Our research addresses the issue of teaching and learning concepts in science education as an empirical question. We study the process of conceptualization by closely examining the unfolding of classroom lesson sequences. We situate our work within the practice turn line of research on epistemic practices in science education. We also adopt a practice turn approach when it comes to the learning of concepts, as we consider conceptualization as being inherent within epistemic practices. In our work, pedagogical practices are modeled (...) as learning games and epistemic practices in science education are characterized as enacted epistemic games emerging through the unfolding of learning games. Science practices are modeled as source epistemic games since they are the source of the knowledge at stake in pedagogical practices. From this point, we examine closely how playing learning games can enable students to play enacted epistemic games and then in turn the source epistemic games at the core of conceptual understanding. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is to link pedagogical practices to epistemic practices in science education and to science practices in general. Our method is consistent with this epistemological framework as our case study on the concept of earthquakes in a 5th grade classroom sequence illustrates. Following an investigation of two experienced teachers and their classes during a teaching unit, our analysis shows how teaching effectiveness is determined by a dialectic. This entails on the one hand a didactic continuity between learning games and enacted epistemic games and, on the other, an epistemic continuity between enacted epistemic games and source epistemic games. (shrink)

This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the (...) seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant's view of his own historicity, and of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, and in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics. (shrink)

In 1959 C. P. Snow delivered his now-famous Rede Lecture, 'The Two Cultures,' a reflection on the academy based on the premise that intellectual life was divided into two cultures: the arts and humanities on one side and science on the other. Since then, a third culture, generally termed 'social science' and comprised of fields such as sociology, political science, economics, and psychology, has emerged. Jerome Kagan's book describes the assumptions, vocabulary, and contributions of each of these cultures and argues (...) that the meanings of many of the concepts used by each culture are unique to it and do not apply to the others because the source of evidence for the term is special. The text summarizes the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to our understanding of human nature and questions the popular belief that biological processes are the main determinant of variation in human behavior. (shrink)

In this two-part analysis, I analyze Marc Lewis’s arguments against the brain-disease view of substance addiction and for a developmental-learning approach that demedicalizes addiction. I focus especially on the question of whether addiction is a medical disorder. In Part 1, I argued that, even if one accepts Lewis’s critique of the brain evidence presented for the brain-disease view, his arguments fail to establish that addiction is not a disorder. Relying on my harmful dysfunction analysis of disorder, I defended the view (...) that addiction is a medical disorder and a brain disorder. In Part 2, I consider some broader philosophical issues raised by Lewis’s arguments: I consider a larger puzzle, at the heart of the neo-Kraepelinian program in contemporary psychiatry, that is raised by Lewis’s argument that addiction is not a disorder because the brain displays no damage but only normal learning: must all mental disorders be brain disorders, or can mental disorders occur in normal brains? I argue that mental disorders can occur in normal brains. I critique Lewis’s response to the evolutionary “novel environment” approach to explaining why addiction is a disorder. Lewis agrees with brain-disease proponents that interpreting addiction as brain disorder relieves addicts of moral censure, but I argue that moral defect and brain disease are not exclusive. Finally, I consider Lewis’s “developmental-learning” account of addiction that encourages positive and empowering narrativizing of addiction, but I argue that the developmental-learning view is vacuous due to use of an overly broad notion of “development.”. (shrink)

v. 1. A dialectical examination of the conceptions of freedom.--v. 2. A dialectical examination of the controversies about freedom.

The quantifier Q m,n binds m + n variables. In the κ-interpretation $M \models Q^{m,n} \bar{x}, \bar{y}\phi\bar{x}, \bar{y}$ means that there is a κ-powered proper subset X of |M| such that whenever ā ∈ mX and b̄ ∈ n X̃ then $M \models \phi\bar{a}, \bar{b}$. If σ ∈ L m,n has a model in the κ-interpretation does it have a model in the λ-interpretation? For σ ∈ L 1,1, κ regular and uncountable, and λ = ω 1 the answer is (...) yes. (shrink)

Résumé Depuis la Place (1983), Annie Ernaux a tourné le dos à la fiction pour se consacrer à des récits factuels, témoignant de l’expérience du transfuge de classe. Pour ce faire, elle recourt à des modèles explicatifs venus des sciences sociales. Cet article propose d’examiner l’éthique narrative propre à cette posture de témoin, à travers deux options formelles qui l’incarnent : d’abord, une énonciation « transpersonnelle », ensuite la mise au point d’une « écriture plate ».

Ecological crisis is being widely discussed in society today and therefore, the subject of religious naturalism has emerged as a major topic in religion. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-four chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts: ¿ Varieties of religious naturalism and its relations to other outlooks (...) ¿ Some earlier religious naturalists ¿ Pantheism, materialism, and the value-ladenness of nature ¿ Ecology, humans, and politics in naturalistic perspective ¿ Religious naturalism and traditional religions ¿ Putting religious naturalism into practice ¿ Critical discussions of religious naturalism. Within these sections central issues, debates, and problems are examined, including: defining religious naturalism; religious underpinnings of ecology; natural piety; the religious-aesthetic; ecstatic naturalism as deep pantheism; spiritual ecology; African-American religious naturalism; Christian religious naturalism; Dao and water; Confucianism; environmental action; and practices in religious naturalism. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, theology, and philosophy. The Handbook will also be useful for those in related fields, such as environmental ethics and ecology. (shrink)

The general aim of this volume is to investigate the nature of the relation between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation. In particular, it is concerned with the character and intimacy of this relationship: is there a mere causal connection between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation, or are the two relata constitutively associated with one another? The essays in the book's first section investigate important conceptual issues related to the pictorial experience of paintings. In Section II, the essays discuss the notion (...) of styles, techniques, agency, and facture, and also take into account the experience of photographic and cinematic pictures. The Pleasure of Pictures goes substantially beyond current debates in the philosophy of depiction to launch a new area of reflection in philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Prologue: retrospective and prospective -- The ethics of enough -- Real and apparent goods -- Wrong desires: pleasure, money, fame, and power -- Right desires: the totum bonum and its constituents -- Fundamental errors in moral philosophy -- Necessary but not sufficient -- Epilogue: transcultural ethics.

Preface by Dr. Franz Alexander - Director, Psychiatric and Pychosomatic Research Institute Mount Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles. Vol. 9.

Answering a question of Cifú Lopes, we give a syntactic characterization of those continuous sentences that are preserved under reduced products of metric structures. In fact, we settle this question in the wider context of general structures as introduced by the second author.

Après la crise de l’année 2008, la plus grave jamais traversée par le capitalisme depuis 1929, après des immixtions d’un niveau rarement atteint du politique dans l’économie, voilà que surgissent d’amples interrogations sur la nature même de ce régime économique. En ces temps de crise de l’économie et de trouble dans la pensée sur l’économie, il faut..

What does "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" mean? This question, in one form or another, has been asked of the poem from the beginning; indeed, so interesting and so dominant has this question been that Coleridge's poem now serves as one of our culture's standard texts for introducing students to poetic interpretation. The question has been, and still is, an important one, and I shall try to present here yet another answer to it. My approach, however, will differ slightly (...) from the traditional ones, for I do not believe that we can arrive at a synthetic answer until we reflect upon the meaning of the question itself. I will begin, therefore, by reconsidering briefly the history of the poem's criticism. . . . A poem like the "Rime" encourages, therefore, the most diverse readings and interpretations. Since this encouragement is made in terms of the Christian economy, the interpretations have generally remained within the broad spiritualist terms, "heathen" terms, in Newman's view, which Coleridge's mind had allowed for. The historical method of the "Rime," however, had also prepared the ground for a thoroughly revisionist view of the poem, in which the entire ideological structure of its symbolist procedures would finally be able to be seen in their special historical terms. (shrink)

Dans les leçons sur la rythmique ancienne de F. Nietzsche, le rythme est objet d’une étude philologique, lié à l’expérience de la parole et du texte, mais aussi et surtout d’une étude anthropologique, parce que son action sera repérée dans les moments originaires de l’organisation religieuse, sociale et civile de l’homme. Le lien entre ces deux approches s’éclaircit quand on comprend que le discours sur le rythme est d’abord un discours sur la forme (en un sens aristotélicien) et sur la (...) norme (la normativité), ou bien sur la convention et sur son rapport avec la nature. Le rythme est une forme qui a une capacité normative, capable d’informer la matière, conçue aussi bien comme poésie et musique ou comme âme, caractère et habitus de l’homme. (shrink)