The Vocabulary of Critical Thinkingtakes an innovative, practical, and accessible approach to teaching critical thinking and reasoning skills. With the underlying notion that a good way to practice fundamental reasoning skills is to learn to name them, the text explores one hundred and eight words that are important to know and employ within any discipline. These words are about comparing, generalizing, explaining, inferring, judging sources, evaluating, referring, assuming and creating - actions used to assess relationships and arguments - and (...) the words are grouped according to these and other concepts essential to critical thinking. Featuring five or more words and an introduction on how they are related, each chapter is organized into three parts. Part I includes definitions of the words, brief examples of their use, and matching exercises. To further contextualize the words, Part II, Understanding the Meaning, provides numerous real-world examples, with commentary, of the words in use. Finally, Part III, providing practice of the associated critical thinking skills. Questions also appear throughout the chapters to encourage reflection and to highlight important points. Thirty-five photographs and illustrations additionally enrich the text. The book is an ideal text for critical thinking and reasoning courses as well as a variety of courses that prepare students to succeed. (shrink)

While the vocabulary of sacrifice has been the subject of detailed studies, the terms of votive offerings in ancient Greece still lack a semantic survey of their own. I am here interested in a particular type of offering, the so-called ‘first-fruit’ offerings, in Archaic and Classical Greece. It was a common practice in different parts of the Greek world for individuals and cities to bring an offering termed ἀπαρχή to the gods using a portion of the proceeds from a (...) variety of human activities; and this act is described by the verb ἀπάρχεσθαι. And yet the word ἀπάρχεσθαι is not limited to making dedications; it is also used in sacrificial procedures and cult payments. This study aims to give a semantic analysis of these terms, examining their religious applications in different contexts. It appears that the values attached to the notion of ἀπάρχεσθαι are rather different in the cases of sacrifices, of bringing first-offerings and of cult finance. The ways in which the usages of these terms overlap with and diverge from each other constitute one of the most interesting results. (shrink)

The critical condition and historical motivation behind Time Studies The concept of time in the post-millennial age is undergoing a radical rethinking within the humanities. Time: A Vocabulary of the Present newly theorizes our experiences of time in relation to developments in post-1945 cultural theory and arts practices. Wide ranging and theoretically provocative, the volume introduces readers to cutting-edge temporal conceptualizations and investigates what exactly constitutes the scope of time studies. Featuring twenty essays that reveal what we talk about when (...) we talk about time today, especially in the areas of history, measurement, and culture, each essay pairs two keywords to explore the tension and nuances between them, from “past/future” and “anticipation/unexpected” to “extinction/adaptation” and “serial/simultaneous.” Moving beyond the truisms of postmodernism, the collection newly theorizes the meanings of temporality in relationship to aesthetic, cultural, technological, and economic developments in the postwar period. This book thus assumes that time—not space, as the postmoderns had it—is central to the contemporary period, and that through it we can come to terms with what contemporaneity can be for human beings caught up in the historical present. In the end, Time reveals that the present is a cultural matrix in which overlapping temporalities condition and compete for our attention. Thus each pair of terms presents two temporalities, yielding a generative account of the time, or times, in which we live. (shrink)

This article offers a critical review of the Ukrainian translation of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Translations of classical works should serve a twofold function. They do not only facilitate the adoption of the terminology within the academic community but should first and foremost allow those unacquainted with the language of the original to engage with a foreign philosophical tradition meaningfully. The translation of a philosophical text has to preserve terminological rigidity and strictly follow the letter of the original (...) while simultaneously being a product of interpretation and, to a certain extent, a paraphrase, the result of cooperation between the author and the translator. Decent knowledge of the original language does not suffice to successfully deal with the outdated vocabulary and the peculiarities of authorial language use, as many of the crucial translation decisions cannot be justified without understanding the inner logic of the argument. However, my detailed analysis of terminological patterns and Ukrainian renderings of complex and ambiguous syntactic constructions proves that none of these tasks were achieved here. Unfortunately, despite the efforts, the quality of this translation does not correspond to the standards of consistency and does not reflect the letter and spirit of Kant’s original due to numerous mistakes, misreadings, and distortions. Neither the impressive list of translator’s notes nor the occasional practice of giving German equivalents in the brackets is of any help to the reader in understanding Kane’s practical philosophy unless they already possess sufficient knowledge of the German language. This translation, therefore, cannot be used as teaching material at universities and stands in the way of a wider reception of Kant’s philosophy and productive public discussions. (shrink)

The Latin language is uncharacteristically rich when it comes to describing witches. A witch may be called acantatrixorpraecantrix, asacerdosorvates. She may bedocta,divina,saga, andmaga, avenefica,malefica,lamia,lupula,strix, orstriga. She may be simplyquaedam anus. The available terms are copious and diverse, and the presence of such an abundant differential vocabulary might suggest that Latin made clear linguistic distinctions between various witch types. It would seem a reasonable expectation thatpraecantrices, a word evocative of those who sing of events before they happen, would be concerned with (...) divinatory practices, whileveneficae, given the term's close relationship to the word for poison, would deal in potions or philtres, leaving thelamiae orstriges to function as quasi-demonic bogeys posing threats to the lives of small children. However, this expectation of semantic and morphological concordance remains unfulfilled following any concerted attempt to correlate a witch's title with her function. Because of this disjuncture, this paper proposes to demonstrate not only the inaccuracy of the Latin vocabulary in articulating the functional differences between various witches, but also to assert the essential uniformity of witch characters in so far as each witch is, in essence, a blank canvas onto which a myriad of fears and anxieties may be mapped. (shrink)

This dissertation is concerned with normativity both as an explanatory device in the philosophy of language, logic and epistemology and as a philosophical issue in its own right. Following later Wittgenstein and Sellars, it is argued that language is normative, in the first instance because of the fact that speech acts take place within a structure of social norms and institutions. This fact is then utilized to show that important features of semantic content can be explained in terms of such (...) norms. ;This Sellarsian conception of linguistic usage as the performance of acts within a linguistic game of giving and asking for reasons, leads us to focus on inferential proprieties as central to semantic content. It is, then, natural to look at logical vocabulary, paradigmatically 'entails', as expressing the very normative relations definitive of this content. An idea of Brandom's is developed in providing a formal theory of the inferential content of logical vocabulary. Such normative-inferentialist semantic analyses are developed for a wide range of logical systems. ;A certain conception of justification also falls naturally out of this general theory of language. If asserting is an act performed within a linguistic game, then justification can be thought of as a matter of winning such a game, a successfully defending one's assertion in the face of licensed challenges to it. This account is developed, drawing consequences for the theory of rationality and knowledge. ;The second major issue of the dissertation is the theory of the normative itself and much of the constructive work in the philosophy of language, philosophy of logic and epistemology forms a case study for a particular theory of the normative. On the basis of Wittgensteinian considerations, it is argued that normativity must be understood as resting ultimately on social practice. ;We solve problems of earlier accounts of norms by introducing a novel normative relation between assertions of normative propriety and social practices. Normative assertions do not describe existing social standards, but do nonetheless derive their semantic content from those standards. This argument carried through in detail for cases of logical and epistemic vocabulary in the dissertation. (shrink)

This paper highlights the emergence of different ‘vocabularies’ that describe various values-driven business functions within large organizations and argues for improved horizontal alignment between them. We investigate two established functions that have long-standing organizational histories: Ethics and Compliance and Corporate Social Responsibility. By drawing upon research on organizational alignment, we explain both the need for and the potential benefit of greater alignment between these values-driven functions. We then examine the structural and socio-cultural dimensions of organizational systems through which E&C (...) and CSR horizontal alignment can be coordinated to improve synergies, address tensions, and generate insight to inform future research and practice in the field of Business and Society. The paper concludes with research questions that can inform future scholarly research and a practical model to guide organizations’ efforts towards inter-functional, horizontal alignment of values-driven organizational practice. (shrink)

A hallmark of recent critical social science has been the commitment to methodological and theoretical pluralism. Habermas and others have argued that diverse theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to support informed social criticism. However, an unresolved tension remains in the epistemology of critical social science: the tension between the epistemic advantages of a single comprehensive theoretical framework and those of methodological and theoretical pluralism. By shifting the grounds of the debate in a way suggested by Dewey's pragmatism, the author (...) argues that a thoroughgoing pluralism strengthens, rather than weakens, both the social scientific and political aims of critical social science. Not only does pragmatism offer a plausible interpretation of the epistemic pluralism of the social sciences, but it also provides a way of thinking about their fundamentally practical and political character. With a better normative vocabulary with which to discuss the epistemological issues of such a pluralistic mode of inquiry, the democratic role of critical inquiry and its specifically practical form of verification can be clarified. (shrink)

This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization (...) of the body, mind, things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent. (shrink)

This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems. Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction (...) by one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems. (shrink)

A critical edition with facing-page translation, of Guglielmo Ebreo's treatise of 1463. It also contains dance tunes in facsimile and in annotated transcriptions based on the choreographies.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Merging Traditional Technique Vocabularies with Democratic Teaching Perspectives in Dance EducationA Consideration of Aesthetic Values and Their Sociopolitical ContextsBecky Dyer (bio)IntroductionConventional aesthetic values in dance traditionally have been wed to long-established authoritarian teaching approaches in American professional dance companies and university dance programs. Developed over time from a mixture of enduring cultural tastes, aesthetic ideals, and historical influences, aesthetic values play a significant role in teaching and learning (...) processes in the classroom, although the impact of their presence on learning is often indiscernible or paid little attention. As dance educators in higher education make efforts to move toward more democratic teaching perspectives, they often find themselves philosophically lodged between established approaches to teaching traditional, codified vocabularies and aesthetics and more contemporary, student-centered, and democratically oriented perspectives to teaching and learning dance. Attention to the sociopolitical contexts of dance training gives practitioners opportunities to consider aesthetic values of dance from differing cultural vantage points and the perspectives by which these values are taught and learned.Each learning circumstance in dance is a complex weaving of personal and social experience involving individuals, communities, movers, and viewers. Movement aesthetic values emerge from personal and communal morals and ideals as well as social mores of the body, which create contextual lenses for experiencing, interpreting, and making meaning of movement vocabularies created and perpetuated in dance communities. It is important that teachers who seek to incorporate more democratically oriented, student-centered teaching perspectives become mindful of ways social values and perceptual/contextual frameworks impact personal [End Page 108] and communal practices in dance. Approaches to learning technique that consider sociocultural factors of dance movement aesthetics—wherein teachers and learners are led to recognize and reflect upon personal, social, and aesthetic values embodied in movement and embedded in movement vocabularies—can lead teachers and learners to better understand the significance of learning in dance as it relates to personal and social worlds beyond the classroom.This article will suggest how movement analysis from a socially contextualized perspective can inform understanding about the significance of sociopolitical contexts and aesthetic values in Western dance training. Perspectives of movement analysis will provide groundwork for discussing perceivable ways to address discrepancies between democratic and authoritarian teaching viewpoints and to challenge the prominent linking of conventional aesthetic values and vocabularies, as well as codified techniques, to authoritarian practices. The discussion will address relationships between pedagogical perspectives and ideologies held by teachers concerning the place and worth of conventional aesthetic values and the nature of aesthetic experiences in the dance technique classroom, and the potential understandings and meanings their students construct.Foundations of Movement Analysis: The Ideas and Practices of Rudolf LabanRecognizing embedded personal and social aesthetic values in movement is an important initial stage in developing more critically reflective practices that promote meaning, agency, and student interest in learning. The task is challenging because the only values accessibly evident to the bystander, and often the mover, are visual ones. Yet, as Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) suggested, intangible values also inspire movement. Laban created a theoretical framework—referred to as Laban Movement Analysis—for movement exploration, description, and analysis to consider both noticeably apparent and less-tangible values of movement by investigating movement phenomena and factors that generate them.1 The praxis-oriented system involves reflecting on movement observations, considering emotional and mental facets of movement, and taking into account experiential bodily perspectives of the mover.2Although one of Laban's fundamental purposes for developing a descriptive vocabulary for movement was to facilitate the mastery of dance technique,3 his teaching emphasized the "harmonious expressiveness of the whole individual," as he aimed to facilitate dancers' ability to understand and use their bodies in order to discover individual ways of expressing themselves and communicating.4 Laban's attitudes toward training were in sharp contrast to approaches of the day, yet interestingly, they were not [End Page 109] opposed to them. For example, common dance gestures and postures were expanded into free exploration and studied from diverse points of view rather than a narrow range of perspectives, aesthetic values, and movement qualities.5Laban's theory of "Effort," which he linked to emotions as well as... (shrink)

ABSTRACTCurrently, the repetition of a critical way of speaking results in a stagnating tendency in educational debates. This had led to the endeavour of developing a ‘post-critical pedagogy’. This paper employs Rortyan and Latourian language in order to tackle the question of how such a post-critical pedagogy should deal with critique. It argues that if one takes critique as what Latour calls a debunking activity, then post-critical pedagogy should leave critique behind. If however critique means simply to say how something (...) should not be, then post-critical pedagogy should remain critical. In addition, however, there is a need for enriching the critical vocabulary with more affirmative language. For accomplishing this need, in contrast to recent suggestions to go back to ontology, the paper suggests that new propositions developed by literary theorists like Sedgwick and Felski are more promising. All these arguments are framed by Rorty’s notion of philosophy as cultural politics. (shrink)

White-collar crimes are illegal and unethical actions by agents of an organization. In this paper, we address two related research questions concerning white-collar crime—how did the language of white-collar crime evolve? And how did this language co-evolve with the investigation of white-collar crime? Building on research on institutional work, we find that key institutional actors such as the Presidential Office are likely to use frames and adopt a particular language in order to legitimize institutional practices . Conversely, less powerful actors (...) such as the law enforcement agencies are then likely to use narratives to shape language in order to mobilize other stakeholders to continue the adoption of the referent practice. We uncover these findings by using qualitative methodology and trend analysis. We conclude with a detailed theoretical discussion of the role of institutional actors in institutional work and the implications of our research. (shrink)

Ontologies describe reality in specific domains in ways that can bridge various disciplines and languages. They allow easier access and integration of information that is collected by different groups. Ontologies are currently used in the biomedical sciences, geography, and law. A Biomedical Ethics Ontology would benefit members of ethics committees who deal with protocols and consent forms spanning numerous fields of inquiry. There already exists the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI); the proposed BMEO would interoperate with OBI, creating a powerful (...) information tool. We define a domain ontology and begin to construct a BMEO, focused on the process of evaluating human research protocols. Finally, we show how our BMEO can have practical applications for ethics committees. This paper describes ongoing research and a strategy for its broader continuation and cooperation. (shrink)

While extremes tend to capture attention, the ordinary is often most of the story. So it may be with the structure-mapping process. The structure-mapping process can account for such pinnacles of thinking as analogy and metaphor, which can lead to overlooking the mundane, incremental use of structure mapping. Consequently, the current discussion shifts focus to the value of close comparisons between literally similar items for the development of knowledge. The intent is to foster greater integration between process and content as (...) well as between individuals and collectives. The payoff is identifying some undue simplifications and some promising new directions. (shrink)

The notions of risk and hazard, concepts borrowed from the natural and social sciences by way of intersectionality, have found active usage in artistic practices that address creative work in its widest possible usage. This paper will philosophically reflect on the shifts in the meanings of risk when understood in the context of artistic work. Curatorial work, for instance, is conceptually rooted in a care-based ethic, while creative work can be argued to be conceptually rooted in transcendental action. This subtle (...) tension between curating and creating is the threshold on which risk resides. What does this mean for the artist and the curator? Key to understanding implications of risk in art is to contextualize meanings of risk in various kinds of human action. If artistic practice is that kind of human action that aims to create new experiences or understandings of our condition, then institutional approaches to risk must be tuned to this understanding of practice. Thus, blanket superimpositions of general ethical norms employed in non-artistic frameworks such as educational, scientific, or/and sociological institutions may not do justice to artistic practice. First, institutional intervention in this regard must conceptually understand the affordances and the commitments of artistic practice in order to do justice to the ways in which risk is defined in the arts. In this essay, I argue that institutions must engage with a contextual understanding of the nature of the threshold between caring and creating in order to explore a justified incorporation or risk-oriented vocabulary in artistic institutional practices. (shrink)

Putting the principles of multisensory teaching into practice, this study investigated the effect of audio-visual vocabulary repetition on L2 sentence comprehension. Forty participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. A sensory-based model of instruction was used to teach a list of unfamiliar vocabularies to the two groups. Following the instruction, the experimental group repeated the instructed words twice, while the control group received no vocabulary repetition. Afterward, their electrophysiological neural activities were recorded through electroencephalography while doing (...) a sentence acceptability judgment task with 216 sentences under acceptable and unacceptable conditions. A one-way analysis of variance, a multivariate analysis of variance, and a Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVA were used to compare the behavioral and neurocognitive responses [N400 as the main language-related event-related brain potential effect] of the two groups. The results showed no significant N400 amplitude difference in favor of any of the groups. The findings corroborated the ineffectiveness of two repetitions preceded by multisensory instruction on L2 sentence comprehension. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of BeliefRobert MetcalfFor the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of Belief. Eugene Garver. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. pp. 264. $55.00, hardcover; $22.50, paperback.Professor Garver's book, For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of Belief, is a provocative and illuminating study of practical reasoning, and one that develops (...) many of the ideas found in his magisterial study, Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). The previous book concluded by arguing that Aristotle's Rhetoric is philosophically more interesting today than it was in Aristotle's time, in part because for us there is no polis to which the argumentative facility of rhetoric would be subordinate (1994, 233ff.). This idea is echoed in the present book when Garver writes: "The more we take disagreement to be a permanent part of the situation of practical reasoning, and not something soon to be overcome by appropriate theory or universal enlightenment, the more rhetorical facility becomes a central part [End Page 95] of practical reason" (2004, 175). It is, indeed, a fascinating feature of For the Sake of Argument that it defends the autonomy and integrity of practical reason through Aristotle's insights on the various connections between argument, persuasion, and ethos (153), and illustrates these through examples such as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, and subsequent Supreme Court decisions.The book is divided into eight chapters, and, as Garver explains, these represent four pairs of essays in which a more concrete or "applied" chapter is followed by a chapter that draws generalizations from the examples of the prior chapter. Among the themes most prominent in the book are the connection between reason and character, on which Garver writes, "Practical reason has its own integrity when who we are and how we think are intimately connected" (2); the compatibility, within practical reason, of truth and one's own interest; the "ampliative" nature of practical reason, such that the implications of one's beliefs can lead to discoveries unanticipated at the beginning; the connection between the ethos of a leader and the ethos of a community; and the underappreciated power of epideictic rhetoric "to affirm values and articulate new vocabularies" (178). In addressing such broad themes, Garver's attention to concrete examples, like Brown v. Board of Education, is thoroughly instructive. The Brown decision, he argues, is "an epideictic declaration that equality and antidiscrimination are fundamental American Constitutional values" (73). Brown clearly demonstrates the ampliative nature of practical reason in that the conclusion it reaches is stronger than the premises from which it begins (i.e., the Fourteenth Amendment); moreover, it generates what Garver calls an "ethical surplus" that allows for unanticipated implications that are stronger still, such as the later Court decision striking down antimiscegenation laws (71–73). This "increase" in strength in proceeding from premises to conclusion is "impossible under a purely deductive conception of rationality," Garver writes (73), yet it is well explained by his Aristotle-inspired account of practical reasoning.Surely some readers will recoil from Garver's more provocative claims, such as that "we decide... to be convinced and choose to find a line of reasoning compelling" (119), offered within a discussion of the responsibility we bear in ethical argumentation. However, the issue that is more problematic, to my mind, concerns Garver's treatment of Plato. This may seem odd, given that Plato only appears as a foil in the book—but the problem is that it is merely a caricature of Plato that Garver allows to act as [End Page 96] a foil. Garver argues against "the Platonic program which will save reason by removing it from human contamination" (3) and "the Platonic hope of replacing ethical reasoning by the certainties of science" (5). He sides with Aristotle's idea that we can aim at effectiveness and at rightness together (48, 200) over against the allegedly Platonic idea that we must choose between truth and our own interest, reason and emotion, and so forth, or else... (shrink)

In Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion, Thomas Hibbs recovers the notion of practice to develop a more descriptive account of human action and knowing, grounded in the venerable vocabulary of virtue and vice. Drawing on Aquinas, who believed that all good works originate from virtue, Hibbs postulates how epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and theology combine into a set of contemporary philosophical practices that remain open to metaphysics. Hibbs brings Aquinas into conversation with analytic and Continental philosophy and suggests how (...) a more nuanced appreciation of his thought enriches contemporary debates. This book offers readers a new appreciation of Aquinas and articulates a metaphysics integrally related to ethical practice. (shrink)

In the past twenty years, the field of science and technology studies (S&TS) has made considerable progress toward illuminating the relationship between scientific knowledge and political power. These insights have not yet been synthesized or presented in a form that systematically highlights the connections between S&TS and other social sciences. This timely collection of essays by some of the leading scholars in the field attempts to fill that gap. The book develops the theme of "co-production", showing how scientific knowledge both (...) embeds and is embedded in social identities, institutions, representations and discourses. Accordingly, the authors argue, ways of knowing the world are inseparably linked to the ways in which people seek to organize and control it. Through studies of emerging knowledges, research practices and political institutions, the authors demonstrate that the idiom of co-production importantly extends the vocabulary of the traditional social sciences, offering fresh analytic perspectiveson the nexus of science, power and culture. (shrink)

Robert Brandom's normative-pragmatic theory is intended to represent the minimal set of practical abilities whose exhibition qualifies creatures as speaking a language. His model of a minimally discursive practice (MDP) is one in which participants, devoid of logical vocabulary, are only capable of making assertions and drawing inferences. This dissertation argues that Brandom's purely assertional practices are not MDPs and that speech acts of asking questions (queries) must be included in any practice that counts as an MDP. I (...) propose several novel alternations to Brandom's deontic scorekeeping model of discourse, which I then utilize to generate a normative-pragmatic analysis of inquisitive practices. This analysis supports the claim that agents who can assert need to be able to ask questions and vice versa. The upshot is that intentionality belongs to those who can ask and answer questions. (shrink)

During the pandemic, civil society organisations adjusted their purpose to provide support to the most vulnerable. In the midst of the first wave, Superbergamo, an initiative that grew out of local activist associations, provided groceries and medicine to the elderly, the infirm and at-risk groups during the lockdown in Bergamo, Italy. This research analyses a newspaper article from Corriere della Sera published almost two years after the event, which tells the story of Stefano ‘Kino’, one of the volunteers of Superbergamo. (...) Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we show how the mainstream media normalised the story of Superbergamo to transform a critical, radical, leftist mutual aid practice, into an example of charitable volunteering. By omitting and recontextualising central elements, the article inscribed the mutual aid practice in a catholic narrative, stripping it of any critical afflatus of the status quo. Reframed within the catholic vocabulary by the Corriere della Sera’s weekly insert ‘good news’, the story of Superbergamo becomes one that reinforces the common sensical model of catholic charitable volunteering. (shrink)

Savulescu J. Is current practice around late termination of pregnancy eugenic and discriminatory? Maternal interests and abortion. J Med Ethics 2001;27:165–71. Lachlan de Crespigny contributed in a major way to the conceptualisation, design, administration of surveys, ….

It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one's choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for one's willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the option's antecedent utility, rather than on the offered (...) odds. And even apart from this consideration, assigning probabilities to the options among which one is choosing is futile since such probabilities could be of no possible use in choice. The paper subjects these arguments to critical examination and suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, practical deliberation need not crowd outself-prediction. (shrink)

Digital artifacts from iPads to databases pervade our lives, and the design decisions that shape them affect how we think, act, communicate, and understand the world. But the pace of change has been so rapid that technical innovation is outstripping design. Interactors are often mystified and frustrated by their enticing but confusing new devices; meanwhile, product design teams struggle to articulate shared and enduring design goals. With Inventing the Medium, Janet Murray provides a unified vocabulary and a common methodology for (...) the design of digital objects and environments. It will be an essential guide for both students and practitioners in this evolving field. Murray explains that innovative interaction designers should think of all objects made with bits--whether games or Web pages, robots or the latest killer apps--as belonging to a single new medium: the digital medium. Designers can speed the process of useful and lasting innovation by focusing on the collective cultural task of inventing this new medium. Exploring strategies for maximizing the expressive power of digital artifacts, Murray identifies and examines four representational affordances of digital environments that provide the core palette for designers across applications: computational procedures, user participation, navigable space, and encyclopedic capacity. Each chapter includes a set of Design Explorations--creative exercises for students and thought experiments for practitioners--that allow readers to apply the ideas in the chapter to particular design problems. Inventing the Medium also provides more than 200 illustrations of specific design strategies drawn from multiple genres and platforms and a glossary of design concepts. (shrink)

Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is a powerful examination of current metaphors for and synonyms of teaching. It offers an account of the varied and conflicting influences and conceptual commitments that have contributed to contemporary vocabularies--and that are in some ways maintained by those vocabularies, in spite of inconsistencies and incompatibilities among popular terms. The concern that frames the book is how speakers of English invented (in the original sense of the word, "came upon") our current vocabularies (...) for teaching. Conceptually, this book is unique in the educational literature. As a whole, it presents an overview of the major underlying philosophical and ideological concepts and traditions related to knowledge, learning, and teaching in the Western world, concisely introducing readers to the central historical and contemporary discourses that shape current discussions and beliefs in the field. Because the organization of historical, philosophical, theoretical, and etymological information is around key conceptual divergences in Western thought rather than any sort of chronology, this text is not a linear history, but several histories--or, more precisely, it is a genealogy. Specifically, it is developed around breaks in opinion that gave or are giving rise to diverse interpretations of knowledge, learning, and teaching--highlighting historical moments in which vibrant new figurative understandings of teaching emerged and moments at which they froze into literalness. The book is composed of two sorts of chapters, "branching" and "teaching." Branching chapters include an opening treatment of the break in opinion, separate discussions of each branch, and a summary of the common assumptions and shared histories of the two branches. Teaching chapters offer brief etymological histories and some of the practical implications of the terms for teaching that were coined, co-opted, or redefined within the various traditions. Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is an essential text for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in curriculum studies and foundations of teaching and is highly relevant as well for students, faculty, and researchers across the field of education. (shrink)

This text explores a set of key concepts in Marxist theory as developed and read by Lacan, demonstrating links and connections between Marxist thought and Lacanian practice. The book examines the complexity of these encounters through the structure of a comprehensive vocabulary which covers diverse areas, from capitalism and communism to history, ideology, politics, work, and family. Offering new perspectives on these concepts in psychoanalysis, as well as in the fields of political and critical theory, the book brings together (...) contributions from a range of international experts to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between Marx and Lacan, as well as illuminating 'untranslatable points' which may offer productive tension between the two. The entries trace the trajectory of Lacan's appropriation of Marx's concepts and analyses how they were questioned, criticized and reworked by Lacan, accounting for the wide reach of two thinkers and worlds in constant homology. Each entry also discusses psychoanalytic debates relating to the concept and seeks to refine the clinical scope of Marx's work, demonstrating its impact on the social and individual dimensions of Lacanian clinical practice. With a practical and structured approach, The Marx Through Lacan Vocabulary will appeal to psychoanalysts and researchers in a range of fields, including political science, cultural studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

Researchers' interest in the learning of vocabulary from word cards has grown alongside the increasing number of studies published on this topic. While meta-analyses or systematic reviews have been previously performed, the types of word cards investigated, and the number of word card studies analyzed were limited. To address these issues, a research synthesis was conducted to provide an inclusive and comprehensive picture of how the use of word cards by learners results in vocabulary learning. A search of the Web (...) of Science and Scopus databases resulted in 803 potential studies, of which 32 aligned with the inclusion criteria. Coding of these studies based on an extensive coding scheme found most studies assessed receptive vocabulary knowledge more often than productive vocabulary knowledge, and knowledge of vocabulary form and meaning were assessed more often than knowledge of vocabulary use. Results of effect size plots showed that more of the reviewed studies showed larger effects for the use of paper word cards than digital word cards, and for the use of ready-made word cards than self-constructed word cards. Results also indicated more studies showed larger effects for using word cards in an intentional learning condition compared with an incidental learning condition, and for using word cards in a massed learning condition compared with a spaced learning condition. Although a correlation was found between time spent using word cards and vocabulary learning outcomes, this correlation was not statistically significant. Learners that were more proficient in English learned more words from using word cards than those less proficient. These results suggest that future researchers should report learner proficiency, adopt reliable tests to assess vocabulary learning outcomes, compare the effectiveness of ready-made word cards and self-constructed word cards, and investigate the learning of different aspects of word knowledge. Teachers should provide learners guidance in how to use word cards and target word selection for self-construction of word cards. In addition, teachers should encourage learners to create word cards for incidentally encountered unknown words and use massed learning when initially working with these new words before using spaced learning for later retrieval practice. (shrink)

For a long time, it seemed that Aristotelians and Kantians had little to say to each other. When Kant the moralist was known in the English-speaking world primarily from his Groundwork and his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant's conceptual vocabulary of “duty,” “law,” “maxim,” and “morality” appeared quite foreign to Aristotle's “virtue,” “end,” “good,” and “character.” Yet ever since philosopher Mary Gregor's Laws of Freedom, published in 1963, made Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals central to the interpretation of his ethical (...) thought, it has become clear that such “Aristotelian” terms as virtue, end, good, happiness, and character are also central to Kant. Aristotelians and Kantians now see that they have plenty to say to each other, and they have gone from being adversaries to sharing a sometimes unprincipled urge to merge central aspects of Aristotle's and Kant's ethical thought. (shrink)

This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we work. When we are dealing with (...) professional boundary issues, we should centre relationship-building skills that are central to many other aspects of our work. Skills that foster relationships at all levels – between professionals, service users, and services – need to be revalued. Our final recommendation is to create, develop, and foster safer spaces within and outside of organisations, as well as inter-professionally, for the discussion and exploration of boundary-related issues and practice. We are interested in hearing from those with experiences of being marginalised by boundaries so that they can inform a reshaping of our collective ideas around boundary related practices. To foster relationship-based practices in organisations, we have outlined several recommendations here; however, we recognize that these do not go far enough, and that collective action is needed to inform systemic change. (shrink)

Robert Brandom defends the intelligibility of the notion of a fully discursive practice that does not include any kind of logical vocabulary. Logical vocabulary, according to his account, should be understood as an optional extra to discursive practice, not as a necessary ingredient. Call this the Layer Cake Picture of the relation of logical to non-logical discursive practices. The aim pursued in this paper is to show, by way of an internal critique, that the Layer Cake Picture is (...) in fact incompatible with the most central claims of Brandom’s philosophy. A way is sketched how to give up the Layer Cake Picture and still hold on to a position that is central to Brandom’s philosophical outlook, namely his expressivism about logic. (shrink)

This paper examines the state of the field of “science and values”—particularly regarding the implications of the thesis of transient underdetermination for the ideal of value-free science, or what I call the “ideal of epistemic purity.” I do this by discussing some of the main arguments in the literature, both for and against the ideal. I examine a preliminary argument from transient underdetermination against the ideal of epistemic purity, and I discuss two different formulations of an objection to this argument—an (...) objection that requires the strict separation of the epistemic from the practical. A secondary aim of the paper is to suggest some future directions for the field, one of which is to replace the vocabulary of values that is often employed in the literature with a more precise one. (shrink)

Robert Brandom claims that language expressing pro-attitudes makes explicit proprieties of practical inference. This thesis is untenable, especially given certain premises which Brandom himself endorses. Pro-attitude vocabulary has the wrong grammatical structure; other parts of vocabulary do the job he ascribes to pro-attitude vocabulary; the thesis introduces implausible differences between the inferential consequences of desires and intentions, and distorts the interpretation of conditional statements. Rather, I suggest, logical vocabulary can make proprieties of practical inference explicit, just as the inferentialist says (...) it can for theoretical inference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its compelling presence “across (...) fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)