This paper examines heterogeneous impacts of gendered household headship and control of resources on food security in rural Tanzania. Analysis with minimal attention to heterogeneity in gender considerations indicates no differences in household food security between male and female-headed households. But with a more differentiated household headship variable and accounting for gendered differences in resource ownership, the results differ markedly. Using more gender-disaggregated variables, our results show significant differences between female-headed and male-headed households. In these results we find support for (...) the claim that gender norms in the study villages often restrict women’s access to resources, resulting in more vulnerable female-headed households. Female-headed households with no male adults present are particularly vulnerable. The study also points to specific opportunities for enhanced food security with attention to female and joint ownership of livestock. These results represent a hopeful sign that efforts to enhance female livestock ownership could be a useful strategy to address lower levels of food consumption in these Tanzanian villages. (shrink)

Cognitive science is experiencing a pragmatic turn away from the traditional representation-centered framework toward a view that focuses on understanding cognition as "enactive." This enactive view holds that cognition does not produce models of the world but rather subserves action as it is grounded in sensorimotor skills. In this volume, experts from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, robotics, and philosophy of mind assess the foundations and implications of a novel action-oriented view of cognition. Their contributions and supporting experimental evidence show that (...) an enactive approach to cognitive science enables strong conceptual advances, and the chapters explore key concepts for this new model of cognition. The contributors discuss the implications of an enactive approach for cognitive development; action-oriented models of cognitive processing; action-oriented understandings of consciousness and experience; and the accompanying paradigm shifts in the fields of philosophy, brain science, robotics, and psychology. ContributorsMoshe Bar, Lawrence W. Barsalov, Olaf Blanke, Jeannette Bohg, Martin V. Butz, Peter F. Dominey, Andreas K. Engel, Judith M. Ford, Karl J. Friston, Chris D. Frith, Shaun Gallagher, Antonia Hamilton, Tobias Heed, Cecilia Heyes, Elisabeth Hill, Matej Hoffmann, Jakob Hohwy, Bernhard Hommel, Atsushi Iriki, Pierre Jacob, Henrik Jörntell, Jürgen Jost, James Kilner, Günther Knoblich, Peter König, Danica Kragic, Miriam Kyselo, Alexander Maye, Marek McGann, Richard Menary, Thomas Metzinger, Ezequiel Morsella, Saskia Nagel, Kevin J. O'Regan, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Giovanni Pezzulo, Tony J. Prescott, Wolfgang Prinz, Friedemann Pulvermüller, Robert Rupert, Marti Sanchez-Fibla, Andrew Schwartz, Anil K. Seth, Vicky Southgate, Antonella Tramacere, John K. Tsotsos, Paul F. M. J. Verschure, Gabriella Vigliocco, Gottfried Vosgerau. (shrink)

Bhabha, Georges Didi-Huberman, David Morgan and Lee Siegel, as well as a series of focused contributions by Yve-Alain Bois, Wendy Doniger, Kenneth Frampton, Martin E. Marty, John Hallmark Neff, Annemarie Schimmel, and Helen Tworkov consider how rapture resonate's both in a cultural context and within the experience of a single human being.

Phenomenological analyses of ageing and old age have examined themes such as alterity, finitude, and time, not seldom from the perspective of “healthy” aging. Phenomenologists have also offered detailed analyses of lived experiences of illness including lived experiences of dementia. This article offers a phenomenological account of what we label as entering the grey zone of aging between “healthy” aging and aging with a disease. This account is developed through a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis of elderly persons’ lived experiences of (...) being tested for dementia through primary care in Sweden, i.e., within a cultural context where dementia commonly is understood as a frightening a loss of self even though this understanding also is questioned. To enter this grey zone of aging, we argue, does not dissolve dynamic self-becoming but can involve an experience of oneself as being old. Further, in the grey zone, the self experiences itself as neither fully healthy nor as having a disease, and as needing to negotiate and live this ambiguity. To enter this grey zone is to enter an affectively charged, sociocultural and medicalized zone, and while the self can still act in different ways within it, staying in the grey zone can result in a re-orientation in the self’s mode of being, in ways that are thoroughly beyond its control. To stay in the grey zone can have detrimental effects on the self, even though the self does not have a disease: the self can become “stuck” in a reflective mode of attending to embodiment, aging, health, and disease. (shrink)

There is a narrow thread in the vast literature on Kafka which pertains to Kafka’s knowledge of philosophy, and more precisely to Kafka’s use in his fictional writings of some of the main ideas of Franz Brentano. Kafka attended courses in philosophy at the Charles University given by Brentano’s students Anton Marty and Christian von Ehrenfels, and was for several years a member of a discussion-group organized by orthodox adherents of the Brentanian philosophy in Prague. The present essay summarizes (...) what is known about Kafka’s relations to the Brentanist movement. It draws on Brentanian ideas on the evidence of inner perception, on oblique consciousness, on active introspection, on correct and incorrect judgment, and on consciousness as a species of inner tribunal, in order to throw light on central features of Kafka’s writings, including stylistic features. Special attention is directed towards Die Verwandlung and Der Prozess, and a reading of the latter is offered according to which the trial of Joseph K. occurs entirely within the mind of K. himself. The revisions in the 1997 version of the paper relate especially to the treatment of Kafka and Brentano in Arnold Heidsieck’s book The Intellectual Contexts of Kafka’s Fiction: Philosophy, Law, Religion, of 1994. (shrink)

The anti-realist argument from underconsideration focuses on the fact that, when scientists evaluate theories, they only ever consider a subset of the theories that can account for the available data. As a result, when scientists judge one theory to be superior to competitor theories, they are not warranted in drawing the conclusion that the superior theory is likely true with respect to what it says about unobservable entities and processes. I defend the argument from underconsideration from the objections of Peter (...) Lipton. I argue that the inconsistency that Lipton claims to find in the argument vanishes once we understand what the anti-realist means when she claims that scientists are reliable. I also argue that collapsing the distinction between relative and absolute evaluations, as Lipton recommends, has its costs. Finally, I briefly examine Richard Boyd's influential defence of realism. (shrink)

The article defines the significance of Bolzano for the Brentano school and explores the sense in which Bolzano could have been an intermediary between late Scholasticism and the Brentano school. The first part of the article discusses the assessment of the Bolzano’s philosophical doctrine, which is offered by Brentano himself and his closest student Marty. Brentano found Bolzano’s pursuit of scientific philosophy commendable, but at the same time criticized him for platonism in the theory of meanings and for distin­guishing (...) the ways of being. Marty, continuing partly to criticize Bolzano, rather posi­tively assessed his doctrine of propositions in themselves. Using the example of the doc­trine of modifying adjectives, it is shown what influence Bolzano had on Marty’s philoso­phy of language. In the second part of the article, the question of Bolzano’s influence on K. Twardowski, A. Meinong and E. Husserl is considered. It is shown that each of these thinkers interpreted Bolzano's doctrine of propositions in themselves in different ways and at the same time not quite correctly. Bolzano’s doctrine of proposition structure is discussed separately and the evaluation of this doctrine proposed by Husserl is analyzed. Bolzano’s insufficient attention to the syntactic complexity of sentences, according to Husserl, was the reason that the Bohemian thinker did not propose a full-fledged theory of meaning and did not investigate the relationship between semantics and ontology. For other students of Brentano, Husserl’s assessment only confirmed that Bolzano did not pay due attention to linguistic synsemantics. The third part answers the question of Bolzano’s mediation between late Scholasticism and the Brentano school: the desire to defend the objectivity of truth and refute subjectivism unites such thinkers as S. Izquierdo and B. Bolzano, and it is on this basis that the continuity between late Scholasticism and the Brentano school can be traced. (shrink)

Un mince fil dans la vaste littérature sur Kafka concerne la connaissance qu’avait Kafka de la philosophie, et plus précisément l’utilisation, dans les récits de Kafka, de quelques-unes des idées principales de Franz Brentano. Kafka a suivi des cours de philosophie à l’Université Charles, cours donnés par des étudiants de Brentano, Anton Marty et Christian von Ehrenfels. Il fut aussi, pendant plusieurs années, membre d’un groupe de discussion organisé par des partisans orthodoxes de la philosophie brentanienne à Prague. Le (...) présent essai résume ce que l’on sait des relations entretenues par Kafka avec le mouvement brentanien. Il porte sur les idées brentaniennes qui concernent l’évidence de la perception intérieure, la conscience oblique, l’introspection active, le jugement correct et incorrect et la conscience en tant qu’espèce de tribunal intérieur, dans le but d’éclairer certains aspects centraux de l’œuvre de Kafka, incluant son style. Nous porterons une attention particulière sur Die Verwandlung et Der Prozess , et nous offrirons une interprétation de ce dernier texte selon laquelle le procès de Joseph K. se passe entièrement dans l’esprit de K. lui-même. (shrink)

I evaluate the extent to which we could learn something about how we should be conducting collaborative research in science from the research on groupthink. I argue that Solomon has set us in the wrong direction, failing to recognize that the consensus in scientific specialties is not the result of deliberation. But the attention to the structure of problem-solving that has emerged in the groupthink research conducted by psychologists can help us see when deliberation could lead to problems for a (...) research team. I argue that whenever we need to generate alternative solutions or proposals, groupthink is a genuine threat, and research teams would be wise to allow individuals opportunities to work alone. But the benefits of team work emerge when scientists seek to evaluate the various proposals generated, and determine a course of action. Then the group is less prone is groupthink, and the interaction of group members can be an epistemic asset. (shrink)

Part of a 14-volume work covering writings in American religious history with specific attention to trends in American Protestantism; church and state; theological issues; social Christianity; women in religion; native American religion; regional and black religion; fundamentalism and creationism.

t. 1. Essai d'économie psychosomatique.--t. 2. L'ordre psychosomatique : désorganisations et régressions.

Les analyses linguistiques modernes ont mis en lumière une dimension de la communication humaine qui est de l’ordre de la promesse, et qui est applicable au langage de la création. Tout récit de commencement est mythique et symbolique, en tant qu’il relève de l’imagination et qu’il implique la foi dans une promesse d’avenir. Dans la Bible, les récits de création disent l’Alliance de Dieu avec l’humanité, dont l’histoire est précédée par l’acte créateur de l’univers. S’intéressant à l’histoire de la nature (...) à la suite de Newton, Kant fera de l’idée de Dieu un principe, non de connaissance d’un objet, mais de régulation de la recherche, et il accepte de parler d’une finalité de la création pour rendre compte de la liberté humaine. Le paradigme de la création relève d’une pensée de l’agir libre et s’impose quand il est question de l’avenir. L’excès du monde où vit l’homme provoque son admiration et lui donne le pressentiment de la transcendance.De nos jours, l’écologie, avec la prise de conscience de l’environnement, relance le problème de la création sous la forme de l’habitation de l’homme dans son monde. L’anthropocentrisme biblique signifie à cet égard que c’est la tâche de l’homme de rendre ce monde habitable pour tous, sans violence et dans la beauté. Le mythe engage dans une pratique constitutive des liens de société.Modern linguistic analyses shed light on a dimension of human communication that is in the order of promise, and which is applicable to the language of creation. Every story of the beginning is mythic and symbolic, in so far as it comes from the imagination and implicates faith in a future promise. In the Bible, the stories of creation speak of the Covenant of God with humanity, whose history is preceded by an act creating the universe. Kant, who followed Newton’s interest in the history of nature, made the idea of God a principle, not of knowledge of an object but of the control of research. He accepted to speak of a finality of creation in order to understand human freedom. The paradigm of creation comes from the idea of acting freely and imposes itself when there is a question of the future. The excess of the world where man lives provokes his admiration and gives him the presentment of transcendence .In our day, ecology’s concern with the environment brings back the problem of creation under the form of man living in his world. Biblical anthropocentrism means, in this context, that it is the job of man to make this world habitable for everyone, without violence and in beauty. Myth engages in a practice constitutive of the bonds of society. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Most authors of articles in this issue reflect on differences between the world into which William James dropped his book in 1902 and the world in which readers can confront it in 2002. Here and there are mentions that imply he was speaking in a climate where many hearers and readers were indifferent to, suspicious of, or hostile to explorations that dealt with anything coded with words such as 'transcendent', 'mystical', 'spiritual', or 'religious'. Such mentions are in place. One can (...) sense the psychologist clearing his throat, shifting on his feet, and perhaps figuratively raising a protective arm as a shield against verbal missiles that would be hurled by audiences or readers. To deal with some medieval mystics was one thing; to take seriously the upstart and often, among academics, unrespectable movements such as Christian Science was another. It could expose him to ridicule and hurt the scientific and philosophical communities in which he was a leader. Between the turn of the last century and the turn of this one, historians of culture agree, James would have had an ever worse time carrying on his explorations or making his points. The world, which meant the world of the academy, media, arts, and often politics, was periodically described as secular, and growing ever more relentlessly so. Whatever else 'secular' meant, it implied the freedom to ignore or oppose scholarship other than historical that dealt with the transcendent or the mystical. Those were years of 'secular theology' or 'the death of God' movements or, simply, turnings of the back on mysticism and inquiries concerning it for pragmatic reasons or less discernible ones that came with the ethos. (shrink)

Van Fraassen believes our current best theories enable us to make accurate predictions because they have been subjected to a selection process similar to natural selection. His explanation for the predictive success of our best theories has been subjected to extensive criticism from realists. I aim to clarify the nature of van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science. Contrary to what the critics claim, the selectionist can explain why it is that we have successful theories, as well as (...) why it is reasonable to expect past successful theories to be successful in the future. I also argue that the plausibility of the realists’ explanation rests on an inaccurate understanding of the nature of predictive success . The predictive success of our best theories is a relative success. (shrink)

In this paper we address the question of when a researcher is justified in describing his or her artificial agent as demonstrating ethical decision-making. The paper is motivated by the amount of research being done that attempts to imbue artificial agents with expertise in ethical decision-making. It seems clear that computing systems make decisions, in that they make choices between different options; and there is scholarship in philosophy that addresses the distinction between ethical decision-making and general decision-making. Essentially, the qualitative (...) difference between ethical decisions and general decisions is that ethical decisions must be part of the process of developing ethical expertise within an agent. We use this distinction in examining publicity surrounding a particular experiment in which a simulated robot attempted to safeguard simulated humans from falling into a hole. We conclude that any suggestions that this simulated robot was making ethical decisions were misleading. (shrink)

Bullying is a serious problem in today’s workplace, in that, a large percentage of employees have either been bullied or knows someone who has. There are a variety of ethical concerns dealing with bullying—that is, courses of action to manage the bullying contain serious ethical/legal concerns. The inadequacies of legal protections for bullying in the U.S. workplace also compound the approaches available to deal ethically with bullying. While Schumann (2001, Human Resource Management Review 11, 93–111) does not explicitly examine bullying, (...) the five moral principles that he advocates can be applied to judge the ethics of bullying in the workplace. A possible limitation of this model is that, it is designed to be normative (judgmental), and while it does take into consideration the relationships among the victim, the perpetrator, the groups in the organization, and the organization itself in judging the ethics of bullying, it does not explicitly consider the process by which bullying might develop and persist. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of this process, Nijhof and Rietdijk (1999, Journal of Business Ethics 20(1), 39–50)) suggest applying an A–B–C (antecedents, behaviors, and consequences) model to help understand the dynamics of bullying in the workplace. Formal propositions are offered to guide both academics and practitioners to an enriched understanding of the ethics of workplace bullying. (shrink)