I analyze a type of practice related to inquiry: treating things as zetetically relevant to questions, and argue that this practice is a central normatively evaluable way to extend lines of inquiry. My strategy is to introduce the practice and its normative features by examining its relationship to something already well-understood: the ways that news stories produced by journalists frame events. I then argue that the same core zetetic practice can be found across domains, just not in (...) journalism. Finding the same practice across such different human settings suggests it is a core feature of inquiry. (shrink)

Cartesian habits of the imagination, thought to be abandoned when Michael Polanyi’s theory of knowledge is embraced, may persist unrecognised and distort interpretation of this theory. These habits are challenged by a ‘radical’ reading of Polanyi which consistently finds a paradigm for knowledge in lively research. It is argued that this is rooted in an intention which is at once and irreducibly receptive and critical, and which gives rise to the ’radical line’ of inquiry. In this setting, Cartesian dualism (...) arises when quieter knowledge, falsely represented to itself, becomes instead a paradigm for knowledge. (shrink)

Consciousness is central to what we study in psychology and how we study it. This paper provides a description of the fundamental features and processes of consciousness. Based on Husserl's phenomenology, it begins with a description of Husserl's two most foundational, phenomenological claims: that we 'see' conscious acts, and that we 'see' that we 'see' them. Upon this footing, I explore two forms of skepticism, and I demonstrate their inherent problems. With skepticism described, I explicate an ontology of consciousness. First, (...) I provide a "presentational" model of consciousness that depicts the relation between conscious acts and the objects of consciousness. Second, I explain the importance of "Evidenz." Third, I provide a description of the ubiquitous nature of essences and their importance for a model of consciousness. Fourth, I briefly explain Husserl's account of transcendence. And finally, I describe intentionality and provide a clarification of the nature and function of ideas. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Scientist, mathematician, thinker, the father of pragmatism, the inspiration for William James and John Dewey, Charles Peirce has remained until recently a philosopher's philosopher. Peirce trod a fine line between the extremes of nominalism and realism, tough-minded pragmatism and metaphysical speculation. As Peter Skagestad makes clear, Peirce's system of thought was fragmented, incomplete, and sometimes inconsistent. But one overriding concern gives unity to the whole: the road of inquiry must never be blocked.

Nurses have an important role in preventing and responding to child abuse and neglect. This paper reports on nurses' perceptions of how organisational systems and hierarchies shaped their capacity to respond to child abuse and neglect. This is one of four key themes identified through an inductive analysis of data from a broader qualitative study that explored nurses' perceptions and experiences of keeping children safe. The study was guided by social constructionist theory, and data were collected through in‐depth interviews with (...) nurses working with children in Australia (n = 21). Key findings showed that nurses experienced many challenges to responding to child abuse, including difficulties sharing information, fear of making mistakes and inflexible systems of care. This was underpinned by an organisational ‘rule‐centred’ culture of following policies at the expense of maintaining an explicit focus on children's needs. These findings demonstrate first the importance of creative and flexible thinking from individual professionals, so policies are enacted with a clear child focus. Second, they highlight the need for leadership to enact organisational and systemic cultural change that maintains a genuinely child‐centred approach. (shrink)

Consciousness is central to what we study in psychology and how we study it. This paper provides a description of the fundamental features and processes of consciousness. Based on Husserl's phenomenology, it begins with a description of Husserl's two most foundational, phenomenological claims: that we 'see' conscious acts, and that we 'see' that we 'see' them. Upon this footing, I explore two forms of skepticism, and I demonstrate their inherent problems. With skepticism described, I explicate an ontology of consciousness. First, (...) I provide a "presentational" model of consciousness that depicts the relation between conscious acts and the objects of consciousness. Second, I explain the importance of "Evidenz." Third, I provide a description of the ubiquitous nature of essences and their importance for a model of consciousness. Fourth, I briefly explain Husserl's account of transcendence. And finally, I describe intentionality and provide a clarification of the nature and function of ideas. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This qualitative study examined hospital nurses’ methods in handling meal and nutrition care during inpatient time, with an underlying focus on undernourished older adult. Observations and interviews were used to document nurses’ methods through the span of a transition (defined by an entry, passage, and exit). The study finds inconsistencies in care methods due to institutional processes restricting both mealtime care and nutritional logging of information throughout hospitalization. It is concluded that the consequences of these inconsistencies must be recognized and (...) that new approaches to meals and nutritional care should be introduced in order to provide greater flexibility. Based on the assumption that mobilizing patient resources is pivotal for meal and nutritional care, it is argued that it may be important to mobilize patient resources during mealtime and in nutritional logging of information in order to increase the visibility of meal and nutritional care in patient transitions within the institution and across settings. Both nurses’ methods and institutions developmental initiatives regarding meal and nutritional care need to accommodate the differences between what in this paper is defined as social‐bodily care and text‐based care. This could be met through care methods that take place with, more than for the patient. (shrink)

Modern physicians are taught that they should not involve themselves in their patients’ religious concerns. Many worry that doing so would be intrusive, manipulative, difficult, and embarrassing. Patients, however, often want their physicians to explore questions of religion and faith with them. If these questions are broached in a sensitive and flexible way, they can be a natural and appropriate part of the physician‐patient relationship.

In Linguistic Bodies, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Elena Clare Cuffari and Hanne De Jaegher propose a dialectic method to explain organism’s movements and exchanges, i.e., life inter-actions and evolution, that can also explain the evolution from life to cultural relations, that include linguistic interactions. One of the main questions Linguistic Bodies wants to answer is how to explain human life and culture without a reductive scientific thought. If one defies radical reductionism, one of the central risks is to dissociate physical (...) inquiries from biological investigations. In the book, the authors oppose the analytical mode of thinking present in many natural sciences to a dialectical mode of thinking that would explain living beings’ interactions. It is relevant to question if they succeeded in defending the dialectical model they profess to be the best suited to explain human social phenomena. Following this line of rationale, in this paper, I will, first, show that dialectical methods are over-ambitious and, second, inquire into the anti-reductionist attitude present in the dialectical model advocated in Linguistic Bodies.Key-words: Linguistic bodies, radical reductionism, dialectical model. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the meaning of the use of force for military professionals by analyzing the US Navy’s Crossing the Line ceremony. Ambiguity surrounds the initiation ritual for crossing the equator onboard naval warships, especially as it comes to its form prior to the late 1990s. All the while, the US Navy has maintained that the ceremony is part of a long tradition for teaching the values of honor, commitment and courage. Inspired by Max van Manen’s approach to (...) phenomenological writing ([1984]. “Practicing Phenomenological Writing.” Phenomenology + Pedagogy 2 (1): 36–69; [2016]. Writing in the Dark: Phenomenological Studies in Interpretive Inquiry. London: Routledge), I explicate the idea that the ceremony, in its former form, did indeed teach the value of honor, but through inversion, acting out the worst possible behavior imaginable for military professionals in the form of a black mass, while the ceremony in its current form teaches the value of individual dignity as a professional obligation. The inquiry concludes with a reflective stance of honor and dignity as moral principles for enabling and constraining the use of force. Derived from the experience of a particular military practice, the stance also has general significance, helping navigate the line between thoughtlessness and thoughtful actions within a social framework, not unlike the just war tradition. (shrink)

_Expanding Curriculum Theory, Second Edition_ carries through the major focus of the original volume—to reflect on the influence of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of "lines of flight" and its application to curriculum theorizing. What is different is that the lines of flight have since shifted and produced expanded understandings of this concept for curriculum theory and for education in general. This edition reflects the impact of events that have contributed to this shift, in particular the logic of school (...) policy changes and reforms in the past decade, and the continued explosion of social media and its effect on the collective understanding of how both "knowledge" and "education" work as forms of repression. The introduction updates the text and puts it into current debates in the field and in the larger socio-economic milieu. New dis/positions are presented that explore central questions circulating within and outside curriculum studies. Exciting scholarship on a range of topics includes notions of desire and commodities, youth culture and violence, new directions in curriculum theory, Eco-Ethical consciousness, new Deleuzian views of normality, the diffusion of technology and lines of flight in transnational curriculum inquiry. (shrink)

Let us agree, to begin with, that we are not shown [in Last Judgment], as Life Magazine long ago phrased it, a Saint Bartholomew who "holds his own mortal skin, in which Michelangelo whimsically painted a distorted portrait of himself.”1 The face was sloughed with the rest of the skin and goes with it. What we see is a Saint Bartholomew with another's integument in his hand. We next consider an aspect of the self-portrait which even La Cava left out (...) of account - its relative siting. This has to matter since the portrait lies in the path of Christ's imminent action. More than that, it lies on a diagonal that traverses the fresco like a heraldic bend chief to base - from left top to right bottom. The twofold competence thus assumed by the self-portrait - in its concrete location and in the range of its influence - is something to marvel at. A hangdog face flops to one side, helpless and limp. But the tilt of its axis projected upward across the field strikes the apex of the left-hand lunette, the uppermost point of the fresco. And if, departing once again from the skin's facial axis, we project its course netherward, we discover the line produced to aim straight at the fresco's lower right corner. Such results do not come by chance. To put it literally, letting metaphor fall where it may: it is the extension of the self's axis that strings the continuum of heaven and hell. · 1. Life Magazine, 6 December 1949, p. 45. So also Redig de Campos speaks of the lifeless Apostle's own skin, "dove il Buonarroti ha nascoto un singolare autoritratto..in caricatura tragica della sua 'infinita miseria'" . Tolnay sees the matter correctly: "It is the artist's empty skin which the saint holds in his hand" Leo Steinberg is Benjamin Franklin Professor and University Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, Michelangelo's Last Paintings, Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, as well as studies of Leonardo, Pontormo, Velazquez, and Picasso. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to debates about the nature of philosophical inquiry and its relation to science. The starting point is the Discontinuity View (DV), which holds that philosophy is discontinuous with science. Upon critically engaging two lines of argument in favor of DV, the paper presents and defends the Continuity View (CV), according to which philosophy and science are continuous forms of inquiry. The critical engagement sheds light on continuities between philosophical and scientific inquiry (...) while underlining special normative competences of philosophical work. The final part of the paper uses these insights to offer a brief outline of a normative approach to philosophy of science. (shrink)

Peirce trod a fine line between the extremes of nominalism and realism, tough-minded pragmatism and metaphysical speculation. As Peter Skagestad makes clear, Peirce's system of thought was fragmented, incomplete, and sometimes inconsistent.

Untangle the complex web of philosophical dilemmas of Spidey and his world—in time for the release of The Amazing Spider-Man movie Since Stan Lee and Marvel introduced Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962, everyone’s favorite webslinger has had a long career in comics, graphic novels, cartoons, movies, and even on Broadway. In this book some of history’s most powerful philosophers help us explore the enduring questions and issues surrounding this beloved superhero: Is Peter Parker to blame for the death (...) of his uncle? Does great power really bring great responsibility? Can Spidey champion justice and be with Mary Jane at the same time? Finding your way through this web of inquiry, you’ll discover answers to these and many other thought-provoking questions. Gives you a fresh perspective and insights on Peter Parker and Spider-Man’s story lines and ideas Examines important philosophical issues and questions, such as: What is it to live a good life? Do our particular talents come with obligations? What role should friendship play in life? Is there any meaning to life? Views Spider-Man through the lens of some of history’s most influential thinkers, from Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant to Nietszche, William James, Ayn Rand, and Alasdair MacIntyre. (shrink)

The Confessions recounts Augustine 's successful search for God. But Augustine worries that one cannot search for God if one does not already know God. That version of the paradox of inquiry dominates and structures Confessions 1–10. I draw connections between the dramatic opening lines of book 1 and the climactic discussion in book 10.26–38 and argue that the latter discussion contains Augustine 's resolution of the paradox of inquiry as it applies to the special case of (...) searching for God. I claim that he develops a model, relying on the universal human experience of joy and truth, that identifies a starting point that is common to all human beings, is sufficient for guiding a successful search for God, and avoids commitment to recollection of experiences prior to birth. The model is crucial to Augustine 's rejection of traditional Platonist views about recollection. (shrink)

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 74-93, February 2022. This study seeks to investigate aspects of the relationship between the core academic activities of teaching and research in higher education, through a theoretically enriched discussion of the design of an innovative popular music module on Adele’s 25 album and its delivery to first-year undergraduates on a general-purpose music degree during the academic years 2015–21. Drawing on autoethnographic approaches, it contemplates the challenges associated with the execution (...) of a module on genuinely contemporary topics, outlining the case for the importance of ensuring that university curricula remain up-to-the-minute as well as exploring strategies by which to realise this aspiration in the absence of a body of academic literature that might ordinarily have provided strong foundations for the content of such teaching. These lines of inquiry lead to consideration of broader questions concerning the evolving relationship between teaching and research in light of the substantial changes that have taken place within the UK higher education sector in recent years, as well as the possibilities for teaching-led research, developed exclusively for and in the academic classroom, as an alternative to the more traditional research-led teaching. (shrink)

In this essay, Jim Garrison explores the emerging scholarship establishing a Hegelian continuity in John Dewey’s thought from his earliest publications to the work published in the last decade of his life. The primary goals of this study are, first, to introduce this new scholarship to philosophers of education and, second, to extend this analysis to new domains, including Dewey’s theory of inquiry, universals, and creative action. Ultimately, Garrison’s analysis also refutes the traditional account that claims that William James (...) converted Dewey from Hegelian idealism, after which Charles Sanders Peirce inspired him to rebuild his instrumentalism along radically different lines. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the meaning of the use of force for military professionals by analyzing the US Navy’s Crossing the Line ceremony. Ambiguity surrounds the initiation ritual for crossing the equator onboard naval warships, especially as it comes to its form prior to the late 1990s. All the while, the US Navy has maintained that the ceremony is part of a long tradition for teaching the values of honor, commitment and courage. Inspired by Max van Manen’s approach to (...) phenomenological writing ([1984]. “Practicing Phenomenological Writing.” Phenomenology + Pedagogy 2 (1): 36–69; [2016]. Writing in the Dark: Phenomenological Studies in Interpretive Inquiry. London: Routledge), I explicate the idea that the ceremony, in its former form, did indeed teach the value of honor, but through inversion, acting out the worst possible behavior imaginable for military professionals in the form of a black mass, while the ceremony in its current form teaches the value of individual dignity as a professional obligation. The inquiry concludes with a reflective stance of honor and dignity as moral principles for enabling and constraining the use of force. Derived from the experience of a particular military practice, the stance also has general significance, helping navigate the line between thoughtlessness and thoughtful actions within a social framework, not unlike the just war tradition. (shrink)

Originally published as 'Das Problem des Prinzipienforschung und die aristotelische Physik' in Kant-Studien 52 (1960-1), pp. 206-19, the revised text of a lecture given on 28 October 1959 in Hamburg. It presents in summary form the main line of argument developed in the introduction and first two parts of Wieland's book, Die aristotelische Physik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1962).

Formal models of scientific inquiry, aimed at capturing socio-epistemic aspects underlying the process of scientific research, have become an important method in formal social epistemology and philosophy of science. In this introduction to the special issue we provide a historical overview of the development of formal models of this kind and analyze their methodological contributions to discussions in philosophy of science. In particular, we show that their significance consists in different forms of ‘methodological iteration’ whereby the models initiate new (...) lines of inquiry, isolate and clarify problems with existing knowledge claims, and stimulate further research. (shrink)

The present article discusses shared epistemological characteristics of two distinct areas of research: the field of first-person inquiry and the field of quantum mechanics. We outline certain philosophical challenges that arise in each of the two lines of inquiry, and point towards the central similarity of their observational situation: the impossibility of disregarding the interrelatedness of the observed phenomena with the act of observation. We argue that this observational feature delineates a specific category of research that we (...) call the non-trivial domain. Unlike the trivial domain, non-trivial research cannot assume the view from nowhere on which the observed phenomena could be regarded as existing independently of the process of observation. Presenting first-person inquiry and quantum mechanics as two of its examples, we show that non-trivial research violates several fundamental observational presuppositions of the trivial domain, exemplified in the principles of classical physics. Drawing on Niels Bohr’s philosophy of quantum mechanics and the constructivist notion of enaction, we stress the constructive, participatory, and irreversible nature of observation in the non-trivial domain. We discuss the possibility of developing a non-representationalist epistemology of the non-trivial, and consider the implications of our discussion for research in the non-trivial domain, as well as for the general understanding of the scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Building on the papers and discussions in this project, my concluding comments indicate fruitful lines of further inquiry into the common and distinctive features of the Christian and Islamic political inheritances and their contemporary appropriation in the two communities. Topics for further exploration include: the hermeneutic approaches to diversity within the authoritative traditions of Christianity and Islam; the extent and nature of the service rendered by political rule to the natural and soteriological goods of moral community; the theological/anthropological (...) underpinnings of the moral limitations and ambiguities of political order and justice; and alternative political modes of accommodating religious plurality in society. (shrink)

Which premisses should we use to start our inquiries? Which transitions during inquiry should we take next? When should we switch lines of inquiry? In this paper, I address these open questions about inquiry, formulating novel norms for such decisions during deductive reasoning. I use the first-order predicate calculus, in combination with Carnap’s state description framework, to state such norms. Using that framework, I first demonstrate some properties of sets of sentences used in deduction. I then (...) state some norms for decisions made during deductive reasoning, establishing initial benchmarks for efficient deduction by ideal reasoners. When deciding which transition to make next, reasoners should choose the most informative transition, the one that maximally reduces uncertainty in the sense of ruling out the largest number of state descriptions relevant to their inquiry. Finally, inspired by optimal foraging theory, I show that, under certain assumptions of ignorance, reasoners should change premiss sets when their information intake drops below the global average information intake across premiss sets. (shrink)

Antirealists who hold the knowability thesis, namely that all truths are knowable, have been put on the defensive by the Church-Fitch paradox of knowability. Rejecting the non-factivity of the concept of knowability used in that paradox, Edgington has adopted a factive notion of knowability, according to which only actual truths are knowable. She has used this new notion to reformulate the knowability thesis. The result has been argued to be immune against the Church-Fitch paradox, but it has encountered several other (...) triviality objections. Schlöder in a forthcoming paper defends the general approach taken by Edgington, but amends it to save it in turn from the triviality objections. In this paper I will argue, first, that Schlöder's justification for the factivity of his version of the concept of knowability is vulnerable to criticism, but I will also offer an improved justification that is in the same spirit as his. To the extent that some philosophers are right about our intuitive concept of knowability being a factive one, it is important to explore factive concepts of knowability that are made formally precise. I will subsequently argue that Schlöder's version of the knowability thesis overgenerates knowledge or, in other words, it leads to attributions of knowledge where there is ignorance. This fits a general pattern for the research programme initiated by Edgington. This paper also contains preliminary investigations into the internal and logical structure of lines of inquiries, which raise interesting research questions. (shrink)

Conversation is one of the main contexts in which we are conducting inquiries. Yet, little attention has been paid so far in pragmatics or epistemology to the process of inquiry in conversation. In this paper, we propose to trigger such an investigation through the development of a formal modelling based on inquisitive pragmatics—a framework offering a semantic representation of questions and answers, along with an analysis of the pragmatic principles that govern questioning and answering moves in conversations geared towards (...) information exchange. Our starting observation is that an interrogative inquiry in a conversation takes the form of a finite sequence of questioning and answering steps, and appears thereby as an inherently temporal process. The central notion of interrogative protocol introduced in this paper precisely aims to capture the temporal dimension of inquiry. Interrogative protocols are defined as branching-time tree structures encoding all the possible sequences of questioning and answering steps—i.e., all the possible inquiry paths—that can subsequently occur in a starting conversational situation in accordance with the principles of inquisitive pragmatics. They provide us with a formal environment to define and investigate the epistemological notions of interrogative inquiry and interrogative consequence in conversational contexts. One of the main interests of the resulting framework is to enable a formal investigation of central epistemological issues relative to interrogative inquiry under the form of computational problems. We frame three key inquiry problems along this line, and we then propose an algorithmic procedure for solving them in the restricted case where the inquirer has at her disposal a finite number of questions in her inquiry. We conclude by relating our approach to Wiśniewski’s Erotetic Search Scenarios and Hintikka’s Interrogative Model of Inquiry. (shrink)

Freedom of inquiry is often touted as an unimpeachable virtue. This chapter examines a type of situation in which there seems to be a moral imperative not to pursue certain lines of research. It argues that the imperative is genuine, but that there is no good argument for censorship.

Drawing the Line examines the ways in which cultural, political, and legal lines are imagined, drawn, crossed, erased, and redrawn in post-apartheid South Africa through literary texts, artworks, and other forms of cultural production. Under the rubric of a philosophy of the limit and with reference to a range of signifying acts and events, this book asks what it takes to recalibrate a sociopolitical scene, shifting perceptions of what counts and what matters, of what can be seen and heard, (...) of what can be valued or regarded as meaningful. The book thus argues for an aesthetics of transitional justice and makes an appeal for a postapartheid aesthetic inquiry, as opposed to simply a political or a legal one. Each chapter brings a South African artwork, text, speech, building, or social encounter into conversation with debates in critical theory and continental philosophy, asking: What challenge do these South African acts of signification and resignification pose to current literary-philosophical debates? (shrink)

What particular privilege has this little Agitation of the Brain which we call Thought, that we must make it the Model of the whole Universe? (Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1976, p. 168)******...at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man (sic) of Achievement especially in Literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when someone is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. (Keats 1959, (...) p. 261)******Die menschliche Vernunft hat das besondere Schicksal in ihrer Gattung ihrer Erkenntnisse: dass sie durch Fragen belästigt wird, die sie nicht abweisen kann; denn sie sind ihr durch die Natur der Vernunft selbst aufgegeben, die sie aber auch nicht beantworten kann; denn sie übersteigen alles Vermögen der menschlichen Vernunft. (Opening lines of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1956), A VII; the italics in the text are mine)Human reason has the particular fa .. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 265 - 285 This article examines the development of Heidegger’s thought directly following _Being and Time_, a period that is significant both in its own right and in its capacity to shed light on the problems driving Heidegger’s later works. I assess Crowell’s thesis that Heidegger’s aim was to develop a metontology along the lines of a pre-critical _metaphysica specialis_ based on a reassessment of Kant’s transcendental dialectic. I show that such a (...) reading misrepresents the nature of Heidegger’s project in this period and argue that Heidegger was instead attempting to develop a distinctively critical metaphysics in a post-Kantian vein. (shrink)

_Pragmatism Ascendent_ is the last of four volumes on the contribution of pragmatism to American philosophy and Western philosophy as a whole. It covers the period of American philosophy's greatest influence worldwide, from the second half of the 20th century through the beginning of the 21st. The book provides an account of the way pragmatism reinterprets the revolutionary contributions of Kant and Hegel, the significance of pragmatism's original vision, and the expansion of classic pragmatism to incorporate the strongest themes of (...) Hegelian and Darwinian sources. In the process, it addresses many topics either scanted or not addressed at all in most overviews of the pragmatism's relevance today. Noting the conceptual stalemate, confusion, and inertia of much of current Western philosophy, Margolis advances a new line of inquiry. He considers a fresh conception of the human agent as a hybrid artifact of enlanguaged culture, the decline of all forms of cognitive privilege, the pragmatist sense of the practical adequacy of philosophical solutions, and the possibilities for a recuperative convergence of the best resources of Western philosophy's most viable movements. (shrink)

The article is primarily a study of Nietzsche’s unpublished fragments from the period spring-autumn 1881, in which Nietzsche first developed his thought of the “eternal recurrence of the same.” In the article, I attempt to accomplish two goals: the first goal is to explain Nietzsche’s theses on the eternal recurrence, which at that time were still remarkably clear and coherent. And the second goal is to try to find in these same theses an explanation for their future silence. In other (...) words, the article examines the relationship between Nietzsche’s theses that he developed in 1881 and his book _Thus spoke Zarathustra_, which, in Nietzsche’s own words, relies on these theses as their “grounding thought,” but nevertheless never fully reveals them. Both lines of inquiry lead to the conclusion that the core of Nietzsche’s introduction of the idea of eternal recurrence is his concept of _Einverleibung_ or embodiment. Indeed, the analysis shows that Nietzsche’s main concern with the thought of eternal recurrence was not to set forth its clear articulation within consciousness, but rather to construct it in such a way that it could become an unconscious instinct capable of gradually displacing the “embodied mistakes” that dominate our thinking from within itself. (shrink)

A traditional line of inquiry in epistemology tried to analyze the concept of knowledge into its constituent components. In virtue of understanding these alleged more basic concepts, such as truth, justification, and belief, it was hoped that a complete and informative theory of knowledge would emerge. According to the revolutionary approach advocated here, one which originates in Timothy Williamson's Knowledge and Its Limits, better success can be achieved by reversing this conceptual analysis structure by taking knowledge as the fundamental (...) explanatory tool in epistemological theorizing. I defend the view that this knowledge-theoretic approach exceeds the explanatory value of its conceptual analysis competitor in the sense that the best explanations of epistemologically significant phenomena are appropriately expressed in terms of knowledge per se. (shrink)

Although the ways in which the fields of gender studies, feminist theory and politics have grown and developed in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the last decade are largely unaccounted for in feminist scholarship, their lessons, insights and potentials are relevant for scholarship and politics that weaves through the traumatic knots of postcoloniality and biopolitics. This article looks at the politics of witnessing through a creative approach to losses and the potential politics of hope in such a context. It engages with (...) several lines of inquiry through a dialogue of `local'/`global' feminist and postcolonial theory and practice, through subaltern lenses of transnational feminist solidarities and informed by the lessons of non-institutional public spaces of thinking, judging and acting as instances of vernacular cosmopolitanism in the field of cultural production within Bosnia. Continuously re-emerging postcolonial/biopolitical fractures, induced by the global/local political economy of capital and violence, also produce political (cultural/artistic/public) practices of witnessing which shake and reshuffle our quests for social and political transformation. Embracing them effectively is one of the most important lessons of Bosnian (postcolonial, post-war, post-communist...) ambivalences and forbearances. Such hopeful political navigation through injustices and injuries inflicted by global/local regimes of biopolitics and capital is fundamentally about reinvigorating the scholarship and politics of gender, witnessing, postcoloniality and trauma along creative feminist trajectories. (shrink)

This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born. Eleven principal expressive aspects of music each contains specific structural patterns whose configuration signifies a certain affective state. This distinguishes the tonal organization of music from the phonetic and prosodic organization of natural languages and animal communication. The question of music’s origin can therefore be answered by establishing the point in human history at which all eleven expressive aspects might have (...) been abstracted from the instinct-driven primate calls and used to express human psycho-emotional states. Etic analysis of acoustic parameters is the prime means of cross-examination of the typical patterns of expression of the basic emotions in human music versus animal vocal communication. A new method of such analysis is proposed here. Formation of such expressive aspects as meter, tempo, melodic intervals, and articulation can be explained by the influence of bipedal locomotion, breathing cycle, and heartbeat, long before Homo sapiens. However, two aspects, rhythm and melodic contour, most crucial for music as we know it, lack proxies in the Paleolithic lifestyle. The available ethnographic and developmental data leads one to believe that rhythmic and directional patterns of melody became involved in conveying emotion-related information in the process of frequent switching from one call-type to another within the limited repertory of calls. Such calls are usually adopted for the ongoing caretaking of human youngsters and domestic animals. The efficacy of rhythm and pitch contour in affective communication must have been spontaneously discovered in new important cultural activities. The most likely scenario for music to have become fully semiotically functional and to have spread wide enough to avoid extinctions is the formation of cross-specific communication between humans and domesticated animals during the Neolithic demographic explosion and the subsequent cultural revolution. Changes in distance during such communication must have promoted the integration between different expressive aspects and generated the basic musical grammar. The model of such communication can be found in the surviving tradition of Scandinavian pastoral music - kulning. This article discusses the most likely ways in which such music evolved. (shrink)

After situating Andreas Reckwitz’s The Society of Singularities within the broader context of the tradition of social theory, we discuss in detail the obvious strengths of this book, notably its impressive range and originality. Subsequently, we elaborate on two limitations of Reckwitz’s argument. Firstly, we argue that Reckwitz’s use of categories such as ‘singularity’ and ‘universality’ is too all-embracing, lacking the clarity and focus needed to sustain a productive line of inquiry. Secondly, and related to the previous point, we (...) contend that Reckwitz’s claims about the recent trend towards increasing singularity are so broad that they are difficult to refute empirically. Further, we discuss briefly contemporary political developments to demonstrate why the core societal issues at stake cannot be explained through all-inclusive categories such as singularity. Finally, we maintain that existence theory can provide an alternative fruitful perspective on some of the phenomena discussed in this book. (shrink)

Republics of Knowledge tells the story of how the circulation of knowledge shaped the formation of nation-states in Latin America, and particularly in Argentina, Peru and Chile, during the century after Iberian rule was defeated in the 1820s. Most immediately, the author has sought to provide a cross-disciplinary approach to the history of knowledge, combining the methods of global intellectual history with a new way of thinking about nations as experienced and enacted as well as how they are imagined, and (...) in so doing offer a new interpretation of the history of independent Latin America to illustrate its wider significance in the making of the modern world. By bringing these lines of inquiry together within a transnational framework, Nicola Miller shows how evidence from the pioneering nations of Latin America can invite historians to rethink many of their general theories about how knowledge travels and how a sense of nationhood is created. The book is designed to stimulate debate about the significance of knowledge not only in Latin America but in all modern societies. As Miller explains, Latin America is usually regarded as an exception to general theories, notably of colonialism, nationalism and liberalism; and yet it was in that part of the world, not in Europe, that the Age of Revolution brought the founding of a second wave of modern republics, and it was in Latin America that pioneering attempts were made to apply liberal principles in societies with inherited caste divisions and corporate institutions. It was there that some of the richest debates about the vexed relationship between collective identities and individualism took place. (shrink)

Inquiry-based learning has the potential to foster conceptual change, but whether it can induce an advancement in strategy use is not yet known. Such an advancement seems plausible, because conceptual change can be reflected in the use of new strategies. Whether inquiry-based learning leads to advancement in strategy use can be tested with strategy-based tests, such as the balance beam test. Distinct strategies have been proposed and identified for this test. Therefore, the present study compared response patterns on (...) the balance beam test before and after an inquiry-based lesson. The experimental condition completed a digital inquiry-based lesson about the balance beam ( n = 113), and the control condition completed a similar inquiry-based lesson but investigated a different topic ( n = 44). The participants were aged 8–13 years old and were unfamiliar with the law of moments. The balance beam test (pretest and posttest) consisted of 25 items. Overall accuracy in solving balance beam problems improved after the inquiry-based lesson in the balance beam (BB) condition but not in the control condition. Classes, identified with latent transition analysis (LTA), appeared to be globally in line with previously identified strategies in the balance beam test. Condition was entered as a covariate in the LTA to identify which changes in strategy use could be attributed to the experimental intervention. First, changes from pretest to posttest were found, which supported that a change in strategy use occurred in some children. Second, there were more improvements in the BB condition, and these improvements indicated larger gains compared to the control condition. This means that in science education, it is important to map out prior knowledge and its effect on learning paths. Overall, results suggested that conceptual change could be measured as a change in strategy use and modeled with LTA to reveal that 26% of the children showed conceptual change after a single inquiry-based lesson. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 675-696 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]History of Religion Becomes Ethnology: Some Evidence from Peiresc's AfricaPeter N. Miller Bard Graduate CenterAbstractThe relationship between history of religion and ethnology on the one hand, and antiquarianism and them both, on the other, lie at the core of this essay. These lines of inquiry come together in the work of Nicolas Fabri de (...) Peiresc (1580-1637), the intellectually adventurous Provençal late humanist. Peiresc's correspondence with a renegade in Tunis, an adventurer in Ethiopia, and a missionary once based in Guinea provided him with remarkably direct information about the customs and practices—the moeurs—of contemporary sub-Saharan Africans. The content of these letters has not found its place in histories of anthropology or histories of antiquarianism.I.Bound up amidst Peiresc's copies of his letters to the Paduan antiquary Lorenzo Pignoria from the winter of 1615–16 is a text of four sides entitled, in large letters, "Delli Popoli della China" and continuing, in smaller ones, "written by P. Ioannes Pietro Maffei History of the Indies, Fr. Antonio di Saint Roman, in the History of the East Indies, Fr. Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza Augustino, in the books on China, and others." 1 The reading notes [End Page 675] that follow are interesting for one reason: though labelled "Delli Popoli della China" they are almost entirely about religion in China. At this stage of Peiresc's thinking at least, history of religion seems interchangeable with ethnography.In his letter to Pignoria of 4 January 1616, Peiresc acknowledges having time to page through ("di transcorrere un poco") Maffei, Gonzales, and Saint Roman where he found some information about figures they had discussed, and also about artificial grottoes used for domestic refrigeration, "which I did not note when I read it the first time." He asked if Pignoria wouldn't mind inquiring as to whether there was a more precise impression of a particular Chinese plaque or medallion—Pignoria had sent him one but Peiresc pronounced it "not as exact as I would like." 2Peiresc begins with the gods that were worshipped (these included deceased parents and friends, as well as the occasional living person) and auguries. This then leads to mention of the clothing and hair styles of those priests making offerings to the gods. Some of this information was derived from that octagonal medallion. Peiresc also noted down the presence of a vase, as if for libation, and other instruments for offerings.These authors, he continued, observed that the Chinese revered the God of Heaven above all the others. Peiresc recorded that Gonzalez mentioned that he was indicated by use of the first letter of the alphabet, that this character looked a bit like "AF," that it was called "Guant," that he was honored with a solemn festival every near year, at the new moon in March, with vocal and instrumental music during which his priests applied themselves for an entire day to a board groaning with meat, poultry, fish, and fruits (no wonder the earlier reference to the gluttony of the priests). For the greater veneration of the King he was called the "Son of Heaven."Mention of the King led to discussion of the monthly festivals in the provinces when priests bore a portrait of the King, on gold, through the streets with great reverence. But then, citing from Maffei, Peiresc proceeded to jot down observations made about Chinese seaside towns and the domestic interior. This, in turn, led to some observations about dining—and, therefore, feasting—practices.Finally, Peiresc returned to the aforementioned medallion, whose details now seemed to him to represent just such an honorific feast. But he was especially interested in the practice of indicating the name of God with a single Chinese character, or cipher. This reminded him, he wrote, that the [End Page 676] Basilidian gnostics, as recorded in Epiphanius, represented the god of heaven with the seven Greek vowels AEHIOUY. He... (shrink)

Those who have considered the connection between Dewey’s theory of inquiry and Greek thought have mostly situated their remarks within larger points, regarding either teaching and learning (Garrison, 1997; Johnston, 2006b; Cahn, 2007) or aesthetics and craft (Alexander, 1987; Hickman, 1990). The fact that this area remains somewhat underexplored could be chalked up to several factors: 1) Dewey was often quite critical of the classical tradition, particularly when it came to theories of knowledge, 2) Dewey was not a trained (...) classicist, with little working knowledge of ancient Greek, and was self-admittedly not a historian of philosophy, and 3) whenever Dewey did turn positive attention toward ancient thought, he tended to speak in generalities, referring most often to “the Greeks” rather than any particular Greek thinker. In spite of this, there remain many compelling reasons to place Dewey’s views on inquiry in meaningful dialogue with the classical tradition. I will suggest that the most compelling of all is the link between Dewey’s view of inquiry and his particular brand of naturalism, which found its fullest expression late in his career. This is an underappreciated connection in Dewey’s work on inquiry, either taking a backseat to the instrumental, experimental themes in his thought or misinterpreted as a form of positivism/scientism. Once acknowledged, however, this connection could help bring Dewey’s normative, socio-political writings in line with his theories on ontology, logic, and the acquisition of knowledge. (shrink)

Because of the exacting nature of teaching, identifying factors affecting teachers’ mental health and psychological wellbeing are of paramount importance. Parallel with this line of inquiry, the goal of this project was to test a model of psychological wellbeing based on teacher self-efficacy and emotion regulation in an EFL context. To this end, 276 Iranian English teachers participated in this survey. First, the measurement models for the three latent constructs were verified through performing Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Then Structural Equation (...) Modeling was used to test the hypothesized model. SEM outcomes evince that both teacher self-efficacy and emotion regulation were the significant predictors of teachers’ psychological wellbeing, with teacher self-efficacy being a stronger correlate than emotion regulation. The findings offer significant implications for English as a Foreign Language teachers. (shrink)

Non-recent (historic) childhood sexual abuse is an important issue to research, though often regarded as taboo and frequently met with caution, avoidance or even opposition from research ethics committees. Sensitive research, such as that which asks victim-survivors to recount experiences of abuse or harm, has the propensity to be emotionally challenging for both the participant and the researcher. However, most research suggests that any distress experienced is usually momentary and not of any clinical significance. Moreover, this type of research offers (...) a platform for voices which have often been silenced, and many participants report the cathartic effect of recounting their experiences in a safe, non-judgemental space. With regard to the course of such research, lines of inquiry which ask adult participants to discuss their experiences of childhood sexual abuse may result in a first-time disclosure of that abuse by the victim-survivor to the researcher. Guidance about how researchers should respond to first-time disclosure is lacking. In this article, we discuss our response to one research ethics committee which had suggested that for a qualitative study for which we were seeking ethical approval (investigating experiences of pregnancy and childbirth having previously survived childhood sexual abuse), any disclosure of non-recent (historic) childhood sexual abuse which had not been previously reported would result in the researcher being obliged to report it to relevant authorities. We assess this to be inconsistent with both law and professional guidance in the United Kingdom; and provide information and recommendations for researchers and research ethics committees to consider. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists and experts in human health have raised concerns about the effects of hydraulic fracking to access natural oil and gas resources found deep in shale rock formations on surrounding ecosystems and communities. In this study, we analyzed the prevalence of discourse on brain and mental health, and ethics, in the peer-reviewed and grey literature in the five-year period between 2016 and 2022. A total of 84 articles met inclusion criteria for analysis. Seventy-six percent (76%) mentioned impacts on brain (...) (e.g., neural tube defects, neurological symptoms), and mental health (e.g., negative psychological effects, stress, depression) briefly; 11 reports dedicated substantive discourse to either or both together. References to safety (77%) dominated the ethics context. Discussion of environmental injustices as fracking sites disproportionately affect vulnerable communities appeared in 38% of the papers. We examine the findings through the lens of environmental neuroethics that brings human-made changes to the environment, brain and mental health, and ethics together into three interwoven lines of inquiry. (shrink)

Moral theory is no substitute for virtue, but virtue is no substitute for moral theory. Many critics of moral theory, with Richard Posner being one prominent recent example, complain that moral theory is too abstract, that it cannot generally be used to derive particular rights and wrongs, and that it does not improve people's characters. Posner complains that it is thus of no use to legal theorists. This article defends moral theory, and to some degree, philosophical inquiry in general, (...) against such pragmatic complaints. I argue that the primary goal of moral theorizing is not pragmatic, but theoretical. Moral theory aims at explanation, at answering certain kinds of questions about morality. Moral theory is meant to deepen our insight into morality but, to count as deepening our insight, it need not provide a formula for calculating what to do in a particular circumstance, nor must it make us more virtuous. I provide an account of the scope and nature of explanation provided by moral theory as well as an account of why such explanations can be worth having, even if they were to have few pragmatic consequences. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a development of a variety of approaches for examining lived experience in the context of cognitive science. However, the field of first-person research has yet to develop a pragmatic epistemological framework that would enable researchers to compare and integrate – as well as understand the epistemic status of – different methods and their findings. In this article, we present the foundation of such a framework, grounded in an epistemological investigation of gestures involved in acquiring data on (...) experience. We examine the acts of turning towards one’s experiential field and attending to experience within the process of reflection. We describe what we call the horizon of attending to experience by analogy to the “experimental arrangement” in quantum observation: this horizon, we argue, co-defines experiential phenomena that end up being observed and reported; at the same time, it itself forms an element of experience and is therefore amenable to phenomenological investigation. Drawing on the constructivist notion of enaction, we show that acknowledging the inherently constructive nature of attending to experience and accepting one’s lack of epistemic access to the “original”, observation-independent pre-reflective experience is not a dead end for first-person research when situated in a constructivist (but not relativist) understanding of the reflective act and its results. Expanding the notion of the horizon to encompass all epistemic acts involved in producing phenomenological data and final results of a first-person study (i.e., horizon of the method), we suggest some lines of inquiry that would allow researchers to identify and articulate horizons of particular methods, opening a way towards integrating past and future findings of different complementary first-person approaches into a comprehensive map of lived experience. (shrink)

The second edition of Foucault and the Government of Disability considers the continued relevance of Foucault to disability studies, as well as the growing significance of disability studies to understandings of Foucault. A decade ago, this international collection provocatively responded to Foucault’s call to question what is regarded as natural, inevitable, ethical, and liberating. The book’s contributors draw on Foucault to scrutinize a range of widely endorsed practices and ideas surrounding disability, including rehabilitation, community care, impairment, normality and abnormality, inclusion, (...) prevention, accommodation, and special education. In this revised and expanded edition, four new essays extend and elaborate the lines of inquiry by problematizing (to use Foucault’s term) the epistemological, political, and ethical character of the supercrip, the racialized war on autism, the performativity of intellectual disability, and the potent mixture of neoliberalism and biopolitics in the context of physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

Parallel to the public discussion on the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, a debate on the ethics of nanotechnology has begun. It has been postulated that a new “nano-ethics” is necessary. In this debate, the — positive as well as negative — visionary and speculative innovations which are brought into connection with nanotechnology stand in the foreground. In this contribution, an attempt is made to discover new ethical aspects of nanotechnology in a more systematic manner than has been the case. (...) It turns out that there are hardly any completely new ethical aspects raised by nanotechnology. It is much rather primarily a case of gradual shifts of emphasis and of relevance in questions which, in principle, are already known and which give reason for ethical discussions on nanotechnology. In a certain manner, structurally novel ethical aspects arise through the important role played by visions in the public discourse. New questions are also posed by the fact that previously separate lines of ethical reflection converge in the field of nanotechnology. The proposal of an independent “nano-ethics”, however, seems exaggerated. (shrink)