Samuel Shirley's splendid new translation, with critical annotation reflecting research of the last half-century, is the only edition of the complete text of Spinoza's correspondence available in English. An historical-philosophical Introduction, detailed annotation, a chronology, and a bibliography are also included.

From the book: What is to be done with political ecology? Nothing. What is to be done? Political ecology!

A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and ...

Ethical decision-making is essential to professionalism in engineering. For that reason, ethics is a required topic in an ABET approved engineering curriculum and it must be a foundational strand that runs throughout the entire curriculum. In this paper the curriculum approach that is under development at the Padnos School of Engineering (PSE) at Grand Valley State University will be described. The design of this program draws heavily from the successful approach used at the service academies — in particular West Point (...) and the United States Naval Academy. As is the case for the service academies, all students are introduced to the “Honor Concept” (which includes an Honor Code) as freshmen. As an element of professionalism the PSE program requires 1500 hours of co-op experience which is normally divided into three semesters of full-time work alternated with academic semesters during the last two years of the program. This offers the faculty an opportunity to teach ethics as a natural aspect of professionalism through the academic requirements for co-op. In addition to required elements throughout the program, the students are offered opportunities to participate in service projects which highlight responsible citizenship. These elements and other parts of the approach will be described. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” King Solomon. (shrink)

The value of argumentation in science education has become internationally recognised and has been the subject of many research studies in recent years. Successful introduction of argumentation activities in learning contexts involves extending teaching goals beyond the understanding of facts and concepts, to include an emphasis on cognitive and metacognitive processes, epistemic criteria and reasoning. The authors focus on the difficulties inherent in shifting a tradition of teaching from one dominated by authoritative exposition to one that is more dialogic, involving (...) small-group discussion based on tasks that stimulate argumentation. The paper focuses on how argumentation activities have been designed in school science. Examples of classroom dialogue where teachers adopt the frameworks/plans are analysed to show how argumentation processes are scaffolded. The analysis shows that several layers of interpretation are needed and these layers need to be aligned for successful implementation. (shrink)

Crudely put, educational research is unethical when it misrepresents or misidentifies—and so betrays—its putative beneficiaries or the goods and values they hold dear. How can researchers guard against these vulnerabilities? While acknowledging the vulnerabilities of educational research to abuses of trust and representation, and that there is no Archimedean point from which to approach research into people’s practices, we defend a universalist conception of research ethics in education. This universalist conception is developed via an examination of a central debate in (...) feminism, contrasting Alcoff’s positionality, Caughie’s performative conception and Nussbaum’s universalist conception of feminism. (shrink)

This volume covers the philosophical, historical, religious, and interpretative aspects of the ancient Guodian bamboo manuscripts which were disentombed in the Guodian Village in Hubei Province, China, in 1993. Considered to be the Chinese equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls, these manuscripts are archaeological finds whose importance cannot be underestimated. Many of the texts are without counterparts in the transmitted tradition, and they provide unique insights into the developments of Chinese philosophy in the period between the death of Confucius and (...) the writings of Mencius, and beyond. Divided into two parts, the book first provides inter-textual contexts and backgrounds of the Guodian manuscripts. The second part covers the main concepts and arguments in the Guodian texts, including cosmology and metaphysics, political philosophy, moral psychology, and theory of human nature. The thematic essays serve as an introduction to the philosophical significance and the key philosophical concepts/thought of each text contained in the Guodian corpus. Each chapter has a section on the implications of the texts for the received tradition, or for the purpose of comparing some of the text with the received tradition in terms of the key philosophical concepts as well as the reading and interpretation of the texts. The volume covers most of the texts inscribed on the 800-odd slips of the Guodian corpus dated to the fourth century BCE. (shrink)

A case-study of the interaction between philosophical context and observational data in the practice of Science.

The stereotyped pattern of cell commitments during leech embryogenesis is described. The nature of cell commitments during segmentation differs significantly between leech and fruit fly. Despite the constancy of cell fate assignments in normal development, ablation experiments show that cell interactions are essential in setting some of these commitments. Interacting cells follow a positionally determined hierarchy of fate choices. For other cells, which appear to have fates fixed from birth, the possibility of determinative interactions between mother and daughter cells is (...) discussed. (shrink)

During embryogenesis, cell division must be spatially and temporally regulated with respect to other developmental processes. Leech embryos undergo a series of unequal and asynchronous cleavages to produce individually recognizable cells whose lineages, developmental fates and cell cycle properties have been characterized. Thus, leech embryos provide an opportunity to examine the regulation of cell division at the level of individual well‐characterized cells within a community of different types of cells. Isolation of leech homologues of some of the highly conserved regulators (...) of the cell division cycle, and characterization of their patterns of maternal and zygotic expression, indicate that the cell divisions of early leech embryos are regulated by cell type‐specific mechanisms. These studies with leech embryos contribute to the emerging appreciation of the diverse mechanisms by which animals regulate cell division during early development. (shrink)

Zhong 中 is an important notion in early Chinese thought. This essay offers a brief survey of the possible connotations of zhong found in the Baoxun 保訓 text of the Tsinghua University’s Collection of bamboo manuscripts of the Warring States period. By making a preliminary textual analysis and philosophical interpretation of the concept of zhong in relation to ideal rulership as presented in this newly discovered ancient text it is hoped that it will shed some light on the continuing debate (...) on the notion of zhong in early Chinese thought. (shrink)

É possível constatar, mesmo em uma leitura superficial, que Kant tem o propósito de empreender em seu opúsculo de 1795, À Paz Perpétua, uma defesa dos princípios normativos do direito em todas as esferas da vida pública. Isso se evidencia na tentativa de desenvolver uma teoria da paz erigida sobre uma teoria tríplice do direito público, dividida nos âmbitos do direito estatal, das gentes e cosmopolita. Mas, se a questão é, por um lado, adequar os princípios puros da doutrina do (...) direito à teoria da paz, por outro, o problema com o qual Kant tem de lidar é essencialmente histórico. Não se trata apenas de justificar, em um contexto abrangente, a normatividade dos princípios do direito, mas também de demonstrar a sua aplicabilidade. Por conseguinte, em seu empreendimento, Kant encontra-se diante do desafio de demonstrar a inconsistência da “expressão corrente”, com a qual teve que lidar antes, que diz que “isto pode ser correto na teoria, mas nada vale na prática”. Tal preocupação pode ser observada direta e indiretamente, em várias passagens, no decorrer do texto, explicitando-se ,sobretudo, na discussão apresentada no Suplemento Primeiro no qual a questão suscitada pelo problema da teoria e prática, acerca das condições de possibilidade de realização do ideal da paz, é discutida no contexto de sua filosofia da história e também no Apêndice I, no qual, através de uma reflexão sobre o consenso entre moral e política, o que se põe em questão é a possibilidade da concordância entre teoria e prática no contexto da filosofia e da prática política. Ocupar-me-ei nesse texto apenas em tratar da questão sob esse segundo aspecto, tentando destacar que a estratégia kantiana para superar o problema da teoria e prática, no âmbito da filosofia política, depende do desenvolvimento de uma “renovada” doutrina da prudência. Como observa Castillo1, “[p]ara provar que a teoria jurídica da paz se aplica na teoria e na prática ao mesmo tempo”, Kant “deve fazer um exame crítico do conceito de prudência do Estado”2 . Esta análise deve nos permitir concluir, em primeiro lugar, que, bem diferente da visão antes difundida de que a filosofia política de Kant é expressão de um moralismo “que é certamente sincero, mas basicamente ingênuo”3, o objetivo de Kant, na verdade, nunca foi o de se afastar da realidade concreta da política em nome de um ideal abstrato de virtude política. Sua preocupação foi, em vez disso, a de ajustar os co. (shrink)

I argue against the interpretation of propositions as intentions and proof-objects as fulfillments proposed by Heyting and defended by Tieszen and van Atten. The idea is already a frequent target of criticisms regarding the incompatibility of Brouwer’s and Husserl’s positions, mainly by Rosado Haddock and Hill. I raise a stronger objection in this paper. My claim is that even if we grant that the incompatibility can be properly dealt with, as van Atten believes it can, two fundamental issues indicate that (...) the interpretation is unsustainable regardless: (1) it is hard to determine, without appealing to propositional intentions on pain of circularity, what intention a proof-object should be understood as a fulfillment of; (2) due to a difficult fulfillment dilemma, it is unclear, at best, what the object of an intention corresponding to a proposition is. (shrink)

Falls are a leading cause of serious injury and restricted participation among persons with stroke (PwS). Reactive balance control is essential for fall prevention, however, only a few studies have explored the effects of lesion characteristics (location and extent) on balance control in PwS. We aimed to assess the impact of lesion characteristics on reactive and anticipatory balance capacity, gait, and hemiparetic lower limb function, in PwS. Forty-six subacute PwS were exposed to forward, backward, right and left unannounced horizontal surface (...) translations in 6 increasing intensities, while standing. Fall threshold (i.e., perturbation intensity that results in a fall into the harness system) was measured. In addition, the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), 6 Minute Walk Test (6MWT) and Lower Extremity Fugl-Meyer (LEFM) were measured. Lesion effects were analyzed separately for left- and right-hemisphere damaged (LHD, RHD) patients, using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM). Our results show that voxel clusters where damage exerted a significant impact on balance, gait and lower-limb function were found in the corticospinal tract, in its passage in the corona radiata and in the posterior limb of the internal capsule. Additional significant impact was found to lesions affecting the putamen and the external capsule. Balance, gait, and hemiparetic lower limb function showed much overlap of the corresponding ‘significant’ voxel clusters. Test scores of RHD and LHD patients were affected largely by damage to homologous regions, with the LHD group showing a wider distribution of ‘significant’ voxels. The study corroborates and extends previous findings by demonstrating that balance control, gait, and lower limb function are all affected mainly by damage to essentially the same brain structures, namely - the corticospinal tract and adjacent structures in the capsular-putaminal region. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should solve paradoxes for propositions (such as the Russell–Myhill paradox) in essentially the same way that we solve Russellian paradoxes for sets. That is, the standard, iterative approach to sets is extended to include properties, and then the resulting hierarchy of sets and properties is used to construct propositions. Propositions on this account are structured in the sense of mirroring the sentences that express them, and they would seem to serve the needs of philosophers of (...) language and metaphysicians who rely on such propositions. The resulting account has limitations, comparable to those faced by the iterative approach to sets, but it is argued to be in important ways preferable to others that have been proposed. (shrink)

This study examines how low-income African American mothers of children with sickle cell disease cope with the reproductive implications of having passed a genetic disease on to their children. Based on in-depth interviews with 29 African American mothers, I found that most mothers knew about SCD prior to having a child with the disease; many knew they were carriers of the sickle cell trait. In explaining why this knowledge did not lead them to alter their reproductive behaviors, mothers invoked a (...) theme of medical mismanagement; that is, they said the genetic screening programs for SCD did not provide them with enough medical knowledge about the disease. The implication that adequate knowledge about SCD would have affected their childbearing choices, however, is contradicted by their subsequent reproductive behaviors. I argue that the SCD diagnosis threatened motherhood, an important cultural value among low-income African American women, and that they protected their reproductive autonomy by obfuscating SCD medical knowledge. (shrink)

Crudely put, educational research is unethical when it misrepresents or misidentifies—and so betrays—its putative beneficiaries or the goods and values they hold dear. How can researchers guard against these vulnerabilities? While acknowledging the vulnerabilities of educational research to abuses of trust and representation, and that there is no Archimedean point from which to approach research into people’s practices, we defend a universalist conception of research ethics in education. This universalist conception is developed via an examination of a central debate in (...) feminism, contrasting Alcoff’s positionality, Caughie’s performative conception and Nussbaum’s universalist conception of feminism. (shrink)

In a modern economy, “equilibrium” means that supply and demand is equal. It is at this point that the allocation of goods and services is at its most efficient, this being because the amount of goods and the amount of goods in demand are equally balanced. The market equilibrium therefore is determined by supply and demand. This paper looks at the concept of “equilibrium” in some of the early Confucian texts and its possible implications in economic activities. In the Confucian (...) context equilibrium, or what can be termed as the ultimate equilibrium, is to be understood in a broader sense where balances and harmony at different levels (e.g. individual and society) need to be sought in order to achieve a model of sustainable development. The ultimate equilibrium may provide an alternative approach to social welfare and economic prosperity creating universal harmony and better living for humans. In Confucian ideology, governing for the welfare of the people is not merely a question of increasing personal income and wealth; it requires implementation on a priority basis, taking into consideration the formation of an orderly society based on the enforcement of moral and ethical standards with the existence of a benevolent government which appropriates things according to the principles of harmony and order to achieve what can be termed as the “great equilibrium”—equilibrium that is not simply defined by balanced economic forces as in modern economic theory; but rather is used to suggest an ideal state of harmony in self fulfilment and socio-political order through incentives and by appropriate means. (shrink)

In this sequel of my previous publication, I will continue my discussion of the word tian as it appears in the Guodian texts. I shall argue that, from natural order arises xing, human's distinctive potentiality, which is endowed by heaven to follow and be guided by the heavenly principle. I thereafter will elaborate the sages' role as cultural creators. The distinct roles of heaven and humanity are further deepened when tian and ming are perceived as the determinants of an individual's (...) success or failure. I will go on to show how the word tian can be understood as the source or underlying pattern that brings about coincidental or synchronous events and experiences. (shrink)