In this volume, critical scholars and educational activists explore the intricate dynamics between the enclosure of global commons and radical visions of a common social future that breaks through the logics of privatization, ecological degradation, and dehumanizing social hierarchies in education. In its institutional and informal configurations alike, education has been identified as perhaps the key stake in this struggle. Insisting on the urgency of an education that breaks free of the bonds of enclosure, the essays included in this volume (...) weave together bright threads of radical thought into a vivid tapestry illustrating a critical framework for enacting a global educational commons. (shrink)

Early German Romanticism sought to respond to a comprehensive sense of spiritual crisis that characterised the late eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how the Romantics sought to bring together the new post-Kantian idealist philosophy with the inheritance of the realist Platonic-Christian tradition. With idealism they continued to champion the individual, while from Platonism they took the notion that all reality, including the self, participated in absolute being. This insight was expressed, not in the language of theology or philosophy, but through (...) aesthetics, which recognised the potentiality of all creation, including artistic creation, to disclose the divine. In explicating the religious vision of Romanticism, this study offers a new historical appreciation of the movement, and furthermore demonstrates its importance for our understanding of religion today. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theoretic accounts of justice attempt to explain our willingness to follow certain principles of justice by appealing to robustness properties possessed by those principles. Skyrms (1996) offers one sketch of how such an account might go for divide-the-dollar, the simplest version of the Nash bargaining game, using the replicator dynamics of Taylor and Jonker (1978). In a recent article, D'Arms et al. (1998) criticize his account and describe a model which, they allege, undermines his theory. I sketch a (...) theory of evolutionary explanations of justice which avoids their methodological criticisms, and develop a spatial model of divide-the-dollar with more robust convergence properties than the models of Skyrms (1996) and D'Arms et al. (1998). (shrink)

After over 300 years of scrutiny, the subject of Galileo continues to be pursued with unabating intensity. Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter points to the popular interest in the man and his legacy. The Catholic Church, understandably interested in dispelling the notion that its censure of Galileo centuries ago is proof positive that religious faith and science as well as ecclesiastical authority and free pursuit of scholarship are irreconcilable, continues to offer explanations. New books, articles and conferences probe both in breadth (...) and in depth the magnetic field charged by Galileo, science, and the Church. Galileo's analysis of the physics of motion has also received considerable attention. In particular, a great deal has been written during the past thirty years about the structure and objectives of three experiments with inclined planes. Galileo had carried them out in Padua and recorded them in his working papers. The assessments of the three experiments differ widely in points of detail, but all regard them as sophisticated, ingenious, and remarkable. This article presents a new critical study of these experiments. Its conclusion is that one of the experiments is indeed a success, but that the other two fail and are abandoned because Galileo did not have a firm enough grip on the underlying physical principles and mathematical relationships. (shrink)

In this review, we discuss how two evolutionarily conserved pathways at the interface of DNA replication and repair, template switching and break-induced replication, lead to the deleterious large-scale expansion of trinucleotide DNA repeats that cause numerous hereditary diseases. We highlight that these pathways, which originated in prokaryotes, may be subsequently hijacked to maintain long DNA microsatellites in eukaryotes. We suggest that the negative mutagenic outcomes of these pathways, exemplified by repeat expansion diseases, are likely outweighed by their positive role in (...) maintaining functional repetitive regions of the genome such as telomeres and centromeres. Break-induced replication and template switching are conserved mechanisms of replication fork restart. They do not cause microsatellite instability in prokaryotes, but promote repeat expansion in eukaryotes. We suggest that TS and BIR persisted in eukaryotes despite their mutagenic potential because they help maintain long repetitive telomeres and centromeres. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Hardt reflects on recent transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—collective intellectuality—for educators to revise traditional notions of leadership to encourage more ethical, democratic, and sustainable futures. (...) Yet, what this looks like in practice remains for us to imagine. (shrink)

Die Musikpädagogik als Disziplin begann sich erst Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts zu konstituieren. Gleichwohl hat Johann Gottfried Herder zahlreiche musikpädagogische Ideen benannt und reflektiert. Als leidenschaftlicher Musikliebhaber und Pädagoge kreisten seine Gedanken in retrospektiver Ferne und interkultureller Weite, ohne theoriebildenden Anspruch für die Musikerziehung zu erheben. Dennoch wurde Herder häufig als Gewährsmann verschiedener ideologischer Perspektiven bemüht. Die Studie will sachlich, ehrlich und unbefangen aufräumen, indem sie erstens Herders Spuren zur Erziehung durch Musik gründlich folgt, zweitens Irrtümer sowie Missdeutungen aus dem (...) Weg räumt, um drittens Herder als Wegbereiter durch Dokumentation seiner immensen Rezeption zu würdigen. (shrink)

The God of Jesus -- The nature of God: an unanswerable question? -- The nature of God in Christian tradition -- And our God?

Recent years have seen increased interest in the question of whether it is possible to provide an evolutionary game-theoretic explanation for certain kinds of social norms. I sketch a proof of a general representation theorem for a large class of evolutionary game-theoretic models played on a social network, in hope that this will contribute to a greater understanding of the long-term evolutionary dynamics of such models, and hence the evolution of social norms.

Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting its inherent message. In both cases the fundamental importance of Platonism, as (...) a force which Christianity defined itself by and against, is clear. Written by an international team of scholars, this landmark volume examines the history of Christian Platonism from antiquity to the present day, covers key concepts, and engages issues such as the environment, natural science and materialism. (shrink)

Irenaeus, Coleridge and Gadamer all wrote about religion in distinct historical periods, however the work that each produced reflects the anthropological condition of the middle position. Furthermore, each thinker provides an opportunity for self-reflection about the motivations of faith without requiring the individual to abandon their religious belief in order to do so. In this manner they present a productive alternative to the required external views of the social sciences. The individual's position in mid-creation, his moral freedom and his historical (...) contingence all require the acceptance, commitment and trust of faith. Gnosticism, Empiricist thought and the desire to overcome historical contingency all reveal intellectual impatience in riposte to this condition. This intellectual impatience seeks the absolute without the need for faith. For Irenaeus, Coleridge and Gadamer such absolute, logocentric, complete systems end up alienating man from the reality of the incomplete condition that permeates his existence and the faith-requiring mythos that ultimate realities necessitate in order to be communicated. (shrink)

Family income is associated with gray matter morphometry in children, but little is known about the relationship between family income and white matter structure. In this paper, using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS), a whole brain, voxel-wise approach, we examined the relationship between family income (assessed by income-to-needs ratio) and white matter organization in middle childhood (N = 27, M = 8.66 years). Results from a nonparametric, voxel-wise, multiple regression (threshold-free cluster enhancement, p < 0.05, FWE corrected) indicated that lower family (...) income was associated with lower white matter organization (assessed by fractional anisotropy) for several clusters in white matter tracts involved in cognitive and emotional functions including fronto-limbic circuitry (uncinate fasciculus and cingulum bundle), association fibers (inferior longitudinal fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus), and corticospinal tracts. Further, we examined the possibility that cumulative risk exposure might function as one of the potential pathways by which family income influences neural outcomes. Using multiple regressions, we found lower fractional anisotropy in portions of these tracts, including those found in the left cingulum bundle and left superior longitudinal fasciculus, was significantly related to greater exposure to cumulative risk (β = -0.47, p < 0.05 and β = -0.45, p < 0.05). (shrink)

Strong reciprocators possess two behavioural dispositions: they are willing to bestow bene ts on those who have bestowed bene ts, and they are willing to punish those who fail to bestow bene ts according to some social norm. There is no doubt that peoples' behaviour, in many cases, agrees with what we would expect if people are strong reciprocators, and Fehr and Henrich argue that many people are, in fact, strong reciprocators. They also suggest that strongly reciprocal behaviour may be (...) brought about by specialised cognitive architecture produced by evolution. I argue that specialised cognitive architecture can play a role in the production of strongly reciprocal behaviour only in a very attenuated sense, and that the evolutionary foundations of strong reciprocity are more likely cultural than biological. (shrink)

Sender–receiver games, first introduced by David Lewis ([1969]), have received increased attention in recent years as a formal model for the emergence of communication. Skyrms ([2010]) showed that simple models of reinforcement learning often succeed in forming efficient, albeit not necessarily minimal, signalling systems for a large family of games. Later, Alexander et al. ([2012]) showed that reinforcement learning, combined with forgetting, frequently produced both efficient and minimal signalling systems. In this article, I define a ‘dynamic’ sender–receiver game in (...) which the state–action pairs are not held constant over time and show that neither of these two models of learning learn to signal in this environment. However, a model of reinforcement learning with discounting of the past does learn to signal; it also gives rise to the phenomenon of linguistic drift. 1 Introduction2 Dynamic Signalling Games with Reinforcement Learning2.1 Introducing new states2.2 Swapping state–action pairs3 Discounting the Past3.1 Learning to signal in a dynamic world3.2 An unexpected outcome: linguistic drift4 ConclusionAppendix: A Markov Chain Analysis. (shrink)

Novalis was a central figure in early German Romantic philosophy. Whilst the importance of both Fichte and Spinoza for the development of Romanticism is well established, the vital influence of the Platonic tradition in allowing the Romantics to synthesise these divergent philosophies merits closer attention. Essential to the development of Novalis’ thought was his exposure to Plotinus. This examination first sets out the religious and philosophical problems in Germany at the close of the eighteenth century and situates Novalis in relation (...) to this intellectual environment. Following this, a brief survey of Plotinus-scholarship at the close of the eighteenth century in Germany frames how Novalis came into contact with Plotinus through Dieterich Tiedemann. The examination proceeds to consider how Tiedemann shaped Novalis reception of Plotinus and allowed him to develop a synthesis of Spinoza and Fichte. Finally, it briefly examines the poetic realisation of this synthesis through Novalis’ late poetic work. (shrink)

This paper examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon (2009) that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the (...) epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

Whereas The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure supplements Evolution of the Social Contract by examining some of the earlier work’s strategic problems in a local interaction setting, no equivalent supplement exists for The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation . In this article, I develop a general framework for modeling the dynamics of rational deliberation in a local interaction setting. In doing so, I show that when local interactions are permitted, three interesting phenomena occur: (a) the attracting deliberative equilibria (...) may fail to agree with any of the Nash equilibria of the underlying game, (b) deliberative dynamics which converged to the same deliberative outcome in The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation may lead to different deliberative outcomes here, and (c) Bayesian deliberation seems to be more likely to avoid nonstandard deliberative outcomes, contrary to the result reported in The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation , which argued in favour of the Brown–von Neumann–Nash dynamics. (shrink)

The concept of biopolitics was first outlined by Michel Foucault (2003, 2007, 2009) in his lectures at the Collège de France in the late 1970s in order to name and analyze emergent logics of power...

This essay subjects to criticism the historical and philosophical attitudes to political thought found in the writings of John Dunn and Michael Oakeshott. The essay does not limit itself to criticism but attempts to elaborate what is indicated by criticism for the sake of the modern understanding of political thought. The argument is that history and philosophy as they have recently been practised suffer from limitations that can only be addressed by a recognition of something which is here called theology. (...) The significance of such a recognition is considered with regard to the history of political thought, political philosophy and finally to theology itself. The emphasis on theology makes it necessary to say that the essay is written for the benefit of historians and philosophers, not theologians. Although it is an argument for theology it is in no sense an argument from theology. Whether this is a contradictory position may require consideration elsewhere; but since the essay is a first step rather than a final step in an argument, it may gain more than it loses by such a contradiction, if there is one. (shrink)

Despite promising early work into the role of immune cells such as eosinophils in adipose tissue (AT) homeostasis, recent findings revealed that elevating the number of eosinophils in AT alone is insufficient for improving metabolic impairments in obese mice. Eosinophils are primarily recognized for their role in allergic immunity and defence against parasitic worms. They have also been detected in AT and appear to contribute to adipose homeostasis and drive energy expenditure, but the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. It has long (...) been recognized that immune cells such as macrophages respond to external signals to regulate adipose homeostasis and energy balance, however, less is known about the relevance of eosinophil activity in AT. As the authors propose in this review, given recent debate over the relative importance of their tissue‐specific abundance, the stage is now set for exploring the functionality and activation states of AT eosinophils. (shrink)

Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze (...) such claims rhetorically, cognitively, and epistemically. Namely, how do we think about human nature? Claims about human nature, we show, are susceptible to widely exhibited deficits in cognitive tendencies such as framing, confirmation bias, satisficing, and teleological perspectives, as well as motivated reasoning. Such missteps foster methodological, empirical, and psychological mistakes and biases. Specifically, they promote the naturalizing error, whereby cultural ideology and values are projected onto an apparently objective description of nature. Concrete remedies are offered to aid scientists in conducting and reporting their research goals and findings more responsibly and effectively (relevant also to educators and other communicators who convey these findings publicly). Recommendations include acknowledging that human nature claims are often context-dependent, seeking multiple critical perspectives, and explicitly labeling uncertainties. (shrink)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU confirms the protection of personal data as a fundamental human right and affords data subjects more control over the way their personal information is processed, shared, and analyzed. However, where data are processed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, asserting control and providing adequate explanations is a challenge. Due to massive increases in computing power and big data processing, modern AI algorithms are too complex and opaque to be understood by most data (...) subjects. Articles 15 and 22 of the GDPR provide a modest regulatory framework for automated data processing by, among other things, mandating that data controllers inform data subjects about when it is being used, and its logic and ramifications. Nevertheless, due to the phrasing of the articles and the numerous exceptions they allow, doubts have arisen about their effectiveness. In this paper, we empirically evaluate the quality and effectiveness of AI disclosures as mandated by the GDPR. By means of an online survey (N = 835), we investigated how data subjects expect to be informed about the automated processing of their data. We then conducted a content analysis of the AI disclosures of N = 100 companies and organizations. The combined findings reveal that current GDPR-mandated disclosures do not meet the expectations and needs of data subjects. Explanations drawn up following the guidelines of the generic formulations of the GDPR differ widely and are often vague, incomplete and lack transparency. In our conclusions we identify a path towards standardizing and optimizing AI information notices. (shrink)

In the course of history, many individuals have the dubious honor of being remembered primarily for an eponym of which they would disapprove. How many are aware that Joseph-Ignace Guillotin actually opposed the death penalty? Another notable case is that of Maria Agnesi, an Italian woman of privileged, but not noble, birth who excelled at mathematics and philosophy during the eighteenth century. In her treatise of 1748, Instituzioni Analitiche, she provided a comprehensive summary of the current state of knowledge concerning (...) both integral calculus and differential equations. Later in life she was elected to the Bologna Academy of Sciences and, in 1762, was consulted by the University of Turin for an opinion on the work of an up-and-coming mathematician named Joseph-Louis Lagrange. (shrink)

It is certainly the case that morality governs the interactions that take place between individuals. But what if morality exists because of these interactions? This book, first published in 2007, argues for the claim that much of the behaviour we view as 'moral' exists because acting in that way benefits each of us to the greatest extent possible, given the socially structured nature of society. Drawing upon aspects of evolutionary game theory, the theory of bounded rationality, and computational models of (...) social networks, it shows both how moral behaviour can emerge in socially structured environments, and how it can persist even when it is not typically viewed as 'rational' from a traditional economic perspective. This book also provides a theory of how moral principles and the moral sentiments play an indispensable role in effective choice, acting as 'fast and frugal heuristics' in social decision contexts. (shrink)

Jacobi held a position of unparalleled importance in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century intellectual history. This includes his role in bringing about the close of the Enlightenment, his central part in shaping the reception of Kant's philosophy and German idealism, and his influence on the development of Romanticism and existentialism.