Higher education institutes both foster the advancement of knowledge and address society's socioeconomic and environmental challenges. To fulfil these multiple missions requires significant changes to how the role of a researcher is perceived e.g. a researcher identity that is congruent with the objective of contributing to fundamental knowledge while also engaging with non-academic actors, broadly, and entrepreneurship, in particular. We argue that the early stages of an academic career—namely the PhD training trajectory—and the knowledge networks formed during this period have (...) a major influence on the scientist’s future capacity to develop an appropriate researcher role identity. We draw on knowledge network and identity theories to investigate how the knowledge networks (i.e. business, scientific and career knowledge networks) of PhD students promote changes to, reinforce or conflict with the perception of a researcher role identity. Our longitudinal qualitative network study includes PhD students and their supervisors funded by the H2020 FINESSE project. At the network level, we show that scientific knowledge is distributed equally throughout young academics’ networks but that entrepreneurial (business) and career knowledge tend to be concentrated around certain individuals in these networks. On the PhD student level, we observe different pronunciations of the researcher role identity linked to students’ interactions with their knowledge networks. We distinguish identity conflicts due to misalignment between ego and alters which leads to withdrawal from the network. Our findings have practical implications and suggest that universities and PhD student supervisors should support PhD students to develop a researcher identity which is in line with the individual PhD student’s expectations. (shrink)

In an approach to quantify the locomotor response to environmental stimuli in fishes and its central control mechanisms, initially stochastic models of spontaneous locomotor behavior are being formulated. In the present paper, the locomotor patterns of three active nurse shark,Ginglymostoma cirratum, in six experiments are converted into 17 locomotor variables and found to have definite time series structure. Sixty-seven of the 102 first order serial correlation coefficients are statistically significant, the incidence rate of which differs between experiments and between locomotor (...) variables. The percent residual variation about an autoregressive equation is transformed by a Fisher's z statistic and the means are found to differ significantly among experiments and among variables. The experiment by variable interaction is very low implying a consistency in the ranks of the variables despite the wide differences in their absolute levels over the experiments. This suggests the existence of a relatively rigid albeit occasionally latent locomotor control mechanism in the central nervous system. (shrink)

Biologists, historians, lawyers, art historians, and literary critics all voice arguments in the critical dialogue about what constitutes evidence in research and scholarship. They examine not only the constitution and "blurring" of disciplinary boundaries, but also the configuration of the fact-evidence distinctions made in different disciplines and historical moments the relative function of such concepts as "self-evidence," "experience," "test," "testimony," and "textuality" in varied academic discourses and the way "rules of evidence" are themselves products of historical developments. The essays and (...) rejoinders are by Terry Castle, Lorraine Daston, Carlo Ginzburg, Ian Hacking, Mark Kelman, R. C. Lewontin, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Mary Poovey, Donald Preziosi, Simon Schaffer, Joan W. Scott, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith. The critical responses are by Lauren Berlant, James Chandler, Jean Comaroff, Arnold I. Davidson, Harry D. harootunian, Elizabeth Helsinger, Thomas C. Holt, Francoise Meltzer, Robert J. Richards, Lawrence Rothfield, Joel Snyder, Cass R. Sunstein, and William Wimsatt. (shrink)

The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns the (...) gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)

This paper explores two aspects of Hume's skeptical crisis in the conclusion to _Treatise<D> Book I: his involved personal experience of the crisis, and his detached naturalistic reflection on it. I discuss several distinct states of mind reported in the text, ranging from extreme skepticism that rejects all belief, to natural dogmatism that rejects all reflection, to mitigated skepticism that tries to reconcile reflection and belief. I argue against interpretations according to which Hume's skepticism supports his naturalism, and I suggest (...) that Hume's extreme skepticism ultimately depends on a predisposition to think of the crucial elements of human cognition as "trivial", as epistemically disabling rather than enabling. (shrink)

The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns the (...) gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)

Critical study of Ṣirāṭʹhā-yi mustaqīm, a book by ʻAbd al-Karīm Surūsh on religious pluralism and philosophy of religion.

Political sociology; political ethics; Iraq.

Divine traditions and moral deviation; also social ethics and social aspects in Islam.

This book review considers Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson's argument that there is less of an intrinsic tension between liberalism and republicanism than has been claimed by various students of the history of modern liberal thought. It fully endorses the authors' directing of our attention to the mode of thinking which is to be seen in their select group of subjects (Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant). But it balks at their claim (...) that their 'critical junctures' or 'heterogeneous and relational' interpretation of the rise of liberalism is superior to the 'linear' or 'trickle down' approach which sees this rise as a tale of the progressively strengthening influence of the 'giants' of political thought such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Montesquieu et. al. over lesser thinkers who were more absorbed in 'practical affairs.' The suggestion is made that what the authors take to be 'negotiable' differences of emphasis between the classically liberal and classically republican traditions may in fact be 'existential' oppositions which no single political order could overcome. (shrink)

À partir du témoignage de Sénèque et d’Épictète, le présent article vise à montrer comment les stoïciens rendent compte des réactions involontaires à partir de leur propre psychologie de l’action. Les références faites à Zénon et les allusions à Chrysippe prouvent qu’une théorie des « affections préliminaires » existait dès les débuts du Portique. Le fragment 9 d’Épictète et l’ouverture du deuxième livre du De Ira sont ainsi interprétés comme deux versions concurrentes se rapportant à deux théories subtilement différentes. À (...) partir du matériau textuel emprunté aux premiers stoïciens, on montre l’influence de Zénon sur le De Ira et celle de Chrysippe sur le passage du livre perdu des Entretiens. Cette hypothèse a pour conséquence d’accorder l’exposé de Sénèque à l’orthodoxie stoïcienne défendant un monisme psychologique, et non à la filiation posidonienne, marquée par un dualisme psychologique à tendance platonico-aristotélicienne. (shrink)