This article argues that children represent one vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult-child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. Following Herbert Marcuse's invocation of a ‘new sensibility’, the author argues that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. (...) After exploring child-adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what Dewey called ‘impulse’ and ‘habit’, three key dimensions of dialogic schooling are identified, all of which are grounded in a fourth: the form of dialogical group discourse called community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), which is based on the problematisation and reconstruction of concepts through critical argumentation. As a discourse-model, CPI grounds practice in all of the dialogic school's emergent curricular spaces, whether science, mathematics, literature, art, or philosophy. Second, it opens a functional space for shared decision-making and collaborative governance, making of school an exemplary model of direct democracy. Finally, CPI as a site for critical interrogation of concepts encountered in the curriculum (e.g. ‘alive’, ‘justice’, ‘system’, ‘biosphere’) and as a site for democratic governance leads naturally to expression in activist projects that model an emergent ‘new reality principle’ through concrete solutions to practical problems on local and global levels. (shrink)

Semantic noise, the effect ensuing from the denotative and thus functional variability exhibited by different terms in different contexts, is a common concern in natural language processing (NLP). While unarguably problematic in specific applications (e.g., certain translation tasks), the main argument of this paper is that failing to observe this linguistic matter of fact as a generative effect rather than as an obstacle, leads to actual obstacles in instances where language model outputs are presented as neutral. Given that a common (...) and long-standing challenge in NLP is the interpretation of ambiguous – i.e., semantically noisy – cases, this article focuses on an exemplar ambiguity-resolution task in NLP: the problem of anaphora in Winograd schemas. The main question considered is: to what extent is the standard approach to disambiguation in NLP subject to a stagnant “image of language”? And, can a transdisciplinary, dynamic approach combining linguistics and philosophy elucidate new perspectives on these possible conceptual shortcomings? In order to answer these questions we explore the term and concept of noise, particularly in its presentation as semantic noise. Owing to its definitional plurality, and sometimes even desirable unspecificity, the term noise is thus used as proof of concept for semantic generativity being an inherent characteristic in linguistic representation, and its concept is used to interrogate assumptions admitted in the resolution of Winograd schemas. The argument is speculative and theoretical in method, and the result is an analysis which provides an account of the fundamentally dialogical and necessarily open-ended effects of semantic noise in natural language. (shrink)

This volume addresses how spatialized identities, belongingness and hospitality are interrogated in British and Irish contemporary art (painting, installation, video, photography, new public art) at a time when economic and political crises tend to encourage individual or exclusive usages of space. It sketches a cartography of encounters encompassing the home, the neighbourhood, the village or city, and the nation. Artists interrogate how intimacy is both facilitated and threatened by spatial devices, how space fashions our perception of gender, social or ethnic (...) identity and activates power relations. They explore the need for a home or a homeland and the various forms exile or placelessness can take. They may also take part in the restoration of the Commons and the constitution of alternative communities. Whether the analyses focus on the private sphere (in urban, suburban or rural contexts), or on shared communal spaces, they ponder the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion at work in human encounters and shed light on how artistic apparatuses make the tensions between openness to the other and rejection or withdrawal perceptible. The approach, borrowing from art history as well as anthropology lays emphasis on context, situationality and field work; it proposes to repoliticize relational art and concludes on the dialogical positionality which lies at the core of art. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe political changes in Czechoslovakia and in other Eastern European countries in 1989 are closely related to Jan Patoĉka's philosophy. He was one of the first speakers for the human rights manifesto “Charta 77” and died following his political interrogations in 1978. Vàclav Havel, the president of the ĉSFR, was one of his students. Patoĉka's philosophy is sketched here following his interpretation of Comenius, beginning with an early work of 1932 and until his interpretation of Comenius' The Paradise of (...) the World and the Labyrinth of the Heart in his book Die Philosophic der Erziehung des J. A. Comenius.As a phenomenologist who transcends both Husserl and Heidegger, Patoĉka's conflict with the political system of his country was inevitable. The regime could not put up with his thesis on the “open soul” which, due to its existential openness, can hear the “call of conscience.” Behind this thesis stands Patocka's teaching of the three movements of existence. And out of this follows his “Education of the Turning.” Patoĉka's theory of education leads straight to some nondogmatic conceptions of education such as the “Communication Pedagogics” which dates back to the dialogical education of Martin Buber. (shrink)

This paper employs Mikhail Bakhtin for a dialogic reading of dialectics, conceptualising how early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ political dialogues are opened up and closed down. Explorations of ‘political dialogue’, or how teachers respond to issues they deem of political concern, is pertinent for teaching’s inherently political nature. How such encounters are opened and closed has special significance for ECE teachers, who have expressed feeling professionally and politically silenced. Guided by a philosophical framing of the contradictions and jostling interplays (...) between dialogism’s in-betweenness and dialectic’s one-ness, excerpts are analysed from a doctoral study involving 10 Victorian, Australian ECE teachers. This framing and analysis signal the potential ramifications of a dialectical closing down of ECE teachers’ political dialogues in addition to how dialogism’s in-betweenness fosters openness. Contemplating these language strategies, the paper highlights how a silencing divisiveness may transpire, prompting a need for genuine listening in the threshold in-between the self and other. (shrink)

Tom Andersen’s reflecting team process, which allowed families to witness and respond to the talk of professionals during therapy sessions, has been described as revolutionary in the field of family therapy. Reflecting teams are prominent in a number of family therapy approaches, more recently in narrative and dialogical therapies. This way of working is considered more a philosophy than a technique, and has been received positively by both therapists and service users. This paper describes how dialogical therapists conceptualise the reflective (...) process, how they work to engage families in reflective dialogues and how this supports change. We conducted semi-structured, reflective interviews with 12 dialogical therapists with between 2 and 20 years of experience. Interpretative Phenomenological analysis of transcribed interviews identified varying conceptualisations of the reflecting process and descriptions of therapist actions that support reflective talk among network members. We adopted a dialogical approach to interpretation of this data. In this sense, we did not aim to condense accounts into consensus but instead to describe variations and new ways of understanding dialogical reflecting team practices. Four themes were identified: Lived experience as expertise; Listening to the self and hearing others; Relational responsiveness and fostering connection; and Opening space for something new. We applied these themes to psychotherapy process literature both within family therapy literature and more broadly to understand more about how reflecting teams promote helpful and healing conversations in practice. (shrink)

In this essay David Kennedy argues that children represent one vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. Following Herbert Marcuse's invocation of a “new sensibility,” Kennedy argues that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny — the long formative period of human childhood and the paedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle — makes of the adult–child collective of school a (...) primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” Kennedy identifies three key dimensions of dialogic schooling, all of which are grounded in a fourth: the form of dialogical group discourse called community of philosophical inquiry, which is based on the problematization and reconstruction of concepts through critical argumentation. As a discourse model, CPI grounds practice in all of the dialogic school's emergent curricular spaces, whether science or mathematics, whether literature, art, or philosophy. Second, CPI opens a functional space for shared decision making and collaborative governance, making of school an exemplary model of direct democracy. Finally, CPI as a site for the critical interrogation of concepts encountered in the curriculum and as a site for democratic governance leads naturally to expression in activist projects that model an emergent “new reality principle” through concrete solutions to practical problems on local and global levels. (shrink)

L’interrogation en Italie du Nord : ce que les corpus nous disent et les questions qu’ils laissent ouvertesCet article traite de l’interrogation dans les variétés de l’Italie du Nord, plus précisément celles du ladin dolomitique. Une discussion sur les corpus disponibles, leurs avantages et leurs inconvénients est complétée par la présentation de mes enquêtes dialectales : méthodologie et données recueillies. Ainsi, on verra comment la recherche basée sur des corpus déjà existants et l’enquête de terrain peuvent se compléter, les données (...) des atlas linguistiques offrant un point de départ indispensable à des investigations plus spécifiques et nécessaires. (shrink)

The objective in this paper is to demonstrate the indispensability of Peirce’s double consciousness to foster abductive reasoning, so that internal/external dialogue inform the worthiness of hunches. These forms of dialogue establish a mental give-and-take forum in which novel meanings/effects are particularly highlighted and noticed. Such attentional shifts are compelled by surprising states of affairs within the beholder’s internal, interpretive competencies, or from external factors (pictures, gestural or linguistic performatives). The dialogic nature of these signs pre-forms operations not possible (...) non-dialogically; they command, interrogate, or suggest alterations to established conduct/beliefs in contexts in which propositional/argumentative conflicts are obviated. This inquiry proposes experimental methodologies to measure when double consciousness (via private/inner speech) mediates hypothesis-making. Vygotsky’s conflict of motive at four distinct developmental stages constitutes the foundation for the proposed experiments. Designs draw upon Vygotsky’s ‘double stimulation’ paradigms that force decision-making processes when conflicts of motive surface. Paradigms include forced imitation of one model while ignoring another (imitating bear, not dragon), and altering a visual array to depict logical sequencing accurately (the “Cycles Test”; “The Odd One Out”). These conflicts require children to change their conduct/beliefs to accommodate to atypical states of affairs. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of artistic creativity based on Martin Buber’s theory of dialogue. Crucially, Buber distinguishes between the It that is objectified in experience and use and the You whom we meet as a whole person in dialogical relationships. Buber’s emphasis on dialogue as the core of what it means to be human suggests that the human significance of art might also be in its dialogical potential. The problem, however, is that artists, psychologists, critics, and philosophers often treat (...) artistic creativity in objective terms and thus make any dialogical ontology of art implausible. To address this issue, the essay proposes a dialogical anthropology of art that acknowledges the objective conditions of art-making and locates the human significance of art in the non-objective interfaces it opens between the artist and his or her world. Such an account brings to light the ways in which art may invite people into “unfinalizable” dialogical relationships with the world they inhabit. (shrink)

Salons evoke high-flown associations; we picture elegant people gathering in glamorous settings for cultivated conversations about the arts, literature, and politics. The so-called salons hosted around 1800 in Berlin by bourgeois Jewish women are tied to promises of emancipation and religious toleration. Scholars have either hailed the empowering functions of these convivial gatherings or debunked their enlightened promises as myths. Drawing on the latest research on conviviality in the social sciences, on Friedrich Schleiermacher's theory of sociability, and on writings by (...) and about Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz and Fanny Lewald, this essay approaches the topic of the salon from a different angle. I argue that these women's social endeavours were not tied to specific ends that we can either admiringly endorse or expose as failures from today's perspective. The notions of the female self, of writing, and the conceptions of literature and philosophy emerging from these convivial constellations are inherently dialogical and shifting. Conversations may sometimes break open hierarchies, but they may also foster conflict and no improvement. The value of these encounters, I suggest, lies in the effort made rather than a classifiable outcome. (shrink)

According to Douglas Walton, the concept of presumption relates to both logical and dialogical components. Logically, a presumption is the conclusion of a presumptive defeasible inference. Dialogically, the function of a presumptions to shift the burden of proof to the respondent in order to move the dialogue forward when the proponent, due to an objective lack of evidence, cannot present a sufficiently persuasive proposition. Presumptive status, assigned only at the argumentation stage of dialogue, is provisional: a particular presumption stands until (...) further counter-indications are found. This paper points out some possible difficulties pertaining to Walton’s dialogical model of presumption. Firstly, once a presumption's typical practical function is made precise, Walton’s idea of presumption starts to lose its conceptual cohesion, thereby becoming applicable in the opening stage of dialogue, as well. Secondly, cohesion is lost also in practical contexts, since Walton's "seat belts" example might indicate that presumptions are not evidentially defeasible if the practical stakes are raised high enough. Most importantly, contextual evaluation may reveal that presumptions do not shift the burden of proof in any specific or genuine way. (shrink)

In 2008, Samantha Newbery, then a PhD student, discovered a hitherto confidential document: ‘Confidential: UK Eyes Only. Annex A: Intelligence gained from interrogations in Northern Ireland’ (DEFE 13/958, The National Archives (TNA)). It details the British Army’s notorious interrogations of IRA suspects that led to the eventual banning of the ‘five techniques’ that violated the UK’s international treaty obligation prohibiting the use of torture and ‘inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. Having decided that the document – Intelligence gained from should (...) be put in the public domain, she invited me, along with the eminent lawyer, Philippe Sands and Brian Stuart, a former Secretary to the British Joint Intelligence Committee, to contribute commentaries. I concluded that even if the document was accurate in both what it stated and in what it left out, that use of the ‘five techniques’ (tantamount to torture) was unjustified, since the normalisation and institutionalisation of torture is far worse than failing to obtain the information thus gained. Whether or not this joint paper will make a difference to UK policy concerning the use of torture remains an open question; whether or not it should is not. This piece is an example of how my book on torture, deliberately written for a public readership, has made it possible for me to make interventions in practical policy, or at least to attempt to, whether in occasional writing for eg The Chartist and the web-based Open Democracy, or directly for activist groups, eg my ‘Ethical Opinion’ for Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Report: Holding Health to Ransom: GSS Interrogation and Extortion of Palestinian Patients at Erez Crossing (2008). (shrink)

Until recently, torture was regarded as an unthinkable act. But in the dark years following September 11, 2001, many people have defended it openly as they have many other kinds of action previously considered taboo. And the underlying issues are complicated. Yet at least a virtually absolute prohibition on interrogational torture can be rationally defended.

Popular culture could be understood as a political battleground where conflicting meanings are inscribed into the “ordinary objects” that constitute that public sphere. This is also true for science fiction television series. This article critically examines how political matters and ethical agencies are represented within The Expanse, a series that takes place within a speculative twenty-fourth century milky way. Firstly, I will situate The Expanse within its generic “system of reference.” Then, I will illustrate how political matters are represented as (...) conjoined with the ethical. While the ethical refers to actions of persons, politics refers to fictional conceptions of what Tristan Garcia’s terms we-ourselves, understood as conflicting and overlapping conceptions of “we.” The conjunction between the political and the ethical in The Expanse is spatiotemporal: the characters, the events they are entangled in, and the spaces that connect discrete events develop through fictional and literal time. I argue that the science fictional representations of “we-ourselves,” and the specific spatiotemporal representational capacities of the television series format, can be understood through the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the chronotope and the dialogic. That is, The Expanse’s we-representations are chronotopic and the refractive rhetoric of television is dialogic. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: Key aspects of Werner’s concerns involve overcoming dualisms. This presupposes an implicit spatial preunderstanding that is neglected in Werner and needs amplification. Diametric and concentric spatial-relational frames for cognition and perception offer a supporting framework for Werner’s interrogation of constructivist roots, to go beyond Cartesian metaphysics and to concretise difference that is not mere dualistic separation.

This thesis deals with the theory of interrogative belief revision, a recent development in the subfield of philosophical logic known as belief revision theory. While classical belief revision theory deals with the dynamics of an agent’s beliefs, interrogative belief revision aims to describe the dynamics of the agent’s questions about the world, or research agenda, as well. Great emphasis is put on the interaction between belief change and changes in the research agenda. I develop both the technical framework (...) for this theory by constructing and investigating modal logics for reasoning about the dynamics of research interests, as well as pursuing further the philosophical foundations and applications of the theory. Among the contributions of the thesis are: - a novel interpretation of the theory founded on a notion of epistemic strategies - a solution to the previously open problem of contraction and revision in this context - several systems of modal logic that can be used to reason about interrogative belief revision - completeness results and decidability results for these logics - a characterization of a class of relevant conditionals based on a notion of agenda relevance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article investigates Rancière’s understanding of the Heideggerean conception of art. It argues that Rancière is mistaken in categorizing Heidegger’s philosophy of art within the ethical regime of images, and further that his work corresponds with the central tenets of, and thus should be categorized within, the aesthetic regime of art. This is because art is understood as art, for Heidegger, when it instigates strife between world—the network of associations which constitute the horizons of a given population’s perceptual, conceptual and (...) motor possibilities—and earth—the necessarily resistant to explicit conscious acts and signification. Insofar as it is constituted by this dual relation, art puts forth a dialogically open space in which it paradoxically reinforces the boundaries of seeing, thinking and doing, yet remains heterogeneous to these modes, thereby preventing art from being reducible to the everyday. This paradoxical role, this articulation and reconfiguration that establishes a unified-character of the arts for Heidegger, performs a function that is best framed within the aesthetic redistribution-based transformative conception of art. This is because in both Heidegger and the aesthetic regime, the dialogically open space granted to art allows for cultural revolutions and paradigm shifts to take place in an indeterminable manner. (shrink)

Scholars and practitioners across domains are increasingly concerned with algorithmic transparency and opacity, interrogating the values and assumptions embedded in automated, black-boxed systems, particularly in user-generated content platforms. I report from an ethnography of infrastructure in Wikipedia to discuss an often understudied aspect of this topic: the local, contextual, learned expertise involved in participating in a highly automated social–technical environment. Today, the organizational culture of Wikipedia is deeply intertwined with various data-driven algorithmic systems, which Wikipedians rely on to help manage (...) and govern the “anyone can edit” encyclopedia at a massive scale. These bots, scripts, tools, plugins, and dashboards make Wikipedia more efficient for those who know how to work with them, but like all organizational culture, newcomers must learn them if they want to fully participate. I illustrate how cultural and organizational expertise is enacted around algorithmic agents by discussing two autoethnographic vignettes, which relate my personal experience as a veteran in Wikipedia. I present thick descriptions of how governance and gatekeeping practices are articulated through and in alignment with these automated infrastructures. Over the past 15 years, Wikipedian veterans and administrators have made specific decisions to support administrative and editorial workflows with automation in particular ways and not others. I use these cases of Wikipedia’s bot-supported bureaucracy to discuss several issues in the fields of critical algorithms studies; critical data studies; and fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning—most principally arguing that scholarship and practice must go beyond trying to “open up the black box” of such systems and also examine sociocultural processes like newcomer socialization. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to motivate and outline a dialogical perspective on agency that accommodates centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in current cultural theories of agency. To complement approaches that assume a high degree of integration and clarity, we emphasise the diversity of agency as it is experienced in the open-ended dialogical relationship with a particular other. While these former approaches to agency provide us with the means to examine the influence of social processes such as division of labour (...) and reproduction of community, they tend to underplay the importance of agency as it is embodied and experienced in the lives of particular people. To reflect on this aspect of agency, we will draw extensively on Bakhtin's work, which crosses boundaries between philosophy, psychology and literary criticism, and which is concerned to understand what is personal in activity. In terms of agency, his work draws our attention to the sense of responsibility and potentiality that imbues our dialogues with particular others, the aesthetics and ethics involved in dialoguing with the other, and the sense of dilemmatic choice and intonation that is involved in our dialogue with the other. (shrink)

This article presents current philosophical reflections on religious diversity and concomitant attitudes towards the interreligious situation. The motive behind this presentation is to show that in order to deal more efficiently with the phenomenon of religious plurality, there is a need for a development of the philosophy of religion, where new perspectives are opened up and explored. The very concept of religion as a belief system is put into question, since it has caused philosophical reflections on religious diversity to be (...) confined to certain metaphysical and epistemological concerns. Instead of focusing on the noun ‘religion’, the article suggests a way to understand the adjective ‘religious’ and view religious plurality as a plurality of ways of being religious. This opens up a certain context of interreligious relations and interreligious dialogue, where this very dialogue itself can contribute to the development of philosophical tools, concepts and categories for dealing with the fact of plurality. I call this context constructive dialogical pluralism. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Developing a Dialogical Platform for Disseminating Research through Design” by Abigail C. Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace & Joyce Yee. Upshot: The experimental conference format described by Durrant et al. is intended to create an open platform for dissemination and knowledge creation. The field of open design, in which designers create structures to support creative action by others, offers relevant insights and alternative approaches. For example: while it is logical to see openness as (...) open choice, it can be productive to instead think of openness as constructed through a balance of structure and choice. (shrink)

The first half of the paper consists of a philosophical reflection upon a historical exchange. I discuss Buber’s famous letter, and another letter by J. L. Magnes, to Mahatma Gandhi, both challenging the universality of the principle of ahiṃsā. I also touch on Buber’s interest and acquaintance with Indian philosophy, as an instance of dialogue de-facto across cultures. Gandhi never answered these letters, but his grandson and philosopher extraordinaire Ramchandra Gandhi ›answers‹ Buber, not on the letter but about the ideal (...) of dialogue at large, and the interconnection of dialogue and ahiṃsā. The second half of the paper focuses on the work of Daya Krishna, another ›philosopher of dialogue.‹ from within Daya Krishna’s vast philosophical corpus, I underscore one of his last projects, in which he sketches the outlines of what he refers to as »knowledge without certainty,« contrary to common and traditional ways of perceiving the concept of knowledge. I argue that the pramāṇa, means and measure of knowledge, in the intriguing case of »knowledge without certainty,« depicted by Daya Krishna as open-ended, dynamic, constantly evolving, is inevitably dialogue, and I aim to disclose the meaning and salience of dialogue in Daya Krishna’s oeuvre. However, not just the content, but also the form, or the ›how,‹ matters in my paper. I use different materials across genres and disciplines to rethink, in dialogue with Buber and Daya Krishna, the possibilities and impossibilities of dialogue. These ›materials‹ include Milan Kundera and Richard Rorty, Krishna and Arjuna, Vrinda Dalmiya who works with the notion of care as bridging between epistemology and ethics, Wes Anderson on seeing through the eyes of the other, and Ben Okri on hospitality in the realm of ideas. As author of the present paper I am moderating an imagined a multi-vocal dialogue between these ›participants‹ on dialogue as concept, as craft and especially, as a great necessity in the world in which we live. (shrink)

Context: Practice-based design research is becoming more widely recognized in academia, including at doctoral level, yet there are arguably limited options for dissemination beyond the traditional conference format of paper-based proceedings, possibly with an exhibition or “demonstrator” component that is often non-archival. Further, the opportunities afforded by the traditional-format paper presentations is at times at odds with practice-based methodologies being presented. Purpose: We provide a first-hand descriptive account of developing and running a new international conference with an experimental format that (...) aims to support more analogously the dissemination of practice-based design research. Method: Our approach herein is broadly interpretative, phenomenological and critically reflective in orientation, to analyze our own experiential insights from the conference conception, through to the event itself and post-conference reflections, alongside the reflections fed back by conference delegates. Results: We have found the roundtable format continues to function well for creating a discursive interactional context. However issues arose around the crucial nature of the session chair’s role in enabling rich and multi-voiced discussion and how presenters’, organizers’ and delegates’ voices were captured and documented, with implications for further developing the conference design. Looking forward, there are also questions raised about: balancing the stringency of a rigorous review process with provision of an encouraging platform for early-career researchers; and balancing the need for clear criteria and formatting standards with the “openness” of the submission template and formatting guidelines and/or writing. This includes designers who are new to research cultures. It should also appeal to those working in interdisciplinary research in collaboration with design practitioners (but who may not be practitioners themselves. The conference aims to foster and support a burgeoning “research through design” academic community and to provide a fitting dissemination platform for this community. We hope that the conference will encourage academic communities to give proper consideration to the concept of design as a knowledge-generating activity. Constructivist content: Knowledge about design research is generated from meaningful interaction between people and artifacts as part of the unfolding conference experience. The organizational features of the conference aim to support knowledge dissemination through dialogical relations between people and things in particular contexts of interaction. (shrink)

This paper scrutinizes the dialogical character of knowledge from the perspectives of Hegel’s and Davidson’s philosophies. First, it outlines their analogous trains of thought, particularly their “anti-representational” and “intersubjective” accounts of knowledge. Second, it draws a parallel between the two by discussing their contrasting views of the structure and goal of knowledge, showing that while Davidson advocates an open-ended, scheme-less empirical knowledge, Hegel maintains the notion of a (universal-rational) scheme and a goal-oriented dialectical process in which “the true is the (...) whole.” This section then critically traces their underlying disagreement to their divergent views on the nature of meaning, language, and thought. Finally, it argues that their views can be seen as complementary to two versions of dialectic, showing that while Hegel’s approach, akin to Platonic dialectic, focuses on the self-contained and “Truth”-oriented “negotiational” movement of ideas, Davidson’s, reminiscent of Socratic elenchus, emphasizes the truth-oriented ‘conversational’ interaction of subjects exchanging concepts. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Developing a Dialogical Platform for Disseminating Research through Design” by Abigail C. Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace & Joyce Yee. Upshot: The experimental conference format described by Durrant et al. is intended to create an open platform for dissemination and knowledge creation. The field of open design, in which designers create structures to support creative action by others, offers relevant insights and alternative approaches. For example: while it is logical to see openness as (...) open choice, it can be productive to instead think of openness as constructed through a balance of structure and choice. (shrink)

If one interprets Plato’s dialogues using the dialogical mode, then the principal philosophical significance of the work is not exhausted by the arguments put forward by its characters. Integral to the dialogical mode involves a consideration of the purpose of investigating a philosophical issue in the form of a dialogue rather than a treatise. But Plato’s dialogues should not only be understood in a dialogical mode but instructors should also teach (and students should examine) using this mode of interrogation. This (...) paper describes a new way Plato’s Euthyphro might be taught to students, focusing less on its use as a logical primer and more on the character of Euthyphro. (shrink)

This article examines an interrogative construction with which recipients in Finnish interactions treat the co-participant's prior action as having exhibited a stance that was overstated. A key element in the interrogative is the intensifier niin which foregrounds the scalar character of its head word and suggests that the place it points to is too high on the scale. We will show that the niin-interrogative can target something the co-participant explicitly mentioned or only implied, and it can have (...) in its scope either the prior turn or a longer stretch of talk. Niin-interrogatives form one means for indicating that the co-participant's claim departed from some normal way of perceiving social life, and they orient to a moral norm of walking the golden mean. As compared to other ways of dealing with exaggeration, a niin-interrogative allows the recipient to express her disagreeing stance in a fashion that avoids an open conflict. (shrink)

In this paper we maintain that abductive inferential processes should be embedded to a more general outlook on human cognition. Abduction has clear a.nities to the so-called interrogative model of inquiry in which inquiry and reasoning are conceptualized as a dialogue. We think, in addition, that dialogicality must be broadened to a “trialogical” framework which means a threefold relationship with mediating artefacts where the inquirer, other inquirers , and the object of knowledge are inextricably bound up with each other (...) in long term processes of inquiry. Seen from this perspective Peirce's semeiotic pragmatism has close connections to modern ideas about distributed cognition; also to Pera's dialectical model of science, and Davidson's theory of triangulation concerning human mind, cognition, and knowledge. (shrink)

The logics of formal inconsistency are logics tolerant to some amount of contradiction, but in which some versions of explosion still hold. The main result of this paper is a reconstruction of two such logics in the dialogical framework. By doing so, we achieve two things. On the one hand, we provide a formal approach to argumentative situations where some contradictions may occur while keeping the idea that there may still be situations in which some propositions are ‘safe’ in the (...) sense of immunity to the contradictions. On the other hand, we open a new line of study on these logics, in the context of the game-theoretical approach to semantics born in the 1960s, with various interesting perspectives, some of which are discussed at the end of this article. (shrink)

Despite some talk of ‘erotetic logic’ and ‘the logic of interrogatives’, logicians have hitherto completely overlooked the peculiar logical form of questions, also shared by interrogative clauses generally. Of relevance to an understanding of time are those interrogative clauses that are janus-like: sometimes raising a question, sometimes answering it—which can then no longer arise. Since a closed question can no longer arise, it might seem that simply the passing of time turns an open into a closed question. Instead, (...) the passing of time itself can be understood as the closing or resolution of open questions, of the determination of what is not fixed but as yet in question. (shrink)

The article is based on reports and discussions held during three online events organized by the Russian Research Center for the Internet of Things together with the Department of Philosophy and Sociology of South-West State University during 2021: an open discussion with the famous transhumanist philosopher David Pearce dedicated to the birthday of Jeremiah Bentham on February 15, a round table dedicated to the World Internet of Things Day on April 9, and a session within the first IoT Hot Spots (...) conference on June 16. The main topics for discussion this year were the consideration of the following philosophical and socio-cultural problems and concepts in the light of the development of cyberphysical systems: anthropological differences between the «posthuman» and «metahuman» projects, epistemological aspects of bio- and cybersemiotics in modern hybrid techno-social networks, the cultural dimension of remote proximity in the digital age, the ontology of the quantum complexity of the digital multiverse, the ethical dimensions of the digital economy in the post-covid period, the aesthetics of metamodernism in the smart city, the anthropocene effects of silicon addiction and the race of computing, socio-philosophical problems of management in situations of high uncertainty, political strategies for sustainable development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 95-113 [Access article in PDF] Further Buddhist Christian Dialogue: A Review Article of Hee Sung Keel's Understanding Shinran: A Dialogical Approach Alfred BloomUniversity of Hawai'iIt was my original intention to write a review of Professor Keel's book. The exceptional quality of the book itself, however, and the issues it raises concerning Shin Buddhism call for a more detailed exploration and discussion. Therefore, this essay is (...) a review article offered in the interests of promoting the dialogue which Professor Keel has so eloquently and capably initiated.With the appearance of Professor Keel's book the development of Shin studies has reached a major milestone. Aspects of Shinran's (1173-1262) life and thought have occasionally been discussed by scholars in the West and by participants in Buddhist-Christian dialogue conferences. In this work we have a detailed analysis of Shinran's thought and the problems and questions that emerge from his interpretation of Mahayana Buddhism and Pure Land teaching. The breadth of Professor Keel's knowledge of Shinran and the depth of his insight into the teaching will carry Buddhist-Christian dialogue into the relatively unexplored area of Shin Buddhist-Christian dialogue.Professor Keel underscores the fact that the translation of Shinran's writings into English has significantly advanced Shin studies by making the teachings available to a wider range of inquirers. It also demonstrates the great responsibility shouldered by Shin scholars who have produced these texts. They must respond substantively and positively to the issues raised by Professor Keel.Though he is clearly Christian, he offers a lucid, sensitive, and fair summation of Shinran's religious experience and thought. He has opened the door of dialogue by presenting an interpretation of Shinran which requires a response. He does not take the position that he possesses the truth, nor does he attempt to refute Shinran in favor of Christianity. He does not judge Shinran to be in error, so much as to point to the paradoxes and dilemmas that are implied in his thought. We shall focus on these later.His volume addresses features of the study of Shinran. Chapter One, entitled The Easy Path, takes up the social and religious background and context of Pure Land [End Page 95] teaching out of which Shinran emerged. Particularly important is the teaching of Honen (1133-1212) whose interpretation of the sole practice of nembutsu (recitation of Amida Buddha's name) threatened the traditional Buddhist establishment. Honen taught that the nembutsu recitation was fully sufficient to realize birth in the Pure Land and ultimate enlightenment without depending on the elaborate, complex Buddhist institutions which offered arduous, rigorous methods for attaining liberation from the bondage of finitude. The elevation of a single practice as the way to enlightenment characterizes the new forms of Buddhism in the Kamakura period (1185-1332).The emphasis on the sole practice of nembutsu devotion marking Honen's Pure Land teaching, Dogen's dedication to zazen meditation alone, and Nichiren's insistence on the recitation of the title of the Lotus Sutra [Saddharma-pundarika-sutra] all countered the worldliness and decline of the contemporary Buddhist order of the period, as well as responded to the social turbulence and disorder arising from social change and shifts of power in Japan at that time. These developments also provided the background of Shinran's religious search and inspired his interpretation of Pure Land teaching which, while trying to clarify Honen against his critics, went beyond the master in significant areas.In Chapter Two, Shinran the Bonpu, Keel takes up Shinran's religious development and life. Bonpu means a foolish, common mortal, an ordinary person. As Keel points out, religion begins with problems intrinsic to human life. In the case of Shinran, he became deeply aware of the great evils of ignorance, greed, and anger within himself and in his world. Shinran's existential seriousness and honesty led him to draw "the ultimate conclusion from the message of his master [Honen] and [push] it to the extremity of paradoxicality, giving... (shrink)

According to the special-obligations challenge to the justice argument for more open borders, immigration restrictions to wealthier polities are justified because of special obligations owed to disadvantaged compatriots. I interrogate this challenge by considering three types of ground for special obligations amongst compatriots. First, the social relations that come with shared residence, such as participation in a territorially bounded, mutually beneficial scheme of cooperation; having fundamental interests especially vulnerable to the state’s exercise of power; being subject to coercion by the (...) state; and having pervasive and roughly equal stakes in a political society. Second, the civic relations of shared citizenship, such as participation in a common political enterprise. And third, the political relation of joint responsibility for the exercise of political power. In light of this analysis, I argue that whatever special obligations are owed by citizens (or residents) of wealthier polities to their domestic poor, they do not justify restrictions on immigration by the global poor. (shrink)

The main aim of the present paper is to show that the recently developed dialogical approach to Martin-Löf’s Constructive Type Theory, called Immanent Reasoning, provides the means for distinguishing François Recanati’s process of free enrichment and saturation, meets his own objections against perspectives based on unarticulated constituents and opens a new venue to pragmatic modulation, where the speaker-receiver interaction is integrated into the notion of enrichment. In such a setting enrichment operates on proof-objects that make fully articulated event-propositions true. The (...) point is that distinguishing what makes a proposition true from the proposition made true offers a simple and clean way to avoid conflating the contextual elements that enrich a proposition with the proposition itself. Such a framework abounds in means for expressing reference structures such as anaphora, including time and/or location reference. Furthermore, the notion of dependent types of CTT and the associated formation rules allow for a straightforward analysis of composition of meaning at work in Recanati’s cases concerning occasion meaning as determined by context. The brand of dialogical contextualism, grounded on the play-level, advocated herewith is not a form of propositional syncretism. The framework offers a straightforward response to the failure of third excluded in some instances of faultless disagreement without giving up the notion of propositional content. More generally, this suggests an alternative way to tackle the interface pragmatics semantics underlying the notion of pragmatic modulation by integrating into the interface the dialogical game of asking and giving reasons. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to further the conversation about the possibilities of dialogue with technology that Wegerif and Major have initiated. In their paper Wegerif and Major have argued that “constructive dialogue with technology is possible, even essential, and that this takes the form of opening a dialogic space” and they also “argue against Buber that dialogic spaces do not all take the same form, but that they take a multitude of forms depending, to a large extent, (...) on the mediating technology”. Reflecting on the paper by Wegerif and Major, the present paper attempts to highlight certain issues and possibilities for such a dialogue. In the first section of the paper, Wegerif and Major’s discussion of technology-mediated dialogue has been reflected upon. This is followed by a reflection on the possibility and challenges of engaging in a dialogue with technology as ‘other’ by referring to the case of a robot ‘Sophia’ getting citizenship in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The third section discusses certain concerns regarding the interpretation of Buber’s idea of dialogue by Wegerif and Major. The conclusive section highlights some key aspects that need to be considered while reflecting on the possibility of dialogue with technology. (shrink)

Creative collective actions can have the potential of true performative utterances opening windows of opportunities for new realities to emerge, for new possible worlds to be created—the realm of the arts is the realm of the “possible.” Group poetry writing can be a performative, dialogic act, and a transformative, revolutionary one as well. Collective artistic creations can break the isolation that the capitalistic patriarchal system imposes on us, helping us connect with one another, giving us hope.

In the paper "On the role of the research agenda in epistemic change", Olsson and Westlund have suggested that the notion of epistemic state employed in the standard framework of belief revision (Alchourrón et al. 1985; Gärdenfors 1988) should be extended to include a representation of the agent's research agenda (Olsson and Westlund 2006). The resulting framework will here be referred to as interrogative belief revision. In this paper, I attempt to deal with the problem of how research agendas (...) should change in contraction, a problem largely left open by Olsson and Westlund. Two desiderata of an appropriate solution are suggested: one is a principle of continuity, stating that changes in the research agenda should somehow reflect that certain long term research interests are kept fixed. The other desideratum, which is based on part of Olsson and Westlund's motivation for adding research agendas to the epistemic states, is that we should be able to account for how contraction may serve to open up new, fruitful hypotheses for investigation. In order to achieve these desiderata, I base my solution on a revised version of Olsson and Westlund's notion of epistemic state. (shrink)

Background: Compassion, understood as empathy for another who is experiencing physical, mental, emotional and/or spiritual suffering, is an essential element of our shared understandings of nursing and the constitution of the professional nurse. Theoretical foundation: Charles Taylor account of ethics which concerns ‘what or who is it good to be’ rather than the predominant analytical moral philosophy approach which concentrates on ‘what ought one to do’ is the core concern of this discussion. An ontological appreciation of our shared human condition (...) is the premise upon which the discussion is based. Discussion: This article proposes that concept by opening a dialogical space, nurses can engage in reflection and sense making wherein they explore individually and collectively the conflicts and confusions encountered in their day-to-day work. Through their dialogues, nurses – individually and collectively – orient and reorient themselves and each other towards what they see as meaningful and purposeful in their lives and in doing so they are well positioned to reaffirm their commitment to compassion as a value which both anchors and orients their day-to-day work. Implications: The provision of opportunities in the workplace, in the form of dialogue, to articulate often unspoken assumptions and frameworks in which nursing work is carried out can not only initiate the building of pathways of support but also assist nurses reaffirm their compassion – arguably the essence of their nursing practice. (shrink)

This study examines the discursive history and interactive aspects of the opening statement in Anglo-American courts. Informed by the concepts of stance and engagement, the study explicates the process of conceptual interaction which turns the jurors into co-constructors of the discourse, thereby making the opening statement fictively dialogic. Drawing upon 51 opening statements as recorded in Proceedings of the Old Bailey, between 1759 and 1789, the qualitative and quantitative analysis reveals that interactive devices are an integral part of the (...) genre, and that pronouns appear to occur most frequently, followed by the lawyers’ use of attitude markers, questions, and reported discourse, respectively. With these devices, the lawyers are likely to be able to prime the jury into viewing the events and participants in a given direction. (shrink)

Javier Muguerza’s Ethics and Perplexity makes a highly original contribution to the debate over dialogical reason. The work opens with a letter that establishes a parallel between Ethics and Perplexity and Maimonides’s classic Guide of the Perplexed. It concludes with an interview that repeatedly strikes sparks on Spanish philosophy’s emergence from its “long quarantine,” as Muguerza puts it. These informal pieces—witty, informative, conversational—orbit the nucleus of the work: a formidable critique of dialogical reason. The result is a volume by turns (...) vivid and profound. (shrink)

Buber’s distinction between the ‘I-It’ mode and the ‘I-Thou’ mode is seminal for dialogic education. While Buber introduces the idea of dialogic space, an idea which has proved useful for the analysis of dialogic education with technology, his account fails to engage adequately with the role of technology. This paper offers an introduction to the significance of the I-It/I-Thou duality of technology in relation with opening dialogic space. This is followed by a short schematic history of (...) educational technology which reveals the role technology plays, not only in opening dialogic space, but also in expanding dialogic space. The expansion of dialogic space is an expansion of what it means to be ‘us’ as dialogic engagement facilitates the incorporation, into our shared sense of identity, of aspects of reality that are initially experienced as alien or ‘other’. Augmenting Buber with an alternative understanding of dialogic space enables us to see how dialogue mediated by technology, as well as dialogue with monologised fragments of technology, can, through education, lead to an expansion of what it means to be human. (shrink)

Body and image are crucial to the elaboration of both Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy andClaire Denis’s work in cinema. Nancy’s short book about the body, Corpus ,though it may initially have appeared as a minor work in his œuvre, has since been shown,and notably since the intervention of Jacques Derrida, as the cornerstone of much ofNancy’s late thought. As Derrida demonstrates, Nancy’s interest in the body turnsaround the crucial trope of touch which comes to stand, in his philosophy, as the marker (...) ofthe most fundamental limits that shape our understanding of and interaction with theworld: between inside and outside, subject and object, matter and meaning. As such, theconcept of touch frequently recurs in the discussion of art works, where the inscription of amaterial trace coincides with, or touches upon an evanescent sense. Nancy’s discussions ofartistic meaning have frequently centred around images – both painterly and filmic – asthe phenomena whereby the real, in manifesting its presence, is granted a certain sense.1Claire Denis, in common with the vast majority of live-action filmmakers, necessarily dealsin images and bodies – images of bodies – but her frequent refusal to provide thetraditional cinematic signifiers of psychological depth often means that the spectator isbrought up short before the strangeness of these bodies as bodies, which in turn opens upan interrogation as to the sense of her images. The mutual fascination that exists betweenNancy and Denis is well established, demonstrated by Nancy’s detailed, published engagements with Denis’s films – Beau travail , Trouble Every Day , L’Intrus – as well as by Denis’s short film portrait of the philosopher – Vers Nancy –and her cryptic appropriation of his text L’Intrus . But their engagement witheach other’s work appears in the image of Nancy’s somewhat abstract conception of touch:an approaching and withdrawing, a momentary proximity to the other that serves as muchto consolidate the stable identity of the one as it does to share in the identity of the other.Mirroring this intermittent relationship, this article will seek not to over-state theinterpenetration of the two œuvres, but merely to sketch some points of contact betweenthem, turning notably around the fascinating, but perhaps ultimately untouchable figureof the wound. (shrink)

In European research and innovation policy, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science (OS) encompass two co-existing sets of ambitions concerning systemic change in the practice of research and innovation. This paper is an exploratory attempt to uncover synergies and differences between RRI and OS, by interrogating what motivates their respective transformative agendas. We offer two storylines that account for the specific contexts and dynamics from which RRI and OS have emerged, which in turn offer entrance points to further (...) unpacking what ‘opening up’ to society means with respect to the transformative change agendas that are implicit in the two agendas. We compare differences regarding the ‘how’ of opening up in light of the ‘why’ to explore common areas of emphasis in both OS and RRI. We argue that while both agendas align with mission-oriented narratives around grand societal challenges, OS tends to emphasize efficiency and technical optimisation over RRI’s emphasis on normative concerns and democracy deficits, and that the two agendas thus contrast in their relative legitimate emphasis on doable outcomes versus desirable outcomes. In our conclusion, we reflect on the future outlook for RRI and OS’ co-existence and uptake, and on what their respective ambitions for transformation might mean for science-society scholars and scholarship. (shrink)

The Talking-Tree or Palaver Tree is a designated location in many African traditions where the community comes together to discuss, in a peaceful and constructive manner, issues of common interest. It is conceived as an open gathering space of interactive communication led by the stance that finding a compromise or common solution is the best way to consolidate a community. At times, the interchange taking place at a Talking-Tree may also transform into conflict management. Conflict management unfolds into several specific (...) patterns of argumentation including those that aim at deciding if some given accusation is justified or not. The main aim of this chapter is to study, within the Baule tradition of Talking-Tree debates involving accusations of wrongdoing, the meaning explanation underlying proverbs, which constitute the most fundamental elements of these debates. More precisely our study, based on a pragmatic approach to meaning, will focus on the distinction drawn by linguist Kouadio between ascertainment, logical and moral Baule proverbs by distinguishing their different role in a Talking-Tree debate. One of the main results of our approach is that it makes it patent that drawing a conclusion from a Talking-Tree debate is grounded on contentual functional links, rather than on the analysis of logical constants. This research should set the basis for a larger epistemological research on the structure of argumentation patterns born and developed in Africa, where meaning and knowledge are constituted during dialogical interaction. The dialogical system underlying such form of argumentation, that we call Dialogues of functional reasoning by proverbs, we think provides a general instrument for the study of patterns of argumentation beyond the African tradition. (shrink)

Transition economies have inherited of a lot of outdated or blackwarded facilities in many industries from the socialist period. Restructuring such enterprises or industries need massive inputs of investment and technology. Privatisation and foreign direct investment provide answers to this problem, but at the price of important lost of control over the concerned bodies. Here we consider the situation of Hungarian telecoms which have been successfully privatised to Deutsch Telecom and try to assess the results of the operation and the (...) effects on the potential growth of the industry and more generally on the Hungarian economy.Les économies en transition ont hérité de la période socialiste un certain nombre d’entreprises et de secteurs aux installations largement obsolètes. Leur mise à niveau constitue un préalable à l’amélioration qualitative des productions, des processus de production, et par conséquent à une élévation progressive des salaires réels et des niveaux de vie. Cette opération nécessite des injections massives de capitaux et de technologie. La privatisation des entreprises concernées, en particulier au bénéfice d’investisseurs étrangers, peut apporter une solution, mais au prix d’une perte importante de contrôle.Ici, nous examinons la situation des télécoms en Hongrie, qui ont été privatisées au profit de l’entreprise elle-même, du point de vue de l’industrie des télécommunications, et plus généraleme- nt in s’interroge sur les effets qu’elle peut avoir sur l’ensemble de l’industrie hongroise. (shrink)

The continuing relevance of Ludwik Fleck’s work, above its status as a classic in science studies, lies in his reflexive conceptualisation of an open epistemology. As early as 1929, in the midst of a broad debate about a ‘crisis’ of science, Fleck offered a socio-historical analysis of the widely assumed crisis in form of an epistemology. He presented his argument, which was in itself an interrogation of the metaphysical foundations of science, as a reflexive and political intervention to this debate. (...) His book of 1935, Genesis and development of a scientific fact, in which he developed the notion of the thought collective, can be read in a similar vein as a functional analysis of science under National Socialism. His traumatic experiences during this period fostered his drive for science, democracy and epistemology. When he returned to the epistemological debate in 1946, he sharpened the presentation of his argument, presenting it rhetorically as an ironic political dialogue. This surprising text unfolds as an epistemological intervention by a participant observer. In this respect, Fleck’s epistemology, combining the historical analysis with reflexive intervention, is still a message in a bottle. (shrink)