A recurrent theme in ethnomethodological research is that of instructed actions. Contrary to the classic traditions in the social and cognitive sciences, which attribute logical priority or causal primacy to instructions, rules, and structures of action, ethnomethodologists investigate the situated production of actions which enable such formulations to stand as adequate accounts. Consequently, a recitation of formal structures can not count as an adequate sociological description, when no account is given of the local production ofwhat those structures describe. (...) The natural sciences can be described as a domain of practical action in whichthe use of methods enables the intersubjective reproduction of naturalistic observations and experiments. As numerous sociological studies of laboratory practices have shown, the achievement of intersubjective order cannot be reduced to formal methods; instead, it arises from the work of custom-fitting relevant methods to the local circumstances of the research. In this paper we discuss a possible extension of this idea to cover two intertwined aspects of molecular biology: (1) the work of following instructions on how to perform routine laboratory procedures, and (2) the relationship between cellular orders and the encoded instructions contained in the DNA molecule. We suggest that a classic conception of scientific action is implied by the way formal instructions are treated as a primary basis, both for molecular biologists' actions and the cellular functions they study, and we envision an ethnomethodological alternative to those conceptions of social and biological order. (shrink)

Action research is increasingly used as a means for teachers to improve their instruction, yet for many the idea of doing "research" can be somewhat intimidating. _Using Action Research to Improve Instruction_ offers a comprehensive, easy-to-understand approach to action research in classroom settings. This engaging and accessible guide is grounded in sources of data readily available to teachers, such as classroom observations, student writing, surveys, interviews, and tests. Organized to mirror the action research process, the highly (...) interactive format prompts readers to discover a focus, create research questions, address design and methodology, collect information, conduct data analysis, communicate the results, and to generate evidence-based teaching strategies. Engaging in these decision-making processes builds the skills essential to action research and promotes a deeper understanding of teaching practice. Special Features Include: -An Interactive Text -Reflection Questions and Activity Prompts -A Sample Action Research Report -Numerous Examples and Practice Examples -Numbered Sections for Cross Referencing This original text is a must-read for teachers interested in how they can use their current knowledge of instruction and assessment to meaningfully engage in action research. (shrink)

Bringing together evidence from natural and social sciences, the work introduces the non-reductionist Instruction Grammar programme. Viewed from within the practicalities of the lifeworld, utterances are described as instructions to simulate perceptions and attributions for action. The approach provides solutions to long-standing philosophical problems of cognitive grammar theories and traditionally puzzling syntactic phenomena.

This book has been written in the hopes of equipping teachers-in-training—that is, teacher candidates—with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, effective, and responsive strategies that help students succeed.

In this study, I describe a potential challenge to semiotics, which exists in the fact that no interpretation of an instruction can get us closer to doing what the instructional text describes. I provide a praxeological description of a situation in a software development firm where the instructions for a particular type of meeting are inscribed on the whiteboard in front of which the meetings were held. I discuss the gap between instructions and the behavior they describe and the moral (...) order of praxis that is not inscribed in instructions. (shrink)

Intellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that, and consequently that the knowledge involved in skill is propositional. In support of this view, the intentional action argument holds that since skills manifest in intentional action and since intentional action necessarily depends on propositional knowledge, skills necessarily depend on propositional knowledge. We challenge this argument, and suggest that instructive representations, as opposed to propositional attitudes, can better account for an agent’s reasons for action. While a propositional-causal (...) theory of action, according to which intentional action must be causally produced “in the right way” by an agent’s proposition-involving reasons, has long held sway, we draw on Elizabeth Anscombe’s insights offer a path toward an alternative theory of action. In so doing, we reject the implicitly Cartesian conception of knowledge at the core of the intentional action argument, while hanging on to the idea that mental states are representations of a certain kind. Our argument provides theoretical support for anti-intellectualism by equipping philosophers with an account of non-propositional, practical content. (shrink)

This study investigates the influences of action research on primary school English instruction from five dimensions in the classroom, viz., types of questions, language errors, gestures, facial expressions, and interpersonal distance. Four English teachers’ 9 real classroom teaching videos before and after action research are collected and annotated by using ELAN software. The results show that primary school English teachers in Chinese rural areas prefer closed questions to open questions; They make some language errors; Deictic gestures are the (...) most common gestures used, while metaphoric gestures, beat gestures and iconic gestures are rare; Teachers have the same preference for three types of facial expressions, and teachers’ serious expressions accounts for most of the time; They seldom keep an intimate distance or personal distance from their students. Second, Action research is effective to motivate teachers in rural areas, who make great progress in all five dimensions after AR: more open questions are asked; pragmatic errors and grammatical errors are reduced; deictic gestures increase; apathetic decrease, and more intimate distance is exhibited in the interpersonal distance dimension. Third, teacher’s English teaching competence is partly transferrable to her future professional development, and this is also the long-lasting effect of AR. (shrink)

This study takes an interest in instructions and instructed actions in the context of manual skills. The analysis focuses on a video recorded episode where a teacher demonstrates how to crochet chain stitches, requests a group of students to reproduce her actions, and then repeatedly corrects the attempts of one of the students. The initial request, and the students’ responses to it, could be seen as preliminary to the series of corrective sequences that come next: the request and the (...) following attempts make it possible for the teacher to launch instructional sequences specifically designed and addressed to the students who need further guidance. In the interaction between the teacher and the novice student, the reasoned character of the instructed actions is not explained so much as installed and tuned. The materiality of the project makes it possible for the two parties to methodically and meticulously adjust their actions in accordance with each other, and towards the gradual realization of the aimed-for results. In connection to this, a number of issues pertaining to the reproducibility and recognizability of manual skills are raised: how instructions-in-interaction orient towards the progression of the skill rather than the interaction itself; how attempts by and mistakes of the instructed party provide grounds for further instruction; and, consequently, how instructions in the form of corrections build on the instructor’s continuous assessments of the instructed actions. (shrink)

While there is considerable support for integrating ethics education in accounting curricula, research presents conflicting evidence on how best to incorporate it. A review of accounting ethics scholarship highlights criticisms of the literature, including limited research into actual behavior and a lack of theory. We report the results of a study that is theory based, captures behaviors rather than attitudes, and explores the effect of repeated practice to develop voice efficacy. We examine the impact of two types of ethics instructions. (...) Across four classes in an accounting curriculum, one student cohort participated in traditional ethics instruction, while the other cohort participated in Giving Voice To Values instruction. We collected student responses to an ethical challenge and conduct a between-subject analysis. The results reveal consistent unethical behavior in the traditional cohort but not in the GVV cohort, indicating that faculty should consider the use of this pedagogy in accounting ethics education. (shrink)

This article deals with surgical practice as it is locally organized within the course of the operation; it focuses on the way in which surgical action shaping the body for the local purposes of the operation is organized in a timely, situated, interactive manner. In order to do that, I offer a systematic analysis of the instructions addressed by a chief surgeon to his assistant in the form of directives during a surgical operation, as well as of instructed (...) actions of the assistant following the directives of the surgeon. In this way, I aim to show how surgery is a methodic collaborative achievement, relying on finely tuned coordination between staff members. More generally, the article sketches a systematic and detailed analysis of instructions as situated accomplishments in time, and of instructed action as resulting from an embodied and indexical understanding of directives and requests as they are produced in time and in context. (shrink)

In this article the logistic regression results in Table 4 Logistic regression results were unfortunately misinterpreted with respect to one hypothesis. The original article states that H5 Levels of observed unethical behavior by accounting students are lower for students who self-identify as politically liberal, than for students who self-identify as politically conservative. While the variable “Self-identified Political Ideology” is statistically significant, the negative sign on the coefficient indicates the result is hypothesized in the opposite direction. Thus the correct interpretation is (...) that accounting students who self-identify as conservative have lower levels of observed unethical behavior than accounting students who self-identify as politically liberal. We regret any inconveniences this may have caused. (shrink)

How can a course on engineering ethics affect an undergraduate student’s feelings of responsibility about moral problems? In this study, three groups of students were interviewed: six students who had completed a specific course on engineering ethics, six who had registered for the course but had not yet started it, and six who had not taken or registered for the course. Students were asked what they would do as the central character, an engineer, in each of two short cases that (...) posed moral problems. For each case, the role of the engineer was successively changed and the student was asked how each change altered his or her decisions about the case. Students who had completed the ethics course considered more options before making a decision, and they responded consistently despite changes in the cases. For both cases, even when they were not directly involved, they were more likely to feel responsible and take corrective action. Students who were less successful in the ethics course gave answers similar to students who had not taken the course. This latter group of students seemed to have weaker feelings of responsibility: they would say that a problem was “not my business.” It appears that instruction in ethics can increase awareness of responsibility, knowledge about how to handle a difficult situation, and confidence in taking action. (shrink)

A videographic study of origami is presented in which subjects were observed making four different origami objects under five modes of instruction: photos + captions, illustrations-only, illustrations with small captions, illustrations with large captions, and text-only as control. The objective of the study was to explore the gestures and other actions that subjects produce as they try to follow instructions rather than to determine the most effective style of instruction per se. We found that the task of situating instructions to (...) the context at hand is error prone and that to facilitate it subjects gesture, point, re-orient illustrations, and generally do things that have no function other than to change the epistemic and interactive landscape of activity so they can more easily understand what is to be done. These studies bear on the new questions designers are asking about the placement, timing, and pace of instructions that digital aids now provide and on the fundamental question of how humans embed themselves in an activity by framing their task in a situation specific manner. (shrink)

Hesiod’s fable of the hawk and the nightingale, addressed to kings, notoriously has no moral. Its depiction of a hawk carrying off a nightingale, preaching the futility of either resistance or pleading, appears to communicate the counsel, commonly designated as “Machiavellian,” that a ruler must know how to imitate a beast as well as a man. Such instruction—which advises that unjust actions are justifiable and necessary for a ruler—is clearly at odds with Hesiod’s explicit exhortations to his brother Perses to (...) work hard and avoid hubris, and his caution that unjust kings or lords will be punished by Zeus. I argue that Hesiod’s addressing the fable to kings “who themselves have understanding” explains the lack of a moral. To substantiate my claim I compare Hesiod’s and Machiavelli’s ranking of intellects, and illuminate Hesiod’s position with particular reference to and comparison with Machiavelli’s Prince, and examples drawn from the Old Testament and Old Irish law. (shrink)

This work aims to reform legal teaching in Colleges and Universities and improve law students’ comprehensive quality. In the context of Educational Psychology research, Deep Learning theory is integrated into legal instructional design. Following a theoretical review of EPSY and DL, the current situation and problems of college legal teaching are understood based on the Law School in a University in Shanghai through auditing, communication, and investigation methods. The theoretical research results are integrated into the ID. The teaching content is (...) divided into language information module, wisdom skills module, cognitive module, action skills module, and attitude module. Each module is divided into three teaching methods, and all teaching methods are combined into the proposed legal ID. Finally, the proposed legal ID is applied in the legal classroom of the Law School in a University in Shanghai. Overall, seventy students are recruited and grouped into Class A and Class B. Class A uses the proposed legal ID, and Class B does not. The scores of Classes A and B are compared. After a semester, the average score of Class A has increased from 68 to 71.11 points. The covariance has decreased from 61.66 to 51.42. When the confidence level is set to 0.95, the confidence interval of class A has increased from 65.26–70.74 to 68.62–73.61. By comparison, the average score of Class B dropped from 68.14 to 68.11 points. The covariance has decreased from 60.24 to 41.76. When the confidence level is set to 0.95, the confidence interval of class B has changed from 65.44–70.85 to 65.86–70.37, without significant improvement. Therefore, the proposed legal ID based on DL theory is scientific and effective. This work has certain reference significance for optimizing the ID of CAUs and improving the comprehensive quality of college-student talents. (shrink)

Traditional models of mathematical proof describe proofs as sequences of assertion where each assertion is a claim about mathematical objects. However, Tanswell observed that in practice, many proofs do not follow these models. Proofs often contain imperatives, and other instructions for the reader to perform mathematical actions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of instructions in proofs by systematically analyzing how instructions are used in Kunen’s Set theory: An introduction to independence proofs, a widely used graduate (...) text in set theory. I use Kunen’s text to describe how instructions and constructions in proof work in mathematical practice and explore epistemic consequences of how proofs are read and understood. (shrink)

This article discusses ethical problems related to postsecondary–K-12 collaborative work involving instructional technologies. Technology related school-university collaboration in particular can give rise to some ethical dilemmas, due to the variety of skills, interests, and obligations of participating teachers, tech specialists, professors, and school administrators. Participants, in promoting narrow interests and concerns too immoderately, can lose sight of a learning-driven framework for decision making. Ethics are implicated, because student learning should be at the heart of the codes that guide all educators (...) in their professional behavior. This article begins by identifying potential advantages of using technology to enrich teacher education classes. The article then describes problems related to initiating access to K-12 classrooms and to negotiating a plan of action. The article seeks to reconcile the concerns of school administrators’and information technology officers’typical concerns with those of K-12- and university-based instructors. (shrink)

The quest for molecular mechanisms that guide axons or specify synaptic contacts has largely focused on molecules that intuitively relate to the idea of an “instruction.” By contrast, “permissive” factors are traditionally considered background machinery without contribution to the information content of a molecularly executed instruction. In this essay, I recast this dichotomy as a continuum from permissive to instructive actions of single factors that provide relative contributions to a necessarily collaborative effort. Individual molecules or other factors do not constitute (...) absolute instructions by themselves; they provide necessary context for each other, thereby creating a composite that defines the overall instruction. The idea of composite instructions leads to two main conclusions: first, a composite of many seemingly permissive factors can define a specific instruction even in the absence of a single dominant contributor; second, individual factors are not necessarily related intuitively to the overall instruction or phenotypic outcome. (shrink)

The majority of the studies on attentional focus have shown that participants who were instructed to focus externally performed better than those who were taught to focus internally. However, in most of these studies the participants performed complex motor tasks. Due to the scarcity of data on the effects of attentional focus specifically on simple motor tasks, our purpose in the current study was to examine these effects on two simple reaction time tasks. The study was conducted on a (...) cloud-based experimental software. Participants were allocated to three experimental groups: an external focus group, an internal focus group, and a control group. The participants performed two tasks: a choice-RT task and a Simon task. Participants in all three groups practiced eight blocks of 20 trials from each task in a counterbalanced order – a total of 180 trials for each task. The sole difference between the three groups was the administered attentional focus instructions. The findings suggest that attentional focus instructions do not affect the performance of a choice-RT task or a Simon-task in a computerized online study. It is possible that the simple RT-based tasks in the current study were not sensitive to the attentional focus manipulation, since in such simple tasks there are not many actions that internal focus can disrupt. Although we asked the participants to what extent they followed the instructions, we cannot say whether their responses represent their actual attentional focus when performing the tasks. (shrink)

The article addresses the production of reproducibility as a topic that has become acutely relevant in the recent discussions on the replication crisis in science. It brings the ethnomethodological stance on reproducibility into the discussions, claiming that reproducibility is necessarily produced locally, on the shop floor, with methodological guidelines serving as references to already established practices rather than their origins. The article refers to this argument empirically, analyzing how a group of novice neuroscientists performs a series of measurements in a (...) transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment. Based on ethnography and video analysis, the article traces a history of the local measurement procedure invented by the researchers in order to overcome the experimental uncertainty. The article aims to demonstrate how reproducibility of the local procedure is achieved in the shop floor work of the practitioners and how the procedure becomes normalized and questioned as incorrect in the course of experimental practice. It concludes that the difference between guidelines and practical actions is not problematic per se; what may be problematic is that researchers can be engaged in different working projects described by the same instruction. (shrink)

A common description of a mathematical proof is as a logically structured sequence of assertions, beginning from accepted premises and proceeding by standard inference rules to a conclusion. Does this description match the language of proofs as mathematicians write them in their research articles? In this chapter, we use methods from corpus linguistics to look at the prevalence of imperatives and instructions in mathematical preprints from the arXiv repository. We find thirteen verbs that are used most often to form imperatives (...) in proofs, and that these show up significantly more often within proofs than in the surrounding mathematical writing. We also show that there are many more verbs used to form a diverse selection of instructions in proofs. These findings are at odds with the view of proofs as sequences of assertions. Instead, we argue in favour of the recipe model of proofs: that proofs are like recipes, giving instructions for mathematical actions to be carried out. (shrink)

Data science skills are rapidly becoming a necessity in modern science. In response to this need, institutions and organizations around the world are developing research data science curricula to teach the programming and computational skills that are needed to build and maintain data infrastructures and maximize the use of available data. To date, however, few of these courses have included an explicit ethics component, and developing such components can be challenging. This paper describes a novel approach to teaching data ethics (...) on short courses developed for the CODATA-RDA Schools for Research Data Science. The ethics content of these schools is centred on the concept of open and responsible science citizenship that draws on virtue ethics to promote ethics of practice. Despite having little formal teaching time, this concept of citizenship is made central to the course by distributing ethics content across technical modules. Ethics instruction consists of a wide range of techniques, including stand-alone lectures, group discussions and mini-exercises linked to technical modules. This multi-level approach enables students to develop an understanding both of “responsible and open science citizenship”, and of how such responsibilities are implemented in daily research practices within their home environment. This approach successfully locates ethics within daily data science practice, and allows students to see how small actions build into larger ethical concerns. This emphasises that ethics are not something “removed from daily research” or the remit of data generators/end users, but rather are a vital concern for all data scientists. (shrink)

Kazimierz Twardowski is most commonly known as the teacher of great philosophers and the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. As a philosopher however, he is primarily remembered for his famous comparison of the contents and objects of various kinds of representations, a comparison that remains enshrined in European thought.In fact, he attained important results in many other branches of philosophy as well. For instance, in ontology, he laid the foundations for the modern theory of formal structure of objects, and he (...) introduced the theoretically fruitful pair of terms, action-product. In epistemology, he developed a profound analysis of the notion and criteria of truth; and he provided a forceful account of the errors underlying relativist theories of truth. In methodology, he drew an explicit distinction between the processes of discovering, systematising, and grounding in science, and he offered accurate descriptions of the nature of psychology and other humanities. In logic, he offered decisive arguments on behalf of the idiogenetic conception of judgement, and he improved the traditional typology of adjectives.These achievements are of significance that is not only historical. Kazimierz Twardowski's work, formulated in plain, precise language, are instructive and inspiring for contemporary students of philosophy. (shrink)

Prayer, meditation and contemplation have long been established as essentials in human life all over the world. Yet, even by a religious devotee, they are regarded in one way or another as insignificant and secondary: what is taken into accounts is just getting things done. Thus, prayer sounds simply as ‘saying words’, and meditation is an obscure and complicated practice not easily understood. Even if there is any advantage, it is recognised and perceived as totally detached from the life of (...) average people. Contemplative life is indeed sometimes seen as something sceptical. The article challenges the perspective and saying that the absolute principle of prayer is intensifying intimate accomplishment in love, the awareness of God. The authentic goal of meditation is the search and discovery of advanced dimensions in freedom, illumination and love, in intensifying our awareness of our life in God. Besides, people usually consider contemplative life as the opposite of active life and prefer to contemplative life. Using one of the greatest Catholic mystic’s perspective, the article shows that contemplative life is not better than active and not vice versa. Both are necessary. In this case, the article also put into a dialogue with Islamic spirituality. Contribution: This article enriches the current debate on contemplation and action; it also shatters the complains that mysticism, instructs and guides abandonment from worldly interests and introduces what we can called a new mysticism, that is, an ‘activist mysticism of dynamised silence’. (shrink)

This paper examines faculty perceptions regarding ethical behavior among colleagues and students, and faculty practices with regard to teaching ethics in three institutions over a 4-year period. Faculty reported an uneven pattern of unethical behavior among colleagues over the period. A majority of business courses included ethics, however as both a specific topic on the syllabus and within course discussions. The percentage of courses with ethics discussions increased in 2006, however, the time allocated to these discussions decreased. These results suggest (...) that faculty are approaching ethics instruction less formally, raising concerns over the success of curriculum integration. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on a physiotherapy consultation in which the first author of the contribution is the patient and the second author is the physiotherapist. It features analysis of video excerpts in which (1) the physiotherapist instructs the patient how to do an exercise and (2) the patient turns the physiotherapist's instructions into a course of action while (3) the physiotherapist monitors, assesses, guides, and corrects the patient's instructed actions by deploying touch. The investigation draws on video-recordings and (...) transcriptions of the physiotherapist’s and the patient’s interaction during the exercise instructions, the authors’ experience of touching/being touched during these instructions, and their shared understandings as discussed during data-sessions devoted to select video-clips of exercise instructions. In a learning process, the instructor’s instructional corrections are critical: they provide learners with relevant specifications and explanations as to how instructed actions and/or remedial actions are to be accomplished. Whereas monitoring and touching the patient allows the physiotherapist to feel, assess, correct, and guide the patient’s instructed actions, being touched permits the patient to feel how the physiotherapist’s touch resonates beyond locally circumscribed body contact and adapt her movements accordingly. Our contribution thus reveals touching/being touched configurations that establish joint attention and action on extended sensoriality as forming constitutive parts of a dynamic sensorimotor process of inter- and intrabodily resonance, which is challenging to investigate. (shrink)

Technical Graphics is one of the technology subjects taught at Junior Certificate level in post- primary schools in Ireland. The Junior Certificate examination is held at the end of the Junior Cycle in post-primary schools, which caters for students aged from 12 to 15 years. As a teacher of Technical Graphics for the past seven years, I have gained a great understanding and insight into the different topics in the subject and how they are perceived by students. I concur with (...) the State Examinations Commission report (2008) that students lack an understanding of the rotation element of transformation geometry, one of the six topics covered on the Junior Cycle Technical Graphics course. The purpose of this study is to implement a new teaching methodology through the use of SolidWorks in an effort to improve the students’ visualization, spatial awareness and understanding of transformation geometry. I engaged in an action research study of my own practice as I investigated if SolidWorks could actually be used at Junior Certificate level to improve student understanding of transformation geometry. The action research took place over a five-week period and included three cycles of research. The research was carried out with a third-year Junior Cycle group aged between fifteen and sixteen years of age and all students in the class took part in the study. The first stage of the research examined student progress as they worked through the topic following teacher instruction on SolidWorks. The second stage of the research examined the students’ progress as they used the software for themselves. I carried out an assessment task with students towards the end of the study, which showed that student learning had improved in comparison to previous years. (shrink)

Error-related electroencephalographic signals have been widely studied concerning the human cognitive capability of differentiating between erroneous and correct actions. Midfrontal error-related negativity and theta band oscillations are believed to underlie post-action error monitoring. However, it remains elusive how early monitoring activity is trackable and what are the pre-response brain mechanisms related to performance monitoring. Moreover, it is still unclear how task-specific parameters, such as cognitive demand or motor control, influence these processes. Here, we aimed to test pre- and post-error (...) EEG patterns for different types of motor responses and investigate the neuronal mechanisms leading to erroneous actions. We implemented a go/no-go paradigm based on keypresses and saccades. Participants received an initial instruction about the direction of response to be given based on a facial cue and a subsequent one about the type of action to be performed based on an object cue. The paradigm was tested in 20 healthy volunteers combining EEG and eye tracking. We found significant differences in reaction time, number, and type of errors between the two actions. Saccadic responses reflected a higher number of premature responses and errors compared to the keypress ones. Nevertheless, both led to similar EEG patterns, supporting previous evidence for increased ERN amplitude and midfrontal theta power during error commission. Moreover, we found pre-error decreased theta activity independent of the type of action. Source analysis suggested different origin for such pre- and post-error neuronal patterns, matching the anterior insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, respectively. This opposite pattern supports previous evidence of midfrontal theta not only as a neuronal marker of error commission but also as a predictor of action performance. Midfrontal theta, mostly associated with alert mechanisms triggering behavioral adjustments, also seems to reflect pre-response attentional mechanisms independently of the action to be performed. Our findings also add to the discussion regarding how salience network nodes interact during performance monitoring by suggesting that pre- and post-error patterns have different neuronal sources within this network. (shrink)

The article looks at sport as a form of human action where the participants display various forms of Intentionality. Intentionality may be defined as ‘that property of many mental states and events by which they are directed at or about or of objects and states of affairs in the world.’ Sporting actions are about human intentions, beliefs, desires, perceptions and not to forget, movements. This means that sports typically display what we call ‘Intentionality.’ The study of Intentionality and intentional (...) actions has previously received relatively little attention among sport philosophers, but deserves more attention. Even though there is a tension and several differences between continental and analytical approaches to philosophical problems, there is a common understanding of the phenomenon we call ‘Intentionality.’ The debate between John Searle, representing the analytical camp, and Hubert Dreyfus, representing the phenomenological camp, is instructive to see the differences, and also the commonalities between the two approaches. The article starts with a clarification of the concept of Intentionality and sketches some of the history and background of the concept. It then presents the main conceptual framework that Searle uses to distinguish the different types and forms of Intentionality and his views on sporting actions. This is followed by a presentation of the phenomenological approach of Dreyfus and the response by Searle. The article ends by discussing the possibility of a combined and enriched view where a clarification of the logic as well as the phenomenology of sporting actions is needed. It may thus be possible to bridge the gap between the two approaches. (shrink)

First published 30 years ago and long out of print, _Aquinas: God and Action_ appears here for the first time in paperback. This classic volume by eminent philosopher and theologian David Burrell argues that Aquinas’s is not the god of Greek metaphysics, but a god of both being and activity. Aquinas’s plan in the _Summa Theologiae_, according to Burrell, is to instruct humans how to find eternal happiness through acts of knowing and loving. Featuring a new foreword by the author, (...) this edition will be welcomed by philosophers and theologians alike. (shrink)

This paper begins by reviewing dominant themes in current teaching of professional ethics in engineering education. In contrast to more traditional approaches that simulate ethical practice by using ethical theories to reason through micro-level ethical dilemmas, this paper proposes a pragmatic approach to ethics that places more emphasis on the practical plausibility of ethical decision-making. In addition to the quality of ethical justification, the value of a moral action also depends on its effectiveness in solving an ethical dilemma, cultivating (...) healthy working relationships, negotiating existing organizational cultures, and achieving contextual plausibility in everyday professional practice. This paper uses a cross-cultural ethics scenario to further elaborate how a pragmatic approach can help us rethink ethical reasoning, as well as ethics instruction and assessment. This paper is expected to be of interest to educators eager to improve the ability of engineers and other professional students to effectively and appropriately deal with the kinds of everyday ethical issues they will likely face in their careers. (shrink)

A number of general points behind the story of this paper may be worth setting out separately, now that we have come to the end.There is perhaps one obvious omission to be addressed right away. Although the word “information” has occurred throughout this paper, it must have struck the reader that we have had nothing to say on what information is. In this respect, our theories may be like those in physics: which do not explain what “energy” is (a notion (...) which seems quite similar to “information” in several ways), but only give some basic laws about its behaviour and transmission.The eventual recommendation made here has been to use a broad type-theoretic framework for studying various more classical and more dynamic notions of proposition in their interaction. This is not quite the viewpoint advocated by many current authors in the area, who argue for a whole-sale switch from a ‘static’ to a ‘dynamic’ perspective on propositions. This is not the place, however, to survey the conceptual arguments for and against such a more radical move.This still leaves many questions about possible reductions from one perspective to another. For instance, it would seem that classical systems ought to serve as a ‘limiting case’, which should still be valid after procedural details of some cognitive process have been forgotten. There are various ways of implementing the desired correspondence: e.g. by considering extreme cases with ⫅ equal to identity, or, in the pure relational algebra framework by considering only pairs (x, x). What we shall want then are reductions of dynamic logics, in those special cases, to classical logic. But perhaps also, more sophisticated views are possible. How do we take a piece of ‘dynamic’ prose, remove control instructions and the like, and obtain a piece of ‘classical’ text, suitable for inference ‘in the light of eternity’?There is also a more technical side to the matter of ‘reduction’. By now, Logic has reached such a state of ‘inter-translatability’ that almost all known variant logics can be embedded into each other, via suitable translations. In particular, once an adequate semantic has been given for a new system, this usually induces an embedding into standard logic: as we know, e.g., for the case of Modal Logic. Like-wise, all systems of dynamic interpretation or inference proposed so far admit of direct embedding into an ordinary ‘static’ predicate logic having explicit transition predicates (cf. van Benthem 1988b). Thus, our moral is this. The issue is not whether the new systems of information structure or processing are essentially beyond the expressive resources of traditional logical systems: for, they are not. The issue is rather which interesting phenomena and questions will be put into the right focus by them.The next broad issue concerns the specific use of the perspective proposed here, vis-à-vis concrete proposals for information-oriented or dynamic semantics. The general strategy advocated here is to locate some suitable base calculus and then consider which ‘extras’ are peculiar to the proposal. For instance, this is the spirit in which modal S4 would be a base logic of information models, and intuitionistic logicthe special theory devoting itself to upward persistent propositions. Or, with the examples in Section 4.1, the underlying base logic is our relational algebra, whereas, say, ordinary updates then impose special properties, such as ‘idempotence’: $$xRy \Rightarrow yRy$$ Does this kind of application presuppose the existence of one distinguished base logic, of which all others are extensions? This would be attractive-and some form of relational algebra or linear logic might be a reasonable candidate. Nevertheless, the enterprise does not rest on this outcome. What matters is an increased sensitivity to the ‘landscape’ of dynamic logics, just as with the ‘Categorial Hierarchy’ in Categorial Grammar (cf. van Benthem 1989a, 1991) where the family of logics with their interconnections seems more important than any specific patriarch.Finally, perhaps the most important issue in the new framework is the possibility of new kinds of questions arising precisely because of its differences from standard logic. Notably, given the option of regarding propositions as programs, it will be of interest to consider systematically which major questions about programming languages now make sense inside logic too.EXAMPLE. Correctness. When do we have $$\left[\kern-0.15em\left[ \pi \right]\kern-0.15em\right](\left[\kern-0.15em\left[ A \right]\kern-0.15em\right]) \subseteq \left[\kern-0.15em\left[ B \right]\kern-0.15em\right]$$ for (s, t) propositions A, B and a dynamic (s, (s, t)) proposition π?Program Synthesis. Which dynamic proposition will take us from an information state satisfying A to one satisfying B? (This question needs refinement, lest there be trivial answers.)Determinism. Which propositions as programs are deterministic, in the sense of defining single-valued functions from states to states?Querying. What does it mean to ask for information in the present setting? (Again, individual types referring to e will be crucial here.)This is not merely an agenda for wishful thinking. Within Logic, there are various ways of introducing such concerns into semantics, especially, using tools from Automata Theory. (See van Benthem 1989c for further discussion of such computational perspectives in ‘cognitive programming’.)At least if one believes that ‘dynamics’ is of the essence in cognition (rather than a mere interfacing problem between the halls of eternal truth and the noisy streets of reality), the true test for the present enterprise is the development of a significant new research program not merely copying the questions of old. (shrink)

Mīmāṁsā, an Indian hermeneutics provides an exhaustive methodology to interpret Vedic statements. A formalism namely, Mīmāṁsā Inspired Representation of Actions has already been proposed in a preliminary manner. This paper expands the formalism logically and includes Syntax and Semantics covering Soundness and Completeness. Here, several interpretation techniques from Mīmāṁsā have been considered for formalising the statements. Based on these, instructions that denote actions are categorized into positive and prohibitive unconditional imperatives and conditional imperatives that enjoin reason, temporal action and (...) goal. These instructions are evaluated to three values S, V and N. If the instruction is executed with the intention of goal, then it acquires the value of S; if the intention of goal is present and the instruction is not executed, then it assumes the value of V; and if there is no intention of goal, then the instruction is evaluated to N. This formalism has also been applied in different computational settings such as AI planning, Robotics, task analysis and classification of natural language instructions. An outline of these applications and the comparison of this formalism with other relevant theories are also presented in this paper. (shrink)

Examining a fragment of interaction that occurred during a surgery at a teaching hospital, we explore how particular instructed experiences are produced for two trainees, a surgeon in the residency program and a medical student in a surgical clerkship. We are concerned with what is produced as learnable in each case. Stated slightly differently, we are interested in the ways in which the attending surgeon uses demonstrations as instruction and the ways in which recipients of that instruction, in this (...) case the resident and the clerk, respond with enactments of those demonstrated actions. The recipients of this kind of instruction participate in a form of experiential learning in which they enact their own versions of the instructor’s demonstrated actions to be observed and assessed by the instructor. These enactments provide learners with experiential access to the instructor’s demonstrated actions. They are designed to be experiences that learners may draw upon to make experientially warranted claims at some later time. (shrink)

This is a charming and engaging book that combines careful attention to the phenomenology of experience with an appreciation of the psychology and neuroscience of perception. In some of its aimsfor example, to show problems with a rigid version of a view of visual perception as an inverse optics process of constructing a static 3-D representation from static 2-D information on the retina--it succeeds admirably. As No points out, vision is a process that depends on interactions between the perceiver and (...) the environment and involves contributions from sensory systems other than the eye. He is at pains to note that vision is not passive. His analogy with touch is to the point: touch involves skillful probing and movement, and so does vision, although less obviously and in my view less centrally so. This much is certainly widely accepted among vision scientistsalthough mainstream vision scientists (represented, for example, by Stephen Palmers excellent textbook²) view these points as best seen within a version of the inverse optics view that takes inputs as non-static and as including motor instructions (for example, involving eye movements and head movements).³ The kind of point that No raises is viewed as important at the margins, but as not disturbing the main lines of the picture of vision that descendswith many changesfrom the pioneering work of David Marr in the 1980s (and before him, from Helmholtz). But No shows little interest in mainstream vision science, focusing on non-mainstream ideas in the science of perception, specifically ideas from the anti-representational psychologist J.J. Gibson, and also drawing on Wittgenstein and the phenomenology tradition. There is a sense throughout the book of revolution, of upsetting the applecart. This is a review from the point of view of the applecart. (shrink)

The mechanism underlying action potentials is routinely used to explicate the mechanistic model of explanation in the philosophy of science. However, characterisations of action potentials often fixate on neurons, mentioning plant cells in passing or ignoring them entirely. The plant sciences are also prone to neglecting non-neuronal action potentials and their role in plant biology. This oversight is significant because plant action potentials bear instructive similarities to those generated by neurons. This paper helps correct the imbalance (...) in representations of action potentials by offering an overview of the mechanism for plant action potentials and highlighting their similarity to those in neurons. Furthermore, it affirms the role of plant action potentials in discovering the evolution and function of mechanisms of action potentials more broadly. We stress the potential of plants for producing generalisations about action potentials and the possible role of plants as experimental organisms. (shrink)

Document-based history instruction (DBI) was implemented in a middle school special education setting to promote the development of disciplinary cognitive processing and higher order thinking using historical thinking as a framework for students with learning differences (ld). A convergent mixed methods action research design was utilized to explore a) how DBI influenced students’ disciplinary cognitive processing and higherorder thinking when reading multiple historical documents b) the affordances and constraints of using DBI in a special education classroom. Using quantitative data (...) sources (e.g., highlighted documents, reading comprehension responses, and an ondemand writing task) and additional qualitative data (e.g., interviews, fieldnotes, classroom artifacts, and audio recordings), we uncovered insightful evidence to support the potential of DBI for students with ld. In one academic year, when reading multiple historical sources, students learned how to efficiently highlight content knowledge and academic vocabulary, interrogate historical sources, and corroborate information from different sources. (shrink)

Book synopsis: The book illustrates the concept of action in three different contexts - the justification of actions, people's life history, and pragmatism. The special feature of this book is that a comprehensive view of this kind marks a departure from the atomistic approach of action theory, which in itself raises a number of questions. If actions are not justified by mental states, how can persons then act for reasons? How can persons' actions over time be described, and (...) what is the connection with the question of personal identity? If there is to be a unified understanding of the person, does the practical have to take precedence over the theoretical, and what does this mean for epistemology, for example? The ten contributors to this volume engage in an instructive manner with these and similar questions in the three sections of the book. (shrink)