I argue that believing that p implies having a credence of 1 in p. This is true because the belief that p involves representing p as being the case, representing p as being the case involves not allowing for the possibility of not-p, while having a credence that’s greater than 0 in not-p involves regarding not-p as a possibility.

In this paper I argue for a doctrine I call ?infallibilism?, which I stipulate to mean that If S knows that p, then the epistemic probability of p for S is 1. Some fallibilists will claim that this doctrine should be rejected because it leads to scepticism. Though it's not obvious that infallibilism does lead to scepticism, I argue that we should be willing to accept it even if it does. Infallibilism should be preferred because it has greater explanatory power (...) than fallibilism. In particular, I argue that an infallibilist can easily explain why assertions of ?p, but possibly not-p? (where the ?possibly? is read as referring to epistemic possibility) is infelicitous in terms of the knowledge rule of assertion. But a fallibilist cannot. Furthermore, an infallibilist can explain the infelicity of utterances of ?p, but I don't know that p? and ?p might be true, but I'm not willing to say that for all I know, p is true?, and why when a speaker thinks p is epistemically possible for her, she will agree (if asked) that for all she knows, p is true. The simplest explanation of these facts entails infallibilism. Fallibilists have tried and failed to explain the infelicity of ?p, but I don't know that p?, but have not even attempted to explain the last two facts. I close by considering two facts that seem to pose a problem for infallibilism, and argue that they don't. (shrink)

In recent years, the construct of character has received substantial attention among developmental scientists, but no consensus exists about the content and structure of character, especially among children and early adolescents. In a study of positive development among racially diverse Cub Scouts in the greater Philadelphia area, we assessed the construct and concurrent validity of a new measure of character, the Assessment of Character in Children and Early Adolescents, among 906 Scouts and 775 non-Scout boys and girls. We identified an (...) eight-correlated-factor model as providing the best fit with our data. We further established measurement invariance and explored latent mean differences for ACCEA scores across two Scout groups, non-Scout boys and non-Scout girls. Girls were generally superior than boys on all character attributes. We further examined concurrent validity of ACCEA by correlating the character attributes with youth sense of school competence, intentional self-regulation and parental perception of youth school performance. We discuss implications for future character research and point to the value of the ACCEA measure being used by practitioners in character development programs. (shrink)

Concessive knowledge attributions (CKAs) are knowledge attributions of the form ‘S knows p, but it’s possible that q’, where q obviously entails not-p (Rysiew, Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 35:477–514, 2001). The significance of CKAs has been widely discussed recently. It’s agreed by all that CKAs are infelicitous, at least typically. But the agreement ends there. Different writers have invoked them in their defenses of all sorts of philosophical theses; to name just a few: contextualism, invariantism, fallibilism, infallibilism, and that the knowledge (...) rules for assertion and practical reasoning are false. In fact, there is a lot of confusion about CKAs and their significance. I try to clear some of this confusion up, as well as show what their significance is with respect to the debate between fallibilists and infallibilists about knowledge in particular. (shrink)

_ _From the frozen landscapes of the Antarctic to the haunted houses of childhood, the memory of places we experience is fundamental to a sense of self. Drawing on influences as diverse as Merleau-Ponty, Freud, and J. G. Ballard, _The Memory of Place___ __charts the memorial landscape that is written into the body and its experience of the world._ Dylan Trigg’s _The Memory of Place_ _ __offers a lively and original intervention into contemporary debates within “place studies,” an interdisciplinary (...) field at the intersection of philosophy, geography, architecture, urban design, and environmental studies. Through a series of provocative investigations, Trigg analyzes monuments in the representation of public memory; “transitional” contexts, such as airports and highway rest stops; and the “ruins” of both memory and place in sites such as Auschwitz. While developing these original analyses, Trigg engages in thoughtful and innovative ways with the philosophical and literary tradition, from Gaston Bachelard to Pierre Nora, H. P. Lovecraft to Martin Heidegger. Breathing a strange new life into phenomenology, _The Memory of Place___ __argues that the eerie disquiet of the uncanny is at the core of the remembering body, and thus of ourselves. The result is a compelling and novel rethinking of memory and place that should spark new conversations across the field of place studies. Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University and widely recognized as the leading scholar on phenomenology of place, calls _The Memory of Place _“genuinely unique and a signal addition to phenomenological literature. It fills a significant gap, and it does so with eloquence and force.” He predicts that Trigg’s book will be “immediately recognized as a major original work in phenomenology.”. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson's epistemology leads to a fairly radical version of scepticism. According to him, all knowledge is evidence. It follows that if S knows p, the evidential probability for S that p is 1. I explain Williamson's infallibilist account of perceptual knowledge, contrasting it with Peter Klein's, and argue that Klein's account leads to a certain problem which Williamson's can avoid. Williamson can allow that perceptual knowledge is possible and that all knowledge is evidence, while at the same time avoiding (...) Klein's problem. But while Williamson can allow that we know some things through experience, there are very many things he must say we cannot know. Given just how very many these are, he should be considered a sceptic. (shrink)

What is the human body? Both the most familiar and unfamiliar of things, the body is the centre of experience but also the site of a prehistory anterior to any experience. Alien and uncanny, this other side of the body has all too often been overlooked by phenomenology. In confronting this oversight, Dylan Trigg’s The Thing redefines phenomenology as a species of realism, which he terms unhuman phenomenology. Far from being the vehicle of a human voice, this unhuman phenomenology (...) gives expression to the alien materiality at the limit of experience. -/- By fusing the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and Levinas with the horrors of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and H.P. Lovecraft, Trigg explores the ways in which an unhuman phenomenology positions the body out of time. At once a challenge to traditional notions of phenomenology, The Thing is also a timely rejoinder to contemporary philosophies of realism. The result is nothing less than a rebirth of phenomenology as redefined through the lens of horror. (shrink)

Several philosophers have claimed that S knows p only if S’ s belief is safe, where S's belief is safe iff (roughly) in nearby possible worlds in which S believes p, p is true. One widely held intuition many people have is that one cannot know that one's lottery ticket will lose a fair lottery prior to an announcement of the winner, regardless of how probable it is that it will lose. Duncan Pritchard has claimed that a chief advantage of (...) safety theory is that it can explain the lottery intuition without succumbing to skepticism. I argue that Pritchard is wrong. If a version of safety theory can explain the lottery intuition, it will also lead to skepticism. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Article Pages 1-26 DOI 10.1007/s10670-011-9305-z Authors Dylan Dodd, Department of Philosophy, Northern Institute of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK Journal Erkenntnis Online ISSN 1572-8420 Print ISSN 0165-0106. (shrink)

In Plato, Politics and a Practical Utopia Kenneth Royce Moore offers a working model of Magnesia, the city of Plato's Laws. His method is to treat the “second-best city” “as if it were a real polis of the ancient world” (p. 82). Moore's conclusion is that Plato has created a “fairly large city”, with some unusual institutional features, but one that is “strangely practical” and firmly grounded in reality (p. ix). The Laws is often said to be a long and (...) rambling work showing “various signs of (…) - 12. Plato 12 (2012). (shrink)

Background: Although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) achieve high diagnostic accuracy for detecting Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, they are not yet applied in clinical routine. One important reason for this is a lack of model comprehensibility. Recently developed visualization methods for deriving CNN relevance maps may help to fill this gap as they allow the visualization of key input image features that drive the decision of the model. We investigated whether models with higher accuracy (...) also rely more on discriminative brain regions predefined by prior knowledge. Methods: We trained a CNN for the detection of AD in N = 663 T1-weighted MRI scans of patients with dementia and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and verified the accuracy of the models via cross-validation and in three independent samples including in total N = 1655 cases. We evaluated the association of relevance scores and hippocampus volume to validate the clinical utility of this approach. To improve model comprehensibility, we implemented an interactive visualization of 3D CNN relevance maps, thereby allowing intuitive model inspection. Results: Across the three independent datasets, group separation showed high accuracy for AD dementia versus controls (AUC ≥ 0.91) and moderate accuracy for amnestic MCI versus controls (AUC ≈ 0.74). Relevance maps indicated that hippocampal atrophy was considered the most informative factor for AD detection, with additional contributions from atrophy in other cortical and subcortical regions. Relevance scores within the hippocampus were highly correlated with hippocampal volumes (Pearson’s r ≈ −0.86, p < 0.001). Conclusion: The relevance maps highlighted atrophy in regions that we had hypothesized a priori. This strengthens the comprehensibility of the CNN models, which were trained in a purely data-driven manner based on the scans and diagnosis labels. The high hippocampus relevance scores as well as the high performance achieved in independent samples support the validity of the CNN models in the detection of AD-related MRI abnormalities. The presented data-driven and hypothesis-free CNN modeling approach might provide a useful tool to automatically derive discriminative features for complex diagnostic tasks where clear clinical criteria are still missing, for instance for the differential diagnosis between various types of dementia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob DylanPeter CheyneThe Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan; 422 pp. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2022.Bob Dylan, like Dante's Virgil, takes us on an odyssey through sixty-six levels, not of the Underworld but of Songworld, in The Philosophy of Modern Song. With playful prose rhythms measured for pleasure and effect, these vistas are almost all seen through second-person portrayals. (...) His gorgeous write-up on Uncle Dave Macon's "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" (1924), for instance, conveys the "happy wanderer, the chicken thief," embodying the flagrant aristocracy of freedom: "You're the Dalai Lama, the Black Monk … The Thief of Baghdad … prowling and shoplifting … Multiracial, bisexual, celibate … freethinking … fucking and farting … Long John Silver … a pastry chef … hash slinger" (pp. 237–38). In Dylan's telling, this great song shimmies through a Whitmanesque catalogue of types united in aesthetic thrill.Invented characters inhabit this book, as they do Dylan's songs. Most prominent are the personae he extemporizes from others' songs in barnstorming flights of fancy. Upheld by writerly performance rather than argument, they act out his view that "it's what a song makes you feel about your own life that's important" (p. 9).The standout weird turn is the antihero he conjures from Webb Pierce's "There Stands the Glass" (1953). This is a country song about alcoholic consolation after a breakup, the toper hoping his love still thinks of him, in his misery. Simple, clichéd even, but Dylan invents a backstory hell of a Vietnam vet who "doesn't recall ever having a soul" and is "betrayed by politicians back home." Standard old-drunk fare, but then comes the nightmare of having "stuck a bayonet into babies' bellies and gouged out old men's eyes," "assassinated priests," and a concatenation of sins. "He rounds up the elderly, women and children, torches their huts" (p. 21). No bar-time happy hours for him; all those become "zero hour," "surrounded by the enemy" (p. 22). Dylan still protests the empire grotesque. Following each dark dive or wild fantasia is a straighter section that zooms out to more objective viewpoints, factoids, and historical analysis."You," ubiquitous and protean. "You," Dylan's projected center of subjective meaning. "You," his device, as he brings you along to reinvent a mood and mind frame, a world for each song. A thesis on mimesis, the second-person fantasies urge the reader to identify with the original first-person narrative, then fly it sky high. Dylan maintains that a successful song sings the listener into an alternative existence, a temporary self, through imagery and rhyme. This is just what Plato warned against, and what Dylan values: the art of making the listener mimetically become, for a few timeless minutes, what the writer and performer sing into being. In the ancient tussle between philosophers and poets, Dylan holds the agora through the harp. [End Page 254]Popular song as fiction is nothing unusual, but criticism as fiction? Is this critical license in extremis or is Dylan stressing the idea that music is always subjective? According to Dylan, songs earn their wings not just in the hearing but in how far and wide hearers can take them. While Dylan fabricates characters that weren't even dreamt of by the song performers, this book is also autobiographical throughout. The commentary relates as much of himself as the records he highlights. The book sustains a mood where the host impishly swaps masks all the while (as when he reveals, in a tiny chapter, that "Long Tall Sally" [1956] is about a one-story-tall woman from the Nephilim tribe in antediluvian Samaria). On Bobby Bare's "Detroit City" (1963), he writes, "Everybody assumes you're a bigwig, that things are cool and beautiful, but they're not." Here, many readers will flash back to young Zimmerman in Greenwich Village, desperate to pull off his move to the big city, "and the disgrace of failure is overwhelming" (p. 1). Through songs by selected others, Dylan recounts Dylan.Channeling small-hour talk radio, pulp Westerns, and hardboiled prose, the bourbon-scented mood evokes... (shrink)

This expanded edition now contains essays by Penelope Maddy, Michael D. Resnik, and William P. Thurston that address the nature of mathematical proofs. The editor has provided a new afterword and a supplemental bibliography of recent work.

Recently, Dylan Dodd (this Journal ) has tried to clear up what he takes to be some of the many confusions surrounding concessive knowledge attributions (CKAs)—i.e., utterances of the form “S knows that p , but it’s possible that q ” (where q entails not- p ) (Rysiew, Noûs 35(4): 477–514, 2001). Here, we respond to the criticisms Dodd offers of the account of the semantics and the sometime-infelicity of CKAs we have given (Dougherty and Rysiew, Philosophy and Phenomenological (...) Research 78(1): 121–132, 2009), showing both how Dodd misunderstands certain central features of that view and how the latter can, pace Dodd, be naturally extended to explain the oddity of those “For all I know” statements to which Dodd draws attention. (shrink)

Turkey has passed the import substitution economic model to a new model of the economy called open out since 1980. Along with the neoliberal policies implemented, the process of integration with the global economy has begun. The incomes of the religious people who cannot be excluded from the effects of this articulation also increased and their consumption behaviors has changed. On the other hand, some transport elements, especially the media, have enabled consumption codes to reach different segments. The new values (...) emerged in this process also caused transformations in individual consumption trends. In this study, the "Scale of Consumption Dynamics" (SCD) was developed in order to identify the trends of consumption of devotees and to find out how they changed. Quantitative research approach was adopted in the study and the datas were collected by face-to-face survey technique. The individuals included in our sample were selected by quota sampling. In this study, an expression pool was created as a result of literature review, expert opinion consultation, brainstorming with academicians and observations. The validity and reliability analysis of the scale was made using different statistics through the SPSS program. As a result of these steps, the dimensions of the scale consisting of 16 items and 3 dimensions are called "showy consumption", "wasteful consumption" and "religious priority consumption". Summary: The first studies on consumption history and sociology belong to Marx, Weber, Veblen and Simmel. In these studies consumption is examined as a part of production process and consumption forms were investigated as a social class aspect. Consumption phenomenon was later studied under critical approach (Frankfurt School) with Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm’s theories. Theorists at Frankfurt School study how social structure steers individuals to consumption. After the 1970’s, the meaning of consumption phenomenon has changed. There are studies by Jean Baudrillard, Mike Featherstone, George Ritzer, and Zygmunt Bauman on changing phenomenon of consumption. It is widely believed that modern consumption phenomenon was originated in the USA after the World War II. After the war Keynesian economic policies and Fordist consumption forms later influenced other Western nations. After 1950’s and 1960’s mass consumption was initiated in the USA and except very poor sections of the nations, other social classes, it started to spread out in Europe, the USA, and other countries. In 1970’s and 1980’s, it has merged with individuals’ identity definitions. After 1980’s in Turkey a new economic policy instead of import substitution was adopted. In application along with neo liberal policies, Turkey started to integrate to the rest of the World. Religious people as well influenced these changes and their incomes have increased along with their consumption habits. In addition to media, some other forms of communication channels have carried new consumption habits to other sections of the society. With the increased effects of mass communication media, new social sections have emerged and their cultural characteristics have become the norms of the whole society. A new values created in this process also transformed the consumption habits. In this article, in order to assess consumption habits of religious people as it is now and to understand which direction these habits evolve, Consumption Dynamics Scale (CDS) has been developed. Scales are widely used when a researcher tries to identify and measure respondents’ feelings and ideas on a subject matter. There are different scales used in social sciences such as Thurstone, Likert, Guttman, and Bogardus that are among the most widely used ones. A Likert Type scale has been used in this study. In the first phase of the study and pilot study 5 point Likert scale and in the second phase of the study 10 point Likert scales was used to collect the data. We could not come across with any study in the literature on investigating consumption characteristics Dynamics of individuals with a formal religious education. In the study, quantitative research method has been adopted and the research data has been collected with face to face administration of the survey instrument. The scale development phase lasted about 6 months from August, 2016. Based on 3% error rate, we determined to sufficient sample size as 516, yet we reached 600 individuals and end up with 563 usable responses. Sample has been determined with quota sampling methodology. We formed a pool of statements based on literature review, expert opinion, brain storming with academicians. 49 questions have been selected from the question pool where 93 questions were found, then they are merged, some questions are changed or totally eliminated and final 30 questioned questionnaires made ready for pilot study. Two pilot studies have been carried out. In the first pilot study, 47 people are reached and 30 questions with Likert scales have been administered. In the second phase of the study, 10 point Likert scales with 57 questions has been given to 54 individuals. After pilot studies, data was analyzed with SPSS 20 version and 32 questioned final survey instrument has been formed. In order to check sufficiency of data set for Factor Analysis Kaisser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and the relationships among variables Bartlett test were used. Sample composed of 563 responses revealed significant results (3358,808, p=0,000) and KMO test revealed (KMO=0,812) value. After expletory factor analysis, factor loading less than 0,40 were deleted from the scale. Hence the final structure is composed of 29 questions with 8 different factors. The reliability of scales were calculated with Cronbach Alfa analysis separately for each dimension. After reliability analysis, items with 0,60 and less reliability score were taken out from the scales. Finally 16 items were made up 3 dimensions namely “ostentatious consumption”, “wasteful consumption”, and “religious priority consumption”. The items in Factor 1 are related with luxury, fashion and statue, in Factor 2 desire to make more shopping, purchase without need, advertisement and showcase, and factor 3 religious sensitive reference focus and religion first purchasing are decided as appropriate names. Based on the analysis, measurement was decided valid and sound. Therefore, this study is believed to contribute significantly to the existing literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Merton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday MindKristin Johnston LargenMerton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday Mind. Edited by Bonnie Bowman Thurston. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2007. 271 pp.This particular book—Merton and Buddhism—is the fourth in a series that seeks to study world religions “through the lens of Thomas Merton’s life and writing” (p. viii). The first three volumes in the series are Merton and Sufism, Merton (...) and Hesychasm, and Merton and Judaism. This book continues in the same format and includes essays from a variety of scholars addressing various aspects of Merton’s engagement with different schools of Buddhism. It is divided into four main parts, with a fifth part that contains a helpful bibliography as well as notes on the different contributors. Additionally the text is peppered with a variety of illustrations, including a center section with many pictures of images of the Buddha from different cultural contexts. The assortment of black-and-white illustrations include pictures of people Thomas Merton (1915–1968) met on his travels, pictures he took while on his “Asian Journey,” and pictures of Merton himself and Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery.The volume begins with two helpful essays that orient a novice reader to the volume. The first essay, by the late Roger Corless (1938–2007), is a simple, straight-forward [End Page 218] introduction to Buddhism. This is useful for readers who are drawn to this book by the desire to learn more about Merton but have no background in Buddhism itself. The second essay is by Bonnie Thurston, who describes her piece as “Merton and Buddhism 101” (p. 15). Her essay describes primarily the “when” and the “why” of Merton’s interest in Buddhism, noting that Merton was not interested in becoming a Buddhist himself, but rather believed that his own (and others’) practice of Christianity could be positively informed by Buddhism, particularly in its attention to meditation and dismantling what Merton called the “false self.”The second main part of the book is devoted to essays that each focus on Merton’s engagement with a specific Buddhist tradition. While it is clear that Merton was particularly influenced by and drawn to Zen Buddhism (Ruben Habito supplies the essay on Merton’s experience with Zen in this section), he did not limit himself to Zen, but sought out connections and experience with individuals from diverse Buddhist backgrounds. Thus, the first essay in this section details his meetings with monks from the Theravada tradition and emphasizes the central role Merton’s own monastic identity played in his understanding and evaluation of Buddhism as a whole.The second essay is of particular importance, as it discusses Merton’s engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, which many believe would have developed into a much deeper connection had his exposure to Tibetan Buddhism not come at the very end of Merton’s life. The author of this essay, Judith Simmer-Brown, notes that “Previously, Merton’s interests had been in Zen Buddhism, but after meeting Tibetans in India he felt an immediate rapport” (p. 53). The Tibetans also shared this experience. The Dalai Lama (from whom Merton received meditation instruction), Trungpa Rinpoche, and Chadral Rinpoche, among others, all recognized his spiritual depth and honesty. At the end of her essay, Simmer-Brown reflects on the strong impression the mountain Kanchenjunga made on him (this is the “seventh mountain” of Merton’s personal geography—see The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, by Michael Mott) and speculates as to how Merton might have continued to explore Tibetan Buddhism, had he lived beyond the year.The final essay in this section is of a different nature, but serves a very important purpose. John Keenan’s essay, “The Limits of Thomas Merton’s Understanding of Buddhism,” makes clear that Merton’s understanding of Buddhism reflects the general ignorance of Buddhism by Western Christians at that time, and thus, while Merton’s engagement with Buddhism was “welcome and mind-stretching” to his audience in the 1960s, it is “quite insufficient today for any dialogue with Buddhism, or with Zen” (p. 121). Keenan notes that a large part of the problem stems from Merton’s... (shrink)

Who's better? Billie Holiday or P. J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such questions aren't merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they inform our most passionate arguments, distil our most deeply held values, make meaning of our ever-changing culture. In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. What's good, what's bad? What's high, (...) what's low? Why do such distinctions matter? (shrink)

In this brief note, I wish to highlight Proclus’ unappreciated contribution to a well-documented debate in antiquity that continues to hold great contemporary interest: what psychological characteristics, if any, distinguish humans from non-human animals?

The role of emotions in ethics is often taken by philosophers and others as antithetical to rationality. On the most basic level (in undergraduate philosophy exams and elsewhere), stating an opinion in the form "I feel that p" can be a way of sidestepping the demand for reasons. But emotions can sometimes also be seen as supplying reasons for moral judgment to the extent that they involve evaluations--and a way of communicating them across different moral perspectives.

In the article the possibility of using a smartphone with an integrated set of necessary technical means for implementing the technology of video recording of vehicle speed is investigated and established. The main algorithmic and software components of a smartphone are proposed, which allow to identify and to accompany a vehicle, as well as to determine its speed. Installation and initial setup of the device is simple. It is only necessary to measure and enter in the device height of its (...) arrangement. In the article the possibility of using a smartphone with an integrated set of necessary technical means for implementing the technology of video recording of vehicle speed is investigated and established. The smartphone has a low cost and power consumption, the ability to operate in the required temperature range, as well as a set of physically built-in necessary technical means: several video cameras, accelerometers, gyroscope, magnetometer, GPS sensor, GSM and Wi-Fi wireless communication. Due to its low power consumption, it can also run on solar panels during the day when no other power source is available. The cost of a smartphone with very good characteristics does not exceed 10,000 UAH. The paper proposes the main components of the algorithmic support of the device. The use of the Lucas-Kanade method for the implementation of tracking and the calculation in the interpixel space of the coordinates of the points of the vehicle's trajectory will improve the accuracy of measurements of the traveled distance and the vehicle's speed on short sections of the trajectory. The proposed algorithm for calculating the vehicle speed requires entering only one parameter - the height of the device. Therefore, installation and initial setup of the device is simple. It is enough to measure and enter this parameter into the device. Large-scale introduction of a device for measuring vehicle speed, built on the basis of a smartphone, is possible due to relatively small investments in the development of its mechanical part, algorithmic and software. (shrink)

The complex of cultural, political and societal affiliations, both in a historic and a contemporary perspective, is expressed by a special term in the Nordic languages, 'faellesskab', often with the addition of 'folkelig', as 'folkeligt faellesskab', where 'folkelig' means of the people. No corresponding term exists in English. For medical ethics the concept 'faellesskab', or whatever wording is chosen to serve the semantics of this term, is vital. In research ethics and clinical decision-making complex ethical analyses and normative evaluations are (...) necessary. They cannot be based solely on moral relativism, whether being based on results of opinion polls or on a widespread 'every man minds his own business' concept. 'Faellesskab' possesses the necessary base of common values. (shrink)

Three experiments explore the role of working memory in motor skill acquisition and performance. Traditional theories postulate that skill acquisition proceeds through stages of knowing, which are initially declarative but later procedural. The reported experiments challenge that view and support an independent, parallel processing model, which predicts that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired separately and that the former does not depend on the availability of working memory, whereas, the latter does. The behaviour of these two processes was manipulated (...) by providing or withholding visual (and auditory) appraisal of outcome feedback. Withholding feedback was predicted to inhibit the use of working memory to appraise success and, thus, prevent the formation of declarative knowledge without affecting the accumulation of procedural knowledge. While the first experiment failed to support these predictions, the second and third experiments demonstrated that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired independently. It is suggested that the availability of working memory is crucial to motor performance only when the learner has come to rely on its use. (shrink)

Problem: Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism has been highly influential in the fields of mathematics and science education. However, its relevance is typically limited to analyses of classroom interactions and students’ reasoning. Methods: A project that aims to support improvements in the quality of mathematics instruction across four large urban districts is framed as a case with which to illustrate the far-reaching consequences of von Glasersfeld’s constructivism for mathematics and science educators. Results: Von Glasersfeld’s constructivism orients us to question the (...) standard view of policy implementation as a process of travel down through a system and to conceptualize it instead as the situated reorganization of practice at multiple levels of a system. In addition, von Glasersfeld’s constructivism orients us to understand rather than merely evaluate policies by viewing the actions of the targets of policies as reasonable from their point of view. Implications: The potential contributions of von Glasersfeld’s constructivism to mathematics and science education have been significantly underestimated by restricting the focus to classroom actions and interactions. The illustrative case of research on the application of these ideas also indicates the relevance of constructivism to researchers in educational policy and educational leadership. (shrink)