Some sensory modalities, such as sight, touch and audition, are arguably spatial, and one way to understand these spatial senses is to investigate spatial representations in them. Here I focus on a specific element in this area— the interplay between perspectival variation and spatial constancy—and discuss recent interdisciplinary works on this topic. With these relevant experimental works, we will see clearly how traditional controversies in philosophy, for example, whether we perceive perspectival shapes as well as objective shapes, and whether any (...) sensory field should be postulated in senses other than vision, can benefit from considerations in empirical sciences. (shrink)

Gratitude is the proper or called-for response in a beneficiary to benefits or beneficence from a benefactor. It is a topic of interest in normative ethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, and may have implications for metaethics as well. Despite its commonness in everyday life, there is substantive disagreement among philosophers over the nature of gratitude and its connection to other philosophical concepts. The sections of this article address five areas of debate about what gratitude is, when it is called (...) for, and what implications it has for other debates in moral philosophy and philosophy generally. (shrink)

Philosophers generally agree that gratitude, the called-for response to benevolence, includes positive feelings. In this paper, I argue against this view. The grateful beneficiary will have certain feelings, but in some contexts, those feelings will be profoundly negative. Philosophers overlook this fact because they tend to consider only cases of gratitude in which the benefactor’s sacrifice is minimal, and in which the benefactor fares well after performing an act of benevolence. When we consider cases in which a benefactor suffers severely, (...) we see the feelings associated with gratitude can be negative, and even quite painful. I conclude with a discussion of the implications negative feelings of gratitude have for the normative question of when gratitude is owed, and for the descriptive claim in positive psychology that gratitude enhances wellbeing. (shrink)

Arash Abazari's Hegel's Ontology of Power is a superb study of the relevance of Hegel's logic to Marx's theory. Hegel is often dismissed by Marxists as an ‘idealist’ denying the reality of the world, as if Hegel were Bishop Berkeley with a German accent.1 Abazari recognizes this is not the case: ‘(T)he logical categories are not self-standing, but shadow, or track, the empirical world’ (Abazari 2020: 7). But the world in its full actuality does not simply consist of the objects (...) we sense or perceive. It is intrinsically intelligible, and its intelligibility can be comprehended only in thought. When it is, the ‘idealist’ thesis of the identity (in difference) of thought and being holds. Anyone asserting a truth claim implicitly asserts this identity. In so far as Marx asserts that Capital comprehends the capitalist mode of production, he too is an ‘idealist’ in the Hegelian sense of the term. (shrink)

Signs and things -- How Shall a Sign be Called? -- Peirce -- Modes of Representation -- Medium Matters -- The Mute Poem -- Rhetoric of the image.

Space exploration and off-world commercial activity engage both skeptics and its enthusiasts. What does seem clear, however, is that such activity has increased and is set to expand further during the present century. This book explores some of the emerging ethical issues of the space frontier and evaluates the prospects for the medium-range future.

The Philosophy of Representation -- The Transition -- The Sign-Systems of 1908 -- Rhetorical Concerns -- Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object.

Clinical psychology is characterized by persistent disagreement about fundamental aspects of the discipline ranging from what mental disorders are to what constitutes effective treatment. Attempts to address the problem of epistemic disagreement have been frequently based on establishing the correct answer by fiat without identifying and addressing the sources of the disagreement. We argue that this strategy has not worked very well and the result is frequently ongoing and intractable disagreement, with each side in an argument convinced they are correct. (...) In this paper, we outline an epistemic disagreement procedural model intended to assist researchers and clinicians in the field of clinical psychology to identify, explore, and develop inquiry strategies that capitalize on situations where competing knowledge claims are made. The result is a flexible conceptual framework committed to a defensible epistemic pluralism, fallibilism, and contextualism, across the various research tasks constituting the field of clinical psychology. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to contribute to the development of a paradigmatic shift in how design is understood, transformed and practiced in the Global South. It does this by establishing the case for building a strong contextual relation between design, colonialism, and the mobilised counter-agency of decoloniality. Thereafter, design for/by the Global South is presented within a critical epistemological reframing subordinate to a situated imperative of the ‘Sustainment’.

What is moral education? How do young children learn to act and interact appropriately? How do we enable children to recognise that how they act and interact matters? How can character, virtues and value help young children internalise qualities associated with living 'a good life'? Challenging many current assumptions about ethics and education, Tony Eaude suggests that a moral dimension runs through every aspect of life and that ethics involves learning to act and interact appropriately, based on an 'ethic (...) of care' and enduring qualities and attributes, to equip children to resist strong external pressures. (shrink)

In 1925, David Katz published an influential monograph on touch, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, which was translated into English in 1989. Although it is called “the world of touch,” it also discusses the thermal and the nociceptive senses, albeit briefly. In this chapter, we will follow this approach, but we will speak about “somatosensory senses” in general in order to remind ourselves that perceptions of temperatures and pains should also be considered together in this context.

To take the idea of a non-anthropocentric ethic of nature seriously is to abandon morality itself. The idea of humanity is not an optional extra for moral seriousness. Non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists mistake the kind of value non-human entities may bear. It is not moral value, but aesthetic value.

This paper examines the resonances between Deleuze's theory of subjectivity and the Buddhist view of subjectivity. Although much scholarship has been focused on Deleuze's theory of subjectivity, relatively little has been directed at a comparative study of how his theory of subjectivity resonates with the idea of de-centred subjectivity in Buddhist philosophy. In addition to this, the paper explores the ethical and political implications of such a notion of subjectivity. In the first part, it examines Deleuze's theory of subjectivity and (...) in the second part, it examines the theory of subjectivity in Buddhist philosophy. In the third part, it considers the ethical implications of the Deleuzian and Buddhist theory of subjectivity. (shrink)

Is there a duty to prosecute grave international crimes? Many have thought so, even if they recognize the obligation to be defeasible. However, the theoretical literature frequently leaves the grounds for such a duty inadequately specified, or unsystematically amalgamated, leaving it unclear which considerations should drive and shape processes of criminal accountability. Further, the circumstance leaves calls to end impunity vulnerable to skeptical worries concerning the risks and costs of punishing perpetrators. I argue that a qualified duty to prosecute can (...) be substantiated on the basis of a single class of reasons, though also that standard justifications of international criminal law (as currently conceived) are not up to the task. The account exploits the expressive dimension of punishment, but locates the central good of criminal accountability in its capacity to appropriately enable an agential stance on the part of subjects in transitional circumstances. It can legitimate, in a way to be specified, hope. The approach also displays the cynicism of an anti‐impunity ethos in the absence of a robust commitment to securing basic human rights in transitional circumstances. (shrink)

Pastor and trusted Bible teacher Dr. Tony Evans answers fundamental questions about the Christian faith to help children understand who God is and why they can trust Him with their lives. Help children build a firm foundation of faith.

Bodily Awareness Most of us agree that we are conscious, and we can be consciously aware of public things such as mountains, tables, foods, and so forth; we can also be consciously aware of our own psychological states and episodes such as emotions, thoughts, perceptions, and so forth. Each of us can be aware of … Continue reading Bodily Awareness →.

In God and Human Freedom: A Kierkegaardian Perspective Tony Kim discusses Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of historical unity between the divine and human without disparaging their absolute distinction. Kim’s central analysis between the relation of God and human freedom in Kierkegaard presents God’s absoluteness as superseding human freedom, intervening at every point of His relation with the world and informing humanity of their existentially passive being. Kim argues Kierkegaard is not a strict voluntarist but deeply acknowledges God’s absoluteness and initiative (...) over and against human life. Moreover, the author’s exploration of unity in Kierkegaard points to the very ethics of who God is, one who loves the world. Ultimately, God manifests that love in Jesus Christ, representing God’s ultimate reconciliation with the world in his humility. (shrink)

This paper discusses the significance of the concept of a social formation for historical materialism. It argues that the concept is wrongly thought to be associated uniquely with the writings of Louis Althusser and with structuralist Marxism. It can be found in the writings of Marx himself, as well as those of Lenin, and is central to an adequate understanding of classical Marxism. To illustrate its importance the paper shows how the concept may be used to shed new light on (...) the debate around the transition from feudalism to capitalism. (shrink)

Clarifies the character and fundamental structures of 'political economy' as an intellectual discipline in the texts of Adam Smith. This title is suitable for historians of economic thought and philosophers of social science.

This book brings together perspectives on predictive processing and expected experience. It features contributions from an interdisciplinary group of authors specializing in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Predictive processing, or predictive coding, is the theory that the brain constantly minimizes the error of its predictions based on the sensory input it receives from the world. This process of prediction error minimization has numerous implications for different forms of conscious and perceptual experience. The chapters in this volume explore these implications (...) and various phenomenon related to them. The contributors tackle issues related to precision estimation, sensory prediction, probabilistic perception, and attention, as well as the role predictive processing plays in emotion, action, psychotic experience, anosognosia, and gut complex. Expected Experiences will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science working on issues related to predictive processing and coding. (shrink)

In 1973, the Trilateral Commission asked whether democracies were becoming ‘ungovernable’. Warning of the ‘rise of anomic democracy’, it identified threats that we are more than familiar with today, as we confront – once again – the ‘crisis’ of democracy: ‘the disintegration of civil order, the breakdown of social discipline, the debility of leaders, and the alienation of citizens’. In this chapter I revisit this ‘problem’ of anomie, locating it at the very heart of democracy and the historical problem of (...) its governance. In the Laws, Plato had already used the disparaging term ‘theatrocracy’, which drew on the analogy of the theatre and its audience, to describe the unruly nature of democratic forms of life. Just as the theatre audience is an ill-disciplined rabble so, he argued, the members of a democratic society are prone to various disorders. Thus the pathologies of the democratic polis qualify it for one of Plato’s ‘diseased cities’, where popular discontentment collapses democracy into something far worse: tyranny. I pursue this ‘theatrocratic’ problem as a means of understanding democracy’s central dynamic, particularly visible in an age of popular discontentment, namely its constitutive proneness to displeasure, incivility and antagonism. The first part of the chapter re-examines the legacy of theatrocratic discourse by reframing it in relation to the discourse on play. I argue that for theatrocratic discourses ‘play’ – often understood as ‘idleness’ – constitutes the core problematic of democratic or ‘common’ forms of life, and that for Plato, and for many commentators who later followed him, democracy must be viewed as ‘dangerous play’. I show how the modern State sought to neutralise the ‘theatrocratic’ threat associated with democracy’s dangerous play by means of ‘education’, converting incivility into civility; disorder into orderly conduct; idleness and illegality into productive labour. The second part of the chapter, focusses more closely on this educational solution, arguing that it leads to a further paradox and one with which we still contend today. This paradox becomes particularly acute in Schiller’s notion of the ‘aesthetic education of man’ and in his tract on theatre as a tool for instruction. While Schiller sees ‘play’ as central to human emancipation, in advocating theatre as a tool of moral instruction, designed to reconcile the demos to the State, aesthetic education reverts to a discourse of two humanities – one civil, the other barbaric. Nonetheless, I argue Schiller’s insight that ‘man’ is ‘only wholly Man when he is playing’ remains useful to understanding the theatrocratic ‘crisis’ afflicting contemporary democracies with the rise of populism across Europe and beyond. Thus in the final part of the chapter, I turn to consider how we might understand democracy through the figure of theatrocracy today. Following the political theorist, Chantal Mouffe, I argue that the solution to the crisis of democracy is not less but more democracy. I suggest that what this involves is the need to reconstruct democratic engagement around two senses of the term ‘play’. First, that play is indeed correctly understood as a ‘subversive’ force – a productive ‘incivility’ – and that an ‘aesthetic education’ today requires ‘playful resistance’ to the total mobilisation of the social by capitalism; second, that democratic politics must be reconfigured around the notion of a radical ‘politics of rehearsal’ – where play signifies, not something subservient to an instrumental goal, but the opening of an autonomous space, emancipated from productive labour, in which new ‘identities’ can be created. (shrink)

Despite a growing body of literature that engages both Catholic social thought and the Capability Approach, little has been done to explore what these two traditions of thought might offer to a reassessment of the project of global democracy promotion. This essay brings Catholic social thought and the Capability Approach into conversation for this purpose. What emerges is a framework for thinking about and engaging in what the author calls democratic democracy promotion (DDP). DDP is based on a broadened conception (...) of democracy and avoids a dogmatic commitment to the promotion of Western liberal democracy; it takes a needs-based approach to the allocation of externally driven democracy assistance; and it prioritizes education initiatives as central components of democracy promotion. Refashioned as such, democracy promotion has the potential to bring about more participatory democratic processes, a more inclusive global democracy, and a critical and caring mass of global democrats. (shrink)

This article explores tentatively how young children develop a sense of beauty and should be guided in doing so. Beauty is partly a matter of personal preference, but it implies a more profound and considered idea than what is pleasing or attractive. Beauty contributes to well-being and a flourishing life. Since ideas of beauty vary over time and are transmitted through culture and socialization, these are affected by socio-cultural factors such as gender, ethnicity, class and age. Children’s perceptions of beauty (...) often differ from those of adults. A sense of what is beautiful or otherwise is based mainly in emotional and sensory responses but also involves cognitive processes and judgements. Unconscious learning by immersion in beautiful environments helps children sense what is beautiful. They benefit from a wide range of opportunities and experiences and time to dwell on these and to re-present them kinaesthetically, visually and using language. While the arts and nature provide particularly fertile opportunities, aesthetic development can occur in most contexts. The role of adults should be more that of facilitator, providing opportunities, encouragement and example, than instructor. Implications for the education of the whole child are considered. (shrink)

This book is an essential contribution to the transdisciplinary field of critical design studies. The essays in this collection locate design at the center of a series of interrelated planetary crises, from climate change, nuclear war, and racial and geopolitical violence to education, computational culture, and the loss of the commons. In doing so, the essays propose a range of needed interventions in order to transform design itself and its role within the shifting realities of a planetary crisis. It challenges (...) the widely popular view that design can contribute to solving world problems by exposing how this attitude only intensifies the problems we currently face. In this way, the essays critique the dominant modes of framing the meaning and scope of design as a largely Anglo-European "problem-solving" practice. By drawing on post-development theory, decolonial theory, black studies, continental philosophy, science and technology studies and more, the contributions envision a critical and speculative practice that problematizes both its engagement with planet and itself. The essays in this collection will appeal to design theorists and practitioners alike, but also to scholars and students generally concerned with how the past and future of design is implicated in the unfolding complexity of ecological devastation, racial and political violence, coloniality, technological futures, and the brutality of modern western culture generally. (shrink)

This collection of Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930–2002) thoughts and reflections on sociology, originally presented in his lectures at the Collège de France from 1982 to 1986, consists of: Vol. 1: Classif...

This article investigates the place that habit occupies in different ‘architectures of the person’, focusing particularly on constructions of the relations between habit and other components of personhood that are marked by time. Three such positions are examined: first, the relations between thought, will, memory, habit and instinct proposed by post-Darwinian accounts of ‘organic memory’; second, Henri Bergson’s account of the relations between habit, memory and becoming; and, third, the temporal aspects of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus understood as a (...) set of hereditable dispositions. These different ‘architectures of the person’ are considered with regard to the role they accord habit in trans-generational mechanisms of inheritance; the historicised forms of embodied personhood that they propose; and the manner in which they account for the emergence of a capacity for freedom that can (partially) offset the weight of the inherited past. It is argued that the imputation of such a capacity to some forms of personhood, but not others, is both shaped by and provides the conditions for the operation of liberal forms of government. The manner in which the conduct of those who exhibit such a capacity for freedom is brought under the direction of varied ‘authorities of freedom’ is given particular consideration. (shrink)

The target article argues that language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH) is applicable to various domains, including perception. However, it focusses exclusively on the visual case, which is limited in this regard. I argue for two ideas in this commentary: first, their case can be extended to other modalities such as touch; and second, the status of those six criteria needs to be further clarified.

To desire is to want, but not necessarily to be disposed to do anything. That is to say, desiring does not necessarily involve having any disposition to act. To lend plausibility to this view I appeal to the example of whimsical desires that no action could help us to realise. What may lead us to view certain desires as whimsical is precisely the absence of any possibility of realizing them. While such desires might seem less than full-blooded, I argue that (...) we can have full-blooded desires concerning such matters because of our (non-whimsical) concern for others. That is to say, whimsical desires can have a borrowed seriousness. The article goes on to strengthen the separability of dispositions and desires by narrowing down the concept of triggering conditions for a disposition. If we allow the triggering conditions to be too broad then it will always make sense to say that someone with a desire simply must have a disposition because, all other things being equal, they would bring about what they desire if they were able to do so. (shrink)

It seemed to happen overnight. Not long ago, we were all watching television, and now we are watching something else. Television stations have been replaced by streaming services. Well, not quite replaced, since we still have televisions, but somehow our television screens are not quite what they were. In Netflicks: Conceptual Television in the Streaming Era Tony Hughes-d'Aeth critically considers how our viewing habits, and television shows themselves, have changed over time. This book is about television in the streaming (...) age and it considers some of the continuities that contemporary streamed shows have to other narrative forms such as classic television and classic Hollywood. Long gone are the days when we had to wait a week for the next episode of a tv show to be aired -- now we can binge-watch whole series in one sitting! ABOUT VIGNETTES Series Editors: Sarah Collins and Tony Hughes-d'Aeth The Vignettes Series from UWAP is aimed at sharing the knowledges that are emerging in the contemporary university and which that consider the complexities of modern life. Each book provides an image, or a vignette, of a particular phenomenon and how this is being thought through by intellectual practitioners in today's academy. (shrink)

Humans and other animals perceive with many different sensory modalities, includ- ing olfaction, touch, audition, vision, echolocation, proprioception, gustation, and some other senses, depending on different criteria and definitions. Given its broad range, it is not possible to give a comprehensive overview of all of the philosophi- cal, psychological, and neuroscientific studies about perception in one chapter, so what will be offered here is quite selective. In the introduction, we will discuss basic concepts such as figure-ground segregation and scene analysis. (...) Section 1.1 provides a historical overview of psychological theories of perception since the late 19th century. Section 1.2 discusses the information-processing approach and hierarchical explanations, while section 1.3 looks into the historical development of philosophical studies of perception. Sections 2.1–2.3 introduce contemporary issues, and 3.1–3.3 provide future directions. (shrink)

Although the body has become of increasing importance throughout the social sciences, it has been neglected by the discipline of social policy. The aim of this article is to rectify that neglect. It argues that the connections which some have begun to make between social welfare and the body can be strengthened by reference to the figure of the cyborg. The article develops a model that can be used to explain the cyborgization of social identity. This process of cyborgization is (...) then related to contemporary trends in social welfare: the individualization of rights and the collectivization of duties which is occurring via the prevalence of surveillance technologies and the ideology of productivism. These trends signify a drift towards what can be called post-social security. (shrink)