Drawing on corpora from West Africa and Iceland, the article presents a fieldwork-based comparative exploration of ‘things that place names do’. Treating toponyms as performative elements of culture, we have observed striking parallels as well as differences in the uses of place names in both regions. Place names communicate spatial orientation; play an important role in the commemoration of people and events; mark claims of possession; support the construction of identity; sacralize landscapes; and voice moral reprimands. They can provide entertainment, (...) by, for instance, inscribing ridicule into the land. They subvert as well as affirm hierarchies and power structures, and even play a role in interethnic conflict. Equally, they can become nuclei of storytelling, providing starting points for the invention of narratives. Showing the range of functions that place names can assume in two very different geographical contexts, the article presents a heuristic illustration of the potential of fieldwork-based approaches for toponomastic research. (shrink)

This article is based on narrative, autobiographic interviews with domestic workers in Peru focusing on their migration and work experiences. The interviewees evoke a border discourse that divides and hierarchizes Peruvian society and stigmatizes migrants, especially migrant domestic workers. As domestic service leads to intense social interactions at this ‘border’, the interviewees are constantly forced to ‘translate’ when constructing their identity. The discourse-analytical bottom—up perspective focusing on membership categorization devices evaluates the performativity of the discourses of those considered as ‘oppressed’; (...) it analyses processes of subjection and subjectification: whereas some of the interviewees internalize the discursively attributed inferior ‘Me’, others use the constructed borders as an opportunity to develop hybrid discourse strategies that cross and even deconstruct social categorizations. By focusing on the agency of ‘border-crossers’, the article aims at scientifically ‘rethinking the social with cultural difference as a constitutive feature’. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag werden die Fragen diskutiert: Welche Vorstellungen von Geschlecht und Sexualität finden sich im Buddhismus, welche Frauenrollen oder Frauenbilder lassen sich daraus ableiten, und was geschieht, wenn diese Geschlechtervorstellungen heute auf den europäischen Kontext treffen: Welche Probleme entstehen? Ist Geschlechtergerechtigkeit ein westliches Problem oder wird sie weltweit thematisiert? Lassen sich Wechselwirkungen feststellen, und welche Strategien werden verfolgt, um Geschlechtergerechtigkeit im Buddhismus herzustellen?

The ethical guidelines for prenatal diagnosis proposed by the World Health Organisation , as well as by national regulations, only refer to paternity and gender of the fetus as unacceptable, disease-unrelated criteria for prenatal selection, as no other such parameters are at hand so far. This perspective is too narrow because research on complex genetic systems such as cognition and ageing is about to provide clinically applicable tests for genetic constituents of potentially desirable properties such as intelligence or longevity which (...) could be misused as parameters for prenatal diagnosis. Moreover, there is an increasing number of prenatally testable genetic traits, such as heritable deafness, which are generally regarded as pathological but desired by some prospective parents and taken into account as parameters for pro-disability selection. To protect prenatal diagnosis from ethically unacceptable genetic consumerism, guidelines must be clarified as soon as possible and updated towards a worldwide restriction of prenatal genetic testing to immediately disease-determining traits. (shrink)

What is objectionable about “blacking up” or other comparable acts of imagining involving unethical attitudes? Can such imaginings be wrong, even if there are no harmful consequences and imaginers are not meant to apply these attitudes beyond the fiction? In this article, we argue that blackface—and imagining in general—can be ethically flawed in virtue of being oppressive, in virtue of either its content or what imaginers do with it, where both depend on how the imagined attitudes interact with the imagining’s (...) context. We explain and demonstrate this using speech act theory alongside a detailed case study of blackface. (shrink)

People generally accept that there is causation by omission—that the omission of some events cause some related events. But this acceptance elicits the selection problem, or the difficulty of explaining the selection of a particular omissive cause or class of causes from the causal conditions. Some theorists contend that dependence theories of causation cannot resolve this problem. In this paper, we argue that the appeal to norms adequately resolves the selection problem for dependence theories, and we provide novel experimental evidence (...) for it. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss narration of ethical themes in nursing care. The text represents part of the findings of an ethnographic study aimed at description of everyday work on an oncology ward. Nurses on this ward are constantly involved in ethical care issues and narratives are told to share experiences. Of vital importance in ethical decision making is the perpetual creation of a mediating moral world constituted by daily experience. The need for making space in nursing (...) for a continual learning conversation is expressed and in this I include writings of nursing theorists. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow accurate are insights compared to analytical solutions? In four experiments, we investigated how participants' solving strategies influenced their solution accuracies across different types of problems, including one that was linguistic, one that was visual and two that were mixed visual-linguistic. In each experiment, participants' self-judged insight solutions were, on average, more accurate than their analytic ones. We hypothesised that insight solutions have superior accuracy because they emerge into consciousness in an all-or-nothing fashion when the unconscious solving process is complete, (...) whereas analytic solutions can be guesses based on conscious, prematurely terminated, processing. This hypothesis is supported by the finding that participants' analytic solutions included relatively more incorrect responses than timeouts compared to their insight responses. (shrink)

The following presentation has for object raise the problem of the human action and the technology. The human and instrumental. The human effort for trying to control (to (limit) the technology, is the Hybris against which the word of Apollo gets up in Delphi. The knowledge of the limits of the man, it is what claims the man and not to the claimed responsibility, with which he believes, there has been delivered him the mission to direct his own destination. The (...) Nosce te ipsum, of the temple of Apollo, is the philosophy, the wisdom that is in the recognition of the limits that mark the essence of the man and that it consists of thinking never trying to exceed them. What will be postulated here, is that the concept of precaution and his Principle, it continues being a determination of the technology, not only a consummation of the instrumental and anthropologic action, but a consummation of the ‘technical’ of the thought. (shrink)

This article analyzes populism utilizing the semiotic theory of A.J. Greimas. This structural linguist offers a tool for uncovering links between manifestations of populism and the language structu...

This book is the most comprehensive study to date of the development of the three suffixes -hood, -dom and -ship in the history of English. Based on data from annotated corpora it provides an in depth investigation from Old English to Modern English and shows that structurally the three suffixes developed from syntactic heads via morphological heads in compounds to morphological heads in derivations. Being an instance of morphologisation the rise of suffixes clearly shows that word formation is not part (...) of the syntactic module. This development is triggered by semantic change, more pre. (shrink)

In response to the IABS conference theme to “advise practitioners,” this paper is framed in terms of two questions that have been found to be critical to practitioners. These are “what is Corporate Responsibility and how to do it” and “what is the value of Corporate Responsibility.” The paper uses theories from within the academic literature to develop a model to answer these two practitioner-based questions. An empirical framework based upon the model is developed and tested with a study of (...) customers of a financial service organisation in the UK. (shrink)

People’s causal judgments are susceptible to the action effect, whereby they judge actions to be more causal than inactions. We offer a new explanation for this effect, the counterfactual explanation: people judge actions to be more causal than inactions because they are more inclined to consider the counterfactual alternatives to actions than to consider counterfactual alternatives to inactions. Experiment 1a conceptually replicates the original action effect for causal judgments. Experiment 1b confirms a novel prediction of the new explanation, the reverse (...) action effect, in which people judge inactions to be more causal than actions in overdetermination cases. Experiment 2 directly compares the two effects in joint-causation and overdetermination scenarios and conceptually replicates them with new scenarios. Taken together, these studies provide support for the new counterfactual explanation for the action effect in causal judgment. (shrink)

Motivated by the ongoing controversy surrounding corporate tax, this article presents a study that explores stakeholder expectations of corporate tax in the context of UK business. We conduct a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of community groups, as well as interviews with those representing business groups. We then identify eight themes that together describe “what” companies need to do, “how” they need to do it, and “why” they need to do it, if they wish to appeal to a (...) wide group of interested parties. We discuss our findings based on the corporate social responsibility literature and propose novel ways for community groups and business groups to connect on the topic of corporate tax, suggesting opportunities and themes for dialogue and potential steps to co-create solutions in a stakeholder society. (shrink)

Mathematics is often defined as a “universal” or “conventional” language. Yet, things may be not as simple as that. The theoretical lens of the semiosphere, with the related notions of context and spatial dynamics, within which the concept of cultural conflict is defined, provides a new framework for research in mathematics education to consider the cultural aspects of mathematical discourses. It is under this framework that learning awareness occurs, and teaching challenges are no longer conceived as independent of the content (...) taught (or to be taught). It is not a question of nullifying the cultural conflict, but exploiting the concept of asymmetry to make sense of mathematical discourse. Meeting foreign cultures leads to looking at one’s own practices. An example drawn from Danish numerals, juxtaposed with a mathematical discourse occurring in a sixth-grade classroom in Italy, delves into the practical application of the framework. (shrink)

This essay is a critical discussion of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s book Provincializing Europe as well as a first sketch of a History on Equal Terms. After giving a short summary of Provincializing Europe, I first argue, against Chakrabarty, that there is no necessary connection between the discipline of history and the metanarratives of modernity. To the contrary: the founding idea of the discipline of history was a turn against such grand narratives. With his attempt to deconstruct the narratives of the European (...) Enlightenment and of modernity, Chakrabarty therefore has to be regarded as a thinker of radical historicism rather than as a critic of the discipline of history. Second, I criticize the use of the term “modernity” in Provincializing Europe and the concept of modernity in general. Instead of a deconstruction of the discipline of history, I propose a deconstruction of the concept of modernity. This could open up the way for a History on Equal Terms situated within the discipline of history, that is, a historiography that would—just as Chakrabarty rightly demands—in principle pay the same attention to and expect relevant results from any region in the world, depending only on the focus of research. (shrink)

Recently, psychologists have explored moral concepts including obligation, blame, and ability. While little empirical work has studied the relationships among these concepts, philosophers have widely assumed such a relationship in the principle that “ought” implies “can,” which states that if someone ought to do something, then they must be able to do it. The cognitive underpinnings of these concepts are tested in the three experiments reported here. In Experiment 1, most participants judge that an agent ought to keep a promise (...) that he is unable to keep, but only when he is to blame for the inability. Experiment 2 shows that such “ought” judgments correlate with judgments of blame, rather than with judgments of the agent’s ability. Experiment 3 replicates these findings for moral “ought” judgments and finds that they do not hold for nonmoral “ought” judgments, such as what someone ought to do to fulfill their desires. These results together show that folk moral judgments do not conform to a widely assumed philosophical principle that “ought” implies “can.” Instead, judgments of blame play a modulatory role in some judgments of obligation. (shrink)

Una forma frecuente de medir y estimular el desarrollo narrativo infantil utiliza el recontado de una narración. En Chile, se han diseñado tareas considerando la estructura del input verbal, tanto en un nivel léxico-sintáctico como textual, estableciéndose –incluso– niveles de complejidad. En el marco del Proyecto FONDECYT 1130420, para elaborar un cuento infantil –input de la tarea de recontado– se hizo hincapié no solo en los rasgos verbales, sino también visuales del relato. De tal forma, se propuso un doble objetivo: (...) diseñar las imágenes de una historia potenciando su significado a través de una gramática visual y observar en qué medida estos elementos aparecen reflejados en el recontado oral de los sujetos. Para este propósito, junto a la Gramática de la Historia para el discurso, se consideró la Gramática de Diseño Visual y sus herramientas analíticas para la construcción de imágenes. El cuento se piloteó en una muestra de 20 pre-escolares de Kinder de un colegio particular subvencionado de la Región de Valparaíso. Sus discursos fueron videograbados, transcritos y analizados. Se observó que todas las imágenes narrativas aparecen mencionadas en más de un 60% de los recontados. Además, existen tres referidas en el 90% de los discursos infantiles y representan momentos cruciales del relato o cierta complejidad del input como la simultaneidad de acciones. Estos resultados permiten valorar la importancia de los elementos visuales del cuento en la tarea de recontado infantil. (shrink)

Il cosiddetto “paradosso della finzione” nasce dal tentativo di spiegare quale tipo di emozioni proviamo verso quegli oggetti che troviamo nei romanzi e nei film e che sappiamo perfettamente essere fittizi. Si tratta di un paradosso classico, tornato alla ribalta nel 1975 dopo la pubblicazione di un articolo di Colin Radford che partiva precisamente dall’interrogativo riguardante le lacrime che versiamo per ciò che non è reale (come un personaggio fittizio, appunto). Perché ci commuoviamo per il suicidio di Anna Karenina se (...) sappiamo che non esiste? Che differenza c’è tra piangere per Anna Karenina, piangere per una bugia, piangere per la depressione e fare finta di piangere perché si vuol fare credere a chi ci guarda che siamo sinceramente commossi? In Piangere e ridere davvero (2009) Maurizio Ferraris offre un’interessante proposta teorica per dissolvere il paradosso in questione e si sofferma su alcune distinzioni fondamentali riguardanti le nostre reazioni emotive a stimoli reali e fittizi. In questo saggio si prende spunto dalla teoria di Ferraris e ci si propone di chiarire che cosa significhi fare finta di rispondere emotivamente a qualcosa nella vita di tutti i giorni e quale sia la differenza tra queste “finte” emozioni e quelle che invece proviamo durante la fruizione di opere che sappiamo essere di finzione. Saranno scelti come esempi paradigmatici il caso Fenaroli (al centro della cronaca italiana alla fine degli anni Cinquanta), Il vedovo di Dino Risi e Scusate il ritardo di Massimo Troisi. (shrink)

According to some, there is a problem concerning the emotions we feel toward fictional entities such as Anna Karenina, Werther and the like. We feel pity, fear, and sadness toward them, but how is that possible? “We are saddened, but how can we be? What are we sad about? How can we feel genuinely and involuntarily sad, and weep, as we do know that no one has suffered or died?” (Radford, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1975). This is the (...) paradox of fiction which is based on the assumption that emotions, to be genuine and rational, should be directed toward existent beings. But if beliefs about existence are necessary for us to be rationally moved by something, and such beliefs are lacking when we are moved by fiction (because we do not believe fictional characters and events to be real), then our capacity for an emotional response to fiction is irrational. Consequently, our emotional attitude toward future generations should be considered as irrational as well. But is this really the case? Are there good arguments to consider future and fictional entities as similar from this point of view? Or would it be better to distinguish the two? Is there such a thing as a paradox of the future? If so, how does it relate to the more famous paradox of fiction? (shrink)

A collection of papers presented at the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science, University at Buffalo, July 1994, including the following papers: ** Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science, Barry Smith ** The Bounds of Axiomatisation, Graham White ** Rethinking Boundaries, Wojciech Zelaniec ** Sheaf Mereology and Space Cognition, Jean Petitot ** A Mereotopological Definition of 'Point', Carola Eschenbach ** Discreteness, Finiteness, and the Structure of Topological Spaces, Christopher Habel ** Mass Reference and the Geometry of Solids, Almerindo E. (...) Ojeda ** Defining a 'Doughnut' Made Difficult, N .M. Gotts ** A Theory of Spatial Regions with Indeterminate Boundaries, A.G. Cohn and N.M. Gotts ** Mereotopological Construction of Time from Events, Fabio Pianesi and Achille C. Varzi ** Computational Mereology: A Study of Part-of Relations for Multi-media Indexing, Wlodek Zadrozny and Michelle Kim. (shrink)