In this paper I introduce the theory of gift giving as a possible means to reconcile the contradictions inherent in accountability measures of ‘faculty productivity’ in the American university. In this paper I sketch the theory of gift economies to show how, given the historical ideals that characterize the faculty‐student relationship, a theory of gift giving could help us better judge the labor of the faculty. I suggest that it is the relational character of teaching that frustrates accountability measures and (...) that perhaps if viewed as a gift economy—and in particular an economy with ‘reproductive’ ends—we could better grasp the effectiveness of these relationships. (shrink)

In our daily lives, we continuously evaluate feedback information, update our knowledge, and adapt our behavior in order to reach desired goals. This ability to learn from feedback information, however, declines with age. Previous research has indicated that certain higher-level learning processes, such as feedback evaluation, integration of feedback information, and updating of knowledge, seem to be affected by age, and recent studies have shown how the adaption of choice behavior following feedback can differ with age. The neural mechanisms underlying (...) this age-related change in choice behavior during learning, however, remain unclear. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate the relation between learning-related neural processes and choice behavior during feedback learning in two age groups. Behavioral and fMRI data were collected, while a group of young and older adults performed a probabilistic learning task consisting of 10 blocks of 20 trials each. On each trial, the participants chose between a house and a face, after which they received visual feedback. In each block, either the house or the face image had a higher probability of yielding a reward. Participants were instructed to try to maximize their gains. Our results showed that less successful learning in older adults, as indicated by a lower learning rate, corresponded with a higher tendency to switch to the other stimulus option, and with a reduced adaptation of this switch choice behavior following positive feedback. At the neural level, activation following positive and negative feedback was found to be less distinctive in the older adults, due to a smaller feedback-evaluation response to positive feedback in this group. Furthermore, whereas young adults displayed increased levels of knowledge updating prior to adapting choice behavior, we did not find this effect in older adults. Together, our results suggest that diminished learning performance with age corresponds with diminished evaluation of positive feedback and reduced knowledge updating related to changes in choice behavior, indicating how such differences in feedback processing at the trial level in older adults might lead to reduced learning performance across trials. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer, al hilo de un análisis del texto de la Fenomenologíadel Espíritu que comenta la Antígona de Sófocles, una interpretación del concepto hegeliano de acciónque pone en cuestión la tesis, defendida habitualmente, según la cual Hegel habría pretendido que elconflicto trágico resulta superado por la acción moderna.Ese texto revela que la acción, que comparece ahí como principio absoluto, posee sin embargo unaestructura quebrada y paradójica: necesariamente presupone y niega una instancia en sí, inmediata ysustantiva (...) que, finalmente, oculta la negatividad de la muerte. En la medida en que esa vinculación ala sustancia se demuestra así consustancial a la acción, el trabajo concluye, frente a otras lecturas, que,aun cuando la historia del espíritu haya dejado atrás la “sustancia ética” antigua, la acción nopuede liberarse para Hegel del carácter trágico. Por último, defiende el sentido en el que precisamenteesta condición trágica la determina a la vez como destructiva y productiva, capaz de abrir la historia. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from the content“Accountability” used to be a term that applied primarily to K-12 education, especially following the passage of No Child Left Behind. However, the recent economic downturn and subsequent recovery prompted debates on whether the cost of pursuing a college degree is “worth it” for students. Students’ post-graduation debt and job market prospects have been publicly scrutinized as well as the operations of large research universities. Supporters of higher education posit that these critiques of the (...) system impose a business model where it should not be as they emphasize outputs and efficiency over quality. At the same time, it is hard to ignore that calls for accountability in higher education are getting louder than ever before.In Accountability, Pragmatic Aims, and the American University, Ana M. Martínez-Alemán examines accountability from a historical perspective, arguing that accountability arose in the American university during the early part of the twentieth century. This rise coin. (shrink)

El ideario filosófico del filólogo alemán, parecería ser controvertido e incluso contradictorio. No obstante, la problemática que se presenta se desenvuelve bajo la metodología de la hermenéutica analógica, misma que ha brindado un panorama de apertura a una perspectiva que da pulimento a la fuerza del pensamiento moral y existencial de Nietzsche. Esta perspectiva de dos autores, corre en una reflexión paralela, que culmina con una síntesis de suma importancia para los tiempos actuales. Una síntesis que supera a la misma (...) posmodernidad, esta es la perspectiva de una racionalidad analogizante. (shrink)

Quienes nos adscribimos al realismo metafísico y tenemos a Robert Spaemann como uno de nuestros filósofos de referencia, celebramos que Comares haya editado una “introducción a la ética de Robert Spaemann”, elaborada por la profesora de la Universidad Católica de Ávila y de la Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca Mª Luisa Pro Velasco (Pro Velasco, 2021). En su introducción, la autora señala que su estudio viene a cubrir el vacío provocado por la escasez de trabajos sobre el filósofo alemán. Y ciertamente (...) lo hace. Por eso, no se trata tanto de un ensayo dirigido a quienes ya conocemos a Spaemann, cuanto de una síntesis orientada a seducir a un público culto de amplio espectro, interesado por la filosofía y cansado de las propuestas éticas idealistas (e ideológicas), para que descubra la obra de este gran filósofo y se adhiera a su idea de que la verdad, por más que sea perspectivista y se deje decir desde múltiples ubicaciones, es siempre verdad y se asienta sobre la realidad. En lo que sigue, ofrecemos una breve recensión del contenido del libro, al objeto de ayudar a los lectores a decidirse en favor de su lectura. (shrink)

This is the first collection of essays to evaluate John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy from a feminist perspective. The variety of feminist interpretations offered here ranges from Jane Addams's praise for his collegial efforts to resolve the problems of the inner city to contemporary comparisons of his approach with Addams's own critique of capitalism as patriarchal. In between are essays assessing Dewey's contributions to feminist theory and practice both in his lifetime and in regard to contemporary feminist approaches to education, subjectivity, (...) objectivity and truth, and social and political philosophy. At a time when feminists are questioning and developing alternatives to the scientistic value-free inquiry advocated by logical positivism, the myth of detached observation informing the epistemological turn, rationalistic ethics, and the model of an unattached, nonrelational subject, this book reminds us of Dewey's early and passionate opposition to the same assumptions and his reconstruction of philosophy as a "method of moral and political diagnoses and prognosis." It has often been remarked that Dewey's pragmatism provides a genuine alternative to the usual masculinist biases of Western philosophy, and the various essays in this book develop this claim more extensively. Contributors, besides the editor, are Jane Addams, Ana M. Martínez Alemán, Paula Droege, Marilyn Fischer, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Judith M. Green, Lisa Heldke, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Erin McKenna, Marjorie C. Miller, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, and Shannon Sullivan. (shrink)

The general concept of mental disorder specified in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is definitional in character: a mental disorder might be identified with a harmful dysfunction. The manual also contains the explicit claim that each individual mental disorder should meet the requirements posed by the definition. The aim of this article is two-fold. First, we shall analyze the definition of the superordinate concept of mental disorder to better understand what necessary criteria actually (...) characterize such a concept. Second, we shall consider the concepts of some individual mental disorders and show that they are in tension with the definition of the superordinate concept, taking pyromania and narcissistic personality disorder as case studies. Our main point is that an unexplained and not-operationalized dysfunction requirement that is included in the general definition, while being systematically violated by the diagnostic criteria of specific mental disorders, is a logical error. Then, either we unpack and operationalize the dysfunction requirement, and include explicit diagnostic criteria that can actually meet it, or we simply drop it. (shrink)

In this paper we provide an interpretation of Aristotle's rule for the universal quantifier in Topics Θ 157a34–37 and 160b1–6 in terms of Paul Lorenzen's dialogical logic. This is meant as a contribution to the rehabilitation of the role of dialectic within the Organon. After a review of earlier views of Aristotle on quantification, we argue that this rule is related to the dictum de omni in Prior Analytics A 24b28–29. This would be an indication of the dictum’s origin in (...) the context of dialectical games. One consequence of our approach is a novel explanation of the doctrine of the existential import of the quantifiers in dialectical terms. After a brief survey of Lorenzen's dialogical logic, we offer a set of rules for dialectical games based on previous work by Castelnérac and Marion, to which we add here the rule for the universal quantifier, as interpreted in terms of its counterpart in dialogical logic. We then give textual evidence of the use of that rule in Plato's dialogues, thus showing that Aris... (shrink)

Versions and extensions of intuitionistic and modal logic involving biHeyting and bimodal operators, the axiom of constant domains and Barcan's formula, are formulated as structured categories. Representation theorems for the resulting concepts are proved. Essentially stronger versions, requiring new methods of proof, of known completeness theorems are consequences. A new type of completeness result, with a topos theoretic character, is given for theories satisfying a condition considered by Lawvere . The completeness theorems are used to conclude results asserting that certain (...) logics are conservatively interpretable in others. (shrink)

The medieval Islamic philosophers held a certain conception of the divine unity that assumes the necessary existent to be both one and simple. The oneness of the necessary existent meant that it is the only necessary existent and its simplicity meant that it admits no composition whatsoever – it is pure essence and its essence is necessary existence. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers al-Ġazālī presents, with elaboration, an exposition of the philosophers' conception of the divine unity, several arguments for (...) its two components, and his critique of these arguments. In this paper I focus on six of the arguments attributed to the philosophers. Following the textual evidence, I reconstruct these arguments and offer two possible interpretations of them. The first interpretation, which I call the many-argument interpretation, sees one of the arguments as employing the simplicity of the necessary existent to establish its oneness and the other five arguments as invoking oneness to establish simplicity. The second interpretation, which I call the one-argument interpretation, doesn't offer a new reading for the first argument but sees the other five arguments as defending the simplicity of the necessary existent based on its basic concept. I argue for the superiority of the one-argument interpretation. Résumé Les philosophes de l'Islam classique ont une doctrine de l'unité divine selon laquelle l'existant nécessaire est à la fois unique et simple. Son unicité signifie qu'il est le seul existant nécessaire, sa simplicité qu'il n'admet aucune sorte de composition; il est pure essence et son essence est existence nécessaire. Dans la Destruction des Philosophes, al-Ġazālī présente avec force détails un exposé de la doctrine de l'unité divine des philosophes, plusieurs arguments en faveur de ses deux composantes, ainsi que sa critique de ces arguments. Je me concentre ici sur six des arguments qu'il attribue aux philosophes. En suivant les données textuelles, je reconstruis ces arguments et en propose deux interprétations possibles. La première, que j'appelle l'interprétation “à arguments multiples”, identifie l'un des arguments comme s'appuyant sur la simplicité de l'existant nécessaire pour établir son unicité, et les cinq autres comme s'appuyant sur son unicité pour établir sa simplicité. La seconde, que j'appelle l'interprétation “à argument unique”, conserve la première lecture du premier argument mais voit dans les cinq autres une défense de la simplicité de l'existant nécessaire fondée sur sa notion fondamentale. J'argumente en faveur de la supériorité de l'interprétation “à argument unique”. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to provide building blocks for a reconciliation of the ethical care for heritage protection and nature restoration ethics. It will do so, by introducing a hermeneutic landscape philosophy that takes landscape as a multi-layered “text” in need of interpretation, and place identities as build upon certain readings of the landscape. I will argue that from a hermeneutic perspective, both approaches appear to complement each other. Renaturing presents a valuable correction to the anthropocentrism of many European (...) rural cultures. Yet, heritage protectionists rightly point to the value of narratives for Old World identities. I will conclude with a short reflection on how such a hermeneutic environmental ethic can be helpful in dealing with environmental conflicts. (shrink)

This paper aims at considering the conceptual status of feeding and eating disorders (FEDs). Now that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) has changed the classification and some relevant criteria of FEDs, it is particularly relevant to evaluate their psychiatric framework and their status as mental disorders. I focus my efforts on addressing only one specific question: Do FEDs fit the DSM-5 general definition of mental disorder? In DSM-5 a mental disorder is defined as a syndrome that (...) reflects adysfunctionand is usually associated with significantdistress or disability. More importantly, there is an explicit statement saying thatallmental disorders listed in the manual must meet the requirements highlighted by the general definition. Thus, I evaluate whether or not FEDs are really meant to reflect a dysfunction and are usually associated with significant distress or disability. (shrink)

“You Have Seen Their Faces”: Gisèle Freund, Walter Benjamin and Margaret Bourke-White as Headhunters of the Thirties -/- Abstract This paper concentrates on one work by each of three authors: Walter Benjamin’s Deutsche Menschen (Germans), an anthology of twenty-five 18th and 19th century German personal letters; Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell’s You Have Seen Their Faces; and Gisèle Freund’s collection of photographic portraits of writers and artists, compiled between 1936 and 1939. The purpose of this paper is to compare the (...) politics of representation of these three figures and to examine the challenge they addressed to the dominant iconography of the 1930s. At the heart of each one’s work was a desire to bring about a shift in contemporary cultural politics by reimagining the body politic. Benjamin’s and Freund’s aim was to displace the monumentalizing, distancing, ‘heroic’ forms of fascist art and writing. They construct and project an intimate, or ‘domestic’ image of humanism as a form of social practice, past and present. Bourke-White’s aim was to bring to visibility an America concealed beneath the glossy homogenized images of white American advertising. All three authors aligned themselves with a documentary tradition that believed that representation should function as a constructed record of the traces of lived experience. Driven by a need to expose the other side’s deliberate falsifications of experience, they saw their own constructed fictions as ways of ‘documenting,’ and then perhaps transforming, an experiential world of ‘facts,’ bodies, and ‘truths.’ -/- Working Paper 3:15 European Society and Culture Research Group. Center for German and European Studies, University of California at Berkeley. April 1994 37pp. -/- M. Kay Flavell Critical Theory, University of California at Davis . (shrink)

Michel Henry ofrece un análisis de la propuesta metafísica de Meister Eckhart en los parágrafos §§39, 40 y 49 de su La esencia de la manifestación. Partiendo de los temas propuestos por M. Henry, el presente trabajo tiene como objetivo ampliar las consideraciones sobre estos al interior de la obra misma de Meister Eckhart. De esta forma, se puede apreciar el movimiento de recepción que el autor francés realizó: la construcción de una imagen de Eckhart que, aunque no se aleja (...) demasiado de los puntos centrales de su teoría, con todo presenta ciertas omisiones que pueden hacer perder el carácter histórico del pensador alemán. Observar aquellos aspectos teóricos que Michel Henry decidió recuperar y los que decidió evitar es útil, a nivel de los diálogos interhistóricos, para observar qué elementos del neoplatonismo cristiano de Eckhart consideró aptos para incorporar a su sistema y cuáles, por el contrario, no encajaban en él. (shrink)

Residency training in the Netherlands is to be restructured over the coming years. To this end a general competence profile for medical specialists has been introduced. This profile is nearly the same as the Canadian CanMEDS 2000 model, which describes seven general areas of medical specialist competence, one of which is professionalism. In order to establish a training programme for residents and their instructors based on this competence, it is necessary to develop a vision that does justice to everyday medical (...) practice. The two most prevailing views of professionalism—as personal, or as a behavioural characteristic—fall short of this. Only when professionalism is understood as reflective professionalism does it encompass the fundamental contextuality of medical treatment. This means that the focus of training and assessment must be shifted to accountability for treatment. (shrink)

The Greeks and Romans have been charged with destroying the ecosystems within which they lived. In this book, however, M. D. Usher argues rather that we can find in their lives and thought the origin of modern ideas about systems and sustainability, important topics for humans today and in the future. With chapters running the gamut of Greek and Roman experience – from the Presocratics and Plato to Roman agronomy and the Benedictine Rule – Plato's Pigs brings together unlikely bedfellows, (...) both ancient and modern, to reveal surprising connections. Lively prose and liberal use of anecdotal detail, including an afterword about the author's own experiments with sustainable living on his sheep farm in Vermont, add a strong authorial voice. In short, this is a unique, first-of-its-kind book that is sure to be of interest to anyone working in Classics, environmental studies, philosophy, ecology, or the history of ideas. (shrink)

The history of moral dilemma theory often ignores the medieval period, overlooking the sophisticated theorizing by several thinkers who debated the existence of moral dilemmas from 1150 to 1450. In this book Michael V. Dougherty offers a rich and fascinating overview of the debates which were pursued by medieval philosophers, theologians and canon lawyers, illustrating his discussion with a diverse range of examples of the moral dilemmas which they considered. He shows that much of what seems particular to twentieth-century moral (...) theory was well-known long ago - especially the view of some medieval thinkers that some forms of wrongdoing are inescapable, and their emphasis on the principle 'choose the lesser of two evils'. His book will be valuable not only to advanced students and specialists of medieval thought, but also to those interested in the history of ethics. (shrink)