Everything you need to know about Learning Theories in Early Childhood practice. This book explores the key theorists and theories that form the foundation of learning and development in early childhood. Building your own understanding and knowledge of children's learning, it then helps you develop the skills of translating theory into practice. How does this book support you? · The structure of the book mirrors your student learning journey, to compliment your course and seminar reading. · Parts 1 and 2 (...) help you develop your reflective and analytical skills through critical questions, photographs and discussion points. · Part 3 gives real life case studies to help you understand how the theories can be practically applied in settings to improve your own practice. (shrink)

In some views, philosophy’s glory days in bioethics are over. While philosophers were especially important in the early days of the field, so the argument goes, the majority of the work in bioethics today involves the “simple” application of existing philosophical principles or concepts, as well as empirical work in bioethics. Here, we address this view head on and ask: What is the role of philosophy in bioethics today? This paper has three specific aims: (1) to respond to skeptics and (...) make the case that philosophy and philosophers still have a very important and meaningful role to play in contemporary bioethics, (2) to discuss some of the current challenges to the meaningful integration of philosophy and bioethics, and (3) to make suggestions for what needs to happen in order for the two fields to stay richly connected. We outline how bioethics center directors, funders, and philosopher bioethicists can help. (shrink)

Is free will just an illusion? What is it in the brain that allows us to pursue our own actions and objectives? What is it about this organ that permits seemingly purposeful behaviour, giving us the impression we are free? This book takes a journey into the brain to examine what is about known voluntary behaviour, and why it can go wrong.

A clear and concise account of the metaphysical concept of world, its possibilities and limitations, from Kant to Derrida.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake) Introduction In this book I deal with some of the central ...

The concepts of identity and community have recently been the subject of a good deal of debate in social philosophy, much of it focused on the ideas of writers like MacIntyre, Taylor, Walzer. These philosophers are often referred to as `communitarians', though they do not constitute a united school and none of them identifies himself as such. Nevertheless, there are good reasons 1 for grouping them together, for they share some important elements of common ground. In their different ways, each (...) develops a critique of liberal and individualist social theory and formulates a philosophy which recognises the reality and value of community. (shrink)

Something about my book, Marxism and Human Nature,1 seems to have provoked Eagleton's hostility and clouded his mind, but it is difficult to figure out what. All that is evident from his review is that he has not read the book carefully or taken the trouble to understand it properly.

Although much has been written about Nietzsche’s views on education over the years, and much has also been written about Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, very little attention has been given to the meaning of, and need for, a Dionysian education. This two-part article is an attempt to begin that project. In Part One, drawing Nietzsche’s articulation of the Dionysian, Apollonian, and anti-Dionysian into the orbit of broader scholarship on Dionysus, the author invited readers to think about what (...) a Dionysian education might look like in a modern-day school setting, why such an education would be valuable, as well as some of the barriers to implementing such an education and the enjoyment of its fruits. Here in Part Two, the author considers some of the ideas current among philosophy of music scholars concerning “the Dionysian” in rock music. By analyzing and clarifying these views with reference to research conducted in Part One, the author proceeds in Part Two to investigate what combined role rock music and philosophy might play in the high school classroom where a Dionysian education is fostered. (shrink)

External economic aid has played an important role in Northern Ireland’s peacebuilding process, particularly by funding community-based intervention projects.As a consequence of the Troubles, Northern Ireland suffered from severe socioeconomic inequality. These locally funded projects have fostered social cohesion by encouraging cross community interaction aimed at reducing violence and sectarianism. The NGO projects also promote social justice, reduce inequality, and provide the means to meet people’s basic human needs. The field research for this article was conducted during the summer of (...) 2010 and explores the perceptions of 120 civil society leaders and funding agency development officers on the effectiveness of the aid from the IFI and EU Peace III Fund in creating local social-economic NGOs to promote equity, equality, and social justice. The findings of this study reveal significant diversity in the respondents’ descriptions of the aids’s role in promoting equality, equity, and social justice as well as their expressed hopes and frustrations regarding its overall effectiveness. (shrink)

Using a number of his recent site-specific installations, conceptual artist and theorist Victor Burgin discusses the status and future of the camera from photography to moving image to computer-generated virtual works that combine both still and moving images. In the process he modifies Bazin’s question ‘What is cinema?’ to ask ‘What is a camera?’ These works extend and develop Burgin’s long-standing interest in the relationship of aesthetics and politics as rendered through visualization technologies, especially as it pertains to space. Burgin’s (...) discussion constructs a genealogy of seeing, visualizing and image-making as technologically-determined and crafted. The ideology of vision and the ideological artefacts produced by and through visual technologies from perspectival painting to analog photography to computer imaging constitute, in Burgin’s argument, ‘the ideological chora of our spectacular global village’. (shrink)

The concept of alienation is one of the most important and fruitful legacies of Hegel's social philosophy. It is strange therefore that Hegel's own account is widely rejected, not least by writers in those traditions which have taken up and developed the concept in the most influential ways: Marxism and existentialism.

The concept of authenticity -- the idea of `being oneself' or being `true to oneself' -- is central to modern moral thought. Yet it is a puzzling notion. This article discusses two accounts of it. Essentialism holds that each individual has a `true' nature or self. Feelings and actions are authentic when they correspond to this nature. This approach is contrasted with views of the self as a complex entity in which all parts are essential, and in which authenticity involves (...) the harmonious functioning of all parts together. This approach is illustrated from Freud and Plato, and defended against the charge of conservatism (Marcuse) and the postmodernist rejection of the very idea of an integral self (Rorty). (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 17-19, June 2011.

The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as (...) a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite. (Marx 1971, 820). (shrink)

It seems evident that class differences and class struggle continue to exist in socialist societies; that is to say, in societies like the Soviet Union and China, which have undergone socialist revolutions and in which private property in the means of production has been largely abolished. I shall not attempt to prove this proposition here; rather it will form my starting point. For my purpose in this paper is to show how the phenomenon of class in socialist society can be (...) understood and interpreted in Marxist terms; and, in particular, to explain and expound Mao Zedong's attempt to do so. For one of Mao's most striking and important contributions to Marxism was his recognition that `contradictions among the people' continue to exist in socialist society, and his attempt to explain them within the theoretical framework of historical materialism. Marx outlines his account of historical development in the following well-known words: It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - what is merely a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. (Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) It has been common to interpret these words as expressing a simple form of economic or even technological determinism which would rule out the very possibility of class divisions continuing to be a fundamental feature of socialist society. For, according to this account, a socialist society, by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, thereby abolishes the material and economic basis of class differences; and so classes are destined to die out in socialist society 2 as the forces of production are developed. According to this interpretation, which I shall call the `traditional' account, in Marx's account of historical development all the emphasis is placed upon the development of the productive forces.. (shrink)

In the articles that Skillen criticizes, I am concerned with the problems posed by the 1 social character of knowledge. To defend realism, I argue, it is necessary to develop a historical account of knowledge, involving relative concepts of truth and falsehood. Although Skillen shares the desire to defend realism, he can see no value in this approach, which he variously describes as `obfuscating', `obscuring', and lacking `rigour' and `consistency'. Indeed, he cannot even see the problems I am dealing with. (...) The whole exercise is `unnecessary', he says, `the social development of science' poses no problems for `traditional realism' or for the absolute concepts of truth and error. (shrink)

In the `Preface' to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel outlines the dialectical method and contrasts it with two other approaches. On the one hand, there is `material thinking' (das materielles Denken): `a contingent consciousness that is absorbed only in material stuff', a form of thought which is rooted in existing conditions and cannot see beyond them. At the `opposite extreme' is the transcendent critical method of `argumentation' (das Räsonieren), which involves `freedom from all content and a sense of vanity towards (...) it'. The dialectical method must `give up this freedom'. It refuses `to intrude into the immanent rhythm of the Notion, either arbitrarily or with wisdom obtained from elsewhere'. Instead, it `sink[s] this freedom in the content, letting it move spontaneously of its own nature ... and then ... contemplate[s] this movement'. (shrink)

The appearance of this Korean translation of Reality and Reason gives me the opportunity to clarify the purpose of the book and to indicate some of the areas in which my views have developed and altered in the years since it was first written. My primary aim in the book is to explain and defend the realist and materialist view that there is an objective material world of which we can have knowledge. My argument, I have now come to realise, (...) takes a Kantian `transcendental' form. I do not prove these propositions from any more fundamental or indubitable premises, for there are none. Rather, starting from the assumptions that there is a material world and that knowledge of it is possible, I try to show how such knowledge is possible Β what are its necessary conditions Β and what this entails about the nature of subject and object, appearance and reality, and the relations between them. Althusser and Ruben adopt a similar approach, I now see, and I regret my polemic against them on this topic (pp. 9-14). A great deal of traditional epistemology starts from the Cartesian assumption that we have immediate and indubitable knowledge of the contents of subjective consciousness, of appearances; whereas objective reality is something beyond and separate, and related to appearances only contingently. Once a dualistic gulf is created in this way between subject and object, knowledge of the objective world by the subject becomes inexplicable and impossible. The possibility of such knowledge obliges us to reject dualism and assume instead the unity of subject and object, appearance and reality. Reality must not be regarded as a mere `thing-initself' beyond or behind appearances, it is revealed in and through appearances. And appearances are not purely subjective: they are not mere appearances, but always and necessarily the appearances of some aspect of objective reality which is disclosed in and through them.. (shrink)

Has Marxism a future, now that communism has collapsed throughout Eastern Europe and is in crisis everywhere else? It is often said that Marxism is discredited and refuted by these events: they signify the triumph of capitalism and the free market, the `end of history'. At the other extreme, some Marxists in the West would like to believe that history has not yet begun. For them, socialism is still a distant dream. The old regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern (...) Europe had nothing to do with true socialism. Their demise, therefore, has no bearing on Marxism: no rethinking is required. (shrink)

British universities have just gone through their third Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The `research output' (i.e. publications) of every participating department has been graded by panels of `experts' on a seven point scale. The purpose of this massive operation is to provide a basis for distributing funds for research. In theory, the idea of allocating these scarce resources according to the standard of the work produced seems fair and reasonable; but in philosophy, at least, that is not how things work (...) out in practice. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 2, Page 375, June 2011.

Although much has been written about Nietzsche’s views on education over the years and much has also been written about Dionysus the god of wine and ecstasy, very little attention has been given to the meaning of, and need for, a Dionysian education. This article is an attempt to begin that project. Drawing Nietzsche’s articulation of the Dionysian, Apollonian, and anti-Dionysian into the orbit of broader scholarship on Dionysus, the author invites readers to think about what a Dionysian education might (...) look like in a modern-day school setting, why such an education would be valuable, as well as some of the barriers to implementing such an education and the enjoyment of its fruits. Part One of this larger inquiry is followed by Part Two in a later issue, where we consider what role rock music and philosophy might play in the high school classroom where a Dionysian education is fostered. (shrink)

The transition from analogue to digital photography was not accomplished in a single step. It required a number of feeder technologies which enabled and structured the nature of digital photography. Among those traced in this article, the most important is the genesis of the raster grid, which is now hard-wired into the design of the most widely employed photographic chip, the charge-coupled device. In tracing this history from origins in half-tone printing, the authors argue that qualities available to analogue photographers (...) are no longer available to digital, and that these changes correspond to historical developments in the wider political and economic world. They conclude, however, that these losses may yet be turned into gains. (shrink)

The number of women living with HIV/AIDS is increasing worldwide, and there is an urgent public health need to develop new user-initiated HIV prevention methods, including microbicides. Although funding for microbicide development has increased since 2000, financial support is provided predominantly by governmental agencies and private foundations. Many donors, including the US Agency for International Development and the US National Institutes of Health, have policies that restrict how research funds may be used. Among these are the now-rescinded Mexico City Policy, (...) elements of the US Foreign Assistance Act, and restrictions on non-study-related care. The effect of these restrictions on the design and conduct of clinical research is poorly understood. As part of a recent mapping exercise conducted by the Global Campaign for Microbicides, we reviewed the impact of donor restrictions on seven HIV prevention trials. We found considerable confusion within the HIV prevention field as to whether and how Mexico City and other policies affect the use of research funds. We also found that these donor-imposed policies limited the level of care provided to trial participants and the types of capacity building projects undertaken. (shrink)

This article examines the experiences of pilgrims walking to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It argues that walking is a social practice operating at the nexus between body and self. Pilgrims do not generally regard walking as a spiritual practice at the journey's outset. They do, however, develop a deep awareness of the multiple effects of walking as they progress along the route. Pilgrims report a variety of techniques in relation to their walking including using (...) rhythm, `being' in the moment and narrating. Various social borders also establish a space for self-reflection that is both individualistic as well as marked by wider social meanings. Walking is thus simultaneously a bodily, social and spiritual practice. (shrink)