The purpose of this article is to start a dialogue between the so-called autopoietic enactivism and the semiotic pragmatism of C. S. Peirce, in order to re-examine both action and representation under a Peircean light. The focus lays on autopoietic enactivism because this approach offers a wider theoretical scope to cognition based on the continuity of life and mind, embodiment, dynamic and non-linear interaction between a system and its environment which are compatible ideas with Peirce’s semiotic pragmatism. The term ‘pragmatic’ (...) has been introduced in cognitive science to reinforce the idea that cognition is a form of practice and to help action-oriented viewpoints to escape representationalism. In this paper, I shall try to demonstrate that Peirce’s semiotic pragmatism can be a meaningful methodological path to guide a reconciliation between not only anti-Cartesianism and representation but also representation and action. In order to accomplish this purpose, Peirce’s account to action, habit, thought and mind will be addressed through some of the guiding principles of his semiotic—sign and sign action. What follows is the re-examining of the problem of representation—as refuted by autopoietic enactivism—under the light of Peirce’s semiotic pragmatism. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an interpretation of Plato’s repeated claims in Republic V that women are “weaker” (asthenestera) than men. Specifically, I argue that Plato thinks women have a psychological propensity to get easily dispirited, which makes them less effective in implementing and executing their rational decisions. This interpretation achieves several things. It qualifies Plato’s position regarding women and their position in the polis. It provides the background against which we can interpret Aristotle’s claim in Politics I that women (...) possess a deliberative capacity that is not authoritative (akuron). It expands our understanding of the nature and role of spirit (thumos) in these authors. And, finally, it gives us insight into a kind of moral-psychological success that Plato and Aristotle consider central to both personal and political agency. (shrink)

The article asks whether political anger has a legitimate place in a democracy, as this is a political system designed to resolve conflicts by peaceful negotiation. It distinguishes personal from social anger and political anger, to focus explicitly on the latter. It argues that both the feeling and expression of political anger are subject to normative constraints, often specific to social status and gender. The article examines arguments, including those of Seneca, in favour of an anger-free society. It concludes, however, (...) that a democracy cannot dispense with political anger, which has a vital role to play in protecting things of value. This role demands a civic education such that when democratic values are under threat citizens will not feel apathetic or simply fearful, but angry and possessed of a repertoire of ways of expressing democratic anger. (shrink)

The skin is always and already a serietl of planes which signify race, gender, age and such. Tattooing creates a new surface of potential significance upon the body. Tattooing can call into question concepts of volition in reference to the power to inscribe and define one's subjectivity through one's own skin, and the social defining of the subject. Skin is the involution or event between subject and object, will and cultural inscription, the social and the self. Feminists, particularly corporeal feminists, (...) have attempted to think ways in which the female flesh may be recognized and self-defined without risking essentialism through reification of the meaning of ‘woman's body’. Thinking a tattooed female body thus resonates with some of the risks and benefits feminism has found in theorizing a marginalized body. Using Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard and other major influences on corporeal feminists, this article explores ways in which significance is sought in skin, and possible configurations of skin and world, which challenge the desire to read the flesh as a legible incarnation of subjectivity. (shrink)

This article, which stems from separate research projects pursued by each author in Oaxaca, Mexico, explores conducting fieldwork through the lenses of community autonomy , and hospitality . Engaging with these concepts made us question how the process of research can contradict cultural ethics that operate within fieldwork locations, as well as consider how such concepts may inform a more ethical set of inquiry practices. Such a set of alternative ethics can provide, furthermore, means for negotiating situations marked by interculturality, (...) particularly as it emerges through contemporary processes of globalization. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what value pluralism tells us about the pursuit of moral coherence as a method of moral reasoning. I focus on the status of the norm of ‘systematicity,’ or the demand that our principles be as few and as simple as possible. I argue that, given certain descriptive facts about the pluralistic ways we value, epistemic ways of supporting a systematicity norm do not succeed. Because it is sometimes suggested that coherence functions in moral reasoning (...) as it does in scientific reasoning, my argument considers analogies and disanalogies between moral reasoning and scientific reasoning. (shrink)

Most people believe that extraterrestrial beings or porpoises or computers could someday be recognized as persons. Given the significant constitutional differences between these entities and ourselves, the general assumption appears to be that ‘person’ is not a natural kind term. David Wiggins offers an illuminating challenge to this popular dogma in ‘Locke, Butler and the Stream of Consciousness: and Men as a Natural Kind’. Wiggins does not claim that ‘person’ actually is a natural kind term; but he argues hard for (...) the advantages of regarding it as something like a natural kind classification. The problem is that, whatever its merits, there are obvious and fatal objections to the view that person is a natural kind. My aim is to present a modification of the natural kind thesis which avoids these objections and retains the attractions of the basic position. (shrink)

Citizenship education is a complex matter, and not least the place of civic virtues in it. This is illustrated by a consideration of the civic virtue of gratitude. Two conceptions of gratitude are explored. Gratitude seen as a debt is examined and Kant’s exposition of it, including his objections to a person’s getting himself into the position where he has to show gratitude as a beneficiary, is explored. An alternative conception of gratitude as recognition is developed. This, it is claimed, (...) has more relevance to the kind of gratitude it would be appropriate for citizens of a democratic state to feel. The educational implications of these views are indicated. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic produced immeasurable impacts on the economy, education, and socialization, besides the loss of millions of lives. Thus, there has been an accelerated development of an unprecedented number of COVID-19 vaccine candidates to control the pandemic. The World Health Organization’s emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines still in clinical trial allowed immunizing the population. This paper presents a perspective of the bioethical precepts of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice in the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines. Furthermore, it emphasizes (...) the importance of surveillance at all stages of vaccine development to detect adverse effects and ensure compliance with bioethical precepts. (shrink)

Two very different insights motivate characterizing the brain as a computer. One depends on mathematical theory that defines computability in a highly abstract sense. Here the foundational idea is that of a Turing machine. Not an actual machine, the Turing machine is really a conceptual way of making the point that any well-defined function could be executed, step by step, according to simple 'if-you-are-in-state-P-and-have-input-Q-then-do-R' rules, given enough time (maybe infinite time) [see COMPUTATION]. Insofar as the brain is a device whose (...) input and output can be characterized in terms of some mathematical function -- however complicated -- then in that very abstract sense, it can be mimicked by a Turning machine. Given what is known so far brains do seem to depend on cause-effect operations, and hence brains appear to be, in some formal sense, equivalent to a Turing machine [see CHURCH-TURING THESIS]. On its own, however, this reveals nothing at all of how the mind-brain actually works. The second insight depends on looking at the brain as a biological device that processes information from the environment to build complex representations that enable the brain to make predictions and select advantageous behaviors. Where necessary to avoid ambiguity, we will refer to the first notion of computation as algorithmic computation, and the second as information processing computation. (shrink)

In the dissertation I provide an account of action descriptions which emphasizes their role as explanations of consequences. By showing that consequences are ascribed to an action under a description, and only when that description can explain the consequence, I undermine the view that consequences are brute events. Roughly, I reason as follows. If consequences were brute events, then their ascription to an action wouldn't hinge on how we understand the action. We could, for instance, say in ordinary circumstances "John (...) tensed his finger" and as a consequence "Mary became a widow" without any untowardness at all. I show both that we do not do this and that we cannot do it. That we do not do it is supported primarily by linguistic intuitions; mainly I show that there is an infelicity in ascribing to an action a consequence which is not explained by that action. To support the claim that we cannot do this I argue that if there were no "fit" between action and consequence that would make communication difficult. ;I then use this characterization of action descriptions and consequences to serve as a criterion for identifying the privileged description of an action. Any one action may have several action descriptions. In light of this, there is a question raised about which, if any, of these descriptions is privileged. I show that within the wider social context there is a description of the action which is dominant. Then I argue that this description is and should be chosen in virtue of the explanatory power of action descriptions with respect to consequences. (shrink)

The papers in this volume question how perceptions of space influenced understandings of the body and its functions, illness and treatment, and the surrounding natural and built environments in relation to health in the classical and ...

• But this rests on the debatable view that understanding a moral reason implies being motivated to conform to it. Psychopaths do seem to have at least a “rote” or emotionally shallow understanding that their acts are wrong.

Today’s business students are tomorrow’s business leaders. To ensure they have skills in creating profitable, pro-social, ethical organizations, we need to consider alternative methods of teaching CSR. In this proposed symposium, we will present different approaches to international CSR/Service-Learning.

What principles explain or justify legal institutions or decisions, thereby transforming coercion to authority? Are there or could there be any such universal principles? Can any philosophical theory account for such principles? How, if at all, do philosophical theories of law and politics apply to particular issues? And finally, what, if any, do such practical applications tell us about general theories and principles? The essays in this volume represent the efforts of an international group of scholars to understand these general (...) aspects of legal philosophy. (shrink)

A democratic state is characterised by more than its particular principles and institutions; its citizens must have the democratic virtues and attitudes. One such important attitude is trust, as commentators on the current attempts to create democratic institutions in the USSR emphasise. The paper gives an account of social trust and also the important, though problematic, role that distrust plays in a democracy. Finally the paper considers how the school can instantiate social trust in its own ethos.

The relationship between intimacy and honesty seems a paradoxical one. While intimate relationships would seem to demand a high level of honesty, this same intimacy might make us more likely to shield the other or protect ourselves through benevolent lying or the withholding of information. It would seem that honesty may not always be the best policy in intimate relationships. The purpose of this article is to examine the tension between honesty and intimacy in Kant’s duty of friendship, and it (...) will highlight the limitations of Kant’s expectations of friendship. At the same time I will use Kant’s own appeal to the autonomy of moral agents to delineate an appropriate role for the obligations of honesty and self disclosure in friendship. (shrink)

The content of emotion sometimes seems to be conflated with its object, but we can distinguish between content and object on the model of Fregean sense versus reference. Fear, for instance, refers to something the subject of fear is afraid of and represents that object of fear as dangerous, so that the emotion can be said to have evaluative content. Here I attempt to clarify and defend my view of emotional discomfort or other affect as what does the evaluating. Some (...) current accounts of the unpleasantness of physical pain take a similar view, but in application to emotion they call for an explanation of how emotional affect can simultaneously evaluate both the affective symptoms of emotion and the emotion's object. I suggest an explanation and indicate how it supports the link between emotional valence and motivational force. (shrink)

Using data from the General Social Survey and the National Organizations Survey, this study assesses the extent to which job search methods affect gender composition in a job. In contrast to past research and the popular notion that networking maximizes job search outcomes, it is found that women who use informal job search methods had jobs with more women in them compared to not using such methods. Women using formal job search methods had jobs with fewer women in them compared (...) to not using these methods. For men, job search methods were not associated with the gender composition of the job. (shrink)

Drawing from four Arendtian themes-plurality, the public realm, power, and perspective appreciation-I argue for citizenship as a "politics of enlarged mentality." This term suggests an alternative conception of citizenship that surpasses the limits of both the liberal and civic republican traditions. Unlike the masculinized liberal ideal of the citizen and contrary to the gendered universality that defines the civic republican traditions, a politics based on enlarged mentality combines context sensitivity with principled judgments.

One approach to understanding model-based reasoning in science is to examine how it develops during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The way in which thinking changes sometimes provides clues to its nature. This paper examines cognitive developmental aspects of modeling practices and discusses how a developmental perspective can enrich the study of model-based scientific reasoning in adults. The paper begins with issues concerning developmental change, followed by a model of model-based reasoning. The rest of the paper describes how several key concepts (...) from recent developmental work could contribute to current work on model-based reasoning. Specifically, developmental research shows that (a) social processes are involved in model-based reasoning and scientific discovery, (b) the development of a theory of mind contributes to the development of scientific reasoning, (c) changes in scientific reasoning are characterized by cognitive variability, and (d) microgenetic methods could clarify conceptual change during model-based reasoning. (shrink)

Bioethics, clinical ethics, and professional ethics are mature, well-developed fields of applied ethics that focus on medical research, patient autonomy and patient care, patient–healthcare professional relationships, and issues that arise in clinical and other medical settings. However, despite these developments, little attention has been paid to the organizational aspects of healthcare in these fields. This is surprising, because in the last 30 years healthcare has become more and more institutionalized in provider, management, and insurer organizations. Despite JCAHO's preoccupation with organizational (...) ethics during the last decade, the philosophical underpinnings of their requirements have been less explored in the literature. Clinical ethics remains preoccupied with clinical patient care and professional ethics with individual professional guidelines; even the American College of Healthcare Executives focuses primarily on healthcare managers, not on healthcare organizations. (shrink)

This essay addresses the question of the effect of Russell's paradox on Frege's distinctive brand of arithmetical realism. It is argued that the effect is not just to undermine Frege's specific account of numbers as extensions (courses of value) but more importantly to undermine his general means of explaining the object-directedness of arithmetical discourse. It is argued that contemporary neo-Fregean attempts to revive that explanation do not successfully avoid the central problem brought to light by the paradox. Along the way, (...) it is argued that the need to fend off an eliminative construal of arithmetic can help explain the so-called Caesar problem in the Grundlagen, and that the "syntactic priority thesis" is insufficient to establish the claim that numbers are objects. (shrink)

'Gilles Deleuze: A Symposium' Edited by Mike Fetherstone _Theory, Culture and Society_, vol. 14 no. 2, May 1997 ISSN 0263-2764 87 pp.