Freethinking seems to be desirable because the human being is seen as an independently thinking being. However, as is well known, freethinking should not be taken for granted: ideological indoctrination, manipulation and propaganda, inter alia, are versatile tools for rulers and, in consequence, regularly repeated phenomena. One of the most drastic intellectual turning points in history occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the incontestable religious world view of European civilization changed along with early modern science and the Age (...) of Enlightenment. Although freethinking and religion do not have to be thought of as opposed, the period in question includes instances of complex and delicate phenomena, which in this article are termed intellectual purism and socio-intellectual control. The discussion includes how five thinkers operated in a restrictive politico-religio-theological framework and how they manifest religious deviance. (shrink)

Ricoeur, Culture, and Recognition: A Hermeneutic of Cultural Subjectivity presents Ricoeur’s work from the beginning to its end in form of a cultural theory and proposes a cultural hermeneutic that clarifies the cultural facilitation in a person’s process of attaining a sense of being a human. This exploration of human being as profoundly formed and influenced by the cultural condition also enables a new understanding of intercultural questions by revealing the common human condition that the various cultures manifest.

In many European countries,organic agriculture has rapidly beentransformed from a farmers' movement to aninstitutionalized part of agricultural policy.In certification, compliance with publishedorganic standards is verified through annualinspections on farms. In Finland, the role ofadvice in organic inspections has been thesubject of debate. Two inspections are usedhere to show how the term organic was definedand what the role of advice in relation tocompliance was. Both compliance and advisorytypes of interaction between the inspector andthe farmer were identified along an axis from “input (...) substitution” to “system redesign.” Thefindings illustrate the heterogeneity of theprocesses and definitions of the term organicin connection with inspections. System redesignwas less obvious in compliance than items ininspection documents suggest. The physicalsurroundings and the methods used affectinspection practices. Institutionalization isnot merely negative, but may also provideresources for system redesign. Whether adviceis part of a new and emerging way of enforcinginspections is considered. The findings suggestthat dialogue and negotiation are necessary inpromoting system redesign and in enhancing thedevelopmental functions of organicinspections. (shrink)

Based on the double character of “as if,” it is argued in this paper that “the surplus of meaning” turns out to be “the surplus of being,” which reveals a human being who interprets his or her own being and also acknowledges this being as be-ing at the same time. In this article, 1) the notion of “as if” is retrieved from Ricoeur’s early work in relation to the “poetics of being” aspired to by him. This leads us to 2) (...) examine the relation between the “semantic surplus” and the “becoming of being.” 3) Addressing the problem of metaphorical reference, the key philosophical problem of poetics, is, therefore, inevitable. Only after this analysis will we 4) be able to consider whether there is a kind of “poetics of being” in the work of Paul Ricoeur. (shrink)

ABSTRACTKeeping an eye on Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology in particular, this essay maps out Ricoeur’s explicit references to Kierkegaard in the corpus of his major works. Even though many of...

In this essay Schleiermacher’s recasting of sin is taken as a key to his phenomenological analysis of self-consciousness. The notion of sin is grossly misunderstood if read solely in the light of C...

Scholars—philosophers and scientists alike—have recently reintroduced the New Realism movement, which has its roots in the soil of early twentieth-century philosophy, as a challenge to continental philosophy. This essay will propose a “BLT correction” (Bacon, lecture, theatre) in order to criticize, instead of support, the current tendency to underestimate the insightfulness of phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy. The paper will discuss a hermeneutic of Idols proposed by Francis Bacon, and will conclude by proposing Paul Ricoeur’s correlating inclusion of objectifying explanation (expliquer/comprendre) (...) as a necessary phase in interpretative action. (shrink)

Scholars—philosophers and scientists alike—have recently reintroduced the New Realism movement, which has its roots in the soil of early twentieth-century philosophy, as a challenge to continental philosophy. This essay will propose a “BLT correction” in order to criticize, instead of support, the current tendency to underestimate the insightfulness of phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy. The paper will discuss a hermeneutic of Idols proposed by Francis Bacon, and will conclude by proposing Paul Ricoeur’s correlating inclusion of objectifying explanation as a necessary phase (...) in interpretative action. (shrink)

The number of books at home is commonly used as a proxy for socioeconomic status in educational studies. While both parents’ and students’ reports of the number of books at home are relatively strong predictors of student achievement, they often disagree with each other. When interpreting findings of analyses that measure socioeconomic status using books at home, it is important to understand how findings may be biased by the imperfect reliability of the data. For example, it was recently suggested that (...) especially low-achieving students tend to underestimate the number of books at home, so that use of such data would lead researchers to overestimate the association between books at home and achievement. Here we take a closer look at how students’ and parents’ reports of the number of books at home relate to literacy among fourth grade students, by analyzing data from more than 250,000 students in 47 countries participating in 2011 PIRLS. Contrary to prior claims, we find more downward bias in estimates of books at home among high-achieving students than among low-achieving students, but unsystematic errors appear to be larger among low-achieving students. This holds within almost every country. It also holds between countries, that is, errors in estimates of books at home are larger in low-achieving countries. This has implications for studies of the association between books at home and achievement: the strength of the association will generally be underestimated, and this problem is exacerbated in low-achieving countries and among low-achieving students. (shrink)

We raise the possibility that the roles words typically play in sentence context, rather than their motor or visual associations, determine the organization of language in the brain. We also discuss time-sensitive functional imaging approaches that allow experimentation both on isolated words and connected language.

This article looks at the relevance of the concept of self-determination to psychiatric patients by studying the existence, importance and manifestations of self-determination. The data were collected by interviewing long-term patients (n = 72) in one mental health care organization, which included a psychiatric hospital and an outpatient department. Self-determination was defined in terms of the right to decision-making, the right to information, the right of consent, the right to refuse treatment, and the right to be heard and taken into (...) account. It was found that, with the exception of the right to refuse and consent, these rights are indeed present in the practice of psychiatric nursing and that they are relevant and important to psychiatric patients. The patients typically gave ethical, practical and legal reasons for a psychiatric patient's right to self-determination. The main reasons why psychiatric patients said they lacked the right to self-determination were illness and staff authority. Recommendations for educational, clinical and methodological implications for the future in nursing are discussed. (shrink)