This collection brings together a diverse range of interpretivist perspectives to find fresh takes on the meanings of religion. Cutting across paradigms and traditions, experts from the UK, US, and India apply different approaches to engagement with beliefs and themes, including identity, ritual, and emotion.

This review of Manning’s article wonders at the wonder that Manning describes. It does so first in broad terms that question the experience of wonder that Manning describes and goes on to wonder specifically about her understanding of the experienced realities of thinking in movement. In the course of doing so, the review questions her sweeping away ‘the subject’; questions her hard-and-fast distinctions between phenomenology and Whitehead’s metaphysics and voices wonder about her neglecting complementarities between phenomenology and Whitehead’s metaphysics; questions (...) the validity of her claims about ‘where phenomenology goes wrong’; wonders about the absence of kinesthesia and its qualitative dynamics in what she writes of human movement; and finally wonders about her non-substantiated claims about ontogeny. (shrink)

The general process view of learning, which guided research into learning for the first half of this century, has come under attack in recent years from several quarters. One form of criticism has come from proponents of the so-called biological boundaries approach to learning. These theorists have presented a variety of data showing that supposedly general laws of learning may in fact be limited in their applicability to different species and learning tasks, and they argue that the limitations are drawn (...) by the nature of each species' adaptation to the particular requirements of its natural environment. The biological boundaries approach has served an important critical function in the move away from general process learning theory, but it is limited in its ability to provide an alternative to the general process approach. In particular, the biological boundaries approach lacks generality, it is in some respects subservient to the general process tradition, and its ecological content is in too many cases limited toex post factoadaptive explanations of learning skills. A contrasting, ecological approach to learning, which can provide a true alternative to general process theory, is presented. The ecological approach begins by providing an ecological task description for naturally occurring instances of learning; this step answers the question:Whatdoes this animal learn to do? The next step is an analysis of the means by which learning occurs in the course of development, answering the question:Howdoes the animal learn to do this? On the basis of such analyses, local principles of adaptation are formulated to account for the learning abilities of individual species. More global principles are sought by generalization among these local principles and may form the basis for a general ecological theory of learning. (shrink)

This paper explores how touch is key to understanding education—not as an achievement or an instrument of acquisition, but as a process through which one becomes a subject capable of both living and leading a life that matters for ourselves and others. As a process, it is concerned with how we encounter things and others in the world and not solely with what we encounter. In particular, it argues that the dynamics of touch-as both a touching and being touched by-are (...) central for understanding educational encounters as sensory landscapes of contact. This paper turns first to Aristotle’s understanding of touch as central to life itself in order to contemplate how it is not merely one of the senses but signifies as the primary mode of all bodily contact with the world. This vital aspect will then be examined in relation to the specific ways bodies experience contact, through their membranes, morphological make up and their movements. Here, I draw on a number of philosophers and theorists, such as Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Juhani Pallasmaa and Erin Manning, and a recent art installation The Boarding School by Sisters Hope to demonstrate how bodies matter to the very practices of education. I conclude with some thoughts on what morphologies, membranes and movements can specifically offer to a sensuous understanding of education. (shrink)

Despite several decades of criticism, dichotomous thinking about behavioral development remains widespread and influential. This is particularly true in study of birdsong development, where it has become increasingly common to diagnose songs, elements of songs, or precursors of songs as either innate or learned on the basis of isolation-rearing experiments. The theory of sensory templates has encouraged both the dichotomous approach and an emphasis on structural rather than functional aspects of song development. As a result, potentially important lines of investigation (...) have been overlooked and the interpretation of existing data is often flawed. Evidence for a genetic origin of behavioraldifferencesis frequently interpreted as evidence for the genetic determination of behavioralcharacters. The technique of isolation rearing remains the methodology of choice for many investigators, despite the fact that it offers only a rather crude analysis of the contribution of experience to song development and provides no information at all about genetic contributions to development. The latter could in principle be elucidated by the application of developmental-genetic techniques, but it is unlikely that these can easily be applied to the study of birdsong. Because developmental questions are so often posed in terms of the learned–innate dichotomy, “experience” is taken to be synonymous with “learning” and the possible role of nonobvious contributions to song development has largely been ignored. An alternative approach, based on Daniel Lehrman's interactionist theory of development, permits a more thorough appreciation of the problems that have yet to be addressed, and provides a more secure conceptual foundation for theories of song development. (shrink)

In a project The Hastings Center is now running on the future of prenatal testing, we are encountering clear examples, both in established law and in the practices of individual providers, of failures to respect women's reproductive autonomy: when testing is not offered to certain demographics of women, for instance, or when the choices of women to terminate or continue pregnancies are prohibited or otherwise not supported. But this project also raises puzzles for reproductive autonomy. We have learned that some (...) clinicians and patients do not discuss the fact that prenatal testing can lead to a decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy—they just don't talk about it. And while the decision whether to agree to prenatal screening and diagnostic testing is to be made with women's free and informed consent, many screening tests have been routinized in such a way that some women do not even recall agreeing to testing, while others feel that agreeing to testing is what their clinicians expect of them or that the testing is necessary to protect themselves and their families from the significant financial hardship of raising a child with a disability. In the face of these pressures, can one really say that women are freely choosing to undergo testing or are freely choosing to continue or terminate a pregnancy following receipt of test results? The reality of these pressures is requiring us to consider expanding the scope of our investigation beyond the clinical encounter to the broader context—to think harder about what reproductive autonomy means and how best to enhance it. (shrink)

In 'On the nature of truth and falsehood' Russell offers both a multiple relation theory of judgment and a correspondence theory of truth. It has been a prevailing understanding of the Tractatus that Wittgenstein rejects Russell’s multiple relation idea but endorses the correspondence theory. Ramsey took the opposite view. In his 'Facts and Propositions', Ramsey endorses Russell’s multiple relation idea, rejects the correspondence theory, and then asserts that these moves are both due to Wittgenstein. This chapter will argue that Ramsey’s (...) ascriptions are both correct. The extent of the agreement between Ramsey and Wittgenstein will be argued, moreover, to count definitively against standard understandings of Ramsey as a redundancy theorist of truth. Wittgenstein is no correspondence theorist and Ramsey is no redundancy theorist; rather, both philosophers offer identity theories of truth. (shrink)

The Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety acknowledged understaffing and substandard care in residential aged care and home care services, and recommendations were made that that the Australian Government should promote assistive technology within aged care. Robotic care assistants can provide care and companionship for the elderly—both in their own homes and within health and aged care institutions. Although more research is required into their use, studies indicate benefits, including enabling the elderly to live independently at home, (...) assistance with medication and monitoring of safety. Nevertheless, there are inherent ethical challenges in the use of robots as carers, including loss of privacy, unwarranted restrictions on autonomy, lack of dignity, deception, and the exacerbation of loneliness. Ethics by design can counter these issues in development of robotics and clinical ethics committees have been put forward as a way of dealing with the ethical use of robotic care in healthcare institutions. In this paper I outline the ethical challenges of robotic care assistants and how these may be mediated in their design and use. (shrink)

The identity theory of truth takes on different forms depending on whether it is combined with a dual relation or a multiple relation theory of judgment. This paper argues that there are two significant problems for the dual relation identity theorist regarding thought’s answerability to reality, neither of which takes a grip on the multiple relation identity theory.

We propose that corporations should be subject to a legal obligation to identify and internalise their social costs or negative externalities. Our proposal reframes corporate social responsibility as obligated internalisation of social costs, and relies on reflexive governance through mandated hybrid fora. We argue that our approach advances theory, as well as practice and policy, by building on and going beyond prior attempts to address social costs, such as prescriptive government regulation, Coasian bargaining and political CSR.

This article presents a case study of life and work at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich which reveals tensions between the lived reality of the observatory as a social space, and the attempts to create order, maintain discipline and project an image of authority in order to ensure the observatory's long-term stability. Domestic, social and scientific activities all intermingled within the observatory walls in ways which were occasionally disorderly. But life at Greenwich was carefully managed to stave off such disorder (...) and to maintain an appearance of respectability which was essential to the observatory's reputation and output. The article focuses on three areas of management: the observatory's outer boundaries, demonstrating how Greenwich navigated both human and environmental intrusions from the wider world; the house, examining how Greenwich's domestic spaces provided stability, while also complicating observatory life via the management of domestic servants; and the scientific spaces, with an emphasis on the work and play of the observatory's boy computers. Together, these three parts demonstrate that the stability of the observatory was insecure, despite being perpetuated via powerful physical and social boundaries. It had to be continually maintained, and was regularly challenged by Greenwich's occupants and neighbours. (shrink)

It is not immediately clear from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus how to connect his idea there of an object with the logical ontologies of Frege and Russell. Toward clarification on this matter, this paper compares Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s versions of the thesis of an atomic fact that it is a complex composition. The claim arrived at is that whilst Russell (at times at least) has one particular of the elements of a fact – the relation – responsible for the unity of the (...) whole, for Wittgenstein the unity of a fact is the product of copulative powers inherent in all its elements. All kinds of constituents of Tractarian facts – all kinds (forms) of object – are, to use Fregean terminology, unsaturated. (shrink)

We present a formal reconstruction of the theories of the medieval logician Robert Kilwardby, focusing on his account of accidental and natural inferences and the underlying modal logic that gives rise to it. We show how Kilwardby’s use of an essentialist modality underpins his connexive account of implication.

The case for inquiry -- The case for Deweyan inquiry -- An account of general inquiry -- Inquiry in science education -- Inquiry in social science education -- Inquiry in art and art education -- Inquiry, embodiment, and kinaesthetics in education -- Conclusion.

Immanuel Kant is one of Alain Badiou’s principle philosophical enemies. Kant’s critical philosophy is anathema to Badiou not only because of the latter’s openly aired hatred of the motif of finitude so omnipresent in post-Kantian European intellectual traditions—Badiou blames Kant for inventing this motif—but also because of its idealism. For Badiou-the-materialist, as for any serious philosophical materialist writing in Kant’s wake, transcendental idealism must be dismantled and overcome. In his most recent works, Badiou attempts to invent a non-Kantian notion of (...) the transcendental, a notion compatible with the basic tenets of materialism. However, from 1988’s Being and Event up through the present, Badiou’s oeuvre contains indications that he hasn’t managed fully to purge the traces of Kantian transcendental idealism that arguably continue to haunt his system—with these traces clustering around a concept Badiou christens “counting-for-one”. The result is that, in the end, Kant’s shadow still falls over Badiouian philosophy—this is despite Badiou’s admirable, sophisticated, and instructive attempts to step out from under it—thus calling into question this philosophy’s self-proclaimed status as materialist through and through. (shrink)

Summary A new culture of mathematics was developed in sixteenth-century England, the culture of ?the mathematicalls?. Its representatives were the self-styled mathematical practitioners who presented their art as a practical and worldly activity. The careers of two practitioners, Thomas Bedwell and Thomas Hood, are used as case studies to examine the establishment of this culture of the mathematicalls. Both practitioners self-consciously used mathematical instruments as key resources in negotiating their own roles. Bedwell defined his role in contrast to mechanicians and (...) he secured patronage in military engineering and the service of the commonwealth; Hood worked in the commercial setting of London as a teacher, author, chartmaker, and retailer. Working in new contexts and dealing with new audiences of gentlemen and mechanicians, Bedwell and Hood used instruments to construct a public consensus on the status and aims of mathematics. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the status of a symbol in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. It is claimed in the first section that a Tractarian symbol, whilst essentially a syntactic entity to be distinguished from the mark or sound that is its sign, bears its semantic significance only inessentially. In the second and third sections I pursue this point of exegesis through the Tractarian discussions of nonsense and the context principle respectively. The final section of the paper places the forgoing work in (...) a secondary context, addressing in particular a debate regarding the realism of the Tractatus. (shrink)

It has been much debated whether Tractarian objects are what Russell would have called particulars or whether they include also properties and relations. This paper claims that the debate is misguided: there is no logical category such that Wittgenstein intended the reader of the Tractatus to understand his objects either as providing examples of or as not providing examples of that category. This is not to say that Wittgenstein set himself against the very idea of a logical category: quite the (...) contrary. However, where Russell presents his logical variety of particulars and the various types of universal, and Frege presents his of objects and the various types of function, Wittgenstein denies the propriety of such a priori expositions. Wittgenstein envisages a variety of logical types of entity but insists that the nature of these types is something to be discovered only through analysis. (shrink)

Since 1980, the number of twin births in the United States has increased 76 percent, and the number of triplets or higher‐order multiples has increased over 400 percent. These increases are due in part to increased maternal age, which is associated with spontaneous twinning. But the primary reason for these increases is that more and more people are undergoing fertility treatment. Despite an emerging (but not absolute) consensus in the medical literature that multiples, including twins, should be a far less (...) frequent outcome of fertility treatment, American clinicians currently practice fertility medicine in ways likely to result in twins and, occasionally, triplets—often, they tell us, at the request of their patients. At first blush, one might conclude that these practice patterns show that patients and their doctors have weighed the risks associated with twins against the benefits of swiftly completing their families and decided that the risks are worth taking. That is, their requests for twins must represent their free and informed choices. But there are reasons to be skeptical of this interpretation, including that the preferences of many patients seem to be very strongly shaped, if not sometimes completely constrained, by concerns about costs—costs that mainly result from the routine exclusion of in vitro fertilization from health insurance coverage. It is quite possible, we believe, that these cost concerns actually undermine the autonomy of fertility patients, pushing many of them to take risks with their health and the health of their hoped‐for future children. (shrink)

In July 2000, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma passed a resolution that would effectively expel a significant portion of its tribal members. The resolution amended the Nation's constitution by changing its membership criteria. Previously, potential members needed to show descent from an enrollee of the 1906 Dawes Rolls, the official American Indian tribal rolls established by the Dawes Commission to facilitate the allotment of reservation land. The amended constitution requires possession of one-eighth Seminole Indian blood, a requirement that a significant (...) portion of the tribe's membership cannot fulfill. The members of the Nation who fail to meet this new membership criterion all have one thing in common: they are black.Descendents of former slaves who came to live among the Seminole Indians of Florida in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the black Seminoles have been officially recognized by the U.S. government as members of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma since 1866. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine why Kantian ethics has had such a hard time of it. I look at readings of Kant’s moral theory that have had great force in the 20th century and conclude that these have much to do with an ensuing confusion, which has led to charges of rigidity, formality and severity. Then I demonstrate that when we make moral judgements we rely heavily on the stock of rules, norms, duties and laws that is extant in our (...) social life. We use these as frames that are already influential in the role and scope of our anticipated moral action. We deliberate primarily by forming a maxim (principle) that must have the consent of all. We do so only occasionally, as the existing stock of rules is already in operation, helping us to reject out-of-hand outlandish or egregious maxims. Finally, I discuss, in very cursory form, some educational approaches based on this way of conceiving Kantian moral theory. (shrink)

Since 1980, the number of twin births in the United States has increased 76 percent, and the number of triplets or higher-order multiples has increased over 400 percent. These increases are due in part to increased maternal age, which is associated with spontaneous twinning. But the primary reason for these increases is that more and more people are undergoing fertility treatment. Despite an emerging (but not absolute) consensus in the medical literature that multiples, including twins, should be a far less (...) frequent outcome of fertility treatment, American clinicians currently practice fertility medicine in ways likely to result in twins and, occasionally, triplets-often, they tell us, at the request of their patients. At first blush, one might conclude that these practice patterns show that patients and their doctors have weighed the risks associated with twins against the benefits of swiftly completing their families and decided that the risks are worth taking. That is, their requests for twins must represent their free and informed choices. But there are reasons to be skeptical of this interpretation, including that the preferences of many patients seem to be very strongly shaped, if not sometimes completely constrained, by concerns about costs-costs that mainly result from the routine exclusion of in vitro fertilization from health insurance coverage. It is quite possible, we believe, that these cost concerns actually undermine the autonomy of fertility patients, pushing many of them to take risks with their health and the health of their hoped-for future children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

Although it is common for interpreters of Aristotle's De Anima to treat the soul as a specially related set of powers of capacities, I argue against this view on the grounds that the plausible options for reconciling the claim that the soul is a set of powers with Aristotle's repeated claim that the soul is an actuality cannot be unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that there are good reasons to be wary of attributing to Aristotle the view that the soul is (...) a set of powers because this claim conflicts with several of his metaphysical commitments, most importantly his claims about form and substance. I argue that although there are passages in the De Anima in which Aristotle discusses the soul in terms of its powers or capacities, these discussions do not establish that the soul is a set of capacities. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to look at the arguments advanced by three Parisian arts masters about how to understand Prior Analytics II 4 and the more general discussion that medieval authors situate...

People are using innovative internet of things technologies to gain individualised management of their type 1 diabetes. The #WeAreNotWaiting movement supports them to build their own hybrid closed loop systems and access their real time blood sugar data via any web connected device. A small number of parents in Australia use such DIY looping systems to manage their child’s type 1 diabetes, but these systems have not been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia, creating ethical dilemmas for clinicians (...) about how to respond to the use of medical devices that are not registered on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. This article considers whether the use of DIY looping is in the best interests of the child and, if not, whether intervention in parental decision making is justified to prevent harm to the child. It addresses the ongoing duty of healthcare professionals to provide care to children who are ‘looping.’ Reference is made to findings from a study, Personalised Closed Loop Systems for Childhood Diabetes, to illustrate stakeholders’ perceptions of benefits and harms of DIY looping systems. I conclude that the decision of parents to use DIY looping technology could be considered to be in a child’s best interests, broadly defined, and falls within the Zone of Parental Discretion, however healthcare practitioners who support parents may have professional concerns in doing so. (shrink)