How is knowledge produced and used in cyberspace? David Hakken--a key figure in the anthropology of science and technology studies-approaches the study of cyberculture through the venue of knowledge production, drawing on critical theory from anthropology, philosophy and informatics (computer science) to examine how the character and social functions of knowledge change profoundly in computer--saturated environments. He looks at what informational technologies offer, how they are being employed, and how they are tied to various agendas and forms of (...) power. This book will be essential for both social scientists and cultural studies scholars doing research on cyberculture. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a basis for renewed talk about ‘use’ in computing. Four current ‘discourse arenas’ are described. Different intentions manifest in each arena are linked to failures in ‘translation’, different terminologies crossing disciplinary and national boundaries non-reflexively. Analysis of transnational use discourse dynamics shows much miscommunication. Conflicts like that between the ‘Scandinavian System Development School’ and the ‘usability approach’ have less current salience. Renewing our talk about use is essential to a participatory politics of information technology and (...) will lead to clearer perception of the implications of letting new systems becoming primary media of social interaction. (shrink)

In this essay, David Waddington and Noah Weeth Feinstein explore how Dewey's conception of science can help us rethink the way science is done in schools. The authors begin by contrasting a view of science that is implicitly accepted by many scientists and science educators — science as a search for truth — with Dewey's instrumentalist, technological, and nonrealist conception of science. After demonstrating that the search-for-truth conception is closely linked to some ongoing difficulties with science curricula that students (...) find particularly alienating, they then analyze some of the educational opportunities that Dewey's vision opens up. Ultimately, Waddington and Weeth Feinstein argue that Dewey offers a humble and humanistic vision of science and science education practice that captures the power of science by connecting it clearly to everyday human activities and challenges. (shrink)

Standards and norms for reasoning function, in part, to manage epistemic risk. Properly used, modal qualifiers like presumably have a role in systematically managing epistemic risk by flagging and tracking type-specific epistemic merits and risks of the claims they modify. Yet, argumentation-theoretic accounts of presumption often define it in terms of modalities of other kinds, thereby failing to recognize the unique risk profile of each. This paper offers a stipulative account of presumption, inspired by Ullmann-Margalit, as an inferentially generated modal (...) qualifier, “presumably, p,” distinguishing it from other, particularly epistemic modalities, e.g., standing commitments, assumptions, assertions, suppositions, hypotheses, and defeasible claims. By avoiding the tranching of inferential instruments of qualitatively different bona fides and risk profiles, this account provides a more accurate risk-rating system that better manages epistemic risk in inference, as well as contributing to the normative theory of the operation of presumption in reasoning and argument. (shrink)

Taking a new look at the language of ‘religious experience’, the authors in this contribution take into review this aspect in the current theological discussion, and in the church pew, asking the question: Does George Lindbeck’s criticism of the experiential-expressive model of religion still have something to say to us? Firstly, Lindbeck is reviewed and recouped. Then, religious experience and its commodification are discussed, at the hand also of the heritage from Schleiermacher onwards on experience. Taking a position within the (...) post-modern, relativist, critical realist and pragmatist possibilities, a community-embedded sense of truth is concluded to without sacrificing the possibility of universalising claims. Is it possible, though, within the cultural reflex towards psychologised faith to retain a historically oriented depth? (shrink)

Existing analyses of slurs emphasize how linguistic mechanisms make slurs derogatory. I will argue that, in addition to linguistic mechanisms, there are overlooked doxastic and epistemic features of standard slurring utterances that can be sources of offense. Additionally, I argue that the doxastic feature that distinguishes slurring utterances from other negatively valenced utterances is fundamental to understanding slurring terms. Clinical Trial Registration: Not applicable.

This essay argues that whereas ‘analytic’ political philosophy is focussed on generating reasons that are oriented to the issue of articulating norms of justice, legitimacy and so on, that guide political judgements about institutions and/or forms of conduct; ‘Continental’ political philosophy is oriented to critically assessing the practices of reasoning that characterise our social and political institutions and forms of conduct as well as our first-order normative reflection on them. It explores the distinction between the two orientations in terms of, (...) what are called, their ‘structural problematics’: the guidance problem and the critique problem, before considering briefly ways in which they may be combined. (shrink)

Relationships between the behavioral integrity of managers as perceived by employees and employee attitudes (job satisfaction and life satisfaction), well-being (stress and health), and behaviors (absenteeism) were tested using data from the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (n = 2,820). Using multivariate and univariate analysis, perceived behavioral integrity (PBI) was positively related to job and life satisfaction and negatively related to stress, poor health, and absenteeism. The effect size for the relationship with job satisfaction was medium-to-large while the (...) effect sizes with respect to the other variables were small-to-medium. There was no support for the hypotheses that women would perceive lower levels of behavioral integrity and that the strength of the relationships between PBI and the outcomes variables would be stronger among women than among men. (shrink)

A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural (...) revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip. (shrink)

Na poti do sem sem razmišljal, kako začeti to srečanje – in bolj sem razmišljal, bolj se mi je zdelo absurdno, da bi uvodoma predstavljal nekoga, ki ga vsi poznate. Pač pa lahko povem anekdoto, za katero mogoče ne veste vsi. V Društvu za antične in humanistične študije smo predlani prišli na idejo, da bi profesorja Gantarja predlagali za neko drugo nagrado, ki je imela med obrazci tudi obrazec za soglasje predlaganega. Naredil sem osnovnošolsko napako ter pisal profesorju, če ga (...) lahko izpolni in podpiše. On pa mi je odpisal, da je nagrad v življenju dobil preveč in da prosi, naj ga ne predlagamo. Eksplicitno izraženi zahtevi se je težko upreti. Smo pa v društvu tudi poznavalci Otona Župančiča, ki je, kot veste, napisal, da gre osel enkrat na led, »baš to je oslovstvo«, in da modrec ve, kako je »danes pal«, jutri bo pa plesal po njem. Ko smo tako profesorja predlagali naslednjič, tokrat za Prešernovo nagrado, ga nismo nič spraševali. Na tem mestu bi se zato rad zahvalil Miljani Cunta s Slovenske matice, ki je vse to koordinirala, in SAZU, ki je predlog takoj podprla; resnično sem vesel, da ob tej priložnosti lahko sediva tukaj. (shrink)

In Science, Order and Creativity, David Bohm and F. David Peat argue that science has lost its way in recent years and needs to go beyond a narrow and fragmented view of nature and embrace a wider holistic view that restores the importance of creativity and communication for all humanity - not just scientists. The result of a close collaboration by one of the 20th century's greatest physicists and thinkers, David Bohm, with leading science writer F. (...) class='Hi'>David Peat, provides a rare combination of profound reflection and clear exposition that can be appreciated by anyone concerned with science and its importance in our lives. This new edition includes a new preface and an extended additional chapter by Peat which draws upon further discussions with David Bohm before the latter's death in 1992. A fascinating diagnosis and considered proposal for a cure for science's ills, it is also very accessible entry point to the work of David Bohm. Bohm and Peat contend that science has lost its bearings in the last century in favour of a narrow, abstracted, fragmented approach to nature and reality. Tracing the history of science, Bohm and Peat offer intriguing new insights into how scientific theories come into being, how to eliminate blocks of creativity and how science can lead to a deeper understanding of society, the human condition and the human mind itself. (shrink)

Podstawa przekładu: David Hume, Of the Balance of Trade, w: tegoż, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller, Liberty Fund, Inc., Indianapolis 1987. Przypisy, które nie pochodzą od Hume’a, zostały ujęte w nawiasy kwadratowe; wykorzystano w nich uwagi wydawcy edycji będącej podstawą tłumaczenia.

This article examines Engelhardt’s thesis from the standpoint of liturgical theology. Fagerberg’s previous work has claimed that liturgy gives birth to theology in such a way that liturgy is the ontological condition for theology, as Schmemann said. If we apply this approach to the question at hand, we will understand liturgy to be the source and foundation also for Christian morality. This is no particular surprise, since the Christian tradition has always integrated liturgy, theology, and asceticism, that last named treating (...) morality as a pathway to deification. Liturgical theology views liturgy as a pneumatic exercise that makes theologian souls, and liturgical asceticism understands such theologian souls to be molded by the doings of the body, and this delivers us to the threshold of liturgical morality, for in liturgy the God’s-eye perspective shares its light with us. (shrink)

Keynes is widely accepted to have proved the existence of a consumption gap as a cause of economic depressions. Such a gap meant that, ironically, depressions could get worse as a result of the greater wealth produced by the modern economy, since, as Keynes argued, the wealthy consumed proportionately less than the lower?income groups. Textual analysis, however, shows that Keynes's arguments amounted to assumptions, not demonstrations. And a survey of the empirical research of the subsequent half?century reveals a lack of (...) convincing evidence of the consumption gap. (shrink)

Ranson, David Review(s) of: The deep within: Towards an archetypal theology, by Eugene Stockton, (Blue Mountain Education and Research Trust, 2011), pp.115, $15.00.

Most people have heard about quantum physics and its remarkable, well-nigh bizarre claims. And most people would assume that quantum reality describes a world quite different from ours. In this book, David A. Grandy shows that one can find quantum puzzles, or variations thereof, in the backyard of everyday experience. What disappears in transferring quantum theory to the everyday is the theory's mathematical formalism, but that need not imply a loss of analytic rigor. If quantum reality is truly as (...) elemental and ubiquitous as many thinkers suggest, then alternative or complementary perspectives ought to be possible, and with the proliferation of such perspectives, a more fully rounded understanding of quantum reality—and everyday reality—might emerge. Everyday Quantum Reality is a step in that direction. (shrink)

Some modern critics of Kant, like Bernard Williams, argue that his ideal of morality is a form of action which lies beyond any empirical determination. The aim of this article is to show that Kant was not only fully aware of the role of contingent elements in moral action, but that his fundamental conception of practical rationality is itself partly constituted by contingent factors. Practical rationality cannot be separated from its exercise and hence from the necessary empirical conditions of human (...) psychology and historical circumstances. Without a maxim there can be no manifestation of practical reason. Without a human character there is no room for moral virtue. Without achievement no moral action can be complete . Thus, human agency extends beyond the realm of pure motive. These themes reflecting Kant's recognition of the importance of contingency in his general theory of rational action are discussed primarily in the light of the Metaphysics of Morals, which in its structure and program explicitly sets out to tie together the a priori and contingent elements in a unified theory. Legality without morality is blind; morality without legality is vacuous. Einige moderne Kritiker Kants wie Bernard Williams behaupten, Kants Sittlichkeitsideal weise auf eine Handlungsform, die außerhalb alles empirisch Feststellbaren liege. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es zu zeigen, daß Kant sich der Rolle kontingenter Elemente im moralischen Handeln nicht nur voll bewußt war, sondern daß sein grundlegender Entwurf praktischer Vernunft selbst teilweise auf kontingente Faktoren gegründet ist. Praktische Vernunft kann nicht von ihrer Anwendung getrennt werden und also auch nicht von den notwendig empirischen Bedingungen menschlicher Psychologie und von den historischen Umständen des Handelns. Ohne eine Maxime gibt es keine praktische Vernunft. Ohne einen menschlichen Charakter gibt es keine moralische Tugend. Ohne ein erreichtes Ziel kann keine moralische Handlung vollständig sein. Menschliches Handeln überschreitet die Grenzen des Bereichs bloßer Motive.Die Themen zeigen, daß Kant in seiner allgemeinen Theorie vernünftigen Handelns die Kontingenz ernst nimmt. Sie werden hauptsächlich im Lichte der Metaphysik der Sitten diskutiert, die sich in ihrem Programm und in ihrer Struktur explizit vornimmt, apriorische und kontingente Elemente in einer einheitlichen Theorie zu verbinden. Legalität ohne Moralität ist blind; Moralität ohne Legalität ist leer. (shrink)