This article explores the significance that environments play in terms of the learning process. In the United States, the legacy of John Dewey's intellectual efforts left a theoretical understanding that views the architectural composition of learning environments as instrumental mediums which house the educational process. This understanding of learning environments is precipitated by a separation of human agents as subjects and their environments as objects. By contrast, Martin Heidegger's theory of ontology, and its reconfiguration of the subject and object relationship, (...) lends itself to an understanding of the architectural composition of learning environments as dwellings. (shrink)

In _Civilization and Its Discontents_ Freud extends and clarifies his analysis of religion; analyzes human unhappiness in contemporary civilization; ratifies the critical importance of the death drive theory; and contemplates the significance of guilt and conscience in everyday life. The result is Freud’s most expansive work, one wherein he discusses mysticism, love, interpretation, narcissism, religion, happiness, technology, beauty, justice, work, the origin of civilization, phylogenetic development, Christianity, the Devil, communism, the sense of guilt, remorse, and ethics. A classic, important, accessible (...) work, Freud reminds us again why we still read and debate his ideas today. Todd Dufresne’s introduction expands on why, according to the late Freud, psychoanalysis is the key to understanding individual and collective realities or, better yet, collective truths. The Appendices include related writings by Freud, contemporary reviews, and scholarly responses from Marcuse, Rieff, and Ricoeur. (shrink)

The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature and value of literary fiction has witnessed a lot of spilled ink amongst philosophers over the past decade. Gibson characterizes this debate as a conflict between two apparently incompatible intuitions: the ‘humanist’ intuition that works of literary fiction have some sort of cognitive value in telling us about the world, and the ‘sceptical’ anti-humanist intuition that such works, and their proper appreciation, are not essentially concerned with the notions of truth and knowledge. The vast (...) majority of recent writers on this issue have defended various versions of cognitivism, but the novelty of Gibson's cognitivist – or as he calls it ‘humanist’ – position consists in attempting to reconcile the two sides of the debate.Gibson thus takes seriously various sceptical arguments, primarily semantic and epistemological, to the effect that works of fiction qua fiction do not or cannot make reference to or represent the ‘real’ world and insofar as they do refer to it, they provide no evidence in themselves for forming justified beliefs about their claims. These arguments, Gibson holds, place a necessary ‘textual constraint’ on any plausible humanism, …. (shrink)

Academic freedom is thus a complex ideal, and I have argued that in many respects it has a more limited application than some of its protagonists seem to believe. Many of the arguments for it, moreover, are not peculiar to academics and universities. We would therefore be well advised to take seriously Eric James' injunction “to think less of universities as having rights to additional and peculiar liberties, and to regard them more as places where the essential liberties of a (...) civilised state find strongest champions, champions, moreover, who by reason of the intellectual strength which they possess, and the intellectual integrity which they defend, have a particular responsibility”.36 But it is beyond rational doubt that the continuation of civilised states as civilised depends on the maintenance of, among other things, academic freedom, and particularly of what I have called scholarly freedom. (shrink)

This article explores the significance that environments play in terms of the learning process. In the United States, the legacy of John Dewey's intellectual efforts left a theoretical understanding that views the architectural composition of learning environments as instrumental mediums which house the educational process. This understanding of learning environments is precipitated by a separation of human agents as subjects and their environments as objects. By contrast, Martin Heidegger's theory of ontology, and its reconfiguration of the subject and object relationship, (...) lends itself to an understanding of the architectural composition of learning environments as dwellings. (shrink)

The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature and value of literary fiction has witnessed a lot of spilled ink amongst philosophers over the past decade. Gibson characterizes this debate as a conflict between two apparently incompatible intuitions: the ‘humanist’ intuition that works of literary fiction have some sort of cognitive value in telling us about the world, and the ‘sceptical’ anti-humanist intuition that such works, and their proper appreciation, are not essentially concerned with the notions of truth and knowledge. The vast (...) majority of recent writers on this issue have defended various versions of cognitivism, but the novelty of Gibson's cognitivist – or as he calls it ‘humanist’ – position consists in attempting to reconcile the two sides of the debate.Gibson thus takes seriously various sceptical arguments, primarily semantic and epistemological, to the effect that works of fiction qua fiction do not or cannot make reference to or represent the ‘real’ world and insofar as they do refer to it, they provide no evidence in themselves for forming justified beliefs about their claims. These arguments, Gibson holds, place a necessary ‘textual constraint’ on any plausible humanism, …. (shrink)

Recent research has shown that mind wandering recruits executive resources away from the external task towards inner thoughts. No studies however have determined whether executive functions are drawn away in a unitary manner during mind wandering episodes, or whether there is variation in specific functions impacted. Accordingly, we examined whether mind wandering differentially modulates three core executive functions—response inhibition, updating of working memory, and mental set shifting. In three experiments, participants performed one of these three executive function tasks and reported (...) their attentional state as either on-task or mind wandering at random intervals. We found that mind wandering led to poorer performance in the response inhibition and working memory tasks, but not the set-shifting task. These findings suggest that mind wandering does not recruit executive functions in a monolithic manner. Rather, it appears to selectively engage certain executive functions, which may reflect the adaptive maintenance of ongoing task performance. (shrink)

Each Local Research Ethics Committee (LREC) is expected to produce an annual report for its establishing authority. Reports from 145 LRECs were examined with regard to (a) whether the committees were working within the terms of the most recent guidelines from the Department of Health and (b) observations on the role of LRECs with particular reference to accountability. Most LRECs had produced a report, although their length varied greatly. Most reports showed how seriously the committee took its task. Most committees (...) met many of the guidelines; for example, almost all had two or more lay-members. The guideline most frequently not met was that committees should have no more than 12 members. Many committees review very large numbers of projects (maximum 351). Approximately two-thirds provide details in the annual report of individual project titles, their author and the committee decision; all reports should contain this information. Although it may in fact happen more generally, only 23 per cent of the reports referred to any form of monitoring of the eventual outcome of the research. A significant issue to arise from the reports is the extent to which the framework for the operation of LRECs has been confused by the development of the purchaser-provider split. The paper concludes with suggestions for remedying the situation. (shrink)