An investigation into the historical development of Nike's award-winning advertising campaigns in the US reveals that, over the last decade or so, African-American athletes have become their almost exclusive focus. However, these ads have increasingly centered not on black personalities per se, but on the aesthetic, affective and visceral manifestations of skin, musculature and sweat. Black bodies in advertising are rarely to be seen at rest, unless in a state of exhaustion (from which the requisite product alone can provide relief). (...) Consideration is therefore given to the potential connotations of cultural producers' repeated references to extreme physical exertion. Anson Rabinbach's trope of the `human motor' evokes modern science's concern with matters of energy preservation and entropy; here it is utilized to provide a fresh insight into the chronic contradictions between commercial cultural production on one hand, and the reality of contemporary cultural and social inequalities on the other. (shrink)

Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results is a strengths-based framework for strategic thinking, planning, conversations, and leading that focuses on strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. The SOAR framework leverages and integrates Appreciative Inquiry to create a transformation process through generative questions and positive framing. While SOAR has been used by practitioners since 2000 as a framework for generating positive organizational change, its use in empirical research has been limited by the absence of reliable and valid measures. We report on (...) the reliability, construct validity, and measurement invariance of the SOAR Scale, a 12-item self-report survey organized into four first-order factors. Data from a sample of 285 U.S. professionals were analyzed in Mplus using confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling. The Four-Factor first-order exploratory structure equation modeling had the best model fit. Measurement invariance tests found the scalar invariance of the SOAR Scale across gender and education groups. Implications are discussed for using the SOAR Scale to build resilience at the individual, the team, and the organizational levels. (shrink)

Arguably, the modern missionary movement’s foundational text, the ‘Great Commission’ of Matthew 28:18–20 has been criticized for its use in legitimizing colonial oppression. Focusing on reception history in South Asian polycolonial contexts, this article uses ‘Saidian’ contrapuntal reading to explore whether and for whom the commission is ‘great’? William Carey used it as a proof-text in his ‘Enquiry’ for Christians to engage in foreign mission. RS Sugirtharajah brings a postcolonial critique to Carey, but Saugata Bhaduri appreciates the unintended de-colonizing (...) consequences of Carey’s vernacular literature. Jayachitra Lalitha questions why women were absent in Matthew 28:18–20 and why Dalit women still struggle. George Soares-Prabhu’s reading alongside a Buddhist text suggests more integral mission and liberation. Despite colonialism’s distorting affect, there is historical irony in Matthew 28’s influence in South India. Contrapuntal conversations helpfully focus on the well-being of overlooked groups and recover some of the resistance implicit in Matthew’s composition. (shrink)

Those who advocate a “historicist” outlook on moral responsibility often hold that people who unwillingly acquire corrupt dispositions are not blameworthy for the wrong actions that issue from these dispositions; this contention is frequently supported by thought experiments involving instances of forced psychological manipulation that seem to call responsibility into question. I argue against this historicist perspective and in favor of the conclusion that the process by which a person acquires values and dispositions is largely irrelevant to moral responsibility. While (...) the thought experiments introduced by historicists raise perplexing questions about personal identity and involve clear instances of moral wrongs done to the manipulated subjects, neither of these considerations bear on the question of moral responsibility. Rather, questions about moral responsibility in manipulation cases should be answered, I argue, by considering whether a manipulated agent is capable of expressing through her actions the objectionable attitudes that make blame appropriate in normal cases of wrongdoing. (shrink)

Should we remain neutral between our interests and those of future generations? Or are we ethically permitted or even required to depart from neutrality and engage in some measure of intergenerational discounting? This Article addresses the problem of intergenerational discounting by drawing on two different intellectual traditions: the social welfare function (“SWF”) tradition in welfare economics, and scholarship on “prioritarianism” in moral philosophy. Unlike utilitarians, prioritarians are sensitive to the distribution of well-being. They give greater weight to well-being changes affecting (...) worse-off individuals. Prioritarianism can be captured, formally, through an SWF which sums a concave transformation of individual utility, rather than simply summing unweighted utilities in utilitarian fashion. The Article considers the appropriate structure of a prioritarian SWF in intergenerational cases. The simplest case involves a fixed and finite intertemporal population. In that case, I argue, policymakers can and should maintain full neutrality between present and future generations. No discount factor should be attached to the utility of future individuals. Neutrality becomes trickier when we depart from this simple case, meaning: (1) “non-identity” problems, where current choices change the identity of future individuals; (2) population-size variation, where current choices affect not merely the identity of future individuals, but the size of the world’s future population (this case raises the specter of what Derek Parfit terms “the repugnant conclusion,” i.e., that dramatic reductions in the average level of individual well-being might be compensated for by increases in population size); or (3) an infinite population. The Article grapples with the difficult question of outfitting a prioritarian SWF to handle non-identity problems, population-size variation, and infinite populations. It tentatively suggests that a measure of neutrality can be maintained even in these cases. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"An Option for Art But Not an Option for Life":Beauty as an Educational ImperativeJoe Winston (bio)IntroductionIn a recent meeting of the academic staff in the university department where I work, we were asked to state our current research interests. Responses progressed around the circle and everyone listened quietly and respectfully until I stated that my interest was beauty, to which there was general laughter—complicit, not derisory, as if everyone (...) laughing presumed it was a joke. In the same week, I heard a story from a colleague who works in another institution. She had been interviewing a prospective female candidate for their postgraduate teacher training course with a deputy principal from a local school. When it came to a decision, the latter had not been in favor of offering the young woman a place; she was "too beautiful," she thought, to the extent that she would "be a distraction" in the classroom.I offer these stories as illustrative of a fact little discussed—that beauty is a problem in educational discourse, seen as either wildly irrelevant or discordant with the job of teaching. Yet it was not always the case. Beauty has in the past been understood as one of the highest aims of education. For Schiller, it fulfilled a core human need, and he wrote in the second of his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man that "it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to Freedom."1 Matthew Arnold argued that it was in beauty that the "human race finds its ideal."2 Emerson saw beauty as "the form under which the intellect likes to study the world,"3 and Iris Murdoch argued that it should be at the base of any education in the virtues, citing Plato's argument that beauty is the one spiritual quality that we love by instinct.4 These figures could hardly be described as philosophical lightweights, yet their sentiments and the complex arguments through which they expressed [End Page 71] them have for years been neglected; only recently has this begun to change. Elaine Scarry, in particular, has written an influential book on the topic, taking up the argument of Iris Murdoch and developing a strong case for the educational power of beauty, allying it strikingly with an education in social justice.5 Two recent articles in this journal have also heralded a re-evaluation of beauty as a concept of profound significance for both the arts and education. Stuart Richmond sees in the development of our capacities to create and appreciate beauty "a way to bring us back into contact with what is sensual and intrinsically worthwhile,"6 and Howard Cannatella argues passionately "that something of the indelible quality of poiesis and delight in beauty should be the focus of specific educational concern, a factor at its core."7This article is an attempt to add further substance to the claim that-beauty should be one of our core educational values. In doing so, it develops the ideas that connect these perspectives: that beauty's power is instinctive, that it delights, that it is of deep human value. As do Murdoch and Scarry in their different ways, I will argue that beauty is powerfully formative and intrinsically associated with virtue, an idea developed in the final section of the article. First, however, I wish to consider what happened to beauty and why it became a neglected concept not only in education but also in the arts.What Happened to Beauty?Language and world refer to each other and presuppose each other for their mutual intelligibility. In this count, human learning becomes the process of aligning language and world.8In considering beauty, we begin inevitably with the word itself and with its usage. Like all evaluative concepts captured through language, beauty is a historical and cultural entity and, as such, it has both gathered and discarded meanings with the passage of time. Consequently, its nature is elusive and open to revision and debate. Is it characterized by perfect harmony and balance, as the classical world would have it, or by the soaring solidity of a medieval Gothic cathedral? Do we associate it with goodness... (shrink)

This is an overview of the Nyaya ("Logic") school of classical Indian philosophy, focusing on the earlier period (up to roughly 1000 CE).

The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that science (...) can and should have an influence on our values. This interplay, he explains, must be guided by accounts of scientific inquiry and value judgment that are sensitive to the complexities of their interactions. Brown presents scientific inquiry and value judgment as types of problem-solving practices and provides a new framework for thinking about how we might ethically evaluate episodes and decisions in science, while offering guidance for scientific practitioners and institutions about how they can incorporate value judgments into their work. His framework, dubbed "the ideal of moral imagination," emphasizes the role of imagination in value judgment and the positive role that value judgment plays in science. (shrink)

Fichte in Berlin offers a new reading of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's philosophical output during his time in Berlin from 1804 to 1806. The study focuses on the philosopher's second set of lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre from 1804, one of the most exemplary versions of Fichte's philosophical project.

In this paper, I exploit the parallel between epistemic contextualism and metaethical speaker-relativism to argue that a promising way out of two of the primary problems facing contextualism is one already explored in some detail in the ethical case – viz. expressivism. The upshot is an argument for a form of epistemic expressivism modeled on a familiar form of ethical expressivism. This provides a new nondescriptivist option for understanding the meaning of knowledge attributions, which arguably better captures the normative nature (...) of epistemic discourse than descriptivist competitors like invariantism and contextualism. (shrink)

This Article provides a comprehensive, critical overview of proposals to use happiness surveys for steering public policy. Happiness or “subjective well-being” surveys ask individuals to rate their present happiness, life-satisfaction, affective state, etc. A massive literature now engages in such surveys or correlates survey responses with individual attributes. And, increasingly, scholars argue for the policy relevance of happiness data: in particular, as a basis for calculating aggregates such as “gross national happiness,” or for calculating monetary equivalents for non-market goods based (...) on coefficients in a happiness equation. But is individual well-being equivalent to happiness? The happiness literature tends to blur or conflate important concepts: well-being, subjective well-being, happiness, utility, satisfaction. A preference-realization account of well-being denies the equivalence of happiness and welfare, since someone can have preferences for non-mental attributes, such as health, autonomy, goal-fulfillment, knowledge or the quality of her relationships. It is critical, therefore, to differentiate two potential policy roles for happiness surveys. First, the survey response may provide prima facie evidence of the respondent’s preference-utility: the extent to which her preferences are realized. Second, it may indicate her experience-utility: the quality of her mental states. The Article clarifies these two, very different, ideas. It then criticizes, in turn, the preference-utility and the experience-utility defenses of the policy relevance of happiness surveys. Enthusiasm about happiness is premature. (shrink)

A popular version of anti-Humeanism is one that views fundamental properties as being irreducibly dispositional in nature, and it is a view to which I am attracted. Proponents of this view typically object to Humean regularity theories of laws on the basis that they do not explain why our world is regular rather than chaotic from moment to moment. It is thought that, for this reason, Humeanism does not provide firm enough foundations for induction. However, in this paper I argue (...) that it is far from clear how these anti-Humeans can themselves explain this regularity. This is because it is far from clear how they can explain why the entities in our world do not change their dispositional properties arbitrarily over time. This is a neglected problem, which I call the retention problem. In an attempt to solve this problem, several naturalistic explanations of retention are explored. Unfortunately, none of these explanations is free of problems, showing that dispositional forms of anti-Humeanism may not have as many advantages as some have assumed where the problem of induction is concerned. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the central questions addressed in the book and states the main positions to be defended. The focus of the book is briefly discussed, which includes the choices of parents as well as the policies of governments.

This monograph surveys the history of the Army's professional ethic, focusing primarily on the Army officer corps. It assesses today's strategic, professional, and ethical environment. Then it argues that a clear statement of the Army officers' professional ethic is especially necessary in a time when the Army is stretched and stressed as an institution. The Army officer corps has both a need and an opportunity to better define itself as a profession, forthrightly to articulate its professional ethic, and clearly to (...) codify what it means to be a military professional."--Summary. (shrink)

It is a piece of philosophical common sense that belief and knowledge are states. Some epistemologists reject this claim in hope of answering certain difficult questions about the normative evaluation of belief. I shall argue, however, that this move offends not only against philosophical commonsense but also against ordinary common sense, at least as far as this is manifested in the semantic content of the words we use to talk about belief and knowledge. I think it is relatively easily to (...) show with some linguistic tests that ordinary belief and knowledge attributions should be classified aspectually as state descriptions. Hence, the move some epistemologists to deny that belief and knowledge are states threatens to simply change the topic rather than open up answers to difficult questions in epistemology. I do not know fully how to answer the relevant questions about the normative evaluation of belief, but I pursue this critical point here in service of a positive proposal about the general framework in which they should be answered. In brief, the general framework is one which recognizes an important place for what I call state-norms, beside the action-norms which are more familiar from normative theory. And it locates the epistemic norms that apply to beliefs and are relevant for knowledge on the state-norm side of this divide. This turns out to be not only consistent with but indeed to underwrites the philosophical and ordinary common sense that belief and knowledge are states. (shrink)

This paper examines of the intersection of theism and philosophy in classical Indian thought, focusing on the rational theology of Nyaya and the revealed theology of Vedanta. I also consider anti-theistic arguments, primarily by classical Buddhists.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern ArtMatthew ZiffPainting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, by David W. Galenson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001, 272 pp., $29.95.The relationship between the market value of paintings and the chronological point in an artist's working life when the paintings were produced is the driving mechanism for exploring creativity and innovation in David W. Galenson's book "Painting (...) Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art. The working thesis of this book is that Modern artists have worked creatively and innovatively in one of two distinctly different manners. The terminology Galenson uses to describe these distinct ways of working are "finders" and "seekers." Finders are artists like Pablo Picasso, who at age 26, make startling and important innovations with little advance indication that such a burst is about to take place. Seekers are artists like Paul Cezanne, whospend their entire working lives engaged in the pursuit of a singular approach or achievement. The differences between these methodologies are carefully presented through the details of the working lives of a variety of Modern artists. French nineteenth century and early twentieth-century artists and mid-twentieth-century American artists are used as the source data for these comparisons.Early in the book Galenson presents lists of chronological events within the lives of artists and market valuation of their work within this chronology. The dramatic clarity of the relationships presented in this data sets the stage for the detailed information that follows. Factors that in some cases only partly, and in others nearly completely, explain an artist's way of working are offered through biographic information, information about the aesthetic and cultural milieu, and about the economic and educational structures that are predominant during the relevant time in the life of the artist.The relationship between the aesthetic and cultural milieu surrounding an artist and the capacity or inclination of an artist to be innovative is an important aspect of the book's analysis. The scope of the book is limited to Modern artists because of the shift that took place at the outset of Modern art, during the mid 1860s, that brought a strong emphasis on innovation and change for their own sake as an important characteristic within a work of art. This emphasis "created incentives for painters to produce new approaches to art" (p. 111). Prior to the time of Modern art, innovation and change were often unnecessary for an artist to be successful. Modern art introduced the demand that innovation and change be necessary ingredients in art, and therefore the search for innovation became a significant element within the work of many artists. The manner in which this search took place, as presented through the data at hand, reveals how individual artists viewed the need for innovation and change within their own [End Page 123] work. Paul Cezanne, for example, was aware of the impact that his painting was having on the art world, but he insisted that he was not yet finished with discoveries that would reveal the truest expression of his beliefs about aesthetic expression.In the American movement, "Abstract Expressionism," Galenson finds a useful counter example to the art scene in Paris. In the United States, especially during the 1940s and 1950s — the peak years of creative output by Abstract Expressionist artists — the demand for their work was quite low. There were few economically viable outlets for the work of de Kooning, Pollack, Rothko, and the others of this group. Consequently there is a shift in the chronological point at which these artists achieve market value success. Nearly all of these artists receivedrecognition at an older age than the French artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.The thesis of the book, that there are two fundamentally different ways of working to produce works of art, is directly applicable to, and useful in, exploring issues of teaching and learning in design education. As a teacher of interior architecture I was interested to follow the details that Galenson presented in support of his analysis of the careers of numerous Modern artists. The methodological differences between seeking and... (shrink)

This article retrieves the theme of “otherization” as it appears in the watershed postcolonial text Orientalism, by Edward Said, and applies it to another historically influential text on otherization, The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel Huntington. A close comparative reading of Said’s and Huntington’s arguments reveals deep logical and moral flaws in both the postcolonial and civilizational-clash paradigms that each, respectively, represents. Pope Francis’s “mysticism of encounter” provides an alternative that overcomes these flaws. Francis’s framing of how to understand and (...) approach difference, the article concludes, is superior precisely because of its theological content: In grounding the discourse about the other in God, Francis demonstrates how it is possible to cogently define the other as other without creating oppressive power hierarchies—an insight that provides greater promise for establishing solidarity among diverse peoples. (shrink)

The project of comparing Stoicism and Buddhism may appear to be an improbable one. While the latter determines that we strive for an enlightenment that contributes to the liberation of all living beings, the doctrines of the former would seem to entail that this is impossible. Though both strongly affirm principles of causality and cyclicity in the constitution of the world, Buddhism apparently grants considerably more freedom of human agency than does Stoicism. Their conception of eternal return in the strict (...) and literal sense is foreign to the Buddhist notion of the bodhisattva's ongoing spiritual progress through numberless lives. These distinctions, moreover, sometimes issue in markedly different ethical orientations: the Buddhist elevation of compassion in the constellation of cardinal virtues finds its Stoic pendant in a more restrained attitude of commiseration. (shrink)

This article examines the attempt by the Kingdom of Morocco—a country of pivotal geopolitical importance in the late 1970s and early 1980s—to secure a research reactor. It finds that by treating that reactor as a diplomatic object, we can observe the different diplomatic frameworks in which that object was conceived of, contextualized, and negotiated. The historical emergence of these frameworks occurred in close relationship with the IAEA, which acted as an intermediary linking various administrations, programs, and countries, including Morocco. In (...) the end, this history reveals that the late Cold War nuclear world involved multilateral actions and forces, some of which encouraged Morocco in its bid to acquire a reactor, but others of which left that same reactor orphaned and unfinished. (shrink)

We are living in an era where global university schemes only offer narrow conceptions of quality, relying too heavily on international ranking systems. This timely book present an alternative perspective on evaluating 'world-class universities', showcasing how eight very different higher education institutions have defined and are pursuing excellence in their own way. Each case study highlights how institutions can align their work with shared values and goals, and strive to uphold these principles in all they do and say. The portraits (...) offer insights into the ways institutions can create cultures of excellence tied to a vision of how to make a difference for their students and society. Their success suggest that policy makers should reward institutions that adopt and strive to fulfil particular educational purposes rather than continuing to perpetuate the status quo. It is essential reading for researchers and students of education research, education policy, and international education reform. (shrink)

This paper interprets the Republic’s “parallel” imagery of a contest between the lives of the most just and most unjust men as indicating that book 9’s two pleasure arguments are the culmination of the dialogue’s refutation of Thrasymachus’ sophistry. This strategic function of the pleasure arguments explains why Socrates designates the account of the just man’s pleasure the most severe defeat of the unjust man. The article concludes with a brief defense of using the contest imagery as an interpretive aid (...) to the dialogue. (shrink)

I examine two strands in Locke's thought which seem to conflict with his corpuscularian sympathies: his repeated suggestion that natural philosophy is incapable of being made a science, and his claim that some of the properties of bodies--secondary qualities, powers of gravitation, cohesion and maybe even thought--are arbitrarily "superadded" by God. ;Locke often says that a body's properties flow from its real essence as the properties of a triangle flow from its definition. He is widely read as having thought that (...) if we had ideas of a body's real essence, we would be able to perceive a priori a necessary connection between that body's real essence and its observable properties. I argue that this leaves Locke's skepticism without any rationale, making it depend entirely upon our ignorance of corpuscular structures when in fact he never rules out the possibility of our acquiring ideas of corpuscular structures through improvements in microscopy. I argue that Locke's geometrical analogy is better understood as an endorsement of deductivism about scientific explanation. He thinks that knowledge of corpuscular structures is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for scientific knowledge of bodies. The deeper source of his skepticism is his view that we cannot have universal and certain knowledge of the laws of nature because they are contingent. ;I approach the subject of Locke's attitude toward mechanism by examining his superaddition doctrine. In contrast with M. R. Ayers, I attribute to Locke what I call strong voluntarism: the view that a body's powers to interact with other bodies are not fully determined by the essence of matter, and that they are at least partly determined by the will of God. I argue that Descartes and Boyle are also strong voluntarists, but that Locke's voluntarism differs in that he maintains that bodies have some powers which are not even partly explicable in terms of the motions of matter. Locke's position is thus incompatible with the mechanism of Descartes and Boyle. (shrink)

This collection of 28 original essays examines the diverse scope of John Locke’s contributions as a celebrated philosopher, empiricist, and father of modern political theory. Explores the impact of Locke’s thought and writing across a range of fields including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, political theory, education, religion, and economics Delves into the most important Lockean topics, such as innate ideas, perception, natural kinds, free will, natural rights, religious toleration, and political liberalism Identifies the political, philosophical, and religious contexts in (...) which Locke’s views developed, with perspectives from today’s leading philosophers and scholars Offers an unprecedented reference of Locke’s contributions and his continued influence. (shrink)

This chapter addresses issues of justice with respect to the end of childhood. Should there be an age at which certain legal rights become available to individuals and, if so, how should the appropriate age be determined? The chapter defends age-based discrimination against objections that it is unjust or undemocratic. It then considers the issue of the voting age and defends certain criteria for its determination.

Caplan & Waters's model differentiating levels of processing and the role of working memory is important and likely right. However, their claim rests on a lack of correlation between working memory and structural complexity. We examine sources of variability in these measures that remain unaccounted for (by anyone), variability that muddies a straightforward claim that the lack of correlation is cleanly established.

A selection of poems from a chapbook research creation regarding the mystery of the printing and distribution of the Treaty 6 parchment. Treaty 6 was signed in 1876 with the promise of parchment copies to be delivered to the signatories the following year. This delivery did not occur. A copy of the parchment with unknown provenance is housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta. These poems are part of an ongoing research project examining the implications of (...) one-sided document access in a nation-to-nation agreement. (shrink)

In the mid-19 th century, increases in global migration and mobility produced a discernable rise in the number of ambiguous absences. This shift, combined with a novel expectation, linked to improved communications technology, that such absences might be resolved engendered the emergence of missing persons as a social category. A demand on the part of families of the missing that the state aid in their location would produce a Bourdieusian classification struggle over how to define and categorize this new mass (...) of absences. At issue would be whether an ambiguously absent individual was merely absent, as a routine component of social life, or whether the individual merited legitimation by the state as a new form of deviant: a "missing" person. Scholars have described the emerging administrative state’s enhanced powers of surveillance and classification and its persistent inclination to render their populations, in James Scott’s phrase, “legible.” Brought to the attention of the state, missing persons represented a body of people who had conspicuously fallen out of official sight. Yet, instead of attempting to fix this omission by gathering additional information on the lost — to, in effect, see the missing — as theories of the state would lead us to expect, the state chose to look away. In the United States, the state, in the form of municipal police departments, resisted classifying absences as cases of missingness and pushed back against families’ requests for aid. Leveraging the inherently ambiguous characteristics of the missing, the state promoted a definition of missing persons that conveniently freed it from the burden of managing an unmanageable population. In this article, drawing from archival data, I challenge prevailing theories of the modern state that emphasize its avidly classificatory nature by offering a case in which legibility was strategically withheld and a population was, in service of state interests, intentionally obscured. Only after the state lost its symbolic monopoly and the category was raced and gendered, becoming, in public discourse, associated with a socially valuable demographic – namely, young, white women – would the state, facing a threat to its legitimacy, deem the missing as worthy of being seen. (shrink)