Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception

The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, Brandt, Frankfurt, Nagel and Williams have taken it for granted, and have made use of it to supply metaethical foundations for a wide variety of normative moral theories. But the Humean conception of the self also leads to seemingly insoluble problems about moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification. Can it be made to work

Rebirth, reform, and resilience: universities in transition, 1300-1700

(print) 367 p., [1] p. of plates ; 24 cmUniversities in transition, 1300-1700JAMES M. KITTELSON : OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Introduction : The Durability of the Universities of Old Europe 1 -- HEIKO A. OBERMAN : UNIVERSITY OF TUBINGEN University and Society on the Threshold of Modern Times : The German Connection 19 -- LEWIS W. SPITZ : STANFORD UNIVERSITY The Importance of the Reformation for Universities : Culture and Confession in the Critical Years 42 -- EDWARD GRANT : INDIANA UNIVERSITY Science and the Medieval University 68 -- WILLIAM J. COURTENAY : UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN The Role of English Thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages 103 -- JOHN M. FLETCHER : UNIVERSITY OF ASTON IN BIRMINGHAM University Migrations in the Late Middle Ages with Particular Reference to the Stamford Secession 163 -- PAUL W. KNOLL : UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA The University of Cracow in the Conciliar Movement 190 -- GUY FITCH LYTLE : UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS The Careers of Oxford Students in the Later Middle Ages 213 -- JAMES H. OVERFIELD : UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT University Studies and the Clergy in Pre-Reformation Germany 254 -- M. A. SCREECH : UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON Two Attitudes toward Hebrew Studies : Erasmus and Rabelais 293 -- JOHN M. FLETCHER and JULIAN DEAHL : UNIVERSITY OF ASTON IN BIRMINGHAM European Universities, 1300-1700 : The Development of Research, 1969-1979, with a Summary Bibliography 324 -- Notes on Contributors 359 -- Index 36

Endogenous development: a model for the process of man-environment transaction

Iran is currently subject to a number of adverse factors affecting good development in the built environment: population explosion, oil- dependent economy, finite resources, war and natural disasters, etc. The object of the study is to research a development model appropriate to the Country's needs for a proactive system of building environment. This model is not specific to Iran and, as the case studies and the discourse of the thesis indicate, is universal. However, the author suggests that the validity of development approaches will not be determined as a result of theoretical and ideological debate but in the realm of practice. Therefore, he has explored diverse ways in which professionals in the built environment can provide an analytical survey of the problems that beset them. An attempt has been made to bring these various elements into perspective and offer a model of 'endogenous development'.The process for achieving a viable, exciting and humane built environment is very complex and calls for contributions from many individuals and small multi -disciplinary groups. Beside professionals contributions (which is accomplished by deduction inference), there is a need for people's participation in design process (which is accomplished either by deduction or by abduction inferences). This participatory approach can also help shifting the process of design towards a wider domain that of the 'production process' (which is accomplished by abduction and induction inferences). Production process is the first paradigm of the model of endogenous development and is a manifestation of a feedback mechanism and acts as an open - ended living system. The second is 'supply- demand' paradigm which shows the relationships between the components of a system or between different systems in surface- structuresThis model is directed at society's development, not just its economic growth, but it does not preclude the possibility of such growth. The reduction of the problems' effect in an endogenous development is viewed more as a way of improving the quality of life than of increasing the standard of living. Nowadays, people are passive recipients in the consumer society and are totally dependent on others for their survival. This style of living is assumed to project an image of economic development and higher productivity, but there is a confrontation of preadjusted commodities which are the products of others. That is because the process of production is not natural (i.e. a closed loop cyclic process via feedback control). It is artificial (i.e. an open -loop linear process via a feed -forward control) which may not help satisfying the user's needs and wants entirely. In the built environment, the great majority have no say in the planning and design of their homes or places of work.Accordingly, endogenous development offers a framework within which the necessity of employing the people's creative power in building their environment is explained. It is based on the assumption that each individual and society's knowledge and experiences play a central and mediating role between professionals' perceptions of the environment and a series of preferences judgements or choices they might make towards and within that environment. Indigenous knowledge and cultural attributes of traditional societies and the organizational capabilities of traditional polities are essential in qualification of the development plans, which are also evaluated and assessed by this proposed framework

Rape and "consent to force" : legal doctrine and social context in Victorian Britain

This thesis is an exercise in the historical use of legal analysis. It illuminates the social construction of gender in an era of changing social mores, by relating rape doctrines to demographic, economic, social, and cultural changes. Changes in the rape law of early Industrial Britain (1800-1860) are examined as: 1). results of ideological changes since the eighteenth century; and 2). causes of the creation of Victorian sexual culture. The ideology of “Separate Spheres” for men and women led to a fearful sexual regime which prescribed chaperoning to ensure women’s chastity. Law made women’s avoidance of being alone outside, where they could become prey of strange men, a requirement for sexual respectability, because rape became more difficult to prove.The 1817 rural Midlands murder case of Rex versus Abraham Thornton caused popular controversy because the judge said physical evidence of brutal sex was not inconsistent with consensual sex: the woman could have been “persuaded” by violence: reasonable doubt on the rape meant the accused was presumed to lack a motive to kill the deceased. Thornton was influential on law and gender ideology. “Consent to force”—the idea that a woman could meaningfully consent to sex after violence—was extended in later rape cases. Secondly, even though the public reacted against Thornton’s acquittal, popular culture interpreted it to support “Stranger Danger”—that women risk rape by strangers while out alone, and should remain at home unless accompanied by trusted men. “Consent to Force” and “Stranger Danger” worked at different levels of the social hierarchy. But both served to extend Separate Spheres to working class women.Law undermined traditional mores which had supported the North West European marriage system—late marriage, small age difference between brides and grooms, nuclear family households, and numerous adolescents working in others’ homes as servants, resulting in low rates of premarital births during long courtships. Young commoners had managed a sexual balancing act by engaging in sexual exploration while refraining from vaginal intercourse. Late marriage, very low illegitimacy, and high rates of prenuptial conceptions of first marital births, resulted from young couples engaging in sexual intercourse only when conditions for marriage were right. Young men had to marry pregnant sweethearts, because communities could identify putative fathers.Industrialization threw the North West marriage system out of balance: young men became more mobile and able to evade forced marriage. It also became more difficult for young men, especially artisans, to achieve the status traditionally associated with marriage. This sexual crisis was exacerbated by upper class libertinism spreading to commoner men. The Thornton case promoted libertinism among all men, to allow men of higher class to approach lower class women for prostitution.The moral denigration of lower class women under rape law after Thornton was the flip side of the association of marriage with making wives consent to sex upon demand by their husbands, under Fraternal Patriarchy. Categorizing women as “bad girls” or “good girls” became central to rape law, yet illusory. Lower class women “persuadable” by force were subjected to similar constraints as wives: both were to think selflessly about fulfilling men’s “needs”. Bourgeois wives, like domestic servants, entered lifelong contracts to serve heads of households upon demand. Domestic torts based upon the property right of masters of households to service provided by wives and children, as well as servants, linked treatment of different classes of women. But because lower class women were not marriageable to elite men, their premarital chastity was not considered as valuable. Working class women’s gender value was discounted; working class men were emasculated as potential heads of households, by economic instability interfering with marriage, the displacement of men’s authority over wives to their employers, and the 1834 New Poor Law, which proposed removing wives and children from working class husbands and fathers when they went onto relief. De-gendering of lower class women and men was reflected in the difficulty that lower class men had in obtaining damages for domestic torts. Privileging of the bourgeois with respect to gender contributed to the failure of feminist and labour movements to cement a political alliance. Industrial-era rape doctrines were ultimately applied to all women rape complainants, regardless of class status, and became the basis for the anti-victim rape laws which second wave feminists analyzed and opposed. Modern rape law still presents women with similar challenges, based upon rape myths like Stranger Danger

Monumentality and its shadows : a quest for modern Greek architectural discourse in nineteenth-century Athens (1834-1862)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-335).The dissertation traces the sources of modern Greek architectural discourse in the first period of the modern Greek State following Independence and under the monarchy of Bavarian King Othon I (1834-1862). Its intent is to provide an informed account, first, of the intellectual and ideological dynamic wherein the profession of the modern architect developed in Greece in contradistinction to that of the empirical masterbuilder; and second, of the cognitive realm whereby modern Greeks formed their architectural perception relative to the emerging phenomenon of the westernized city. The dissertation offers a methodical survey of Greek sources of organized discourse on architecture authored mainly by non-architect scholars at the time. The focus of the writings is Athens, the reborn city-capital in which westernization manifested its effects most prominently. Monumentality, a concept with implications of cosmological unity and sharing in the same communicative framework, serves as a working conceptual tool which fa cilitates the identification, categorization, and analysis of different models of thought in reference to key architectural ideas (e.g., beauty, imitation, dignity). Special heed is paid to the writers' attitude relative to the country's monuments, both old and new, which were now considered the principal activators of ethnic unity, cultural assimilation, and national identification for diverse urban populations under the call for a return to the country's "Golden Age." The texts reveal that the urge for nation-building under the aegis of a centralized authority provided but little room for the development of disinterested discourse on architecture as opposed to instructive discourse which often followed the path of prescriptive or ideological reasoning. Bipolarity, moralism, reliance on precedent, and impermeability of boundaries were some of the characteristics of this reasoning. Architecture, in particular, was subjected to an ideologically-based dichotomy of classicism and romanticism which in theory obstructed any fruitful amalgamation of the two intellectual paradigms and which, in effect, displaced any organic/ evolutionist patterns of thought. The dissertation presents the discourse of the Greek philologist-archaeologists as the most influential in the shaping of the theoretical foundations of architecture as a new discipline, in the universalization of neoclassicism as the official style, and in the promotion of monumentality as the preferred rhetorical strategy toward the reacquisition of the country's ancient glory. The written and visual texts of the philologist- archaeologist Stephanos A. Koumanoudis (1818-1899) are set forth as telling witnesses of the relevance of this discourse to architecture, as well as of the positive and negative aspects of such a conjunction. The dissertation finally argues that organic practices of space use and manipulation with roots in the vernacular tradition persisted through the new era and informed people's response to building problems in the new city, yet now coupled with the rational categories of modernity as introduced by the aforementioned discourses.by Irene Fatsea.Ph.D

The art and architecture of mathematics education: a study in metaphors

This chapter presents the summary of a talk given at the Eighth European Summer University, held in Oslo in 2018. It attempts to show how art, literature, and history, can paint images of mathematics that are not only useful but relevant to learners as they can support their personal development as well as their appreciation of mathematics as a discipline. To achieve this goal, several metaphors about and of mathematics are explored

Metaphor in Education

Without metaphor there would be no legs on the table, no hands on the clock. These are dead metaphors. Even that expression is a metaphor, for how can something be dead that has never literally been born. It is an expression which cannot be taken literally. In its first use it was 'alive' in the sense of being new or witty or apt and memorable. Without metaphor we are reduced to the bare bones of language, to a kind of Orwellian Newspeak. One can hardly avoid using metaphors to explain them. Even scientists and mathematicians use metaphors but they usually refer to them as models. Metaphor is a function of language which enables us to be creative. Not only the person who coins, invents, or thinks of the new metaphor but also the listener or reader who constructs a personal meaning for him or her self. We speak of creativity in education, as a human capacity to be encouraged and developed. How creative can humans be? Do they ever really 'create' anything new apart from reproductions of themselves? Any creative activity such as painting, building or gardening is really re-organising elements already created. So humans enjoy 'creating' their own order, forms, or patterns which we call art. Language is capable of endless patterns. The basic patterns, usually known as grammar, appear to be innate and in speech and writing we use these 'inbuilt' structures to create new sentences of our own. At its highest level we call this literature. It has taken us some time to realise that a word in itself has no meaning as it is a symbol only. For those aspects of experience which are difficult to explain we turn to metaphor. Thus religions often use myths and symbols. Anthropology describes many human activities as metaphoric, for example myths or totemism. Practically every sphere of human activity is imbued with this magical quality of metaphor, for it extends our understanding of the world by giving us a kind of 'elastic' way of describing our experiences. It is not the prerogative of writers or poets but a power we all possess and one which has been derided and abused at times in our history. Only now is it increasingly being recognized as a human capacity worthy of study. In this work I delve into some aspects of the use of metaphor to show how we need to be aware of its potent, pervasive power, especially those of us involved in teaching for whom I will attempt to demonstrate that teaching is itself a metaphoric activity