The prevalence of teams in contemporary organizations and the trend toward diversity in a workforce composed of members from multiple countries have drawn the attention of researchers on the consequences of diversity in workplaces. While there are potential benefits to diversity, relationship conflicts among team members may also result and affect team functioning. The aim of the present study was to explore how supervisors’ social dominance orientation, a tendency to support the arbitrary dominance of specific social groups over (...) others, may relate to relationship conflicts and reduced team commitment within teams. A two-wave study in a sample of 931 individuals from 108 workgroups was conducted to examine the relationship between supervisors’ social dominance orientation and team functioning. Analyses indicated that supervisor social dominance orientation was associated with increased within-team differentiation of leader-member exchange relationships based on team members’ national origin. Such LMX differentiation was related to more within-team relationship conflict and in turn to reduced collective team commitment. The implications of these findings for research on supervisor social dominance orientation, within-team nationality diversity, and team functioning are discussed. (shrink)

Feminists have argued that oppressive socialization undermines the liberal model of autonomy. We contend that this argument can also be employed effectively as a challenge to the standard bioethical model of informed consent. We claim that the standard model is inadequate because it relies on presumptions of procedural autonomy and rational choice that overlook the problem of how agents are often socialized so that they adopt and internalize oppressive norms as part of their motivational structure. The argument that oppressive socialization (...) undermines liberalism’s view of autonomy is most relevant to what Beauchamp and Childress call the threshold elements of informed consent—competence and voluntariness. We show how these elements fail to account for morally relevant factors such as oppressive socialization. (shrink)

This article proposes a Social Determinants of Health framework as a counter to the prominence of bio-determinist tropes in understandings of the relationship between concussion and later life neurodegenerative conditions in athletic populations. It is argued that debates about concussion (or repetitive head impacts) causing CTE have been particularly influenced by broader social trends towards neuro-essentialism. This paradigm reduces complex social behaviour to brain matter and continues to dominate the field despite the recent diversification of evidence from (...) autopsy-based studies of neuropathology to epidemiological studies comparing recorded causes of death among former elite athletes. In contrast, this article explores the ‘causes of causes’ of neurodegenerative conditions. It outlines the ways in which the distinct dynamics of: a) employment, b) education, income and wealth, c) health systems and services, and d) social environment and public safety relate to the specific occupational conditions of elite sport and likely negatively shape health outcomes of athletic populations. The article concludes by arguing that to more effectively address these particular health harms we must move beyond narrow, mono-causal models and evoke a cultural change that extends beyond making rule changes and adjusting psychological attitudes and behavioural norms, to redress the social structural parameters of elite sports participation. The continuation of narrower, neuro-centric and reductionist paradigms obscures the causes of the causes of neurodegenerative decline and limits the scope for change. (shrink)

SUMMARYAll three ‘scientific’ pollsters wrongly predicted incumbent President Harry Truman’s defeat in the 1948 presidential election, and thus faced a potentially serious legitimacy crisis. This ‘fiasco’ occurred at a most inopportune time. Social science was embroiled in a policy debate taking place in the halls of Congress. It was fighting a losing battle to be included, along with the natural sciences, in the National Science Foundation, for which legislation was being drafted. Faced with the failure of the polls, the (...) Social Science Research Council intervened quickly to prevent social science’s adversaries from using this event to degrade further its status. After all, many social scientists considered the sample survey as the paramount tool of social research, and sampling as one of social science’s greatest innovation. Concurrently, there was an ongoing conflict among polling practitioners themselves—between advocates of probability sampling and users of quotas, like the pollsters. The SSRC committee appointed to evaluate the polling debacle managed to keep this contentious issue of sampling from becoming the centre of attention. Given the inauspicious environment in which this event happened, the SSRC did not wish to advertise the fact that the house of social science was in turmoil. (shrink)

From the invention of the alphabet to the explosion of the internet, Dominic Wyse takes us on a unique journey into the process of writing. Starting with seven extraordinary examples that serve as a backdrop to the themes explored, it pays particular attention to key developments in the history of language, including Aristotle's grammar through socio-cultural multimodality, to pragmatist philosophy of communication. Analogies with music are used as a comparator throughout the book, yielding radically new insights into composition processes. The (...) book presents the first comprehensive analysis of the Paris Review interviews with the world's greatest writers such as Louise Erdrich, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Ted Hughes, and Marilynne Robinson. It critically reviews the most influential guides to styles and standards of language, and presents new research on young people's creativity and writing. Drawing on over twenty years of findings, Wyse presents research-informed innovative practices to demonstrate powerfully how writing can be learned and taught. (shrink)

Aesthetic values give agents reasons to perform not only acts of contemplation, but also acts like editing, collecting, and conserving. Moreover, aesthetic agents rarely operate solo: they conduct their business as integral members of networks of other aesthetic agents. The consensus theory of aesthetic value, namely that an item’s aesthetic value is its power to evoke a finally valuable experience in a suitable spectator, can explain neither the range of acts performed by aesthetic agents nor the social contexts in (...) which they operate. This paper proposes a new theory of aesthetic value specifically to explain facts about the sociality of aesthetic agents. (shrink)

Instances of natural beauty are widely regarded as counterexamples to practice-based theories of aesthetic value. They are not. To see that they are not, we require the correct account of natural beauty and the correct account of social practices.

Dominic LaRochelle | : Les religions ne constituent pas des monolithes immuables et inchangés dans le temps. Elles évoluent au fil de l’histoire humaine, changent au gré des transformations culturelles et sociales des communautés dans lesquelles elles s’implantent, négocient avec les instances séculières et religieuses leur pertinence et leur droit d’exister ; bref, elles innovent constamment pour s’assurer une place dans un monde lui aussi en constant changement. Cet article propose deux outils pour analyser les innovations au sein des traditions (...) religieuses : les théories de la réception, inspirées des travaux de Hans Robert Jauss, et l’invention des traditions, inspirée du célèbre ouvrage d’Eric J. Hobsbawm et Terence O. Ranger. L’intérêt de l’utilisation de ces outils en histoire est qu’ils permettent, entre autres choses, de dépasser les oppositions classiques tradition/modernité et authenticité/innovation en analysant les religions du point de vue des ruptures et des transformations à l’intérieur de celles-ci. Ces outils seront appliqués à un cas particulier, celui de la réception et de la réinvention du taoïsme dans les sociétés occidentales au XXe siècle. Cette tradition religieuse chinoise vieille de plusieurs siècles a en effet été réinventée en Occident et transformée en une tradition spirituelle universelle répondant aux attentes des Occidentaux en matière de spiritualité contemporaine. | : Religions are not immutable monoliths that remain unchanged over time. They evolve over the course of human history ; changing according to the cultural and social transformations of the communities in which they are established and negotiating with secular and religious authorities for their relevance and right to exist. In short, they continually innovate to secure a place in a constantly changing world. This article proposes two tools to analyze innovations within religious traditions : reception theories, inspired by the works of Hans Robert Jauss, and the invention of tradition, inspired by the celebrated work of Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger. The interest of using these tools in a historical approach is that they allow us, among other things, to overcome the traditional oppositions of tradition vs. modernity and authenticity vs. innovation by analyzing religions from a rupture and transformation point of view. These tools will be applied to a particular case, namely the reception and reinvention of Taoism in Western societies in the twentieth Century. This centuries-old Chinese religious tradition has been reinvented in the West and transformed into a universal spiritual tradition that meets the expectations of Westerners for contemporary spirituality. (shrink)

Marginalisation is both a structural and an epistemic issue. The struggle against exclusion and marginalisation should take place within larger social structures. Moreover, we should address the legitimacy offered, through the knowledge production process itself, for exclusion and marginalisation. Knowledge production regarding the oppressed should document their lives, experiences and concerns. It must take place with an appropriate methodological struggle informed by alternative epistemologies. While creating alternative epistemologies, it is important to challenge the value-neutrality claim of mainstream research practices. (...) We should acknowledge that mainstream epistemic domination exists ‘not because of objectivity or universality of their research practices but their privileged location within a historical, material and social setup of dominant power relations’. A ‘situated knowledge’ building process may help to end the epistemic oppression of marginalised groups. This process lends new forms and applications of enquiry that are necessarily inclusive and that pay closer attention to elements such as personal experiences, subjectivity, worldviews, and emotions. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation by offering an entirely new theory of beauty - that beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks - and sheds light on why aesthetic engagement is crucial for quality of life.

Dominic Scott compares the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics from a methodological perspective. He argues that Plato and Aristotle distinguish similar levels of argument in the defence of justice, and that they both follow the same approach: Plato because he thinks it will suffice, Aristotle because he thinks there is no need to go beyond it.

Accession Number: ATLA0001788471; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 26-43.; Physical Description: diag, table ; Language(s): English; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

This book is a formidably compelling source of insights for those who are interested in subjects ranging from moral philosophy, social justice, hermeneutics and education. It reconciles traditional theories of ethics by re-framing them through hypertextual techniques, bringing together contrasting and contradictory ethical views.

Although there exist advantages to group-living in comparison to a solitary lifestyle, costs and gains of group-living may be unequally distributed among group members. Predation risk, vigilance levels and food intake may be unevenly distributed across group spatial geometry and certain within-group spatial positions may be more or less advantageous depending on the spatial distribution of these factors. In species characterized with dominance hierarchy, high-ranking individuals are commonly observed in advantageous spatial position. However, in complex social systems, individuals can (...) develop affiliative relationships that may balance the effect of dominance relationships in individual's spatial distribution. The objective of the present study is to investigate how the group spatial distribution of a semi-free ranging colony of Mandrills relates to its social organization. Using spatial observations in an area surrounding the feeding zone, we tested the three following hypothesis: (1) does dominance hierarchy explain being observed in proximity or far from a food patch? (2) Do affiliative associations also explain being observed in proximity or far from a food patch? (3) Do the differences in rank in the group hierarchy explain being co-observed in proximity of a food patch? Our results showed that high-ranking individuals were more observed in proximity of the feeding zone while low-ranking individuals were more observed at the boundaries of the observation area. Furthermore, we observed that affiliative relationships were also associated with individual spatial distributions and explain more of the total variance of the spatial distribution in comparison with dominance hierarchy. Finally, we found that individuals observed at a same moment in proximity of the feeding zone were more likely to be distant in the hierarchy while controlling for maternal kinship, age and sex similarity. This study brings some elements about how affiliative networks and dominance hierarchy are related to spatial positions in primates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Violence and Birthday PartiesA Girardian Analysis of the PiñataDominic Pigneri (bio)The piñata is a tradition most commonly associated with Latin America, but this party game has a mysterious origin. Some suppose that the origin of the practice was brought to the Americas by the Spanish, who received the custom from the Italians.1 Some say that the Italians, through Marco Polo, appropriated the ritual from the Chinese.2 Others see (...) the Mexican piñata as originating locally in an Aztec religious ritual.3 But looking at this festival activity through a Girardian lens we can see that wherever a custom came into being, it seems that its origins lie in the lethal practice of collective violence. The following description may serve as an exemplar of the tradition:In Mexico, a plain, round clay cooking pot called an olla is decorated and finally almost entirely concealed by ruffles and streamer coverings shaped into animals, stars, etc. It is filled with nuts, sugar cane, fruits and small toys and is hung overhead from a rope. One participant in the game is blindfolded and given a long stick with which he or she tries to hit the pot. Several people (usually children) take turns at being blindfolded and swinging the stick, and finally when someone hits the pot [End Page 209] hard enough to break it, the other players scramble on the ground for the scattered prizes. It is a kind of noisy and happy version of a grab-bag, and the game goes on for quite a few minutes, since a controlling cord is used to swing the pot out of reach of the batters. There are several sing-song chants which the children say as the game goes on with each new target.4While the clay pot is the most traditional, piñatas are also made from other materials, including papier-mâché and cane plants.5 Furthermore, the piñata has a place in many different festivals; it is especially associated with Christmas, Easter, and birthday parties all over the Americas where there is a Latin influence.While the ritual of the piñata contains no explicit violence, the ritual itself contains many of the elements of the scapegoat mechanism René Girard describes in Violence and the Sacred. What Girard describes here is the banding together of society as they focus their internal animosity onto an arbitrary third-party victim. The peace that arrives after this violence is so profound that it is instinctually associated with the divine. This peace inspires a reenactment of this violence as a religious ritual. Therefore, religion functions as the force that keeps internal violence from turning all members of a society against one another. This controlled violence is the safety valve that releases the violence that would otherwise rend the social fabric of a community.6 Religion also veils the violence, which grants peace. It is important that the violence be expressed, but also hidden. Girard says, "Men cannot confront the naked truth of their own violence without the risk of abandoning themselves to it entirely. They have never had a very clear idea of this violence, and it is possible that the survival of all human societies of the past was dependent on this fundamental lack of understanding."7 This is the significance of the ritualism of cultic sacrifice.This relates to our current question of the piñata in the sense that the practice is reminiscent of a sacrificial ritual, especially when the piñata takes the shape of a being like an animal or human person. First, destruction is the initial aim of the activity. The piñata, like the oblation, must be destroyed in some way. This is what grants the ritual its efficacy. Second, there is a need for rubrics, a carefully followed procedure for the desired effect to come about. In cultic sacrifice, this can take place in a variety of ways, from ritualistic washing of the priest and the victim to the exact procedure and order for dissecting the victim. Similarly, as we saw in the description of the piñata above, there is a procedure. The piñata is... (shrink)

The aim of the study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Social Justice Scale, composed by Representation, Recognition, and Redistribution dimensions. Likewise, the contribution of social dominance and the belief in a just world in each dimension were analyzed. A total of 471 young adults residing in Madrid participated in the online preliminary study, with an age range of 18–42 years with different genders (74.1% defined themselves as female). The main results indicated adequate psychometric properties for (...) Social Justice Scale through its three dimensions. In addition, we observed that both social dominance and belief in a just world might be psychosocial variables that modulate the levels of social justice. The main findings of the research and need for replication in future studies are discussed. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that contemporary media technologies push individuals into collective action on an industrial scale, without them necessarily being aware of it. Yet what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same affective networks and moments, but rather dispersed into countless different networks and moments? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at (...) the same moment? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video, and, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity In this short and provocative book Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls ‘asynchronous hypermodulation’, as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. By focusing on ‘we, the mediated’, this radical intervention challenges the narratives that portray the new media environment as a monolithic media apparatus, rendering us all into the same libidinal grey glue, subsequently channelled at will through the pleasure palace of the internet. The unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distractions that accompany it. (shrink)

Trust and reciprocity are cornerstones of human nature, both at the levels of close interpersonal relationships and economic/societal structures. Being able to both place trust in others and decide whether to reciprocate trust placed in us is rooted in implicit and explicit processes that guide expectations of others, help reduce social uncertainty and build relationships. This review will highlight neurobehavioral mechanisms supporting trust and reciprocity, through the lens of implicit and explicit social appraisal and learning processes. Significant consideration (...) will be given to the neural underpinnings of these implicit and explicit processes, and special focus will center on the underlying neurocomputational mechanisms facilitating the integration of implicit and explicit signals supporting trust and reciprocity. Finally, this review will conclude with discussion of how we can leverage findings regarding the neurobehavioral mechanisms supporting trust and reciprocity to better inform our understanding of mental health disorders characterized by social dysfunction. (shrink)

I offer reasons against reading Hume as a Pyrrhonian sceptic. I argue that Hume's scepticism is motivated differently, that his sceptical strategies are not analogous to Pyrrhonism's, and that it is profitable to read Hume as a critic of Pyrrhonism. I hold that the most informative point of comparison between Hume and Sextus Empiricus is a point of difference, namely, their stands on the connection between suspension of judgement (epochê) and tranquillity (ataraxia). For Sextus, tranquillity flows naturally from suspending judgement (...) on all opinions. Hume, by contrast, consistently treats radical suspension of judgement as resulting in despair and social detachment. I take a firmer stance than past commentators on this issue by affirming that Hume and Sextus do not merely disagree on this issue, but that Hume's view is more plausible. Reading Hume's sceptical crisis, I propose, reveals an insightful criticism of Pyrrhonism, one that sheds light on human nature's response to radical doubt. (shrink)

The idea of ‘community’ dominates politics in Northern Ireland in both popular and political discourse and in academic writing, policy and legislation. Depending upon particular understandings of the notion of community different arguments are made about the policies that need to be implemented to develop the peace process. This has had a fundamental impact on areas such as legislation over parades and the development of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. This essay critically looks at understandings of ‘community’; how (...) it becomes used in political discourse and in policy development and the character of its relationship with ideas about safety and security. (shrink)

Scientific images represent types or particulars. According to a standard history and epistemology of scientific images, drawings are fit to represent types and machine-made images are fit to represent particulars. The fact that archaeologists use drawings of particulars challenges this standard history and epistemology. It also suggests an account of the epistemic quality of archaeological drawings. This account stresses how images integrate non-conceptual and interepretive content.

This paper proposes a description of the moral obligations of economic agents. It will show that a threefold division should be adopted to distinguish moral obligations applying to their interactions in the market, obligations applying to their interactions inside business firms and obligations applying to their interactions with agents outside the market. Competition might be permissible in the first case since markets are special patterns of social interactions (called adversarial schemes). They produce their benefits when agents try to satisfy (...) exclusive preferences at the expense of others. However, moral obligations inside the firm and moral obligations outside the market are of a different nature. This argument will be developed in the two first parts of this paper. In the third part, it will outline the relevant strengths of that account in relation with two popular views of economic agents’ moral obligations: the shareholder primacy view and the stakeholder theory. (shrink)

The social science approach to risk has matured over the past two decades, with distinct paradigms developing in disciplines such as anthropology, economics, geography, psychology, and sociology. Social Theories of Risk traces the intellectual origins and histories of twelve of the established and emerging paradigms from the perspective of their principal proponents. Each contributor examines the underlying assumptions of his or her paradigm, the foundational issue it seeks to address, and likely future directions of research. Taken together, these (...) essays illustrate that the principal achievement of social sciences has been to broaden the debate about risk beyond the narrow, technical considerations of engineers and the physical and life sciences. The authors conclude that expert knowledge is not value-free, that public perceptions of and attitudes toward risks vary according to a wide range of social, psychological, and cultural variables, and that public opposition to particular risks cannot be assuaged by technical fixes. The essays reveal the circuitous paths that lead people to the study of risk, highlight how these paths have crossed and discuss some of the seminal influences on individuals and the field in general. Social Theories of Risk presents a broad, retrospective view of the state of the theory in the social sciences, written by many who have been on the cutting edge of risk research since its early days. The book includes both established and novel perspectives that address the theoretical foundations of the field and reflect what we know about risk as a psychological, social, and cultural phenomenon. The collection of papers not only informs us of the tributary ideas that spawned the social studies of risk, but also how the field has matured. The biographical flavor of the essays provides fascinating reading for established members of the field, and a valuable entree for newcomers. It is an ideal college text for courses in the history of science, environmental policy, and science, technology, and society, as well as the burgeoning array of more specialized courses in risk assessment and management. (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano’s (1781–1848) writings in aesthetics are clear, concise, and explicit about method. Provocative and revisionary, they champion broad views of beauty, the arts, and their social function. Dominic McIver Lopes's introductory materials place Bolzano's essays in context, give them a new interpretation, and map out how to teach them, in full or in part, in a variety of courses.

Since the 1990s, educators and social commentators have raised alarms regarding the moral character of successive generations of Americans. A consistent concern within those calls for alarm directs attention to teaching ethics in secondary education. A pedagogy of accompaniment recognizes the timeliness for objective and subjective approaches to learning social ethics, transcending the either/or of subject-object, content-skill educational conflicts as well as the disordered distractions of a performance-merit based assessment of learning. In secondary education, the praxis of accompaniment (...) through social ethical discernment creates an occasion wherein students hear and take seriously for the first time their moral voices and imagine their social ethical horizons. (shrink)

BackgroundThe experiences of UK ethnic minority healthcare workers are crucial to ameliorating the disproportionate COVID-19 infection rate and outcomes in the UKEM community. We conducted a qualitative study on UKEM healthcare workers’ perspectives on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UKEM community.MethodsParticipants were 15 UKEM healthcare workers. Data were collected using individual and joint interviews, and a focus group, and analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsWe generated three themes: heterogeneity, mistrust, and mitigating. Therein, participants distinguished CVH in the UKEM community in educational attainment (...) and ethnicity. They pointed to the role of mistrust in CVH in the UKEM community. They opined that the mistrust underlying CVH in the UKEM community is rooted in history and religion, conspiracy theories, the speedy development and novelty of the vaccines, post-vaccination complications/side effects, false positive test results, and social media and social support/influence. Participants recommended that interventions targeted at mitigating CVH in the UKEM community need to, in a non-judgmental way, tackle dis/misinformation and provide education, and incorporate UKEM healthcare worker endorsement. They also suggested such interventions be community-oriented, enhance the convenience of vaccination centers and the possibility of vaccine choice, and appreciate that overcoming CVH and accepting vaccination is a gradual process involving personal assessment of risks and benefits.ConclusionCVH in the UKEM community is a multifaceted phenomenon requiring multicomponent interventions. (shrink)

This study examines how visibility of a content moderator and ambiguity of moderated content influence perception of the moderation system in a social media environment. In the course of a two-day pre-registered experiment conducted in a realistic social media simulation, participants encountered moderated comments that were either unequivocally harsh or ambiguously worded, and the source of moderation was either unidentified, or attributed to other users or an automated system (AI). The results show that when comments were moderated by (...) an AI versus other users, users perceived less accountability in the moderation system and had less trust in the moderation decision, especially for ambiguously worded harassments, as opposed to clear harassment cases. However, no differences emerged in the perceived moderation fairness, objectivity, and participants confidence in their understanding of the moderation process. Overall, our study demonstrates that users tend to question the moderation decision and system more when an AI moderator is visible, which highlights the complexity of effectively managing the visibility of automatic content moderation in the social media environment. (shrink)

In this workshop, a decentered approach to stakeholder theory is proposed, where a shared network problem, rather than a firm, frames stakeholder interactions. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the potential usefulness of adopting a decentered perspective on firm-stakeholder relations. Multi-stakeholder learning dialogues and actor-network theory are introduced as examples of possible theoretical frameworks that allow the adoption of a decentered perspective.

In this review essay I offer a critical assessment of the work of David Byrne, an applied social scientist who is one of the leading advocates of the use of complexity theory in the social sciences and who has drawn on the principles of critical realism in developing an ontological position of ‘complex realism’. The key arguments of his latest book, Applying Social Science: The Role of Social Research in Politics, Policy and Practice constitute the frame (...) of the review; however, since these overlap with those of his previous books, Interpreting Quantitative Data and Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences, I consider all three books together. I identify aspects of Byrne’s ontological position that are in tune with the principles of original and dialectical critical realism and aspects that are not. I argue that these inconsistencies, which Byrne must resolve if he is to take his understanding of complexity further, stem from the residual influence of various forms of irrealism in his thinking. (shrink)

This article focuses on aesthetics and the philosophy of art as branches of so-called analytic philosophy. It begins with a historical overview of aesthetics and the philosophy of art before turning to a discussion of how the philosophy of art bears upon human culture. It then considers the methods used in attacking problems in aesthetics and the philosophy of art by highlighting the distinctions between pure and applied philosophy, between internal and external perspectives on aesthetic and artistic phenomena, and between (...) first-order and second-order methods. It also examines how aesthetics and the philosophy of art are affected as the arts evolve and as empirical studies of aesthetic and artistic phenomena become well established in the social and behavioural sciences as well as the humanities. (shrink)

This essay challenges the relevance of the primary analogy in Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emanuel’s article “Physicians, Not Conscripts: Conscientious Objection in Health Care.” The author then proposes an alternative, classi­cally inspired model of conscience based on the work of E. Christian Brugger, Edmund Pellegrino, and Alasdair MacIntyre. This teleological model enables a more robust analysis of conscience claims than does Stahl and Emanuel’s social-constructivist framework.

This article has two related aims: to examine how the Internet might be rendered an object of coherent philosophical consideration and critique, and to contribute to divesting the term “transcendental” of the negative connotations it carries in contemporary philosophy of technology. To realise them, it refers to Kant’s transcendental approach. The key argument is that Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is one example of a more general and potentially thoroughgoing “transcendental” approach focused on conditions that much contemporary philosophy of technology misunderstands or (...) ignores, to the detriment of the field. Diverse contemporary approaches are engaged to make this claim, including those of Verbeek, Brey, Stiegler, Clark and Chalmers, Feenberg, and Fuchs. The article considers how these approaches stand in relation to tendencies towards determinism, subjectivism, and excessive forms of optimism and pessimism in contemporary considerations of the Internet. In terms of Kant’s transcendental idealism, specifically, it concludes by arguing that contemporary philosophy of technology does not go far enough in considering the Internet as a “regulative idea”; in terms of transcendental approaches more generally, it concludes by arguing that openness to the transcendental has the potential to call into question presuppositions regarding what constitutes an “empirical” object of enquiry in philosophy of technology, thereby, opening the field up to important new areas of research. (shrink)

You have a complex and detailed aesthetic life. You make aesthetic decisions every day. You wake up, shower, and dress. When you decide what to wear, you think about how it feels and fits. You have aesthetic feelings and reactions every day. The sunset swings into view as you turn a corner and you think, “That’s beautiful.” A wave of calm and pleasure wash over you. You take a bite of cake and you think, “Wow, that’s sweet.” Maybe too sweet. (...) Almost everything you do has an aesthetic dimension—from the way you make your bed, prepare your coffee, and tie your shoes, to the way you speak to others and edit photos to post on social media. You have a complex and detailed aesthetic life that you orchestrate every day through your aesthetic decisions, reactions, feelings, and actions. But why live this way? What exactly is aesthetic life and why, if at all, does it matter? In Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters, three philosophers present their different answers to this question and discuss the many challenging and fascinating philosophical issues that arise in our aesthetic lives. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Ian Hacking has produced a model of social causation in mental illness and begun to sketch in outline how this might be integrated with the medical model of psychiatry. This article elaborates and revises Hacking 's model of social forces, criticizes him for attempting a merely semantic resolution of the tension between the social and the biological, and sketches an alternative approach that builds upon his substantial insights.

A study of culturally-embedded perceptual responses to aesthetic value indicates that learned perceptual capacities can secure compliance with social norms. We should therefore resist the temptation to draw a line between cognitive processes, such as perception, that can adapt to differences in physical environments, and cognitive processes, such as economic decision-making, that are shaped by social norms. Compliance with social norms is a result of perceptual learning when that same compliance modifies perceptible features of the physical environment.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

An examination of Ian Parker's definitions of discourse reveals them to be non-distinctive and of limited utility. It is argued that discourse analysis should be integrated with, rather than set against, social psychology. Discourse analysts should attend to the issues of the representativeness and generality of their evidence, should be wary of attributing causality to discourse, and should consider the advantages of systematically investigating, rather than asserting, the social consequences of the use of different discourses.

Empirical research on aesthetic response poses two challenges to philosophy. The more familiar challenge is that scientific explanations of aesthetic responses debunk what we take to be our reasons for those responses. One reaction to this challenge is an accommodation strategy that seeks to reconcile the scientific findings with an improved understanding of our normative reasons. This paper presents a more fundamental challenge: a well-established body of research in social psychology indicates that we routinely confabulate the reasons we give (...) for our aesthetic response. This challenges the accommodation strategy and suggests that philosophy should adopt a more radical naturalism about aesthetic response. (shrink)

One question that leads us into aesthetics is: why does beauty matter? Or, what do aesthetic goods bring to my life, to make it a life that goes well? Or, how does beauty deserve the place we have evidently made for it in our lives? A theory of aesthetic value states what beauty is so as to equip us to answer this question. According to aesthetic hedonism, aesthetic values are properties of items that stand in constitutive relation to pleasure. Contemporary (...) versions of aesthetic hedonism don’t explain what makes aesthetic values aesthetic, but they do explain what makes them normative, stating what makes it the case that aesthetic value facts lend weight to what an agent should do, for the fact that acting yields pleasure is always a reason to act. This book introduces and defends an alternative to aesthetic hedonism. According to the network theory, aesthetic value facts lend weight to its being an achievement for an agent to act. Since agents achieve by acting in coordination with one another, the theory takes seriously the sociality of aesthetic activity. The main argument for the network theory is that it better explains six facts about aesthetic activity than does aesthetic hedonism. The book also discusses the relationship between aesthetic value and pleasure, the point and distinctive character of aesthetic discourse, and the metaphysics of aesthetic value. Two final chapters use the network theory to shed light on how aesthetic value matters to us as individuals and as members of collectives. (shrink)

Social prescriptions are one term commonly used to describe non-pharmaceutical approaches to healthcare and are gaining popularity in the community, with evidence highlighting psychological benefits of reduced anxiety, depression and improved mood and physiological benefits of reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and reduced hypertension. The relationship between human health benefits and planetary health benefits is also noted. There are, however, numerous barriers, such as duration and frequencies to participate in activities, access, suitability, volition and a range of unpredictable variables (...) impeding a comprehensive approach to their use on a wider scale. From a multidisciplinary perspective, this commentary incorporates a salutogenic and nature-based approach to health, we also provide a range of recommendations that can be undertaken at the patient level to assist in shifting the acknowledged systemic barriers currently occurring. These include using simple language to explain the purpose of health empowerment scripts, ensuing personal commitment to a minimum timeframe, enabling ease of access, co-designing a script program, providing ongoing motivational support and incorporating mindfulness to counter unexpected disruptions. (shrink)

Social-rank cues communicate social status or social power within and between groups. Information about social-rank is fluently processed in both visual and auditory modalities. So far, the investigation on the processing of social-rank cues has been limited to studies in which information from a single modality was assessed or manipulated. Yet, in everyday communication, multiple information channels are used to express and understand social-rank. We sought to examine the voluntary nature of processing of facial (...) and vocal signals of social-rank using a cross-modal Stroop task. In two experiments, participants were presented with face-voice pairs that were either congruent or incongruent in social-rank. Participants’ task was to label face social dominance while ignoring the voice, or label voice social dominance while ignoring the face. In both experiments, we found that face-voice incongruent stimuli were processed more slowly and less accurately than were the congruent stimuli in the face-attend and the voice-attend tasks, exhibiting classical Stroop-like effects. These findings are consistent with the functioning of a social-rank bio-behavioural system which consistently and automatically monitors one’s social standing in relation to others and uses that information to guide behaviour. (shrink)