This special issue focuses on the theoretical, empirical and practical integrations between embodied cognition theory and educational science. The key question is: Can EC constitute a new theoretical framework for educational science and practice? The papers of the special issue support the efforts of those interested in the role of EC in education and in the epistemological convergence of EC and educational science. They deal with a variety of relevant topics in education and offer a focus on the role of (...) the body and embodied experience in learning and educational settings. In conclusion, some further topics are suggested that will need to be investigated in the future, such as a critical evaluation of the possibility for an epistemological alliance between educational theory and embodied cognition, and the contribution that enactive cognition can provide to educational systems, organizations, institutions and policies. (shrink)

Awareness discusses body rhythms, sleep and dreaming, jet lag and hypnosis.

Little is known about the psychological processes that can explain how connectedness to nature evolves. From social psychology, we know that emotions play an essential role when connecting to others. In this article, we argue that social connectedness and connectedness to nature are underpinned by the same emotions. More specifically, we propose that social relational emotions are crucial to understanding the process, how humans connect to nature. Beside other emotions, kama muta (Sanskrit: being moved by love) might play a particular (...) crucial role when connecting to nature. Future research should address the consideration of social relational emotions in a range of areas when investigating the human-nature relationship. (shrink)

The potential benefits of an alternative to physical gestation are numerous. These include providing reproductive options for prospective parents who are unable to establish or maintain a physiological pregnancy, and saving the lives of some infants born prematurely. Ectogenesis could also promote sexual equality in reproduction, and represents a necessary option for women experiencing an unwanted pregnancy who are morally opposed to abortion. Despite these broad, and in some cases unique benefits, one major ethical concern is the potential impact of (...) this emerging technology on abortion rights. This article will argue that ectogenesis poses a challenge to many common arguments in favour of a pregnant woman’s right to choose, but only insomuch as it highlights that their underlying justifications for abortion are based on flawed conceptions of what the foetus and pregnancy actually are. By interrogating the various interests and relationships involved in a pregnancy, this article will demonstrate that the emergence of artificial gestation need not impact existing abortion rights or legislation, nor definitions of independent viability or moral status. (shrink)

This paper aims to address how artificial gestation might affect equality of opportunity for the unborn and any resultant generation of “ectogenetic” babies. It will first explore the current legal obstacles preventing the development of ectogenesis, before looking at the benefits of allowing this technology to control fetal growth and development. This will open up a discussion of the treatment/enhancement divide regarding the use of reproductive technologies, a topic featured in various bioethical debates on the subject. Using current maternity practices (...) in Western society as a comparator, this paper will conclude that neither naturally nor artificially gestated fetuses have interests that can conflict with those of potential parents who might want to use this technology to control fetal development. Such control may include selective implantation of embryos of a desired gender, deliberate choice of genetic traits, or maintenance of an ideal incubation environment to avoid fetal damage. Objections on the basis of disability as well as concerns regarding eugenics will be addressed. The paper will conclude that none of these objections are compelling grounds to prevent the development and use of ectogenesis technologies for the purpose of achieving specific reproductive goals, particularly when compared to current practices in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and selective abortion on the grounds of undesired traits. As such, when deciding whether to support ectogenesis research, the enduring interests of parents must be the primary consideration, with societal concerns regarding potential misuse the only valid secondary consideration. (shrink)

Written in the wake of a critical incident which the author considers worrying and yet characteristic of the times we live in, this article contends that the conflation heretofore evident between critical historical thinking (revisionism) and negationism is ultimately harmful to the historical discipline since it can serve the interests of the deniers and indirectly grant an argument to radical postmodernists who demote history to a loosely constructed form of personal fiction. On the other hand, it also eschews the belief (...) in historical scholarship as an immiscible category demarcated by impenetrable boundaries, which is habitually associated with empirical positivism. Furthermore, it argues strongly for the introduction of a diachronic perspective in the study of revisionism not only to show the steady process of professionalization of the discipline but to disclose an often neglected or denied aspect: its contribution to the evolution of philosophical thought. (shrink)

Conditionalization is a widely endorsed rule for updating one’s beliefs. But a sea of complaints have been raised about it, including worries regarding how the rule handles error correction, changing desiderata of theory choice, evidence loss, self-locating beliefs, learning about new theories, and confirmation. In light of such worries, a number of authors have suggested replacing Conditionalization with a different rule — one that appeals to what I’ll call “ur-priors”. But different authors have understood the rule in different ways, and (...) these different understandings solve different problems. In this paper, I aim to map out the terrain regarding these issues. I survey the different problems that might motivate the adoption of such a rule, flesh out the different understandings of the rule that have been proposed, and assess their pros and cons. I conclude by suggesting that one particular batch of proposals, proposals that appeal to what I’ll call “loaded evidential standards”, are especially promising. (shrink)

The influence of conscience on nurses in terms of guilt has frequently been described but its impact on care has received less attention. The aim of this study was to describe nurses' conceptions of the influence of conscience on the provision of inpatient care. The study employed a phenomenographic approach and analysis method. Fifteen nurses from three hospitals in western Sweden were interviewed. The results showed that these nurses considered conscience to be an important factor in the exercise of their (...) profession, as revealed by the descriptive categories: conscience as a driving force; conscience as a restricting factor; and conscience as a source of sensitivity. They perceived that conscience played a role in nursing actions involving patients and next of kin, and was an asset that guided them in their efforts to provide high quality care. (shrink)

In ‘Assisted Gestative Technologies,’ Romanis argues for the conceptual creation of a new genus of assisted reproductive technologies, in recognition of the unique ethical, legal and social implications assistive gestative technologies raise.1 She argues this taxonomic classification might allow for ethicolegal determinations regarding one AGT to be generalised to other instances of this technology. Romanis correctly identifies a lack of appropriate regulations for dealing with the rapidly developing field of assisted and artificial gestation, noting the current discussion of surrogacy law (...) reform in the UK offers an opportunity to redress this. However, when reading this article what strikes me most is not how AGTs, ARTs or assisted conception are defined, but rather what constitutes a technology. Surrogacy is introduced as assisted gestation, but uterine transplantation as being on the spectrum of AGTs. While both might use assisted conception, for example, in vitro fertilisation, it is unclear what part of uterus donation or transplantation is to be considered technological? This is not to say such processes do not involve technologies—of course they do—but we do not typically describe surgery itself as an instance of technology. This distinction is relevant if the purpose of establishing this genus of AGTs is to group morally relevant characteristics of technologies together or create paradigm cases for casuistical reasoning. Considering the above …. (shrink)

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 119-138, April 2022. This article examines the development, impact and integration of interdisciplinary approaches in British Higher Education Institutions. It evaluates how the concept of interdisciplinarity has become popularised over time and embraced by disciplines such as archaeology. It then explores the extent to which interdisciplinary approaches have impacted research agendas, first, by evaluating the interdisciplinary research calls from 2019 for seven UK-based research councils and then, at a discipline (...) level, using archaeology as an exemplar. Overall, interdisciplinary research calls only accounted for, at best, 11.9% of a council’s budget. Interrogation of the funding requirements of four of the largest archaeological-research funders demonstrated that successful archaeology-themed grant applications are reliant on interdisciplinarity. The influence of interdisciplinarity on British University’s research and education agendas was examined through analysing the strategic plans of eight universities, followed by an analysis of the availability and potential benefits of interdisciplinary undergraduate and research programmes. This indicated that interdisciplinary approaches are interwoven into university’s research aspirations but displayed variation in relation to their educational goals, with only 20% of institutions offering specific interdisciplinary degree programmes. Despite this, the skillset and research outputs produced as a result of interdisciplinary collaboration were found to be highly valued, thereby suggesting that interdisciplinarity will increasingly feature in the research and education strategies of British universities. (shrink)

The development of social media technology makes it easy for people to access information about religious knowledge. Anyone can learn the religion from social media, one of them is Youtube. This phenomenon seems to force young Nahdlatul Ulama _kiai _such as Gus Baha, Gus Miftah, and Gus Muwafiq to be adaptive and familiar to social media like Youtube. It makes them close to being called millennial _kiai_. This paper used a phenomenological approach based on observations on Youtube that examines the (...) educational interaction of millennial kiai in carrying out the process of Islamic proselytization and creating a role model of social education that they do. The educational interaction carried out by millennial _kiai_ on Youtube is very effective in attracting the interest of citizens. The number of their viewers is between four to eight million in one year. The number of videos viewed is around one hundred editions. Whereas the role model of millennial social education of _kiai_ is analyzed through Bandura theory which starts through a process of stimulus, observation, then processed in mental cognitive, then creates motivation so that demands a response by giving likes and subscribing comments. The response is the beginning of constant behavior change. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to propose the structural outline and conceptual framework of a Ricœurian translation theory. Following a discussion on the ambiguities around situating Ricœur in translation theory, three major interlinked components of the theory are explored. First, the metaphysics of meaning and translation is established based on Ricœur’s hermeneutics of infinitude. Then, the language-processing component is constructed through an incorporation of Ricœur’s narrative theory. Finally, the ethics and politics of translation, particularly in globalization, are founded based (...) on Ricœur’s “age of hermeneutics theory.”. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the current crisis of higher education and to propose a new model to counter the threat this crisis poses to the arts and humanities. The crisis of the university is presented through a comparison with two earlier crises: the first occurring in the seventeenth century and the second in the early nineteenth century. I argue that as an institution and a culture the mission of the university is to uphold the value of (...) autonomy, a term I borrow from Cornelius Castoriadis, and to actively cultivate the autonomy of its students and teachers. (shrink)

This paper argues that uterine transplants are a potentially dangerous distraction from the development of alternative methods of providing reproductive options for women with absolute uterine factor infertility. We consider two alternatives in particular: the bioengineering of wombs using stem cells and ectogenesis. Whether biologically or mechanically engineered, these womb replacements could provide a way for women to have children, including genetically related offspring for those who would value this possibility. Most importantly, this alternative would avoid the challenge of sourcing (...) wombs for transplant, a practice that we argue would likely be exploitative and unethical. Continued research into bioengineering and ectogenesis will therefore remain morally important despite the recent development of uterine transplantation, even if the procedure reaches routine clinical application. (shrink)

This article offers a critical presentation of Jan Patočka's philosophy by focusing mainly on his lecture series published as Body, Community, Language, World, where he outlined his phenomenological project of re-instating the body in philosophy. Taking the body and its invariable situatedness as a starting point and identifying useful precursors in European philosophy, Patočka delineates three movements of human life: an affective movement consisting of creating roots, identified as primarily aesthetic and interested in the past; an ascetic movement consisting of (...) work and self-expansion, identified with the world of production and related to the present; and, a transcendent, philosophical movement peculiar to the realization of human existence and linked to the future. I examine certain ellipses and complications in Patočka's description of these movements, and suggest elaborations that are consistent with his overall project. Finally, turning to Patočka's Plato and Europe, I argue that the third movement is accomplished via both philosophical reflection and artistic practice. (shrink)

This article puts forward a critical investigation and comparative assessment of Julia Kristeva's political writing on Europe and cosmopolitanism. Kristeva's reflections on the status of the stranger in the European religious and secular traditions, and her persistent argument on the need to constructively reformulate what is most conducive to a present and future cosmopolitanism from within those traditions and discourses, have already been recognized. What this article addresses is the need for a constructive critical dialogue with the themes and arguments (...) of Kristeva's writing on these issues in the context of recent writing on cosmopolitanism. The article is concerned with ethical cosmopolitanism, as Kristeva's thought mostly bears on the subjective, interpersonal and communal dimensions of cosmopolitanism. Two main problems are identified that crucially undermine Kristeva's thinking on Europe. First, Kristeva's views on the present and future of Europe repeatedly confine the idea of Europe to the representation of a very particular history of French modernity that is only tempered by occasional, comparative yet complementary, references to the USA. The second problem concerns the use of psychoanalytic theories of questionable validity to support cultural analyses and theoretical propositions of dubious value for a cosmopolitan ethos or politics. (shrink)

In this anti-colonial treatise, Ricœur reflects on the responsibility of every French citizen and of the French state with respect to colonialism. He establishes five principles that should guide his readers in their reflection on this issue and expresses his support for the independence of the colonies.

Starting from Brentano’s classical characterization of intentionality, we review the radical enactivist proposal about basic cognition and show that the underlying assumption that stripping teleosemantics of its representationalist commitments results in no explanatory loss is unwarranted. Significant features of basic cognition are lost, or so we argue, with the RECtification of teleosemantics that are retrieved by means of an alternative dubbed metaphysically non-committal content-ascriptivism.

The term ur-emotion is proposed to replace basic emotion as a name for the aspects of emotion that underlie perceived similarities of emotion types across cultures and species. The ur- prefix is borrowed from the German on analogy to similar borrowings in textual criticism and musicology. The proposed term ur-emotion is less likely to be interpreted as referring to the entirety of an emotional state than is the term basic emotion. Ur-emotion avoids reductionism by indicating an abstract underlying structure that (...) accounts for similarities between emotions without implying that the differences are unimportant. This article is dedicated to the memory of Bob Solomon, and is framed in terms of his decades-long analysis and critique of the concept of basic emotions. (shrink)

Comparison of human and animal emotions reveals a fuzzy yet discernible boundary. Their undeniable similarities are more aptly described as ur-emotions than as basic emotions. This article describes how the concept of ur-emotion can be useful to animal researchers as well as to social constructionists by making sense of emotional variation both across species and across cultures.

The first part of this paper reveals a conflict between the core principles of deterministic causation and the standard method of difference, which is widely seen as a correct method of causally analyzing deterministic structures. We show that applying the method of difference to deterministic structures can give rise to causal inferences that contradict the principles of deterministic causation. The second part then locates the source of this conflict in an inference rule implemented in the method of difference according to (...) which factors that can make a difference to investigated effects relative to one particular test setup are to be identified as causes, provided the causal background of the corresponding setup is homogeneous. The paper ends by modifying the method of difference in a way that renders it compatible with the principles of deterministic causation. (shrink)

Ricoeur’s Philosophy of the Will is reexamined here both as a source of motivation for his project of dialoguing with the analytic theory of action and as an explanation for the lack of response on the part of his Anglo-American interlocutors. Keywords: Actions, Language, Body, Idealism. Résumé La Philosophie de la volonté de Ricœur est revisitée ici comme source de motivation de son entreprise de dialogue avec la théorie analytique de l’action et comme explication du défaut de réponse de ses (...) interlocuteurs anglo-américains. Mots-clés: Actions, Langage, Corps, Idéalisme. (shrink)

Although Paul Ricœur never wrote a book on acting and suffering, the essay focuses on Ricœur’s engagement with this topic. It was one of Ricœur’s abiding interests that consistently appeared over the years in a number of his works. Given his compassionate affirmation of life in this world, he was vitally concerned about human beings’ inhumanity, in the form of inflicting unmerited suffering on their fellow beings. His distress on this issue was clearly evident. This essay is an overview of (...) Ricœur’s endeavors to try and alleviate such injustice by a commitment to an ethically grounded approach that aimed at “the good life with and for others, in just institutions.”. (shrink)

Ce texte s’inscrit dans le prolongement d’un effort endurci pour penser les modalités complexes du dialogue entre la psychanalyse lacanienne et la phénoménologie française dans la seconde moitié du xx e siècle. Plus exactement, il s’agit ici d’indiquer les raisons objectives, à la fois théoriques et pratiques, qui expliquent la violence de la réception française du De l’interprétation de Paul Ricœur, en mettant en perspective les positions respectives du philosophe et celles du psychanalyste Jacques Lacan lors du colloque de Bonneval (...) sur l’Inconscient d’octobre 1960. L’analyse détaillée du texte “Le conscient et l’inconscient” – élément du corpus ricœurien trop souvent négligé – au regard de l’enseignement lacanien du tournant des années 1960 doit en outre permettre de dégager deux théories de l’interprétation antagonistes, afin d’indiquer pour finir les points concrets de divergence entre les orientations “ricœurienne” et “lacanienne” de la clinique psychanalytique. (shrink)