American televised political shows are under tremendous pressure to succeed within an economic model that requires maximizing viewership. In response to this growing financial pressure, political shows invite contentious guests to discuss current events and issues. Such discussions are often confrontational, making a mockery of the responsibility the news industry has in disseminating information in an impartial and insightful way. Although outrage is a common discourse feature of televised political shows, little is known about what this language looks like and (...) how it is used to argue ideological positions. To this end, drawing from critical discourse analysis, this study investigates the multidimensional and multifunctional aspects of mocking, which is a type of outrage discourse. The findings show that mocking is an important argumentative tool for panel members, which occurs in the turn following an opposing viewpoint and is used to carry out a range of actions, including expressing disagreement, establishing a competing ideological position, and refuting an idea based on an opponent’s political identity, to name a few. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how mocking and mock news feed into partisan ideologies, creating both tribalism and skepticism within society. (shrink)

The months preceding and following the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States have incited furious debate about the authenticity of media discourse in the shaping of reality, including in particular the reporting of refugees from predominantly Muslim regions and their resettlement in Western nations. Much of this debate is rooted in how opposing discourse clans, such as liberal and conservative ideologies, construct a narrative of nationhood around contested views of refugees. Examining mainstream and alternative (...) media from a critical discourse analytic perspective, the article uncovers how two key narratives about the Syrian refugee crisis emerge when the media attempt to orient their respective audiences to government policy through the discursive formation of the American Dream. Drawing on aspects of historicity, linguistic and semiotic action, and social impact, the analysis of the data reveals a discursive fracas between a humanistic perspective on the crisis that exploits a banal understanding of the American Dream and a more dichotomous narrative that homogenises refugees as a threat to the American way of life. These observations add to the growing body of literature that questions the ways in which the media discursively shapes, and is shaped by, political ideologies. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Emily McTernan’s book, Taking Offence. I focus on how to evaluate taking offence comparatively against alternative attitudes such as anger or blame. Drawing on some of my work on blame, emotion and expressive action, I sketch a way in which we might reach a more convincing answer than that provided by McTernan.

in a nachlass fragment of 1888, Nietzsche refers to psychology as "Affektenlehre"—the doctrine or theory of the affects.1 Given his contention elsewhere that psychology represents the "path to the fundamental problems", it should come as no surprise that Nietzsche makes reference to affects in numerous prominent passages, and throughout some of his most important works.2 Yet, as Peter Poellner has claimed, one might "feel that not much is gained by [Nietzsche's] assertions in the absence of a detailed account of what (...) 'affects' are supposed to be". Literature on the topic has focused predominantly on the roles ascribed to affects in his moral... (shrink)

Optimistic predictions that genetic and genomic testing will provide health benefits have been tempered by the concern that individuals who receive their results may experience negative psychosocial outcomes. This potential ethical and clinical concern has prompted extensive conversations between policy‐makers, health researchers, ethicists, and the general public. Fortunately, the psychosocial consequences of such testing are subject to empirical investigation, and over the past quarter century, research that clarifies some of the types, likelihood, and severity of potential harms from learning the (...) results of the testing has accumulated. I aim to provide an overview of the findings of this research by looking at selected systematic reviews. This will convey the gist of the literature’s quality and coverage, reveal gaps in existing knowledge, and highlight promising areas for future scholarship. (shrink)

Given advances in microsurgical techniques, immunomodulation protocols, and neuro-regenerative therapies, there is a growing likelihood that first-in-human whole-eye transplantation (WET) may be at...

This article takes up the important recent argument of Mearsheimer and Rosato that states are rational in their foreign policy behavior and that their rationality can be defined in terms of the quality of their decision-making process. In particular, they define a state decision as rational if the decision makers engage in a deliberative process with a final choice based on a credible theory. First, I take up other notions of rationality familiar from the statistical and economic literature, arguing that (...) these other definitions are more useful for realist theory. Then, by contrast with Mearsheimer and Rosato, I argue that what is fundamental about realism in international relations theory is a focus on the subjectively rational pursuit of state security, regardless of the process used to attain it. This approach incorporates most realist theorizing while allowing for the great diversity of state behavior predicted by various realist doctrines and observed in reality. Within realism, I maintain that the distinction between revisionist and status quo states cannot be elided as neorealism attempts to do. Finally, I argue that domestic politics, too, is best understand in realist terms, even in democratic states. (shrink)

First Published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book presents a theory that unifies these theories by using a philosophical approach to disclose an oversight in the theory of relativity.

MutL family proteins contain an N‐terminal ATPase domain (NTD), an unstructured interdomain linker, and a C‐terminal domain (CTD), which mediates constitutive dimerization between subunits and often contains an endonuclease active site. Most MutL homologs direct strand‐specific DNA mismatch repair by cleaving the error‐containing daughter DNA strand. The strand cleavage reaction is poorly understood; however, the structure of the endonuclease active site is consistent with a two‐ or three‐metal ion cleavage mechanism. A motif required for this endonuclease activity is present in (...) the unstructured linker of Mlh1 and is conserved in all eukaryotic Mlh1 proteins, except those from metamonads, which also lack the almost absolutely conserved Mlh1 C‐terminal phenylalanine‐glutamate‐arginine‐cysteine (FERC) sequence. We hypothesize that the cysteine in the FERC sequence is autoinhibitory, as it sequesters the active site. We further hypothesize that the evolutionary co‐occurrence of the conserved linker motif with the FERC sequence indicates a functional interaction, possibly by linker motif‐mediated displacement of the inhibitory cysteine. This role is consistent with available data for interactions between the linker motif with DNA and the CTDs in the vicinity of the active site. (shrink)

The colonial period of Christian expansion was plagued by practices and systems that exploited non-European indigenous populations for the endgame interests of enriching the treasuries of European imperial powers and promoting Eurocentrism. Anderson Jeremiah has written an important paper that explains how the concepts of race and the caste system in South Asia functioned in the context of colonial Christian expansion, and argues that postcolonial Christian actors should prioritise intentionally replacing dehumanising forms of missional activity with the four ethically decolonising (...) paradigms of radical resistance, solidarity, hospitality, and joy in service of promoting racial justice in future global society. My response focuses on Jeremiah's ethical paradigm of hospitality, and engages with the challenge of applying this paradigm. In order for this hospitality paradigm to be applied in ways that lead to optimal missional outcomes, it must answer several questions, especially those linked to the existence of contesting hospitality-focussed frameworks and sociocultural attitudes endorsed by contemporary Christian agents and communities whose norms of hospitality appear radically different. (shrink)

Ideology criticism, like scepticism, calls into question the objective or justified status of beliefs. However, where scepticism only refutes, and never puts forward, a substantive claim about anything, the ideology critic must maintain some criterion for distinguishing ideas which support relations of domination from those that do not, in virtue of her criticism of a particular set of ideas as “ideological”. The trouble for the ideology critic is that the sceptical methods she deploys undermine any critical thesis, including her own. (...) Thus, the theory of ideology tends to undercut ideology criticism with a fundamental problem of self-implication. This paper draws on the epistemological problem of the criterion to explain and define a basic problem of justification for the theory of ideology. A problem of self-implication is introduced in part one. I argue that the basis for ideology criticism inevitably succumbs to the very doubt it puts forward. I draw on various criticisms of ideology criticism to formulate a specific account of the basic, fundamental problem for the theory of ideology. I show how norms for ideology criticism are vulnerable to an Ancient sceptical problem for epistemic criteria, which brings the ideology critic to a dilemma: either (i) find independent grounds for criticism, immune to ideology, or (ii) show how ideology is self-undermining. Each horn of the dilemma is ideological. (shrink)

Many accounts of the evolutionary origins of rule-following (or normative guidance) argue that rules and norms emerged out of the demands of cooperation in early human societies. This paper argues that this cooperation story is misguided because of the underlying telic or functional framework it relies on in explaining the emergence of normative agency. The fundamental philosophical claim here is that teleology does not entail normativity. So normative guidance does not follow from any telic/functional explanation. I consider a range of (...) possible responses from advocates of the cooperation story, including a defence of the shared intentionality approach, and argue that they fall short. I suggest that a deontic rational structure (instead of a telic or functional one) better accounts for normative guidance. In place of cooperation, I put forward the notion of participation as a more viable alternative that captures this deontic structure. Participation is said to foreground joint commitment (in lieu of joint goals) and co-regulation (instead of cooperation or coordination) as two distinctive features structuring normative agency. I end by gesturing towards interdisciplinary work that operationally unpacks this participation view from a behavioural and comparative perspective suggesting the central role of social play as a key focal point in the evolutionary emergence of normative agency. (shrink)

This article begins by unfolding Thomas Berry’s notion of Pax Gaia, using the concept as a key to unlock cogent aspects of his geobiological thought. Then, suggesting an addition to John Howard Yoder’s typologies, the authors argue that Berry’s vision of the peace of the Earth can be categorized as a “the pacifism of religious cosmology.” Berry’s cosmology of peace is then grounded with reference to concrete issues of ecojustice, with a particular focus on the interrelated concepts of “biocide” and (...) “geocide.” The article ends by highlighting the need for reinvention of the human, which emerges from the moral imperatives associated with the pacifism of religious cosmology. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is a highly original, indeed decidedly iconoclastic thinker whose work has ranged widely over areas of equal concern to philosophers in the ‘continental’ and mainstream analytic traditions. These areas include ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, and – above all – philosophy of mathematics. It is unfortunate, and symptomatic of prevailing attitudes, that his work has so far receivedminimal attention from commentators in the analytic line of descent. Here I try to help the process of reception along by describing Badiou’s (...) remarkably ambitious approach to issues of mathematical (more specifically: of set-theoretical) ontology, and by explaining just where his project stands in relation to some major issues within current analytic debate. Chief among them are: the issue between realists and anti-realists – along with various avowed middle-ground or compromise solutions – and those oddly tenacious problems-from-Wittgenstein (e.g., concerning what it means to follow a rule) that have so preoccupied philosophers over the past decade. In particular I stress the unusual, indeed unique combination in his thought of high formal rigour and conceptual clarity allied to a speculative scope and inventiveness which tend to make those other discussions appear somewhat self-absorbed and parochial. Most importantly, Badiou engages these issues at a level of creative as well as of technical or analytic grasp, which puts his thinking closely in touch with the way that set theory has itself evolved through a constant process of – in Badiou’s phrase – ‘turning paradoxes into concepts.’ I also discuss his strong and principled rejection of the ‘linguistic turn’ in its manifold (analytic and continental) variants, and his idea of the ‘event’ as that which inherently eludes or surpasses the conceptual resources of any received ontology, whether in mathematics and the natural sciences or in the history of genuinely epochal changes in politics and ethics. All in all, I put the case for Badiou as a thinker of the first importance not only for the impressive range, depth and originality of his work, but also because it points to an escape-route from some of the more cramped or windowless quarters of present-day philosophic thought. (shrink)

This is a study of the psychological ideas of Galen (AD 129-c.210, the most important medical writer in antiquity) and Stoicism (a major philosophical theory in ...

Aristotle’s Metaphysics Λ.7 features an argumentative progression from the unwavering actuality of the unmoved mover through its necessity to its goodness, which goodness in turn grounds the manner in which it serves as the ultimate principle of motion, namely, by being an object of love and desire (1072b4-12). One link in this progression is especially brief and startling, namely the second of two inferences in this short sentence: “It is a being of necessity, therefore, and in so far as [it (...) exists] necessarily, [it exists] finely, and it is in this way a principle” (1072b10-11). Aristotle slides smoothly from: x exists necessarily (ex anagkēs) to x exists finely (kalōs), without any intervening step. The seamless speed of this step is bound to give us pause—we naturally read it as enthymematic and start casting about for an intervening premise set. Still more arresting is its apparent move from a descriptive to a normative proposition. From our post-Humean vantage point we may be likely to presume that whatever the missing premise set of this inference turns out to be, somewhere buried in that set will need to be something of the form: if descriptive proposition (DP), then normative proposition (NP). Otherwise, Aristotle’s conclusion will have illicitly inferred a normative proposition from a descriptive premise set, in violation of the Humean edict that one cannot infer an ought from an is. Yet, if we smuggle the norm into our premise set along the way, we have merely relocated our problem. For then we will have asserted, or assumed, that the truth of some descriptive proposition is sufficient for the truth of some normative proposition, namely the consequent of the conditional: if DP, then NP. At any rate, this obtains unless necessity itself is already a normative notion, a questionable assumption, but one we will consider in due course. In either case, though, we need some explication of the route Aristotle follows when he moves, without comment, from necessity to goodness. (shrink)

I argue in this chapter against a common Kantian-inspired misconception of human dignity that has prevailed in African philosophical discussions of the concept of late. This approach substitutes the normative ground of dignity in our inherent capacity for individual rational autonomy for our inherent capacity for communal relationality. Although this African communitarian correction to Kantian individualism rightly picks up on the relational character of human dignity in African ethics and political thought, it repeats the mistake of attributing dignity to single, (...) individual persons. This misses the value of the social ontology of human dignity, which may be attributed to a typically African relational approach. In contrast, I offer an interpretation that locates dignity in mutual recognition. (shrink)

A recent publication (I by Simon Brodbeck, 2022) proposes to resolve a long-standing theological conundrum of Hindu mythology on the basis of a literary-holist or “synchronic” reading of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, seeking thereby to displace earlier scholarship treating this theme. This review essay provides a thorough analysis of the arguments of Divine Descent and the closely linked matter of the two competing methodologies in the reading of the Sanskrit epics: the “synchronic” or holist approach championed by Brodbeck and the “analytic” (...) approach, which views the Mahābhārata as a historically layered text. Ultimately, I argue here that the latter “analytic” solutions to the conundrum, which it was Brodbeck’s purpose to challenge, account for the matter far more persuasively. In particular, I make special reference to a 1960 study by Paul Hacker as a work of persisting value for understanding the historic development of the avatāra system over time. (shrink)

Chester Barnard's classic, The Functions of the Executive, is premised on an Aristotelean conception of human nature. This reliance ramifies throughout his analysis of the cooperative basis of human organizations. Perhaps its most important manifestation appears in his definition of willing cooperation as self-abnegation. For by so removing cooperation from its utilitarian and contractarian assumptions, he avoids the well known criticisms of those assumptions while retaining his fundamental liberalism. Put positively, self-abnegation informs Barnard's liberalism with an heroic dimension. This, in (...) turn, enables him to provide an account of organizational effectiveness which is at once realistic and optimistic and which values its unique human participants. (shrink)

The architectural photographer Julius Shulman (1910-2009) is one of the few image makers to have documented, as well as witnessed, nearly an entire century of Los Angeles history.

This paper aims to explore and expand on Wittgenstein’s remarks on the nature of mental imagery. Despite some rather cryptic passages and obvious objections, his notion of mental imagery as possessing a constitutive (and not merely added) element of expressive thought and conceptuality offers critical insights linking perceptual capacities with our shared practices. In particular I seek to further develop Wittgenstein’s claim that perceptual impressions presuppose a “mastery of a technique.” I argue that this sense of technique, understood as acquired (...) conceptual capacities, can explain and capture the rich and varied spectrum of expressive visual content that can be accessed by human beings initiated and embedded in a variety of shared practices. Using Gilbert Ryle’s account of dispositions, I cash out the notion of acquired conceptual capacities as spanning a wide latitude of responsive dispositions from mere “blind” visual habits to more normatively-guided, intelligent, and deliberately-trained visual “skills.” Visual impressions construed as such are hardly perceptually (nor representationally) univocal and instead exhibit a dynamic and reflexive plurivocity manifested through one’s initiation into shared practices and forms of life. This plurivocity makes possible a rich array of visual affordances that would otherwise not be accessible outside the context of a shared practice. This suggests that human beings possess a distinctive kind of expressive and responsive intelligence which picks out visual affordances determined not so much by a merely receptive perceptual faculty but by the subject’s skillful, active, and responsive engagement with the world. (shrink)

A paradigm-breaking exploration of how collective intelligence functions in groups with practical guidelines for teachers.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 1 Seiten: 234-275.