1. De jezuïten -- 4. Een zwerm getuigen -- 5.-6. De filosofie van Leuven -- 7. Op zoek naar zijn en zin -- 8. Katholieken en hun filosofie.

Context: Sustainability is among major societal goals in our days. Education is acknowledged as an essential strategy for attaining sustainability by activating the creative potential within young people to understand sustainability, bring forth changes in their everyday life, and collectively envision a more sustainable future. Problem: However, teaching and learning about sustainability and sustainability-related issues is not an easy task due to the inherent complexity, ambiguity, and context-specificity of the concept. We are in need of innovative pedagogical approaches and tools (...) that will allow us to design learning activities in which learners will be empowered to develop new, alternative interpretations of sustainability in personally and collectively meaningful ways. Method: We argue that a constructionist perspective involving the use of expressive media for digital storytelling offers an appropriate frame for designing learning activities fostering collaborative creativity in thinking and learning about urban sustainability. Our study is based on the design of a learning activity following this rationale. We adopted a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of different sources of data with the aim to explore collaborative creativity as a learning process based on the students’ collective processes and resulting in the co-construction of new ideas and insights about sustainability, and new tangible artefacts encompassing them. Results: Our analysis of the collaborative creativity exemplified in the three digital stories produced identified important creative elements with regards to the three components of a digital story and how they were embodied in each digital story produced as a result of the students’ joint constructionist activity. Implications: Our study provides some preliminary evidence that collaborative creativity from a constructionist perspective can stand as an appropriate framework for designing learning activities addressing the difficult concept of sustainability. There are several implications for both theory and educational practice in environmental education and education for sustainable development, constructionism, and digital storytelling in education. Moreover, our study opens up new fields for research and theory in creativity. (shrink)

This paper uses the term “ surveillance ” in its widest sense to include data sharing and the revealing of identity information in the absence of consent of the individual concerned. It argues that the current debate about the nature of a “ surveillance society” needs a new structural framework that allows the benefits of surveillance and the risks to individual privacy to be properly balanced. To this end, the first part of this article sets out the reasons why reliance (...) on the current framework of data protection or human rights legislation, or on the current regulatory regime does not necessarily protect privacy. The second part sets out nine principles that can be used to assess whether individual privacy is comprehensively considered when surveillance policy is developed. These principles are applied to surveillance in the UK to identify the structural improvements that could create an effective balance. These principles are not legislative proposals but provide a means of exploring possible deficiencies in information law governance and, in particular, Parliament’s role in scrutinising the executive and the powers needed by a regulator when engaging with the Parliamentary process. As most European countries adopt a democratic, human rights framework, it is suggested that these principles are not limited in an application in the UK environment. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own. (shrink)

Fractal time fluctuations of the spectral “1/f” form are universal in natural self-organizing systems. Neurobiology is uniquely infused with fractal fluctuations in the form of statistically self-similar clusters or bursts on all levels of description from molecular events such as protein chain fluctuations, ion channel currents and synaptic processes to the behaviors of neural ensembles or the collective behavior of Internet users. It is the thesis of this essay that the brain self-organizes via a vertical collation of these spontaneous events (...) in order to perceive the world and generate adaptive behaviors. REM sleep, which coalesces from self-similar clusters of burst-within-burst behavior during ontogeny, is essential to cognitive-emotional function, and has recurrent fractal organization. Empirical fMRI observations further support the association of fractal fluctuations in the temporal lobes, brainstem and cerebellum during the expression of emotional memory, spontaneous fluctuations of thought and meditative practice. Cognitive-emotional integration arises as amygdaloid-brainstem-cerebellar systems harmonize the vertical “1/f” symphony of coupled isochronous cortical oscillations in the pursuit of mindfulness. (shrink)

In E.N. I. c. 5 Aristotle is considering divers views as to what constitutes Eudaimonia. He told us in c. 4, 2–3 that there are many conflicting opinions on the subject. The Many identify Happiness with some palpable good, such as pleasure, wealth, honour, but the Wise identify it with something beyond the Many, while [Plato] denied it to be any specific good at all. Of all these views we should consider such as have many adherents or are considered to (...) be reasonable. Accordingly, the Universal Good is considered in c. 6 after consideration in c. 5 of five particular goods—pleasure in the form of bodily pleasure, honour, wealth, virtue [and, implied in the theoretic Life, wisdom]. These five goods are brought into relation with four Lives—viz. pleasure with the apolaustic; honour and virtue with the political; [wisdom] with the theoretic; wealth with the business or money-making Life; and the first three Lives are called προέχοντες. There is nothing in this introduction of the Lives to astonish us; for, as Aristotle himself tells us, τò ληθς ν τοȋς πρακτικοȋς κ τν ργων κα τοû βίου κρίνεται . But there is much difference of opinion as to the argument he draws from the Lives. According to the view now submitted for consideration, the argument is that when a specific good, which some suppose to be Eudaimonia, is also the end of a ‘pre-eminent’ Life, then there is some prima facie probability in the view that that specific good is Eudaimonia. (shrink)

In The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus gives an extended argument on behalf of the “Open Society.” Instead of claiming that it is uniquely best from some privileged moral perspective, he argues for the Open Society by showing why it is acceptable to many perspectives. In this way, Gaus argues for a liberal market-based society in a way that treats deep diversity as a fundamental feature of social life. However, the argument falters at four important points. When taken together, (...) these four problems significantly limit the significance of Gaus’s conclusions. (shrink)