When analyzing complex longitudinal data, especially data from different educational settings, researchers generally focus only on the mean part (i.e., the regression coefficients), ignoring the equally important random part (i.e., the random effect variances) of the model. By using Project English Language and Literacy Acquisition (ELLA) data, we demonstrated the importance of taking the complex data structure into account by carefully specifying the random part of the model, showing that not only can it affect the variance estimates, the standard errors, (...) and the tests of significance of the regression coefficients, it also can offer different perspectives of the data, such as information related to the developmental process. We used xxM (Mehta, 2013), which can flexibly estimate different grade-level variances separately and the potential carryover effect from each grade factor to the later time measures. Implications of the findings and limitations of the study are discussed. (shrink)

This article examines the notorious mid-nineteenth-century American trial of Amelia Norman, who was acquitted - very much against the weight of the evidence - of attempting to kill the man who seduced her. In particular, we explore the role in the trial and its aftermath of the affective energies and cultural expectations set in motion by best-selling American sentimental novels like Hannah Foster's "The Coquette" and Susanna Rowson's "Charlotte Temple." In Norman's case, once newspapers, defense lawyers, and reformers such as (...) Lydia Maria Child recast the defendant as a sentimental heroine, the trial became about seduction, not attempted murder. The sentimental emplotment of Norman's life marshaled a powerful set of emotional responses and moral judgments on her behalf. For example, Norman claimed insanity. And since sentimental heroines are supposed to go mad when they are seduced and abandoned, the jury was prepared to interpret her symptoms according to her lawyers' very strategy for establishing her innocence. Ultimately, however, Norman embodied the plight of the sentimental heroine at the same time that she contested her fictional counterpart's fate. In this way, her trial spectacularized the disparity which the sentimental novel conjures up and displaces but never resolves. Going further, the common law theory of coverture, which severely limited the legal personhood of married women, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Cases like Norman's remind us that unmarried women were also subject to draconian constraints on their legal personhood. The tort of seduction is a key example. Legal historians trace the development of the seduction tort from its common-law origins, when men's property interest in women's bodies formed the basis of the cause of action, to 1851, when Field Code authors (including Norman's lawyer, David Graham) persuaded several states to grant seduced women standing to bring their own cause of action. Consequently, courts were forced to reckon with the seduced woman as a moral agent capable of consenting to sex. As trials like Norman's demonstrate, sentimental novels helped lay the groundwork for this shift in the law by elucidating a subjectivity for the seduced woman. Yet the doctrinal implications of Norman's precedent-setting trial had a second, more ambiguous strain. Other women facing similar charges used the same legal strategy to gain acquittals in a substantial number of cases. Indeed, Norman's sentimental strategy proved so powerful that men on trial for killing their wives' seducers appropriated it to bring their own stories before juries and to reinforce male sexual norms through the so-called honor defense. In the end, then, Norman's trial fostered legal reform, but it also suggested - as Lydia Maria Child's fictionalization of the case in "Rosenglory" recognized - that only sustained and multifaceted efforts to change cultural as well as legal norms could improve the sexual status of women. In addition to its legal, literary, and historical insights that it provides, we also intend this article to contribute to debates on the nature of scholarship in law and literature. Scholars such as Wai Chee Dimock have argued for a focus on the historical and historically shifting relations between law and literature - a view we endorse. Where we differ from Dimock is in our diversion of attention away from abstract ideas of law laid out by treatise writers and philosophers in favor of law experienced and manipulated by individuals. So, too, we are interested less in representations of concepts such as justice in legal and literary texts than we are in the ways in which literature (broadly conceived) can create provisional and fragile opportunities for concrete instantiations of justice and even generate legal change (for good or ill). We would argue that to the extent legal change motivates rather than simply mirrors cultural change, it needs literature to be effective. This project, then, responds to Gregg Crane's call for attention to the complex and slippery historical interactions of law and literature that shape and are shaped by an ever changing cultural idiom of justice. The extended story of Amelia Norman, in short, not only constitutes a case study in the inescapable interaction between the overlapping and interdependent discourses of law and literature, but also reveals the literary and legal consequences of that interaction. (shrink)

Our paper explores how the affective energies and cultural expectations set in motion by best-selling American sentimental novels like Hannah Foster's The Coquette and Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple informed the notorious mid-nineteenth-century American trial of Amelia Norman, who attempted to kill the man who seduced her. Once newspapers, defense lawyers, and reformers such as Lydia Maria Child recast the defendant as a sentimental heroine, the trial became about seduction, and Norman was acquitted against the weight of the evidence. Sentimental novels (...) turn on the contrast between the passive victim status of the heroine and the active libidinal quest of the rake-villain. As Cathy Davidson points out, this fiction is "about silence, subservience, stasis (the accepted attributes of women as traditionally defined) in contradistinction to conflicting impulses toward independence, action, and self expression (the ideals of the new American nation)." The seduction plot diverts attention from this disparity by establishing an affective solidarity between heroine and reader and elevating the ruined woman to a tragic status. The sentimental emplotment of Norman's life marshaled a powerful set of emotional responses and moral judgements on her behalf. Norman claimed insanity. And since sentimental heroines are supposed to go mad when they are seduced and abandoned, the jury was prepared to interpret her symptoms according to her lawyers' very strategy for establishing her innocence. Ultimately, however, Norman embodied the plight of the sentimental heroine at the same time that she contested her fictional counterpart's fate. In this way, her trial spectacularized the disparity which the sentimental novel conjures up and displaces but never resolves. The common law theory of coverture, which severely limited the legal personhood of married women, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Cases like Norman's remind us that unmarried women were also subject to draconian constraints on their legal personhood. The tort of seduction is a key example. Legal historians trace the development of the seduction tort from its common-law origins, when men's property interest in women's bodies formed the basis of the cause of action, to 1851, when Field Code authors (including Norman's lawyer David Graham) persuaded several states to grant seduced women standing to bring their own cause of action. Consequently, courts were forced to reckon with the seduced woman as a moral agent capable of consenting to sex. As trials like Norman's demonstrate, sentimental novels helped lay the groundwork for this shift in the law by elucidating a subjectivity for the seduced woman. Yet the doctrinal implications of Norman's precedent-setting trial had a second, more ambiguous strain. Norman's sentimental strategy proved so powerful that men on trial for killing their wive's seducers appropriated it to bring their own stories before juries and to reinforce male sexual norms. In the end, then, Norman's trial fostered legal reform, but it also suggested - as Child's fictionalization of the case in "Rosenglory" recognized - that only sustained and multifaceted efforts to change cultural as well as legal norms could improve the sexual status of women. Scholars such as Wai Chee Dimock have argued for a focus "on the historical and historically shifting relations between law and literature" - a view we endorse. Where we differ from Dimock is in our diversion of attention away from abstract ideas of law laid out by treatise writers and philosophers in favor of law experienced and manipulated by individuals. So, too, we are interested less in representations of concepts such as justice in legal and literary texts than we are in the ways in which literature (broadly conceived) can create provisional and fragile opportunities for concrete instantiations of justice and even generate legal change (for good or ill). Going further, we would argue that to the extent legal change motivates rather than simply mirrors cultural change, it needs literature to be effective. Thus, we see no need to characterize - and indeed reject the depiction of - law as "a limited arena" in which ideas of morality have little place. This project, then, responds to Gregg Crane's call for attention to "the complex and slippery historical interactions of law and literature that shape and are shaped by an ever changing cultural idiom of justice." The extended story of Amelia Norman not only constitutes a case study in the inescapable interaction between the overlapping and interdependent discourses of law and literature, but also reveals the literary and legal consequences of that interaction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Mahāyāna Reading of Chalcedon Christology:A Chinese Response to John KeenanPan-chiu LaiIntroductionThe Christological formula of Chalcedon, especially its use of the substantialist concepts such as ousia, hypostatsis, and so on, has long been a target of criticism in the history of Western Christian theology.1 Recently, Kwok Pui-lan, an Asian feminist theologian, has queried not only the language or way of thinking of traditional Western Christology, but also its (...) anthropocentric tendency. According to Kwok, "the majority of Asian people find it difficult to accept a savior in human form because of their cosmological sensibility."2 Kwok also thinks that the Chalcedonian expressions such as "fully God and fully man" or "two natures in one substance" are quite beyondthe understanding of the majority of the Asian people. The lengthy debate on the difference between homoousia and homoiousia is also irrelevant to the average Chinese, because there are no immediate Chinese equivalents to the terms such as "being" or "essence." According to Kwok, Buddhism, in contrast, characterizes the world as transient and impermanent without using the philosophical language such as "being" and "nonbeing."3 Kwok further notes that "The Buddhist tradition asserts that there is not one Buddha, but many Buddhas, and that everyone has the potential to attain Buddhahood. If we get away from the framework defined by a language of substance, we will not be fixated on a one-time incarnation."4 Kwok concludes that the anthropocentric perspective and the substantialist language of the Chalcedonian Creed represent a burden or obstacle that needs to be put aside. She even laments that "the church worldwide is still much under the yoke of the Chalcedonian captivity and Eurocentric theological formulations based on Western heritages."5 Kwok's comment seems to imply that the Buddhist way of thinking may offer a better alternative or a remedy to Chalcedonian Christology.In the contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue, John P. Keenan, when proposing a Mahāyāna theology, also offers a critique of Chalcedonian Christology.6 [End Page 209] Through a response to Keenan's discussion, this paper will examine these critiques and will attempt to reinterpret the Chalcedonian Christology from a Mahāyāna perspective.The Mahāyāna Theology of John KeenanIn proposing a Mahāyāna theology, Keenan assumes a Christian standpoint and tries to make use of Mahāyāna Buddhism for the service of Christianity. As Keenan himself frankly admits, his basic approach is to adopt "Mahāyāna Thought as Theologiae Ancilla, " which is the heading for the second part of his The Meaning of Christ. Keenan's strategy of arguing for a Mahāyāna theology is to identify the need of Christianity first, and then to argue in what way Mahāyāna Buddhism can help Christian theology to solve its own problems. According to Keenan's diagnosis, a fundamental problem of the Western Christian tradition is the detrimental separation of mysticism from doctrine. In his own words,It is argued here that, to date, the Christian West has been unable organically to relate its own mystic thinkers to its doctrinal, theoretical thinking. The reason for this inability was not simply, as Adolf von Harnack thought, the adoption and superimposition of Greek patterns of ontology upon the gospel. Rather it is an inability to differentiate that realm of Greek, logos-centered theory from the more primal realm of mystic awareness, an ability to understand the mind of faith in its polyvalent realms of meaning.7In the first part of the book (ch. 1-5), based on his review of the historical development of the Christian understanding of Christ, Keenan highlights the tremendous tension between the primal experience of "being in Christ" and the theoretical understanding of Christ.8 Keenan believes that the school of wisdom literature in the Old Testament has prepared the New Testament for an understanding of the meaning of Christ as God's wisdom. This wisdom comprises essentially God as Father (Abba) as well as the theology of the cross and resurrection. He further points out that early Christians, following the example of Jesus Christ, had direct experience of God as Father. Owing to the... (shrink)

Due to the economic globalization which is characterized with business scandals, scholars and practitioners are increasingly engaged with the implementation of codes of ethics as a regulatory mechanism for stimulating ethical behaviours within an organization. The aim of this study is to examine various organizational practices regarding the effective implementation of codes of ethics within construction contracting companies. Views on ethics management in construction organizations together with the recommendations for improvement were gleaned through 19 semi-structured interviews, involving construction practitioners from (...) various construction companies in Hong Kong. The findings suggested some practices for effective implementation of codes of ethics in order to diffuse ethical behaviours in an organizational setting which include; introduction of effective reward schemes, arrangement of ethics training for employees, and leadership responsiveness to reported wrongdoings. Since most of the construction companies in Hong Kong have codes of ethics, emphasis is made on the practical implementation of codes within the organizations. Hence, implications were drawn from the recommended measures to guide construction companies and policy makers. (shrink)

This book approaches the topic of intercultural understanding in philosophy from a phenomenological perspective. It provides a bridge between Western and Eastern philosophy through in-depth discussion of concepts and doctrines of phenomenology and ancient and contemporary Chinese philosophy. Phenomenological readings of Daoist and Buddhist philosophies are provided: the reader will find a study of theoretical and methodological issues and innovative readings of traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies from the phenomenological perspective. The author uses a descriptive rigor to avoid cultural prejudices (...) and provides a non-Eurocentric conception and practice of philosophy. Through this East-West comparative study, a compelling criticism of a Eurocentric conception of philosophy emerges. New concepts and methods in intercultural philosophy are proposed through these chapters. Researchers, teachers, post-graduates and students of philosophy will all find this work intriguing, and those with an interest in non-Western philosophy or phenomenology will find it particularly engaging. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of post-traumatic growth and identify its influencing factors in discharged COVID-19 patients. PTG refers to individual experiences of significant positive change arising from the struggle with a major life crisis. This descriptive cross-sectional study used the convenient sampling method to recruit 140 discharged COVID-19 patients in Hunan, China. The results show that the PTG of the discharged COVID-19 patients was positively correlated with self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorder, coping style tendency, (...) and social support, but negatively correlated with the time from onset to diagnosis. Our findings could provide guidance on improving the psychological state and well-being of discharged COVID-19 patients. (shrink)

Translation of western philosophical concept into Chinese is often considered to be challenging. This is attributed to both linguistic and cultural differences. This article discusses these challenges under four categories, namely terminology, semantic understanding and context, philosophical disputes, and language reconstruction and combination. For each category, one or two examples are presented to illustrate the challenges. How each of these challenges is resolved is also discussed so as to provide the readers with some guidelines if they encounter similar challenges in (...) their work. (shrink)

Design research has been positioned as an important methodological contribution of the learning sciences. Despite the publication of a handbook on the subject, the practice of design research in education remains an eclectic collection of specific approaches implemented by different researchers and research groups. In this paper, I examine the learning sciences as a design science to identify its fundamental goals, methods, affiliations, and assumptions. I argue that inherent tensions arise when attempting to practice design research as an analytic science. (...) Drawing inspiration and insight from Chinese philosophy and the practice of Chinese medicine, I propose that the learning sciences may better attain its claims to science through greater reliance on inductive synthesis rather than linear causal analysis. In so doing, I reposition the endeavor of science making within the metaphysics of process philosophy instead of classical Western philosophy. I suggest that theory building will be strengthened empirically and pragmatically by more careful observation and systematic generalization of the stability patterns of design related phenomena. It also needs to be more situated in its orientation. (shrink)

This paper asks how the intensity of individual local eParticipation affects users’ perception of democratically valuable effects. Drawing on participatory and deliberative theory literature we extract four participatory effects- internal political efficacy, common good orientation, tolerance, and legitimacy. Furthermore, the paper examines which cognitive factors may moderate the relationship between intensity of participation and perception of participatory effects. Drawing on online survey data from 670 citizens engaged in public budgeting online consultations on the local level, the conducted path analysis shows (...) that intensity of participation seems to foster the perception of common good orientation and tolerance. The other perceptions of participatory effects were not influenced by participation intensity. Findings on moderating factors indicate that the beneficial effects of online participation were not distributed unequally among participants. In conclusion, the research presents evidence for an optimistic view on local eParticipation that is able to promote democratically valuable user experiences. (shrink)

Drama pedagogy has evolved in recent years as one the most creative and adaptable tools for engaged learning in language teaching. This paper discusses the teaching of modern Chinese play selected to be a prescribed text in pre-university Chinese literature curriculum. The play in focus is Teahouse by the renowned Chinese writer, Lao She. The study aims to pilot qualitative research through concrete individual teaching, in order to perform a preliminary classification and analysis of how teaching methods of modern plays (...) are carried out. These include the use of the Theatre in Education and Drama in Education models to conduct the teaching of modern plays. The study purported that the use of Theatre in Education and Drama in Education are methods to trigger students’ interest in learning before lessons and to carry out warm-up activities and to evaluate lesson results. These methods also aid students to familiarize the core of the original texts and use meaningful, theatrical real scenarios for the teaching of language and literature. Keywords - Education, drama pedagogy, classroom pedagogy, qualitative design, Singapore. (shrink)

The last millennium saw rapid change, spreading globalization, and shifting populations. These have posed moral, ethical, and social dilemmas that have challenged the very foundations of our beliefs and radically changed our way of life. In this volume, some of the world's greatest thinkers in philosophy, music, religion, and the arts share their insights on the future shape of human civilization. How can old cultural legacies fit new contexts? Can there be a universalist values coexist with local differentiation? Are literature (...) and music still relevant in a world where technology is dominant? By discussing these important issues in an interdisciplinary framework, these scholars have provided a provisional blueprint for our new society. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to investigate and analyze the status and influential factors of gender equality awareness, self-esteem, and subjective well-being in school-age boys and girls. The results can help schools and teachers provide more effective gender equality and mental health education. In the study, 284 valid questionnaires were collected from a total of 323 school-age boys and girls in the Hunan Province, China. The questionnaire covered gender equality awareness, self-esteem, and subjective well-being, with the influencing factors analyzed (...) through multiple linear regression. There was a significant correlation among children’s gender equality awareness in all areas examined, with both boys and girls having the lowest awareness of gender equality in occupational fields. The children’s self-esteem and subjective well-being were significantly correlated as well. Gender equality awareness, self-esteem, and subjective well-being among boys and girls reflected different influential factors. Androgynous traits were conducive to the development of gender equality awareness and self-esteem among the children. Therefore, schools and teachers need to provide gender equality and mental health education according to the specific psychological characteristics of each boy and girl. (shrink)

The dynamical equations of quantum mechanics are rewritten in the form of dynamical equations for the measurable, positive marginal distribution of the shifted, rotated, and squeezed quadrature introduced in the so-called “symplectic tomography”. Then the possibility of a purely classical description of a quantum system as well as a reinterpretation of the quantum measurement theory is discussed and a comparison with the well-known quasi-probabilities approach is given. Furthermore, an analysis of the properties of this marginal distribution, which contains all the (...) quantum information, is performed in the framework of classical probability theory. Finally, examples of the harmonic oscillator's states dynamics are treated. (shrink)

Junior researchers can be abused and bullied by unscrupulous senior collaborators. This article describes the profile of a type of serial abuser, the White Bull, who uses his academic seniority to distort authorship credit and who disguises his parasitism with carefully premeditated deception. Further research into the personality traits of such perpetrators is warranted.

By his critical reflections on the crisis of modern civilization, Jan Patočka, phenomenologist of the Other Europe, incarnates the critical consciousness of the phenomenological movement. He was in fact one of the first European philosophers to have emphasized the necessity of abandoning the hitherto Eurocentric propositions of solution to the crisis when he explicitly raised the problems of a “Post-European humanity”. In advocating an understanding of the history of European humanity different from those of Husserl and Heidegger, Patočka directs his (...) philosophical reflections back to sketch a more profound phenomenology of the natural world insufficiently thematized in Husserl and absent in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. By virtue of its emphasis on the structural characteristics of movement, of praxis, and of the disclosure of the abyssal nature of human existence and of the original nothingness as the (non-)foundation of the phenomenal world, Patočka’s phenomenology of the natural world constitutes an opening towards the reception of Others and other cultures, in particular that of Chinese Taoist philosophy. (shrink)

The conception of saviour siblings using preimplantation genetic diagnosis coupled with human leukocyte antigen typing or HLA typing alone is controversial and receives a wide divergence of legal responses among countries around the world. The resulting child conceived through this procedure is dubbed a ‘saviour sibling’ as the child can potentially act as a compatible donor for an elder ailing sibling who needs a haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. At present, the acceptability of this procedure in Malaysia is ambiguous as there (...) is no specific statute governing assisted reproductive technology, and the guideline issued by the Malaysian Medical Council does not expressly address this issue. The ethical arguments relating to the conception of saviour siblings in the current literature are mainly thought to reflect a liberal viewpoint which is predominantly Western in nature. This paper seeks to explore the perception of selected key stakeholders on the acceptability of and ethical concerns related to this procedure in the Malaysian context. The findings indicate that stakeholders generally support the conception of saviour siblings and some of their concerns echo the Western viewpoint. Interestingly, many were highly anxious about its economic implication, which is rarely discussed in the current literature on saviour siblings. (shrink)

Recently, Philip Goff has argued that the idea of agentive cosmopsychism is the best explanation of cosmic fine-tuning. This idea suggests that our universe is a conscious subject which has capacity to recognize and respond to reasons or facts about value. In this article, by carefully examining the involved premises in Goff’s argument, we show that two important premises are dubious and not rationally acceptable. Therefore, we conclude that Goff’s argument for agentive cosmopsychism fails.

William C. Frederick proposes a naturalistic business ethics. Many commentators focus on the issues of naturalistic fallacy, deprivation of freedom of the will, and possibility of important and universal moral values in business ethics. I argue that an ethics being naturalistic is not a worry. The issue of deprivation of free will is irrelevant. Yet there are urgent questions regarding the possibility of important and universal moral values, which may prevent Frederick’s view from getting off the ground.

Purpose This paper aims to engage with the social issues emerging from the increasing reliance upon app-driven services, as they pertain to precarious labor and ethical standpoints in a digital era. Popular ride services such as Uber have been lauded for bringing much needed transportation services that are superior to expensive taxis or unpleasant or inaccessible public transit. Design/methodology/approach As a result of over three years of ongoing research and analysis, this paper is a comprehensive assessment of a number of (...) social issues facing the integration of practices both signified and enacted in an economy driven by apps such as Uber. While these companies are indeed profitable, questions remain as to just how much of a panacea these practices actually herald. Findings Findings indicate that privatization and a lack of labor regulation may present a significant savings to the user, but full cost economics suggest that the social and environmental costs require consideration. Research limitations/implications The recommendations here refer to the ethical considerations forwarded in this paper and serve to open up dialog to further discuss the persistent issues facing a precarious future. Practical implications In terms of practical implications, there is a point of tension between governmental/regulatory bodies, disruptive innovators and users. Social implications Stakeholders of all stripes are scrambling to keep up with the pace and problematics of digital innovations and an inclusive critical dialog on app-driven services has yet to become a priority. Originality/value The original value of this analytical framework from a social justice perspective stands to catalyze action on a number of pervasive social issues surrounding digital ethics and policy. (shrink)

This article examines some recent theoretical objects of feminism with a view towards a reinvigorated dialogue with psychoanalysis. Against the backdrop of debates on essentialism, universalism, social constructionism and historical change, it aims to reintroduce the value of psychoanalytic ideas to feminism by unfolding a dimension of history in the divided subject and adding a positive value to psychoanalytic universalism. This argument is carried out with the help of the writings of Julia Kristeva, from the early essay, `Women's Time', to (...) the psychoanalytic publications of the 1980s and 1990s. (shrink)

Volume 53, Issue 2, February 2021, Page 181-196.

We analyze time use data of four East Asian societies and 12 Western countries between 1985 and 2016 to investigate the gender revolution in paid work, domestic work, and total work. The closing of gender gaps in paid work, domestic work, and total work time has stalled in the most recent decade in several countries. The magnitude of the gender gaps, cultural contexts, and welfare policies plays a key role in determining whether the gender revolution in the division of labor (...) will stall or continue. Women undertake more total work than men across all societies: The gender gap ranges from 30 minutes to 2 hours a day. Our findings suggest that cultural norms interact with institutional contexts to affect the patterns of gender convergence in time use, and gender equality might settle at differing levels of egalitarianism across countries. (shrink)

In recent analytic philosophy of religion, one hotly debated topic is the veridicality of religious experience. In this paper, I briefly trace how the argument from religious experience comes into prominence in the twentieth century. This is due to the able defense of this argument by Richard Swinburne, William Alston, and Jerome Gellman among others. I explain the argument's intuitive force and why the stock objections to religious experience are not entirely convincing. I expound Swinburne's approach and his application of (...) the Principle of Credulity to religious experience. Then I critically examine four major objections to Swinburne. I conclude that the argument from religious experiences is not likely to be conclusive but it should not be dismissed either. (shrink)

The field of bioethics aims to ensure that modern scientific and technological advancements have been primarily developed for the benefits of humankind. This field is deeply rooted in the traditions of Western moral philosophy and socio-political theory. With respect to the view that the practice of bioethics in certain community should incorporate religious and cultural elements, this paper attempts to expound bioethical tradition of the Malay-Muslim community in Malaysia, with shedding light on the mechanism used by the National Fatwa Council (...) to evaluate whether an application of biological sciences is ethical or not. By using the application of the genetically modified food as a case study, this study has found that the council had reviewed the basic guidelines in the main references of shari'ah in order to make decision on the permissibility of the application. The fatwa is made after having consultation with the experts in science field. The council has taken all factors into consideration and given priority to the general aim of shari'ah which to serve the interests of mankind and to save them from harm. (shrink)

Although Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty both reject the traditional picture of cultural change in which intellectuals are supposed to have the ‘last word’ on cultural issues and envisage cultural changes as the result of ‘dialogue’ or ‘conversation’ between them and the lay public, they nevertheless end up espousing different pictures of cultural change because of their totally different conception of the role and function of language, truth and rationality in such dialogue. In the first two sections of this article, (...) I will recount Habermas’s critique of Rorty’s neo-pragmatism and the latter’s responses to it so that they can reveal the core issues of the debate. In the third section, I will argue that, as a ‘sociologized version’ of Rorty’s philosophy, Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of social performance provides us with a sociological framework that makes possible a wide range of empirical studies of cultural change. (shrink)