This article elaborates a theoretical framework for making sense of Tibetans in Tibet who live as ‘exiles in their own homeland’. Placing questions of mobility at the centre of anthropological approaches to diaspora, it subjects ‘the fact of movement’ to critical scrutiny. In so doing it calls into question three fundamental assumptions of recent work in both ‘new mobilities’ and the study of diaspora more broadly: first, that people move and territory does not; second, that ‘place(s)’ and ‘movement(s)’ are different (...) sorts of things, and clearly distinguishable; and, third, that movement takes places only in Euclidean space. Beginning by placing recent Tibetan experiences of exile and diaspora in comparative context, it then works through recent deconstructions of the boundary between movement and place, a critique of Western ethno-epistemologies of movement, and Law and Mol’s work on social topology as theoretical orientations that might allow us to make sense of mobile homelands and diasporas in situ. (shrink)

Public arguments can be good or bad not only as a matter of logic, but also in the sense that speakers can _do_ good or bad things with arguments. For example, hate speakers use public arguments to contribute to the subordination of their targets. But how can ordinary speakers acquire the authority to perform subordinating speech acts? This is the ‘Authority Problem’. This paper defends a solution inspired by McGowan’s (Australas J Philos 87:389–407, 2009) analysis of oppressive speech, including against (...) concerns raised by McGowan (Just words: On speech and hidden harm, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019) herself. A _deflated_ kind of authority can be gained from the hate speaker’s standing in a norm-governed ‘activity of oppression’. We should be wary about engaging with such speakers in public argument. Even if we counter their arguments, we may still elevate their standing within that activity and so enable them to perform more pernicious speech acts than was previously possible. (shrink)

This essay argues that the third-century BC Ruist “masters” text Xúnzǐ presents a sophisticated approach to semantics and epistemology in which a concern with truth is at best secondary, not central. Xúnzǐ’s primary concern is with identifying and applying the apt dào (way), which for him is a more fundamental concept that underwrites and explains truth claims. Dào refers to a way or path of personal and social conduct, covering prudential, esthetic, ethical, and political concerns. Xúnzǐ is primarily concerned with (...) whether utterances, along with actions, policies, and social practices, are correct in conforming to dào—specifically, the dào of “good order” (zhì)—rather than whether they are correct in being true. Insofar as he is concerned with truth, he regards the status of assertions as true or not as derivative from their status as following dào or not. A consequence is that for Xúnzǐ questions of value and culture are more basic than questions of truth. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is reasoning about what to do. Practical wisdom is the traditional ideal of practical reasoning associated with virtue ethics. Practical wisdom requires the knowledge and skills necessary to act rightly across a wide range of situations. Critics allege that this notion does not cohere well with what contemporary cognitive science tells us about the production of human behavior. After briefly discussing these criticisms, I sketch an alternative account of these cognitive processes that I call affective engine theory. I (...) then discuss a normative conception of practical reasoning that complements this account. Finally, adopting an approach according to which the virtues are those character traits necessary for excellence in practical reasoning, I argue that these accounts can provide the basis for a nontraditional theory of virtue. I discuss three traits that are plausible candidates for virtues on such an account. (shrink)

We can often permissibly choose a worse self-interested option over a better altruistic alternative. For example, it is permissible to eat out rather than donate the money to feed five hungry children for a single meal. If we eat out, we do something permissibly partial toward ourselves. If we donate, we go beyond the call of moral duty and do something supererogatory. Such phenomena aren’t easy to explain, and they rule out otherwise promising moral theories. Incommensurability and Ruth Chang’s notion (...) of parity can explain certain small improvement puzzles, but they can’t explain permissible partiality and supererogation. On the other hand, Josh Gert’s distinction between justifying and requiring weight can explain all three phenomena: permissible partiality, supererogation, and the relevant small improvement puzzle. Indeed, this chapter provides a reason to endorse the justifying/requiring weight distinction by showing that it provides the only extant explanation of all three phenomena. (shrink)

Scottish philosopher David Hume provided some of the most novel and important insights into the nature of causation. This article introduces his most important lines of thought regarding cause and effect, specifically, his analysis of causation culminating in his two definitions of causation and the Problem of Induction.

This article aims to contribute to ongoing debate on the place of metaphor at the semantics/pragmatics interface. Contextualists have argued that metaphorical utterances (i.e., prosaic/conventional metaphors) behave like literally loose uses of speech in that they are interpreted automatically and unreflectively. If metaphors are interpreted along the same lines as literally loose speech, metaphorical content is part of what a speaker says, and is classified as semantic. Some other authors have observed that metaphorical utterances (i.e., poetic, novel metaphors) seem to (...) behave more like paradigmatic conversational implicatures, and so are conversationally meant. On this picture, metaphors are patently pragmatic. I attempt to square these seemingly disparate observations by developing an idea in Korta and Perry’s _Critical Pragmatics_ (2011). Namely, that _every_ utterance is _systematically_ associated with a family of contents. The truth-conditions of these contents are classified by different contents; some of these contents are reflexive and have the utterance itself as a constituent. They range from the purely reflexive to referential content thereby constituting a family of gradually less reflexive and more contextually independent contents. Differences between prosaic and poetic metaphors roughly correspond to the level of content triggering an inference to metaphorical meaning. (shrink)

More often than not, notes are conceptualized as a technology for helping students stay focused on and attentive to subject matter deemed educationally valuable. This article concerns itself, however, with how notes may interrupt and render inoperative this learning function. To probe the question of attention and distraction, the authors devised an experiment in note taking. Our question is whether or not these forms of rendering the learning function of notes inoperative have any educational value. In conclusion, we suggest that (...) such activities, while divorced from official, outcomes-based learning, do indeed have educational meaning: they make present the potentiality for thinking and acting without forcing such potentiality into measurable forms. What remains is the notes themselves, and the notational effects they in turn generated and continue to generate. (shrink)

Providing an inter-disciplinary base to the notion of transgression, this set includes a history of ideas, a résumé of the major contributory theorists, and a thematic discussion of the key moments and substantive concerns of these various debates.

ABSTRACT The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies concludes its twenty-three-year journey with a grand finale that celebrates its history as the only interdisciplinary, scholarly, double-blind peer-reviewed periodical devoted to the critical discussion of Ayn Rand and her times.

Abstract:In this essay I respond to four commentators who participated in a symposium on my book, Reconstructing Pragmatism. Issues that emerge include: Addams’s and Rorty’s mutual commitment to cultivating affective rationality; how Royce and Rorty share an ethical imperative in their philosophy and where both can learn from Alain Locke; what a post-Rortyan pragmatism might look like and the best path toward realizing it; the significance of recovering the serious, unironic Rorty and the limits of weak misreadings; Rorty’s pragmatic maxim; (...) and reflections on how best to sustain the habits and practices of a robust pragmatic tradition and community. In places, for understandable reasons the commentaries stray from the book’s argument about Rorty’s relation to classical pragmatism and address larger issues surrounding Rorty’s work and its broader reception. I don’t respond to all such matters but try to here and there, which hopefully gives what follows a relevance for contemporary pragmatism beyond the book itself. (shrink)

RELIGION TODAY (2nd edition) offers a refreshing introduction to the academic study of religion with a particular emphasis on critically informed analysis. The book skillfully explores diverse religious traditions and phenomena, providing readers with a comprehensive overview that encourages them to engage critically with the subject and materials. Written for an undergraduate audience, this book is accessible and well-organized, making it suitable for both students and general readers interested in sharpening their understanding of religion. Overall, Religion Today is a valuable (...) resource for anyone seeking to approach the academic study of religion. Its holistic approach, engaging writing style, and emphasis on critical thinking make it a welcome addition to various religious studies curriculums or personal libraries.” — Brad Stoddard, associate professor of Religious Studies, McDaniel College. (shrink)

Chris Horner and Emrys Westacott present a clear and accessible introduction to some of the central problems of philosophy through challenging and stimulating the reader to think beyond the conventional answers to fundamental questions. No previous knowledge is assumed, and in lively and provocative chapters the authors invite the reader to explore questions about the nature of science, religion, ethics, politics, art, the mind, the self, knowledge and truth. Each chapter includes inset boxes providing links to classic philosophy texts (...) on the issues discussed. In addition, the book relates the adventure of philosophy to some of the key principles of critical thinking. (shrink)

To enact democracy, which is to live in communication with difference, requires a formative process that involves an education of the whole person for and through civic life. Drawing on Charles Mills's theory of Herrenvolk ethics and Jonathan Lear's analysis of psychosocial lapses that ail us, Sheron Fraser-Burgess and Chris Higgins pursue a critical, historiographical, and psychosocial reading of our failures to live up to this aspiration, offering (1) a critique of our tendency to saddle ourselves with a false (...) choice between a homogenizing unity and a differentiated but fractured republic; (2) a demonstration of why we must eschew a thin universalism of principles and confront difference as embodied; (3) an argument from the ethics of risk against the urge to reify and compartmentalize difference; and (4) an evocation of how deep pluralism itself might serve as a unifying creed. Civic education is not a matter of informing but of forming and cultivating vision and values. In pursuing the credal deep pluralism that is required to do justice to the prospects and perils of our democracy-in-the-making, the task of the formative educator may be more difficult; but by embracing this creed, teachers may inspire their students to do the same. (shrink)

This study is part of a larger exploration of ‘talk and cure’ that combines the examination of talk-in-interaction, with nonverbal displays, and measurements of the client’s and therapist’s autonomic arousal during therapy sessions. A key assumption of the study is that psychotherapy entails processes of intersubjective meaning-making that occur across different modalities and take place in both verbal/explicit and nonverbal/implicit domains. A single session of a psychodynamic psychotherapy is analysed with a focus on the expression and management of affect, with (...) an aim to describe key interactive events that promote change in both semantic and procedural domains. The clinical dialogue is analysed discursively, with a focus on the conversational processes through which new meanings are jointly constructed and affective states shared; detailed attention is paid to nonverbal displays of affiliation and affect. Furthermore, we explore whether the interactional patterns implicated in joint meaning-making, as revealed by analysing the therapeutic conversation, have correlates in the autonomic arousal of the two protagonists, as reflected in their heart rates. Conversation analysis has still untapped potential to illuminate interactional patterns that underlie the practice of psychotherapy. In this exploratory study we suggest that discursive analyses of talk-in-interaction can be enriched through detailed focus on nonverbal displays as well as measures of physiological arousal. Drawing upon the analysis, we suggest that bringing the methodological strengths of language-based analysis into fertile dialogue with embodied quantitative data can help our explorations of what’s really going on in psychotherapy. (shrink)

In higher-level cognitive tasks, older compared to younger adults show a bias towards positive emotion information and away from negative information (a positivity effect). It is unclear whether this effect occurs in early perceptual processing. This issue is important for determining if the positivity effect is due to automatic rather than controlled processing. We tested this with older and younger adults on a positive/negative face emotion valence classification task using masked priming. Positive (happy) and negative (angry) face targets were preceded (...) by masked repetition or valence primes with neutral face baselines. In Experiment 1, 30 younger and 30 older adults were tested with 50 ms primes. Younger adults showed repetition priming for both positive and negative targets. Older adults showed repetition priming for positive but not negative targets. Neither group showed valence priming. In Experiment 2, 30 older and 29 younger adults were tested with longer duration primes. Younger adults showed repetition priming for both positive and negative emotions, and no valence priming. Older adults only showed repetition and valence priming for positive targets. We proposed older adults’ lack of angry face priming was due to an early attention orienting strategy favouring happy expressions at the expense of angry ones. (shrink)

Introduction to the translation of “De beteekenis van de wijsbegeerte der wetsidee voor de theorie der menschelijke samenleving” by Herman Dooyeweerd, Philosophia Reformata 2, pp. 99–116.

In recent decades, care has played an increasingly crucial role in the self-understanding of the human being in the West. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of confusion and uncertainty surrounding the notion of care. One of the focal points of critics is the normativity of care. To what extent does care have an obligatory character? Only when the objective normative basis of care is sufficiently clarified, care practices can be evaluated and optimised from an ethical perspective. In this contribution (...) we explain how the anthropology of personalism could bring us closer to the normative core of care. The paper starts with a general overview of the contribution of care ethics in healthcare and the problems in relation to the normativity of care. Thereafter, we set the viewpoints of the Louvain tradition of personalism apart en show that this view on the human person is in keeping with a few basic principles of care ethics. Next, we describe how a personalist approach to care ethics can indeed indicate in which direction action must be taken so that human action may be considered ethically sound. (shrink)

Fundamental movement skill proficiency does not develop solely due to maturation, but also via diverse perceptual-motor experiences across childhood. Practicing gymnastics has been shown to improve postural control. The purpose of the present study was to examine potential changes to postural control of children following a course of educational gymnastics. Two groups of children both completed 20 × 45-min physical education lessons; one group completed educational gymnastics lessons in school delivered by a professional coach, the other group completed their typical (...) PE classes. Unipedal balancing performance was assessed by calculating the percentage of successful trials made. Postural sway dynamics were explored by calculating center-of-pressure sample entropy, 95% ellipse sway area and sway velocity. Measurements were taken before the lessons began and immediately after the lessons were completed. The gymnastics group performed better than the typical PE group at unipedal balancing. Females outperformed males in both groups. Males made different changes to postural control compared to females across 3 months. Educational gymnastics enabled children in a critical period of development to make more rapid improvements to postural performance and control. Novel movement experiences, like those offered by educational gymnastics, may have a positive influence on postural control and importantly, physical literacy. Future work should examine how sex effects the development of postural control strategies in young children. (shrink)

Draws on the traditions of the martial arts to ask whether playing violent videogames actually transform gamers into better people.

This book covers all of Hans-George Gadamer major works, ideas and influences and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Gadamer's thought. Students will discover information, analysis and criticism. A-Z entries include a clear definition of all the key terms used in Gadamer's writings and detailed synopses of his key works, including his magnum opus, Truth and Method. The Dictionary also includes entries on Gadamer's major philosophical influences, from Plato to Heidegger, and his contemporaries, including Derrida and Habermas. (...) It covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Gadamer's 'philosophical hermeneutics', offering clear and accessible explanations of often complex terminology. (shrink)

While recognising the power and fundamental importance of Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages, this essay explores some of the problems associated with the relative silence within the text about the issue of the forces of production and their development. By contrast, Harman suggests that Wickham’s most important contribution to our understanding of the period, his concept of a peasant-mode of production, is best understood against the backdrop of prior developments of the forces of production. Moreover, the peasant-mode’s temporality is (...) itself best understood against the background of further developments of the forces of production. (shrink)

Chris Letheby, Jaipreet Mattu, and Eric Hochstein try to put an end to the “mysticism wars,” by which they mean the battle between psychedelic researchers who hold that mystical concepts ought to be employed in attempts to describe and understand psychedelic experiences and those who do not hold this. Letheby, Mattu, and Hochstein side with the former and do so on the grounds that (as they put it), “there are no good reasons to abandon mystical concepts in psychedelic science, (...) and plenty of good reasons to keep them.” At bottom, they contend that critiques of the pro-mystical-concepts view can be solved via clarifying concepts and recognizing basic (though significant) distinctions. And though they grant that mystical concepts may one day be superseded in the science of psychedelics, they maintain that this should not occur on the basis of a misplaced conceptual critique, as is (they maintain) the present-day critique of the pro-mystical-concepts view. (shrink)

Catcalls have been said to insult, intimidate, and silence their targets. The harms that catcalls inflict on individuals are reason enough to condemn them. This paper argues that they also inflict a type of structural harm by subordinating their targets. Catcalling initiates an unwanted conversation where none should exist. This brings the rules and norms governing conversations to bear in such a way that the catcall assigns their target a ‘subordinate discourse role’. This not only constrains the behaviour of the (...) target here and now, but also influences the norms governing future conversations. Catcalls are then not only bad because of the effects on their target, but also because of their pernicious contribution to the wider normative landscape. (shrink)

This volume explores the usefulness of the notion of fittingness in investigating a range of normative matters. Topics include the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relation between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility.