In this article, Peter and Rowland explore the role of implicit statistical learning in syntactic development. It is often accepted that the processes observed in classic implicit learning or statistical learning experiments play an important role in the acquisition of natural language syntax. As Peter and Rowland point out, however, the results from neither research strand can be used to fully explain how children's syntax becomes adult‐like. They propose to address this shortcoming by using the structural priming paradigm.

This article attempts a philosophical defense of an autonomy-based approach to multicultural education. I contend that multicultural education is necessary in order for students to be able to develop personal autonomy. This, in turn, can empower students to effectively formulate their own version of the good life. The development of autonomy need not, as many critics claim, promote atomistic individualism. Rather, contemporary liberal autonomy strives for a balance between the individual and the community. In defending multicultural education, my argument relies (...) on Joseph Raz's notion of autonomy and Will Kymlicka's concept of a context of choice. I conclude that through multicultural education, students can expand their contexts of choice and consequently develop individual autonomy, an essential ingredient of the good life. (shrink)

This essay examines the educational opportunities of people in poverty who receive social welfare assistance. The dominant political theory underlying social policy (including education policy) in the United States has evolved from 1960s and 1970s welfare liberalism into 1980s and 1990s style neo-conservatism—a theory that embraces principles of the market and individual liberty as paramount social values. Against this backdrop, I review two recent books that provide compelling evidence for this turn and I call for increased understanding of the relationship (...) between social welfare policies and higher education opportunities for those in poverty. (shrink)

(2004). Toward a Critical Deliberative Strategy for Addressing Ideology in Educational Policy Processes. Educational Studies: Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. null.

The project we highlight in this article stems from our philosophical work on moral disagreements that appear to be—and sometimes are—intractable. Deliberative democratic theorists tout the merits of dialogue as an effective way to bridge differences of values and opinion, ideally resulting in agreement, or perhaps more often resulting in greater mutual understanding. Could dialogue mitigate disagreements about a controversial education policy such as affirmative action? Could it foster greater understanding? We conceived of a project that would simultaneously fulfill two (...) goals that we had as philosophers, education researchers, and aspiring public intellectuals. First, it would allow us to use philosophy in research, grounding our mixed methods research in a philosophically informed framework. The tools and analytic techniques that are particular to philosophers felt uniquely suited for an empirical study concerning political theory. Second, we aimed to use philosophy in the community. We were able to put our own expertise in philosophy and race-conscious education policy to good use by purposefully creating opportunities for diverse community members in our larger metropolitan area to engage in dialogue and deliberation with each other over the issue of affirmative action. (shrink)

: The purposes of this critical analysis are to clarify why high stakes testing reforms have become so prevalent in the United States and to explain the connection between current federal and state emphases on standardized testing reforms and educational opportunities. The article outlines the policy context for high stakes examinations, as well as the ideas of testing and accountability as major tenets of current education reform and policy. In partial explanation of the widespread acceptance and use of standardized tests (...) in the United States, we argue that there is a pervasive testing culture, in addition to other contributing factors such as administrative utility, profit motives, and political ideology. Finally, we offer a critique of high stakes testing reforms in light of concerns about equality of educational opportunity. (shrink)

One goal of the scientific research enterprise is to improve the lives of individuals and the overall health of societies. This goal is achieved through a combination of factors, including the composition of research portfolios. In turn, this composition is determined by a variety of scientific and societal needs. The recent history of polio research highlights the complex relations between research policy, scientific progress and societal benefits. Here, we briefly review the circumstances leading to the possibility of eradication of poliovirus, (...) evaluate the research environment that emerged following the introduction of a vaccine, and compare and contrast the current research framework with that for other infectious diseases. From this analysis, policy lessons with general applicability to scientific research are identified. (shrink)

Due to natural phenomena like global warming and climate change, agricultural production is increasingly faced with threats that transcend farm boundaries. Management practices at the landscape or community level are often required to adequately respond to these new challenges (e.g., pest migration). Such decision-making at a community or beyond-farm level—i.e., practices that are jointly developed by farmers within a community—can be aided by computing and communications technology. In this study, we employ a translational research process to examine the social and (...) behavioral drivers of adoption of smart and connected farm networks among commodity crop farmers in the United States. We implement focus groups and questionnaires to bring to the fore views on the use of digital technologies in collaborative contexts. We find that participating farmers are concerned with several issues about the potential features of the network (e.g., the ability to ensure data validity while maintaining data privacy) and the nature of their interactions with the various stakeholders involved in the network management. The participatory approach we adopt helps provide insights into the process of developing technologies that are both actionable and trusted by potential end users. (shrink)

Cognitive biases play an important role in creating and perpetuating problems that lead to foodborne illness outbreaks. By using insights from behavioral ethics, we argue that sometimes people engage in unethical behavior that increases the likelihood of foodborne illness outbreaks without necessarily intending to or being consciously aware of it. We demonstrate these insights in an analysis of the 2011 Listeriosis outbreak in the U.S. from the consumption of contaminated cantaloupes. We then provide policy implications that can improve our understanding (...) of other kinds of disease outbreaks and epidemics. (shrink)

We examined 11-month-olds’ tendency to generalize properties to category members, an ability that may contribute to the inductive reasoning abilities observed in later developmental periods. Across 3 experiments, we tested 11-month-olds’ (N= 113) generalization of properties within the cat and dog categories. In each experiment, infants were familiarized to animal-sound pairings (i.e., dog-barking; cat-meowing), and tested on this association and the generalization of the sound property to new members of the familiarized categories. After familiarization with a single exemplar, 11-month-olds generalized (...) the sound to new category members that were both highly similar and less similar to the familiarized animal (Expt. 1). When familiarized with mismatched animal-sound pairings (Expt. 2; i.e., dog-meowing; cat-barking), 11-month-olds did not learn or generalize the sound properties, suggesting that infants have pre-existing expectations about the links between the characteristic sound properties and the animal categories. When familiarized with unfamiliar sound-animal pairings (Expt. 3; i.e., dog-unfamiliar sound), 11-month-olds linked the animals with the novel sounds but did not generalize to new category members. Taken together, these findings highlight the conditions under which young infants generalize properties from one exemplar to other category members. (shrink)

This title opens the debate about what an ethics for the 21st century would look like and the role of corporations and how to work to ensure they produce results which benefit society as a whole.

Actions that do not have instrumental goals can communicate social goals that are not rituals. Many non-instrumental actions such as bowing or kissing communicate a commitment to or roles in dyadic relationships. What is unclear is when people understand such actions in terms of ritual and when they understand them in terms of relationships.

After 50 years of materialist culture, people are desperately seeking answers to such questions as the proper sharing of the bounty of the planet and also the human economy. Who should have and who should have not and can inequality ever be justified. Should humans take every last benefit from the planet or do we need other species and do we need to learn to share and to respect nature. We are not alone on this planet but we might be (...) a very short lived species if we dont get a grip on our proper role. This unique book brings texts and discussion from some of the founders of the green movement and makes todays' philosophy accessible and usable for everyone! The main features of philosophical possibilities for the 21st century and brings the light of Green Movement thinking to bear on todays issues. The Green Movements' original philosophical questions and conundrums in the light of todays' challenges. Shinning a very modern light on Classical texts This book introduces the philosophical basis and understanding of the Green Movements' amazingly accurate predictions on climate and global environmental physical and political change to a broader group of readers, students, policy makers, academics and campaigners in this ground breaking volume. (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s invective is legendary among philosophers, and is unmatched in the historical canon. But these complaints are themselves worthy of careful consideration: they are rooted in Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language, which itself reflects the structure of his metaphysics. This short chapter argues that Schopenhauer’s vitriol rewards philosophical attention; not because it expresses his critical take on Fichte, Hegel, Herbart, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, but because it neatly illustrates his philosophy of language. Schopenhauer’s epithets are not merely spiteful slurs; instead, they reflect (...) deep-seated theoretical and methodological commitments to transparency of exposition. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that fiction is necessarily incomplete, but some recent work postulates the existence of universal fictions—stories according to which everything is true. Building such a story is supposedly straightforward: authors can either assert that everything is true in their story, define a complement function that does the assertoric work for them, or, most compellingly, write a story combining a contradiction with the principle of explosion. The case for universal fictions thus turns on the intuitive priority we assign (...) to the law of non-contradiction. My goal in this paper is to show that our critical and reflective literary practices set constraints on story-telling which preclude universal fictions. I will raise four stumbling blocks for universal fictionalists: the gap between saying and making true, our actual interpretive reactions to story-level contradictions, the criteria we accept for what counts as a story in our literary practices, and the undesirability of the universal fictionalist’s closure principles. (shrink)

It is widely believed, among philosophers of literature, that imagining contradictions is as easy as telling or reading a story with contradictory content. Italo Calvino’s The Nonexistent Knight, for instance, concerns a knight who performs many brave deeds, but who does not exist. Anything at all, they argue, can be true in a story, including contradictions and other impossibilia. While most will readily concede that we cannot objectually imagine contradictions, they nevertheless insist that we can propositionally imagine them, and regularly (...) do, simply by entertaining a text which prompts us to do so. I argue that this narrative does not bear scrutiny for two main reasons. First, because propositional imagining is beside the point, where truth in fiction is concerned; evaluating truth in fiction engages the cognitive architecture in ways that prohibit the mobilization of merely propositional imagination to that end. And second, because it is not obvious, given the strategies usually suggested, that we ever propositionally imagine contradictions in the first place—in fact, it seems we go out of our way to avoid directly imagining them. (shrink)

In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)