The volume draws attention to the unknown and unexplored areas, trends and ways of thinking under the communist regime. It demonstrates how various bodies of knowledge were produced, disseminated and used for a wide variety of purposes: from openly justifying dominant political views to framing oppositional and non-official discourses and practices.

A macroscope is proposed and tested here for the discovery of the unique argumentative footprint that characterizes how a collective manages differences and pursues disagreement through argument in a polylogue. The macroscope addresses broader analytic problems posed by various conceptualizations of large-scale argument, such as fields, spheres, communities, and institutions. The design incorporates a two-tier methodology for detecting argument patterns of the arguments performed in arguing by an interactive collective that produces views, or topographies, of the ways that issues are (...) generated in the making and defending of standpoints. The design premises for the macroscope build on insights about argument patterns from pragma-dialectical theory by incorporating research and theory on disagreement management and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The design reconceptualizes prototypical and stereotypical argument patterns for characterizing large-scale argumentation. A prototype of the macroscope is tested on data drawn from six threads about oil-drilling and fracking from the subreddit Changemyview. The implementation suggests the efficacy of the macroscope’s design and potential for identifying what communities make controversial and how the disagreement space in a polylogue is managed through stereotypical argument patterns in terms of claims/premises, inferential relations, and presentational devices. (shrink)

A common approach for measuring the effectiveness of an education system or a school is the estimation of the impact that school interventions have on students’ academic performance. However, the latest trends aim to extend the focus beyond students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills, and to consider aspects such as well-being in the academic context. For this reason, the 2015 edition of the international assessment system PISA incorporated a new tool aimed at evaluating the socio-affective variables related to the well-being (...) of students. It is based on a definition focused on the five dimensions proposed in PISA theoretical framework: cognitive, psychological, social, physical and material. The main purpose of this study is to identify the well-being components that significantly affect student academic performance and to estimate the magnitude of school effects on the well-being of students in OECD countries, the school effect being understood as the ability of schools to increase subjective student well-being. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the responses of 234,000 students from thirty-five OECD countries to PISA 2015 questionnaires. Specifically, we considered non-cognitive variables in the questionnaires and student performance in science. The results indicated that the cognitive well-being dimension, composed of enjoyment of science, self-efficacy and instrumental motivation, as well as the test anxiety all had a consistent relationship with student performance across countries. In addition, the school effect, estimated through a two-level hierarchical linear model, in terms of student well-being was systematically low. While the school effect accounted for approximately 25% of the variance in the results for the cognitive dimension, only 5-9% of variance in well-being indicators was attributable to it. This suggests that the influence of school on student welfare is weak, and the effect is similar across countries. The present study contributes to the general discussion currently underway about the definition of well-being and the connection between well-being and achievement. The results highlighted two complementary concerns: there is a clear need to promote socio-emotional education in schools, and it is important to develop a rigorous framework for well-being assessment. The implications of the results and proposals for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

This paper investigates Negative Concord, arguing that it results from a systematic lexical ambiguity: the items that participate in Negative Concord ("n-words" in Laka's 1990 terminology) are ambiguous between negative polarity items and their genuinely negative counterparts. I try to show that on empirical grounds the proposed account compares favorably with other analyses that shy away from ambiguity. I furthermore suggest that the ambiguity is not implausible conceptually because it can be viewed as reflecting an intermediate stage of the Jespersen (...) Cycle. Negative Concord can be observed in many languages. The data discussed here are taken from Romance, primarily Spanish. (shrink)

The article discusses Karl Popper’s account of Lamarckism. In this article I use Popper’s published and unpublished statements regarding Lamarckism as well as his correspondence with the Australian immunologist Edward Steele and other biologists to examine why Popper was interested in Lamarckism, how his account of Lamarckism can be understood in the context of his philosophy, and what, if any, new context Popper provided for the discussion of this abandoned doctrine. I begin by discussing Popper’s frame of reference regarding Lamarckism, (...) examining how it changed following his involvement with different “transitory groups” of biologists concerned with redefining the boundaries between traditional disciplines. I then discuss Popper’s account of Lamarckism in positioning it in relation to three aspects of his philosophy: his distinction between the principles of induction/instruction and deduction/selection, his distinction between scientific and teleological concepts, and his concept of progress in science. Then, I follow the debate concerning Steele’s Lamarckian experiments with a closer look at Popper’s role and his position in this controversy. I conclude that Popper’s writings provided a new context for the discussion of Lamarckism in the 1970s and 1980s, thus making it “scientifically acceptable” again. I preface this discussion by a brief outline of Steele’s Lamarckian hypothesis and Popper’s comments on Steele’s work. (shrink)

Some authors have claimed that Hegel's ‘determinate negation’ should be distinguished from ‘logical’ or ‘formal’ negation, that is, from a view of negation as a contradictory forming operator. In contrast, I argue that dialectical determinate negation involves a view of negation as a contradictory forming operator, and can therefore count as formal negation in every respect. However, as it is clear in contemporary glutty semantics of negation, one may distinguish between different accounts of the relationship between negation, contradiction and content. (...) I suggest that, differently from classical negation, and as glutty negation, dialectical negation has partial content. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss a proposal for reform in the teaching of Euclidean geometry that reveals the symbiotic relationship between axiomatics and pedagogy. We examine the role of intuition in this kind of reform, as expressed by Mario Pieri, a prominent member of the Schools of Peano and Segre at the University of Turin. We are well aware of the centuries of attention paid to the notion of intuition by mathematicians, mathematics educators, philosophers, psychologists, historians, and others. To set (...) a context for Pieri’s proposal, we only seek to open a small window on views of the pedagogical role of intuition, from primary education to university study that may have informed early 20th century efforts to improve the teaching of geometry at the secondary school level. Pieri addressed the topic of intuition in many of his axiomatizations, including those in projective geometry which was his main area of concentration in foundations. We focus here primarily on his axiom systems for elementary geometry, which embraced the transformational approach of Felix Klein’s vision for the subject. Our goal is to convey Pieri’s thoughts on how to integrate two types of intuition, denoted as sensible and rational, in his endeavors to improve the teaching of the geometry of Euclid. We show how Pieri’s views on geometric intuition and pedagogical reform were either ignored or misrepresented in several notable publications at the turn of the 20th century. In particular, we give Pieri a voice in response to specific comments made in the early 1900s by Federigo Enriques, Ugo Amaldi, and Florian Cajori in widely circulated publications inspired by Klein. (shrink)

In our contemporary age, where a combination of individualism and mutual distrust is unhappily common among people and society is “liquid” and disoriented, so-called intermediate units are a precious resource that promotes positive coexistence within organizations and in local communities, too. The present contribution describes an example of such an intermediate unit, the Talent Club, located in a peripheral neighborhood of a metropolitan area in northern Italy. This case study shows the development of positive living and working together in organizations (...) and their transformation in the tool for community development and good coexistence. Qualitative and quantitative data show that the relational aspect is crucial because it promotes authentic exchange among people, supporting participation and social cohesion against self-referential habits and isolation. Although at present the Talent Club is mostly functioning in a affiliating coexistence among members, seeds of a more generativ... (shrink)

Based on in-depth interviews, this article examines a sample of 48 Canadian women’s feelings about their changed postpartum bodies, their sense of self, and the factors that affect both. Our findings suggest that understanding women’s postpartum feelings requires contextualizing them in the work of infant care and women’s life circumstances, as well as ideologies about mothering and feminine appearance. Motherhood afforded the women in this study a new appreciation of their bodies, and a positive embodied sense of themselves, but only (...) if they felt their bodies performed maternal functions well. Concerns about appearance persisted and became especially salient when women faced the return to paid work. Moreover, varied life circumstances influenced women’s overall feelings about their changed bodies as insecurities were displaced onto women’s body images. (shrink)

This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach (...) a satisfactory level of objectivity. My argument connects Price’s considerations on the situation of deliberation, whose structure, common to all agents, is the same with respect to both decision making and causal claims on a concept inspired by Douglas’s classification of objectivity of thought processes: the perspective of the detached agent. I further argue that, despite his agent-independent concept of intervention, Woodward’s claim of a stronger objectivity standard cannot be achieved, as the relativity of causal concepts to a variable set brings about the issue of the agent’s choice of variables. Consequently, a more permissive objectivity standard applies to both views. (shrink)

The article examines science-policy conversations mediated by social science in attempts to govern, or set up terms for, scientific research. The production of social science research accounts about science faces challenges in the domains of emerging technosciences, such as nano. Constructing notions of success and failure, participants in science actively engage in the interpretation of policy notions, such as the societal relevance of their research. Industrial engagement is one of the prominent themes both in policy renditions of governable science, and (...) in the participants’ attempts to achieve societally relevant research, often oriented into the future. How do we, as researchers, go about collecting, recording, and analyzing such future stories? I examine a series of recent interviews conducted in a number of US universities, and in particular at a university campus on the West Coast of the United States. The research engages participants through interviews, which can be understood as occasions for testing the interpretive flexibility of nano as “good” scientific practice and of what counts as societal relevance, under what circumstances and in view of what kind of audiences. (shrink)

This paper investigates how an introductory philosophy course influences the moral and political development of undergraduate students in a Liberal Arts university in Central Asia. Within a context of rapid changes characteristic of transitional societies—reflected in the organization of higher education—philosophy provides students with the means to reason about moral and political values in a way that overcomes the old ideological tenets as well as contemporary reluctance to theoretical inquiry. Studying philosophy provides a remedy for deficiencies in both secondary and (...) higher education, by improving general reading and reasoning skills, that enable the development of moral reasoning. Furthermore, familiarity with major works of moral and political philosophy can help students comprehend the patterns of social change, as well as surmount the issue of unsatisfactory theoretical foundations for social science. (shrink)

In the decade following hepatitis B vaccine’s 1981 approval, U.S. health officials issued evolving guidelines on who should receive the vaccine: first, gay men, injection drug users, and healthcare workers; later, hepatitis B-positive women’s children; and later still, all newborns. States laws that mandated the vaccine for all children were quietly accepted in the 1990s; in the 2000s, however, popular anti-vaccine sentiment targeted the shot as an emblem of immunization policy excesses. Shifting attitudes toward the vaccine in this period were (...) informed by hepatitis B’s changing popular image, legible in textual and visual representations of the infection from the 1980s through the 1990s. Notably, the outbreak of AIDS, the advent of genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, and a Democratic push for health reform shaped and reshaped hepatitis B’s public image. Hepatitis B thus became, in turn, an AIDS-like scourge; proof of a new era of pharmaceuticals; a threat from which all American children had a right to be protected; and a cancer-causing infection spread by teenage lifestyles. The metamorphosis of the infection’s image was reflected in evolving policy recommendations regarding who should receive the vaccine in the 1980s, and was key to securing broad uptake of the vaccine in the 1990s. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo reconstruir la ética de la resistencia que Nietzsche propone en _El Anticristo _partiendo de la imagen que se ofrece en el prólogo a modo de declaración de intenciones: “preferible _vivir en medio del hielo_”. Dicha ética le exige al individuo la superación de la psicología de la convicción o de la fe y recurre, como método, a la Filología entendida como “_ephexis _en la interpretación”. La apropiación nietzscheana de ese término procedente del pirronismo obliga (...) a medir la utilidad de las enseñanzas escépticas para un individuo que aspira a autorrealizarse, _a llegar a ser el que es_. Con este fin ha de poner entre paréntesis los lugares comunes y asegurarse una posición hermenéutica propia que quiere evitar la_ des-simismación_ y que renuncia, por ello, a implicarse en la rutina democrática de las sociedades modernas. En sintonía con la sensibilidad pirrónica que anima a cultivar la distancia y la indiferencia, se acabará mostrando, en primer lugar, que Nietzsche se dirige exclusivamente a una comunidad de lectores afines y que, en segundo lugar, suspende la vocación política de su propuesta. (shrink)

800x600 Normal 0 21 false false false RO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Review of Mihaela Frunză, Expertiza etică și bioetica. Studii de caz (Ethical Expertise and Bioethics. Case Studies). Cluj-Napoca, Limes Publishing House, 2010.

El artículo se propone valorar la capacidad feminista del pensamiento de Descartes en un triple sentido. En primer lugar, se centrará la cuestión en la propia filosofía de este autor en busca de sus claves éticas. En un segundo paso, se expondrá como éstas fueron interpretadas y activadas por mujeres intelectuales de la época conocidas como las cartesianas. Finalmente, se analizará la recepción crítica de la concepción cartesiana de la subjetividad por parte de Isabel de Bohemia, quien insiste en las (...) circunstancias que condicionan el ejercicio de la autonomía, propiciando una lectura en clave de género. (shrink)

The inflexion of pronouns varies in different Indo-European languages and so far, as it can be reconstructed, in the Proto-Indo-European it was different in several aspects from the inflexion of nouns and adjectives. In the course of time pronominal and nominal inflexions went through a process of mutual levelling. The analysis and comparison of the thematic and athematic nominal inflexions has shown that gendered pronouns played important role in the development of the thematic o-stem and eH2-stem substantives. The evidence of (...) the Greek language for the relationship of pronouns and other nomina is significant and complex at the same time, bearing in mind the individual development of Greek dialects and the archaic features of the earliest Greek records found in Mycenaean archives. The aim of this paper is to re-examine the evidence for the influence of pronominal on nominal inflexion found in Mycenaean Greek documents in the light of more recent studies and discuss its relevance for the earliest history of pronouns and nouns in the Greek language and the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. (shrink)

In recent decades, affective scientists have begun using concepts and tools from dynamical systems theory (DST) to characterise emotional processes. This article considers how the concept of emergence might be used to develop this approach. Emotions are explicated as ‘emergent products’ that diachronically constrain the operations of their parts in virtue of feedback loops (a classical feature of nonlinear dynamical systems). The explication is shown to be broadly consistent with what is sometimes called ‘pattern’ emergence. Casting emotions as emergent patterns (...) is shown to shed light on a major conceptual and empirical challenge emotion theorists have faced over the past century: identifying and measuring the presence of emotional episodes (Lindquist et al., 2012; Hollenstein & Lanteigne, 2014), dubbed here the ‘boundary problem’ (following Colombetti, 2014). In particular, the explication suggests seeing the emotional ‘signatures’ thought to accompany emotional episodes as fragile and context-bound: likely to hold under a relevant class of interventions (Woodward, 2005), but not without exception beyond that class. This in turn may suggest a need to significantly revise the statistical methods currently used to measure the presence of emotional ‘signatures’. The casting of emotions as emergent patterns also functions as a further case study supporting the value of ‘pattern emergence’ (Winning & Bechtel, 2019) as a powerful vehicle for characterising the objects of investigation — compound and context-sensitive — ubiquitous in the biological sciences. (shrink)

En el panorama creativo del siglo XXI abundan las producciones apocalípticas, muchas veces protagonizadas por vampiros y zombis. En algunas de ellas, se elaboran toda una serie de resignificaciones religiosas, vinculando el cristianismo con el vampirismo y lo zombi. En este contexto, la figura de María Magdalena aparece, en ocasiones, reformulada con importantes connotaciones feministas. Así sucede tanto en la película Jesucristo Cazavampiros (Lee Demarbre, Jesuschrist Vampire Hunter, 2001) como en el cortometraje Zombie Jesus (Carla Siegle, 2014). Ambas producciones, a (...) las que se unen otras para demostrar que las mismas no son una excepción, presentan un conocimiento tanto de las Escrituras como de los estudios procedentes de la teología feminista, aspectos que configuran el foco principal de atención en el presente estudio. (shrink)

Hallucination lies at an intriguing border between psychiatry and philosophy. Although Behrendt & Young (B&Y) tie their proposal to Kantian transcendental idealism, other philosophical positions are equally consistent. Cognition is underconstrained by reality not only in hallucination but also in autism and dreaming. Sensory underconstraint is insufficient to encompass schizophrenia. There is also a breakdown in integrative capacity on the cognitive side. From a wider clinical perspective than schizophrenia, there can be underconstraint or overconstraint in sensory and cognitive functionalities.

Nella tradizione agostiniana del XII secolo compaiono temi e linguaggi che suggeriscono la presenza, accanto al discorso teologico, di un discorso dell'uomo sull'uomo. Si analizza la figura di Maria Maddalena in alcuni autori del XII secolo e l'allegoria nuziale nei Sermones super Cantica di Bernardo di Clairvaux. La lettura viene condotta sulla base di categorie concettuali di carattere psicoanalitico, in quanto tali categorie trovano la propria origine, prima ancora che nel pensiero, nella più concreta e profonda esperienza umana. Ed è (...) proprio il collocarsi all'interno di questa viva esperienza umana che consente di cogliere in modo più diretto la dimensione antropologica che pare emergere dagli scrittori monastici di questo periodo. (shrink)

Violence suffered by children is a violation of human rights and a global health problem. Children with disabilities are especially vulnerable to violence in the school environment, which has a negative impact on their well-being and health. Students with disabilities educated in special schools have, in addition, more reduced experiences of interaction that may reduce both their opportunities for learning and for building protective social networks of support. This study analyses the transference of evidence-based actions to prevent violence in schools (...) – the dialogic model of prevention and resolution of conflicts (DMPRC) – in the context of a special school, and its impact on the reduction of violence, the creation of egalitarian relationships, and the prevention of bullying. A case study with a communicative approach was conducted including in-depth interviews and communicative focus groups with the diverse participants to analyze the process of transformation carried out in the school and the main actions that give students a voice in the management and creation of egalitarian non-violent relationships. The results show that the inclusion of the students’ voices in the resolution and prevention of conflicts reduces violence, empowers special education students, strengthens friendship relationships, caring behavior, and active positioning among the community. The positive impact of the transference of the DMPRC to special schools contributes to students’ well-being and healthy development by offering safe and protective educational spaces and quality emotional education, also contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals related to the elimination of all forms of violence in childhood. (shrink)

In this paper I consider Benedetto Croce’s interpretation and critique of Hegel’s dialectic in Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di Hegel (1906)and I compare it with a very similar critique elaborated by Gilles Deleuze around sixty years later (in Différence et répetition, 1968, Nietzsche et la philosophie,1962 and Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? 1991). Even if they are two very different authors, belonging to very different traditions and contexts, both Croce andDeleuze criticise Hegel with a (...) very similar argument, namely by saying that Hegel did not adequately take into account the concept of difference, and subordinated it to opposition (or negation). In addition, albeit by taking different roads, both Croce and Deleuze thought that philosophy has its own specific logic, and this logic is a logic of concept. (shrink)

The richness and subtlety of the felt presence phenomenon introduced by “Felt Presence: the uncanny encounters with the numinous Other” (Solomonova et al., this issue) offers a challenge to the emerging field of new media. How to create a computer-mediated environment which can engender a spontaneous, creative, and individualized experience such as felt presence? The Other experiment described in this paper explores the possibility of unfolding phenomenological and poetic aura of felt presence experience in a media-rich environment with liminal stimulation, (...) dosed carefully, and open to interpretation. (shrink)

The article demonstrates that post-Soviet academic debates about theoretical concepts and visions of truth can be usefully interpreted in terms of different “class positions” of knowledge producers. One academic faction is interested in academic freedom, autonomy, and corporate solidarity, as the social and cultural capitals of its members are involved with the global symbolic market. The capitals of the other group are invested into the slightly modified Soviet academic system and local symbolic fields. Intellectuals necessarily are aligned with more powerful (...) social actors and thus become involved in divisions and struggles that they cannot escape. (shrink)

Over the years, researchers of numerous fields have suggested different criteria and conventions for the transcription of oral samples. Current practice by workers who carry out transcriptions in the Spanish legal system is not standardized and does not follow any general criteria. Indeed, the standards followed by professionals in this context are characterized by their heterogeneity. This contribution highlights the benefits of adhering to a particular set of criteria and conventions agreed upon by 115 transcribers to make the transcription process (...) more efficient, improve its comprehension and add to the value of transcriptions as key documents within the legal system that may have a direct impact on the right of the parties involved. (shrink)