We present a perspective of the national transplant program based on organizational theory and complexity theory, framing the system’s allocation of donor organs as an interorganizational directed multiplex of agents with diverse belief formation in a cooperative-competitive environment. Simulation and analysis of this macroscale complexity may help explain known behavioural variations across member organizations. However, the transplant community still relies on system-scale simulations since effective macroscale methodologies are not well established. Therefore, we offer this perspective of the national transplant program (...) as a means to stimulate new methods that capture macroscale impacts of policy development for deceased donor organ allocation. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall provide a novel response to the argument from context-sensitivity against truth-conditional semantics. It is often argued that the contextual influences on truth-conditions outstrip the resources of standard truth-conditional accounts, and so truth-conditional semantics rests on a mistake. The argument assumes that truth-conditional semantics is legitimate if and only if natural language sentences have truth-conditions. I shall argue that this assumption is mistaken. Truth-conditional analyses should be viewed as idealised approximations of the complexities of natural language (...) meaning. From this perspective, disparity between the scientific model and its real-world target is to be expected. I elaborate on what such an approach to semantics would look like. (shrink)

This article offers a critical appraisal of Ulrich Beck’s A God of One’s Own. Connecting the trajectory of the book with the conceptual anchors set down in preceding work on reflexive modernization and cosmopolitanism, areas of empirical imprecision are identified and obstacles to the widespread adoption of personalized forms of faith are considered. Concentrating on issues around configurations of power, the formation of identity and filters of cultural difference, points of critique are developed and areas ripe for future investigation are (...) suggested. (shrink)

This paper presents a new version of the democratic argument for the freedom of expression that has the resources to give a plausible reply to the perennial objection—ordinarily considered fatal—that such accounts fail to deliver protections for abstract art, instrumental music, and lots of other deserving nonpolitical speech. The argument begins with the observation that there are different things that a free speech theory might aim to accomplish. It will hope to justify a right to free speech, of course, with (...) a particular scope and shape, but that right might be a moral right, an ordinary legal right, or a specifically constitutional right. The new version of the argument—the refined argument from democracy—aims to justify a specifically constitutional right to political speech, administered by strong-form judicial review. The democracy theorist can accommodate the intuition that abstract art deserves protection by agreeing that we have a moral right, and probably ought to have an ordinary legal right, to produce and view abstract art. She must only insist that abstract art should not be protected by a specifically constitutional right administered by strong-form judicial review. Not because abstract art does not deserve constitutional protection, but because, on this view, whether a particular right ought to be enshrined in the constitution and administered by judicial review is not solely a matter of the importance of the right or the value of the interests it protects. (shrink)

Generative grammarians typically advocate for a rationalist understanding of language acquisition, according to which the structure of a developed language faculty reflects innate guidance rather than environmental influence. This proposal is developed in developmental linguistics by triggering models of language acquisition. Opposing this tradition, various theorists have advocated for empiricist views of language acquisition, according to which the structure of a developed linguistic competence reflects the linguistic environment in which this competence developed. On this picture, linguistic development is accounted for (...) by general statistical learning mechanisms. In this article I shall precisify the debate, provide a clearer picture of what is at stake, and show why an intermediate picture is needed. (shrink)

This e-special issue of Theory, Culture & Society showcases work published in the journal by and about the late German sociologist Ulrich Beck. Beck became known as a pioneering and inventive thinker, continuously engaged in a quest to capture the essence of the modern age, whilst simultaneously wrestling with the upcoming horizons of the future. During his career, he was responsible for developing some of the defining sociological concepts of the late 20th and early 21st century, including risk, reflexive modernization, (...) individualization and cosmopolitanism. He published many articles in Theory, Culture & Society, inspiring acolytes to mobilize his ideas and provoking critics to dispute them. Complementing articles written by Beck, this collection also includes critical commentaries, applications of his work, a selection of interviews and several reflective pieces which consider his legacy. The key aspiration of this special issue is to encourage contemplation on both the richness and the range of Ulrich Beck’s academic contribution. The contents stimulate reflection on the intricacies of Beck’s method of inquiry and flag up ways in which his work can influence the future trajectory of social theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall provide a novel response to the argument from context-sensitivity against truth-conditional semantics. It is often argued that the contextual influences on truth-conditions outstrip the resources of standard truth-conditional accounts, and so truth-conditional semantics rests on a mistake. The argument assumes that truth-conditional semantics is legitimate if and only if natural language sentences have truth-conditions. I shall argue that this assumption is mistaken. Truth-conditional analyses should be viewed as idealised approximations of the complexities of natural language (...) meaning. From this perspective, disparity between the scientific model and its real-world target is to be expected. I elaborate on what such an approach to semantics would look like. (shrink)

Traditional arguments against the identification of the language of thought with natural language assume a picture of natural language which is largely inconsistent with that suggested by contemporary linguistic theory. This has led certain philosophers and linguists to suggest that this identification is not as implausible as it once seemed. In this paper, I discuss the prospects for such an identification in light of these developments in linguistic theory. I raise a new challenge against the identification thesis: the existence of (...) ungrammatical but acceptable expressions seems to require a gap between thought and language. I consider what must be the case in order for this objection to be dealt with. (shrink)

Deep learning techniques have revolutionised artificial systems’ performance on myriad tasks, from playing Go to medical diagnosis. Recent developments have extended such successes to natural language processing, an area once deemed beyond such systems’ reach. Despite their different goals, these successes have suggested that such systems may be pertinent to theoretical linguistics. The competence/performance distinction presents a fundamental barrier to such inferences. While DL systems are trained on linguistic performance, linguistic theories are aimed at competence. Such a barrier has traditionally (...) been sidestepped by assuming a fairly close correspondence: performance as competence plus noise. I argue this assumption is unmotivated. Competence and performance can differ arbitrarily. Thus, we should not expect DL models to illuminate linguistic theory. (shrink)

I present a novel, collaborative, methodology for linguistics: what I call the ‘explanatory economy’. According to this picture, multiple models/theories are evaluated based on the extent to which they complement one another with respect to data coverage. I show how this model can resolve a long-standing worry about the methodology of generative linguistics: that by creating too much distance between data and theory, the empirical credentials of this research program are tarnished. I provide justifications of such methodologically central distinctions as (...) the competence/performance and core/periphery distinction, and then show how we can understand the push for simplicity in the history of generative grammar in this light. (shrink)

Much of social life now takes place online, and records of online social interactions are available for social science research in the form of massive digital text archives. But cultural social science has contributed little to the development of machine-assisted text analysis methods. As a result few text analysis methods have been developed that link digital text data to theories about culture and discourse. This paper attempts to lay the groundwork for development of such methods by proposing metatheoretical and theoretical (...) foundations suitable for machine-assisted semantic text analysis. Metatheoretically I draw on the work of Elder-Vass, Kaidesoja and others to argue that digital text analysis methods ought to be based on a realist constructionist ontology that treats discourses as ontologically real emergent social entities that have causal relationships with non-discursive social and cognitive processes. Theoretically I follow Feldman and many others in arguing that language is fundamentally shaped by processes of embodied cognition. Researchers developing digital text analysis techniques must theoretically account for such processes if they wish to produce algorithms that can interpret texts in ways that supplement, and not only amplify, human interpretation. I critically survey contemporary text analysis methods that implicitly share these metatheoretical and theoretical positions and discuss some ways these can be further developed with newly available software. (shrink)

This article reviews the German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s final contribution, The Metamorphosis of the World. The drivers of the process of metamorphosis are appraised and the approach adopted by Beck is considered within the broader context of his oeuvre. Continuities with previous work are illuminated and novel developments identified. In order to provide a critical but sympathetic assessment of the theory of metamorphosis, Beck’s epistemological position and his sociological modus operandi are considered. It is argued that, despite elisions, the theory (...) of metamorphosis breaks new ground in social theory and offers valuable opportunities for future empirical investigation and conceptual debate. (shrink)

The dominant tradition in analytic philosophy of language views reference as paradigmatically enabled by the acquisition of words from other speakers. Via chains of transmission, these words connect the referrer to the referent. Such a picture assumes the notion of a word as a stable mapping between sound and meaning. Utterances are constructed out of such stable mappings. While this picture of language is both intuitive and historically distinguished, various trends and programs that have developed over the last few decades (...) in theoretical linguistics suggest an alternative. According to these approaches, the word, conceived of as a linguistic ‘building block’, has no special theoretical significance. While natural language systems generate structures mapping sounds onto meanings, they need not do so by composing elements which themselves specify such mappings. I shall describe some of these developments, and show how they pose a problem for traditional philosophical views of language and communication, before identifying an alternative approach to reference which does not rely on this common-sense picture of words. (shrink)

This interview with Ulrich Beck was undertaken in late August 2014. At this juncture Beck was preparing what was to be his final book, The Metamorphosis of the World. The conversation is reflective of Beck's thinking around the theory of metamorphosis at that time and represents his views on the underlying dynamics of social transformation and the mobilizing power of global risks.

Although the bulk of this paper takes the form of an interpretation of the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis, it is intended as an exploration of what I take to be a new nexus of assumptions about the objects and practice of philosophy. This new configuration might be designated the narrative paradigm. Here one treats philosophical statements about the world as speech acts in a context few of whose disparate dimensions -- psychological, political, economic, scientific, aesthetic or moral (...) -- can be mastered with the precision of a logical calculus, but which nevertheless exhibits structures and motifs that may let us make sense of philosophical strategies we can neither evade nor forego. Most philosophers from classical times on have been interested in some version of a complete.. (shrink)

Although a certain mature historicism in contemporary philosophy takes dialogue with past writers to be the “ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood,” the problem of truth must persist for it—if only in the form of the question concerning the validity of interpretation. If there is no progress in philosophy toward a more precise and established body of true propositions, still there must be some sort of movement to conversation and some reference point by means of which the (...) movement can be gauged. The reference point for traditional metaphysics is presence and presentation —both as method and as subject matter. But our goal now is simply to understand the special philosophical senses of truth and presence in their historical reality. (shrink)

Language has long been a problem‐case for subsymbolic theories of mind. The reason for this is obvious: Language seems essentially symbolic. However, recent work has developed a potential solution to this problem, arguing that linguistic symbols are public objects which augment a fundamentally subsymbolic mind, rather than components of cognitive symbol‐processing. I shall argue that this strategy cannot work, on the grounds that human language acquisition consists in projecting linguistic structure onto environmental entities, rather than extracting this structure from them.

Quilty-Dunn et al. adopt a methodology for psychology connecting behavioral capacities to the format of the mental systems underlying them. This methodology opens up avenues connecting linguistic theory to comparative psychology. On the assumption that language structures thought, identifying the formal structure of human language can generate hypotheses connecting distinctively human cognitive traits to the distinctive structures of human language.

Standard proposals of scientific anti-realism assume that the methodology of a scientific research program can be endorsed without accepting its metaphysical commitments. I argue that the distinction between competence, the rules governing one’s language faculty, and performance, or linguistic behavior, precludes this. Linguistic theories aim to describe competence, not performance, and so must be able to distinguish observations reflective of the former from those reflective of the latter. This classification of data makes sense only against the background of a psychologically (...) realistic view of linguistic theory. So the very methodology of the science commits one to its realistic interpretation. (shrink)

The Myth of the Lost Tribes and the Ambiguity of “Israel” 23 Conversion and Return: The Yerushalmi’s Discussion 24 When is “this day”? (Deut. 29:28) 25 The Metaphysics of the Day 27 Hermeneutics in the Covenant of Moab 29..

The use of platelet rich plasma as a novel treatment is discussed in the context of a qualitative research study comprising 38 interviews with sports medicine practitioners and other stakeholders working within the English Premier League during the 2013–16 seasons. Analysis of the data produced several overarching themes: conservatism versus experimentalism in medical attitudes; therapy perspectives divergence; conflicting versions of appropriate evidence; subcultures; community beliefs/practices; and negotiation of medical decision-making. The contested evidence base for the efficacy of PRP is presented (...) in the context of a broader professional shift towards evidence based medicine within sports medicine. Many of the participants while accepting this shift are still committed to casuistic practices where clinical judgment is flexible and does not recognize a context-free hierarchy of evidentiary standards to ethically justifiable practice. We also discuss a tendency in the data collected to consider the use of deceptive, placebo-like, practices among the clinician participants that challenge dominant understandings of informed consent in medical ethics. We conclude that the complex relation between evidence and ethics requires greater critical scrutiny for this emerging specialism within the medical community. (shrink)

In diesem Buch geht es um die Bedeutung der Gabe im Gegensatz zum Tausch, mit dem sie gleichwohl verflochten ist. In der einen, der Welt der überreichen ethnologischen, anthropologischen, kulturwissenschaftlichen und -soziologischen Literatur wimmelt es von Gaben, die in der anderen, der Welt der ökonomischen und Rational-Choice-theoretischen Literatur, nicht gesehen, bestritten, unsichtbar gemacht und vielmehr mit Tausch gleichgesetzt werden. In beiden kommen Gaben in Organisationen kaum vor, in der einen, weil man dort Gaben inmitten der Wirtschaft, der Unternehmen, der (...) Organisationen kaum Aufmerksamkeit widmet (obwohl gerade das im Sinne Marcel Mauss' gewesen wäre), in der anderen, weil sie da ein Geben jenseits eines do ut des überhaupt nicht wahrhaben können und wollen. Sonstige Ingredienzien unter anderem: Eine scharfe Kritik der Gabentheorie Bourdieus, eine Erörterung der Missachtung der Gabe bei Luhmann, Konsequenzen für die Organisations- und die Unternehmungstheorie und ein paar launige kleine Stücke zu Weihnachts- und zu Festschriftgaben. Der Autor Dr. Dr. h.c. Günther Ortmann ist ehem. Professor für Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre an der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg, zuletzt Professor für Führung an der Universität Witten Herdecke. (shrink)

Im Kontext der Spannung zwischen Kritik und Erneuerung der Metaphysik entfaltet der christliche Philosoph Ferdinand Ulrich eine Metaphysik des Seins als Gabe, in der nicht Gabe statt Sein, sondern Sein als Gabe konsequent gedacht wird. Geschichte und Existenz werden Schauplatz einer Ontodramatik, bei der es in der dialogischen Selbstverantwortung und in der Verantwortung fur die Welt um die Zustimmung zur oder die Verweigerung der Liebe als Sinn des Seins geht. Unter den vielfaltigen Stationen dieses dialogisch vorgehenden Denkens (...) werden im vorliegenden Band die Gesprache mit Hegel, Heidegger und Schelling aufgenommen. Entlang dieser Gesprache rekonstruiert die Autorin diesen metaphysischen Ansatz, fragt nach seiner inneren Logik und seinem epistemologischen Status und sucht Moglichkeiten des Nachvollzugs. (shrink)

Der hier zu unterbreitende Vorschlag mit dem 'Analogie'-Denken umzugehen, basiert auf einer zugespitzen Lesart der Gabe-Theologie, die im Anschluss an Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion und Marc Richir etabliert und mit den Vorschlagen zum Umgang mit der Analogie, wie sie Erich Przywara, Karl Barth, Eberhard Jungel und Wolfhart Pannenberg verstehen, in Kontrast gesetzt wird. Es wird dazu eine neue religionshermeneutische Phanomenologie des transpassiblen Momentes des Sakraments entwickelt, in der die Wir-Gestalt der Freiheit als eine Gabe eine zentrale Rolle spielt. (...) 'Die' Analogie wird als ein Gabegeschehen re-konzeptionalisiert gedacht, welche die Rede von Gott als zuruckgebunden an die transpassible Sprachgestalt der Freiheit von Gott und Mensch in ihrem Erschliessungverhaltnis als Ereignis zur Darstellung bringt. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungAn der Gabenpraxis traditioneller Gesellschaften, die Marcel Mauss im Essai sur le don untersucht hat, ist die ästhetische Dimension von großer Bedeutung; zu sozial konstitutiven Gaben, die v.a. Akte wechselseitiger Anerkennung sind, eignen sich nämlich nur besondere Dinge und Leistungen. Diese werden im Rahmen festlicher Gelegenheiten getauscht. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen Gabe und Ästhetik an einem konkreten Fall der europäischen Vormoderne, an Benvenuto Cellinis Saliera für den französischen König François Ier. In der Renaissance verklammert der Begriff (...) grazia Hofkunst mit höfischem Habitus, Selbstdarstellung der Elite und Inszenierung der Macht. Das hier verhandelte kostbare Objekt und seine Geschichte realisieren grazia in ihrer doppelten Bedeutung als Erscheinung im Kunstwerk und soziopolitische Beziehung; beide verweisen auf die Gabenpraxis und deren symbolische Funktionen, und umgekehrt. Für die Analyse sind Materialität des Gegenstands und Textualität gleichermaßen wichtig.The aesthetic dimension is crucial in the practices of gift giving in traditional societies as studied by Marcel Mauss in his Essai sur le don. Aesthetics is highly relevant because not any object or service is suitable for the socially constitutive gift, which, above all, is a symbolic act of recognition. Rare and precious objects and services are exchanged at festive occasions. This paper examines the connection between gift and aesthetics in a concrete case of pre-modern Europe: in Benvenuto Cellini’s salt cellar for the French King François Ier. In Renaissance discourse, the concept of grazia links the work of an individual court artist to courtly behavior, elite self-representation and the celebration of political power. Grazia is actualized in the saliera and the history of its making; in its double sense, as appearance in the artwork and social relationship, it refers to gift giving practices and their symbolic functions, and vice versa. For my article, the material object and the related texts are equally important. (shrink)