ABSTRACTCurrent theoretical approaches suggest that mathematical anxiety manifests itself as a weakness in quantity manipulations. This study is the first to examine automatic versus intentional processing of numerical information using the numerical Stroop paradigm in participants with high MA. To manipulate anxiety levels, we combined the numerical Stroop task with an affective priming paradigm. We took a group of college students with high MA and compared their performance to a group of participants with low MA. Under low (...) anxiety conditions, participants with high MA showed relatively intact number processing abilities. However, under high anxiety conditions, participants with high MA showed higher processing of the non-numerical irrelevant information, which aligns with the theoretical view regarding deficits in selective attention in anxiety and an abnormal numerical distance effect. These results demonstrate that abnormal, basic numerical process... (shrink)

With the rapid development of information technology and data science, as well as the innovative concept of “Internet+” education, personalized e-learning has received widespread attention in school education and family education. The development of education informatization has led to a rapid increase in the number of online learning users and an explosion in the number of learning resources, which makes learners face the dilemma of “information overload” and “learning lost” in the learning process. In the personalized learning (...) resource recommendation system, the most critical thing is the construction of the learner model. Currently, most learner models generally have a lack of scientific focus that they have a single method of obtaining dimensions, feature attributes, and low computational complexity. These problems may lead to disagreement between the learner’s learning ability and the difficulty of the recommended learning resources and may lead to the cognitive overload or disorientation of learners in the learning process. The purpose of this paper is to construct a learner model to support the above problems and to strongly support individual learning resources recommendation by learning the resource model which effectively reduces the problem of cold start and sparsity in the recommended process. In this paper, we analyze the behavioral data of learners in the learning process and extract three features of learner’s cognitive ability, knowledge level, and preference for learning of learner model analysis. Among them, the preference model of the learner is constructed using the ontology, and the semantic relation between the knowledge is better understood, and the interest of the student learning is discovered. (shrink)

With the rapid development of information technology, the society’s demand for innovative talents has become increasingly prominent. The purpose of this study is to optimize the teaching strategies of entrepreneurship education for college students, further cultivate college students’ entrepreneurial ideas, and promote the formation of entrepreneurial values. The problems existing in entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities are studied based on entrepreneurial psychology and attribution theory. A questionnaire survey is conducted on the problems with a (...) high probability of entrepreneurial failure of college students. The heads of new ventures in Xi’an are selected. Then, 300 questionnaires are distributed, and 209 are returned. The survey results are analyzed using failure attribution and failure learning. Suggestions are provided for management strategies of new ventures. The results show that the Corrected Item-Total Correlation value of R−1 is 0.65, and the CITC value of R−2 is 0.35. In addition, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values of entrepreneurial failure attribution and entrepreneurial failure mode are both greater than 0.7, which indicates that the scale of entrepreneurial failure attribution has good validity and can be used for factor analysis. However, the KMO values of entrepreneurial failure attribution and entrepreneurial failure learning model are both greater than 0.7, and the significance of Bartlett sphericity test is 0.00, which indicates that the survey has good validity. The research has practical application and reference value for the cultivation of college students’ innovative and entrepreneurial ability. (shrink)

As one of the important 21st-century skills, collaborative problem solving (CPS) has caught much attention in the assessment area. Two initiative approaches have been created: the human-to-human and human-to-agent modes. Between the two modes, the human-to-human interaction is much closer to the real-world situation and its process stream data can reveal more detailed information about the cognitive processes. In order to measure CPS ability effectively by this mode, how to extract indicators from the data and model it (...) is crucial, while the existing methods all have some disadvantages. In the present study, we proposed a new paradigm for extracting indicators and modeling the dyad data in the human-to-human mode. Specifically, both individual and group indicators were extracted from the data stream, which served as evidence for demonstrating CPS skills. In addition, a within-item multidimensional Rasch model was used to fit the dyad data. To test the validity of the paradigm, we developed five tasks following the asymmetric mechanism and integrated them into an online testing platform. Four hundred thirty-four students from China participated in the assessment and the online platform recorded their crucial actions with time stamps. The new paradigm was used to deal with the generated process stream data. Results showed that the model fitted well. The item parameter estimates and fitting indexes were acceptable, and students were well differentiated. In general, the new paradigm of extracting indicators and modeling the dyad data is feasible for improving the human-to-human assessment of CPS. Finally, the limitations of the current study and further research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Chapter 1 First Person Access to Mental States. Mind Science and Subjective Qualities -/- Abstract. The philosophy of mind as we know it today starts with Ryle. What defines and at the same time differentiates it from the previous tradition of study on mind is the persuasion that any rigorous approach to mental phenomena must conform to the criteria of scientificity applied by the natural sciences, i.e. its investigations and results must be intersubjectively and publicly controllable. In Ryle’s view, philosophy (...) of mind needs to adopt an antimentalist stance to achieve this aim. Antimentalism not only definitively rejects the idea that mind is a substance separated from the body, it also denies that mental phenomena radically differ from physical phenomena by virtue of several unique features. Most problematically, mental phenomena have a conscious character (mental states are related to specific qualitative feelings) and are accessible only to the first-person (only the subject knows directly what s/he is experiencing inside his/her mind). Ryle takes a strong stance on antimentalism going so far as to maintain that an approach to mind which aims to meet the criteria of scientificity set by the natural sciences must avoid any reference to internal, unobservable mental states. In his view (which is considered a specifically philosophical version of psychological behaviorism and also addresses questions put forward in psychological research), mental states can be redescribed in terms of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, we address the historical roots of the antimentalist view and analyze its relation to the later tradition of research on mind. We show that, compared to the antimentalist stance, functionalism and cognitivism take a step back when they maintain that direct reference to mental states is necessary since mental states cause and therefore explain human behavior. This step backwards is often interpreted as a return to mentalism. However, this is only partially true. Indeed, we suggest that these later traditions retain one important element of Ryle’s antimentalism, i.e. the idea that mental states must be uniquely identified using external and publicly observable criteria, while excluding any reference to introspection and those qualitative dimensions of a mental state, which are accessible only to the first-person. According to the perspective we put forward, this epistemological stance has continued to influence contemporary research on mind and current philosophical and psychological theories which both tend to exclude the subjective qualities of human experience from their accounts of how the mind works. The issue we raise here is whether this is legitimate or whether subjective qualities do play a role with respect to the way our mind works. The conclusion of this chapter anticipates the argument the book makes in in favor of this latter position, starting from a particular angle, i.e. the problem of how we categorize concepts related to our internal states. -/- Chapter 2 The Misleading Aspects of the Mind/Computer Analogy. The Grounding Problem and the Thorny Issue of Propriosensitive Information -/- Abstract. After the crisis of behaviorism, cognitivism and functionalism became the predominant models in the field of psychology and of philosophy, respectively. Their success is mainly due to the new key they use for interpreting mental processes: the mind/computer analogy. On the basis of this analogy, mental operations are seen as cognitive processes based on computations, i.e. on manipulations of abstract symbols which are in turn understood as informational unities (representations). This chapter identifies two main problems with this model. The first is how these symbols can relate to and communicate with perception and thus allow us to identify and classify what we perceive through the senses. Here we limit ourselves to presenting this issue in relation to the classical symbol grounding problem originally put forward by Harnad on the basis of Searle’s Chinese room argument. An attempt to address the problem raised here will be made in chap. 3. The second point we discuss in relation to the mind/computer analogy concerns the idea of information it fosters. Indeed, following this analogy, information is something available in the external world which can be captured by the senses and transmitted to the central system without being influenced or modified by the procedures of transmission. This perspective does not take into account that – unlike computers – in living beings information is acquired by means of the body. As Ulric Neisser has already pointed out, the body is itself an informational source that provides us with additional sensory experience that influences (modifies or complements) the information extracted from the external world by the senses. To develop this line of analysis and to determine exactly what information is provided by the body and how this might influence cognition, we examine Sherrington’s and Gibson’s positions. Moving on from their views, we qualify bodily information in terms of ‘proprioception’. We use ‘proprioception’ in a broad sense to describe any kind of experience we have of our internal states (including postural information as well as sensations related to the general state of the body and its parts). Following Damasio’s and Craig’s studies, we further elaborate this position, arguing that living beings are equipped with an internal propriosensitive monitoring system which maps all the changes that constantly occur in our body and that give us perceptual (‘proprioceptive’ or propriosensitive) information about what happens inside us. Moreover, relying on Goldie’s and Ratcliffe’s view, we show that emotional information can also be considered as a form of ‘proprioception’ which contributes to determining everything we perceive. This analysis leads us to the second main thesis of this book: ‘proprioception’ is a form of internal perception and it is an essential component of the sensory information we can access and use for all cognitive purposes. -/- Chapter 3 Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition -/- Abstract. Concepts are essential constituents of thought: they are the instruments we use to categorize our experience, i.e. to classify things and group them together in homogeneous sets. Here we define concepts as the internal mental information (representations) that allows us, among other things, to master words in natural language. By analyzing the way in which individuals master word meanings we explore a number of hypotheses regarding the nature of concepts. Following Diego Marconi’s research, we differentiate between two kind of abilities that underpin lexical competence – so-called ‘referential’ and ‘inferential competence’ – and we suggest that, in order to support these abilities, concepts must also include two corresponding kinds of information, i.e. inferential and referential information. We point out that the most widely used and acknowledged theories of concepts do not make this distinction, instead broadly characterizing the information used for categorization in terms of propositionally described feature lists. However, we show that while feature lists can explain inferential competence, they do not account for referential competence. To address the issue of referential competence we examine Ray Jackendoff’s hypothesis that to account for the possibility of linking perceptual and conceptual information we need to assume the existence of a (visual) representation that encodes the geometric and topological properties of objects and bridges the gap between the percept and the concept. Furthermore, we analyze the extension of this work by Jesse Prinz who introduced the notion of a proxytype, a perceptual representation of a class of objects that incorporates structural and parametric information related to their appearance. However, as we point out, proxytypes can only explain the relationship between perception and concepts with respect to instances that can be perceived through the senses and that belong to the same class by virtue of their physical similarity. We suggest that this notion be extended to include larger conceptual classes. To accomplish this, we further develop Mark Johnson, George Lakoff and Jean Mandler’s idea of a schematic image and argue that conceptual representations include a perceptual schema. Perceptual schemata are non-linguistic, structured experiential gestalts (patterns or maps) that make use of information taken from all sensory modalities, including body perception. They accomplish a quasi-conceptual function: they allow us to recognize and to classify different instances. In this work, we hypothesize that perceptual schemata are an essential component of concepts, but not identical to them. Instead, we suggest that concepts include both perceptual and propositional information with perceptual schemata providing the ‘perceptual core concept’ that grounds related propositional information. -/- Chapter 4 In the Beginning There Were Categories. The Bodily Origin of Prelinguistic Categorical Organization: The Example of Folkbiological Taxonomies -/- Abstract. Studies of categorization in psychology and the cognitive sciences have made use of the notions of ‘category’ and ‘concept’ without precisely defining what is meant by either; in fact, often these terms have been used as synonyms, making it difficult to address specific issues related to conceptual development. This chapter begins by discussing the definitions of, as well as the distinctions between, ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ in the classical philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Kant and Husserl). We introduce our view of categories with reference to Husserl. Categorization is defined as the way in which our experience is originally (pre-linguistically) organized in a passive and fully unconscious manner on the basis of universal structuring principles. Conceptualization is explained as a later process in which the earlier categorical macro-classes are further subdivided into more specific and detailed sets; this later process also relies on linguistic learning and exposure to culture. On the basis of Ray Jackendoff, Jean Mandler, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, we hypothesize that categorization is a two-step process that begins with the formation of homogeneous sets of entities partitioned into regions that describe the ontological boundaries of the objects that humans perceive (categories) and continues at a later stage with the development of more specific classifications (concepts). In this chapter, we mainly address three related issues: Why should we assume that there is categorical organization which precedes the development of a conceptual system? How do categories and concepts relate to each other? Shall we hypothesize that categories are innate or that they are formed before concepts on the basis of information and organizational structure available at a very early developmental stage? We show that categorical partitions are necessary for categorization and, following Mandler, that the general categories we form at an early age do not match our adult superordinate concepts. As for the third issue, we argue that there might be no need to assume that categories are innately present in the human mind, since their formation can be explained – at least in certain cases – by basic mechanisms that work on body (propriosensitive) information. This hypothesis will not be discussed in general, but in relation to a particularly relevant example of categorical partition, i.e. the folk-biological dichotomy between ANIMATE/INANIMATE. This is compared with other dichotomies that derive from it, but are not directly categorical such as LIVING/NON-LIVING and BIOLOGICAL/NON-BIOLOGICAL. -/- Chapter 5 Internal States: From Headache to Anger. Conceptualization and Semantic Mastery -/- Abstract. Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chapter 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that – even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world – they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also chap. 2§5, §6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions – at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. -/- Chapter 6 The ‘Proprioceptive’ Component of Abstract Concepts -/- Abstract. In this chapter, we address the issue of whether the mastery of abstract words requires only inferential knowledge and thus, if the concepts that support the mastery of abstract words include only linguistic information. We start by differentiating the notions of ‘abstract’ and ‘general’ which are often erroneously confused. We then identify a strict definition of abstract, as contrasted with ‘concrete’, that applies to words or concepts whose referent cannot be experienced by the senses. We argue that abstract words/concepts would be better described as theoretical, because they are usually conceived as structured sets of inferential knowledge expressed linguistically; that is, as small theories. Pointing out parallels with Carnap’s analysis of this issue in philosophy of science, we hypothesize that words/concepts denoting non-observable entities are not all ‘equally theoretical’, because their link to sensory experience can be stronger or weaker. We revive the distinction, inspired by Quine, between theoretical and intertheoretical concepts/words. This distinction relies on the fact that the former – unlike the latter – retains a strong, although indirect, connection with perception. In Quine’s discussion, perception is understood uniquely in terms of observability, i.e. of external sensory experience. Here we argue, however, that bodily, ‘proprioceptive’ (i.e. propriosensitive) experience can also serve to referentially ground theoretical (i.e. abstract) concepts/words. We frame this issue using the example of the theoretical concept ‘freedom’ and Lakoff’s hypothesis that this concept is developed on the basis of bodily information. We contrast this with the example of ‘democracy’ which more closely resembles an intertheoretical concept/word. Furthermore, we show that one of the classical views put forward in psycholinguistic research to explain how abstract concepts are mentally represented – i.e. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory – points in the same direction as our analysis. The same is true of Barsalou’s work suggesting that we use internal information to understand at least some abstract words. To sustain this position, we put forward two lines of evidence: the first comes from psycholinguistic studies while the second examines deficits of semantic competence exhibited by people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. On the basis of our analysis, we put forward a classification that distinguishes between different kinds of concreteness and different degrees of abstraction: concepts/words referring to body experiences and basic emotions are described as analogous to concrete concepts/words because they are grounded in perceptual (i.e. propriosensitive) experience, while abstract concepts/words are considered more or less abstract depending on whether they are intratheoretical (and rely entirely on inferential information) or theoretical (and are partially grounded in perceptual – or more often in propriosensitive perceptual – information). In the last section of the chapter we consider two scales that have been used in psycholinguistic research to measure the degree of concreteness vs. abstractness of words and we show that – used conjointly – they can provide a measure of the internal vs. external grounding of specific words. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Post-Genomic RevolutionA Paradigm Shift for Biopsychosocial SystemsClaude Robert Cloninger, MD, PhD (bio)The pstchologist Danielle Dick and psychiatrist Kenneth Kendler (DK) began an ongoing study in 2011 called Spit for Science (S4S) in which they obtained saliva as a peripheral source of DNA along with assessment of detailed self-report information on alcohol and other substance use, selected personality traits, and psychosocial history about the students entering a (...) large university (Dick et al., 2014). They hoped to identify the genes underlying the heritability of alcohol use and related behaviors to inform students about their individual risk, and thereby to promote increased self-awareness and health. The students were highly cooperative volunteers, and many peer-reviewed research papers have been published from these data.Eric Turkheimer, a psychologist who studies how genes and environments shape the development of human behavior (Harden et al., 2007; Loehlin et al., 2009; Turkheimer et al., 2003), reviewed all the resulting publications coming from S4S along with coauthor Sarah Greer (Turkheimer & Greer, 2024). Turkheimer and Greer (TG) were surprised to find the study has failed to identify any genes that have substantial (“nontrivial”) effects on reported levels of consumption or problems related to their use of alcohol or other substances, except for a variant of the gene for aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), which was already known to cause many people of Asian descent to flush when they drink alcohol. TG state that, “Again and again, the results of S4S investigations demonstrated tiny, and frequently null, contributions of genetics to differences in drinking and related behaviors among college students. GWAS [genome-wide association studies] revealed practically no genome-wide significant SNPs [single nucleotide polymorphisms], and the SNPs identified at less stringent levels of significance were never mentioned more than once” (Turkheimer & Greer, 2024).TG concluded that the design, execution, psychometric measures, and analysis of the data were excellent. However, they also discuss facts that raise doubts about the adequacy of the design and methods. Namely, it is an inconvenient fact, [End Page 429] but widely known, that approaches to GWAS that are frequently used in psychiatric genetics require huge samples (often hundreds of thousands) to detect statistically significant genes because the observed effects have consistently been weak whenever genes are assumed to act independently, as did DK. Consequently, polygenic risk scores are weak and inconsistent predictors of behavioral phenotypes (Zwir et al., 2020c). Nevertheless, TG fault DK and their coauthors for an overemphasis on statistical significance in large samples rather than prominently reporting that the observed effect sizes of genes were only weakly and inconsistently associated with any measured features of substance use.TG report that they were surprised by the weak and inconsistent findings from genetic variants from this GWAS because they knew that twin and family studies (i.e., what they call “genetics at altitude”) have previously found strong and consistent evidence of the heritability of phenotypes like those measured by DK. For example, in my own research with adoptees separated from their biological parents at an early age and reared by adoptive parents, the risk of alcohol abuse in adoptees was strongly predicted by alcohol abuse and related behaviors in their biological, but not adoptive, parents (Bohman et al., 1981; Cloninger et al., 1981; Sigvardsson et al., 1996) and by their childhood personality, particularly novelty seeking, when the children were followed into young adulthood (Cloninger, 1987; Cloninger et al., 1988). However, it is well-known that the methods used by DK for GWAS consistently fail to detect most of the heritable variance for behavioral phenotypes estimated in twin studies, which include much variability from complex patterns of gene–gene interaction (Table 1) (Cloninger & Zwir, 2022). This consistent observation in GWAS studies that assume genes act independently is called the missing or hidden heritability problem.Nevertheless, DK expressed optimism in 2011 that genome-wide measurement of genetic variants would identify genetic markers to predict risk of alcohol-related phenotypes in college students. They do so because they assume that all the information about heritable processes can be extracted from genome-wise scans of SNPS. The heritable phenotypes of interest in S4S included patterns of use of alcohol and other recreational... (shrink)

The emergence of the network environment is the product of the combination of the development of computer technology and the development of network technology. Internet technology is slowly penetrating into all aspects of people’s lives and has had a huge impact and change on people’s lives. With the repeated outbreak of the epidemic in recent years, online education has been increasingly applied to the study and life of college students. The epidemic has lasted for 3 years, while the (...) life of college students is only 4 years. In recent years, most of the campus study and life of college students have been carried out in the online education mode. This not only changed the mode of class, but also changed the mental health of college students. Taking the online education model during the epidemic as the research background, this paper selects the psychological factors of college students’ learning pressure to analyze, combined with the design and implementation of the questionnaire, to understand the impact of online education on college students’ cognition, emotion, willpower, and social interaction. The purpose is to find out the psychological factors of college students’ learning pressure under the online education mode, and to propose effective solutions. The analysis of the psychological factors of college students’ learning pressure in the form of questionnaires is more accurate than other forms of experimental investigation, the efficiency is increased by 32%, and the accuracy is also increased by 18%. (shrink)

Background: The effectiveness of ethics education continues to be disputed. No studies exist on how nursing students perceive the effectiveness of nursing ethics education in Flanders, Belgium. Objectives: To develop a valid and reliable instrument, named the ‘Students’ Perceived Effectiveness of Ethics Education Scale’ (SPEEES), to measure students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of ethics education, and to conduct a pilot study in Flemish nursing students to investigate the perceived efficacy of nursing ethics education in Flanders. Research (...) design: Content validity, comprehensibility and usability of the SPEEES were assessed. Reliability was assessed by means of a quantitative descriptive non-experimental pilot study. Participants and research context: 86 third-year baccalaureate nursing students of two purposefully selected university colleges answered the SPEEES. Ethical considerations: Formal approval was given by the ethics committee. Informed consent was obtained and anonymity was ensured for both colleges and their participating students. Findings: The scale content validity index/Ave scores for the subscales were 1.00, 1.00 and 0.86. The comprehensibility and user-friendliness were favourable. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.94 for general effectiveness, 0.89 for teaching methods and 0.85 for ethical content. Students perceived ‘case study’, ‘lecture’ and ‘instructional dialogue’ to be effective teaching methods and ‘general ethical concepts’ to contain effective content. ‘Reflecting critically on their own values’ was mentioned as the only ethical competence that, was promoted by the ethics courses. The study revealed rather large differences between both schools in students’ perceptions of the contribution of ethics education to other ethical competences. Discussion and conclusion: The study revealed that according to the students, ethics courses failed to meet some basic objectives of ethics education. Although the SPEEES proved to be a valid and reliable measure, the pilot study suggests that there is still space for improvement and a need for larger scale research. Additional insights will enable educators to improve current nursing ethics education. (shrink)

The research seeks to ascertain the influence of the Needham and Cosgrove-Osborne models on the comprehension of educational foundations among students at the Faculty of Education. Employing a partially controlled experimental design, the researcher randomly selected a control group from Division C, with Division A representing the first experimental group and Division B the second. The study involved 92 participants, with 30 students in each experimental group and 32 in the control group. To ensure statistical equivalence among the (...) three groups, the researcher utilized one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to assess variables such as chronological age (in months), intelligence test results, and the previous year's Grade Point Average (GPA). A test was crafted to evaluate concept acquisition, with its validity and reliability duly established. Upon statistical analysis of the students' responses using ANOVA and the Scheffe test to pinpoint differences in means, the findings revealed significant disparities between the average scores of students in the first and second experimental groups, who studied the subject matter using the Needham, Cosgrove, or Osborne models. The researcher posits that the Needham and Cosgrove-Osborne models should be integrated into teaching practices, given their demonstrated effectiveness as instructional paradigms. (shrink)

In order to improve the integrity of the social network behavior feature extraction results for sports college students, this study proposes to be based on the clustering algorithm. This study analyzes the social network information dissemination mechanism in the field of college students’ sports, obtains the real-time social behavior data in the network environment combined with the analysis results, and processes the obtained social network behavior data from two aspects of data cleaning and de-duplication. Using (...) clustering algorithm to determine the type of social network user behavior, setting the characteristics of social network behavior attributes, and finally through quantitative and standardized processing, get the results of college students’ sports field social network behavior characteristics extraction. The experimental results showed that the completeness of the method feature extraction results improved to 9.93%, and the average extraction time cost was 0.344 s, with high result integrity and obvious advantages in the extraction speed. (shrink)

This research investigates the efficacy of business ethics intervention, tests a theoretical model that the love of money is directly or indirectly related to propensity to engage in unethical behavior (PUB), and treats college major (business vs. psychology) and gender (male vs. female) as moderators in multi-group analyses. Results suggested that business students who received business ethics intervention significantly changed their conceptions of unethical behavior and reduced their propensity to engage in theft; while psychology students without intervention (...) had no such changes. Therefore, ethics training had some impacts on business students' learning and education (intelligence). For our theoretical model, results of the whole sample (N = 298) revealed that Machiavellianism (measured at Time 1) was a mediator of the relationship between the love of money (measured at Time 1) and unethical behavior (measured at Time 2) (the Love of Money → Machiavellianism → Unethical Behavior). Further, this mediating effect existed for business students (n = 198) but not for psychology students (n = 100), for male students (n = 165) but not for female students (n = 133), and for male business students (n = 128) but not for female business students (n = 70). Moreover, when examined alone, the direct effect (the Love of Money → Unethical Behavior) existed for business students but not for psychology students. We concluded that a short business ethics intervention may have no impact on the issue of virtue (wisdom). (shrink)

Higher education institutions are mining and analyzing student data to effect educational, political, and managerial outcomes. Done under the banner of “learning analytics,” this work can—and often does—surface sensitive data and information about, inter alia, a student’s demographics, academic performance, offline and online movements, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and social network. With these data, institutions and third parties are able to describe student life, predict future behaviors, and intervene to address academic or other barriers to student success (however defined). (...) Learning analytics, consequently, raise serious issues concerning student privacy, autonomy, and the appropriate flow of student data. We argue that issues around privacy lead to valid questions about the degree to which students should trust their institution to use learning analytics data and other artifacts (algorithms, predictive scores) with their interests in mind. We argue that higher education institutions are paradigms of information fiduciaries. As such, colleges and universities have a special responsibility to their students. In this article, we use the information fiduciary concept to analyze cases when learning analytics violate an institution’s responsibility to its students. (shrink)

Individuals with high self-concept will likely have high life satisfaction, they easily get adjusted to life, and they communicate their feeling more appropriately. However, it was not certain whether self-concept would decline or improve as individuals age, or whether self-concept would vary between genders and ethnic groups. To prove, a study was carried out to compare the self-concept of college students in an Asian context. The inquiry utilized the cross-sectional design in finding out significant (...) differences in the self-concept of participants in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. A 22-item questionnaire was adapted and administered to 222 Bachelor of Public Administration and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration students from the satellite campus of Bukidnon State University in the Philippines. Initially, a sample was randomly drawn from the population. During the actual data collection, the researchers had difficulty getting the responses from the randomly selected individuals due to internet connection and it was done amidst a pandemic. Instead, it took all responses from those who were available, have access to the internet, and could accomplish the google forms. The data were analyzed using Mean, Standard Deviation, T-test for independent sample, ANOVA and Post Hoc test. The results revealed that college students at the locale have a high level of self-concept in self-fulfilment, emotional adjustment, and honesty. Yet, they only had a moderate level of self-concept in autonomy. Further, there were significant differences in college students’ autonomy and honesty in terms of age and gender. Furthermore, there were significant differences in their emotional adjustment and self-fulfilment as to their ethnicity. The results have implications for instruction, administration, guidance services, and future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Reconception of Performance Study in the Philosophy of Music EducationValerie L. TrollingerThe actual place of performance in music education has been the subject of numerous debates over the years. Most debates have revolved within the paradigm of the performance ability of the teacher and consequently the performance ability of the students. Is the level to be attained that of a winning concert band/marching band/choir? Or, is the (...) level to be attained the level at which the students and teacher feel the most comfortable and pleased? Most of this debate, along with the development of various assessments (including the Watkins-Farnum Test) and various rubrics to score music performance competitions, has emphasized characteristics of performance pertaining to accuracy of notes, precision of rhythm, and attendance to musicianship, style, and interpretation. On the other hand, the aesthetic value of performance has also been questioned in that the value of music in the schools should not be assessed solely by the importance placed on the attainment of performance skills by the students, suggesting that it is only through performance that one may know music. For example, in a recent article in the Music Educator's Journal,1 Bennett Reimer promotes the [End Page 193] position that time spent in either performance studies and active performance in music education (both at the K-12 and college teacher training levels) is not vital to the reconception of the National Standards (USA) for music education and, by extension, the field of music education itself. In the MEJ article, Reimer wrote:there is no reason to believe that highly developed performers make the best general music teachers, just as there is no reason to believe the reverse. We must get over the outdated and unrealistic assumption that performance is the one, singular, royal road to being musical and being an effective music educator.... [T]eachers cannot be expected to do what performance specialists do, and their teacher education curriculum must reflect that fact.2This position has also been recently supported by sociological publications3 and the following statement—echoed by several colleagues of mine—by a music teacher-training specialist,There is one big misconception among many music education students. Many graduates view themselves as musicians who are going into teaching. I attribute my own success to the realization that I am a teacher at heart. My first responsibility is teaching children. The vehicle through which I connect to them is music.4It is likely within the previous paradigm in which these respected authors positioned their arguments for the place of performance in the music curriculum and in that regard these assertions are unquestionably valid. What this particular paradigm concerns is the quantity and quality of performance based on purely musical attributes. The omission is that it does not include the quality of performance in relationship to health-based music education, a growing area of concern in the performing arts medicine field and, by extension, music educators who are concerned about this particular aspect of performance.5 The reason for the concern and hence this paper calling to the philosophical community to re-think the place and quality of performance in music education is that these viewpoints have had a great impact upon the validity of music education, in that they ignore a growing body of research from the performance and medical fields. While it must be made clear for the purposes of this paper that the writers of the above quotes have framed their ideas gracefully within their individual philosophical structures of music education, it must be pointed out that current research and knowledge in performance arts, in its conception as a physical human activity, needs to be incorporated into a revised philosophy of music education and curriculum. Music performance in music education has traditionally been viewed as a cognitive and emotional experience. However, it [End Page 194] is also a psychomotor experience, involving all sorts of soft body tissues, bones, and cartilages, which can enhance or detract from the total musical experience. Many music educators do not get enough instruction in college on how to teach voice or instruments healthfully and this is the reason for the concern... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading History: On Jacob Burckhardt as Source-ReaderJürgen GroßeThere is a gap between the reputation Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97) has enjoyed among the educated public and among professional historians—a discrepancy that has become commonplace in the century-long reception of the Swiss cultural historian’s work. 1 Nevertheless, in the light of recent appraisals of Burckhardt as an ancestor of a different—perhaps a new—cultural history, and with the rediscovery of his contributions (...) to the history of art, aesthetics, and historical anthropology, the gap seems to be ever-narrowing. 2 However, let us keep it open in the following few pages.The chasm between assessments of Burckhardt as an historian-writer and as an historian-researcher appears roughly analogous to his above-mentioned respective reputations among laymen and professional scholars. As a historian Burckhardt did not want to be a scientific researcher. From the time he began writing history he admitted that he felt little commitment to the predominating concept of scientific progress as a continuous accumulation of facts and theories. Thus, as an outsider to the profession he had only one option, which was to [End Page 525] attain a place of honor as an esteemed writer of historical books for the educated public—a “master historian.” Yet it is precisely this characterization of Burckhardt that makes a curious fact appear all the more baffling: the act of writing books made Burckhardt feel thoroughly tormented. Throughout his career, he lamented historical authorship as a thankless occupation—a form of “slavery.” Just four years after finishing Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860) Burckhardt wrote to his friend Paul Heyse:I now consider my modest literary career as finally closed, and feel much better and content reading sources, as I only study and make notes for teaching and not for possible book-making. The historical market is tremendously overcrowded as things are, and it will be worse if peace lasts. 3Books like Die Zeit Constantins des Großen, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, and Der Cicerone—works that gained the Basler historian fame that has endured to the present day—were either not prepared by the author for further editions or abandoned for colleagues to revise. Thus, Burckhardt seemed to regard himself neither as a researcher nor as a writer but rather as a reader of history. His dislike of research and authorship deserves our attention not only because it stands in sharp contrast to the mores of the scientific community, both in his and our times; for it might also elucidate yet another interesting paradox: Burckhardt, who celebrated the “reading of sources” and “the insights accessible from sources” as no other nineteenth-century historian, was soon to be charged with failing to meet the accepted standards of source-criticism. This essay examines these problems in terms of a series of questions concerning Burckhardt’s reading of history.Why Burckhardt Prefers ReadingBurckhardt clearly abhorred what he called the “history of the events.” Already as a student, he felt himself confronted with a barrage of events, not so much as matters of real history as rather as products of historical science—the ever-increasing facts that historians produced in relation to actual events. Unlike the humanistic and enlightenment paradigms of history, mainstream nineteenth-century scholarship no longer relied on the eyewitness to guarantee authenticity. The focus had shifted from remembrance to reconstruction; events were now narrated in terms of newly conceived abstractions like “development,” “process,” “spirit of an age,” and “spirit of a nation.” This increasing detachment from eyewitnessed experience paved the way for an endless production of information, [End Page 526] which had become an occupation in its own right. Every newcomer to the study of history now encountered a huge mass of mere historical facts, largely devoid of content—“a desperate prospect at the beginning of the study of history,” according to Burckhardt. Furthermore, the dynamism of modern history itself continued to produce more and more “events,” which were then to be reproduced as “facts.” This mire of facts burdened the reader of historiography even more than the student of history. “Even the most well-meaning of contemporary historians,” Burckhardt... (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 78-91. This article consists of three parts. First, I will review the major themes of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude . Since some of my readers will have read this book and others not, I will try to strike a balance between clear summary and fresh critique. Second, I discuss an unpublished book by Meillassoux unfamiliar to all readers of this article, except those scant few that may have gone digging in the microfilm archives of the École normale (...) supérieure. The book in question is Meillassoux’s revised doctoral dissertation L’Inexistence divine (or The Divine Inexistence ), with its seemingly bizarre vision of a God who does not yet exist but might exist in the future. Without literally accepting this view, I will claim that it is philosophically interesting in ways that even a hardened sceptic might be able to appreciate. Third and finally, I will speculate on the possible future of Meillassoux’s speculative materialism itself. And here I mean its future development not by Meillassoux, but by those readers who might be inspired by his book. Plato could never have predicted the emergence of Aristotle’s philosophy, despite the obvious debt of the latter to the former. Nor could Descartes have predicted Spinoza and Leibniz, nor Kant the German Idealists, and neither could Husserl in 1901 have foreseen the later emergence of Heidegger. How are the works of interesting philosophers transformed by later thinkers of comparable importance? While it may seem that there are countless ways to do this, I think there are only two basic ways in which this happens: you can radicalize your predecessors, or you can reverse them. I will close this article with a few words about these two methods, and try to imagine how Meillassoux might be radicalized or reversed by some future admirer. My view is that the more important thinkers are, the easier they are to radicalize or reverse. This helps explain why the great philosophers of the West have so often appeared in clusters, succeeding one another at relatively brief intervals during periods of especial ferment. 1. After Finitude After Finitude is unusually short for such an influential book of philosophy: running to just 178 pages in the original French, and an even more compact 128 pages in the English version, despite the introduction of roughly eight pages of new material for the English edition. Rather than summarizing Meillassoux’s book in the order he intended, I will focus on six points that strike me as the pillars of his debut book. Along the way, I will offer a few criticisms as well. The first pillar of the book is Meillassoux’s own term “correlationism.”1 Although he introduces this term as the name for an enemy, it is striking that Meillassoux remains impressed by correlationism much more than his fellow speculative realists are. This continued appreciation for his great enemy influences the shape of his own ontology. Is there a world outside our thinking of it, or does the world consist entirely in being thought? Traditionally, this dispute between realism and idealism has been dismissed in continental philosophy as a “pseudo-problem,” in a strategy pioneered by Husserl and extended by Heidegger. We cannot be realists, since following Kant we have no direct access to things-in-themselves. But neither are we idealists, since the human being is always already outside itself, aiming at objects in intentional experience, deeply engaged with practical implements, or stationed in some particular world-disclosing mood. The centuries-old dispute between realism and idealism is dissolved by saying that we cannot think either real or ideal in isolation from the other. There is neither human without world nor world without human, but only a primordial correlation or rapport between the two. This is what “correlationism” means: philosophy trapped in a permanent meditation on the human-world correlate, trying to find the best model of the correlate: is it language, intentionality, embodiment, or some other form of correlation between human and world? Among other problems, this generates some friction between philosophy and the literal meaning of science. When cosmologists say that the universe originated 13.5 billion years ago, they do not mean “13.5 billion years ago for us ,” but literally 13.5 billion years ago, well before conscious life existed, and thus at a time when there was no such thing as a correlate. Meillassoux also coins the term “ancestrality” (10) for the reality that predated the correlate, and later expands this term to “dia-chronicity,” (112) to refer to events occurring after the extinction of human beings no less than to those occurring before we existed. Up to this point, Meillassoux’s focus on ancestral entities existing prior to consciousness might seem like a straightforward realist who wants to unmask correlationism as just another form of idealism. Yet Meillassoux also admires the correlationist maneuver, which can obviously be traced back to Kant. Unlike a thinker such as Whitehead, Meillassoux feels no nostalgia for the pre-critical realism that came before Kant: “we cannot but be heirs of Kantianism,” he says (29). What impresses Meillassoux about correlationism is something both simple and familiar. If we attempt to think a tree outside thought, this is itself a thought . Any form of realism which thinks it can simply and directly address the world the way it is fails to escape the correlational circle, since the attempt to think something outside of thought is itself nothing other than a thought, and thereby collapses back into the very human-world correlate that it pretends to escape. For Meillassoux this step, suggested by Kant but first refined by the ensuing figures of German Idealism, marks decisive forward progress in the history of philosophy that must not be abolished. Any attempt to break free from the correlate must first acknowledge its mighty intellectual power. Realist though he may seem, Meillassoux’s works are filled with praise of such figures as Fichte and Hegel, not of so-called “naïve realists.” It is also the case that for Meillassoux, not all correlationisms are the same. The second pillar of his book is a distinction between various positions that I have termed “Meillassoux’s Spectrum,” though of course he is never so immodest as to name it after himself. He distinguishes between at least six different possible positions, and perhaps we could add even subtler variations if we wished. But in its simplest form, Meillassoux’s Spectrum allows for just four basic outlooks on the question of realism vs. anti-realism. Three of these are easy to understand, since we have already been discussing them. At one extreme is so-called “naïve realism,” which holds that a world exists outside the mind, and that we can know this world. Meillassoux rejects this naïve realism as having been overthrown by Kant’s critical philosophy. At the other extreme is subjective idealism, in which nothing exists outside the mind. For to think a dog outside thought immediately turns it into a thought, and therefore there cannot be anything outside; the very notion is meaningless. In between these two is what we have called correlationism. And here comes a crucial moment for Meillassoux, since he distinguishes between the two forms of “weak” and “strong” correlationism, and chooses the strong form as the launching pad for his own philosophy. Weak correlationism is easy to explain, since we all know it from the philosophy of Kant. The things-in-themselves can be thought but not known. They certainly must exist, since there cannot be appearances without something that appears. And we can think about them, which idealism holds to be impossible. They are simply unknowable due to the finitude of human thought. Strong correlationism is the new position introduced by Meillassoux (though he sees it at work in numerous twentieth century thinkers), midway between weak correlationism and subjective idealism. The major difference between the three positions is as follows. Weak correlationism says: “The things-in-themselves exist, but we cannot know them.” The subjective idealist says: “This is a contradiction in terms, since when we think the things-in-themselves, we already turn them into thoughts.” But the strong correlationist says: “Just because ‘things-in-themselves’ is a meaningless notion does not mean that they cannot exist. No one has ever traveled to the world-in-itself and come back to make a report on it. Thus, the fact that we cannot think things-in-themselves without contradiction does not prove that they do not exist anyway. There may be things-in-themselves, we simply are not capable of thinking them without contradiction form within the correlational circle.” This step is crucial for Meillassoux, since strong correlationism is the position he attempts to radicalize into his own new standpoint: speculative materialism. As I see it, this step of the argument fails. Strong correlationism cannot avoid collapsing into subjective idealism, since the statements of the strong correlationist are rendered meaningless from within. All three of the other positions in the Spectrum make perfectly good sense even for those who disagree with them. The naïve realist says that things-in-themselves exist and we can know them; the meaning of this statement is clear. The weak correlationist can say that things-in-themselves exist but lie forever beyond our grasp; this too makes perfect sense, even though the German Idealists try to show a contradiction at work here. We can also understand the claim of the subjective idealist that to think anything outside thought turns it into a thought, and that for this reason we cannot think the unthought. The strong correlationist, alone among the four, speaks nonsense . This person says “I cannot think the unthought without turning it into a thought, and yet the unthought might exist anyway.” But notice that the final phrase “the unthought might exist anyway” is fruitless for this purpose. For we have already heard that to think any unthought turns it into a thought. But now the strong correlationist wants to do two incompatible things simultaneously with this unthought. On the one hand, he neutralizes the unthought by showing that it instantly changes into just another thought. But on the other hand, he wants to appeal to the unthought as a haunting residue that might exist outside thought, thereby undercutting the absolute status of the human-world correlate found in idealism. But this is impossible. If you accept the argument that thinking the unthought turns it into a thought, you cannot also add “but maybe there is something outside that prevents this conversion from being absolutely true,” because this “something outside” is immediately converted into nothing but a thought for us. In short, Meillassoux here seems to be offering a kind of Zen koan: his “strong correlationism” is reminiscent of the gateless gate, or the sound of one hand clapping, or the command to punch Hegel in the jaw when meeting him on the road. We cannot at the same time both destroy the realist challenge of the things-in-themselves in order to undercut realism and reintroduce that very realist sense in order to undercut idealism. In a world where everything is instantly converted into thought, we cannot claim that there might be something extra-mental anyway, because this “might be something” is itself converted into a thought by the same rules that condemned dogs, trees, and houses to the idealist prison. This brings us to the third pillar of Meillassoux’s argument, which is the key to all the rest: the necessity of contingency. His strategy is to transform our supposed ignorance of things-in-themselves into an absolute knowledge that they exist without reason, and that the laws of nature can change at any time for no reason at all. In this way the cautious agnosticism of Kantian philosophies is avoided, but so is the collapse of reality into thought as found in German Idealism. Meillassoux does try to prove the existence of things-in-themselves existing outside thought; he simply holds that they must be proven after passing through the rigors of the correlationist challenge, not just arbitrarily decreed to exist in the manner of naïve realism. As he puts it, “Everything could actually collapse: from trees to stars, from stars to laws, from physical laws to logical laws; and this not by virtue of some superior law whereby everything is destined to perish, but by virtue of the absence of any superior law capable of preserving anything, no matter what, from perishing” (53). If idealism thinks that the human-world correlate is absolute, for Meillassoux it is the facticity of the correlate that is absolute. He tries to show this with a nice brief dialogue between five separate characters (55-59) which is covered in detail in my forthcoming book,2 but which I will simplify here for reasons of time. In this simplified version, we first imagine a dogmatic realist arguing with a dogmatic idealist. The realist says that we can know the truth about the things-in-themselves; the idealist counters that we can only the truth about thought, since all statements about reality must be turned into statements concerning our thoughts about reality. Here the correlationist enters and proclaims that both of these positions are equally dogmatic. For although we have access to nothing but thoughts, we cannot be sure that these thoughts are all that exist; there could be a reality outside thought, there is simply no way to know for sure. And this latter position is the one that Meillassoux attempts to transform from an agnostic, skeptical point into an ontological claim about the contingency of everything. Consider it this way. How does the correlationist defeat the idealist? The idealist holds that the existence of anything outside thought is impossible. The correlationist, by contrast, holds that something might exist outside the human-world correlate. But this “something might” has to be an absolute possibility. It cannot mean that “something outside thought might exist for thought ,” because that is what the idealist already says. No, the correlationist must mean that something might exist outside thought quite independently of thought. In other words, the correlationist says that idealism might be wrong, and this means it is absolutely true that idealism might be wrong. Thus, correlationism is no longer just a skeptical position. It holds that all the possibilities of the world are absolute possibilities. We have absolute knowledge that any of the possibilities about the existence or non-existence of things-in-themselves might be true, and this means that correlationism flips into Meillassoux’s own position: speculative materialism. As Meillassoux sees it, there are only two options here. Option A is to absolutize the human-world correlate, which is what the idealist does: there absolutely cannot be anything outside thought. Option B, by contrast, is to absolutize the facticity of the correlate: its character of simply being given to us, without any inherent necessity. The correlationist cannot have it both ways by saying: “there absolutely might be something outside thought, yet maybe this is absolutely impossible.” In other words, once we escape dogmatism we can only be idealists or speculative materialists, not correlationists. The human-world correlate is merely a fact, not an absolute necessity. But this facticity itself cannot be merely factical: it must be absolute. Here Meillassoux coins the French neologism factualité , which has been suitably translated into the English neologism “factiality.” (7, 122-3) Factialty means that for everything that exists, it is absolutely possible that it might be otherwise, not just that we cannot know whether or not it might be otherwise. Just as Kant transformed philosophy into a meditation on the categories governing human finitude, Meillassoux wishes to turn philosophy into a meditation on the necessary conditions of factiality, which he calls “figures”—a new technical term for him. (80) One such figure is that the law of non-contradiction must be true, and for an unusual reason. Since everything is proven to be contingent, nothing that exists can be contradictory, for whatever is contradictory has no opposite into which it might be transformed, and thus contingency would be impossible.3 Another such figure is that there must be something rather than nothing: for since contingency exists, something must exist in order to be contingent. It is a daring high-wire act, one that sacrifices realism to the correlational circle in order to rebuild it from out of its own ashes. Some might conclude that the lack of reason in things is a byproduct of the ignorance of finite humans, Meillassoux is making precisely the opposite point. For in fact, the doctrine of finitude usually leads directly to belief in a hidden reason. The fact that it lies beyond human comprehension merely increases our belief in this arbitrarily chosen concealed ground. By defending anew the concept of absolute knowledge Meillassoux evacuates the world of everything hidden. The reason for things having no reason is not that the reason is hidden, but that no reason exists. Thus, even while insisting on the necessity of non-contradiction, he rejects the other Leibnizian principle: sufficient reason. Everything simply is what it is, in purely immanent form, without deeply hidden causes. Or as Meillassoux puts it: “There is nothing beneath or beyond the manifest gratuitousness of the given—nothing but the limitless and lawless power of its destruction, emergence, or persistence” (63).The world is a “hyper-chaos”(64). But this is not the same thing as flux. For the chaos of the world is such that stability might occur just as easily as constant, turbulent change. Let’s now digress a bit, and return to the question of ancestrality, which Meillassoux transforms later in the book into “dia-chronicity.” Correlationism holds that all talk of a world outside the correlate is immediately recuperated by the correlate. The phrase “13.5 billion years ago” becomes “13.5 billion years ago for us ,” and the phrase “the universe following the extinction of humans” becomes “the universe following the extinction of humans for humans .” But notice that whether we talk about the world before or after humans, in both cases it is time that is used to challenge the correlate. Meillassoux has no interest in challenges that might be posed by space. For example, what about a vase in a lonely country house that topples to the floor and smashes when no one is there to watch it? Isn’t this also a challenge to correlationism, no less than the Big Bang or the heat death of the universe long after humans have vanished? In an eight-page supplement to the English translation of After Finitude ,4 possibly in response to my own 2007 review of the French original,5 Meillassoux bluntly denies that space is of any relevance to the question. Spatial distance is a merely harmless challenge to the human-world correlate. After all, even though no one is there in the lonely country house to witness the shattering of the vase, we can say that had there been an observer , that observer would have witnessed the toppling and destruction of the vase. For this event still occurs in a world in which the human-world correlate already exists, whereas the diachronicity of events both before and after the existence of humans makes it impossible to say that had there been an observer they would have witnessed the Big Bang occurring in such and such a fashion. However, it seems to me that Meillassoux merely asserts that the temporal simultaneity of our existence with that of the vase in the lonely country house is enough to render it harmless. It is true that the house does not exist prior to the correlate, but nonetheless it exists outside the correlate, and that is enough to make the same challenge. It is difficult to see why the “had there been an observer” maneuver succeeds in the case of a vase in the countryside in April 2011 but fails in the case of the Big Bang. This is not just a matter of nitpicking Meillassoux’s argumentative style: the fact that he bases his argument on time has at least two important consequences for his position. For in the first place, even though Meillassoux insists that the laws of nature are absolutely contingent, this turns out to be true only in a temporal sense. That is to say, it is a paradoxical feature of Meillassoux’s philosophy that he does allow for the existence of laws of nature, and simply believes that they can change at any moment without reason. Within any given moment, laws of nature do exist. He never suggests that different parts of the universe can have different laws at the same time, nor does he have any interest in the laws of part/whole composition that take place within any given instant. Could it be the case that rather than being made of gold atoms, a small chunk of gold could be made of silver atoms, cotton, horses, or that this same small piece of gold could be made of gigantic vaults filled with even more gold? These are not topics that draw Meillassoux’s attention, since he is focused solely on how the laws of nature might change or endure from one moment to the next . Another implication for Meillassoux’s system is that his concept of things-in-themselves turns out to be to be inadequate. For when he proves that things-in-themselves can exist without humans, this turns out to be true only in a temporal sense as well. Namely, things-in-themselves existed ten billion years ago, and they will continue to exist after all humans have succeeded in exterminating themselves. However, being able to exist before our births and after our deaths is just one small part of what it means to be a thing-in-itself. The more important part is that even if a thing is sitting on a table right now, in front of me, even if I stroke it lovingly or press my face up against it directly, I am still dealing only with a phenomenal version of the thing; the thing-in-itself continues to withdraw from all access. Yet no such thing is acknowledged by Meillassoux. For him finitude is a disaster, and absolute knowledge is in fact possible. Meillassoux’s thing-in-itself exists in independence only of the human lifespan , not of human knowledge. The fifth pillar of Meillassoux’s argument is his use of Cantor’s transfinite mathematics to show that even if the laws of nature are contingent, they need not be unstable, and thus we cannot use the apparent stability of nature to disprove his metaphysics of absolute contingency. What Cantor showed is that there are different sizes of infinity, and that all these infinities cannot be totalized in a single infinite number of infinities. Meillassoux sees this as crucial, since it allows him to discredit any “probabilistic” argument against his theory. The probabilistic argument (as defended quite clearly by Jean-René Vernes)6 would say this: given that the laws of nature seem so stable, it it is extremely improbable that there is no hidden reason for their remaining so stable. As Meillassoux sees it, probability is of value only when we can index an accessible total of cases. These can even be infinite: for example, there are an infinite number of points where a rope can break when stretched tight, but this does not stop us from calculating probabilities for various sections of the rope to break. By contrast, there is no way to sum up the number of possible laws of nature. For here there is no way to totalize; we cannot stand outside of nature and calculate the possible number of laws so as to determine the probabilities that any one of them might change. Therefore, although we can speak of probability when dealing with intraworldly events such as elections, horse races, and coin-flips, we cannot use the words “probable” or “improbable” when describing alterations at the level of nature as a whole. Rather than commenting on the validity of this argument and its use of Cantor, let me simply note that it once again creates a dualistic ontology. We already saw that Meillassoux treats time differently from space. In analogous fashion, he now treats the level of world differently from that of intraworldly events. The emergence of worlds is purely contingent and virtual and governed by no probability at all, while events within the world necessarily follow laws (even if these laws can change at any moment without reason), and thus their probabilities can be calculated. It is a strategy deeply reminiscent of Badiou’s (2005) own dualism between the normal “state of the situation” and the rare and intermittent “event.” The sixth and final pillar of Meillassoux’s book can be dealt with briefly, since we have already touched on it elsewhere. It comes at the very beginning of the book, when Meillassoux says that we must revive the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and that the primary qualities are the ones that can be mathematized. He admits that he has not yet published a proof of this idea, though in fact it is already known as one of his primary doctrines. And here we encounter the familiar problem with Meillassoux’s inadequate conception of things-in-themselves. “Primary qualities” refers to those qualities that a thing has independently of its relations with us or anything else. But if the primary qualities can be mathematized, this means that they are not entirely independent of us, since our knowledge can get right to the bottom of them. The mathematized qualities of things are independent of us only in Meillassoux’s sense that they will still have those qualities even when all humans are dead. But to repeat, autonomy from the human lifespan is not the same as autonomy from human access. Here once more Meillassoux is concerned only with independence from the human-world correlate across time, not in any given instant. 2. L’Inexistence divine In 1997, the same year in which he turned thirty years old, Meillassoux earned his doctorate at the École normale supériuere with a brazen dissertation entitled L’Inexistence divine ( The Divine Inexistence ). The work was substantially revised in 2003. But even then, with typical fastidiousness, Meillassoux decided that the work was not yet ready for press. It has now been scrapped in favor of some future, multi-volume work bearing the same title. While writing my book on Meillassoux for Edinburgh University Press, I was permitted to translate excerpts from this unpublished work for use as an appendix in my own book; in total, the appendix contains approximately twenty percent of Meillassoux’s 2003 manuscript, the first time any of it will be published in any language. Nonetheless, a portion of the argument was already tested in the article “Spectral Dilemma,” published in English in the journal Collapse (2008: 261-75). There the philosophical motives for the virtual God are already made clear. What troubles us most are early deaths, brutal deaths, deaths of especial injustice– the sorts of deaths in which the brutal twentieth century was so abundant. And here, neither the atheist nor the believer can help us. The atheist can offer nothing but a sad and cynical resignation when reflecting on the victims of these terrible crimes. The believer does little better, being unable to explain how God could have allowed such things to happen, due to the famous intractability of the problem of evil. The solution offered to this dilemma by Meillassoux is bold, and all the more so given that he emerges from such a deeply Leftist, materialist, and unreligious background. His solution is that God does not yet exist, and therefore is not blameworthy for these catastrophes. Given that everything is contingent in Meillassoux’s philosophy, this God and divine justice might never exist, but they can at least exist as an object of hope. Let’s begin by jumping to the end of L’Inexistence divine , where the alternatives are laid out so nicely. There are four basic attitudes that humans can have towards God, Meillassoux says. First, we can believe in God because he exists. This is the classical theist attitude, rejected for the simple reason that it would be amoral and blasphemous to believe in a God who allows children to be eaten by dogs, to use Dostoevsky’s example. Second, we can disbelieve in God because he does not exist: the classical atheist attitude. But this leads to sadness, cynicism, and a sneering contempt for the greatness of human capacity. The third option, rather more complex, is to disbelieve in God because he does exist: in other words, to exist in rebellion against God as the one who must be blamed for the evils of the earth. The examples here might range from Lucifer himself, to the more human figure of Captain Ahab in Melville’s Moby-Dick , to Werner Herzog’s even more recent catchphrase, “Every man for himself, and God against all.” That leaves only the fourth option: believing in God because he does not exist. Meillassoux closes his book by saying that the fourth option has now been tried (namely, in the course of his own book), and that now that all four have been specified, we must choose. The first reaction to this theory of the inexistent God will be laughter. Few readers will ever be literally convinced by it, and probably none will immediately be convinced by it. But if we ask ourselves why we laugh, the answer is because it sounds so improbable that an inexistent God might suddenly emerge and resurrect the dead. It obviously sounds more like a gullible theology than a rigorous piece of philosophical work. Yet two things need to be kept in mind. First, Meillassoux’s theories are hardly more unlikely than those of great philosophers of the past such as Plato, Plotinus, Avicenna, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, or Whitehead. We read the great philosophers not because their systems are plausible in commonsense terms that can be measured by the laws of probability. Instead, we read them precisely because they shatter the existing framework of common sense and open up new window on the universe. Second, and even more importantly, Meillassoux has already rejected probability as a valid measuring stick in philosophy. Or rather, he accepts probability in the intra-worldly realm (where it is linked with potentiality), and rejects it at the level of the world itself (where potentiality is replaced with what he calls virtuality). The virtual God can appear at any moment for no reason at all, just as any other new configuration of laws of nature can appear: in a manner that the laws of probability cannot calculate. Responding to those who might ridicule the idea of a sudden emergence of God and a resurrection of the dead, Meillassoux cites Pascal, who asserts that the resurrection of the dead would be far less incredible than the fact that we were born in the first place. This shifts philosophy onto new ground. Rather than concerning ourselves with what is likely to happen in the world as we know it, we focus instead on the most important things that could happen. For this reason, the expected objection that a virtual God is no more likely to appear than a virtual unicorn or a virtual flying spaghetti monster misses the point. Unicorns and spaghetti monsters could also appear, just like any other non-contradictory thing. But these would just be novel bizarre entities among others, not the heralds of completely new worlds. For Meillassoux, the emergence of matter, life, and thought have been the three truly amazing advents of the world so far, each of them dependent on the advent(s) preceding them. As he sees it, there can be no greater intraworldly entity than the human beings who already exist, since nothing in the world is better than the absolute knowledge of which humans alone are capable. This means that the next great advent must be something that perfects human beings rather than superseding them. And this can only be the world of justice, in which the dead are resurrected and their horrible deaths partially cancelled (Meillassoux never considers the possibility of a God who would literally erase the pre-divine past so that it never happened at all). The only immortality worth having is an immortality of this life, not an existence in some ill-defined afterworld. Human existence, he holds, must always be governed by a “symbol” that gives us the “immanent and comprehensible inscription of values in a world.” And just as cosmic history made the three great contingent leaps of matter, life, and thought, with a leap to justice as the only one still to come, a similar structure occurs within human culture and its symbols, which consist so far of the cosmological, naturalistic, and historical symbols, with a “factial” symbol still to come. We can review each of these symbols briefly. The cosmological symbol refers to the ancient dualism between the terrestrial and celestial spheres. Here below everything is conflict, corruption, and decay; but in the heavens nothing is perishable, all movement is circular, and everything is arranged in mutual harmony. This symbol is ended by modern physics when Galileo discovers such blemishes as sunspots and craters on the moon, and when Newton integrates both celestial and terrestrial movement into a single gravitational law. Next comes the naturalistic or romantic symbol, in which perfection comes not from the sky but from nature itself. The world is filled with pretty flowers (Meillassoux claims that the ancients never discussed the beauty of flowers until Plotinus in the third century) and with living creatures naturally moved by pity, at least until society corrupts them. This symbol collapses in the face of reality as we know it, since pity is no more common than war, corruption, and violence. This brings us to the historical symbol, which only now is passing away. Bad things may happen, but history has an inner logic of its own, such that everything works out in the end. The ultimate form of the historical symbol is the economic symbol, whether in a Marxist or neo-liberal form. Just as the Marxist holds that the inner economic logic of the capitalists will inexorably lead them to self-destruction, the neo-liberal assumes that the sum total of individual selfish actions will lead, in the long run, to the greatest possible good. We worship the economy and let it guide history for us, just as the ancients worshipped celestial bodies and held them to be free from blemish. The final remaining symbol is the factial symbol, which Meillassoux hopes will now emerge. Factiality, we recall, is his term for the absolute contingency of everything that exists. Once we have grasped this absolute contingency, we are free to expect the dramatic advent of the coming fourth World: the world of justice, inaugurated by a virtual God and even mediated by a messianic human figure. There is the added feature, however, that this messiah must abandon all claims to special status once the messianic realm of justice is achieved. The messianic figure will then be no more special than any person on the street, since a reign of human equality will have arisen. Although this focus on human being might seem like a return to standard humanism, Meillassoux holds that human pre-eminence has never truly been maintained. Previously, humans have been treated as special only because they contemplate the Good, because they resemble their omnipotent creator, or because they happen to be the temporary victors in a cruel Darwinian death-match between millions of living species. For Meillassoux, by contrast, humans have value because they know the eternal. But it is not the eternal that is important, since this merely represents the blind, anonymous contingency of each thing. What is important is not knowledge of the eternal , but knowledge of the eternal. We should not admire Prometheus for stealing fire from the gods; Prometheus is simply as bad as all the gods, no matter how much he increased our power. Feuerbach and Marx were wrong to say that God is a projection of the human essence, since for Meillassoux the usual concept of God represents the degradation of the human essence. If the traditional God was allowed to inflict plagues and tsunamis on the human race, the Promethean human of the twentieth century simply assumes the right to inflict death camps and atomic fireballs instead. In this respect, we have simply begun to imitate the degradation of humanity that was formerly invested in an omnipotent and arbitrary God. In response to charges that absolute contingency might lead to political quietism, Meillassoux counters that the World of justice would mean nothing unless we had already hoped for it beforehand. A World of justice that came along at random would merely be an improved third World of thought: indeed, a perfect one. But it would have satisfied no craving, and would therefore have no redemptive power. For this reason, we must actively hope for the fourth World of justice for such a fourth World ever to arise. Not only justice, but beauty is dependent on such hope: for Meillassoux, who is here somewhat dependent on Kant, beauty means an accord between our human symbolization and the actual world, which could never be present in a World of the blessed any more than justice could. And just as a messianic figure is needed to incarnate our hope and then abandon power once the World of justice is realized, it is the figure of the child whose fragile contingency shows us a dignity and a demand for justice beyond all power. 3. Meillassoux Radicalized or Reversed Given the promising reception of Meillassoux’s first book, it would not be groundless to engage in early speculation about what it might take to earn him a place in the history of philosophy. Maybe this will never happen—who knows?—but quite possibly it will: his lucid argumentative methods and sheer philosophical imagination at least make him a good candidate to be read well into the future, especially following further elaboration in print of his mature system. Philosophy is often practiced as thought it were nothing more than the amassing of “knockdown arguments.” But this is no more insightful than saying that good architecture is the amassing of steal beams. It is true that poorly constructed building cannot stand for long, but sound construction is merely the first, indispensable step in building. In fact, I am inclined to say that what really makes a philosopher important is not being right, but being wrong . I mean this in a very specific sense. I once heard the interesting remark about twentieth century culture that “you have to remember that the sixties really happened in the seventies.” That is to say, it was in the 1970’s rather than the more honored 1960’s that civil rights, free love, long hair, and the rock and roll drug culture really took root. With respect to the history of philosophy, we might just as easily say: “you have to remember that Plato really happened in Aristotle,” that “Kant really happened in Hegel” or “Hume really happened in Kant,” or that “Husserl’s phenomenology first achieved its truth in Heidegger.” One becomes an important philosopher not by being right, but by attracting rebellious admirers who tell you that you are wrong , even as their own careers silently orbit around your own. To recruit faithful disciples may be comforting and flattering, but the greatest thinkers have generally had to experience refutation at the hands of their most talented heirs. For this reason, I would propose that we size up the magnitude of living thinkers not by deciding how many times they are right and wrong, but by asking instead: who would take the trouble to refute this author? For this reason I do not ask: “Is Meillassoux right?”, since I do not believe in the virtual God myself, nor am I convinced by any important aspect of Meillassoux’s philosophy. Instead, I ask if there are interesting ways to overturn him. Only by being overturned, by no longer remaining a contemporary, does one become a classic. Let’s begin with a simple model of refutation, which can be refined further at a later date once the basic point is established. One kind of refutation simply consists in saying: “This author is a complete idiot.” The refuter now walks away in celebration, and no link between the present and the future is built; all is reduced to rubble. But this sort of mediocre triumphalism is generally practiced by those who achieve little of their own, and is not especially interesting. Much more interesting is the sort of refutation that does not take its target to be a complete idiot. I would like to suggest that there are just two basic ways in which this can be done: radicalization and reversal . It has not escaped my notice that this is a fairly good match for the Deleuzian distinction between irony and humor. Whereas irony critiques and adopts the opposite principle of what it attacks, humor accepts what it confronts but pushes it into highly exaggerated form. The ironist is like the worker who sows chaos by rebeling and contradicting the boss, while the humorist is like the worker who follows orders to an absurdly literal degree, with equally chaotic results. Let’s start with a few examples. In Aristotle’s treatment of Plato, and Heidegger’s of Husserl, we find reversal. Plato’s eidei are transformed by Aristotle into mere secondary substances, and the individual worldly things despised by Plato become what is primary. For Husserl what is primary is whatever is present to consciousness, while for Heidegger this is precisely what is secondary, since the primary stuff of the world withdraws from any form of presence at all. As for radicalization, it is most easily found in the transformation of Kant by German Idealism: “Kant was right to wall off the things-in-themselves from human access, and simply should have realized that the thought of the Ding an sich is also a thought, and thereby the noumena are just special cases of the phenomena,” with much following from this discovery. It would also be easy to read Spinoza as a radicalizer of Descartes, and Berkeley and Hume as radicalized versions of Locke. Perhaps the distinction is now sufficiently clear. Admiring refutations are not those that say “Professor X is an idiot,” which is merely the flip side of the eager disciple’s fruitless “Professor X got everything right.” Instead, it will be some variant of one of the following two options: “Professor X is important, but got it backwards,” or “Professor X is important, but didn’t push things far enough.” In the history of philosophy these two latter cases have often been painful in purely human terms: Aristotle expresses sadness at refuting Plato, Kant is openly annoyed at Fichte, and Husserl feels betrayed and used by Heidegger. Rude handling from later figures almost seems to be the sine qua non of being a great philosopher. Now, it has already been claimed that Meillassoux is an emerging philosopher of the first importance, and by no less a figure than Alain Badiou: “It would be no exaggeration to say that Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy…” (Preface, vii). But rather than taking Badiou’s word for it, or rejecting his word, we might experiment by asking how Meillassoux could be radicalized or reversed. Are there interesting ways of doing this that might launch whole new schools of philosophy, unexpected or even condemned by Meillassoux himself? While no one can see the future, the present is poor when it is not riddled with virtual futures. The relation between philosophers and their predecessors and successors is always somewhat complicated, of course. But generally there is one central divergence at stake, which might be taken as the key to all the others. On this basis we could say that new thinkers primarily radicalize or primarily reverse the main ideas of their chief philosophical forerunner. There may be specific historical conditions and perhaps even personality traits connected with these two types, but this question can be left aside for now. More important for us is that radicalizers will generally be followed by reversers, and vice versa. Consider the textbook example of a reversal in the history of philosophy: Kant’s Copernican Revolution, which inverts the so-called dogmatic tradition that addresses the world itself, and makes the world revolve instead around the conditions by which it is known. While it is not completely impossible that Kant’s successors might have re-reversed this principle back into a new and stronger dogmatic realism, conditions were premature for such a move. Anyone doing this too early would likely have been an angry anti-Kantian reactionary rather than an original thinker in command of a genuinely new realist principle. The far more likely outcome is the one that actually happened: Kant’s reversal of his predecessors was viewed as incomplete, or as retaining lamentable bits of the traditional view, which despite his admirable breakthrough he was unable to shake off. This was the view of German Idealism, anyway. In similar fashion, Spinoza could also be viewed as a radicalizer of Descartes, who is equally accused of preserving various Scholastic dogmas in an otherwise radical project of philosophical reversal. The point is this: reversals in the history of thought tend to be followed soon thereafter by radicalizations of those reversals. The same may hold true in reverse: radicalizations might generally be followed by reversals, given that it is not always possible to be more radical than the radicals have already been. Consider the case of Husserl, who radicalizes Brentano’s early vagueness about what lies beyond immanent objectivity, and Twardowski’s assertion that there must be an external object lying outside the intentional content, by collapsing everything into the intentional sphere: there is no difference between the Berlin in my consciousness and the actual Berlin that is home to millions of people. It is difficult to see how one could be even more radical than Husserl’s idealist turn here. And thus the road is paved to Heidegger’s reversal of classical phenomenology, in which the key point is what lies deeper than any presence to consciousness: the Sein whose power and obscurity cannot be made exhaustively present, but only sends itself in historical epochs. In similar fashion we might also read Leibniz as a reverser of Spinoza’s radicalization, retrieving a strong sense of individual substance and a certain validity of what the Scholastics had said. Returning to Meillassoux, we might ask which kind of philosopher he is: a radicalizer or a reverser? At present, Meillassoux looks to me like a radicalizer (though for now his future remains shrouded in mist). He takes the correlationist tradition, which allows us to speak only of the relation between human and world, and tries to raise it into an even more extreme claim about the absolute contingency of everything. But whereas German Idealism did this by trying to collapse the distinction between thought and world entirely into the “thought” side, Meillassoux does it by trying to shift the non-absolute contingency of the thought-world correlate from epistemology to ontology. It is no longer a question of the inability of human knowledge to know what lies outside the correlate, but the inability of reality itself to be rooted in any definite laws. Furthermore, if we look at the various features of Meillassoux’s philosophy identified earlier tonight, all but one are already so radical that there is no obvious way to push them further. The one exception would be his claim that the world as a whole can change for no reason at any moment, coupled with the inconsistent claim that within a given world there are laws of nature that everything must follow. If gravitational attraction between all masses is a current law in our world, then for Meillassoux there can be no exceptions to this law for as long as it remains in force. A toppled vase will fall to the floor every time for sure,unless there is a cosmic change by which the laws of nature as a whole have altered. (This is reminiscent of the late medieval distinction between the absolute and ordained power of God, according to which God has the power to set or change the laws of nature, but not to contravene those laws locally once they are set.) On this point, to radicalize Meillassoux would simply be to say: there are no laws of nature even in the local sense. Everything that happens, even in the world here and now, is purely contingent and not governed by even a trace of law. And while this would be a more consistent development of Meillassoux’s thoughts on contingency, it is difficult to see how it could lead to a new philosophy. Instead, the admiring successors of Meillassoux are more likely to reverse one of his already sufficiently radical points. At least four candidates come to mind: *First, we have seen that Meillassoux thinks correlationism is challenged by a time before or after consciousness, but not by a space lying outside it. Perhaps this could be reversed into saying that spatial exteriority is the really crucial point. The arguments on this point are perhaps the least convincing in After Finitude (and do not even occur in the original French edition), and therefore it might be a candidate for the “blind spot” of which no philosopher is ever free. *Second, Meillassoux uses Cantor to claim that the contingency of laws of nature would not entail that they are unstable. A successor of Meillassoux might claim that it does make them unstable, and celebrate this fact. This person would then have to explain why common sense seems to encounter a relatively stable world despite its truly rampant instability. Whereas Meillassoux’s problem is to show how stability might exist despite contingency, this successor’s problem would be slightly different: to show why actual, full-blown instability might have the appearance of stability. *Third, Meillassoux claims that the primary qualities of things are those that can be mathematized. He might be reversed by a successor who says the opposite: the mathematizable qualities are the secondary ones, and the primary ones are those that elude symbolic formulation. While this is a perfectly valid possible objection to Meillassoux, it is one that is made in advance by some of his predecessors and is still made by some of his peers, making it less interesting for futurology than some of his other points. *Fourth and finally, whereas Meillassoux claims that God does not exist but might exist in the future, a successor might argue even more bizarrely that God has always existed but might vanish in the future. Let’s arbitrarily select the first of these possibilities, and imagine briefly where it might lead, if pursued in the future by admiring detractors. Meillassoux comes from the circle of Badiou, and some of Badiou’s most ardent admirers are found in Latin America. So, let’s imagine that towards mid-century some ingenious reversers of Meillassoux emerge in that portion of the Spanish-speaking world. Just for fun, let’s call them Castro and Chávez. And in order to avoid any confusion with the present-day politicians of those names, we will stipulate that Meillassoux’s great successors are both women. The philosopher Castro (we will suppose she comes from Peru) reverses Meillassoux’s argument that the ancestral or diachronic are what most threaten the human-world correlate. Instead, she claims that the diachronic does not threaten the correlate at all, and that we must instead look at space as what ruins the correlate and demands a strange new realism. What would such a philosophy look like? In order to determine this, we might ask what price Meillassoux pays for doing it the opposite way. As I see it, he pays in two separate ways. One is that laws of nature for him are contingent over time . The laws of nature apply to the universe as a whole at any given moment, and would be changed globally if they are ever changed at all. The second price he pays is that Meillassoux has no mereology , or theory of parts and wholes. Everything for him is on the level of the given, or immanent in experience, with the sole proviso that the laws governing this immanence might change without notice at any given moment. In reversing Meillassoux, Castro makes the following claims in the preface to her stunning debut book of 2045, The Cosmos and its Neighborhoods , rapidly translated from Spanish into all the languages of the world: Despite his brilliant analysis of the contingency of laws of nature over time, Meillassoux gets two important assumptions wrong. First, he allows for only one set of contingent laws to govern nature as a whole. Second, he allows laws to govern only the world that is immanent in experience, and thereby fails to explore the contingency among part-whole relations. In this book I will argue, first, that the laws of nature vary in any given instant between one region of the universe and the next; and second, that the world is made up of layers of parts and wholes that are also contingent with respect to one another. Those are the words of Castro. This may sound like a hopeless free-for-all of chaos, yet the book somehow succeeds in drawing some compelling deductions about how laws must vary from one place or level in the world to the next. Trapped in the limited horizon of 2011, and not yet inspired by the heavily balkanized political and technological situation of 2050 that somehow lends additional credence to Castro’s vision, we can only vaguely grasp what such a philosophy might look like. After this reversal of Meillassoux by Castro, the usual pattern leads us to expect a radicalization by Chávez, a young Argentine student of Castro. How could the already strange theories of Castro be radicalized? Perhaps as follows, in a disturbing new book entitled The Implosion of the Neighborhoods , which argues as follows: Castro was right to shift the Meillassouxian framework of contingency from time to space. However, in this respect she retained a surprisingly traditional opposition between the two. In this book I will show that time and space collapse into one another. This may sound too much like the discredited four-dimensional block universe of twentieth century physics and philosophy. However, the four-dimensional universe is a model biased in favor of space, merely adding an extra dimension to the commonsense spatial continuum while stipulating that the serial passage of time is an illusion. In this book I will argue instead for a one-dimensional space-time modeled after our experience of time, in which there is no simultaneous co-existence at all between different parts of the universe, or ‘neighborhoods’ as my esteemed teacher Castro has called them. Instead, the various portions of the universe link to one another by succession rather than by coexistence. Buenos Aires, New York, and Amsterdam do not exist simultaneously in the same landscape, but one after the other in the mind of some observer, and this observer can only be an observer much larger than any human. Against Meillassoux’s notion of a virtual God that does not exist now but might exist in the future, I will argue for an actual God that surveys the universe in sequence, thereby generating the illusion of spatial diversity and even the illusion of individual minds located within that diversity. Once this divine observer dies, the universe as a whole must perish. Again, these ideas are so bizarre that we of 2011 can barely comprehend them, just as Aristotle would have had a difficult time grasping the theories of Descartes. We could then perhaps imagine a further reversal of this theory, emanating from the intellectually resurgent Philippines of the twenty-second century. The Filipino School might argue that the universe is already dead, given the collapse of its spatial richness into the serial observations of a flimsy and mortal God. The virtual universe does not yet exist, but might exist in fully spatial form in the future, and this would require the death of God and the resulting liberation of God’s succession of images as independent, spatially situated realities. With a bit of sharpening, we might be able to make all of these imaginary thinkers more intuitively clear. Along with the history of philosophy, there might arise a new discipline generating imaginary futures for philosophy. The richness of Meillassoux’s system comes not from the fact that he is plausibly right about so many things, but because his philosophy offers such a treasury of bold statements ripe for being radicalized or reversed. He is a rich target for many still-unborn intellectual heirs, and this is what gives him the chance to be an important figure. NOTES 1. Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude . Trans. R Brassier. (London: Continuum, 2008.) Page 5. The word “correlationism” does not appear in his doctoral thesis. As Meillassoux informed me in an email of February 8, 2011, he first coined this term in 2003 or 2004, while editing for publication a lecture he had given at the École normale supérieure on a day devoted to the theme of “Philosophy and Mathematics,” an event including Alain Badiou as one of the participants. 2. Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making . (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2011). 3. In an email of December 6, 2010, Meillassoux clarifies that in After Finitude he only deduces the impossibility of a “universal contradiction,” not of a determinate contradiction. In the same email he suggests that he can also prove the latter, though the proof is somewhat lengthier than the one found in After Finitude . 4. After Finitude (18-26), in the passage falling between the two sets of triple asterisks. These pages were sent by Meillassoux to translator Ray Brassier (in French) during the translation process, and do not appear in the original French version of the book. 5. Graham Harman, “Quentin Meillassoux: A New French Philosopher.” Philosophy Today 51.1 (2007): Pages 104-117. The passage where I raise the question of space can be found in the first column of page 107. 6. Vernes is first cited on p. 95 of After Finitude . See Jean-René Vernes, Critique de la raison aléatoire, ou Descartes contra Kant . (Paris: Aubier, 1982).  . (shrink)

Mental health is an important basic condition for college students to become adults. Educators gradually attach importance to strengthening the mental health education of college students. This paper makes a detailed analysis and research on college students’ mental health, expounds the development and application of clustering analysis algorithm, applies the distance formula and clustering criterion function commonly used in clustering analysis, and makes a specific description of some classic algorithms of clustering analysis. Based on (...) expounding the advantages and disadvantages of fast-clustering analysis algorithm and hierarchical clustering analysis algorithm, this paper introduces the concept of the two-step clustering algorithm, discusses the algorithm flow of clustering model in detail, and gives the algorithm flow chart. The main work of this paper is to analyze the clustering algorithm of students’ mental health database formed by mental health assessment tool test, establish a data mining model, mine the database, analyze the state characteristics of different college students’ mental health, and provide corresponding solutions. In order to meet the needs of the psychological management system based on the clustering analysis method, the clustering analysis algorithm is used to cluster the data. Based on the original database, this paper establishes the methods of selecting, cleaning, and transforming the data of students’ psychological archives. Finally, it expounds on the application of data mining in students’ psychological management system and summarizes and prospects the implementation of the system. (shrink)

The various papers and short "discussions" contained in this latest addition to the "Studies in Logic" series were presented at the 1965 International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, in London. Of the nine "problems" considered in this symposium, seven have directly to do with philosophy, one is an historical study of the origins of Euclid's axiomatics, and the last is an interesting—if one-sided—discussion of the "new math" controversy in the pre-college curriculum. Happily, this book demonstrates that the important (...) issues in the philosophy of mathematics somewhat outrun the usual ism-mongering debate between representatives of various schools. Unhappily, it also demonstrates that a good deal of undeserving material seems to find its way between the covers of scholarly books. After reading certain of the articles in this volume one is left with the feeling that the authors have not come to grips with the issues which they raise, that a lot of effort has been expended on peripheral matters, and that, in some instances, a sledge hammer has been brought down upon an egg. Abraham Robinson's article, "The Metaphysics of the Calculus," deals with a series of important linguistic and ontological problems concerning the foundations of analysis. Moreover, these are problems which can no longer be ignored, especially in view of the evolution of non-standard analysis. But, unfortunately, the interested reader would do far better to turn to Robinson's recent book on the subject, and pay special attention to the second, third, and last chapters therein. "On a Fregean Dogma" by Fred Sommers gives a rather curious non-quantificational algorithm for the monadic fragment of syllogistic. This Sommers does in the interest of "a conservative effort to restore categorical statements to predicative status." Despite the heat and the occasional interesting remarks which the discussion generated, one is inclined to ask, "So what?" The sequence of three papers by Mostowski, Bernays, and Körner is best considered as a group, since each of these is concerned with the philosophical significance of recent results in set theory and logic. Students of the philosophy of mathematics would do well to read this part of the book very carefully, although one wishes that the authors would elaborate a bit on their specific philosophical views. Finally, there is Georg Kreisel's difficult and amazing paper, "Informal Rigor and Completeness Proofs," in which is presented a mathematical treatment of the problem of selecting the primitive rules and concepts of mathematical systems. Kreisel's ideas are refreshing, unorthodox, dubious, and a genuine contribution to the philosophy of mathematics. In sum, this book is a mixed bag, uneven in the quality of its contents, but worth reading.—H. P. K. (shrink)

Radicalism has the potential to become more widespread in a younger generation of Muslims who are too textual, exclusive, extreme and uncritical. Their ethos of struggle has created a momentum to contest radical ideologies of Islamic radicals. This study investigates the potential for the radicalisation of Islamic students in Indonesia and formulates an approach of integrating national and religious values to mitigate the potential for radicalism. A qualitative research approach is used, and data were collected by distributing questionnaires to (...) Indonesian Islamic student activists. Interviews were also conducted with experts to strengthen secondary sources of information. The results show that the potential for Islamic student to be exposed to radical activists is high. Through categorisation, interpretation and analysis, it was found that the concepts and spread of radicalism were more influenced by religious interpretations than social tolerance factors. In addition, the religious nationalist approach is formulated based on religious terminology and religious narratives.Contribution: This research contributes by assisting colleges’ efforts in building a detection system and mitigating the risk of student radicalism through a religious nationalist approach. (shrink)

Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:????; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:????; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt;} Learning styles, much related to motivation and cognitive strategies, has been one of the most frequently discussed topics in the field of foreign/second language (L2) education. (...) There is a considerable body of research on learning styles stemming from the domain of psychology to the conceptual field. As individuals learn in different ways from time to time, from culture to culture, and from context to context, findings of such research can only explain a comparatively small group of people’s temporary perceptions of their learning preferences to a selected subject surveyed. Sternberg (2001, p. 250) notes that “the literature has failed to provide any common conceptual framework and language,” while, according to Reid (1998), the concept is still not well understood. An enduring question for language researchers is the effect of individual differences on the efficacy of language learning (Nel, 2008). Much more research has to be done to address the issue of theoretical coherence as well as aiming for well-rounded empirical findings, tested through replication. Therefore, with an intention to contribute more data to cross-country research, this study investigated the differences and similarities of Chinese and Japanese college students’ perceptions of their current English learning styles through a classroom-based survey. Implications for the teaching and learning are discussed in the final section. (shrink)

Through perception we gain information about the world. We also gain information about the world through communication with others. There are concepts — indexical concepts, such as the concept of the present time ('now') or of the present place ('here') or the concept of oneself — which have a special link to perception. Are there concepts which are tied to communication in the same way in which indexical concepts are tied to perception? After discussing, and criticizing, (...) a deflationary approach to the phenomenon of deference, I argue that 'deferential concepts' are indeed the communicational equivalent of indexical concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Politica of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace-BookAnn MossThroughout Western Europe in the sixteenth century, schoolboys and grown men educated in the Latin schools of the humanists would recognize the commonplace-book as an indispensable tool for making sense of the books they read, for assimilating the written culture transmitted to them, and for possessing the means of production in their turn. This handy organizer of information and rather (...) effective retrieval mechanism has been treated with a fair amount of contempt after being sidelined towards the end of the seventeenth century and then falling into public disrepute, its rich stock of precious commonplaces devalued into the small change of mere banalities. Nor indeed does it suit the agenda of post-Romantic scholars and critics looking in a simplistic way for signs of originality and innovation. However, the last few years have seen commonplaces in their more sophisticated guise back on the critical agenda, with several particular studies and, latterly, two major overviews published in a single year. 1 The thesis underlying this paper is that the commonplace-book is central to an understanding of how knowledge was organized in the early modern period. More than that, the commonplace-book keys us into procedures of investigation and debate and into the dialectical and rhetorical modes of articulating thought which were agreed to have persuasive force; and it exhibits the commonality of expectations, the common places, which ensured a common route into a shared area of communication when the cultural consensus of Western Europe was strained to breaking point.One test of this thesis will be whether it can be usefully applied to texts which fit badly into interpretative frames familiar to the modern reader. The particular purpose of this paper is to apply the principles of commonplace-book [End Page 421] reading to just such an awkward case, in order at least to suggest the possibility of recovering an historically probable reading strategy which may more fully recuperate the text for the modern reader. The Politica of the eminent Stoic philosopher and scholar of antiquity, Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), is a network of quotations from ancient authorities linked together by Lipsius’s own words. He himself regarded it as one of his most important achievements. His contemporaries and their seventeenth-century descendants knew perfectly well how to read it, and there is plenty of evidence that they regarded it highly. 2 Modern readers find it an embarrassment, not knowing quite what to do with a book from which the author eclipses himself, yet keeps a dead hand on it: “All of it is mine and nothing is.” 3 Modern critics tend to assume it is all Lipsius, riding roughshod over the quotation indicators 4 ; or they prefer to think that nothing is and treat the text solely as a compilation of extracts 5 ; or they get tied in knots trying to rescue Lipsius’s voice drowned out in his quotations. 6 But Lipsius’s original readers in 1589 knew how to read it, because he told them: “For what is it but a well-arranged register of accounts or COMMONPLACES?” 7If we are going to get anywhere near the original point of reception, we must remind ourselves about commonplaces and commonplace-books. It was Erasmus in De copia who gave the first systematic guidelines for making commonplace-books, but by the time of Lipsius schoolboys in every Latin school in Northern Europe were busy excerpting from their [End Page 422] texts as they read, either under the schoolmaster’s instructions or at their own discretion. The commonplace-book was a probe and an instrument for redistributing text so as to ensure maximal retrievability and optimum application. Here is one of the many enthusiastic promoters of the practice, writing in 1564:So that the more important passages in the authors set for reading and the more brilliant sententiae, exempla, similitudes, words, phrases, and outstanding figurative expressions may be the more readily imprinted on the memory and available and ready for use as occasion requires, it is extremely useful to have the common-places of the main intellectual disciplines arranged in a definite order, under which students may note... (shrink)

"Hard task to analyze a soul. . . ." We would do well to let Wordsworth's comment guide our questioning. Have we avoided "a mystical and idle sense" of an influence? Have we lost our way tracking the "most obvious and particular thought?" Have our conclusions been "in the words of reason deeply weighed?" We might well wonder with such a supreme influence on a life that is firmly stamped by independence and originality, a source of an immense influence in (...) itself. [G. E.] Moore's philosophy provided the young [I. A.] Richards with terms and concepts for his psychological aesthetics and criticism, though Richards was not long in reacting to and passing beyond this influence. More enduring was the influence on the nature of meaning, on modes of comprehending through language analysis—more enduring and pervasive, though less traceable. Then, there is Moore's example of employing multiple hypotheses to which, in his application, Richards would give the name of complementarity. Lastly, Moore's personal influence reached deeply into the student's character, and if the influence did not initiate, it fortified and still fortifies a quest for sincerity, a Socratic quest for which we can scarcely find a "beginning." John Paul Russo is associate professor of English at Camden College, Rutgers University, the editor of I. A. Richards' Complementarities: Uncollected Essays, and the author of Alexander Pope: Tradition and Identity. (shrink)

The selection strategies of individuals and 2-person cooperative groups were investigated in 5 concept-attainment problems. 2 types of stimulus displays were used: (a) form displays, consisting of geometric forms varying in 6 attributes with 2 levels of each, (b) sequence displays, consisting of 6 plus and/or minus signs in a row. The arrangement of cards in the stimulus displays was ordered or random. The principal results were: (a) 2-person groups used the focusing strategy more, required fewer card choices (...) to solution, and required more time than individuals; (b) form displays resulted in more use of the focusing strategy than sequence displays, with no difference in number of card choices; (c) no difference between ordered and random arrays in use of the focusing strategy or number of card choices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The implications of Globalization on education are multifaceted. However, roots of all these implications can be traced to the predominance of economic activity at the global level. The education and learning paradigm, around the world is under increasing pressure to meet the demands of the new knowledge and information-intensive global economy in a better way. This kind of pressure is challenging the traditional relationships between teachers and students and causing paradigm shifts in the process of learning. Especially, as (...) noted by KB Power (2002:i) ‘Higher education has undergone important paradigm shifts including the shift from teacher-centered to a student centered learning, and the replacement of the traditional practice of learning over a period of time by the concept of lifelong learning.’ Along with these there are major shifts in the modes of instructional technologies - from face to face oral instruction to print based instruction, and from Multimedia based videotapes and Television channels to E-learning systems. The present paper limits itself to the paradigm shifts in the concept of education with reference to learner. After a brief introduction on how education is understood in globalization the paper discusses the place of learner which is transforming according to the needs of global economy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 41-57 [Access article in PDF] The Subordination of Aesthetic Fundamentals in College Art Instruction Randall Lavender we smile at a hasty philosopher who assures his disciples that art is about to be replaced with philosophy. 1Opportunities for college students of art and design to study fundamentals of visual aesthetics, integrity of form, and principles of composition are limited today (...) by a number of factors. With the well-documented prominence of postmodern critical theory in the world of contemporary art (and itsquestionable effects on higher education in art and design), the study of aesthetic fundamentals is largely subordinated to a multitude of conceptual, theoretical, and expressive priorities recycled from the art world. 2 Contemporary idea-based priorities tend to obviate, in the minds of many artists who teach, the "need" for aesthetic fundamentals in college art curricula. But as Rudolph Arnheim suggests, art is not easily replaced by ideas alone. For no matter how interested artists, instructors, or students may be in ideas, theory, or self-expression, today's college art/design students need to gain a solid grounding in aesthetic fundamentals early in their college art educations in order to become adept and well-informed makers of art and/or design.In this essay I argue for the value of aesthetic fundamentals in the education of artists and designers, and outline a series of factors that contribute to the subordination of aesthetics in college art instruction. I examine introductory-level college art/design curricula, including a pair of courses that are intended to provide students with visual, compositional, and/or aesthetic fundamentals, and explore why instructors, even in these courses, too often bypass such fundamentals in their teaching. Specifically, I discuss the ways in which traditions of art education, mixed with artist/teachers' own art training, lead to a virtual dismissal of aesthetic fundamentals. Certain assumptions that professional artists often bring to their teaching and how these contribute to the problem are examined. I identify a historical phenomenon [End Page 41] that plays a key role in the subordination of aesthetic fundamentals — the schism between "art" and "design." I suggest an approach for embracing aesthetic fundamentals in college art instruction that preserves students' individual and cultural differences, while at the same time enabling them to make aesthetic decisions in their work, and to discern aesthetic quality in each other's work. Finally, I conclude that students can fully succeed in more advanced explorations of the complex and controversial realm of contemporary art issues, and certainly in the applied arts, only after receiving a solid, balanced, and inclusive grounding in the profound aesthetic power of clear organizing principles of visual information. The Value of Aesthetic Fundamentals Why are aesthetic fundamentals — that is, principles and elements of visual organization — actually important to the education of college art students? Among other reasons, they are important because professional artists do somehow have to learn to make their work aesthetically convincing, even if they must manage other challenges as well, including "newness," historical relevance, and significance of idea. The National Association of Schools of Art and Design shares this reasoning, as evidenced by their requirement that B.F.A. students acquire "essential competencies," including becoming "visually literate," developing an "understanding of basic design principles, concepts, media, and formats," and "mastery of basic foundation techniques." 3 The problem we face in educating artists today is that the range of challenges inherent to a career in the art world often results in aesthetic considerations being assigned a low priority in visual arts curricula. Many contemporary artists teaching in college art programs see themselves as all but immune to the realm of visual aesthetics; they subscribe instead to the prevalent postmodern dictum that aesthetics are superfluous. As this way of thinking permeates college art instructors' thinking to an ever-greater extent, students of art and design find themselves increasingly distanced from aesthetic training, and from the aesthetic experience. This distancing is a loss to students.Students lose when aesthetic fundamentals are neglected because for all the effort they might make... (shrink)

In Hong Kong, transfer students encounter different challenges unfolding in their transition from community college to university study. However, limited research has been conducted to explore their discipline-specific challenges. To address this gap, in this study three engineering and science faculties were selected from which to collect data through 35 in-depth interviews with transfer students, followed by a thorough thematic analysis. With the concept of in-betweenness, three main themes were identified: “shifted the focus of study” academic (...) excellence in community college; future career in the university; and university life); “encountered challenges in the transition” non-matching program articulation; heavy study workload and its associated consequences; and non-specific administration arrangement and support from university); and “students’ voices to enhance learning experiences” modify the study duration; improve program articulation; improve social adjustment; and overseas exchange). The results of this study indicate the challenges faced by transfer students in their transition from community college to university and have implications for universities to design and implement appropriate strategies to prepare for the future. (shrink)

Educational institutions have failed to achieve desired goals due to the lack of technology adoption, and this situation needs researchers’ emphasis. Hence, the current study examines the impact of digitalization and digital competencies among students on the educational performance of low-income college students in China. The article also investigates the moderating impact of parental support at the nexus of digitalization, digital competencies among students, and educational performance in low-income college students in China. The questionnaires (...) were used by the researchers to gather the data from the selected respondents. The article has applied the smart-PLS to check the linkage among understudy constructs and test the hypotheses. The results revealed that digitalization and digital competencies among students positively link educational performance. The results also exposed that parental support significantly moderates digitalization, digital competencies, and educational performance in low-income college students in China. This article helps policymakers develop policies to improve educational performance using technology adoption. (shrink)

Publically launched in 2013 and discontinued in 2017, Yik Yak was an anonymous and geographically restricted social media application. A uses and gratifications theoretical framework and a mixed-methods research design were selected for this exploratory study regarding differences between Yik Yak users and nonusers. College students (n = 264) from a western university completed online surveys regarding Yik Yak in November of 2015. Results indicated that Yik Yak users were significantly younger than nonusers, and no significant differences were (...) identified between Yik Yak users’ and nonusers’ reported time spent with other social media platforms (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat). Qualitative results indicated that college students who used Yik Yak did so for informational, entertainment, agency-enhancement, and community-building purposes. Nonusers chose not to use Yik Yak because the application did not meet their needs, they were unaware of Yik Yak, and because of unfavorable content. (shrink)

John Granville's first book is unique on several counts. First, it's not simply a history of science, but rather a history of our evolving unerstanding of motion. It's unique in the detailed explanations given to common scientific riddles-explanations aimed to help students avoid catastrophic collisions with these concepts in college. It's unique in that it resents the philosophies on which the major scientific paradigm shifts rest. It's unique in its presentation from Thomas Kuhn's point of view (i.e., his (...) concept of world view and paradigm shifts as presented in his classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). The book begins with an informal discussion of Kuhn's notion of world view, and various concepts relevant to his thesis concerning the nature of scientific revolutions; but, the Discovery of Motion proper begins with ancient Egyptian and Greek preparations for Aristotle (here the dialectic of Parmenides and Plato are given special attention). A survey of Aristotle and his science of motion follows (i.e., his theory of nature and natural philosophy). Included in this part of the book are the works of such notables as Archimedes and Ptolemy. The Copernican revolution, including the works of Galileo, Kepler and Newton is, of course, presented from the viewpoint of Kuhn's paradigm shift. Four chapters concerning Newtonian motion are the highlight of the first half of the book. It is here Granville's original aim, of explaning puzzling scientific phenomena to young students, is realized-but now this material serves another purpose. These chapters not only clarify Newton's world view but expose phenomena that were virtually invisible to the peripatetics...and will eventually expose reasons for the ambivalence and frustration that accompany scientific revolutions. Granville then turns to philosophical developments that led to our modern view of the world. This part of the book covers the evolution of empiricism from Bacon to Hume (with Descartes' rationalism thrown in for contrast). Kant's epistemology concludes this philosophical survey, deliberately leading the plot back toward the classical viewpoint. Finally, developments of the nineteenth century that led to the so-called Second Scientific Revolution are considered. The final chapter is a unique presentation of Einstein's relativity theory, where the incompatibility of this theory with Newtonian physics, and the reason why relativity must take precedence, are discussed. Granville compares the opposition to the Copernican revolution with twentieth century opposition to the Einsteinian revolution. The book reveals that, after building detailed understanding of classical Newtonian phenomena, opposition to a shift of world view is an understandable human reaction. (shrink)

Traditionally, the Swedish Agricultural Extension Service has delivered technical information to farmers with the aim of increasing productivity and efficiency in farming. Present problems with overproduction of food and the negative social and environmental consequences of present farm practices has brought this traditional mission in question. In a situation of budgetary constraints it has been suggested that the funding of the governmental Agricultural Extension Service should be cut down or even discontinued altogetherThe article argues that this would be a (...) mistake. The various negative consequences of modern agriculture indicate that we are far from an ideal mode of agricultural production. Instead, public opinion and new guidelines for agricultural and environmental policies call for substantial changes in Swedish agriculture with respect to pollution, preservation of non-renewable resources, maintaining an open rural landscape, ethical aspects of animal production, rural development etc.This reorientation of Swedish agriculture presumes that decision-makers, farmers, and the public at large get an opportunity to learn more about the complexities of agricultural production. In contributing to this learning process the Agricultural Extension Service would have an important mission. To be able to fulfill this mission, extension professionals must be provided an opportunity to learn a broader concept of productivity and efficiency in agriculture, for instance, how to extend cost-benefit analyses and technical criteria of efficiency to include social, environmental, and ethical aspects. Our present extension staff has not received adequate training for this task. It is suggested that all agricultural colleges need to create departments of Rural Sociology and Agricultural Humanities to provide agricultural students and professionals an opportunity to develop a better understanding of agriculture and make them prepared to take on the challenges and responsibilities they confront in developing our future agriculture. (shrink)

Background: A large number of nurse researchers do not adhere to ethical standards while performing the research. Moreover, there is far less data on knowledge of existing national ethical guidelines. This study was, therefore, done to assess awareness and adherence to current national ethical guidelines among nursing students and faculty members. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was done among nursing faculty members and theses carried out by postgraduate nursing students between 2012 and 2017. Using the convenience sampling technique, (...) seven states of North India were selected. In each of the selected seven states, one government and one private nursing college was selected. Thus, a sample of 14 nursing colleges was selected. Then, using simple random sampling, a total of 140 nursing faculty members and 280 postgraduate nursing theses were selected from all the chosen institutes to be part of the study. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics. Ethical considerations: The study has been approved by the institutional ethical committee (ECR/737/Inst/UK/2018/RR-18). In addition, written permission from the head of each nursing institute was obtained before conducting the study. After participants read the Participation Information Sheet, they were asked for written informed consent before data collection. Confidentiality of the information and anonymity of the participants were maintained throughout the study. Results: The majority (81.8%) of the participants were females. It was found that compared to private nurses, government college nurses were more adhered to the research guidelines on research project approval (68.6% vs 22.1%), informed consent guidelines (74.3% vs 25%), providing patient information sheets (55.7% vs 10%), maintaining information confidentiality (82.9% vs 72.1%), maintaining anonymity (76.4% vs 22.9%) and obtaining custodian permission (97.8 vs 89.3%). It was also shown that nurses were more aware of the informed consent process domain (4.3 ± 0.3) followed by the general ethical principles domain (3.8 ± 0.8). Conclusion: Government college nurses adhered more to the research guidelines as compared to those employed in private settings. Most of the faculty members were not part of any clinical trials and had no research ethics training at all. Therefore, it is needed to provide an instructional programme to raise awareness of the research ethical standards. (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Elvira Panaiotidi, “The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education”Carlos Xavier RodriguezElvira Panaiotidi has delivered a very useful and appealing paper on the topic of how the music education community decides it is time to change the way it thinks and acts. Her primary focus is whether the concept of "paradigms" proposed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions reasonably explains how (...) change occurs in music education theory and practice and, if not, whether it can be modified so that it does. Following Peter Abbs' account of paradigm shifts in arts education, she proposes that paradigm shifts occur when methods of inquiry change even if what is being analyzed does not change. More specifically, paradigm shifts involve gradual transformations such that certain principles and terminology are carried over from the previous paradigm to the new one, and change at a slower rate than the methodologies adopted to make sense of them. Such discrepancy creates the kind of communicative discord she alludes to in her introduction: the aesthetic/praxial debate. Her further analysis of Abbs' argument leads her to conclude that the paradigm shifts he describes in arts education are different in kind from those intended by Kuhn. They apparently lack conceptual modification, or "conversion experience," and seem motivated by the need for increasingly comprehensive explanations of artistic behavior and thinking.Panaiotidi's synopsis of Kuhn's original criteria for paradigms reminded me [End Page 108] that his Structure of Scientific Revolutions as my first college textbook, exerted a powerful influence on me by its power to explain how humans formulate and react to new and better ideas. Panaiotidi seems to share this feeling, and scrutinizes Kuhn's original intention to use paradigms as a way of delineating the natural sciences from the humanities. Kuhn himself cautioned that his characterization of change and progress in science is not readily applicable to the arts and, more importantly, that interpretive frameworks for understanding art are not paradigms because paradigms are not theories, a distinction he echoed throughout his career. I argue that Kuhn would not consider the aesthetic and praxial approaches to music education paradigms at all; rather they are more a search for "a more inclusive theory" as Panaiotidi states. However, the ready applicability of Kuhn's criteria for paradigms to the work of music education philosophers is apparent. Their writings have been "sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity." They have become associated with new methodological strategies because their writings are "sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to solve."There is, however, quite a difference in the way that science and art communities function. As Ted Gracyk writes in his book, I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity:Where a scientific community singles out one paradigm as the foundation for further research, artistic communities do not. Once Newtonian mechanics was accepted as a scientific paradigm, no other approach to mechanics counted as a rational basis for mechanics. "Unlike art," Kuhn observes, "science destroys its past." The artworld can admire multiple paradigms, representing different periods in art history, without risking incoherence: Picasso's success did not lead museums to put their Rembrandts into storage."1Perhaps, then, the discord noted by Panaiotidi between "aestheticians" and "praxialists" arises not from a shortcoming of music education theory to provide what she calls "tenacious theoretical footing which could help settle the dispute," but from a too-literal interpretation of Kuhn's original criterion that applies to the natural sciences: new paradigms must necessarily refute those that have preceded them. Indeed, the music education research community has grappled with this very issue in its polarized views of acceptable research practice, which is perhaps more fundamentally a misunderstanding regarding the nature of the sciences versus the nature of the humanities. We in arts education have long admired scientific inquiry for its relative stability, what Kuhn calls a "normal" versus "revolutionary" mode of activity. However, as Panaiotidi explains, "Normal science [End Page 109] is characterized by a broad consensus of the specialists and is not by its nature... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 65.2 (2004) 191-211 [Access article in PDF] Oratory and Rhetoric in Renaissance Medicine Nancy G. Siraisi Hunter College In Renaissance medical practice rhetoric had an ambiguous reputation. Many authors warned physicians against use of persuasion or repeated some version of the truism that patients are cured not by eloquence but by medicines. On the other hand, physicians were also reminded that by (...) speaking well they helped patients to have confidence in their advice and to understand directions, which in turn facilitated cure.1 Yet some aspects of medical culture of the period between 1450 and 1600 seem profoundly attentive to rhetoric, at least as regards the use of language, performative elements, and the influence of these features in ancient models (most notably Galen himself).2 One area in which rhetoric had an unambiguous, acknowledged, and essential place was in the medical orations pronounced at university ceremonies. A sample follows: Pursuit of all these different things by study, investigation of obscurities with ingenuity, conquest of difficulties with industry, and—after penetrating into the very fibers of the earth and searching everywhere into the arcana of the whole of nature and from all herbs, fruits, trees, animals, gems, and even poisons—inquiry after remedies and the proper way to use them for all the ills of human life from so many authors, so many disciplines, and even from the very stars: these things, I say, [End Page 191] have uncovered so many hidden cures, been attained with such arduous powers of the mind, completed with so much effort of memory, offer so many things necessary for the health of the entire human race in common, that does not indeed [the entire enterprise of medicine] seem to have been superhuman and really in a certain way divine?3This nicely exuberant example of Renaissance medical rhetoric exemplifies the genre in several respects. The oration to which it belongs was originally delivered to an academic faculty of medicine by a physician; it shows the impact in medical settings of the revival of epideictic rhetoric, and its author drew on learned sources and commonplaces about medicine that belonged to a store of broadly humanistic erudition, shared both in and outside the medical profession. In fact the only truly distinctive feature of this passage is its author. It comes from Erasmus's Encomium medicinae, which he wrote in 1499 for a friend—a physician named Gysbertus—to deliver to the medical faculty of the University of Paris.4If Gysbertus was exceptionally fortunate in his ghost, many other surviving medical orations are internal products of medical faculties, the work of university masters or students of medicine. But whoever their authors, orations delivered in or written for an academic medical setting offer some telling illustrations both of the way in which certain kinds of humanistic interests and requirements came to penetrate medical learning and of the reaction of humanistic rhetoric to medicine. "Medical humanism" is usually understood to encompass both the core enterprise of intensive philological study, editing, and translation of Greek medical texts—never the occupation of more than a handful of hellenist scholars—and also the reception and scientific influence of the fruits of their labors among a wider medical audience. But Renaissance medicine was also a humanistic discipline in a much broader and more inclusive sense; that is, it both fostered and provided ample scope for the development among learned physicians of interests characteristic of humanistic culture in general: rhetoric, history, biography, fascination with remote peoples and places, and antiquarianism. At the same time, as the passage from Erasmus quoted [End Page 192] above demonstrates, humanists outside the medical profession interested themselves in medicine and controlled a stock of rhetorical commonplaces on the subject. To be sure, the penetration of terminology and concepts from medicine into the general culture long antedated the Renaissance.5 But the revival of rhetoric together with attention to ancient sources and commonplaces provided humanist observers with new tools for commenting, sometimes in quite specific and detailed terms, on the contemporary medical scene, a phenomenon... (shrink)

Se realizó un estudio con el objetivo de ejemplificar los modos de actuación en el trabajo metodológico interdisciplinario que respondan a la formación académica, laboral e investigativa de los estudiantes de la carrera de Medicina de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey, desde una concepción intra e interdisciplinaria, rectorada por la disciplina Informática Médica. Se elaboraron propuestas de tareas docentes problematizadoras desde una estrategia metodológica a partir de la planificación que cada asignatura del año debe diseñar, las que permitieron (...) la realización de trabajos investigativos por los estudiantes en cada semestre del curso escolar, en las que se combinaron de manera creciente los contenidos y los diversos métodos teóricos y prácticos de las unidades curriculares del plan de estudio de las asignaturas Informática Médica, Metodología de la Investigación, Educación Física, Psicología General y Medicina General Integral como disciplina rectora en la carrera, influyendo en la formación de un profesional más competente. Determining a mode of on-the-job acting interdisciplinary methodologic that the intra answer to Camagüey's academic, labor and investigating formation of the students of the carrier of Medicine of Ciencias Médicas's Faculty, from a conception and interdisciplinary, manager for Information-Technology Medical discipline, he identified the objective of this work. The problem from a strategy elaborated bidding of teaching tasks themselves methodologic as from the planning that he must design each subject of study of the year, the ones that permitted the realization of investigating works for students in each semester of the school year, in the ones that combined of increasing manner the contentses and various theoretic methods themselves and pilots of units curriculares of the curriculum of Information-Technology Medical subjects of study, Methodology of Investigation, Physical Education, Psicología General and Medicine General Integral like ruling discipline in the carrier influencing a more competent professional's formation. (shrink)

Modern trends in social development are defined not only as an information society, but increasingly as a knowledge society. To understand its content and strategy of implementation, an important aspect is to understand the contradictions that are increasingly manifested and are of a general socioanthropological nature. In particular, this is the problem of the correlation between a knowledge society and objective scientific knowledge; this is the question of the correlation between the available knowledge and experience reflected in the cultural (...) tradition and the rapidly changing information flow; this is the question of the social role of education and the social status of an educated person, as well as the problem of human self-determination in the context of situational relations and a configurative society, etc.The widespread mythologeme of a knowledge society as a society of intellectuals supports a rather one-sided view of it. Therefore, understanding the paradoxical combination of elements of a knowledge society system, their contradictions, and complementarities, makes it possible to understand the risks and develop tools to avoid them. The research methodology. The study is based on an interdisciplinary and comprehensive analysis of contemporary socio-cultural processes in the context of the formation of a knowledge society and information pedagogy. Research results: The interpretation of modern society as a knowledge society raises a number of theoretical questions and discussions concerning the definition of knowledge (scientific/non-scientific, useful/unsuitable, etc.), and the definition of its social and anthropological characteristics and human status (educated person, informed person, professional person, successful person). The challenges of the processes of informatization of society lead to the formation of «e-didactics» and «information pedagogy» of a new educational paradigm, the effectiveness of which should resolve a number of contradictions. These include, in particular, the discrepancy between learning tools (openness and mobility) and reproductive learning models; between distance asynchronous learning and the classical stability of the structure and forms of organization of the educational process, etc. Discussions. The analysis of knowledge as the fundamental basis of the new social reality and changes in its historical status allows us to identify problematic issues of the worldview picture of the world that is formed in the conditions of intensive production of information and a certain devaluation of knowledge, actualization of innovations, and devaluation of cultural tradition. The knowledge society is often characterized as an education society. Although such a generalization is debatable, educational technologies of knowledge production and transmission are an important component of the development of a knowledge society and include the destruction of stereotypes and attitudes of the industrial society’s education paradigm. This explains why interdisciplinary discussions about the content and forms of organization of modern education are becoming increasingly acute. The problem of rethinking the established models of teacherstudent relations and the requirements for the subjects of the educational process is important among the many aspects of changes. A student is transformed from an object of pedagogical influence into a subject of the educational process, where a teacher plays the role of a mentor, a tutor, since knowledge must be «extracted» by a student because of his or her own intellectual efforts and cognitive search.The change in social role also includes a change in worldview, way of thinking, and value priorities. Conclusion. The analysis of the socio-cultural mechanisms and practices of the knowledge society reveals its ambivalence and risks, which are its inherent characteristics. Knowledge as the fundamental basis of the new social reality is defined not only as a tool for understanding the world but also as a factor of civilizational development that produces new forms of activity and relationships, new worldview orientations, and value priorities. The transformation of the phenomenon of knowledge and the rapidity of the information flow raises the question of the relevance of existing knowledge and experience to the needs of a given situation, thus actualizing the demand not for the depth of knowledge and understanding, but for the ability to combine and choose a practical (useful) option, to put together puzzles and mosaics, forming a clip thinking. Challenges of the processes of society informatization lead to the formation of “e-didactics”, information pedagogy as a tool for adaptation and a new educational paradigm, the effectiveness of which should resolve the identified contradictions.However, the transformation of modern educational practices involves not only rethinking their content, technologies, and teaching methods, changing the status relations of the subjects of the educational process, but also a general change in models of thinking and personal behavior, and a change in the human world. The correlation of the modes of human definition: educated, intellectual, erudite, and specialist becomes an important issue of the anthropological dimension of the knowledge society, where the problem of human self-determination is becoming more acute. (shrink)

Before he originated the field of philosophy for children, Matthew Lipman spent nearly twenty years teaching at Columbia University and its affiliated colleges under the tutelage of the American philosopher Justus Buchler. In those years Lipman’s scholarship focused on Buchler’s naturalist metaphysics, which was informed by Buchler’s scholarship on the philosophy of Charles Peirce. In this essay I relate Lipman’s relationship with Buchler, summarise Buchler’s theory of human judgement, and indicate key parts of that theory that influenced Lipman’s own theory (...) of judgement and multidimensional thinking. I then discuss the pedagogical turn Buchler made with his theory, including his conception of classroom discussion as a mode of ‘community of query,’ which became the prototype for Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp’s theory of ‘community of inquiry’ as a protocol of classroom dialogue and a paradigm of philosophical practice and democratic decision-making. (shrink)