Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have implicated insula and anterior cingulate cortices in the empathic response to another’s pain. However, virtually nothing is known about the impact of the voluntary generation of compassion on this network. To investigate these questions we assessed brain activity using fMRI while novice and expert meditation practitioners generated a loving-kindness-compassion meditation state. To probe affective reactivity, we presented emotional and neutral sounds during the meditation and comparison periods. Our main hypothesis (...) was that the concern for others cultivated during this form of meditation enhances affective processing, in particular in response to sounds of distress, and that this response to emotional sounds is modulated by the degree of meditation training. The presentation of the emotional sounds was associated with increased pupil diameter and activation of limbic regions (insula and cingulate cortices) during meditation (versus rest). During meditation, activation in insula was greater during presentation of negative sounds than positive or neutral sounds in expert than it was in novice meditators. The strength of activation in insula was also associated with self-reported intensity of the meditation for both groups. These results support the role of the limbic circuitry in emotion sharing. The comparison between meditation vs. rest states between experts and novices also showed increased activation in amygdala, right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in response to all sounds, suggesting, greater detection of the emotional sounds, and enhanced mentation in response to emotional human vocalizations for experts than novices during meditation. Together these data indicate that the mental expertise to cultivate positive emotion alters the activation of circuitries previously linked to empathy and theory of mind in response to emotional stimuli.. (shrink)

We discuss applications of our account of moral status grounded in person-rearing relationships: which individuals have higher moral status or not, and why? We cover three classes of cases: (1) cases involving incomplete realization of the capacity to care, including whether infants or fetuses have this incomplete capacity; (2) cases in which higher moral status rests in part on what is required for the being to flourish; (3) hypothetical cases in which cognitive enhancements could, e.g., help dogs achieve human-like cognitive (...) capacities. We thereby show that our account does not have the counterintuitive implications alleged by DeGrazia and other critics. (shrink)

When Locke mentions polygamy in his writings, he does not condemn the practice and, even seems to endorse it under certain conditions. This attitude is out of step with many of his contemporaries. Identifying the philosophical reasons that lead Locke to have this attitude about polygamy motivates our project. Because Locke never wrote a treatise on ethics, we look to number of different texts, but focus on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Essays on the Law of Nature, in order (...) to outline his basic ethical theory. We argue that this theory, the elements of which include moral mixed modes, the law of nature, and the comparison of these modes with this law, is broad enough to accommodate practices like polygamy. Our interpretation shows that Locke’s line of thought on marriage is strikingly flexible for the 17th century, and even compared to some contemporary public debates on marriage. (shrink)

Whereas experiments and computer simulations seem very different at first view because the former, but not the latter, involve interactions with material properties, we argue that this difference is not so important with respect to validation, as far as epistemologyEpistemology is concerned. Major differences remain nevertheless from the methodological point of view. We present and defend this distinction between epistemology and methodology. We illustrate this distinction and related claims by comparing how experiments and simulations are validated in evolutionary studies, a (...) domain in which both experiments in the lab and computer simulations are relatively new but mutually reinforcing. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 46-50.

Professional institutions are increasingly confronted by fiscal constraints and political pressures to improve and increase their accountability in a competitive consumer-driven market. Accordingly, the need to ensure efficiency and accountability is of strategic importance. This article reports on a qualitative study of medical professionals that assessed the utility of financial incentives and external control methods derived from agency theory to ensure accountability of professionals. The authors argue that approaches derived from stewardship and institutional theories can extend the principal–agent perspective to (...) sustain greater social and ethical accountability. (shrink)

Antoine Arnauld is well known as a passionate defender of Jansenism, specifically Jansen’s view on the relation between freedom and grace. Jansen and, early in his career Arnauld, advance compatibilist views of human freedom. The heart of their theories is that salvation depends on both the irresistible grace of God and the free acts of created things. Yet, in Arnauld’s mature writings, his position on freedom seems to undergo a significant shift. And, by 1689, his account of freedom no longer (...) seems Jansenist. In this paper, we offer an interpretation of Arnauld’s mature view on freedom, with a focus on his claim that freedom requires a “power to the opposite.” In order to see what he means by this, we look to several under-examined texts in his corpus for clues about how he understands the related topics of “infallible determination,” habit, and primo-primi motus. We argue that Arnauld’s mature view on freedom should be understood as libertarian. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the first universities and mendicant schools, where thousands of students began to converge during the thirteenth century. Logic played an unpreceded role in basic and higher education. A “Parisian logical model” of education was shaped at the University of Paris, adopted by mendicant Orders in their schools of logic, diffused in all disciplines, and progressively spread in Southern Europe. Medieval education became heavily based upon logical, and even “logician” practices, with the “syllogization” of exegetical, disputational, (...) and evaluation practices.The notion of logical skill conveniently captures this unique situation for the discipline of logic, as well as the way medieval thinkers conceived of logic as a universal, transdisciplinary method, a natural operation of the mind, a modality of knowledge, the very form of teaching and graduating, a “habitus,” a technique and a science.The divisions of Aristotelian logic, the “artificial logic,” were for the first time naturalized and projected on the very structure of human mind, which was thereby “logicalized” and ascribed a “natural logic.” A strong anthropological dimension was bestowed on logic. The discipline of logic was deemed a necessary instrument in the philosophical “perfection” and the Christian “reparation” of man as an intellectual creature by a group of logically skilled, professional philosophers and theologians, whereas men deprived of logical education were described as “logically disabled,” and stuck into inferior forms of humanity.The world of medieval intellectual elites displayed a variety of social uses of logic, beyond academic circles, especially in the performance of pastoral duties. The possible historical records of the social usefulness of logic are explored: for students, the majority in medieval universities, who left university without a degree, but with a solid logical education, for ordinary mendicant friars, dedicated to preaching and confession, who frequented logical schools, and for members of the parish clergy sent to the faculties of arts. (shrink)

It is difficult to consider, describe or address the ethical issues particular to qualitative research without experience and understanding of the technicalities of qualitative methodologies. The Australian National Statement on the Ethical Conduct of Research Involving Humans charges researchers with a responsibility to demonstrate that they have the appropriate experience, qualifications and competence for their proposed research. Ethical review committees have the responsibility to judge claimed research competence. This article provides practical guidance to researchers and review committees on using formal (...) qualifications and training, explicit claims of competence, and markers of in/competence to assess qualitative research competence. (shrink)

Farm-to-school (FTS) programs have garnered the attentions and energies of people in a diverse array of social locations in the food system and are serving as a sort of touchstone for many in the alternative agrifood movement. Yet, unlike other alternative agrifood initiatives, FTS programs intersect directly with the long-established institution of the welfare state, including its vestiges of New Deal farm programs and public entitlement. This paper explores how FTS is navigating the liminal terrain of public and private initiative, (...) particularly the ways in which it interfaces with neoliberalism as both a material and discursive project. It examines the political emergence of school food programs and finds that FTS is strikingly similar to traditional school programs in objectives, but differs in approach. Yet, in their efforts to fill in the gaps created by political and economic neoliberalization, FTS advocates are in essence producing neoliberal forms and practices afresh. These include those associated with contingent labor relationships, private funding sources, and the devolution of responsibility to the local, all of which have serious consequences for social equity. The paper also discusses how FTS programs are employing the rhetoric of neoliberal governmentality, including personal responsibility and individual success, consumerism, and choice. While these may be tactical choices used to secure funding in a competitive environment, they may also contribute to the normalization of neoliberalism, further circumscribing the possibilities of what can be imagined and created to solve social problems. (shrink)

We expand on the article “Ethical Challenges Arising in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Overview from the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) Task Force” to consider the ways in which rural...

Dès 1947, la construction de la nation birmane par Aung San, militaire victorieux de l’occupation japonaise, s’est faite en excluant certaines minorités, notamment musulmanes. En 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi revient au pays et prend la tête de l’opposition au nom de son père, assassiné en 1947, avec son parti la Ligue nationale pour la démocratie. Elle affirme son allégeance au bouddhisme et son soutien à l’armée malgré les exactions de celle-ci contre les minorités. Et c’est en tant que cheffe (...) de fait du gouvernement qu’elle comparait devant le tribunal de la Haye en 2019. (shrink)

Depuis l’Approche Communicative et aujourd’hui avec la méthode actionnelle, la littérature a été réhabilitée. Elle fait partie des supports de cours mais reste néanmoins réservée aux niveaux plus avancés du Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues. Nous montrerons à travers plusieurs exemples qu’au contraire l’apprenant de FLE doit être sensibilisé dès le niveau débutant à la musicalité de la langue française par des textes où les auteurs se sont attachés à en travailler tout particulièrement le rythme, l’intonation, la (...) syllabation et la sonorité. Nous montrerons aussi qu’il faut aller au-delà de la phonématique pure et de la discrimination auditive par paires minimales et traiter de phénomènes que l’on a eu trop tendance à oublier mais qui ont reçu l’attention de certaines nouvelles phonologies qui se sont développées pour le domaine français : le « e » instable, la quantité vocalique, les enchaînements, la diérèse…. (shrink)

ABSTRACTVantage perspective during recall is thought to affect the emotionality and accessibility of distressing memories. This study aimed to test the effects of vantage perspective during recall...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning in Dramatic and Virtual Worlds:What Do Students Say About Complementarity and Future Directions?John O'Toole (bio) and Julie Dunn (bio)A top financial backer has arrived to determine which team of computer interaction designers has developed the most exciting and innovative proposal for the Everest component of the Virtually Impossible Computer Company's Conquerors of the World Series. Tension is high as the presentations begin, but this tension soon turns (...) to outright conflict as some proposals suggest George Mallory as the conqueror, and the financial backer will have none of him. The backer, it seems, has her own agenda and is determined to allow for only one view of history—the one that records Sir Edmund Hillary as a New Zealand hero and the only real conqueror of the tallest mountain on earth. The designers become more and more agitated until suddenly someone bangs their hand on the table and calls out, "Hang on... just because you've got the money doesn't mean... kids need to learn about both these men... they need to learn about history." With that the drama is cut by the teacher. The deep understandings about "history's purchased page" that can be generated when drama and computers are brought together for learning have been made explicit... but could these same outcomes have been achieved using just one of these approaches?IntroductionThe research explored within this article was generated as part of the Media Station, a project funded by the Australasian Collaborative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID), with an overall mission to investigate the potential of massively multiplayer online games for learning. This particular subproject, History's Purchased Page, saw researchers from interaction design [End Page 89] and drama education come together with a group of young learners to investigate their perceptions of the complementarity of computers and live classroom drama and to brainstorm future possibilities for applying computer-based technologies to drama-based learning. We sought to discover the following:• What do young learners say about how they experience and value learning in a context involving a combination of drama and computers?• What ideas do these young learners have about how future technologies might enrich the complementarity of this combination?As the drama researchers involved in this project, we had been experimenting with this perhaps slightly unusual combination for over a decade by incorporating computers into a number of our drama units within our primary textbook Pretending to Learn.1 Our goal in these experimentations had always been to enrich the classroom drama experience by taking advantage of the information capacity of the Internet and other computer-based resources, including databases. For example, we had used The First Fleet Database2 to support a drama unit where the learners take on the role of convicts arriving in Australia in 1788. We discovered that this material, combined with other documentation and historical materials available via the Internet, greatly enhanced not only the historical accuracy of the work but also the level of engagement experienced by the learners when in role. Therefore, we were very keen to extend this work by exploring new possibilities and were especially keen to develop a better understanding of what the learners made of this interactivity.In recent years the partnering of these two quite different approaches to learning has developed quite a research following, and a number of drama teachers and researchers have become interested in the complementarity of these ways of learning.3 At the same time, researchers and designers from the field of computer-assisted learning have also noted these connections. This goes back to the work of Brenda Laurel, who first drew attention to the intriguing links between computers and theatre in her now famous text Computers as Theatre.4 With the rapid growth of interactive learning tools such as 3-D immersive worlds, blogs, and online voice and text chat spaces, the opportunities for exploration of these connections have also grown, with each of these offering exciting new possibilities when used in conjunction with the highly interactive and engaging strategies of process drama.Process drama is a way of group learning, through whole-class improvised drama, with students (and sometimes the... (shrink)

Philosophical consideration of dance has gained in vigor, diversity, and sophistication in recent decades -- even though philosophers disagree sharply on what philosophy is! Divergent methodological approaches range from the phenomenological explorations of Maxine Sheets- Johnstone, the existentialist approach of Sandra Horton Fraleigh, and the postmodernist continental work of Susan Foster to more traditional "British-American" analysis by such well-known philosophers as Nelson Goodman, Joseph Margolis, and Francis Sparshott.

The physical, psychological, and spiritual violence against fat bodies in the US, committed in service of a racist, sexist, classist, and ableist vision of an idealized body size, is death-dealing. This essay develops a theo-ethical vision of fat liberation that rejects the trappings of the “religion of thinness” and celebrates the inherent worth of fat bodies through an incarnational theology that recognizes the image of God in every body size, the presence of body size diversity in creation, and the full (...) inclusion of all body sizes at the eucharistic table. (shrink)

This article discusses a Leverhulme residency undertaken by the author Julie Brixey-Williams in 2003–4 at the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. Notions of medical visibility were explored through practice-led investigations under the umbrella title, Traces of the Invisible, that concentrated on making concrete, visible responses to the hidden or intangible elements of the anesthetist’s working life in areas such as sleep, breath, pain and genetic markers. Rosebud is a unique nine-foot concertina bookwork created after reading the (...) entire story of The Sleeping Beauty into an anesthetic machine. This essay expands upon the concepts and material responses that led to the making of the book with particular reference to how the book’s structure forms a relationship to language and the body-as-site, whilst operating as a sculptural object that raises the visibility of the anesthetic profession. Fairy tales and their telling, including stories of enchanted sleep, transformational qualities, magical languages and shaman healers, will be examined alongside. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Comment se pratique la philosophie du droit en ce début de XXIe siècle à la suite des bouleversements politiques et théoriques observés lors du siècle précédent? Comment se pose la question du droit pour et dans la philosophie, et quelles sont les spécificités du rapport que les juristes nouent à la philosophie dans le déploiement de leur pratique juridique, ainsi que dans leur propre réflexion sur le droit? Les textes présents dans ce volume, rédigés (...) en l'honneur de Guy Haarscher par des amis et des collègues influencés par son travail, abordent ce questionnement en profitant, à sa suite, de la multiplicité des espaces de croisement entre les discours juridiques et philosophiques, qu'il s'agisse de la spécificité des droits de l'homme ou du droit constitutionnel dans le champ juridique, des choix moraux à l'oeuvre lors des conflits entre droits fondamentaux, de la place de la rhétorique ou de l'utilisation de la philosophie dans la procédure judiciaire, du statut réservé à la technique juridique dans la tradition philosophique occidentale, d'un légalisme commun au jusnaturalisme et au juspositivisme, d'une forme de moralité purement interne à la pratique du droit, de la question du tribunal de l'histoire ou encore du sens juridique de la laïcité.". (shrink)

This contributed volume explores the ways logical skills have been perceived over the course of history. The authors approach the topic from the lenses of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and history to examine two opposing perceptions of logic: the first as an innate human ability and the second as a skill that can be learned and mastered. Chapters focus on the social and political dynamics of the use of logic throughout history, utilizing case studies and critical analyses. Specific topics covered include: (...) the rise of logical skills problems concerning medieval notions of idiocy and rationality decolonizing natural logic natural logic and the course of time Logical Skills: Social-Historical Perspectives will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in the fields of history, sociology, philosophy, and logic. Psychology and colonial studies scholars will also find this volume to be of particular interest. (shrink)

The literature of the past century produced an historical reconstruction of statics theory applied to mechanical structures coinciding–starting with Le Mecaniche (1634) and Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche sopra a due nuove scienze (1638) by Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). Based on previous research (RP) and our historical and historiographical line of research [37], in this paper we briefly analyse Buonaiuto Lorini (1540–1611) Le Fortificationi ([1596] 1609) as a bridge between the science of weights and early mechanical science, including the graphical scale and (...) machines. This is a fundamental and advanced military fortification–engineering treatise with an evident important relationship between theory & practice, including designs–projects of both fortresses and machines, understood as tools, to manufacture them. Lorini also presents an excursus on how fortifications developed according to the advent of new artillery/weapons, comprising the crucial passage from the use of square to circular towers up to the description of modern fortresses in all their details, e.g., bulwarks and cavaliers, curtains, orillons, star–shaped plans. Basing on Archimedes’ (fl. 287–212 BCE) techniques (law of the lever) and Guidobaldo del Monte's (1545–1607; Le Mecaniche (1577–1581) he successfully engaged in advanced mechanical considerations. His position (at the end of the first chapter) on the distinction between the mathematician (scientist) and the mechanician (architect–engineer or even machine expert) is historiographically very interesting within the difference between abstract Euclidean geometry and the application of its contents to imperfect and heterogeneous reality. The translations are ours. (shrink)

A recent study using a crossmodal matching task showed that the identity of a talker could be recognized even when the auditory and visual stimuli that were being matched were different sentences spoken by the talker. This finding implies that general temporal features of a person's speech are shared across the auditory and visual modalities.

In The Imaginary, Sartre provides the foundation upon which the development of his theory of bad faith is built, pointing to a fundamental choice at the level of image consciousness between the unreflective projection of the image and the impure reflection upon that image constitutive of imaginative comprehension, or what he refers to in this text as pure comprehension. Pure comprehension can be seen as Sartre's early formulation of pure reflection in which thought is characterised by movement rather than the (...) reification of thought indicative of impure reflection and imaginative comprehension. This will prove to have consequences for the interpretation of Sartre's conceptualizations of desire and bad faith and consequently for Sartrean ontology, psychoanalysis and ethics. (shrink)

Em minha tese de doutorado defendi que, para compreender como Hegel articula a passagem da contradição dialética à lógica, o conceito hegeliano de contradição deve ser analisado sob a perspectiva de uma antinomia. Para sustentar este argumento, propus uma atualização deste conceito a partir de uma estrutura antinômica. Essa atualização, porém, trouxe um outro problema: nessa reconstrução, a contradição, em Hegel, continua a se desenvolver de maneira gradativa, ao passo que a lógica tradicional trabalha apenas com valores de p e (...) -p, e não com níveis de gradação. Assim, para continuar sustentando o argumento de que o conceito hegeliano de contradição, sob a perspectiva de uma antinomia, pode ser compreendido como uma contradição lógica, seria necessário encontrar uma lógica que não operasse apenas com valores binários, mas também com níveis de gradação. Foi a partir dessa necessidade que surgiu a ideia de aplicar o conceito de contradição em Hegel à Lógica Difusa, e esta é, portanto, a proposta do presente artigo. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a heretofore ignored critic of Descartes on the heterogeneity problem: Anton Wilhelm Amo. Looking at Amo’s critique of Descartes reveals a very clear case of a thinker who attempts to offer a causal system that is not a solution to the mind-body problem, but rather that transcends it. The focus of my discussion is Amo’s 1734 dissertation: The Apathy [ἀπάθεια] of the Human Mind or The Absence of Sensation and the Faculty of Sense in the (...) Human Mind and their Presence in our Organic and Living Body. Amo’s discussion of the interaction, or lack thereof, of the mind and body hinges on the essential feature he identifies for the human mind—apathy, that is, impassivity. In this work, Amo engages explicitly with Descartes’s writing, which allows us to more precisely see the nature of his agreement and disagreement with the Cartesian metaphysics of mind. I proceed by treating Amo’s five stated criteria for spirit-hood which, in turn, reveal the kinds of causal connections that are possible for embodied spirits on his view. My aim is threefold: To lay out what I take to be Amo’s view of and arguments for the five criteria he takes to be required for a substance to be spirit. To locate Amo’s agreement and disagreement with Descartes. To suggest that Amo’s view on mind-body interaction involves a kind of occasional causation. (shrink)

There is a deep cultural anxiety around public expressions of maternalism and the application of maternal values to society as a whole. Julie Stephens examines why postmaternal thinking has become so influential in recent decades and why there has been a growing unease with maternal forms of subjectivity and maternalist perspectives. In moving beyond policy definitions, which emphasize the priority given to women's claims as employees over their political claims as mothers, Stephens details an elaborate process of cultural forgetting (...) that has accompanied this repudiation of the maternal. Reclaiming an alternative feminist position through an investigation of oral history, life narratives, Web blogs, and other rich and varied sources, Stephens confronts the core claims of postmaternal thought and challenges dominant representations of feminism as having forgotten motherhood. Deploying the interpretive framework of memory studies, she examines the political structures of forgetting surrounding the maternal and the weakening of nurture and care in the public domain. She views the promotion of an illusory, self-sufficient individualism as a form of social unmothering that is profoundly connected to this ethos. In rejecting both traditional maternalism and the new postmaternalism, Stephens challenges prevailing paradigms and makes way for an alternative feminist maternalism centering on a politics of care. (shrink)

One issue of dispute between methodological individualists and methodological holists is whether holist explanations are dispensable in the sense that individualist explanations are able to do their explanatory job. Methodological individualists say they are, whereas methodological holists deny this. In the first part of the paper, I discuss Elder-Vass’ version of an influential argument in support of methodological holism, the argument from emergence. I argue that methodological individualists should reject it: The argument relies on a distinction between individualist and holist (...) explanations that they find unacceptable and Elder-Vass’ reasons in support of his way of drawing this distinction are not good ones. In the second part, I examine what, if anything, would be good reasons in support of a particular way of differentiating between individualist and holist explanations. I propose that a good reason is one which shows, in an acceptable manner, that the distinction, drawn in the same way in all contexts, is useful from the perspective of offering explanations of the social world. I show that if this criterion is adopted, it will result in a fruitful reorientation of the whole debate between methodological individualists and methodological holists. (shrink)

Nous remercions Julie Perrin de nous avoir autorisé à reproduire cet article. Il a déjà paru dans le n° 3 d'Ambiances. Revue internationale sur l'environnement sensible, l'architecture et l'espace urbain – Animer l'espace public? Entre programmation urbaine et activation citoyenne, en 2017. Résumé : Dans Walk, Hands, Eyes, l'artiste chorégraphique Myriam Lefkowitz propose à un spectateur à la fois une balade urbaine silencieuse, les yeux fermés. Cet article examine la dimension spatiale, - Urbanisme.

Recent debates about inequality have focused almost exclusively on the distribution of wealth and disparities in income, but little notice has been paid to the distribution of free time. Free time is commonly assumed to be a matter of personal preference, a good that one chooses to have more or less of. Even if there is unequal access to free time, the cause and solution are presumed to lie with the resources of income and wealth. In Free Time, Julie (...) Rose argues that these views are fundamentally mistaken. First, Rose contends that free time is a resource, like money, that one needs in order to pursue chosen ends. Further, realizing a just distribution of income and wealth is not sufficient to ensure a fair distribution of free time. Because of this, anyone concerned with distributive justice must attend to the distribution of free time. On the basis of widely held liberal principles, Rose explains why citizens are entitled to free time—time not committed to meeting life's necessities and instead available for chosen pursuits. The novel argument that the just society must guarantee all citizens their fair share of free time provides principled grounds to address critical policy choices, including work hours regulations, Sunday closing laws, public support for caregiving, and the pursuit of economic growth. Delving into an original topic that touches everyone, Free Time demonstrates why all citizens have, in the words of early labor reformers, a right to "hours for what we will.". (shrink)

Growing Up White is for everyone who wants to know more about our schools, our community, our country, and ourselves. Julie Landsman takes the reader on an inventory of her life, pulling from events and scenes, a set of lessons learned. She discloses honestly and unflinchingly the privileges she has experienced as a white person and connects those to her presence in city classrooms where she taught for over 25 years. As a teacher Julie made mistakes, learned from (...) them, made more and concludes that understanding race in America is an ongoing process. Her book is rich with suggestions for working in our schools today, where we find a primarily white teaching force and an expanding population of students of color. She believes that these students make our schools rich and exciting places in which to work. Landsman also believes that white teachers can reach their students in deep and positive ways. Because she invites you to go along with her in revealing the basis of her upbringing and her choices, the story itself is engaging. Readers arrive at the final chapters with an appreciation not only for the complexity of our history as individuals around race, gender and class but with real hope in education as a way to create a place where all children get a fair chance at success. (shrink)

The introduction provides an overview of the ontological and the methodological individualism-holism debates. Moreover, these debates are briefly discussed in relation to two kindred disputes: The micro-macro and the agency-structure debates. Finally, the contributions to this book are briefly presented.