The papers by Mele, Randels, and Schrag call attention to the proper work that the concept of loyalty can perform. All threeauthors argue that loyalty is not taken seriously enough in modern corporations. As Mele, Randels, and Schrag independently ascribespecial status to the concept of loyalty, their analyses converge along numerous conceptual margins. Along these margins, a singularconception of loyalty comes into focus. Along these margins, we can see Simultaneously why each author assigns extraordinary status to loyalty and why, (...) ironically, each turns the special concept of loyalty over to the service of conventional management thinking. Mele,Randels, and Schrag leave it for us to ponder whether this ironic twist is unique to the concept of loyalty. (shrink)

The article examines reports of natural disasters in the 18th century Austrian newspaper "Wienerisches Diarium" to gain insights into how people captured the extraordinary sensory experiences of such events in written form. By analysing a digitised corpus of over 300 newspaper issues, the study identifies 302 text passages referring to natural disasters, among them 285 news reports, and explores textual traces of (multi)sensuality present within this material. The close reading and semantic annotation of the textual findings reveals that comparisons (...) to familiar sensations are commonly used to convey the sensory experiences of natural disasters, allowing readers to (better) relate to and understand the extreme events. At the same time, touch and vision constitute the most frequently mentioned senses, while smell and taste only play a minor role in early modern disaster depiction. In addition, the study finds that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more likely to include multisensory descriptions compared to other types of disasters. These and further findings shed light on when and how (multi)sensory impressions of disasters were conveyed in written form within early modern news. (shrink)

Kevin O’Rourke argues that Aquinas’s concept of a “spiritual goal of life,” to which Pius XII refers in his famous allocution of 1957, serves as a basis for declaring that certain treatments, such as artificial nutrition and hydration [ANH] for patients in a persistent vegetative state [PVS], are “extraordinary” and thus morally optional. I examine whether O’Rourke properly interprets Aquinas’s concept in this regard and conclude that he is correct in his assessment and that ANH is properly understood, in (...) typical and properly diagnosed cases of PVS, as extraordinary treatment the use of which is not morally obligatory. (shrink)

Two prominent questions come to mind when I think of readers likely to pick up a book with this title. Those attracted to a study of miracles will probably ask, "How can miracles be 'everyday'?" And those who eagerly anticipate Donald Crosby unfolding another dimension of his religious naturalism might well ask, "Why do we still need to be talking about 'miracles'?" In The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, Crosby weaves a gracious and expansive argument that brings both kinds of (...) readers to the same existential meeting place, a space where we take time to stand together in awe and wonder at the inexplicable mysteries of even the most seemingly mundane aspects of our daily lives—mysteries that draw us irresistibly... (shrink)

The terms ordinary and extraordinary, when employed in the medical setting, quite often appear vacuous to the point of justifying their elimination. This appraisal appears to be based upon the belief that certain procedures are ordinary and others are extraordinary independent of the particular factors of the clinical setting. This belief may be shown mistaken once it is realized that the conditions sufficient for determining whether a medical procedure is ordinary or extraordinary are themselves specifiable only within (...) the clinical context. Unfortunately, even if the terms may be meaningfully employed, the two classes are not comprehensive. Thus, it is suggested that some medical procedures will prove recalcitrant to the ordinary-extraordinary classification; and the values inherent in the classification will prove inappropriate. (shrink)

Untreated depression at the end of life may affect treatment and raise ethical concerns. Patients with a major depressive disorder may desire a hastened death, may refuse reasonable and beneficial medical care, or may present with cognitive distortions that hinder their ability to make decisions about care. Treating depression can avert or minimize these problems in many cases. For a patient who does not respond to antidepressant medications and other interventions, however, the unrelieved depression could tip the balance and make (...) additional medical treatments burdensome. In such cases, a proposed medical treatment might be considered extraordinary. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14.4 : 697–710. (shrink)

In this chapter we offer a reflection on the notion of sample representativeness from an interpretivist-qualitative perspective. Specifically we are looking into the idea of learning about a phenomenon through examining extraordinary individuals characterized by that phenomenon; to describe them we use the term ‘extraordinary’ as a noun, thereby building on Howard Gardner’s notion of ‘extraordinary minds’ (Gardner, 1997). We are looking at the ‘extraordinary’ in their professional socio-historical contexts, as the phenomena we are interested in (...) cannot be divorced from the contexts in which they are embedded. In this particular book chapter we are interested in the phenomenon of creativity, and the two research projects on which we base our argument are also concerned with creativity. However, we do not see any reason why similar considerations could not be made in other areas – but we do not suggest that a simple generalizability is possible. -/- The basis of our reflection are two research projects we have done in the past: In the first one, we conducted ‘insider interviews’ (the second-named author used to be a chef in Michelin-starred restaurants) with 18 extraordinary chefs in order to gain a better understanding of how creativity manifests itself socio-culturally in the culinary domain (Cousins, O’Gorman, & Stierand, 2010; Stierand, 2015; Stierand & Dörfler, 2012b, 2016; Stierand, Dörfler, & MacBryde, 2014; Stierand & Lynch, 2008). In the second one, we interviewed 20 extraordinary scientists, including 17 Nobel Laureates in order to gain a better understanding of cognitive complexity and how cognitive complexity is manifested in the socio-cultural acceptance of creative outcomes in the scientific world (Dörfler & Eden, 2014a, 2014b, 2017). -/- We have presented our research at various conferences, and, perhaps as we were so passionate about it, we have received a great deal of interest from others, mainly PhD students and early career researchers, who were keen to undertake similar research projects. But, although we believe that the methodological journey we have taken can be an excellent path to very interesting and meaningful research, we cannot wholeheartedly recommend it to junior colleagues, knowing the difficulties they will face when trying to justify their findings and methodological choices and the uncertain profits in the form of publication of the results (see an excellent overview of the difficulties and profits in Lebuda, 2014). We made our initial methodological choices, i.e. interviewing extraordinary chefs and scientists, purely intuitively that is, we just knew that the insights we could gain from these people would potentially lead to excellent findings. However, this is not an acceptable justification in the academic world. Therefore, we started to develop a framework for conducting this type of research, but we are not quite there yet. This reflection chapter is a midway point for taking stock of the convincing arguments we have developed over time and of the problems we still need to solve. (shrink)

It seems fairly straightforward to describe what should and should not count as a disability into two separate and opposing categories. In this paper we will challenge this assumption and critically reflect on the narrow relations between the concepts of 'talent' and 'disability'. We further relate such matters of terminology and classification to issues of justice in what is conceived of as disability sport. Do current systems of classification do justice to the performances of disabled athletes? Is the organisation of (...) a just and fair competition similar for abled as it is for disabled sport? Two cases (of Francesco Lentini and Oscar Pistorius) will be explored to further illustrate the complexities of these questions, in particular when related to notions of normality and extraordinary performances. (shrink)

This book explores the aesthetics of the objects and environments we encounter in daily life. Thomas Leddy stresses the close relationship between everyday aesthetics and the aesthetics of art, but places special emphasis on neglected aesthetic terms such as ‘neat,’ ‘messy,’ ‘pretty,’ ‘lovely,’ ‘cute,’ and ‘pleasant.’ The author advances a general theory of aesthetic experience that can account for our appreciation of art, nature, and the everyday.

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the history of intellectual property in Great Britain, very little has been said about the history of intellectual property law in the British colonies. This Article attempts an overview, focusing on the nineteenth century. The author argues that there was no apparent imperial strategy as to the development of colonial intellectual property laws, and that, as a consequence wide variations existed between the laws operative in Britain and the colonies. One (...) exception to this picture existed in relation to literary copyright, where, for reasons that were never clearly articulated, British law had been extended to its colonies from 1814. The overall picture was otherwise one of "legal fecundity," with capacity for variation and experiment by the colonial legislatures constrained more by internalized notions of what was appropriate than by formal, external, limitations imposed from Britain. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared a growing desire both in Great Britain, and amongst many of the colonies and self-governing dominions, for a greater level of uniformity. (shrink)

In an addendum to Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke argues against his earlier view that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person. In this paper, I suggest a nonstandard interpretation of the addendum. A key feature of this non-standard interpretation is that it attempts to make sense of why Kripke would be rejecting the view that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person without asserting that it is not the case that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person.

Mankind have lamented for their deaths since their existence, wept for them and written poems and proses to utter their sorrows. Thus, history of lamenting goes back as far as the pain and tragedies occurring in their lives. Although it is challenging to determine the date of first elegy poem, it can be said that elegiac is one of the oldest genres among the poems. Sadness and joy are the two important emotions in human nature. Humans mostly experience two feelings (...) separately; yet sometimes together at the same time. It is possible to see reflections of this in some literary works. During the Umayyad period, the transformation of the caliphate into a structure inherited from father to son brought about some changes and transformations in Arabic literature and led to the birth of new literary genres. One of these types, elegy, is to express condolence and celebration at the same time, that is, both sadness and joy, in literary works. In Arabic literature, this type of elegy is considered a type of iftinā, the art of expressing two opposing themes at the same time. Although the art of iftinān had existed at a conceptual level before, it was first brought into the literature terminologically by Ibn Abi al-Isba'. These impressive examples, which constitute the type of elegy in question and are generally expressed by people with quick wit, are worth examining in many respects, thanks to their high literary quality. Literary material on the subject, which has an extraordinary theme due to sadness and joy being expressed together, is scattered in the sources. As far as we can determine from the examples that have survived so far, the addressees of this art are generally the administrative groups. When the examples in the sources are examined, it is seen that condolence and celebration are combined into a single expression on various occasions. These situations, which require mastery and quick wit in terms of language and literature, offer poets and writers the opportunity to display their skills and talents. This phenomenon, which is mostly directed to caliphs, princes, emirs and other statesmen, takes place in palace circles. There is different information in the sources about who was the first person to apply this art, emerging during the Umayyad period, in poetry and prose. In this study, samples of the relevant species found scattered in the sources will be analyzed. The main goal of the article is to analyze from various perspectives these examples in poetry and prose form, where condolences and congratulations, which are a special theme in classical Arabic literature, are expressed together. The importance of this genre, which emerged during the Umayyad period and transformed into a literary structure with its own characteristics in terms of form and content, will be emphasized through examples and its place in Arabic literature will be tried to be revealed. The absence of a separate study on the subject reveals the originality of the article and is thought to contribute to the field in terms of understanding and evaluating the development of the literary genre in question. The study will be conducted based on document analysis, which is one of the qualitative research methods. (shrink)

Esej pojednává o koncepci poznání, již zformuloval významný český filosof a ekonom Karel Engliš (1880-1961) a nejuceleněji uložil do monumentálního spisu Velká logika. Toto teprve nyní publikované dílo obsahuje enormně bohatý materiál, a proto se přítomná studie soustředila na několik myšlenkových motivů, jejichž prostřednictvím lze konkrétně posoudit přínos i možnosti Englišova konceptu tří myšlenkových řádů (ontologicko-kauzálního, teleologického a normologického). Jsou to témata lidské vůle a možné svobody, rozlišení logických a empirických poznávacích prostředků a problém účelnosti a užitečností poznání. Tyto tematické (...) okruhy bylo možno zvažovat u Englišovy kritiky představitelů různých filosofických směrů – osvícence Voltaira, voluntaristy Schopenhauera a pragmatisty W. Jamese. Konfrontace jejich názorů s koncepcí myšlenkových řádů dokládá možné kritické použití Englišovy optiky. (shrink)

Existing theory has not documented the potential benefits of facing the challenges of underdog entrepreneurs, who may succeed unexpectedly. This research explains why, and under what circumstances, the underdog status of entrepreneurs can promote entrepreneurial success rather than just hinder it. We predict that the underdog effect has the potential to boost entrepreneurial resource efficiency when entrepreneurs hold an incremental theory, enter a low-barrier industry, and are in a favorable business environment. Study 1 provides support for the positive relationship between (...) underdog status and resource efficiency through an ordinary least squares regression analysis, which is accompanied by a moderating effect of the implicit theory, industry context, and business environment. The data was obtained from two nationwide surveys. By extending a qualitative comparative analysis of multiple case studies, Study 2 reveals support for a synergistic effect of the above factors. Our research results examine the assumption that perceiving underdog status is detrimental and offer meaningful insights into why and when underdog entrepreneurs have good performance in entrepreneurial resource efficiency. We provide a psychological and behavioral explanation for the underdog effect, extending the underdog effect theory to the field of entrepreneurship for the first time from the perspective of the actors. Finally, theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed by indicating the limitations of the research. (shrink)

In this article I will present two arguments. First, the argument that the time travel television series historically provided viewers with a spectacular temporal and spatial alternative to the routine of everyday life, the regulation of television scheduling, and the small-world confines of domestic subjectivity. Taking the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, predominantly in a UK viewing environment, I will suggest that the special effect rendering of the time travel sequence expanded the viewer’s material universe, and affectively wrenched the (...) television set free from the strictures of scheduling and realist programming. Further, the time travel series readily and regularly took the domestic space, the ordinary day and the everyman/person into awesome environments and situations that suggested alternative lifestyles and behaviours, with a different existential tempo and rhythm. At a narrative, thematic, meta-textual, and aesthetically spectacular level, television time travel saw to the wonderful end of the working day. Case studies include Sapphire and Steal, Dr Who, and Quantum Leap. Second, the article will argue that rather than the contemporary time travel television series being an extraordinary alternative to ordinary life, they instead articulate convergence culture, deregulation, multiple channel viewing, and time-shift culture where there is no such thing as an ordinary working day or domestic viewing context. (shrink)

Summary Leading scholars offer perspectives from the philosophy of science on the crisis in psychiatric research that exploded after the publication of DSM-5. -/- Psychiatry and mental health research is in crisis, with tensions between psychiatry's clinical and research aims and controversies over diagnosis, treatment, and scientific constructs for studying mental disorders. At the center of these controversies is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which—especially after the publication of DSM-5—many have found seriously flawed as a guide (...) for research. This book addresses the crisis and the associated “extraordinary science” (Thomas Kuhn's term for scientific research during a state of crisis) from the perspective of philosophy of science. The goal is to help reconcile the competing claims of science and phenomenology within psychiatry and to offer new insights for the philosophy of science. -/- The contributors discuss the epistemological origins of the current crisis, the nature of evidence in psychiatric research, and the National Institute for Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria project. They consider particular research practices in psychiatry—computational, personalized, mechanistic, and user-led—and the specific categories of schizophrenia, depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Finally, they examine the DSM's dubious practice of pathologizing normality. (shrink)

Our understanding of the impact of gender on refugee determination has evolved greatly over the last 60 years. Though many people initially believed that women could not be persecuted qua women, it is now frequently recognized that certain forms of gender-related persecution are sufficient to warrant asylum. Yet despite this conceptual progress, many states are still reluctant to consider certain forms of gender-related persecution to be sufficient to warrant asylum or refugee status. One reason for this continued bias is the (...) lack of a framework with which to understand gender-related persecution. I argue that we ought to understand gender-related persecution as resulting from the intersection of individual or state persecution and structural injustice. Structural injustice can be understood as the kind of everyday injustice, harm, and violence that women experience that makes possible the more extraordinary kinds of violence that women are likely to claim as the basis of asylum. Understanding gender-related persecution within the context of structural injustice will, I argue, help us to see it as a legitimate form of persecution and thus allow more just outcomes for women refugees. (shrink)

Careful attention to contemporary political debates, including those around global warming, the federal debt, and the use of drone strikes on suspected terrorists, reveals that we often view our responsibility as something that can be quantified and discharged. Shalini Satkunanandan shows how Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger each suggest that this calculative or bookkeeping mindset both belongs to 'morality', understood as part of our ordinary approach to responsibility, and effaces the incalculable, undischargeable, and more onerous dimensions of our responsibility. (...) These thinkers also reveal how the view of responsibility as calculable is at the heart of 'moralism' - the pettifogging, mindless, legalistic, excessively judgmental, or punitive policing of our own or others' compliance with moral duties. By elaborating their narratives of a difficult 'conversion' to the open-ended and relentless character of responsibility, Satkunanandan explores how we might be less moralistic and more responsible in politics. She ultimately argues for a political ethos attentive to how calculative thinking can limit our responsibility, but that still accepts a circumscribed place for calculation in responsible politics. (shrink)

In 1979 astronomer Carl Sagan popularized the aphorism “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. But Sagan never defined the term “extraordinary.” Ambiguity in what constitutes “extraordinary” has led to misuse of the aphorism. ECREE is commonly invoked to discredit research dealing with scientific anomalies, and has even been rhetorically employed in attempts to raise doubts concerning mainstream scientific hypotheses that have substantive empirical support. The origin of ECREE lies in eighteenth-century Enlightenment criticisms of miracles. The most important (...) of these was Hume’s essay On Miracles. Hume precisely defined an extraordinary claim as one that is directly contradicted by a massive amount of existing evidence. For a claim to qualify as extraordinary there must exist overwhelming empirical data of the exact antithesis. Extraordinary evidence is not a separate category or type of evidence--it is an extraordinarily large number of observations. Claims that are merely novel or those which violate human consensus are not properly characterized as extraordinary. Science does not contemplate two types of evidence. The misuse of ECREE to suppress innovation and maintain orthodoxy should be avoided as it must inevitably retard the scientific goal of establishing reliable knowledge. (shrink)

Composers with disabilities and the critical reception of their music -- Musical narratives of disability overcome : Beethoven -- Musical narratives of disability accommodated : Schubert -- Musical narratives of balance lost and regained : Schoenberg and Webern -- Musical narratives of the fractured body : Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, and Copland -- Disability within music-theoretical traditions -- Performing music and performing disability -- Prodigious hearing, normal hearing, and disablist hearing.

This paper is concerned with the particular problems raised by observations of phenomena outside the common course of nature for their validation as knowledge. It examines to what extent the content of the reports and, in particular, their lack of intrinsic plausibility affected the methods used in their authentication and the assessment of testimony at the Royal Society in the first half of the eighteenth century. I show that literary strategies were usually necessary but not sufficient for the validation of (...) these kinds of observations. Next, I discuss why visual representations were especially useful in establishing the singularity of the observations, but I point out that their high costs and other restrictions meant that they were not so widespread. In contrast I show that, for a long period of time, testimony was used in the majority of the reports as the true stamp of authenticity. I note, however, that the Royal Society accepted reports by authors of varied social status, level of education and occupation, and I discuss some of the factors responsible for the complexity of the handling of testimony at the Society. I argue against Shapin that in the case of reports of extraordinary phenomena, the competence of the reporter and witnesses was often more important than their social status. The increasing role of expertise in the assessment of observations at the Society become especially apparent by the middle of the eighteenth century.Author Keywords: Authentication; Competence; Monstrous births; Singular; Testimony; Royal Society of London. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Extraordinary Rendition:On Politics, Music, and Circular MeaningsRandall Everett AllsupThe purpose of this symposium is to look at music, education, and politics. I will begin with an examination of how musical meanings are politically rendered, and how these understandings are attached to moral consequences. Highly resistant to classification, musical meanings are those things we come to understand about ourselves through music, as opposed to musical knowledge which is demonstrable (...) know-how. While marching bands and flute sonatas can be judged with scores estimated to the 100th decimal point, the meanings that are created between the standards of practice of a given genre and the worldview of the listener or performer are provisional at best. Seen in this light, even seemingly secure or knowable realms like Christian heavy metal or anti-war movies are in fact highly un-objective and unpredictable. (More on Christian rock and movies in a moment). The challenge this paper seeks to uncover is participation on the hither side of fact, where understandings are rendered in a world that is contingent, political, and always in motion. What better example of the unclassifiable than the moving axes of politics and art?So what occurs between art and human or so-called "world" experience? [End Page 144] Let's agree that there is always motion, non-neutral, political movement in this interaction. We need not be students of French post-structuralism to recognize that we are part of many ever-evolving human-made systems, some of control, regulation, reward, punishment, and pleasure, but each with their own gravitation pull.1 I like Susan Sontag's take the best when she wrote that every place, every history has its own "sensibility," its own ineffable way of being in the world.2 Sensibilities—perhaps a clearer way of referring to politics in the context of art and experience—do not exist apart from their environment, yet they are more elusive than an idea or recognizable behavior.3 The sensibility of a time and place makes possible multiple discourses through which we make meaning.4 Some discourses, Foucault would remind us, are intensified by a history's particular sensibility and so appear louder than others. Such a discourse might speak so loudly that it shapes the meanings we make, drowning out options, and thus appearing obvious or commonsensical. The logic of musical assessment and evaluation—scoring marching bands and flute sonatas to the 100th decimal—is one such example.In spite of authoritative voices and reasonable discourses, each history's sensibility has its own escape routes, its own distortions and contradictions. I am fascinated by how we comply with or resist these pulls, as they are matters of agency and identity, matters of equity and social justice. In the present-day context of neo-liberalism and conservative values, especially 21st Century American fundamentalism, we would do well to ask how—not whether—such a fundamentalist sensibility shapes our ways of doing and knowing.5 My attempt is to locate music education in such a project.Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, I wrote a short piece on the fundamentalist imagination and its pull on the arts and education.6 This research took place at the 2003 MENC biennial where Bennett Reimer asks philosophy SRIG participants to consider (among other things) the role of metaphor in music education.7 I viewed the fundamentalist imagination as antithetical to metaphor: to paraphrase, the fundamentalist philosophy of education was "a philosophy for, not with, its initiates. Judgments are passed, not reached; answers are given, not argued... [Most importantly,] it is an educational method that emphasizes and then measures what is literal."8Since then, the voices of American literalism have appeared in increasingly loud volume seeking to discourage interpretation and argument in favor of handed-down teachings and binary logic. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia decries the folly of a "living" constitution, in favor of a strict or literal reading. Retired Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, in response to a common ground initiative by the late Joseph Bernadin, labels an appeal to "dialogue" a "fundamental flaw."9 Law sniffed, "Dissent from revealed truth or the authoritative [End Page 145] teaching of the church cannot... (shrink)

The PRIME Institute of the College of Pharmacy, University of Minnesota, recently released preliminary research findings indicating a trend of extraordinary pharmaceutical industry pricing of drug products in the United States (U.S.). According to researchers at the PRIME Institute, such extraordinary price increases are defined as any price increase that is equal to, or greater than, 100% at a single point in time. In some instances, PRIME Institute researchers found that drugs exhibiting extraordinary price increases are categorized (...) as "orphan drugs" (or blood-related biologic treatments) and often life-saving or life-sustaining for treating the cause or symptoms of diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S., or where there is prevalence of less than 5 per 10,000 people afflicted with a disease or symptoms in the community. Because of extraordinary price increases for orphan drugs — some exceeding 1000% at a single point in time -this article addresses two interrelated questions: Are extraordinary orphan drug price increases socially responsible behavior? If so, are the pharmaceutical industry's policies providing orphan drug access to American consumers in dire need of available life-sustaining and life-enhancing pharmaceuticals considered "socially responsible" behavior? The author concludes, after an interdisciplinary analysis of the legal, economic, sociopolitical, and ethical dimensions of orphan drug pricing, that they are not socially responsible – unless justified by cost and availability of health care marketplace/patient options. Furthermore, the author recommends a socially responsible industry strategic approach to insure that patients ultimately receive -regardless of cost -timely access to life-saving and life-sustaining orphan drugs. (shrink)

Numerous scholars have signalled that neo-pagan practitioners use their body and their senses to interact with the divine and elaborate a spiritual experience. However, the learning process followed to achieve and produce a sensing body capable of communicating with summoned entities has not been properly assessed, until very recently. For over a decade, I have conducted ethnographic research on neo-pagan ritual practices held at European megalithic sites to understand how practitioners learn to co-construct their somatic experiences culturally. Collected data allowed (...) me to develop a model I called somatic pedagogy, which is a progressive sensory learning process applied by ritual specialists organizing practices. In this review article, I present a synthesis of published material where I have developed this model extensively. Specifically, I will go through the elements that permit this kind of somatic education to be implemented within analysed practices: the specificities of neo-pagan ontologies about the human body and world, the potential of neo-pagan rituals to function as learning sites, and the main stages of this progressive bodily education. (shrink)

IT SEEMS PLAUSIBLE TO DIVIDE ALLEGEDLY EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS, "SECULAR" OR OTHERWISE, INTO TWO BROAD CATEGORIES. THE FIRST CATEGORY COMPRISES EVENTS WHICH APPEAR TO BE EXTENSIONS OF THE FAMILIAR, SINCE THEIR CHARACTERIZATION APPARENTLY INCORPORATE A REFERENCE TO EVENTS WHICH ARE SCIENTIFICALLY COMMONPLACE. THE SECOND COMPRISES EVENTS WHICH APPEAR TO BE TOTAL BREAKS WITH THE FAMILIAR, SINCE APPARENTLY NO SUCH REFERENCES CAN BE ELICITED. THE WRITER EXAMINES IN DETAIL POSSIBLE BASES FOR THE DISTINCTION, IN CONNECTION, ESPECIALLY, WITH THE NOTION OF THE (...) DEFEASIBILITY OF AN ACTION. HE CONCLUDES THAT ALTHOUGH THE DISTINCTION CANNOT IN THE END BE SUSTAINED, ANY ATTEMPT TO PROVIDE A COHERENT LOGIC OF THE MIRACULOUS MUST TAKE ACCOUNT OF A NUMBER OF POINTS ARISING FROM THE EXAMINATION. (shrink)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But on uninteresting topics, surprising claims usually are surprising evidence; we rarely make claims without suffi- cient evidence. On interesting topics, however, we can have interests in exaggerating or downplaying our evidence, and our actions often deviate from our interests. In a simple model of noisy humans reporting on extraordinary evidence, we find that extraordinary claims from low noise people are extraordinary evidence, but such claims from high noise people are (...) not; their claims are more likely unusual noise than unusual truth. When people are organized into a reporting chain, noise levels grow exponentially with chain length; long chains seem incapable of communicating extraordinary evidence. (shrink)

Prepare white preservice teachers to be successful in urban contexts. This cutting-edge curriculum shows how to complicate teachers' awareness of identity anda foster teachers' understanding of their own identity and positionality. The text includes clear and transferable principles, practices, lesson plans, assignments, readings, and a companion website.

Weber’s concept of rationalization internally relies on an opposition that is borrowed from a religious semantics: the opposition between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Taking as point of departure the expression ‘the disenchantment of the world’ I argue that this expression, and the concept of rationalization, which is connected with it, have to be understood as elements of a categorical field of tension that is dominated precisely by the mentioned opposition. Referring to the sociology of religion, in which Weber (...) for the first time developed and deployed this opposition as an analytical tool, it appears that 1) the concept of rationalization in Weber is multivocal; 2) that the extraordinary and the ordinary relate to one another as do charisma and institution; and finally 3) that the description of the western rationalization process in terms of ‘disenchantment of the world’ by no means signifies that modern society is no longer characterized by the relationship between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Weber, for that matter, indeed attaches great importance to the extraordinary as a factor of revolutionary change, both in modern history and in modern politics. (shrink)

If options cannot be defended, then there is a general requirement to promote the good. Appropriate political and social structures have an important place in seeing to it that this requirement is met, and in somewhat reducing the nature of the sacrifices that may be required in meeting it; but there is no getting around the fact that morality can demand a significant overall sacrifice of one's interests. However, moral agents are free, and we are required to use this freedom (...) to change ourselves so as to better meet the demands of morality. (shrink)