Hamblin distinguished between formal and descriptive dialectic. Formal normative models of deliberation dialogue have been strongly emphasized as argumentation frameworks in computer science. But making such models of deliberation applicable to real natural language examples has reached a point where the descriptive aspect needs more interdisciplinary work. The new formal and computational models of deliberation dialogue that are being built in computer science seem to be closely related to some already existing and very well established computing technologies such as problem (...) solving and decision making, but whether or how dialectical argumentation can be helpful to support these systems remains an open question. The aim of this paper is to examine some real examples of argumentation that seem to hover on the borderlines between deliberation, problem solving and decision making. (shrink)

Self-transcendence has been characterized as a decrease in self-saliency (ego disillusionment) and increased connection, and has been growing in research interest in the past decade. Several measures have been developed and published with some degree of psychometric validity and reliability. However, to date, there has been no review systematically describing, contrasting, and evaluating the different methodological approaches toward measuring self-transcendence including questionnaires, neurological and physiological measures, and qualitative methods. To address this gap, we conducted a review to describe existing methods (...) of measuring self-transcendence, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these methods, and discuss research avenues to advance assessment of self-transcendence, including recommendations for suitability of methods given research contexts. (shrink)

This book analyses Kant’s assumptions about happiness and the implications they have for his moral, political, and legal thought. It provides a “map” of the different areas in which the concept of happiness appears in his practical philosophy and examines how it relates to the main themes of his practical philosophy.

This study explores the emergence and productivity of word order usage in Mandarin-speaking typically-developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder, and examines how this emergence relates to frequency of use in caregiver input. Forty-two caregiver-child dyads participated in video-recorded 30-min semi-structured play sessions. Eleven children with ASD were matched with 10 20-month-old TD children and another 11 children with ASD were matched with 10 26-month-old TD children, on expressive language. We report four major findings: Preschool Mandarin-speaking children with ASD (...) produced word order structures with pervasive ellipsis at similar rates to language-matched TD children, but also displayed differences from TD children in their usage of SVt and VtO frames; Grammatical productivity was observed in both TD children and children with ASD; moreover, children with ASD with higher expressive language produced less stereotyped language; Both TD children and children with ASD heard a range of word orders in their caregivers’ input, with TD children’s input greater in amount and complexity; however, caregivers of both groups also showed no age/language-related changes in word order usage; Few word-order-specific correlations emerged between caregivers and their children; however, strong correlations were observed for mean length of utterances for both groups: Caregivers who produced longer/more complex utterances had children who did the same. Taken together, it seems that despite their pragmatic deficits, the early grammatical knowledge of word order in Mandarin-exposed children with ASD is well preserved and in general follows the typical developmental pattern. Moreover, caregiver input is broadly rather than finely tuned to the linguistic development of TD children and children with ASD, and plays a more important role in children’s general syntactic development than in specific word order acquisition. Thus, early word order usage in preschool Mandarin-speaking TD children and children with ASD may be influenced by both caregiver input and child abilities. (shrink)

Research on evaluative conditioning (EC) shows that attitudes can emerge from co-occurrences of stimuli, and accumulating evidence suggests that EC usually depends on memory for these stimulus contingencies. Therefore, processes known to aid memory retention may be relevant for the development of stable attitudes. One such process may be memory consolidation, assumed to be promoted by waking rest and sleep. In two pre-registered experiments, we investigated whether waking rest (vs. cognitive activity, Experiment 1) and sleep (vs. wakefulness, Experiment 2) in (...) between conditioning and measurement of EC, consolidate contingency memory and EC. Contrary to our predictions, waking rest (vs. cognitive activity) promoted neither contingency memory nor EC effects. Sleep (vs. wakefulness) decreased forgetting of contingency memory but crucially, it did not attenuate the impact of counterconditioning on contingency memory. Sleep also did not influence EC effects, nor the reduction of EC by counterconditioning. EC effects in both experiments were predicted by contingency memory. Yet, unexpectedly, EC effects occurred in the absence of contingency memory after waking rest, but neither after sleep nor in the active control conditions. Our findings emphasise a role of contingency memory in EC, but it remains unclear whether this role changes during waking rest. (shrink)

This paper explores the alleged role of a conception of human nature for Kant’s justification of the duty to leave the state of nature and the related right to coerce others to enter the civil condition in the Doctrine of Right (1797). I criticise the interpretation put forward by Byrd and Hruschka, according to which Kant’s postulate of public right is a preventive measure based on a “presumption of badness” of human beings. Although this reading seems to be supported by (...) § 42 of the Doctrine of Right, I shall argue that the paragraph neither offers a justification of why we have a duty to leave the state of nature, nor explains why individuals are allowed to coerce others to do so. I offer an alternative interpretation of § 42 by focusing on the difference between formal and material violations of right and argue that the rationale behind the postulate of public right is the idea that remaining in the state of nature is a formal violation of the concept of right. It is therefore not prudential reason that authorizes us to coerce others to enter the lawful condition. (shrink)

The recent cycle of social struggles against precarity in Italy has been characterized by an extensive use of images representing precarious workers. This contribution explores this in the case of the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP) protest campaign. The subversion of existing popular culture traditions was the main objective of the activists’ newly created icons such as San Precario, Serpica Naro and other visual tools. The visual work on gender in the EMP seemed to fill a gap between theoretical work on (...) the feminization of affective and immaterial labour and the less predominant presence of gender. Visual icons seem to have been at least as successful as text messages in publicizing the precarity discourse and their production deserves further attention. (shrink)

Anti-Academy examines the ideas, processes, workshops and legacies of three radical educational models in 1960s Japan, the USA and Denmark. Comprised of three sections, each relating to one of these school's programmes, Anti-Academy explores life at Bigakko, Tokyo, The Intermedia Programme at the University of Iowa, and Ex-School, Copenhagen. Anti-Academy is a comprehensive interpretation of how these three academies situated themselves on the peripheries of the art world, existing in opposition to the mainstream, and responding to the political and social (...) climate, location and cultural context of the day.Published alongside an exhibition of the same name, 21 November 2013 - 18 February 2014. (shrink)

Este presente artigo visa buscar os pressupostos da dupla reflexão de Climacus para melhor compreender a sua crítica ao pensamento dialético-especulativo. É tendo em mente que a dupla reflexão retoma os conceitos do trágico e do cômico, da seriedade e do gracejo – ainda que sobre uma nova perspectiva– que compreenderemos a importância dessa comunicação para a linguagem indireta, que tem por objetivo comunicar uma contradição absoluta.

This doctoral thesis analyzes the systematic role of Kant’s conception of happiness in his moral, legal and political theory. Although many of his conclusions and arguments are directly or indirectly influenced by his conception of human happiness, Kant’s underlying assumptions are rarely overtly discussed or given much detail in his works. Kant also provides different and apparently incompatible definitions of happiness. This research explores the domains of Kant’s practical philosophy in which his conception of happiness plays a systematic role: the (...) relation between the natural need of human beings to pursue happiness and the ends-oriented structure of the human will; Kant’s anti-eudaimonism in ethical theory; Kant’s claim that we have an indirect duty to promote our own happiness and the problem that under certain circumstances, the indeterminacy of happiness makes it not irrational to choose short term satisfaction at the costs of one’s overall, long term happiness, given Kant’s conception of non-moral choice as expectation of pleasure; Kant’s justification of the duty to adopt the happiness of others as our ends and the latitude and eventual demandingness of this duty; finally, since Kant also subsumes subsistence needs and welfare under the concept of happiness of individuals, I also engage with the question of state provision for the poor in the Kantian Rechtsstaat and explore Kant’s conception of equity or fairness as an alternative to the traditional minimalist and the welfare interpretations of the Kantian state. (shrink)

Criticism of the traditional periodization of history (antiquity, the Middle Ages, the modern age), generally centered on the medieval period as the crucial point, has not even stooped to consider what is called the “contemporary age.” This new and poorly defined phase, proposed by the methodologists to inclose in history the events and times which immediately precede us or in which we live, has not in general been accepted as such a theoretical unity by those who have been occupied with (...) the other pretentious “ages” in order to deny their equal validity.In the ingenious and controversial scheme outlined here, certainly, the contemporary age represents a concept so artificial, so devoid of unified personality and feeling and of clear differentiation, that it only disturbs the already slight harmony of this controversial and antiquated system. (shrink)

One of two commentaries on “Normalizing Atypical Genitalia: How a Heated Debate Went Astray,” by Josephine Johnston, from the November‐December 2012 issue.

This is the second of two parts of an interview with Alice Crary conducted in a single exchange in the first weeks of January 2022, where she discusses ordinary language philosophy and feminism, Wittgenstein’s conception of mind and its relation to feminist ethics, the link between Wittgenstein and Critical Theory, and her own views about efforts to bring about social and political transformations. The first part on “Wittgenstein and Feminism” is published in the NWR Special Issue “Wittgenstein and Feminism”, (...) forthcoming later this year. (shrink)

This paper reviews the social scientific literature on biometric surveillance, with particular attention to its potential harms. It maps the harms caused by biometric surveillance, traces their theoretical origins, and brings these harms together in one integrative framework to elucidate their cumulative power. Demonstrating these harms with examples from the United States, the European Union, and Israel, I propose that biometric surveillance be addressed, evaluated and reframed as a new form of control rather than simply another means of inspection. I (...) conclude by delineating three features of biometric technologies—complexity, objectivity, and agency—that demonstrate their social power and draw attention to the importance of studying biometric surveillance. (shrink)