In this article, I turn my attention to the figure of the ignorant master, Joseph Jacotot, that is depicted in The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (1991). I will show that the voice of Jacotot can actually be read as a reaction against the progressive figure of the teacher which, following Rancière's view, can be seen as effecting a stultification. In some respects, however, Rancière's analysis of the pedagogical order no longer seems to be valid in today's partly (...) reconfigured, pedagogical order that depicts the teacher in terms of facilitation. Yet, the figure of the facilitator can be seen as effecting a stultification as well. Therefore, I will stress that Jacotot's voice is highly relevant today. The most important difference between the figure of the (old and current) figure of the stultifyer and that of the ignorant master is identified in their starting point. The stultifying master starts from the assumption of inequality. S/he transforms taught material (words, text, images, etc.) into objects of knowledge or resources for competence development that open the door to another world. The ignorant master (Jacotot) assumes equal intelligence and draws attention to a thing in common. According to Rancière, the ignorant master keeps the door closed and puts his/her students in the presence of a thing in common. (shrink)

This article provides a review of scholarly approaches to assessing the impact of certification standards for sustainability. While we observe that some theoretical advances have afforded a better understanding of the potential impacts of adopting such standards, we also find that progress has been constrained due to a strong emphasis on assessing impact via linear causal pathways. This linear focus on the net effects for single stakeholders, such as farmers and producers, local communities and ecosystems, falls short of adequately capturing (...) the broader impact of certifications across social and ecological dimensions. Inspired by theories on complex systems thinking, we present a framework based on a systems-based impact logic that better captures and assesses the impacts of certification standards within broader social-ecological systems. Our framework can be used as a heuristic to design impact-related studies and assess the impact of certification standards across disciplinary vantage points and empirical contexts. (shrink)

Transparency has achieved a mythical status in society. Myths are not false accounts or understandings, but deep-seated and definitive descriptions of the world that ontologically ground the ways in which we frame and see the world around us. We explore the mythical nature of transparency from this perspective, explain its social-historical underpinnings and discuss its influence on contemporary organizations. In doing so, we also theorize in a more general sense about the relationship between myth, as a foundational understanding and description (...) of the world, and the constellation of metaphors, as specific ways of framing and seeing organizational reality, to which it gives rise. While observations and evidence can always be adduced to challenge a particular set of metaphors, the endogenous force of the myth may sustain the overall project. This process is explained with a detailed analysis of the transparency myth. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDrawing upon archival material, this article offers an overview and discussion of the manner in which the topic of representative democracy was addressed during conferences of the Mont Pèlerin Society in the period between 1947 and 1998. I contend that the most common critique of democracy amongst MPS members was that democratic politics has the tendency to lead to interventions in the economy, thus distorting or even destroying the market mechanism. Yet most members were simultaneously convinced that democracy is a (...) necessary condition of individual liberty, which meant that democracy, rather than being either a mere nuisance or an irredeemable obstacle that must be rejected wholesale, posed a genuine problem for them. Whilst at MPS conferences a myriad of solutions to the problem of democracy was explored, one such solution was suggested most often and theorized most thoroughly, namely the imposition of constitutional limits on popular power; a proposal that often amounted to an attempt radically to circumscribe citizens’ influence on the legislature. I conclude by reflecting upon the implications of these findings for the scholarly study of neoliberal thought on democracy. (shrink)

Religious beliefs are often singled out for special treatment in secular liberal societies. Yet if a legal exemption is granted for a belief with a religious foundation, the question arises whether a similar, non‐religious moral belief must also be granted an exemption. I argue that common reasons for favoring religious over non‐religious beliefs fail to provide a convincing moral case for drawing a distinction of this nature. I focus on arguments concerning the role of religious beliefs in constituting an individual's (...) identity and the transcendental nature of religion, which lead me to consider in the final section the role of choice in religious belief. (shrink)

This article proposes a rethinking of Bourdieu’s habitus as context-specific, multiple, and decentralized based on nine months of participant-observation fieldwork with dumpster divers in New York City. Dumpster divers are mostly white, college-educated people in their twenties and thirties who eat food from retail trash as a lifestyle choice. Sociologists have recently theorized culture as a fragmented, incoherent “toolkit” of cultured capacities acquired throughout the lifetime. Bourdieu on the contrary, theorized socialized culture as habitus, a relatively durable, classed structure acquired (...) during childhood. While he recognized the possibility of acquiring “specific” habitus (Bourdieu 2000) later in life, he never developed the theoretical implications of socialization across multiple contexts. Building on ethnographic evidence of dumpster divers’ contradictory pursuit of food taste through the distasteful behavior of eating from the trash, I develop an alternative model of habitus as interlinked bundles of dispositions acquired in specific contexts. To theorize the bundled quality of habitus, I introduce what I call the practical congruity of dispositions. I show how rather than being disparate elements of a cultural repertoire, ways of seeing, common sense, dexterity, and orientations “make sense” in conjunction as actors mobilize them in specific contexts: dumpster diving acquires a commonsensical character based on the practical sense practitioners acquire. My understanding of habitus goes beyond the fragmentation assumed in notions of culture as a repertoire of cultured capacities, on the one hand, and the continuity and coherence premised in notions of primary and secondary habitus, on the other hand. (shrink)

Understanding natural phenomena is an important aim of science. Since the turn of the millennium the notion of scientific understanding has been a hot topic of debate in the philosophy of science. A bone of contention in this debate is the role of truth and representational accuracy in scientific understanding. So-called factivists and non-factivists disagree about the extent to which the theories and models that are used to achieve understanding must be true or accurate. In this paper we address this (...) issue by examining a case from the practice of synthetic chemistry. We investigate how understanding is obtained in this field by means of an in-depth analysis of the famous synthesis of periplanone B by W. Clark Still. It turns out that highly idealized models—that are representationally inaccurate and sometimes even inconsistent—and qualitative concepts are essential for understanding the synthetic pathway and accordingly for achieving the synthesis. We compare the results of our case study to various factivist and non-factivist accounts of how idealizations may contribute to scientific understanding and conclude that non-factivism offers a more plausible interpretation of the practice of synthetic chemistry. Moreover, our case study supports a central thesis of the non-factivist theory of scientific understanding developed by De Regt, namely that scientific understanding requires intelligibility rather than representational accuracy, and that idealization is one way to enhance intelligibility. (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at a conference.

We describe and analyse how large herbivores strongly diminished a woody vegetation, dominated by the unpalatable shrub Sambucus nigra L. and changed it into grassland. Density of woody species and cover of vegetation were measured in 1996, 2002 and 2012 in the grazed Oostvaardersplassen. In 2002 and 2012 we also measured density and cover in an ungrazed control site. In 2002 we measured intensity of browsing and bark loss of Sambucus shrubs in the grazed and control sites. In the grazed (...) site the density of Sambucus and Salix spp. declined significantly between 1996 and 2012, and large areas changed into grassland. In the control site the density of Sambucus increased significantly during this period, the density of Salix spp. did not change, and the vegetation consisted of a mixture of woody species and a field layer dominated by tall herbs. In 2002 and 2012 the percentages of dead Sambucus shrubs were significantly higher in the grazed site than in the control site. In 2002 the percentages of twigs browsed and ring barked stems of Sambucus shrubs were significantly higher in the grazed site than in the control site. Our results show that debarking caused mature Sambucus shrubs to die, but that heavy browsing may have helped this process. Our results also point to a significant neighbour effect on the break down of Sambucus, suggesting that Aggregational Resistance and Associational Palatability were both active. Essential conditions for the break down of this woody vegetation were the presence of large herbivores, the low ratio between the areas of summer and winter feeding habitats and the competition amongst herbivores. Browsing may have been responsible for seedling death, as seedlings were found only in the control site and not on the old and newly established grasslands in the grazed site. (shrink)

This article engages with the limits of Ernesto Laclau's theory of populism, focusing on the logic of popular identification. The central argument is that the Laclauian framework is incapable of accounting for recent forms of populism that articulate a decolonial mode of identification. More specifically, the article shows that for Laclau, leadership and exclusion are necessary components of popular identification, in which the identity of ‘the people' depends on the prior symbolic articulation of both an enemy and a leader. Although (...) this theory of populism is well-positioned to explain how populist leadership functioned in several mid-century Latin American varieties of populism, it founders when faced with more recent forms of populist identification. Careful analysis of contemporary Ecuadorian and Bolivian populisms shows that these implicitly reject the Laclauian model of identification, articulating instead a decolonial model that advocates the plurality of identities and mobilises rich national histories of anti-colonial resistance. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Jacotot's Experiment The Stultifying Master The Ignorant/Emancipating Master The Public Role of the Teacher Conclusion Notes References.

As offshoots of and reactions to neoliberalism continue to dominate our political imaginary, the scholarly critique of neoliberal thought remains urgent and timely. This article engages with two re...

‘Non-Fascist Living’: Identity, Subjectivity, Resistance This article explores a recent form of academic and artistic resistance to contemporary modalities of fascism. This form of resistance is premised upon the argument that fascism lodges itself in the deepest recesses of the self, manifesting as fascist desires and beliefs. As such, traces of fascism are present in everyone, including people who do not otherwise hold fascistic ideas. This position goes on to argue that any critic of fascism must accordingly identify and eradicate (...) such traces inside her own subjectivity, by means of an ethics of ‘non-fascist living’. Critically examining the philosophical presuppositions of this position, the article asks what implicit conception of the subject and its relation to resistance is at work here. It brings this position into conversation with Michel Foucault, upon whose work it draws but whose understanding of resistance, it is argued, it reconceptualises. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this form of resistance for critical philosophical practice. (shrink)

The colors we perceive are the outcome of an attempt to meaningfully order the spectral information from the environment. These colors are not the result of a straightforward mapping of a physical property to a sensation, but arise from an interaction between our environment and our visual system. Thus, although one may infer from a surface’ reflectance characteristics that it will be perceived as “colored,” true colors only arise by virtue of the interaction of the reflected light with the eye (...) (and brain) of an observer. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the empirical phenomenon of large multinational corporations acquiring socially oriented enterprises, such as the Unilever–Ben & Jerry’s, and the L`Oréal-The Body Shop takeovers. When focusing on these cases, we argue that variance in organisational identity orientations, as the dominant logic of managers within the acquiring organisations, determines whether MNCs consider the transaction not only in financial terms, but also decide to adopt “social technology” in the form of CSR-related organisational practices from the acquired unit. We (...) argue that in turn based on a “match” with the organisational identity of the acquired unit, managers will opt to adopt CSR practices more fully or selectively, and in more substantial or symbolic ways. With these propositional arguments we not only aim to contribute to the literature on CSR adoption by MNCs, but we also set out to develop theory on the widespread but so far undocumented phenomenon of MNCs “buying CSR” by acquiring socially oriented enterprises. (shrink)

We used attractiveness judgements as a proxy to visualize the ideal female and male body for male and female participants and investigated how individual differences in the internalization of cultural ideals influence these representations. In the first of two studies, male and female participants judged the attractiveness of 242 male and female computer-generated bodies which varied independently in muscle and adipose. This allowed us to map changes in attractiveness across the complete body composition space, revealing single peaks for the attractiveness (...) of both men and women. In the second study, we asked our participants to choose the most attractive male and female bodies in a method of adjustment task in which they could independently vary muscle and adipose to create the most attractive body. We asked whether individual differences in internalization of cultural ideals, drive for muscularity, eating disorder symptomatology and depressive symptoms could systematically shift the location of peak attractiveness in body composition space. We found a clear preference by both genders for a male body with high muscle and low adipose, and a toned, low adipose female body. The degree of internalization of cultural ideals predicted large individual differences in the composition of the most attractive bodies. (shrink)

Self-surveillance and self-experimentation are of concern to everyone interested in finding out the factors that increase one's risk of stroke from.

Colour constancy refers to the ability to extract information about surface colours independently of illumination conditions. A ripe strawberry, for example, appears the same red when viewed under a blue sky or a reddish sunset. Since Land's pioneering work, discussion has centred on the issue whether colour constancy is achieved primarily in the retina or visual cortex. Recently, the debate has shifted to a consideration of the constraints imposed by various psychophysical tasks and instructions. Humans can judge illuminant colour, reflected-light (...) colour, surface colour, and the relationship between surface colours within a scene. Such observations suggest that colour constancy may not be a unitary phenomenon, and that its different aspects may be mediated at different levels in the visual system. Several questions therefore arise: are the tasks of surface estimation and illuminant estimation complementary, insofar as good performance in one implies poor performance in the other? How does retinal adaptation alter performance? Is colour vision tuned to the statistical composition of natural surfaces and illuminants? What role does colour-opponent processing in retina and cortex play in colour constancy? These and related questions are explored here in order to better understand what we mean when we ask: "Why do strawberries look red?". (shrink)

One of the core problems with engineering ethics education is perceptual. Although ethics is meant to be a central component of today’s engineering curriculum, it is often perceived as a marginal requirement that must be fulfilled. In addition, there is a mismatch between faculty and student perceptions of ethics. While faculty aim to communicate the nuances and complexity of engineering ethics, students perceive ethics as laws, rules, and codes that must be memorized. This paper provides some historical context to better (...) understand these perceptual differences, and suggests that curriculum constraints are important contributing factors. Drawing on the growing scholarship of student engagement approaches to pedagogy, the paper explores how students can be empowered to effect change in the broader engineering curriculum through engineering ethics. The paper describes a student engagement approach to pedagogy that includes students as active participants in curriculum design—a role that enables them to critically reflect about why ethics is a requirement. Including students in the process of curriculum design leads students to reframe ethics as an integrative tool with the capacity to bring together different engineering departments and build bridges to non-engineering fields. This paper argues that students can and should play an active and important role in relocating ethics from the periphery to the core of the engineering curriculum. (shrink)

We have identified a sample of 53 societies outside of the classical Himalayan and Marquesean area that permit polyandrous unions. Our goal is to broadly describe the demographic, social, marital, and economic characteristics of these societies and to evaluate some hypotheses of the causes of polyandry. We demonstrate that although polyandry is rare it is not as rare as commonly believed, is found worldwide, and is most common in egalitarian societies. We also argue that polyandry likely existed during early human (...) history and should be examined from an evolutionary perspective. Our analysis reveals that it may be a predictable response to a high operational sex ratio favoring males and may also be a response to high rates of male mortality and, possibly, male absenteeism. Other factors may contribute, but our within-polyandry sample limits analysis. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore how nurses perceive patient participations of patients over 75 years old undergoing hemodialysis treatment in dialysis units, and of their next of kin. Ten nurses told stories about what happened in the dialysis units. These stories were analyzed with critical discourse analysis. Three discursive practices are found: (1) the nurses’ power and control; (2) sharing power with the patient; and (3) transferring power to the next of kin. The first and the predominant (...) discursive practice can be explained with an ideology of paternalism, in which the nurses used biomedical explanations and the ethical principle of benefice to justify their actions. The second can be explained with an ideology of participation, in which the nurses used ethical narratives as a way to let the patients participate in the treatment. The third seemed to involve autonomous decision-making and the ethical principle of autonomy for the next of kin in the difficult end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

Rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence are leading to an increasing human reliance on machine decision making. Even in collaborative efforts with Decision Support Systems (DSSs), where a human expert is expected to make the final decisions, it can be hard to keep the expert actively involved throughout the decision process. DSSs suggest their own solutions and thus invite passive decision making. To keep humans actively ‘on’ the decision-making loop and counter overreliance on machines, we propose a ‘reflection machine’ (RM). This (...) system asks users questions about their decision strategy and thereby prompts them to evaluate their own decisions critically. We discuss what forms RMs can take and present a proof-of-concept implementation of a RM that can produce feedback on users’ decisions in the medical and law domains. We show that the prototype requires very little domain knowledge to create reasonably intelligent critiquing questions. With this prototype, we demonstrate the technical feasibility to develop RMs and hope to pave the way for future research into their effectiveness and value. (shrink)

Background: Primary open-angle glaucoma patients exhibit widespread white matter degeneration throughout their visual pathways. Whether this degeneration starts at the pre- or post-geniculate pathways remains unclear. In this longitudinal study, we assess the progression of WM degeneration exhibited by the pre-geniculate optic tracts and the post-geniculate optic radiations of POAG patients over time, aiming to determine the source and pattern of spread of this degeneration.Methods: Diffusion-weighted MRI scans were acquired for 12 POAG patients and 14 controls at two time-points 5.4 (...) ± 2.1 years apart. Fiber density, an estimate of WM axonal density, was computed for the OTs and ORs of all participants in an unbiased longitudinal population template space. First, FD was compared between POAG patients and the controls at time-point 1 and time-point 2 independently. Secondly, repeated measures analysis was performed for FD change in POAG patients between the two time-points. Finally, we compared the rate of FD change over time between the two groups.Results: Compared to the controls, POAG patients exhibited significantly lower FD in the left OT at TP1 and in both OTs and the left OR at TP2. POAG patients showed a significant loss of FD between the time-points in the right OT and both ORs, while the left OR showed a significantly higher rate of FD loss in POAG patients compared to the controls.Conclusions: We find longitudinal progression of neurodegenerative WM changes in both the pre- and post-geniculate visual pathways of POAG patients. The pattern of changes suggests that glaucomatous WM degeneration starts at the pre-geniculate pathways and then spreads to the post-geniculate pathways. Furthermore, we find evidence that the trans-synaptic spread of glaucomatous degeneration to the post-geniculate pathways is a prolonged process which continues in the absence of detectable pre-geniculate degenerative progression. This suggests the presence of a time window for salvaging intact post-geniculate pathways, which could prove to be a viable therapeutic target in the future. (shrink)

В статье философия характеризуется на основе дискурсной парадигмы анализа: как текст, интеллектуальная деятельность и коммуникация. Характеризуются два равнозначных аспекта философского дискурса - когнитивный и коммуникативный. Обсуждается феномен философских контроверз, специфика философского спора, выразительные (знаковые) средства философского дискурса, роль мировоззренческого дискурса в современной общественно-политической ситуации в стране.