The question of capacity building in education has predominantly been approached with regard to the methods and methodologies of educational research. Far less attention has been given to capacity building in relation to theory. In many ways the latter is as pressing an issue as the former, given that good research depends on a combination of high quality techniques and high quality theorising. The ability to capitalise on capacity building in relation to methods and methodologies may therefore well be restricted (...) by a lack of attention to theory. In this paper we make a case for capacity building with regard to theory, explore the different roles of theory in educational research, and provide an outline of an agenda for capacity building with regard to theory. (shrink)

This article discusses the discourses of disability through a parallel `disabling' of its own text. It draws on literary as well as sociological sources in order to interrogate the nature and relations of the `tragic', the `heroic' and the `comic'. The authors offer the conclusion that the comic is never quite absent from the discourse of tragedy (after Kundera), and turn that insight back on their own text, in an attempt to refuse the solemnities and closures of their own narrative.

_Psychopathology at School_ provides a timely response to concerns about the rising numbers of children whose behaviour is recognised and understood as a medicalised condition, rather than simply as poor behaviour caused by other factors. It is the first scholarly analysis of psychopathology which draws on the philosophers Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari and Arendt to examine the processes whereby children’s behaviour is pathologised. The heightened attention to mental disorders is contrasted with education practices in the early and mid-to-late twentieth century, and (...) the emergence of a new conceptualization of childhood is explored. Taking education as a central component to the contemporary experience of growing up, the book charts the ways in which mental disorders have become commonplace in childhood and youth, from birth through to college and university, but also offers examples of where professionals have refused to pathologise children’s behaviour. The book examines the extent of the influence of psychopathology on the lives of children and young people, as well as the practices that infiltrate education and the possibilities for alternative educational responses that negate the diagnosis of mental disorder. Psychopathology at School is a must read for anyone concerned about the growing influence of psychopathology in education and will be of particular interest to educated readers and to scholars, students and professionals in education, psychiatry, psychology, child studies, youth studies, nursing, social work and sociology. (shrink)

This paper synthesises a collaborative review of social capital theory, with particular regard for its relevance to the changing educational landscape within Scotland. The review considers the common and distinctive elements of social capital, developed by the founding fathers-Putnam, Bourdieu and Coleman-and explores how these might help to understand the changing contexts and pursue opportunities for growth.

We have investigated the emotional profile of dreams and the relationship between dream emotion and cognition using a form that specifically asked subjects to identify emotions within their dreams. Two hundred dream reports were collected from 20 subjects, each of whom produced 10 reports. Compared to previous studies, our method yielded a 10-fold increase in the amount of emotion reported. Anxiety/fear was reported most frequently, followed, in order, by joy/elation, anger, sadness, shame/guilt, and, least frequently, affection/eroticism. Unexpectedly, there was no (...) significant difference in the profiles of emotion reported by men and women. When the reports were scored for bizarreness, a significant correlation was found between the occurrence of bizarreness and major shifts in emotion. These results support the conclusion that dreaming is a mental state whose general emotional features are widely shared across individuals and strongly linked to cognitive features within individual dreams. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 72-74.

The missing piece of the puzzle: the discovery of the Higgs boson On July 4, 2012 the CMS and ATLAS collaborations at the large hadron collider jointly announced the discovery of a new elementary particle, which resembled the Higgs boson, the last remaining undiscovered piece of the standard model of elementary particles. Both groups claimed to have observed a five-standard-deviation effect above background, the gold standard for discovery in high-energy physics. In this essay I will briefly discuss the how the (...) CMS collaboration performed the experiment and analyzed the data. I will also show the experimental results. (shrink)

Presented at Amer Agri. Econ Assoc. annual meetings, Long Beach, CA, July 28 – 31, 2002..

While cancer survivors commonly experience fear and anxiety, a substantial minority experience an enduring and debilitating fear that their cancer will return; a condition commonly referred to as fear of cancer recurrence. Despite recent advances in this area, little is known about FCR among people from Indigenous or other ethnic and racial minority populations. Given the high prevalence and poor outcomes of cancer among people from these populations, a robust understanding of FCR among people from these groups is critical. The (...) current review identified and aggregated existing literature on FCR amongst adult cancer survivors from Indigenous and minority populations. The protocol of this review was registered with PROSPERO in July 2020. A systematic search of bibliographic databases was conducted for relevant articles published from 1997 to November 2019. Data from eligible articles were extracted and appraised for quality by two independent reviewers. Nineteen articles from four countries met the inclusion criteria, including 14 quantitative, 4 qualitative and 1 mixed-methods study. Only one article reported on an Indigenous population. Few studies reported on FCR prevalence or severity. While the variation in tools used to measure FCR hindered a robust estimate of severity, results suggested some differences in FCR severity between minority and dominant populations, although these may have been due to study metholodological differences. Few factors were reported as being associated with FCR in minorities across multiple studies. The qualitative synthesis found five themes associated with the lived experience of FCR: variations in the lived experience of FCR; spirituality and worldview impacting on FCR; the importance of staying positive; complexities around support; and increasing cancer knowledge. The findings of this review highlight differences in FCR across cultures and contexts, which reinforces the need for culturally-specific approaches to this condition. The dearth of research in this area is of concern given the significant burden of cancer in these populations. A deeper understanding of this condition among Indigenous and minority populations is critical to developing and delivering appropriate and effective psychosocial care for cancer survivors from these groups. Systematic Review Registration: identifier [CRD42020161655]. (shrink)

This paper is the second of two in a series. In our first paper, we presented a social justice framework emerging from an extensive literature review and incorporating core social determinants specific to mental health in the age of COVID-19 and illustrated specific social determinants impacting mental health (SDIMH) of our resettled Bhutanese refugee population during the pandemic. This second paper details specific barriers to the SDIMH detrimental to the basic human rights and social justice of this population during this (...) pandemic. The SDIMH, as described, further informs the need for social justice measures and cultural humility in mental healthcare, public health, law, and community engagement. This work concludes with a proposed call to action toward mental health improvement and fair treatment for refugee populations in three core areas: communication and education, social stigma and discrimination, and accessibility and availability of resources. (shrink)

This book examines some of the deepest questions in philosophy: What is involved in judging a belief, action, or feeling to be rational?

The first major publication in English on the bamboo slips excavated from a late fourth century B.C. Chu-state tomb at Guodian, Hubei, in 1993. The slip texts include both Daoist and Confucian works, many previously unknown. Thie monograph is a full account of the international conference held on these texts, at which leading scholars from China, the United States, Europe, and Japan analyzed the Laozi materials and a previously unknown cosmological text. In addition, the contents include nine essays on topics (...) such as the archaeological background of the discovery, conservation of the slip-texts, and the relation of the Guodian Laozi materials to the received Laozi text. An annotated edition of the Guodian Laozi materials and the cosmological text are included, as well as a critical bibliography with summary of Chinese scholarship on the Guodian texts in the year following the conference. (shrink)

Choices can be wise or foolish, and feelings can be apt or off the mark. So we judge, and it would be good to know what content these normative judgements carry. Gibbard offers an answer, and elaborates it. His theory explores what is at issue in narrowly moral questions, and in questions of rational thought and conduct in general.

In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Social Work Values and Ethics -- Chapter 2: Managing Ethical Issues -- Chapter 3: Social Justice -- Chapter 4: Client Autonomy, Self-Determination, and Informed Consent -- Chapter 5: Privacy, Confidentiality, and Exceptions -- Chapter 6: Professional Competence, Incompetence, and Impairment -- Chapter 7: Cultural Competence, Humility, Awareness, and Responsiveness -- Chapter 8: Professional Boundaries, Dual Relationships, and Conflicts of Interest -- Chapter 9: Responsibilities in Practice Settings -- Chapter 10: Access to Services -- Chapter 11: Honesty (...) and Integrity -- Chapter 12: Social Work Accountability and Regulation -- Chapter 13: Risk-Benefit Management -- Chapter 14: Conclusion. (shrink)

In Experiment, Right or Wrong, Allan Franklin continues his investigation of the history and philosophy of experiment presented in his previous book, The Neglect of Experiment. Using a combination of case studies and philosophical readings of those studies, Franklin again addresses two important questions: (1) What role does and should experiment play in the choice between competing theories and in the confirmation or refutation of theories and hypotheses? (2) How do we come to believe reasonably in experimental results? Experiment, (...) Right or Wrong makes a significant contribution to an important area in contemporary history and philosophy of science. Philosophers and historians of science, physicists, and advanced students in these areas will find much of interest in this engaging study. (shrink)

As far back as we know, there have been individuals incapacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder." Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory (...) like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions," a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilizing these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the transcripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia. (shrink)

This book claims that Aristotle followed an aspect theory of predication.

This book provides the reader with a detailed and captivating account of the story where, for the first time, physicists ventured into proposing a new force of nature beyond the four known ones - the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces, and gravitation - based entirely on the reanalysis of existing experimental data. Back in 1986, Ephraim Fischbach, Sam Aronson, Carrick Talmadge and their collaborators proposed a modification of Newton's Law of universal gravitation. Underlying this proposal were three tantalizing pieces of (...) evidence: 1) an energy dependence of the CP (particle-antiparticle and reflection symmetry) parameters, 2) differences between the measurements of G, the universal gravitational constant, in laboratories and in mineshafts, and 3) a reanalysis of the Eötvos experiment, which had previously been used to show that the gravitational mass of an object and its inertia mass were equal to approximately one part in a billion. The reanalysis revealed that, contrary to Galileo's position, the force of gravity was in fact very slightly different for different substances. The resulting Fifth Force hypothesis included this composition dependence and also added a small distance dependence to the inverse-square gravitational force. Over the next four years numerous experiments were performed to test the hypothesis. By 1990 there was overwhelming evidence that the Fifth Force, as initially proposed, did not exist. This book discusses how the Fifth Force hypothesis came to be proposed and how it went on to become a showcase of discovery, pursuit and justification in modern physics, prior to its demise. In this new and significantly expanded edition, the material from the first edition is complemented by two essays, one containing Fischbach's personal reminiscences of the proposal, and a second on the ongoing history and impact of the Fifth Force hypothesis from 1990 to the present. <. (shrink)

PREFACE A volume of essays on Wittgenstein, arguably this century's greatest philosopher, certainly would require no apology. However, one which combines ...

This volume offers a general introduction to the field of semantics and provides coverage of the main perspectives.

This book is the most comprehensive and rigourous critique of the ways disciplinary boundaries still inhibit knowledge-production and integration.

It is currently common to conceive of the classic methodological individualism–holism debate in level terms. Accordingly, the dispute is taken to concern the proper level of explanations in the social sciences. In this paper, I argue that the debate is not apt to be characterized in level terms. The reason is that widely adopted notions of individualist explanations do not qualify as individual-level explanations because they span multiple levels. I defend this claim relative to supervenience, emergence, and other accounts of (...) the social world as levelled. Moreover, I discuss the consequences of this finding for the ongoing methodological individualism–holism debate. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking work, Allan Combs presents a wide-ranging survey of the nature and origins of consciousness research, viewing consciousness as a dynamic and self-organizing process with evolutionary potential. Combs reviews the work of evolutionary theorists such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ken Wilber, Jean Gebser, and Sri Aurobindo. What emerges is a fascinating study of consciousness that discloses itself as a rich and ongoing act of self-creation, poised at the edge of chaos between past and future.

Chapter Beginning an account of linguistic meaning: speaker, hearer, context, and utterance Pity the poor analyst, who has to do the best he can with ...

An important volume connecting classical studies with feminism, Feminism and Ancient Philosophy provides an even-handed assessment of the ancient philosophers' discussions of women and explains which ancient views can be fruitful for feminist theorizing today. The papers in this anthology range from classical Greek philosophy through the Hellenistic period, with the predominance of essays focusing on topics such as the relation of reason and the emotions, the nature of emotions and desire, and related issues in moral psychology. The volume contains (...) some new, ground-breaking essays on Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, as well as previously published pieces by established scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Julia Annas. It promises to be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including those working in classics, ancient philosophy, and feminist theory. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation between Bateson and Guattari’s ecological thoughts: two thinkers whose ecological ideas at first sight have a lot in common. In order to show the difference between the thoughts of both thinkers, I will take my clue from Guattari’s remark that he parts ways with Bateson on the role of context. Explaining the role of context in both authors will allow me to show how Guattari’s thought implies both an endorsement and a critique of (...) cybernetics, and, specifically, promoting a machinic rather than cybernetic ecology. I will conclude by indicating what is at stake in this distinction. (shrink)

For Malraux, modernity in art is not only about modern art; it is also about the birth of what he aptly terms “the first universal world of art.” This event was a consequence of the process of metamorphosis which is central to Malraux’s account of the relationship between art and time. The article explains this event, noting also that modern aesthetics has not provided an explanation.

In these three Tanner lectures, distinguished ethical theorist Allan Gibbard explores the nature of normative thought and the bases of ethics. In the first lecture he explores the role of intuitions in moral thinking and offers a way of thinking about the intuitive method of moral inquiry that both places this activity within the natural world and makes sense of it as an indispensable part of our lives as planners. In the second and third lectures he takes up the (...) kind of substantive ethical inquiry he has described in the first lecture, asking how we might live together on terms that none of us could reasonably reject. Since working at cross purposes loses fruits that might stem from cooperation, he argues, any consistent ethos that meets this test would be, in a crucial way, utilitarian. It would reconcile our individual aims to establish, in Kant's phrase, a "kingdom of ends." The volume also contains an introduction by Barry Stroud, the volume editor, critiques by Michael Bratman (Stanford University), John Broome (Oxford University), and F. M. Kamm (Harvard University), and Gibbard's responses. (shrink)

In Film and Phenomenology, Allan Casebier develops a theory of representation first indicated in the writings of the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and then applies it to the case of cinematic representation. This work provides one of the clearest expositions of Husserl's highly influential but often obscure thought. It also demonstrates the power of phenomenology to illuminate the experience of the art form unique to the twentieth-century cinema. Film and Phenomenology is intended as an antidote to all hitherto (...) existing theories about the nature of cinematic representation, whether issuing from classic sources such as the film theory of Andre Bazin or the post-structuralist synthesis of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Barthesian textual analysis and Metzean cine-semiotics. Casebier shows how a phenomenological account of representation will further the aims of any film theory. Developing a viable feminist film theory, legitimizing the documentary, answering the challenge of Derridean deconstruction, properly theorizing narrativity, Film and Phenomenology argues that theory of film must be Realist both with respect to epistemology and ontological issues. In this way, this work runs contrary to the whole course of contemporary film theory which has been deeply anti-Realist. (shrink)