Adulthood is usually defined as the period of human development in which the physical development, cognitive development, and psychosocial development of women and men slow and reach their highest level. Although scholars strive to build consistent theories, the description of the developmentally highest level differs between countries and cultures due to economic factors and sociocultural factors. After presenting some basic concepts of adulthood from different cultures, this entry continues with a psychological definition of adulthood, a discussion of (...) characteristics of maturity, and brief descriptions of various theories about what constitutes adulthood. It ends with suggestions for the direction of future discussions on adulthood. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a puzzle for Rawlsians given an attractive way for them to approach defining an adult citizen.

We examined the links between moral identity—the centrality of moral principles to identity—and political purpose during emerging adulthood. We analyzed data from two waves of a longitudinal study of civic purpose. T1 surveys were collected before high school graduation and T2 survey were collected two years later. We categorized people (N = 1,578 at T1 and N = 480 at T2) into political purpose groups based on the person-centered perspective and then performed multinomial logistic regression analysis to test whether (...) moral identity was associated with categories of political purpose. The findings from our study indicate that moral identity at T1 is linked with the maintenance and formation of T2 political purpose. (shrink)

We examined change over time in the relationship between moral identity and presence of meaning during early adulthood. Moral identity refers to a sense of morality and moral values that are central to one’s identity. Presence of meaning refers to the belief that one’s existence has meaning, purpose, and value. Participants responded to questions on moral identity and presence of meaning in their senior year of high school and two years after. Mixed effects model analyses were used to examine (...) how moral identity and presence of meaning interacted during this two-year period. The findings demonstrated that moral identity positively predicted presence of meaning over time. (shrink)

Civilizations can be perceived as living human beings that are born, mature, age, and ultimately die and disappear, passing their legacy to the future generations. These transitions may be projected to the different stages of cognitive development of children. The Western Civilization, which embodies our current state of cultural advancement from the Classic Greek to the modern period, can be paralleled by the gradual transitions of human beings toward adulthood. From this perspective, the ancient Greek era resembles the toddler (...) years of humanity at which the first “why”-type questions are being asked. The theocratic period that followed until the Renaissance can be seen as our childhood, when people lived their lives under the tight boundaries set by religious authorities. The period spanning from the Enlightenment until almost the end of the 20th century can be considered as our teenage years when people rediscover their past, are liberated from superstition, and set the path forward based on reason by a manner at which the distinction between plausible and feasible is vague. Within this scheme, postmodernism also finds its place in our teenhood. The last few decades, from this perspective, signify our entrance to adulthood at which major questions are considered answered, or at least settled, and the only path forward perceived as feasible is the one that is followed already, a state that is bringing us closer to our intellectual aging and its inevitable death. Some signs of aging-related pathologies are already manifested in today’s technology-intensive society. By identifying our intellectual age and by appreciating our health status, we may be able to proactively delay or even avert our intellectual aging and death. (shrink)

Traditionally, most philosophers saw childhood as a state of deficiency and thought that its value was entirely dependent on how successfully it prepares individuals for adulthood. Yet, there are good reasons to think that childhood also has intrinsic value. Children possess certain intrinsically valuable abilities to a higher degree than adults. Moreover, going through a phase when one does not yet have a “self of one’s own,” and experimenting one’s way to a stable self, seems intrinsically valuable. I argue (...) that children can have good lives, on several understandings of well-being – as a pleasurable state, as the satisfaction of simple desires or as the realization of certain objective goods. In reply to the likely objection that only individuals capable of morality can have intrinsic value, I explain why it is plausible that children have sufficient moral agency to be as deserving of respect as adults. (shrink)

We chart how neuroscience and philosophy have together advanced our understanding of moral judgment with implications for when it goes well or poorly. The field initially focused on brain areas associated with reason versus emotion in the moral evaluations of sacrificial dilemmas. But new threads of research have studied a wider range of moral evaluations and how they relate to models of brain development and learning. By weaving these threads together, we are developing a better understanding of the neurobiology of (...) moral judgment in adulthood and to some extent in childhood and adolescence. Combined with rigorous evidence from psychology and careful philosophical analysis, neuroscientific evidence can even help shed light on the extent of moral knowledge and on ways to promote healthy moral development. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes the conceptual foundations and research on emotional creativity. Emotional creativity is defined as a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience. This construct pervades human creative performance and represents an important link between emotional experience and cognitive processes. Empirical research in this field has revealed various links of emotional creativity to personality variables (e.g., openness to experience), positive affect, fantasy proneness, coping strategies, post-traumatic growth, better self-understanding, and one’s engagement (...) in practicing creative leisure activities. In the applied settings, emotional creativity has been found to be positively related to the intrinsic motivation of employees, the innovative performance of employees, teaching efficacy, and an increased awareness of professional roles. Interestingly, the available meta-analysis of past studies revealed that women showed significantly higher emotional creativity than men. Emotional creativity has also been found to be lower in older adulthood compared to younger age. Because the levels of emotional creativity were found to be sensitive to the decline of cognitive functions in older adults, their decrease can be considered as one of the indicators of cognitive aging. Recent research in clinical neuropsychology has also revealed that older adults in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease showed decreased emotional creativity compared to healthy older adults. (shrink)

Pain asymbolia is a rare condition caused by brain damage, usually in adulthood. Asymbolics feel pain but appear indifferent to it, and indifferent also to visual and verbal threats. How should we make sense of this? Nikola Grahek thinks asymbolics’ pains are abnormal, lacking a component that make normal pains unpleasant and motivating. Colin Klein thinks that what is abnormal is not asymbolics’ pains, but asymbolics: they have a psychological deficit making them unresponsive to unpleasant pain. I argue that (...) an illuminating account requires elements of both views. Asymbolic pains are indeed abnormal, but they are abnormal because asymbolics are. I agree with Klein that asymbolics are incapable of caring about their bodily integrity; but I argue against him that, if this is to explain not only their indifference to visual and verbal threat, but also their indifference to pain, we must do the following: (i) take asymbolics’ lack of bodily care not as an alternative to, but as an explanation of their pains’ missing a component, and (ii) claim that the missing component consists in evaluative content. Asymbolia, I conclude, reveals not only that unpleasant pain is composite, but that its ‘hedomotive component’ is evaluative. (shrink)

This paper addresses a philosophical problem concerning the ontological status of age classification. For various purposes, people are commonly classified into categories such as “young adulthood”, “middle adulthood”, and “older adulthood”, which are defined chronologically. These age categories prima facie seem to qualify as natural kinds under a homeostatic property cluster account of natural kindhood, insofar as they capture certain biological, psychological, and social properties of people that tend to cluster together due to causal processes. However, this (...) is challenged by the observation that age categories are historically unstable. The properties that age categories are supposed to capture are affected by healthcare and cultural developments, such that people are staying biologically, psychologically, and socially young for longer. Furthermore, the act of classifying people into age categories can bring about changes in their behaviors, which in turn alter the biological, psychological, and social properties that the categories are supposed to capture. Accordingly, I propose that age categories are best understood as interactive kinds that are influenced in dynamic ways by looping effects. I consider some implications of these looping effects for our classificatory practices concerning age, including how different disciplines may need to review the ways they define and use age categories in their inductive inferences. (shrink)

Traditionally, most philosophers saw childhood as a state of deficiency and thought that its value was entirely dependent on how successfully it prepares individuals for adulthood. Yet, there are good reasons to think that childhood also has intrinsic value. Children possess certain intrinsically valuable abilities to a higher degree than adults. Moreover, going through a phase when one does not yet have a “self of one’s own,” and experimenting one’s way to a stable self, seems intrinsically valuable. I argue (...) that children can have good lives, on several understandings of well-being – as a pleasurable state, as the satisfaction of simple desires or as the realization of certain objective goods. In reply to the likely objection that only individuals capable of morality can have intrinsic value, I explain why it is plausible that children have sufficient moral agency to be as deserving of respect as adults. (shrink)

Herein, I evaluate how masking traditions (which are an integral part of the African identity and the Igbo reality) vary within Igbo land: from Omabe, Mma, Mmawu, Ogbodo, Ekpe, and Odo. I lay focus on the tradition of Odomagana or simply, Odo, with all its richly symbolic rituals especially within the domains of its role in the life of the people of the Northern Igbo Land. Particular emphases are made on the role of masquerade cults as means of initiating the (...) young into full adulthood with special reference to Ukana which is present within Igbodo tradition practiced by a group of towns. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the relationship between carefreeness and the valuable goods that constitute a good childhood. I argue that carefreeness is necessary for children to develop positive affective responses to worthwhile projects and relationships, and so is necessary for children to endorse the valuable goods in their lives. One upshot of my discussion is that a child who is allowed to play, who receives an adequate education, and who has loving parents, but who lacks the psychological disposition of (...) carefreeness leads an impoverished life, even if she might lead a good life in adulthood. (shrink)

Newtonian impact on Rousseau’s Thinking Summary The most prominent works of Rousseau are written in the field of political philosophy. However, the success of his model of social contract, Rousseau acknowledges, depends on pedagogics. The best way to proceed with it is to return to the natural sources. Rousseau literally brings Emile “back to nature”, and goes to play in and study their natural environment. Playfully directing the kid, he makes experiments devoted to the gradual development of the kid’s body (...) and mind, finding out and emphasizing his own personal abilities. When approaching adulthood, Rousseau switches to more spiritual teaching. in the Profession of Faith of Savoyard Vicar, Rousseau distinguishes as his main predecessor “the illustrious Clarke” who, as we all know, was a friend of Newton, and mainly spread his outlook in metaphysics. interest in ancients and criticism towards their contemporaries, emphasis on the free will within a fragile system hoping for divine support also relates Rousseau and Newton. This opens up a new way in the interpretation of Rousseau through the lens of Newton, an attempt, hopefully, promising us the discovery of a whole new spectrum of colors in Rousseau’s thinking. (shrink)

A quarter-life crisis (QLC) is a phenomenon that has gained widespread attention in the media and popular literature as a result of the difficulties associated with early adulthood. This study, "Tumatanda na Ako: The Quarter-life Crisis Phenomenon Among Emerging Adults," explored the emerging adults’ experiences of quarter-life crisis and the meaning they make out of their experiences of this phenomenon. The study utilized the interpretative phenomenological analysis of the qualitative data gathered from twenty (20) respondents from a higher educational (...) institution in Bocaue, Bulacan. The findings have been the bases for the development of the developmental program entitled, “KnowNow, Know-How: Unveiling the Quarter-life Crisis Phenomenon and Finding Ways to Conquer!” and for the development of a proposed psychological assessment tool namely “Help! I Am Lost,” A Quarter-life Crisis Scale. (shrink)

Descartes affords several notions of consciousness as he explains the characteristics of the diverse features of human thought from infancy to adulthood and from dreaming to attentive wakefulness. The paper argues that Descartes has a rich and coherent view of conscious mentality from rudimentary consciousness through reflexive consciousness to consciousness achieved by deliberate, attentive reflection.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diseases are a group of neuromuscular diseases that often cause suffering and premature death. New mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs) may offer women with mtDNA diseases the opportunity to have healthy offspring to whom they are genetically related. MRTs will likely be ready to license for clinical use in the near future and a discussion of the ethics of the clinical introduction ofMRTs is needed. This paper begins by evaluating three concerns about the safety of MRTs for clinical (...) use on humans: (1) Is it ethical to use MRTs if safe alternatives exist? (2) Would persons with three genetic contributors be at risk of suffering? and (3) Can society trust that MRTs will be made available for humans only once adequate safety testing has taken place, and that MRTs will only be licensed for clinical use in a way that minimises risks? It is then argued that the ethics debate about MRTs should be reoriented towards recommendingways to reduce the possible risks of MRT use on humans. Two recommendations are made: (1) licensed clinical access to MRTs should only be granted to prospective parents if they intend to tell their children about their MRT conception by adulthood; and (2) sex selection should be used in conjunction with the clinical use ofMRTs, in order to reduce transgenerational health risks. (shrink)

This paper uses readings of two classic autobiographies, Edmund Gosse's Father & Son and John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, to develop a distinctive answer to an old and central question in value theory: What role is played by pleasure in the most successful human life? A first section defends my method. The main body of the paper then defines and rejects voluntarist, stoic, and developmental hedonist lessons to be taken from central crises in my two subjects' autobiographies, and argues for a (...) fourth, diagnostic lesson: Gosse and Mill perceive their individual good through the medium of pleasure. Finally, I offer some speculative moral psychology of human development, as involving the waking, perception, management, and flowering of generic and individual capacities, which I suggest underlies Gosse and Mill's experiences. The acceptance of one's own unchosen nature, discovered by self-perceptive pleasure in the operation of one's nascent capacities, is the beginning of a flourishing adulthood in which that nature is fully developed and expressed. (shrink)

The high prevalence of brain injury incidents in adolescence and adulthood demands effective models for re-learning lost cognitive abilities. Impairment in brain injury survivors’ higher-level cognitive functions is common and a negative predictor for long-term outcome. We conducted two small-scale interventions (N = 12; 33.33% female) with persons with acquired brain injuries in two municipalities in Sweden. Age ranged from 17 to 65 years (M = 51.17, SD = 14.53). The interventions were dialogic, inquiry-based, and inspired by the Philosophy (...) for Children Programme, a participatory thinking skills approach with documented higher-order cognitive outcomes, such as developed argumentation skills, in other target groups. Philosophical dialogues were conducted once a week in the two groups, totalling 12 dialogues per group. Group argumentation development was measured through compared scores from structured observations of filmed dialogues early and late in the intervention. Large positive changes in mean scores from early to late in the intervention, together with constantly high facilitator quality, suggest argumentation development in the sample due to the intervention. (shrink)

Seneca asserts in Letter 121 that we mature by exercising self-care as we pass through successive psychosomatic “constitutions.” These are babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus). The self-care described by Seneca is 'self-affiliation' (oikeiōsis, conciliatio) the linchpin of the Stoic ethical system, which defines living well as living in harmony with nature, posits that altruism develops from self-interest, and allows that pleasure and pain are indicators of well-being while denying that happiness consists in pleasure and (...) that pain is misery. Augustine divides the narrative of his own development into the stages of babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus) in the Confessions, a text wherein he claims familiarity with more than a few works of Seneca (Conf. 5.6.11). Furthermore, he had access to Stoic accounts of affiliation not only in Seneca’s Letter 121, but also in Cicero’s On Goals, and in non-extant sources of Stoic ethical theory. After pointing out that Augustine endorsed the notion of self-affiliation outside of the Confessions, I raise the question of whether he also makes the notion of affiliation thematic in his philosophical autobiography. I argue that he does indeed present himself and some of his primary relationships – with his mother and his long-term girlfriend – in terms of personal and social oikeiōsis. In addition, his self-critiques in the early books of the Confessions can be more fully understood if compared to Stoic developmental theory. He depicts himself as failing to progress intellectually, socially, and morally: although he passed through the successive constitutions, becoming physically larger and cognitively capable, he did not mature correctly by the standards of his Stoic sources. (shrink)

Ketamine is a well-known and widely available general anesthetic from the 1960s that, in sub-anesthetic doses, has been adopted in a limited manner for the treatment of acute suicidality and treatment-resistant depression. Its short onset time and short duration of action make it feasible for use at outpatient clinics. In the US, it has a long history of off-label use and was officially approved for depression treatment in 2019. In Finland, it has been administered to selected hospitalized patients in the (...) public healthcare system since 2010 and became available at a private outpatient clinic very recently. In Norway, it has been administered off-label at a private clinic for approximately 500 patients since mid-2010s and at a public clinic for approximately 300 patients since 2020, with plans on opening more clinics in 2024. In the US, the treatment has been administered to hundreds of thousands of patients. -/- The retrospective ethnographic inquiry part of this study features a Finnish woman in her twenties who suffered from treatment-resistant depression, rooted in her insecure childhood and having been bullied at school, as well as income insecurity and excessive workload in adulthood. Eventually, she was violently raped, which induced an obvious post-traumatic stress disorder and exacerbated her depression, incapacitating her. In the course of approximately five years, she was prescribed ten different anti-depressive medications and seventeen other medications, including various antipsychotic medications and lithium. These failed to provide an anti-depressive effect but resulted in 'massive' adverse effects instead, including 60% weight gain and psychotic hallucinations. Eventually, esketamine spray treatment at a private outpatient clinic resolved her depression in a single session. A weekly re-administration process was ongoing. -/- In this case, repeated esketamine administration alleviated depression by producing accumulating corrective emotional experiences without the need to re-experience previous traumatizing events. In a few months to a year, the transient but accumulating anti-depressive effect typically leads to the resolution of depression in most cases, if the patients' living conditions no longer constantly re-traumatize them. It is necessary to adopt ketamine more widely as an emergency measure while more effective, non-addictive alternatives and complements are prepared for adoption. The cost of this specific pilot program implementation was unscalable, but costs can be reduced by approximately 90% by modifying the implementation details. Ketamine and its more effective alternative, 5-MeO-DMT, can serve a major role in facilitating a rebirth of public and private mental healthcare systems, with treatment efficacy multiplied and treatment costs simultaneously reduced. (shrink)

Most work at the intersection of law and the philosophy of action focuses on criminal responsibility. Unfortunately, this focus has been at the expense of reflecting on how the philosophy of action might help illuminate our understanding of issues in civil law. In this essay, focusing on Anglo-American jurisprudence, we examine the conditions under which a party to a legal agreement is deemed to have the capacity required to be bound by that agreement. We refer to this condition as the (...) capacity condition. We begin by showing how recent work on the metaphysics of powers might ground an account of the role of capacities in the metaphysics of intentional agency. After discussing the capacity to contract in Anglo-American jurisprudence, we show how the general ontology of capacities and agency sketched can ground and help clarify legal thinking about capacity. We argue that when we couple our understanding of capacity with relevant recent data from developmental neuropsychology, a lacuna in Anglo-American contract law becomes evident. Specifically, it appears that persons in early adulthood do not clearly satisfy the conditions requisite for them to satisfy the capacity condition. In the light of this, we sketch some potential solutions that are compatible with existing legal standards and would contribute to a more consistent application of the capacity condition in contract law. (shrink)

When in doubt, for the embryo. New arguments on the moral status of human embryos. - In the first part of our essay we distinguish the philosophical from the legal and political level of the embryo debate and describe our indirect justification strategy. It consists in renouncing a determination of the dignity-giving φ-properties and instead starting from premises that are undoubted by all discussion partners. In the second part we reconstruct and criticize the species, continuum, identity and potentiality arguments. The (...) species argument only has a certain plausibility, if at all, as a critical argument. From the continuum argument and identity argument we take over the idea of numerical identity (NI) and link it with the core idea of the potentiality argument (P). So we come to the NIP argument: -/- (NIP) -/- (1) Every living human body that is the bearer of (or has) potential φ-properties has dignity. (2) Every viable human embryo is a living human body that is the bearer of (or has) potential φ properties. Therefore, (3) Every viable human embryo has dignity. -/- Reversibly comatose people and newborns are protected because they have the potential to have actual personal characteristics in the future; our thesis is that embryos that are capable of development also have the same potential in moral terms. The basic idea of numerical identity, with which we support the second premise, is that every human being, from embryonic existence to adulthood, forms a physical unity. In a detailed part, we deal with the crown princess, gametes, parthenogenesis, somatic cell, pronuclear stage, biological heteronome early embryo, multiple, fusion, Siamese twin, hydatidiform mole and finally trophoblast problems. In a third part, the indirect argument is supplemented by a metatheoretical cautionary argument. It states that in situations where there is doubt as to whether a being falls within the scope of a moral norm, but there are sufficiently strong reasons for this subsumption, it must be assumed that this is the case if the contrary assumption and the positive effects it may have are in no acceptable proportion to the moral harm that would result if that subsumption were not made. The main result of our considerations is therefore: When in doubt, for the embryo. (shrink)

This article is concerned with choices that parents or guardians make about the food they give to their children. Those with primary responsibility for the care of young children determine the set of foods that their children eat and have a significant impact on children’s subsequent dietary choices, both in later childhood and in adulthood. I argue that parents have a morally significant reason not to feed meat to their children, which stems from their fiduciary responsibility for the child’s (...) moral development. This should, at a minimum, be factored into parental decisions about their children’s diet. In the absence of compelling countervailing reasons, it will mean that parents should not, in an all-things-considered sense, feed meat to their children. This claim does not rely upon the obviously contentious claim that it is morally wrong to eat meat. Instead, the fact that children, when adults, may reasonably themselves come to believe that consuming meat is wrong gives parents morally compelling reasons to avoid acting in ways which may have the predictable consequence of corrupting the moral character of those for whom they are responsible. (shrink)

Child soldiers, who often appear to be both victims and perpetrators, present a vexing moral and legal challenge: how can we protect the rights of children while seeking justice for the victims of war crimes? There has been little stomach, either in domestic or international courts, for prosecuting child soldiers—but neither has this challenge been systematically addressed in international law. Establishing a uniform minimum age of criminal responsibility would be a major step in the right direction; we argue that such (...) a standard ought to be guided by the best evidence from neuropsychology about the development, during childhood and adolescence, of the executive functions that give rise to morally and legally responsible agents. In light of that evidence, which suggests that the brain’s executive functions are still maturing into early adulthood, we recommend a graded structure of culpability for child soldiers. (shrink)

We provide to readers the 11th volume of the "Czech-Polish-Slovak Studies in Andragogy and Social Gerontology" series. We are delighted to announce that the presented study is the result of the work of scientists from seven countries: Austria, China, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, Poland, and Russia. This international collection of texts is part of the global discourse on the determinants of adult education and the functioning of people in late adulthood. The 11th volume is a collection of research results that (...) show both the positive and negative dimensions of ageing through the prism of research experience from various geographical and cultural areas. The researchers invited to the presented volume tried to illustrate the issues assigned to the following topics: ageing with dignity; retirement age; assumptions and conditions resulting from living in the home; the relationship between challenges concerning life expectancy and needs; care and ageing services; and foundations and potential changes in pension systems. The research results presented in this volume have a common denominator, which is caring for the quality of life of the older people regardless of their place of residence. Thus, the study "Between Successful and Unsuccessful Ageing: Selected Aspects and Contexts" brings new insights from scientists who scrupulously characterize the complexity of processes that affect the positive and negative conditions of functioning in old age, which is a mosaic of various nuances. Inviting readers to familiarize themselves with the content of the monograph, we would like to thank the reviewers who contributed to the improvement of the quality of the texts and open new fields for participation in further joint publishing projects. (shrink)

Until recently, the nature of children’s well-being or prudential value remained all but unexplored in the literature on well-being. There now exists a small but growing body of work on the topic. In this chapter, I focus on a cluster of under-explored issues relating to children’s well-being. I investigate, in specific, three distinct (and to my mind puzzling) positions about it, namely, that children’s lives cannot on the whole go well or poorly for them, prudentially speaking; that the prudential goods (...) of childhood count for less than the same goods of adulthood towards the prudential value of an individual’s life as a whole; and that children’s prudential goods (or goods more generally) are (at least in some cases) in some way special. This chapter is divided into four main sections. In the first section, I briefly describe some accounts of the nature of children’s well-being. In the next three sections, I address the three somewhat puzzling positions mentioned above. (shrink)

Research in education indicates that the Philosophy for Children (P4C) curriculum is instrumental in achieving important educational objectives. And yet, it is precisely this instrumentalist conception of P4C that has been challenged by a second generation of P4C scholars. Among other things, these scholars argue that P4C must remain vigilant toward, and avoid subscribing to 1) developmentalism and 2) a reductive identification of thinking with rationality. On the contrary, they suggest that P4C must ensure that it gives voice to childhood, (...) allowing it to enter a genuine dialogue with adulthood. Scholars who defend a non-reductive and non-instrumentalist approach to P4C, highlight the significance of play in philosophy sessions with children. In this paper I examine the extent to which the philosophical inquiry that takes place in the context P4C can be understood as a playful activity. I submit that Fink’s account of play can help us reach a better understanding of what we mean by play, which in turn can help us examine the compatibility between the activities of P4C and play. In the first part of the paper, I examine some of the basic ideas of P4C and raise the question about the compatibility of philosophical inquiry and play. In the second part of the paper, I engage in a philosophical appreciation of play by drawing on the work of Eugen Fink. In the final part of the paper, I show how play – understood along Fink’s lines – is compatible with philosophical inquiry as practiced in school settings. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the role of philosophy in the school environment, paying special attention to the promise of intergenerational dialogue carried forward by philosophy programmes associated with Lipman’s Philosophy for Children (P4C) curriculum and its current transformation into Philosophy with Children (PwC). There are two basic ideas that constitute the guiding thread of my reflections. Firstly, that philosophical interventions of that kind challenge adult-centric views of education and philosophy. Secondly, that such initiatives carry with them the promise of acknowledging (...) children as equal participants in the process of philosophical questioning and meaning creation. In the first part of the paper, I argue for the importance of understanding the act of philosophizing with children as a disruption of adult-centrism. First, I reflect on a narrow future-directedness that seems to characterize the temporality of school. I suggest that P4wC interventions interrupt such a future-directedness inviting the students to immerse themselves into a dilated ‘now’ of multiple possibilities. Then, I reflect on the ways in which P4wC interventions challenge the assumption that philosophy is an adult preoccupation. Special attention is paid to the work of scholars who challenge our restrictive assumptions about what qualifies as philosophical thinking. In the second part of my paper, I turn to the work of Merleau-Ponty with the aim of sketching out some requirements for the possibility of a dialogue between childhood and adulthood. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on childhood and expressive speech are invaluable in the context of P4wC because they invite us 1) to appreciate the alterity of children without reducing them to inferior ‘others’ and 2) to remain alert to the expressivity of children’s speech. (shrink)

The recent news of a 13-year-old Singaporean prodigy graduating from an Australian university has sparked discussion about Singapore’s approach to nurturing exceptional young talents, especially after it was revealed that the boy had been previously rejected by a local university because of his young age. Some have called for an increased flexibility to allow such young people to skip levels in Singapore - parents of intellectually advanced children often cite concerns that their children are disengaged and bored at school. The (...) fear is real - keeping these students at the same level as their peers could potentially squander their potential and impede their growth. Yet, on the flip side, accelerating their academic journey could potentially jeopardise their social and emotional development, which could negatively impact their ability to connect and work well with their peers in their adulthood. Nonetheless, this debate brings to light the need for more effective strategies to meaningfully engage students with diverse abilities and learning paces. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Ancient Greek's tales of cannibalism were not really about cannibalism at all, but about more typically Greek issues (such as the transfer of political power, the guest-host relationship, the initiation of youths into adulthood, and so on). Cannibalism is rather the image used to designate the negative extremes of human behavior as conceived by the Hellenic world: social breakdown, barbarism, reversion to animality, and ultimately, the inability to live under the institution of the polis.

In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) (...) adulthood (2003–present) during which revolutionary research areas such as molecular biology and genomics have achieved a certain level of normalcy—have evolved into a normal science. I will indicate how a psychoanalytical assessment conducted in this manner may help us to interpret and address some of the key normative issues that have been raised with regard to molecular genetics over the years, such as ‘relevance’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘promise management’. (shrink)

In this issue of the Journal, Dundas et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2014;180(2):197–207) apply a hitherto infrequent multilevel analytical approach: multiple membership multiple classification (MMMC) models. Specifically, by adopting a life-course approach, they use a multilevel regression with individuals cross-classified in different contexts (i.e., families, early schools, and neighborhoods) to investigate self-reported health and mental health in adulthood. They provide observational evidence suggesting the relevance of the early family environment for launching public health interventions in childhood in order to (...) improve health in adulthood. In their analyses, the authors distinguish between specific contextual measures (i.e., the association between particular contextual characteristics and individual health) and general contextual measures (i.e., the share of the total interindividual heterogeneity in health that appears at each level). By doing so, they implicitly question the traditional probabilistic risk factor epidemiology including classical “neighborhood effects” studies. In fact, those studies use simple hierarchical structures and disregard the analysis of general contextual measures. The innovative MMMC approach properly responds to the call for a multilevel eco-epidemiology against a widespread probabilistic risk factors epidemiology. The risk factors epidemiology is not only reduced to individual-level analyses, but it also embraces many current “multilevel analyses” that are exclusively focused on analyzing contextual risk factors. (shrink)