Today, an increased impact of information and communication technologies in the society at large has lead teachers to engage in professional development activities related to the use of ICT. Even though this development has been prominent for more than two decades, its long term effects seem complex to determine. This paper is based on interviews with twelve Swedish teachers who participated in a national program for promoting school development and use of ICT in 2000-2001. The program was aligned with the (...) pedagogical approaches set out in the national Swedish curriculum, such as a shift from teaching to learning and giving pupils more responsibility, introducing interdisciplinary approaches to teaching in teams, and a problem based pupils-oriented pedagogy. The analysis of the interviews show that teachers still feel a high degree of appreciation for the program, and that they share a relative agreement of the importance of the program for their teaching with ICT in the last decade. The general intentions of the program to be more concerned with school development and pedagogy rather than technology and ICT seem also to be present today as a long term effect. (shrink)

Volume 46, Issue 6, November 2020, Page 727-743.

Book reviewed in this article: In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. By John Van Seters. The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament. By Samuel E. Balentine. Theodicy in the Old Testament. Edited by James L. Crenshaw. Ce Dieu censé aimer la Souffrance. By François Varone. Evil and Evolution, A Theodicy. By Richard W. Kropf. ‘Poet and Peasant’ and ‘Through Peasant Eyes’: A Literary‐Cultural Approach to (...) the Parable in Luke. By Kenneth Bailey. The Biblical Foundations for Mission. By Donald Senior and Carroll Stuhlmueller. New Testament Foundations of Ministry. By Colin Kruse. Church, Ministry and Unity. By James E. Griffiss. Theology of Ministry. By Thomas Franklin O'Meara. Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology. By Colin E. Gunton. I believe in the Holy Spirit. By Yves Congar. Between Jesus and Paul. By Martin Hengel. From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background. By Frances Young. Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century. By G.R. Evans. Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. By Clarissa W. Atkinson. Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408–1929. Edited by N. Macdougall. Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution. Collected Essays, Volume II. By Frances A. Yates. Seven‐Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentury, 1483–1983. Edited by Peter Newman Brooks. Ökumenische Erschliessung Martin Luthers. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer. Luther's Ecumenical Significance, An Interconfessional Consultation. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer, in collaboration with Carter Lindberg and Harry McSorley. States of Mind: A Study of Anglo‐Irish Conflict 1780 to 1980. By Oliver MacDonagh. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth‐Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter Reform. By Gregory L. Freeze. Pusey Rediscovered. Edited by Perry Butler. Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell's Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold. By Nicholas Sagovsky. The Concept of Glaubenslehre. By Walter E. Wyman, Jr. The Existence and Nature of God. Edited by Alfred J. Freddoso. Faith and Reason. By Anthony Kenny. Logic and The Nature of God. By Stephen T. Davis. Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality. By Josef Fuchs. Morality and Conflict. By Stuart Hampshire. Realism and Imagination in Ethics. By Sabina Lovibond. Intentionality. By John R. Searle. Philosophical Papers, I: Practical Reason. By G.H. von Wright. Philosophical Papers, II: Philosophical Logic. By G.H. von Wright. A Model of Making: Literary Criticism and its Theology. By Ruth Etchells. The Return of the Goddess: Femininity, Aggression and the Modern Grail Quest. By Edward Whitmont. The Power of the Poor in History. By Gustavo Gutierrez, translated by Robert R. Barr. The God of the Xhosa. By Janet Hodgson. Our Hymn Tunes: Their Choice and Performance. By Donald Webster. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. By William Morgan. An Introduction to Plato's Laws. By R.E. Stalley. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. By Kenneth M. Sayre. Plato's ‘Parmenides’: Translation and Analysis. By R.E. Allen. Politics in the Ancient World. By M.I. Finley. (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore current work in central areas of philosophy, work unified by attention to salient questions of human action and human agency. They ask what it is for humans to act knowledgeably, to use language, to be friends, to act heroically, to be mortally fortunate, and to produce as well as to appreciate art. The volume is dedicated to J. O. Urmson, in recognition of his inspirational contributions to these areas. All the essays but one have (...) been specially written for this volume. (shrink)

Moral philosophers tend to discriminate, explicitly or implicitly, three types of action from the point of view of moral worth. First, they recognize actions that are a duty, or obligatory, or that we ought to perform, treating these terms as approximately synonymous; second, they recognize actions that are right in so far as they are permissible from a moral standpoint and not ruled out by moral considerations, but that are not morally required of us, like the lead of this or (...) that card at bridge; third, they recognize actions that are wrong, that we ought not to do. (shrink)

J. O. Urmson; VIII*—A Defence of Intuitionism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 111–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

J. O. Urmson; VIII*—A Defence of Intuitionism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 111–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

Philosophical Analysis Its Development between the Two World Wars.

The Pythagorean idea that numbers are the key to understanding reality inspired philosophers in late Antiquity (4th and 5th centuries A.D.) to develop theories in physics and metaphysics based on mathematical models. This book draws on some newly discovered evidence, including fragments of Iamblichus's On Pythagoreanism, to examine these early theories and trace their influence on later Neoplatonists (particularly Proclus and Syrianus) and on medieval and early modern philosophy.

On its first appearance in 1960, J.O. Urmson's Concise encyclopedia of Western philosophy and philosophers established itself as a classic. Its contributors included many of the leading philosophers of the English-speaking world: Ryle, Hare, Strawson, Ayer, Dummett, Williams and many others. They wrote with an authority and individuality which made the Encyclopedia into a lively and engaging introduction to philosophy as well as a convenient reference work. For this edition, supervised by Jonathan Rée, the original articles have been revised and (...) updated, and eighty articles by thirty one new authors have been added. The additions take account of recent developments in philosophy, of literary, historical and political issues in philosophy, and of developments in continental thought, including in Marxism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstruction. There is a clear, integral cross-referencing system which allows the reader to identify points of overlap between philosophical traditions and their personalities at a glance. (shrink)

Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is not a counsel to perform mean or moderate actions. It states that excellence of character is a mean state with regard to the having and displaying of emotions. All emotions are morally neutral; character is shown by displaying emotions on the right occasions, Not too often or too rarely, Not too strongly or too weakly, For sufficient and only sufficient reasons, Etc. The difficulties for such a view presented by justice and such bad emotions (...) as envy are discussed. The conclusion is that basically aristotle's theory can resist critical scrutiny. (shrink)

J.O. Urmson's The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary contains some five hundred alphabetically arranged entries, each aiming to provide useful information on a particular word used by Greek philosophers. The book includes a wealth of quotations ranging from the fifth century BC to the sixth century AD.

BackgroundBiobanks are considered to be key infrastructures for research development and have generated a lot of debate about their ethical, legal and social implications. While the focus has been on human genomic research, rapid advances in human microbiome research further complicate the debate.DiscussionWe draw on two cystic fibrosis biobanks in Toronto, Canada, to illustrate our points. The biobanks have been established to facilitate sample and data sharing for research into the link between disease progression and microbial dynamics in the lungs (...) of pediatric and adult patients. We begin by providing an overview of some of the ELSI associated with human microbiome research, particularly on the implications for the broader society. We then discuss ethical considerations regarding the identifiability of samples biobanked for human microbiome research, and examine the issue of return of results and incidental findings. We argue that, for the purposes of research ethics oversight, human microbiome research samples should be treated with the same privacy considerations as human tissues samples. We also suggest that returning individual microbiome-related findings could provide a powerful clinical tool for care management, but highlight the need for a more grounded understanding of contextual factors that may be unique to human microbiome research.ConclusionsWe revisit the ELSI of biobanking and consider the impact that human microbiome research might have. Our discussion focuses on identifiability of human microbiome research samples, and return of research results and incidental findings for clinical management. (shrink)

Philosophical Analysis Its Development between the Two World Wars.

Knowledge of the structure of the cosmos, Plato suggests, is important in organizing a human community which aims at happiness. This book investigates this theme in Plato's later works, the Timaeus, Statesman, and Laws. Dominic J. O'Meara proposes fresh readings of these texts, starting from the religious festivals and technical and artistic skills in the context of which Plato elaborates his cosmological and political theories, for example the Greek architect's use of models as applied by Plato in describing the making (...) of the world. O'Meara gives an account of the model of which Plato's world is an image; of the mathematics used in producing the world; and of the relation between the cosmic model and the political science and legislation involved in designing a model state in the Laws. Non-specialist scholars and students will be able to access and profit from the book. (shrink)

Following arguments put forward in my book (Why red doesn’t sound like a bell: understanding the feel of consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 2011), this article takes a pragmatic, scientist’s point of view about the concepts of consciousness and “feel”, pinning down what people generally mean when they talk about these concepts, and then investigating to what extent these capacities could be implemented in non-biological machines. Although the question of “feel”, or “phenomenal consciousness” as it is called by (...) some philosophers, is generally considered to be the “hard” problem of consciousness, the article shows that by taking a “sensorimotor” approach, the difficulties can be overcome. What remains to account for are the notions of so-called “access consciousness” and the self. I claim that though they are undoubtedly very difficult, these are not logically impossible to implement in robots. (shrink)

The influence of J. L. Austin on contemporary philosophy was substantial during his lifetime, and has grown greatly since his death, at the height of his powers, in 1960. Philosophical Papers, first published in 1961, was the first of three volumes of Austin's work to be edited by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Together with Sense and Sensibilia and How to do things with Words, it has extended Austin's influence far beyond the circle who knew him or read (...) the handful of papers he published in journals. (shrink)

The species problem is one of the oldest controversies in natural history. Its persistence suggests that it is something more than a problem of fact or definition. Considerable light is shed on the species problem when it is viewed as a problem in the representation of the natural system (sensu Griffiths, 1974, Acta Biotheor. 23: 85–131; de Queiroz, 1998, Philos. Sci. 55: 238–259). Just as maps are representations of the earth, and are subject to what is called cartographic generalization, so (...) diagrams of the natural system (evolutionary trees) are representations of the evolutionary chronicle, and are subject to a temporal version of cartographic generalization which may be termed systematic generalization. Cartographic generalization is based on judgements of geographical importance, and systematic generalization is based on judgements of historical importance, judgements expressed in narrative sentences (sensu Danto, 1985, Narration and knowledge, Columbia Univ. Press, New York). At higher systematic levels these narrative sentences are conventional and retrospective, but near the "species" level they become prospective, that is, dependent upon expectations of the future. The truth of prospective narrative sentences is logically indeterminable in the present, and since all the common species concepts depend upon prospective narration, it is impossible for any of them to be applied with precision. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Instrumentalism is an approach to science that treats a theory as a tool and only as a tool for computation; it dispenses with the concept of truth.Conventionalism treats a theory as true by convention if it forms a pattern of observations from which correct predictions can be made.Operationalism denies meaning to the concepts of a theory unless they can be defined operationally. It is argued in this paper that truth-value is indispensable to science, because a theory can be rejected only (...) if an empirical consequence is false and if falsity of a conclusion entails falsity of a premise. This undermines the above positions. The fourth interpretation isinduction. Induction, by contrast, uses the notion of truth-value. What is focused on here is its reliance on the ultimacy ofobservation. The present thesis is that instrumentalism, conventionalism, and induction are different attempts to handle observations. The common problem is the gap between data and theory.All these interpretations share a philosophy of observationalism. The aim of this paper is to show that the several orthodox interpretations of science all fail to solve the problem of the data-theory gap, and to show that they all presuppose a philosophy of observation. (shrink)