I suppose I’m writing this because of my 1965 paper on Pacifism. In that essay I argued that pacifism is self-contradictory. That’s a strong charge, and also not entirely clear. Let’s start by trying to clarify the charge and related ones.Pacifism has traditionally been understood as total opposition to violence, even the use of it in defense of oneself when under attack. I earlier maintained (in my well-known “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis” (Narveson, Ethics, 75:4, 259–271, 1965)) that this position is (...) contradictory, if it is intended to mean that one has no right to use violence. While that is perhaps going too far, pacifism as so characterized is surely, as I have later argued, self-defeating in an obvious sense of that expression. But in any case, contemporary theorists who describe their views as pacifist profess to hold no such doctrine—they regard that familiar characterization of pacifism as a caricature. They do express strong opposition to war, but even that is not unlimited. If the chips are genuinely down, they will approve going to war-level self-defense—but they deny that it ever is really necessary, or at least that it is necessary nearly as often as actual war-making behavior among nations would suggest.In this it is not clear that we have a purely philosophical disagreement. How much opposition to war qualifies a view as “pacifist”? That is now very hard to say. After all, all decently liberal thinkers are against violence as a standardly available way of pursuing one’s ends. We all agree that if violence is to be justified, it takes something special. It should be a “last resort,” Just War theorists have classically said, and while ‘last’ is very difficult to pin down, at least, violence should be very far from the first thing a responsible nation thinks of. What’s more, the “something special” is not just that one’s ends are so important. It has to be that the violence would be employed in defense, of self or of other innocent parties under threat. So if there is genuine disagreement, it must be along this line: that we are morally required to make very substantial sacrifices in the pursuits of our otherwise legitimate interests, including our interests in security, in order to avoid using the violence of war.Is this reasonable? I think not. We should, of course, be reasonable, and that includes refraining from violence—except when the violence is necessary to counter the aggressive violence of others. For we reason, on practical matters, in terms of benefits and costs. Agents, especially political agents, can, alas, benefit from violence where that violence is unilateral. Thus it is rational to see to it that it won’t be unilateral. And when it is not unilateral, then the balance is in favor—strongly in favor—of peace. It remains that we must, alas, be able to make war in the possible case that we can’t have peace. When everybody shares the preference for peace, then we can scale down and hopefully even eliminate war-making capability. (Contemporary nations have already scaled down considerably—there have been few wars in the classic sense of military exchanges between states as such in recent times.) But until the scaling down is universal and includes a genuine renunciation of the use of warlike methods to achieve ends other than genuine self-defense, what most of us think of as “pacifism” is a non-option in the near run. (shrink)

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban elementary school, this volume is an examination of how school division politics, regional economic policies, parental concerns, urban development efforts, popular cultures, gender ideologies, racial politics, and university and corporate agendas come together to produce educational effects. Unlike conventional school ethnographies, the focus of this work is less on classrooms than on the webs of social relations that embed schools in neighborhoods, cities, states, and regions. Utilizing a variety of narratives (...) and analytical styles, this volume: * explores how curriculum innovations are simultaneously made possible by and undermined by school district politics, neighborhood histories, and the spatial and temporal organizations of teachers' and parents' lives; * situates the educational discourse of administrators and teachers in the changing economic and political climates of the city; * analyzes the motivations behind an effort by school and business proponents to refashion classrooms within the school into business enterprises, and of children's efforts to make sense of the scheme; * examines the role of the school as a neighborhood institution, situating it at the intersections of city planners' efforts to regulate city space and children's efforts to carve out live spaces through out-of-school routines; * contemplates the meaning of school as a site for bodily experience, and looks at how patterns of space and control in the school shaped children's bodies, and at how they continued to use body-based languages to construct maturity, gender, and race; and * investigates the school as a space for the deployment of symbolic resources where children learned and constructed identities through their engagements with television, comic books, movies, and sports. _Tangled Up In School_ raises questions about how we draw the boundaries of the school, about how schools fit into the lives of children and cities, and about what we mean when we talk about "school.". (shrink)

In this article, other-repetition after informing statements is investigated in a corpus of institutional encounters between native Norwegian clerks and non-native clients. Such repetition is used to display receipt of information. A plain repeat with falling intonation is described as a display of hearing, whereas a repeat plus a final response particle, ‘ja’, constitutes a claim of understanding. Repeats with high-tone response particles in addition display emotional stance, such as surprise or interest, and these are primarily exploited for the purposes (...) of topic organization. In the cross-linguistic context of the current encounters, the native speakers are shown to use receipts as embedded corrections of the non-native speaker’s utterances. The repeats also have certain formal features that are characteristic of the situation, such as less pronominalization and ellipsis, and this is explained as a procedure to ensure the joint construal of linguistic form. (shrink)

We show that considerable sets of positive linear operators namely their extensions as closures, adjoints or Friedrichs positive self-adjoint extensions form operator (generalized) effect algebras. Moreover, in these cases the partial effect algebraic operation of two operators coincides with usual sum of operators in complex Hilbert spaces whenever it is defined. These sets include also unbounded operators which play important role of observables (e.g., momentum and position) in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.

I joined Trevelyan College (Trevs), Durham University in 2011 as a mature student under former professor and principle of the college Martyn Evans. It was to be the beginning of a transformative journey culminating in my doctoral thesis: Balanced Wonder: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Role of Wonder in Human Flourishing. -/- In 2020 Trevs kindly asked me to contribute to the Alumni Magazine Hippocampus and in particular to the ‘Where Are They Now’ section. -/- “You Haven’t Done Anything” is (...) my contribution and it highlights in a humorous fashion some of the things I have achieved since I left Trevs. -/- Sections: -/- Standing still is rarely a good strategy in life -/- If One Lives Wisely Sometimes Less is More and Infinately More Valuable. (shrink)

Connecting with peers online to overcome social isolation has become particularly important during the pandemic-related school closures across many countries. In the context of contact restrictions, feelings of isolation and loneliness are more prevalent and the regulation of these negative emotions to maintain a positive well-being challenges adolescents. This is especially the case for those individuals who might have a high need to belong and difficulties in emotional competences. The difficult social situation during contact restrictions, more time for online communication (...) and maladaptive emotion regulation might lead to aggressive communication patterns in the form of cyberbullying perpetration. In an online study with N = 205 adolescents aged 14–19, we assessed the frequency of online and offline contacts, need to belong, emotion regulation problems, feelings of loneliness, and cyberbullying perpetration as predictors of adolescents’ well-being. In particular, we explored whether cyberbullying perpetration might function as a maladaptive strategy to deal with feelings of loneliness and therefore predicts well-being. This effect was expected to be stronger for those with a higher need to belong and with higher emotion regulation problems. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that well-being was significantly predicted by less emotion regulation difficulties, less feeling isolated and more cyberbullying perpetration. We also tested whether the need to belong or emotion regulation problems moderated the association between cyberbullying and well-being. While the results for emotion regulation problems were not significant, the moderation effect for the need to belong was significant: For students with a high need to belong, well-being was more strongly related to cyberbullying perpetration than for students with a medium need to belong. For students with a low need to belong, cyberbullying was not significantly associated with well-being. That cyberbullying perpetration predicted well-being positively is rather surprising in the light of previous research showing negative psychosocial outcomes also for cyberbullying perpetrators. The moderation analysis provides a hint at underlying processes: In times of distance learning and contact restrictions, cyberbullying may be a way of coming into contact with others and to regulate loneliness maladaptively. (shrink)

Der Band vereint Beiträge zu neueren Entwicklungen in der Schrifttheorie, vor allem aus linguistischer, philosophischer, medientheoretischer und sprachdidaktischer Perspektive. Dabei geht es zum einen um die Frage, mit welchen Methoden und Kategorien Schrift und Schreiben analysiert werden können und worin sich die geschriebene Sprache medial von der gesprochenen unterscheidet. Zum anderen werden Einflüsse des Mediums Alphabetschrift auf die historische Entwicklung dieser Disziplinen nachgezeichnet und verschiedene Schrifttypen im Verhältnis zueinander beschrieben. Ausgangspunkt für die Beiträge waren die schrifttheoretischen Arbeiten Christian Stetters, insbesondere (...) seine Thesen, dass die Alphabetschrift nicht als eine Art Lautschrift zu begreifen sei, und dass die spezifischen Eigenschaften dieses Schrifttyps zur Genese formaler Sprachbetrachtung in Sprachwissenschaft und Philosophie entscheidend beigetragen haben. In den Beiträgen des Bandes werden Schwierigkeiten der Orthographie-Reform ebenso reflektiert wie didaktische Kontroversen zum Schriftspracherwerb, die Pragmatik des Schreibens ebenso wie die Ästhetik unterschiedlicher Schriftarten. (shrink)

Česká filosofka Albína Dratvová (1892–1969) je připomínána především pro své práce z filosofie přírodních věd a jako autorka řady učebnic filosofie a logiky pro střední školy. Významnou část jejího myšlenkového odkazu tvoří také publikace antropologicko-etické. Mezi nimi má důležité místo knížka Duše dnešní ženy. Autorka v ní vychází z vlastní zkušenosti a vlastních zážitků a věnuje se významu a úkolům duševní činnosti žen v nových podmínkách a formách ženské aktivity. Jemná analýza duševní situace žen je i výzvou a návodem pro (...) nalezení smyslu života. (shrink)

Les recherches récemment consacrées à la géographie artistique et confessionnelle des Pays-Bas septentrionaux et méridionaux ont non seulement permis de se faire une idée plus juste et plus précise des rapports que les artistes et leurs clients néerlandais ont entretenus au XVIIe siècle avec la foi, mais aussi de se défaire de certains lieux communs en vigueur depuis le XIXe siècle, et que l’on retrouve encore parfois dans la littérature historique. Cet article est consacré à l’examen critique de quelques-uns de (...) ces lieux communs. (shrink)

The Cleitophon has recently been discovered to be Plato's dialogue introducingThe Republic. In this volume of essays, Editor, Translator, and Author Mark Kremer introduces seminal work that understands The Cleitophon as an ancient discussion of what scholars today refer to as posthumanism and postmodernism. Thoroughly original, this volume is an invaluable resource to all disciplines that attempt to come to terms with our emerging global society.

In the static field configuration, a spatially-Variable Speed of Light (VSL) scalar gravity model with Lorentz-Poincaré interpretation was shown to reproduce the phenomenology implied by the Schwarzschild metric. In the present development, we effectively cover configurations with source kinematics due to an induced sweep velocity field w. The scalar-vector model now provides a Hamiltonian description for particles and photons in full accordance with the first Post-Newtonian (1-PN) approximation of General Relativity Theory (GRT). This result requires the validity of Poincaré’s Principle (...) of Relativity, i.e. the unobservability of ‘preferred’ frame movement. Poincaré’s principle fixes the amplitude of the sweep velocity field of the moving source, or equivalently the ‘vector potential’ ξ of GRT (e.g.; S. Weinberg, Gravitation and cosmology, [1972]), and provides the correct 1-PN limit of GRT. The implementation of this principle requires acceleration transformations derived from gravitationally modified Lorentz transformations. A comparison with the acceleration transformation in GRT is done. The present scope of the model is limited to weak-field gravitation without retardation and with gravitating test particles. In conclusion the model’s merits in terms of a simpler space, time and gravitation ontology—in terms of a Lorentz-Poincaré-type interpretation—are explained (e.g. for ‘frame dragging’, ‘harmonic coordinate condition’). (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 46 Heft: 1 Seiten: 391-418.

The advent of simple in vitro fertilisation techniques has provided the reproductive biologist with an invaluable system for assaying sperm fertilising ability. In particular, they provide a useful way of identifying and characterising gamete‐specific proteins that play a role in sperm‐egg interactions, and in recent years, a growing number of sperm surface proteins have been identified that appear to be involved in these processes. Fertilin β was one of the first sperm membrane proteins to be implicated in egg interactions and (...) it has been proposed that this is mediated by means of binding of its disintegrin‐like domain to cognate integrin receptors on the egg plasma membrane. A recent paper in Science by Cho and colleagues [Cho et al. 1998. Fertilisation defects in sperm from mice lacking fertilin β. Science 281:1857–1859 (Ref. 1)] provides preliminary data on a fertilin β knockout mouse. Whilst fertilin βnull males had greatly reduced fertility, somewhat surprisingly, this could be largely attributed to causes other than impaired binding to the egg plasma membrane. BioEssays 21:183–187, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Článek spadá do tematické oblasti současných snah o oživení Aristotelovy etické teorie. V užším vymezení jde o téma aktualizace konceptu morálního charakteru (či mravní ctnosti), které je spojováno s využitím poznatků psychologických věd. Zde pak klíčovou pozornost věnuji problému kritérií, podle kterých můžeme posuzovat adekvátnost návrhů na takovou aktualizaci. Vedle běžně respektovaných kritérií interdisciplinarity a empirické a normativní adekvátnosti představuji kritérium funkce, které je ústředním pojmem článku. Cílem článku je formulovat toto kritérium a pro jeho vyjasnění co nejlépe vystihnout funk­ci (...) (zjednodušeně řečeno užitečnost či přínos) Aristotelovy etické teorie. Dále je mým zámě­rem na příkladech představit, jaké důsledky by mělo přijetí tohoto kritéria (tedy zachování či zefektivnění funkce) pro posuzování adekvátnosti návrhů k aktualizaci Aristotelova konceptu morálního charakteru. Za funkci Aristotelovy etické teorie považuji zvyšování naší morální gramotnosti a tvrdím, že tato funkce vyplývá ze stěžejního rysu Aristotelovy práce, z důsledné analýzy a nalezení vzájemných vazeb mezi pojmy, které spojujeme s každodenní morálkou a s prožíváním dob­rého a spokojeného života. Na konkrétních příkladech ukazuji, jak snahy naplnit jiná kritéria adekvátní aktualizace mohou vést k pojmové redukci, zahlcení irelevantními informacemi, nebo jinak narážet na kritérium funkce. Naplnění všech zde představených kritérií ilustruji na analogii dovednosti, kterou jakožto aktualizaci představila Julia Annasová. (shrink)

This study explored the relationship between both overall television viewing and romantic youth drama viewing, as well as of females’ concerns about boys’ attractiveness expectations on the one hand, and body image dissatisfaction on the other. Participants were 411 adolescent girls who completed self-report measures on body dissatisfaction, television viewing, and concerns about appearance expectations. Our results indicated that there was both a direct and indirect relationship between romantic youth drama viewing and body satisfaction. Girls who spent more time watching (...) romantic youth drama displayed lower levels of body satisfaction. In addition, romantic youth drama viewing had a significant positive impact on concerns about boys’ attractiveness expectations, which had an indirect effect on body satisfaction. (shrink)

Political relations in today’s world are in a deep, perhaps even radically threatening disequilibrium; similarly, humanity’s home—the Earth—is treated with disdain and contempt despite its increasingly angry protests. Moreover, the rules and principles by which most of the world runs its economic affairs and strives to “modernize” its life are founded on a set of market laws devoid of all social context and only serve to deepen the dangerous contrasts between small islands of wealth and a sea of humanity doomed (...) to poverty and alienation. (shrink)