This paper proposes an in-depth on the legal and educational linguistic policy of the state that affect the everyday practice school French students. The allied French academic culture to the school culture are articulated to serve the construction of republican citizenship. This ideological construction, political and cultural affects students entering the use of French particularities of its cultural, social status or family origin. From a historical and legislative perspective the authors address the orientation of the teaching of (...) French in the educational system as an obstacle to the integration of groups of students who do not fit the narrow linguistic-political patterns that the system imposes. And finally, from an applied perspective, explores the factors that can lead to the breakdown of monolingual system, moreover, is articulated as a cultural system of segregation and exclusion of class.Este artículo propone una reflexión en profundidad sobre las consecuencias jurídicas y pedagógicas de la política lingüística del estado que afectan en la práctica cotidiana escolar al alumnado francés. La cultura académica francesa aliada con la cultura escolar se articulan al servicio de la construcción de la ciudadanía republicana. Esta construcción ideológica, política y cultural afecta a los estudiantes que incorporan al uso de la lengua francesa particularidades propias de su entorno cultural, social o de su origen familiar. Desde una perspectiva histórica y legislativa los autores abordan la orientación de la enseñanza de la lengua francesa en el sistema educativo como un obstáculo para la integración de los grupos de alumnado que no se ajustan a los estrechos patrones linguístico-políticos que el sistema impone. Y por último, desde una perspectiva aplicada, exploran los factores que pueden desembocar en la ruptura del sistema monolingüe que, además, se articula como un sistema de segregación cultural y de exclusión clasista. (shrink)

The structural reforms of the education system in France (1959, 1963, and 1975) were part both of a global process of democratisation of education launched after the Second World War and of a larger modernisation project in which knowledge producers (experts, scholars and consultants) played a crucial role. Instead of a national approach or a world system approach to education reforms I propose a neo-Weberian glocal perspective that focuses on knowledge producers as a status group, (...) education discourse structuration and education global networks; this perspective integrates national contexts and their peculiarities in the analysis without losing sight of the global forces. Global education networks centered in international organisations-such as UNESCO and the OECD-in which French knowledge-producers were largely involved, adopted a discourse inspired by the American school model that was adopted by scholars in different countries. The reformist network, in which scholars, experts and policy makers participated, enhanced reformist discourse structuration in the knowledge-production institutions (universities and national institutes) around social problems such as 'technological and scientific lag', 'inequality of opportunity', and 'disenchantment from the education system, thus, fostering transformations of the French education system. (shrink)

This article seeks a better understanding of how Rudolf Steiner envisioned his reform pedagogy as a site of spiritual learning (for example through art, seasonal festivals, ritual drama, etc.), but also as a specific site intended to resist the encroaching influence of capitalism, materialism, and corporatism spreading in Germany following the First World War. Steiner’s ideas about education did not emerge in a vacuum. He was inspired by and connected with other forms of communist, socialist, and Lebensreform movements in (...) his time. Yet Steiner more actively embraced and incorporated esotericism into his pedagogical project. How did his approach differ from the other anti-capitalist and anti-materialist-inspired schools that were spreading, and what role did esotericism play in terms of developing Waldorf students? This article explores these questions and contributes to a recontextualization of both Steiner and esotericism taking place in the academy. (shrink)

Within the philosophy of science, the realism debate has been revitalised by the development of forms of structural realism. These urge a shift in focus from the object oriented ontologies that come and go through the history of science to the structures that remain through theory change. Such views have typically been elaborated in the context of theories of physics and are motivated by, first of all, the presence within such theories of mathematical equations that allow straightforward representation of the (...) relevant structures; and secondly, the implications of such theories for the individuality and identity of putative objects. My aim in this talk is to explore the possibility of extending such views to biological theories. An obvious concern is that within the context of the latter it is typically insisted that we cannot find the kinds of highly mathematised structures that structural realism can point to in physics. I shall indicate how the model-theoretic approach to theories might help allay such concerns. Furthermore, issues of identity and individuality also arise within biology. Thus Dupre has recently noted that there exists a ‘General Problem of Biological Individuality’ which relates to the issue of how one divides ‘massively integrated and interconnected’ systems into discrete components. In response Dupre advocates a form of ‘Promiscuous Realism’ that holds, for example, that there is no unique way of dividing the phylogenetic tree into kinds. Instead I shall urge serious consideration of those aspects of the work of Dupre and others that lean towards a structuralist interpretation. By doing so I hope to suggest possible ways in which a structuralist stance might be extended to biology. (shrink)

Some recent work in the philosophy of quantum mechanics has suggested that quantum systems can be thought of as non-separable and therefore non-individual, in some sense, in Bell and E.P.R. type situations. This suggestion is set in the context of previous work regarding the individuality of quantal particles and it is argued that such entities can be considered as individuals if their non-classical statistical correlations are understood in terms of non-supervenient relations holding between them. We conclude that such relations are (...) strongly non-supervenient in Cleland's sense and note a possible connection between this idea and the realist quantum logic programme. (shrink)

In a series of radio broadcasts, one of which is translated for the first time in this issue (pp. 21-34), Adorno and Becker claimed that modern education is profoundly inadequate. Their views on education draw heavily on Kant’s notion of Enlightenment as a process for the development of personal and social maturity and responsibility. As such, education cannot just be a training but must itself be a developmental process which takes into account not only social and political (...) realities but also the complex psychodynamics involved in learning. However, Adorno and Becker arrive at a position that is close to self-contradictory, unable to solve the paradox inherent in the idea of an education that is at once authoritative and non-conformist. This might arise from their failure to reflect on the nature of their own dialogue, and it is suggested that friendship offers the social model of a dynamic relationship of the type they sought to articulate. Despite the fact that the discussion took place in 1969, in a climate of educational debate radically different from today’s, their work raises issues and poses questions of the profoundest importance 30 years on. (shrink)

ArgumentThroughout the nineteenth century, French alienists reflected on the nature of idiocy, on its causes and possible treatments. Central to this reflection was the question of education. Was it possible to teach a child idiot to develop physically, intellectually, and morally? Schools were established, wards were rearranged, and educational methods were suggested. The extent to which all of this succeeded is hard to assess. The optimistic tone of educational treatises was never reflected in the life in the asylum. (...) By the end of the century, the dichotomy between theoretical ideals and practical reality came to a halt as both methodological treatises on education and pleas for funding ceased. Soon, idiots left the wards and their schools for new classes within the common school system. While the former practice had proved successful in improving the patients' abilities, it was claimed that it had failed to bring about the social integration for which alienists had once hoped. This final period marked a rupture in the treatment of idiocy, both in terms of space and organization from asylums to schools and from alienists to psychologists. (shrink)

Plato claimed that morality exits to control conflict. Business people increasingly are called upon to resolve moral conflicts between various stakeholders who maintain opposing ethical positions or principles. Attempts to resolve these moral conflicts within business discussions may be exacerbated if disputants have different communicative styles. To better understand the communication process involved in attempts to resolve a moral dilemma, we investigate the "discourse ethics" procedure of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas claims that an individual's level of moral reasoning parallels the type (...) of communication which that individual typically uses in attempts to resolve conflict. Our research focuses upon the relationship between the communicative style used by participants attempting to resolve a particular moral dilemma involving workplace safety and the level of moral reasoning possessed by those participants. The results of our study suggest that, contrary to Habermas' views, participants with "higher" levels of moral reasoning do not use "discursive" communicative tactics more frequently than participants that possessed "lower" moral reasoning. (shrink)

We apply the recently elaborated notions of ‘pragmatic truth’ and ‘pragmatic probability’ to the problem of the construction of a logic of inductive inference. It is argued that the system outlined here is able to overcome many of the objections usually levelled against such attempts. We claim, furthermore, that our view captures the essentially cumulative nature of science and allows us to explain why it is indeed reasonable to accept and believe in the conclusions reached by inductive inference.

The confession quoted above by way of introduction reveals with tragic sincerity the fatal passion of an overly avid reader, unlimited in curiosity certainly but fully conscious of the demanding finality of the work he had to accomplish: the scientific critique of an international system of social organization, “in which man is a humiliated, enslaved, abandoned and scornful being” (1844). Cultivating poetry and philosophy in a world felt to be unlivable meant becoming an accomplice of those individuals and institutions (...) principally responsible for the barbarity called modern civilization. But to combat this, it was necessary to scour the murky historical horizon issued from a distant past where only great social revolutions marked the stages of a progression seen as ambiguous because realized by means of unspeakable phenomena of regression. Only one revolution took place under the contradictory sign of an emancipation with universal ambitions and of a decline with indelible consequences: the French Revolution. Conclusion as well as beginning, it was studied by Marx as a unique event, both in relation to its antecedents as well as its liberating promises. Although it is true that Marx “never wrote a history of the ancien régime”, a hardly significant remark, it is no less true that he studied and compiled, with the eagerness of a schoolboy enthralled by history, an enormous mass of documentation that can “help understand how (the ancien regime) gave birth to the Revolution”, despite what François Furet might think (Marx et la Révolution française, Paris, 1986, p. 79). Moreover, the author of Das Kapital drew from the revolutionary history of France the inspiration for a “poetry of the future” in which the following vision was designed:“The old bourgeois society, with its classes and its class antagonism, gave way to an association in which the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of the whole” (1848). (shrink)

The opposition of science and religion is a recent phenomenon; in the middle ages, and indeed until the middle of the nineteenth century, there was almost no conflict. In the Middle Ages the objective study of nature - the activity we now call science - was largely the province of religious men. This book looks at the origins of western science and the central role played by the Dominican and Franciscan friars. It explains why these two groups devoted so much (...) intellectual effort to the study of physical and biological phenomena, and distinguishes ’Natural Philosophy’ from ’science’ as presently understood. Though the friars were recognisably ’scientific’ in their approach their motives were religious - they wished to understand the mind of God and the beauty of God’s nature. Even so, as this study makes clear, the roots of western science lie in the monasteries and refuges of the medieval friars - the direct forebears of the anti-scientific Popes of the age of Copernicus and Galileo. Contents: Introduction 1. Philosophy and true philosophy 2. Town air 3. Sapienta and scientia: the cloister and the school 4. nature and the twelfth century 5. Heresy and Dominic 6. The evil and good world 7. Conquest and re-education 8. Dominican re-education 9. Fiat lux! Let there be light! 10. Et facta est lux! And there was light 11. Epilogue. (shrink)

InThere Are No Such Things As Theories(French 2020), the reification of theories is critically analysed and rejected. My aim here is to tease out some of the implications of this approach first of all, for how we, philosophers of science, should view the history of science; secondly, for how we should understand the devices that we use in our own philosophical practices; and thirdly, for how we might think about the relationship between the history of science and the philosophy (...) of science. (shrink)

This is the first anthology to take a theoretical look at violence against women. Each essay shows how philosophy provides a powerful tool for examining a difficult and deep-rooted social problem. Stanley G. French, Wanda Teays, and Laura M. Purdy, all philosophers, present a familiar phenomenon in a new and striking fashion. The editors employ a two-tiered approach to this vital issue. Contributors consider both interpersonal violence, such as rape and battering; and also systemic violence, such as sexual harassment, (...) pornography, prostitution, and violence in a medical context. The editors have further broadened the discussion to include such cross-cultural issues as rape in war, dowry deaths, female genital mutilation, and international policies on violence against women. Against this wide range of topics, which integrate personal perspectives with the philosophical, the contributors offer powerful analyses of the causes and effects of violence against women, as well as potential policies for effecting change. (shrink)

Any approach to the study of managerial situations undertaken without reflection on the underpinning philosophy is flawed because it limits our ability to question the validity of the knowledge claimed in the analysis. The paper considers this issue and presents a philosophical reflection on the use of a systems approach to the modelling of human enterprises. It draws on insights from systems thinking, cognitive science, autopoiesis, communication theory and non-linear dynamics. These are interpreted within the context of social systems as (...) networks of conversations that are generated in language. It is written to invite an exchange of ideas concerning the role of the generative dialogue. (shrink)

The large numbers of children working in developing countries continue to provoke calls for an end to such employment. However, many reformers argue that efforts should focus on ending the exploitation of children rather than depriving them of all opportunities to work. This posture reflects recognition of the multiplicity of needs children have and the diversity of situations in which they work. Unfortunately, research typically neglects these complexities and fails to distinguish between types of labor market jobs, dismisses household chores (...) as irrelevant, and conceptualizes children’s needs largely in terms of the education they require for successful careers. Based on data collected in schools in Franca, Brazil, where children often combine school with work in the shoe industry, this study first examined the implications of labor market jobs and household work for their health, life satisfaction, and education. Analyses suggested that both forms of work negatively affected children’s welfare, but the effects of household work were more extensive, especially for girls. The second part focused on children with labor market jobs and examined how facets of their jobs as well as their after-work household duties affected their welfare. A lack of discretion on the job undermined the health of both boys and girls, higher pay adversely affected boys’ education, and housework had detrimental effects on all indicators of girls’ welfare. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for further research and suggests the needs for attention to different forms of work activities within families. It concludes with suggestions for multinationals sourcing in developing areas that go beyond the usual calls for ridding their facilities and supply networks of child workers. (shrink)

Part of the educational system in England has been geared towards the preparation of particular professions, while the identity and status of members of some professions have depended significantly on the general education they have received. Originally published in 1973, this volume explores the interaction between education and the professions. It also looks at the education of the main professions in sixteenth century England and at how twentieth century university teaching is a key profession for the (...) training of new recruits to other professions. (shrink)

Despite the bad press that revenge has received from moral philosophers and legal theorists, it can be a legitimate way to forge a link between wrongful behavior and penalties that karmic moral theories can only postulate. It can be especially effectual in commonplace cases that are under the radar of formal systems of justice. In such cases it can play a positive role in strengthening the moral foundations of a community. In those cases acts of revenge can provide a morally (...) valuable antidote to the negative participant reactive attitudes of community members. They can be an expression of morality in and for itself while exorcizing such pent up emotions as resentment, hatred, indignation, anger, antipathy, annoyance, umbrage, and ire. I maintain that responding in morally appropriate ways to insults, derisions, disparagements, and other forms of perceived wrongful disrespect and ill will is elemental in sustaining equitable human relations. To reiterate and paraphrase a point Robert Nozick made, the only power that morality has to affect human affairs resides in the critical responses moral people feel obliged to make upon recognizing the wrongful quality of another person’s acts or will. In this paper I apply the four criteria I defended in the book The Virtues of Vengeance to rather mundane cases of perceived maltreatment, exploitation, oppression, and/or neglect, and I deal with the issue of regulating multiple avengers who are bent on dealing out revenge to offenders in such commonplace cases. (shrink)

Richard Rorty has drawn a distinction between three ways philosophers in the 20th Century have conceived of the enterprise of philosophy. There are those who see it as the guardian of the sciences, those who treat it as a kina of poetry, and those who view philosophy as a political exercise. In this paper, I try to show that Wittgenstein, despite certain popular conceptions of his project, belongs more in the third group than in the other two. The paper focuses (...) on Wittgenstein's notes On Certainty in order to reveal the structure of Wittgenstein's notion of epistemological privilege and how it depends on communal agreement and behaviour. The system of conventions and commitments on which our vanouis practices are grounded is not justifiable. It is a matter of forms of life. (shrink)

This paper integrates genetical studies of variation in the wing patterns of Lepidoptera with experimental investigations of developmental mechanisms. Research on the tropical butterfly,Bicyclus anynana, is described. This work includes artificial selection of lines with different patterns of wing eyespots followed by grafting experiments on the lines to examine the phenotypic and genetic differences in terms of developmental mechanisms. The results are used to show how constraints on the evolution of this wing pattern may be related to the developmental organisation. (...) The eyespot pattrn can be envisaged as a set of developmental homologues; a common developmental mechanism is associated with a quantitative genetic system involving high genetic correlations. However, individual genes which influence only subsets of the eyespots, thus uncoupling the interdependence of the eyespots, may be important in evolutionary change. The postulated evolutionary constraints are illustrated with respect to differences in wing pattern found among other species ofBicyclus. (shrink)

From all corners of the globe, the on-line revolution is proclaimed. The imperative is to connect; to shop, work, learn, be governed, even fall in love on-line. Government initiatives proliferate globally, stressing the urgency for citizens to become part of the so called Information Society. In the midst of all this euphoria the question must be raised 'Is this opportunity for all, or just a few?' Information and Communication Technologies are being introduced to the teaching and learning process at an (...) increasing pace. E-government ministers are particularly concerned about the 'have-nets' and 'have-nots' in this 'digital revolution'. Our research in schools and the HE sector, looking at women learning on-line, has indicated barriers. We discuss how gendered relations in the home, work and education go far beyond having access to IT. We illustrate how these relations contribute to the shaping of the gendered experiences of using technology in education. So whilst women are urged to get connected, we ask whether or not they will want to use technology as a tool to learn with. We suggest that the current gendered discourse surrounding technology and its use in all areas of society should inform government on-line learning policies globally, cutting through the euphoric hype. (shrink)

In this book Gary Gutting tells, clearly and comprehensively, the story of French philosophy from 1890 to 1990. He examines the often neglected background of spiritualism, university idealism, and early philosophy of science, and also discusses the privileged role of philosophy in the French education system. Taking account of this background, together with the influences of avant-garde literature and German philosophy, he develops a rich account of existential phenomenology, which he argues is the central achievement of (...) French thought during the century, and of subsequent structuralist and poststructuralist developments. His discussion includes chapters on Bergson, Sartre, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Derrida, with sections on other major thinkers including Lyotard, Deleuze, Irigaray, Levinas, and Ricoeur. He offers challenging analyses of the often misunderstood relationship between existential phenomenology and structuralism and of the emergence of poststructuralism. Finally, he sketches the major current trends of French philosophy. (shrink)

Originally published in 1971, this volume examines the relationship between the history and sociology of education. History does not stand in isolation, but has much to draw from and contribute to, other disciplines. The methods and concepts of sociology, in particular, are exerting increasing influence on historical studies, especially the history of education. Since education is considered to be part of the social system, historians and sociologists have come to survey similar fields; yet each discipline appears (...) to have its own aims and methodology. (shrink)

We examine various logics that combine knowledge, awareness, and change of awareness. An agent can become aware of propositional propositions but also of other agents or of herself. The dual operation to becoming aware, forgetting, can also be modelled. Our proposals are based on a novel notion of structural similarity that we call awareness bisimulation, the obvious notion of modal similarity for structures encoding knowledge and awareness.

In the first section of the article, we examine some recent criticisms of the connectionist enterprise: first, that connectionist models are fundamentally behaviorist in nature (and, therefore, non-cognitive), and second that connectionist models are fundamentally associationist in nature (and, therefore, cognitively weak). We argue that, for a limited class of connectionist models (feed-forward, pattern-associator models), the first criticism is unavoidable. With respect to the second criticism, we propose that connectionist modelsare fundamentally associationist but that this is appropriate for building models (...) of human cognition. However, we do accept the point that there are cognitive capacities for which any purely associative model cannot provide a satisfactory account. The implication that we draw from is this is not that associationist models and mechanisms should be scrapped, but rather that they should be enhanced.In the next section of the article, we identify a set of connectionist approaches which are characterized by “active symbols” — recurrent circuits which are the basis of knowledge representation. We claim that such approaches avoid criticisms of behaviorism and are, in principle, capable of supporting full cognition. In the final section of the article, we speculate at some length about what we believe would be the characteristics of a fully realized active symbol system. This includes both potential problems and possible solutions (for example, mechanisms needed to control activity in a complex recurrent network) as well as the promise of such systems (in particular, the emergence of knowledge structures which would constitute genuine internal models). (shrink)

This article provides an introduction to a special issue of Body & Society that explores the surveillance--embodiment nexus. It accentuates both the prevalence and consequence of bodies being increasingly converted into ‘objects of information’ by surveillance technologies and systems. We begin by regarding the normalcy of body monitoring in contemporary life, illustrating how a plurality of biometric scanners operate to intermediate the physical surfaces and subjective depths of bodies in accordance with various concerns. We focus on everyday experiences of bodily (...) intermediation by surveillant dispositifs, and consider the broader political, epistemological, and ontological significance of these processes. We then point to the substantive intersections and divergences existing between body and surveillance studies. We conclude with an overview of the five articles appearing in this special issue. We describe how each contribution creates a template for imagining what a body is, and what a body might become, in a culture defined by proliferating data sharing behaviours, systems of codification, and practices of intermediation. (shrink)

There is a large body of literature by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, usually referred to as Autopoietic Theory. This theory describes the dynamics of living systems; dealing with cognition as a biological phenomenon. The theory, however, has found far wider application than may be suggested from its biological roots. This is because the theory builds from its cognitive base to generate implications for epistemology, communication and social systems theory. Since, in essence, there is no discontinuity between (...) what is social and what is human, from the perspective of their biological roots. This paper presents some of the key elements of autopoietic theory and explores their application to organisations and their management. The topics considered are: i) the epistemological qualities of our knowledge and its relevance in understanding organisation; ii) human enterprises as autonomous selforganising systems; iii) the meaning of communication and the role of language in organisations. The paper also describes a new approach to organisational inquiry. This brings together, in a co-determinate fashion, a pragmatic attitude to human experience and language, and the value of theoretical insight. (shrink)

In mining, manufacturing and industrial process industries, maintenance procedures are used as an aid to guide technicians through complex manual tasks. These procedures are not machine-readable, and cannot support reasoning in digitally integrated manufacturing systems. Procedure documents contain unstructured text and are stored in a variety of formats. The aim of this work is to query information held in real industrial maintenance procedures. To achieve this, we develop an ontology for maintenance procedures using the OWL 2 description language. We leverage (...) classes and object properties from the ISO 15926 Part 14 Upper Ontology and create a domain ontology. The key contribution of this paper is a demonstration of trade-offs required when modelling an existing engineering artifact, where an abstraction of its contents is given a-priori. We provide an ontologically rigorous abstraction of notions captured in procedure documentation to a set of classes, relations and axioms that allow reasoning over the contents. Validation of the ontology is performed via a series of competency questions based on queries relevant to technicians, engineers and schedulers in industry. The ontology is applied to real world maintenance procedures from two industrial organisations. (shrink)

The mathematical concept of pragmatic truth, first introduced in Mikenberg, da Costa and Chuaqui (1986), has received in the last few years several applications in logic and the philosophy of science. In this paper, we study the logic of pragmatic truth, and show that there are important connections between this logic, modal logic and, in particular, Jaskowski's discussive logic. In order to do so, two systems are put forward so that the notions of pragmatic validity and pragmatic truth can be (...) accommodated. One of the main results of this paper is that the logic of pragmatic truth is paraconsistent. The philosophical import of this result, which justifies the application of pragmatic truth to inconsistent settings, is also discussed. (shrink)

This paper compares the recently proposed Robust Full Computational Tree Logic to model robustness in concurrent systems with other computational tree logic -based logics. RoCTL* extends CTL* with the addition of the operators Obligatory and Robustly, which quantify over failure-free paths and paths with one more failure respectively. This paper focuses on examining the succinctness and expressiveness of RoCTL* by presenting translations to and from RoCTL*. The core result of this paper is to show that RoCTL* is expressively equivalent to (...) CTL* but is non-elementarily more succinct. That is, RoCTL* does not add any expressive power over CTL*, but can represent some properties using vastly reduced formulae. We present a translation from RoCTL* into CTL* that preserves truth but may result in non-elementary growth in the length of the translated formula, as each nested Robustly operator may result in an extra exponential blowup. However, we show that this translation is optimal in the sense th.. (shrink)

We apply the recently elaborated notions of 'pragmatic truth' and 'pragmatic probability' to the problem of the construction of a logic of inductive inference. It is argued that the system outlined here is able to overcome many of the objections usually levelled against such attempts. We claim, furthermore, that our view captures the essentially cumulative nature of science and allows us to explain why it is indeed reasonable to accept and believe in the conclusions reached by inductive inference.

The large numbers of children working in developing countries continue to provoke calls for an end to such employment. However, many reformers argue that efforts should focus on ending the exploitation of children rather than depriving them of all opportunities to work. This posture reflects recognition of the multiplicity of needs children have and the diversity of situations in which they work. Unfortunately, research typically neglects these complexities and fails to distinguish between types of labor market jobs, dismisses household chores (...) as irrelevant, and conceptualizes children’s needs largely in terms of the education they require for successful careers. Based on data collected in schools in Franca, Brazil, where children often combine school with work in the shoe industry, this study first examined the implications of labor market jobs and household work for their health, life satisfaction, and education. Analyses suggested that both forms of work negatively affected children’s welfare, but the effects of household work were more extensive, especially for girls. The second part focused on children with labor market jobs and examined how facets of their jobs as well as their after-work household duties affected their welfare. A lack of discretion on the job undermined the health of both boys and girls, higher pay adversely affected boys’ education, and housework had detrimental effects on all indicators of girls’ welfare. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for further research and suggests the needs for attention to different forms of work activities within families. It concludes with suggestions for multinationals sourcing in developing areas that go beyond the usual calls for ridding their facilities and supply networks of child workers. (shrink)

In the first monograph on Lyotard and education, Derek R. Ford approaches Lyotard's thought as pedagogical in itself. The result is a novel, soft, and accessible study of Lyotard organized around two inhuman educations: that of "the system" and that of "the human." The former enforces an interminable process of development, dialogue and exchange, while the latter finds its force in the mute, secret, opaque, and inarticulable. Threading together a range of Lyotard's work through four pedagogical processes-reading, writing, (...) voicing, and listening-the author insists on the distinct educational logics that can uphold or interrupt different ways of being-together in the world, touching on a range of topics from literacy and aesthetics to time and political-economy. While Inhuman Educations can serve as an introduction to Lyotard's philosophy, it also constitutes a singular, provocative, and fresh take on his thought. (shrink)

The apparently paradoxical nature of self-deception has attracted a great deal of controversy in recent years. Focussing on those aspects of the phenomenon which involve the holding of "contradictory" beliefs, it is our intention to argue that this presents no "paradox" if a non-classical, "paraconsistent", doxastic logic is adopted. (On such logics, see, for example, N. C. A. da Costa, 'On the theory of inconsistent formal systems', Notre Dame J Formal Logic 11(1974), 497-510, and A. I. Arruda, 'A survey of (...) paraconsistent logic', in A. I. Arruda, N. C. A da Costa and R Chuaqui, _Mathematical Logic in Latin America, North-Holland, 1984, pp. 1-41.). (shrink)

The issue of what consequences to draw from the existence of non-classical logical systems has been the subject of an interesting debate across a diversity of fields. In this paper the matter of alternative logics is considered with reference to a specific belief system and its propositions :the Azande are said to maintain beliefs about witchcraft which, when expressed propositionally, appear to be inconsistent. When the Azande have been presented with such inconsistencies, they either fail to see them as (...) such or else accept them as non-problematical. Is our knowledge of logical truths a relative and culturally determined phenomenon, or is there some (transcendent) criterion that allows us to adjudicate between alternative logical systems? The authors propose an approach for resolving disputes about the status of Azande reasoning which assumes a paraconsistent framework, thus providing a new perspective on this debate. (shrink)

This paper examines the need for standards to resolve ethical conflicts related to qualitative, on-line research. Practitioners working in the area of qualitative research gauged the breadth and depth of this need. Those practitioners identified several key ethical issues associated with qualitative on-line research, and felt that there should be a common ethics code to cover issues related to Internet research. They also identified challenges associated with the profession's acceptance of a unified code. The paper concludes by offering guidance in (...) developing and implementing such a code. (shrink)

EDUCATION ON AFFECTIVE AND SEXUAL LIFE AT SCHOOL The French education system circular 2003 recomends three yearly sessions of education on affective and sex life in schools. While such sessions are increasingly being organised in response to a media buzz, now is perhaps the time to look back at their original justification and see how nowadays they can have meaning for young people. The author, who is a marital and family guidance counsellor responsible for this (...) type of intervention, shows, with a few supporting examples, the significance of the background, the time devoted and the ability to listen for dialogue and joint thinking on this issue to be initiated. (shrink)

EDUCATION ON AFFECTIVE AND SEXUAL LIFE AT SCHOOL The French education system circular 2003 recomends three yearly sessions of education on affective and sex life in schools. While such sessions are increasingly being organised in response to a media buzz, now is perhaps the time to look back at their original justification and see how nowadays they can have meaning for young people. The author, who is a marital and family guidance counsellor responsible for this (...) type of intervention, shows, with a few supporting examples, the significance of the background, the time devoted and the ability to listen for dialogue and joint thinking on this issue to be initiated. (shrink)

Three‐ to 4‐month‐old infants show asymmetric exclusivity in the acquisition of cat and dog perceptual categories. The cat perceptual category excludes dog exemplars, but the dog perceptual category does not exclude cat exemplars. We describe a connectionist autoencoder model of perceptual categorization that shows the same asymmetries as infants. The model predicts the presence of asymmetric retroactive interference when infants acquire cat and dog categories sequentially. A subsequent experiment conducted with 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds verifies the predicted pattern of looking time (...) behaviors. We argue that bottom‐up, associative learning systems with distributed representations are appropriate for modeling the operation of short‐term visual memory in early perceptual category learning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation by Jason DemersKenneth SurinDemers, Jason. The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation. University of Toronto Press, 2019. 218pp.This most welcome book gets off on the right foot by eschewing such problematic terms as “post-structuralism” or “French theory” in studying the work of French thinkers Gilles (...) Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. These terms are of a strictly Anglo-Atlantic provenance, a convenient but misleading encapsulation that facilitated their journey or translation into the Anglo-Atlantic world. Instead, Demers prefers to view this transmission as an ensemble of relays between “people, groups, places, ideas, and moments in time” (3), as well as codes; metalanguages; markets for symbolic capital, a notion derived from Pierre Bourdieu; and “networks of feeling” (5n), a term the author borrowed from Raymond Williams. Demers observes, for example, that there was a relay or “mutual implication” (5) between Paris and Columbia University, which occurred in the aftermath of the events of May ’68, that recalled a somewhat earlier circuit, also leading to Paris, which involved the mid-1960s Berkeley free speech movement. To approach the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and Foucault by resorting to terms such as “post-structuralism” or “French theory” severs them from the crucial relays and circuits constituting the complex and highly mobile transpositions of their work to an American intellectual and political milieu, and vice versa, and it is clear that Demers views, quite rightly, that the political and the intellectual are inextricably bound up with each other.Demers acknowledges his debt here to the versions of assemblage theory formulated in Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, Manuel DeLanda’s Assemblage Theory and A New Philosophy of Society, and Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Buttressing these texts for Demers is the work of catalytic significance undertaken by Deleuze and Guattari on assemblages/ensembles. The supervening context for these processes of transmission between France and the Anglo-American world is the global May ’68.Demers’s first chapter deals with Derrida and the notions of translation and margins in order to delineate and analyze the “contiguous [End Page 127] relationship between campus and community” (12). The difficulty Demers grasps here is that Derrida’s work on the place of philosophy, already premised on the defining notion that there is no “we” in the philosophical domain, is rooted in the French educational system, and so is deracinated, inevitably, by its movement out of France into the Anglo-Atlantic world. After seeking to account for the implications of this uprooting, Demers shows convincingly how the later Derrida moved (somewhat) away from the political evasiveness of his earlier writings. Taking Derrida’s “The Ends of Man” as his focus, Demers understands the essay as an attempt to translate the intellectual and practical work being done on the academic and political margins of the university into a properly philosophical position (“deconstruction”) with regard to the logic of margins and centers extending beyond the university. At this point Demers makes two criticisms of Derrida. First, while Derrida’s philosophy pivots on an ever-expanding democracy-to-come, the richness and intricacies of the margins – the very resources created there to disrupt the established centers – have little place in his reflections. Derrida caters to iconic figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, who serve as powerful cryptograms for his thinking, but hardly more than that. This stems from a second problem associated with Derrida’s deconstructive positions, namely, that apart from making theoretical moves acclamatory of those positioned on the margins, albeit in relation to a deconstructed and displaced center held in an endless abeyance, it also leaves the Derridean Other in a situation of debilitating indeterminacy – the infinite deferral of Derrida’s différance and the à venir purports to be redemptive, but is ultimately incapacitating. Derrida’s eschatology always trumps his politics. In fact, in his theoretical and practical “spaces,” Derrida’s cat seems to have the same discursive status as Mandela. Demers, and I suspect he may agree with... (shrink)