This book validates the claim that the process of reproduction of social inequalities in teacher education is not a perfect, static process, but on the contrary, the real “seeds of transformation” within teacher education departments are abundant.

Systemic risks are risks produced through interconnected non-wrongful actions of individuals, in the sense that an individual's action is a negligible cause of the risk. Due to scale effects of interaction, their consequences can be serious but they are also difficult to predict and assess via a risk assessment. Since we can have good reason to engage in the interconnected activities giving rise to systemic risk, we incur a concurrent collective responsibility to ensure that the risks are fairly distributed and (...) well regulated. James argues that fairness in this context requires taking reasonably available precautions ensuring for each risk-bearer a favourable ratio of expected benefits over expected losses. In sections 2 and 3 we argue that such a conception of fairness applies but only on the condition that the systemic risks created are irreversible risks and that the general background conditions of justice are imperfectly fair. When risks are reversible, compensatory justice can correct for unfairness in risk imposition. Where risks are irreversible, compensatory justice necessarily fails, giving rise to a collective responsibility to regulate fairly ex ante. Additionally, where background conditions of justice are fully fair and the systemic risk is well understood, risk bearers can be said to have consented to the systemic risk. If they are not fair, we argue that the primary political obligation should lie in fixing the fairness of the backgrounds of justice. A related reason for addressing the general background conditions of fairness is that James’ account of fairness in systemic risk imposition encounters a baseline problem. If expected risks and benefits are calculated again an unfair historic background condition, systemic risk imposition would not be fully fair. Section 4 shows why differences in evidentiary uncertainty as to probability and levels of harm and effective responses require a normatively appropriate response in the form of additional precautions. We show that the evidentiary standards set for risk-based cost-benefit analysis have a connection with deontology because they express a postulate of equal treatment in formal terms. Systemic risks can have different possible degrees of epistemological certainty due to factors of social and natural origin, such as more available research funding or higher degrees of complexity for some systemic risks but not others. These differences have to be mitigated by taking even greater precautions in difficult-to-research systemic risks. (shrink)

This paper is about the use of analogical reasoning, models and metaphors in Galileo's discovery of the mountains of the moon, which he describes in the Starry Messenger, a short but groundbreaking treatise published in 1610. On the basis of the observations of the Moon he has made with the newly invented telescope, Galileo shows that the Moon has mountains and that therefore it shares the same solid, opaque and rugged nature of the Earth. I will first reconstruct Galileo's reasoning, (...) and illustrate the counterintuitive and quasi-circular way in which discovery depends on analogy: in order for analogical reasoning to succeed in bridging ontological gaps and thus serve as a discovery tool, a certain similarity between what are considered as radically different domains has to be presupposed. More particularly, in order for analogical reasoning to lead to genuine discoveries, salient features have to be selected in the source domain that will be mapped onto the target domain. There is disagreement as to how this mapping is successfully carried out: the syntactical, pragmatic and ontological-categorical approaches, all illuminate some features of this selection in the mapping process. On the basis of an analysis of Galileo's discovery, I will argue that we need a different "bootstrapping" approach which involves the construction of an imaginary temporary model encompassing both the source and the target domains, and which is occasionally strengthened by metaphors which serve as incomplete transitional models. (shrink)

Psychiatric disorders like eating disorders might be underpinned by differences in decision making. However, little previous research has investigated this potential relationship using longitudinal data. This study aimed to understand how components of decision making measured by the Cambridge Gambling Task in the United Kingdom’s Millennium Cohort Study at age 11 might explain clusters/types of ED prodrome involving body dissatisfaction, intention to lose weight, dietary restraint, excessive exercise and significant under/overweight measured in the MCS at age 14. Latent class analysis (...) revealed two groups within the cohort: a non-prodromal eating pathology group, who were more likely to be of “average” weight, according to the UK90, with minimal disordered attitudes and behaviors in relation to eating and weight; and a second group with prodromal eating pathology, who had more body dissatisfaction, a desire to lose weight, were using dietary restriction and exercise to influence weight and were more likely to be “overweight” according to the UK90. Logistic regression showed that, after adjustment for confounding, higher risk-taking scores were associated with a 60% greater probability of being in the prodromal eating pathology group, and higher scores on quality of decision making were associated with a 30% lower probability of being in the prodromal eating pathology group. Helping young people to engage in moderate risk taking and improving decision making might reduce the later presence of ED prodromes. (shrink)

Clarke and Beck discuss in their sections on congruency and confounds literature that has challenged the claim that the approximate number system represents numerical content. We argue that the propositions put forward by these studies aren't that far from the indirect model of number perception suggested by C&B.

Badania zostały sfinansowane ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki przyznanych w ramach finansowania stażu po uzyskaniu stopnia naukowego doktora na podstawie decyzji numer DEC–2014/12/S/HS1/00153.

Dans cet article sont examinés les différents sens du mot «probable» tel qu'il apparaît dans certains commentaires desTopiques d'Aristote, notamment ceux d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise, d'Averroès et surtout celui d'Agostino Nifo, ainsi que dans des traités qui s'en inspirent, notamment leDe dialogo de Carlo Sigonio et leDe inventione dialectica de Rudolph Agricola. On retrouve dans ces écrits les trois sens principaux de ce mot depuis Aristote et Cicéron: celui d'opinion communément admise, celui d'opinion qui correspond à «ce qui se passe la plupart (...) du temps» et celui d'opinion apte à produire la persuasion. À partir de cette polysémie du mot «probable», l'article met en évidence les différentes fonctions attribuées aux opinions probables dans ces divers écrits, plus particulièrement au XVIe siècle. L'association du mot «probable» avec la notion de vérité contingente conduit à mettre en valeur le lien entre hypothèse probable et conjecture. (shrink)

Thoughtprints Anne E. Berger andMarta Segarra I admit to it in the name of autobiography and in order to confide in you the following: [...] I have a particularly animalist perception and interpretation of what I do, think, write, live, ...

En su comentario al Segundo libro de las Sentencias de Pedro Lombardo, Tomás de Aquino enfrenta el problema de la materia desde distintos puntos de vista. En este artículo, algunos textos relevantes del Comentario sobre las distinciones 3, 12 y 18 son analizados con un triple propósito. En primer lugar, se presenta la perspectiva temprana de Tomás de Aquino sobre la materia, con particular atención a sus implicaciones físicas y metafísicas. En segundo lugar, las tesis del Aquinate son rastreadas hasta (...) sus raíces peripatéticas, con la finalidad de mostrar el papel crucial que juegan Avicena y Averroes en su replanteamiento de la física y metafísica aristotélicas. En tercer lugar, el pensamiento de Tomás de Aquino es puesto en el contexto del debate sobre la materia que surgió desde la recepción de la Física y la Metafísica del Aristóteles latino. Desde esta triple perspectiva, se puede apreciar la consistencia y originalidad de la propuesta temprana de Tomás de Aquino sobre la materia. (shrink)

Philosophy is dangerous business. At least, this is what Plato tells us. The literature on Plato’s metaphilosophy and methodology, however, has largely ignored this fact. In this dissertation, I show that an overemphasis on a narrow definition of Plato’s understanding of philosophy has meant we have missed an important account of how he proposes we navigate the dangers of rational inquiry. Framed as continuing the Platonic project of successfully and safely converting people to philosophy, this dissertation takes seriously the fact (...) that Plato is wary of philosophy being done badly, and shows that this perspective sheds light not only on methods such as elenchus, but also on Plato’s psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics. (shrink)

This book provides a critical reflection on automated science and addresses the question whether the computational tools we developed in last decades are changing the way we humans do science. More concretely: Can machines replace scientists in crucial aspects of scientific practice? The contributors to this book rethink and refine some of the main concepts by which science is understood, drawing a fascinating picture of the developments we expect over the next decades of human-machine co-evolution. The volume covers examples from (...) various fields and areas, such as molecular biology, climate modeling, clinical medicine, and artificial intelligence. The explosion of technological tools and drivers for scientific research calls for a renewed understanding of the human character of science. This book aims precisely to contribute to such a renewed understanding of science. (shrink)

Emotions are a natural vector for acting together with others and are witnessed in human behaviour, perception and body functions. For this reason, studies of human-to-human interaction, such as multi-person motor synchronisation, are a perfect setting to disentangle the linkage of emotion with socio-motor interaction. And yet, the majority of joint action studies aiming at understanding the impact of emotions on multi-person performance resort to enacted emotions, the ones that are emulated based on the previous experience of such emotions, and (...) almost exclusively focus on dyadic interaction. In addition, tasks chosen to study emotion in joint action are frequently characterised by a reduced number of physical dimensions to gain experimental control and subsequent facilitation in data analysis. Therefore, it is not clear how naturalistically induced emotions diffuse in more ecological interactions with other people and how emotions affect the process of interpersonal synchronisation. Here, we show that positive and negative emotions differently alter spontaneous human synchronous behaviour during a multi-person improvisation task. The study involved 39 participants organised in triads who self-reported liking improvisational activities. The task involved producing improvisational movements with the right hand. Participants were emotionally induced by manipulated social feedback involving a personal ranking score. Three-dimensional spatio-temporal data and cardiac activity were extracted and transformed into oscillatory signals to compute behavioural and physiological synchrony. Our results demonstrate that individuals induced with positive emotions, as opposed to negative emotions or a neutral state, maintained behavioural synchrony with other group members for a longer period of time. These findings contribute to the emerging shift of neuroscience of emotion and affective sciences towards the environment of social significance where emotions appear the most—in interaction with others. Our study showcases a method of quantification of synchrony in an improvisational and interactive task based on a well-established Kuramoto model. (shrink)

Generating and Understanding Jokes by Five- And Nine-Year-Olds as an Expression of Theory of Mind The main aim of the presented research is to describe children's ability to generate and understand humorous stories and pictures drawn by their peers and older or younger children. From the perspective of research on children's theories of mind, we assume that in middle childhood we will observe a transition from the basic, copy theory of mind to the interpretative one. We examined 60 five- and (...) nine-year-old children in two phases. During the first phase, the children were asked to draw a funny picture and then justify what made it funny and they had also to present the funny story. Two months later, the children were presented with some pictures chosen after the first phase as the most typical one. They had to justify why these pictures are funny. The obtained results indicate that there is a relation between the age of the subjects and the kind of interpretations of funny pictures which are consistent with the author's intentions. Significantly more nine-year-olds than five-year-olds accurately understood the author's intentions when interpreting his picture. The presented data indicate that changes in the theory of mind take place also in middle childhood and lead to a complex, interpretative theory of mind which can be discovered when researching children's understanding of jokes. (shrink)

I argue that many interpretations of Kant’s philosophy suffer from what I call “Textvergessenheit,” and that the remedy against it is what I call “kommentarische Interpretation.” By “Textvergessenheit” I mean that, despite all appearances, there are no really close, detailed, exegetical and reconstructive interpretations of Kant’s texts; and by “kommentarische Interpretation” I mean interpretations that are just this: close, detailed, exegetical and reconstructive. The main purpose of “doing history of philosophy” and thus the main purpose of interpreting philosophical texts is (...) to understand what they mean; it is not to find out whether what the text claims to be true really is true . The ultimate aim of reading a philosophical text is to understand, and this means: to reconstruct the theory and arguments put forward by its author. Once it is clear what an argument says, we can relate to it, critically or affirmatively, or whatever; but what exactly the argument really says, is never obvious. Of course, no one will argue that we should not read Kant’s text carefully. Yet, since it is a widely held belief that, contrary to what I claim, there are close readings of Kant’s text, I will provide examples that, as a matter of fact, this is not the case; Textvergessenheit is a fact of philosophical life. Key words HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. (shrink)

El Fórum 2004 acogió la XX edición del Congreso Público Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), que contó con la participación de destacados miembros de la comunidad científica i de instituciones públicas y privadas relevantes en el ámbito de la ciencia a nivel internacional. La reflexión propia del congreso PCST, que se centró en cómo hacer llegar, comunicar a la ciudadanía los objetivos, tendencias y resultados de la investigación científica actual, se incorporó a un diálogo más amplio, que tenía por (...) objetivo encontrar puntos de acuerdo entre los ponentes sobre la difícil articulación entre el conocimiento científico i la diversidad cultural en el mundo actual: el Diálogo denominado Conocimiento científico y diversidad cultural, en el seno del Fórum 2004. (shrink)

RESUMENEl artículo que se presenta aquí traducido se editó en alemán en un volumen homenaje al filósofo Heinrich Rombach, quien se ha sabido unido a la «escuela de Freiburg » (en Briesgau) y determinado por la conexión entre Husserl y Heidegger, que, a pesar de las diferencias, es Fenomenología. Amigos, colegas y discípulos del profesor Rombach, por entonces profesor activo de la Universidad de Würzburg, dejaron en ese volumen huellas de haber oteado brechas y caminos muy distintos, en pos de (...) alcanzar espacios abiertos, libres y diversos, propios de un filosofar que se sabe estructural, intermundano e intercultural. La participación de Franco Volpi, que se concentró en el Welt und Gegenwelt de Rombach, caminó a la par de quienes transitaron el primero de los tres movimientos, que emprendió la filosofía de Rombach y que se llama Hermética filosófica. Inspirado, pues, por la lectura del Welt und Gegenwelt, Volpi defiende que con el proyecto de la hermética el pensar de Rombach aventaja, de modo radical, la Zeitkritik de Heidegger de los fundamentos epocales, en cuyo caso el profesor italiano pone a consideración el aporte de la Hermética en la tradición de la filosofía alemana, que alcanza al fundador de la escuela hermeneútica. La carta de respuesta de Rombach, por su lado, desmiente el haber tenido que ver con la Zeitkritik heideggeriana, y lleva a primer plano lo fundamental del fenómeno hermético, esto es, la unidad inmediata e inseparable de ser humano y realidad, lo cual acontece como el respectivo caminar juntos o a la par, y sería algo con lo cual se topa quien lo pueda ver. Hermética sería entonces el arte de ver esa unidad inmediata.PALABRAS CLAVEROMBACH–HERMÉTICA–HERMENEÚTICA–FENOMENOLOGÍA–CONCREATIVO.ABSTRACTThis is a translation of an article originally published in German in a special issue dedicated to philosopher Heinrich Rombach. Rombach identified himself as a member of the “Freiburg School” in Breisgau, and delimited by the connection between Husserl and Heidegger, which, despite their differences is Phenomenology. Friends, colleagues and disciples of Professor Rombach, who was back then an active Professor at the University of Würzburg, left traces in this volume of having glimpsed very different paths and gaps in the pursuit of reaching free, open and diverse spaces, characteristic of a structural, intermundane, and intercultural way of doing philosophy. Franco Volpi’s contribution moved along others who focused on the Rombach`s Welt und Gegenwelt, following the first of three movements undertaken by Rombach`s philosophy, namely philosophical Hermetics. Inspired by Welt und Gegenwelt, Volpi claims that with the hermetic project, the thought of Rombach surpasses, in a radical way, the Heideggerian Zeitkritik, and so the Italian Professor examines the contribution of the Hermetics in the tradition of German philosophy, that includes the founder of the school of hermeneutics. The letter with Rombach`s reply to Volpi`s claim, on the other hand, denies Rombach`s involvement with the Zeikritik. Instead, Rombach emphasizes the centrality of the hermetic phenomenon, that is, the immediate and inseparable unity of human being and reality, which happens as they respectively move along together or at the same time, understood by Rombach as a special discover for who can grasp it. According to this, Hermetic is the art of seeing that immediate unity.KEYWORDSROMBACH–HERMETICS–HERMENEUTICS–PHENOMENOLOGY–CONCREATIVE. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFinance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the pursuit of external goods, but this should encourage attempts to reform the institutionalization of finance rather than to reject its potential for virtuous business activity. This article argues that finance should be regarded as a domain-relative practice. Alongside management, its moral status thereby varies with the purposes it serves. Hence, when practitioners working in finance facilitate projects that create common goods, it allows them to develop virtues. This (...) argument applies MacIntyre’s widely acknowledged account of the relationship between practices and the development of virtues while questioning some of his claims about finance. It also takes issue with extant accounts of particular financial functions that have failed to identify the distinctive goods of financial practice. (shrink)

This book presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle's account of how shame instils virtue, and defends its philosophical import. Shame is shown to provide motivational continuity between the actions of the learners and the virtuous dispositions that they will eventually acquire.

In a series of three behavioral experiments, we found a systematic distortion of probability judgments concerning elementary visual stimuli. Participants were briefly shown a set of figures that had two features (e.g., a geometric shape and a color) with two possible values each (e.g., triangle or circle and black or white). A figure was then drawn, and participants were informed about the value of one of its features (e.g., that the figure was a “circle”) and had to predict the value (...) of the other feature (e.g., whether the figure was “black” or “white”). We repeated this procedure for various sets of figures and, by varying the statistical association between features in the sets, we manipulated the probability of a feature given the evidence of another (e.g., the posterior probability of hypothesis “black” given the evidence “circle”) as well as the support provided by a feature to another (e.g., the impact, or confirmation, of evidence “circle” on the hypothesis “black”). Results indicated that participants’ judgments were deeply affected by impact, although they only should have depended on the probability distributions over the features, and that the dissociation between evidential impact and posterior probability increased the number of errors. The implications of these findings for lower and higher level cognitive models are discussed. (shrink)