Periods of accelerated societal change in European history have disrupted gradual alteration in the landscape, creating breaks with the past. This has led to, what we refer to as, the contemporary landscape identity complex in the Netherlands. Composed of dissonant narratives surrounding the landscape that play out on the societal level, the contemporary landscape identity complex may create tensions that can obstruct conservation efforts. In this article, we map out this complex. Three narrative clusters, distilled from literature and supplemented by (...) interviews, aid in understanding the tension regarding the future of the Dutch contemporary rural landscape, namely: ‘the utilitarian narrative’, ‘the romantic narrative’, and ‘the eco-scientific narrative’. The contemporary landscape identity complex is fed by these narratives, specifically through how rural landscapes are imagined and discussed, as opposed to how they are lived and acted upon. The way such narratives play out in practice is further investigated through a case study on the ‘Bommelerwaard’, an area in the south-central of the Netherlands. From our results, we propose a pathway to reconcile the contemporary landscape identity complex towards a landscape conservation ethic that allows for a co-existence of a diversity of images and ideas about (semi-) natural landscapes. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to argue against the claim that agent causation is more fundamental than event causation. To accomplish this aim, I shall first briefly discuss the motivation behind agent causation. Second, I shall highlight the differences between agent causation and event causation. Third, I shall begin briefly with the weaker claim held by Timothy O’Connor and Randolph Clarke that there is no good reason to believe that event causation is more fundamental than agent causation. Fourth, (...) I shall discuss the stronger claim held by E. J. Lowe that agent causation is more fundamental than event causation, and raise objections against the various arguments Lowe advances for the stronger claim. To the extent that my objections against Lowe’s stronger claim succeed, they raise questions for O’Connor’s and Clarke’s weaker claim. (shrink)

Although Emmanuel Levinas is widely respected as one of the classic thinkers of our century, the debate about his place within Continental philosophy continues. In _Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,_ Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak shows Levinas's thought to be a persistent attempt to point beyond the borders of an economy where orderly interests and ways of reasoning make us feel at home--beyond the world of needs, beyond the self, beyond politics and administration, beyond logic and ontology, even beyond freedom (...) and autonomy. Peperzak's examination begins with a general overview of Levinas's life and thought, and shows how issues of ethics, politics, and religion are intertwined in Levinas's philosophy. Peperzak also discusses the development of Levinas's relations with Husserl and Heidegger, demonstrating thematically the evolution of both Levinas's anti-Heideggerian view of technology and his critical attitude toward nature. (shrink)

Osteons are cylindrical structures of bone created by matrix resorbing osteoclasts, followed by osteoblasts that deposit new bone. Osteons align with the principal loading direction and it is thought that the osteoclasts are directed by osteocytes, the mechanosensitive cells that reside inside the bone matrix. These osteocytes are presumably controlled by interstitial fluid flow, induced by the physiological loading of bones. Here I consider the stimulation of osteocytes while the osteon is closed by osteoblasts. In a conceptual finite element model, (...) bone is considered a poro‐elastic material and subjected to locomotion‐induced loading conditions. It appears that the magnitude of flow is constant along the closing cone, while shear strain rate in the bone matrix diminishes linearly with the deposition of bone. This suggests that shear strain rate, rather than fluid flow, is the physical cue that controls osteocytes and bone deposition in newly formed osteons. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce everyday aesthetics in education. First, it presents everyday aesthetics as a subdiscipline within philosophical aesthetics, that revisits sensory perception as the backdrop of all experience, claims ordinary life is a proper venue for aesthetic inquiry, and problematizes the impact aesthetic preferences have on habitual decisions. Second, the paper argues that among the diverse matters students learn in school, they learn—explicitly or implicitly—what and how to perceive, as well as the pedagogical purposes of (...) daily perception. School models the relationships that students will develop between what they perceive, what they think about it, and how they act accordingly. Next, the paper elaborates on the notions of “school aesthetic matrixes” and “space and place in school”. School aesthetic matrixes refer to perceptual patterns that allow characterizing relationships between daily perception and the pedagogical project of a school. They manifest through expressions such as prison school, home school, mall school, etc. Space and place in school allude to concomitant experiences, of corporeal basis, that allow describing how we inhabit the world. What distinguishes them is the approach each one gives to the senses and the body. The paper concludes by calling attention to the comprehension and role of perception in education, urging to mind the aesthetic-pedagogical character that students develop throughout 12 years of schooling. Ultimately, the key relationships we develop with ourselves, others, and the world, entail a basic perceptual dimension that can be educated to become more purposefully and integrally present in life. (shrink)

The fruit of the author's many courses on Emmanuel Levinas in Europe and the United States, this study is a clear introduction for graduate students and scholars who are not yet familiar with Levinas's difficult but exceptionally important oeuvre. After a first chapter on the existential background and the key issues of his thought, chapters 2, 3, and 4 concentrate on and include a short text, "Philosophy and the idea of the Infinite," which contains the program of Levinas's entire oeuvre. (...) Chapter 5 is a companion to the reading of Levinas's first opus magnum, Totality and the Infinite. It analyzes the structure of this book and shows how its questions and answers adhere together. "Through phenomenology toward a saying beyond phenomena and essence" could be the summary of Levinas's attempt to think, with and against Martin Heidegger, the otherness of the Other. -- Amazon.com. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This phenomenological study begins by presenting trust as a characteristic form of interpersonal and communal relationship. In the second chapter, the scope is narrowed to someone's reliance on one or more trustworthy individuals. Chapters 3 to 5 explore specific aspects of trust, insofar as we confide in social structures or movements, the impersonal regularities and events of nature, or our own particular talents, motivations, and possibilities. In a world that is ravaged by the omnipresence of suffering and the most outrageous (...) manifestations of evil, no philosopher can avoid the question of what kind of trust may be profound and strong enough to overcome the ultimate anxiety or despair that threatens all human existence. In the Western tradition of belief, thinking, faith, and searching for the first and ultimate, that question is approached here through reflection upon the radical difference between trust in the universe and faith in God. (shrink)

Individuals with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulties in the recollection of past experiences (Episodic Memory). Accumulating evidence suggests that they might have also difficulties in the ability to imagine potential future scenarios (Episodic Future Thinking, EFT) and in narrative generation skills. This investigation aimed to determine 1) whether impairments of EFT can be identified in a large cohort of children with high functioning ASD using a task with minimal narrative demands; and 2) if such impairments are related to the (...) ability to generate a narrative's scenario. 77 children with high-functioning ASD and 77 children with typical development were recruited for the study. The two groups were balanced for age, level of formal education, and IQ. EFT was assessed by administering a task with minimal narrative demands, whereas narrative generation skills were assessed with three tasks requiring children to generate past, middle or future episodes in a narrative discourse. With respect to control participants, a subgroup of children with ASD had impaired EFT skills and also showed significant impairments in the ability to generate adequate narratives. On the contrary, participants with spared EFT had normal performance on the narrative generation task. Interestingly, EFT skills predicted narrative generation abilities in both groups. The results of this study support the hypothesis that EFT may be impaired in some but not all children with ASD and of a relation between difficulties with EFT and impairments in the process of narrative generation. The assessment of EFT should employ tasks that do not require narrative production, as children with impaired EFT may also have reduced narrative skills. (shrink)

As state-of-art technology can create artificial images that are indistinguishable from real ones, it is urgent to understand whether believing that a picture is real or not has some import over affective phenomena such as sexual arousal. Thus, in two pre-registered online studies, we tested whether 60 images depicting models in underwear elicited higher self-reported sexual arousal when believed to be (N = 57) or presented as (N = 108) real photographs as opposed to artificially generated. In both cases, Realness (...) correlated with significantly higher scores on self-reported sexual arousal. Consistently with the literature on downregulation of emotional response to fictional works, our result indicates that sexual images that are perceived to be fake are less arousing than those believed to portray real people. (shrink)

The field of Philosophy and Education seems to be experiencing a renewed interest in the work of Aristotle. As recently reviewed by Curren (Oxf Rev Educ 36(5):543–559, 2010), most of this attention aligns with the virtue ethics movement where themes like moral development in education, and the inquiry on human flourishing as the aim of education are prevalent. For sources, this scholarship relies heavily and extensively on the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics’ Book VIII where Aristotle develops his single, clearly defined (...) account of education. Among the short list of scholars who include Poetics in their research, their work seems to return to issues of morality and education (Carr in J Aesthet Educ 44(3):1–15, 2010; Gupta in J Aesthet Educ 44(4):60–80, 2010). This paper is an attempt to rediscover Aristotle’s insights on the peculiar type of learning that the arts seem to favor. In order to carry on this investigation, I will first guide my argument towards Aristotle’s remarks on poiesis. Then, I will focus on what constitutes the heart of poiesis, that is, mimesis. I will pay special attention to Aristotle’s consideration of both poiesis and mimesis as ultimately dealing with what he calls “possibility.” I will argue that learning in the arts entails the coming together of these three qualities. This would be a way of learning characterized by seeing human likenesses emerge as such in our interactions with artworks. (shrink)

After a brief introduction about the problem of leopardian sources, I wish to introduce here a description of the diffusion of Addison’s theories about the Imagination in Italy at the time of Leopardi, trying to highlight their influence on his thinking and his philosophy. The third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of an important excerpt of the Zibaldone where Leopardi quotes Addison and his Catone to introduce an interesting reflection about the pleasure of beauty and the role of imagination, (...) almost as a way to face Addison issues.This excerpt represents an occasion to compare the theories of Addison and Leopardi about Aesthetics and also the similarities and the differences between them. The last part of the paper is dedicated to the results of the analysis and the conclusions. (shrink)

In this article, the author explains the context and circumstances in which he begun, back in the 60s, the first French translation of Sein und Zeit, in collaboration with Alphonse de Waehlens. The article describes the methods and perspectives the first French translators adopted during their work of translation. The article ends with a few considerations concerning the incompleteness of the Heideggerian’s project of Sein und Zeit, explaining this nonachievement by Heidegger’s abandonment of the existential perspective he assumed in Sein (...) und Zeit. (shrink)

Ethics as First Philosophy brings together original essays by an outstanding group of international scholars that discuss the work of Emmanuel Levinas. The book explores the significance of Levinas' work for philsophy, psychology and religion. Ethics as First Philosophy comprises an excellent collection of work on this major contemporary thinker. The book presents Levinas philosophy from a wide and well-balanced variety of perspectives. The contributions range from thematic discussions of Levinas central concepts to explorations of his affinities and differences with (...) other key writers such as Kant, Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Blanchot and Derrida. Some of the authors focus on the religious and philosophical issues presented by Levinas while others analyze the role of Levinas within phenomenology in or within recent French philosophy. (shrink)

Let us imagine that a man loses his keys one night and starts looking for them under the light of a street lamp. When people join him to help him search, they ask where it was that he thinks he might have let them fall; with a frustrated look on his face, he then points into the dark distance and says, by way of explanation, “I am looking under the lamppost because this is where the light is!” This story, introduced (...) by Janice Ross, provides us with a metaphorical description of an ongoing situation in arts education advocacy1: Certainly, I can only look for the arts in education where there is something about them that can be seen. Yet there may be aspects of them concealed beyond the reach of the vision.. (shrink)

RESUMEN:Este artículo presenta el pensamiento de Michel Montaigne como camino para interpretar aspectos de la formación docente contemporánea. En primer lugar se caracterizan las nociones de ensayo y de experiencia; se analizan las relaciones entre ellas; y se las discute como ejes de una propuesta formativa basada en una exploración seria de la propia vida. Luego, se presentan dos desafíos identificados por Russell : por una parte, si bien han pasado 12 años escolarizados, al momento de comenzar con sus prácticas (...) profesionales los alumnos de carreras de pedagogía tienen dificultades en explicar de qué se trata enseñar. Por otro lado, los profesores que dictan cursos de pedagogía suelen no ser los mismos que acompañan a los alumnos en sus primeras experiencias docentes. Esto tendería a crear una ruptura entre la educación que se recibe como alumno y la que se imparte como docente de práctica profesional. El artículo concluye proponiendo la posibilidad de implementar un ensayo de posición pedagógica. Éste constituiría una estrategia formativa por sí misma que permitiría, tanto a profesores experimentados como a novicios, visibilizar, articular y discutir los argumentos fundamentales desde los cuales orientan su tarea cotidiana como educadores. ABSTRACT:This paper presents Michel Montaigne´s thought as a way of interpreting some aspects of contemporary teacher education. First, it characterizes the notions of experiment and experience, analyzes their relationship, and discusses them as guidelines for an educational project based on the serious consideration of personal life. From this point of view, the paper continues presents two challenges identified by Russell. First, the claim that when beginning their training, education students have difficulty in articulating what teaching is about. Second, the assertion that university course professors are usually not the same people that guide students through their practicum. The paper concludes by proposing the possibility of a pedagogical position experiment. This would be an educational experience as such, that would allow both experienced and novice teachers to manifest, discuss, and articulate the basic assumptions by which they guide their daily work. (shrink)

In memoriam of Elliot Eisner, I wish to commend his book Educating Artistic Vision for advancing a distinction between contextual and essential arguments that has become classical to justify the purposes of the arts in education.1 Contextual arguments typically focus on transferring artistic qualities to nonartistic school areas and aim at achieving extrinsic outcomes such as higher academic results, a better school climate, improved cognitive development, and the like. Essential arguments are those that deal with intrinsic artistic qualities like the (...) development of aesthetic awareness, the exploration of feeling and emotion as ways of interpreting reality, the capacity to make good judgments in the absence of... (shrink)

Članek obravnava pravno teorijo, ki je prisotna v končnem delu Vebrovega spisa Etika. Prvi poizkus eksaktne logike nagonske pameti. Veber se le mimogrede ukvarja s teorijo prava, vendar njegov prispevek ni zanemarljiv. Vebrova Etika je logika nagonske pameti: Veber, gledano iz čistega predmetnoteoretičnega vidika, ne sestavlja zbirke moralnih zapovedi, ampak namerava orisati najsplošnejša formalna načela, ki določajo pravilnost nagonskega doživetja. Tega, kaj mora posameznik narediti v danem trenutku, logika nagonske pameti ne more povedati, ker je le formalna veda. »Most« med (...) formalnim in materialnim pristopom nravnemu problemu Veber najde v glasu vesti, ki svetuje posamezniku, kaj naj naredi v konkretnem delovanju. V soglasju s tem mora biti državno pravo osnovano na načelih nagonske logike, ker bi bilo drugače brez vsake veljavnosti. Pravo velja, v kolikor je utemeljeno na logiki, ki orisuje imanentna načela človeške narave; cilj prava je pospeševanje čim bolj pravilnega življenja posameznikov in družbe. Z druge strani vsebina tega prava ni enkrat za vselej določena in napisana, ampak vsakič izhaja iz hermenevtike, ki jo posamezniki in družba morajo izvršiti o sebi in o svoji naravi. Etika »zdravega razuma« in »povprečnega človeka« je po Vebru najboljši model za materialno izpopolnenje formalne nagonske logike. (shrink)

This paper aims to trace the links between Leopardi’s linguistic reflection and his theory of assuefazione, a theory that focuses on the functions of perception and the imaginative faculty within cognitive mechanisms. This theory also explains the functioning of the modalities with which human knowledge is articulated, starting from the experiential data, and therefore linguistic knowledge, in terms of a metaphorical apperception of the world. Specific attention will also be given to the notion of semantic vagueness, closely linked to the (...) general concept of indefinite: a concept that Leopardi develops in his reflections on the theory of pleasure and which is fundamental to define the peculiarities of the imaginative faculty. Furthermore, through the Garronian study of metaoperativity a more in-depth reading of the leopardian theory of assuefazione and of the link between perception and imagination too, as well as the role these two last faculties play in language will be provided. Precisely the metaoperativity allows us to explain and define with greater clarity the disposizione a poter essere, that is a precondition in order to conceive the Leopardian notion of indefinite. This conceptual clarification will also be important to highlight how the thought of Leopardi – in spite of the asystematicity that characterizes Zibaldone – is structured and deeply coherent, in line with that unitary and global approach to human knowledge of its time: an approach in which linguistic reflection and the theory of knowledge mutually imply each other, tightened by a relationship of mutual relevance. (shrink)