Social studies’ explanations of race can marginalize educators of color, due to a lack of focus in the curriculum or conversations in the classroom. This article addresses the problem through composite counter-narratives, created from collaborations between the author and current social studies teachers of color. Two teachers, Charlie Smith and Rosita Hernandez, describe their experiences learning and teaching social studies through the lens of community. Current research positions counter-narratives as a pedagogical tool for pre-service teachers resisting majoritarian narratives or as (...) a curricular tool for elementary social studies teachers challenging mainstream historical texts. However, a gap exists on in-service social studies teachers using community to create counter-narratives. Composite counter-narratives serve as a starting point in addressing this gap. This article aims to provide scholarship space for the voices of teachers of color while situating the community as a significant influence in teaching social studies. (shrink)

An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or “the new Jim Crow.” Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended (...) altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers. Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven’t paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime. While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences. (shrink)

Why do American ghettos persist? Decades after Moynihan’s report on the black family and the Kerner Commission’s investigations of urban disorders, deeply disadvantaged black communities remain a disturbing reality. Scholars and commentators today often identify some factor―such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street crime―as the key to solving the problem and recommend policies accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby argues, these attempts to “fix” ghettos or “help” their poor inhabitants ignore fundamental questions of justice and fail to see the urban poor (...) as moral agents responding to injustice. (shrink)

In biosemiotics, life and living phenomena are described by means of originally anthropomorphic semiotic concepts. This can be justified if we can show that living systems as self-maintaining far from equilibrium systems create and update some kind of representation about the conditions of their self-maintenance. The point of view is the one of semiotic realism where signs and representations are considered as real and objective natural phenomena without any reference to the specifically human interpreter. It is argued that the most (...) basic concept of representation must be forward looking and that both C. Peirce’s and J. v. Uexküll’s concepts of sign assume an unnecessarily complex semiotic agent. The simplest representative systems do not have phenomenal objects or Umwelten at all. Instead, the minimal concept of representation and the source of normativity that is needed in its interpretation can be based on M. Bickhard’s interactivism. The initial normativity or natural self-interest is based on the ‘utility-concept’ of function: anything that contributes to the maintenance of a far from equilibrium system is functional to that system — every self-maintaining far from equilibrium system has a minimal natural self-interest to serve that function, it is its existential precondition. Minimal interactive representation emerges when such systems become able to switch appropriately between two or more means ofmaintaining themselves. At the level of such representations, a potentiality to detect an error may develop although no objects of representation for the system are provided. Phenomenal objects emerge in systems that are more complex. If a system creates a set of ongoingly updated ’situation images’ and can detect temporal invariances in the updating process, these invariances constitute objects for the system itself. Within them, a representative system gets an Umwelt and becomes capable of experiencing triadic signs. The relation between representation and its object is either iconic or indexical at this level. Correspondingly as in Peirce’s semeiotic, symbolic signs appear as more developed — for the symbolic signs, a more complex system is needed. (shrink)

Here, a distinguished group of international contributors examines what we know about, feel, and hope to accomplish in real-world environments.

Socrates’ Criteria: A Libertarian Interpretation argues that Socrates requires definitions for freedom or rational agency. Socrates is freedom’s advocate; he is not an early epistemologist or semanticist. Due to this, he is still relevant to current philosophy.

Background: Longitudinal studies exploring the complex interplay between family structures and residential mobility on educational achievement and failure are lacking. We investigate the interplay between the number of residential moves during late childhood, parental education level, family living situation, and the probability of completing upper secondary education. Methodology Detailed longitudinal data for a random sample of 30% of the entire Norwegian population born 1982 to 1989 ( N = 121,247) and information on all their relocations between Norwegian enumeration districts from (...) ages 10 to 18 years were extracted from the Norwegian population registries. Family structures were grouped into four intersectional family strata defined by combining categories of parental education level (distinguishing poorly educated and well-educated families) and the family’s living situation (comparing non-intact families with intact families). We applied two-level logistic regression models, which incorporated individual and family contextual factors, to estimate possible differences in completion rates of upper secondary education. Results Non-completion of secondary education (which constitutes 29% of the study sample) increases incrementally with the number of residential changes across all four family structures, but this effect was not distributed evenly between the different family strata. Individuals in “well-educated, intact families” seem to be least affected by residential moves. On the other hand, the highest disadvantage of frequent moves was among adolescents in the stratum “poorly educated, intact families.” In poorly educated families the probabilities of completing secondary school among non-intact and intact families converge toward each other as the number of moves increase. About 43% of the variation in school completion may be attributed to differences between families. The highest risk of school non-completion was found among adolescents in poorly educated families, which accounted for 74% of the non-completers. Conclusion We demonstrated underlying links between residential mobility and family structures on non-completion of upper secondary education. The adverse effect of frequent moves calls for attention in schools, public health agencies, and housing policies. The findings should be considered in a life course perspective, as the accumulation of unfavorable conditions during childhood and adolescence tends to constrict future prospects in terms of health and quality of life. (shrink)

In this paper, I will introduce and argue for a new view on religious faith and language, a view that focuses on the use and context of use of religious expressions. I call this view implicaturism. As one may guess, ‘implicaturism’ comes from ‘implicature’, a term coined by Paul Grice. For Grice, implicature is a technical term for certain kinds of inferences that are drawn from statements without those inferences being logical implications or entailments. In the view of religious faith (...) and language, implicaturism denotes the claims about the existence of God or other supernatural beings as pragmatic conclusions of the expressions used in religious practice, not the ground or presupposition of religious practice. In other words, in religious context, the claims of the form “X exists” (e.g. “God exists”) or “there are Xs” (e.g. “There are angeles”) are inferences that are based on prayers and worship expressions and their relatedbackground assumptions. This pattern of reasoning is not deductive, but abductive, thus inference from consequences to a possible cause. This kind of inference is logically invalid, in that the conclusion “God exists” is not a logical consequence of the premises: the religious expressions. The existential claims in religion (”God exists” or “There are angels” as examples) are thus some sort of a posteriori reasons or explanations for religious behaviour and related expressions, not their prior presuppositions. (shrink)

This self-interview is the responsive document coming forth from the post-conference camaraderie. The four “Žižekian Performers” – found with themselves personally, creatively, and academically following the 2014 International Žižek Studies Conference. As a self-interview document that mimics the gameplay of Žižek himself in his own self-interview from his The Metastases of Enjoyment where he puts on the guise of the “big Other” to examine himself, we four performers here examine ourselves, each other, our work, and each other’s work to produce (...) this post-partum collaborative essay. In our collective project, we outline our individual performances from the Conference, each stake a claim and personal response to the critical question of what is a “Žižekian Performance,” and identify and discuss other synergies that emerged and exist amid our work in the form of cross-examinations and self-examinations. Ultimately, this group’s self-interview blazes the way for performance to interpenetrate the “Žižekian” and to intervene wherever theory, investigation, and presentation may lie. (shrink)

The paths of God chasers can be traced across the pages of history from Moses the stutterer, David the singer, and Paul the itinerant preacher to A. W. Tozer ...

It is a problem in philosophy how the mind understands nature. How the results of observations come together in a meaningful form. Kant suggests a priori categories for this problem. According to him in the absence of the categories, the objects and phenomena that we perceive are in a relatively independent heap. A priori categories bring those independent pieces of observation together in an organized and meaningful form. Durkheim accepts Kant’s approach to a priori categories, however, he suggests a social (...) origin for them. Durkheim’s attempt to explain the social origin of the categories results in differences in the number and content of a priori categories that Kant suggested. Durkheim’s suggestion changes into general concepts that act as social facts which lead to individuals’ thoughts. (shrink)

We argue that constructive approaches in epistemology and systems science, which are focused on normativity, knowledge, and communication of organisms and emphasize the primacy of activity, self-construction, and niche-construction in the cognitive agents, fit naturally to the both methodology and theory of biosemiotics. In particular, constructive view was already present in the works of the major precursors of biosemiotics: von Uexküll and Bateson, and to some extent Peirce. Biosemiotics has a chance to function as a mediating field in the theoretical (...) integration of semiotics with its construction-related sister disciplines (e.g., second order cybernetics, autopoiesis, constructivism, enactivism, and interactivism) because of its explicit assumption of the semiotic nature of life and agency and its objectified “first person” view to biosemiotic agents, the view that nevertheless avoids the agnostic attitude towards reality. (shrink)

Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies and won the 2018 American Book Award. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore, is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines. (...) -/- Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males. (shrink)

I reply to Mills's critique of my effort to show the relevance of Rawls's theory of justice for thinking about and responding to racial injustices. Contrary to Mills's claims, my suggestion that the fair equality of opportunity principle can remedy socioeconomic disadvantages caused by the legacy of racial oppression is compatible with Rawls's framework, does not conflate distributive justice with corrective justice, and does not confuse racial injustice with economic injustice. I also raise doubts about Mills's project to radically reconstruct (...) contractarian political philosophy. He seeks to displace ideal theory with nonideal theory by foregrounding the realities of past racial domination. Against this approach, I argue that an ideal theory that abstracts away from these realities is not inherently ideological, useless for corrective justice, or too ideal to guide social reform. And I defend the view that ideal theory is indispensible for nonideal theorizing about racial justice. (shrink)

Intersectionality has utilized various feminist theories that continue subculture of violence thinking about Black men and boys. While intersectional feminists often claim that intersectionality leads to a clearer social analysis of power and hierarchies throughout society and within groups, the categories and claims of intersectionality fail to distinguish themselves from previously racist theories that sought to explain race, class, and gender, based on subcultural values. This article is the first to interrogate the theories used to construct the gendered categories and (...) the assumptions behind Black male positionality under intersectional analyses. Contrary to its promises for more liberated Black identities, intersectionality merely replicates the pseudo-science of racist criminology and presents decades old theories as cutting-edge gender analyses. In short, while intersectionality has allowed Black women to create nuanced experiences and epistemological accounts of Black womanhood, the very same theory has confined Black male experience to the perpetration of violence and defined Black manhood as lesser—merely the exemplification of white masculinity’s pathological excess. (shrink)

-/- Winner of the 2020 Josiah Royce Prize in American Idealist Thought, presented by the Josiah Royce Society, for demonstrating the extent to which Josiah Royce’s ideas about race were motivated explicitly in terms of imperial conquest. -/- Another white Man’s Burden performs a case study of Josiah Royce’s philosophy of racial difference. In an effort to lay bare the ethnological racial heritage of American philosophy, Tommy J. Curry challenges the common notion that the cultural racism of the twentieth (...) century was more progressive and less racist than the biological determinism of the 1800s. Like many white thinkers of his time, Royce believed in the superiority of the white races. Unlike today, however, whiteness did not represent only one racial designation but many. Contrary to the view of the British-born Germanophile philosopher Houston S. Chamberlain, for example, who insisted upon the superiority of the Teutonic races, Royce believed it was the Anglo-Saxon lineage that possessed the key to Western civilization. It was the birthright of white America, he believed, to join the imperial ventures of Britain—to take up the white man’s burden. To this end he advocated the domestic colonization of Blacks in the American South, suggested that America’s xenophobia was natural and necessary to protecting the culture of white America, and demanded the assimilation and elimination of cultural difference for the stability of America’s communities. Another white Man’s Burden reminds philosophers that racism has been part of the building blocks of American thought for centuries, and that this must be recognized and addressed in order for its proclamations of democracy, community, and social problems to have real meaning. (shrink)

This reference work offers a representative and reliable survey of classical, medieval, and modern history in regards to the philosophical term, truth .

Microgames are rapidly gaining increased attention and are highly being considered because of the technology-based media that enhances students’ learning interests and educational activities. Therefore, this study aims to develop a new construct through confirmatory factor analysis, to comprehensively understand the factors influencing the use of microgames in mathematics class. Participants of the study were the secondary school teachers in West Java, Indonesia, which had a 1-year training in microgames development. We applied a quantitative approach to collect the data via (...) online questionnaires through google form. Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS software was used to analyze the proposed model. Empirical results confirmed the perceived easy to use and subjective norm influence relationship with teachers’ microgame usage behaviors and intentions. In this condition, SN was found to have the initial significant influence on behavioral intention, as attitude, BI, and facilitating conditions also correlated with the actual use of microgames. Furthermore, the largest influential factor was BI, with the results subsequently showing that TPACK had no significant influence on the actual use of microgames. This report is expected to help bridge the gap across several previous studies, as well as contribute to the explanation and prediction of the factors influencing the teachers’ mathematical utilization of the study’s program. Besides this, it also helps to increase the use of microgames in teaching and learning activities. (shrink)

With a full introduction and textual commentary, this volume introduces William H. Ferris’s The African Abroad, a treatise on racial idealism, Black ethnology, and the evolution of Blacks from Negro to Negrosaxon, presenting the first evidence of a Black American idealist and evolutionary thinker in philosophy.

Die zweisprachige wissenschaftliche Fachzeitschrift enthält ausschließlich Originalbeiträge und ist prinzipiell für alle Richtungen der Religionsphilosophie und der philosophischen Theologie offen. Mit Erscheinen des Bandes 18 wird das Jahrbuch eingestellt.

IN THE JEWISH—CHRISTIAN SCHISM REVISITED, JOHN HOWARD YODER gives an account of the Jewishness of the politics of Jesus and Pauline Christianity. He rightly claims that irresponsible historiography has presented early Christianity as a departure from the Jewish ways of its time, reading the later schism into the New Testament and belying the Jewishness of Christian ethics. He contends that living in the faithfully Jewish ways of Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul, as many Jewish communities did up to the time of (...) Jesus and many non-Christian Jewish communities and free churches have done since, is what it means to be the people of God. After an appreciative exposition of Yoder's account and a brief articulation of its theological and ethical stakes, I argue that the biblical witness to the election of Israel troubles his understanding of the people of God as presupposed and conveyed by his revisionist historiography of the Jewish—Christian schism. (shrink)

In order to offer a substantive Christian challenge to modern state violence, the particular character of the modern state cannot be ignored. Nor can New Testament teaching on peace be reduced to flat and generalized ethical imperatives. The subtlety of peace is neglected if either of these two tendencies goes unchecked. After thus framing the question of a Christian response to modern state violence, itself the product of Christian agency among other factors, I offer a New Testament challenge to modern (...) state violence along two lines: (1) refusing the sacrificial political economy characteristic of the modern state, laboring instead at a christological dynamic of gift that takes account of the relative position of agents in the inherited distribution of power and expects more from the strong; (2) observing the limits of state representation for addressing vulnerability to violence, indeed its complicity in that vulnerability, and investing in scales of community commensurate with the subtlety of peace. (shrink)

The Political Economy of Terrorism presents a widely accessible political economy approach to the study of terrorism. It applies economic methodology – theoretical and empirical – combined with political analysis and realities to the study of domestic and transnational terrorism. In so doing, the book provides both a qualitative and quantitative investigation of terrorism in a balanced up-to-date presentation that informs students, policy makers, researchers and the general reader of the current state of knowledge. Included are historical aspects, a discussion (...) of watershed events, the rise of modern-day terrorism, examination of current trends, the dilemma of liberal democracies, evaluation of counterterrorism, analysis of hostage incidents and much more. The new edition expands coverage of every chapter, adds a new chapter on terrorist network structures and organization, accounts for changes in the Department of Homeland Security and the USA Patriot Act and insurance against terrorism. Rational-actor models of terrorist and government behavior and game-theoretic analysis are presented for readers with no prior theoretical training. Where relevant, the authors display graphs using data from International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events, the Global Terrorism Database, and other public-access data sets. (shrink)