The cultural consumption research landscape of the 21st century is marked by an increasing cross-disciplinary fermentation. At the same time, cultural theory and analysis have been marked by successive ‘inter-’ turns, most notably with regard to the Big Four: multimodality (or intermodality), interdiscursivity, transmediality (or intermediality), and intertextuality. This book offers an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform for accommodating these notions. To this end, a call for a return to Foucault is issued via a critical engagement with the (...) so-called practice-turn. This re-turn does not seek to reconstitute venerably Foucauldianism, but to theorize ‘inters-’ as vanishing points that challenge the integrity of discrete cultural orders in non-convergent manners. The propounded interdiscursivity approach is offered as a reading strategy that permeates the contemporary cultural consumption phenomena that are scrutinized in this book, against a pan-consumptivist framework. By drawing on qualitative and mixed methods research designs, facilitated by CAQDAS software, the empirical studies that are hosted here span a vivid array of topics that are directly relevant to both traditional and new media researchers, such as the consumption of ideologies in Web 2.0 social movements, the ability of micro-celebrities to act as cultural game-changers, the post-loyalty abjective consumption ethos. The theoretically novel approaches on offer are coupled with methodological innovations in areas such as user-generated content, artists’ branding, and experiential consumption. (shrink)

How important is the ability to freely control eye movements for reading comprehension? And how does the parser make use of this freedom? We investigated these questions using coregistration of eye movements and event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) while participants read either freely or in a computer‐controlled word‐by‐word format (also known as RSVP). Word‐by‐word presentation and natural reading both elicited qualitatively similar ERP effects in response to syntactic and semantic violations (N400 and P600 effects). Comprehension was better in free (...) reading but only in trials in which the eyes regressed to previous material upon encountering the anomaly. A more fine‐grained ERP analysis revealed that these regressions were strongly associated with the well‐known P600 effect. In trials without regressions, we instead found sustained centro‐parietal negativities starting at around 320 ms post‐onset; however, these negativities were only found when the violation occurred in sentence‐final position. Taken together, these results suggest that the sentence processing system engages in strategic choices: In response to words that don't match built‐up expectations, it can either explore alternative interpretations (reflected by regressions, P600 effects, and good comprehension) or pursue a “good‐enough” processing strategy that tolerates a deficient interpretation (reflected by progressive saccades, sustained negativities, and relatively poor comprehension). (shrink)

Whilst this paper was initially part of a larger project tracing the development of Anglo-American thought from the colonial through to the post-colonial era, below it stands alone as reflection on the colonialism of John Stuart Mill read from a post-colonial perspective. It aims to show that Mill's views on colonial rule were largely informed by his principle of liberty which, in turn, was based on his qualitative utilitarianism. The driving force behind his colonialism, as with his (...) work in general, was his unwavering belief in the importance of human progress and development. Mill never believed, as did many of his contemporaries, that the ‘backward’ societies of the colonies were inherently inferior, but rather that they needed paternal intervention from more civilised, progressive societies in order to stimulate growth in that spontaneous human development was not inevitable. When read in this light Mill's views on colonial rule, while culturally bigoted and ethnocentric, appear less contradictory to his liberalism as a whole. (shrink)

In this article we explore the relationship between semiotic analysis of images and quantitative analysis of vast image corpora, in particular the work produced by Lev Manovich and the Cultural Analytics Lab, called “Media Visualization.” Media Visualization has been chosen as corpus because of its metavisual operation (images are visualized and analyzed by images) and its innovating way of conceiving analysis: by visual instruments. In this paper semiotics is used as an approach to Media Visualization and taken as an object (...) of study as well, especially visual semiotics. In this sense, a comparison between visual semiotics (close reading of small corpora) and quantitative analyses of images (distant reading of vast collections) are conducted from a semiotic point of view. Post-Greimassian semiotics guides this study with respect to the issue of the image-within-an-image and metavisual visualization; Peircean semiotics is employed to explain and develop the notion of diagram. (shrink)

The book asks how we can make sense of career paths for PhD graduates, something that has rarely been systematically studied. It offers a coherent synthesis of the empirically-based insights that arose from the experiences of 48 early career researchers, who were participants in a 10-year qualitative longitudinal research program. The book has the power to inform other researchers’ conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of post-PhD career trajectories. The authors draw on the conceptual lens of ‘identity-trajectory’, (...) which emerged from their research program, to examine the decision-making processes underpinning the careers of PhD graduates, whether contingent researchers and teachers, assistant professors within the academy or professionals elsewhere. The book highlights the role of personal agency in negotiating academic and non-academic work and careers within broader personal lives. It will be compelling reading for researchers and students working in the areas of Education and Sociology, particularly those with an interest in examining career development and decision-making. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Special Issue on 'post-truth'. The contributions to this special issue try between them to strike a right balance. To establish how new ‘post-truthism’ really is – or isn’t. To seek a point of reflection on whatever is new in our current socio-political straits. And to consider seriously how philosophy can help. Whether by wondering about the extent to which reason, or truth, may rightly, if one follows Wittgenstein, be viewed in certain respects as a (...) constraint upon thought or opinion. Or indeed by wondering whether we still have a long way to go in approaching truth at all. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the use of depth psychology in the interpretation of ancient texts is irrelevant and methodologically unsound. Several typical Jungian archetypes, such as the shadow, the primordial mother, and the hero, were identified, interpreted and commented on from a post-Jungian perspective. The apocryphal Book of Baruch has typically been studied as a prime example of penitential prayer in the late Second Temple Period. In this study, the book was approached from the perspective of post-Jungian (...) literary criticism. While Jungian literary criticism has become unfashionable as a result of Jung’s anti-feminist and anti-Semitic ideas, the usefulness of his theory to criticise itself was demonstrated. Although Jung’s work is haunted by racism, anti-feminism, and antisemitism, his work may still be useful for literary criticism from a psychological perspective. Contribution: The article demonstrated the value of the depth psychological approach to the interpretation of biblical material. (shrink)

This paper will apply post-structural semiotic theories to study the texts of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. I will study the texts’ own articulations of concepts of ‘meaning’, analyze the mechanisms they use to sustain their senses of validity, and point out how the texts depend (without losing their mathematical rigor) on sustaining some shifts of meaning. I will demonstrate that the texts manifest semiotic effects, which we usually associate with poetry and everyday speech. I will conclude with an analysis (...) of how the picture I paint relates to an ethics of mathematical production. (shrink)

'Practices without foundations' is, in genesis and in effect, a discussion of the following quotation , which serves therefore as an epigraph to it: ;Nelson Goodman's discussion of the 'new riddle of induction' ... deserves comparison with Wittgenstein's work. Indeed ... the basic strategy of Goodman's treatment of the 'new riddle' is strikingly close to Wittgenstein's sceptical arguments .... Although our paradigm of Wittgenstein's problem was formulated for a mathematical problem it ... is completely general and can be applied to (...) any rule or word. In particular, if it were formulated for the language of color impressions, as Wittgenstein himself suggests, Goodman's 'grue', or something similar, would play the role of 'quus'. But the problem would not be Goodman's about induction--"Why not predict that grass, which has been grue in the past will be grue in the future?"--but Wittgenstein's about meaning: "Who is to say that in the past I didn't mean grue by 'green', so that now I should call the sky, not the grass, 'green'?" vskip9pt ;This fascinating remark of Kripke's suggests a project, that of charting out both the interpretive and philosophic points of connection and disconnection between Wittgenstein, Goodman and Kripke. That project is this dissertation. ;My work severely tests Kripke's remark. For I argue that Kripke not only misreads Wittgenstein, but also mistakes the extremity of the 'scepticism' of his version of Wittgenstein for the priority of the philosophical puzzle that Goodman has bequeathed to us. ;To reach this conclusion, I show that Kripke's Wittgenstein's 'meaning-scepticism' is unanswerable if statable, but actually unstatable; and that, under certain interpretations, the same is true of putative scepticisms derivable from Goodman's text. The upshot is that the sceptical reading of most twentieth century philosophy must be displaced in favour of 'post-scepticism' and 'philosophical ethnography'. The latter concepts, sketched toward the end of the dissertation, are perhaps its telos. (shrink)

S(zp,zp) performs an innovative analysis of one of modern logic's most celebrated cornerstones: the proof of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. The book applies the semiotic theories of French post- structuralists such as Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze to shed new light on a fundamental question: how do mathematical signs produce meaning and make sense? S(zp,zp) analyses the text of the proof of Gödel's result, and shows that mathematical language, like other forms of language, enjoys the full complexity (...) of language as a process, with its embodied genesis, constitutive paradoxical forces and unbounded shifts of meaning. These effects do not infringe on the logico-mathematical validity of Gödel's proof. Rather, they belong to a mathematical unconscious that enables the successful function of mathematical texts for a variety of different readers. S(zp,zp) breaks new ground by synthesising mathematical logic and post-structural semiotics into a new form of philosophical fabric, and offers an original way of bridging the gap between the "two cultures". (shrink)

Re-reads Marx in light of the contemporary critical interrogation of subjectivity.

The Concept “hope,” (Greek), appears in two of Heraclitus’s fragments. This essay offers an attentive reading of these fragments and examines the role of hope in Heraclitus’s thinking. The essay is divided into two parts. The first part examines the meaning of the Greek notion for hope, (Greek), by looking into archaic and classical sources, particularly the myth about the origin of hope in Hesiod’s Works and Days. Based upon the renewed understanding of the concept, the second part of (...) the essay examines Heraclitus’s use of the concept of hope and demonstrates the central role of hope in Heraclitus’s thinking. (shrink)

This project is an attempt to frame and develop the questions: What is the relation between the economy, what Marx called the mode of production, and transformations of subjectivity and social relations? How is it possible to think these relations without reducing one to the other, or effacing one for the sake of the other? In short, how can we think the materiality of subjectivity? Several different discourses and lines of research provoke these questions. First, recent and not so recent (...) work within continental philosophy in relation to the "critique of the subject," argues for an investigation of the practices of knowledge, power, and desire productive of historically determinate forms of subjectivity. The second line of research includes a history of heterogeneous Marxist thinkers all of whom attempt to locate in Marx's texts a series of questions, largely unresolved, regarding the relations between production and power, politics and the economy, culture and materiality. To identify these two discourses as provocations, however, is not to suggest that what is at stake in this project is the simple adjudication, or settling of accounts, between Marxism and post-structuralism---a question which would only be of interest to a handful of academics. Rather the investigation into these two lines of research has as its framework a larger and somewhat inchoate series of questions regarding the contemporary socio-historical condition. These questions all begin from the intuition that contemporary society, what is called "post-industrial," "postmodern," or "information society," entails a fundamental transformation of the relations, or an accelerated breakdown of the divisions, between the spheres of the economy, culture, politics, and subjectivity. I argue that these questions, and the current juncture which they attempt to grasp, can be clarified through an articulation of the complex relation between the mode of production and the production of subjectivity; such an articulation takes the form of a genealogy of various critical junctures in the writing of Marx, the debates within western Marxism and critical theory, and contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

The author observes that Plato's Republic and Job have a common premise, namely the extremely unjust treatment of a just person to prove that the person is just, proceeding with a close comparative commentary on both works.

The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requires as a condition of accreditation that every health care institution -- hospital, nursing home, or home care agency -- have a standing mechanism to address ethical issues. Most organizations have chosen to fulfill this requirement with an interdisciplinary ethics committee. The best of these committees are knowledgeable, creative, and effective resources in their institutions. Many are wellmeaning but lack the information, experience, and skills to negotiate adequately the complex ethical (...) issues that arise in clinical and organizational settings. Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees is the first resource designed to address the range of work performed by ethics committees as part of their multiple responsibilities, including education, case consultation, and policy development. It features an eight-chapter curriculum reviewing the content of contemporary health care bioethics and discussing the ethical foundations of clinical practice, with each subsequent section focusing on a set of ethical issues that commonly arise in the clinical setting. Through case studies, the authors explore issues such as informed consent and refusal, decision making and decisional capacity, truth telling, decision-making concerns of minors, end-of-life issues, palliation, justice in and access to health care services, and organizational ethics. They offer sample policies and procedures, draft guidelines and protocols, and key legal cases. Providing both a strong theoretical foundation and practical applications, this handbook will be essential reading for every member of a health care ethics committee. (shrink)

The term “deep history” refers to historical accounts framed temporally not by the advent of a written record but by evolutionary events (Smail 2008; Shryock and Smail 2011). The presumption of deep history is that the events of today have a history that traces back beyond written history to events in the evolutionary past. For human kinship, though, even forming a history of kinship, let alone a deep history, remains problematic, given limited, relevant data (Trautman et al. 2011). With regard (...) to a deep history, one conjecture is that human kinship evolved from primate social systems in a gradual, more-or-less continuous manner (see Chapais 2008); another conjecture is that kinship, in accordance with the incest account of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1969) or the fanciful, tetradic account of Nicholas J. Allen (1986), “comes into existence with a leap” (Trautman et al. 2011: 176); and yet another, the account to be developed in this paper, is that kinship, as it is understood and lived by culture bearers today, is the consequence of a profound and qualitative evolutionary transformation going from an ancestral primate-like social system predicated on extensive face-to-face interaction to the relation-based social systems that characterize human societies (Read 2012). (shrink)

Since the mid-1800s, clergy, doctors, other clinicians, and military personnel who specifically facilitate their work have been designated “non-combatants”, protected from being targeted in return for providing care on the basis of clinical need alone. While permitted to use weapons to protect themselves and their patients, they may not attempt to gain military advantage over an adversary. The rationale for these regulations is based on sound arguments aimed both at reducing human suffering, but also the ultimate advantage of the nation-state (...) fielding non-combatant staff. However, this is sometimes not immediately apparent to combatant colleagues. Clinicians in the armed force are also military officers, owing a “dual loyalty” that can create conflict if their non-combatant status is not well understood. Historical examples of doctors breaching their responsibilities include prioritisation of combat capability over the rights of individual soldiers (as occurred when scarce medical resources were allocated to soldiers more likely to return to battle in preference to those most likely to die without them), use of physicians to facilitate prisoner interrogation, medical research or treatment to enhance physical performance at the expense of health, application of Medical Rules of Eligibility according to factors other than clinical need, provision of treatment contingent upon support for military objectives, and use of medical knowledge to enhance weapons. However, not being a combatant party to a conflict does not imply that the non-combatant clinician cannot act in the national interest. Indeed, by adhering to the same universal ethics as their civilian colleagues, military clinicians provide optimal care to their own troops, facilitate freedom of action in host nations, and build positive international relationships during the conflict and in the post-conflict state. (shrink)

Finlayson argues that ‘post-truth’ is nothing new. In this response, I motivate a more modest position: that it is something new, to some extent, albeit neither radically new nor brand new. I motivate this position by examining the case of climate-change-denial, called by some post-truth before 'post-truth'. I examine here the (over-determined) nature of climate-denial. What precisely are its attractions?; How do they manage to outweigh its glaring, potentially-catastrophic downsides? I argue that the most crucial of all (...) attractions of climate-denial is that it involves the denier in a kind of fantasised power over reality itself: namely, over the nature of our planetary system, and thus of life itself. Climate-denial pretends to give the denier a power greater than that of nature, including in nature's 'rebellion' against humanity, what James Lovelock calls Gaia's incipient and coming 'fever'. Climate-denial seems to give the denier freedom from truth itself, in the case of the most consequential truth at present bearing down upon humanity. The most crucial of all the attractions of climate-denial is then that it provides would-be libertarians an ultimate freedom. They reject the reality of human-triggered climate-change, in the end, because they are unwilling to be ‘bound’ by anything, not even truth itself. Climate-denial has been around for a while, but not for more than 30-35 years or so. I thus suggest that Finlayson is right to be sceptical of the claim that post-truth is radically new and extremely recent, but I suggest that it is relativelynew and has been with us for only about a generation or at most two. Keywords: climate-change, climate-denial, libertarianism, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein. (shrink)

In Predication and Ontology A. Kalbarczyk provides the first monograph-length study of the Arabic reception of Aristotle’s Categories. At the center of attention is the critical reappraisal of that treatise by Ibn Sīnā, better known in the Latin West as Avicenna. Ibn Sīnā’s reading of the Categories is examined in the context of his wider project of rearranging the transmitted body of philosophical knowledge. Against the background of the late ancient commentary tradition and subsequent exegetical efforts, Ibn Sīnā’s Kitāb (...) al-Maqūlāt of the Šifāʾ is interpreted as a milestone in the gradual reshuffle of the relationship between logic proper and ontology. In order to assess the philosophical impact of this realignment, some of the subsequent developments in Ibn Sīnā’s writings and in the emerging post-Avicennian tradition are also taken into account. The thematic focus lies on the two fundamental classification schemes which Aristotle introduces in the treatise: the fourfold division of Cat. 2 and the tenfold scheme of Cat. 4. They both pose the question of whether and how the manner in which an expression is predicated relates to extra-linguistic reality. As the study intends to show, this question is one of the driving forces of Ibn Sīnā’s momentous reform of the Aristotelian curriculum. (shrink)

In this essay, the philosophies of John Dewey and Martin Heidegger are compared specifically on the topic of the productionist metaphysics. In this comparison, the readings of Larry Hickman and Michael E. Zimmerman are utilized to highlight the noted philosophers’ views. In Hickman’s reading of Dewey, production is the key virtue of the entire pragmatic theory and the evolution of humanity through the improvement of technique and productivity the focus of human life.Hickman’s reading of Dewey, deemed the “technological” (...) reading of Dewey, provides proof of support of the productionist metaphysics view of the West that Heidegger deemed as the root of the “darkening” of the world. To illustrate the historical calamity that Heidegger deemed directly connected to this brand of metaphysics, which he believed began with the ancient Greeks and since has expanded to all areas of human life, the reading of Zimmerman is applied. (shrink)

Pike, Gregory K In the year 2000, Canberra-based writer Melinda Tankard Reist placed notices and advertisements in various places about a project she was conducting on 'Abortion Grief'. Over 200 women responded, bravely prepared to tell their stories. The resulting book, Giving Sorrow Words: Women's stories of grief after abortion1 makes harrowing reading. Grief and pain followed these women down through the years and sometimes decades. Their accounts, as well as the numerous qualitative studies into women's experiences after (...) Abortion, and the anecdotal observations coming from post-abortion care services5 are evidence that abortion leaves a significant mark on some women. (shrink)

The study combines theories of myth, popular culture, structuralism and poststructuralism to explain the enormous appeal of Star Wars and Harry Potter. Although much research already exists on both stories individually, this book is the first to explicitly bring them together in order to explore their set-up and the ways in which their structures help produce ideologies on gender and ethnicity. Hereby, the comparison yields central insights into the workings of modern myth and uncovers structure as integral to the success (...) of the popular genre. It addresses academic audiences and all those wishing to approach the tales from a fresh angle. (shrink)

This book should be required reading for anyone who cares about the realism/antirealism issue, but also, and perhaps above all, for those who have tired of the dispute because they suspect it is meaningless. In response to those who thus turn their backs on the issue, Professor Cortens argues at length, and with great clarity and rigor, that “unless they give up on philosophy altogether” they will likely be unable “to avoid discussing the issues that give life to these (...) labels”. The reason is that for some time philosophy has been characterized by all-encompassing struggles over the nature of thought, language, and their relation to the world. In these struggles, “one party will naturally view the other as repudiating everything all at once,” especially when the dispute is about “whether it is we who... ‘divide the world into objects,’” or about “the reality of reference,” or about “whether meaning and psychological content are objective matters of fact”. We friends of metaphysics run the risk that “we might wake up one day to discover, much to our horror, that our best philosophers of mind and language have robbed us of the ability to say or think anything at all, much less to speculate about the fundamental features of reality that concern the metaphysician.... Small comfort to be told that, once we become fully converted to the strange new conception of thought and language, we may continue to speak as though we believed in a world”. (shrink)

The present paper suggests to consider Kierkegaard’s use of Abraham’s story in Fear and Trembling in regulative terms, that is, to consider it as a model – not for our moral behaviour but rather for our religious behaviour. To do so, I first rely on recent literature to argue that Kierkegaard should be regarded as a distinctively post-Kantian philosopher: namely, a philosopher who goes beyond Kant in a way that is nevertheless true to the spirit of Kant’s original critical (...) philosophy. Then, I present a post-Kantian reading of Fear and Trembling, focusing on the problematic implications that result from comparing this text with Hegel’s theory of recognition. Finally, I submit that sacrifice in Fear and Trembling is a regulative notion in a Kantian sense. This interpretation addresses some of the most problematic aspects of the text. I conclude that the regulativity of sacrifice may be regarded as an important and perhaps an essential component of Kierkegaard’s overall philosophical strategy. (shrink)

Cultural studies constitutes one of the most multi-perspectival research fields. Amidst a polyvocal theoretical landscape that spans different disciplines semiotics is of foundational value. In an attempt to effectively address the conceptual richness of the semiotic discipline, a wide roster of perspectives is evoked in this book against the background of a diverse set of cultural phenomena, including structuralist and post-structuralist semiotics, semiotically informed psychoanalysis, cultural semiotics, film semiotics, sociosemiotics, but also, to a lesser extent, music semiotics and more (...) niche, but certainly promising perspectives, such as postmodern semiotics, ethnosemiotics, phenomenological semiotics and rhetorical semiotics. The recruitment of semiotic frameworks and concepts is enacted against the background of advances in cultural studies (thus reinstating the dialogue with a discipline that took form by drawing on semiotics in the first place) and the various research streams that have become consolidated within the wider cultural studies territory, such as memory studies, celebrity studies, death studies, cultural geography, visual studies. At the same time, the offered readings engage dialogically with Consumer Culture Theory. As regards the diversity of cultural phenomena that constitute the empirical substratum of the offered analyses, music, cinema, new media, live-shows, branding, advertising and literature constitute the focal areas of concern. Under the aegis of a permeating textuality paradigm, the ubiquitously applicable tools of multimodal analysis, and time-hallowed qualitative research methods facilitated by advances in videography and archival research, the featured semiotic readings aim at scrutinizing the wider social implications and communicative functions of popular cultural artefacts, spectacles, processes and places, such as Lady Gaga’s monstrosity, Dio’s memorial, experiential consumption events, the ice-bucket challenge video meme. (shrink)

The evolution from pre-human primates to modern Homo sapiens is a complex one involving many domains, ranging from the material to the social to the cognitive, both at the individual and the community levels. This article focuses on a critical qualitative transition that took place during this evolution involving both the social and the cognitive domains. For the social domain, the transition is from the face-to-face forms of social interaction and organization that characterize the non-human primates that reached, with (...) Pan, a hiatus due to the centripetal effects that highly individualized behavior has on a social system. The transition is to the relation-based forms of social organization that evolved in the hominins ancestral to Homo sapiens and are universal in human societies today. For the cognitive domain, this transition involves going from behavior responding mainly to phenomenal level sensory inputs to behavior formed in accordance with the concept of a relation, initially abstracted from behavior patterns, then extending the concept of a relation beyond abstraction from behavior patterns to the concept of a relation generated recursively through constructing the relation of a relation. This extension made possible the construction of systems of relations; initially genealogical systems of relations constructed culturally using the logic of recursion, and subsequently, the symbolic, computational systems of kin term relations referred to by anthropologists as kinship terminologies. The latter are “constructed realities” in the sense this term is used by cultural anthropologists. It follows that the evolution of relation-based systems of social interaction is not adequately accounted for through population model evolutionary accounts such as the Dual Inheritance Theory of human evolution since “constructed realities” constitute collectively and publicly shared cultural knowledge rather than the individually and privately possessed knowledge that is assumed in the population model framework for human evolution. (shrink)

There have been historical and literary studies on the pre-deuteronomistic narrative of 1 Samuel 21 and 22. However, there have been few studies on the reception of Doeg the Edomite among the exilic and post-exilic communities. This article tries to show how the minor character of Doeg the Edomite in 1 Samuel 21 and 22 was understood by the exilic and post-exilic communities after the fall of Jerusalem. With this objective in mind, the article analyses the literary structure (...) of 1 Samuel 21 and 22 with a focus on Doeg. Along with the literary approach to the text, it examines the historical setting of the exilic and post-exilic communities regarding their cultural memory and enmity towards Edomites. The conflict between Edom and Israel has been constantly described in the biblical text including the Deuteronomistic History. The enmity of Israel towards Edom had been worse after the fall of Jerusalem. The pre-deuteronomistic record of Doeg in 1 Samuel 21 and 22 would have been used as a propagandistic device to reinforce the enmity of the exilic and post-exilic communities towards Edom and Edomites. (shrink)

Nichols and Bruno claim that the folk judge that psychological continuity is necessary for personal identity. In this article, we evaluate this claim. First, we argue that it is likely that in thinking about hypothetical cases of transformations, the folk do not use a unitary concept of personal identity, but instead rely on different concepts of ‘person’, ‘identity’, and ‘individual’. Identity can be ascribed even when post-transformation individuals are no longer categorized as persons. Second, we provide new empirical evidence (...) suggesting that the folk do not consider psychological continuity to be necessary for an individual to be categorized as a person or for ascribing identity over time and through transformations. In this, we assume, along with Nichols and Bruno, that folk judgments about identity can be read off the use of proper names. Furthermore, we raise some doubts about the ability of current experimental designs to adequately distinguish between qualitative and numerical identity jud.. (shrink)

This article theorizes the connection between political distrust and conspiracy theories through a post-political framework. Following Luc Boltanski’s focus on the critical capacities of ordinary actors, it builds on interviews with participants of the Yellow Vest Movement in France who hold conspiratorial views of Covid-19 and the vaccine. The article explores how the interviewees’ critique mirrors that of post-political theorists. In particular, I use Rancière’s notion of subjectification and politics to theorize how conspiracy theories function as a means (...) of dissent in the interviewees’ understanding of their experiences as well as in their own critique of and disillusionment with politics in France. As such, this article explores how political trust affected reactions to the pandemic, how political trust is interconnected with conspiracy theories and finally how such conspiracy theories can be viewed as biproducts of the post-political order. (shrink)

Jones' proposed application of Optimality Theory assumes the primary kinship data are genealogical definitions of kin terms. This, however, ignores the fact that these definitions can be predicted from the computational, algebralike structural logic of kinship terminologies, as has been discussed and demonstrated in numerous publications. The richness of human kinship systems derives from the cultural knowledge embedded in kinship terminologies as symbolic computation systems, not the post hoc constraints devised by Jones.

In this book, Fitzpatrick and May make the case for a reimagined approach to critical ethnography in education. Exploring how critical ethnography works within contemporary inquiries, the authors argue that many researchers already do the kind of critical ethnography that readers imagine, whether they call their studies critical or not. Such studies employ the tenets of ethnography and are grounded in work that attends to, reimagines, troubles, and questions notions of power, in/justice, in/equity, and marginalization. Understanding the tensions and complexities (...) that come with the posts-including poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and posthumanism-Fitzpatrick and May argue that social, theoretical, and political issues in education can be more profoundly viewed through a lens that is personal, embodied, and lived: critical ethnography. Offering a wide-ranging and insightful commentary on approaches and influences on critical ethnography over time, Fitzpatrick and May interrogate how it has moved and engaged with ongoing theoretical developments to now include a wide range of possible analytical approaches. With extensive examples, excerpts, and personal discussions, they demonstrate how critical ethnography is an expansive, eclectic, and inclusive methodology. Linking work across a range of topics, this book highlights the ongoing importance of this methodology in education. It is essential reading for students, scholars, and researchers in qualitative inquiry, ethnography, educational anthropology, educational research methods, sociology of education, and philosophy of education. (shrink)

The paper presents a critical analysis of the current state of qualitative research approaches in the social sciences and humanities within Slovak academic institutions. The author has been inspired by the metaphor of academic “barbaricum”. This analytical category is based on a model of the relationship between core and periphery, which has no clear function or organisational logic. From the scientific point of view, the core/centre should produce and innovate the theory, whereas the periphery should apply it. In Slovakia—contrary (...) to the situation in Western academia—, the last two decades have seen a growth in the numbers of academic institutions dealing with the humanities (and partly with the social sciences), and stagnation in qualitative social research. The author suggests that if the Slovak social sciences aspire is to becoming part of the so-called European academic space, then this will certainly not be possible without much stronger and extensive support for social research based on qualitative approaches and methods. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager was sometimes viewed in the eighteenth-century as an argument conquering its whole demonstrative force not in the Pensées but in a passage of Locke’s Essay Concerning the Human Understanding (II, XXI, § 70) dealing with the preference to be given to a virtuous life when considering the possibility of another eternal life. In this paper, I intend to show that this interpretation is ill-founded. The argument of the wager highlights the discrepancy between the requirements of alethic reason on (...) the one side and of practical reason on the other side: the wager is to be seen not as a proposition, but as an act. When emphasizing the conditions on which this act can conform to rationality, the argument used of in the Pensées puts the comparison between a unity (my life ante mortem) and a multiplicity (other possible lives post mortem) on the front of the stage, in combination with a reckoning of the chances of winning or losing the bet on God’s existence. The reduction ad absurdum of the act of betting against God’s existence is deduced from a double infinitization, not only quantitative (an infinity of lives), but also qualitative (a reiterating infinity of happiness) of the second member in the comparison. Now, the case is different in Locke’s argumentation. Its reading is vitiated if we deem that the § 70 in the Essay II, XXI consists in a self-sufficient demonstration, understandable by itself. Through a close examination of the chapter XXI in its entire, it appears on the contrary that the thesis of an alleged improvement or even of a mere equivalent of Pascal’s wager in the Essay is defeated by the necessity to put back Locke’s own argument in its true place, actually as the result of a complex enquiry on the principle of the determination of the will. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reassess the educational affordances of digital screens, at a time when their educational impact has become incontournable, but is also increasingly growing suspicion. To bypass the redundancies of overly critical theoretical approaches, the paper foregrounds the subjectifying potentialities of the screen’s elusive technological ‘plasticity’. After the introduction, in which some pedagogical misgivings about the digital screen are addressed, we turn to Marie-José Mondzain’s historico-philosophical genealogy of iconoclasm. Trying to make sense of the aesthetic-political ambivalence that shrouded (...) the icon’s screenic agency within a Christian ‘economy of salvation’, and which climaxed in a politics of strictly economic equivalency, we concur with Peter Szendy that this ambivalence still haunts the icon’s contemporary heirs. By pedagogically re-reading Szendy’s alternative account of ‘iconomy’ we are subsequently led to make a case for exceeding neoliberal screening politics through an affirmation of the digital screen’s radical plasticity. Along with Yves Citton, we suggest, in our conclusion, that this post-critical affirmation calls for an ‘iconomical’ practice of care-ful experiments with the screen’s dynamic technologies. Instead of combating or adapting to its aesthetically dazzling algorithms, educational practices are required that allow these algorithmic quantities to qualitatively differentiate the uses that educands make of them. (shrink)

Salmon has argued that science provides explanations by describing a causal nexus: For Salmon, this nexus is a network of processes and interactions. I argue that this picture of the causal nexus is insufficient for an account of scientific explanation: a taxonomy of causal relevance is also needed. ;Probabilistic theories of causation seem to provide such a taxonomy in their dichotomy between promoting and inhibiting causes. However, standard probabilistic theories are beset by a difficulty called the problem of disjunctive factors. (...) According to such theories, an effect is more probable in the presence of a cause than in its absence . But there are many ways in which a particular cause may come about, and many in which it may be absent; these ways need not confer the same probabilities upon the effect. Thus, there is no direct comparison of two probabilities to be made. My solution is to abandon the oversimplified dichotomy between promoting and inhibiting causes. Causal claims convey qualitative information about more complex probabilistic relationships. Interestingly, this picture of causation meshes naturally with extant theories of explanation. ;I show how this framework may be employed in resolving several outstanding problems in the theories of causation and explanation, such as the relationship between singular and general causal claims, and the role of contrastive stress in causal and explanatory claims. ;Finally, I show how my account of causal explanation can be connected with the semantic conception of scientific theories. According to this conception, a theory is characterized in terms of a class of mathematical models. I describe the relationship between these mathematical models and the probabilistic relationships that are described by causal explanations. These ideas are illustrated in an extended discussion of causation and explanation in evolutionary theory. (shrink)

The ecological approach to object pretend play, developed from the ecological perspective, suggests an action- and affordance based perspective to account for pretend object play. Theoretical, as well as empirical reasons, support the view that children in pretense incorporate objects into their play in a resourceful and functionally appropriate way based on the perception of affordances. Therefore, in pretense children are not distorting reality but rather, they are perceiving and acting upon action possibilities. In this paper, we argue for the (...) viability of an ecological theoretical framework to pretend object play which has been traditionally understood as a representational and metarepresentational ability. We discuss the origins and basic assumptions of the ecological approach to pretense. We layout details by presenting a qualitative analysis of a pretend play episode and discuss the results of an experimental study inspired by the ecological assumptions. We discuss pretend object play in the context of ecological work on tool use. We address the relationship between the enactive and the ecological approaches to pretend play, pointing out similarities as well as differences. We conclude that ecological and enactive approaches have shown that it is possible to challenge accepted interpretations and seek explanatory frameworks that could move the field in new directions. (shrink)

This is a book that brings together material from an unusually wide range of perspectives on an important topic. The scholarship is first-rate--one profits from reading the footnotes as well as the text.

Ever since the publication of Read’s The Politics of Transindividuality (2015), the academic interest in transindividuality has steadily mounted. In this conversation, Bram Wiggers and Jason Read discuss the current state of affairs around the concept of transindividuality. The conversation begins with a definition of transindividuality and discusses what sets the term apart from other philosophies of social individuation. Having defined the concept of transindividuality, the conversation then engages with the question of how transindividuality can be adopted as a means (...) of social-political critique. First, Bram and Jason discuss how transindividuality is evoked but not explicitly mentioned in the social-political critiques of Spinoza and Marx. Secondly, the conversation takes up the social-political critiques of Paolo Virno and Bernard Stiegler who make explicit use of transindividuality. Central to the later parts of the conversation is the complicated interrelation between the political and economic domains of individuation, as well as the tendency of collective modes of representation to be effaced and obscured by (neoliberal) individualism and the post-Fordist conditions of labor. Overall, the conversation highlights the relevance of transindividuality for social-political philosophical critique. (shrink)

Narrative analysis, creative writing, and interactive reflective writing have been identified as valuable for professional identity formation and resilience among medical and premedical students alike. This study proposes that medical student blogs are novel pedagogical tools for fostering peer-to-peer learning in academic medicine and are currently underutilized as a near-peer resource for premedical students to learn about the medical profession. To evaluate the pedagogical utility of medical student blogs for introducing core themes in the medical humanities, the authors conducted (...) class='Hi'>qualitative analysis of one hundred seventy-six reflective essays by baccalaureate premedical students written in response to medical student-authored narrative blog posts. Using an iterative thematic approach, the authors identified common patterns in the reflective essays, distilled major themes, coded the essays, and conducted narrative analysis through close reading. Qualitative analysis identified three core themes and one overarching theme. The premedical students’ essays demonstrated significant self-reflection in response to near-peer works, discussed their perceptions of medical professionalism, and expressed concerns about their future progress through the medical education system. The essays consistently attributed the impact of the medical student narratives to the authors’ status as near-peers. The authors conclude that reading and engaging in reflective writing about near-peer blog posts encourages premedical students to develop an understanding of core concepts in the medical humanities and promotes their reflection on the profession of medicine. Thus, incorporating online blogs written by medical trainees as narrative works in medical humanities classrooms is a novel pedagogical method for fostering peer-to-peer learning in academic medicine. (shrink)

'Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development' won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Year 2023 as mentioned on the Rowman and Littlefield webpage. The book investigates how the concept of beauty in African philosophy and related qualitative social sciences may contribute to a richer intercultural exchange on the idea of development. While working within frameworks created in post-colonial and arguably neo-colonial times, African thinkers have reacted against the mainstream view that restricts (...) the meaning and scope of good development to economic growth and Western-style education. These thinkers have worked toward a critical self-understanding of the potentials inherent in cultural, spiritual, and political traditions since pre-colonial times. Edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, this collection explores branches of thought from wisdom or oral traditions to political thought and philosophy of culture. This book is urgent reading material for any policy maker, scholar, or student wishing to attend to the voices of African(ist) thinkers who search for alternative approaches to global questions of development in a time of climate change and increasing socio-economic inequality. The book was introduced by Louise Müller -as a first author - and Angela Roothaan. (shrink)

The Collective Unconscious in the Age of Neuroscience brings the connection between C.G. Jung's theory of a collective unconscious, neuroscience, and personal experiences of severe mental illness to life. Hallie B. Durchslag uses narrative analysis to examine four autobiographical accounts of mental illness, including her own, and illuminate the interplay between psychic material and human physiology that Jung intuited to exist. Durchslag's unique study considers the links between expressions of the collective unconscious, such as myth, fairy tales, folk tales, and (...) 'big dreams', and the experiences of those diagnosed with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The author's personal narrative account of a psychotic episode is at its heart, bringing both an intimate foundation and exceptional insight to the book. With reference to neuroscientific and genetic research throughout, The Collective Unconscious in the Age of Neuroscience highlights the gap between depth psychological notions of etiology and treatment, highlights patterns of collective material in the qualitative experience of these genetic and biological disorders, and explores how the efficacy of pharmacological treatment sheds light on Jung's theoretical model. The Collective Unconscious in the Age of Neuroscience will be essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, consciousness, neuroscience and mental health. It will also provide unique insight for analytical psychologists interested in severe mental illness and the collective unconscious. (shrink)

This volume offer a manifold approach to a less evident and until now much neglected undercurrent in the work of Hannah Arendt., namely her ambiguous relation to the Judeo-Christian relligious heritage. Arendt's dissertation was dedicated to the concept of love in the works of Augustine, where she set her tone and developmed her frame for approaching theological matters. Her understanding of secularity might provide a model for the reconciliation of secularization and the persistence of religious belief in the contemporary world. (...) Thought Hannah Arendt wad certainly and outspokenly a secular thinker, her work also harbors ways of understanding secularization as the possibility of a new, maybe even messianic, attitude towards finite life and earthly reality. She famously depicts this attitude as "faith in and hope for the world". --Book cover. (shrink)