This paper explores the biographical and cultural sources that inspired the decision of Janusz Korczak to make his life’s vocation the education of young children from dysfunctional families. This decision emerged out of the radical version of humanism he embraced. His identification of children as the population his humanist ethos must serve, distinguishes it from other versions of humanism. The paper explores the role his sense of self and his identification with Poles, Jews, and humanity play in the composition of (...) this humanism. It identifies the hybridity of his cultural identifications as its heart. It proposes that the tensions between these identifications in general, and his non-Jewish Jewish identification that situated him as being ‘a part of’ and ‘apart from’ Polish society in particular, induced Korczak to create a universal religion of children in which religious, ethnic, or physical distinctions do not generate prejudice, intolerance, and violence. (shrink)

Ouija board sessions are illustrious examples of how subjective feelings of control – the Sense of Agency - can be manipulated in real life settings. We present findings from a field experiment at a paranormal conference, where Ouija enthusiasts were equipped with eye trackers while using the Ouija board. Our results show that participants have a significantly lower probability at visually predicting letters in a Ouija board session compared to a condition in which they are instructed to deliberately spell out (...) words with the Ouija board planchette. Our results also show that Ouija board believers report lower SoA compared to sceptic participants. These results support previous research which claim that low sense of agency is caused by a combination of retrospective inference and an inhibition of predictive processes. Our results show that users in Ouija board sessions become increasingly better at predicting letters as responses unfold over time, and that meaningful responses from the Ouija board can only be accounted for when considering interactions that goes on at the participant pair level. These results suggest that meaningful responses from the Ouija board may be an emergent property of interacting and predicting minds that increasingly impose structure on initially random events in Ouija sessions. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the problem of selfidentification in the domain of action. We claim that this problem can arise not just for the self as object, but also for the self as subject in the ascription of agency. We discuss and evaluate some proposals concerning the mechanisms involved in selfidentification and in agencyascription, and their possible impairments in pathological cases. We argue in favor of a simulation hypothesis that claims that actions, whether overt or covert, are centrally simulated (...) by the neural network, and that this simulation provides the basis for action recognition and attribution. (shrink)

This article shows how Plato’sParmenidesexplores the relationship between place and the geometric forms that are inscribed in it, independently of sensation, becoming and causality. The analysis concurs with essential points of what is said in theTimaeusaboutkhôra, this receptacle deprived of any intrinsic qualities, on which every sensitive reality is drawn.

In the following, I will propose and/or defend new or previous emendations for a set of passages in Catullus, most of which are deemed corrupt or even beyond repair by many, if not all, philologists. For the sake of simplicity, I will first quote Mynors's OCT text, except for possible changes in punctuation that will be justified, either implicitly or in their own terms, in the ensuing discussion. Those sections I consider incorrect I will put between obeli. In addition, I (...) will reproduce the relevant manuscript readings recorded in Mynors's apparatus, checked against Thomson's more complete collations. In each case, I will begin with summarizing the state of the question; nevertheless, owing to the vast amount of corrections or conjectures to be examined for many passages, I will concentrate on the most significant proposals. Next, I will try to show that the correction suggested conforms to the constraints of metre and language, and sheds some light on the symbolic or intertextual dimension of the poem at hand. Finally, I will provide an account of the corruption process that presumably operated, with the aim of establishing the palaeographical verisimilitude of my proposal. (shrink)

The thesis we develop in this essay is that all humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions. As an empirical research program, we follow the framework of modern linguistics.1 The spirit of the argument dates back at least to the economist Adam Smith (1759/1976) who argued for something akin to a moral grammar, and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls (...) (1971). The logic of the argument, however, comes from Noam Chomsky’s thinking on language specifically and the nature of knowledge more generally (Chomsky, 1986, 1988, 2000; Saporta, 1978). If the nature of moral knowledge is comparable in some way to the nature of linguistic knowledge, as defended recently by Harman (1977), Dwyer (1999, 2004), and Mikhail (2000; in press), then what should we expect to find when we look at the anatomy of our moral faculty? Is there a grammar, and if so, how can the moral grammarian uncover its structure? Are we aware of our moral grammar, its method of operation, and its moment-to-moment functioning in our judgments? Is there a universal moral grammar that allows each child to build a particular moral grammar? Once acquired, are different moral grammars mutually incomprehensible in the same way that a native Chinese speaker finds a native Italian speaker incomprehensible? How does the child acquire a particular moral grammar, especially if her experiences are impoverished relative to the moral judgments she makes? Are there certain forms of brain damage that disrupt moral competence but leave other forms of reasoning intact? And how did this machinery evolve, and for what particular adaptive function? We will have more to say about many of these questions later on, and Hauser (2006) develops others. However, in order to flesh out the key ideas and particular empirical research paths, let us turn to some of the central questions in the study of our language faculty.. (shrink)

In their recent article "Ideology in Action" in this journal, Alan Fine and Kent Sandstrom (1993) offer a theoretical account of ideology informed by pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. The authors provide compelling reasons for understanding ideology not simply as beliefs but as situated social action. Their effort to retrieve the analysis of ideology from the realm of the noosphere is a welcome departure from more traditional conceptions. Moreover, they provide a convincing case for bringing ideological analysis back into many of (...) our analyses of social life. In the following pages I wish to engage the authors on the terrain they have laid out. Drawing on the linguistic turn in recent social theory, I offer a few friendly critiques of their interactionist conception of ideology. After reviewing these problems I discuss how a dialogic analysis of ideology can build on Fine and Sandstrom's important account of ideology, as well as offering additional insights into its nature and dynamics. I begin, however, with a capsule review of the authors' conception of ideology in action. (shrink)

Formal tools are attributed central roles in organizing work within many modern workplaces. How should one comprehend the power of these tools? Taking the medical record as an example, this article builds on recent calls to overcome the dichotomy between the formal and the informal and proposes an understanding of the generative power of such tools that does not attribute mythical capacities to either tool or human work. To do so, it is important to look both at the history offormal (...) tools and to their real-time use in concrete work practices. These steps toward a sociology of the formal are crucial for a more comprehensive understanding and evaluation offormal systems in practice. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Le principal objectif de ce texte est d'apporter certaines clarifications par rapport à des problèmes et difficultés entourant l'usage actuel des notions de culture, d'appartenance et de dialogue. L'auteur montre que l'idée selon laquelle on pourrait être prisonnier de sa propre culture découle d'une transformation récente de la signification du concept de culture. Cette idée est critiquée comme étant un mythe, le mythe de la monade culturelle, reposant sur une mécompréhension des rapports entre culture, appartenance et dialogue. L'auteur s'efforce (...) de proposer une meilleure compréhension de ces trois concepts, de façon à éviter toute forme de relativisme radical. ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to shed light on some difficulties and problems related to the current use of the concepts of culture, belonging and dialogue. The author shows that the idea that we could be prisoners of our own culture stems from a recent transformation of the meaning of the concept of culture. This idea is criticized as a myth, the myth of the cultural monad, based on a misunderstanding of the relationship among culture, belonging and dialogue. The author tries to offer a better understanding of these three concepts, in order to avoid any form of radical relativism. (shrink)

Intent upon harmonizing doctrines of their predecessors, some Neoplatonic commentators are faced with a problem of resolving doctrinal discrepancies so as to restore the συµφωνία in the history of philosophy. This article considers a particular example of this attempt ats harmonization: how Simplicius reconciles Aristotle's Categories with the Neopythagorean doctrine of the Pseudo-Archytas. The chronological inversion introduced by the counterfeiter produces remarkable effects on the late Platonic doctrine about general terms, to the extent that a commentator such as Simplicius works (...) to reduce the dissonance between Archytas' and Aristotle's words. This paper has three aims: to restore the general grid that Simplicius uses for reading and commenting on Archytas through Aristotle; to identify the exegetical strategies aimed at a doctrinal reconciliation; to consider a specific case, provided by the doctrine of weight, which engenders a new physical theory by Simplicius. (shrink)

This article argues that David Hume's essay 'Of the Liberty of the Press' points to significant elements of his conception of the public realm and, in particular, his thoughts on the nature and importance of political discourse. Hume saw the opposition of interests as both a key constitutional support and a potential source of faction and fanaticism. His account of politeness suggests an important means through which a free press might improve the quality of public discourse such that the educative (...) facet of discourse and, what I have termed, its messy facet, could be united towards maintaining the constitutional balance, the latter by providing a forum for the opposition of interests and the former by deflating factional bigotry. (shrink)

L’origine iranienne du titre de « Vivificateur », donné en 4Q521 au héros eschatologique, auteur de la résurrection, a été établie dans un article antérieur. On suit ici le parcours du « Vivificateur » dans la littérature juive de langue grecque, dans le Nouveau Testament et dans les Actes de Thomas. In a former article we established that the title « Life-Giver » – which is attributed to an eschatological hero in 4Q521, who brings about the resurrection – has an (...) Iranian origin. Here we follow the track of the « Life-Giver » in Jewish literature written in Greek, in the New Testament and in the Acts of Thomas. (shrink)