This article underscores the dilemma posed by the exclusivist view of the tradition-modernity contrast for anyone interested in the project of returning and belonging to the African community. On the exclusivist view, tradition and modernity are irreconcilable. After discussing the tradition-modernity contrast in the fields of sociology and academic African philosophy, this article adopts an eclectic view of tradition as an alternative to the exclusivist view. The alternative view enables those interested in the project of returning and belonging to retrieve (...) those elements of tradition that have enduring values in order to utilize them creatively in various development projects. It is argued that this creative synthesis of traditional and modern elements is necessary to build viable contemporary African societies in which individuals feel a sense of belonging and identity. (shrink)

Over the last years, the European Commission has heavily promoted various forms of digital education. In this article, we draw upon two recent European policy documents as key articulations...

The purpose of this study is to test the two-component theory of news selection. Its components are news factors included in articles and news values of news factors. It is assumed that news factors have different news values for various media outlets. The theory was tested comparing the empirical with the theoretical newsworthiness of news stories. First, news values of five news factors for national quality papers, regional papers, and tabloids were identified. Then, based on theory, the theoretical newsworthiness of (...) news stories was calculated. The independent variables were the news factors included in these articles and the news values of these news factors. In addition, in a laboratory setting, the empirical newsworthiness of the news stories was measured. Finally, measured newsworthiness was compared to the predicted one. Results confirmed the two-component theory and demonstrated that the chances of news stories to get published can be predicted by news factors and their news values. (shrink)

The practice of people mandated by the university to go to school in order to observe and evaluate the activity of trainees in pre-service teachers training remains poorly documented from the point of view of professional gestures (Jorro, 2016). This article focuses on the analysis of a feedback interview, which is a key moment in this practice, aiming at commenting, evaluating the performance of a trainee after the observation of their teaching. The originality of our analysis is that it was (...) carried out from several frames, in an effort to combine different perspectives on the same object. It is therefore a multifocal analysis (Altet, 2002). (shrink)

We prove the existence of p-ideals that are nonmeagre subsets of P(ω) under various set-theoretic assumptions.

Eye behavior is increasingly used as an indicator of internal versus external focus of attention both in research and application. However, available findings are partly inconsistent, which might be attributed to the different nature of the employed types of internal and external cognition tasks. The present study, therefore, investigated how consistently different eye parameters respond to internal versus external attentional focus across three task modalities: numerical, verbal, and visuo‐spatial. Three eye parameters robustly differentiated between internal and external attentional focus across (...) all tasks. Blinks, pupil diameter variance, and fixation disparity variance were consistently increased during internally directed attention. We also observed substantial attentional focus effects on other parameters (pupil diameter, fixation disparity, saccades, and microsaccades), but they were moderated by task type. Single‐trial analysis of our data using machine learning techniques further confirmed our results: Classifying the focus of attention by means of eye tracking works well across participants, but generalizing across tasks proves to be challenging. Based on the effects of task type on eye parameters, we discuss what eye parameters are best suited as indicators of internal versus external attentional focus in different settings. (shrink)

We have benefited from conversations with Archon Fung, Brian Jacob, Todd Pittinsky, Peter Schuck, Ani Satz, Andrew Williams, and students in a joint class on statistics and ethics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in October 2002. We are also grateful to our audience at the conference “The Priority of Practice,” organized by Jonathan Wolff at University College London in September 2003, and to Arthur Applbaum, Miriam Avins, Frances Kamm, Simon Keller, Frederick Schauer, Alan Wertheimer, and the (...) Editors of Phi- losophy & Public Affairs for insightful comments. We have benefited from prepublication reading of Schauer’s work on profiling, Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003). We thank Avedis Koutoujian for research assistance. (shrink)

"Das Buch ist gut zu lesen und als Urlaubslektüre zu empfehlen." (Sachverhalte 3/2015) "Der klare und sachlogisch überzeugende Argumentationsgang des vorliegenden Bands macht ihn, in Kombination mit einer sehr gelungenen, sprachlichen Gestaltung zu einem echten Lesevergnügen und kann für philosophische 'Einsteiger' zum Beginn einer philosophischen Liebesgeschichte werden. Für Lehrende der Philosophie an Schule und Hochschule ist Tiedemanns Band (…) Fundgrube sowie fachlich fundierter und didaktisch ausgezeichnet aufbereiteter Begleiter durch Unterricht und Seminar." (Mathias Balliet, ZDPE 1/2015) Liebe, Sexualität und Freundschaft (...) gehören nicht nur zu den intensivsten Erfahrungen des Menschen, sie werfen auch zahlreiche Fragen auf: Wie wichtig sind sie für ein gelungenes Leben? Wie genau unterscheiden sich Liebe und Freundschaft? Ist Sexualität ein eigenständiges Phänomen oder notwendig mit Liebe verbunden? Besteht Liebe eher aus selbstloser Fürsorge oder aus eigennütziger Habsucht? Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart haben sich namhafte Denker von Sokrates über Rousseau bis hin zu Sigmund Freud und Simone de Beauvoir dieser Fragen angenommen und dabei erstaunliche Antworten formuliert. Die Philosophie der Liebe ist so vielgestaltig wie ihr Gegenstand. Ist platonische Liebe wirklich lustfeindlich und entsagungsvoll? Beruht die christliche Sexualmoral auf einem Mutterkomplex? Muss man dichten können wie Goethe, um mit Schiller befreundet zu sein? Ist alle Liebe so egoistisch, wie Schopenhauer uns einreden will, oder sind wahre Liebe und Freundschaft vielleicht doch für jeden von uns möglich? Das Buch bietet einen abwechslungsreichen Streifzug durch die Antworten der Ideengeschichte und lädt ein zum Weiterdenken. Love, sexuality and friendship are not only among the most intense of human experiences, they also give rise to many questions: How important are they for a successful life? How exactly do love and friendship differ? Is sexuality an independent phenomenon or does it have to be connected with love? Is love more a matter of selfless care or of selfish desire? From antiquity to the present day prominent thinkers from Socrates through Rousseau to Sigmund Freud and Simone de Beauvoir have taken on these questions and come up with surprising answers. The philosophy of love is as varied as love itself. Is Platonic love really opposed to pleasure and obsessed with self-denial? Is Christian sexual morality based on a mother-complex? Is it necessary to write like Goethe to be friends with Schiller? Is all love as egotistical as Schopenhauer would have us believe, or are true love and friendship still possible for all of us? This book takes us on a diverse foray into the answers offered by intellectual history and invites us to think further for ourselves. (shrink)

Gerard of Bologna (d. 1317) was the first Carmelite master at the University of Paris in the Middle Ages. In Quaestio 6, article 1 of his incomplete Summa theologiae, Gerard discusses the issue of teaching and learning. During the course of his discussion he summarises his understanding of the process of cognition in human beings and he considers God, angels and human beings as teachers. Gerard insists on the necessity of the teacher-student relationship in the handing on of human knowledge.

Wordsworth wrote that he longed to compose 'some philosophic Song/Of Truth that cherishes our daily life'. Yet he never finished The Recluse, his long philosophical poem. Simon Jarvis argues that Wordsworth's aspiration to 'philosophic song' is central to his greatness, and changed the way English poetry was written. Some critics see Wordworth as a systematic thinker, while for others, he is a poet first, and a thinker only (if at all) second. Jarvis shows instead how essential both philosophy and (...) the 'song' of poetry were to Wordsworth's achievement. Drawing on advanced work in continental philosophy and social theory to address the ideological attacks which have dominated much recent commentary, Jarvis reads Wordsworth's writing both critically and philosophically, to show how Wordsworth thinks through and in verse. This study rethinks the relation between poetry and society itself by analysing the tensions between thinking philosophically and writing poetry. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What if Tattooing is Immoral? Latent Criminals or Degenerate Aristocrats Loos and Amorality Tattooing is Like Murdering? Loos and the Crime of Ornamentation Tattooing and Personal Meaning Tattooing and Liberal Autonomy Attraction and Repulsion.

For Lyotard, “Auschwitz” is named only as the terrible sign of a differend. However, this paper argues that the dissymmetrical address alluded to in a 1993 lecture given by Lyotard for Amnesty, “The Other’s Rights,” makes possible an alternative legacy found in the very formation of civil politics which might itself “rephrase” this differend otherwise, transforming what may be termed “distress” into “rights” without recourse to the type of contractuality that would risk both repressing and compounding a “wrong” by seeking (...) to litigate it. (shrink)

A temporal account of the mental capacities for processing information may not be relevant in a context where the goal is to search for storage capacity expressed in chunks. However, if mental capacity and information processing is the question, the time issue can be rehabilitated. A very different temporal viewpoint on capacity limit is proposed in this commentary.

Many recent studies on network technologies and cities share an alarmist view of the impact of technological or regulatory change in utility sectors on the social and spatial fabric of cities, pointing to growing discrimination and inequalities, alienation, enhanced social exclusion and urban “splintering” on a universal scale. A science and technology study perspective on these matters is helpful in moving beyond this “universal alarmism” by emphasizing the ambivalence inherent to all technologies, the significant potential of contestation of, and resistance, (...) to technology-supported forms of discrimination, and the deeply contingent nature of the process of appropriation of new technologies and, as a consequence, of the social “effects” of technologies. Adopting this perspective would mean actively searching for and exploring these context-dependent and often conflictive appropriation processes. For it is in these spaces that we might begin to identify urban technological politics that break free from an intellectually and politically disabling technological pessimism. (shrink)

Intelligent environments aim to provide context-sensitive services to humans in the physical spaces in which they work and live. While the ethical dimensions of these systems have been considered, this is an aspect which requires further analysis. A literature review shows that these approaches are disconnected from each other, and that they are making little impact on real systems being built. This article provides a solution to both of these problems. It synthesises the ethical issues addressed by previous work and (...) highlights other important concerns which have been overlooked so far. Furthermore, it proposes an alternative, more holistic approach that can be used to guide the development of intelligent environments. The validity of the framework is demonstrated by its integration into an actual project. (shrink)

This book summarizes the ideas about cognitive psychology expressed in the writings of medieval Europeans. Up until the 13th century, Christians who wrote about cognitive psychology, foremost of whom was St. Augustine, did so in the Neoplatonic tradition. The translation of the works of Aristotle and some of the works of Arab scholars into Latin during the 12th and 13th centuries brought a high level of sophistication to the theories. The author touches upon the works of Augustine, Averro^Des, Avicenna, Albertus (...) Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and others. (shrink)

Rather than defend each instance of problem suggested by Williams, what I propose to do is to respond by making two clarificatory points: first, I rule out two ways of understanding mathematical problems that might be clouding the water; and then, second, I further characterise how Deleuze thinks some mathematical problems, two in particular, are not just examples of mathematical problems, but provide mathematical models for what a mathematical problem in general can be understood to be. This is important because (...) it is how mathematical problems can be modelled in mathematics that provides Deleuze with a model for how problems can be modelled in other discourses. This will then get to the bottom of what is at stake in my approach to Deleuze and to Deleuze studies in general. (shrink)

I restate the view defended in my ‘Patriotism as Bad Faith’, offer a different argument for it, and respond to some objections from Steve Nathanson and Keith Horton.

Emergent research in metagenomics has unveiled large quantities of previously unknown and unclassified prokaryotic DNA. As these prokaryotes constitute the vast majority of microbial life in environmental samples, some microbiologists and commentators in scientific media have referred to this expansive unknown as ‘biological dark matter’, translating the rhetorical power of dark matter from the physical to the life sciences. Engaging literatues and approaches from across the philosophy, history, and social studies of science, we explore the cultural significance of the dark (...) matter theory in the physical sciences and examine the implications of its conceptual reworking in biology, through critically engaging the political narratives folded within dark matter’s genealogies. ‘Dark matter’ designates both zones of importance and zones of turbulence, simultaneously emphasizing microbiologists’ creativity whilst constructing new ways of relating to microbiota. Such a situation, we propose, also invites theoretical analysis as it calls for a conceptual reconsideration of the gene and its fundamental role within the life sciences. (shrink)