Are the disciplines of education ghosts of a productive past or creative and useful forms of inquiry? Are they in a demographic and organisational crisis today? The contribution of the ‘foundation disciplines’ of sociology, psychology, philosophy, history and economics to the study of education has always been contested in the UK and in much of the English-speaking world. But such debates are now being brought to a head in education by the demographic crisis. Recent research has shown that with the (...) an ageing population of education academics, in ten years' time, there could be very few disciplinary specialists left working within faculties of education in UK universities. But does that matter and is the UK no more than a special case? How does this ‘crisis’ look from Europe where the disciplines of education are more embedded, and from the USA with its more diverse higher education system? In this book, leading scholars – including A.H. Halsey, David Bridges, John Furlong, Hugh Lauder, Martin Lawn and Sheldon Rothblatt – consider the changing fortunes of each discipline as education moved away from the dominance of psychology in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s as a result of the growing importance of the other disciplines and new social questions, and how the changing epistemological and political debates of the last twenty years haves resulted in their progressive demise. Finally, the book confronts the question as to whether the disciplines have a place in education in the twenty-first century. The book brings the coming crisis into the public view and explores the issue of the past, current and future relevance of the disciplines to the study of education. It will be of interest to all international academics and researchers in the field of education and the contributory disciplines as well as to students on educational research methods courses. (shrink)

In this volume, Peter Furlong delves into the question of divine determinism - the view that God has determined everything that has ever happened or will ever happen. This view, which has a long history among multiple religious and philosophical traditions, faces a host of counterarguments. It seems to rob humans of their free will, absolving them of all the wrongs they commit. It seems to make God the author of sin and thus blameworthy for all human wrongdoing. Additionally, it (...) seems to undermine the popular 'Free Will Defense' of the problem of evil, to make a mockery of the claim that God loves us, and to make it inappropriate for God to blame and punish us. This work carefully formulates these and other objections to divine determinism and investigates possible responses to each of them, providing systematic and balanced discussion of this major philosophical and theological debate. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende preguntarse si, a pesar del “silencio” de Heidegger ante la teoría de los géneros poéticos de Hölderlin, no es esta misma teoría, y especialmente el poema lírico que caracteriza a la modernidad, la cuestión en la cual se apoya Heidegger para fundamentar su “historia del ser”, de modo que la noción fuerte de _historia _que se maneja en su obra y finalmente el término marcado _das Ereignis _estaría en sintonía con los “trayectos poéticos” que Hölderlin teoriza.

We review different studies of the Periodic Law and the set of chemical elements from a mathematical point of view. This discussion covers the first attempts made in the 19th century up to the present day. Mathematics employed to study the periodic system includes number theory, information theory, order theory, set theory and topology. Each theory used shows that it is possible to provide the Periodic Law with a mathematical structure. We also show that it is possible to study the (...) chemical elements taking advantage of their phenomenological properties, and that it is not always necessary to reduce the concept of chemical elements to the quantum atomic concept to be able to find interpretations for the Periodic Law. Finally, a connection is noted between the lengths of the periods of the Periodic Law and the philosophical Pythagorean doctrine. (shrink)

A combination of spiritual insight and outrageous behavior, wisdom and childishness, joyous high spirits and deep loneliness, Alan Watts (1915-1973) touched the lives of many with his teachings. In this penetrating biography, Furlong reveals how Watts was instrumental in introducing Eastern philosophy and religion to Western minds.

A symmetric network consists of a set of positions and a set of bilateral links between these positions. For every symmetric network we define a cooperative transferable utility game that measures the “power” of each coalition of positions in the network. Applying the Shapley value to this game yields a network power measure, the β-measure, which reflects the power of the individual positions in the network. Applying this power distribution method iteratively yields a limit distribution, which turns out to be (...) proportional to the well-known degree measure. We compare the β-measure and degree measure by providing characterizations, which differ only in the normalization that is used. (shrink)

Agents are morally responsible for their actions only if they understand what they are doing. This much seems clear, but it is unclear exactly what agents must understand in order to be morally responsible; in other words, the epistemic condition for moral responsibility is difficult to discover. In this paper, I will investigate Aquinas’s discussion of knowledge, voluntariness, and moral responsibility in order to discover his views on this condition. Although he never provides a formal expression of such a condition, (...) I will use his discussions of related issues to construct a three-part epistemic condition for moral responsibility. In the process I will raise and discuss several interpretative difficulties, arguing that while some can be resolved, others, despite recent claims to the contrary, resist resolution. Finally, I will draw out several consequences of his account, noteworthy for a variety of reasons. (shrink)

The author addresses two questions concerning hume's philosophy: (1) why is imagination so prominent in hume's thought? and (2) what exactly did hume mean by imagination? (staff).

Most formalisms for representing common-sense knowledge allow incomplete and potentially inconsistent information. When strong negation is also allowed, contradictory conclusions can arise. A criterion for deciding between them is needed. The aim of this paper is to investigate an inherent and autonomous comparison criterion, based on specificity as defined in [POO 85, SIM 92]. In contrast to other approaches, we consider not only defeasible, but also strict knowledge. Our criterion is context-sensitive, i. e., preference among defeasible rules is determined dynamically (...) during the dialectical analysis.We show how specificity can be defined in terms of two different approaches: activation sets and derivation trees. This allows us to get a syntactic criterion that can be implemented in a computationally attractive way. The resulting definitions may be applied in general rulebased formalisms. We present theorems linking both characterizations. Finally we discuss other frameworks for defeasible reasoning in which preference handling is considered explicitly. (shrink)

Mathematical chemistry is often thought to be a 20th-century subdiscipline of chemistry, but in this paper we discuss several early chemical ideas and some landmarks of chemistry as instances of the mathematical way of thinking; many of them before 1900. By the mathematical way of thinking, we follow Weyl's description of it in terms of functional thinking, i.e. setting up variables, symbolizing them, and seeking for functions relating them. The cases we discuss are Plato's triangles, Geoffroy's affinity table, Lavoisier's classification (...) of substances and their relationships, Mendeleev's periodic table, Cayley's enumeration of alkanes, Sylvester's association of algebra and chemistry, and Wiener's relationship between molecular structure and boiling points. These examples show that mathematical chemistry has much more than a century of history. (shrink)

Julius Evolas writing covered a vast range of subjects, from a distinctive and categorical ideological outlook and has been extremely influential on a significant number of extreme right thinkers, activists and organisations. This book is the first full length study in English to present his political thought to a wider audience, beyond that of his followers and sympathisers, and to bring into the open the study of a neglected strand of contemporary Western thought, that of traditionalism. Evola deserves more attention (...) because he is an influential writer. His following comes from an important if largely ignored political movement: activists and commentators whose political positions are, like his, avowedly traditionalist, authoritarian, anti-modern, anti-democratic and anti-liberal. With honourable exceptions, contemporary academic study tends to treat these groups as a minority within a minority, a sub-species of Fascism, from whom they are held to derive their ideas and their support. This work seeks to bring out more clearly the complexity of Evolas post-war strategy, so as to explain how he can be adopted both by the neo-fascist groups committed to violence, and by groups such as the European New Right whose approach is more aimed at influence from within liberal democracies. Furlong also recognises the relevance of Evolas ideas to anti-globalisation arguments, including a re-examination of his arguments for detachment and spontaneism (apolitia). (shrink)

According to the highly controversial “Principle of Alternative Possibilities,” an agent is morally responsible for an action only if he could have done otherwise. In this paper, I will investigate whether Aquinas accepts this principle. I will begin by arguing that if one grants Aquinas’s theory of human action, Frankfurt-style counter-examples do not succeed. For this reason, it is necessary to investigate various texts in order to discover how Aquinas views this principle. Although he does not explicitly discuss it, he (...) does discuss an axiom that is similar to this principle in various ways. I eventually conclude that, even if Aquinas would reject a strict understanding of PAP, he would only demand a relatively common modification of it. (shrink)

The current literature on nanoethics focuses on a wide array of topics such as equity, privacy, military, environment, human enhancement, intellectual property, and security. The identification of those topics leads to the adoption of an ethical stance, which we call the in itself dimension . In this article we argue that even though it is correct to identify the areas where ethical problems are imperative to deal with ( in itself dimension ), it is a partial approach. This is because (...) the in itself dimension pays no attention to another ethical stance; one that does not have anything to do with individual or collective responsibilities, but rather with the socio-economic system into which those responsibilities are embedded. We call this second issue the contextual dimension. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce everyday aesthetics in education. First, it presents everyday aesthetics as a subdiscipline within philosophical aesthetics, that revisits sensory perception as the backdrop of all experience, claims ordinary life is a proper venue for aesthetic inquiry, and problematizes the impact aesthetic preferences have on habitual decisions. Second, the paper argues that among the diverse matters students learn in school, they learn—explicitly or implicitly—what and how to perceive, as well as the pedagogical purposes of (...) daily perception. School models the relationships that students will develop between what they perceive, what they think about it, and how they act accordingly. Next, the paper elaborates on the notions of “school aesthetic matrixes” and “space and place in school”. School aesthetic matrixes refer to perceptual patterns that allow characterizing relationships between daily perception and the pedagogical project of a school. They manifest through expressions such as prison school, home school, mall school, etc. Space and place in school allude to concomitant experiences, of corporeal basis, that allow describing how we inhabit the world. What distinguishes them is the approach each one gives to the senses and the body. The paper concludes by calling attention to the comprehension and role of perception in education, urging to mind the aesthetic-pedagogical character that students develop throughout 12 years of schooling. Ultimately, the key relationships we develop with ourselves, others, and the world, entail a basic perceptual dimension that can be educated to become more purposefully and integrally present in life. (shrink)

We present a mathematical approach to defeasible reasoning based on arguments. This approach integrates the notion of specificity introduced by Poole and the theory of warrant presented by Pollock. The main contribution of this paper is a precise, well-defined system which exhibits correct behavior when applied to the benchmark examples in the literature. It aims for usability rather than novelty. We prove that an order relation can be introduced among equivalence classes of arguments under the equi-specificity relation. We also prove (...) a theorem that ensures the termination of the process of finding the justified facts. Two more lemmas define a reduced search space for checking specificity. In order to implement the theoretical ideas, the language is restricted to Horn clauses for the evidential context. The language used to represent defeasible rules has been restricted in a similar way. The authors intend this work to unify the various existing approaches to argument-based defeasible reasoning. (shrink)

Bi-intuitionistic logic is the result of adding the dual of intuitionistic implication to intuitionistic logic. In this note, we characterize the expressive power of this logic by showing that the first order formulas equivalent to translations of bi-intuitionistic propositional formulas are exactly those preserved under bi-intuitionistic directed bisimulations. The proof technique is originally due to Lindstrom and, in contrast to the most common proofs of this kind of result, it does not use the machinery of neither saturated models nor elementary (...) chains. (shrink)

La educación y cómo educamos, siempre son temas actuales. De diversas maneras se ha enfatizado que el conocer y memorizar hechos y datos no son causas suficientes para una formación integral de la persona. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) ya había combatido contra una concepción educativa basada en la erudición coleccionista, objetiva, desprendida de las emociones, y frente a la cual propuso una especie de pedagogía vitalista: los hechos del pasado, del presente, los datos, las descripciones, deben recogerse y tratarse selectivamente teniendo (...) como meta la construcción, la vivificación del individuo, la búsqueda de la unidad y el sentido de aquello que estudiamos. El presente trabajo se orienta a identificar y explicar las concepciones de la educación y de la cultura a las que se enfrentó Nietzsche y cómo se puede caracterizar la pedagógica que él propone para estudiar el pasado. (shrink)

The article analyses and assesses the development of the post-war thought of Julius Evola. Evola's initial writings in the inter-war period were from an ideological position close to the Fascist regime in Italy, though not identical to it. Over a long and prolific writing career he developed a complex line of argument, which synthesises the spiritual orientation of writers such as Rene Guenon with the political concerns of the European authoritarian Right. The paper argues that notwithstanding the changed circumstances, Evola (...) remained committed to the 'Traditionalism', broadly defined, with which he had been associated before 1945, and that his success lay in his capacity to adapt his strategic perspective without sacrificing the fundamentals of his conservative authoritarian position. The continuing use of his work among the radical Right, and the appearance of many of his writings in English translation for the first time, suggest that he should be taken more seriously by academic analysis than has hitherto been the case. (shrink)

By analysing a contemporary criticism to the so called “mathematical chemistry”, we discuss what we understand by mathematizing chemistry and its implications. We then pass to ponder on some positions on the subject by considering the cases of Laszlo, Venel and Diderot, opponents to the idea of mathematization of chemistry. In contrast, we analyse some scholars’ ideas on the fruitful relationship between mathematics and chemistry; here Dirac and Brown are considered. Finally, we mention that the mathematical–chemistry relationship should be considered (...) beyond the mere aspect of whether chemistry is or not able to be mathematized. This discussion is based upon opinions by Kant and Comte, the first one having two positions on chemistry based upon mathematics and the latter mooting the idea of doing chemistry with mathematical spirit. (shrink)

The party registration of tenure‐track faculty at 11 California universities, ranging from small, private, religiously affiliated institutions to large, public, elite schools, shows that the “one‐party campus” conjecture does not extend to all institutions or all departments. At one end of the scale, U.C. Berkeley has an adjusted Democrat:Republican ratio of almost 9:1, while Pepperdine University has a ratio of nearly 1:1. Academic field also makes a tremendous difference, with the humanities averaging a 10:1 D:R ratio and business schools averaging (...) 1.3:1, and with departments ranging from sociology (44:1) to management (1.5:1). Across all departments and institutions, the D:R ratio is 5:1, while in the “soft” liberal‐arts fields, the ratio is higher than 8:1. These findings are generally in line with comparable previous studies. (shrink)

How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus on salient or statistical associations between target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in the dependency networks that are part of our representations of social categories. (...) Dependency networks encode information about how features in a conceptual representation depend on each other. This information determines the degree of centrality of a feature for a conceptual representation. Importantly, centrally encoded biases systematically disassociate from those encoded in salient-statistical associations. Furthermore, the degree of centrality of a feature determines its cross-contextual stability: in general, the more central a feature is for a concept, the more likely it is to survive into a wide array of cognitive tasks involving that concept. Accordingly, implicit biases that are encoded in the central features of concepts are predicted to be more resilient across different tasks and contexts. As a result, the distinction between centrally encoded and salient-statistical biases has important theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)