The study examines the argumentative competencies of people with Asperger syndrome (AS) and compares this with those of normal – or what are called neurotypical (NT) – subjects. To investigate how people with AS recognise, evaluate and engage in argumentation, we have adapted and applied the empirical instrument developed by van Eemeren, Garssen and Meuffels to study the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical freedom rule (van Eemeren, Gars- sen & Meuffels 2003a; 2003b; 2005a; 2005b; van Eemeren & Meuffels, 2002). Our (...) paper begins with some background information on Asperger syndrome and how it impacts upon communication and argumentation; then it addresses the research questions and methods used; thirdly, it presents some initial findings; finally, it will conclude with some im- plications for those people with AS, for those they come into contact with and for the pragma-dialectic model in general. (shrink)

Amongst the many social factors that impact upon children, race is arguably one of the largest. Race is an ever-present social category that governs many elements of a child’s interaction with others, and especially for racial minority children it exerts a deep influence on their understanding of themselves. In this chapter, we shall begin by examining what the concept of race really amounts to, emphasizing its status as a socially constructed concept, before examining in the following section how children first (...) come to recognize the existence of race, and to understand their own racial identity.We will then look at two important areas that illustrate the profound impact that the social presence of race and the child’s developing understanding of racial identity have upon the social conditions of many children. First, we will examine how race and childhood intersect in matters of educational opportunity and achievement, before moving on to examine the issue of transracial adoption in the final section. (shrink)

God’s speech is a prominent theme in the book of Hebrews. A fascinating phenomenon regarding God’s speech, and one that has in my opinion not been adequately explored, is that the writer possibly implies that God created by his word (Heb 11:3), preserves creation by his word (Heb 1:3) and will consummate creation by his word (Heb 12:26). This article examines whether the writer indeed had the conviction that God did, does and will do this by his word. This is (...) done by doing grammatico-historical exegesis of Hebrews 11:3, 1:3 and 12:26 and integrating the findings. In so doing, this article contributes to the study of Hebrews’ theology of God’s word. (shrink)

Peirce's Sign Theory, or Semiotic, is an account of signification, representation, reference and meaning. Although sign theories have a long history, Peirce's accounts are distinctive and innovative for their breadth and complexity, and for capturing the importance of interpretation to signification. For Peirce, developing a thoroughgoing theory of signs was a central philosophical and intellectual preoccupation. The importance of semiotic for Peirce is wide ranging. As he himself said, “[…] it has never been in my power to study anything,—mathematics, ethics, (...) metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semiotic”. (SS 1977, 85–6). Peirce also treated sign theory as central to his work on logic, as the medium for inquiry and the process of scientific discovery, and even as one possible means for 'proving' his pragmatism. Its importance in Peirce's philosophy, then, cannot be underestimated. -/- Across the course of his intellectual life, Peirce continually returned to and developed his ideas about signs and semiotic and there are three broadly delineable accounts: a concise Early Account from the 1860s; a complete and relatively neat Interim Account developed through the 1880s and 1890s and presented in 1903; and his speculative, rambling, and incomplete Final Account developed between 1906 and 1910. The following entry examines these three accounts, and traces the changes that led Peirce to develop earlier accounts and generate new, more complex, sign theories. However, despite these changes, Peirce's ideas on the basic structure of signs and signification remain largely uniform throughout his developments. Consequently, it is useful to begin with an account of the basic structure of signs according to Peirce. (shrink)

Art is a language. Art objects are therefore decipherable into more or less elaborated and restricted codes. These codes change with the relative solidarity of the community in which they are produced. The more solidary the group, the more restricted the code; the less solidary the community, the more elaborated the artistic codes they produce. In general, realism is a more elaborated code and abstraction a more restricted code, and accordingly more solidary communities should produce more abstract art and less (...) solidary groups should produce more realistic art. This theoretical relationship between artistic codes and group solidarity is captured in the idea of a "semantic equation" and is applied to changes in the styles of New York art from the 1940s through the mid 1980s. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to consider the possibility of a new analytical methodology that could include multidisciplinary approaches into the study of religious ideologies and practices, taking benefit from historical and ethnographic interpretations, but also from linguistic and philological, psychoanalytical, philosophical, sociological, and anthropological considerations. If one tries to study the role or function played by religion in society, considering human beings as builders of symbolic worlds, one should set out to analyze, if not rules, at least general (...) processes of the religious readjustment with respect to the rest of social life, whenever the gap is much too wide, or the religious transfer from one realm to another entirely different. (shrink)