scholarly journals Teaching feminism: Problems of critical claims and student certainty

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 1203-1224
Author(s):  
Richard Stopford
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
The World ◽  
Descriptive Theory ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
The Way

Learning about feminism can be a revelation for many students. However, for others, it can be a confounding, troubling experience. These difficulties return as problems for the teacher: how to help sceptical, resistant students understand the theory. Moreover, understanding what can be so troubling about learning feminism helps us to better understand the situation of feminist modules in the contexts of broader humanities curricula. Obviously, these are complex issues, and I wish to focus on just two specific points: how feminist theories make critical claims and the challenges that emerge for students as a result; how feminist theory claims find challenges in student certainty. Firstly, feminist theory claims, which describe sociocultural states of affairs while at the same time destabilising them, are operating with critical norms. These critical norms are at odds with norms of descriptive theory claims that students find elsewhere in their curriculum. As such, I want to explore the effects of this clash in student learning experience, and the difficulties that teachers face a result. In the second part of the article, I use Wittgenstein’s analysis of certainty to explore how feminist theory claims often challenge the very foundations of students’ understanding of themselves, and the world around them. As such, learning in the feminist classroom is not merely an issue of learning about and then adjudicating between theories. Feminist theories implicate the way in which we live, and the conditions of intelligibility for theories as such. In light of my discussions, I do not think there are onesize solutions to these issues. However, I think that recognising these problems in theory can help us to articulate them in the classroom, and this might go some way to alleviating the structural challenges faced by teachers of feminism.

scholarly journals Are emotions perceptions of value?

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérôme Dokic ◽  
Stéphane Lemaire
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Evaluative Response ◽  
The World ◽  
Response Dependence ◽  
Present Response ◽  
The Way

A popular idea at present is that emotions are perceptions of values. Most defenders of this idea have interpreted it as the perceptual thesis that emotions present (rather than merely represent) evaluative states of affairs in the way sensory experiences present us with sensible aspects of the world. We argue against the perceptual thesis. We show that the phenomenology of emotions is compatible with the fact that the evaluative aspect of apparent emotional contents has been incorporated from outside. We then deal with the only two views that can make sense of the perceptual thesis. On the response–dependence view, emotional experiences present evaluative response-dependent properties (being fearsome, being disgusting, etc.) in the way visual experiences present response-dependent properties such as colors. On the response–independence view, emotional experiences present evaluative response-independent properties (being dangerous, being indigestible, etc.), conceived as ‘Gestalten’ independent of emotional feelings themselves. We show that neither view can make plausible the idea that emotions present values as such, i.e., in an open and transparent way. If emotions have apparent evaluative contents, this is in fact due to evaluative enrichments of the non-evaluative presentational contents of emotions.

On the Rationality of Radical Theological Non-Naturalism

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Necessary Condition ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Time And Being ◽  
Clear Idea ◽  
The Way

In my Contemporary Critiques of Religion and in my Scepticism, I argue that non-anthropomorphic conceptions of God do not make sense. By this I mean that we do not have sound grounds for believing that the central truth-claims of Christianity are genuine truth-claims and that we do not have a religiously viable concept of God. I argue that this is so principally because of three interrelated features about God-talk. (I) While purporting to be factual assertions, central bits of God-talk, e.g. ‘God exists’ and ‘God loves man-kind’, are not even in principle verifiable (confirmable or disconfirmable) in such a way that we can say what experienceable states of affairs would count for these putative assertions and against their denials, such that we could say what it would be like to have evidence which would make either their assertion or their denial more or less probably true. (2) Personal predicates, e.g. ‘loves’, ‘creates’, are at least seemingly essential in the use of God-talk, yet they suffer from such an attenuation of meaning in their employment in religious linguistic environments that it at least appears to be the case that we have in such environments unwittingly emptied these predicates of all intelligible meaning so that we do not understand what we are asserting or denying when we utter ‘God loves mankind’ or ‘God created the heavens and the earth’ and the like. (3) When we make well-formed assertions, it appears at least to be the case that a necessary condition for such wellformedness is that we should be able successfully to identify the subject of that putative statement so that we can understand what it is that we are talking about and thus understand that a genuine statement has actually been made. But, where God is conceived non-anthropomorphically, we have no even tolerably clear idea about how God, an infinite individual, occupying no particular place or existing at no particular time, and being utterly transcendent to the world, can be identified. Indeed we have no coherent idea of what it would be like to identify him and this means we have no coherent idea of what it would be like for God even to be a person or an it. He cannot be picked out and identified in the way persons and things can.

Myths, Lies and Historical Truth: A Defence of Nationalism

1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Archard
Keyword(s):  
False Beliefs ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
National Myths ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
The Way

This article examines the charge that nationalism is simply mistaken about the way the world is. It argues that it would be better to talk of national myths which are not myths proper, nor complete falsities, and which bear a complex relation to the truth. They may contain some truth, and give rise to true beliefs. National myths may also be justifiable for serving cognitive and affective purposes. They may be condemned for giving rise to unjustifiable false beliefs, for requiring the unjustified manipulation of the facts, or for sustaining unjustifiable states of affairs.

scholarly journals The evolving field of learning analytics research in higher education

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Megan Axelsen ◽  
Petrea Redmond ◽  
Eva Heinrich ◽  
Michael Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Retention ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Outcome Measures ◽  
Diagnostic Tool ◽  
Learning Analytics ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Over the last decade the deployment and use of learning analytics has become routine in many universities around the world. The ability to analyse the way students interact with technology has demonstrated significant value for providing insights into student learning and there are now a wide range of uses for learning analytics in education. From use as a diagnostic tool, to a method for prediction, learning analytics in higher education has an emphasis on a wide range of outcome measures, including student retention, progression, attainment, performance, mastery, employability and engagement. In exploring how learning analytics can improve learning practice by transforming the ways we support learning processes, this editorial highlights some of the learning analytics research that has been published in AJET to date.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-178
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Real World ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Semantic Representations ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Event Structures ◽  
The World ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Throughout this book, I have attempted to detail some ways in which the native syntactic and semantic structures of natural language may fail to recapitulate the ultimate metaphysical structure of reality. I argued, for example, that the thematic structures of argument-taking expressions may vary significantly from language to language even when they express the same real-world relations, properties, states of affairs, or event structures. I begin this chapter with a further argument that changes in our encyclopedic representations of the world typically are not reflected in our native semantic representations of the world. Finally, I close the chapter and the book by illustrating the potential of the way of reference in metaphysics with respect to achieving metaphysical insight into the true nature of human freedom.

Theorizing the Politics of ‘Islamic Feminism’

2001 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrzad Mojab
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
The West ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
The World ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Legal Equality ◽  
Cultural Entities

This article examines developments in ‘Islamic feminism’, and offers a critique of feminist theories, which construct it as an authentic and indigenous emancipatory alternative to secular feminisms. Focusing on Iranian theocracy, I argue that the Islamization of gender relations has created an oppressive patriarchy that cannot be replaced through legal reforms. While many women in Iran resist this religious and patriarchal regime, and an increasing number of Iranian intellectuals and activists, including Islamists, call for the separation of state and religion, feminists of a cultural relativist and postmodernist persuasion do not acknowledge the failure of the Islamic project. I argue that western feminist theory, in spite of its advances, is in a state of crisis since (a) it is challenged by the continuation of patriarchal domination in the West in the wake of legal equality between genders, (b) suspicious of the universality of patriarchy, it overlooks oppressive gender relations in non-western societies and (c) rejecting Eurocentrism and racism, it endorses the fragmentation of women of the world into religious, national, ethnic, racial and cultural entities with particularist agendas.

Becoming Politicized

2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Beliefs About The Future ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.

Restrained Airs: The Diegetic Surface and Nondiegetic Depth of British Film Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-443
Author(s):  
Paul Mazey
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
The World ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The Way

This article considers how pre-existing music has been employed in British cinema, paying particular attention to the diegetic/nondiegetic boundary and notions of restraint. It explores the significance of the distinction between diegetic music, which exists in the world of the narrative, and nondiegetic music, which does not. It analyses the use of pre-existing operatic music in two British films of the same era and genre: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and demonstrates how seemingly subtle variations in the way music is used in these films produce markedly different effects. Specifically, it investigates the meaning of the music in its original context and finds that only when this bears a narrative relevance to the film does it cross from the diegetic to the nondiegetic plane. This reveals that whereas music restricted to the diegetic plane may express the outward projection of the characters' emotions, music also heard on the nondiegetic track may reveal a deeper truth about their feelings. In this way, the meaning of the music varies depending upon how it is used. While these two films may differ in whether or not their pre-existing music occupies a nondiegetic or diegetic position in relation to the narrative, both are characteristic of this era of British film-making in using music in an understated manner which expresses a sense of emotional restraint and which marks the films with a particularly British inflection.

Profilometry. Using Corneo-scleral topography for scleral lens fitting

The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer
Keyword(s):  
Ocular Surface ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Contact Lenses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.

Los criterios de textualidad en la hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur. Un análisis crítico

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Bertorello
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Material Base ◽  
The World ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Text Writing ◽  
The Way

RESUMENEl trabajo examina críticamente la afirmación central de la hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur, a saber, que el soporte material de la escritura es el rasgo determinante para que una secuencia discursiva sea considerada como un texto. La escritura cancela las condiciones fácticas de la enunciación y crea, de este modo, un ámbito de sentido estable en el que se puede validar una concepción de la subjetividad que está implicada en las dos estrategias de lecturas (el análisis estructural y la apropiación), esto es, un sujeto pasivo que se constituye por la idealidad del significado. Asimismo, el trabajo intentará precisar una serie de ambigüedades en el uso que Ricoeur hace del «ser en el mundo» para sostener la referencialidad del discurso.PALABRAS CLAVETEXTO, ESCRITURA, REFERENCIA, SUBJETIVIDAD, MUNDOABSTRACTThis paper critically examines the main assertion of Paul Ricoeur´s hermeneutics, i.e., that the material base of writing is the determining feature to consider a discursive sequence as a text. Writing cancels the factual conditions of enunciation and creates, in this way, a background of stable meaning where it is possible to validate a conception of subjectivity implicated in the two reading strategies (the structural analysis and the appropriation), i.e., a passive subject constituted by the ideality of meaning. Likewise, this paper aims to clarify some ambiguities in the way Ricoeur uses the «beings in the world» to support the discourse referentiality.KEY WORDSTEXT, WRITING, REFERENCE, SUBJECTIVITY, WORLD

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