On 12 March 2020, the Norwegian government instigated measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, the most drastic policies of any Norwegian government in peacetime. A particularly Norwegian metaphor used when introducing those measures concerned the “dugnad” tradition, a cultural practice of voluntary work carried out as a community. This article traces the trajectory of dugnad metaphors related to COVID-19 in Norwegian public discourse, to shed light on the aptness of their use. Aptness is measured in terms of “resonance,” the (...) public reception to the metaphor. It follows a threefold categorization: imposition, endorsement, or resistance, all of which are divided into inductively developed subcategories. The data consists of all relevant concordances of the lexeme DUGNAD appearing from March 2020-June 2021 in one of the three largest Norwegian national online newspapers. Findings indicate that the imposition of the dugnad struck a chord with the Norwegian people; supportive statements far outweighed those of opposition and continued throughout the investigated period, even though national government officials mostly stopped using the dugnad metaphor after May 2020. Resistance was nevertheless also present from the outset, reaching a renewed peak around March 2021. Aptness thus varies over time, a finding with implications for future pandemic communication. (shrink)

Recent philosophical treatment of conspiracy theories supposes them all to be explanatory, thus overlooking those conspiracy theories whose major purpose is the assertion of ‘hidden facts’ rather than explanation of accepted facts. I call this variety of non-explanatory conspiracy theories “counterfact theories”. In this paper, through the use of examples, including the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory, I uncover the distinctive reasoning pattern and dialectical strategy of counterfact theories, highlighting their epistemic flaws.

The primary aim of this essay is to present a case for a heavily revised notion of heterophenomenology. l will refer to the revised notion as ‘enkinaesthesia’ because of its dependence on the experiential entanglement of our own and the other’s felt action as the sensory background within which all other experience is possible. Enkinaesthesia2 emphasizes two things: (i) the neuromuscular dynamics of the agent, including the givenness and ownership of its experience, and (ii) the entwined, blended and situated co-affective (...) feeling of the presence of the other(s), agential (for example, human, horse, cat, beetle) and non-agential (for example, cup, bed, apple, paper) and, where appropriate, the anticipated arc of the other’s action or movement, including, again where appropriate, the other’s intentionality. When the ‘other’ is also a sensing and experiencing agent it is their - in this case, the pair’s - affective intentional reciprocity, their folding, enfolding, and unfolding, which co-constitutes the conscious relation and the experientially recursive temporal dynamics that lead to the formation and maintenance of the deep integral enkinaesthetic structures and melodies which bind us together, even when they pull us apart. Such deeply felt enkinaesthetic melodies emphasise the dialogical nature of the backgrounded feeling of being. (shrink)

This paper examines Hutcheson’s moral sense theory’s attack on internalism and his defense of an innovative version of externalism. I show that Hutcheson’s distinction between exciting and justifying reasons supports a type of externalist theory not anticipated by Brink, Smith, or McDowell. In Moral Sense Externalism, moral judgment relies upon the perceptions of a moral sense, and the felt quality of these perceptions introduces to judgment an affective dimension. Thus feeling is a constituitive part of what it is to have (...) a justifying reason for a moral act even when it is not the direct motive to action. (shrink)

Initially proposed as rivals of classical logic, alternative logics have become increasingly important in areas such as computer science and artificial intelligence. Fuzzy logic, in particular, has motivated major technological developments in recent years. Susan Haack's Deviant Logic provided the first extended examination of the philosophical consequences of alternative logics. In this new volume, Haack includes the complete text of Deviant Logic , as well as five additional papers that expand and update it. Two of these essays critique fuzzy (...) logic, while three augment Deviant Logic 's treatment of deduction and logical truth. Haack also provides an extensive new foreword, brief introductions to the new essays, and an updated bibliography of recent work in these areas. Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic will be indispensable to students of philosophy, philosophy of science, linguistics, mathematics, and computer science, and will also prove invaluable to experienced scholars working in these fields. (shrink)

In many toxic-tort cases - notably in Oxendine v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc, and in Joiner v. G.E., - plaintiffs argue that the expert testimony they wish to present, though no part of it is sufficient by itself to establish causation "by a preponderance of the evidence," is jointly sufficient to meet this standard of proof; and defendants sometimes argue in response that it is a mistake to imagine that a collection of pieces of weak evidence can be any stronger (...) than its individual components. This article draws on the epistemological theory I first presented in 1993 in Evidence and Inquiry, and then amplified and refined in 2003 in Defending Science - Within Reason. This theory of evidence shows that, under certain conditions, a combination of pieces of evidence none of which is sufficient by itself really can warrant a casual conclusion to a higher degree than any of its components alone. When my account is applied to the very complex congeries of evidence typically proffered to prove general causation in these toxic-tort cases, it improves on the influential "Bradford Hill criteria" for assessing causation; and it suggests answers to questions frequently raised in such cases: e.g., whether epidemiological evidence is essential for proof of causation, and whether such evidence should be excluded if it is not statistically significant. Moreover, the argument of this paper reveals that by obliging courts to screen each item of expert testimony individually for reliability, the atomism implicit in Daubert will sometimes stand in the way of an accurate assessment of the worth of complex causation evidence. (shrink)

Transhumanists would have humanity's creation of posthumanity be our governing aim. Susan B. Levin challenges their overarching commitments regarding the mind, brain, ethics, liberal democracy, knowledge, and reality. Her critique unmasks their notion of humanity's self-transcendence via science and technology as pure, albeit seductive, fantasy.

This study examined self-recognition processing in both the auditory and visual modalities by determining how comparable hearing a recording of one’s own voice was to seeing photograph of one’s own face. We also investigated whether the simultaneous presentation of auditory and visual self-stimuli would either facilitate or inhibit self-identification. Ninety-one participants completed reaction-time tasks of self-recognition when presented with their own faces, own voices, and combinations of the two. Reaction time and errors made when responding with both the right and (...) left hand were recorded to determine if there were lateralization effects on these tasks. Our findings showed that visual self-recognition for facial photographs appears to be superior to auditory self-recognition for voice recordings. Furthermore, a combined presentation of one’s own face and voice appeared to inhibit rather than facilitate self-recognition and there was a left-hand advantage for reaction time on the combined-presentation tasks. (shrink)

The Macmillan Company New York, led by the Bretts, was a major player in American life. But it had a secret: the company was majority owned by the London parent. As the US came to eclipse the UK, the arrangement led to growing tensions. Finally, in 1951, London was persuaded to sell its stake. But the UK firm found itself unable to use the family name for a new American venture, sparking a legal fight that lasted until 2002. This account (...) of an important event in publishing history adds new detail from archival sources, supporting a fresh reading and correcting earlier errors. It also brings into view a significant amount of material that is published for the first time. The article argues that, although there were hard business reasons for the sale, cultural and personal factors were also consequential and these two types of agency, rational and emotional, work in interrelated ways. (shrink)

The Harlem Renaissance espoused the modernist belief in radical new beginnings and the celebration of interventions into old certainties, while resisting the “monologism” of w...

The Epistle on Legal Theory: Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī. Edited and translated by Joseph E. Lowry. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Pp. xl + 501. $40.

Les publications sur le thème de l’histoire de la jeunesse française au xxe siècle sont aujourd’hui nombreuses. Les premières s’intéressaient aux jeunes intellectuels, aux mouvements de jeunesse durant la période d’entre-deux-guerres, et à la jeunesse sous le régime de Vichy, tandis que les plus récentes se sont penchées sur les années après 1945, et plus particulièrement sur les Trente Glorieuses et les années soixante. Ces ouvrages expliquent comment la jeunesse française est devenue la cib...

Why Theories of Concepts Should Not Ignore the Problem of Acquisition.