For most of us, learning to communicate is as effortless as breathing, and like air, communication skills are elemental; integral to our human existence in this world. Our communicative competencies might be seen as a bridge, facilitating our relationship with the world we are immersed in. But what happens when a child has difficulty learning to communicate effectively? What happens when their most basic messages of hunger or thirst fail to be understood or they are unable to jointly share in (...) everyday experiences of curiosity, joy, frustration, or anger? In these situations, it is the role of the Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) to span the distance between a child and their family, a child and the world, building a route for life experiences and understandings to cross over. An SLP often begins with assessment and after a brief interaction, an SLP may come to a ‘naming’ such as delay or disorder. While the caring professional may intend this naming to be helpful in better understanding a child or facilitating access to valuable support, this naming may also place an immeasurable weight upon the child and their family. The act of naming is therefore an ethical concern. Through observation and interviews, this paper presentation explores SLP’s experiences of coming to a diagnosis through the human lens of phenomenological inquiry. It seeks to enhance thoughtful and conscientious practice by considering the ‘ethical experience of caring responsibility’ as applied to SLP (van Manen, 2016). (shrink)

This study on the Speech Act of Promising builds on an article by Egner which claims that in many African Societies a promise is most often made not to be committed to its content but to be polite and save one's own or the addressee's face. While Egner opts for a Speech Act Theory approach to explain the phenomenon and comes to the conclusion that the speech act of promising may occur minus commitment, thus refuting the standard (...) SAT claim, I have opted to treat the issue within Relevance Theory and claim that a true speech act of promising cannot be without commitment since it is a performative and institutional speech act which has to be committed by its very nature. I have rather explained that the concept PROMISE can be used as an ad hoc concept PROMISE* which conveys a speech act of "saying that" and which is a broadened version of the encoded concept to make commitment optional and include issues of politeness and face saving. While Egner claims that a committed speech act can be determined by linguistic indication most of the time I claim that the intended interpretation falls out naturally from the relevance theoretic comprehension procedure which is: "Follow the path of least effort in determining cognitive effects and stop when your expectation of relevance is fulfilled". Unlike Egner I claim that at the root of using non-committed promises as a face saving device are shame oriented cultures that need these kinds of mechanisms for politeness more than guilt oriented cultures. (shrink)

The first half of Barbaras’s book, which is as lucidly analytical as it is ambitiously interpretive, is an uncovering of the unjustified Husserlian transcendental “objectivism,” Sartrean dialectic, and Cartesian dualism that dominate the early period of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. According to Barbaras, the Phenomenology of Perception is overburdened with the critique of the intellectualist and realist framework of nonphenomenological theories of perception. Merleau-Ponty’s development must be understood as transcending the residue of his former intellectualist point of view deriving from a phenomenological (...) theory of consciousness. His achievement in his later work is to have uncovered the “unthought” in Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, which is precisely the articulation of intersubjectivity that transcends the insular, solipsistic body. What Barbaras traces in comprehensive detail is a teleology that is directed toward an ontological turn based on the primacy of the flesh as that which manifests meaning in the world of perceptual and linguistic sense, even though, as he admits, “We do not have any one text that gathers together the final state of his philosophy”. Nonetheless, according to the teleological reading incited by the later working note according to which the results of Phenomenology of Perception need to be brought to ontological explicitation, Barbaras takes as the basis of the critique the idea that the early work is based on the consciousness-object distinction, later to be overcome in the notions of intertwining and chiasm. Merleau-Ponty later overcomes this separation by disclosing that genesis of the ideality of expressible meaning is based in the perceptible domain itself, but that in turn the perceivable is not to be reduced to the expressible. Through the investigation of expression the being of a “wild world” can be located beyond the earlier opposition between fact and essence, an inheritance of Husserl’s thought the overthrow of which signals the turn toward the Being of the world as rooted in the intertwining of the perceived and expressed sense in speech. Visual perception is conceived simultaneously as “silent logos,” speech, and expression, and ontologically speaking, as the world itself. This entails a radical extension of phenomenality to include that which is invisible in speech and sense. (shrink)

Ovidians continue to be puzzled by the 404-line speech put into the mouth of Pythagoras in book 15 of theMetamorphoses.Questions of literary decorum and quality are insistently raised: how does the philosopher's popular science consort with the predominantly mythological matter of the preceding fourteen books? Do Pythagoras' revelations provide some kind of unifying ground, a ‘key’, for the endless variety of the poem? Can one take the Speech as a serious essay in philosophical didactic, or is it all (...) a mighty spoof, as intentionally laughable, perhaps, as the imperial panegyric with which the narrative of book 15 concludes? Or should we beware of imposing modern tastes on Ovid's original audience, and respect the Hellenistic and Roman predilection for scientific poetry? This article seeks to establish further contexts for the evaluation of the Speech of Pythagoras through a study of Ovid's allusive practice within the Greco-Roman tradition of hexameterepos.The figure who provides a foundation for Ovid's construction of his own poetic genealogy turns out to be the Greek philosophical poet Empedocles. The resulting reflections on Ovid's manipulation of generic conventions may be timely in the light of the recent appearance of sophisticated and fresh approaches to the question of whether theMetamorphosesis, or is not, an epic. (shrink)

Some psychologists argue that in general we self-ascribe characteristics according to others' perceived reactions to us. In illustration michael argyle cites a case involving the self-Ascription of popularity. But popularity is what I here call a 'reaction-Determined characteristic, That is, A characteristic such that certain others' reacting to someone in a certain way is logically sufficient for his having it. The general import of cases involving such characteristics needs careful examination and I argue that in fact argyle's case does not (...) support the general thesis in question. I conclude that 'ordinary language' analysis is important for the evaluation of psychological data. (shrink)

In the article the author’s solution of the inexpressibleness of the speech subject is given taking into account the asymmetry of the linguistic sign - signifying and signified - in relation to the elements of the functional-semantic category of the inexpressible. It was determined that the elements of the field of inexpressible are marked by the nomination of abstract vocabulary of three subclasses: 1) the most general feature, 2) the concept or term 3) the generic notions in relation to (...) the aspectual. On the other hand, the names, which are the surreal constructs of subject, in spite of an empty denotative value are not marked with an inexpressible, expressing a specific holistic image. From the object of speech, it can be said about a single inexpressibleness of the speech object signifying or signified, or the dual inexpressibleness - both signifying and signified. It is determined for the first time that under the dual inexpressibleness the categories denoting imaginary creatures in fiction or extraordinary beings, whose properties are impossible with nothing to relate, are actively being labeled with the elements of the field of inexpressible. The inexpressibleness of signified is conditioned by factors of external or internal linguistics. The factor of the internal linguistics is an aspect of existential inexpressibleness, the inexpressibleness of the subject of speech due to its otherness. This inexpressibleness is marked with the discursive pronouns usage. The factor of external linguistics is a competitive or psychophysical inexpressibleness due to the peculiarities of speech subject. The meaning of inexpressible is transmitted by interrogative sentences with a negative value, the particle if, indivisible combinations like ‘something untold‘. In situations with the meaning of a signifier, in which the speaker actually knows the meaning and only marks this sector as inexpressible - And she was an indescribable beauty - means of transferring of semantics of inexpressible finds centrifugal forces; from the field of inexpressible it migrates to the field of a very high quality concentration. This ‘migration‘ is being observed in the folk formulas, in the formulas of feeling expression. (shrink)

Summary This paper concentrates on the literary sources of the battle of Delion and reopens the debate on the relevance of Euripides’ Supplices for the narrative of this event. Thucydides is read with a particular focus on the speech of Pagondas, which can be understood through the current reconstruction of the history of Boiotia in the latter half of the fifth century BCE. Finally, Diodorus is considered as a useful source for a few pieces of information on the aftermath (...) of the battle that have previously been disregarded. (shrink)

A resurgence of interest in inner speech as a core feature of human experience has not yet coincided with methodological progress in the empirical study of the phenomenon. The present article reports the development and psychometric validation of a novel instrument, the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire , designed to assess the phenomenological properties of inner speech along dimensions of dialogicality, condensed/expanded quality, evaluative/motivational nature, and the extent to which inner speech incorporates other people’s voices. In (...) response to findings that some forms of psychopathology may relate to inner speech, anxiety, depression, and proneness to auditory and visual hallucinations were also assessed. Anxiety, but not depression, was found to be uniquely positively related to both evaluative/motivational inner speech and the presence of other voices in inner speech. Only dialogic inner speech predicted auditory hallucination-proneness, with no inner speech variables predicting levels of visual hallucinations/disturbances. Directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the apophatic tradition, which has been reinvigorated by the post-structural emphasis upon ‘unsaying,’ with the dialogical or speech thinking tradition represented by the Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, and his inimical dialogical partner, teacher and friend, Jewish apostate and post-Nietzchean Christian thinker, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. I trace the tradition back to Hegel’s critique of the dominant metaphysical dualism of his age, while arguing that the key weakness in Hegel’s argument is his privileging of reason above speech, and (...) that his contemporary J.G. Hamman understanding of the role speech in world-making had already supplied the supplement and direction that would be developed by Rosenzweig and Rosenstock-Huessy. I argue that although the apophatic accentuates certain dimensions of our experience that are not insignificant, when those dimensions occlude the sociality of religious practice and narrative, reality becomes mystified, as our more mundane reality, which is the very reality we live and die within, is relegated to something secondary and relatively unimportant, in extreme cases a kind of unreality. (shrink)

Ovidians continue to be puzzled by the 404-line speech put into the mouth of Pythagoras in book 15 of the Metamorphoses. Questions of literary decorum and quality are insistently raised: how does the philosopher's popular science consort with the predominantly mythological matter of the preceding fourteen books? Do Pythagoras' revelations provide some kind of unifying ground, a ‘key’, for the endless variety of the poem? Can one take the Speech as a serious essay in philosophical didactic, or is (...) it all a mighty spoof, as intentionally laughable, perhaps, as the imperial panegyric with which the narrative of book 15 concludes? Or should we beware of imposing modern tastes on Ovid's original audience, and respect the Hellenistic and Roman predilection for scientific poetry? This article seeks to establish further contexts for the evaluation of the Speech of Pythagoras through a study of Ovid's allusive practice within the Greco-Roman tradition of hexameter epos. The figure who provides a foundation for Ovid's construction of his own poetic genealogy turns out to be the Greek philosophical poet Empedocles. The resulting reflections on Ovid's manipulation of generic conventions may be timely in the light of the recent appearance of sophisticated and fresh approaches to the question of whether the Metamorphoses is, or is not, an epic. (shrink)

Philosophers, political theorists, and the general public are increasingly concerned with the moral complexities of riots, especially those that occur in overtly political circumstances within democratic societies. Many believe the riots can play no constructive role in a democracy, but recently some theorists have argued that riots can be morally justifiable forms of political protest. To adjudicate this important issue, we think a better account is needed of the ways in which riots can be politically communicative, and this paper aims (...) to supply such an account. We start from the assumption that some riots are protests and then use speech-act theory to develop an account of the complex illocutionary logic of riotous protests. We argue that political riots, like all political protests, have a vocative element that is often overlooked. This element is what Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to when he described political riots as “the voice of the unheard” through which rioters demand recognition as equal participants in democratic decision making. An appreciation of the communicative structure of political riots, in particular their vocative dimension, provides a way of understanding the constructive role they can play in democratic deliberation. (shrink)

Much of the most influential free speech scholarship emphasises that ‘political speech’ warrants the very highest standards of protection because of its centrality to self-governance. This central idea mitigates against efforts to justify the regulation of political speech and renders some egregiously offensive or harmful speech worthy of protection from a theoretical perspective. Yet paradoxically, in practice, in many liberal democracies such speech is routinely restricted. In this paper, I develop an argument that is compatible (...) with both the argument from democracy and the notion of political speech, and that can justify the regulation of hate speech, by joining an understanding of the constitutive role of speech in individuals’ lives derived from Nussbaum's capabilities theory with ideas of democratic deliberation and legitimation drawn from a Habermasian framework. This approach attends to the conditions required at an individual level for democratic legitimation to occur at a social level. It permits the development of a robust theoretical justification for the protection of a broad range of speech. It simultaneously provides a guiding framework for regulatory policy designed to ameliorate the effects of, and inhibit the expression of, that speech, which could imperil the conditions required for individuals to develop their own capabilities and which instantiates anti-democratic practice, and thus discourse, preventing the very communications required to perform democracy from being uttered. Thus, my argument also strengthens and transforms the argument from democracy as a justification for free speech protection more generally. (shrink)

This chapter offers an analysis of the speech conditions constitutive for the staging of political disagreement. Rather than seeking to offer an explanation for various situations of protest, however, it aims to identify what, if anything, is unique or peculiar to such modes of address. Drawing on the resources of speech act theory, the chapter suggests a reading of ‘dissensual speech’ as a form of ‘unauthorised’ speech through which the ‘people’ appear, however, evanescently. It analyses the (...) peculiarities of dissensual speech in the following ways: first, in terms of specifying its modes of utterance, which are identified with phatic and agonic modes of address and, second, in terms of its performative attitudes. In analysing the latter, I turn to Foucault’s notion of parrēsiastic speech in order to confront a paradox that arises with my reading of dissensual speech viewed in terms of ‘performatives’, since parrēsia—‘speaking truth to power’—is radically opposed to two fundamental rules that govern performatives and illocutionary forces: that they are conventional and that their enunciator must be authorised to use them. The chapter proposes a resolution to this contradiction by showing that an affinity exists between parrēsiastic speech and dissensual speech insofar as both entail ‘risk’ to the speaker in uttering a truth. The question then is whether it is possible to collectivise that risk, or whether parrēsia necessarily remains the speech of the individual martyr. (shrink)

Scholars employing the work of Plato in business literature have generally focused upon three Socratic dia logues, the Republic, the Laws and the Statesman. These have been obvious choices as each pays particu lar attention to leadership and governance/administration. There are, however, other works of Plato that can also shed light upon our contemporary notions of leadership in organizational life. The Phaedrus is a case in point.1 While not explicitly directed towards the study of leadership, it can be viewed as (...) a dialogue that does offer critical advice to those in positions of authority and power. The purpose of this paper is then to explore the relevance of Phaedrus to contemporary organizational leadership. (shrink)

Many liberal societies are deeply committed to freedom of speech. This commitment is so entrenched that when it seems to come into conflict with other commitments (e.g., gender equality), it is often argued that the commitment to speech must trump the other commitments. In this paper, we argue that a proper understanding of our commitment to free speech requires being clear about what should count as speech for these purposes. On the approach we defend, should (...) get a special, technical sense, different from its ordinary sense. We offer a partial characterization of this technical sense. Finally, we argue that if certain theorists (e.g., MacKinnon) are right about what (some) pornography does, then it should fall outside the scope of the free-speech principle. If so, then contrary to first appearances, pornography may not be a case in which our commitments to freedom and gender equality come into conflict. (shrink)

The point of the present article is to investigate whether the key conceptions of epochē and reduction as found in Husserl's phenomenology can be brought to bear in a fruitful rereading of the speech of Socrates in Plato's Symposium.1 In pursuit of this goal, I will begin by revisiting the traditional reading of this speech in terms of a scala amoris in which the erotic subject is guided from attachment to a series of inferior objects to the Beautiful (...) and Good itself such that the value of all preceding attachments is suspended. The critique that this approach to love instrumentalizes all but the transcendent Good is one that is found both within and without the text. In opposition to this reading, however, I will suggest that Husserl's notions of epochē and reduction enable us to read the speech not as an instrumentalizing scala but in terms of a reflective distance in which our immersion in and with the erotic object is suspended so that we might reappropriate the real meaning of erotic engagement. According to this reading, Plato does not negate the particular or lower forms of eros but reinscribes them with a value derived from their position in relation to the ultimate. The suspension of the lower forms, then, is not final but is merely employed in order to let what occurs in erotic engagement show itself. (shrink)

This book examines the complex relationship between politics and hate speech laws, domestic and international. How do political contexts shape understandings of what hate speech is and how to deal with it? Why do particular states enact hate speech laws and then apply, extend or reform them in the ways they do? What part does hate speech play in international affairs? Why do some but not all states negotiate, agree and ratify international hate speech frameworks (...) or instruments? What are some of the best and worst political arguments for and against hate speech laws? Do political figures have special moral duties to refrain from hate speech? Should the use of hate speech by political figures be protected by parliamentary privilege? Should this sort of hyperpolitical hate speech be subject to the laws of the land, civil and criminal? Or should it instead be handled by parliamentary codes of conduct and procedures or even by political parties themselves? What should the codes of conduct look like? Brown and Sinclair answer these important and overlooked questions on the politics of hate speech laws, providing a substantial body of new evidence, insights, arguments, theories and practical recommendations. The primary focus is on the UK and the US but several other country contexts are also explored and compared in detail, including: Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India, China, Japan, Turkey, Germany, Hungary and Italy. Methodologically, the two authors draw on approaches and concepts from a range of academic disciplines, including: law and legal theory, political theory, applied ethics, political science and sociology, international relations theory and international law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, RhetoricJohn NicholsonPaul MacKendrick. The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, Rhetoric, with the technical assistance of Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. London: Duckworth, 1995. viii + 627 pp. Cloth, £55.Readers familiar with MacKendrick’s 1989 study of The Philosophical Books of Cicero will have an idea what to expect from his new companion work on Cicero’s speeches. It is essentially a factual handbook providing a (...) full and careful summary of the contents of Cicero’s major orations, along with some basic background information and a rhetorical analysis. The treatment is quite detailed so that, despite a length of well over 600 pages, the book covers only half of the fifty-eight extant Ciceronian speeches. Regrettably omitted on account of limitation of space are all the Verrines and all the Philippics, as well as any representatives of the early orations. But otherwise, we get a judicious, well-balanced selection from all rhetorical types, lengths, and audiences.MacKendrick begins in medias res. What he calls chapter 1 is actually only a two-page chronological outline of Cicero’s life, and this is the only preface we get before plunging into the presentation of the first speech (On Pompey’s Command) which comprises chapter 2. It would have been helpful if MacKendrick had begun with some kind of statement about his aims and methods, and perhaps some introduction to the ways and means of classical rhetoric in general, and of Ciceronian oratory in particular. Such preliminaries will be especially missed by neophyte readers who select this book as an introduction to Cicero’s speeches. Otherwise the work is well suited to this audience since MacKendrick takes little for granted, translates into English virtually all the Latin he quotes, and repeatedly defines technical terms.The format of each chapter is strictly uniform, divided into four sections. First comes an outline summarizing in full detail the content of the speech under consideration, with the standard divisions marked off and labeled. (Here alone MacKendrick fails to define rhetorical terminology; structural labels like narratio, partitio, peroratio, etc. are left unexplained.) Second, there comes a section called “Context” succinctly describing the historical background. Third, MacKendrick gives a summary of the legal points raised by each speech, which is kept quite brief, depending largely on the conclusions of standard modern authorities, especially A. H. C. Greenidge’s time-honored Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time (which is unfortunately missing from the intended key reference on 460). The fourth and final section, called “Rhetoric,” is the fullest, and is divided into the subcategories of Word Frequency, Metaphor, and Other Rhetorical Devices.While the first three sections of each chapter merely rehearse basic information in a useful handbook format, it is in the fourth section on rhetoric that we get MacKendrick’s main original contribution, essentially a quantified word study of the speeches. Though he nowhere explicitly declares his analytical strategy, an early note decrying “the shapeless gobbledegook” (460 n. 2) of much [End Page 654] modern criticism reveals his contempt for sloppy subjective evaluation. Accordingly, his own approach here is largely statistical in nature, presumably based on computer-generated tabulations. The preoccupation is with quantitative analysis via word frequency lists and the counting and cataloging of metaphors and various rhetorical figures used by Cicero over the course of his career.MacKendrick first examines the semantic range and varying significance of the most commonly repeated words in each oration, and shows how Cicero manipulates them in different contexts. Personal pronouns usually head the lists, followed by terms such as res publica, urbs, civi[ta]s, consul, senatus, salus, omnis, lex, dignitas, bellum, and populus Romanus.Next he counts and classifies metaphors, a category which he defines very broadly—at times to the point of robbing the term of practical descriptive value inasmuch as extremely common words are analyzed as though poetic figures. For example, the verb fero and its many compounds are considered “metaphors of touch” even in standard idioms such as legem fero, while aequus is called a “metaphor of earth” (a subcategory of “metaphors of nature”), and intellego is called a “metaphor of agriculture” (since it literally means “to glean... (shrink)

This paper defends the knowledge rule of informative speech acts. It is argued that Edward Craig's insightful practical explication of the concept of knowledge can be extended to motivate the knowledge rule. A number of problem cases for the knowledge rule are addressed and accommodated.

Unfortunately, many people today see the regulation of lies, disinformation, hate speech, and fake news as an infringement of free speech, at least when such speech is ‘political,’ despite the damage that such speech can do. But this very protective attitude toward speech rests on a mistaken understanding of the role of free speech in a liberal society. The right to free speech is based on the liberal value of freedom, and as such (...) can be no broader than freedom itself. And freedom has always been subject to reasonable limits in a liberal society. Indeed, while the principles of toleration and neutrality are often cited as supporting a broad interpretation of the right to free speech, they also tell us that certain limits apply to that right. We need not tolerate speech that encourages intolerance, and while government should be neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good, it need not be neutral between reasonable and unreasonable conceptions. These ideas form the framework of liberal society, and as I shall show, also provide a guide for understanding what kind of speech is protected in a liberal society and what it is not. (shrink)

Currently, the most used method to measure brain activity under a non-invasive procedure is the electroencephalogram (EEG). This is because of its high temporal resolution, ease of use, and safety. These signals can be used under a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) framework, which can be implemented to provide a new communication channel to people that are unable to speak due to motor disabilities or other neurological diseases. Nevertheless, EEG-based BCI systems have presented challenges to be implemented in real life situations (...) for imagined speech recognition due to the difficulty to interpret EEG signals because of their low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). As consequence, in order to help the researcher make a wise decision when approaching this problem, we offer a review article that sums the main findings of the most relevant studies on this subject since 2009. This review focuses mainly on the pre-processing, feature extraction, and classification techniques used by several authors, as well as the target vocabulary. Furthermore, we propose ideas that may be useful for future work in order to achieve a practical application of EEG-based BCI systems toward imagined speech decoding. (shrink)

Much of the material MacNeilage cites to support his frame/content theory for the evolution of speech production in humans is not unique to mammals. Parallels can be drawn for comparable evolution of vocal flexibility (specifically the reproduction of human speech) in birds. I describe several such parallels and conclude that MacNeilage's hypotheses may have broader application than he envisioned.

This work analyses the speech-act of arguing as proposed by Linguistic Normative Model of Argumentation (LNMA) with the help of diagrams, examples and basic formalization techniques. The focus is set on one of the most novel issues of LNMA, modal qualification, and the distinction between epistemic and ontological modals. The first conclusion is that employing LNMA in order to analyse and evaluate actual argumentation as it is proposed is too complex to be applied as is. The second conclusion, at (...) a theoretical level, is that the distinction between ontological and epistemic modals is highly problematic in LNMA. (shrink)

A number of studies have shown that phonetic peculiarities, especially at the coarticulation level, exist in the disfluent as well as in the perceptively fluent speech of people who stutter (PWS). However, results from fluent speech are very disparate and not easily interpretable. Are the coarticulatory features observed in fluent speech of PWS a manifestation of the disorder, or rather a compensation for the disorder itself? The purpose of the present study is to investigate the coarticulatory behavior (...) in the fluent speech of PWS in the attempt to answer the question on its symptomatic or adaptive nature. In order to achieve this, we have studied the speech of 21 adult PWS (10 French and 11 Italian) compared to that of 20 fluent adults (10 French and 10 Italian). The participants had to repeat simple CV syllables in short carrier sentences, where C = /b, d, g/ and V = /a, i, u/. Crucially, this repetition task was performed in order to compare fluent speech coarticulation of PWS to that of PWNS, and to compare the coarticulation of PWS under a condition with normal auditory feedback (NAF) and under a fluency-enhancing condition due to an altered auditory feedback (AAF). This is the first study, to our knowledge, to investigate the coarticulation behavior under AAF. The degree of coarticulation was measured by means of the Locus Equations (LE). The coarticulation degree observed in fluent PWS speech is lower than that of the PWNS, and, more importantly, in AAF condition, PWS coarticulation appears even weaker than in the NAF condition. The results allow to interpret the lower degree of coarticulation found in fluent speech of PWS under NAF condition as a compensation for the disorder, based on the fact that PWS’s coarticulation is weakening in fluency-enhancing conditions, further away from the degree of coarticulation observed in PWNS. Since a lower degree of coarticulation is associated to a greater separation between the places of articulation of the consonant and the vowel, these results are compatible with the hypothesis that larger articulatory movements could be responsible for the stabilization of the PWS speech motor system, increasing the kinesthetic feedback from the effector system. This interpretation shares with a number of relatively recent proposal the idea that stuttering derives from an impaired feedforward (open-loop) control system, which makes PWS rely more heavily on a feedback-based (closed loop) motor control strategy. (shrink)

This review article summarizes various functions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that are related to language processing. To this end, its connectivity with the left-dominant perisylvian language network was considered, as well as its interaction with other functional networks that, directly or indirectly, contribute to language processing. Language-related functions of the DLPFC comprise various aspects of pragmatic processing such as discourse management, integration of prosody, interpretation of nonliteral meanings, inference making, ambiguity resolution, and error repair. Neurophysiologically, the DLPFC seems to (...) be a key region for implementing functional connectivity between the language network and other functional networks, including cortico-cortical as well as subcortical circuits. Considering clinical aspects, damage to the DLPFC causes psychiatric communication deficits rather than typical aphasic language syndromes. Although the number of well-controlled studies on DLPFC language functions is still limited, the DLPFC might be an important target region for the treatment of pragmatic language disorders. (shrink)

Gaining a high level of proficiency is the ultimate aspiration of all language learners, and the use of apology and politeness strategies is consistently associated with the levels of language proficiency. Owing to the significance of speech acts, politeness strategies, and level of proficiency, this study aimed to investigate the realization of apology speech acts and politeness strategies among Iranian EFL learners to examine and compare the lower-intermediate and advanced learners’ use of apology and politeness strategies. To achieve (...) this goal, 320 learners were selected out of 390 EFL learners who took a test of English language proficiency and were then divided into lower-intermediate and advanced levels. The findings of the study revealed significant differences between lower-intermediate and advanced Iranian EFL learners in the realization of the speech act of apology and politeness strategies. Advanced learners preferred to use more indirect and complicated forms of apology speech acts and tended to apply negative politeness and off-record strategies more than the lower-intermediate learners did. However, lower-intermediate learners preferred to use simple and more direct forms of apology and politeness strategies. It can be concluded that as learners increase their knowledge in the target language, and as their interlanguages get closer to the target language, they tend to apply more complicated and native-like speech acts and strategies . (shrink)

In this book, David McNeill illuminates Plato’s distinctive approach to philosophy by examining how his literary portrayal of Socrates manifests an essential interdependence between philosophic and ethical inquiry. In particular, McNeill demonstrates how Socrates’s confrontation with profound ethical questions about his public philosophic activity is the key to understanding the distinctively mimetic, dialogic, and reflexive character of Socratic philosophy. Taking a cue from Nietzsche’s account of “the problem of Socrates,” McNeill shows how the questions Nietzsche raises are questions that, in (...) Plato's depiction, Socrates was aware of and responded to. McNeill also shows how the Republic provides a view of Socratic moral psychology that resembles Nietzsche’s account of human psychology: it deals with the internalized ethical narratives and justificatory schemes through which human beings orient themselves to their world. McNeill argues that this moral psychology not only determines Socrates’s explicit account of different character types and political regimes but also crucially informs his dialectical engagements with his various interlocutors in the dialogues. In addition to contributing a unique perspective to current debates about Socrates’s philosophic methods and the significance of the literary character of Plato’s dialogues, the book offers a far-reaching interpretation of Plato’s presentation of the theoretical and practical activities of the fifth-century Sophists. And in showing how Plato responds to “modern” theoretical challenges, McNeill provides new evidence to question standard views of the differences between ancient and modern conceptions of the self, society, and nature. (shrink)

Although interpretivists are right to give inner speech a central role in generating self-knowledge, they mischaracterize the precise nature of this role. Inner speech is fundamentally an action, a form of speech, and provides us with self-knowledge not by being something that we perceive (or “quasi-perceive”) and interpret, but by being something that we knowingly do. Once this is appreciated, interpretivism is undermined.

More than half a century ago, the Supreme Court held that the free speech protection of the First Amendment is not limited to verbal communication, but also applies to such expressive conduct as saluting a flag or burning a flag. Even though the Supreme Court has decided a number of important cases involving expressive conduct, the Court has never announced any standards for distinguishing such conduct from conduct without communicative value. The aim of this paper is to examine which (...) conceptions of nonverbal expression underlie judicial decisions on expressive conduct, and to offer an account of expressive conduct grounded in contemporary semantic theory. The central hypothesis of this paper is that significance of expressive conduct can be explained by principles that explain important features of linguistic meaning. I propose an analysis of expressive conduct that takes the meaningfulness of conduct as a function of the action and its consequences in context. I develop a theory of expressive conduct whose underlying conception of expression is based on a number of ideas from speech act theory. These are Grice's account of nonnatural meaning, Austin's theory of illocutionary force, and Grice's work on conversational implicature. My analysis understands the meaningfulness of conduct in terms of its relational properties and relevant features of the context upon which illocutionary force, perlocutionary properties and implicature are predicated. The natural and conventional properties of types of conduct, features of the context, and underlying social and cultural presumptions and expectations about human conduct thus play a role in the constitution of symbolic speech. (shrink)

An alternative account of the locus equation phenomenon based on recent theories of speech movement planning is provided. It is similar to Sussman et al.'s account in positing that our productions are tuned to satisfy auditory constraints. It differs by suggesting that the locus equation effect may be an epiphenomenon of a planning process that satisfies simpler auditory constraints.

Several theories propose that one of the core functions of inner speech (IS) is to support subjects in the completion of cognitively effortful tasks, especially those involving executive functions (EF). In this paper we focus on two populations who notoriously encounter difficulties in performing EF tasks, namely, people diagnosed with schizophrenia who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (Sz-AVH) and people within the Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). We focus on these two populations because they represent two different ways in which IS (...) can fail to help in EF tasks, which can be illustrative for other mental conditions. First, we review the main components of EF (Section 1). Then we explain the functions that IS is taken to perform in the domain of EF (Section 2) and review the evidence concerning problems about EF in the two populations of our study: Sz-AVH (Section 3) and ASC (Section 4). After this we further detail our account about what a properly functioning IS can do for both populations and how different IS profiles may impact EF performance: in the case of Sz-AVH, the uncontrolled and intrusive character of IS negatively affects EF performance, whereas in ASC, EF is not sufficiently supported by IS, given the tendency in this population to present a diminished use of IS (Section 5). We finally briefly discuss Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Developmental Language Disorders (DLD). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy and the Language of the People: The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke by Lodi NautaPatrick RysiewLodi Nauta. Philosophy and the Language of the People: The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 275. Hardback, $39.99.What type of language should philosophers use? Granted that such things as clarity and communicative efficacy are desiderata of a good (...) language in which to philosophize, are they best achieved by inventing a specialized language or by sticking to the common language we already possess? It might seem that using familiar terms would be among the nonnegotiable starting points in philosophical theorizing. After all, how else are we to ensure that our theories make and maintain contact with the subjects that prompted us to philosophize in the first place? On reflection, however, perhaps our common language is so beset with defects—imprecision, the encoding of various prejudices, an inability to express certain types of truths, and so on—that philosophers, like specialists in other fields, have no alternative but to devise their own technical language. So, even if we agree that philosophers should use “clean tools,” as J. L. Austin famously put it, that does not settle the question of whether they should adhere to a common language or whether such a language is ill-suited for philosophical purposes.In contemporary analytic circles, the debate just rehearsed is likely to prompt thoughts of the twentieth-century back-and-forth between those who thought that philosophical advancement required developing a logically ideal language (e.g. Russell and Frege) and those who were deeply suspicious of such a project (e.g. Austin and Wittgenstein). But then, contemporary analytic philosophy tends to be pretty ahistorical. And one of the main aims, and most welcome accomplishments, of Lodi Nauta’s Philosophy and the Language of the People is to demonstrate that this type of debate is not a recent phenomenon. In particular, Nauta’s stated goal is to increase awareness of the role that a critique of language—and, in particular, an insistence upon the need to respect common language—played in helping to bring about the erosion and eventual demise of Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy.Of course, Aristotle himself was hardly indifferent to the workings of ordinary language, drawing important lessons from how we use certain words. But neither was he averse to coining new terms when ordinary Greek fell short. The example of Aristotle thus makes it clear that, as Nauta notes (16), in adjudicating between common and technical language there is plenty of room for intermediate positions that do not simply champion one or the other. This general point notwithstanding, attempts to render Aristotle’s ideas in Latin and to capture the subtleties of various proposed additions to the Aristotelean framework historically led to significant increases in the stock of technical terms used to philosophize. With this came the growing sense that philosophy had lost contact with its subject matter and lost track of its proper aim of making sense of the world of everyday experience.As Nauta suggests (4), the concern that philosophy is just so much technical tire-spinning will be all too familiar to contemporary philosophers. Much less familiar, however, is that precisely this was the complaint of many Renaissance humanist and early modern philosophers. Hence the need for Nauta’s book: over eight central chapters—book-ended [End Page 506] by an introduction and conclusion—Nauta recounts the various ways in which an insistence upon the importance of “common language” played destructive and constructive theoretical roles in the writings of a selected range of thinkers.Chapter 1 considers early humanist critiques of scholastic jargon by Francesco Petrarch and Leonardo Bruni. Chapter 2 examines Lorenzo Valla (the subject of Nauta’s previous monograph) and his attempt to cast classical Latin as the natural common language in which learned scholarship should be conducted. Chapters 3–5 survey three humanists who built differently on Valla’s foundation—Giovanni Pontano, via a genealogical approach to language and an emphasis on its role in our affective, social, and cognitive lives; Juan Luis Vives, as part of his wider views on human culture... (shrink)

Action perception and recognition are core abilities fundamental for human social interaction. A parieto-frontal network (the mirror neuron system) matches visually presented biological motion information onto observers' motor representations. This process of matching the actions of others onto our own sensorimotor repertoire is thought to be important for action recognition, providing a non-mediated “motor perception” based on a bidirectional flow of information along the mirror parieto-frontal circuits. State-of-the-art machine learning strategies for hand action identification have shown better performances when sensorimotor (...) data, as opposed to visual information only, are available during learning. As speech is a particular type of action (with acoustic targets), it is expected to activate a mirror neuron mechanism. Indeed, in speech perception, motor centers have been shown to be causally involved in the discrimination of speech sounds. In this paper, we review recent neurophysiological and machine learning-based studies showing (a) the specific contribution of the motor system to speech perception and (b) that automatic phone recognition is significantly improved when motor data are used during training of classifiers (as opposed to learning from purely auditory data). (shrink)

The Coronavirus pandemic has been ongoing for almost two years now. Not only did it surprise the whole world in the initial stages of its occurrence, but also the world left it in shock. Therefore, the instant solution strategies included complete lockdowns in order to prevent the spread of such a disease. However, as the lockdowns lasted longer, it generated negative psychological effects on people globally. This being the case, collective endeavors and efforts were performed, in the hope of (...) achieving a concrete solution in order to overcome the bad repercussions that seemed visible on societal levels, which of course, included religious aspects; and in some cases resulted in social separation as well as a dramatic rise in suicide rates. On the one hand, this caused a retraction from the religion and religiously oriented rituals, but on the other hand, it also made people turn more to religion as it provided a psychological relief from the heavy burdens of the pandemic. These psychological conditions had theological resonances that made already complicated issues even more complex. Among them, the nature of God’s actions and the human position in this matter can be given as examples. This article is an attempt to place and define the issue of the pandemics and plagues from the perspective of Islamic theology, in particular, to shed light on three main points. The first is the problem of pains and aches, and how it was mentioned in theological literaturey and discussed by Islamic theologians (Mutakallimūn), as the issue of pandemics and plagues indisputably fall under this matter. The second point tackles the problem of whether “such calamities as pandemics and plagues come from God's Decree, or not?”. The last point focuses on the issue of fatalism and tries to show whether the de facto acceptance that pandemics are from God’s Decree would require the servant to stop taking measures in response to them. To answer the questions at stake, this paper will focus on four different perspectives of the Mu’tazila, Ash‛arī s, Māturīdis, and Ahl al-Hadīth, by using a selective methodology and focusing on their prominent and pioneering theologians (Mutakallimūn) of these schools. (shrink)

Recent feminist philosophy of language has highlighted the ways that the speech of women can be unjustly impeded, because of the way their gender affects the uptake their speech receives. In this chapter, I explore how similar processes can undermine the speech of a different sort of speaker: Indigenous communities. This involves focusing on Indigeneity rather than gender as the salient social identity, and looking at the ways that group speech, rather than only individual speech, (...) can be unjustly impeded. To do this, I make use of the notion of ‘discursive injustice’ that has been developed by Quill Kukla, and, with reference to three case studies, show how discursive injustice can effectively derail the speech of Indigenous communities. (shrink)

THE TITLE OF THIS PAPER calls for clarification. Not only are there several senses in which something may be said to "be," there are also many nuances to the terms "categorial" and "intuition." Taking Aristotle as a guide, let us focus upon the primary sense of "being," that is, substance considered both as first substance and second substance. We may then take "categorial" as referring to what Aristotle calls the "figures of predication," the ways in which predicates characterize subjects, (...) indicating "what" the subject is, its quality, quantity, relation, its "where," its "when," and so forth. The term "intuition" expresses something too primitive to be defined, but Edmund Husserl's metaphorical contrast between the "emptiness" of thought and speech and the "fullness" of intuition successfully highlights its essential characteristic. A couple of examples should suffice to grasp the import of Husserl's distinction. Consider the difference, for instance, between first entertaining vague plans of visiting a foreign city and then experiencing the fulfillment of actually strolling through its streets, or the difference between first reading a manual of instructions for performing some task and then actually executing the task skillfully. Taking Husserl as a guide, let us therefore characterize intuition broadly as the presentation of something in its fullness, as opposed to thinking or talking about it in an empty way. Finally, combining Husserlian and Aristotelian terminologies, we may describe categorial intuition as the presentation of figures of predication. Rather than presenting some particular thing, say a red chair, categorial intuition presents the chair's being red, the red quality's belonging to the chair. In short, categorial intuition makes present the modes of presentation of things. (shrink)

This article investigates the performative nature of forensic dialogue as a literary device in the story of Susanna. Whilst Susanna scholars have brought significant contributions in recent years, this article contends that there has never been a special focus on the performative function of forensic dialogue in Susanna. This aspect should be explored further as it can contribute to how the story can be read, interpreted and applied in contemporary society. The article suggests that the forensic dialogue in Susanna is (...) possibly an intentional literary strategy by the implied author and has a performative function to benefit the implied reader. This means that the implied author uses forensic dialogue to invite participation from the reader. From a speech act interpretive angle, this article attempts to prove this claim by exploring the aforementioned literary device in Susanna and demonstrating its performative nature aimed at the reader. Contribution: The article’s main contribution rests on its unique approach to investigating the performative nature of forensic dynamics in Susanna. This technique of exploring narrative texts does also advance the Susanna scholarship, in that it offers a reader yet another way of reading, interpreting and applying the story to the contemporary society. (shrink)

The evaluation of speeches in ancient histories by modern scholars is very varied. Tarn opened his discussion of ‘The speeches in Arrian’ with the following words:Speaking generally, one expects a speech in any ancient historian to be a fabrication, either composed by the historian himself or by a predecessor, or else some exercise from one of the schools or rhetoric which he had adopted.On the other hand, according to Fornara, ‘the fact does not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated (...) that the ancients unfailingly endorsed the convention that speeches must be reported accurately’. When Fornara made a generalization, he wrote as follows:The ancients had unanimously adopted the Thucydidean principle of honest reporting of the things that were said as well as the things that were done. (shrink)

Pons Asinorum Or The Future of Nonsense George Edinger and E J C Neep Originally published in 1929. "A most entertaining essay, rich in quotation from the old masters of clownship’s craft." Saturday Review The author maintains that true nonsense must be aimless humour – the humour that makes fun as opposed to the humour that makes fun of something. 88pp Democritus Or The Future of Laughter Gerald Gould Originally published in 1929. "Democritus is bound to be among the favourites (...) of the series. Gould’s humour glances at history, morality, and humanity…wise and witty writing." Observer Democritus is intended to illustrate the prevailing fashion in laughter and on the basis of historical and philosophical principles to forecast the humour of the future. 90pp Mrs Fisher Or The Future of Humour Robert Graves Originally published in 1928 "Mr Graves is the best man who could have been chosen to write on this subject." Daily Express "…perfectly irresponsible, as a joker should be." The Times This volume analyzes humour with a solemnity which becomes almost nightmarish. 90pp Babel Or the Past, Present and Future of Human Speech Richard Paget Originally published in 1930. "…stimulating and absorbing." Journal of Education This volume discusses human speech and treats it as a growth which must be tamed if it is to fulfil its highest purpose as a symbolism for human thought. 86pp. (shrink)

Quotatives have been studied extensively in the language of teenagers in recent years as they present distinctive features of their own that make them different in part from those used by adults in mainstream English and Spanish. However, zero quoting has not received all the attention it certainly deserves as it has not been fully probed in terms of its discourse and pragmatic functions. This corpus-based study is focused on the strategies used by British and Spanish teenagers to introduce constructed (...) dialogue without the use of a particular marked and an explicit quotative form. The results indicate that the absence of quotatives is not casual; there are some linguistic contexts that favor the existence of this type of quotatives, namely non-lexicalized and sound words, and the dramatic recreation of situations where the speaker perform new voices. The lack of quotatives also serves to involve the interlocutor more directly and in a higher degree in what is being told, and gives more self-assurance to the narrator. These tendencies apply equally to English and Spanish. The study of null/zero quotatives should go then beyond the simple reporting of an absence of a verbal mark, and should address pragmatic and interpersonal factors closely associated with the context where they occur and with the speaker’s attitude and communicative intention and purpose. (shrink)

People frequently report that, at times, their thought has a vocal character. Thinking commonly appears to be accompanied or constituted by silently ‘talking’ to oneself in inner speech. In this paper, we explore the specifically epistemic role of inner speech in conscious reasoning. A plausible position—but one I argue is ultimately wrong—is that inner speech plays asolelyfacilitative role that is exhausted by (i) serving as the vehicle of representation for conscious reasoning, and/or (ii) allowing one to focus (...) on certain types of objects or relations, e.g., causal relations, abstracta, counterfactuals, etc., or to consciously entertain structured propositional contents that it would be hard (or impossible) to focus on or entertain with representations in other (e.g., imagistic) formats. According to this position, inner speech doesn't figure as a justificatory element in our reasoning or as the partial epistemic basis of our conclusions—it merely facilitates reasoning through (i) and/or (ii). In contrast to the view that inner speech is amerefacilitator, I establish that (outside of potentially playing roles (i) and/or (ii)) the language we use itself serves as a crucial source of information in reasoning. In other words, we reason from propositions about the language we use in inner speech as opposed to exclusively reasoning from the semantic contents of the speech. My conclusion follows from how we use language as a cognitive tool to keep track of information, e.g., the contents of premises, lemmas, previous reasoning results, etc., in reasoning. (shrink)

The article made an attempt to understand the nature of jus, going from an analysis of its genesis and the primary simplest forms, the formation of which constituted the transition from the pre-social to the social world. In line with the hypothesis of Levi-Strauss of the beginning of society, the author considers dual-group unions to be the first social formations, halfs of which, in relation to and through each other, acquired the quality of historically original subjects of jus – the (...) space of freedom jointly built by them, based on the consensus of non-violence of the parties, rational coordination of wills and judicial resolution of conflicts. Subsequent social evolution gives rise to fundamentally new forms of both deploying the essence of jus and obstructing it. Among the latter, the most important is the state that does not need coordination and is able to impose its will on so­ciety by violence. History develops mechanisms for curbing state authority by jus, based on its high axiological status, which ensures the readiness of society to defend legal val­ues, among which freedom of speech plays a key role, which, firstly, acts as the main form of concordance of wills in society that forms the jus, and secondly, it allows contin­uous control over the state and in the threat of its going beyond the framework of the jus to initiate social activity that prevents this. (shrink)

Inner speech has been shown to vary in form along several dimensions. Along condensation, condensed inner speech forms have been described, that are supposed to be deprived of acoustic, phonological and even syntactic qualities. Expanded forms, on the other extreme, display articulatory and auditory properties. Along dialogality, inner speech can be monologal, when we engage in internal soliloquy, or dialogal, when we recall past conversations or imagine future dialogs involving our own voice as well as that of (...) others addressing us. Along intentionality, it can be intentional (when we deliberately rehearse material in short-term memory) or it can arise unintentionally (during mind wandering). We introduce the ConDialInt model, a neurocognitive predictive control model of inner speech that accounts for its varieties along these three dimensions. ConDialInt spells out the condensation dimension by including inhibitory control at the conceptualization, formulation or articulatory planning stage. It accounts for dialogality, by assuming internal model adaptations and by speculating on neural processes underlying perspective switching. It explains the differences between intentional and spontaneous varieties in terms of monitoring. We present an fMRI study in which we probed varieties of inner speech along dialogality and intentionality, to examine the validity of the neuroanatomical correlates posited in ConDialInt. Condensation was also informally tackled. Our data support the hypothesis that expanded inner speech recruits speech production processes down to articulatory planning, resulting in a predicted signal, the inner voice, with auditory qualities. Along dialogality, covertly using an avatar’s voice resulted in the activation of right hemisphere homologs of the regions involved in internal own-voice soliloquy and in reduced cerebellar activation, consistent with internal model adaptation. Switching from first-person to third-person perspective resulted in activations in precuneus and parietal lobules. Along intentionality, compared with intentional inner speech, mind wandering with inner speech episodes was associated with greater bilateral inferior frontal activation and decreased activation in left temporal regions. This is consistent with the reported subjective evanescence and presumably reflects condensation processes. Our results provide neuroanatomical evidence compatible with predictive control and in favor of the assumptions made in the ConDialInt model. (shrink)

This chapter offers an analysis of the speech conditions constitutive for the staging of political disagreement. Rather than seeking to offer an explanation for various situations of protest, however, it aims to identify what, if anything, is unique or peculiar to such modes of address. Drawing on the resources of speech act theory, the chapter suggests a reading of ‘dissensual speech’ as a form of ‘unauthorised’ speech through which the ‘people’ appear, however, evanescently. It analyses the (...) peculiarities of dissensual speech in the following ways: first, in terms of specifying its modes of utterance, which are identified with phatic and agonic modes of address and, second, in terms of its performative attitudes. In analysing the latter, I turn to Foucault’s notion of parrēsiastic speech in order to confront a paradox that arises with my reading of dissensual speech viewed in terms of ‘performatives’, since parrēsia—‘speaking truth to power’—is radically opposed to two fundamental rules that govern performatives and illocutionary forces: that they are conventional and that their enunciator must be authorised to use them. The chapter proposes a resolution to this contradiction by showing that an affinity exists between parrēsiastic speech and dissensual speech insofar as both entail ‘risk’ to the speaker in uttering a truth. The question then is whether it is possible to collectivise that risk, or whether parrēsia necessarily remains the speech of the individual martyr. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of language. Although he has dedicated a significant part of his work to the study of language and even though his analysis of language has been extensively discussed in the literature, almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Bourdieu’s account of language is based on a number of ontological presuppositions, that is, on a set of universal assumptions about the very nature of language. (...) This article aims to fill this gap in the literature by offering a detailed overview of 10 key features which, from a Bourdieusian point of view, can be regarded as inherent in language. On the basis of this enquiry, the study seeks to demonstrate that—contrary to common belief—there is not only a Bourdieusian sociology of language but also a Bourdieusian philosophy of language, which provides a useful theoretical framework for examining the unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on the flaws and limitations of Bourdieu’s approach to language. (shrink)

Engaging with the literature on transformative conceptions of rationality, I argue for the following position on the way reason transforms human cognition: when the capacity for knowing that one ought to do something is directed at one's own speech acts, an initially domain‐specific and practical grasp of genus/species relations – manifest in the ability to select among the various permitted ways to do as one judges one ought – becomes a mechanism through which the reflective study of genus/species relations (...) hones the domain‐general classificatory abilities that accompany adult human language use. In this fashion, our instinctive behaviors may be transformed: we might cease to respond to events simply as (e.g.) fearful or enraging, recognize these motivations as cases of cowardice and recklessness, and begin to treat them as opportunities for courage and restraint. (shrink)

Contemporary trends in politics and historical interpretation have raised the specter of the end of philosophy. In the post-philosophical era, every attempt to explain or make sense of the world would be considered no more than a particular myth or worldview, possessing relative rather than universal validity. Arguing that philosophy fails to transcend the relativity of worldviews entails rejecting Hegel’s attempt to complete, or comprehend absolutely, the sense of history via his logical interpretation of Christ. The post-Hegelian loss of faith (...) in the human ability to achieve an absolutely reasonable or objective understanding of our world can be seen as requiring a turn to Christianity to correct the deficiencies of objective understanding. However, the Hegelian logical interpretation of Christ may be needed to protect Christian faith against the same historicism that is so corrosive of faith in philosophy. Does the middle or mediating ground between Christianity and its critics disintegrate, leaving the vacuum of nihil absolutum, if it is not held together by the Hegelian science of logic? Such a vacuum would be filled by a will to the power of world making, which some people call divine and others insist is purely human. But giving up Hegel might mean giving up the possibility of a reasoned mediation of this dispute. Without reason, or on faith, one could leap in countless different directions and embrace countless different worldviews—until one simply wearied of the effort and resigned to the credo of nothingness. (shrink)

French theorist Luce Irigaray has become one of the twentieth century's most influential feminist thinkers. Among her many writings are three books (with a projected fourth) in which she challenges the Western tradition's construals of human beings' relations to the four elements--earth, air, fire, and water--and to nature. In answer to Heidegger's undoing of Western metaphysics as a "forgetting of Being," Irigaray seeks in this work to begin to think out the Being of sexedness and the sexedness of (...) Being. This volume is the first English translation of L'oubli de l'air chez Martin Heidegger (1983). In this complex, lyrical, meditative engagement with the later work of the eminent German philosopher, Irigaray critiques Heidegger's emphasis on the element of earth as the ground of life and speech and his "oblivion" or forgetting of air. With the other volumes (Elemental Passions and Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche) in Irigaray's "elemental" series, The Forgetting of Air offers a fundamental rereading of basic tenets in Western metaphysics. And with its emphasis on dwelling and human habitation, it will be important reading not only in the humanities but also in architecture and the environmental sciences. (shrink)

Recently, several philosophers have recast feminist arguments against pornography in terms of Speech Act Theory. In particular, they have considered the ways in which the illocutionary force of pornographic speech serves to set the conventions of sexual discourse while simultaneously silencing the speech of women, especially during unwanted sexual encounters. Yet, this raises serious questions as to how pornographers could (i) be authorities in the language game of sex, and (ii) set the conventions for sexual discourse - (...) questions which these speech act-theoretic arguments against pornography have thus far failed to adequately answer. I fill in this gap of the argumentation by demonstrating that there are fairly weak standards for who counts as an authority or convention-setter in sexual discourse. With this analysis of the underpinnings of a speech act analysis of pornography in mind, I discuss a range of possible objections. I conclude that (i) the endorsement of censorship by a speech act analysis of pornography competes with its commitment to the conventionality of speech acts, and, more damningly, that (ii), recasting anti-pornography arguments in terms of linguistic conventions risks an unwitting defence of a rapist's lack of mens rea - an intolerable result; and yet resisting this conclusion requires that one back away from the original claim to women's voices being 'silenced'. (shrink)