This study takes a systemic functional multimodal social semiotic approach to the analysis and discussion of image and text relations in two sets of data. First, patterns of contextualisation of images and text in the online magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah produced by the Islamic extremist organisation which refers to itself as Islamic State are examined. The second data set consists of a sample of texts from Western online news and blog sites which include recontextualisations of images found in the first (...) data set. A sample of examples of the use and re-use of images is discussed in order to identify patterns of similarity and difference when images and text are recontextualised. It is argued that the ISIS material tends to foreground the interpersonal metafunction in combination with the textual metafunction, while the other data set tends to foreground the ideational metafunction. These inferences indicate that further exploration of a larger data set is worth pursuing. Such studies would provide deeper insights helping to distinguish between online material which supports terrorism and that which opposes it, as well as facilitating the further development of multimodal social semiotic approaches to image and text relations. (shrink)

Medical students’ mask-making can provide valuable insights into personal and professional identity formation and wellness. A subset of first- and second-year medical students attending a medical school wellness retreat participated in a mask-making workshop. Faculty-student teams examined student masks and explanatory narratives using visual and textual analysis techniques. A quantitative survey assessed student perceptions of the experience. We identified an overarching theme: “Reconciliation/reclamation of authentic identity.” The combination of nonverbal mask-making and narrative offers rich insights into medical students’ experience and (...) thinking. This activity promoted reflection and self-care, while providing insight regarding personal and professional development. (shrink)

The authors would like to correct a misspelling in the name of one of the authors due to a typographical error. The name should read Atur Turakhia, not Artur Turakhia. This does not change the conclusions or interpretations presented.

Ethicists widely accept the notion that scientists have moral responsibilities to benefit society at large. The dissemination of scientific information to the public and its political representatives is central to many of the ways in which scientists serve society. Unfortunately, the task of providing information can often give rise to moral quandaries when scientific experts participate in politically charged debates over issues that are fraught with uncertainty. This paper develops a theoretical framework for an “ethics of expertise” (EOE) based on (...) the notion that scientists have responsibilities to provide information in a way that promotes autonomous decision-making on the part of the public and its representatives. Moreover, insofar as the principle of informed consent has developed in biomedical ethics as a way for physicians to promote autonomous decision-making on the part of their patients, this paper suggests that the informed-consent concept may suggest a set of criteria and guidelines that can help scientists to fulfill their similar ethical responsibilities to the public. In order to illustrate how the resulting EOE could provide practical guidance for scientific experts, the paper examines a case study involving the dissemination of information about the low-dose biological effects of toxic chemicals and carcinogens. (shrink)

Husserl seems to have devoted roughly equal amounts of energy and pages to the description of perception, judgement, and imagination. By “description,” he meant the analysis of the traits and components of mental states or acts and their objects. As his views changed over the years about the nature of intentionality and philosophy, the descriptive psychology of the Logical Investigations (1900/01) gave way to descriptive programmes in which the objects of perception and of judgement were conceived of in terms of (...) a new, analytic framework; in particular Husserl lost interest in describing the things and processes in the real world that are the objects of perception and judgement and so too in describing their relations to these acts. His new analytic framework, particularly as it applies to perception, has been thoroughly expounded and discussed in the literature. My aim here is to expound Husserl's first descriptions of perception within the framework of the Investigations and to incorporate as far as possible his later descriptive results to the extent that these are separable from his later turn to idealism. (shrink)

Contemporary political philosophers disagree about whether theories of justice should be utopian or realistic. Contributors to this volume largely deny that the choice between realism and idealism is binary. Their contributions represent a continuum between realism and idealism that best represents the contemporary state of the debate.

Phenomenology was in large part the discovery of Edmund Husserl, whose Logical Investigations of 1900/01 are normally regarded as the work that launched the phenomenological movement. Yet Husserl's phenomenology, in particular in the form in which it is set out in this his most important contribution to philosophy, is itself part of an Austrian philosophical tradi tion inspired by Brentano and continued, in very different ways, by Meinong, Stumpf, Twardowski, Ehrenfels, Husserl - and Marty. Like Brentano and all his heirs (...) Marty's philosophical interests were in the philosophy of mind, where this is taken to include or at least ground the philosophy of language, and analytic metaphysics. It is Marty's discussions of topics in these two areas that provide the contributions to this volume with their subject-matter. The papers by Roderick Chisholm, S. -Y. Kuroda, Barry Smith, Peter Simons, Rosaria Egidi, Karl Schuhmann, Elmar Holenstein, Edgar Morscher, Wolf gang Wenning and myself were presented at the 1984 conference on Anton Marty in Fribourg, Switzerland. Our host in Fribourg was Guido Kung, the conference was made possible by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. I should like to thank both for their help. Geneva, April 1988 KEVIN MULLIGAN Xl Abbreviations Employed in the Text Anton Marty's two major works, the Untersuchungen and the posthumously published Raum und Zeit are referred to in what follows in the following style. U Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie, Vol. I (only volume published). Halle a. S. (shrink)

This chapter presents what people think about God and how one should act in this world. It discusses how people should pray, and that, if possible, one could pray through poetry. It also discusses why poetry is considered as sacrament, on how its writings reflect one's belief. It focuses on “Lachrimae”, a poem that exemplifies sacramental manner.

In the 1920s, John Dewey's followers in China, led by his student Hu Shih, attempted to put his pragmatism into practice in their quest for democracy. This essay compares Hu Shih's thought, especially his emphasis on pragmatism as method, with Dewey's philosophical positions and evaluates Hu's achievement as a pragmatist in the context of the tumultuous times he lived in. It assesses Hu's claim that the means to democracy lies in education rather than politics, since democracy as a way of (...) life requires a cultural renewal beyond institutional changes. It argues that a problem‐centered approach to social change does not preclude radical action, even revolution. But pragmatism is against gratuitous use of violence in the service of wholesale and abstract ideals advocated by various “isms.” While Hu's experiment of democracy in China is a significant episode in the history of pragmatism, its “failure” does not prove that there are inherent flaws in the pragmatist method, that pragmatism is unviable for China. The failure needs to be understood in the context of the pragmatist conception of experiment, in which failures are to be expected; what is important is to learn from them to achieve better results in the next stage of inquiry. Hu Shih's pragmatism contains lessons for pragmatists and for those interested in the continued quest for democracy in China—the experiment continues. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is not only disrupting industries and businesses, particularly the ones have fallen behind the adoption, but also significantly impacting public life as well. This calls for government authorities pay attention to public opinions and sentiments towards AI. Nonetheless, there is limited knowledge on what the drivers behind the public perception of AI are. Bridging this gap is the rationale of this paper. As the methodological approach, the study conducts an online public perception survey with the residents of Sydney, (...) Melbourne, and Brisbane, and explores the collected survey data through statistical analysis. The analysis reveals that: the public is concerned of AI invading their privacy, but not much concerned of AI becoming more intelligent than humans; the public trusts AI in their lifestyle, but the trust is lower for companies and government deploying AI; the public appreciates the benefits of AI in urban services and disaster management; depending on the local context, public perceptions vary; and the drivers behind the public perception include gender, age, AI knowledge, and AI experience. The findings inform authorities in developing policies to minimise public concerns and maximise AI awareness. (shrink)

This essay develops a novel account of the distinction between a publicly justified polity and modus vivendi regimes by appealing to the ideal of congruence in public reason liberalism. A fully publicly justified polity is one whose laws are supported by congruent “first-personal” and “second-personal” moral reasons to internalize laws as personally binding on those subject to them. Regimes approach modus vivendi status to the extent that their laws fail to be justified by either type of reason, or where firstpersonal (...) and second-personal reasons fail to justify internalization. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 35-37.

This is a working paper that presents the first phase of what will eventually be a huge project, namely a critical appropriation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Early on it provides a sketch of the main strands of Aristotle’s theoretical web in his N. Ethics. Following that, the paper offers some critical commentary concerning some of Aristotle’s main positions: especially his views on moral virtue, the soul, intellectual virtue, and human well-being. The paper then turns to the development of some significantly (...) different ways of construing both intellectual virtue as well as moral virtue. With respect to intellectual virtue, I present my own perspective in interconnection with a process-oriented way of understanding reality, as opposed to Aristotle’s substance-oriented way. With respect to moral virtue, I present my interpretation in relation to a thisworldly understanding of the human spirit/soul, as well as a humanistic-Marxist interpretation of human well-being. Toward the paper’s end, I offer some suggestions concerning a modified “doctrine of the mean” that would be a sort of critical synthesis of the views of Aristotle and Confucius. (shrink)

Although music is commonly conceived of as a humanities, in a wider sense, music is a spiritually infused business – a profession redolent of priceless eternal illumination and beauty. Hence the stories of the life and work of great composers and performers are, in a profound sense, stories about businesspeople of a peculiarly enlightened and noble ilk, dedicated to the creation and perpetuation of an enduring form of incorporeal wealth that I shall designate as sapiential capital. It is notable that (...) whereas some renowned composers are not necessarily deemed to be financial successes as measured within the span of their own mortal lifetimes, the (financial and nonfinancial) heritage of their work for posterity can be colossal. Thus, seen from augmented temporal, spiritual, non-egoistic, and non-materialistic vantage points, many great musicians were (and still are) monumental successes – both qua their humanities legacies and qua their business endeavors. The thrust of the paper is to draw spiritually significant insights that are pertinent for businesspeople aspiring to venture beyond the secular confines of conventional business life attached to materialistic norms and values. The study seeks to examine – from a faith and spirituality standpoint – interdisciplinary linkages between music-qua-humanities and music-qua-business that point to higher purposes and meanings for business life and beyond. (shrink)

In his new book, Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, Bryan G. Norton proposes an account of sustainability grounded in the deliberation of local communities as part of an adaptive management process. One can distinguish two different ways of justifying his account—resulting in “political” and “metaphysical” conceptions of sustainability—in much the same way that John Rawls famously distinguishes between political and metaphysical conceptions of justice. Whereas the metaphysical conception of sustainability depends on principles that are specific to American pragmatist (...) philosophical theory, the political conception draws on relatively uncontroversial elements of democratic political culture. Although Norton seems to lean toward a metaphysical conception of sustainability in his book, a political conception would actually be more compatible with the overarching aims of his project. Finally, the distinction between political and metaphysical conceptions could prove valuable as a model for thinking about how many of the current projects in environmental pragmatism relate to other strands of environmental philosophy. Thus, a potentially fruitful alteration to Norton’s recent work provides some conciliatory lessons for relating different projects in the field of environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Christian Ethics and Commonsense Morality goes against the grain of various postmodern approaches to morality in contemporary religious ethics. In this book, Jung seeks to provide a new framework in which the nature of common Christian moral beliefs and practices can be given a new meaning. He suggests that, once major philosophical assumptions behind postmodern theories of morality are called into question, we may look at Christian morality in quite a different light. On his account, Christian morality is a historical (...) morality insofar as it is rooted in the rich historical traditions of the Christian church. Yet this kind of historical dependence does not entail the evidential dependence of all moral beliefs on historical traditions. It is possible to argue for the epistemic autonomy of moral beliefs, according to which Christian and other moral beliefs can be justified independently of their historical sources. The particularity of Christian morality lies not in its particular historical sources that also function as the grounds of justification, but rather in its explanatory and motivational capacity to further articulate the kind of moral knowledge that is readily available to most human beings and to enable people to act upon their moral knowledge. (shrink)

But beyond doubt also, the primacy that Plato gives to the imitation of, or participation in the Ideas, apparently substantially existing, is the main reason why critics have refused to recognize or consider possible any mode of conceptual immanence in the mind of the Demiurge or whomever they regard as the Platonic God. Text on text could be cited to exemplify the role of the Ideas as archetypes. Yet it seems rather strange that Plato should conceive of two simultaneous objects (...) of imitation, the Supreme Being and the Ideas. Despite the plurality of Ideas, however, some critics have recognized a centripetal tendency in the dialogues toward the primacy of the Good, or the One, or the Beautiful, or Being, over subordinate Ideas. Was there possibly some similar tendency toward unity of some sort between the Supreme Intellect and the Intelligibles, his archetypes, which in the Timaeus are the ideal Living Exemplar of the cosmos? (shrink)

This volume contains ten essays that treat the relationship between Kant’s philosophy and those of his predecessors in the early modern canon. The essays divide into five pairs devoted respectively to Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. In each case, the work of a prominent Kant scholar precedes a reply by an early modernist. This format provides the opportunity to reevaluate both Kant’s philosophy and those of his predecessors, the contention being that the latter “in our historical conscience” too often (...) are read “in light of Kant’s reconstruction of their thought”.In this review, I discuss a selection of the articles in order to evaluate the extent to which they contribute to the stated historiographic aim of the volume. Each of the ten contributions provides a worthwhile read in isolation from the others, but the success they achieve in reassessing the relationship of Kantian to pre-Kantian philosophy varies significantly from essay to essay. Cumulatively, they offer an inspiring retort to the central arguments of that chapter of modern philosophy entitled “On the division of all philosophies into vorkantische and nachkantische. (shrink)

It has been asserted that preaching in the first half of the twenty-first century is in crisis by the authors of Engaging Preaching. This crisis has arisen, so say the authors, due in part to those who have been entrusted to preach the ‘oracles of God’ (1 Peter 4:11), having failed to faithfully proclaim the Word of the Lord. No longer do the words of ‘Thus saith the Lord’, regularly fill the halls of the sanctuary. Instead of a sure word (...) from the Bible, those in attendance are just as likely to give tips on self-fulfillment or achieving one’s dreams. By this practice, it seems there are a significant number of pulpit practitioners who neither trust in the authority or the sufficiency of the Word of God. The situation seems bleak, but there is a remedy to be applied to this situation. Carl F. H. Henry has left us a wealth of theological writings that speak to this very problem. This paper will argue as Henry has masterfully argued for the authority of Scripture, the preacher finds a sure footing for a pulpit practice that displays the authority and the sufficiency of the Bible. It will be argued that expositional preaching is the most natural response to a robust view of the authority and sufficiency of the Word of God. (shrink)

This article describes recent jurisprudential accountsof analogical legal reasoning andcompares them in detail to the computational modelof case-based legal argument inCATO. The jurisprudential models provide a theoryof relevance based on low-levellegal principles generated in a process ofcase-comparing reflective adjustment. Thejurisprudential critique focuses on the problemsof assigning weights to competingprinciples and dealing with erroneously decidedprecedents. CATO, a computerizedinstructional environment, employs ArtificialIntelligence techniques to teach lawstudents how to make basic legal argumentswith cases. The computational modelhelps students test legal hypotheses againsta database of (...) legal cases, draws analogiesto problem scenarios from the database, andcomposes arguments by analogy with a setof argument moves. The CATO model accountsfor a number of the important featuresof the jurisprudential accounts, includingimplementing a kind of reflective adjustment.It also avoids some of the problems identifiedin the critique; for instance, it deals withweights in a non-numeric, context-sensitivemanner. The article concludes by describingthe contributions AI research can make tojurisprudential investigations of complexcognitive phenomena of legal reasoning. Forinstance, unlike the jurisprudential models,CATO provides a detailed account of how togenerate multiple interpretations of a citedcase, downplaying or emphasizing the legalsignificance of distinctions in terms of thepurposes of the law as the argument contextdemands. (shrink)

I argue against Lori Watson and Christie Hartley's recent criticisms of convergence approaches to public justification. In particular, I argue that convergence approaches can capture what is distinctive about democratic decision‐making and provide an attractive account of stability for the right reasons.

Kevin T. Kelly and Clark Glymour. Inductive Inference from Theory-Laden Data.