The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is increasingly depended upon by education policy makers to provide reliable measures of their country's education system against international benchmarks. PISA attempts to provide efficient, scientific and technical means to develop educational policies which achieve optimal outcomes (Berg & Timmermans, 2000, p. 31). This kind of scientific evidence is seen by policy makers as being free of prejudice and ideology. Science is expected to represent the truth, state universal facts and make predictions. (...) Thus PISA seeks to rank countries' performances, work out future scenarios and offer policy direction. By what means does PISA gain knowledge and speak with confidence about diverse cultures and distant nations? How does it acquire a ‘voice from nowhere’ (Haraway, 1988; Suchman, 2000), and become a modern-day Oracle that countries might consult for policy advice? Modelled on early actor-network accounts of laboratory life, this ethnography traces how PISA knowledge comes to be made, guided by interview data with two ‘insiders’ in the ‘PISA laboratory’. It traces the translations and the circulating reference that turn PISA into a ‘centre of calculation’. It highlights how human and non-human entities are imbricated in the assembling of scientific facts and argues for a suspension of the divide between ‘science’ and ‘politics’. In the process, the paper offers an empirical instantiation of how some concepts from actor-network theory may be applied in the field of education policy, and ponders the implications of such an understanding for evidence based policy making. (shrink)

The legal status of the human body is hotly contested, yet the law of the body remains in a state of confusion and chaos. Sometimes the body is treated as an object of property, sometimes it is dealt with under the rubric of contract, and sometimes it is not conceived as property at all, but rather as the subject of privacy rights. Which body of law should become the law of the body? This question is even more pressing in the (...) context of current biomedical research, which permits commodification and commercialization of the body by everyone except the person who provides the “raw materials.” The lack of property protection for tangible parts of the human body is in stark contrast to the extensive protection granted to intellectual property in the body in the form of patents upon human genes and cell lines. Moreover, even courts that reject ownership claims on the part of those who supply body parts appear willing to grant property rights to scientists, universities, and others who use those body parts to conduct research and create products. (shrink)

Recent cases involving biosamples taken from indigenous tribes and newborn babies reveal the emptiness of informed consent. This venerable doctrine often functions as a charade, a collective fiction which thinly masks the uncomfortable fact that the subjects of human research are not actually afforded full information regarding the types of research that may be contemplated, nor do they provide meaningful consent. But if informed consent fails to provide adequate protection to the donors of biological materials, why not turn to principles (...) of property law? Property is power, yet current law permits everyone except for those who donate biological materials to possess property rights. The reluctance to invoke property probably stems from fears of resurrecting slavery and the commodification of human beings. But ironically, avoidance of property transforms the subjects of human research into objects that can be owned only by others, resulting in new forms of oppression and exploitation. Human research subjects are autonomous individuals who should not only possess the power to contribute their biological materials, but also the right to help control the course of research, and to share in the resulting benefits or profits. Conferring body property might enable research subjects to regain power and a measure of self-sovereignty. (shrink)

The classic questions of philosophical aesthetics—how and why human beings find certain works of art beautiful or sublime—suffered from something of a hiatus in the twentieth century, but the study of beauty has seen a return in recent years, often calling on rapidly evolving research in cognitive science and neuroscience for assistance. Patrick Colm Hogan's Beauty and Sublimity: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts is an important contribution to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of cognitive aesthetics. The book makes (...) a brave attempt to bring together insights from neuroscience, cognitive science, and literature to explain aesthetic response and justification.Hogan's focus is on the minutiae of... (shrink)

It is universally accepted that genetic control over basic aspects of cell and molecular biology is the primary organizing principle in development and homeostasis of living systems. However, instances do exist where important aspects of biological order arise without explicit genetic instruction, emerging instead from simple physical principles, stochastic processes, or the complex self‐organizing interaction between random and seemingly unrelated parts. Being mostly resistant to direct genetic dissection, the analysis of such emergent processes falls into a grey area between mathematics, (...) physics and molecular cell biology and therefore remains very poorly understood. We recently proposed a mathematical model predicting the emergence of a specific non‐Gaussian distribution of polygonal cell shapes from the stochastic cell division process in epithelial cell sheets; this cell shape distribution appears to be conserved across a diverse set of animals and plants.1 The use of such topological models to study the process of cellular morphogenesis has a long history, starting almost a century ago, and many insights from those original works influence current experimental studies. Here we review current and past literature on this topic while exploring some new ideas on the origins and implications of topological order in proliferating epithelia. BioEssays 30:260–266, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article compares three frameworks for legal regulation of the human body. Property law systematically favors those who use the body to create commercial products. Yet contract and privacy rights cannot compete with the property paradigm, which alone affords a complete bundle of rights enforceable against the whole world. In the face of researchers' property rights, the theoretical freedom to contract and the meager interest in privacy leave those who supply body parts vulnerable to exploitation.

Selective reduction and abortion both involve the termination of fetal life, but they are classified by different designations to underscore the notion that they are regarded as fundamentally different medical procedures: the two are performed using distinct techniques by different types of physicians, upon women under very different circumstances, in order to further dramatically different objectives. Hence, the two procedures appear to call for a distinct moral calculus, and they have traditionally evoked contradictory reactions from society. This essay posits that (...) despite their different appellations, selective reduction and abortion are essentially equivalent. (shrink)

The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is increasingly depended upon by education policy makers to provide reliable measures of their country's education system against international benchmarks. PISA attempts to provide efficient, scientific and technical means to develop educational policies which achieve optimal outcomes (Berg & Timmermans, 2000, p. 31). This kind of scientific evidence is seen by policy makers as being free of prejudice and ideology. Science is expected to represent the truth, state universal facts and make predictions. (...) Thus PISA seeks to rank countries' performances, work out future scenarios and offer policy direction. By what means does PISA gain knowledge and speak with confidence about diverse cultures and distant nations? How does it acquire a ‘voice from nowhere’ (Haraway, 1988; Suchman, 2000), and become a modern‐day Oracle that countries might consult for policy advice? Modelled on early actor‐network accounts of laboratory life, this ethnography traces how PISA knowledge comes to be made, guided by interview data with two ‘insiders’ in the ‘PISA laboratory’. It traces the translations and the circulating reference that turn PISA into a ‘centre of calculation’. It highlights how human and non‐human entities are imbricated in the assembling of scientific facts and argues for a suspension of the divide between ‘science’ and ‘politics’. In the process, the paper offers an empirical instantiation of how some concepts from actor‐network theory may be applied in the field of education policy, and ponders the implications of such an understanding for evidence based policy making. (shrink)

There seems to be some initial evidence that team captains are selected based on non-leadership factors such as team tenure, technical abilities, being the daughter of the club president, or playing position. This is concerning since players expect their ideal team captain to have superior motivational and social skills. Adding to this literature on captain selection, the present study investigates relationships between the reasons for which team captains are selected and their perceived leadership quality; and perceived acceptance. To accomplish this, (...) we recruited 450 coaches and 198 players from Flemish football and volleyball teams. Participants evaluated 41 reasons on the extent to which they played a role in the selection of their team captain. Additionally, participants rated their team captain’s leadership quality and level of acceptance. The results consistently indicated that captains who were selected for having good motivational and social competencies were given higher ratings on perceived leadership quality and acceptance by participants. In conclusion, athletes who are motivated, good at motivating others and have superior social skills tend to be better suited for captaincy than those selected based on non-leadership factors. (shrink)

_Curriculum and Learning for Climate Action_ offers researchers, practitioners, donors, and decisionmakers insights into entry points for education systems change needed to reorient human society’s relationship with our planetary systems.

Dobbs appears more extreme when juxtaposed against Roe’s hidden history. Justice Blackmun was the author of Roe, but the opinion was the product of a remarkable collaboration that incorporated the suggestions of many Justices. Thus, Roe’s medical framing embodied the vision of the Court as a whole, not one individual.

This chapter contains sections titled: ANT and the ‘PISA Laboratory’ PISA: An Overview Background to the Study Making PISA Knowledge From ‘World’ to ‘Word’ Engaging in a ‘Politics of Fact’ Notes References.

Partitions and their Afterlives engages with political partitions and how their aftermath affects the contemporary life of nations and their citizens.

Résumé Considéré comme l’action individuelle par excellence, le dribble renvoie le plus souvent à l’exercice d’une maîtrise technique que seuls quelques protagonistes d’exceptions sont à même d’exécuter. Cette image purement descriptive, centrée sur le seul pratiquant, n’entretient qu’un lointain rapport avec la réalité de ce qui constitue la raison d’être profonde de cette action motrice. Le dribble, entendue comme un acte qui consiste à conduire un objet, – une balle, un palet –, en alternant des temps de contact et de (...) non contact, est avant tout à envisager dans sa dimension collective. Là est le point aveugle des analyses menées à son propos. Dans cette étude, on considérera le dribble comme un type de conduite motrice porteur d’intentions auxquelles sont attachées des significations de nature essentiellement sociale. Fondamentalement le dribble est relation, c’est-à-dire interaction. Il doit être envisagé sous l’angle de la sémiotricité, autrement dit des significations que les pratiquants lui accordent. Sa fonction est essentiellement d’annoncer les actions futures. À ce titre, il renvoie à une classe de comportements tactiques dont les significations relèvent d’une interprétation en situation sous la dépendance directe des règles du jeu sportif considéré. Loin d’être univoque, le dribble doit être envisagé comme un « signe » qui doit être décodé par les pratiquants en fonction de la grammaire du jeu considéré selon un double axe ; syntagmatique et sémantique. Ce travail à pour objectif de repérer les différentes significations possibles du « signe-dribble », considéré comme un praxème. (shrink)

This book opens the door to the effects of intellectual, educational, and economic colonization of young children throughout the world. Using a postcolonial lens on current educational practices, the authors hope to lift those practices out of reproducing traditional power structures and push our thinking beyond the adult/child dichotomy into new possibilities for the lives that are created with children.

Le génie de Blaise Pascal séduit toujours de nombreux chercheurs. Des âmes avides d'absolu font de ses écrits leur livre de chevet. Sans doute cette notoriété a-t-elle estompé les autres membres de cette famille somme toute remarquable. Etienne, le père, est un esprit universel. Juriste, délégué de la cité, il est aussi grand mathématicien, compositeur et organiste, religieux et père admirable. Gilberte, la sœur aînée, a un talent littéraire qui s'exprimera dans La vie de M. Pascal. Les dons poétiques de (...) Jacqueline, la cadette, étonnent dès l'enfance. Etienne, le neveu, écrira un précieux témoignage sur la méthode de son oncle. Marguerite, la nièce miraculée, vivra jusqu'à quatre-vingt-sept ans et rapportera ses souvenirs dans un livre sur Blaise. Leurs lettres, peu nombreuses et trop souvent ignorées, méritent une attention d'autant plus minutieuse qu'elles nous introduisent dans l'intimité de cette famille. Ce qui domine, c'est une union exceptionnelle qui survit au-delà de la mort après avoir traversé les heurts inévitables entre ces fortes personnalités. On s'émerveille de la diversité des vocations : chaste veuvage pour Etienne, maternité et vie de famille pour Gilberte, vie religieuse pour Jacqueline, consécration à Dieu dans le monde pour Blaise, ministère presbytéral pour Louis. André Bord nous raconte cette vie de famille étonnante en nous faisant découvrir plusieurs faits inédits. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one aspect of Weil's philosophy of labor, which has not been studied until now: the problem of boredom. In a 1938 article, she defines boredom as the main source of suffering for factory-workers. But shouldn't boredom rather occur during leisure-time, when one has nothing to do? In fact, factory work can lead to boredom, despite its frenetic rhythm and the deep concentration it implies. According Weil, boredom in factory has two main causes: monotony, and the fact (...) that, while working, the workers lose the control over their own time. This correlation of boredom with certain conditions of work is nowadays still relevant, and it concerns modern life not only in the working sphere. It implies a critical approach to the conditions of production in the capitalist era. But it also helps to describe the paradoxical state in which, while being active, one suffers from weariness. At last, it shows the relevance of an exploration of the various aspects of modern alienation through the problematic of time. The interest in the problem of boredom therefore allows to explore two complementary sides of Weil's thought: materialism and religious inspiration. (shrink)

In India, there has been a shift from using unclaimed bodies to voluntary body donation for anatomy dissections in medical colleges. This study used in-depth qualitative interviews to explore the deeper intent, values and attitudes towards body donation, the body and death, and expectations of the body donor, as well as their next of kin and representative religious scholars. All donors had enrolled in a body bequest programme in a medical school in South India. This study concludes that body donors (...) are philanthropists with deep-rooted values of altruism and service, who are often willing to forgo traditional religious and cultural death rituals. The next of kin are often uncomfortable with the donor’s decision, and this suggests that it is important that dialogue/counselling occurs at the time of the bequest, if the donor’s wishes are to be respected. Religious injunctions are often misinterpreted; this implies that religious leaders/scholars can play a significant role in addressing these misconceptions which are barriers to body donation. Body bequest programmes in India may be enhanced by positioning body donation as ‘daana’—giving without any expectation of return for a higher purpose, including ceremonies of respect in medical colleges. Furthermore, increased public engagement and awareness about body bequest programmes are also important to enhance participation. When medical students internalise what body donors expect of them, i.e. altruism, empathy with patients and becoming ‘good doctors’, it will help to ensure that the donation was not in vain and that the dead truly teach the living. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a study of the figure of the philistine (Spidsborgeren) as the embodiment of spiritlessness in Kierkegaard. Indeed, although the pseudonyms aim at representing all the possibilities of existence, declining at the same time the diverse degrees of inwardness, the philistine appears throughout the whole work as the very paradigm of the lack of inwardness. While this figure stands as a kind of antipseudonym, I thus argue that it plays a decisive role in Kierkegaard, because it (...) enables him to constitute and to structure, in a negative way, his philosophy of existence. (shrink)

This paper inquires into the conceptual nature of self-deception. I shall afford a theory which links SD to wishful thinking. First I present two rival models for the analysis of SD, and suggest reasons why the interpersonal model is flawed. It is necessary for supporters of this model to work out a strategy that avoids the ascription of inconsistency to the self-deceiver in order to fulfill the requirements of the charity principle. Some objections to the compartmentalization strategy are put forward, (...) and a motivational theory is advanced. This theory diverges from Mele (1997)'s account of SD in that it (i) establishes as a necessary condition for SD the existence of a causal link between a desire and a belief unacknowledged by the self-deceived subject, who is unaware also of the counterevidential nature of his belief (the 'focused inferential blindness' thesis), (ii) allows only 'weak SD' cases and offers methodological reasons against the seemingly intentional and dissociative nature of SD and (iii) stresses the deception-SD asymmetry. /// El presente artículo intenta investigar la naturaleza conceptual del autoengaño. Presentaré dos modelos rivales de análisis y ofreceré razones contra la teoría interpersonal frente a la motivacional, alegando las dificultades que comporta seguir alguna de sus estrategias de compartimentación para evitar la atribución de inconsistencia simple al sujeto autoengañado. Defenderé una teoría que vincula el autoengaño con la creencia desiderativa. Se trata de una teoría motivacional que difiere de la de Mele (1997) en que (i) establece como condición necesaria para el autoengaño que se dé una relación causal entre el deseo y la creencia pertinentes, relación cuya existencia desconoce el sujeto, que ignora también el grado en que su creencia es incompatible con los datos empíricamente disponibles (tesis de la ceguera inferencial focalizada), (ii) acepta sólo casos de autoengaño débil y ofrece razones metodológicas contra la supuesta naturaleza intencional y disociativa del autoengaño y (iii) subraya la asimetría autoengaño/engaño. (shrink)

Contre l'effrayante puissance d'anéantissement de l'idéologie mise au service de la tyrannie, Kostas Papaïoannou défendit les droits de la pensée critique. Contemporain d'Hannah Arendt, proche de Raymond Aron et d'Octavio Paz, il décrivit les rouages du totalitarisme et éclaira la condition de l'homme moderne. Lire Papaïoannou, ce n'est pas seulement se plonger au coeur de la pensée de Hegel, de Marx, lire Papaïoannou, c'est aussi et surtout retrouver la source fraîche et brûlante de la Grèce antique, le chaos et la (...) vigueur d'une pensée extraordinairement créative. (shrink)

"Le droit est traditionnellement appréhendé comme un phénomène inhérent au langage. Est-il possible, dès lors, pour ce droit, qui est enserré dans les rets du langage, de « dire le silence »? « Le silence du droit » ou « le silence dans le droit » témoignent ainsi d'une parole différée ou d'une voix impossible. Cette problématique a été appréhendée, dans cette étude, sur une base métaphorique. Comme toute métaphore, celle-ci rend compte d'une relation de substitution : la relation d'absence (...) qu'elle évoque a, cependant, été performante dans le domaine juridique afin de nous consoler des risques inhérents à l'inscription du droit dans l'ordre du langage. La métaphore du silence devient ainsi « la forme même de la consolation »".--Résumé de l'éditeur. (shrink)

La question du risque transparaît dans toute l’œuvre de Kierkegaard. En plus de lui apporter dynamisme et profondeur, elle permet au penseur danois d’articuler philosophie de l’existence et philosophie de la foi. Précisément, le risque chrétien, en tant que risque « intellectuel » et « existentiel », oriente l’individu vers soi-même, et plus exactement, vers ce paradigme de l’identité qu’est le Christ en tant qu’homme-Dieu. Nous nous proposons donc ici d’analyser cette notion éminemment kierkegaardienne en insistant notamment sur deux modalités (...) du risque : le risque comme catégorie « polémique », vis-à-vis de la chrétienté en tant qu’avatar de la mondanité, et le risque comme catégorie « théologico-existentielle », en ceci qu’il détermine, positivement ou négativement, l’existence de l’individu. (shrink)

En este artículo pretendo analizar ciertos elementos de la tematica correspondiente a la noción de parte temporal. En la primera parte estudio dicha noción y describo las tesis principales con las que los partidarios de la teoría de partes temporales se comprometen al respecto, En la segunda parte expongo algunas críticas contra la existencia de partes temporales presentadas por los partidarios de continuantes e intento mostrar que o bien estas críticas parten de ciertas confusiones que las hacen insatisfactorias o bien (...) son perfectamente salvables desde el marco tetradimensionalista. Me centro especialmente en las criticas de J.J. Thomson, P. Geach, D. Mellor y S. Haslanger, que hacen referencia a las cuestiones acerca deI supuesto carácter instantaneo de las partes temporales, su existencia ex nihilo, la analogía espacio-temporal y la causalidad humeana.In this paper some answers to certain arguments against temporal parts are presented. The first part explores the very notion of temporal part and tries to describe the main tenets that friends of temporal parts hold. The second one develops sonze criticisms that friends of continuants have expoused against those entities and argues that most of these criticisms mischaracterize the problems at issue. The discussion focuses on J.J. Thomson’s, P. Geach’s, D. Mellor’s and S. Haslanger’s arguments about the impossibility of procesualism to escape from some problematic commitents like instantaneous parts, ex nihilo existences, time-space analogies and humean causes. Nevertheless I will try to show that some of this consequences do not folIow and that some other are seen not to be as threatening as they might first have appeared. (shrink)