This article examines preadolescent girls in a group setting as they coconstructed heteronormativity. The authors contend that heteronormativity is not the product of a coming-of-age transformation but instead an everyday part of life, even for very young social actors. It emerges from the gender divide between boys and girls but is also reproduced by and for girls themselves. In the Girl Project, the authors sought to understand younger girls’ interests, skills, and concerns. They conducted nine focus groups with 43 elementary (...) school girls, most of whom were age nine or younger. They observed these girls as they defined “girls’ interests” as boy centered and as they performed heteronormativity for other girls. This article contributes to filling the gap in research on gender and sexuality from children’s own points of view. (shrink)

Extensively updated to include clinical findings over the last two decades, this third edition of A Practitioner's Guide to Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy reviews the philosophy, theory, and clinical practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. This model is based on the work of Albert Ellis, who had an enormous influence on the field of psychotherapy over his 50 years of practice and scholarly writing. Designed for both therapists-in-training and seasoned professionals, this practical treatment manual and guide introduces the basic principles of (...) rational-emotive behavior therapy, explains general therapeutic strategies, and offers many illustrative dialogues between therapist and patient. The volume breaks down each stage of therapy to present the exact procedures and skills therapists need, and numerous case studies illustrate how to use these skills. The authors describe both technical and specific strategic interventions, and they stress taking an integrative approach. The importance of building a therapeutic alliance and the use of cognitive, emotive, evocative, imaginal, and behavioral interventions serves as the unifying theme of the approach. Intervention models are presented for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, anger, personality disorders, and addictions. Psychologists, clinical social workers, mental health counselors, psychotherapists, and students and trainees in these areas will find this book useful in learning to apply rational-emotive behavior therapy in practice. (shrink)

This book explores how people's subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for human cognition and language. Cognition is what occurs when the body engages the physical and cultural world and must be studied in terms of the dynamical interactions between people and the environment. Human language and thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied, (...) but seek out the gross and detailed ways that language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action. Embodiment and Cognitive Science describes the abundance of empirical evidence from many disciplines, including work on perception, concepts, imagery and reasoning, language and communication, cognitive development, and emotions and consciousness, that support the idea that the mind is embodied. (shrink)

This is a profound and concise essay on the basic structure of contemporary politics, written throughout in a voice that is sceptical, engaged, and clear.

Because visual narratives demand complex inference abilities, they can potentially be used as a tool for developing inferential skills in other domains, like reading. The Inferential Language Comprehension (iLC) Framework proposes an approach to using visual narratives in educational settings to sponsor inference skills by building on cognitive, developmental, and language research.

Cognitive theories of metaphor understanding are typically described in terms of the mappings between different kinds of abstract, schematic, disembodied knowledge. My claim in this paper is that part of our ability to make sense of metaphorical language, both individual utterances and extended narratives, resides in the automatic construction of a simulation whereby we imagine performing the bodily actions referred to in the language. Thus, understanding metaphorical expressions like ‘grasp a concept’ or ‘get over’ an emotion involve simulating what it (...) must be like to engage in these specific activities, even though these actions are, strictly speaking, impossible to physically perform. This process of building a simulation, one that is fundamentally embodied in being constrained by past and present bodily experiences, has specific consequences for how verbal metaphors are understood, and how cognitive scientists, more generally, characterize the nature of metaphorical language and thought. (shrink)

Raymond Godfrey; John White and the Imposition of Autonomy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 115–117, https://doi.org/.

A central task of schooling is to cultivate reasonableness in students. In this chapter we show how the teaching of reasonableness can be practiced successfully in secondary schools, using materials from the Western Australian curriculum. The discussion proceeds in four stages. We first defend the claim that the teaching of reasonable is a key aim of schooling. Here we offer an account of reasonableness, which we take to be both a skill and a disposition. Students learn reasonableness through the practice (...) of specific skills such as open and curious questioning, clarifying, and categorizing, and evaluating the merits of each contribution toward the problem or question under consideration. Reasonableness comes about as a joint commitment between the individual and the group to be honest in their views, to take care of those views, and for everyone to recognize that each member is a partial bearer of truth. Secondly, we discuss the pedagogies that cultivate reasonableness. The Philosophical Community of Inquiry is a natural pedagogy for this purpose. This can be supplemented with the thinking tools approach of Cam’s Twenty Thinking Tools or Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. In addition, we introduce our own two skill-building exercises, the Reasoning Game and the Argument Game. Thirdly, we show how this approach can be applied not just in Philosophy classes, but in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We argue that our approach brings these subjects to life, it develops understanding and reasonableness, and it bumps up student engagement. Fourthly, we discuss the assessment of reasonableness. In this type of learning environment, the way students perform in the philosophical community of inquiry is the focus of assessment. The desirable qualities of being reasonable become the assessment criteria for an on-balanced judgment about the student. (shrink)

This paper explores the trade-off between cognitive effort and cognitive effects during immediate metaphor comprehension. We specifically evaluate the fundamental claim of relevance theory that metaphor understanding, like all utterance interpretation, is constrained by the presumption of optimal relevance (Sperber and Wilson, 1995, p. 270): the ostensive stimulus is relevant enough for it to be worth the addressee's effort to process it, and the ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator's abilities and preferences. One important implication (...) of optimal relevance is that listeners follow a path of least effort and stop processing at the first interpretation that satisfies their expectation of relevance. They do this by trying to minimize cognitive effort while maximizing cognitive effects. Some relevance theory scholars suggest that metaphors should require additional cognitive effort to be understood, and that in return they yield more cognitive effects than does literal speech. Others claim that metaphors may be understood quickly, as soon as people infer enough effects for the speaker's utterance to meet their expectation of optimal relevance. Our analysis of the experimental evidence suggests that there is no systematic relationship between cognitive effort and cognitive effects in metaphor comprehension. We conclude that relevance theory need not make any general predictions about the effort needed to comprehend metaphors. Nevertheless, relevance theory is consistent with many of the findings in psycholinguistics on metaphor understanding, and can account for aspects of metaphor understanding that no other theory can explain. (shrink)

Contemporary psychiatry is becoming more biologically oriented in the attempt to elicit a biological rationale of mental diseases. Although mental disorders comprise mostly functional abnormalities, there is a substantial overlap between neurology and psychiatry in addressing cognitive disturbances. In schizophrenia, the presence of cognitive impairment prior to the onset of psychosis and early after its manifestation suggests that some neurocognitive abnormalities precede the onset of psychosis and may represent a trait marker. These cognitive alterations may arise from functional disconnectivity, as (...) no significant brain damage has been found. In this review we aim to revise A.R. Luria’s systematic approach used in the neuropsychological evaluation of cognitive functions, which was primarily applied in patients with neurological disorders and in the cognitive evaluation in schizophrenia and other related disorders. As proposed by Luria, cognitive processes, associated with higher cortical functions, may represent functional systems that are not localized in narrow, circumscribed areas of the brain, but occur among groups of concertedly working brain structures, each of which makes its own particular contribution to the organization of the functional system. Current developments in neuroscience provide evidence of functional connectivity in the brain. Therefore, Luria’s approach may serve as a frame of reference for the analysis and interpretation of cognitive functions in general and their abnormalities in schizophrenia in particular. Having said that, modern technology, as well as experimental evidence, may help us to understand the brain better and lead us towards creating a new classification of cognitive functions. In schizophrenia research, multidisciplinary approaches must be utilized to address specific cognitive alterations. The relationships among the components of cognitive functions derived from the functional connectivity of the brain may provide an insight into cognitive machinery. (shrink)

I distinguish three strands in the discussion of "culture" in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany. One is centered around the analysis of the diverse folkways of various human groups. A second focuses on the cultivation of individual talents and capacities. The third treats aesthetic experience and judgment and its relation to forms of sociability. I discuss some of the various ways in which these three strands of discussion interacted historically and suggest some ways in which the study of this historical (...) episode might be relevant to contemporary discussions of "culture.". (shrink)

How do people decide what to say in context? Many theories of pragmatics assume that people have specialized knowledge that drives them to utter certain words in different situations. But these theories are mostly unable to explain both the regularity and variability in people’s speech behaviors. Our purpose in this article is to advance a view of pragmatics based on complexity theory, which specifically explains the pragmatic choices speakers make in conversations. The concept of self-organized criticality sheds light on how (...) a history of utterances and subtle details of a situation surrounding a conversation may directly specify language behavior. Under this view, pragmatic choice in discourse does not reflect the output of any dedicated pragmatic module but arises from a complex coordination or coupling between speakers and their varying communicative tasks. (shrink)

A collection of paradoxes, dialogues, problems, and essays discusses aspects of philosophy, including the natures of reality, truth, existence, and death.

Raymond Polin. valeurs objectives. De l'objectivité des valeurs, n'espère-t-on pas tirer un double bénéfice, fonder la vérité d'une part, et, d'autre part, rendre possible leur universalité ? La liaison des valeurs aux normes est trop essentielle  ...

Should blood be bought and sold is in crude terms the question asked and answered by Richard Titmuss in his recent book The Gift Relationship. Dr Raymond Plant, a lecturer in philosophy at Manchester University, analyses Titmuss' arguments in a paper which we are printing in two parts. Titmuss has taken the provision of blood as his example of the gift relationship--and by extension that of health care generally. Dr Plant considers in turn each of Titmuss' arguments that blood (...) should not be a marketable commodity, the moral objections to which seem to be the erosion of freedom and of truth telling, the separation of society through the cash nexus, and its converse that the provision of health care is a means for the integration of society. Dr Plant also examines the views of other commentators on the Titmuss' theory of the value of a 'free' blood transfusion service and other medical care as a means of integration in society, and ends with his promise that in the second part of his paper he will examine Titmuss' principles not in terms of the market but rather as related to the principle of social justice. (shrink)

When people are asked “Do you have the time?” they can answer in a variety of ways, such as “It is almost 3”, “Yeah, it is quarter past two”, or more precisely as in “It is now 1:43”. We present the results of four experiments that examined people’s real-life answers to questions about the time. Our hypothesis, following previous research findings, was that people strive to make their answers optimally relevant for the addressee, which in many cases allows people to (...) give rounded, and not exact, time responses. Moreover, analyses of the non-numeral words, hesitations, and latencies of people’s verbal responses to time questions reveal important insights into the dynamics of speaking to achieve optimal relevance. People include discourse markers, hesitation marks, like “uh” and “um”, and pauses when answering time questions to maximize the cognitive effects (e.g., a rounded answer is adequate) listeners can infer while minimizing the cognitive effort required to infer these effects. This research provides new empirical evidence on how relevance considerations shape collaborative language use. (shrink)

This study uses a quasi-experimental design to assess how the incorporation of an embedded writing centre tutor in the experimental class affects student achievement in comparison with the control...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 568-569 [Access article in PDF] James P. Scanlan. Dostoevsky the Thinker. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 251. Cloth, $29.95. Important works on Dostoevsky's life and thought abound, but James Scanlan offers the first comprehensive treatment and evaluation of Dostoevsky as a philosophical thinker. Scanlan uses Dostoevsky's thousands of letters, essays, and "capacious notebooks" (3), as well as (...) his literary work, to analyze systematically Dostoevsky's philosophical worldview and to argue for its coherence. Scanlan's commitment to careful scholarship is apparent throughout, including his translations of the texts. A philosopher himself, Scanlan contextualizes Dostoevsky's work in relation to traditional philosophers, including Descartes, Kant, and Kierkegaard. The result is a balanced, rich, and provocative treatment that also suggests new interpretations of some of Dostoevsky's literary works.If Bakhtin is right to describe Dostoevsky's novels as "polyphonic," how does one ascertain their author's position? Scanlan grants the challenges of approaching Dostoevsky as a philosopher. Nineteenth-century Russian thinkers rarely identified with particular philosophical schools, and Dostoevsky never thought of himself as a philosopher. Yet Dostoevsky was intensely interested in philosophy, and Scanlan argues that Dostoevsky's characters serve as surrogates for competing philosophical positions. Scanlan also reminds readers of Dostoevsky's often-neglected nonfiction works and weaves masterfully the nonfiction and the literature to support his argument.Echoing Bakhtin, Scanlan labels Dostoevsky's methodology "dialogical in style, monological in substance" (4). Doing so effectively rejects critical perspectives that suggest the author held contradictory positions. For Scanlan, Dostoevsky's dialectical method resulted from his preoccupation with combating others' ideas, implied by his frequent use of reductio ad absurdum arguments. Dostoevsky "sought to establish his own positions by demonstrating the failure of their antitheses" (231). Not only does Scanlan persuasively demonstrate the consistency of Dostoevsky's philosophical commitments, he also challenges the appropriation of Dostoevsky by existentialists as an "irrationalist," despite Dostoevsky's "convincing portrayals of human irrationality" and skepticism concerning rationality's powers (5).Scanlan examines Dostoevsky's vision of Christianity that included a strict binary of matter and spirit, and a rejection of rational egoism and mechanism (termed "nihilism"). Dostoevsky's positive deontologism, his "law of love" (with Christ as exemplar) was, for Dostoevsky, necessary to overcome the "law of personality," and conscience grounded in Christian love was the basis for salvation. Scanlan persuasively argues that Dostoevsky, if irrationalist, belongs more with Kant than Kierkegaard in viewing rationality as limited but not to be rejected wholesale. Scanlan uses this analysis to ground a provocative new reading of Notes from Underground.Scanlan also explores the connectedness of Dostoevsky's ethics and aesthetics in Dostoevsky's insistence that artists should create moral beauty beyond the purely aesthetic or cognitive. Much has been written about Dostoevsky's aesthetics, but Scanlan exposes its logical grounding in Dostoevsky's rejection of the subjective utilitarian aesthetics of Chernyshevsky and the radical materialism of Dobrolyubov. For Dostoevsky, the need for [End Page 568] beauty and creativity is intrinsic to human nature, and art serves an epistemological function that gestures toward reality, not as a "mindless photographer" (140) but as a cognitive vision penetrating "the core of his subject" (141). Dostoevsky also justified his use of the anomalous, noting that the exceptional might be "an avenue of access to the universal" (143).Dostoevsky's "dream of a community of perfect Christian brotherhood and love" (160) grounds Scanlan's examination of Dostoevsky's sociopolitical philosophy and his rejection of the critical view that Dostoevsky's politics radically changed over time. Though Scanlan agrees with biographers that Dostoevsky despised the "moral blight" (169) of serfdom, he argues that Dostoevsky's vision of Christian society permitted social stratification so long as service to masters was voluntary, cooperative, and rational. This analysis makes clear the distance between Dostoevsky and Western liberal political theorists.For Dostoevsky, society based on universal Christian love is the only acceptable "socialism," and the last part of Scanlan's work analyzes Dostoevsky's nationalism and its relation to his attacks on socialism. In addition to... (shrink)

The relation of merleau-ponty's work to husserlian phenomenology continues to be a matter of discussion and disagreement. since merleau- ponty considered the doctrine of reduction the ultimate notion in husserl's philosophy, this paper attempts to clarify the relationship of the two thinkers by contrasting their theories of the reduction. such a study indicates that the transcendental sphere achieved by merleau-ponty's reduction is decisively different from that of husserl. hence his philosophy is best understood as the development of a new transcendental (...) philosophy rather than a modification of the original husserlian phenomenology. (shrink)

This is a new edition of a classic textbook in health care ethics, one that offers an alternative to the principle-based approach from Beauchamp and Childress (Principles of Biomedical Ethics, now in its seventh edition from OUP) and traditional Catholic approaches of Ashley and O'Rourke. In the early chapters Devettere spells out the meaning of ethics and the importance of prudential reasoning in seeking the good life. The rest of the book deals with issues and cases, including determinations of life (...) and death, reproduction and research and genetics, and the distribution of health care. In this fourth edition Devettere updates all chapters and adds new cases and new sections on the following: neuroscience, social psychology, overriding advance directives, studies on the fetus, the palliative care movement, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, pharmacists and reproductive issues, prenatal life and abortion, neonatal testing and mandatory vaccinations, the US governments' STD research in Guatemala, the emergence of biobanks, facial transplantations, genetic testing, legal issues around the Affordable Care Act, and more. This is an accessible and comprehensive textbook covering all aspects of the field. (shrink)

Abstract:Thoreau’s story of climbing Saddleback (Mt. Greylock) in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) preserves his memories associated with the place and establishes the cultural significance of the mountain. The interpolation is about Thoreau’s quest to find a place of meaning and permanence amid the rapid changes in his life and the development of rural New England from industrialization. Places are integrations of space and time created by stories with personal and cultural significance. Such places must be (...) preserved. The hike is a pilgrimage to a paradise where he has a transcendental vision of a new world. Thoreau is born again on the mountain. The Greylock story is one of the most studied places in A Week. Literary critics have discussed how Thoreau’s ascent and the sunrise at the summit are the climax of the Romantic hero’s journey through nature, space, and time. None have noticed the symbolism of Thomas Carlyle’s “untamable fly” appearing instead of God, and none have explored Greylock as a Thoreauvian place. Thoreau’s trip to Greylock and the Catskills was a search for inspiration, and he was inspired to write Walden (1854). He stayed in cabins that prefigured his house at Walden Pond, and he saw things that reminded him of Harvard, Boston, Staten Island, and other mountains he had climbed. At the summit he found water, nibbled supper with the mice, conceived of a book about nature, and watched the sunrise of his new life. The history of Greylock is the story of the environmental impact of unregulated lumbering and development and the resulting conservation efforts. The old growth forest is now protected state land, with rare birds and a ghost. The mountain is a literary place also associated with Hawthorne, Melville, and Rowling. Since 1994, Thoreau’s climb up Greylock has been commemorated by an annual hike retracing his footsteps. (shrink)

One of the clearest examples of a technological system, in the sense that Ellul discussed it, is contemporary biomedical health care. The foundation of technological systems is technique: efficient methods for achieving isolated goals. However, the goal of health care should be to achieve health in the full sense of wholeness. Traditional healing systems addressed heath in this sense, but biomedicine cannot; attempting to use the techniques of traditional systems without the accompanying culture ruptures those systems. Using the contemporary epidemic (...) of chronic noncommunicable diseases as an example, this article attempts to exposes the limitations of a technical approach, as well as the limitations of the methodology of risk analysis. (shrink)