A provocative ontological-cum-semantic position asserting that the right ontology is austere in its exclusion of numerous common-sense and scientific posits and that many statements employing such posits are nonetheless true. The authors of Austere Realism describe and defend a provocative ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. Terence (...) Horgan and Matjaz Potrc argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, Horgan and Potrc consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call "blobjectivism"--the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos, which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts. The arguments in Austere Realism are powerfully made and concisely and lucidly set out. The authors' contentions and their methodological approach--products of a decade-long collaboration--will generate lively debate among scholars in metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy. (shrink)

In his PhD proposal, now published as Seeing Sociological, Garfinkel [2006] formulated action in terms of a mutually constitutive structure—the Noesis-Noema Structures. This structure can be traced to Aaron Gurwitsch’s gestalt psychology and Law of Good Gestalt which theorises how participants prioritise functional Gestalts over other possible meanings of what is perceivable in their surroundings. While Gurwitsch illustrated his theory using images, in this paper we revisit Gurwitsch’s theory in light of the advances in recording real-time interaction to consider Gestalt (...) in spatio-temporality of real-time interaction. We consider the Law of Good Gestalt in terms of the dimensions of time and space, and postulate two analytical principles—the Principle of Good Momentary Gestalt and the Principle of Good Temporal Gestalt—for analysing a multi-angle video segment of a monologue taken from a training event. The analysis examines how the monologue was embedded in a multi-layer projection structure, so that during the time of the monologue, the trainer and trainees can be seen as achieving a transition between one activity to another while sustaining the frame of the training event. Through this, the analysis highlights the multi-layered structure of participants’ field of perception that constitutes their experience of the social activity, and explores a “method” to reconstruct such a structured field of perception through re-coupling meanings to the assemblages of multimodal resources recoverable on video. (shrink)

Existence monism is defended against priority monism. Schaffer's arguments for priority monism and against pluralism are reviewed, such as the argument from gunk. The whole does not require parts. Ontological vagueness is impossible. If ordinary objects are in the right ontology then they are vague. So ordinary objects are not included in the right ontology; and hence thought and talk about them cannot be accommodated via fully ontological vindication. Partially ontological vindication is not viable. Semantical theorizing outside the ontology room (...) and semantical theorizing in the doorway. Existence monism is theoretically preferable to priority monism. (shrink)

Neo-liberalism has become one of the boom concepts of our time. From its original reference point as a descriptor of the economics of the ‘Chicago School’ or authors such as Friedrich von Hayek, neo-liberalism has become an all-purpose concept, explanatory device and basis for social critique. This presentation evaluates Michel Foucault’s 1978–79 lectures, published as The Birth of Biopolitics, to consider how he used the term neo-liberalism, and how this equates with its current uses in critical social and cultural theory. (...) It will be argued that Foucault did not understand neo-liberalism as a dominant ideology in these lectures, but rather as marking a point of inflection in the historical evolution of liberal political philosophies of government. It will also be argued that his interpretation of neo-liberalism was more nuanced and more comparative than more recent contributions. The article points towards an attempt to theorize comparative historical models of liberal capitalism. (shrink)

This paper is predicated on the understanding that clinical encounters between clinicians and patients should be seen primarily as inter-relations among persons and, as such, are necessarily moral encounters. It aims to relocate the discussion to be had in challenging medical decision-making situations, including, for example, as the end of life comes into view, onto a more robust moral philosophical footing than is currently commonplace. In our contemporary era, those making moral decisions must be cognizant of the existence of perspectives (...) other than their own, and be attuned to the demands of inter-subjectivity. Applicable to clinical practice, we propose and justify a Habermasian approach as one useful means of achieving what can be described as dialogic consensus. The Habermasian approach builds around, first, his discourse theory of morality as universalizable to all and, second, communicative action as a cooperative search for truth. It is a concrete way to ground the discourse which must be held in complex medical decision-making situations, in its actual reality. Considerations about the theoretical underpinnings of the application of dialogic consensus to clinical practice, and potential difficulties, are explored. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of Michael Oakeshott as a philosopher rather than a political theorist, which is how most commentators have regarded him.

This article contributes to the emerging intersectional analyses of religious studies and disability studies by conceptualizing counterprivates specific to religious spaces. To accomplish this task, we investigate the ways in which persons with disabilities, both physical and cognitive, engender counterprivate spaces within Evangelical and Mormon churches. Specifically, we posit that those with disabilities constitute a counterprivate within evangelical communities through theological incongruence and within Mormon spaces through the ways in which counterprivates inform counterpublics. Throughout this paper, we elucidate Mormon and (...) Evangelical spaces as a means of investigating the heterogeneity of private, religious spaces often unrecognized by scholarship. (shrink)

The conference entitled ‘Best Practices in Clinical Ethics Consultation and Decision-Making’, held in London 8–9 July 2010, was the first of its kind dedicated to identifying best practices in clinical ethics consultation and decision-making. Academics, health and social care professionals, clinical ethics committee members, lawyers, service users and carers from the UK, USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia attended lectures, workshops, parallel paper sessions and clinical ethics case discussions across adult, maternity, children's, older persons, mental health and learning disabilities settings. (...) Seventy-eight best-practice points impacting on the quality of clinical ethics consultations and subsequent decisions were identified and grouped into eight themes: who tells the story; how the story is told; how the analysis, discussion and subsequent decisions are made; how values are weighted and balanced against one another; who decides; how the decision is made; how group dynamics and conflict are handled; how decisions are recorded. (shrink)

We here propose an account of what it is for an agent to be objectively justified in holding some belief. We present in outline this approach, which we call transglobal reliabilism, and we discuss how it is motivated by various thought experiments. While transglobal reliabilism is an externalist epistemology, we think that it accommodates traditional internalist concerns and objections in a uniquely natural and respectful way.

Deleuze’s philosophical method is analyzed and positioned against the background of the intellectual/religious tradition of practical mysticism that has been traveling the globe across times, places, languages, and cultural barriers. The paper argues that Deleuze’s unorthodox ontology of the virtual enables a naturalistic interpretation of the functioning of mysticism when the triad of concepts, percepts and affects is formed in accordance with the logic of the included middle.

This article explores the crucial moments of scientists’ research activities when they decide to shift to a radical new domain or to perpetuate a project. We introduce what we have called the “respiration model” which describes and analyses key cognitive components which occur in this complex process. Respiration either privileges epistemic expectations which are rooted in socio-cognitive metrics of “concentration” or in a functionality-multiple horizon context which we refer to as “extension”. The respiration model accords particular attention to the elements (...) curiosity and synergy in science. (shrink)

The global justice movement has often been associated with opposition to the broad programme of ‘neoliberalism’ and associated patterns of ‘corporate globalisation’, creating a widespread impression that this movement is opposed to liberalism more broadly conceived. Our goal in this article is to challenge this widespread view. By engaging in critical interpretive analysis of the contemporary ‘corporate accountability’ movement, we argue that the corporate accountability agenda is not opposed to the core values of a liberal project. Rather, it is seeking (...) to reconfigure the design of liberal institutions of individual rights-protection, adjusting these for new material conditions associated with economic globalisation, under which powerful corporations alongside states now pose direct and significant threats to individual rights. This activist agenda is, therefore, much less radical in its challenge to the prevailing liberal global order than it may initially appear, since it functions to buttress rather than corrode many core normative commitments underpinning the liberal political project.Keywords: liberalism; corporate accountability; business regulation; human rights; global justice movement. (shrink)

This study of self is a growing concern within psychology, and related disciplines, particularly in social and clinical psychology, psychiatry and personality studies.

Categories can affect our perception of the world, rendering between-category differences more salient than within-category ones. Across many studies, such categorical perception has been observed for the basic-level categories of one's native language. Other research points to categorical distinctions beyond the basic level, but it does not demonstrate CP for such distinctions. Here we provide such a demonstration. Specifically, we show CP in English speakers for the non-basic distinction between “warm” and “cool” colors, claimed to represent the earliest stage of (...) color lexicon evolution. Notably, the advantage for discriminating colors that straddle the warm–cool boundary was restricted to the right visual field—the same behavioral signature previously observed for basic-level categories. This pattern held in a replication experiment with increased power. Our findings show that categorical distinctions beyond the basic-level repertoire of one's native language are psychologically salient and may be spontaneously accessed during normal perceptual processing. (shrink)

We conduct quantitative and qualitative analysis of 33 cases of internal and external whistleblowers wrongfully fired for reporting wrongdoing. Our results show external whistleblowers have less tenure with the organization, greater evidence of wrongdoing, and they tend to be more effective in changing organizational practices. External whistleblowers also experience more extensive retaliation than internal whistleblowers, and patterns of retaliation by management against the whistleblower vary depending on whether the whistleblower reports internally or externally. We discuss implications for organizations and whistleblowers, (...) and we conclude that researchers need to develop different theoretical explanations of internal and external whistleblowing processes. (shrink)

When The Age renamed the corner of Russell and Bourke streets the ‘Golden Elbow’ it brought the city into close proximity with an altogether different city. Neither Chang Mai, Hong Kong nor Melbourne, the Golden Elbow was defined by what it could be. Neither one thing nor another, the Golden Elbow is a space of the city-becoming-other. Through narrative work and news media maps of no-go zones, machines mobilise fear and thus value, from the desire flowing through this abject zone. (...) Capitalism sucks value from these encounters through the production of fear as affect. The city-becoming-other is both enormously productive, and destructive of bodies caught up in the mix. This article explores the flow of desire and the abject of a city becoming other through a street drug marketplace. The encounter with the abject brings use closer to the beauty and fear of ontological mixity. (shrink)

In several avenues of contemporary research, much attention is devoted to the contrast between the real authority of institution and their formal power, in the analysis of institutional funtionings; also in the study of the relationships between institutions on the one hand, rules, principles or norms on the other hand. Such a contrast appears to be based on familiar observations: the capacity of institutions to get their preferred outcomes is sometimes loosely connected with the hierarchical prerogatives of the considered institutions. (...) More particularly, current studies of the „migration authority” bring out possible shitts in real authority while there is no changein the formal structure of power. This article will partly consist in the explanation of recent results of common reaserch in project „Delicom”, in which a formal treatment of the distinction has been put foward. This approach will be set against the background of recent contributions in political science or economics. The revelance of the problematic for the study of competence delegation among institutions will be stressed all along. (shrink)

In all disciplines there is the question of how to promote progress and offset decline. But, what are progress and decline ? For this short article, the main discussion centers on biology. A solution called functional specialization begins to emerge as relevant to all of the sciences, technologies and arts. This introductory article ends with some heuristics on various follow-up issues.

This chapter examines the philosophies of Hegel and Marx. The analysis of Hegel draws upon his book, Philosophy of Right. It considers three controversial Hegelian ideas: dialectic, alienation, and actuality. The discussion of Marx's views includes his thoughts about Hegel's philosophy, capitalism, and bourgeois moral theory.

Health care reforms, in particular the expansion of public and/or private health care benefit coverage to some or all population groups, is becoming an increasingly hot topic for discussion—and in some cases for action—at all levels of government. With almost 16% of Americans estimated to be uninsured for at least part of the year, opinion polls show health care near the top of the general public’s list of concerns. Little wonder that presidential candidates for the 2008 election are incorporating ‘‘universal (...) health care coverage’’ proposals in their campaign platforms. Will ‘‘cradle-to-grave’’ coverage for all become a reality or will they just experience cradle-to-grave debates over this issue? That is essentially one of the questions posed in the following discussion on the role of nonprofit health care organizations in promoting, and operating under, universal health care coverage. (shrink)