his university years. In fact, his entire academic oeuvre has been nurtured from this fecund origin so much so that he became one of the most well known names associated with the Catholic school at Tübingen to which he gave a new, creative impulse having himself been profoundly inspired by it. ‘He always emphasised his own roots not only as a teacher of theology and a member of the teaching faculty of this institution, but also as bishop’ and cardinal. The principal intention of the present article is precisely this: to return to this beginning and elucidate these decisive years for Kasper in broad outline by way of a relecture and interpretation of his book on The Absolute in History and the particular manner in which he interpreted the so-called second Schelling, an author whom he approached in the wake of Walter Schulz and at practically the same time as Xavier Tilliette. The analysis will subsequently move on into the more properly theological field. (shrink)

Sentido ontológico de la paz. -- Sé lo que eres. -- Univresidad, humanidades, humanismo. -- Luces de Heráclito el oscuro. -- Bergson : psicología, moral, religión. -- Tolstoi, un hombre humanizado. -- Porras : el hombre venicó al ministro.

In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in (...) The Great Transformation , Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal “Axial Age” can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times. Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action. In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change. (shrink)