Guest editors' introduction to the issue containing essays originally presented at the 2022 Philosophy of Education Society conference examining Mary Louise Pratt's notion of "contact zones." This issue includes discussions that highlight the “highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths” of contact zones in which we teach and learn. Pratt draws attention towards asymmetry to emphasize the social differences and fluidity of relations that characterize communities (including classrooms), over and against ideas of community (...) that are homogeneous or horizontal. In this issue, we invite readers to consider how these asymmetries play out beyond the classroom itself, through institutional contact as well as through political systems that shape our relationships. (shrink)

IntroductionThe Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully therapy for patients with advanced cancer was tested against a supportive psycho-oncological counseling intervention in a randomized controlled trial. We investigated whether CALM was delivered as intended ; whether CALM therapists with less experience in psycho-oncological care show higher adherence scores; and whether potential overlapping treatment elements between CALM and SPI can be identified.MethodsTwo trained and blinded raters assessed on 19 items four subscales of the Treatment Integrity Scale covering treatment domains of CALM. A (...) random sample of 150 audio recordings were rated on a three-point Likert scale with 1 = “adherent to some extent,” 2 = “adherent to a sufficient extent,” 3 = “very adherent.”ResultsAll 19 treatment elements were applied, but in various frequencies. CALM therapists most frequently explored symptoms and/or relationship to health care providers and allowed expression of sadness and anxiety about the progression of disease. The exploration of CALM treatment element SC_1 was most frequently implemented in a satisfactory or excellent manner, whereas the treatment element SMP_4: Therapist promotes acknowledgment that some life goals may no longer be achievable was not implemented in a satisfactory manner. In terms of treatment differentiation, no treatment elements could be identified which were applied significantly more often by CALM therapists than by SPI therapists.ConclusionResults verify the application of CALM treatment domains. However, CALM therapists’ adherence scores indicated manual deviations. Furthermore, raters were not able to significantly distinguish CALM from SPI, implying that overlapping treatment elements were delivered to patients. (shrink)

Impartialist political philosophy must show how and why the priority of impartial justice can be reconciled with a belief in the permanence of pluralism. Although the argument from epistemological abstinence explains the permanence of pluralism, it cannot explain why justice should have motivational priority. It delivers only, and at most, a modus vivendi defence of toleration. The way to attain a defence that is more than a modus vivendi is to ground political impartialism in moral impartialism.

Designing curricular experiences that make the usefulness of the liberal arts vividly clear as early as possible in an undergraduate's education is our collective responsibility. In this essay, I argue for providing that experience by employing a critical pedagogy of awakening (seeing), interdisciplinary understanding (knowing) and agency (doing), and I illustrate the use of this pedagogy with an example that brings philosophy "into the field" with biology.

Summary Scholars who study Roman prodigies and expiations have mostly ignored Cassius Dio’s imperial prodigy lists. This paper argues that these lists should be considered valid. If we accept them, we have a wealth of evidence for the continuation of prodigy reports and expiations in the early Roman Empire.

In a well-known text called ‘The Communist Hypothesis’, first published in 2007, the renowned philosopher Alain Badiou breathed fresh life into the idea of communism as an intellectual representation that provides a critical perspective on existing politics and offers a systemic alternative to capitalism. Now, in the course of this wide-ranging conversation with Peter Engelmann, Alain Badiou explains why he continues to value the idea of communism against the background of current social crises and despite negative historical experiences. From the (...) anticipation of a communism without a state to the problem of the concept of democracy and an analysis of capitalism as a system, the two thinkers discuss the key political issues of our time. Whilst explaining his political philosophy, Badiou also reflects on current socio-political developments such as the turmoil in the Middle East and the situation in China. This compelling dialogue is both a highly topical contribution to the question of how we might organize our societies differently and an accessible introduction to Badiou's philosophical thinking. (shrink)

Every year, like a social drinker who wants to prove to herself that she's not an alcoholic, I give up cannabis for a month. It can be a tough and dreary time - and much as I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, alcohol cannot take its place. Some people may smoke dope just to relax or have fun, but for me the reason goes deeper. In fact, I can honestly say that without cannabis, most of my scientific research (...) would never have been done and most of my books on psychology and evolution would not have been written. Some evenings, after a long day at my desk, I'll slip into the bath, light a candle and a spliff, and let the ideas flow - that lecture I have to give to 500 people next week, that article I'm writing for New Scientist, those tricky last words of a book I've been working on for months. This is the time when the sentences seem to write themselves. Or I might sit out in my greenhouse on a summer evening among my tomatoes and peach trees, struggling with questions about free will or the nature of the universe, and find that a smoke gives me new ways of thinking about them. Yes, I know there are serious risks to my health, and I know I might be caught and fined or put in prison. But I weigh all this up, and go on smoking grass. For both individuals and society, all drugs present a dilemma: are they worth the risks to health, wealth and sanity? For me, the pay-off is the scientific inspiration, the wealth of new ideas and the spur to inner exploration. But if I end up a mental and physical wreck, I hereby give you my permission to gloat and say: "I told you so". My first encounter with drugs was a joint shared with a college friend in my first term at Oxford. This was at the tail end of the days of psychedelia and flower power - and cannabis was easy to obtain. After long days of lectures and writing essays, we enjoyed the laughter and giggling, the heightened sensations and crazy ideas that the drug seemed to let loose. Then, one night, something out of the ordinary happened - though whether it was caused by the drug, lack of sleep or something else altogether, I don't know.. (shrink)

This review is primarily concerned with two key issues in research on dystrophin: (1) how the protein interacts with the plasma membrane of skeletal muscle fibres and (2) how an absence of dystrophin gives rise to Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In relation to the first point, we suggest that the post‐translational acylation of dystrophin may contribute to its interaction with the plasma membrane. Regarding the second point, it is generally considered that an absence of dystrophin makes the plasma membrane susceptible to (...) damage by contraction/relaxation cycles. In this connection, we propose that the progressive nature of Duchenne dystrophy, and the phenotypic characteristics of mdx mice, are more consistent with dystrophin functioning as a mechanical transducer that transmits growth stimuli from the enlarging skeleton to the muscle. On the basis of this hypothesis, dystrophin‐deficient muscles would be unable to grow at the same rate as the skeleton. (shrink)

This article argues that language without the body does not `mean' at all; corporeality provides language with meaning under socio-cultural constraints. Traditional ways of interpretation have been dominated by the transference of linguistic interpretation to the non-linguistic. At the same time, traditional linguistically focused interpretation is heavily laden with orthodox value systems. This makes the body a secondary phenomenon. In many art forms, however, the body is primary and yet transient. This requires a reversal of traditional approaches. Recent liminal performances (...) have attempted to offer a non-verbal critique of both that linguistic dominance and such value orthodoxy. Unless the immediacy of the body, including corporeal readings (visual, tactile, haptic, olfactory, gustatory, kinetic, proximic, etc.) is made the focus of interpretation, such recent experimental genres as Viennese Actionism, Tanztheater, digitized music, high-definition television and its filmic consequences, cannot be appreciated. However, I suggest it would be a mistake to read their presentations of the immediacy of the body as an escape from representation altogether. Rather, what we are dealing with here is a radical transvaluation of corporeality. The article questions some recent theories from this perspective, using selected excerpts from liminal performances to illustrate this critique. (shrink)

Human tool behavior is species-specific. It remains a diagnostic feature of humans, even when comparisons are made with closely related non-human primates. The archaeological record demonstrates both the deep antiquity of human tool behavior and its fundamental role in distinguishing human behavior from that of non-human primates.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:464 Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Claire Raymond and Sarah Corse A Distorting Mirror: Educational Trajectory After College Sexual Assault This article focuses on the broad and specific impacts of college sexual assault on student-survivors’ academic performance, academic trajectory, and their sense of self in relation to the university community. We frame this study with, and relate our findings to, the historic and (...) theoretical literatures that provide the context for this essay, including the large and burgeoning literature on the sexual assault of women college students and recent studies analyzing the role of fraternities in sexual assault, students’ fears and perceptions about college assault, bystander intervention training, and survivors’ grade-point averages after assault.1 Our study also builds on the history of feminist resistance to rape, feminist writings about rape, and campus activism against rape, with the 1. Cortney Franklin, Leana Allen Bouffard, and Travis C. Pratt, “Sexual Assault on the College Campus: Fraternity Affiliation, Male Peer Support, and Low Self-Control,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 39, no. 11 (2012): 1457– 80; Christine A. Gidycz, John R. McNamara, and Katie M. Edwards, “Women ’s Risk Perception and Sexual Victimization: A Review of the Literature,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 11, no. 5 (2006): 441–56; Jennifer Katz and Jessica Moore, “Bystander Education Training for Campus Sexual Assault Prevention: An Initial Meta-Analysis,” Violence and Victims 28, no. 6 (2013): 1054–67; Douglas W. Pryor and Marion R. Hughes, “Fear of Rape among College Women: A Social Psychological Analysis,” Violence and Victims 28, no. 3 (2013): 443–65; Carol E. Jordan, Jessica L. Combs, and Gregory T. Smith, “An Exploration of Sexual Victimization and Academic Performance among College Women,” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 15, no. 3 (2014): 191–200. Claire Raymond and Sarah Corse 465 goal of shedding light on one aspect of the problem. Groundbreaking (and in some cases controversial) works analyzing the cultures of rape, such as Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will and Peggy Sanday’s “The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape” (in which Sanday creates the concept of the rape-producing culture—a concept that is central to our argument in this essay), found immediate reception with feminist activists of the 1970s and early 1980s.2 Mary Koss’s work regarding the scope of rape in college settings is also foundational to our study of campus rape.3 Susan Estrich, Catharine MacKinnon, and other feminist theorists in the mid-1980s developed critical apparatuses to shift the understanding of rape, providing a feminist framework wherein rape is interpreted as violence committed against a woman—in opposition to the patriarchal argument that rape is caused by a woman’s actions or is the product of her distortion of events after the fact.4 Angela Davis and bell hooks were deeply influential in framing understandings of the racial and racist aspects of feminist discussions of rape, while legal scholar Sarah Deer has more recently broadened understandings of the racialized discourse of rape, and Lisa Wade has written on twenty-first century hookup culture and the ways that this social landscape promulgates rates of maleon -female rape that are significantly higher on college campuses than in the general population.5 2. Peggy Reeves Sanday, “The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape: A Cross-Cultural Study,” Journal of Social Issues 37, no. 4 (1981): 5–27; Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Penguin Books, 1976). 3. Mary P. Koss, Christine A. Gidycz, and Nadine Wisniewski, “The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Higher Education Students,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 55, no. 2 (1987): 162–70. 4. Susan Estrich, Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Duncan Chappell, Robley Geis, and Gilbert Geis, eds., Forcible Rape: The Crime, the Victim and the Offender (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). 5. Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist,” in her Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 172–201; bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984); Sarah Deer, The Beginning and End... (shrink)

This paper critically assesses the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans as a piece of public policy concerning the regulation of research ethics. Two of the stated purposes of the National Statement are the provision of a “national reference point for ethical consideration relevant to all research involving humans” and the “protection of the welfare and rights of participants in research”. The process of Human Research Ethics Committee review of research proposals is evaluated in light of these (...) two purposes. I argue that the approach taken in the National Statement has the potential to meet these purposes, but that, in its current form the statement does not provide sufficient guidance to HRECs to properly fulfil either purpose. For the National Statement to meet its promise, it needs to provide greater direction to HRECs which is properly informed by understanding of the full array of research involving human participants. (shrink)

Previous governments and other commentators have emphasized the relationship between a teacher's knowledge of the subject material being taught and the quality of learning outcomes. This has been reflected in the entry requirements to Initial Teacher Training of public examination performance in the core subjects. However, disquiet has been expressed as to the efficacy of such qualifications as indicators of knowledge and skills at the entry point. Recent changes to ITT regulations require students' actual knowledge of the content of the (...) three core subjects to be audited. This paper reports and reflects on the effects that re-examining their knowledge and skills in mathematics has had on the confidence of primary trainee teachers. It presents some key questions that must be addressed if the current audit regulations are indeed to benefit our future teachers and to enhance the learning of our pupils. (shrink)

Sustaining the Writing Spirit: Holistic Tools for School and Home, second edition is aimed at all educators, at school or home, seeking non-traditional ways to enliven the growth potential of the whole learner. Schiller urges educators to accept a holistic orientation for learning -- one that combines the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual, with the intellect, rather than primarily basing learning on the intellect. Included are details on background, historical development, and philosophical explanations of holistic education, including a timeline of (...) key people and ideas. This new edition also addresses sustainability and spirituality as the core of holistic learning, and the teaching activities provide context and processes for writing that encourage activating multiple intelligences. It also has a cross-disciplinary quality and could be used in a number of educational settings. (shrink)

The simultaneous publication in 1992 of two texts dealing with a global decline in sperm potency, P. D. James’s The Children of Men and Elisabeth Carlsen’s “Evidence for Decreasing Quality of Semen during the Past 50 Years,” inaugurates the exploration of another kind of sterility: the failure of feminist literary criticism and feminist science studies to converge as a fertile zone of inquiry and analysis. This article considers the modern discipline of literary studies, as well as feminist literary criticism and (...) feminist science studies, and suggests how Latour’s seven rules of method might be adapted to produce cross-fertilization between these fields... (shrink)

How are beliefs efficacious? One answer is: via rational intentional action. But there are other ways that beliefs are efficacious. This dissertation examines these other ways, and sketches an answer to the question of how beliefs are efficacious that takes into account how beliefs are involved in the full range of behavioral disciplines, from psychophysiology and cognition to social and economic phenomena. The account of how beliefs are efficacious I propose draws on work on active accounts of perception. I develop (...) an account based on a proposal sketched by the cognitive scientist Ulrich Neisser. Neisser sketched an active account of perception, on which dynamic anticipatory schemata direct an organism's exploration and action, and are in turn revised as a result of exploration and action. This notion of schema has roots in nineteenth century neurophysiology and in Frederick Bartlett's subsequent work on memory. Neisser appealed to it to unite what he thought was right about information-processing accounts of perception with what he thought was right about ecological accounts of perception. The point that we must anticipate in order to perceive has been recognized by philosophers in the form of the "theory-ladenness of observation." I extend the concept of anticipatory schema to include its role in social perception and social interaction; the concept of anticipatory schema provides a more interactive account of the role of expectations in the maintenance and existence of social institutions, and can be used to enrich the account of convention David Lewis provided. I also show that the concept of rational expectations, which explains the neutrality of money in terms of the efficacy of anticipatory expectations, is compatible with the proposed account of how beliefs are efficacious. I discuss how the proposal accounts for the three main modes by which beliefs can be efficacious: via their role in causing intentional action, via their role in causing economic phenomena and the existence and maintenance of social institutions, and via their role in causing unintentional physiological responses, including anticipatory physiological responses that can enable perception, cause involuntary actions and give rise to the placebo effect. (shrink)

Through our hands we construct our world and through our construction of our world we construct ourselves. We reach with our hands and touch with our hands, and with this reaching and touching we come to understand how things feel and are. It is not an utterable knowledge, yet it is knowing the world in a dynamically-engaged affective, effective way. Through affective feedback our reaching and touching becomes a prehensive grasping which leads, through the enkinaesthetic givenness of the agent with (...) its world, to a situated and embodied knowing, and the rudiments of apprehension. With each fresh comprehension a new enkinaesthetic enquiry is engendered; with each enquiry we have afresh the anticipatory dynamics of reaching, touching and feeling, with the hand-to-object of world-investigation, the hand-to-body of auto-investigation and investigating the Other. (shrink)