Although current educational priorities tend to avoid strong moral positions, one of the world's most venerable yet persistently influential moral traditions not only lays out a number of major moral principles but also incorporates them into its pedagogy. Confucius teaches us about the importance of seeking knowledge, learning how to learn, applying ancient wisdom to contemporary situations, valuing virtue over material gain, following the Golden Rule, and living by our principles. He also has ways of assessing his own students' progress (...) in these matters. Confucius' pedagogy is an interesting model to consider and contrast with contemporary models. This chapter introduces these principles and assessments from the Analects and draws out some comparisons to and contrasts with two alternative theories in western moral thought, Augustine and John Dewey. -/- The accepted version of the paper is included here. Pagination does not match the published version. (shrink)

Dispersal of biota by humans is a hallmark of civilization, but the results are often unforeseen and sometimes costly. Like kudzu vine in the American South, some examples become the stuff of regional folklore. In recent decades, "invasion biology," conservation-motivated scientists and their allies have focused largely on the most negative outcomes and often promoted the perception that introduced species are monsters. However, cases of monstering by scientists preceded the rise of popular environmentalism. The story of tamarisk (Tamarix spp.), flowering (...) trees and shrubs imported to New England sometime before 1818, provides an example of scientific "monstering" and shows how slaying the monster, rather than allaying its impacts, became a goal in itself. Tamarisks' drought and salt tolerance suggested usefulness for both coastal and inland erosion control, and politicians as well as academic and agency scientists promoted planting them in the southern Great Plains and Southwest. But when erosion control efforts in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas became entangled with water shortages, economic development during the Depression and copper mining for national defense during World War Two, federal hydrologists moved quickly to recast tamarisks as water-wasting foreign monsters. Demonstrating significant water salvage was difficult and became subsidiary to focusing on ways to eradicate the plants, and a federal interagency effort devoted specifically to the latter purpose was organized and continued until it, in turn, conflicted with regional environmental concerns in the late 1960s. (shrink)

Our concern is in explaining how and why models give us useful knowledge. We argue that if we are to understand how models function in the actual scientific practice the representational approach to models proves either misleading or too minimal. We propose turning from the representational approach to the artefactual, which implies also a new unit of analysis: the activity of modelling. Modelling, we suggest, could be approached as a specific practice in which concrete artefacts, i.e., models, are constructed with (...) the help of specific representational means and used in various ways, for example, for the purposes of scientific reasoning, theory construction and design of experiments and other artefacts. Furthermore, in this activity of modelling the model construction is intertwined with the construction of new phenomena, theoretical principles and new scientific concepts. We will illustrate these claims by studying the construction of the ideal heat engine by Sadi Carnot. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 561-575 [Access article in PDF] Claude de Seyssel's Translations of Ancient Historians Rebecca Boone Through his seven translations of ancient history Claude de Seyssel played a major role in transmitting knowledge about antiquity to the French. Despite this fact he has received little attention from scholars of the French Renaissance. Perhaps the problem is that Seyssel does not seem to fit (...) neatly into any category. He was neither French nor Italian but a Savoyard, not truly noble but the illegitimate son of a noble family, not truly a historian but a writer of history-based propaganda and a translator of histories. He began his career as a jurist, became a royal councillor, then a bishop, and in the end died as the Archbishop of Turin. Before his death Seyssel left numerous works, his most famous being a political treatise entitled La Monarchie de France, a work contemporaneous with The Prince by Machiavelli, with whom he shared a similar view of the political world. 1Much like Seyssel himself the genre of history translation has been rather neglected by scholars. A notable exception is a recent article by A.C. Dionisotti, which also examines the translations of Seyssel. The article's intention is to continue a project proposed by Arnaldo Momigliano, to collect evidence that "would help us to understand where and on what occasions and by what people books of history were written and read." 2 This essay attempts to continue this project by asking the following questions: Why did Seyssel undertake the translations? For whom were they intended? How did Seyssel conceive his task as translator? Finally, what can be inferred from his technique of translation? [End Page 561]First, the translations must be put in the context of Seyssel's life. The translations were a sideline in his busy career as royal councillor. One of many itinerant scholar-diplomats hired by the states of Europe at that time, Seyssel had been teaching law at the University of Turin when he was called into the service of France by the newly crowned Louis XII in 1498. Seyssel was of value to the court because of his reputation as a jurist as well as his connections with the court of Savoy, the state which held the mountain passes leading to Italy. This was especially important because the conquest of Milan was the main goal of Louis XII throughout his reign. Seyssel played an active role in the French occupational government in several Italian cities. Although Seyssel spent much of his time in Italy, he often followed the king around France or was in transit on diplomatic missions to England, to Flanders, and to the Swiss cantons.It is amazing that Seyssel even found the time to write, but by the end of his life, he had left an astounding variety of written works: legal commentaries, translations, works of propaganda for the French monarchy, a political treatise, and at the end of his life several religious tracts. Despite the copiousness of his written works, however, Seyssel remained outside the circle of writers at the French court. He had no connections either with Budé or with the Grands Rhetoriqueurs, such as Jean Lemaire de Belges, nor did he leave any friendly and eloquent correspondence to other humanists. If Seyssel lived during the budding years of the French renaissance, he showed few signs of appreciating it. As a Savoyard educated in Italy he probably thought of the French in the same way as did many Italians of his age: they were militarily powerful but culturally backward. 3Undoubtedly, Seyssel believed the translations would serve his own interests at court. They were a way to cultivate patronage and to enhance his prestige by building up a reputation as an important scholar. But evidence suggests that their main purpose was to prove to the king, to whom all but one of his translations were dedicated, his utility as a councillor. This was the argument of Paul [End Page 562] Chavy in his study of Seyssel's... (shrink)

In science policy, it is generally acknowledged that science-based problem-solving requires interdisciplinary research. For example, policy makers invest in funding programs such as Horizon 2020 that aim to stimulate interdisciplinary research. Yet the epistemological processes that lead to effective interdisciplinary research are poorly understood. This article aims at an epistemology for interdisciplinary research, in particular, IDR for solving ‘real-world’ problems. Focus is on the question why researchers experience cognitive and epistemic difficulties in conducting IDR. Based on a study of educational (...) literature it is concluded that higher-education is missing clear ideas on the epistemology of IDR, and as a consequence, on how to teach it. It is conjectured that the lack of philosophical interest in the epistemology of IDR is due to a philosophical paradigm of science, which prevents recognizing severe epistemological challenges of IDR, both in the philosophy of science as well as in science education and research. The proposed alternative philosophical paradigm entails alternative philosophical presuppositions regarding aspects such as the aim of science, the character of knowledge, the epistemic and pragmatic criteria for accepting knowledge, and the role of technological instruments. This alternative philosophical paradigm assume the production of knowledge for epistemic functions as the aim of science, and interprets ‘knowledge’ as epistemic tools that must allow for conducting epistemic tasks by epistemic agents, rather than interpreting knowledge as representations that objectively represent aspects of the world independent of the way in which it was constructed. The engineering paradigm of science involves that knowledge is indelibly shaped by how it is constructed. Additionally, the way in which scientific disciplines construct knowledge is guided by the specificities of the discipline, which can be analyzed in terms of disciplinary perspectives. This implies that knowledge and the epistemic uses of knowledge cannot be understood without at least some understanding of how the knowledge is constructed. Accordingly, scientific researchers need so-called metacognitive scaffolds to assist in analyzing and reconstructing how ‘knowledge’ is constructed and how different disciplines do this differently. In an engineering paradigm of science, these metacognitive scaffolds can also be interpreted as epistemic tools, but in this case as tools that guide, enable and constrain analyzing and articulating how knowledge is produced. In interdisciplinary research, metacognitive scaffolds assist interdisciplinary communication aiming to analyze and articulate how the discipline constructs knowledge. (shrink)

Studies of social media and its uses have focused on how it shapes behavior but less so with emotion. Overcoming this limitation, this article investigates the role of emotion in understanding and shaping actions online, and how, conversely, different uses of social media are leveraged to manage and express emotions, focusing on Facebook and Instagram. To this end, this article draws on 24 in-depth interviews with youth users in Hong Kong to excavate practices of emotional labor and management online, which (...) reveal (1) strategies to manage emotional reactions, centering on critical distance; (2) strategies to manage emotional conveyance by manipulating the temporality of the content they produce; and (3) the creation of a digital blasé that consisted of the atmosphere of Facebook and Instagram, sustained by general emotional detachment, the perceived need to detach, and a sense of “watchedness”. Throughout, emotional detachment was the default state that users entered into when using Facebook and Instagram, as an anticipatory reaction to the emotional exhaustion imposed by imagined content and into which they inevitably returned. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the ethics of restricting visitation to hospitals during an infectious disease outbreak. We aim to answer three questions: What are the features of an ethically justified hospital visitor restriction policy? Should policies include scope for case‐by‐case exemptions? How should decisions about exemptions be made? Based on a critical interpretive review of the existing ethical literature on visitor restrictions, we argue that an ethically justified hospital visitor restriction policy has the following features: proportionality, comprehensiveness, harm mitigation, (...) exemptions for specific patient populations, visitation decisions made separately from a patient's treating clinicians, transparency, and consistency in application. We also argue that an ethical policy ought to include scope for case‐by‐case exemptions for individual patients. We propose a process for ethical decision‐making that provides a shared language and structure to decrease the risks and burdens of decision‐making when clinicians or managers are considering requests for exemptions. (shrink)

This study is constituted by three components. The first will examine how Chinese scholars and Western sinologists have characterized modern Chinese intellectual history and what directions they have proposed for future intellectual development in China. The second section will construct a hermeneutic model of intercultural understanding and discuss its implications for the evaluation of modern Chinese intellectual development. I will show that an understanding of modern Chinese intellectual development in hermeneutical terms can circumventing many of the entrenched and misleading dichotomies (...) in the field. In the third section, I will investigate three intercultural difficulties that modern and contemporary Chinese intellectuals face in the study of their own society and tradition. The recognition of these intercultural difficulties — which is made possible by re-conceptualizing local intellectual development in hermeneutical terms — put into relief the plight and possibilities of local intellectual development in non-Western localities. (shrink)

What is the viewpoint regarding the emotional lives of sages in the Zhuangzi 莊子? There are two conflicting positions in current scholarship: sages have emotions, and sages are without emotions. In this essay, we introduce these positions with their corresponding textual support and show that they are not satisfactory accounts. Specifically, we point out that the conflict arises as scholars adopt a static model of emotions. Thus, we propose that a better way to understand the emotional lives of sages is (...) to adopt a dynamic model of emotions characterized by the process of forgetting. Through the discussion of such a dynamic process, we show how conflicting textual evidence can be integrated into this dynamic process and, at the same time, be read consistently. Ultimately, we argue that the ideal emotional lives of sages in the Zhuangzi adopt a dynamic model of emotions characterized by the vacillation of activity of the mind between the state with and without emotions. (shrink)

The goal of this pilot study is to investigate expressions of the collective disquiet of people in the first months of Covid-19 pandemic, and to try to understand how they manage covert risk, especially with religion and magic. Four co-authors living in early hot spots of the pandemic speculate on the roles of science, religion, and magic, in the latest global catastrophe. They delve into the consolidation that should be occurring worldwide because of a common, viral enemy, but find little (...) evidence for it. They draw parallels to biblical works, finding evidence of a connection between plague and “social strife.” They explore changes in the purviews of science, religion, and magic, and how and why they have changed, as three systems of covert risk management. They speculate on the coming wave of grief when the world populations finally decide that too many people have died, and they envision cultural changes on the other side of the pandemic, to lifestyles, travel, reverse urbanization, and living and working in smaller communities. Using an unusual approach named “crowd-sourced ethnography”, they conduct un-traditional ethnography and speculate on management of covert risk in their native countries. (shrink)

Unlike basic sciences, scientific research in advanced technologies aims to explain, predict, and (mathematically) describe not phenomena in nature, but phenomena in technological artefacts, thereby producing knowledge that is utilized in technological design. This article first explains why the covering-law view of applying science is inadequate for characterizing this research practice. Instead, the covering-law approach and causal explanation are integrated in this practice. Ludwig Prandtl's approach to concrete fluid flows is used as an example of scientific research in the engineering (...) sciences. A methodology of distinguishing between regions in space and/or phases in time that show distinct physical behaviours is specific to this research practice. Accordingly, two types of models specific to the engineering sciences are introduced. The diagrammatic model represents the causal explanation of physical behaviour in distinct spatial regions or time phases; the nomo-mathematical model represents the phenomenon in terms of a set of mathematically formulated laws. (shrink)

This study analyzes and evaluates the social thought of Dai Zhen. It interprets Dai’s thought in terms of a critique of ideology that problematizes Song dynasty Neo-Confucian moral vocabulary. Dai thinks that social critique is the ultimate goal of scholarship and he was explicit about this belief. This study will show that he analyzes the negative social consequences of Song Neo-Confucian moral discourse in sociologically sophisticated ways, and that he has developed this understanding through a series of works that began (...) with Yuanshan (The Origin of Goodness) and ended with Mengzi Ziyi Suzheng (Commentaries on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius). Contemporary social theorist and cultural critics should find Dai’s work relevant because his deconstruction of the reified moral vocabulary of his times is postmodern in spirit and he elucidated how discourses can concretely impact on society. (shrink)

The authors present an evolutionary model for the biological emergence of religious capacity as an advanced neurocognitive trait. Using their model for the stages leading to the evolutionary emergence of religious capacity in Homo sapiens, they analyze the mechanisms that can fail, leading to unbelief (atheism or agnosticism). The analysis identifies some, but not all types of atheists and agnostics, so they turn their question around and, using the same evolutionary model, ask what keeps religion going. Why does its development (...) not fail in one social group after another, worldwide? Their final analysis searches for reasons in important evolutionary changes in the senses of hearing, vision, and general sensitivity on the hominin line, which together interact with both intellectual and emotional brain networks to achieve, often in human groups, variously altered states of consciousness, especially a numinous state enabled in part by a brain organ, the precuneus. An inability to experience the numinous, consider it important, or believe in its supernatural nature, may cleave the human population into those with belief and those with unbelief. (shrink)

In this third and last article on the evolution of religious capacity, the authors focus on compassion, one of religious expression's common companions. They explore the various meanings of compassion, using Biblical and early related documents, and derive general cognitive components before an evolutionary analysis of compassion using their model. Then, in taking on neural reuse theory, they adapt a model from linguistics theory to understand how neural reuse could have operated to fix religious capacity in the human genome. They (...) present a teaching tool on “Religious Capacity in Action,” and develop an example of compassionate decision making in very early Homo sapiens in North Africa. They round out their analysis of compassion by exploring theory in neuroscience on a standard decision-making model, and investigate what goes on in the human brain when a values-based decision is made. (shrink)

The large, ancient ape population of the Miocene reached across Eurasia and down into Africa. From this genetically diverse group, the chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and humans evolved from populations of successively reduced size. Using the findings of genomics, population genetics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and archaeology, the authors construct a theoretical framework of evolutionary innovations without which religious capacity could not have emerged as it did. They begin with primate sociality and strength from a basic ape model, and then explore how (...) the human line came to be the most adaptive and flexible of all, while coming from populations with reduced genetic variability. Their analysis then delves into the importance of neurological plasticity and a lengthening developmental trajectory, and points to their following article and the last building block: the expansion of the parietal areas, which allowed visuospatial reckoning, and imagined spaces and beings essential to human theologies. Approximate times for the major cognitive building blocks of religious capacity are given. (shrink)

With the goal of understanding how Christopher Southgate communicates his in-depth knowledge of both science and theology, we investigated the many roles he assumes as a teacher. We settled upon wide-ranging topics that all intertwine: (1) his roles as author and coordinating editor of a premier textbook on science and theology, now in its third edition; (2) his oral presentations worldwide, including plenaries, workshops, and short courses; and (3) the team teaching approach itself, which is often needed by others because (...) the knowledge of science and theology do not always reside in the same person. Southgate provides, whenever possible, teaching contexts that involve students in experiential learning, where they actively participate with other students.We conclude that Southgate’s ultimate goal is to teach students how to reconcile science and theology in their values and beliefs, so that they can take advantage of both forms of rational thinking in their own personal and professional lives. The co-authors consider several examples of models that have been successfully used by people in various fields to integrate science and religion. (shrink)

In this paper I will give some provisional answers to the questions how one can be a Christian philosopher rather than just a philosopher who happens to be a Christian, how one can be a Reformation philosopher rather than just a Christian philosopher whohappens to be a Reformation Christian, and how one can be a Baptist philosopher rather than just a Reformation philosopher who happens to be a Baptist. A good way to be a philosopher is to, like Socrates, seek (...) wisdom concerning spiritual good. A good wayto be a specifically Christian philosopher is to, like Augustine, seek that wisdom in Jesus Christ. A good way to be a specifically Reformation philosopher is to recognize and reflect on a distinction between two inseparable spiritual goods on which we are seeking wisdom: justification and sanctification. A good way to be a specifically Baptist philosopher, taking some inspiration from the likes of Locke and Kierkegaard, is to also recognize and reflect on some signs of these spiritual goods which Baptists emphasize: resistance to the idea of a state church and believer’s baptism. -------------------------- Received: 20/03/2023. Reviewed: 18/04/2023. Accepted: 24/04/2023. (shrink)

In science policy, it is generally acknowledged that science-based problem-solving requires interdisciplinary research. For example, policy makers invest in funding programs such as Horizon 2020 that aim to stimulate interdisciplinary research. Yet the epistemological processes that lead to effective interdisciplinary research are poorly understood. This article aims at an epistemology for interdisciplinary research, in particular, IDR for solving ‘real-world’ problems. Focus is on the question why researchers experience cognitive and epistemic difficulties in conducting IDR. Based on a study of educational (...) literature it is concluded that higher-education is missing clear ideas on the epistemology of IDR, and as a consequence, on how to teach it. It is conjectured that the lack of philosophical interest in the epistemology of IDR is due to a philosophical paradigm of science, which prevents recognizing severe epistemological challenges of IDR, both in the philosophy of science as well as in science education and research. The proposed alternative philosophical paradigm entails alternative philosophical presuppositions regarding aspects such as the aim of science, the character of knowledge, the epistemic and pragmatic criteria for accepting knowledge, and the role of technological instruments. This alternative philosophical paradigm assume the production of knowledge for epistemic functions as the aim of science, and interprets ‘knowledge’ as epistemic tools that must allow for conducting epistemic tasks by epistemic agents, rather than interpreting knowledge as representations that objectively represent aspects of the world independent of the way in which it was constructed. The engineering paradigm of science involves that knowledge is indelibly shaped by how it is constructed. Additionally, the way in which scientific disciplines construct knowledge is guided by the specificities of the discipline, which can be analyzed in terms of disciplinary perspectives. This implies that knowledge and the epistemic uses of knowledge cannot be understood without at least some understanding of how the knowledge is constructed. Accordingly, scientific researchers need so-called metacognitive scaffolds to assist in analyzing and reconstructing how ‘knowledge’ is constructed and how different disciplines do this differently. In an engineering paradigm of science, these metacognitive scaffolds can also be interpreted as epistemic tools, but in this case as tools that guide, enable and constrain analyzing and articulating how knowledge is produced. In interdisciplinary research, metacognitive scaffolds assist interdisciplinary communication aiming to analyze and articulate how the discipline constructs knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to develop an epistemology of scientific models in scientific research practices, and to show that disciplinary perspectives have crucial role in such an epistemology. A transcendental approach is taken, aimed at explanations of the kinds of questions relevant to the intended epistemology, such as “How is it possible that models provide knowledge about aspects of reality?” The approach is also pragmatic in the sense that the questions and explanations must be adequate and relevant to (...) concrete scientific practice. First it is explained why the idea of models as representations in terms of similarity or isomorphism between a model and its target is too limited as a basis for this epistemology. An important finding is that the target-phenomenon is usually not something that can be observed in a straightforward manner, but requires both characterization in terms of measurable variables and subsumption under concepts. The loss of this basis leads to a number of issues, such as: how can models be interpreted as representations if models also include conceptually meaningful linguistic content; how can researchers identify non-observable real-world target-phenomena that are then represented in the model; how do models enable inferential reasoning in performing epistemic tasks by researchers; and, how to justify scientific models. My proposal is to deal with these issues by analyzing how models are constructed, rather than by looking at ready-made models. Based on this analysis, I claim that the identification of phenomena and the construction of scientific models is guided and also confined by the disciplinary perspective within which researchers in a scientific discipline have learned to work. I propose a Kuhnian framework by which the disciplinary perspective can be systematically articulated. Finally, I argue that harmful forms of subjectivism, due to the loss of the belief that models objectively represent aspects of reality, can be overcome by making the disciplinary perspective in a research project explicit, thereby enabling its critical assessment, for which the proposed Kuhnian framework provides a tool. (shrink)

Navigating to goal locations in a known environment (wayfinding) can be accomplished by different strategies, notably by taking habitual, well-learned routes (response strategy) or by inferring novel paths, such as shortcuts, from spatial knowledge of the environment's layout (place strategy). Human and animal neuroscience studies reveal that these strategies reflect different brain systems, with response strategies relying more on activation of the striatum and place strategies associated with activation of the hippocampus. In addition to individual differences in strategy, recent behavioral (...) studies show sex differences such that men use place strategies more than women, and age differences such that older adults use more response strategies than younger adults. This paper takes a comprehensive multilevel approach to understanding these differences, characterizing wayfinding as a complex information processing task. This analysis reveals factors that affect navigation strategy, including availability of the relevant type of environmental knowledge, momentary access to this knowledge, trade-offs between physical and mental effort in different navigation contexts, and risk taking. We consider how strategies are influenced by the computational demands of a navigation task and by factors that affect the neural circuits underlying navigation. We also discuss limitations of laboratory studies to date and outline priorities for future research, including relating wayfinding strategies to independent measures of spatial knowledge, and studying wayfinding strategies in naturalistic environments. (shrink)

Navigating to goal locations in a known environment (wayfinding) can be accomplished by different strategies, notably by taking habitual, well-learned routes (response strategy) or by inferring novel paths, such as shortcuts, from spatial knowledge of the environment's layout (place strategy). Human and animal neuroscience studies reveal that these strategies reflect different brain systems, with response strategies relying more on activation of the striatum and place strategies associated with activation of the hippocampus. In addition to individual differences in strategy, recent behavioral (...) studies show sex differences such that men use place strategies more than women, and age differences such that older adults use more response strategies than younger adults. This paper takes a comprehensive multilevel approach to understanding these differences, characterizing wayfinding as a complex information processing task. This analysis reveals factors that affect navigation strategy, including availability of the relevant type of environmental knowledge, momentary access to this knowledge, trade-offs between physical and mental effort in different navigation contexts, and risk taking. We consider how strategies are influenced by the computational demands of a navigation task and by factors that affect the neural circuits underlying navigation. We also discuss limitations of laboratory studies to date and outline priorities for future research, including relating wayfinding strategies to independent measures of spatial knowledge, and studying wayfinding strategies in naturalistic environments. (shrink)

This article is an account of the teaching and practice of a course on Christian spirituality and ministry at Trinity Theological College in Singapore. It introduces the design of the course, discuss its theological foundations and practicums, and explains how it is delivered and assessed. The course adopts a historical-theological approach to the introduction of Christian spirituality and traces its development from the early church until the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. It introduces spiritual exercises from each epoch of the Christian (...) tradition and engages the student in their practice through week-long practicums. An important feature lies in the immediacy of feedback given to the student after they submit a reflection on their practicums. The course has been taught as a three-credit hour, sixteen-week semester-long course each academic year for the past three years. The students come from a broad range of nationalities and cultural contexts, as well as from different stages of life and denominational backgrounds. The course contributes to an overall emphasis on Christian spiritual formation at the college. (shrink)

Social context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. We use a simulated negotiation to test how three dimensions of social context—dyadic gender composition, negotiation strategy, and trust—interact to influence one micro-ethical decision, the use of deception. Deception in all-male dyads was relatively unaffected by trust or the other negotiator’s strategy. In mixed-sex dyads, negotiators consistently increased their use of deception when three forms of trust were low and opponents used an accommodating strategy. However, in all-female dyads, negotiators (...) appeared to use multiple and shifting reference points in deciding when to deceive the other party. In these dyads, the use of deception increased when a competitive strategy combined with low benevolence-based trust or an accommodating strategy combined with high identity-based trust. Deception in all-female dyads decreased when a competitive strategy was used in the context of low deterrence-based trust. (shrink)

Multiple realization has traditionally been characterized as a thesis about the relation between kinds posited by the taxonomic systems of different sciences. In this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to move beyond this framing. I begin by showing how the traditional framing is tied to positivist models of explanation and reduction and proceed to develop an alternate framing that operates instead within causal explanatory frameworks. I draw connections between this account and the notion of functional robustness in (...) biology and neuroscience. I then examine two cases from systems neuroscience that substantiate my account and show how traditional debates fail to track important features of these cases. (shrink)

Traditional Christianity teaches that the Bible's primary referent is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and Christians have long looked for ways to connect every passage in the Bible to the Christ. One venerable strategy is the allegorical or figurative approach of creatively interpreting any unit of biblical meaning, sometimes down to the individual words, as referencing Christ. Alternatively, we might take the biblical narrative itself as referencing Christ and find the connection of smaller units of meaning to Christ through their place (...) in that narrative. My article clarifies this topic through interaction with an exemplary practitioner of the strategy of figurative reading, the Church Father Augustine. I will first explain Augustine's reasons for his hermeneutics, which stem largely from his focus on smaller units of reference such as the word and the sentence. Then I will argue that his reasons are not persuasive if indeed the Bible does refer to Christ at a broader level, the level of narrative. (shrink)

A number of authors have recently cited phenomenal effects of covert attention as a source of objection to representationalism. These authors maintain that covert attention brings about changes to phenomenology that cannot be explained by changes in representational content. This paper deals with two related issues that are central to this debate: (1) how attention interacts with representational content, and (2) how variations in the precision or determinacy of representational content should be incorporated into representationalist accounts of perceptual phenomenology. I (...) address these issues in the course of responding to several recent anti-representationalist arguments that have been advance by Ned Block. I argue that attention can increase the precision of range content and that this provides a basis for defusing both the concerns raised by Block and more general concerns related to covert attention. I conclude by situating my response with respect to analogous proposals that have been developed around the determination relation. (shrink)

An infonnal fallacy is a reasoning error with three features: the reasoning employs an implicit cogent pattern; the fallacy results from one or more false premises; there is culpable ignorance or deception associated with the falsity of the premises. A reconstruction and analysis of the cogent reasoning patterns in fourteen standard infonnal fallacy types plus several variations are given. Defense of the CMR account covers: a general failure to apply the principle of charity in informal fallacy contexts; empirical evidence for (...) it; how it explains Walton's point that there are both fallacious and non-fallacious instances of fallacy types; how it avoids most "relevance" problems, pennits clearer taxonomizing, and promises pedagogical advantages; how it solves a "demarcation problem.". (shrink)

With the goal of better understanding how science, religion, and poetic art came together in the work of Christopher Southgate, the authors first explore his spiritual poetry. They come away with a better understanding of the author’s commitment to a broad naturalism that contributes, along with his own faith experience, to his prose works in the emerging field of ecotheology. The authors conclude that Southgate’s work is part of the worldwide emergence of a theological rationale that supports environmentalism, the protection (...) of species, and the conservation of biodiversity. The authors find Southgate’s poetry warm, appealing, accessible, and re-readable to good effect, but with a thread of danger and warning throughout. Both features are quite appropriate for the environmental movement in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Human services planning for crews who go to Mars is in its earliest phase, but the modalities for service delivery are well worth anticipating because they could involve some of the first innovations that merge physical, biological, and digital capacities on the new planet. This chapter examines the constraints of the planet Mars, itself, on all humans. It anticipates how “exogenous stressors” might affect the psychological, social, and cultural capacities and conflicts of the earliest crews. Several types of service modalities (...) are explored: hibernation; medication management; traditional psychotherapy; long-distance modalities to approximate the “talking cure”; digitized, keyed psychology workbooks; robotics, or service delivery without verbal feedback; AI technologies, or service delivery with verbal feedback; problem-solving at the cultural level; digital bulletin boards to substitute for journaling; and a special section on the issue of privacy. The chapter rounds out with a section, on types of spiritual services that may be beneficial even for those who profess no faith. We focus on “sacred space,” and on death and burial ritual on Mars. Factors explored here reflect the backgrounds of the two authors: one, a cultural anthropologist and biologist, and the other, an astronomer who is also a Catholic priest. (shrink)

Approaching the settlement of our Moon from a practical perspective, this book is well suited for space program planners. It addresses a variety of human factor topics involved in colonizing Earth's Moon, including: history, philosophy, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, politics & policy, sociology, and anthropology. Each chapter identifies the complex, interdisciplinary issues of the human factor that arise in the early phases of settlement on the Moon. Besides practical issues, there is some emphasis placed on preserving, protecting, and experiencing the (...) lunar environment across a broad range of occupations, from scientists to soldiers and engineers to construction workers. The book identifies utilitarian and visionary factors that shape human lives on the Moon. It offers recommendations for program planners in the government and commercial sectors and serves as a helpful resource for academic researchers. Together, the coauthors ask and attempt to answer: “How will lunar society be different?”. (shrink)

Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform is an invaluable resource for policymakers, faculty, students, and anyone interested in how decisions made about the education system ultimately affect the quality of education, educational access, and social justice.

Popper has argued that the repetition of tests yields diminishing returns. His argument has been criticised by Musgrave for involving an inductive element. This paper argues that Musgrave's solution robs the concept of corroboration of it's force. An alternative solution is suggested on the basis of a differentiation between replication and repetition. It is argued that one then does receive diminishing returns in agreement with the structure of corroboration in general.

Scholars have devoted considerable attention to the discovery by Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson of a distinction between the fittingness of an emotion and the propriety of the same. Meanwhile, Christian theology has long been attentive to the relevance of Christian theology to the emotions. Although it seems that never so far have the twain discussions met, they should meet. A fitting emotion accurately construes a situation. Christian theology tells us something about the importance—or the lack thereof—of emotional fit for (...) the emotions involved in love. It is a desideratum for the emotions that they are fitting. But other desiderata for the emotional life sometimes overrule the desideratum of fit. Moreover, emotions sometimes have an effect on their own fittingness. As Kierkegaard shows, love construes its object as better than he presently is, but it also makes the object better. We should cultivate a disposition to loving emotions that are occasionally unfitting yet help to bring about better fit. I explain these things and consider how someone might go about cultivating loving emotions which are sometimes unfitting yet also restorative of fit. (shrink)

Prevalent narratives of agricultural innovation predict that we are once again on the cusp of a global agricultural revolution. According to these narratives, this so-called fourth agricultural revolution, or agriculture 4.0, is set to transform current agricultural practices around the world at a quick pace, making use of new sophisticated precision technologies. Often used as a rhetorical device, this narrative has a material effect on the trajectories of an inherently political and normative agricultural transition; with funding, other policy instruments, and (...) research attention focusing on the design and development of new precision technologies. A growing critical social science literature interrogates the promises of revolution. Engagement with new technology is likely to be uneven, with benefits potentially favouring the already powerful and the costs falling hardest on the least powerful. If grand narratives of change remain unchallenged, we risk pursuing innovation trajectories that are exclusionary, failing to achieve responsible innovation. This study utilises a range of methodologies to explore everyday encounters between farmers and technology, with the aim of inspiring further work to compile the microhistories that can help to challenge robust grand narratives of change. We explore how farmers are engaging with technology in practice and show how these interactions problematise a simple, linear notion of innovation adoption and use. In doing so, we reflect upon the contribution that the study of everyday encounters can make in setting more inclusionary, responsible pathways towards sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

Two ancient sages show how even the most salacious fiction can be spiritually beneficial, for it shows our need for virtue and for grace. The first is the Roman philosopher Plutarch. Among ancient moral philosophers who were concerned with the effects of bad behavior in fiction, Plutarch distinguishes himself by showing how we can benefit morally from such stories. To do so we must approach them with a critical mind and from the right perspective; only then will we have the (...) discernment to separate the good from the bad, to learn to embrace and imitate virtue but flee from vice. The second is Augustine. A comparison of his writings with Plutarch’s produces not only a valuable theological extension of Plutarch’s thought, but also a valuable Christian perspective on the arts. According to Augustine, the pursuit of virtue only gets us so far, and on its own it cannot get us to a happy life. In particular, fiction such as this shows us that we need virtue; but it also shows us that we are not virtuous; so it also shows us that we need grace. -/- I first expound the concerns of ancient philosophers with the epic fiction of their own day. Then I consider Plutarch’s advice on how to benefit from bad behavior portrayed in fiction. Next, I apply his advice to the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Finally, I show that Galactica illustrates Augustine’s argument in The City of God that happiness cannot be found in this life and how it thus points to our need for grace. -/- Note: The attached file does not have the same pagination as the published article. If you need to cite this article by page number, please consult Volume 2, Issue 1 of Imaginatio et Ratio. (shrink)

Frank Sherwood Taylor was director of the Science Museum London for just over five years from October 1950. He was the only historian of science ever to have been director of this institution, which has always ridden a tightrope between advocacy of science and advocacy of its history, balancing differently at different points in its history. He was also president of the BSHS from 1951 to 1953. So what happened when a historian got his hands on the nation's pre-eminent public (...) museum of science? To what extent did his historian's training and instincts affect his policies whilst director, and with what effect in the longer term? Taking this exceptional case, I suggest, enables us to consider how museum accounts of the past of science relate to historiographies of science otherwise available in the culture. In this discussion, drawing on new archival research, I consider the role of history within a key policy paper he wrote in 1951. I analyse and contextualize its main themes before considering, by way of conclusion, his legacy. (shrink)

The Enarrationes in Psalmos is the collection of Augustine’s commentaries and sermons on the Psalms. Although Augustine is often at his philosophical best here, bearing various resemblances to the Platonists and other philosophers, he also articulates a distinctively Christian view on what we should desire, on how desire has gone wrong, and on how it is healed. The renewal of desire takes place as a result of and through the unity of Christ and the church, which is the guiding theme (...) of the Enarrationes. Augustine’s Preaching and the Healing of Desire in the Enarrationes in Psalmos traces this theology of desire as it connects to Augustine’s Christology, his ecclesiology, his account of happiness and well-being, and his eschatology. The book closes with some suggestions on what the church can learn today from the Enarrationes in the areas of psychology and wellbeing, biblical exegesis, and homiletics. (shrink)

Plantinga’s God and Other Minds, Reformed Epistemology articles, and Warrant Trilogy are all part of the same epistemological project. Although the project develops in phases focusing progressively on anti-theism, evidentialism, and internalism, the epistemology is consistently a Reidian particularism. It follows Roderick Chisholm’s famous particularist strategy for finding an epistemic criterion, uses principles of common sense from Thomas Reid as clear cases of beliefs satisfying that criterion, and applies that criterion to belief in God in order to show that this (...) belief is epistemically respectable. Understanding this will help to clarify Plantinga’s philosophical contributions to our understanding of religious belief. In my article I introduce Plantinga’s epistemological sources, explain the structure of his project, overview its development in these three phases, and correct some misunderstandings of Plantinga that arise from inattention to his Reidian particularism. I also show how Reidian particularism itself suggests an improvement to Plantinga’s epistemology which his critics often recommend: that we recognize that evidence for the existence of God, even if it is not necessary for theistic belief to be warranted, may yet be valuable. (shrink)

In March 2003, President Bush declared the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the anticipated commencement of intensive American-led military operations in Iraq. With this declaration, the media began intense coverage of military operations from the field. For the first time, viewers were able to see images of actual events. This was due to three developments: the advancement of technology allowing immediate transmission of text and images, the actual presence of journalists identified as "embedded journalists" at military sites, and the fierce (...) competition among networks for viewers. One result of this constant coverage was significant pressure on decision makers within the television and cable news networks to decide within a matter of seconds which images to air. In particular, producers and broadcasters of competing networks experienced this pressure. Though the radio and broadcasting industry has a published code of standards, it is "general and advisory rather than specific and restrictive." Therefore, it did not address the unique time sensitive decision-making required within this new environment. Issues such as the security of soldiers, confidentiality of troop maneuvers, and the safety of the embedded journalists were critically important. Equally serious were the concerns about the impact of the immediate airing of information and violent images to the public. This research used Patrick Primeaux's ' mind-heart-sou¾ model of decision-making as its theoretical framework. The study investigated the gender and industry experience of selected professionals in a cable news network, MSNBC, to explore how ethical codes of behavior are integrated when people make decisions. Decision-making in both their professional and personal lives was examined. It is from this perspective that their professional decisions to air/not to air material from Operation Iraqi Freedom were studied. The findings on decisions about airing/not airing material from Operation Iraqi Freedom yielded both expected and unexpected results. There was no clear gender difference regarding ethical decision-making, but there was a difference when analyzed by industry experience. When the study focused on questions regarding the respondents' personal lives, the original hypothesis that there was a gender difference was validated. (shrink)

Development scholars and practitioners are promoting food security, food sovereignty, and the localization of food systems to prepare for the projected negative impacts of climate change. The implementation of biodiverse homegardens is often seen as a way not only to localize food production but also as a strategy in alignment with a food sovereignty agenda. While much scholarship has characterized and critiqued food security and sovereignty conceptualizations, relatively little research has examined people’s lived experiences in order to test how such (...) theoretical visions play out on the ground in farming communities. Based on a case study of four coffee cooperatives in northern Nicaragua, we examine a non-governmental organization (NGO)-supported project promoting food security and sovereignty through development of homegardens. We ask: To what extent are homegardens an effective strategy to reach food sovereignty? And, why may farmers be resistant to changing their food production and consumption strategies to embrace biodiverse homegardens when they improve food security? We discuss characteristics of agroecological homegardens, the distinctions between food security, food sovereignty and dominant discourses of development, the history of food sovereignty in Nicaragua, and farmer perspectives on homegarden implementation. Despite historic critiques, NGOs are poised to facilitate the transformation of food and agricultural development by employing counter development strategies, a necessary step if homegardens are to be successful in the long term. To conclude, we propose some strategies NGOs and communities might pursue to move forward with homegardens as a food sovereignty strategy. This research suggests that a food sovereignty approach still rooted in mainstream development models faces significant obstacles to moving beyond food security and into a farmer-led food sovereignty agenda. (shrink)

The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis's masterpiece in ethics and the philosophy of science,warns of the danger of combining modern moral skepticism with the technological pursuit of human desires. The end result is the final destruction of human nature. From Brave New World to Star Trek, from Steampunk to starships, science fiction film has considered from nearly every conceivable angle the same nexus of morality, technology, and humanity of which C. S. Lewis wrote. As a result,science fiction film has (...) unintentionally given us stunning depictions of Lewis's terrifying vision of the future. In Science Fiction and the Abolition of Man: Finding C. S. Lewis in Sci-Fi Film and Television, scholars of religion, philosophy, literature, and film explore the connections between sci-fi film and the three parts of Lewis's book:how sci-fi portrays "Men Without Chests" incapable of responding properly to moral good, how it teaches the Tao or "The Way," and how it portrays "The Abolition of Man.". (shrink)

This article blends cultural history and theoretical psychology in a discussion of new treatment methods for psychiatric casualties that emerged early in World War II. It draws on philosophical hermeneutics and Hacking's historical ontology to clarify how our interpretation of this history inevitably reflects current struggles making sense of PTSD while efforts to understand this history can enrich present-day reflections about war neurosis and the social good. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Background Supporting physicians in Intensive Care Units s as they face dying patients at unprecedented levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic is critical. Amidst a dearth of such data and guided by evidence that nurses in ICUs experience personal, professional and existential issues in similar conditions, a systematic scoping review is proposed to evaluate prevailing accounts of physicians facing dying patients in ICUs through the lens of Personhood. Such data would enhance understanding and guide the provision of better support for (...) ICU physicians. Methods An SSR adopts the Systematic Evidenced Based Approach to map prevailing accounts of caring for dying patients in ICUs. To enhance the transparency and reproducibility of this process, concurrent and independent use of tabulated summaries, thematic analysis and directed content analysis is adopted. Results Eight thousand three hundred fifty-eight abstracts were reviewed from four databases, 474 full-text articles were evaluated, 58 articles were included, and the Split Approach revealed six categories/themes centered around the Innate, Individual, Relational and Societal Rings of Personhood, conflicts in providing end of life care and coping mechanisms employed. Conclusion This SSR suggests that caring for dying patients in ICU impacts how physicians view their personhood. To resolve conflicts within individual concepts of personhood, physicians use prioritization, reframing and rely on accessible, personalized support from colleagues to steer coping strategies. An adapted form of the Ring Theory of Personhood is proposed to direct timely personalized, appropriate and holistic support. (shrink)

As we look beyond our terrestrial boundary to a multi-planetary future for humankind, it becomes paramount to anticipate the challenges of various human factors on the most likely scenario for this future: permanent human settlement of Mars. Even if technical hurdles are circumvented to provide adequate resources for basic physiological and psychological needs, Homo sapiens will not survive on an alien planet if a dysfunctional psyche prohibits the utilization of these resources. No matter how far we soar into the stars, (...) our psychologies for future generations will be forever tethered to the totality of our surroundings. By shaping our environment toward survival and welfare during the voyage to Mars and in a Martian colony, we indirectly shape our psyches and prepare them for a mission of unprecedented alienation and duration. Once on Mars, human factors such as leadership structure, social organization and code of conduct, group size, gender balance, developmental cycle, mobility, length of stay and the ecological settings and type and manner of subsistence, will create a novel Martian culture. The degree that settlers are severed from the Earth will affect how radically foreign this culture will be when compared with cultures on Earth. (shrink)

ICD-10 and DSM-5 do not provide clear diagnosing guidelines for DID, making it difficult to distinguish ‘genuine’ DID from imitated or false-positive cases. This study explores meaning which patients with false-positive or imitated DID attributed to their diagnosis. 85 people who reported elevated levels of dissociative symptoms in SDQ-20 participated in clinical assessment using the Trauma and Dissociation Symptoms Interview, followed by a psychiatric interview. The recordings of six women, whose earlier DID diagnosis was disconfirmed, were transcribed and subjected to (...) interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five main themes were identified: endorsement and identification with the diagnosis. The notion of dissociative parts justifies identity confusion and conflicting ego-states. Gaining knowledge about DID affects the clinical presentation. Fragmented personality becomes an important discussion topic with others. Ruling out DID leads to disappointment or anger. To avoid misdiagnoses, clinicians should receive more systematic training in the assessment of dissociative disorders, enabling them to better understand subtle differences in the quality of symptoms and how dissociative and non-dissociative patients report them. This would lead to a better understanding of how patients with and without a dissociative disorder report core dissociative symptoms. Some guidelines for a differential diagnosis are provided. (shrink)

Popular posthumanist theories are revealing a lot about their origin from enlightenment humanism. In this paper I will firstly have a closer look on the history of the enlightenment-humanistic concept of human nature and its roots in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Afterwards I will show how this notion of human nature will be broadened in transhumanist thinking, turned upside down as a modern enlightenment humanism, or even deformed and perverted in the popular posthumanist vision of the immortal and from (...) its body completely abstracted mind in the Singularity of a computer interface. (shrink)

We claim that adjustable parameters play a crucial role in building and applying simulation models. We analyze that role and illustrate our findings using examples from equations of state in thermodynamics. In building simulation models, two types of experiments, namely, simulation and classical experiments, interact in a feedback loop, in which model parameters are adjusted. A critical discussion of how adjustable parameters function shows that they are boon and bane of simulation. They help to enlarge the scope of simulation (...) far beyond what can be determined by theoretical knowledge, but at the same time undercut the epistemic value of simulation models. (shrink)