This volume addresses relations between macroscopic and microscopic description; essential roles of visualization and representation in chemical understanding; historical questions involving chemical concepts; the impacts of chemical ideas on wider cultural concerns; and relationships between contemporary chemistry and other sciences. The authors demonstrate, assert, or tacitly assume that chemical explanation is functionally autonomous. This volume should he of interest not only to professional chemists and philosophers, but also to workers in medicine, psychology, and other fields in which relationships between (...) explanations based on diverse levels of description and investigation are important. (Listed on Google books). (shrink)

Doctoral programs at U.S. universities play a critical role in the development of human resources both in the United States and abroad. This volume reports the results of an extensive study of U.S. research-doctorate programs in five broad fields: physical sciences and mathematics, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, biological sciences, and the humanities. Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States documents changes that have taken place in the size, structure, and quality of doctoral education since the widely used 1982 editions. This (...) update provides selected information on nearly 4,000 doctoral programs in 41 subdisciplines at 274 doctorate-granting institutions. This volume also reports the results of the National Survey of Graduate Faculty, which polled a sample of faculty for their views on the scholarly quality of program faculty and the effectiveness of doctoral programs in preparing research scholars/scientists. This much-anticipated update of such an essential reference will be useful to education administrators, university faculty, and students seeking authoritative information on doctoral programs. (shrink)

Two experiments are described that investigate the effects of attention in moderating evaluative conditioning (EC) effects in a picture‐picture paradigm in which previously discovered experimental artifacts (e.g., Field & Davey, 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) were overcome by counterbalancing conditioned stimuli (CSs) and (...) unconditioned stimuli (USs) across participants. Conditioned responses for individuals who had attention enhanced were compared against a control group and groups for whom attention was impeded using a distracter task. In a second experiment the effects of attention were dissociated from those of contingency awareness by using backward‐masked US presentations. The results of these experiments indicate that although associative EC effects may not be disrupted by a lack of contingency awareness, attention is an important factor in establishing conditioning. These results shed some light onto the possible boundary conditions that could explain past inconsistencies in obtaining EC effects in the visual paradigm. (shrink)

What are the ethical, political and cultural consequences of forgetting how to trust our senses? How can artworks help us see, sense, think, and interact in ways that are outside of the systems of convention and order that frame so much of our lives? In Cultivating Perception through Artworks, Helen Fielding challenges us to think alongside and according to artworks, cultivating a perception of what is really there and being expressed by them. Drawing from and expanding on the work of (...) philosophers such as Luce Irigaray and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Fielding urges us to trust our senses and engage relationally with works of art in the here and now rather than distancing and systematizing them as aesthetic objects. Cultivating Perception through Artworks examines examples as diverse as a Rembrandt painting, M. NourbeSe Philip's poetry, and Louise Bourgeois' public sculpture, to demonstrate how artworks enact ethics, politics, or culture. By engaging with different art forms and discovering the unique way that each opens us to the world in a new and unexpected ways, Fielding reveals the importance of our moral, political, and cultural lives. (shrink)

The crisis of confidence in the social sciences has many corollaries which impact our research practices. One of these is a push towards maximal and mechanical objectivity in quantitative research. This stance is reinforced by major journals and academic institutions that subtly yet certainly link objectivity with integrity and rigor. The converse implication of this may be an association between subjectivity and low quality. Subjectivity is one of qualitative methodology’s best assets, however. In qualitative methodology, that subjectivity is often given (...) voice through reflexivity. It is used to better understand our own role within the research process, and is a means through which the researcher may oversee how they influence their research. Given that the actions of researchers have led to the poor reproducibility characterising the crisis of confidence, it is worthwhile to consider whether reflexivity can help improve the validity of research findings in quantitative psychology. In this report, we describe a combination approach of research: the data of a series of interviews helps us elucidate the link between reflexive practice and quality of research, through the eyes of practicing academics. Through our exploration of the position of the researcher in their research, we shed light on how the reflections of the researcher can impact the quality of their research findings, in the context of the current crisis of confidence. The validity of these findings is tempered, however, by limitations to the sample, and we advise caution on the part of our audience in their reading of our conclusions. (shrink)

Few fields in philosophy are so seemingly distant from ordinary human experience as theories of knowledge. How much information do we draw in from bodies outside of us? And to what degree do our perceptual and mental processes subjectify that information to the point of becoming non-objective? The Heart of Matter: Bridging the Kantian Gap in How we Know Things presents both a back history of current theories of perception, and a plausible theory to span the gap between subject and (...) object. This book begins with K. Popper's theory of falsifiability, as a twentieth-century version of Kantian subjectivism. Before considering eighteenth-century transcendental philosophy, a look at both the empirical and rational theories that inspired Kant helps place his Critique of Pure Reason in context. This book highlights the developments in Kant's thought, as he struggled to solve important problems within his Copernican revolution. How far does Kant's theory coincide with our actual perceptual experience? Twentieth-century experimentation in perception sheds important light on human knowing. The Heart of Matter follows C. Fabro's study of those psychological findings, and especially his ability to incorporate those findings into a coherent description and explanation. Many current theories of knowledge dismiss any possibility of our objectively knowing bodies outside of us; this book takes a candid look at both the major dilemmas implied in such a dismissal, as well as our actual perception of things. On this account, a fruitful exchange does appear to take place between the mind and reality in perception. (shrink)

The word "ontology" presently encompasses two different meanings. In the philosophical sense, ontology has been defined since the days of Aristotle as the "science of being," also called "metaphysics." In this sense, ontology is concerned with categorizing discrete entities in reality and the relationships that hold between those entities (Aristotle 1952). Ontology, in the tradition of philosophical realism, aims to describe every day, mesoscopic entities and relations as they are in themselves, and not from the specific viewpoint of some particular (...) domain or conceptual schema. The type of entities realist ontology concerns are those that exist "out there" in the world (such as tables, chairs, mountains, streams .. (shrink)

ObjectivesA sample of women with persistent distress following breast cancer previously exhibited attentional bias away from supraliminally presented cancer-or threat-related information, responses consistent with avoidance coping, and showed negative interpretation bias. Here, we attempt to characterize the nature of supraliminal AB and interpretation bias in that sample of women by comparing against healthy controls.MethodsExtending our previous work, we compared AB patterns for supraliminally presented negatively valenced words and cancer-related information assessed by modified dot-probe tasks and negative interpretation bias assessed by (...) an ambiguous cue task between 140 BC women previously identified as featuring low-stable or persistent high anxiety and 150 age-matched non-BC healthy controls having HADS-defined low or high anxiety.ResultsAttentional avoidance of non-cancer-related negatively valenced words was seen among the anxious BC group, while heightened attention toward such words was seen in anxious healthy controls, F = 3.97, p = 0.009. However, all anxious women in both BC and healthy groups directed attention away from CRI under supraliminal conditions. Interpretation bias scores were significantly higher in BC women with high anxiety vs. healthy controls with high anxiety, F = 13.26, p < 0.001.ConclusionWomen with high anxiety generalized conscious attentional avoidance responses to negatively valenced stimuli, indicating a likely hypersensitivity to potential threat in ambiguous cues and exaggerated threat perception. This may cause maladaptive emotional regulation. Attention focus training, reducing threat salience or modifying threat appraisal, may help women alleviate anxiety levels after BC. (shrink)

"The Bush administration and Congress are in concert on the goal of developing a fleet of unmanned aircraft that can reduce both defense costs and aircrew losses in combat by taking on at least the most dangerous combat missions. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will be neither inexpensive enough to be readily expendable nor-- at least in early development-- capable of performing every combat mission alongside or in lieu of manned sorties. Yet the tremendous potential of such systems is widely (...) recognized, and allies as well as potential adversaries are moving quickly to mount their own research and development programs. The United States is committed to fielding UCAV capabilities by 2010, principally for the missions of suppression of enemy air defense and deep strike, which are among the highest risk tasks for the Air Force and naval aviation."--Overview. (shrink)

Bayesian decision theory can be viewed as the core of psychological theory for idealized agents. To get a complete psychological theory for such agents, you have to supplement it with input and output laws. On a Bayesian theory that employs strict conditionalization, the input laws are easy to give. On a Bayesian theory that employs Jeffrey conditionalization, there appears to be a considerable problem with giving the input laws. However, Jeffrey conditionalization can be reformulated so that the problem disappears, and (...) in fact the reformulated version is more natural and easier to work with on independent grounds. (shrink)

Significant transformations in postmodern society determine the need to form a space of digital communications and the involvement of information and communication technologies. Such trends make significant demands on various categories of professionals, including managers in the field of tourism. The aim of this research is to study the psychological peculiarities of morality in the representatives of digital Generations Y and Z in the field of tourism. In accordance with the aim, we paid attention to the study of (...) such components of moral regulation as ethics attitude, moral foundations, justice sensitivity and moral disengagement. The research involved 200 participants being represented by volunteers from five regions of Ukraine, including 100 respondents in the age of 25-30 who formed part of the Generation Y group; the other 100 participants in the age of 18-23 formed the Generation Z group. The results show that millennials are more idealistic. The intercrossing of the factors of idealism and relativism allows us to characterize millennials as situationalists, and centennials as subjectivists. It is ascertained that millennials are characterised by such important moral foundations for judgments as “Faithfulness”, “Purity”, which is reflected in the greater importance of “Ethics of community”. At the same time, it was found that centennials place more emphasis on the moral foundations of care and justice, and as a result, they are more committed to the “Ethics of autonomy” and “Progressivism”. The research confirmed the uniqueness and specificity of the moral regulation of different digital generations of representatives of the tourism industry. (shrink)

The basic idea of the particular way of understanding mental phenomena that has inspired the "cognitive revolution" is that, as a result of certain relatively recent intellectual and technological innovations, informed theorists now possess a more powerfully insightful comparison or model for mind than was available to any thinkers in the past. The model in question is that of software, or the list of rules for input, output, and internal transformations by which we determine and control the workings of (...) a computing machine's hardware. Although this comparison and its many implications have dominated work in the philosophy, psychology, and neurobiology of mind since the end of the Second World War, it now shows increasing signs of losing its once virtually unquestioned preeminence. Thus we now face the question of whether it is possible to repair and save this model by means of relatively inessential "tinkering", or whether we must reconceive it fundamentally and replace it with something different. In this book, twenty-eight leading scholars from diverse fields of "cognitive science"-linguistics, psychology, neurophysiology, and philosophy- present their latest, carefully considered judgements about what they think will be the future course of this intellectual movement, that in many respects has been a watershed in our contemporary struggles to comprehend that which is crucially significant about human beings. Jerome Bruner, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Boden, Ulric Neisser, Rom Harre, Merlin Donald, among others, have all written chapters in a non-technical style that can be enjoyed and understood by an inter-disciplinary audience of psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, and cognitive scientists alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychopathy, Other-Regarding Moral Beliefs, and ResponsibilityLloyd Fields (bio)AbstractIn this paper I seek to show that at least one kind of psychopath is incapable of forming other-regarding moral beliefs; hence that they cannot act for other-regarding moral reasons; and hence that they are not appropriate subjects for the assessment of either moral or legal responsibility. Various attempts to characterize psychopaths are considered and rejected, in particular the widely held view (...) that psychopaths are, in general, incapable of understanding moral concepts. The particular disability proposed here, the incapacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, is then derived from an analysis of what is required for someone to be a responsible agent. This is illustrated with a detailed case history. A defect of this kind is shown to vitiate moral responsibility, because it renders the psychopath irresponsive to the social pressures which normally ensure respect for moral norms. It is also shown that the psychopath is not a suitable subject for the assessment of legal responsibility, because he lacks the capacity to act from common prudence to avoid sanctions. I conclude that the attempt to characterize particular defects from among the heterogeneity of psychopathic subjects, could lead to better targeted, and hence to more effective, management of particular cases.KeywordsCriminality, mental illness, personality disorder, blame, liability, moral beliefs, guilt, social moralityIntroductionThe term “psychopath” has been used with a wide variety of different meanings and, no doubt, covers a heterogeneous group of subjects (Criminal behaviour and mental health 1992). My aim in this paper is to argue that at least a subgroup of those subjects are characterized by an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs—and hence, for this particular reason, are not morally responsible agents—and that they also lack the capacity for prudence, and hence are not legally responsible agents.I begin by distinguishing the particular sense in which I will be using the term “psychopathy.” I then consider some suggestions in the literature regarding the defect by which psychopaths might be characterized—that they are mentally ill, or incapable of understanding moral concepts. In rejecting these, I come to the suggestion that the relevant defect is an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs, a defect which is graphically illustrated by a case report from the literature. I explore the implication of this kind of defect for [End Page 261] moral responsibility as a socially-embedded notion, and the implication of the psychopath’s inability to exercise prudence in relation to legal liability.Nothing in this paper should be taken to suggest that psychopaths are irredeemable. On the contrary, as I argue in an endnote, correctly characterizing the defect from which they suffer leads directly to forms of treatment whose effectiveness has acquired a measure of empirical support.The Nature of PsychopathyPsychopathy is not a homogeneous concept; there are different types of psychopaths. For example, Henderson identified a type of psychopath who he classified as “Predominantly Creative,” exemplified by such figures as T. E. Lawrence and Joan of Arc. In people of this type genius is associated with heightened sensitivity, psychosexual immaturity and emotional instability (Henderson 1939, 108–20; Henderson and Gillespie 1969, 317). Predominantly creative psychopaths do not come within my purview.By “psychopathy” I shall mean the specific form of personality disorder described by Cleckley in his book, The Mask of Sanity (Cleckley 1964). Cleckley’s description forms the basis of Hare’s Revised (20-item) Psychopathy Checklist. The Checklist includes the following personality traits and deviant behaviors:1. Glibness/superficial charm.2. Grandiose sense of self-worth.3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom.4. Pathological lying.5. Conning/manipulative.6. Lack of remorse or guilt.7. Shallow affect.8. Callous/lack of empathy.9. Parasitic lifestyle.10. Poor behavioral controls.11. Promiscuous sexual behavior.12. Early behavior problems.13. Lack of realistic, long-term plans.14. Impulsivity.15. Irresponsibility.16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions.17. Many short-term marital relationships.18. Juvenile delinquency.19. Revocation of conditional release.20. Criminal versatility (Hare 1986, 18). 1This conceptualization resembles in many respects the category of Antisocial Personality Disorder as described in the American Psychiatric... (shrink)

This book covers the basic guidelines of Vittorio Benussi’s research during the period at Graz and at Padua. It does so in the light of a thorough study of his Nachlass. The book re-evaluates Benussi’s work as a historical piece, and shows how his work is still relevant today, especially in the areas of cognitive psychology and cognitive science. The volume deals with this original and ingenious - though largely ignored - scholar and discusses his work as a leading (...) experimental psychologist. Benussi’s contributions as discussed in this book were particularly relevant in the fields of visual and tactile perception, time perception, forensic psychology, hypnosis and suggestion, unconscious, and emotions. His classical papers are impressive in their originality, energy, range of approaches, experimental skill, the wealth of findings, and the quality of theoretical discussions. This book demonstrates that Benussi was ahead of his time and that his themes, experiments and research programmes are highly relevant to contemporary cognitive psychology. (shrink)

Prompted by the centenary of the founding of Summerhill, in my contribution to this JOPE Suite on Democratic Education, I briefly explore both the admiring reciprocity and the subsidiary but significant differences of praxis between A.S. Neill and Alex Bloom, two remarkable pioneers of education in and for participatory democracy as a way of life. Because A.S. Neill's work is internationally renowned and Alex Bloom's has yet to re-establish the worldwide recognition it had in his own lifetime, my emphasis is (...) on the contribution of Alex Bloom, in large part because he is amongst the most radical pioneers of democratic education the UK state sector has ever known. To a significant degree, the aspirations and actualities of Bloom's work rebutted Neill's insistence that pioneers within the state sector of education could not innovate in ways that would significantly challenge the status quo. Indeed, Alex Bloom extended participatory democratic educational aspirations in ways which Neill did not. Most importantly, these not only entailed a commitment to community engagement, they did so in conditions of abject poverty and profound psychological trauma following the ravages of the Second World War London Blitz with its attendant evacuation and subsequent return to the ruins of their former homes.In the first section, I take as my starting point Alex Bloom's strongly supportive review of A.S. Neill's book The Problem Family and Neill's visit to Bloom's school in the East End of London, some five years later. Foregrounding the dialectic of practice and aspiration, I touch on some of the key issues that emerged for both Neill and Bloom at that time.Challenging Neill's later affirmation that the only significant freedom one can introduce into a state school is ‘a free attitude on the teacher's part, his or her being on the side of the child’ and his reported view that Bloom and others might be able to experiment in methods of teaching or ways of organising the timetable, ‘but not in methods of living’, the second section explores the nature and interrelationship of six key strands woven into the fabric of Alex Bloom's truly remarkable work that exemplified the grounded possibility and vibrant actuality of participatory democracy as a way of living and learning together that prefigures a more just, creative and caring form of human engagement.Locating the foundation of Alex Bloom's praxis within the 20th-century personalist philosophical tradition and its Adlerian psychological counterpart, the brief concluding section draws in particular on the work of John Macmurray who argues, as did Bloom in his own writing and his daily praxis, that ‘The first priority in education—if by education we mean learning to be human—is learning to live in personal relation to other people. Let us call it learning to live in community’. (shrink)

Today a “new” field of philosophy has emerged which can be called simply “The Philosophy of Man and Woman”. Paradoxically, it is a field of study with a long and impressive history which began when the pre-Socratic philosophers first questioned their own identity in the midst of the world. Their questions fall into four broad areas:1. How is the male “opposite” to the female?2. What roles do male and female play in the generation and identity of offspring?3. Are (...) women and men wise in the same or different ways?4. Are women and men good in the same or different ways? (shrink)

Upon its publication in 1976, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis? Schooling in Capitalist America was the most sophisticated and nuanced Marxian social and political analysis of schooling in the United States. Thirty-five years after its publication, Schooling continues to have a strong impact on thinking about education. Despite its unquestionable influence, it has received strikingly little historical attention. This historical article revisits the scholarship of Bowles and Gintis and the milieu in which Schooling was conceived. Specifically, it contextualizes the production (...) and reception of Schooling to better understand the emergence of Marxist thought in the field of education in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. It also seeks to understand how the emergence of Marxist thought in the field was connected to the rise of an Academic Left?an intellectual shift in the academy toward Marxist social and political theory as a framework to theorize democratic socialist movement-building against capitalism and concomitant state sponsored oppression in the 1960s and 1970s. This history suggests that as we engage in historical and contemporary work on radical ideas in the field of education, we need to push ourselves continually to think about the intersection of education with other fields and disciplines. The article also pushes back against a widespread depiction of Schooling as crudely mechanistic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to the CommentariesLloyd FieldsAbstractIn this response, I address three points raised in the commentaries: the question of whether there is a legitimate formal use of “moral,” the claim that a certain sort of affective capacity is required for acquiring the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, and the problem of how to show that psychopaths lack the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs. I maintain that there is (...) a use of “moral” according to which moral beliefs need not be rational. Regarding the affective capacity that Adshead identifies, I explain that I had not intended that such a capacity be constitutive of a moral belief, even an other-regarding one. I then try a new approach, in the light of Adshead’s commentary, to the third point addressed, according to which the psychopath is unable to form other-regarding moral beliefs because a causally necessary condition for doing so is absent in him.KeywordsMoral beliefs, moral understanding, personality disorder, empathy, incapacity, responsibilityThe criticisms offered in the three excellent commentaries on my paper raise deep and important issues. I agree with many of the points made and will respond to three key issues: (1) the question of whether there is a legitimate formal use of “moral”; (2) the claim that there is a certain sort of affective capacity that is required in order to form other-regarding moral beliefs; (3) the problem of how to show that psychopaths lack the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs.I concede that Duff establishes (Duff 1977) that the psychopath lacks moral understanding in Duff’s own content-based sense of “moral.” It is illuminating, however, to emphasize that in my formal sense a psychopath of the kind that I consider in my paper is capable of some degree of understanding of “moral” concepts. Unlike Duff, I do not build rationality into my account of moral principles. Hence, I can accommodate eccentric, irrational or even “crazy” moral beliefs like that of Duff’s split-infinitive fanatic. A person can have irrational factual beliefs; why not irrational moral beliefs?Adshead in her commentary attributes to me the claim that moral beliefs, including other-regarding beliefs, “result” in a disposition to experience certain emotions, and to have certain attitudes in certain situations. She then writes, “it is arguable that the disposition to experience certain emotions and have certain attitudes towards others could be critical to acquiring the capacity to have other-regarding beliefs.” There is only an apparent disagreement here. First, I intended to claim that a disposition to experience certain emotions, etc., is partly constitutive of having a moral belief, not a result of having one. Second, in specifying my third condition of having a moral belief, I had in mind such attitudes and emotions as approval, disapproval, indignation and remorse. Adshead identifies an affective capacity, aspects of which are the recognition of, empathy with, and sympathy with, another’s distress. This capacity seems to correspond more or less to what Rousseau described as “natural compassion” (Rousseau [End Page 291] 1973, 66–69), which arises prior to reflection and the use of reason, and which is exemplified by a mother’s responsiveness to the distress of her child. Rousseau distinguished natural compassion from moral virtues, which require the use of reason. I agree with Adshead that having this affective capacity is likely to be critical to acquiring the capacity to have other-regarding moral beliefs.Radden’s incisive commentary poses the problem of how to show that the psychopath lacks the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, since this does not follow from the fact that he fails to form them. In the light of Adshead’s commentary, I should like to try a different approach to this problem. At least one type of situation in which we say that something, x, cannot do a certain sort of thing, d, is one where a causally necessary condition for x doing d is absent. For example, we should say of a car, not simply that it does not run, but that, as it is presently constituted, it cannot run, if we found that the carburetor of its... (shrink)

Eleven interdisciplinary essays investigate embodiment in contexts including epistemology, medicine and psycho-therapeutics, language, and art. An excellent resource for education in medicine, psychology, and other healing arts, as well as for researchers and others concerned with the body. Each essay opens meanings in the increasingly active field of philosophy of body. Western and non-Western sources contribute to "a metaphysics that upholds the truths of experience.".

This interview with Kwang?Kuo Hwang offers an introductory insight into the emergence of the field of indigenous psychologies. In the process of doing so, it attempts to illuminate the main historical factors behind its development, its key issues of debate and the important challenges it faces. It also provides details pertaining to new theories and methods that have recently emerged in connection with the indigenous approach and how they have contributed to its advancement. In addition, it outlines Hwang?s proposed (...) strategy towards the goal of developing a universal psychology. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Gesture by Giovanni Maddalena is a multilayered volume: It is a "history of philosophy" book, endorsing a challenging anti-Kantian interpretation of Peirce and pragmatism. It is a "theoretical philosophy" book, dealing with classic issues—for example, the difference between synthetic and analytic, the definition of identity—and introducing a new concept, that of complete gesture. Finally, it is a book of "applied philosophy," pointing to a further application of the new concept of complete gesture to the fields of pedagogy, (...) morality, psychology, and literature.Dealing with all these three aspects in a single review would be impossible, maybe even unfair. Therefore, I will focus here mainly on the... (shrink)

In this paper, we move toward offering psychological benchmarks to measure success in building increasingly humanlike robots. By psychological benchmarks we mean categories of interaction that capture conceptually fundamental aspects of human life, specified abstractly enough to resist their identity as a mere psychological instrument, but capable of being translated into testable empirical propositions. Nine possible benchmarks are considered: autonomy, imitation, intrinsic moral value, moral accountability, privacy, reciprocity, conventionality, creativity, and authenticity of relation. Finally, we discuss how getting the right (...) group of benchmarks in human–robot interaction will, in future years, help inform on the foundational question of what constitutes essential features of being human. (shrink)

Interest in science and math plays an important role in encouraging STEM motivation and career aspirations. This interest decreases for girls between late childhood and adolescence. Relatedly, positive mentoring experiences with female teachers can protect girls against losing interest. The present study examines whether visitors to informal science learning sites differ in their expressed science and math interest, as well as their science and math stereotypes following an interaction with either a male or female educator. Participants were visitors to one (...) of four ISLS in the United States and United Kingdom. Following an interaction with a male or female educator, they reported their math and science interest and responded to math and science gender stereotype measures. Female participants reported greater interest in math following an interaction with a female educator, compared to when they interacted with a male educator. In turn, female participants who interacted with a female educator were less likely to report male-biased math gender stereotypes. Self-reported science interest did not differ as a function of educator gender. Together these findings suggest that, when aiming to encourage STEM interest and challenge gender stereotypes in informal settings, we must consider the importance of the gender of educators and learners. (shrink)

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes original (...) scholarly contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

This paper outlines an analysis of the word ‘fun’, as it is used in everyday English sentences to describe various activities and asks why some things are labeled as fun while others seem unable to be properly described as such. One common unspoken idea, for example, is that a fun activity is deemed fun due to having a particular phenomenology, in a way that might be comparable to being in a ‘flow state’. Due to the trouble such psychological accounts of (...) fun have in explaining both the precise conditions of fun and also why some activities are thought to be enjoyable but not fun, a deflationary theory is instead introduced. This proposed alternative account suggests that the use of the word ‘fun’, when describing activities in English sentences, signals that the sentence is a generic sentence, an idea based on a semantic distinction made by Greg Carlson (1989). Further, it is argued that the words ‘pleasurable’ and ‘enjoyable’ are reserved for non-generic sentences, leaving the use of the word ‘fun’ to signal something akin to a grammar relation, rather than referring to a feeling or psychological state. (shrink)

The purpose. Critical social philosophy of education strives to provide a radical critique of existing models of education in the so-called Western models of democracy, creating progressive alternative models. In this context, the proposed integrative metatheory, which is based on classical and modern sources, concepts, aims for a comprehensive understanding and reconstruction of the phenomenon of education. One of the main tasks in the sphere of education’s democratization today, therefore, is to bring to education the results of restructuring and democratization (...) of the society, to reflect changes in conditions of life and thinking, experience and transformation of subjectivity in the context of the technological revolution and globalization. Methodology. The critical social theory, which developed in the framework of contemporary neo-Marxism, indicates the need for a thorough analysis of society, however, unlike other theoretical concepts and research programs in order to analyze not a fixation and a statement of the existing social givens. On the contrary, critical analysis of society involves the identification of existing antagonistic, alienating factors that distort public communication.The subject of social analysis is the whole sphere of human and non-human nature, which interacts a person depend on it, the whole system of relations between society and nature, society and man, which is covered by the historical practice of conscious – "praxis". The representative of "pure science" isn't the learning, research subject. He is a public a person, which is the totality of all social definitions included in society and its constituent individuals. For such a "total subject" Object of interest is not something external; on the contrary, the latter appears as a product of his own activity. The scientific novelty examines trends in educational institutions and models of globalizing society in the context of our particular relationship of education and society, man and the state, and processes. The research and systematic analysis of neoliberal reforms at the level of society in general and education in particular are conducted. It examines substantive, structural and functional characteristics of the concept of «critical social philosophy of education» in the context of institutional tendencies of social life, as well as forms and possibilities of its methodological application. It consider a model of «critical social philosophy of education», as embodied in the programs of social development and learning, which are primarily designed to teach people how to lead an independent and original research themselves, society and knowledge systems. However, it is proved that the models and programs should not be cut off from any individual and the collective system of moral and social values, theoretical and applied training, nor from further use of the acquired values, norms and skills in everyday life, science, or in production, sphere of all social institutions. Conclusions. Critical philosophical, educational, pedagogical-psychological surprisingly theory, its models and concepts seek to redefine public and private and the public mind. Based on these grounds, in the future, it allows philosophy of education to develop a more inclusive philosophical vision of education, to apply directly to the problems of democratization and changes in social relations in the direction of equality and social justice in the field of education. The point of view of socio-philosophical and philosophical-еducational, pedagogical-psychological, normative understanding and social critics also requires the use of active efforts in the reconstruuction of education and society, the social vision of what education and human life can be and what their specific limitations in existing societies. (shrink)

The purpose. Critical social philosophy of education strives to provide a radical critique of existing models of education in the so-called Western models of democracy, creating progressive alternative models. In this context, the proposed integrative metatheory, which is based on classical and modern sources, concepts, aims for a comprehensive understanding and reconstruction of the phenomenon of education. One of the main tasks in the sphere of education’s democratization today, therefore, is to bring to education the results of restructuring and democratization (...) of the society, to reflect changes in conditions of life and thinking, experience and transformation of subjectivity in the context of the technological revolution and globalization. Methodology. The critical social theory, which developed in the framework of contemporary neo-Marxism, indicates the need for a thorough analysis of society, however, unlike other theoretical concepts and research programs in order to analyze not a fixation and a statement of the existing social givens. On the contrary, critical analysis of society involves the identification of existing antagonistic, alienating factors that distort public communication.The subject of social analysis is the whole sphere of human and non-human nature, which interacts a person depend on it, the whole system of relations between society and nature, society and man, which is covered by the historical practice of conscious – "praxis". The representative of "pure science" isn't the learning, research subject. He is a public a person, which is the totality of all social definitions included in society and its constituent individuals. For such a "total subject" Object of interest is not something external; on the contrary, the latter appears as a product of his own activity. The scientific novelty examines trends in educational institutions and models of globalizing society in the context of our particular relationship of education and society, man and the state, and processes. The research and systematic analysis of neoliberal reforms at the level of society in general and education in particular are conducted. It examines substantive, structural and functional characteristics of the concept of «critical social philosophy of education» in the context of institutional tendencies of social life, as well as forms and possibilities of its methodological application. It consider a model of «critical social philosophy of education», as embodied in the programs of social development and learning, which are primarily designed to teach people how to lead an independent and original research themselves, society and knowledge systems. However, it is proved that the models and programs should not be cut off from any individual and the collective system of moral and social values, theoretical and applied training, nor from further use of the acquired values, norms and skills in everyday life, science, or in production, sphere of all social institutions. Conclusions. Critical philosophical, educational, pedagogical-psychological surprisingly theory, its models and concepts seek to redefine public and private and the public mind. Based on these grounds, in the future, it allows philosophy of education to develop a more inclusive philosophical vision of education, to apply directly to the problems of democratization and changes in social relations in the direction of equality and social justice in the field of education. The point of view of socio-philosophical and philosophical-еducational, pedagogical-psychological, normative understanding and social critics also requires the use of active efforts in the reconstruuction of education and society, the social vision of what education and human life can be and what their specific limitations in existing societies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Sanity and Irresponsibility”Lloyd Fields (bio)AbstractI make two criticisms of Wilson’s proposal to dispense with a loaded axiological criterion of sanity. First, Edwards’s axiological criterion of sanity, which Wilson accepts, involves the requirement of impartiality, which at least excludes some standards of right and wrong. Second, value pluralism applies only to morally acceptable forms of life and thus presupposes a standard of right and wrong. I conclude by (...) noting that mental illnesses are not sufficiently characterised by extreme and persistent deviance from practical rationality, as conceived by Edwards and Wilson.KeywordsSanity, responsibility, mental illness, value pluralismWilson’s paper is set in an important tradition of which Susan Wolf is a notable exemplar. He tackles the crucially important issue of how practical rationality is related to mental health and of how certain forms of irrationality are connected with mental illness. This issue must be taken into account in order to avoid infecting the criteria of sanity with “idiosyncratic or culturally biased norms.” Like Wolf (1989, 137–151), Wilson holds that sanity is a necessary condition of responsibility. But Wilson rejects the second of Wolf’s two criteria of sanity on the grounds that it invokes a definite normative theory of right and wrong. He proposes instead that whether an agent is sane should be decided on the basis of whether s/he displays practical rationality, as defined by Edwards’s list of seven items. Following Edwards, Wilson implicitly equates “sanity” with “mental health” and “insanity” with “mental illness.” By rejecting an axiological criterion of sanity that depends on a normative theory of right and wrong, Wilson is able to ensure that individuals like JoJo are not judged to be insane and hence not morally responsible for their actions. Wilson is right to stress the importance of our not applying notions such as “mental illness” or “insanity” too widely, especially in such a way as to allow blameworthy persons to escape blame and punishment.But are Wilson’s own criteria of sanity free from dependence on a normative theory, or a normative standard, of right and wrong? First, let us note that Wilson states Edwards’s seventh condition of practical rationality as follows: “holding values that are or would be adopted under the conditions of (negative) freedom.” Edwards’s own formulation of this condition is the following: “having values which have been (or would be) adopted under conditions of freedom, enlightenment and impartiality” (1982, 315). Wilson explains “freedom” as the absence of coercion. It is uncertain what “enlightenment” means in this context. Impartiality would seem to include being impartial between oneself and others and between one’s own tribe, nation or race and that of others. Although this requirement is perhaps too general to be regarded as a sufficient standard [End Page 303] of right and wrong, it is at least part of such normative theories as utilitarianism and Kant’s moral theory, while it is inconsistent with ethical egoism, i.e., the view that an action is right or wrong depending on whether it serves or frustrates the agent’s overall best interests. One could dispute Wilson’s claim, therefore, that Edwards’s seventh item is not a “loaded” axiological criterion.Second, Wilson maintains that we can avoid assuming a loaded axiological criterion for sanity by adopting the position of value pluralism. Wolf’s axiological criterion for sanity is that the agent should be capable of knowing the difference between right and wrong. Wilson holds that this criterion, as presented, invokes a normative theory of right and wrong. The criterion would not do so if it were applied in accordance with value pluralism, which, Wilson says, “rejects the notion that there is one monolithic theory of right and wrong without denying that an actor may behave virtuously or viciously.” Wilson appears to assume that an “unloaded” version of Wolf’s axiological criterion would be more or less equivalent to Edwards’s seventh condition of practical rationality.Value pluralism maintains that there are incompatible forms of life that display distinct virtues. “Whichever form of life one is pursuing there are virtues which elude one because they are available only to people pursuing alternative and... (shrink)

Breakdown and Breakthrough examines the essential role of regression in the patient's recovery from mental illness. In light of this Nathan Field reassesses the role of the therapist tracing psychotherapy back to its earliest spiritual roots and comparing modern analytic methods with ancient practices of healing and exorcism. The author uses vivid examples from his psychotherapeutic practice to show how, with the apparent breakdown of the therapeutic method itself, patients can break through to a new level of functioning. The (...) book goes on to consider how psychotherapy has been affected by fundamental developments in twentieth century science, such as the move from old, classical assumptions of linear causation to non-linear complexity from reductionism to a holistic systems approach and from mental mechanisms to acknowledging the mysteries of unconscious interaction. Taking up the radical vision originally proposed by Carl Jung and later fostered by eminent psychotherapists such as Winnicott and Bion, the author shows how psychotherapy can be reframed to admit the existence of a psychological fourth dimension. Nathan Field reappraises ideas of health and pathology, psychoanalysis and healing, sex and spirituality in light of a dramatic shift in the way we understand ourselves. How this shift alters the shape of psychotherapy in the twenty-first century is the challenge the practitioners, teachers and trainees must all address. (shrink)

Since the 1970’s there has been a major increase in adventure sports participation but it seems that engagement in such sports comes with a stigma: adventure sports participants are often regarded as reckless ‘daredevils’. We approach the questions about people’s perception of risk and recklessness in adventure sports by combining empirical research with philosophical analysis. First, we provide empirical evidence that suggests that laypeople tend to assess the danger of adventure sports as greater than more mundane sports and judge adventure (...) sports participants as more reckless than participants in non-adventure sports. We contextualise these findings within existing psychological risk perception paradigms and outline new philosophical explanations of the identified pattern in laypeople’s risk perception. (shrink)

The thirteen original essays in this book examine the status and development of the sciences in the eighteenth century. The last generation has seen a revolution in the methodology adopted by historians of science: The development of science is no longer described as a steady progress towards truth - certainties have given way to questions. The essays in this volume scrutinize these changing perspectives in historiography and recommend paths for future study. The eighteenth century has been a neglected and (...) much-misunderstood era in the development of science, all too often viewed as something of a trough between the towering achievements of the 'Scientific Revolution' and the nineteenth century. Yet it was a period of notable developments; it saw the establishment of such fields as electricity and heat, the 'chemical revolution', the new science of gases, the isolation of oxygen, the nebular hypothesis in cosmology, the foundation of rational mechanics, and the birth pangs of biology, geology and psychology. It was, indeed, an age when knowledge was in ferment. (shrink)

Religious therapeutics is the term I use to designate relations between health and spirituality, and medicine and religion. Dimensions of religious therapeutics include religious meanings that inform medical theory, religious means of healing, health as part of religious life, and religion as a remedy for human suffering. Classical Yoga is analyzed to establish an initial matrix of religious therapeutics with 5 branches: philosophical foundations, soteriology, value theory, physical practice, and cultivation of consciousness. Through comparative criticism of classical Yoga, the study (...) presents a heuristic of religious therapeutics: a model for interpreting relations among healing and liberative functions in world religions. ;Body and health are of instrumental but not ultimate value in classical Yoga: the body is used to transcend itself for attainment of Yoga's soteriological goal, realization of self as pure consciousness. Yoga's Samkhya-based metaphysics contains an unreconciled dualism, and while practice of Yoga is paradigmatic of mind/body holism, Yoga prescribes realization of a spiritual self, independent of material and psychological nature. The study rehabilitates the body in respect of the compatibility of embodiedness with religiousness. ;Other Indian and world traditions suggest dimensions of religious therapeutics both resonant with classical Yoga and lacking from it. India's Ayurvedic medicine represents the sixth branch of religious therapeutics: medical therapeutics. I distill from Ayurvedic and Western sources a set of determinants of health: biological, medical/psychological, cultural, and metaphysical. Significant determinants of health are wholeness, self-identity, and freedom; these are incorporated in discussion of the complementary functions of medicine and religion, grounding the claim that in classical Yoga, liberation is healing in an ultimate sense. ;Tantric yogas utilize material nature for human spiritual progress, and unlike classical Yoga, esteem nature, body/mind, the feminine, and relationality. Tantra provides another branch of religious therapeutics: aesthetic therapeutics. The study anticipates elements of health/medicine in western religions, Buddhism, and Lakota religious philosophy. Sacred speech and song are explored to demonstrate comparative inquiry into religious therapeutics; some Native American Indian and Hindu applications of sacred language are considered. Finally, the model of religious therapeutics is supplemented with community, embracing ecological, social, and religious relationality and communication. (shrink)

Climate change and fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies are massively shifting the material and social conditions of existence on Earth and contribute to a state of indeterminacy and increased political experimentation. While various models for what might become the ‘next iteration of governance’ are currently emerging, this essay turns to specific contemporary political experiments which claim to democratize power, distribute and/or share sovereignty, function as peer-to-peer or actor-to-actor, and move beyond criticism—be it to the moon or to soil. More (...) precisely, I look at extropist experiments in competitive crypto-governance and at (post)critical laboratories closer to the conceptual frame of international law, which both, in different ways, rely on a specific practice of determination characterized by binary relations and existential negation. In favor of an alternative approach, I argue for an ethics of legal thought capable of attending to indeterminacy and the relationalities it enables differently. (shrink)

John Russon offers an engaging analysis of Hegel’s notion of embodiment, which, though not given priority in the Hegelian corpus, affords an enriching understanding of Hegel’s notion of sociality. Admittedly, Hegel does not offer those attempting to derive from his work a philosophy of embodiment a wealth of resources. Moreover, his few remarks on the body do not seem to fulfill his own philosophic criteria and aims, and so fail to offer an entirely self-developing position concerning human embodiment. However, Russon (...) casts Hegel as being an heir to the Aristotelian notion of personhood as a confluence of soul and body, and argues for the notion of Geist as the Idealist analogue to Aristotle’s concept of soul/psychology. Russon portrays Hegel as not only furthering Aristotle’s psychology, but also as emerging from the Scholastic and Enlightenment duality of mind or soul and body to act as a precursor of the postmodern account of discursivity as performativity. Embodiment remains, according to Russon, an explication of numerous levels of expression, socialization and habituation. Hegel’s concept of embodiment parallels Aristotle’s in abiding by an internal principle of self-explication, in which personal identity requires and is defined by self-expression. Russon argues that embodiment and self-expression are coextensive; embodiment is discursivity, in which our nature, habits, and express communication reflect and build upon our inherited and internalized culture and institutional relationships. (shrink)

Scholarship in education beyond school has developed largely outside university departments of education, and has rarely engaged systematically with the study of education in schools. The paper concentrates on three areas: adult education, higher education, and further education. The development of the extra-mural tradition meant that adult education was less an object of scholarly study than a means of spreading scholarship to the wider population, with important exceptions such as historical studies. Since the 1970s, the volume of research and postgraduate (...) education in adult education in British universities has grown considerably. The study of higher education was marginal until the 1960s; its subsequent development was relatively slow until the 1990s, when the quality of university teaching came under wider external scrutiny. The study of further education and vocational training is characterised by disciplinary fragmentation, with much activity taking place in departments of psychology, economics, sociology and management, as well as in those former polytechnics that specialised in training further education teachers. The rise of integrative concepts such as lifelong learning suggest greater potential for cross-disciplinary scholarship that can engage the diverse body of those interested in teaching and research about this field. (shrink)

Discussion of Chapter 5 of Stephen Schiffer's "The Things We Mean' in which Stephen Schiffer advances two novel theses: 1. Vagueness (and indeterminacy more generally) is a psychological phenomenon; 2. It is indeterminate whether classical logic applies in situations where vagueness matters.

The study of human behaviour, and the minds that produce that behaviour, has been an occupation of scholars, artists, and philosophers for millennia. But it was not until the turn of the twentieth century that psychology came into its own as a distinct field of study—and, more importantly, as a scientifically legitimate field of study. When we view psychology as a science, certain questions naturally emerge: what sorts of phenomena does psychology seek to explain? What (...) is distinctive about the kinds of explanations adduced in this science? How do these explanations integrate with theories and explanations in other fields of study? Does psychology aim to explain all mental phenomena, or are there some areas, such as consciousness, that will be forever beyond its explanatory powers? Due to its very nature, psychology is a field that both philosophers and scientists have critically examined over the years. This critical examination has, in turn, generated a literature that is voluminous, heavily contested, and increasingly technical. To help users to make sense of this large and complex scholarly corpus, this new four-volume collection from Routledge is both comprehensive and sensitive to the ongoing nature of debates in the field. Two expert editors have carefully assembled classic contributions, as well as more recent work, to create an indispensable ‘mini library’ of the best and most influential scholarship in the philosophy of psychology. With a comprehensive index and newly written introductions by the editors, The Philosophy of Psychology will be welcomed by a broad range of scholars, researchers, and advanced students, especially those working in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science. (shrink)

This essay focuses on questions central to Husserl’s essential methodology, specifically his notion of ‘free-fantasy variation,’ which he regarded as his ‘fundamental methodological insight.’ At the heart of this ‘vital element of phenomenology’ is what he often terms ‘as-if experience’ thanks to which anything whatever can be considered either for its own sake or as an example of something else. Further analysis explores the act of exemplification, the act of feigning and the shifts of attention and orientation that ground free-fantasy (...) variation. Exemplification and possibilizing are then examined in daily life to discern what makes the complex act of feigning at all possible. An examination of the phenomenon of upsets brings the core sense of possibilizing to light. A focus on the dramatic force intrinsic to these experiences, and the essential place of reflective awareness inherent to them, makes apparent how the rudimentary sense of self begins to emerge, and there follows an analysis of this self-referentiality of possibilizing. The analysis then concludes with a brief examination of Husserl’s so-called ‘zig-zag’ method of constitutive phenomenology. (shrink)

Time perspective theory provides a robust conceptual framework for analyzing human behavior in the context of time. So far, the concept has been studied and applied in multiple life domains, such as education, health, social relationships, environmental behavior, or financial behavior; however its explanatory potential has been completely neglected within the domain of sport. In the present paper we provide a deepened theoretical analysis of the potential role of temporal framing of human experience for sport-related attitudes, emotions, and athletic performance. (...) We propose a conceptual model in which time perspectives influence psychological functioning and performance of athletes via three major mechanisms: 1) magnitude and persistence of sport motivation and resulting athlete engagement, 2) regulation of affective states during sport performance, and 3) appraisal of one’s performance and coping with resulting emotions. We support the theoretical considerations based on the major assumptions of time perspective theory with research findings regarding the regulatory role of time perspectives in other life domains. We also highlight potential research paths that would allow us to empirically test the present model and determine the actual role of temporal perspectives in shaping crucial aspects of athletes’ psychological functioning, as well as levels of their sport performance. (shrink)

Some interpretations of the term “coercion” entail that a person who is coerced is morally entitled to do what she does. But there is a vague spectrum of uses of this term, in which one use shades into another. “Coercion” can legitimately be interpreted in a way according to which it is possible for a person who is coerced not to be morally entitled to do what she does and indeed to be blameworthy for her action. In order to distinguish (...) between cases in which a coercee is not blameworthy for compliance and those in which a coercee is blameworthy, an account of moral blameworthiness is presented. The account does not deal, however, with the question of when one harm or evil outweighs another. A person is morally blameworthy if and only if she performs an action which is, on balance, morally wrong, and for which she is morally responsible. Three different standards of moral responsibility are considered. The first two are found to be susceptible to counterexamples. The third, which is claimed to be adequate, is that a moral agent is responsible for a morally wrong action if and only if, first, either she has the psychological capacity to refrain from doing what she does, or, if she lacks this capacity, she nevertheless had a Isecond-order) psychological capacity to prevent the lack of capacity in question; and, second, the moral agent knows what she is doing, under the description of her action according to which it is a wrong action. Thus, where a moral agent is coerced into doing an immoral action, and lacked the psychological capacity to refrain from performing the action, this standard of responsibility enables us to decide whether or not she is blameworthy on the basis of whether the lack of the capacity was due to ordinary human weakness or to a fault of character. (shrink)