Reading difficulties that are not addressed at the primary level continue to exist at the secondary level with serious consequences. Thus, it is important to provide struggling students with specific reading support. In particular, many students with learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disorders demonstrate reading obstacles and are at risk for motivation loss. A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate the effects of a motivational reading racetrack as peer-tutoring on the word reading skills of secondary students with LD with (...) and without EBD. The intervention was conducted through 4–5 baseline and 16–18 reading units three times a week for 15 min over 8 weeks. The results showed positive effects indicating a highly effective treatment. In addition, follow-up results were also promising. Our findings indicate that this multicomponent intervention has a positive effect on the word fluidity of low-achieving students in secondary education with LD and/or EBD. (shrink)

By bringing feminist science studies scholar Donna J. Haraway’s A manifesto for cyborgs (1985) and Situated knowledges (1988) in line with contemporary critical new materialist thought (see Colman & Van der Tuin, 2024; Dolphijn & Van der Tuin, 2012; Geerts, 2022), this critical pedagogical and philosophical think piece tackles the problematic of Anthropocenic disruptions of the planetary biosphere for critical pedagogies and higher education (also see Carstens, 2016). It additionally encourages its readers to think through their own pedagogical conceptions and (...) praxes by means of irruptive (Geerts & Carstens, 2024; Koro-Ljungberg, 2015) selfreflection- stimulating questions. Our situated – and thus limited and open-ended – response to this all-encompassing Anthropocenic crisis is rooted in a rethinking of Harawayan cyborgian and situated knowledges and the critical pedagogical lessons drawn from the latter. Rereading Haraway’s work through contemporary critical new materialist and related scholarship reveals that it already contained an ecofeminist onto-epistemological shift toward more-than-human agency and relationality. This shift has major consequences for all things critical pedagogical and educational, as our pedagogical thinking-doings are deeply embedded in today’s crisis-ridden lifeworld. This rereading exercise furthermore underlines the necessity of an updated critical new materialist pedagogical praxis for learning and teaching, inspired by Harawayan ecofeminism, that takes the entanglements between human, dehumanised, and more-than-human actors seriously. (shrink)

PurposeThe paper aims to explore future and emerging information and communication technologies. It gives a general overview of the social consequences and ethical issues arising from technologies that can currently be reasonably expected. This overview is used to present recommendations and integrate these in a framework of responsible innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe identification of emerging ICTs and their ethical consequences is based on the review and analysis if several different bodies of literature. The individual features of the ICTs and the ethical issues identified (...) this way are then aggregated and analysed.FindingsThe paper outlines the 11 ICTs identified. Some of the shared features that are likely to have social relevance include an increase in natural interaction, the invisibility of technology, direct links between humans and technology, detailed models and data of humans and an increasing autonomy of technology that may lead to power over the user. Ethical issues include several current topics such as privacy, data protection, intellectual property and digital divides. New problems may include changes to the way humans are perceived and the role of humans and technology in society. This includes changing power structures and different ways of treating humans.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper presents a piece of foresight research which cannot claim exact knowledge of the future. However, by developing a detailed understanding of possible futures it provides an important basis for current decisions relating to future technology development and governance.Practical implicationsThe paper spells out a range of recommendations for both policy makers and researchers/industry. These refer to the framework within which technology is developed and how such a framework could be designed to allow the development of ethical reflexivity.Social implicationsThe work described here is likely to influence EU policy on ICT research and technology research and innovation more broadly. This may have implications for the type of technologies funded and broad implications for the social use of emerging technologies.Originality/valueThe paper presents a novel and important broad view of the future of ICTs that is required in order to inform current policy decisions. (shrink)

This intra-view explores a number of productive junctions between contemporary Deleuzoguattarian and new materialist praxes via a series of questions and provocations. Productive tensions are explored via questions of epistemological, ontological, ethical, and political intra-sections as well as notions of difference, transversal contamination, ecosophical practices, diffraction, and, lastly, schizoanalysis. Various irruptions around biophilosophy, transduction, becomology, cartography, power relations, hyperobjects as events, individuation, as well as dyschronia and disorientation, take the discussion further into the wild pedagogical spaces that both praxes have (...) in common. -/- . (shrink)

We argue that Recanati burdens his otherwise salutary “Mental File” account of singular thought with an “Actualist” assumption that he has inherited from the discussion of singular thought since at least Evans, according to which singular thoughts can only be about actual objects: apparent singular thoughts involving “empty” terms lack truth-valuable content. This assumption flies in the face of manifestly singular thoughts involving not only fictional and mistakenly postulated entities, such as Zeus and the planet Vulcan, but also “perceptual inexistents,” (...) e.g., Kanizsa figures, rainbows, words and phonemes, as well as hosts of at best metaphysically problematic “objects,” such as properties, numbers, ceremonies, contracts, symphonies, “the sky,” “the rain.” Indeed, reflection on what seems to be the boundless diversity of “things” about which we seem to be able to have singular thoughts strongly suggests that there may be no general metaphysics of objects, much less “acquaintance” and “epistemically rewarding” relations that would distinguish singular from non-singular thought. We recommend that Recanati and other mental file theorists confine the theory to a metaphysically neutral account of singular thought as specific kind of internally “focused” computational state, and not seek any general account of the relation of thought to reality. (shrink)

When experimental philosophers carry out studies on thought experiments, some participants are excluded based on certain exclusion criteria, mirroring standard social science vignette methodology. This involves excluding people that do not pay attention or who miscomprehend the scenario presented in thought experiments. However, experimental philosophy studies sometimes exclude an alarmingly high number of participants. We argue that this threatens the external and internal validity of the conclusions being drawn and we show how a simple visualization of thought experiments can reduce (...) exclusion rates significantly. Furthermore, we argue that focus should not merely be on how many are excluded, but also why they are excluded, and we highlight the role of comprehension questions in this regard. Philosophical thought experiments often rely on the acceptance of certain key premises that may be regarded contestable, and asking comprehension questions involving such key assumptions could be problematic as that may result in some participants being inadvertently excluded from the study, potentially creating a selection bias. (shrink)

Studies in experimental philosophy claim to document intuition variation. Some studies focus on demographic group-variation; Colaçoet al., for example, claim that age generates intuition variation regarding knowledge attribution in a fake-barn scenario. Other studies claim to show intuition variation when comparing the intuition of philosophers to that of non-philosophers. The main focus has been on documenting intuition variation rather than uncovering what underlying factor(s) may prompt such a phenomenon. We explore a number of suggested explanatory hypotheses put forth by Colaçoet (...) al., as well as an attempt to test Sosa's claim that intuition variance is a result of people ‘filling in the details’ of a thought experiment differently from one another. We show (i) that people respond consistently across conditions aimed at ‘filling in the details’ of thought experiments, (ii) that risk attitude does not seem relevant to knowledge ascription, (iii) that people's knowledge ascriptions do not vary due to views about defeasibility of knowledge. Yet, (iv) we find no grounds to reject that a large proportion of people appear to adhere to so-called subjectivism about knowledge, which may explain why they generally have intuitions about the fake-barn scenario that vary from those of philosophers. (shrink)

By a classifying topos for a first-order theory , we mean a topos such that, for any topos models of in correspond exactly to open geometric morphisms → . We show that not every first-order theory has a classifying topos in this sense, but we characterize those which do by an appropriate ‘smallness condition’, and we show that every Grothendieck topos arises as the classifying topos of such a theory. We also show that every first-order theory has a conservative extension (...) to one which possesses a classifying topos, and we obtain a Heyting-valued completeness theorem for infinitary first-order logic. (shrink)

Laudan famously argued that neither truth nor approximate truth can be part of an explanation of a scientific theory's predictive success because in the history of science there were theories that enjoyed some limited success but now are considered outright false. The power of his argument lay in the many historic examples he listed . Realists have disputed that all theories on Laudan's list can be regarded as predictively successful but let's suppose momentarily that at least some exist that support (...) his point. In this case, there are historic false theories that made some true predictions. We are aiming for a general explanation of a theory's predictive success and hence these false theories necessarily are on board. Now, Laudan also argues that historic false theories – the downright false ones and the ones we nowadays judge as strictly false, but approximately true – do not in any principled sense differ from the ones we presently accept. These theories seem to present a good basis for inductively inferring that any presently accepted scientific theory is actually false. Many presently accepted theories certainly are predictively successful to a great extent and certainly their success should be covered by an acceptable explanation. Since there seems to be inductive support for the conclusion that …. (shrink)

Self-fulfillment of theories is argued to be a threat to social science in at least two ways. First, a realist might worry that self-fulfillment constitutes a threat to the idea that social science is a proper science consistent with a realist approach that develops true and successful statements about the world. Second, one might argue that the potential self-fulfilling nature of social science theories potentially undermines the ethical integrity of social scientists. We argue that if one accepts that social science (...) theories are not based on laws akin to those that govern natural reality or acknowledges that if one can predict self-fulfillment via a meta-theory that explains the underlying regularities of the self-fulfilling change, the threat to realism is dismantled. Furthermore, on the basis of these arguments, we show that if one is unable to predict the consequences of a theory, it is difficult to ascribe moral responsibility at the individual level. It is, therefore, not the potential self-fulfillment of theories per se that poses an ethical challenge, in contrast to claims in the literature. (shrink)

Research methods and their developers play a crucial role in bringing together scientific fields. Scientists, who wish to have their methods acknowledged and used in another discipline have to bridge the gaps between different practices and worldviews, and they often experience hostility, incredulity, and in general feelings of ‘otherness’, while changing the established practice in a scientific field. Researchers representing newly emerging fields such as materials science have to overcome obstacles that are caused more by feelings of threat and fear (...) than by arguments rooted in epistemic or social considerations. In using the habitus concept of Pierre Bourdieu, I analyze in this article statements and observations of the scientists who in the 1950s and 1960s have introduced physical methods into chemistry and in so doing merged characteristic features of research communities into a new unit. The habitus of physicists, chemists and method-oriented researchers are shaped by hierarchical relationships inside the disciplines, and between them. Studying emotional expressions in interviews and self-descriptions gives access to hitherto neglected parts of the historical processes leading to new disciplines and fields. The brief case studies presented are seen as exemplars, and the analysis offered is intended more to provide a possible model for further research than as giving conclusive answers. (shrink)

The linkages and interactions of scientific disciplines with industry, politics, and society have long been a staple in the history of science, the history of technology, and science studies. However, it is arguable that the impact of this intertwining on the epistemic and social core of scientific disciplines has not yet been sufficiently explored. Chemistry is an ideal case in point, given that it has emerged as one of the largest scientific disciplines while at the same time becoming one of (...) the world’s most powerful technologies. Specifically, chemistry’s power lies in its ability to gain knowledge of the natural world by transforming it, along with the society in which it is embedded. The four contributions to this Focus section all address chemistry’s border permeability, based on its transformative powers; they focus on the feedback mechanisms that transformed chemistry and thereby altered the very concept of a scientific discipline. So successful has this “nonclassical approach” become that, in the opinion of the contributors to this Focus section, it is now both necessary and advisable to study the history of chemistry’s embeddedness and power in science and technology. (shrink)

Fascism, according to the Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective and new materialist viewpoints, can be conceived of in terms of desire. In mediating desire’s pure flows, the schizoanalytical programme attempts to bypass what Deleuze calls ‘the strange detour of the other’ (B, 356). In this respect, concepts developed in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia cycle are critical to the project of the problematic of desire, the other and (neo-)fascism. In this chapter, we explore how Deleuzo-Guattarian anti-fascist concepts, such as the (...) Body without Organs (BwO), together with new materialist approaches towards vital materialism, may help us to ‘keep an eye on all that is fascist, even [the fascist] inside us’ (TP, 165). Such a critical-creative analysis, we argue, is needed to distinguish contemporary vitalist new materialisms from so-called Lebensphilosophien (philosophies of life) and frame the rise of neoliberal capitalism-supported regimes of neo-fascism. (shrink)

1. The Search Engine operators inform the users about the way in which the Search Engine works; particularly the basic criteria of ranking are explained. Also, the Search Engine operators describe which ways of manipulating websites lead to exclusion from the result lists in case of doubt.2. The Search Engine operators design their sites in the most transparent way. Contents whose position on the result list is due to a commercial arrangement are clearly marked.3. It is the intention of the (...) Search Engine opera-tors to protect children and youths from morally damaging contents. To this purpose, the opera-tors provide family filters and point out to the fact that filters do not guarantee absolute pro-tection for youths and that children should not use the internet without their parents´ supervision.4. Those sites which are regarded illegal according to national legislation will be excluded from the result lists as soon as the operators know about them and have access to the illegal sites on the index.5. For handling the users´ data there is the princi-ple of data-thriftiness.This “Code of Conduct” was developed by Carsten Welp. It was first published in: Marcel Machill and Carsten Welp : Wegweiser im Netz. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung 2003. Republished and trans-lated by kind permission of Marcel Machill. (shrink)

A monist theory of explanation is one that seeks a common definition for all speech acts answering why-questions. One recent example is the counterfactual theory of explanation, which assumes that an ideal explanation can be characterized by the familiar Hempelian criteria for a scientific explanation plus a certain counterfactual that is supported by the laws mentioned in the explanans. I show that the CTE fails. My discussion leads to a critique of the CTE’s key concept of counterfactual dependence and to (...) the suggestion of an alternative: For an argument to be a scientific explanation, a certain necessary-condition claim must be true. For an answer to a why-question to be an explanation, it must express a certain necessary condition. (shrink)

The interview was conducted in September 1996 in Cambridge. Marilyn Strathern (MS) and Janet Carsten (JC) had been colleagues at the University of Manchester’s Department of Social Anthropology until September 1993, when Marilyn Strathern left to take up the William Wyse Professorship at the University of Cambridge, where she remained until retirement in 2008. Janet Carsten joined Edinburgh in October of the same year, where she is presently Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology. (Supplementary questions, reflecting back on (...) the earlier interview, were put to Marilyn Strathern by the editors of the special issue in 2013.). (shrink)

A hidden-variable model for quantum–mechanical spin, as represented by the Pauli spin operators, is proposed for systems illustrating the well-known no-hidden-variables arguments by Peres (Phys Lett A 151:107–108, 1990) and Mermin (Phys Rev Lett 65:3373–3376, 1990) and by Greenberger et al. (Bell’s theorem, quantum theory, and conceptions of the universe, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1989). Both arguments rely on an assumption of non-contextuality; the latter argument can also be phrased as a non-locality argument, using a locality assumption. The model suggested here is (...) compatible with both assumptions. This is possible because the scalar values of spin observables are replaced by vectors that are components of orientations. (shrink)

Rich with analyses of concepts from deconstruction, systems theory, and post-Marxism, with critiques of fundamentalist thought and the war on terror, this ...

We use the language of categorical logic to construct generic saturated models of intuitionistic theories. Our main technique is the thorough study of the filter construction on categories with finite limits, which is the completion of subobject lattices under filtered meets. When restricted to coherent or Heyting categories, classifying categories of intuitionistic first-order theories, the resulting categories are filtered meet coherent categories, coherent categories with complete subobject lattices such that both finite disjunctions and existential quantification distribute over filtered meets. Such (...) categories naturally embed into Grothendieck toposes which then contain saturated models of the theory we started with. (shrink)

In the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear magnetic resonance , one of the most important analytical techniques in chemistry, grew to maturity in the intermediate research field of chemical physics. Chemists and physicists adapted the new technology to the experimental culture of molecular spectroscopy which was based on a pragmatic experimental style. In molecular spectroscopy, the purpose of experiments was the establishment of methods that suited both the physicists' quest for precision and theoretical model building and the chemists' longing for empirical (...) data and understanding of structural formulae and reaction courses. In this process, an experimental style emerged that can be characterized as reliance on self‐built instrumentation, theoretical foundation in quantum mechanics, and proof of utility in the solution of structural and dynamical questions. This article focuses on the early development of NMR at Harvard University, with particular emphasis on the contributions of the first chemist working in the field of NMR, Herbert S. Gutowsky. (shrink)

The standard axiomatization of quantum mechanics (QM) is not fully explicit about the role of the time-parameter. Especially, the time reference within the probability algorithm (the Born Rule, BR) is unclear. From a probability principle P1 and a second principle P2 affording a most natural way to make BR precise, a logical conflict with the standard expression for the completeness of QM can be derived. Rejecting P1 is implausible. Rejecting P2 leads to unphysical results and to a conflict with a (...) generalization of P2, a principle P3. All three principles are shown to be without alternative. It is thus shown that the standard expression of QM completeness must be revised. An absolutely explicit form of the axioms is provided, including a precise form of the projection postulate. An appropriate expression for QM completeness, reflecting the restrictions of the Gleason and Kochen-Specker theorems is proposed. (shrink)

"Cognitive psychology," "cognitive neuroscience," and "philosophy of mind" are names for three very different scientific fields, but they label aspects of the same scientific goal: to understand the nature of mental phenomena. Today, the three disciplines strongly overlap under the roof of the cognitive sciences. The book's purpose is to present views from the different disciplines on one of the central theories in cognitive science: the theory of mental models. Cognitive psychologists report their research on the representation and processing of (...) mental models in human memory. Cognitive neuroscientists demonstrate how the brain processes visual and spatial mental models and which neural processes underlie visual and spatial thinking. Philosophers report their ideas about the role of mental models in relation to perception, emotion, representation, and intentionality. The single articles have different and mutually complementing goals: to introduce new empirical methods and approaches, to report new experimental results, and to locate competing approaches for their interpretation in the cross-disciplinary debate. The book is strongly interdisciplinary in character. It is especially addressed to researchers in any field related to mental models theory as both a reference book and an overview of present research on the topic in other disciplines. However, it is also an ideal reader for a specialized graduate course. (shrink)

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide a response to Christiansen's paper, Ellen Christiansen “From ‘ethics of the eye’ to ‘ethics of the hand’ by collaborative prototyping”,Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 12 No. 1.Design/methodology/approach– Reflection and critique of Christiansen's position.Findings– The paper raises questions about the conceptual basis, the realisation of participation and the conditions required for participative practice to be more broadly employed.Originality/value– It is an original response.

While early optimists have seen online discussions as potential spaces for deliberation, the reality of many online spaces is characterized by incivility and irrationality. Increasingly, AI tools are considered as a solution to foster deliberative discourse. Against the backdrop of previous research, we show that AI tools for online discussions heavily focus on the deliberative norms of rationality and civility. In the operationalization of those norms for AI tools, the complex deliberative dimensions are simplified, and the focus lies on the (...) detection of argumentative structures in argument mining or verbal markers of supposedly uncivil comments. If the fairness of such tools is considered, the focus lies on data bias and an input–output frame of the problem. We argue that looking beyond bias and analyzing such applications through a sociotechnical frame reveals how they interact with social hierarchies and inequalities, reproducing patterns of exclusion. The current focus on verbal markers of incivility and argument mining risks excluding minority voices and privileges those who have more access to education. Finally, we present a normative argument why examining AI tools for online discourses through a sociotechnical frame is ethically preferable, as ignoring the predicable negative effects we describe would present a form of objectionable indifference. (shrink)

This paper looks at the commodification of interferon, marketed by Hoffmann La Roche as Roferon A in 1986, as a case study that helps us understand the role of pharmaceutical industry in cancer research, the impact of molecular biology on cancer therapy, and the relationships between biotech start-ups and established pharmaceutical firms. Drawing extensively on materials from the Roche company archives, the paper traces interferon’s trajectory from observed phenomenon to product. Roche embraced molecular biology in the late 1960s to prepare (...) for the moment when the patents on some of its bestselling drugs were going to expire. The company funded two basic science institutes to gain direct access to talents and scientific leads. These investments, I argue, were crucial for Roche’s success with recombinant interferon, along with more mundane, technical and regulatory know-how held at Roche’s Nutley base. The paper analyses in some detail the development process following the initial success of cloning the interferon gene in collaboration with Genentech. It looks at the factors necessary to scale up the production sufficiently for clinical trials. Using Alfred Chandler’s concept of ‘organizational capabilities’, I argue that the process is better described as ‘mobilisation’ than as ‘translation’. (shrink)

During the 1960s organic chemistry underwent a spectacular transformation as a result of the introduction of high‐tech instruments. In this process, nuclear magnetic resonance became an important analytical technique in organic chemistry. The theme of this essay is the relationship of Varian Associates of Palo Alto, California, the major manufacturer of NMR spectrometers up to the 1970s, with one early and crucial user, the organic chemist John D. Roberts, who was based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Roberts’s (...) research and teaching contributed to the fast and smooth acceptance of NMR in organic chemistry. He embraced the role of mediator between the instrument manufacturer, which had expertise mainly in physics and electrical engineering, and the customers, who were mostly organic chemists. This essay focuses on the tactics used by Roberts and James N. Shoolery at Varian Associates to implement novel types of instrumentation and on the modes of cooperation between instrument manufacturer and academic scientist. (shrink)

The completeness of quantum mechanics is generally interpreted to be or entail the following conditional statement ): If a QM system S is in a pure non-eigenstate of observable A, then S does not have value ak of A at t. QM itself can be assumed to contain two elements: a formula generating probabilities; Hamiltonians that can be time-dependent due to a time-dependent external potential. It is shown that, given and, QM and SC are incompatible. Hence, SC is not the (...) appropriate interpretation of the completeness of QM. (shrink)

Understanding stakeholders’ perceptions and motivations is of significant importance in relation to conservation and protected area projects. The importance of stakeholder analysis is widely recognized as a necessary means for gaining insight into the complex systemic interactions between natural processes, management policies, and local people depending on the resource. Today, community and group-based participatory inquiry approaches are widely used for this purpose. Recently, participatory approaches have been critiqued for not considering power relations and conflict internal to the community. In this (...) article, we suggest that the five-step Rapid Stakeholder and Conflict Assessment (RSCA) methodology addresses this critique. The objective of the methodology is to provide a facilitator with a comprehensive foundation on which to plan and conduct subsequent participatory project development. The RSCA integrates elements of soft systems and critical systems thinking. Qualitative research interviews and cognitive mapping of stakeholders’ mental models are used for collection of empirical material and analysis. The RSCA methodology is demonstrated in a case study concerning buffer zone management in the coastal wetlands of southern Vietnam. The case study shows that the RSCA methodology can provide an efficient way of obtaining a holistic and critical understanding of a complex resource management situation, thus potentially enhancing project performance in an instrumental as well as an ethical sense. (shrink)

: This article addresses the fact of possible and impossible determination of the I or the self-reflective I. In this context, two questions in particular are discussed: What epistemic functions of the I can be legitimately identified, and what kinds of determination of the I are invalid? A theoretical proof of the immortality of a single, persistent substance of the soul is not possible, because no material substance that corresponds to the I can be found or determined. As this article (...) shows, however, at least a specific form of knowledge of the I, with a view to Kant’s unity of apperception and its actions, can be observed and is therefore epistemically justified. (shrink)

The Song of Songs, a lyric cycle of love scenes without a narrative plot, has often been considered as the Bible’s most beautiful and enigmatic book. The present study questions the still dominant exegetical convention that merges all of the Song’s voices into the dialogue of a single couple, its composite heroine Shulamit being a projection screen for norms of womanhood. An alternative socio-spatial reading, starting with the Hebrew text’s strophic patterns and its references to historical realia, explores the poem’s (...) artful alternation between courtly, urban, rural, and pastoral scenes with their distinct characters. The literary construction of social difference juxtaposes class-specific patterns of consumption, mobility, emotion, power structures, and gender relations. This new image of the cycle as a detailed poetic frieze of ancient society eventually leads to a precise hypothesis concerning its literary and religious context in the Hellenistic age, as well as its geographical origins in the multiethnic borderland east of the Jordan. In a Jewish echo of anthropological skepticism, the poem emphasizes the plurality and relativity of the human condition while praising the communicative powers of pleasure, fantasy, and multifarious Eros. (shrink)