The use of metaphor and metonymy in social awareness campaigns has been shown as an effective strategy to evoke emotional reactions in the audience and influence behavior change. Using authentic campaign discourse, this study investigated how two multimodal, figurative representations of plastic pollution (plastic pollution is war on nature and plastic pollution is usurpation of marine life) influenced participants’ responses to solutions-oriented and emotions-oriented measures. The data were gathered from two online surveys: Experiment 1 used Likert-scales and free-text responses; these (...) were analyzed using statistical techniques and semantic frame analysis. Experiment 2 was a shorter follow-up study which used Likert-scales. The results suggest that the war frame inspired more negative emotional reactions overall, whereas the usurpation frame inspired more positive emotions. We also find that political orientation significantly moderates people’s sense of empowerment to tackle plastic pollution. The results have implications for future experimental studies seeking to explore the interaction of positive and negative affective states in the context of ecological issues, and for designers of campaigns who seek to use metaphor and metonymy to evoke the desired emotional and behavioral responses. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an explanation of the moral significance of microaggressions, seemingly minor incidents in which someone is demeaned in virtue of an oppressed social identity, often without the full awareness of the perpetrator. I argue for a broadly Kantian account of the wrongs of microaggressions and the moral responsibilities of various actors with respect to these incidents.

Concern for global warming, climate change and pollution has grown in recent years, with countries across the world facing natural disasters on unprecedented scales. The communication of environmental protection is therefore a necessary area of enquiry, especially from a Conceptual Metaphor Theory perspective. The present article explores (1) how the themes of global warming, climate change, pollution and activism are conceptualized in a corpus of 51 noncommercial advertisements, (2) the interaction of metonymy with metaphor, (3) the distribution across verbal and (...) visual modes of metaphoric source and target domains, and (4) how value is evoked. Findings show that half of the corpus frames environmental themes through source domains such as weapons, predators and natural disasters. The other half triggers incongruous mappings, such as between concrete entities, and relies on metonymic processes of inference to access the main rhetorical message. Among the most frequent metonymies, CAUSE-EFFECT and CATEGORY FOR SALIENT PROPERTY highlight the negative effects of the represented phenomena. Multimodality usually occurs within source and/or target domains rather than across the metaphoric mapping. Most of the campaigns project mixed value, where a negative evaluation of a theme is accompanied by a positive message, inviting the audience to take action. (shrink)

The concept of knowledge is the topic of this monograph, the purpose of which is to study how it has been represented in educational research literature since 1939. Six texts have been selected, which use the Malmö Longitudinal Study data. These texts span the time period of 1939-1995 and have different foci, such as intelligence, social adjustment, benefits of education, recurrent education and quality of life. Discourse analysis has been used to study the texts. The assumption, guiding the analysis, is (...) that representations of knowledge are found in the texts. In this study the representations that are sought are ideas with reference to knowledge. It was found that different concepts of knowledge have been constucted by diverse activities of choosing, judging and interpreting. The purposes and sources, for whcih these activities have been undertaken, are quite dissimilar, so much so, as to constitute differing conceptualizations of knowledge, underlying these six educational research texts.
The theoretical framework is based on the work of two philosophers, Ernst Cassirer and Michael Lyncg. Cassirer's work from the 1930s and 1940s, in which precision in scientific concepts is advanced, is contrasted to Lynch's work from 1995, in which he proposes the use of fluid concepts. One such fluid concept has been used in the title of this monograph. Over the years, conceptualizations of knowledge have changed in this educational discourse. These results are presented, using social cartography to map the texts as intertextual fields. Visualizing complex pheonomena in this manner provides the reader with an interpretation of the discourse, in which the change is seen. Thus, mapping opens up the discourse for us to see, showing us the concepts of knowledge embedded in the texts, and allows us to see how the ways of seeing have changed over time in this discourse. The monograph ends with a discussion on the construction of knowledge, its consequences for the nature of knowledge and Cassirer's "unity of essence". (shrink)

Since Carol Gilligan's analysis of the “Heinz dilemma,” many philosophers working on care have articulated critiques of abstraction and principles in ethics. Their objections to abstraction and principles have not always been systematically set out. In this paper, I try to clarify the debate. I begin by distinguishing several aspects of the care critique. I then consider the strengths of each from a Kantian perspective. I conclude that, although some of these objections point out potential misuses of abstraction and principle, (...) and in doing so, suggest strategies and cautions for their correct and careful use in ethics, they do not present a successful challenge to abstraction or principles as such. (shrink)

This third edition of O'Rourke and Boyle's Medical Ethics: Sources of Catholic Teaching is a useful and comprehensive collection of statements published, for the most part, by the central authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States and the bishops' conferences of individual US states on a wide range of issues in the area of medical ethics. ….

This third edition of O'Rourke and Boyle's Medical Ethics: Sources of Catholic Teaching is a useful and comprehensive collection of statements published, for the most part, by the central authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States and the bishops' conferences of individual US states on a wide range of issues in the area of medical ethics. ….

In this paper, I argue for a nuanced, context-sensitive approach to the question of trash talk, based on the Kantian principle of respect for persons and an emphasis on first-person action-guidance. I also suggest that we understand trash talk to have several varieties. On my proposed approach, there is no simple answer to the question of whether trash talk is morally permissible; rather, context-sensitive judgment can help us to determine what we ought to do when the possibility of various forms (...) of trash talk arises. (shrink)

Care theorists often think of care as involving “caring-about”—concern or attentiveness—and “caring-for”—acting to nurture, look after, or meet needs. One problem for any theory of care is the scope of our obligations to care in both of those senses; in particular, our capacities for “caring-about” often outrun our capacities for “caring-for.” Accounts of care as potentially global in scope may ascribe overwhelming obligations to moral agents; however, we are often tempted to avoid or ignore situations that may call for a (...) caring response. I suggest that some Kantian ideas may help to strike a reasonable balance. (shrink)

This is a version of a paper delivered at the Beckett centenary conference held at University College Cork, May 26-27, 2006. It was subsequently published under the title ‘Stellar Separation orMachine? Badiou and Deleuze and Guattari on Beckett’ in Beckett Re-Membered: After the Centenary, edited by James Carney,Mi chael O’Sullivan, Leonard Madden and Karl White, pp. 92-107, ISBN 1443835005. This is a pre-publication version of the paper as it appeared in the latter publication. OPENING PARAGRAPH: In the most important study (...) to date of the respective use of Beckett’s writings in the work of Deleuze and Badiou, Jean-Jacques Lecercle concludes by surmising that “Perhaps the close proximity, in the French edition, of Deleuze’s essay, ‘The Exhausted’, to Beckett’s own text, is indeed more than a fortunate coincidence: perhaps it is a symptom”.1 For, Lecercle, despite his long-term support for Deleuze and indeed despite his misgivings concerning Badiou’s characteristically strong reading of Beckett, decides that there may be, after all, something more compelling in the Badiou than in the less consistent Deleuze. This may also be, he suggests, attributable to Deleuze’s own modernism as a writer, which, though it gives him greater access to, and understanding of, the materiality of Beckett’s writing, also in the final analysis, renders his reading of Beckett somewhat orthodox. By contrast, the defiantly declarative and unhesitatingly dogmatic reading advanced by Badiou, is able to disclose strikingly original insights, not least because of the co-implication and reversibility of the readings of Badiou-Beckett and Beckett-Badiou. This essay seeks to examine the symptomatology of one text in particular as it operates and produces or is indicative of symptoms in the work of Badiou and Deleuze respectively. (shrink)

Introduction: What is criticism? (a preliminary dialogue) -- The critic as artist and vice versa -- The eye of the beholder -- Self-criticism (a further dialogue) -- Lost in the museum -- The trouble with critics -- Practical criticism (another dialogue) -- How to be wrong -- The critical condition -- The end of criticism (a final dialogue) -- Afterword.

Diese Arbeit zeigt, dass die Dualität des mathematischen und dynamischen Erhabenen bei Kant auch dem Zweck der dritten Kritik dient, die Kluft zwischen den Gebieten der Natur und der Freiheit zu schließen. In der Sekundärliteratur zu Kant wird das Erhabene oft als Anhang des Schönen oder aufgrund seiner mehrfachen Dualitäten als Bruch in Kants Ansatz angesehen. Dies geschieht, weil solche Interpretationen die Elemente der Theorie des Erhabenen atomisch und nicht systematisch rekonstruieren. Im Gegensatz dazu wird in dieser Arbeit mittels der (...) Resonanz der teleologischen Behandlung der Vernunft nicht nur die innere Systematik der dritten Kritik gezeigt, sondern auch die von der gesamten kritischen Philosophie. Die Vernunft als Vermögen der Zwecksetzung zu verstehen in ihrem praktischen und theoretischen Gebrauch, ist keine neue Idee oder neuer systematischer Rekonstruktionsversuch der kritischen Philosophie in der Kantforschung. Das eigentlich Neue in dieser Monografie ist, einen Beweis von ihrer teleologischen Einheit aus der ästhetischen Perspektive des paradoxen Gefühls des Erhabenen geleistet zu haben. (shrink)

This article discusses two arguments against the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. The first argument says that IIT is wrong in saying that conscious experiences are identical to conceptual structures; they are very different in many ways. The second argument says that the seeming presence of non-conscious integrated information either makes IIT falsified or unfalsifiable. The first argument seeks to show that integrated information is not identical to consciousness; the second argument seeks to show that integrated information is not (...) even always correlated with consciousness. (shrink)