continent. 2.2 (2012): 64–65 Notes on Notes on Sound, July 18, 8:34pm Isaac Linder Paul de Man begins his landmark text, Allegories of Reading , with a cheeky epigraph from the philosopher Blaise Pascal. It reads, 'Quand on lit trop vite ou trop doucement on n’entend rien' (When you read too quickly or too slowly you hear nothing). The epigraph is cheeky because in the course of de Man's work he avoids elucidating at what speed one would one would be (...) able to properly hear the texts to which they are attending. For de Man the force of literary tropes—the way they seduce and structure their multiple readings—relies on the intimate proximity of figures and properties in the relational linkages of a text. Textual spatialization trumps and belies the importance of the tempo and temporality. Enter the "site"-specific text videos by the Korean-American writer and improvising musician, Bonnie Jones. In these works, unique to the venues that have solicited them, the time of writing is captured and stored in a complex digital apparatus in the first instance, along with all of the hesitations, repetitions, and sudden keystrokes attending its production. Speed is pro-scribed— written in advance—and the time (five minutes and sixteen seconds) of Notes on Sound is spatialized into an affective mesh that ensnares the viewer in a doppler effect created between the speed of writing and the speed of reading. We're caught in the tempo of Jones' decisions (that is, unless we fast forward, pause, or rewind the text; unless it freezes or takes too long to load). We find ourselves subvocalizing along to a deceptively simple prompt ("please now together count back from one hundred") as the phonetic units that comprise the video permute into polyphony and warp like the minimalist pixelations of a concrete poem into the grammar of the Notes (that is, unless we are reading along out loud). We are forced to feel our form of reading as it unfolds, in a manner arguably more proliferate and protocolized than would have been known in Pascal's time. Would he have been able to hear anything? With its understated use of syntax and short-circuiting Notes on Sound is without a soundtrack, but by no means silent: Meditation on counting, on the sound of counting, and what counts as sounding; on the way we count on sound as a pre-text for things to ring true, as they do in the famously less calculable arenas of, say, emotion and poetry. Notes on Sound is a record of these. If I become more emotional about this it is only because it forces us to hear her.  . (shrink)

Although puppets have been employed by various disciplines in clinical and community (e.g. homes and schools) environments, little has been written about their use as a communication tool in research. In this article, a critical review of the literature is undertaken integrating the use of puppets in a qualitative research study exploring children's perspectives on and responses to a camp for children with cancer. Methodological considerations and ethical issues of using puppets as a data collection technique are discussed. Although some (...) limitations exist, using puppets in interviews with children appear to help them to identify, clarify and verbalize their feelings. (shrink)

All the passages are from the writings and translations of Thomas Taylor.

The origins of philosophy of education as a discipline are relatively late, and can be traced in the Anglo-American academic world from the 1960s and a specific emphasis on conceptual problems deriving from the analytical tradition of philosophy. In more recent years, however, there has been a notable ‘Continentalist’ turn in the discipline, leading to a re-evaluation of key texts and philosophers from the French and German traditions and their relation to the discourse of education. One paradigmatic example here is (...) the work of the French postmodernist thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard. In this essay, I explore how Lyotard’s powerful critique of education in his early work, especially with regard to his influence on the May ‘68 events at Nanterre University, can be seen as crucially important, now again, to a current crisis in educational philosophy in the Western world. Moreover, Lyotard’s post-’68 work, with his paradigmatic The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge as especially important, can be seen as providing a very challenging riposte to both ‘managerialist’ and instrumentalist philosophies on the one side but also to overly simplistic ‘liberatory’ educational critiques on the other side. (shrink)

This paper examines a case of failed interdisciplinary collaboration, between experimental stem cell research and theoretical systems biology. Recently, two groups of theoretical biologists have proposed dynamical systems models as a basis for understanding stem cells and their distinctive capacities. Experimental stem cell biologists, whose work focuses on manipulation of concrete cells, tissues and organisms, have largely ignored these proposals. I argue that ‘failure to communicate’ in this case is rooted in divergent views of explanation: the theoretically-inclined modelers are committed (...) to a version of the covering-law view, while experimental stem cell biologists aim at mechanistic explanations. I propose a way to reconcile these two explanatory approaches to cell development, and discuss the significance of this result for interdisciplinary collaboration in systems biology and beyond. (shrink)

This paper argues that many ethical issues in neuroeducational research cannot be appropriately addressed using the principles and guidance available in one of these areas alone, or by applying these in simple combination. Instead, interdisciplinary and public dialogue will be required to develop appropriate normative principles. In developing this argument, it examines neuroscientific and educational perspectives within three broad categories of ethical issue arising at the interface of cognitive neuroscience and education: issues regarding the carrying out of interdisciplinary research, the (...) scrutiny and communication of findings and concepts, and the application of research and associated issues of policy likely to arise in the future. To help highlight the need for interdisciplinary and public discussion, we also report the opinions of a group of educators (comprising trainee teachers, teachers and head teachers) on the neuroeducational ethics of cognitive enhancing drugs, infant screening, genetic profiling and animal research. (shrink)

The validity of assessment programs is increasingly important in higher education. Existing approaches to assessment are problematic because they eitherfail to provide timely feedback or have suspect measurement issues. We propose a feed-forward assessment model to help overcome these two limitations oftraditional assessment approaches.

The vocabulary of the art-critic seems to consist of two groups of words, those that refer to the formal or surface properties of the work of art, and those which refer to properties we can at first loosely term imaginative. The first group consists of words and phrases like “unity” , “coherence”, “consistency”, “compactness”, “elegance”, and so on. The way such words are cashed will consist in an analysis of the determinate formal qualities of the work of art as evidence (...) of the skill of the artist as a craftsman. (shrink)

The debate over the central issue confronted in Closing--the role of the university and the liberal arts in the United States--has become increasingly urgent and contentious. The goal of this collection of essays is to consider what we can learn about the dilemmas confronting American culture through a consideration of both The Closing of the American Mind and the debate it has aroused. The contributors differ among themselves as to the validity of both the diagnoses and the solutions Bloom offers, (...) yet they do not engage in "Bloom-bashing" or hero-worship. The goal of the book is to place the debate over Closing into the larger context than can be achieved in a book review format. To provide the historical perspective that has been missing in the controversy over Bloom, included in this volume is Christopher Lasch's "The Great Experiment: Where Did it Go Wrong?" Also included are essays by other leading critics: John K. Roth, Frank Caucci, William K. Buckley, Milton R. Stern, Susan Bourgeois, Margaret C. Jones, Daniel Zins, Kenneth Alan Hovey, Bonnie A. Hain, John Peacock, Patricia L. Lundberg, Peter Siedlecki, Mark W. Roche, William Thickstun, Lorraine Clark, and Gerald Graff. This volume of essays does much to illuminate the issue surrounding The Closing of the American Mind. (shrink)

In Xenophon’s Socratic literature, there is repeated emphasis on the utility the friends provide one another. One extended passage, _Memorabilia_ 2.6, shows that Socrates takes a good person to care about a friend both for the benefits to be gained for oneself and for the sake of the other’s welfare. Genuine friendship, for Socrates, is not transactional or self-interested but rather rooted in the mutual benefit that only good people can provide one another.

Jones, Kate The shortage of registered nurses in Australia necessitates that management move their attention towards those organisational dynamics, which improve the retention of nurses, reducing the potential for high turnover from hospital to hospital. Organisational culture should be considered in the favor of nurses, considering that the model of acute care service provision used by hospitals expects registered nurses to be the professional body entrusted to provide around the clock and continuous patient care.

Jones, Kate Patients need both time and support if they are to participate in a model of shared medical decision making with their physicians. This paper explores the implications of patient centred care, identifies a significant barrier to patient participation in decision making, and suggests recommendations for an ethical approach to the provision of decision making support.

Jones, Kate The quality of communication and the authenticity of interaction are undoubtedly tested in the midst of difficult and challenging circumstances. When patient harm occurs, and health care outcomes fall well below governing best practice standards, the way in which this is managed has a lasting impact on patients and their families. This is true whether or not the problem was due to an error, or a failed plan of treatment, and was unintentional and unforseen.

Derrida, Artaud, and the "writing of the body" -- "Except for a certain laughter" : Derrida, Bataille, and the transgression of dialectic -- From the "outwork" to "Plato's pharmacy" : on Derrida, Plato and, Pickstock -- Mallarmé after Plato : on Derrida and "la double séance" -- What if truth were a woman on spurs : Nietzsche's styles -- On Derrida and feminism -- Re-politicising deconstruction : from "the old mole" to cosmopolitanism to an economic forgiveness.

As the new director of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, I have no deep sense of departure from Philosophy in the Contemporary World. I am simply losing a task that has at times been, in all honesty, difficult and onerous. As with childbirth, I am told, however, memory of the pain gives way to memory of the glory. And it is to the birth of children I would compare each successive issue of the journal since 1997. The (...) journal is healthy, increasing in subscriptions, and looking ahead to being administered and published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. It is a source of pride for the society's members, who indeed form a multitude of parents. Jim Sauer is an able new shepherd, and will take the journal to heights I could not. In ways I feel like I can be more supportive of the journal, and its editor, now that I am not doing the work myself. I am strongly committed to that support. (shrink)

In the ultimate analysis, all philosophical differences are verbal. If by some intellectual X-Ray we could see into the minds of others, and perceive the exact nature of their concepts, we should be force to concede the correctness of their conclusions. The only alternative is that the mental processes—the laws of thought—differ from individual to individual.

Previous discussions of Kant’s influence on German biology have resulted in contradictory accounts. Zammito argues both that Kant could not have influenced German biology because his account is fundamentally incompatible with the presuppositions of biological naturalism, and biology only emerged because biologists misunderstood Kant’s philosophy. I argue that his account exposes an important difficulty when considering Kant’s influence on the development of biology, since it correctly identifies a fundamental incompatibility between biological naturalism and Kant. However, this does not demonstrate that (...) Kant could not have been influential on the development of biology. Instead, I propose a broader conception of influence that includes both intentional and non-intentional forms of misunderstanding. I examine Kant’s influence on the development of biology in the British Isles. Both in the history of science and contemporary research, the literature tends to focus on Kant’s ‘Critique of Teleological Judgment’ as this is where Kant discusses how biological entities require us to judge them as if they possessed the properties of self-organization, growth and reproduction. I argue that Kant’s influence on biology in the British Isles originates from his account of scientific methodology in his earlier work, the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s account was influential on William Whewell. Kant argued that the unity of science was merely a presupposition for scientific enquiry, whereas Whewell argued this unity was an inherent property of the world that science was discovering. I argue that Whewell intentionally misinterpreted aspects of Kant’s philosophy to develop a more naturalistic theory of science. Whewell was influential on the development of Darwin’s scientific methodology in the Origin as he argues for the correctness of his theory on the basis that it displays consilience. Whewell’s account of science was not only influential for the development of biology but also for more recent accounts of scientific methodology and reductivist accounts of science. I argue that this dual philosophical-historical approach provides the basis for a richer, more adequate understanding of how Kant’s philosophy has continued to exert a strong though often unrecognised influence on developments in biological theory such as immunology and contemporary accounts of biological autonomy. All the same that influence is highly problematic because of the original incompatibility between transcendental idealism and biological naturalism. Understanding how aspects of Kant’s philosophy are intertwined with both the development of biology and contemporary philosophy of biology allows us to assess the conjoint costs and benefits of the synthesis between Kant’s philosophy and philosophy of biology. (shrink)

With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Anthropocene, we are faced with “humanizing AI before it dehumanizes us.” Before the advent of the “posthuman,” will our technologies help develop a better world, or enable us to more efficiently destroy it? This essay is an appeal to Black philosophers to contribute to the critique and value theory of AI. OpenAI’s GPT-4 has opened new ethical questions. This examination of AI’s history, and the possibility of “thinking machines,” concludes that emerging (...) technologies have disproportionately adverse effects on Black and brown people. To counter this, as a sentient tool, AI ought not be an instrument enabling excess capital accumulation, increased cognitive class division, surveillance for the authoritarian state, and pernicious anti-Black racism. Because of this, a new value theory for this technology should be based on participatory socialist principles of access to resources, environmentalism, and redistribution of the global commons. Informed by broader perspectives, as a more useful tool in bridging power differentials, AI should be the people’s tool. (shrink)

Religionspsychologie.--Der Gottmensch-Komplex.--Die Empfängnis der Jungfrau Maria durch das Ohr.--Eine psychoanalitische Studie über den Heiligen Geist.