Through writings of Simone Weil and Michel Foucault, the article explores the notion of education as the formation of the attending and attentive subjects. Both writers have in different ways acknowledged the important relation between attention and the self. While Weil develops a spiritual form of attention, an attention which can be trained in any form of serious studying, aiming at dissolving the illusion of the self, Foucault understands attention as an important aspect in the Greek notion of the care (...) of the self, which was developed outside of and due to the limitations of pedagogy aiming at a self-attentive self-formation. Both non-egotistic notions of attention address ethical and educational dimensions of human subjectivity. Foucault’s notion is anti-institutional and Weil’s notion is non-formative. As such, both perspectives inform educational thinking and practice by highlighting attention as a crucial aspect of both the active and the contemplative subject. (shrink)

What is the significance of attentiveness in teaching? A spontaneous answer would be that attentiveness is a crucial aspect in the practice of teaching, because if the students do not pay attention...

While the aesthetics of Rancière is a well-explored topic, there has been something missing from the reception of his works, and that is the relation between Rancière’s aesthetics and music. However, in recent years an interest in this relation has resulted in several academic contributions, which is sign enough that there is in fact a musical element in his works. Rancière himself, in response to this reception, has acknowledged as much. Music is a human form of expression that uses the (...) physicality of air to produce vibrations that encounter and resonate with the human body. Musicality is the ability to attend to such vibrations and harness the expectations and surprises that they bring about. In this article, I explore how a musical approach to Rancière’s writings can inform educational philosophy, especially as regards the practice of teaching. Particular attention is paid to his notion of the sensorium as a sensible realm where we experience and encounter difference and otherness, in political events as well as in teaching situations. Attending ethically to these situations is predicated on a certain sensibility that involves certain aesthetic qualities. In this article, I explore this sensibility as a particular educational musicality. Drawing from educational philosophy, the aesthetic theory of Jacques Rancière, and music philosophy, I connect this musicality of teaching to an ability to navigate in an ethical space that comes to life through a material/sensible community of interests formed in teaching practice. I use the term acousmatic experience as an explorative device in an attempt to depict teaching practice as something that can bring about a specific educational sensorium. (shrink)

This article highlights the educational and the aesthetic significance of the subject matter (i.e., “the third thing”) in the relationship between teacher and pupil. This, through a reading of two texts, one written by the 19th century educationist and German philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart, and one written by the contemporary philosopher and political theorist Jacques Rancière. By emphasizing the third thing between pupil and teacher, the article intends to reimagine both the educative and aesthetic values of those timeless things around (...) us, such as objects of art and education, which give life a meaning beyond our limited socio-cultural desires, interests, concepts, and identities. Teaching, from this “fusion of the horizon” between Herbart and Rancière, is an activity created by the heterogeneity already integral to the “essence” of the subject matter. As such, the article also offers a fusion of the horizon between aesthetics and Didaktik. (shrink)

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential,autonoeticcharacter. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the (...) past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in future-oriented mental time travel do justice neither to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events. (shrink)

Episodic representations can be entertained either as “remembered” or “imagined”—as outcomes of experience or as simulations of such experience. Here, we argue that this feature is the product of a dedicated cognitive function: the metacognitive capacity to determine the mnemicity of mental event simulations. We argue that mnemicity attribution should be distinguished from other metacognitive operations (such as reality monitoring) and propose that this attribution is a “cognitive gadget”—a distinctively human ability made possible by cultural learning. Cultural learning is a (...) type of social learning in which traits are inherited through social interaction. In the case of mnemicity, one culturally learns to discriminate metacognitive “feelings of remembering” from other perceptual, emotional, action-related, and metacognitive feelings; to interpret feelings of remembering as indicators of memory rather than imagination; and to broadcast the interpreted feelings in culture- and context-specific ways, such as “I was there” or “I witnessed it myself.” We review evidence from the literature on memory development and scaffolding, metacognitive learning and teaching, as well as cross-cultural psychology in support of this view before pointing out various open questions about the nature and development of mnemicity highlighted by our account. (shrink)

In this essay, Johannes Giesinger comments on the current philosophical debate on educational justice. He observes that while authors like Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz develop a so-called adequacy view of educational justice, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift defend an egalitarian principle. Giesinger focuses his analysis on the main objection that is formulated, from an egalitarian perspective, against the adequacy view: that it neglects the problem of securing fair opportunities in the competition for social rewards. Giesinger meets this objection (...) by expressing two basic theses: First, he argues that Brighouse and Swift themselves fail to give an adequate account of fair competition; and, second, he shows that the adequacy view provides the theoretical resources to face this problem. (shrink)

Several promising approaches have been developed to represent conscious experience in terms of mathematical spaces and structures. What is missing, however, is an explicit definition of what a ‘mathematical structure of conscious experience’ is. Here, we propose such a definition. This definition provides a link between the abstract formal entities of mathematics and the concreta of conscious experience; it complements recent approaches that study quality spaces, qualia spaces, or phenomenal spaces; and it provides a general method to identify and investigate (...) structures of conscious experience. We hope that ultimately this work provides a basis for developing a common formal language to study consciousness. (shrink)

In recent years, the construct of mindfulness has gained growing attention in psychological research. However, little is known about the effects of mindfulness on interpersonal interactions and social relationships at work. Addressing this gap, the purpose of this study was to investigate the role of mindfulness in leader-follower-relationships. Building on prior research, we hypothesize that leaders’ mindfulness is reflected in a specific communication style (“mindfulness in communication”), which is positively related to followers’ satisfaction with their leaders. We used nested survey (...) data from 34 leaders and 98 followers from various organizations and tested mediation hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling. Our hypotheses were confirmed by our data. Leaders’ self-reported mindfulness showed a positive relationship with several aspects of followers’ satisfaction. This relationship was fully mediated by leaders’ mindfulness in communication as perceived by their followers. Our findings emphasize the potential value of mindfulness in workplace settings. They provide empirical evidence for a positive link between leaders’ dispositional mindfulness and the wellbeing of their followers, indicating that mindfulness is not solely an individual resource but also fosters interpersonal skills. By examining leaders’ mindfulness in communication as an explanatory process, we created additional clarification about how leaders’ mindfulness relates to followers’ perceptions. Moreover, by suggesting mindfulness in communication as a behavioral correlate of mindfulness, we offered a promising starting point for indirect measures of mindfulness. (shrink)

Despite growing evidence to the contrary, researchers continue to posit causal links between cannabis, crime, psychosis, and violence. These spurious connections are rooted in history and fueled decades of structural limitations that shaped how researchers studied cannabis. Until recently, research in this area was explicitly funded to link cannabis use and harm and ignore any potential benefits. Post-prohibition cannabis research has failed to replicate the dire findings of the past. This article outlines how the history of controlling cannabis research has (...) led to various harms, injustices, and ethical complications. We compare commonly cited research from both the prohibition and post-prohibition eras and argue that many popular claims about the dangers of cannabis are the result of ethical lapses by researchers, journals, and funders. We propose researchers in this area adopt a duty of care in cannabis research going forward. This would oblige individual researchers to establish robust research designs, employ careful analytic strategies, and acknowledge limitations in more detail. This duty involves the institutional recognition by funders, journals, and others that cannabis research has been deliberately misconstrued to criminalize, stigmatize, and pathologize. (shrink)

Aim of the lectures -- Early Brahmanical literature -- Panini's grammar -- A passage from the Chandogya Upanisad -- The structures of languages -- The Buddhist contribution -- Vaisesika and language -- Verbal knowledge -- The contradictions of Nagarjuna -- The reactions of other thinkers -- Sarvastivada Samkhya -- The Agamasastra of Gaudapada -- Sankara -- Kashmiri Saivism -- Jainism -- Early Vaisesika -- Critiques of the existence of a thing before its arising -- Nyaya -- Mimamsa -- The Abhidharmakosa (...) bhasya of Vasubandhu -- The Abhidharmasamuccaya of Asanga and its bhasya -- Bhartrhari -- The problem of negation -- Dignaga and verbal knowledge -- The Bodhisattvabhumi -- Prajnakaragupta -- Indian thinkers and the correspondence principle -- Appendix. The Mahaprajnaparamitasastra and the Samkhya tanmatras. (shrink)

To what extent does the common claim that childhood is ‘socially constructed’ affect the ethical debate on the ‘intrinsic’ and ‘special’ goods of childhood? Philosophers have referred to this kind of goods in their critique of overly adult-centred and future-oriented conceptions of childhood. The view that some goods are child-specific, in the sense that they are only good for children, not for adults, seems to presuppose an understanding of what children ‘are’, and how they differ from adults. However, if the (...) social-constructionist view is accepted, it cannot be assumed that childhood is a given. This essay claims that the social-constructionist understanding of childhood does not undermine the debate on the moral status and the goods of childhood, but that nevertheless important lessons can be drawn from the insight that childhood, as we know it, is not a natural and universal phenomenon. (shrink)

This article discusses the educational significance of the moral demand for respect. In Ethics and Education, Richard Peters presents a conception of educational respect that was recently taken up by Krassimir Stojanov. This article responds to both Peters' and Stojanov's contributions and proposes another understanding of educational respect: to respect children is to treat them in a way that enables them to see themselves as persons endowed with dignity; that is, as having the equal standing to make claims on others.

Integrated Information Theory is one of the leading models of consciousness. It aims to describe both the quality and quantity of the conscious experience of a physical system, such as the brain, in a particular state. In this contribution, we propound the mathematical structure of the theory, separating the essentials from auxiliary formal tools. We provide a definition of a generalized IIT which has IIT 3.0 of Tononi et al., as well as the Quantum IIT introduced by Zanardi et al. (...) as special cases. This provides an axiomatic definition of the theory which may serve as the starting point for future formal investigations and as an introduction suitable for researchers with a formal background. (shrink)

Do any nonhuman animals have hedonically valenced experiences not directly caused by stimuli in their current environment? Do they, like us humans, experience anticipated or previously experienced pains and pleasures as respectively painful and pleasurable? We review evidence from comparative neuroscience about hippocampus-dependent simulation in relation to this question. Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and theta oscillations have been found to instantiate previous and anticipated experiences. These hippocampal activations coordinate with neural reward and fear centers as well as sensory and cortical areas (...) in ways that are associated with conscious episodic mental imagery in humans. Moreover, such hippocampal “re- and preplay” has been found to contribute to instrumental decision making, the learning of value representations, and the delay of rewards in rats. The functional and structural features of hippocampal simulation are highly conserved across mammals. This evidence makes it reasonable to assume that internally triggered experiences of hedonic valence (IHVs) are pervasive across (at least) all mammals. This conclusion has important welfare implications. Most prominently, IHVs act as a kind of “welfare multiplier” through which the welfare impacts of any given experience of pain or pleasure are increased through each future retrieval. However, IHVs also have practical implications for welfare assessment and cause prioritization. (shrink)

This essay starts from the observation that the issue of talent, in relation to the problem of distributive justice, can be approached from two different angles. First, it is common to discuss the justificatory function of talent, that is, its role in the justification of educational or social inequalities. In addition, however, this essay proposes to look at practices of talent ascription and their causal role in the distribution of educational prospects. These practices tend to exacerbate educational inequalities due to (...) social background, especially when they are tied to selective educational settings. There is reason to avoid talent-based selection in education, in order to contain the negative effects of practices of talent ascription. (shrink)

In response to the commentaries, we clarify and defend our characterization of both the nature and function of episodic memory. Regarding the nature of episodic memory, we extend the distinction between event and episodic memory and discuss the relational role of episodic memory. We also address arguments against our characterization of autonoesis and argue that, while self-referential, it needs to be distinguished from an agentive notion of self. Regarding the function of episodic memory, we review arguments about the relation between (...) future mental time travel and memory veridicality; clarify the relation between autonoesis, veridicality, and confidence; and finally discuss the role of episodic memory in diachronic commitments. (shrink)

While Kant's pedagogical lectures present an account of moral education, his theory of freedom and morality seems to leave no room for the possibility of an education for freedom and morality. In this paper, it is first shown that Kant's moral philosophy and his educational philosophy are developed within different theoretical paradigms: whereas the former is situated within a transcendentalist framework, the latter relies on a teleological notion of human nature. The second part of this paper demonstrates that the core (...) ideas of Kant's moral philosophy are also present in his pedagogy. This means that the problem of moral education must be solved within the transcendentalist framework. It is finally claimed that Kant himself outlines a solution to this problem in his pedagogical lectures. (shrink)

This book collects published and unpublished work over the last dozen years by one of today's most distinguished and provocative anthropologists. Johannes Fabian is widely known outside of his discipline because his work so often overcomes traditional scholarly boundaries to bring fresh insight to central topics in philosophy, history, and cultural studies. The first part of the book addresses questions of current critical concern. The second part extends the work of critique into the past by examining the beginning of (...) modern ethnography in the exploration of Central Africa during the late nineteenth century: the justification of a scientific attitude and the collecting of ethnographic objects. A final essay examines how the Congolese have returned the 'imperial gaze' of Belgium by the work of critical memory in popular history. The ten chapters are framed by two meditations on the relevance of theory and the irrelevance of the millennium. (shrink)

Language (śabda) occupied a central yet often unacknowledged place in classical Indian philosophical thought. Foundational thinkers considered topics such as the nature of language, its relationship to reality, the nature and existence of linguistic units and their capacity to convey meaning, and the role of language in the interpretation of sacred writings. The first reader on language in--and the language of--classical Indian philosophy, A Śabda Reader offers a comprehensive and pedagogically valuable treatment of this topic and its importance to Indian (...) philosophical thought. A Śabda Reader brings together newly translated passages by authors from a variety of traditions--Brahmin, Buddhist, Jaina--representing a number of schools of thought. It illuminates issues such as how Brahmanical thinkers understood the Veda and conceived of Sanskrit; how Buddhist thinkers came to assign importance to language's link to phenomenal reality; how Jains saw language as strictly material; the possibility of self-contradictory sentences; and how words affect thought. Throughout, the volume shows that linguistic presuppositions and implicit notions about language often play as significant a role as explicit ideas and formal theories. Including an introduction that places the texts and ideas in their historical and cultural context, A Śabda Reader sheds light on a crucial aspect of classical Indian thought and in so doing deepens our understanding of the philosophy of language. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Jeremy Bentham is often thought to have set the groundwork for the modern ‘animal liberation’ movement, but in fact he wrote little on the subject. A full examination of his work reveals a less radical position than that commonly attributed to him. Bentham was the first Western philosopher to grant animals equal consideration from within a comprehensive, non-religious moral theory, and he was a staunch defender of animal welfare laws. But he also approved of killing and using animals, as (...) long as pointless cruelty could be avoided. The nuances of his position are best brought out by comparing it to that of Peter Singer, who draws considerably more radical practical conclusions. This is not primarily explained by competing formulations of utilitarianism, however, but by different empirical background assumptions about the lives of animals. (shrink)

WHAT IS PRESENT TO THE MIND? Donald DAVIDSON The University of California at Berkeley There is a sense in which anything we think about is, ...

The article takes Cornelius Castoriadis’ concept of the ‘political imaginary’ as an invitation to reflect on the role of pictures in politics and in facilitating alternative policies. For this purpose, pictures are not understood as merely rhetorical or propagandistic representations of political statements, which are actually to be thought of independently of the particular picture. Instead, by means of their specific pictorial qualities, pictures also influence the ways politics are negotiated or pursued and, moreover, they can stimulate alternative forms of (...) political thinking. In order to argue for this understanding of the politics of pictures, the article proceeds in three steps: a brief review of the research on political iconography is followed by thoughts on Jacques Rancière and his concept of the ‘distribution of the sensible’. On this basis, an understanding of pictorial politics is finally sketched that asks for genuinely political potentials that are directly linked to the specific qualities of the image: its duality, its vagueness, and its temporality. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary research in the fields of forestry and sustainability studies often encounters seemingly incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The perceived incompatibilities might emerge from the epistemological and ontological claims of the theories or models directly employed in the interdisciplinary collaboration, or they might be created by other epistemological and ontological assumptions that these interdisciplinary researchers find no reason to question. In this paper we discuss the benefits and risks of two possible approaches, Popperian optimism and Kuhnian (...) pessimism, to interdisciplinary knowledge integration where epistemological and ontological differences between the sciences involved can be expected. (shrink)

How should we think, from the point of view of distributive justice, about inequalities in health and longevity? Norman Daniels’s influential account derives a social duty to reduce health inequalities from Rawls’s principle of fair equality of opportunity. This paper criticises Daniels’s approach and offers an alternative. To the extent that the basic structure of society shapes people’s opportunities to be healthy, we ought to think of ‘the social bases of health’ directly as a Rawlsian primary social good. The paper (...) attempts to clarify the correct principle for its distribution, and its relationship to other goods that give rise to considerations of justice. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary research in the fields of forestry and sustainability studies often encounters seemingly incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The perceived incompatibilities might emerge from the epistemological and ontological claims of the theories or models directly employed in the interdisciplinary collaboration, or they might be created by other epistemological and ontological assumptions that these interdisciplinary researchers find no reason to question. In this paper we discuss the benefits and risks of two possible approaches, Popperian optimism and Kuhnian (...) pessimism, to interdisciplinary knowledge integration where epistemological and ontological differences between the sciences involved can be expected. (shrink)

Vorgestellt wird der Versuch, »Jenseits des Lustprinzips« als Dokument einer Diskontinuität zu lesen. Als Vorarbeit hierzu entfaltet der Autor verschiedene Dimensionen, in und zwischen denen sich der Text bewegt, und arbeitet in ihnen aufkommende Disparitäten sowie Fragen heraus, die der Text stellt, indem er sie verhüllt. Leithypothese der Interpretation ist, dass der Text als ganzer Ausdruck, aber auch beginnende Auslegung und Entstellung eines undenkbaren »Gedankens« (des »Todesgedankens«) ist, auf den er zuläuft und vor dem er ausweicht, und dass das Todestriebkonzept (...) bereits eine defensive Ausarbeitung dieses »Gedankens« darstellt. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit fragt nach Formen autonomer Individualität, welche zugleich nicht hinter die postmoderne 'Auflösung des Subjekts' zurückgehen. Diese Problematik wird zunächst vor dem Hintergrund der Analyse von Friedrich Nietzsches Begriff des souveränen Individuums diskutiert. Hierbei werden neben der begrifflichen Analyse auch die Ergebnisse der Nietzscheforschung zum Thema behandelt. Um das Konzept souveräner Individualität aber auch weiter zu entwickeln, wird darüber hinaus ein Vergleich zu Foucaults Analyse der antiken Selbstsorge vorgenommen. Die Ergebnisse dieser Analyse werden daraufhin auf Probleme der aktuellen (...) Subjektphilosophie übertragen. Hierbei steht die Frage im Mittelpunkt, wie die Depotenzierung des Subjekts durch die Idee einer autonomen Individualität ergänzt werden kann. Neben dem erstmals vorgenommenen Vergleich zwischen Nietzsches und Foucaults Konzepten der Selbstsorge entwickelt Johannes Heinrich also auch den Begriff einer autonomen Identität, der bereits durch die dekonstruierende Kritik jüngster Subjekttheorien hindurchgegangen ist. (shrink)

This chapter examines the deep connections between biological organization, agency, and evolution by natural selection. Using Griesemer’s account of the reproducer, I argue that the basic unit of evolution is not a genetic replicator, but a complex hierarchical life cycle. Understanding the self-maintaining and self-proliferating properties of evolvable reproducers requires an organizational account of ontogenesis and reproduction. This leads us to an extended and disambiguated set of minimal conditions for evolution by natural selection—including revised or new principles of heredity, variation, (...) and ontogenesis. More importantly, the continuous maintenance of biological organization within and across generations implies that all evolvable systems are agents or contain agents among their parts. This means that we ought to take agency seriously—to better understand the concept and its role in explaining biological phenomena—if we aim to obtain an organismic theory of evolution in the original spirit of Darwin’s struggle for existence. This kind of understanding must rely on an agential perspective on evolution, complementing and succeeding existing structural, functional, and processual approaches. I sketch a tentative outline of such an agential perspective and present a survey of methodological and conceptual challenges that will have to be overcome if we are to properly implement it. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the various dual-use concepts applied in national and international non-proliferation and anti-terrorism legislation, such as the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, and national export control legislation and in relevant codes of conduct. While there is a vast literature covering dual-use concepts in particular with regard to life sciences, this is the first paper that incorporates into such discussion the United Nations Security Council Resolution (...) 1540. In addition, recent developments such as the extension of dual-use export control legislation in the area of human rights protection are also identified and reviewed. The discussion of dual-use concepts is hereby undertaken in the context of human- and/or national-security-based approaches to security. This paper discusses four main concepts of dual use as applied today in international and national law: civilian versus military, peaceful versus non-peaceful, legitimate versus illegitimate and benevolent versus malevolent. In addition, the usage of the term to describe positive technology spin-offs between civilian and military applications is also briefly addressed. Attention is also given to the roles civil society and research ethics may play in the governance of dual-use sciences and technologies. (shrink)

In a recent opinion piece, Denis Duboule has claimed that the increasing shift towards systems biology is driving evolutionary and developmental biology apart, and that a true reunification of these two disciplines within the framework of evolutionary developmental biology may easily take another 100 years. He identifies methodological, epistemological, and social differences as causes for this supposed separation. Our article provides a contrasting view. We argue that Duboule’s prediction is based on a one-sided understanding of systems biology as a science (...) that is only interested in functional, not evolutionary, aspects of biological processes. Instead, we propose a research program for an evolutionary systems biology, which is based on local exploration of the configuration space in evolving developmental systems. We call this approach—which is based on reverse engineering, simulation, and mathematical analysis—the natural history of configuration space. We discuss a number of illustrative examples that demonstrate the past success of local exploration, as opposed to global mapping, in different biological contexts. We argue that this pragmatic mode of inquiry can be extended and applied to the mathematical analysis of the developmental repertoire and evolutionary potential of evolving developmental mechanisms and that evolutionary systems biology so conceived provides a pragmatic epistemological framework for the EvoDevo synthesis. (shrink)

When is it fair that some people are less healthy than others due to their own individual choices and preferences? In this paper, I explore two alternative answers. The first is a luck-egalitarian account that holds people responsible for choices that society could have reasonably expected them to avoid. I argue that this account is indeterminate and go on to sketch an alternative proposal based on Rawls’s idea of a “social division of responsibility.” This latter approach connects the notion of (...) responsibility for health to the social conditions under which health-related behaviour is developed. (shrink)