"Now in its third edition, this classic text remains the seminal resource for in-depth information about major concepts and principles of the cultural-historical theory developed by Lev Vygotsky, his students, and colleagues, as well as three generations of neo-Vygotskian scholars in Russia and the West. Featuring two new chapters on brain development and scaffolding in the zone of proximal development, as well as additional content on technology, dual language learners, and students with disabilities, this new edition provides the latest research (...) evidence supporting the basics of the cultural-historical approach alongside Vygotskian-based practical implications. With concrete explanations and strategies on how to scaffold young children's learning and development, this book is essential reading for students of early childhood theory and development"--. (shrink)

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

Pulling from theories of social exchange, deonance, and fairness heuristics, this study focuses on the relationship between overall justice climate and both the prosocial and deviant behaviors of groups. Specifically, it considers two contextual boundary conditions on this effect—corporate social responsibility and group moral identity. Results from a laboratory experiment are presented, which show a significant effect for overall justice climate and a two-way interaction between overall justice climate and CSR on group-level prosocial and deviant behaviors, and a marginally significant (...) interaction of group moral identity with overall justice climate on group deviance. The implications of contextual influences on workplace ethics and justice are discussed. (shrink)

Descartes is often accused of having fragmented the human being into two independent substances, mind and body, with no clear strategy for explaining the apparent unity of human experience. Deborah Brown argues that, contrary to this view, Descartes did in fact have a conception of a single, integrated human being, and that in his view this conception is crucial to the success of human beings as rational and moral agents and as practitioners of science. The passions are pivotal in (...) this, and in a rich and wide-ranging discussion she examines Descartes' place in the tradition of thought about the passions, the metaphysics of actions and passions, sensory representation, and Descartes' account of self-mastery and virtue. Her study is an important and original reading not only of Descartes' account of mind-body unity but also of his theory of mind. (shrink)

This article considers the moral notion of care in the context of Quality of Care discourses. Whilst care has clear normative implications for the delivery of health care it is less clear how Quality of Care, something that is centrally involved in the governance of UK health care, relates to practice.

This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The Anti-Compounding Injustice principle or aci. Compounding injustice and the aci principle are likely to be relevant when analyzing the moral issues raised by “big data” and its combination with the computational power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Past injustice can infect the data used in algorithmic decisions in two distinct ways. Sometimes prior (...) injustice undermines the accuracy of the data itself. In these contexts, improving accuracy will also help to avoid compounding injustice. Other times, past injustice produces real-world differences among people with regard to skills, health, wealth, and other traits that employers, lenders, and others seek to measure. When decisions are based on accurate data that itself results from prior injustice, these decisions can also compound injustice. This second dynamic has received less attention than the first but is especially important because improving the accuracy of data will not mitigate this unfairness. (shrink)

In response to calls to expand the scope of research ethics to address justice in global health, recent scholarship has sought to clarify how external research actors from high-income countries might discharge their obligation to reduce health disparities between and within countries. An ethical framework—‘research for health justice’—was derived from a theory of justice (the health capability paradigm) and specifies how international clinical research might contribute to improved health and research capacity in host communities. This paper examines whether and how (...) external funders, sponsors, and researchers can fulfill their obligations under the framework. (shrink)

In 2000, Business and Society Review published a Special Issue of the journal to explore scholars’ ideas about how the practice of corporate citizenship would evolve in the 21st century. Contributors to the volume predicted a change in business motives for engaging in social initiatives, suggesting that managers would begin to see corporate citizenship as a strategic necessity to preserve organizational legitimacy in the face of changing social values. This article uses data from a study of corporate citizenship practices in (...) over 500 Norwegian companies to explore the validity of the Special Issue predictions. We begin by reviewing the foundations of organizational legitimacy theory and examine recent research documenting the growing importance of corporate citizenship for assessments of business legitimacy. We describe our study methods, present our results, and discuss the implications of our findings in this context. (shrink)

Regularities in event timing allow for the allocation of attention to critical time-points when an event is most likely to occur, leading to improved visual perception. Results from recent studies indicate that similar benefits may extend to memory for scenes and objects. Here, we investigated whether benefits of temporal regularity are evident when detailed, item-specific representations are necessary for successful recognition memory performance. In Experiments 1 and 2, pictures of objects were presented with either predictable or randomized event timing, in (...) separate encoding blocks. In the test phase, old and new objects were presented, intermixed with perceptually similar exemplars of encoded objects. In Experiment 3 we attempted to replicate previously reported memory enhancements for scenes. In contrast to predictions, temporal regularity did not affect response times or improve recognition memory accuracy in any of our experiments. These results suggest that any effects of temporal expectation on memory are subtle and may be sensitive to minor changes in task parameters. In sum, indirect upregulation of attention through imposed temporal structure may not be sufficient to have downstream effects on memory performance. (shrink)

Leah, created over the last three years, is a self-styled, autonomous avatar collaboratively developed with Dr Mark Sagar at the Laboratory for Animate Technologies, Auckland Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Using ‘Leah’ as a technoscientific art case study, this paper will address the practical and theoretical considerations underlying the project, showing complex posthuman and bioethical relations. Leah is exhibited as an intra-active screen-based installation. It is the product of a shifting transdisciplinary collaborative process, involving artists, engineers, (...) computer scientists and neuroscientists. Leah was developed as part of the Auckland Face Simulator project where adult faces are realistically and precisely modelled to show accurate expression. These can be used for neurophysiological and neuropsychological research into emotion, agency and empathy. This artwork engages with a deep questioning of the posthuman through bioengineering self-imaging practices and reflects on our co-evolution with technology. (shrink)

Many assumptions are made about public willingness to participate in epidemiological research, yet few empirical studies have been conducted to ascertain whether such assumptions are correct. Our qualitative study of the public and of expert stakeholders leads us to suggest that people are generally prepared to participate in epidemiological research, particularly if it is conducted by a trusted public institution such as a government health department, charity, or university. However, there is widespread community distrust of research conducted or sponsored by (...) pharmaceutical companies. Individuals are prompted to take part if the study concerns an illness they or a family member or friend have personally experienced or if they believe the research will confer a widespread public benefit. Preferences vary about the mode of contact for the research to be conducted. Willingness to participate in telephone surveys has decreased in recent years, and this may be a consequence of an increase in calls to homes by telemarketers and market researchers. Participants also stressed the importance of knowing where their names and contact details were sourced and suggested that this information be available to prospective study participants as a matter of course in the first approach or letter. We provide valuable information to epidemiologists in designing studies. (shrink)

The idea of public or stakeholder engagement in governance of science and technology is widely accepted in many policy and academic research settings. However, this enthusiasm for stakeholder engagement has not necessarily resulted in changes of attitudes toward the role of stakeholders in the dialogue nor to the value of public knowledge, practical experience, and other inputs (like salient questions) vis-à-vis expert knowledge. The formal systems of evaluation of the stakeholder engagement activities are often focused on showing that the method (...) is efficient and works. In this article, we argue that every stakeholder engagement process should be evaluated beyond a simple assessment of the methodology and that the wider context of the stakeholder engagement activity should also be addressed. We evaluate two different stakeholder engagement activities against the existing method evaluation criteria and demonstrate their limitations for assessing the quality of a stakeholder engagement. We argue that these criteria need to be extended so that engagement processes will have a chance to improve not only policies but also their democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

The paper proposes a reflection on mathematical beauty, considering the possibility of aesthetic qualities for formal language. Through a concise overview of the way this question is understood by some famous scientists and mathematicians, we turn our attention to Gian-Carlo Rota’s theoretical proposal: his reflections as a mathematician and philosopher offer a perspective, of phenomenological matrix, fruitful for looking at the question. Rota’s contribution allows us to focus on the role of competence, acquired through effort, sedimentation and habit of repetition, (...) in cultivating the potential to recognise the aesthetic quality of formal language. Finally, we draw on some contributions from Gestalt theory, closely connected to twentieth-century phenomenology for chronological and conceptual reasons, applying the idea of gestalt wholeness to the mathematical product and proposing some reflections that may help to clarify some of the dynamics underlying the attribution of qualities of beauty to formulas or the detection of its lack. (shrink)

The concept of education—its dangers and promises and its illusions and revelations—threads throughout Sigmund Freud’s body of work. This introductory volume by psychoanalytic authority, Deborah P. Britzman, explores key controversies of education through a Freudian approach. It defines how fundamental Freudian concepts such as the psychical apparatus, the drives, the unconscious, the development of morality, and transference have changed throughout Freud’s _oeuvre_. An ideal text for courses in education studies, human development, and curriculum studies, _Freud and Education_ concludes with (...) new Freudian-influenced approaches to the old dilemmas of educational research, theory, and practice. (shrink)

Hobbes's defense of absolutism involves the dual claims that consent is the foundation of legitimate authority and that sovereignty is necessarily absolute. It is a paradoxical combination of claims: If absolute government is the product of choice how can it also be the sole possible constitution? While all of Hobbes's contractarian successors have rejected his preference for absolutism, his dual claims have become commonplace. Since Hobbes, contract thinkers routinely assert that people will choose their preferred constitution and that it is (...) the only possible one. The essay examines the genesis of this paradoxical argumentation: Hobbes's genius lay in merging Grotius's contractarian rationale with Bodin's analytic view that sovereignty must be absolute. The final section discusses related criticisms of Rawls's contract theory. Rawls inherited a genre already flawed by the impluse to combine voluntarist with non-voluntarist reasoning. (shrink)

Since the advent of the women's movement, women have made unprecedented gains in almost every field, from politics to the professions. Paradoxically, doctors and mental health professionals have also seen a staggering increase in the numbers of young women suffering from an epidemic of depression, eating disorders, and other physical and psychological problems. In The Cost of Competence, authors Brett Silverstein and Deborah Perlick argue that rather than simply labeling individual women as, say, anorexic or depressed, it is time (...) to look harder at the widespread prejudices within our society and child-rearing practices that lead thousands of young women to equate thinness with competence and success, and femininity with failure. They argue that continuing to treat depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia as separate disorders in young women can, in many cases, be a misguided approach since they are really part of a single syndrome. Furthermore, their fascinating research into the lives of forty prominent women from Elizabeth I to Eleanor Roosevelt show that these symptoms have been disrupting the lives of bright, ambitious women not for decades, but for centuries. Drawing on all the latest findings, rare historical research, cross-cultural comparisons, and their own study of over 2,000 contemporary women attending high schools and colleges, the authors present powerful new evidence to support the existence of a syndrome they call anxious somatic depression. Their investigation shows that the first symptoms usually surface in adolescence, most often in young women who aspire to excel academically and professionally. Many of the affected women grew up feeling that their parents valued sons over daughters. They identified intellectually with their successful fathers, not with their traditional homemaker mothers. Disordered eating is one way of rejecting the feminine bodies they perceive as barriers to achievement and recognition. Silverstein and Perlick uncover medical descriptions matching their diagnosis in Hippocratic texts from the fourth century B.C., in anthropological studies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and in case studies of many noted psychologists and psychiatrists, including the "hysteric" patients Freud used to develop his theories on psychoanalysis. They have also discovered that statistics on disordered eating, depression, and a host of other symptoms soared in eras in which women's opportunities grew--particularly the 1920s, when record numbers of women entered college and the workforce, the boyish silhouette of the flapper became the feminine ideal, and anorexia became epidemic, and again from the 1970s to the present day. The authors show that identifying this devastating syndrome is a first step toward its prevention and cure. The Cost of Competence presents an urgent message to parents, educators, policymakers, and the medical community on the crucial importance of providing young women with equal opportunity, and equal respect. (shrink)

This paper is drafted as an overview of the process of the Creativity in Health and Care workshop programme the themes arising from the project. It is intended as an introduction to the special edition and the notion of creativity that is being explored.

We argue that while the proposed memory model by Bastin et al. can explain familiarity-based memory judgements through the interaction of a core representation system and an attribution system, recollection-based memory judgements are not based on non-mnemonic signals being attributed to memory.

Being empathetic (or compassionate) is an important trait that allows for those working in health care professions to successfully analyze cases and provide patients with adequate care. One standard and enormously important way to try and teach empathy involves the use of case studies. The case-study approach, however, has some unique limitations in teaching empathy. This paper describes an activity where students are asked to imagine that they have contracted a specific disease (one that lasts the entire semester) through a (...) process of random (or lottery) assignment. Having contracted a disease, students are then tasked with taking on the persona of that patient. In writing and adopting the perspective of that patient, students are better able to learn the kind of empathy needed to be a successful health care professional. (shrink)

Research in animal behavior begins by identifying what animals are doing. In the course of observation, the observer comes to see animals as performing a particular activity. How does this process work? How cn we be certain that behavior is identified correctly? Wittgenstein offers an approach to these questions. looking at the uses of certainly rather than attempting to find rules that guarantee it. Here two stages in research are distinguished: first, watching animals, and second, reporting the results to other (...) scientists. Certainly about what animals are doing, has different uses at each stage. (shrink)

This paper seeks to utilize mathematical methods to formally define and analyze the metaethical theory that is ethical reductionism. In contemporary metaethics, realist-antirealist debates center on the ontology of moral properties. Our research reflects an innovative methodology using methods from Graph Theory to clarify a debated position of Meta-Ethics, previously encumbered by intrinsic vagueness and ambiguity. We employ rigorous mathematical formalism to symbolize, parse, and thus disambiguate, particular philosophical questions regarding ethical ontological materialism of the reductionist variety. In this paper, (...) we seek to revisit the once vexed question regarding the multiple-realizability of moral properties by employing the mathematical machinery of hypergraphs and category theory. The utilization of Mathematical formalism offers explanatory flexibility specifically to the hypothesis that there are potentially an infinite number of unrelated subvening facts which may constitute supervening moral properties. We by no means have attempted to settle the argument on the side of naturalism, but have only identified an obstacle to rigorous argumentation, and pioneered a method to eliminate it. We hope our research will be of interest to both the Analytic Philosophy and the Applied Mathematics communities, and will help facilitate discussions of metaethics, particularly pertaining to ethical naturalism. We believe there is much research yet to be done. (shrink)

Although recent years have seen an increase in professional learning communities, use of video and lesson study groups, most teachers still work and learn in isolation. What they know is personal and remains private; little opportunity exists for most teachers to develop shared knowledge or language. The scale of the teaching force, and the rapid turnover of new teachers, makes this lack of shared knowledge an acute problem. This paper explores the potential of records of practice for developing collective professional (...) knowledge about teaching and learning. We define and illustrate what we mean by records of practice and elaborate the meaning of the term collective professional knowledge. Three concrete examples of records of practice, originating in different contexts and times, are presented and their special features are analyzed and discussed. The paper clarifies that records are not in themselves professional knowledge, but constitute a valuable and unique resource for the study of practice and the generation of knowledge originating in and useful for practice. To illustrate varied approaches for studying practice, possible uses of records of practice for the generation of collective professional knowledge are described and analyzed. The paper concludes with questions about records of practice and their uses. (shrink)

‘Supererogation’ is the notion of going beyond the call of duty. The concept of supererogation has received scrutiny in ethical theory, as well as clinical bioethics. Yet, there has been little attention paid to supererogation in research ethics. Supererogation is examined in this paper from three perspectives: (1) a summary of two analyses of ‘supererogation’ in moral theory, as well as an examination as to whether acts of supererogation exist; (2) a discussion of supererogation in clinical practice, including arguments that (...) both physicians and patients can practice acts of supererogation; (3) a discussion as to why researchers, qua researchers, are not routinely recognized to perform acts of supererogation, while at the same time the very nature of research subject participation involves supererogation. The article concludes by considering three examples of supererogation on the part of researchers, with a plea that researchers’ supererogatory actions be recognized as such. (shrink)

The preceding symposium articles speculate on the psychosocial dynamics of discrimination as reverberating with grief, mourning, melancholia, and denial. They invite a psychoanalytic paradox on the fate of inchoate loss and its complex relation to oppression and depression: constellations of attachment to loss met with its social and psychical disavowal render inexpressible to the other the work of mourning and drive its myriad expressions. A different way of putting the dilemma is that grief calls upon symbolic equation and the pain (...) of symbolization. Deborah Britzman's coda reads the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein's consideration of depression as the origin of the human condition with Paulo Freire's call to educators for a radical humanization to release oppression. Between Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Klein's Love, Guilt, and Reparation, the coda traces a signifying loss that attests to the entwined roots of the self/other matrix with attention to the needed fluctuations within interiority and exteriority, loss and the depressive position, illness and health, and psychoanalysis with pedagogy. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy is highly critical of Cartesian, and more broadly Enlightenment, conceptions of rationality. However, feminist philosophers typically fail to address contemporary theories of rationality and to consider how more current thoeories address feminist concerns. I argue that, contrary to their protestations, feminists are “obsessing over an outdated conception of reason” and that even the most suspect of “malestream” philosophers express an understanding of rationality that is closer to feminist concerns than Cartesian ones. I begin by briefly examining key features (...) of Cartesian rationality and discuss how these features are largely rejected by contemporary philosophy and cognitve science. I then discuss how the philosophical accounts of Robert Nozick and Robert Audi refelect this rejection of Cartesian rationality. Finally, I discuss how the views of Nozick and Audi are in line with many feminist concerns, and I argue that feminists need to take seriously some theory of rationality. (shrink)

Despite his protests, there have been numerous efforts to enroll Davidson in the deflationist program. Michael Williams has recently continued this enterprise, arguing that a truth‐theoretic Davidsonian approach to meaning can be harnessed to a deflationary approach to truth. It is our contention that Williams’ attempt is unsuccessful.

On January 4th 1954, six major American tobacco companies ran a full-page advertisement in more than 400 newspapers titled A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smoker.

Although every cell in a human body contains the same DNA, every cell uses its DNA differently, in unique interaction with its environment. Human bodies live and thrive because their cells and tissues are sustained in a whole whose life emerges from, but cannot be reduced to, its parts. Living creatures are organized systems of processes that maintain their identity not despite change but because of it. These biological observations resonate with the foundational New Testament metaphor of the Body of (...) Christ and with process-theological descriptions of creatures as open-ended processes interacting within a creation itself sustained within the boundless loving creativity of the Creator. I will map contemporary biological understanding of bodies as emergent and processual onto the theological metaphor of the Body of Christ and explore the ideas that emerge in terms of relationships between scripture, communities, and the life of the church. (shrink)