In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Interdisciplinary Proposal for Employing Film to Release the Imaginations of Preservice TeachersHaroldo Abraam Fontaine (bio)IntroductionQuestions regarding the proper role of the arts in education have occupied many thinkers throughout the ages, no less than the likes of Plato and Rousseau. Like them, several have argued that paintings, for example, are mere re-presentations of and certainly not, to borrow a term from Kant, the "thing-in-itself." From a Platonic (...) and Rousseauian perspective, those who behold images and conclude that the "thing-in-itself" (on all occasions) and its rendition on canvas in sundry lines and colors are indistinguishable—indeed, they cannot be—would be led astray from the truth in pursuit of shadows, or worse still, would contribute to the moral collapse of the polis. Yet, that's what I propose in this essay. More precisely, I want to reject Plato's claim that art is imitation of what is. Like Parmenides before me, I argue that his heroic pursuit of the form of the Good depends on a set of unproven assumptions concealed in the cloak of an infinite regress. In the absence of such an unhypothetical first principle—and the cornerstone of the Republic—Plato's lofty fortress collapses, and we are left to our Sisyphean tasks, yet hopeful in the power of our imaginations to set us free to pursue our self-appointed ends. Indeed, imagination's province is the arts, now emancipated from mere imitation and free to lay claim to what is. To their company the twentieth century added the cinema, which soars from the Republic's rubble and steads the identity-constructing enterprise in a manner without historical precedent, thus becoming a legitimate object of rational analysis regarding the "reminiscences of the suffering and … complaints" of the downtrodden.1 For reasons I will discuss below, professors [End Page 58] of education should help preservice teachers to develop their skills and capacities to support such analysis, lest the latter's future students assimilate images uncritically at their peril.The Arts, UnleashedPlato's theory of Forms is arguably the lynchpin of his metaphysical vision. As I understand it, the Good is the fundamental (ethical) principle toward which all social activity points, including education. Given the ethical nature of the Good, education is necessarily character education, in which the student's rational moral personality, and hence his felicity, is fashioned accordingly. As such, a student's (and a city's) success depends on his or her rational insight into the true nature and scale of the Good—that is, s/he must be able to distinguish between the apparent and the real. At these extremes lie national dissolution on the one hand, and the nation's integrity on the other.At the pinnacle of Plato's city sit the philosopher-kings, who administer justice in conformity with the Good. Having transcended the supposed illusions of the physical world, they are said to commune with the Forms directly. The Good, Plato might say, is the Form in, of, and by which all other forms participate. Socrates's (or rather Plato's, or is it Socrates's, or is it Plato's …) method is "to set down some one particular form for each of the particular 'manys' to which we apply the same name,"2 for example, "tree." The form, or rather the universal, precedes and is the metaphysical pattern after which the "manys"—that is, the particulars—are fashioned. What, then, is it that the philosopher-kings commune with? What treeness, if you will, is it that the many trees participate in? Enter Parmenides' twofold objection.In his article on Plato in the 2004 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Jonathan Barnes noted:(Plato's) doctrine of participation … does not really reconcile unity with plurality since it leads to a perpetual regress. It says that the many things that have a common predicate, or characteristic, participate in, or imitate, a single Form. But the Form itself also admits of a common predicate, and therefore a second Form must exist, participated in alike by the sensible things and the first Form, and so on, endlessly. Second, a graver difficulty is that the relations between... (shrink)

The main aim of the paper is to offer a solution compatible with Graham Priest’s Noneism and Amie Thomasson’s Artifactual theory which stresses the epistemic features of the notion of individuality in fiction in a framework where individuals are conceived of as functions (the framework is known as the world-lines-semantics of Hintikka). According to our view, it is the endorsement of a reader’s perspective that extends the range of the values of the functions (individuals) and that offers an alternative solution (...) to cases of identity inside and outside the scope of a fictionality (or representation) operator. More technically, this proposal can be seen as both extending the notion of individuality of the Artifactual theory and furnishing an epistemic twist to Priest’s principle of freedom. (shrink)

Investigating school performance and competencies, especially on leadership, received a considerable attention in the past. In fact, there have been multitudes of evidence that leadership can impact school performance, student achievement, or outcome. Also, there was no single measurement of school performance. This study examined the influence of leadership and core behavioral competencies on the school performance of school heads. This was to build a new model of school performance. Using an explanatory research design, it administered a survey questionnaire to (...) 192 randomly chosen school heads from the 37 districts of Department of Education Division of Surigao del Sur. Also, it used data mining for the performance ratings of school heads from the division office. Regression analysis tested three hypothesized models of school performance where leadership and core behavior competencies serve as independent variables. Results showed that leading people was a significant predictor of school performance. Thus, leading people can best explain the school improvement as a proposed model. The results have implications for future research, leadership practice, and theoretical development of school performance model among school heads. (shrink)

In modern economics, the use of sympathy and empathy shows significant ambiguity. Sympathy has been used in two different senses. First, it refers to cases where the concern for others directly affects an individual's own welfare . Second, the term has served the purposes of welfare economics, where it is associated with interpersonal comparisons of the extended sympathy type, that is, comparisons between one's own situation in a social state and someone else's in a different social state . On the (...) other hand, empathy has been used interchangeably with sympathy either to render the idea of interdependent utility functions , or to convey the imaginative process of imagining oneself in someone else's place. (shrink)

"Le propos de Geneviève Gavignaud-Fontaine s'inscrit dans l'actualité d'une économie mondialement globalisée, et de sociétés ébranlées en leur tréfonds. L'ouvrage et composé de deux parties. La première retrace le cheminement intellectuel et spirituel de Thomas d'Aquin en son temps, ce qui conduit à souligner la spécificité de la méthode et de la pensée thomasiennes. Questionner le réel pour le comprendre, passer outre les apparences du monde présent, chercher dans le passé tant la part d'explication causale qu'il contient que la (...) part d'éternité qu'il transmet, et travailler à connaître l'essence des choses : voilà un programme qui ne saurait laisser indifférent! À partir de la conception thomiste de la justice (volonté vertueuse), la deuxième partie analyse d'abord les causes profondes des faits dont les conséquences minent les sociétés, puis explique pourquoi les actuels propositions intellectuelles et programmes politiques échouent à faire obstacle aux injustes misères humaines du présent début de siècle. Parties des États-Unis.dès les années 1'970 et répandues outre-Atlantique, les successives 'nouvelles théories de la justice' s'essoufflent avec le temps." --. (shrink)

Visual feedback regulation during movement is not fully captured in Plamondon's kinematic theory. However, numerous studies indicate that visual response-produced feedback is a powerful determinant of performance and kinematic characteristics of target-directed movement.

The new generation of psychopharmacological products have proved their efficacy. Some neuro-degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, could be treated by means of the gene therapy. Although the aetiology of such diseases is still not completely known, it has been proven that the patients lack some substances that could be produced by means of the transfer of in vivo or ex vivo genes that codify them in the proper places of the brain. Furthermore, it is announced that the (...) implantation in laboratory grown stem cells of diverse origins is very hopeful. Cerebral (micro)electronic implants could be effective to fight some motor diseases as well as sensory functions. All of these kinds of new treatments need to be tested through clinical research. Most national legislation includes provisions on the clinical trials of drugs and a series of guarantees, procedures and conditions which are designed to ensure protection for individuals used in experiments and to assure that the trial is indeed of scientific relevance. However, few lay down similar regulations or provide for specific controls for the research of other treatments. Finally, enhancement of psychic capacities pose new problems for society as well as do the need for new legal decisions. (shrink)

Nous vivons dans une société mondialisée apparemment unie par une vision commune de l’humanité. Mais derrière l’illusion première d’un ‘’Nous’’ déjà là, se cache la réalité de l’hétérogénéité des croyances, des modes de vies et des cultures. Modèles différents entre pays et dans les pays eux-mêmes, sur le plan mondial comme ‘’national’’, nous cherchons encore ce qui constitue ce Nous tant rêvé. Quel est donc le fondement de notre vie commune? Qu’est-ce qui nous permet de dire que nous faison...

Abraham Ibn Daud es conocido como el filósofo que en su _Ha-Emunah ha-Ramah_ (escrito originalmente en árabe ca. 1160) incorporó el aristotelismo de los _falāsifah_ musulmanes al-Farabi y Avicena al ámbito de reflexión judío. Unos 250 años después, Ḥasdai Crescas sometió este sistema a una severa crítica en su _Or Ha-Shem_ (ca. 1410). En su introducción, Crescas clasifica a Ibn Daud como un filósofo aristotélico, pero no se refiere más a él. Basándose en investigaciones previas, el artículo examina la cuestión (...) de hasta qué punto el trabajo de Ibn Daud fue relevante para Crescas. Paralelos literarios exactos que apunten a una clara influencia de Ibn Daud en Crescas con respecto a las doctrinas filosóficas son difíciles de descubrir porque las fuentes filosóficas de Ibn Daud son las mismas que las de Crescas. Además, el pensamiento de Ibn Daud muestra muchas similitudes con el de Maimónides y también con el de Gersónides, cuyas opiniones Crescas critica. La exégesis bíblica aporta más resultados: se puede demostrar que Crescas se basó en el uso de ciertos versículos bíblicos por parte de Ibn Daud. Es probable que la interpretación de Ibn Daud del Salmo 139 en relación con el problema clave del conocimiento de Dios, así como su uso de la metáfora de la luz, hayan llevado a Crescas a reflexionar sobre la relación entre filosofía y religión. (shrink)

The thirteenth-century Hebrew texts that discuss salinity all ultimately go back to Aristotle's treatment of the subject in the Meteorology. However, in these Hebrew texts the question of what exactly makes the sea salty is answered in diverging ways. The oldest of them, the Otot ha-Shamayim, being the Hebrew translation of the Arabic paraphrase of the Meteorology, proposes various causes of the sea's salinity, to wit, the dry exhalation, the action of heat, and the admixture of an earthy substance. This (...) is due partly to Aristotle's own ambiguity, and partly to the fact that his Greek commentators interpreted his words in different ways. Two later encyclopedias, the Midrash ha-Hokhma and the De'ot ha-Philosofim base their expositions of salinity on Ibn Rushd, whose two commentaries on the Meteorology contain various theories. The first encyclopedia opts for the action of heat as the major cause in producing saltiness, whereas the second attempts to explain in which way the various causes are interrelated by advisedly combining Ibn Rushd's accounts. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Le nom de Brunschvicg est indissolublement lié à celui de Pascal. Sa grande entreprise éditoriale est restée inégalée, comme ses très nombreuses études dédiées directement ou non à l’auteur des Pensées. Pascal a été pour Brunschvicg l’interlocuteur d’une vie entière : cela s’entend du philosophe et du mathématicien qui affrontent l’infini, mais aussi du polémiste chrétien avec qui Brunschvicg a dit n’avoir « pas une idée en commun », mais dont il a saisi les secrets plus qu’aucun autre. Cet article (...) étudie la contribution de Brunschvicg comme éditeur, puis s’attache à cerner la figure brunschvicgienne d’un Pascal dont les Pensées, « nées du miracle » et « pleines de son âme », expriment, bien davantage que l’oeuvre de Descartes et plus directement que celle de Spinoza, les tensions constitutives de la conscience moderne. (shrink)

Arthur Danto believed that “style has to be expressed immediately and spontaneously.” Danto writes that “the question of when is a thing an artwork becomes one with the question of when is an interpretation of a thing an artistic interpretation”. His extensive art criticism focuses, then, on the way artworks are about. The presence of a metaphor and the demand for interpretation are insufficient to draw the demarcation line between art and not‐art. A work of art ought to be “a (...) piece of visual thought”. Danto's own style was an invitation, almost intimate, to engage his enticing and entertaining way of thinking. His writing creates the impression that he is speaking and simply registering his thoughts and imaginings as they come. (shrink)

Résumé Le marché des produits kasher connaît depuis quelques années un développement contre-intuitif. Divers rapports d’étude, présentant la certification comme une « martingale », invitent les professionnels de l’agroalimentaire à rapidement labelliser leur offre commerciale. La pertinence de cette recommandation est ici testée. Une approche prospective originale des trajectoires du marché est proposée, assise sur une étude prospective de l’évolution du champ sémantique qui les sous-tend. L’idée est ainsi retenue selon laquelle la cinématique du marché est fonction d’une dynamique sémantique. (...) La méthode d’investigation retenue croise socio-linguistique et socio-anthropologie. On montre que le terme kasher prend aujourd’hui des sens variés, se charge d’ambivalences et d’ambiguïtés qui dessinent un horizon complexe d’opportunités et de menaces. (shrink)

The possibility of obtaining stem cells from human embryos has given rise to an intensive legal and ethical debate. In this paper, attention is paid to the normative disparity and ambiguity in Europe. An argument for the need for a minimal legal harmonization is made; and a prudent and flexible way to reach this successfully is suggested. Establishing a common legal framework seems to be the only way to guarantee true competitiveness for the European scientific community.

In her book Fiction and Metaphysics (1999) Amie Thomasson, influenced by the work of Roman Ingarden, develops a phenomenological approach to fictional entities in order to explain how non-fictional entities can be referred to intrafictionally and transfictionally, for example in the context of literary interpretation. As our starting point we take Thomasson’s realist theory of literary fictional objects, according to which such objects actually exist, albeit as abstract and artifactual entities. Thomasson’s approach relies heavily on the notion of ontological dependence, (...) but its precise semantics has not yet been developed. Moreover, the modal approach to the notion of ontological dependence underlying the Artifactual Theory has recently been contested by several scholars. The main aims of this paper are (i) to develop a semantic approach to the notion of ontological dependence in the context of the Artifactual Theory of fiction, and in so doing bridge a number of philosophical and logical gaps; (ii) to generalize Thomasson’s categorial theory of ontological dependence by reconstructing ontological categories of entities purely in terms of different structures of ontological dependence, rather than in terms of the basic kinds of entities the categorical entities depend on. (shrink)

A Bioética, que podemos qualificar, sem a menor dúvida, como uma ciência jovem - embora cheia de vigor, dinamismo e em plena expansão - se ocupa, desde as multifacetadas óticas das grandes perguntas que se formula a cada dia, o homem moderno, em torno da vida. Neste livro, os autores tratam de alguns aspectos conceituais que, às vezes, são obliterados no discurso bioético. Por exemplo, quais as relações que se interpõem entre Bioética e Direito, começando por delimitar cada uma destas (...) disciplinas. (shrink)

Fornece um panorama sobre os avanços biotecnológicos, dando ênfase aos aspectos jurídicos e éticos do impacto destes na área genética sobre o homem e o meio ambiente.

La obra incluye legislación de quince países, así como diversos documentos de la ONU, la UNESCO, el Consejo de Europa, la Unión Europea, Comités Nacionales de Ética, dictámenes y resoluciones de Instituciones Internacionales, jurisprudencia española y una selección bibliográfica con unas 1.300 referencias, clasificada por materias. Algunas leyes nacionales y los documentos del Consejo de Europa se publican traducidos al español y en su idioma original, cuando éste se ha considerado fácilmente asequible, con el fin de facilitar el acceso a (...) la fuente directa. (shrink)

The possibility of obtaining stem cells from human embryos has given rise to an intensive legal and ethical debate. In this paper, attention is paid to the normative disparity and ambiguity in Europe. An argument for the need for a minimal legal harmonization is made; and a prudent and flexible way to reach this successfully is suggested. Establishing a common legal framework seems to be the only way to guarantee true competitiveness for the European scientific community.

How to interpret singular terms in fiction? In this paper, we address this semantic question from the perspective of the Artifactual Theory of Fiction (ATF). According to the ATF, fictional characters exist as abstract artifacts created by their author, and preserved through the existence of copies of an original work and a competent readership. We pretend that a well-suited semantics for the ATF can be defined with respect to a modal framework by means of Hintikka’s world lines semantics. The question (...) of the interpretation of proper names is asked in relation to two inference rules, problematic when applied in intensional contexts: the Substitution of Identicals and Existential Generalization. The former fails because identity is contingent. The latter because proper names are not necessarily linked to well-identified individuals. This motivates a non-rigid interpretation of proper names in fiction, although cross-fictional reference (e.g. to real entities) is made possible by the interpretative efforts of the reader. (shrink)

This volume offers a critical edition of Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew version of the Arabic paraphrase of Aristotle's Meteorology , together with an English translation and an introduction which discussed Ibn Tibbon's comments incorporated in his translation.

In the Schrödinger equation, time plays a special role as an external parameter. We show that in an enlarged system where the time variable denotes an additional degree of freedom, solutions of the Schrödinger equation give rise to weights on the enlarged algebra of observables. States in the associated GNS representation correspond to states on the original algebra composed with a completely positive unit preserving map. Application of this map to the functions of the time operator on the large system (...) delivers the positive operator valued maps which were previously proposed by two of us as time observables. As an example we discuss the application of this formalism to the Wheeler-DeWitt theory of a scalar field on a Robertson-Walker spacetime. (shrink)

An hommage to Gad Freudenthal, this volume offers studies on the history of science and on the role of science in medieval and early-modern Jewish cultures, investigating various aspects of processes of knowledge transfer and scientific cross-cultural contacts,.