The present book is intended to help students overcome difficulties by presenting Jaspers' thoughts in comparatively clear and straightforward fashion. While it denies that philosophy is "practical" in any cheap and obvious sense, it follows Jaspers in attempting to avoid the otiose and emphasize the relevance of philosophy to matters of ultimate concern. Those who wish a more theoretical and systematic presentation may well call to mind that, as Heidegger's followers express it, Jaspers, like Kierkegaard- and to some extent Sartre- (...) quite deliberately spurned the "ontological" in favor of the "ontic.". (shrink)

Legal norms serve as practical standards for individuals and officials. While this ‘normative aspect’ of law is widely acknowledged, its significance for theories of law remains contested. In this paper, I examine three views on the matter. First, that we should explain legal norms as reason-giving. Second, that we should explain legal discourse as being about reasons for action. Third, that we should explain law as capable of being reason-giving. I survey some challenges associated with each of these views. What (...) they have in common is an implicit assumption about the form that normative explanation must take: that it must be a linear, non-reductive explanation. There is an alternative model for normative explanation available, however. That model explains normative notions in terms of the practices and attitudes involved in recognizing, offering, and demanding them. I highlight the potentials, and limitations, of this practice-centered alternative. (shrink)

Humanitarian aid in Central Europe after World War I repositioned both food and food research on a global scale. This essay follows the British scientific delegation that worked in Vienna as part of the food aid program and shows how the city became a “lab” for international nutrition. Assuming a political role, British nutrition experts were motivated to collaborate with local experts. To examine what internationalism looked like in the lab, the essay reconstructs the forgotten Viennese NEM system, a scientific (...) theory in which food was measured in milk units instead of calories, and demonstrates the unlikely ways the British researchers adopted it. The exchange of scientific standards between experts resulted in a series of milk experiments in which human and animal milks were exchanged and compared. Bearing on historiographic discussions of standards and internationalism, this case study offers an intervention into how we connect the history of measurement, international politics, and living creatures. (shrink)

As the official UK COVID Inquiry is investigating the response by the government to the 2020 global pandemic, revealing the difficulties that the Johnson administration had to face and the overall lack of adequate preparedness at the top of the UK executive, people are becoming growingly aware of the many challenges that such situations pose in terms of crisis management and public governance. Beyond the somewhat sterile blame game played by leading political actors, this formal accountability forum has also revealed (...) competing narratives about the crisis that might have hampered any coherent political solution. This article proposes to focus on the ‘official’ narratives by the UK government and to analyse critically the way Boris Johnson narrativised his political response to the pandemic in order to examine how his unconventional style of leadership was deployed during a global crisis. Using a typology of crisis management inspired by crisis expert and leadership scholar Arjen Boin, the objective is to examine how ‘crisis narratives’ framed the way the UK government responded to the crisis. (shrink)

To show that discrimination against the terminally ill is a real and worrisome phenomenon Reed presents four examples1. Here, I focus on the final two: right-to-try and right-to-die laws. I argue that they are not instances of discrimination, because they grant rights. Reed appears to have overlooked that rights differ from obligations in ways that leave his argumentation unsuccessful. According to the most prominent theory of rights, rights function to protect the personal interests of their holders.2 For that reason, strengthening (...) rights implies weakening discrimination. Granting women the right to vote by itself meant that they were being less discriminated against. Rights also fail to meet standardly accepted definitions of discrimination. As Reed explains, for discrimination to occur, it is necessary that a significant disadvantage is imposed on a socially salient group. Policies can impose disadvantages by being obligations. While rights sometimes enable disadvantages, they never impose them. More precisely, rights may entitle their holders to subject themselves to disadvantages. The right to try entitles the terminally ill to subject themselves to harms caused by investigational drugs. The right to die entitles the terminally ill to voluntarily subject themselves to the deprivation of life. Contrast this with a policy that requires the terminally ill to take investigational drugs. Such a policy would be discriminatory. Whether rights can nevertheless …. (shrink)

Teachers always try to give their best to educate all students that have been entrusted to them! Knowing that everybody has the right to learn and be well educated, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology after the war took considerable actions in an effort to promote inclusive education in the Kosovo education system. However, teachers are facing different challenges while trying to teach students with mild or moderate specific learning difficulties together with those who don’t have learning difficulties. Understanding (...) specific learning difficulties may not be hard but handling it is a great challenge. So what are specific learning difficulties? This research studies specific areas of inclusive education based on the difficulties students have while learning English Language, how to deal with these difficulties, how can inclusive practices within the school help, what practical teaching approaches can be used, what teaching methods are used or can be used in the inclusive classes in order to come to a conclusion of what can be done more about inclusiveness and understand the importance of inclusive education not only in the centers where the work is done but throughout Kosovo. Remember: Students with specific learning difficulties are just like you and me, they just have a different learning style! (shrink)

1. Contemporary psychology values quantitative over qualitative research and emphasises the importance of the neuroscientific approach. However, there are cases in which quantitative research desig...

Abraham Maslow’s needs theory is one of the most influential motivation theories in management and organizational behavior. What are its anthropological and ethical presuppositions? Are they consistent with sound business philosophy and ethics? This paper analyzes and assesses the anthropological and ethical underpinnings of Maslow’s needs theory from a personalistic framework, and concludes that they are flawed. Built on materialistic naturalism, the theory’s “humanistic” claims are subverted by its reductionist, individualistic approach to the human being, which ends up in a (...) needs-based ethics that understands goodness, virtue, and rights in instinctual, subjectivistic, and relativistic terms. Its moral imperative, “Be yourself!,” is either the materialistic fiat of genetic drives or the voluntaristic command of unbridled will. Significant implications for business educators, managers, and organizations are discussed, along with recommendations. Managerial theories and approaches that reduce personality to individuality are inconsistent with proper anthropological and ethical business principles. Adopting those individualistic theories may ultimately undermine organizational effectiveness, and the very essence of business as human activity and of management as human calling. Instead, personalistic anthropology and virtue ethics, rooted in Aristotelian–Thomistic thought, soundly account for properly human nature and the good life. Business educators and practitioners are encouraged to embrace this integral, truly humanistic framework for motivation, and management theory and practice. (shrink)

El pintor Rafael Ángel Fernández Piedra, fallecido en 2018, es considerado uno de los artistas más representativos de Costa Rica, cuya obra ha tenido también una proyección internacional considerable, al formar parte de la Colección del Museo José Luis Cuevas en Ciudad de México, así como de la Colección del Museo Rally de Arte Contemporáneo, en Punta del Este, Uruguay, entre otros. Obtuvo el premio Aquileo J. Echeverría en Artes Plásticas en 1968, 1972 y 1975, así como el premio Nacional (...) de Cultura Magón en 2002, el más importante galardón que otorga el Estado costarricense en reconocimiento a una vida dedicada a la cultura. Como homenaje póstumo a este insigne creador, en esta edición la Revista Ístmica convierte su sección de Artes Visuales en una galería virtual dedicada a la exposición de parte de su obra, comentada sentidamente por su hija, la curadora y también artista, Alma Fernández. (shrink)

1. Introduction. The problems of other minds ; Body, mind and other minds ; The analogical theory ; The critical theory ; Functionalism and mental states as theoretical entities ; A brief outline of things to come -- 2. Functionalism and the nature of mental representations. Functionalism and cognitive psychology ; Folk psychology and the representational theory of mind -- 3. Theory theory and simulation theory. A very short introduction to the world of theory theory and simulation theory ; A (...) look at simulation theory ; A look at theory theory -- 4. Intentionality and the theory theory. The generic theory theory ; Cognitive and primordial intentionality ; Theory theorists and primordial intentionality ; Fodor's computational theory of primordial intentionality -- 5. The body schema. Historical notes on the notion of body schema ; An outline of a notion of body schema -- 6. On the notion of primordial intentionality. Concrete and abstracts movements ; Why primordial intentionality is not reducible to cognitive intentionality ; The intentionality of primordial intentionality -- 7. The irreducibility of primordial intentionality. The first argument against homuncular functionalism ; The second argument against homuncular functionalism -- 8. Transferring the body schema. Husserl's phenomenology of intersubjectivity ; Towards a primordial intentionality of intersubjectivity ; Some implications and a comparison to Husserl -- 9. Theory theory and simulation theory revisited. Attribution of primordial intentionality as cognitive simulation ; If homuncular functionalism were true ... ; Primordial intentionality and belief-desire psychology ; The theory of body schematic transfer and the simulation theory -- 10. Body schematic transfer and the conceptual problem of other minds. Strawson on the problem of other minds ; Disarming Strawson's objections ; Solving the conceptual problem -- 11. Concluding remarks -- Summary in Swedish -- References. (shrink)

This article focuses on 'improving' schools in difficult or disadvantaged contexts. It explores the contemporary policy discourse and intervention strategies aimed at improving schools in such circumstances. It argues that contemporary approaches to improvement are unlikely to succeed because the approaches adopted are not sufficiently differentiated or context specific. Drawing on two recent empirical studies, the article offers an alternative perspective on school improvement within this group of schools. It argues against standardised solutions in favour of a differentiated approach to (...) school improvement that recognises and respects the diversity, variability and complexity of schools in difficult contexts. (shrink)

The years between 1970 and 1980 represented a formative period in the development of Chicana feminist thought in the United States. During this period, Chicana feminists addressed the specific issues affecting Chicanas as women of color in the United States. As a result of their collective efforts in struggling against racial, class, and gender oppression, Chicana feminists developed an ideological discourse that addressed three major issues. These were the relationship between Chicana feminism and the ideology of cultural nationalism, feminist baiting (...) within the Chicano movement, and the relationship between the Chicana feminist movement and the white feminist movement. This article describes the development of Chicana feminism and compares it with Asian American and Black feminism, which faced similar problems. (shrink)

This article raises the issue of the extent to which a single nation can develop a “national agricultural policy,” pursuing internal goals in agrarian development, goals that vary significantly from those of other industrialized countries. What are the conflicts arising from such a policy and how do these conflicts interfere with the general agricultural crisis of these countries? The Norwegian case is explored as an example of a blend of social-democratic and center-populist agricultural policies. The decision in 1975 by the (...) Norwegian Parliament to establish the income level of farmers at the same level as workers is seen as an experiment. As agricultural policy, this new departure represented a deviation from the earlier policies of rationalization. The Social Democrats developed their new position as a result of internal and external pressure. A series of reforms financed by the new state incomes from oil production were undertaken, of which income equalization and a farm relief service were the most important. Most Norwegian farmers speak of the reform years as “the good years of escalation.” Equity was reached in 1982, but nevertheless several problems emerged: 1) the escalation of subsidized incomes led to overproduction and decreasing incomes from the market (after 1982), 2) the large budgetary transfers to agriculture caused a legitimation crisis, fueling the constituency of the right-wing Progress Party, 3) the large subsidies to agriculture contributed to the fiscal crisis of the state, 4) the problems mentioned above, contributed to the general crisis of the Norwegian Social Democracy which finds itself with dwindling support. The likely outcome of the present Norwegian farm crisis is the implementation of an agricultural policy that will protect the most vulnerable sector and open the more competitive sector to market forces. (shrink)

The main idea of this article is to present various perspectives in order to analyze the recent crisis concerning the agriculture-based rural societies in the developed capitalist communities. In all of these countries there is a production crisis, resulting in too much food. But this is also an ideological crisis, because the consumer thinks that the food is produced at too high a price. And it is a political crisis as well because a major part of the voters think subsidies (...) and trade barriers are too high. The paper argues that beneath the present agricultural and rural policy crisis lies the failure of three great projects of our time: 1) The project of natural science; 2) The project of liberal capitalism; and 3) The project of scientific socialism. The failure of these three projects has to do with the breakdown of the positivist idea of modernization. Modernization theory was partly wrong because it overlooked the persistence of locally based life modes. Those life modes must be understood before a sustainable rural development is found. The article reviews some contemporary social science perspectives that have recently been developed to grasp the fundamental changes of today's rural societies. Based on those perspectives and primarily the life mode perspective, five key elements that are essential to analyze if we want to understand future development are isolated: food production, resources, space, social diversity, and culture. (shrink)

To understand the complex religious dynamics in a globalizing world, Arjun Appadurai's view on imagination as a social practice, Charles Taylor's view on social imaginaries, and John Dewey's view on moral imagination are discussed. Their views enable us to understand religious dynamics as a “space of contestation” in which secular and religious images and voices interact, argue, and clash. Imagination can be used in violent ways in service of extremist world images that spread over the world by the intensive use (...) of social media. This raises an urgent question for psychology of religion: what enables people psychologically to engage in religious pluralism, understood as negotiating and perhaps stimulating diversity in non-violent, constructive ways? It is argued that dialogical psychology helps us to understand the self as the anchor point and navigational system of the social imaginaries that are at play in religious dynamics. (shrink)