In her recent pamphlet Special Educational Needs: a new look (2005) Mary Warnock has called for a radical review of special needs education and a substantial reconsideration of the assumptions upon which the current educational framework is based. The latter, she maintains, is hindered by a contradiction between the intention to treat all learners as the same and that of responding adequately to the needs arising from their individual differences. The tension highlighted by Warnock, which is central to the debate (...) in special and inclusive education, is also referred to as the ‘dilemma of difference’. This consists in the seemingly unavoidable choice between, on the one hand, identifying children's differences in order to provide for them differentially, with the risk of labelling and dividing, and, on the other, accentuating the ‘sameness’ and offering common provision, with the risk of not making available what is relevant to, and needed by, individual children. In this paper, I argue that the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen provides an innovative and important perspective for re-examining the dilemma of difference in significant ways. In particular, I maintain that reconceptualising disability and special needs through the capability approach makes possible the overcoming of the tension at the core of the dilemma of difference, whilst at the same time inscribing the debate within an ethical, normative framework based upon justice and equality. (shrink)

abstract Emerging from the political activism of disabled people's movements and mainly theorised by the scholar Michael Oliver, the social model of disability is central to current debates in Disability Studies as well as to related perspectives on inclusive education. This article presents a philosophical critique of the social model of disability and outlines some of its theoretical problems. It argues that in conceptualising disability as unilaterally socially caused, the social model presents a partial and, to a certain extent, flawed (...) understanding of the relation between impairment, disability and society, thus setting a framework that needs clarifications and extensions and presents limits to the achievement of its own aim of inclusion. This article concludes by suggesting that, despite its theoretical limits, the social model acts as a powerful and important reminder to face issues of inclusion as fundamental, moral issues. (shrink)

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel characterizes Arabic/Islamic philosophy as ‘Oriental’. The meaning and motivation of this characterization are not obvious. In this paper, I address his treatment and outline the key ideas that lead Hegel to describe Islamic philosophy as ‘Oriental’. By highlighting similarities and differences in relation to Oriental philosophy, I shed light on Hegel's approach to Islamic philosophy, which is connected to his view of Oriental philosophy, the East and Islam in its various aspects, (...) and to his more general view of the history of philosophy and of the Absolute as spirit. (shrink)

The ideal of educational equality is fundamentally grounded in the egalitarian principle that social and institutional arrangements should be designed to give equal consideration to all. However, beyond this broad stipulation, the precise content of the ideal of educational equality is more difficult to determine. In this article, I aim to contribute to the debate on equality in education by dealing with the current, contentious issue of provision for students with disabilities and special educational needs. Thus, the paper addresses the (...) question of what constitutes a just provision for these students, and it provides an answer in terms of the capability approach, as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

The authors review how attention helps track and process dynamic events, selecting and integrating information across time and space to produce a continuing identity for a moving, changing target. Rather than a fixed ‘spotlight’ that helps identify a static target, attention needs a mobile window or ‘pointer’ to track a moving target, picking up pieces of evidence along the way to determine not just what the target is, but what it is doing. Behavioural studies show that this dynamic version of (...) attention is model-based, using familiar trajectories to help identify a target and to guide encoding of continuing input from its path. Attention has very coarse temporal resolution for both static and moving targets. However, when the focus of selection is on the move, a given location on a moving target’s path can be selected for extremely brief instants, as little as 50 ms, compared to the typical ‘dwell time’ or minimum duration of attention selection at a fixed location, of 200 ms or more. To determine the path of a moving object, attention must accurately process and sort the onsets and offsets in order to match an offset to the subsequent onset. This aspect of dynamic attention has been called the ‘when’ pathway and patient studies show that it is a qualitatively different system from spatial attention, being completely based in the right parietal lobe for events in both hemifields. Finally, like the salience map of spatial attention, temporal attention may have its own map that guides allocation to upcoming, current, and recent moments to select information at the appropriate time, changing the experience of time as it does so. (shrink)

The harmful effects of Covid 19 on children living in poverty have refocused attention on the complex nature of child poverty and the vexed question of its relationship to education. The paper examines a tension at the heart of much discussion of child poverty and education. On the one hand, education is often regarded as essential for children’s flourishing and a means by which children can “escape” poverty; yet on the other hand, education systems, institutions, and practices, often reflect and (...) entrench the disadvantages associated with poverty. Narratives concerning education as an escape from poverty tend not to deal in any depth with the injustices associated with poverty, stressing instead the transformative potential of education. By contrast, largely sociological analyses of the ways in which schooling reproduces inequalities tend to stop short of developing a normative account of how education can contribute to transforming the structural injustices related to poverty and its effects on children’s lives. In working to move beyond this analytic impasse, the paper shows how the cluster of concepts, which Robeyns (2018) locates as central to the capability approach, give insights which help to address these two different lacunae. The notion of conversion factors highlights the significance of taking account of existing relationships in education, while the distinction between capabilities and functionings helps guide practices regarding the education of children living in poverty. Drawing on literature on the heightened inequalities associated with poor children’s experience of lack of schooling during the COVID pandemic, the paper sketches some of the ways in which sociological analysis and normative evaluation can be linked in taking forward an “ethically engaged political philosophy” (Wolff, 2018) to discuss child poverty and education in real schools. (shrink)

Le Souffle de la Terre/The Pulse of the Earth is an on-going sound work (1996–20–) by the artist L. Abenavoli. She outlines the sonification methods employed in the making of the work in an analysis of its technical and conceptual features. The work is described in terms of her artistic objectives.

Philip Graham’s biography of Baroness Mary Warnock, Mary Warnock. Ethics, Education and Public Policy in Post-War Britain, is a rich and well-researched account of Warnock’s life and work, set agai...

This study investigates the effectiveness of pedagogical practices used to teach business ethics. The business community has greatly increased its demands for better ethics education in business programs. Educators have generally agreed that the ethical principles of business people have declined. It is important, then, to examine how common methods of instruction used in business ethics could contribute to the development of higher levels of moral judgment competence for students. To determine the effectiveness of these methods, moral judgment competence levels (...) for undergraduate and graduate students from three institutions were measured and compared based upon the pedagogical method used in a business class. Significant differences were found for moral reasoning and moral competence scores depending on the method used for ethics instruction. Students in classes with more highly integrated ethics coverage scored higher in moral reasoning and moral competence. (shrink)

In the provocative discussions comprising this collection, scholars Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda explore the multifaceted, enduring legacy of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. In the process they challenge and inspire the reader to do as these great figures once did—to look deep inside oneself to discover potential for growth, to encounter the natural world with reverence and delight, and to express themselves with poetry and imagination. With great appreciation for the timeless and universal (...) relevance of the American Renaissance, Bosco, Myerson, and Ikeda encourage each person to lead lives of greatness and to do nothing less than create Waldens of their own. (shrink)

This article delves into Blaise Pascal’s religious philosophy, focusing on his use of the phrase “Scio cui credidi” (I know whom I have believed) to explore his understanding of faith. It analyzes Pascal’s “Memorial” and the “Summary of the Life of Jesus Christ”, highlighting how Christ is central to Pascal’s belief system. The discussion reveals the transformational nature of Pascal’s faith, particularly after his mystical experience on November 23, 1654. This experience is crucial in understanding his shift from a philosophical (...) to a deeply personal, Christ-centered faith. The article underscores Pascal’s journey from a scientific and philosophical perspective to an intimate, emotional resonance with Christian faith, demonstrating how his personal encounters with the divine profoundly shaped his religious perspective. (shrink)

Réunit des textes d'auteurs français des XVIIe et XVIIIe s. évoquant Saint-Augustin.

RESUMENEl ensayo intenta mostrar la peculiar importancia que el arte, desde finales del s. XVI, concede al afecto y la atención que paralelamente le dedica la reflexión filosófica, hasta llegar a la obra de Baruch Spinoza. No pretende hacer una historia sino destacar ciertos registros que permitan pensar el valor concedido al afecto, concebido sin sublimaciones, desde su raíz corporal.PALABRAS CLAVEFILOSOFÍA DEL ARTE, AFECTO, SPINOZAABSTRACTThis paper intends to show the specific value which art has attached to affection as well as (...) the attention it is subject of on the part of philosophical reflections from the end of XVI century to Baruch Spinoza’s works. The essay doesn´t attempt to draw a historical process, but rather to highlight some aspects which may allow us to consider the importance attached to bodily affections without any sublimation.KEYWORDSPHILOSOPHY OF ART, AFFECTION, SPINOZA. (shrink)

This article examines religious socialism as an American social movement. It focuses on the most recent iteration of this tradition, the Religion and Socialism Commission, formed in the 1970s as a subgroup of the Democratic Socialists of America. Drawing on concepts from social movement theory such as frame alignment and political opportunity structure, it argues that the Religion and Socialism Commission ultimately failed in its attempt to transition from an organization into a social movement. It then considers various possibilities for (...) the future of religious socialism in the United States, given new variables such as a changing political opportunity structure and the rise of social media. (shrink)