Essays on linguistics in Malaysia; festschrift in honor of Asmah Haji Omar, a doctor in linguistics at Universiti Malaya.

While a corporate ethics program is expected to reduce employees’ unethical behavior, understanding the effects of the ethics program elements on reducing the unethical behavior is a crucial issue. This study aims to explore how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements, including punishment, monitoring, internal reporting, code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training, influence employees’ threat appraisal process, coping appraisal process and unethical behavior at workplaces. The data to verify proposed research hypotheses were collected by administering (...) questionnaire survey on four autonomous government organizations in Bangladesh. Research findings show that only punishment and monitoring have significantly negative relationships with unethical behavior. Monitoring and internal reporting have significantly positive relationships with threat appraisal. The code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training are associated positively with coping appraisal. The mediation results reveal that coping appraisal mediates the relationship between ethics program elements and unethical behavior; but the mediation effects of threat appraisal are not significant. This study provides valuable insights into how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements reduces employees’ unethical behavior as well as how employees’ threat and coping appraisal processes are related to the corporate ethics program and unethical behavior in organizations. (shrink)

Many Western historians, cultural and literary critics have viewed travel and exploration as purely western. This total exclusion of Arabo-Islamic travel has been done to demonstrate the Western sense of modernity and cultural superiority over the constructed weak “other”. However, Moroccans, Arabs and Muslims in general have been curious about the lands of the Christians and managed to break the cultural and religious barriers by reaching such lands. In this paper 1 I examine the Moroccan presence in the lands of (...) the Christians and mainly in France through analyzing the work of Ahmad Bin Qasim Al Hajari’s Nasir al-Din ala al-Qawm al Kafirin or to dwell not only at the different instances of anger and wrath but also of love and respect towards the Christians and to demonstrate the way Arab and Muslim travelers remained different from their Christian counterparts in their discursive productions. I also question Occidentalism in Ahmad Bin Qasim Al Hajari’s narrative and assert that al-Azmeh’s vision to the systems of division as essentially part of human discourse is an exaggeration. So, while Westerners get fully entangled in the process of dehumanizing the Arab and Muslim “other”, Muslims produced an ambivalent discourse that sometimes revealed their anger but not hate towards the Christians. (shrink)

This study examined how protection motivation intention and other cognitive appraisal processes influence the relationship between compliance and value-oriented ethics programs and employees’ unethical behavior. A total of 342 employees from various government and private organizations in Bangladesh participated in the study. The PLS-SEM results revealed that perceived vulnerability, perceived cost, and protection motivation intention have significant relationships with employees’ unethical behavior. However, perceived self-efficacy did not show a significant relationship with unethical behavior. The study also identified that cognitive appraisal (...) processes (perceived vulnerability, self-efficacy, and response cost) mediate the relationship between compliance and value-oriented ethics programs and protection motivation intention. Additionally, protection motivation intention was found to mediate the relationship between cognitive appraisal processes and employees’ unethical behavior. Furthermore, the study revealed that accountants and auditors exhibit stronger protection motivation intention to comply with ethics programs compared to other employees. Based on these findings, the study suggests that both academics and practitioners should emphasize the importance of protection motivation intention as a cognitive process when designing ethics programs aimed at preventing unethical behavior in the workplace. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 30 (winter 2010–11): 155–82 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 eviews AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEMSz Omar W. Nasim Science Studies / Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (eth) 8092 Zürich, Switzerland [email protected] David Mills Daniel and Megan Daniel. BrieXy: Russell’sz The Problems of Philosophy. London: scm (...) P., 2007. Pp. viii, 131. isbn 978-0-334-04118-4. £7.99. The following book is a part of the SCM BrieXyz series, which already includes such titles as Anselm’s Prosologion and Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. The series objective is to “enable students and general readers to acquire knowledge and understanding of key texts in philosophy, philosophy of religion, theology and ethics” (p. vii). Each volume is a “short guide” to a particular philosopher ’s ideas through a close reading of a primary text by that philosopher. This review looks at the volume on Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy, which is divided by the authors into a few parts, including a section on the “Context”, a “Detailed Summary of Bertrand Russell’s The Problem of Philosophy ”, an overview and a helpful glossary of terms. The “Context” provides a very brief statement about who Russell was, and spends most of its pages summarizing the arguments of Russell’s Problems. The last few pages of this section provide some helpful “Issues to Consider,” which are a list of pertinent questions one may ask of Russell’s Problems, and ends with some further reading. It ought to be noted that the “Context” is not about the history of Russell’s text, nor is it an attempt to relate the latter to Russell’s other works. This is unfortunate, considering Russell’s well-known philosophical development and the rich history surrounding Problems. The volume under review is indeed a problemoriented study of Problems which uncritically rehearses the same embedding of problems that Russell urges, especially in relation to the British empiricist tradition of the early modern period. The main section of the book is the “Detailed Summary” and is itself divided in the same way in which Russell’s Problems is divided; that is, into Wfteen subsections, with exactly the same headings and order. Using a reissued second edi- February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd 156 Reviews 1 It has the same pagination as oup’s 1967 edition in the uk.z—zEd. tion of Russell’s Problems by Oxford University Press (2001),1 Daniel and Daniel provide a very close, page-by-page exposition of each chapter of Russell’s Problems. The reading is in fact so close that not only is there nearly the same number of pages dedicated to each chapter as in the original, but just about every sentence teems with scare quotes. This goes for not only technical terms such as “universal”, “sense-data”, “relations”, etc., which remain snared by scare quotes throughout the entire section, but also all sorts of other terms such as “light”, “motion”, “just”, “forgotten”, etc. The rationale for this is given in the introduction and is supposed to “enable the reader to follow each development in the philosopher’s argument” (p. vii). Unlike the terms that are in bold type, which are given some explanation in the glossary, the reviewer Wnds the sheer number of scare quotes distracting and pedagogically confusing, because there is no distinction made between terms central to Russell’s argument and those used only in the construction of a sentence. But even the glossary entries are oddly compiled. While most correspond to the bold-type terms in the Summary, some are terms not found anywhere but in the introduction or the “Context” section. So Sartre, Wittgenstein, McMaster University, and Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation are nowhere to be found in Russell’s original, or in the summary provided by the authorsz—zthey are simply terms used in passing in the introduction or “Context” and without being introduced in bold type. Other... (shrink)

I defend an account of God’s ineffability that depends on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental truths. I argue that although there are fundamentally true propositions about God, no creature can have them as the object of a propositional attitude, and no sentence can perfectly carve out their structures. Why? Because these propositions have non-enumerable structures. In principle, no creature can fully grasp God’s intrinsic nature, nor can they develop a language that fully describes it. On this account, the ineffability (...) of God is explained in terms of the inability of our language and mental capacities to grasp God as he really is. I will motivate my account by distinguishing it from a rival proposal. According to this rival, there are no fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature. I argue that this rival proposal faces problems that my account does not face. And unlike this rival and other accounts of ineffability, my account provides a fitting explanation of why God is ineffable. God is ineffable because the structure of his intrinsic nature is infinite. (shrink)

Many social scientists report that they find it difficult to frame adequate definitions of the important terms of the field. At present they are definition-shy. It is the purpose of this paper to show that this avoidance reaction is neither necessary nor desirable as a means for advancing social science. In order that this be made clear, an analysis of an important term will be presented. First, however, a few preparatory questions about the technique of defining must be asked and (...) answered. (shrink)

Abstract:This article discusses Hegel's claim that nature is the idea (Idee) having become external (äußerlich) to itself. Usually taken to signal a type of limitation in Hegel's philosophy, the author argues that recent interpretations of nature's externality are not entirely successfully because they reconstruct nature by either looking back to logic or forward to spirit. Instead, the article offers an interpretation that starts off from Hegel's argument that nature is "weak" (ohnmächtig) as it is not, nor can become, thoroughly rational. (...) It then traces the implications of this view in Hegel's inorganic philosophy of mechanics and physics. There, in a discussion that culminates with matter as fundamentally "brittle," a picture of externality emerges as the likelihood in nature of "deformed" or "damaged" determinations. What is ultimately unique about nature vis-à-vis logic is a setting in which partial rational determination makes sense at all. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Marx's Attempt to Leave PhilosophyOmar DahbourDaniel Brudney. Marx's Attempt to Leave Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 425. Cloth, $45.00.In the introduction to this book, Daniel Brudney writes, "The humanist Marx has been in the shadows. I think it time he was brought into the light" (13). The way Brudney chooses to do this is by examining Marx's writings of 1844-46, along with some of (...) Feuerbach and Bauer's works, for their critique of philosophy. Brudney argues that Marx's early texts are the most intrinsically interesting, in that they contain Marx's explicit antiphilosophical claims (163). Brudney asks three questions about these claims: [1] how different was Marx's critique of philosophy from that of other Young Hegelians, particularly Feuerbach and Bauer? [2] Why was Marx so committed to "leaving philosophy"? and [3] Was he successful in justifying his critique of capitalism nonphilosophically?For this reader, the most compelling part of the book was Brudney's treatment of the first question, in which he gives Feuerbach's "antiphilosophy" a sympathetic yet critical treatment. While Brudney claims that Feuerbach ultimately can substantiate neither his critique of Christian faith nor that of speculative philosophy (73), Feuerbach's work is still of interest for his ambitious, if failed, attempt to do so. Furthermore, Marx's later antiphilosophy, Brudney ultimately concludes, is much more indebted to Feuerbach than Marx cares to admit.The treatment of Marx's early work is aimed at examining the reasons for the hostility to philosophy that infuses virtually all of Marx's texts. After carefully distinguishing between the conceptions of human nature in Marx's 1844-45 manuscripts and in the German Ideology, Brudney concludes that Marx was pessimistic about providing a philosophically compelling argument for the central importance of labor (218). Much more likely, in Marx's view, was a case made on the basis of facts, practice, or experience.But Brudney argues that this will not doóthat philosophy is required because [End Page 135] Marx's conception of labor is irreducibly normative. This is what he calls the "justification problem": how can claims about the alienation of labor, e.g., be derived from facts of the matter without some further (philosophical) interpretation of these facts? In the German Ideology, the problem is compounded: how can social critics attack the "ruling ideas" of capitalism, when they live within the society in which these ideas dominate?So far, so good: Brudney makes his case for the necessity of a normative critique of capitalist society. While Marx was genuinely antiphilosophical, this was to his detrimentóit robbed him of the ability to justify his critique. But Brudney claims that, consequently, what Marx needed was "moral philosophy." This is where the problems with his argument become manifest. Despite an exhaustively detailed treatment of Marx's early texts, Brudney paints with a very broad brush when he employs the terms "philosophy" and "moral philosophy." What exactly do they mean? Brudney refuses to specify or limit Marx's critique to what Marx very probably thought of as most essentially philosophicalónamely, Hegelianism.To limit Marx's criticisms of philosophy in this way might imply that Marx was simply wielding a different kind of philosophical apparatus, one that was, in the particular intellectual world of 1840s Germany, "antiphilosophical." Specifically, Brudney wants to avoid the conclusion that Marx was a materialist, only opposed to idealism, not to "philosophy" as such. Yet, this reader cannot escape the sense that what Brudney really is comparing Marx (and Feuerbach) to the philosophy, not of the 1840s, but of the 1990s.This is especially the case in his discussion of Marx's rejection of "morality." By "morality" Brudney seems to mean some sort of rule-governed theory of moral conduct (e.g., Kantianism). But Marx's rejection of this sort of moral theory certainly need not mean his rejection of ethics of any kind. Brudney fails to adequately confront interpretations of Marx that suggest he was influenced by earlier, particularly Aristotelian, philosophy in his criticisms of German idealism (see, e.g., Carol Gould's Marx's Social Ontology or the writers in George McCarthy [ed... (shrink)

Hasok Chang is developing a new form of pragmatic scientific realism that aims to reorient the debate away from truth and towards practice. Central to his project is replacing truth as correspondence with his new notion of ‘operational coherence’, which is introduced as: 1) A success term with probative value to judge and guide epistemic activities. 2) A more useful alternative than truth as correspondence in guiding scientific practice. I argue that, given its current construal as neither necessary nor sufficient (...) for success, operational coherence is too weak and fails to satisfy both 1) and 2). I offer a stronger construal of operational coherence which aims to improve on Chang’s account by tying it to systematic success. This makes operational coherence necessary and sufficient for success. This new account, if successful, rescues 1) but not 2). I then take a step back and try to locate Chang’s pragmatic realism within the broader pragmatist tradition by comparing his views to the founding fathers Peirce, James and Dewey. I also assess to what extent we should consider Chang’s position ‘realist’, arguing that despite the many relativists threads running through it, Chang’s pragmatic realism is deserving of the realist label because its aims to maximize our learning from reality, even if it falls short of what many traditional realist are happy to accept as realism. I finish with comments on the epistemology of science pointing out that there is nothing intrinsic about a practice-based philosophy of science that precludes having both operational coherence and correspondence and highlighting that given a proper understanding these two notions could, in fact, be understood as complementary. I suggest one way this could be done. (shrink)

The present contribution aims to clarify the ethics involved in the notionof territory, coined by Deleuze and Guattari in Mille plateaux, whose philosophical notes are taken from Spinoza’s and Nietzsche’s works. We will see that this project is sufficiently consistent and united, according to its immanent and materialistic lines. However, this ethics finds its limits, not in its internal constitution but in its tacit iden- tification with politics. Our authors conceive the existential field as crossed by political effects, therefore, all (...) ethical acts would be, by their accounts, a political act too. And these acts will be the more perfect –more ethical and more political– the less they deal with traditional state policy. This involves reducing policy to the political, which we believe is a mistake; because, what applies to the singular-collective existence cannotcount nor compete as a substitute of the collective institutional policy. (shrink)

Omar Khadr was arrested at the age of 15 by the U.S military and has remained in custody in Guantanamo for 8 years. Today, he plead guilty to five war crime charges. Despite stating in open court last summer that he would not plead guilty, today he muttered a confession. In accordance with the plea bargain, Khadr plead guilty to murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and spying. Following this, a jury imposed the harshest possible sentence, (...) 40 years imprisonment. Khadr may receive parole after eight years. The first year of this sentence will be served in Gauntanamo, following which he may be repatriated. The government of Canada does not have to repatriate Khadr, nor is parole guaranteed. Rather than hypothesizing outcomes, I want to discuss the case philosophically. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the analysis of contemporary theories of culture and cognition in cultural sociology. It identifies two major research traditions within cognitivist cultural sociology, based on micro-individualist and collectivist modes of sociological explanation respectively. Two prominent theoretical frameworks within the "micro-individualist" tradition are then critically examined: Stephen Vaisey's dual-process models of culture in action and Omar Lizardo's typology of cultural kinds. It is argued that both frameworks, although well-defined and theoretically insightful, are prone to unwarranted microfoundationalist reductionism. (...) The paper then proceeds to evaluate the presuppositions of the explicitly "collectivist" Zeru-bavelian paradigm of cultural sociology, as well as a series of recent contributions to the field by scholars representing the neo-Durkheimian "strong program". Both are argued to contain problematic assumptions about the location and means of transmission of cultural content. It is concluded that neither "micro-individualist" nor "collectivist" theories of culture and cognition can provide an adequate account of how culture and cognition interrelate since both frameworks are based on explicitly reductionist social ontologies. The article then calls for the adoption of Tuukka Kaidesoja's "naturalized critical realist" social ontology that seeks to overcome these philosophical biases. The paper examines two major sources of Kaidesoja's ontological doctrine, namely Mario Bunge's systemic materialist ontology and the "distributed cognition" perspective. The article then seeks to outline a preliminary sketch of an alternative account of culture that involves the generation, transmission, and transformation of representational states across different media within distributed cognitive systems. (shrink)

In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and (...) theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics. (shrink)

The step between identifying the Research Object that we want to observe and the development of a reference frame to guide the investigation, in our opinion, has not received adequate attention as we help train researchers. Our bibliographical searches give us suggestions as to which aspects are mor..

How do groups—be they religious or ethnic—achieve sovereignty in a postnationalist world? In Self-Determination without Nationalism, noted philosopher Omar Dahbour insists that the existing ethics of international relations, dominated by the rival notions of liberal nationalism and political cosmopolitanism, no longer suffice. Dahbour notes that political communities are an ethically desirable and historically inevitable feature of collective life. The ethical principles that govern them, however—especially self-determination and sovereignty—require reformulation in light of globalization and the economic and environmental challenges of (...) the twenty-first century. Arguing that nation-states violate the principle of self-determination, Dahbour then develops a detailed new theory of self-determination that he calls "ecosovereignty.” Ecosovereignty defines political community in a way that can protect and further the rights of indigenous peoples as well as the needs of ecological regions for a sustainable form of development and security from environmental destruction. In the series Global Ethics and Politics, edited by Carol Gould. (shrink)

While previous literature provides evidence of the positive relationship between ethical climate and job satisfaction, the possible mechanisms of this relationship are still underexplored. This study aims to enhance scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the ethical climate–job satisfaction relationship by identifying and testing two of the possible mechanisms. More specifically, this study fills an existing research gap by examining social and interpersonal mechanisms, referred to in this study as workplace isolation of colleagues and salesperson’s teamwork, of the ethical climate–job satisfaction (...) relationship. This is vital for the selling profession because job satisfaction is known to drive higher levels of salespeople’s performance. The arguments for such mechanisms are built on the foundations of social/psychological contract theory and ethical climate literature. Empirical testing using a large sample of salespeople shows higher levels of ethical climate to decrease workplace isolation and increase teamwork. Findings support hypothesized model where ethical climate positively relates to job satisfaction as partially mediated by workplace isolation and teamwork. Ethical climate is negatively related to workplace isolation and positively to teamwork. Further, findings indicate negative effect of workplace isolation on teamwork and sales performance. Job satisfaction is found to be key factor in driving performance of salespeople. (shrink)

Cuba faces a dilemma between continuing its current portfolio of biotechnology drugs and vaccines with lower profitability or renewing its product portfolio with the associated costs and risks.

Informed by Gloria Anzaldúa's and José Carlos Mariátegui's work, as well as by Andean cosmology, Omar Rivera turns to Inka stonework and architecture as an example of a "Cosmological Aesthetics." He articulates ways of sensing, feeling and remembering that are attuned to an aesthetic of water, earth and light. On this basis, Rivera brings forth a corporeal orientation that can be inhabited by the oppressed, one that withdraws from predominant modern/Western conceptions of the human. By providing an aesthetic analysis (...) of cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for exploring physical dimensions of anti-colonial resistance, and furthers the Latinx and Latin American tradition of anti-colonial and liberatory philosophy. Seeingaesthetic involvements with the cosmos as a source for embodied modes of resistance, Rivera turns to the work of María Lugones and Enrique Dussel in order to make explicit the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance creates a new dialogue between art historians, artists, and philosophers working on Latin American thought, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. It weaves together a Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers. Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling current understandings of decolonial theory and opening the tradition in transformative ways. (shrink)

The investigation in political science and political sociology often has as objective to settle down the conditions that associate with the occurrence of some type of historical event as, for example, changes of political régime. In the cases in that the unit of time is discreet, the logistical reg..

Notions of probability and uncertainty have been increasingly prominant in modern economics. This book considers the philosophical and practical difficulties inherent in integrating these concepts into realistic economic situations. It outlines and evaluates the major developments, indicating where further work is needed. This book addresses: * probability, utility and rationality within current economic thought and practice * concepts of ignorance and indeterminancy * experimental economics * econometrics, with particular reference inference and estimation.

A new interpretation of Marx’s early development and the political dimension of Young Hegelianism. Review p/c.

Morele perceptie is het vermogen om de bijzonderheid van een morele ontmoeting en de implicaties daarvan voor te stellen en te interpreteren. Met behulp van de ecologische benadering van perceptie die is ontwikkeld door de psychologen James Gibson en Ulric Neisser wordt in dit artikel beargumenteerd dat de ervaring van dansers een ecologisch model biedt om morele situaties en de handelingsopties daarin waar te nemen en te verbeelden. Dit model biedt een visie op morele actoren als zelfbewuste, belichaamde actoren die (...) hun handelingen als onderdeel van sociale praktijken waarnemen. Ook kan dit ecologische begrip van het zelf dat door dans tot leven wordt gewekt helpen om het vermogen tot morele waarneming en verbeelding verder te ontwikkelen. (shrink)

On one classical conception of God, God has no parts, not even metaphysical parts. God is not composed of form and matter, act and potency, and he is not composed of existence and essence. God is absolutely simple. This is the doctrine of Absolute Divine Simplicity. It is claimed that ADS implies a modal collapse, i.e. that God’s creation is absolutely necessary. I argue that a proper way of understanding the modal collapse argument naturally leads the proponent of ADS to (...) reject a particular premise of the argument: namely, “the same identical cause brings about the same effect.” However, I argue that the rejection of that premise leads to a deeper problem for ADS. It leads to an explanatory gap: how can we explain the relevant type of indeterminism in an absolutely simple God? (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a general framework for cultural analysis consistent with an “analytic” approach to explanation in social science. The proposed approach provides coherent solutions to thorny problems in cultural theory. These include providing a coherent definition of culture (and the “cultural”), specifying the nature of cultural units (both simple and complex), and outlining the processes making possible episodes of cultural genesis, transformation, and reproduction within bounded units characterized as cultural causal systems.

The construction industry is typically characterized as a fragmented, multi-organizational setting in which members from different technical backgrounds and moral values join together to develop a particular business or project. The most challenging obstacle in the construction process is to achieve a successful practice and to identify and apply an ethical framework to manage the behavior of involved specialists and contractors and to ensure the quality of all completed construction activities. The framework should reflect a common moral ground for myriad (...) people involved in this process to survive and compete ethically in today’s turbulent construction market. This study establishes a framework for moral judgment of behavior and actions conducted in the construction process. The moral framework provides the basis of judging actions as “moral” or “immoral” based on three levels of moral accountability: personal, professional, and social. The social aspect of the proposed framework is developed primarily from the essential attributes of normative business decision-making models identified in the literature review and subsequently incorporates additional attributes related to professional and personal moral values. The normative decision-making models reviewed are based primarily on social attributes as related to moral theories. The professional and moral attributes are established by identifying a set of common moral values recognized by professionals in the construction industry and required to prevent common construction breaches. The moral framework presented here is the complementary part of the ethical framework developed in Part I of this article and is based primarily on the personal behavior or the moral aspect of professional responsibility. The framework can be implemented as a form of preventive personal ethics, which would help avoid ethical dilemmas and moral implications in the first place. Furthermore, the moral framework can be considered as a decision-making model to guide actions and improve the moral reasoning process, which would help individuals think through possible implications and the consequences of ethical and moral issues in the construction industry. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that recent sociological theory has become increasingly bifurcated into two mutually incompatible styles of theorizing that I label formalist and behavioral-realist. Formalism favors mathematization and proposes an instrumentalist ontology of abstract processes while behavioral-realist theory takes at its basis the "real" physical individual endowed with concrete biological, cognitive and neurophysiological capacities and constraints and attempts to derive the proper conceptualization of social behavior from that basis. Formalism tends to lead toward a conceptually independent sociology that (...) in principle requires only minimal reference to the empirical and ontological storehouse of other disciplines, while behavioral-realist theory leads to an interdisciplinary sociology that can be located within a hierarchy of behavioral sciences, leading to questions regarding the relationship between sociology and other disciplines as well as issues of transdisciplinary unification and possible interdisciplinary reduction. I explore the consequences of this split for the project of explanatory sociological theory within the context of how it has manifested itself in sociological network theory and social psychology. I close with a critique and assessment of formalist tendencies in sociological theorizing. (shrink)

The authors of the target article articulate the complicated, often conflicting demands of U.S. Food and Drug Administration roles as justification for the FDA’s delay in releasing guidelines...

I this paper, I draw on recent research on the radically embodied and perceptual bases of conceptualization in linguistics and cognitive science to develop a new way of reading and evaluating abstract concepts in social theory. I call this approach Sociological Idea Analysis. I argue that, in contrast to the traditional view of abstract concepts, which conceives them as amodal “presuppositions” removed from experience, abstract concepts are irreducibly grounded in experience and partake of non-negotiable perceptual-symbolic features from which a non-propositional (...) “logic” naturally follows. This implies that uncovering the imagistic bases of allegedly abstract notions should be a key part of theoretical evaluation of concepts in social theory. I provide a case study of the general category of “structure” in the social and human sciences to demonstrate the analytic utility of the approach. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine Stephen Turner's critique of practice theory in light of recent neurophysiological discoveries regarding the “mirror neuron system” in the pre-frontal mo-tor cortex of humans and other primates. I argue that two of Turner's strongest objections against the sociological version of the practice-theoretical account, the problem of transmission and the problem of sameness, are substantially undermined when examined from the perspective of re-cently systematized accounts of embodied learning and intersubjective action understanding in-spired by these developments. (...) In addition, I show that the practice-theoretical framework out-lined by Pierre Bourdieu in the Logic of Practice and other works is, in contrast to Turner's por-trayal of a confused hodgepodge of logical errors and empirical impossibilities, largely consistent with the latest neurophysiological evidence and as such fundamentally foreshadowed more recent understandings of the neurocognitive foundations of the perception, understanding and structure of the motor schemes productive of action in the world. Also in line with these newer neurosci-entific developments, the practice-theoretical focus on the body as the central matrix generative of tacit understandings and analogical operations responsible for “higher order” systems of classi-fication emerges as the key to solving some of the thorniest problems in the theory of action: eliminating to need to resort to unwarranted “collective object” explanations for the origins of shared presuppositional frameworks. (shrink)

We agree with Lynch et al. that patients with chronic diseases and Band-Aid treatments are unlikely to benefit from a version of Operation Warp Speed or by deprioritizing standards of scientific ev...

Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena. Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim (...) investigates hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge. An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers. (shrink)

In this book Omar Dahbour examines all of the arguments that have been given for national self-determination, whether by international lawyers, moral philosophers, democratic theorists, or political communitarians.

A distinctive focus of 19th- and 20th-century Latin American philosophy is the convergence of identity formation and political liberation in ethnically and racially diverse postcolonial contexts. From this perspective, Omar Rivera interprets how a "we" is articulated and deployed in central political texts of this robust philosophical tradition. In particular, by turning to the work of Peruvian political theorist José Carlos Mariátegui among others, Rivera critiques philosophies of liberation that are invested in the redemption of oppressed identities as conditions (...) for bringing about radical social and political change, foregrounding Latin America's complex histories and socialities to illustrate the power and shortcomings of these projects. Building on this critical approach, Rivera studies interrelated epistemological, transcultural, and aesthetic delimitations of Latin American philosophy in order to explore the possibility of social and political liberation "beyond redemption.". (shrink)