Addressing Education: Purposes, Plans, and Politics is the first in the 10-volume series, Lynchburg College Symposium Readings, 3rd edition. Each volume presents primary texts organized around an interdisciplinary, liberal arts theme such as education, politics, social issues, science and technology, morals and ethics. The series has been developed by Lynchburg College faculty for use in the Senior Symposium and the Lynchburg College Symposium Readings Program (SS/LCSR). While these programs are distinctive to Lynchburg College, the texts are used on many college (...) campuses across the nation, as well as by readers interested in significant original texts on important topics. Addressing Education: Purposes, Plans, and Politics offers primary source readings on a wide range of topics in education. Here are the original writings that readers often only read about. In this volume, the educators speak for themselves in selections and excerpts from Plato (360 B.C. E.) to Paolo Freire (1968). Familiar luminaries Mann, Rousseau, DuBois, Keller, Jefferson, 21 in all gather together all in one volume to deliver these pivotal ideas with incomparable impact. Whether consumed cover-to-cover or piece-by-piece, the volume invites useful, critical debate on this important topic. (shrink)

It has been claimed that the attempt to analyze know-how in terms of propositional knowledge over-intellectualizes the mind. Exploiting the methods of so-called “experimental philosophy”, we show that the charge of over-intellectualization is baseless. Contra neo-Ryleans, who analyze know-how in terms of ability, the concrete-case judgments of ordinary folk are most consistent with the view that there exists a set of correct necessary and sufficient conditions for know-how that does not invoke ability, but rather a certain sort of propositional knowledge. (...) To the extent that one’s considered judgments agree with those of the folk (or to the extent that one is unwilling to contravene widespread judgments), this constitutes a strong prima facie case against neo-Ryleanism. (shrink)

Antibiotic resistance has become a problem of global scale. Resistance arises through mutation or through the acquisition of resistance gene(s) from other bacteria in a process called horizontal gene transfer (HGT). While HGT is recognized as an important factor in the dissemination of resistance genes in clinical pathogens, its role in the environment has been called into question by a recent study published in Nature. The authors found little evidence of HGT in soil using a culture‐independent functional metagenomics approach, which (...) is in contrast to previous work from the same lab showing HGT between the environment and human microbiome. While surprising at face value, these results may be explained by the lack of selective pressure in the environment studied. Importantly, this work suggests the need for careful monitoring of environmental antibiotic pollution and stringent antibiotic stewardship in the fight against resistance. (shrink)

The connections between science and civic culture in the Victorian period have been extensively, and intensively, investigated over the past several decades. Limited attention, however, has been paid to Irish urban contexts. Roman Catholic attitudes towards science in the nineteenth century have also been neglected beyond a rather restricted set of thinkers and topics. This paper is offered as a contribution to addressing these lacunae, and examines in detail the complexities involved in Catholic engagement with science in Victorian Belfast. The (...) political and civic geographies of Catholic involvement in scientific discussions in a divided town are uncovered through an examination of five episodes in the unfolding history of Belfast's intellectual culture. The paper stresses the importance of attending to the particularities of local politics and scientific debate for understanding the complex realities of Catholic appropriations of science in a period and urban context profoundly shaped by competing political and religious factions. It also reflects more generally on how the Belfast story supplements and challenges scholarship on the historical relations between Catholicism and science. (shrink)

This is the first book published that specifically examines questions of ethics and advocacy that arise in conducting research on homelessness, exploring the issues through the deeply personal experiences of some of the field’s leading scholars. By examining the central queries from a broad range of perspectives, the authors presented here draw upon years of rich investigations to generate a framework that will be instructive for researchers across a wide spectrum of areas of inquiry.

Although eye tracking has been used extensively to assess cognitions for static stimuli, recent research suggests that the link between gaze and cognition may be more tenuous for dynamic stimuli such as videos. Part of the difficulty in convincingly linking gaze with cognition is that in dynamic stimuli, gaze position is strongly influenced by exogenous cues such as object motion. However, tests of the gaze‐cognition link in dynamic stimuli have been done on only a limited range of stimuli often characterized (...) by highly organized motion. Also, analyses of cognitive contrasts between participants have been mostly been limited to categorical contrasts among small numbers of participants that may have limited the power to observe more subtle influences. We, therefore, tested for cognitive influences on gaze for screen‐captured instructional videos, the contents of which participants were tested on. Between‐participant scanpath similarity predicted between‐participant similarity in responses on test questions, but with imperfect consistency across videos. We also observed that basic gaze parameters and measures of attention to centers of interest only inconsistently predicted learning, and that correlations between gaze and centers of interest defined by other‐participant gaze and cursor movement did not predict learning. It, therefore, appears that the search for eye movement indices of cognition during dynamic naturalistic stimuli may be fruitful, but we also agree that the tyranny of dynamic stimuli is real, and that links between eye movements and cognition are highly dependent on task and stimulus properties. (shrink)

In this article I contrast 17th and 18th explanations of hysteria including those of Sydenham and Willis with those given by Plato and pre-modern medicine. I show that beginning in the second decade of the 17th century the locus of the disorder was transferred to the nervous system and it was no longer connected with the womb as in Hippocrates and Galen; hysteria became identified with hypochondria, and was a disease contracted by men as well as women. I discuss the (...) purely mechanical explanation of hysteria given by Robert Boyle who attributed its cause to corporeal ideas as well as overly sensitive disposition of the nervous system. I relate this the mechanical theory of the nervous system prominent in Descartes' writings on physiology. The paper closes with a discussion of the contrast between early modern explanations of hysteria and the nature of man with those of Freud in the early 20th century. (shrink)

This book addresses the idea of justice in order to guide society towards a more effective justice system. The authors trace impoverished and accomplished thinking in criminological and justice discourses and show that when justice and love are seen as synonyms, the historic ills that have plagued humanity tend to evaporate.

Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas are three of the most prominent Jewish philosophers of the 20thcentury. This paper looks at the different understandings each author offers of intersubjectivity and authentic self-hood and questions the extent to which for each author God plays a role in interpersonal relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to present the theoretical and philosophical assumptions of the Nursing Manifesto , written by three activist scholars whose objective was to promote emancipatory nursing research, practice, and education within the dialogue and praxis of social justice. Inspired by discussions with a number of nurse philosophers at the 2008 Knowledge Conference in Boston, two of the original Manifesto authors and two colleagues discussed the need to explicate emancipatory knowing as it emerged from the Manifesto . (...) Our analysis yielded an epistemological framework based on liberation principles to advance praxis in the discipline of nursing. This paper adds to what is already known on this topic, as there is not an explicit contribution to the literature of this specific Manifesto , its significance, and utility for the discipline. While each of us have written on emancipatory knowing and social justice in a variety of works, it is in this article that we identify, as a unit of knowledge production and as a direction towards praxis, a set of critical values that arose from the emancipatory conscience-ness and intention seen in the framework of the Nursing Manifesto. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present the theoretical and philosophical assumptions of the Nursing Manifesto, written by three activist scholars whose objective was to promote emancipatory nursing research, practice, and education within the dialogue and praxis of social justice. Inspired by discussions with a number of nurse philosophers at the 2008 Knowledge Conference in Boston, two of the original Manifesto authors and two colleagues discussed the need to explicate emancipatory knowing as it emerged from the Manifesto. Our analysis (...) yielded an epistemological framework based on liberation principles to advance praxis in the discipline of nursing. This paper adds to what is already known on this topic, as there is not an explicit contribution to the literature of this specific Manifesto, its significance, and utility for the discipline. While each of us have written on emancipatory knowing and social justice in a variety of works, it is in this article that we identify, as a unit of knowledge production and as a direction towards praxis, a set of critical values that arose from the emancipatory conscience-ness and intention seen in the framework of the Nursing Manifesto. (shrink)

Revised versions of papers presented at the 1994 Tyndale Fellowship jubilee conference held in Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1890 Edition.

This paper explains how the notion of justification transmission can be used to ground a notion of knowledge transmission. It then explains how transmission theories can characterise schoolteacher cases, which have prominently been presented as counterexamples to transmission theories.

If you cannot lucidly doubt that you exist as a thinking thing, then nor can there be a lucid doubt about the reality of those psychological states and attributes whose possession is distinctive of thinkers, par excellence their being subject to the various kinds of doxastic and conative states involved in goal-directed thought. Thus, it seems a short step from the Cogito to at least a limited application of the categories of ordinary attitudinal psychology. Yet many leading modern philosophers—for instance, (...) Dennett, Stich, the Churchlands and, above all, Quine—have been united, notwithstanding other differences, in a tendency to skepticism about the reality of attitudinal states. (shrink)

: Contextualism in epistemology has been proposed both as a way to avoid skepticism and as an explanation for the variability found in our use of "knows." When we turn to contextualism to perform these two functions, we should ensure that the version we endorse is well suited for these tasks. I compare two versions of epistemic contextualism: attributor contextualism and methodological contextualism. I argue that methodological contextualism is superior both in its response to skepticism and in its mechanism for (...) changing contexts. However, methodological contextualism still faces two challenges: explaining why we are solidly committed to some contexts, and explaining why knowledge within a context is valuable. I propose virtue contextualism as a useful extension of methodological contextualism, focusing on the way that our virtues depend on our social roles. My proposed virtue contextualism retains the benefits of methodological contextualism while explaining both our commitment to particular contexts and the value of knowledge held within those contexts. (shrink)

Medical assistance in dying was legalized by the Supreme Court of Canada in June 2016 and became a legal, viable end of life care option for Canadians with irremediable illness and suffering. Much attention has been paid to the balance between physicians’ willingness to provide MAiD and patients’ legal right to request medically assisted death in certain circumstances. In contrast, very little attention has been paid to the challenge of making MAiD accessible to vulnerable populations. The purpose of this paper (...) was to examine the extant literature and resources that are available on the provision of MAiD in Canada. We found that the provision of EOLC in Canada offers insufficient access to palliative and EOLC options for Canadians and that vulnerable Canadians experience disproportional barriers to accessing these already limited resources. Consequently, we argue that palliative care, hospice care and MAiD must be considered a spectrum of EOLC that is inclusive and accessible to all Canadians. We conclude by imploring Canadian healthcare professionals, policy makers and legislators to consider MAiD as a viable EOLC option for all Canadians. (shrink)

If you cannot lucidly doubt that you exist as a thinking thing, then nor can there be a lucid doubt about the reality of those psychological states and attributes whose possession is distinctive of thinkers, par excellence their being subject to the various kinds of doxastic and conative states involved in goal-directed thought. Thus, it seems a short step from the Cogito to at least a limited application of the categories of ordinary attitudinal psychology. Yet many leading modern philosophers—for instance, (...) Dennett, Stich, the Churchlands and, above all, Quine—have been united, notwithstanding other differences, in a tendency to skepticism about the reality of attitudinal states. (shrink)

The role of individual factors in behavioral neuroscience is an important, but still neglected, area of research. For example, the Elevated Plus-Maze Test has been one of the most used paradigms to gauge unconditioned aversively motivated behavior in rodents. However, despite a great number of experiments with this test there have been only few efforts to assess systematic individual variations in the elevated plus-maze and related neurobiological functions. The present review aims to give, first, a general overview and introduction about (...) the test, and second, an animal model of anxiety based on natural variance of plus-maze behavior within a given unselected population of rats. Finally, critical aspects of such approaches in animal research are discussed, and suggestions are given as to where to go from here. (shrink)

To be asked to provide a short paper on Wittgenstein's views on mathematical proof is to be given a tall order . Close to one half of Wittgenstein's writings after 1929 concerned mathematics, and the roots of his discussions, which contain a bewildering variety of underdeveloped and sometimes conflicting suggestions, go deep to some of the most basic and difficult ideas in his later philosophy. So my aims in what follows are forced to be modest. I shall sketch an intuitively (...) attractive philosophy of mathematics and illustrate Wittgenstein's opposition to it. I shall explain why, contrary to what is often supposed, that opposition cannot be fully satisfactorily explained by tracing it back to the discussions of following a rule in the Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics . Finally, I shall try to indicate very briefly something of the real motivation for Wittgenstein's more strikingly deflationary suggestions about mathematical proof, and canvass a reason why it may not in the end be possible to uphold them. (shrink)

Rapid advances in high throughput genomic technologies and next generation sequencing are making medical genomic research more readily accessible and affordable, including the sequencing of patient and control whole genomes and exomes in order to elucidate genetic factors underlying disease. Over the next five years, the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Initiative, funded by the Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom) and the National Institutes of Health (United States of America), will contribute greatly towards sequencing of numerous African samples for (...) biomedical research. (shrink)

Previous research has identified different moral judgments in liberals and conservatives. While both care about harm/fairness (‘individualizing’ foundations), conservatives emphasize in-group/authority/purity (‘binding’ foundations) more than liberals. Thus, some argue that conservatives have a more complex morality. We suggest an alternative view—that consistent with conservatism as ‘motivated social cognition’, binding foundation activation satisfies psychological needs for social structure/security/certainty. Accordingly, we found that students who were dispositionally threat-sensitive showed stronger binding foundation activation, and that conservatives are more dispositionally threat-sensitive than liberals. We (...) also found that in a heightened threat situation liberals (especially social liberals) showed increased binding foundation activation. These results support the view that the binding foundations function differently in our moral cognition than the individualizing foundations. (shrink)

Thomas Nagel has held that transcendence requires attaining a point of view stripped of features unique to our perspective. The aim of transcendence on this view is to get at reality as it is, independent of our contributions to it. I show this notion of transcendence to be incoherent, yet defend a contrasting notion of transcendence. As conceived here, transcendence does not require striving for an external, objective viewpoint on nature or looking at matters from someone else's or an impartial (...) point of view. On my view, which builds on the work of Iris Murdoch, transcendence consists of a refinement of our concepts and sensibility to make them more adequate to the individuals we encounter. (Published Online October 13 2005). (shrink)