Interest in science and math plays an important role in encouraging STEM motivation and career aspirations. This interest decreases for girls between late childhood and adolescence. Relatedly, positive mentoring experiences with female teachers can protect girls against losing interest. The present study examines whether visitors to informal science learning sites differ in their expressed science and math interest, as well as their science and math stereotypes following an interaction with either a male or female educator. Participants were visitors to one (...) of four ISLS in the United States and United Kingdom. Following an interaction with a male or female educator, they reported their math and science interest and responded to math and science gender stereotype measures. Female participants reported greater interest in math following an interaction with a female educator, compared to when they interacted with a male educator. In turn, female participants who interacted with a female educator were less likely to report male-biased math gender stereotypes. Self-reported science interest did not differ as a function of educator gender. Together these findings suggest that, when aiming to encourage STEM interest and challenge gender stereotypes in informal settings, we must consider the importance of the gender of educators and learners. (shrink)

Recent debate over transubstantiation has concentrated either on transubstantiation as a kind of embarrassment in consequence of modern physics, or on the extent to which it is both a doctrine elaborated in the light of metaphysics and recoverable in consequence of metaphysics having been overcome. In this sense the tension between Aquinas' apparently metaphysical formulation of the doctrine and the less overtly metaphysical formula adopted by the Council of Trent has indicated a way of ‘rescuing’ or ‘recovering’ the doctrine.This article (...) argues that such a recovery is a false trail. Pope Paul VI was right to be wary of relativising the Eucharistic event to the believing community in any doctrine of transignification. Alternatively, attempts like Chauvet's and Macquarrie's to restate Eucharistic event in terms of Heidegger's Geviert presuppose Heidegger has succeeded in destroying the metaphysics of presence, so that they can use the fruits of his researches. What is actually at issue in thinking through transubstantiation is how the doctrine relates to conceptions of the physical: Aristotelian, what comes to be Newtonian, or postmodern conceptions which appear to eschew physics altogether.Heidegger's contribution to the debate would better point to how knowing anything means being included in and disclosed by what I know. A re‐investigation of transubstantiation might therefore take into account the extraordinary reappearance of the term ‘transubstantiation’ in current non‐theological investigations of performativity .Here transubstantiation would include not the maximal meaning of bread and wine as signs constituted in das Geviert, ‘after’ substance has been critiqued, but their minimality, in enacting a change in substance . This would confirm the divinising meaning of the Eucharistic event, which stresses how we are caught up into the divine. Thus, whereas in transignification the Eucharistic event occurs in consequence of the will of the community of believers, in transubstantiation it is the enactment of the community as community that is at issue, an enactment in consequence of no act of will of its own. In terms of the postmodern and non‐theological appropriation of the word transubstantiation, this means that I who participate in the Eucharistic am re‐ordered, or re‐materialised, or ‘trans‐substantiated’ in the Eucharistic event. (shrink)

This collection of 16 original articles by prominent theorists from a variety of disciplines provides an excellent insight into current thinking about artifacts. The four sections address issues concerning the metaphysics of artifacts, the nature and cognitive development of artifact concepts, and the place of artifacts in evolutionary history. The most overtly philosophical contributions are in the first two sections. Metaphysical issues addressed include the ‘mind-dependence’ of artifacts and the bearing of this on their ‘real’ existence, and the distinction between (...) natural and artifact kinds, and its implications for issues in epistemology and semantics – for example, whether there is ‘maker's knowledge’ of artifacts, and whether ‘direct’ theories of reference apply to artifact-kind terms. The papers concerned with the nature of artifact concepts – the ways in which we represent artifacts to ourselves – address how judgements of artifact identity track judgements about manifest appearance, function, and maker's intentions, and the neuroscientific basis for artifact categorization. Papers …. (shrink)

This collected volume is inspired by the work of Edward Halper and is historically focused with contributions from leading scholars in Ancient and Medieval philosophy. Though its chapters cover a diverse range of topics in epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy, the collection is unified by the contributors’ consideration of these topics in terms of the fundamental questions of metaphysics. The first section of the volume, “Knowing and Being,” is dedicated to the connection between metaphysics and epistemology and includes chapters on (...) Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, and the Ancient Daoists. The second section, “Goodness as Knowing How to Be,” addresses ethics as an outgrowth of human metaphysical concerns and includes chapters on Plato, Aristotle, and Maimonides. Contributors include William H. F. Altman, Luc Brisson, Ronna Burger, Miriam Byrd, Owen Goldin, Lenn Goodman, Mitchell Miller, Richard Parry, Richard Patterson, Nastassja Pugliese, John Rist, May Sim, Roslyn Weiss, and Chad Wiener. (shrink)

In “Internalism and Externalism,” Laurence BonJour suggests that the contemporary epistemological debate over internalism and externalism concerns the formulation of the justification or warrant condition in an account of knowledge. The internalist requires that for a belief to meet this condition, all of the necessary elements must be cognitively accessible to the believer, whereas the externalist claims that at least some such elements do not need to be accessible to the believer. BonJour gives an overview of this dispute. He (...) suggests that the opposition between the two views is less straightforward than has usually been thought. He proposes, in addition, that each of them has valuable roles to play in major epistemological issues, even though the internalist approach is more fundamental in an important way. (shrink)

What is it about you in virtue of which you are having the thoughts you are now having? The answer will no doubt make some appeal to the state your brain is now in. Most philosophers, however, claim that this is only part of the answer; many of the facts that determine your thoughts lie outside your skin. This view is called externalism, and in this book Keith L. Butler argues that, contrary to widespread philosophical opinion, externalism is very (...) implausible. Through critical evaluation of a vast amount of philosophical work on the subject, Butler shows that externalism faces problematic epistemological implications (regarding self-knowledge and knowledge of the external world), and problematic metaphysical implications (regarding mental causation). Moreover, externalism derives no support from an appeal to the cognitive sciences. The controversy generated by this book bears on issues in the philosophy of mind, language, science, and epistemology. It is required reading for serious students and professionals concerned with these areas of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how Soldiers make hard choices between competing options. To understand the psychological processes behind these types of decisions, we present qualitative data collected from...

Reading fiction for pleasurable is robustly correlated with improved cognitive attainment and other benefits. It is also in decline among young people in developed nations, in part because of competition from moving image fiction. We review existing research on the differences between reading/hearing verbal fiction and watching moving image fiction, as well as looking more broadly at research on image/text interactions and visual versus verbal processing. We conclude that verbal narrative generates more diverse responses than moving image narrative., We note (...) that reading and viewing narrative are different tasks, with different cognitive loads. Viewing moving image narrative mostly involves visual processing with some working memory engagement, whereas reading narrative involves verbal processing, visual imagery and personal memory (Xu et al 2005). but Attempts to compare the two by creating suggest that existing research is flawed by attempts to create equivalent stimuli and task demands face a number of challenges, and we discuss these difficulties in comparative approaches. We then investigate the possibility of identifying lower level processing mechanisms that might distinguish cognition of the two media, and propose a focus on internal scene construction and on working memory as foci for future research. Although many of the sources we draw on are focussed on English speaking participants in European or North American settings, we also cover material relating to speakers of Dutch, German, Hebrew and Japanese in their respective countries, and studies of a remote Turkish mountain community. (shrink)

Two kinds of sources are available to the historian to reconstruct the first centuries of the history of Mithradates' antidote: biographical information on Mithradates' interests in medicine, and a series of recipes. In this paper I argue that we cannot reconstruct the original recipe of Mithridatium from our existing sources. Instead, I examine how the Romans remodelled the history of the King's death and used the royal name to create a "Roman" drug. This drug enjoyed a huge popularity in the (...) first centuries of the Roman Empire. An Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, consumed it as well as members of the upper class; and many highly literate physicians recommended it notwithstanding the medical sect they were belonging to. With all its expensive ingredients, and its claim to work as a panacea, Mithridatium responded to a real demand in a Roman Empire at its commercial and political apogee. (shrink)

The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for "the good life." This book examines Rousseau's effort to show how and why, despite this challenge from science, nature can remain a standard for human behavior. While recognizing an original goodness in human being in the state of nature, Rousseau knew this to be too low a standard (...) and promoted the idea of "the natural man living in the state of society," notably in _Emile_. Laurence Cooper shows how, for Rousseau, conscience—understood as the "love of order"—functions as the agent whereby simple savage sentiment is sublimated into a more refined "civilized naturalness" to which all people can aspire. (shrink)

We question the idea that the mirror neuron system is the substrate of social affordances perception, and we suggest that most of the activity seen in the parietal and premotor cortex of the human brain is independent of mirroring activity as characterized in macaques, but rather reflects a process of one's own action specification in response to social signals.

With their intensive use of data to classify and price risk, insurers have often been confronted with data-related issues of fairness and discrimination. This paper provides a comparative review of discrimination issues raised by traditional statistics versus machine learning in the context of insurance. We first examine historical contestations of insurance classification, showing that it was organized along three types of bias: pure stereotypes, non-causal correlations, or causal effects that a society chooses to protect against, are thus the main sources (...) of dispute. The lens of this typology then allows us to look anew at the potential biases in insurance pricing implied by big data and machine learning, showing that despite utopic claims, social stereotypes continue to plague data, thus threaten to unconsciously reproduce these discriminations in insurance. To counter these effects, algorithmic fairness attempts to define mathematical indicators of non-bias. We argue that this may prove insufficient, since as it assumes the existence of specific protected groups, which could only be made visible through public debate and contestation. These are less likely if the right to explanation is realized through personalized algorithms, which could reinforce the individualized perception of the social that blocks rather than encourages collective mobilization. (shrink)

This essay is part of a symposium on affirmative action that took place at the University of Cincinnati with the distinguished legal scholar Ronald Dworkin. I argue against affirmative action. And I discuss at length the votes of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the dissent of Justice Clarence Thomas. I develop the idea of idiosyncratic excellence; and I argue that diversity is a weakness insofar as it (a) an excuse for social myopia and (b)an impediment to individuals seeing beyond their (...) differences and affirming the excellences that they witness. The expected publication date, Univ of Cinn Law Review, is March 2004. (shrink)

This article develops the concept of heritage pharmacology as an encompassing critical framework in order to radically recast the interactions and efficacies of heritage as a particularly potent pharmacology of care. I critically engage with Stiegler's philosophic reflections On Pharmacology, which builds on Derrida's work and recasts pharmacology – a term usually reserved for that branch of the biomedical sciences dealing with drugs and their interactions and efficacies – in order to draw out the ‘curative-toxic’ dimensions at play in wider (...) care tropes. By placing core concepts and practices of heritage and pharmacology in critical dialogue, my aim as heritage critic is to gain mutual insights into ‘care’, as that which links together the two domains of heritage and health, as otherwise distinct discourses, concepts, technics, and practices. My specific intervention rethinks the crucial role of ‘heritage pathologies’ and the underpinning memory-work at play within these tropes while grounding these in a case study of Jerusalem Syndrome (JS). I argue that it is the dynamic of heritage pathologies, best crystallized in JS debates, that invests us in the wider Stieglerian quest/ion of ‘pharmacology’, as a concern with ‘what makes life worth living’. Such quests ultimately take this article into the realpolitik of Palestine. (shrink)

En suspendant la violence de ses passions et de ses désirs, l'homme se montre capable d'une relation harmonieuse et respectueuse avec lui-même, les êtres et les choses, dans un dialogue avec la douceur de la vérité et la beauté de l'art qui la recrée. On étudiera comment, à l'âge humaniste et classique, les modernes ont pensé la douceur à partir de la relecture des sources antiques et chrétiennes dans les divers champs du savoir de la poétique à l'éthique, de la (...) métaphysique à l'esthétique et dessiné un idéal difficilement définissable et aisément rompu."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Face à la question des modes de distribution inégalitaire de l’honneur social et de la lutte pour la reconnaissance chez des populations objets de mépris social, le « savoir-être avec » l’Autre est devenu pour le sociologue un enjeu scientifique, méthodologique et épistémologique important. Est proposée ici une ethnographie de la reconnaissance où l’Autre est regardé et reconnu avec son expérience, sa compétence, et son identité plurielle, fluctuante, réversible, inscrit dans une diversité de mondes sociaux organisée par des processus culturels (...) producteurs de hiérarchies et d’inégalités.When faced with unequal forms of distribution of social honour and with the struggle for recognition among populations subject to social contempt, knowing how to be with the Other has become a major methodological and epistemological scientific issue. Here, we are proposing an ethnography of recognition, in which the Other is regarded and recognized with his experience, his competence, and his fluctuating, reversible and varied identity, anchored in a diversity of social worlds organized on the basis of structural processes which produce hierarchy and inequalities. (shrink)

In the winter of 1859, the Boston poet Julia Ward Howe sailed for Cuba; and in the winter of 1860, Ticknor and Fields published an account of her travel. A Trip to Cuba appeared only months after the same firm had published Richard Henry Dana's story of his ???vacation voyage,??? To Cuba and Back . These two narratives responded to a burgeoning American interest in the Caribbean island that promised recuperation to American invalids and adventure for military ???filibusters.??? Howe's narrative (...) demonstrated a self-conscious familiarity with antebellum travel writing more broadly, however, as she playfully resisted yet ultimately upheld various conventions of a genre that had become a staple of the American literary marketplace. ???I do not know why all celebrated people who write books of travel begin by describing their days of seasickness,??? she noted, before discussing her own shipboard illness. She followed similar cues as she blended elements of autobiography, the social sketch, nature writing, and political and social commentary. Across 250 ???sprightly??? pages, readers were offered a familiar melange of humorous portraits, detailed descriptions of ???foreign??? institutions, and extensive commentary on local customs and social mores. (shrink)

Better health requires sectors like housing and education, and healthcare, to collaborate. That needs three strategies. Make full use of waivers to foster experimentation. Use techniques to encourage agencies at all levels to work together. And use new incentives to foster local partnerships.

I have recently been appointed Coeditor of a journal published on my campus, CLIO: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History, with a view to expanding the journal’s philosophy offerings. It is a position I accepted only on the understanding that I would be free to develop the journal as an English-language forum for the study, indisciplinary application and critical evaluation of the Hegelian philosophy.

Personal life events of a chief executive officer can generate tensions between the CEO’s right to personal privacy and the desire of shareholders for information. Such circumstances can create information asymmetry between the executive management and the shareholders of a firm, a situation likely to produce unfavorable pressures on an organization’s stock price. Failure to fully disclose material personal life events can impact the decision-making actions of the CEO, causing the stock price of the firm to vacillate as a result (...) of rumors and other informational uncertainties. These vacillations in stock price may impact a firm’s liquidity, increase the cost of capital, and affect long term returns to shareholders. We draw upon the ethical leadership and signaling theory literatures to demonstrate how a firm can reduce stock price volatility through a CEO making non-required disclosures that reduce information asymmetry. (shrink)

Ce catalogue de l’exposition qui s’est tenue au musée des Beaux-Arts de Bilbao de février à mai 2011 propose, sous la direction de Corinne Charles, une compilation d’articles et une étude en espagnol plus détaillée des objets exposés. Outre la qualité esthétique des reproductions, ce bel ouvrage est le premier du genre sur les représentations des femmes dans l’art à l’époque gothique. Son titre Hay más en ti, « Plus est en vous », reprend la devise de Louis de Bruges (...) (vers 1427-1492) incluant... (shrink)

La réelle généralisation du téléphone en France, outil technique de médiation de la communication interpersonnelle ordinaire, date, après une longue gestation, d’une génération. Revisiter les enquêtes et analyses sur les usages sociaux du téléphone pendant le quart de siècle écoulé facilite, en prenant du recul, le suivi de l’évolution d’une appropriation, par les Français, qui ne fut pas seulement technique mais culturelle. Ce travail de remémorisation et de synthèse d’une révolution invisible préalable à la visibilité soudaine du téléphone portable dans (...) les médias et les espaces publics s’appuie sur les jalons suivants : processus de diffusion dans la société ; alternative au courrier et au face-à-face ; représentations sociales ; mécanismes de compétence interlocutoire ; normes et tactiques d’usage ; différenciation du genre masculin vs féminin ; usages privés sur le lieu de travail ; visite à distance ; réseaux de sociabilité ; répondeur ; téléphone mobile.In France, the telephone, a technical interpersonal communication tool, underwent a long gestation period and became widely used one generation ago. A study of the surveys and analyses of the social uses of the telephone in the last 25 years makes it easier to follow the evolution of its appropriation by the French, which was not merely technical but also cultural. The present history and analysis of the invisible revolution that took place prior to the sudden emergence of the mobile phone in the media and in public places focuses on the following themes : spreading process in society ; alternative to mail or to face-to-face communication ; social representations ; speaking skill mechanisms ; rules and tactics of usage ; differences between sexes ; private uses in the workplace ; remote visits ; social networks ; answering-machines ; mobile phones. (shrink)