LaFollette proposed that the best way to protect children from abuse and neglect caused by their parents would be to implement parental licenses to prospective parents. In this paper, I re-evaluate his proposal by looking at various facts and data related to child abuse and neglect. It will be suggested that (a) parenting as a profession does not satisfy the third of LaFollette's criteria for the introduction of licenses, which is "The benefits of the licensing program outweigh any theoretical reasons against it" (LaFollette 2010, 328), (b) it would subject too many people to unnecessary tests and (c) parenting cannot be compared to other professions licenses are usually issued for.
Within science fiction the topic of 'first contact' is a popular theme. How will an encounter with aliens unfold? Will we succeed in communicating with them? Although such questions are present in the background of many science fiction novels, they are not always explicitly dealt with and even if so, often in a poor way. In this article, I will introduce a typology of five dominant types of solutions to the problem of first contact in science fiction works. The first four solutions are the more dominant, but also the least interesting ones. There is a fifth category that addresses the question of first contact in a more interesting way, exemplified by the work of Stanisław Lem. This fifth option defines itself as a critique of the four previous categories, or of their shared assumption of what Lem (1967) has called 'the myth of cognitive universality'. Lem is sceptical of the common optimism that first contact will always be successful. In books such as Solaris (1961), His Master's Voice (1967) and Fiasco (1986), humanity makes first contact with an alien phenomenon, but fails to comprehend the phenomenon. Fundamentally, it will be argued that Lem's work shows that in such an encounter we will typically not only lack the right answers to our questions, but that we also often lack the correct questions: we simply do not have the right categories or instruments to even recognize, let alone meaningfully interrogate, the alien phenomenon. The article ends with an exploration of the implications of Lem's pessimism and whether it is the most plausible option for first contact. Moreover, the article will draw some lessons for philosophy of science, by exploring the parallel with the confrontation of novel or deviant phenomena in science. Lem's work is helpful here because it succeeds in articulating what has not always been appreciated in the philosophy of science, namely that the right questions by which to interrogate scientific phenomena are not given, but that their articulation always requires work.
In the article we present the results of our research on the spirituality of Slavic Neopagans in Poland. Spirituality is understood here according to the concept of mysticism described by R. W. Hood Jr. (1975). As the second main theoretical tool, we use the concept of religious maturity put forward by R. L. Dudley and R. J. Cruise (1990). A questionnaire survey, conducted online on a sample of Slavic Neopagans and Catholics, showed statistically significant differences between the groups in three out of the eight subscales of mysticism (Unifying Quality, Inner Subjective Quality and Religious Quality), while at the same time showing a lack of significant differences with respect to religious maturity. Further analysis by means of binary logistic regression made it possible to determine predictors of belonging to the group of Slavic Neopagans (75.8% of the cases). In the regression model, the separate treatment of mysticism and religious maturity turned out to be insignificant, whereas gender, age, and the interaction between religious maturity and mysticism significantly differentiated the investigated groups.
In my response to Martin and Wiebe's academic "confession", I try to show that there is a major inconsistency in their argument. This inconsistency resides within their partial and therefore biased application of universal unconscious mechanisms that constrain the human mind, where the application should have been complete. Their argument should have been directed at all sciences or at science in general in order for it to be sound, and not particularly at Religious Studies. This would result in the argument that any scientific discipline is a delusion, which is an outcome Martin and Wiebe do not hold, as they make science a sine qua non for their own argument.
Intergenerational learning is a growing field of practice across Europe. Against a background of demographic and social changes within European countries and the subsequently altering learning processes between different generations in families, communities, and workplaces, educational organizations face the challenge of providing learning opportunities for the different generations. This paper presents research related to the development of intergenerational learning programs in German adult education organizations. Within that project, adult educators from different organizations took part in a training module on intergenerational learning and subsequently created intergenerational learning programs in their own organizations. In this paper we provide insight into the training program of the participating adult educators, as well as into the results of our empirical study. First, we present the systematic framework of intergenerational learning that was used in the training module to initiate the development of practical intergenerational programs. We then present our research design and the results of the qualitative study. Finally, we discuss these results in terms of theory.
The study deals with notarized 14th and 15th century copies from Bavarian and Austrian charter inventories. There are some terminological irregularities in the German speaking research literature that cohere with the definition of insert ("Transsumpt"), which cannot be harmonized with the late medieval linguistic usage. Subsequently, the article describes the different forms of notarized charter copies and tries to point out if they were sustainable according to roman and canonical process law.