The meaning of alternating formation is the one that has been built, day after day, by the author who is working as teacher-researcher. The hyphen here stands for the link between two concrete exercices of the daily writing experience. Six processes have been revealed in two steps : those which are the pilar of this alternative smart teaching method (production, transaction and cooperation) and those which are hidden and secretly bring life to the first setting (integration, authorization (...) and emancipation). Their complex articulation opens an alternate way to learn, teach and be shaped as a subject to find a problematic that has a meaning for us and then enable us to be seen by ourself as a social character in a structure or an organisation. Allow an original intelligence can enable each of us to draw a smart contour to find our place as a social character. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry: Learning with and from the Natural and Human Sciences eds. by Robin W. Lovin and Joshua MauldinSara A. WilliamsTheology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry: Learning with and from the Natural and Human Sciences Edited by Robin W. Lovin and Joshua Mauldin grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2017. 202 pp. $32.00How can Christian theology engage in fruitful dialogue with fields of inquiry such as cognitive science, anthropology, and (...) law? Might discoveries in the natural and human sciences open creative possibilities for theology, and vice versa? Can Christian theology maintain its integrity while integrating insights from other disciplines? Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry takes up these questions as its central aim. This volume of six essays emerges from a three-year Templeton Foundation initiative that brought an interdisciplinary set of scholars together at the Center for Theological Inquiry to explore how their research might collaboratively push theology in new directions. These conversations centered on three themes: evolution and human nature, religious experience and moral identity, and law and religious freedom.In the first essay, Celia Deane-Drummond proposes an alternative approach to traditional readings of the Genesis creation account that looks to "resonances" between von Balthasar's notion of "theo-drama" and niche construction theory. Her argument allows for human agency while drawing theology into a complementary, rather than conflictual, relationship with evolutionary science. The next three essays take up the theme of religious experience and moral identity. Michael Spezio proposes that both theology and cognitive science look to moral exemplars as the phenomenological basis for more realistic and mutually informative moral theology and cognitive models of learning. Colleen Shantz draws on cognitive science to demonstrate how the material [End Page 192] and relational are constitutive of cognitive processes, arguing that it is precisely through "development and change" that we bear the imago Dei (66). Andrea Hollingsworth offers a rereading of Nicholas of Cusa's De visione Dei to demonstrate how a medieval mystical text echoes elements of contemporary neurocognitive processes of self-transformation. The final two essays center on law and religious freedom. John Burgess examines the privileging of religious freedom for canonizing martyrs in post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy, arguing that this provides theological grounding for the legal right to religious freedom. Mary Ellen O'Connell proposes aesthetics as a more adequate modern grounding for legal authority than science. She argues that aesthetics takes us beyond the limits of self-interest, drawing us into concern for the good of others through the contemplation of beauty.What holds these essays together is the pursuit of "transdisciplinarity": "paying close attention to the other discipline(s) in a way that has a substantial and mutual impact, but at the same time retaining a clear sense of disciplinary integrity" (14–15). Lovin and Mauldin argue for humility and hope as virtues that enable us to navigate the tension between openness and integrity. While humility enables us to recognize the limits of disciplinary boundaries and assumptions, hope propels us forward, promising that however incomplete our knowledge remains, by the grace of God we will make advances in understanding our world and ourselves.Just as Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen's Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics argues for the value of engagement with ethnography and its related disciplines to produce theology and ethics grounded in lived reality, this volume argues for the value of engagement with the natural and human sciences to produce "theological realism" that accounts for the complexity of "human personality and community" (xviii). It is unsurprising, then, that both volumes respond to objections from the neo-Radical Reformation and Radical Orthodoxy camps. In his conclusion, Douglas Ottati argues that these camps cannot account for the ways in which theological production inevitably interacts with natural and cultural processes. He argues further that insulating Christian theology is a form of cultural accommodation because it mirrors the formation of discrete modern disciplines, the very limitation these essays seek to transcend.This volume advances the live discussion in Christian ethics about the promise and risks of engaging natural and social sciences. It is a valuable resource on this topic, and its essays are suitable for use in seminary course discussions... (shrink)

Amongst the environmental and social externalities generated by Australian agriculture are a number of risks both to the health and safety of communities living near sites of agricultural production, and to the end consumers of agricultural products. Responses to these potential risks – and to problems of environmental sustainability more generally – have included a number of programs to variously: define “best-practice” for particular industries; implement “Quality Assurance” procedures; and encourage the formation of self-help community “Landcare” groups. Taken together, (...) these programs appear to deal comprehensively with both the social and environmental risks associated with agricultural production and products. However, these programs may also be interpreted as strategies that actually encourage the further intensification of agriculture, while attempting to reassure consumers that their food is safe and that farmers are doing “all they can” to protect the environment. Investigation of the Australian cotton and beef industries illustrates a number of strategies that have become evident between farmers, agri-science agencies, and the retail sector to manage these risks and define good farming practices in ways that satisfy their own perceived interests. Contrary to the image, therefore, of “green consumption” that is emerging as an integrated concern for “clean” (and thereby “healthy”) and sustainably produced foods, it appears that mainstream agricultural industries have bifurcated these concerns in ways that distract attention from production and processing methods, leaving conflict over on-farm production methods a characteristic only of those industries believed to have direct health impacts on nearby communities. (shrink)

Pharmacogenetics is an emerging biotechnology concerned with understanding the genetic basis of drug response, and promises to transform the development, marketing and prescription of medicines. This paper is concerned with analysing the move towards segmented drug markets, which is implicit in the commercial development of pharmacogenetics. It is claimed that in future who gets a particular drug will be determined by their genetic make up. Drawing on ideas from the sociology of expectations we examine how pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are (...) constructing, responding to and realising particular ‘visions’ or expectations of pharmacogenetics and market stratification. We argue that the process of market segmentation remains uncertain, but that the outcome will be fashioned according to the convergence and divergence of the interests of key commercial actors. Qualitative data based both on interviews with industry executives and company documentation will be used to explore how different groups of companies are developing pharmacogenetics in distinct ways, and what consequences these different pathways might have for both clinical practice and health policy. In particular, the analysis will show a convergence of interests between biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies for creating segmented markets for new drugs, but a divergence of interest in segmenting established markets. Whilst biotechnology firms have a strong incentive to innovate, the pharmaceutical industry has no commercial interest in segmenting markets for existing products. This has important implications, as many of the claimed public health benefits of pharmacogenetics will derive from changing the prescribing of existing medicines. One significant implication of this is that biotechnology companies who wish to apply pharmacogenetics to existing medicines will have to explore an alternative convergence of interests with healthcare payers and providers . Healthcare providers may have a strong incentive to use pharmacogenetics to make the prescribing of existing medicine more cost-effective. However, we conclude by suggesting that a question mark hangs over their ability to provide the necessary economic and structural resources to bring such a vision to fruition. (shrink)

This commentary builds on Haico te Kulve and Arie Rip’s ( 2011 ) notion of “engagement agents,” individuals that must be able to move between multiple dimensions, or “levels” of research, innovation, and policy processes. The commentary compares and contrasts the role of the engagement agent within the Constructive Technology Assessment and integration approaches, and suggests that on-site integration research represents one way to transform both social and natural scientists into competent and informed “engagement agents,” a new generation of researchers (...) that possess the knowledge and capacities to forge “novel linkages” between the oftentimes disparate terrains of science, politics, and policy. (shrink)

Projects to integrate digital technologies into the fabric of city life depend upon specific visions of politics and technology. In the process of their realization, they re-constitute the identities, agencies, and relations of human inhabitants, re-defining what it means to be a citizen. This article draws on the idiom of co-production and framework of constitutionalism from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to analyze the coming into being of a form of citizenship with smartphone technologies in Boston in the 2010s. When (...) the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) used newly available smartphone apps to reconfigure the connection among city residents and government, they brought into being a specific mode of citizenship. I term this mode of citizenship “mechanic” to draw attention to the qualities of passivity, infrastructure, and connectedness that characterized MONUM’s early digital citizenship projects. I argue that recognizing that the constitution of the human, and specifically of citizens, is at stake in smart city projects entails re-thinking ethical analysis in contexts of smart cities. Instead of seeking to perform ethical assessments of technological consequences (“ethics of” approach), scholars might begin with a situated analysis of how humans as citizens are constituted through smart city projects (“ethics in” approach). By identifying the political affordances and commitments of the emergent digital citizenship models, scholars can make visible alternative forms of living and engaging politically in the city. (shrink)

The challenges of the Anthropocene are growing ever more complex and uncertain, underpinned by the emergence of systemic risks. At the same time, the landscape of risk governance has become compartmentalised and siloed, characterized by non-overlapping activities, competing scientific discourses, and distinct responsibilities distributed across diverse public and private bodies. Operating across scales and disciplines, actors tend to work in silos which constitute critical gaps within the interface of science, policy, and practice. Yet, increasingly complex and ‘wicked’ problems require holistic (...) solutions, multi-scalar communication, coordination, collaboration, data interoperability, funding, and stakeholder engagement. To address these problems in a real-world context, we present the Risk-Tandem framework for bridging theory and practice; to guide and structure the integration of disaster risk management (DRM), climate change adaptation (CCA) and systemic risk management through a process of transdisciplinary knowledge co-production. Advancing the frontiers of knowledge in this regard, The Risk-Tandem framework combines risk management approaches and tools with iterative co-production processes as a cornerstone of its implementation, in efforts to promote the co-design of fit-for-purpose solutions, methods and approaches contributing toward strengthened risk governance alongside stakeholders. The paper outlines how the framework is developed, applied, and further refined within selected case study regions, including Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Danube Region. (shrink)

This paper introduces an alternative approach to innovation: Emergent Innovation. As opposed to radical innovation Emergent Innovation finds a balance and integrates the demand both for radically new knowledge and at the same time for an organic development from within the organization. From a knowledge management perspective one can boil down this problem to the question of how to cope with the new and with profound change in knowledge. This question will be dealt with in the first (...) part of the paper. As an implication the alternative approach of Emergent Innovation will be presented in the second part: this approach looks at innovation as a socio-epistemological process of “learning from the future”. Keywords: Innovation, radical innovation, emergent innovation, knowledge creation, change. (shrink)

For centuries, the processes of social differentiation associated with Modernity have often been thought to intensify the need for site-specific forms of role training and knowledge production, threatening the university’s survival either through fragmentation or through failure to adapt. Other lines of argument emphasize the extent to which the Modern system creates and relies on an integrated knowledge system, but most of the literature stresses functional differentiation and putative threats to the university. And yet over this period the (...) university has flourished. In our view, this seeming paradox is explained by the fact that modern society rests as much on universalistic cosmological bases as it does on differentiation. The university expands over recent centuries because – as it has from its religious origins – it casts cultural and human materials in universalistic terms. Our view helps explain empirical phenomena that confound standard accounts: the university’s extraordinary expansion and global diffusion, its curricular and structural isomorphism, and its relatively unified structure. All of this holds increasingly true after World War II, as national state societies made up of citizens are increasingly embedded in a world society constituted of empowered individuals. The redefinition of society in global and individual terms reduces nationally bounded models of nature and culture, extends the pool of university beneficiaries and investigators, and empowers the human persons who are understood to root it all. The changes intensify universalization and the university’s rate of worldwide growth. For the university’s knowledge and “knowers,” and for the pedagogy that joins them together, the implications are many. The emerging societal context intensifies longstanding processes of cultural rationalization and ontological elaboration, yielding great expansions in what can and should be known, and in who can and should know. These changes in turn alter the menu of approved techniques for joining knowledge and knower as one. The “knowledge society” that results is distinguished by the extraordinary degree to which the university is linked to society. But it is also distinguished by the degree to which society is organized around the university’s abstracted and universalized understandings of the world and its degree-certified graduates. (shrink)

Small batch manufacture dominates the manufacturing sector of a growing number of industrialised countries. The organisational structures and management methods currently adopted in such enterprises are firmly based upon historical developments which started with individual craftsmen. These structures and methods are primarily concerned with the co-ordination of human activities, rather than with the management of theknowledge process underlying the creation of products.This paper argues that it is the failure to understand this knowledge process and its effective integration at aKnowledge (...) Level which presents the real barrier to increased flexibility, not, as is presently perceived, a lack of suitableInformation Level integration. Potential techniques and methodologies for achievingKnowledge Level integration are beginning to emerge from Artificial Intelligence research. Realisation of full Knowledge Level integration will not only require further research into the AI techniques and methodologies involved, but also an understanding of the wider human aspects of their application. Some questions concerning the effective coupling of human and artificial intelligence to achieve Knowledge Level integration of the product creation process are presented. (shrink)

This article is based on a perspective on circulation of knowledge that allows the consideration of science as the result of the encounter between diverse communities. We tell a story that constantly changes places, scales, and cultures in order to stress the importance of networks as an alternative to the centre/periphery trope, which entangles world histories of science. The result is a picture much more complex and intertwined than the one suggested by these simplifying dichotomies. We focus on a (...) case study that illuminates the process of knowledge production in non-European spaces of modernity. The return of the Society of Jesus to the newly independent nation-states of Latin America is the point of departure to analyse the circulation of a specific scientific idea in Ecuador: Darwin’s theory of biological evolution through natural selection. The article follows the paths of three different knowledge makers whose encounters are seen as sites of knowledge production: a religious order, a Latin American... (shrink)

The aim of the article is to trace the integration of education, science and production through the development of regional cluster policy. At the present stage of development of postindustrial society in the global economy, the processes of globalization and specialization of national markets significantly increase competition between countries, between regions and between producers within the country. In these circumstances, the state authorities of the Russian Federation, while maintaining global leadership in the energy sector, define as long-term development goals of (...) the country, the creation of a competitive economy based on knowledge and high technologies. Following this doctrine in the Russian regions in the period from 2012 to 2014 cluster policy is implemented on the basis of Federal and regional innovation strategies. An important role in this process belongs to the activities of leading higher educational institutions - national research universities, which contribute to stimulate an active scientific activity of students and the introduction of scientific achievements into production. One of the pilot cluster projects, funded by the Federal budget became the territorial cluster ‘ Pharmaceutics, medical technology and information technology ‘ formed in the Tomsk region with a unique starting opportunities for the development of sustainable regional innovation system is a developed scientific and educational complex, small and medium-sized innovative enterprises with the latest technological developments in pharmaceuticals and medical technology. In two years, the activity cluster, implemented with the financial support of public authorities, has been successful. In the future, there are plans to expand the range of pharmaceutical products and the collaboration with other clusters Tomsk. Cluster policy contributes to the emergence of stakeholders and large economic enterprises, thus providing a close relationship between science, business and regional authorities. (shrink)

Calhoun is interviewed regarding the relationship of his work on the university to his other research interests. Calhoun elaborates on his hope for a debate over transformations in the structure of the university that is much more sensitive to the public role universities play and the importance of the collective goods they create. In the process he articulates the possibilities for an institutional analysis of the university that meets scholarly standards of knowledge production while remaining engaged with central issues (...) that arise out of institutional transformation. By situating universities in relationship with the public sphere, Calhoun provides a basis for debates about the transformation of the university to overcome the structured and structuring dispositions of the participants, while remaining grounded in social and historical analysis-an approach that can be considered an alternative public sociology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 31-45 [Access article in PDF] Antonio Gramsci on Surrealism and the Avant-garde E. San Juan, Jr. Surrealism provided me with what I had been confusedly searching for. I have accepted it joyfully because in it I have found more of a confirmation than a revelation. It was a weapon that exploded the French language. It shook up absolutely everything....A process of disalienation, (...) that's how I interpreted surrealism. 1In the spring of 1919, André Breton and Phillipe Soupault conducted various experiments in automatic writing. They converted themselves into machines to record the whispers of the unconscious, inspired by Rimbaud's urge for adventure in quest of cosmic knowledge and Lautreamont's conviction of art as a communal enterprise. To destroy bourgeois morality and class inequality, uphold the freedom of the imagination, and release the libidinal energies dammed up in the psyche, surrealism — Guillaume Appolinaire's term 2 — was invented from the nihilistic ruins of Dada to lay the groundwork for building a society founded on liberty and justice. In the same year the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci founded the innovative journal, L'Ordine Nuovo and advocated the factory council (modeled after the Russian Soviets) as the germ of an emergent communist society. Both initiatives were pathbreaking in challenging the orthodoxies of modernist bourgeois culture, politics, and philosophy.When Breton published his 1924 "First Manifesto of Surrealism" privileging dreams, the unconscious, the fantastic, and marvelous, Gramsci was the principal leader of the Communist Party of Italy spearheading the opposition to Mussolini's fascist takeover. Two years later, Gramsci was arrested and imprisoned until his death in 1937. In the Prison Notebooks that occupied him while in jail, Gramsci does not — as far as I am aware — refer to Breton or to surrealism directly. But in his scattered reflections on modern art and culture in general, and in his particular observations on Italian futurism (in particular, on Filippo Marinetti and Luigi Pirandello), we can [End Page 31] extrapolate the general approach Gramsci would take toward surrealism and avantgarde art as oppositional cultural practices. This exercise may clarify what a revolutionary Marxist position should be toward the philosophical or pedagogical category of the aesthetic within the field of cultural practice and artistic production, especially in the post-Cold War epoch of nation-state realignments and the reconfiguration of globalized finance capital in the new millennium.All commentators agree that Gramsci viewed the aesthetic as a category within the terrain of historical materialism and the political economy ofvalue in general. Artistic values are rooted in the social and material practices of a specific society which defines the limits of conventional artistic forms and the subject matter available to the artist. Vision or intuition and diverse raw materials (language, sounds, dance movements, and filmic images) are indissociable. Contrary to Benedetto Croce's emphasis on transcendental intuition, Gramsci valorizes the materialization of this intuition into perceptible, sensory structure, an architectonic whole produced by intellectual discipline and shaped by an integral worldview. In short, for Gramsci, the work of art is the historicization and objectification of vision/intuition.Gramsci's conception of Marxism stresses its intrinsic dialectical method, its emphasis on processes and relations within a social formation comprised of multilayered modes of production, given the necessarily uneven development of capitalism. This mode of historicizing life not only to interpret but to change it is a guide for collective action, not a dogmatic party line. "Man 'is' precisely the process of his actions," Gramsci writes, and "relative to what we have thought and seen, we seek to know what we are and what we can become, whether it is true and within what limits that we do 'make ourselves,' create our own lives and our own destinies." 3 Here, knowledge and action are oriented toward linking the past with the present in order to fashion the future. The chronotope of revolution is essentially a collage, more precisely a montage, of transformations that amalgamates contraries, oppositions, disparities.While Gramsci did not endorse Freudian theory completely except by... (shrink)

Biobased production has been promoted as a sustainable alternative to fossil resources. However, controversies over its impact on sustainability highlight societal concerns, value tensions and uncertainties that have not been taken into account during its development. In this work, the consideration of stakeholders’ values in a biorefinery design project is investigated. Value sensitive design is a promising approach to the design of technologies with consideration of stakeholders’ values, however, it is not directly applicable for complex systems like biorefineries. Therefore, some (...) elements of VSD, such as the identification of relevant values and their connection to a technology’s features, are brought into biorefinery design practice. Midstream modulation, an approach to promoting the consideration of societal aspects during research and development activities, is applied to promote reflection and value considerations during the design decision making. As result, it is shown that MM interventions during the design process led to new design alternatives in support of stakeholders' values, and allowed to recognize and respond to emerging value tensions within the scope of the project. In this way, the present work shows a novel approach for the technical investigation of VSD, especially for biorefineries. Also, based on this work it is argued that not only reflection, but also flexibility and openness are important for the application of VSD in the context of biorefinery design. (shrink)

The production, manipulation and exploitation of future visions are increasingly important elements in practices of visioneering socio-technical processes of innovation and transformation. This becomes obvious in new and emerging science and technologies and large-scale transformations of established socio-technical systems. A variety of science and technology studies provide evidence on correlations between expectations and anticipatory practices with the dynamics of such processes of change. Technology assessment responded to the challenges posed by the influence of visions on the processes by elaborating methodologies (...) for a “vision assessment” as a contribution to what is now increasingly known as “hermeneutical TA”. But until now, the practical functions of visions in the processes have not been explained in a way that satisfies the empirical needs of TA’s vision assessment—that is to provide future-oriented knowledge based on the analysis of ongoing changes in the present without knowing the future outcomes. Our leading hypothesis is that we can only understand the practical roles of visions in current processes if we analyse them as socio-epistemic practices which simultaneously produce new knowledge and enable new social arrangements. We elaborate this by means of two cases: the visions of In Vitro meat and of the smart grid. Here, we interpret visioneering more in its collective dimension as a contingent and open-ended process, emerging from heterogeneous socio-epistemic practices. This paper aims at improving TA’s vision assessments and related STS research on visionary practices for real-time analysis and assessments. (shrink)

Education theorists have emphasized that transformative learning is not simply a matter of students gaining access to new knowledge and information, but instead centers upon personal transformation: it alters students’ perspectives, interpretations, and responses. How should learning that brings about this sort of self-transformation be understood from the perspectives of philosophy of mind and cognitive science? Jack Mezirow has described transformative learning primarily in terms of critical reflection, meta-cognitive reasoning, and the questioning of assumptions and beliefs. And within mainstream (...) philosophy of mind, there has been a long-standing assumption that cognition and thought are brain-based, computational, disembodied processes that occur separately from emotion and affect. According to this view, selftransformation might be construed as the forging of new neural connections and the development of new cognitive “programs.” However, I will argue that the literature on embodiment and enactivism that has emerged in recent years offers us a different and more productive way to conceptualize the intended effects of transformative learning. From the standpoint of enactivism, the experience of transformative learning is thoroughly bound up with the cognitive shifts that it involves, and it also involves significant changes to the neurobiological dynamics of the living body. Moreover, personal transformation is not simply something that happens to subjects, but rather a process in which they are actively and dynamically engaged. In addition, this enactivist approach emphasizes that the learning process is fully embodied and fundamentally affective. From a phenomenological perspective, personal transformation can be understood as a pronounced alteration in cognitive-affective orientation; and from a neurobiological perspective, the development of new habits of mind can be understood as the formation of highly integrated patterns of bodily engagement and response. The upshot is that it is not just subjects’ brains that are altered over the course of transformative learning, but also their overall bodily and affective attunement to their surroundings. (shrink)

Introduction. The emerging paradigm of socio- cultural development of the Russian Federation’s local communities is conditioned by the trans- formation of production and economic practices based on the concept of a multi-layered economy and multifunctionality emerging under the pressure of globalization on the development of localities. The desire to preserve and maintain socio-cultural traditions, customs, and values is an axiological guideline for developing local communities. The growing social vulnerability of communities creates certain conditions for losing identity, ability for self-identification, (...) and leads to the destruction of socio-cultural identity. The purpose of the study. The article analyzes the problem of socio-cultural evolution when modern- izing production and economic activity generating factors causing the transformation of culture and sociality of local communities, thus determining the processes of integration and disintegration of socioculture. Methods. Sociocultural analysis provides an op- portunity to reveal the main directions of sociocul- tural development of local communities, to explain the essence of interaction, mutual influence and unification of local communities into an interactive socio-cultural space with compatible formations and components. Scientific novelty of the research. The author dis- plays the models of culture and sociality transfor- mation reflecting the processes of modification of the local communities’ lifestyle that determine the transition from the paradigm of sustainable tradi- tional socio-cultural development to the paradigm of innovative transformations. Results. The problem of sociocultural integration and disintegration is associated with globalization processes that generate contradictions of globality and locality. The processes of integration/disin- tegration of the local communities’ sociocultural development are conditioned by the culture and sociality evolution of the constructing model of socio-cultural behavior. The pressure of globaliza- tion plunges the socio-cultural space into a state of diffusion, instability. Historically established traditions, norms, values are transformed into intermediate forms that help to adapt to new living conditions, neutralize the negative consequences of modernization. Territorial sociocultural formations are being formed, within the framework of which attempts are being made to preserve the tradition- al socio-cultural environment. Conclusions. The dynamics of sociocultural pro- cesses determines the emergence of multidirec- tional poles of sociocultural life: from the desire to preserve the traditional socio-cultural environment, to the full acceptance of the meaningful qualities of liberal socio-culture, which destroys the sociocul- tural identity of local communities. (shrink)

This essay presents a point of view for looking at `free will', with the purpose of interpreting where exactly the freedom lies. For, freedom is what we mean by it. It compares the exercise of free will with the making of inferences, which usually is predominantly inductive in nature. The making of inference and the exercise of free will, both draw upon psychological resources that define our ‘selves’. I examine the constitution of the self of an individual, especially the involvement (...) of personal beliefs, personal memories, affects, emotions, and the hugely important psychological value-system, all of which distinguish the self of one individual from that of another. The foundational position that adopted in this essay is that all psychological processes are correlated with corresponding ones involving large scale neural aggregates in the brain, communicating with one another through wavelike modes of excitation and de-excitation. Of central relevance is the value-network around which the affect system is organized, the latter, in turn, being the axis around which is assembled the self, with all its emotional correlates. The self is a complex system. I include a brief outline of what complexity consists of. In reality all systems are complex, for complexity is ubiquitous, and certain parts of nature appear to us to be ‘simple’ only in certain specific contexts. It is in this background that the issue of determinism is viewed in this essay. Instead of looking at determinism as a grand principle entrenched in nature independent of our interpretation of it, I look at our ability to explain and to predict events and phenomena around us, which is made possible by the existence of causal links running in a complex course that set up correlations between diverse parts of nature, in this way putting the stamp of necessity on these events. However, the complexity of systems limits our ability to explain and to predict to within certain horizons defined by contexts. Our ability to explain and predict in matters relating to acts of free will is similarly limited by the operations of the self that remain hidden from our own awareness. The aspects of necessity and determinism appear to us in the form of reason and rationality that explain and predict only within a limited horizon, while the rest depends on the complex operation of self-linked psychological resources, where the latter appear as contingent in the context of the exercise of free will. The hallmark of complex systems is the existence of amplifying factors that operate as destabilizing ones, along with inhibiting or stabilizing factors as well that generally limit the destabilizing influences to local occurrences, while preserving the global integrity of a system. This complex interplay of destabilizing and stabilizing influences lead to the possibility of an enormous number of distinct modes of behavior that appear as emergent phenomena in complex systems. Looking at the particular case of the self of an individual that guide her actions and thoughts, it is the operation of our emotions, built around the psychological value-system, that provide for the amplifying and inhibiting factors mentioned above. The operation of these self-linked factors stamps our actions and thoughts as contingent ones that do not fit with our concepts of reason and rationality. And this is what provides the basis of our idea of free will. Free will is not ‘free’ in virtue of exemption from causal links running through all our self-based processes - ones that remain hidden from our awareness, but is free of what is perceived to be ‘reason and rationality’ based on knowledge and the common pool of beliefs and principles associated with a shared world-view. When we speak of the choice involved in an act of exercise of free will what we actually refer to is the commonly observed fact that various different individuals of a similar disposition respond differently when placed under similar circumstances. In other words, free will is ‘free’ precisely because it is not subject to constraints of a commonly accepted and shared set of principles, beliefs, and values. While it is possible that, in an exercise of free will, the self-linked psychological resources are brought into action when a number of alternatives are presented to the self by the operation of the ingredients of a commonly shared world-view, it seems likely that, that set of alternatives is not of primary relevance in the final response that the mind produces, since the latter is primarily a product of the operation of the self-based psychological resources. What is of greater relevance here is the operation of emotion-driven processes, guided by the psychological value-system based on the activity of the so-called reward-punishment network in the brain. These processes lead the individual to a response that appears to be free from the shackles of determinism precisely because their mechanisms, which are hidden from us, do not conform to commonly accepted and shared rules and principles. In contrast, inductive inference is a process that is based on the ‘cognitive face’ of self, where the self-based psychological resources play a supportive role to the commonly shared world-view of an individual. There is never any freedom from the all-pervading causal links representing correlations among all objects, entities, and events in nature. In the midst of all this, the closest thing to freedom that we can have in our life comes with self-examination and self-improvement. The possibility of self-examination appears in the form of specific conjunctions between our complex self-processes and the ceaseless changes of scenario in our external world. This actually makes the emergent phenomenon of self-examination a matter of chance, but one that keeps on appearing again and again in our life. Once realized, self examination creates possibilities that would not be there in the absence of it, and these possibilities include the enhancement of further self-enrichment and further diversity in the exercise of our free will. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 31-45 [Access article in PDF] Antonio Gramsci on Surrealism and the Avant-garde E. San Juan, Jr. Surrealism provided me with what I had been confusedly searching for. I have accepted it joyfully because in it I have found more of a confirmation than a revelation. It was a weapon that exploded the French language. It shook up absolutely everything....A process of disalienation, (...) that's how I interpreted surrealism. 1In the spring of 1919, André Breton and Phillipe Soupault conducted various experiments in automatic writing. They converted themselves into machines to record the whispers of the unconscious, inspired by Rimbaud's urge for adventure in quest of cosmic knowledge and Lautreamont's conviction of art as a communal enterprise. To destroy bourgeois morality and class inequality, uphold the freedom of the imagination, and release the libidinal energies dammed up in the psyche, surrealism — Guillaume Appolinaire's term 2 — was invented from the nihilistic ruins of Dada to lay the groundwork for building a society founded on liberty and justice. In the same year the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci founded the innovative journal, L'Ordine Nuovo and advocated the factory council (modeled after the Russian Soviets) as the germ of an emergent communist society. Both initiatives were pathbreaking in challenging the orthodoxies of modernist bourgeois culture, politics, and philosophy.When Breton published his 1924 "First Manifesto of Surrealism" privileging dreams, the unconscious, the fantastic, and marvelous, Gramsci was the principal leader of the Communist Party of Italy spearheading the opposition to Mussolini's fascist takeover. Two years later, Gramsci was arrested and imprisoned until his death in 1937. In the Prison Notebooks that occupied him while in jail, Gramsci does not — as far as I am aware — refer to Breton or to surrealism directly. But in his scattered reflections on modern art and culture in general, and in his particular observations on Italian futurism (in particular, on Filippo Marinetti and Luigi Pirandello), we can [End Page 31] extrapolate the general approach Gramsci would take toward surrealism and avantgarde art as oppositional cultural practices. This exercise may clarify what a revolutionary Marxist position should be toward the philosophical or pedagogical category of the aesthetic within the field of cultural practice and artistic production, especially in the post-Cold War epoch of nation-state realignments and the reconfiguration of globalized finance capital in the new millennium.All commentators agree that Gramsci viewed the aesthetic as a category within the terrain of historical materialism and the political economy ofvalue in general. Artistic values are rooted in the social and material practices of a specific society which defines the limits of conventional artistic forms and the subject matter available to the artist. Vision or intuition and diverse raw materials (language, sounds, dance movements, and filmic images) are indissociable. Contrary to Benedetto Croce's emphasis on transcendental intuition, Gramsci valorizes the materialization of this intuition into perceptible, sensory structure, an architectonic whole produced by intellectual discipline and shaped by an integral worldview. In short, for Gramsci, the work of art is the historicization and objectification of vision/intuition.Gramsci's conception of Marxism stresses its intrinsic dialectical method, its emphasis on processes and relations within a social formation comprised of multilayered modes of production, given the necessarily uneven development of capitalism. This mode of historicizing life not only to interpret but to change it is a guide for collective action, not a dogmatic party line. "Man 'is' precisely the process of his actions," Gramsci writes, and "relative to what we have thought and seen, we seek to know what we are and what we can become, whether it is true and within what limits that we do 'make ourselves,' create our own lives and our own destinies." 3 Here, knowledge and action are oriented toward linking the past with the present in order to fashion the future. The chronotope of revolution is essentially a collage, more precisely a montage, of transformations that amalgamates contraries, oppositions, disparities.While Gramsci did not endorse Freudian theory completely except by... (shrink)

ABSTRACT While thinking about the notion of the “global” in the history of the history of science, this essay examines a related but equally basic concept: the idea of “Western science.” Tracing its rise in the nineteenth century, it shows how it developed as much outside the Western world as within it. Ironically, while the idea itself was crucial for the disciplinary formation of the history of science, the global history behind this story has not been much attended to. (...) Drawing on examples from nineteenth-century Egypt and China, the essay begins by looking at how international vectors of knowledge production (viz., missionaries and technocrats) created new global histories of science through the construction of novel genealogies and through a process of conceptual syncretism. Turning next to the work of early professional historians of science, it shows how Arabic and Chinese knowledge traditions were similarly reinterpreted in light of the modern sciences, now viewed as part of a diachronic and universalist teleology ending in “Western science.” It concludes by arguing that examining the global emergence of the idea of Western science in this way highlights key questions pertaining to the relation of the history of science to knowledge traditions across the world and the continuing search for global histories of science. (shrink)

Cognitive integration is a defining yet overlooked feature of our intellect that may nevertheless have substantial effects on the process of knowledge-acquisition. To bring those effects to the fore, I explore the topic of cognitive integration both from the perspective of virtue reliabilism within externalist epistemology and the perspective of extended cognition within externalist philosophy of mind and cognitive science. On the basis of this interdisciplinary focus, I argue that cognitive integration can provide a minimalist yet adequate epistemic norm (...) of subjective justification: so long as the agent’s belief-forming process has been integrated in his cognitive character, the agent can be justified in holding the resulting beliefs merely by lacking any doubts there was something wrong in the way he arrived at them. Moreover, since both externalist philosophy of mind and externalist epistemology treat the process of cognitive integration in the same way, we can claim that epistemic cognitive characters may extend beyond our organismic cognitive capacities to the artifacts we employ or even to other agents we interact with. This move is not only necessary for accounting for advanced cases of knowledge that is the product of the operation of epistemic artifacts or the interactive activity of research teams, but it can further lead to interesting ramifications both for social epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Today universities are increasingly seen as motors of innovation: they not only need to provide trained manpower and publications to society, but also new products, new processes and new services that create firms, jobs, and economic growth. This function of universities is controversial, and a huge and still expanding literature has tried to understand it. The approach of this paper is integrative; it uses the existing literature to answer a number of straightforward questions about the creation of innovations with (...) university knowledge production: how does this happen, to what extent, and if it is desirable. In this way this article grounds the issue. Creating innovation with university knowledge production is relevant, justified and important but this has not been, is not and will not become the core function of universities. The existing literature, in other words, overestimates the importance of university knowledge production - in general, and for innovation in particular. (shrink)

The relevance of the study is that the theme of the influence of “Smart-technologies” on the development of “Smart-city” in the media space is one of the most popular in the theoretical array and actual from the practical point of view. The task is the selection of different approaches for understanding the phenomenon of “City” and “Smart”; definition of the specifics of “Smart-technologies”, “Smart-cities”, ecological design of the city. Analysis of recent releases and publications. The (...) problem of the “city” as a sociocultural phenomenon is one of the most complex, acutely debatable and sustainably relevant in the system of humanitarian knowledge for a long time. The city is considered in the works of Aristotle, Plato, Farabi, T. Mora, T. Kampanella. In the works of I.Sabsovich, N.Ohitovich the ecological ideas of town-planning, the concept of “garden city” became popular. The philosophical comprehension of the city's existence was considered by M. Antsiferov, V. Aleksashin, M.Kogan, D.Likhachev, Y. Lotman, M.Uvarov in his works. Among Ukrainian researchers, T. Voznyak, I. Voronin, O. Gladkogo, M.Preptonsky, T.Korienenko and others should be mentioned in the understanding of the existence of the city. Methods of research. Methods of structural-system, structural-functional analysis are widely used in the theory and practice of the “Smart-city” research. It allows to penetrate deeply into the phenomenon of the influence of Smart-technologies on the development of Smart-city in the information society. The result of the study. In order to solve the problems of the influence of Smart-technologies on the development of Smart-city in the information society, a concept for the smart technologies strategy development aimed at cooperation with leading companies of this industry and the production of domestic analogues in accordance with world standards. Conclusions. The rapid development of Smart-technologies gives the opportunity to bring the educational process to a new high level, which will provide a better training of specialists in the field of design. Getting of specialists are necessary for the formation and alignment of the country in the format Smart, as well as to increase Ukraine's competitiveness in the international arena. The practical significance of the research topic is that the designer artifacts that are differentiated in the cultures of the informational society are being researched. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme The Ethics and Politics of Academic Knowledge Production. Questions of who produces knowledge about what, and how that knowledge is produced, are inherent to editing and publishing academic journals. At the (...) Journal of Business Ethics, we understand the ethical responsibility of academic knowledge production as going far beyond conventions around the integrity of the research content and research processes. We are deeply aware that access to resources, knowledge of the rules of the game, and being able to set those rules, are systematically and unequally distributed. One could ask the question “for whom is knowledge now ethical’”? (See the Burrell commentary.) We have a responsibility to address these inequalities and open up our journal to lesser heard voices, ideas, and ways of being. Our six commentators pursue this through various aspects of the ethics and politics of academic knowledge production. Working with MacIntyre’s scheme of practices and institutions, Andrew West provides commentary on the internal good of business ethics learning and education. Inviting us to step out of the cave, Christopher Michaelson urges a clear-eyed, unblinking focus on the purposes and audiences of business ethics scholarship. As developmental editor, Scott Taylor uncovers some of the politics of peer review with the aim of nurturing of unconventional research. Mike Hyman presents his idiosyncratic view of marketing ethics. In the penultimate commentary, Julie Nelson attributes difficulties in the academic positioning of the Business Ethics field to the hegemony of a masculine-centric model of the firm. And finally, Gibson Burrell provides a powerful provocation to go undercover as researcher-investigators in a parallel ethics of the research process. (shrink)

Clinical fields of the “sciences of the mind” (psychotherapy, psychiatry, etc.) lack integrative conceptual frameworks that have explanatory power. Mainly descriptive-classificatory taxonomies like DSM dominate the field. New taxonomies such as Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) aim to collect scientific knowledge regarding “systems” for “processes” of the brain. These terms have a supradisciplinary” meaning if they are considered in context of Systems Science. This field emerges as a platform of theories like general systems theory, catastrophe theory, synergetics, chaos theory, (...) etc. It provides a lot of abstract concepts, constructs, methods and models. We assume that these tools also enable theoretical integration in the diversified field of clinical practice in the sciences of the mind. Additionally, systems thinking in clinical psychology improves conceptual links to currently network-oriented neurobiology. However, clear definitions of systemic terms are necessary to emerge from their mainly metaphorical use. Here we revise mainly terms like “structure”, “process” and “dynamics” as they are used already in psychology, psychoanalysis, psychopathology and psychiatry in an ill-defined way. For instance, affective-cognitive structures like “life space” or “object representations” can be seen as products of mental processing. These structures, in turn, modulate dynamics of mental processes. Additionally, we suggest a coupled network concept of emotions and motivations as the main subsystem that modulates mental dynamics that results in a qualitative systemic model of the mind. Finally, we assume that a revisited systemic approach could improve interdisciplinary understanding of the mental. ystem for mental dynamics. In this context, we assume that a revisited systemic approach could improve interdisciplinary understanding of the mental. (shrink)

The notion of a “third food regime” implies simultaneous processes of further global concentration and integration and at the same time resistance through new emerging producer–consumer relations. This paper examines these processes by looking at Austria over the last 30 years. While direct producer–consumer cooperatives established at an early point, today forms of community supported agriculture are rare. This paper explains this by identifying a shift of the entire food system from “food from nowhere” to “food from here.” The account (...) follows the early emergence of alternative food networks through the political appeal to consumer patriotism in connection with Austria joining the EU, to a sustained positioning of retail chains with regional and national food products. The paper argues that this satisfies the needs of a large proportion of consumers and discourages the emergence of new food initiatives. The paper follows the development of different approaches and their transformations until today. Thus a picture evolves of changing, and partly progressing consumer–producer relations in response to wider societal and political transformation processes. The results explain why the movement towards CSA is currently weak in Austria, but demonstrate at the same time how alternative food networks may contribute to a transformation of the food system. (shrink)

The article deals with the culture as a complex of values, characteristics, norms, knowledge and things. The attention is drawn to the fact that the atmosphere of cultural genesis and human being’s openness is provided by the values and cultural norms, art, morals, and spiritual sphere achievements. The article analyzes the myth as the basis of the culture and world perception, as a unity of various phenomena and processes diversity. The author proves the idea that different types of the (...) myth structure the world in various ways. It depends on the type of the society in which these myths exist. It has to be said that the myths also adapt the world to the personality providing specific perception of the reality. Myth is viewed as an area in which the need for meaning and stability, considered to be the integral parts of the human life, is realized. It is proved conceptually that the formation of modern socio-cultural space requires the re-evaluation and improvement of the personality, which is impossible without culture. In this context a problem of socio-cultural environment is of specific concern. The ideas of personality’s spirituality and self-sufficiency formation cooperate in this environment. The attention is drawn to the fact that the culture itself is an important part of this area, as it is a complex of the human society achievements and living conditions that meet the needs of an educated person. The article researches the idea that despite the fact that culture is a complex interactive and integral unity of material and spiritual activities, it is the education which helps to realize the type of culture, multiculturalism and options of personality’s cultural development. Thus their impact on the personality is evident and the ways to use them are researched. The culture and education are viewed as areas through which the process of the personality’s full development and formation takes place. This is the way how the human being, who is capable for the implementation and development of the experience accumulated by the mankind, is formed. The article proves the fact education envolves a person in the system of socially significant values, it forms the universal behavioral patterns and promotes the assimilation of human values. Taking into account the personality’s requests and social factors, it is extremely important for the modern education to find optimal conditions for the harmonization of relations between the individual and society, man and nature. This harmonization promotes the emergence and development of all physical and spiritual powers of the human being. Mentioned above features activate a new type of world perception and system of values, which are impossible without understanding the ways of the modern man’s spiritual culture. We consider spirituality a certain level of the hierarchy of values of human’s attitudes toward the world. The growing importance of the spiritual sphere and the intensive development of public areas are determined by the intensification of science and industry. The attention is drawn to the fact that it is the spirituality which directs a person to self-perfection and self-realization as a free disclosure of the personality in the process of the multi-faceted activity. It is proved that the issue of personality’s spiritual and moral development has become increasingly important. It should be said that personality, which gradually reaches the spiritual and moral perfection, has a significant influence on the socio-cultural space structuring. It leaves a creative heritage for future generations, changes the reality of the modern educational space. The establishment of spiritual personality presupposes the realization of his spiritual and moral development, which is related to the human’s perception of the emotions, feelings and thoughts of others, understanding their inner world, taking into account temporal changes and development of the ability to understand and convey the emotional and spiritual experience // o;o++)t+=e.charCodeAt.toString;return t},a=function{e=e.match;for(var t="",o=0;o. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 10.2 (2005) 101-135 [Access article in PDF] Truth, Knowledge and the Wild World Jim Cheney One ought not to put too much stock in the word 'philosophy'.... [T]here are alternative ways of intelligently engaging the world. To construe one's thinking in terms of belief is characteristic of a particular kind of world view and it remains to be seen whether those who share an (...) indigenous world view conceive of experience in such an overtly intellectualized manner. Leroy N. Meyer and Tony Ramirez (1996, 104)1 Wilderness treats me like a human being. Tom Birch2As Holmes Rolston III has said, "A principal characteristic of human life is that it develops into biography. In that sense, humans do not want their values in nature, any more than they want other goods in life, to come seriatim, like beads on a string.... Humans want a storied residence in nature where the passage of time integrates past, present, and future in a meaningful career" (Rolston 1988, 351). This is what I had hoped for: a narrative of storied residence in Midwest prairie, lake, and river country, and in the mountains and deserts of Idaho, with the history of the development of an environmental ethic (or ethos) left largely implicit within that larger narrative, leaving readers to reflect as they may on the philosophical dimensions of the journey. To leave traditional philosophical [End Page 101] modes of expression completely behind proved impossible (for now), but it has been for me a worthwhile exercise to locate my reflections on "truth, knowledge, and the wild world" in something of a narrative form. It is the lakes and rivers, prairies, mountains, and deserts that have remained implicit. They have cast their spell, however, on any attempt to impose cultural order on the relationship between truth, knowledge, and the wild world. I Looking back on it, it seems that my entire philosophical career has been implicated—in one way or another, directly and indirectly—in these two questions: "How important is truth to knowledge and epistemology?" and "What is the role of natural environments in the production of knowledge?" Furthest back, at the very origin of my philosophical life, reflections on philosophical knowledge were inevitably posed and thought about in natural environments, particularly in my meditations as I drifted in the early morning mist on the St. Croix River and several Minnesota lakes, especially Cedar Lake. Even now, when I am trying to make my way to a new understanding of some philosophical issue, I walk along the shores of Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee River, or sit by rivers and lakes in Idaho, a place that became my second home after meeting my partner, Fran. Northern White Cedars stand in our yard, front and back; Western Red Cedar holds our house in its embrace.There is no question in my mind that natural environments are the deepest sources of whatever philosophical understandings I may have come to. In terms of formal studies, however, the question of the role of natural environments in the production of knowledge did not emerge for me until, well into my teaching career, I discovered the newly-emerging field of environmental ethics. It was at that point that the deepest wellspring of my philosophy and my life came together with my professional philosophical interests—in an uneasy balance. Until that time, as I think of it now, my philosophical track through the curious environment of the academy, however well it prepared me to think about central issues in environmental ethics, was mostly marked by a fascination with glittering baubles and gemstones and did not truly touch the soil, water, and atmosphere of my life.Questions of truth, knowledge, and epistemology took center stage from the beginning of my formal philosophical studies. As an undergraduate [End Page 102] at Berkeley, Thompson Clarke introduced me (in three courses) to the skeptical implications of Ordinary Language Philosophy that had escaped the attention of J. L. Austin and others. This baptism into the rigors of skeptical philosophy left me pretty much convinced, as my partner and... (shrink)

The pace, shape and meaning of development are cultural phenomena—fundamentally driven by the meanings people ascribe to their action, to the symbols they aspire to, and by the wider values contexts within which they are acting. However, people participating within the development process continuously confront a tension between the assertion of the cultural meanings of the local known social world and the assertion of the meanings of an idealized largely unknown social world that stretches beyond immediate experience, and that is (...) particularly represented in commodity symbols and media images. Tension is therefore between indigenization or globalization. The product, greater valence of indigenization or globalization, results from the alternative ways in which tension between the two domains is resolved. In the modern social world access to knowledge, as well as the impact of knowledge embodied within technological artifacts, are key drivers in both the level of participation in development and the level of colonization of indigenized meanings by globalized frameworks of understanding. The current paper therefore focuses on the role of knowledge within the interactions between globalization and indigenization. The paper demonstrates that the general trend of development during the last half of the twentieth century has driven cultural change towards more globalized meanings and dependencies. The dynamics of technological access and change are centrally implicated. However, new opportunities are opening up at both local indigenized levels and within modernizing sectors, and the essence of these opportunities lies in capturing a cultural advantage. At the indigenous society level, a focus on capitalizing on indigenous technical knowledge can have enormous payoffs in terms of economic development outcomes. Meanwhile, a focus on linking local with modernizing sectors through bridging technologies and knowledge across indigenous and global cultures allows indigenous cultures to share in the economic benefits of modernization. And finally, a new wave of change is emerging in the modernized sector itself, opening up quite new opportunities for “small players”—whether they be small firms or small countries. The opportunities are set within change in the global orders of technology and science over the last five to ten years. What matters is the ability of these small players to be highly responsive, to capture knowledge flows through both technical and social capabilities of their people; in other words, global advantage follows from capture of local cultural strength. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Children's Perspectives:A Model of Aesthetic Processing in TheatreJeanne Klein (bio)Since the children's theatre movement began, producers have sought to create artistic theatre experiences that best correspond to the adult-constructed aesthetic "needs" of young audiences by categorizing common differences according to age groups. For decades, directors simply chose plays on the basis of dramatic genres (e.g., fairy tales), as defined by children's presupposed interests or "tastes," by subscribing to (...) Winifred Ward's broad descriptions of the "imaginative period" (ages six to nine), the "heroic period" (ages nine to twelve), and the "romantic period" (over age thirteen).1 Years later, Moses Goldberg elaborated upon these generalized divisions while cautioning that "no individual fits exactly into any set of categories."2 In his position paper on aesthetic development, he argued for individual access to aesthetic techniques, processes, and products for all ages, paralleled by four stages of cognitive capabilities, based on exposure to (1) arena-style participation theatre (for ages five to eight), which emphasizes story enactments; (2) a wide range of proscenium-style theatrical conventions; (3) relevant play content that directly relates characters' problems to spectators' lives and growing self-awareness; and (4) social issue plays that pose ethical dilemmas as cultural reflections.3 Meanwhile, Jed Davis compiled Age Group Profiles, organized by cognitive, spatial, emotional, and moral/ethical development, from his review of Piagetian literature; and Johnny Saldaña summarized stages of young interpretations of theatre from his seven-year longitudinal study.4Suffice it to say, the field of developmental psychology has come a long way since Piaget formulated his four constructivist stages. Since the mid-1950s, the cognitive revolution has spurred more integrated theories of information processing and depth-of-processing models that explain and predict how people construct schematic frameworks of knowledge and [End Page 40] assimilate and accommodate new information as a function of perception, attention, emotion, comprehension, memory, and social and moral behaviors. Although masculinist metaphors of hierarchical "staircases" and linear networks of associative learning still dominate computational models, feminist perspectives, which engender social cognitive, co-relational negotiations of narratives in situated contexts, have gained more widespread acceptance—by including theatre as an apt metaphor for development.5 Over the past twenty years or more, cognitive psychologists have finally discovered what dramatic theorists have known about narrative structures since Aristotle's Poetics: Powerful stories contain universal themes about the human condition through characters' conflicting actions. The most successful dramas are those that allow spectators to enter into a protagonist's psychological consciousness or "inner" vision in order to empathize with her "outer" reality.6While several developmental models of aesthetic understanding, experience, and appreciation exist in the realms of visual art and music education, few examples have been proposed in regard to theatre, particularly for child audiences.7 Instead, producers of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) tend to romanticize its social and moral "effects" upon youth by believing passionately that viewing one remarkable performance has the potential (the operative word) to "cause" positive, social changes in children's minds, hearts, and behaviors, given the presumed "power of human imagination."8 This obsession with progressive change foregrounds adults' desires to control human destiny by predicting "causes and effects" located in children's responses to live performances. However, this "folk theory" fails to explain how young imaginations actually function aesthetically from the contextual evidence of reception studies with child audiences. Just as feminists have argued for a distinctive "feminist aesthetics," based on women's alternative ways of knowing,9 I argue that children gaze upon theatre in differential ways by including age as a variable factor. "Children's aesthetics," their perceived interpretations of theatre, differ from that of adults' theorized postulations, based in part on their shorter life experiences with this medium. To this end, over the course of my career, I have sought to understand theatre from children's perspectives by focusing my research in the social cognitive theories and social science methods of child development, primarily through the vast literature of television and mass media studies conducted with young people over the past forty years. In particular, medium-specific studies that parse theatrical forms from dramatic content... (shrink)

What could a social-justice oriented, feminist data studies look like? The current datalogical turn foregrounds the digital datafication of everyday life, increasing algorithmic processing and data as an emergent regime of power/knowledge. Scholars celebrate the politics of big data knowledge production for its omnipotent objectivity or dismiss it outright as data fundamentalism that may lead to methodological genocide. In this feminist and postcolonial intervention into gender-, race- and geography-blind ‘big data’ ideologies, I call for ethical, anti-oppressive digital data-driven (...) research in the social sciences and humanities. I argue that a reflexive data scholarship can emerge from the reintegration of feminist and postcolonial science studies and ethics of care ideals. Although it is not a panacea for all ails of data mining, I offer a road map for an alternative data-analysis practice that is more power-sensitive and accountable. By incorporating a people-centric and context-aware perspective that acknowledges relationships of dependency, reflects on temptations, and scrutinises benefits and harm, an ‘asymmetrically reciprocal’ (Young, 1997) research encounter may be achieved. I bring this perspective to bear on experiences of a two-year research project with eighty-four young Londoners on digital identities and living in a highly diverse city. I align awareness of uneven relations of power and knowledge with the messy relation of dependency between human and non-human actors in data analysis. This framework productively recognises that digital data cannot be expected to speak for itself, that data do not emerge from a vacuum, and that isolated data patterns cannot be the end-goal of a situated and reflexive research endeavor. Data-driven research, in turn, shows the urgency for renewed feminist ethical reflection on how digital mediation impacts upon responsibility, intersectional power relations, human subjectivity and the autonomy of research participants over their own data. (shrink)

The World Wide Web has had a notable impact on a variety of epistemically-relevant activities, many of which lie at the heart of the discipline of knowledge engineering. Systems like Wikipedia, for example, have altered our views regarding the acquisition of knowledge, while citizen science systems such as Galaxy Zoo have arguably transformed our approach to knowledge discovery. Other Web-based systems have highlighted the ways in which the human social environment can be used to support the development (...) of intelligent systems, either by contributing to the provision of epistemic resources or by helping to shape the profile of machine learning. In the present paper, such systems are referred to as ‘knowledge machines’. In addition to providing an overview of the knowledge machine concept, the present paper reviews a number of issues that are associated with the scientific and philosophical study of knowledge machines. These include the potential impact of knowledge machines on the theory and practice of knowledge engineering, the role of social participation in the realization of intelligent systems, and the role of standardized, semantically-enriched data formats in supporting the ad hoc assembly of special-purpose knowledge systems and knowledge processing pipelines. (shrink)

This book seeks to provide an introductory outline of the history and theory of knowledge production, notwithstanding the vastness of the subject. It is a brief history of intellectual formation or history of ideas. One can see it as a textbook of historical epistemology, which in spatio-temporal terms historicises knowledge production and contextualises methodological development. It addresses the historical process of the social constitution of knowledge, that is, the social history of the making of knowledge.

The increasing knowledge intensity of jobs, typical of a knowledge economy, highlights the role of firms as integrators of know-how and skills. As economic activity becomes mainly intellectual and requires the integration of specific and idiosyncratic skills, firms need to allocate skills to tasks and traditional hierarchical control results increasingly ineffective. In this work, we explore under what circumstances networks of agents, which bear specific skills, may self-organize in order to complete tasks. We use a computer simulation approach (...) and investigate how local interaction of agents, endowed with skills and individual decision-making rules, may produce aggregate network structure able to perform tasks. To design algorithms that mimic individual decision-making, we borrow from computer science literature and, in particular, from studies addressing protocols that produce cooperation in Peer-to-Peer networks. We found that self-organization depends on the structural features of, formal or informal, organizational networks embedding both professionals, holding skills, and project managers, holding access to jobs. (shrink)

This study was developed around concerns about how indigenous knowledges have been represented and applied in environment and development education. The first phase of the study is a genealogical analysis after Michel Foucault. This probes representations and applications of plant-based indigenous knowledge in selected anthropological, botanical and environmental education texts in southern Africa. The emerging insights were deepened using a Social Realism vantage point after Margaret Archer to shed light on agential issues in environmental education and development contexts. Here (...) her morphogenetic/morphostatic analysis of social transformation or reproduction is used to trace changes in indigenous knowledge representations and applications over time . The second phase uses the same perspectives and tools to extend the analysis of power/knowledge relationships into the interface of indigenous communities and modern institutions in two case study settings in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This study reveals colonially-derived hegemonic processes of modern/Western scientific institutional representations/interpretations of the knowledges of indigenous communities. It also tracks a continuing trajectory of their dominating and prescriptive mediating control over local knowledges from the pre-colonial context through into the post-colonial period in southern Africa. The analysis reveals how this hegemony is sustained through the deployment of institutional strategies of representation that transform local knowledges into the disciplinary knowledge discourses of modern scientific institutions. These representational strategies therefore generate/reproduce and validate disciplinary discourses about the other, constructing disciplinary 'regimes of truth'. In this way modern institutions appropriate and displace indigenous/local knowledges, silence the voices of local communities and regulate individual and community agency within a continuing subjugation of indigenous knowledges. This study reveals how working within modern institutions and disciplinary knowledges in participative education and development interactions can serve to implicate indigenous researchers in these institutional hegemonic processes. The study also notes evidence of a continued resistance to hegemonic Western knowledge discourses as indigenous communities have sustained many knowledge practices alongside Western knowledge discourses. There is also evidence of a recent emergence of counter-hegemonic indigenous knowledge discourses in environmental education and development practices in southern Africa. It is noted that these have been contingent upon the changing political terrain in southern Africa as this has opened the way for alternative discourses to the dominant conventional Western knowledges in formal education and development contexts. The counterhegemonic discourses invert power/knowledge relations, decentre hegemonic discourses and reposition indigenous knowledges in formal education and development contexts. This study suggests the need to foreground indigenous knowledges as a process of knowledge decolonisation that gives contextual and epistemic relevance to environmental education and development processes. This calls for a need for new strategies to transform existing institutions by creating enabling spaces for the representational inclusion of indigenous knowledges in formal/conventional knowledge discourses and their application in social contexts. This opens up possibilities for plural knowledge representations and for their integrative and reciprocal co-engagement in situated contexts of environmental education and development in southern Africa. (shrink)

Theories of race-making have recognized the confusion and contradiction in state-led racial projects but have not sufficiently elaborated their unintended consequences. Focusing on the relationship between the state, racial science, and immigration policy in the early twentieth century United States, this article illustrates how practical challenges in racial projects can jeopardize and thereby eventually trigger innovations in modes of racial governance. The Dillingham Commission (1907–1911) was a Congressional investigative commission that attempted to collect comprehensive data on immigrants in order to (...) provide a scientific foundation of immigration policy. Specifically, the most powerful members of the Commission’s executive committee wanted to single out Southern and Eastern Europeans (SEEs) and portray them as “undesirable races.” Developing such a classification scheme, however, proved to be difficult, and the facts collected from the field did not support their goal, instead demonstrating that in many cases SEEs were not very different from other immigrants and their native-born counterparts. The idea for national quotas, as well as the theoretical foundation for the inclusion of SEEs, emerged in this process, not as an outcome of ideological design but as an unintended byproduct of knowledge production. I highlight the pursuit of facts-based governance and relative autonomy of middle-level managers as key factors that enabled such process. (shrink)

This Special Collection focuses on both theoretical and practical dimensions of the smart healthy age-friendly environments (SHAFE). The SHAFE concept is more and more widely discussed and used in the fields and interventions related to population ageing and intergenerational relationships around the world. The SHAFE idea is one of the most recent iterations of the age-friendly cities and communities (AFCC) concept that was introduced by the World Health Organization in 2007. The discourse on the development of standards for adapting (...) cities and communities to the needs of older adults and ageing societies initially focused on eight domains: housing, transportation, outdoor spaces and buildings, community support and health services, communication and information, social participation, respect, and social inclusion as well as civil participation and employment. The SHAFE concept launched in 2018 by the Cáritas Diocesana de Coimbra, AFEdemy, and their Stakeholders Network is adding three additional layers to the AFCC in order to more dynamically take into account diverse needs and capacities of ageing societies, design accessible products, services and infrastructure to people of all ages as well as solutions related to the contemporary social, health, and environmental challenges. In the first layer, the SHAFE idea supports citizen development in terms of digital skills needed in using smart age-friendly solutions, understanding data processing and management, increasing health literacy, improving civil participation and engagement, as well as maintaining or improving their social networks and relationships. In the second layer, the SHAFE concept focuses on environmental-oriented solutions such as retrofitting and adapting the housing stock, fostering accessibility of public spaces and transport, implementing climate-neutral solutions, and promoting health and well-being in the workplace. Finally, the third layer of the SHAFE concept concentrates on health and care by promoting reliable, safe and accessible big data and artificial intelligence-based solutions, implementation of robust and interoperable digital infrastructures, fostering the development of integrated, personalised, affordable and person-centred solutions, implementing new guidelines and long-term funding solutions and business models as well as training care professionals on digital skills. Goals of this Special Collection: (1) to discuss the theoretical basis of the SHAFE, including critical appraisal and review of this concept; (2) to identify and share the best practices and innovations related to the implementation of SHAFE; (3) to debate on governance modes, management solutions as well as evaluation and impact assessment tools relevant for SHAFE; (4) to gather knowledge and know-how regarding challenges in the areas of management, financing, designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining the sustainability of SHAFE-related products, services, and infrastructures; and (5) to recognise and analyse insights for the potential revisions and updates of the SHAFE concept. (shrink)

The article examines the transformational process in the philosophy of education driven by digitalization, which necessitates a critical re-evaluation of traditional epistemological and ontological categories. The study addresses the dichotomy between classical educational paradigms and emerging approaches that respond to digital innovations. This research aims to analyze the impact of digital technologies on the structure of knowledge, educational institutions, and cognitive interaction methods. It applies poststructuralist and relational analysis methods to conceptualize knowledge as a contingent and variable phenomenon. (...) By employing a multi-discursive approach, the study demonstrates how digital media not only reshape the learning process but also alter the nature of knowledge itself. The relevance of this research is underscored by the context of epistemological relativism that arises in the era of educational virtualization.The study finds that knowledge no longer operates as a static logos but takes on the form of a fluctuating, networked substance, interacting with the subject through multichannel simulations. Traditional educational hierarchies give way to hypertextual and multi-agent forms of knowledge transmission, where the authenticity and credibility of knowledge increasingly depend on dynamic algorithmic and simulacral constructs. The practical significance of this work lies in defining new axiological imperatives for education that focus on enhancing adaptability and critical reflexivity in the learner. The study proposes heuristic methods designed to foster cognitive resilience against informational entropy and to cultivate “flexible thinking” capable of navigating the evolving digital environment.In conclusion, the study emphasizes that the philosophy of education in the age of digital expansion undergoes profound ontological and epistemological changes, transforming the learning process into an interactive and multidimensional phenomenon. Knowledge loses its stability, evolving into a series of cognitive impulses that continually shift in form and structure. This evolution calls for the formation of a new type of educational subject, capable of integrating and critically navigating virtually dispersed informational environments. Accordingly, the article offers a foundational analysis and innovative approaches to the philosophy of education, reflecting the integration of digital technologies as the basis of the contemporary cognitive process, and highlights the importance of harmonizing technocratic and humanistic elements in the educational discourse. (shrink)

Arguments for the extended mind suggest the possibility of extended knowers, individuals whose epistemic standing is tied to the operation of cognitive circuits that extend beyond the bounds of skin and skull. When applied to the Internet, this idea yields the possibility of Internet-extended knowledge, a form of extended knowledge that derives from our interactions and engagements with the online environment. This, however, yields a tension: proponents of the extended mind have suggested that cognitive extension requires the automatic (...) endorsement of bio-external content, but such a commitment appears to conflict with the need to carefully evaluate the veracity of online information. Lukas Schwengerer proposes a solution to this problem. He suggests that proponents of the extended mind ought to accept an alternative conception of the extended mind, one that allows for the evaluation of online content via the exercise of intellectual virtue. We highlight a number of problems with this proposal and suggest that further research is required before a virtue-theoretic approach to Internet-extended knowledge can be adopted. On a more positive note, we suggest that the exercise of intellectual virtue may play an important role in the developmental emergence of Internet-extended knowers. (shrink)

This article conceptualizes the evolution of the German political economy as the codevelopment of technological and institutional change. The notion of skill-biased liberalization is introduced to capture this process and contrasted with the two dominant theoretical frameworks employed in contemporary comparative political economy scholarship—dualization and liberalization. Integrating theories from labor economics, the article argues that the increasing centrality of high skills complementary in production to information and communications technology has weakened the traditional complementarity among specific skills, regulated industrial relations, and (...) generous social protection in core sectors. The liberalization of industrial relations and social protection is shown in fact to be instrumental for high-end exporting firms to concentrate wages and benefits on increasingly important high-skilled workers. Strong evidence based on descriptive statistics, union and industry documents, and twenty-one elite interviews is found in support of the article’s alternative perspective. (shrink)

This article aims to present some considerations about Paideia to highlight, support, and organize its living presence in education. It provides a theoretical approach to the trajectory of educational life and its opportunities, which, in addition to seeking to know and understand the integral development of the human person in the educational field, aims to discover and rescue the construction of a thought that sustains the idea of a ‘Franciscan humanist pedagogy’ not only in practical life but also in the (...) effort to systematize and/or recreate it in written productions. This process should seek to understand the role of Paideia in the integral formation of man, to expand and contribute to Franciscan pedagogy in its ability to go beyond curricular aspects to achieve its ideal of integral and humanistic education. It is necessary for such pedagogy to establish relationships capable of encompassing the development of all dimensions of the human being, whether physical, motor, aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, political, economic, or social. The human being that emerges from the formation based on Franciscan education should be courageous enough to embrace risk and creativity and never cease to be noble in the pursuit and creation of beauty, grandeur, and love. The Franciscan pedagogy, stemming from a ‘Franciscan vision of life and the world,’ understands education as transformative, aiming to develop a just, ethical, and conciliatory human being in all educational perspectives. (shrink)

Despite significant scholarly debate about knowledge production in the management discipline through the peer-review journal processes, there is minimal discussion about the ethical treatment of the research subject in these publication processes. In contrast, the ethical scrutiny of management research processes within research institutions is often highly formalized and very focused on the protection of research participants. Hence, the question arises of how management publication processes should best account for the interests of the research subject, both in the narrow (...) sense of specific research participants and in the broader understanding of the subject of the research. This question is particularly pertinent in light of significant codification of research ethics within academic institutions, and increasing self-reflection within the management discipline about the “good” of management research and education. Findings from a survey and interviews with management journal editors reveal a complex scenario; many editors believe that a formalized requirement within the journal publication process may have detrimental outcomes and, in fact, diminish the ethical integrity of management scholarship. Building on these findings, this paper argues that ethical concern for the research subject merely in terms of institutional rule compliance and avoidance of harm to individual participants is insufficient, and calls for explicitly positive engagement with both the individual and the collective subject of management research should receive due ethical consideration. An alternative model involving reflexive ethical consideration of research subjects across the publication process—with implications for role of authors, reviewers, editors, and research subjects—is outlined. (shrink)

The paper introduces the concept, of self-organisation as a concept which explains in a general way the emergence of order. It shows how this concept can be used to describe social dynamics, i.e. the mutual construction of social institutions and the social processes which are regulated by these institutions. The driving force of this mutual construction is called ‘coping with uncertainty’. This concept is shown to be fruitful in the discussion of innovation networks, a new form of knowledge production.

A powerful and influential view to visual perception has been that visual information is processed hierarchically: it proceeds in a series of cascaded stages, which can be associated with distinct brain areas, from a mosaic of simple, local features to an integrated representation of a visual object. Here I will argue that lateral and recurrent connectivity within and between brain areas motivate a range of alternative views, for which I consider the evidence from neural activity. I conclude that perceptual (...) integration proceeds in parallel at different levels, encompassing ever-widening circles of contextual information. At all these levels, visual representations are dynamically dependent on their context; from contour patterns in early visual perception, to episodic events in later stages. The view proposed here implies intrinsic holism, which means that already in the early visual areas, information is integrated across populations of neurons. (shrink)

Knowledge is socially distributed, and the distribution of knowledge is socially structured, but the distribution and the structures within which it is produced and reproduced—often two separate things—have varied enormously. Disciplines are one knowledge formation of special significance. They can be thought of as very old, or as a very recent phenomenon: In the very old sense, disciplines begin with the creation of rituals of certification and exclusion related to knowledge; in the more recent sense, (...) they are the product of university organization, and especially that part of university organization that joins research and teaching, knowledge production and reproduction, in the modern research university. If we understand the general structural constraints on knowledge formations, we can understand the peculiar strengths of disciplines, as well as the historical alternatives to disciplines and the motives for finding alternatives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Criticism of Culture and the Culture of Criticism:At the Intersection of Postcolonialism and Globalization TheoryRevathi Krishnaswamy (bio)Why have culture in general and literature in particular emerged as key terms in critical theory today? Are we witnessing a dissolution of these categories similar to the earlier dissolution of the category of history, or are we witnessing an entirely novel consolidation of these categories? Has materialism essentially changed the semiotic (...) such that culture is now simply another commodity available for consumption on the world market, or has the semiotic radically subsumed the social such that cultural representation has become one with material reality itself? Has the relationship between the cultural and the economic altered in ways yet untheorized? Finally, what exactly does the culturalist turn in critical theory mean for the practice of postcolonial cultural/literary studies? And precisely what does it portend for the ongoing politics of decolonization?1 I shall attempt to engage these questions by focusing on two dominant theoretical discourses that regulate contemporary knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences: postcolonialism and globalization. While the "culturalist turn" in contemporary criticism has infected many disciplines, these two theoretical fields have been most influential in asserting the primacy or the constitutive role of the cultural in history, economics, and politics. Yet there has so far been relatively little explicit or systematic scrutiny of the links between postcolonialism and globalization theory.2The links are at once considerable and complicated. Despite differences in disciplinary origin (globalization theory in the social sciences, particularly sociology, and postcolonial theory in the humanities, particularly literary criticism), both discourses emerge at the intersection of imperialism, capitalism, and modernity. Both are concerned with the effects of unequal power relations between different geopolitical locations on the globe: postcolonial theory focuses primarily on a (Eurocentric) colonial past and studies how subaltern practices and productions in the non-Western peripheries respond to Western domination, while globalization theory concentrates mainly on [End Page 106] an (Americocentric) post/neocolonial present and examines how contemporary Western practices and productions affect the rest of the world. Furthermore, both theoretical paradigms have sought to question the universality attributed to Western modernity in metropolitan developmental theory by drawing attention to premodern, nonmodern, or alternatively modern formations in the margins. This attempt to dislocate Western modernity (from the theoretical center) has typically taken the form of dismantling those categories deemed to be central to the narrative of Western modernity—categories such as "nation," "nation-state," "culture" and so on. Consequently, both postcolonial and globalization studies have frequently focused on various forms of economic, political, social, and cultural flows that exceed the boundaries of the nation-state and operate in a deterritorialized or transnational fashion. Through these accounts, postcolonial theory has emphasized the cultural basis of history (the cultural constructedness of history as well as the archival value of cultural productions)3 while globalization theory, in turn, has highlighted the cultural basis of the economic (the economic value of cultural productions as well as the cultural production of economic value).But "besides their shared cultural grammar," the relationship between globalization and postcolonialism "is not very clear," notes Simon Gikandi in "Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality," a provocative essay that represents one of few attempts to explicitly articulate the relationship between the two discourses [628]. It is indeed unclear whether contemporary globalization theory has been made possible by the postcolonial challenge to older Eurocentric forms of globalization premised on the centrality of the nation and narrated in terms of modernization or whether postcoloniality itself is a consequence of a globalization premised on the marginalization of the nation, especially in the domain of the cultural and the imaginary. It is unclear whether the postcolonial and the global are one and the same, whether the postcolonial precedes and provides the foundations for global or transnational cultural studies [Eng and Stratton], or whether globalization created the historical and material conditions that both enabled the production of postcolonial theory and eroded its political purchase through incorporation into the Western academy [Ahmad]. What is clear, however, as Gikandi recognizes, is that the cultural and the literary have risen to new levels of prominence in both theoretical fields.The... (shrink)

IN THE INTRODUCTION TO HIS STUDY of contemporary epistemology, Alvin Plantinga asserts that the “ahistoricism” of analytic philosophy has proven an impediment to progress in epistemology; what we need, he urges, is “history and hermeneutics.” In its turning to history, epistemology is beginning to resemble recent ethical theory, which has readily availed itself of the history of philosophy as a means of enriching its discourse and circumventing seemingly insoluble debates. There are other similarities between contemporary epistemology and recent ethical theory. (...) The standard division in contemporary epistemology pits internalism against externalism. The former demands that individuals have cognitive access to the justifying conditions of their belief and that the belief be formed in accord with appropriate rules. The latter drops the requirement of internal access but demands that a belief be formed by a process, reliably aimed at the production of truth. Internalism’s accentuation of epistemic rights and duties calls to mind ethical deontology, while the externalist emphasis on the production of true beliefs is akin to moral consequentialism. Lately, virtue epistemology has emerged to counter the two dominant theories of knowledge, just as virtue ethics arose as an alternative to deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)

Verbs are more difficult to produce than nouns. Thus, if executive resources are reduced as in Parkinson's disease (PD), verbs are penalized compared to nouns. However, in an experimental condition in which it is the noun that must be selected from a larger number of alternatives compared to the verb, it is the noun production that becomes slower and more prone to errors. Indeed, patients are slower and less accurate than normal subjects when required to produce nouns from verbs (VN) (...) in a morphology derivation tasks (e.g., “osservazione” from “osservare”) [“observation” from “observe”] than verbs from nouns in a morphology generation task, in which only a verb can be generated from the noun (NV) (e.g., “fallire” from “fallimento”) [“to fail” from “failure”]. In the Italian language morphology, in fact, generation and derivation tasks differ in the number of lexical entries among which the response must be selected. The left Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) has been demonstrated to be involved in selection processes. In the present study, we explored if the ability to select words is related to the cortical thickness of the left IFG. Twelve right-sided PD with nigrostriatal hypofunctionality in the left hemisphere (RPD-LH), 9 left-sided PD with nigrostriatal hypofunctionality in the right hemisphere (LPD-RH) and 19 healthy controls (HC) took part in the study. NV and VN production tasks were administered; accuracy and reaction times (RTs) were collected. All 40 subjects received a structural MRI examination. Cortical thickness of the IFG and volumetric measurements for subcortical regions, thought to support selection processes, were computed using FreeSurfer. In VN derivation tasks RPD-LH patients were less accurate than LPD-RH patients (accuracy: 66% vs. 77%). No difference emerged among the three groups in RTs. Task accuracy/RTs and IFG thickness showed a significant correlation only in RPD-LH. Not only nouns (as expected) but also verbs were correlated with cortical thickness. This suggests that the linguistic nature of the stimuli along with executive resources are both relevant during word selection processes. Our data confirm that executive resources and language interact in the left IFG in word production tasks. (shrink)