Teacher competencies can be researched in many different ways. In the present article they are studied from the learner’s viewpoint. The article presents results of the extensive project “Teacher Education for New Competencies for the Knowledge Society and the Role of these Competencies in Educational Goal Attainment at School”, carried out at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, with the financial support of the Slovenian Ministry of Education and Sport. We present the results of the learner’s judgement (...) of the teacher’s didactic competencies. We formed a questionnaire with which we operationalised teacher competencies with the purpose of measuring the teacher’s efficiency of instruction. In order to achieve the goals of modern instruction it is important to engage both models: learner‐centred and teacher‐centred education. The research showed that elements of the traditional instruction model are more frequently used than the model that demands a changed learner role. (shrink)

The vast majority of studies on affective processes in reading focus on single words. The most robust finding is a processing advantage for positively valenced words, which has been replicated in the rare studies investigating effects of affective features of words during sentence or story comprehension. Here we were interested in how the different valences of words in a sentence influence its processing and supralexical affective evaluation. Using a sentence verification task we investigated how comprehension of simple declarative sentences containing (...) a noun and an adjective depends on the valences of both words. The results are in line with the assumed general processing advantage for positive words. We also observed a clear interaction effect, as can be expected from the affective priming literature: sentences with emotionally congruent words (e.g., The grandpa is clever) were verified faster than sentences containing emotionally incongruent words (e.g., The grandpa is lonely). The priming effect was most prominent for sentences with positive words suggesting that both, early processing as well as later meaning integration and situation model construction, is modulated by affective processing. In a second rating task we investigated how the emotion potential of supralexical units depends on word valence. The simplest hypothesis predicts that the supralexical affective structure is a linear combination of the valences of the nouns and adjectives (Bestgen, 1994 ). Overall, our results do not support this: The observed clear interaction effect on ratings indicate that especially negative adjectives dominated supralexical evaluation, i.e., a sort of negativity bias in sentence evaluation. Future models of sentence processing thus should take interactive affective effects into account. (shrink)

Conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) presents many opportunities in the psychotherapeutic landscape—such as therapeutic support for people with mental health problems and without access to care. The adoption of CAI poses many risks that need in-depth ethical scrutiny. The objective of this paper is to complement current research on the ethics of AI for mental health by proposing a holistic, ethical, and epistemic analysis of CAI adoption. First, we focus on the question of whether CAI is rather a tool or an (...) agent. This question serves as a framework for the subsequent ethical analysis of CAI focusing on topics of (self-) knowledge, (self-)understanding, and relationships. Second, we propose further conceptual and ethical analysis regarding human-AI interaction and argue that CAI cannot be considered as an equal partner in a conversation as is the case with a human therapist. Instead, CAI’s role in a conversation should be restricted to specific functions. (shrink)

Understanding Chinese philosophy requires knowledge of the referential framework prevailing in Chinese intellectual traditions. But Chinese philosophical texts are frequently approached through the lens of Western paradigms. Analysing the most common misconceptions surrounding Western Sinology, Jana Rošker alerts us to unseen dangers and introduces us to a new more effective way of reading Chinese philosophy. Acknowledging that different cultures produce different reference points, Rošker explains what happens we use rational analysis, a major feature of the European intellectual tradition, to (...) read Chinese philosophy. We rely on impossible comparisons, arrive at prejudiced assumptions and fail to arrive at the truth, the consequence of applying a different methodology to the process of perceiving, understanding and interpreting reality. Instead of transferring concepts and categories from Western sinology onto socio-cultural Chinese contexts, Rošker constructs a new methodology of reading, understanding and interpreting Chinese philosophy. She opens our eyes to the basic problems of Western paradigms, encourages intercultural approaches and allows us to master a more autochthonous understanding of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

Critical accounts over the past years have focused on neoliberalism as a subject of knowledge; there has been a recently growing interest in neoliberalism as an object of knowledge. This article considers the theoretical, epistemological and political implications of the relationship between neoliberalism as an epistemic subject and neoliberalism as an epistemic object. It argues that the ‘gnossification’ of neoliberalism – framing it an epistemic project, and deriving implications for political engagement from this – avoids engaging with numerous ambiguous elements (...) of the production of knowledge. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘scholastic fallacy’ and Boltanski and Chiapello’s work in sociology of critique, the article lays out a framework for the study of the relationship between epistemic, moral, and political elements of critique of neoliberalism, including the conditions of its own production in contemporary academic contexts. (shrink)

This is an abstract of the paper accepted for publication in \Acta Uni- versitatis Wratislaviensis", series \Prace Filozoczne { Logika". The paper was presented at the 25th Conference for the History of Logic, Krakow, October 5-7, 1979.

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What is the impact of mission on ethical business culture? This question was analyzed through a qualitative case study of a large nonprofit organization in the human services industry with a solid history of ethical business practices and consistent use of a values-based decision-making model. This research explored ethical decision making, ethical business culture, and congruence between enacted and espoused institutional values. Institutional values were identified, and the following pair of research questions was examined: To what extent were incongruent values (...) found between espoused and enacted values? To what extent did incongruent values impact the ethical business culture? Incongruent enacted values were present in the culture, but negative impact was diminished by a larger number of congruent enacted values. Additional findings revealed that an intense commitment to the mission by all employees was the common thread that wound throughout the organization’s ethical business culture and essentially abrogated the undesirable effects of incongruent and negative values. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Assuming that withdrawal is ontological, no method of inquiry will breach the “essence” of an object. As such, this article raises a question of onto-epistemological access to complicate the development of recent rhetorical theories and rhetorical method/ologies informed by object-oriented ontologies and new materialisms. This article wonders about the drive to know and to feel forwarded in these rhetorical method/ologies without discussing how things hide from other things and from themselves, how things elude critics, and how scholars access others (...) through ethnographic and embodied methodologies. Explicating epistemist and anti-epistemist approaches to the question of onto-epistemological access, this article makes a modest proposal for rhetoric scholars to conjure rhetorics of unavailable diversities to remake the gap between knowledge and reality again and again. (shrink)

In Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice, Casey Boyle—or rather, the habitual practice referred to as Casey Boyle—participates in rhetorical studies' recurring concern with relations between humanism and posthumanism. Boyle's posthumanist project crafts another space within the field to think about what rhetoric is, what it does, and what it may become. Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice recalls the purpose of rhetorical education in the Isocrates and Quintilian traditions—"to become a certain kind of person", but with a posthuman return: Whereas classical (...) rhetorical education aimed at ethically stable character formation—the humanist subject—Boyle's posthuman practice enacts character as in-formation... (shrink)

This book offers a thorough technical elaboration and philosophical defense of an objectivist informational interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which its novel content is located in its kinematical framework, that is, in how the theory describes systems independently of the specifics of their dynamics. -/- It will be of interest to researchers and students in the philosophy of physics and in theoretical physics with an interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Additionally, parts of the book may be used (...) as the basis for courses introducing non-physics majors to quantum mechanics, or for self-study by those outside of the university with an interest in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Environmental crises, which are consequences of resource-intensive lifestyles and are characterized to a large extent by both a changing climate and a loss of biodiversity, stress the urgent need for a global social-ecological transformation of the agro-food system. In this regard, the bioeconomy and bioeconomic innovations have frequently been seen as instrumental in addressing these grand challenges and contributing to more sustainable land use. To date, the question of how much bioeconomic innovations contribute to sustainability objectives remains unanswered. Against this (...) background, we study four bioeconomic innovations using the case study of animal production and manure utilization in relation to their potential contributions to a social-ecological transformation. The analysis is based on the application of analytical categories derived from the literature that assess the normativity of these innovations and their implicit cultural changes. The results show that the innovations examined manifest existing thought styles and the incumbent socio-technical regime rather than contribute to a more fundamental transition. In this respect, we stress the importance of evolving alterative ideas in innovation design, applying more integrative approaches, such as embedding innovation processes into transdisciplinary processes, and developing adaptive and reflective governance approaches. In return, bioeconomic innovations should adjust towards the design mission of a social-ecological transformation and include a multitude of actors to discuss and harmonize contesting imaginaries and ethical concerns. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of epistemic positioning to theorize the relationship between identity-based epistemic judgements and the reproduction of social inequalities, including those of gender and ethnicity/race, in the academia. Acts of epistemic positioning entail the evaluation of knowledge claims based on the speaker’s stated or inferred identity. These judgements serve to limit the scope of the knowledge claim, making it more likely speakers will be denied recognition or credit. The four types of epistemic positioning – bounding (reducing a (...) knowledge claim to elements of personal identity), domaining (reducing a knowledge claim to discipline or field associated with identity), non-attribution (using the claim without recognizing the author) and appropriation (presenting the claim as one’s own) – are mutually reinforcing. Given the growing importance of visibility and recognition in the context of increasing competition and insecurity in academic employment, these practices play a role in the ability of underrepresented groups to remain in the academic profession. (shrink)

The notion of trust has been discussed among several scientific fields, but it still lacks the joint theory. The goal was to analyze the trust associations of 600 participants and clarify how people associate the word “trust”. Overall, 600 participants produced 1800 associations which were sequentially divided into five domains and 14 categories. The findings imply, that when it comes to trust people tend to associate it mainly with relationships and positive emotions. The fact that associations involved mainly positive emotional (...) states and significant others may show, that trust in itself is something emotional and obviously bound to people we have the strongest bonds with. (shrink)

This paper presents a proposal for the description of gesture phases derived from articulatory characteristics observable in their execution. Based on the results of an explorative study examining the execution of gesture phases of ten German speakers, the paper presents two sets of articulatory features, i.e., distinctive and additional features by which gesture phases are characterized from a context-independent and context-sensitive point of view. It will be shown that gesture phases show a particular distribution of the features, thus distinguishing one (...) phase from another. Furthermore, changes in the execution of phases in linear successions can be described by means of features. Contrary to other accounts, whose focus on gesture phases is primarily in relation to speech and/or adjacent phases, this proposal concentrates on the visible physical characteristics of gesture phases. (shrink)

This article examines a frequent assumption of sociological accounts of knowledge: the idea that knowledge acts. The performativity of knowledge claims is here analysed through the prism of ‘sociological excuses’: the idea that sociological explanations can act as ‘excuses’ for otherwise unacceptable behaviour. The article builds on Austin’s distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary effects to discuss the relationship between sociological explanation, sociological justification and sociological critique. It argues that understanding how (and if) sociological explanations can act requires paying attention to (...) social and political conditions of performativity and their transformation in late liberalism. (shrink)

The aim of our research is to explore how Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are represented in the Slovak media. Data consisted of text documents from the Newton media database. Search criteria included TV, radio, print and web sources that mentioned the words “Alzheimer” and “dementia” between 2015 and 2018. A thematic discourse analysis was applied in order to identify the themes and their mutual semantic relations. The analysis was focused primarily on the headlines (n = 227). The results show that (...) the biomedical perspective currently dominates at the expense of a socio-psychological one. Persons with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are represented as tragic cases and victims of a cruel disease. Responsibility for care and prevention is individualized. Our findings suggest that a new perspective is needed. Such an approach should recognize the dignity and humanity of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia despite their cognitive deficits and respect their socio-psychological needs. (shrink)

This book offers a critical introduction of Li Zhou’s ethics. Li, who is among the most influential contemporary Chinese philosophers, takes Chinese ethics as a basis for his elaborations on Western ideas, aiming to develop a new global ethics.

The past years have witnessed a growing awareness of the role of institutions of knowledge production in reproducing the global climate crisis, from research funded by fossil fuel companies to the role of mainstream economics in fuelling the idea of growth. This essay argues that rethinking knowledge production for post-carbon futures requires engaging with the co-determination of modes of knowing and modes of governing. The ways in which knowledge production is embedded in networks of global capitalism shapes how we (can) (...) think about the future. The essay argues for an attentivity to the material and infrastructural sides of knowledge production, which will enable us to re-think transition to post-carbon futures in ways that recognize the deep structural, spatial and social inequalities underpinning knowledge production. (shrink)

Study of Inference (anumāna) according to the Nyāyabhūṣaṇa, an autocommentary by Bhāsarvajña, 10th century, on his Nyāyasāra, aphorism on Nyaya philosophy.

This paper explores the problem of racial privilege in US American feminist thought. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s analysis of ethics, particularly her ideas of epistemic discontinuity and teleopoietic reading, I argue that a specific kind of ethical openness can help feminist social-political philosophy better negotiate the legacy of white privilege. Spivak’s work calls for a reconsideration and reworking of the subject who theorizes. Her analysis of ethics suggests that racially privileged feminists must be able to confront their own complicity in (...) order to engage in political critique less likely to recreate historical patterns of racial domination and exclusion. (shrink)

The relationship between academic freedom and freedom of speech features prominently in public and political discussions concerning the role of universities in Western liberal democracies. Recently, these debates have attracted increased attention, owing in part to media framing of a ‘free speech crisis’, especially in UK and US universities. One type of response is to regulate academic expression through legislation, such as the UK’s 2023 Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. This article offers a critical analysis of the assumptions concerning (...) the performativity of speech in this kind of legal intervention. It extends Judith Butler’s discussion of the concept of ‘harmful speech’ as reported by Butler (Excitable speech: a politics of the performative, Routledge Classics, London, 1997) to conceptualize speech-acts as performative not only when it comes to populations, but also when it comes to institutions. Reconceptualizing universities as producing as well as being constituted by speech-acts, the article argues that the effects of free speech legislation need to be considered in the context of the transformation of universities and other political actors (including governments and student unions) in the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It argues that legal enforcement of free speech at universities further obscures the distinction between negative and positive liberties identified by Isaiah Berlin (Two Concepts of Liberty, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1958), and considers this shift as part of the reconfiguration of political ontology in late modernity. (shrink)

This review paper discusses the perspective of complex biological systems as applied to inheritance and ontogeny, focusing on the continuity of genetic, epigenetic and microbiotic inheritance. The informational processuality within this continuity can be used as to exemplify the insufficiency of hierarchical concepts in grasping the complex and integrated nature of biological processes. The argument follows Bruni and Giorgi in emphasizing that while structures and substrates are organized hierarchically, communicational processes are organized heterarchically. The essay also argues the insufficiency of (...) a single, basic, i.e. genetic level of description, which is the prevalent idea of twentieth century biology, to explain all phenotypic variation. I argue that inheritance and development cannot be fully explained by some sub- or super-ordination and that such descriptions are merely heuristic tools that do not reflect the nature of such processes. (shrink)

The concept of dramatization represents a rhetorical and conceptual tension in Deleuze's philosophy in that it refers both to autopoietic ontological processes and to a critical philosophical method. Commentators are wont to refer to either one or the other, saying little about how or if these two fundamentally distinct usages can be thought together; that is what we aim to do here. By unravelling the conceptual transformations of the term, we can gain an appreciation for the double characterisation of dramatization (...) and its centrifugal nature. We begin with the hypothesis that dramatization is linked to actualisation in the first sense and counteractualisation in the second. The fundamental question that we would like to address is: how are these two views to be reconciled? Addressing this question leads us to the conclusion that dramatization becomes an ethical imperative for philosophical subjects to perform certain philosophical exercises, that is, to become worthy of the event. The particular philosophical exercise that is emphasised is the dramatization of a paradoxical thought of death. Ultimately, we suggest that dramatization can be galvanised for both an emancipatory politics and an ethico-aesthetic life practice. (shrink)

This review summarizes the research on ethical decision-making from 2004 to 2011. Eighty-four articles were published during this period, resulting in 357 findings. Individual findings are categorized by their application to individual variables, organizational variables, or the concept of moral intensity as developed by Jones :366–395, 1991). Rest’s four-step model for ethical decision-making is used to summarize findings by dependent variable—awareness, intent, judgment, and behavior. A discussion of findings in each category is provided in order to uncover trends in the (...) ethical decision-making literature. A summary of areas of suggested future research is provided. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEthik-Cafés in der geriatrischen Langzeitpflege dienen auch der ethischen Weiterbildung und sollen den Beteiligten in ungezwungener Atmosphäre einen offenen Diskurs über moralische Fragen mit Bezug zum Arbeitsalltag ermöglichen. In der Literatur werden ihnen diverse Eigenschaften wie Verbesserung der Analysefähigkeit und der Kommunikation, Erhöhung der ethischen Sensibilität und der Entscheidungskompetenz und weitere zugeschrieben. Diese Eigenschaften resultieren vorwiegend aus theoriegeleiteten Modellen. Gegenstand dieser Studie ist die empirische Untersuchung der Wirksamkeit von Ethik-Cafés innerhalb der Pflegezentren Mattenhof-Irchelpark, Zürich. Des Weiteren geht die Studie der (...) Frage nach, ob sich die subjektiven Einschätzungen der Eigenschaften von Pflegenden und anderen Berufsgruppen unterscheiden. Zur Erfassung der Eigenschaften wurde ein Fragebogen konstruiert, in dem die Teilnehmenden während der Erhebungszeit 16 Aussagen zu bewerten hatten. Die Bewertung konnte mittels einer 5-stufigen Likert-Skala angegeben werden. In einer Untergruppe wurde zwischen „Pflege“ und „Nicht-Pflege“ unterschieden. Zusammenfassend konnte festgestellt werden, dass die postulierten Eigenschaften mit einer sehr hohen Zustimmung bestätigt werden. Die Ethik-Cafés leisten nach Meinung der Befragten einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Befähigung des Personals, schwierige Situationen klarer zu analysieren, ethisch sensibler zu entscheiden und die getroffene Entscheidung zu begründen. Die Interdisziplinarität der Ethik-Cafés fördert das Verständnis für die Sichtweisen und Argumentationen der verschiedenen Bereiche und Hierarchien. Die Unterschiede der Berufsgruppen sind teilweise hoch-signifikant. Es kann festgehalten werden, dass die im Fragebogen attribuierten Eigenschaften von der Pflege generell stärker und bedeutsamer wahrgenommen werden. (shrink)

For each vertex of a simple polygon P an integer valued weight is given. We consider the path p1, p2, ..., pk in P which is created according to the following strategy: p1 is a designated start vertex s and pi+1 is obtained by choosing the vertex with smallest weight among all vertices visible from pi and different from p1, p2, ..., pi. If there is no such vertex the path is finished. This path is called geometric lexicographic dead end (...) path. We shall prove the problem of determining whether a distinguished vertex t of P is on the geometric lexicographic dead end path or not to be P-complete. (shrink)

We consider the problem of quadrilaterizing an orthogonal polygon P, that is to decompose P into nonoverlapping convex quadrangles without adding new vertices. In this paper we present a CREW-algorithm for this problem which runs in O time using Θ processors if the rectangle decomposition of P is given, and Θ processors if not. Furthermore we will show that the latter result is optimal if the polygon is allowed to contain holes.

The article deals with Béla Tarr’s longest film Sátántangó and examines relations between image, time and ways of looking, comparing it to Lászlo Krasznahorkai’s 1985 eponymous novel on which the film was based. It reveals connections between episodes and shots in Sátántangó that lead to a conception of time that passes extremely slowly. It is recurrent—leading toward similar, repetitive situations—but at the same represents an inability to change. The image in this film is often conceived as it is mediated and (...) Tarr frequently uses compositions involving ways of looking through some kind of optical device or a window. The only way of accessing reality is to look at it when there is no real opportunity, will or ability to intervene and change it. In this sense the article shows the relationship between the image of the fictional world of Sátántangó, inhabited by passive and demoralized characters, and the world of the film spectator and his or her relation to film image as such. (shrink)