Foucault's notion of ?regimes of truth? (MacNaughton 2005, 30) provides an understanding of how some discourses operate and network together to reinforce a particular powerful view of the world. These can be in oral or written forms. Early childhood education practices are drawn on the discourse of a document developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) on developmentally appropriate practice. Statements made in this written discourse have been accepted as factual and produce shared language among (...) early childhood researchers. Foucault's perspectives of discourse and terms used by him as regimes of truth are used in this article to evaluate the written document that early childhood educators have accepted as authoritative truth. Suggestions for practice include providing a discourse that calls for early childhood teachers to allow time for reflective dialogue and the recognition of multiple perspectives to inform pedagogical knowledge of the social and cultural contexts of the children they teach. (shrink)

Theories of Early Childhood Education continues to provide a comprehensive overview of the various theoretical perspectives in early childhood education from developmental psychology to critical studies, Piaget to Freire. This revised and updated edition includes additional chapters on Michael Alexander Halliday's view of language learning and the attachment theory work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Each author questions assumptions underpinning the use of theory in early childhood education and explores the implications of these questions for policy and practice. Theories (...) reported in this book are a timely reminder of the importance of the relationship between theory and practice necessary for teacher candidates, teacher educators, and early childhood teachers. Students will learn the fundamentals while in-service teachers and professionals will learn the theory behind field observations for their certification exams. (shrink)

Education in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) in the United States has evolved over the past decade from targeting trainees to including educational efforts aimed at faculty and staff. In addition RCR education has become more focused as federal agencies have moved to recommend specific content and to mandate education in certain areas. RCR education has therefore become a research-compliance issue necessitating the development of policies and the commitment of resources to develop or expand systems for educating faculty and (...) staff and for assuring compliance. These changes implied the need to develop a program evaluation model that could be applied to institutional RCR education programs, which were expected to differ from traditional academic credit-bearing courses targeting trainees. Information gleaned from the examination of corporate compliance models was analyzed in order to create a program evaluation module that could be used to document and assess educational programs focused on teaching RCR. A programmed series of questions for each of the nine RCR content areas identified by the United States Office of Research Integrity was created based on a performance-monitoring evaluation model. The questions focus on educational goals, resources provided to support the educational efforts, educational content, content delivery, educational outcomes, compliance requirements and feedback. Answers collected in response to the questions could be used to both document and continually improve the quality of RCR educational programs through on-going formative assessment and feedback. (shrink)

Professor Copi provides us with the following example:Remove all cards except aces and kings from a deck, so that only eight cards remain, of which four are aces and four are kings. From this abbreviated deck, deal two cards to a friend. If he looks at his cards and announces that his hand contains an ace, what is the probability that both his cards are aces? If he announces instead that one of his cards is the ace of spades, what (...) is the probability then that both his cards are aces? (shrink)

This paper suggests that the appearance of circularity in descartes' arguments is due to a lack of precision in his statements of them, Rather than to any flaw in his reasoning. The clear and distinct perceptions presupposed in the demonstrations of the existence of God are not the same as those whose reliability depends upon the existence of god. He is presupposing the reliability only of those clear and distinct perceptions which are known through the light of nature and have (...) metaphysical certainty in that they cannot be imagined false even on the demon hypothesis. And the only clear and distinct perceptions whose reliability he is demonstrating are those which are not known through the light of nature with metaphysical certainty but are subject to metaphysical doubt on the demon hypothesis, Even though they have moral or psychological certainty. (shrink)

A distressing number of philosophers and classicists think that the deuteros plous or “second best” mentioned at Phaedo 99c9-dl is the hypothetical method. Many of them will even tell you that Plato says the hypothetical method is the deuteros plous, and that they are not merely interpreting his meaning. They usually back off, however, when challenged on this point, for there jus isn’t any such statement by Plato. Nor, I think, does Plato give us any justification at all for taking (...) the deuteros plous as the hypothetical method. I will argue in this paper that he is referring rather to the explanation of things in terms of their formal causes, and that this sort of explanation is “second best” when compared to a teleological explanation in terms of final causes. The hypothetical method of the dialectician is simply the logical device or apparatus by means of which the theory of ideas and the attendant notion of formal causation are introduced into the discussion; it is not a “second best” method and is not inferior to anything else. (shrink)

Within the political economy of informational capitalism, commercial surveillance practices are tools for resource extraction. That process requires an enabling legal construct, which this essay identifies and explores. Contemporary practices of personal information processing constitute a new type of public domain—a repository of raw materials that are there for the taking and that are framed as inputs to particular types of productive activity. As a legal construct, the biopolitical public domain shapes practices of appropriation and use of personal information in (...) two complementary and interrelated ways. First, it constitutes personal information as available and potentially valuable: as a pool of materials that may be freely appropriated as inputs to economic production. That framing supports the reorganization of sociotechnical activity in ways directed toward extraction and appropriation. Second, the biopolitical public domain constitutes the personal information harvested within networked information environments as raw. That framing creates the backdrop for culturally situated techniques of knowledge production and for the logic that designates those techniques as sites of legal privilege. (shrink)

The "divided line" passage seems to compare the four states of the soul and their objects to the four segments of a line, somewhat as follows.

In 2004 a survey was conducted in the member states of the European Union designed to gain greater insight into the views on control strategies for foot and mouth disease, classical swine fever, and avian influenza with respect to the epidemiological, economic and social-ethical consequences of each of these animal diseases. This article presents the results of the social-ethical survey. A selection of stakeholders from each member state was asked to prioritize issues for the prevention and control of these diseases. (...) A majority of stakeholders chose preventive measures as the preferred issue. An analysis was done to determine whether there were differences in views expressed by stakeholders from member states with a history of recent epidemics and ones without such a history, and whether there were regional differences. There were no differences between member states with or without a history of recent epidemics. There were indeed regional differences between the priority orders from Northern and Southern Europe on the one hand, and from Eastern Europe on the other. (shrink)

Given that university faculty members and supervisors practicing in the community have been involved in at least one research supervisor-graduate student relationship, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to the ethical issues involved in such relationships. Indeed, as a student and her or his graduate research supervisor may be involved in a close working relationship for many years, it is understandable that several opportunities can arise that could be considered dual or multiple relationships. Examples of such (...) relationship issues discussed in this article include authorship matters, favoritism or inequitable treatment of students, and sexual relationships. Depending on the nature of the relationship, the impact on students can be quite severe; although, the effects on students have not been adequately studied. Existing ethical guidelines do not provide enough guidance in this area where students are in a position of diminished power with respect to the supervisor. Following the discussion of relationship issues, we suggest extensions of current guidelines to deal with these issues. (shrink)

This paper examines socrates' method for determining whether virtue is taught, And discusses some of the opposing interpretations that have been offered (e.G., By robinson and hackforth). Some major conclusions are: that hypotheses that have been deduced from other hypotheses can still be called hypotheses; that it is false that there can be only one hypothesis per argument; and that the several hypotheses in a given argument need not all be hypothesized with the same degree of confidence.

Gordion, the principal city of Phrygia, was an important center for the worship of the major Phrygian divinity, the Great Mother of Anatolia, the Greek and Roman Cybele. Considerable evidence for the goddess's prominence there have come to light through excavations conducted at the site, first by Gustav and Alfred Körte and more recently by the continuing expedition sponsored by the University Museum in Philadelphia. These include sculptural representations of the goddess and numerous votive objects dedicated to her. The material (...) pertinent to the goddess and her cult in Gordion during the most prominent period of Phrygian culture, the eighth and seventh centuries BC, is similar to that from other contemporary Phrygian centers. Even after the loss of Phrygian political independence in the seventh century, the cult of the goddess in Anatolia continued to flourish, and the older traditions of iconography and votive types were maintained. During the Hellenistic period, however, we see a different version of the goddess at Gordion. The earlier Phrygian forms of cult image and votive were gone, and in their stead are figurines and votive objects which are clearly of Greek inspiration. The Mother goddess was still at home in Gordion—several stone and terracotta representations of her from this period attest to that—but her visual image had become thoroughly Hellenized. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) to different sites allows interfering with dysfunctional network function implicated in major depression. Because a prominent clinical feature of depression is anhedonia--the inability to experience pleasure from previously pleasurable activities--and because there is clear evidence of dysfunctions of the reward system in depression, DBS to the nucleus accumbens might offer a new possibility to target depressive symptomatology in otherwise treatment-resistant depression. Three patients suffering from extremely resistant forms of depression, who did not respond to pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, (...) and electroconvulsive therapy, were implanted with bilateral DBS electrodes in the nucleus accumbens. Stimulation parameters were modified in a double-blind manner, and clinical ratings were assessed at each modification. Additionally, brain metabolism was assessed 1 week before and 1 week after stimulation onset. Clinical ratings improved in all three patients when the stimulator was on, and worsened in all three patients when the stimulator was turned off. Effects were observable immediately, and no side effects occurred in any of the patients. Using FDG-PET, significant changes in brain metabolism as a function of the stimulation in fronto-striatal networks were observed. No unwanted effects of DBS other than those directly related to the surgical procedure (eg pain at sites of implantation) were observed. Dysfunctions of the reward system--in which the nucleus accumbens is a key structure--are implicated in the neurobiology of major depression and might be responsible for impaired reward processing, as evidenced by the symptom of anhedonia. These preliminary findings suggest that DBS to the nucleus accumbens might be a hypothesis-guided approach for refractory major depression. (shrink)

Although the therapeutic misconception (TM) has been well described over a period of approximately 20 years, there has been disagreement about its implications for informed consent to research. In this paper we review some of the history and debate over the ethical implications of TM but also bring a new perspective to those debates. Drawing upon our experience of working in the context of translational research for rare childhood diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we consider the ethical and legal (...) implications of the TM for parental consent to research. In this situation, it is potentially the parent who is vulnerable to TM. In our analysis we not only consider the context of informed consent for research but also the wider environment in which the value of research is promoted, more broadly through the media but also more specifically through the communication strategies of patient organizations. All dissemination about developments in research for health runs the risk of portraying an overly optimistic view of the promise of biotechnological solutions and has the potential to encourage a ‘collective’ TM. In this paper we consider the challenge that TM presents to parents as well as explore the ethical and legal responsibilities of researchers to ensure an appropriately informed consent: compatible with a hopeful disposition of parents who consent for the their children whilst avoiding a blind and misleading optimism. (shrink)

In two studies we investigated the association between physical cleansing and moral and immoral behavior in real-life situations. In Study 1, after a workout at the gym, participants cheated more after taking a shower than before taking one. In the second study, participants donated more money to charity before rather than after they bathed for religious purification. The results extend previous findings about moral cleansing and moral licensing and are discussed within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory.