Abstract[I] want to single out one phenomenon that could be called the ‘politics of sources’. It points to the extent to which the histories that both scientists and historians can write are artifacts of the available sources. The Rockefeller Foundation not only opened its archives very early on for historical work but also invested a lot in making the archives readily available for historical exploration. During the 1980s, many young historians took advantage of this opportunity. Thus, in a relatively early (...) phase of the professional historiography of molecular biology, one could have gained the impression that the development of the new biology as a whole was a bio‐politically directed enterprise of the Rockefeller Foundation sustained by the vision that social processes could ultimately be controlled by biological processes. (shrink)

Professor Jack Goody builds on his own previous work to extend further his highly influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive eurocentric or occidentalist biases of so much western historical writing. Goody also examines the consequent 'theft' by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism, and love. The Theft of History discusses a number of theorists in detail, including Marx, Weber and Norbert Elias, and engages with critical (...) admiration western historians like Fernand Braudel, Moses Finlay and Perry Anderson. Major questions of method are raised, and Goody proposes a new comparative methodology for cross-cultural analysis, one that gives a much more sophisticated basis for assessing divergent historical outcomes, and replaces outmoded simple differences between East and West. The Theft of History will be read by an unusually wide audience of historians, anthropologists and social theorists. (shrink)

Several of Krueger & Funder's (K&F's) suggestions may promote more balanced social cognition research, but reconsidered null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) is not one of them. Although NHST has primarily supported negative conclusions, this is simply because most conclusions have been negative. NHST can support positive, negative, and even balanced conclusions. Better NHST practices would benefit psychology, but would not alter the balance between positive and negative approaches.

The notion that there was a profound cultural boundary between Europe (defined as Christian) and Asia (defined as other, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism …) was dear to the hearts of the Europeans at least from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. But it is as much a figment of European creation as the notion of a physical boundary. Of course there were cultural differences of a graduated kind and important political-military ones with the western developments of ships and guns (using (...) the Islamic compass and Chinese gunpowder), but especially with the development of industrial production. Pomerantz has recently argued that western economic supremacy was not in evidence until after that time, a thesis that obviously cuts at the roots of those many writers who claim a cultural advantage in the West going back perhaps to classical times, to Christianity, to the German heritage, or even to the Renaissance and Reformation. Some important changes did occur in the West following developments in the sphere of printing, mainly in the sphere of education and the modes of communication. That earlier levels of cultural attainment were not so very different is clear from the early Jesuit reports of their work in the East. (shrink)

This paper argues that the emergence of humanistic values is not a purely modern phenomenon. If by humanism we refer to secular learning and the development of science, there were periods in the history of Islam when this was encouraged. Humanism in the sense of the respect for ‘human values’ such as democracy is equally widely distributed in time and space, so that the idea that the West, as heirs of Ancient Greece, has a monopoly is quite untenable. Tribal societies (...) often practise versions of direct democracy; representation is an aspect of many more complex regimes. Even with monarchical states, few can afford to neglect public opinion over the longer term. Modern representative democracies moreover often fail to consult their people on major issues such as declaring war. In any case that is only one mode of representation among others and does not have the monopoly of virtue, especially in religiously divided communities. Elsewhere it may be adopted as a legitimating device in a specific context, as I suggested had been the case with Israel. (shrink)

In their “The Prevalence of Mind-Body Dualism in Early China,” Slingerland and Chudek use a statistical analysis of the early Chinese corpus to argue for Weak Folk Dualism (WFD). We raise three methodological objections to their analysis. First, the change over time that they find is largely driven by genre. Second, the operationalization of WFD is potentially misleading. And, third, dating the texts they use is extremely controversial. We conclude with some positive remarks.

En Self-Constitution. Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009), Christine Korsgaard defiende la conclusión de que el imperativo categórico rige la acción humana porque es el único principio que permite alcanzar la unidad psíquica plena, la cual, según Korsgaard, es un prerrequisito esencial para la acción efectiva. Para los agentes humanos, alcanzar esa unidad -que consiste en hacer coherentes distintos impulsos hacia la acción- es una actividad constante, denominada "autoconstitución". De acuerdo con Korsgaard, ésta es la fuente originaria de la normatividad y (...) de las identidades prácticas e incluso de la identidad personal. Después de exponer las ideas centrales del libro, presento dos objeciones: primero, critico la equiparación del imperativo categórico con la autoconstitución exitosa, pues no toda falla de auto-constitución es una falla moral. Segundo, argumento que la tesis de que la identidad personal es producto de la autoconstitución es problemática y que, al defenderla, Korsgaard confunde identidad práctica con identidad personal. In Self-Constitution. Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009), Christine Korsgaard argues that the categorical imperative rules human action because it is the sole principle that allows us to reach the complete psychic unity that, Korsgaard thinks, is an essential prerequisite for effective action. Reaching this unity -which consists in making cohere diverging impulses for action- is for human agents a constant activity called "self-constitution." According to Korsgaard, this activity is the source of normativity, of human practical identities and even of personal identity. After explaining the main ideas of the book, I present two objections. First, I criticize the linkage of the categorical imperative to successful self-constitution, for not every failure of the latter counts as a moral failure. Second, I argue that the thesis that personal identity is a product of self-constitution is problematic and that it betrays a confusion between practical identity and personal identity. (shrink)

Goldman joins the ranks of epistemologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars trying to use economic models of science. For Goldman, these models are part of social rather than individual epistemics. His hope is that these models will illustrate that non-epistemic goals of individual scientists such as professional success do not necessarily undermine epistemic aims of science such as the acquisition of truth. This paper shows that there are inconsistencies between Goldman's individual and social epistemics, that these models do not live (...) up to Goldman's standards of evaluation, and that the economic models that Goldman uses are not social. (shrink)

This article echoes those voices that demand new approaches and ‹senses’ for management education and business programs. Much of the article is focused on showing that the polemic about the educative model of business schools has moral and epistemological foundations and opens up the debate over the type of knowledge that practitioners need to possess in order to manage organizations, and how this knowledge can be taught in management programs. The article attempts to highlight the moral dimension of management through (...) a reinterpretation of the Aristotelian concept of practical wisdom. I defend the ideas that management is never morally neutral and that Aristotelian practical wisdom allows the recovery of moral considerations in management practice. I analyze the impact and implications that the introduction of practical wisdom in business schools entails for the conception and objectives of management education. This view reconfigures management education in terms of attention to values, virtues and context. Therefore, management programmes should prepare students to critically evaluate what they hear and to make decisions coherent with their values and virtues. In the final section, I reflect on the pedagogical implications of this approach. I point out that an integrated model of ethics and practical wisdom promotes education of cognition and education of affect as well. I provide an example to illustrate my perspective and to support my conclusions. (shrink)

The overall goal of this target article is to demonstrate a mechanism for an embodied cognition. The particular vehicle is a much-studied, but still widely debated phenomenon seen in 7–12 month-old-infants. In Piaget's classic “A-not-B error,” infants who have successfully uncovered a toy at location “A” continue to reach to that location even after they watch the toy hidden in a nearby location “B.” Here, we question the traditional explanations of the error as an indicator of infants' concepts of objects (...) or other static mental structures. Instead, we demonstrate that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering. We offer a formal dynamic theory and model based on cognitive embodiment that both simulates the known A-not-B effects and offers novel predictions that match new experimental results. The demonstration supports an embodied view by casting the mental events involved in perception, planning, deciding, and remembering in the same analogic dynamic language as that used to describe bodily movement, so that they may be continuously meshed. We maintain that this mesh is a pre-eminently cognitive act of “knowing” not only in infancy but also in everyday activities throughout the life span. Key Words: cognitive development; dynamical systems theory; embodied cognition; infant development; motor control; motor planning; perception and action. (shrink)

This chapter surveys essentialist and anti-essentialist theories of sex and gender. It does so by engaging three approaches to sex and gender: externalism, internalism, and contextualism. The chapter also draws attention to two key debates about sex and gender in the feminist literature: the debate about the sex/gender distinction (the distinction debate) and the debate about whether sex and gender have essences (the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate). In addition, it describes three problems that theories of sex and gender tend to face: the (...) Inclusion Problem, the Definition Problem, and the Exclusion Problem. Lastly, the chapter highlights why the division between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of sex and gender is not clear. (shrink)

In a recent article, Wilkinson puts forward the notion of identity-relative paternalism. According to Wilkinson’s final formulation of this principle, ‘[i]ndividuals should be prevented from doing to future selves (where there are weakened prudential unity relations between the current and future self) what it would be justified to prevent them from doing to others’.1 In medical ethics, it is usually assumed that hard paternalism, that is, acting against a competent person’s wishes for their own benefit, is not justified. According to (...) Mill’s harm principle, we may only limit people’s freedom if they cause harm to others.2 Harm to self is not a sufficient reason for overriding competent persons’ decisions. Wilkinson, however, draws on Parfit’s reductionist view of personal identity to argue that sometimes, patients’ future selves are sufficiently disconnected from their present selves to treat future selves like different persons. If a competent person’s medical decision negatively affects a future self, this should be treated like a case of harm to others. Thus, overriding competent persons’ decisions in such cases—and treating them against their will—could be justified. In this commentary, I point out two problems with this approach. First, I demonstrate that the cases Wilkinson’s argument is based on are not examples of harm to others but rather cases of surrogate decision making gone wrong, …. (shrink)

Until now, there has been no theoretical foundation that explains why organizations implement whistle-blowing systems. By understanding whistle-blowing systems as an instrument that is desired by society, the legitimacy theory could be transferred to the whistle-blowing concept. A survey of German managers shows that legitimacy theory may be supported. Further insights into legitimacy theory are given by the motivation for the design of the implemented systems. The survey shows that, in particular, the implementation of external whistle-blowing systems is seemingly not (...) driven by desired effectiveness. This supports legitimacy theory, since it reveals that external systems are symbolic rather than substantive systems. However, the results do not hold for internal whistle-blowing systems because the implementation of internal systems is ostensibly driven by power theories. The results are interesting for the planned statutory whistleblower protection as they reveal a partially restrained attitude toward whistle-blowing. Whistle-blowing systems are not effective if management is not convinced of their benefits. (shrink)

A large part of the explainable AI literature focuses on what explanations are in general, what algorithmic explainability is more specifically, and how to code these principles of explainability into AI systems. Much less attention has been devoted to the question of why algorithmic decisions and systems should be explainable and whether there ought to be a right to explanation and why. We therefore explore the normative landscape of the need for AI to be explainable and individuals having a right (...) to such explanation. This exploration is particularly relevant to the medical domain where the (im)possibility of explainable AI is high on both the research and practitioners’ agenda. The dominant intuition overall is that explainability has and should play a key role in the health context. Notwithstanding the strong normative intuition for having a right to explanation, intuitions can be wrong. So, we need more than an appeal to intuitions when it comes to explaining the normative significance of having a right to explanation when being subject to AI-based decision-making. The aim of the paper is therefore to provide an account of what might underlie the normative intuition. We defend the ‘symmetry thesis’ according to which there is no special normative reason to have a right to explanation when ‘machines’ in the broad sense, make decisions, recommend treatment, discover tumors, and so on. Instead, we argue that we have a right to explanation in cases that involve automated processing that significantly affect our core deliberative agency and which we do not understand, because we have a general moral right to explanation when choices are made which significantly affect us but which we do not understand. (shrink)

Reasoning about bedrock abstract concepts such as time, number, and valence relies on spatial metaphor and often on multiple spatial metaphors for a single concept. Previous research has documented, for instance, both future-in-front and future-to-right metaphors for time in English speakers. It is often assumed that these metaphors, which appear to have distinct experiential bases, remain distinct in online temporal reasoning. In two studies we demonstrate that, contra this assumption, people systematically combine these metaphors. Evidence for this combination was found (...) in both directly elicited and spontaneous co-speech gestures about time. These results provide first support for the hypothesis that the metaphorical representation of time, and perhaps other abstract domains as well, involves the continuous co-activation of multiple metaphors rather than the selection of only one. (shrink)

It is widely thought that knowledge is factive – only truths can be known. However, this view has been recently challenged. One challenge appeals to approximate truths. Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri argue that false-but-approximately-true propositions can be known. They provide experimental findings to show that their view enjoys intuitive support. In addition, they argue that we should reject the factive account of knowledge to avoid widespread skepticism. A second challenge, advanced by Nenad Popovic, appeals to multidimensional geometry to build (...) a case where it seems intuitive that a person knows p even though p is false. In addition, Popovic argues that we should reject the factive account of knowledge because most of us would not become widespread skeptics if we discovered that ordinary objects in our world are actually four-dimensional. In this paper, we defend the factive account of knowledge against these arguments by challenging the intuitive appeal of the cases and arguing that there is no real threat of widespread skepticism for the factive account of knowledge. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin's writings on the Paris shopping arcades and nineteenth- century urban industrial culture are frequently referenced in contemporary examinations of ‘modernity'. In current cultural studies Benjamin's investigation of the aesthetics of merchandise and his insights into the social fact of mass consumerism are repeatedly invoked. Indeed these investigations may be alluded to even more frequently than reference is made to Benjamin's once much reproduced essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. A decade and a half (...) ago Benjamin's ‘Artwork’ essay was one of the most frequently cited essays in new art history and cultural studies academic textbooks. To put it crudely, a turnaround has occurred. In the 1970s academic attention spotlit Benjamin's materialist history of artistic production, distribution and reception as presented in the ‘Artwork’ essay and in ‘The Author as Producer’. The political events of 1968 had made Benjamin extremely readable. His thoughts discharged after some years delay. Most alluring to the German 68ers were the statements on political art and Benjamin's dissections of fascism. Also entrancing were Benjamin's analyses of experience. Benjamin wrote extensively, and from early on, about ways of expanding the conceptualisation of experience: sometimes philosophically - by means of Kant-critique, sometimes aesthetically — by a probing of surrealism and psychoanalysis, and sometimes practically – through experiments with hashish, which were later written up as protocols. John Berger's Ways of Seeing represented an original attempt to introduce Benjamin to an English audience, via the appropriately mass mediation of television. Benjamin was adopted as a leftist mascot, and a materialist who could recommend directions for art interpretation and more importantly, cultural practice. The approaches of the 1980s and 1990s, inflected by the priorities of feminist and postmodernist scholarship as they have loomed in cultural studies, art history and sociology, increasingly turned to those aspects of Benjamin's work that appear to illuminate a burgeoning interest in urbanism and consumerism. Interest has shifted away from cultural production and critique towards consumption and characterization. These days, Benjamin is regularly served up as one of the theorists who can vindicate a feel-good consumerism, lending a glamourizing and theoretical loftiness to the activity of shopping. Indeed, far from blasting the chimeras of commodity fetishism, Benjamin becomes the commodity's high-priest. (shrink)

Scripts and deception are alternative means, both imperfect, to the goal of simulating an environment that cannot be created readily. Under scripts, participants pretend they are in that environment, while deception convinces participants they are in that environment although they are not. With repeated trials, they ought to be unnecessary. But they are not, which poses challenges to behavioral sciences.

In several jurisdictions, irremediable suffering from a medical condition is a legal requirement for access to assisted dying. According to the expressivist objection, allowing assisted dying for a specific group of persons, such as those with irremediable medical conditions, expresses the judgment that their lives are not worth living. While the expressivist objection has often been used to argue that assisted dying should not be legalised, I show that there is an alternative solution available to its proponents. An autonomy-based approach (...) to assisted suicide regards the provision of assisted suicide (but not euthanasia) as justified when it is autonomously requested by a person, irrespective of whether this is in her best interests. Such an approach has been put forward by a recent judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court, which understands assisted suicide as an expression of the person’s right to a self-determined death. It does not allow for beneficence-based restrictions regarding the person’s suffering or medical diagnosis and therefore avoids the expressivist objection. I argue that on an autonomy-based approach, assisted suicide should not be understood as a medical procedure but rather as the person’s autonomous action. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss formal reconstructions of Anselm’s ontological argument. We first present a number of requirements that any successful reconstruction should meet. We then offer a detailed preparatory study of the basic concepts involved in Anselm’s argument. Next, we present our own reconstructions—one in modal logic and one in classical logic—and compare them with each other and with existing reconstructions from the reviewed literature. Finally, we try to show why and how one can gain a better understanding of (...) Anselm’s argument by using modern formal logic. In particular, we try to explain why formal reconstructions of the argument, despite its apparent simplicity, tend to become quite involved. (shrink)

This paper enquires into the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective focusing on the temporalities of platforms. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace at which various online media produce new content, we trace the different rhythms, patterns or tempos created by the interplay of devices, users’ web activities and issues. What emerges (...) are distinct forms of ‘realtimeness’ which are not external from but specific to devices, organized through socio-technical arrangements and practices of use. Realtimeness thus unflattens more general accounts of the real-time web and research, and draws attention to the agencies built into specific platform temporalities and the political economies of making real-time. (shrink)

This commentary comprises three different responses to Counted and Zock’s article: “Place Spirituality: An Attachment Perspective.” The first response is from Esther Sternberg, MD, who gives a psychophysiological and neuroscience critique. The second is from Altaf Engineer, PhD, from the perspective of architecture and environmental psychology, and the last response is from Hester Oberman, PhD, who gives a psychology of religion rebuttal.

International business organizations are regularly addressed on their corporate social responsibility (CSR). As illustrated in this paper, it is not yet clear exactly what CSR means to organizations and how to deal with it. In this paper, the authors explore how a sensemaking approach helps to understand the business challenges of CSR within an organizational context. The theories of Karl Weick are applied to the experiences of CSR in Royal Dutch Shell. The authors argue that the key to CSR in (...) international business organizations is to engage stakeholders and start a process of joint sensemaking. Three main competencies are crucial in this: the competency to engage stakeholders through listening and understanding; the creation of an organizational language so that CSR makes sense to members of the organization; and recognizing the momentum of taking action. (shrink)

The importance of writing as a means of communication in a society formerly without it, or where writing has been confined to particular groups, is enormous. It objectifies speech, provides language with a material correlative, and in this material form speech can be transmitted over space and preserved over time. In this book the contributors discuss cultures at different levels of sophistication and literacy and examine the importance of writing on the development of these societies. All the articles except the (...) first were specially written for this book and the extensive introduction unites and synthesizes the material. (shrink)

To commemorate the centenary of Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms this essay focuses on how Cassirer in the development of a distinctive philosophical method analyzed the newest development within philosophy and science. Discussing Einstein's theory of relativity and Russell's formal logic Cassirer found tools to expand the critique of reason into a critique of culture. The course of argumentation is as follows. At the outset Cassirer's outline of the idea of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in the 1920 book (...) Einstein's Theory of Relativity is presented as a reaction to the increasing distance between theoretical physics and ordinary experience. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms can be read as an answer to an inner methodological demand within critical idealism. I encircle this motif in Cassirer's comment that Plato's idealism, understood as the dianoia of thought, is reiterated in Kant's transcendental philosophy and Herman Cohen's reception of Kant. This leads to a discussion of how Cassirer breaks away from Cohen by the positive reception of Russell's symbolic logic. Finally, I present the theory of functional concepts developed by Cassirer (1910) in the book Substance and Function as a prerequisite for the conception of a plural but systematic philosophy of symbolic forms. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of the use of humorous stickers within a WhatsApp chat group. With the rapid growth of digital communication, particularly on mobile devices, WhatsApp has become a popular platform for various forms of interaction, including voice and video calls, as well as text and voice messaging. In this context, humour is a prevalent phenomenon, especially in groups where participants have established familiarity and trust. The prevalence of humour in digital communication is largely attributed to the use (...) of multimodal resources, such as stickers – digital images that can include text and are used to convey emotions, feelings, and humour. The study’s initial hypothesis posits that stickers serve as a means of humour contextualization, helping to emphasize and enhance the intended humour in messages. Additionally, stickers are believed to aid in reducing misunderstandings during communication and mitigating potential threats to the participants’ social image. For this case study, the researchers employed a qualitative approach to analyse conversations within a Spanish WhatsApp group comprising numerous participants, resulting in a corpus comprising 44,362 words and 273 stickers. From this data, they selected 8 humorous conversational sequences that exemplify the primary uses and functions of stickers in this digital context. (shrink)

The philosophy of empowerment, which is based on the premises that clients must be active, equal and collaborative participants, who are aware and commited to change, has guided research in empowerment interventions. This article reports on a small part of a research study that sought to understand Chinese cancer patients’ conceptualization of empowerment. Qualitative delineation of the concept of empowerment by means of in-depth interviews was carried out with 12 Chinese patients with cancer. The findings showed that empowerment is a (...) process whereby patients develop a sense of inner strength through connection with others, including families, friends and health care professionals. It is also a process of transformation through which they actively develop new perspectives by reframing and reinterpreting their illness. Acceptance of illness was shown to result from a realization of a lack of control in the situation, which is then enhanced by the beliefs of Confucianism and Taoism. In the cancer context, personal control comprises both primary and secondary processes. Active involvement, awareness of the situation, partnership, self-determination and self-reliance are important values in empowerment. The concept and therapeutic foundations of empowerment provide ample legitimacy for its vigorous pursuit in nursing. (shrink)

Article published in Stance by Wolfe and Grosz.

Does avoiding biased responding to reasoning problems and grasping the ­correct solution require engaging in effortful deliberation or can such solution insight be acquired more intuitively? In this study we set out to test the impact of deliberation on the efficiency of a de-bias training in which the problem logic was explained to participants. We focused on the infamous bat-and-ball problem and varied the degree of possible deliberation during the training session by manipulating time constraints and cognitive load. The results (...) show that the less constrained the deliberation, the more participants improve. However, even under extremely stringent conditions (high time-pressure and dual task load), participants still show a significant improvement. Critically, this “intuitive” insight effect persists over two months. This suggests that deliberation helps reasoners benefit from the training, but it is not indispensable. We discuss critical applied and theoretical implications. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article considère que l’émergence de valeurs humanistes n’est pas un phénomène purement moderne. Si par humanisme nous entendons l’essor des savoirs laïques et scientifiques, nous pouvons constater sa présence à certaines époques de l’histoire de l’Islam. L’Humanisme dans le sens du respect des « valeurs humaines » comme la démocratie est tout aussi étendu dans le temps et dans l’espace. Donc l’idée que l’Occident, en tant qu’héritier de la Grèce antique, en possède le monopole est assez intenable. Des (...) sociétés tribales pratiquent bien souvent des versions de la démocratie directe, la représentation étant un aspect des régimes beaucoup plus complexes. En outre, même parmi les États monarchiques, rares sont ceux qui peuvent à long terme se permettre d’ignorer l’opinion publique. Les démocraties représentatives modernes en revanche se dispensent souvent de consulter leurs électorats pour des décisions telles que la déclaration des guerres. En tout cas, elles ne constituent qu’un mode de représentation parmi d’autres et n’ont pas le monopole de la vertu, surtout dans les communautés divisées sur le plan religieux. Ailleurs elles peuvent servir de dispositif de légitimation, comme dans le cas d’Israël. (shrink)

L'auteure, riche de son expérience de scripte cinéma, analyse l'organisation spatio-temporelle des éléments constituants un film de fiction pour définir le concept de continuité apparente. Celui-ci est ensuite réinvesti dans l'étude de la stéréoscopie au cinéma. Ces deux notions sont à l'origine de la création de deux courts-métrages en 3D visant à les réunir.