This paper analyses the cultural and biosemiotic bases of human attitudes towards other species. A critical stance is taken towards species neutrality and it is shown that human attitudes towards different animal species differ depending on the psychological dispositions of the people, biosemiotic conditions (e.g. umwelt stuctures), cultural connotations and symbolic meanings. In real-life environments, such as zoological gardens, both biosemiotic and cultural aspects influence which animals are chosen for display, as well as the various ways in which they are (...) displayed and interpreted. These semiotic dispositions are further used as motifs in staging, personifying or de-personifying animals in order to modify visitors’ perceptions and attitudes. As a case study, the contrasting interpretations of culling a giraffe at the Copenhagen zoo are discussed. The communicative encounters and shifting per ceptions are mapped on the scales of welfaristic, conservational, dominionistic, and utilitarian approaches. The methodological approach described in this article integrates static and dynamical views by proposing to analyse the semiotic potential of animals and the dynamics of communicative interactions in combination. (shrink)

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Animal welfare is a complex matter that includes scientific, ethical, economic and other dimensions. Despite the existence of more comprehensive approaches to animal welfare and the obvious shortcomings of the ‘Five Freedoms’, for zoological gardens the freedoms still constitute the general guidelines to be followed. These guidelines reflect both, an ethical view and a science based approach. Analysis reveals that the potential ineptitude of the ‘Five Freedoms’ lies in the manifold perceptions that people have of other animals. These perceptions are (...) biased by our own umwelt, which is intertwined with different cultural attitudes towards other species. Perceptions of animals may be held simultaneously by different interest groups and may often be incompatible, thus often making it difficult to follow the ‘Five Freedoms’ in practice. We aim to recognise and consider the multiplicity of factors that, besides animal subjectivity, are relevant in understanding this hybrid environment. The moral value and practical applicability of the ‘Five Freedoms’ are sometimes undermined by prioritising some freedoms over others and by species bias. Both are characteristic phenomena of the zoo as a hybrid environment where other species are managed by humans. Given deficiencies are further amplified by humanistic and moralistic attitudes that people hold. (shrink)

Recently, several philosophers have recast feminist arguments against pornography in terms of Speech Act Theory. In particular, they have considered the ways in which the illocutionary force of pornographic speech serves to set the conventions of sexual discourse while simultaneously silencing the speech of women, especially during unwanted sexual encounters. Yet, this raises serious questions as to how pornographers could (i) be authorities in the language game of sex, and (ii) set the conventions for sexual discourse - questions which these (...) speech act-theoretic arguments against pornography have thus far failed to adequately answer. I fill in this gap of the argumentation by demonstrating that there are fairly weak standards for who counts as an authority or convention-setter in sexual discourse. With this analysis of the underpinnings of a speech act analysis of pornography in mind, I discuss a range of possible objections. I conclude that (i) the endorsement of censorship by a speech act analysis of pornography competes with its commitment to the conventionality of speech acts, and, more damningly, that (ii), recasting anti-pornography arguments in terms of linguistic conventions risks an unwitting defence of a rapist's lack of mens rea - an intolerable result; and yet resisting this conclusion requires that one back away from the original claim to women's voices being 'silenced'. (shrink)

The article contributes to the theorisation of collective memory involved in building the international representations of a nation, and examines how strategic responses to the legacy of the totalitarian past have been deployed to shape the image of the nations’ remembering agency via the connections with other actors within the global memory field. Drawing on the Bourdieusian concept of symbolic capital, the article develops a concept of the symbolic capital of mnemonics in order to uncover the role of memory in (...) enhancing international standing and prestige, a crucial preoccupation for semi-peripheral states emerging on the global arena. While recent scholarship on traumatic memory as a category of social analysis underlines the role of memory in bolstering the collective identity of nations, the article demonstrates how memories of the communist past provide a platform for connections between nation-states through shared meta-narratives. Through an empirical case study that uses an ethnographic approach, participant observation and analysis of media accounts, the article examines how the official commemorative practices of Kazakhstan have served to realign the country’s mnemonic agenda with that of the global memory of communism and to redeploy the symbolic capital gained through a shared mnemonics to reassert its legitimacy both abroad and at home. (shrink)

This article explores the interconnectedness of the earth, gender and food security in the Zambian context using the narrative of Maria Zaloumis (a female Zambian farmer) in the public sphere. It draws on a narrative research design by the restorying of Maria’s trajectory in Agric-business as informed by the African ecofeminist theory. The study shows that Maria was described as an emerging young farmer and an emblem of female entrepreneurship. Her trajectory mirrored the intersection of the earth, gender and food (...) security through her portrayal as a woman who endured life tragedies of losing a child, and being a victim of gender-based violence in her marriage. She drew inspiration from her mother (venturing into farming was linked to her mother), the earth (farming was an outlet for healing from her marital challenges) and religion (attributed her success to God as a member of the Baptist church). Maria’s account which resonates with the injustice suffered by the earth and shared by women through the environmental crises affirms that in the midst of suffering, women could still contribute to food security by turning a crisis into an opportunity and fostering a life-affirming theology.Contribution: The article contributes to scholarship on the earth, gender and food security by bringing to the fore the ways in which women have contributed to changing the Agric-business landscape through the intersection of the earth, gender and religion from the Zambian context. It also adds a new perspective to women’s empowerment and the preservation and stewardship of mother earth. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Contextualist theories of semantics are not undermined by their purported failure to explain the practice of indirect reporting. I adopt Cappelen & Lepore’s test for context sensitivity to show that the scope of context sensitivity is much broader than Semantic Minimalists are willing to accept. The failure of their arguments turns on their insistence that the content of indirect reports is semantically minimal.

Abstract: An indirect report typically takes the form of a speaker using the locution “said that” to report an earlier utterance. In what follows, I introduce the principal philosophical and pragmatic points of interest in the study of indirect reports, including the extent to which context sensitivity affects the content of an indirect report, the constraints on the substitution of co-referential terms in reports, the extent of felicitous paraphrase and translation, the way in which indirect reports are opaque, and the (...) use of indirect reports as pragmatic vehicles for other speech acts such as humor, insult, or irony. Throughout I develop several positions: (i) that a semantic analysis of indirect reports is insufficient, (ii) that the distinction between direct and indirect reports is not clear and that indirect reports are the predominate way of reporting while direct reports may be a para-linguistic variation on them, (iii) that most questions about the semantics and pragmatics of indirect reports will rely on a full understanding of the nature of what is reported and how it gets reported, (iv) that an analysis of reporting requires the pragmatic tools of metarepresentation and a social, inter-personal understanding of relevance and shared knowledge. (shrink)

Este artículo pasa revista a la presencia de salihat en cuatro documentos hagiográficos del Magreb medieval, así como a la manera de calificarlas. Intenta una reflexión sobre las formas de la experiencia religiosa y las modalidades de presencia de estas santas en la vida de la ciudad. La walaya femenina en este espacio-tiempo del islam medieval (V-IX (IV-XV) está marcada por la ambivalencia, oscilando entre aislamiento y vida comunitaria, sedentaridad y peregrinación, inqibad (retraimiento) y inbisat (apertura) a las preocupaciones y (...) expectativas de sus contemporáneos. Sugiere que se debe ver en este sufismo, no desprovisto de originalidad, materia para una nueva aproximación a la santidad femenina en el Islam. (shrink)

This article analyzes a number of personal and philosophical aspects of the debate over Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and his anti-Semitism. The first part of the article focuses on the personal feat...

This article contributes to Science and Technology Studies on vulnerability by putting cyborgs at center stage. What vulnerabilities emerge when technologies move under the skin? I argue that cyborgs face new forms of vulnerability because they have to live with a continuous, inextricable intertwinement of technologies and their bodies. Inspired by recent feminist studies on the lived intimate relationships between bodies and technologies, I suggest that sensory experiences, material practices, and cartographies of power are important heuristic tools to understand the (...) vulnerabilities of hybrid bodies. Based on an analysis of how patients in the Netherlands and the United States cope with appropriate and inappropriate implantable cardioverter defibrillator shocks, I describe how defibrillators introduce two new kinds of vulnerabilities: vulnerability as an internal rather than an external threat, and as harm you may try to anticipate but can never escape. Despite these vulnerabilities, some heart patients don’t position themselves as passive victims of faulty machines. They actively engage in material practices of resilience by using magnets to stop inappropriate shocks. I conclude that anticipating and taming the improper working of technologies inside bodies constitutes a new form of invisible labor that is crucial to diminishing the existential uncertainties of cyborgs. (shrink)

The analysis of social communication in other-than-human animals poses several theoretical challenges due to the complexity of individual and extra-individual variables. Some previous studies have found a valuable solution in Uexküll’s work by expanding and adapting its usage for the study of communication in a heurtistic manner. An Umwelt analysis provides a theoretical toolbox, which allows researchers to take an emic perspective on the lives and phenomenal world of other animals. However, Umwelt and its elaborations do not allow for a (...) clear distinction between acts of perception and communication and seem to ignore factors that escape the specific communication contexts under analysis. Thus, moving away from the existing linear and cyclical approaches to communication, we propose a complementary approach to the study of social communication by combining Barnlund’s transactional model of communication with Umwelt theory and the functional circle more specifically. Our elaborated model conceives social communication as the process of creating meaning through the interaction of two subjects and emphasizes the role of species-specific and individual features in its creation. Our goal is to re-evaluate the research on social communication of other-than-human animals by advocating for the theoretical and empirical potential of Umwelt, especially pertaining to animals with complex Umwelten. Our model offers a valuable solution to the analysis of intraspecies communication that accounts for the role of private and public cues as well as the subjects’ specific behaviors, messages, and context in the creation of meaning. (shrink)

The contention of this article is that parents do have obligations to care for their children, but for reasons that are not typically offered. I argue that this obligation to care for one’s children is unfair to parents but not unjust. I do not provide a detailed account of what our obligations are to our children. Rather, I focus on providing a justification for any obligation to care for them at all.

Semantic Minimalists make a proprietary claim to explaining the possibility of utterances sharing content across contexts. Further, they claim that an inability to explain shared content dooms varieties of Contextualism. In what follows, I argue that there are a series of barriers to explaining shared content for the Minimalist, only some of which the Contextualist also faces, including: (i) how the type-identity of utterances is established, (ii) what counts as repetition of type-identical utterances, (iii) how it can be determined whether (...) semantically minimal content has been repeated, and (iv) what the nature of such content is. (shrink)

Abstract: A self-abnegating person lacks contact with their agency. This can be against their will, in absence of their will, or voluntarily. This does not mean that they cannot provide reasons for or a narrative about their actions. It’s just that the reasons or narrative are someone else’s. People abnegate parts of their agency regularly; for example, within hierarchical institutions. In other cases, the self-abnegation is all-encompassing; for example, a victim of brainwashing. An agent in such a position can completely (...) fail to understand themselves or be understood by others as having a self. I focus on two problems related to self-abnegation. The first is whether there is a conception of a self that can reliably discriminate between strong selves and abnegated selves. The second is whether a person with an abnegated self should be treated as a person with a strong self. I conclude that the good of respecting derived or instrumental agency comes in putting that person in a position to agentially flourish and in maintaining the structural conditions and expectations of agency. (shrink)

The greatest mandate which God entrusted to human beings since creation is keeping and sustaining the creation. Human beings are responsible towards making the creation glorify God the creator. Another important task is to bring forth other human beings—children—who will also become responsible towards creation in their adulthood. It means that the responsibility of humanity towards creation is continuous. Children are gifts from God through marriages and have to be reared to adulthood in order for them to become fully responsible (...) to God’s creation. This article examined the perceptions of church leaders and normal Christians towards child-rearing in both African traditional and Christian settings. Being guided by Ainsworth and Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, the article addressed the following questions: How is child-rearing understood and practiced in the research area? Is there any laziness in the rearing of children that hinders their proper development to adulthood? In response to these questions, a qualitative study was conducted at Isongole Ward, Ileje District, Songwe region in Tanzania. Interviews were conducted to eight research participants selected purposefully after their informed consent. Data were analyzed qualitatively to obtain themes which were the basis for the presentation and interpretation of findings. Results indicated that laziness to rear children properly was one of the major hindrances for children to realize their adulthood potentials in the future. The article suggests that to have an ethical church and ethical society, child-rearing basing on proper Christian foundation is of paramount importance. (shrink)

In today’s world the growth potential of freedom with its resulting risks and responsibilities can be found in three major interrelated areas of globalization, epistemization and humanization. Our analysis is based on the idea of freedom as a personality’s value, viewed as an individual self-determination towards the most valuable of all possible choices. Globalization provides a general access to collective achievements and introduces new opportunities for development at a global, personal and local level. Epistemization presupposes that leadership positions in society (...) are taken by individuals with what we call as “K-knowledge”; i.e., knowledge and competencies that are key to the advancement of society. We maintain that to implement K-knowledge such individuals ought to possess high ethical standards. Finally, humanization is the ongoing recognition, ideologically and practically of the priority of human dignity and the value of each and every individual. The advancement of human rights is rooted in the implementation of freedom opportunities in all the three areas but mostly agrees with humanization processes. As a result, humanization today needs developing meta-principles, embracing a variety of local value-regulatory systems. Our claim is that the umbrella meta-principles should be those of humanity, justice and tolerance. (shrink)

The definition of Induction in the "topic" is but a description of the prearistotelian process of generalisation. - The genuine aristotelian theory of induction does not concern general propositions but the objectconstruction; it tries to give a logical solution to the theory of anamnesis. - The inductive syllogism is not a summative induction but a suggestion that the relation of extensions of classes is the only criterion for the projectibility of known cases on unknown. - The stoics accept contraposition as (...) the only form of scientific inference while the epicureans introduce a pure empirical criterion for sound general propositions. Both theories however, suggest an identification of the problem of induction with the problem of possibility. - Philoponos is the first author to give a classification of sciences from a methodological point of view. He rejects pure induction and proposes the hypothetico - deductive Method as a solution of the problem of induction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Bataille: The Invention of the FootLucette Finas (bio)Translated by Nelly Furman (bio)§ 1. Certainly, I wrote Le mort before the spring of 1944. This text must have been composed probably in 1943, not before. I do not know where I wrote it, in Normandy (end of 1942), in Paris in December 1942, or during the first three months of 1943; at Vézelay, from March to October 1943? Or (...) in Paris from November ‘43 to the spring of ‘44? Perhaps even at Samois from April to June. Or even perhaps in Paris on Cour de Rohan during the winter of ‘43–‘44. I can no longer remember. I am certain only of having recopied Le mort so as to sell a small number of manuscripts before June 1944 (as I am certain that I wrote this text after the spring of 1942, a time at which I fell ill; and even at the earliest during my stay in Normandy from September to November ‘42).§ 2. In any case, there is the closest relationship between Le mort and the stay in Normandy of the tubercular patient that I was; in Normandy, not far from the village of Tilly (which I name Quilly in Le mort). The inn of Quilly is in fact the inn of Tilly; 1 the woman innkeeper, the one from Tilly. I invented the other details, with the exception of the rain that wouldn’t stop in October or November ‘42. With the exception also of the very dark night when Julie knocked at the door of the inn? I can no longer even remember if I slept in this inn? It seems to me that yes. I believe furthermore that in the room there were two or three farmhands in gummed rubber boots and even a player piano. Whatever it was, it was sinister, and beyond measure. Finally, it is certain that the atmosphere of Tilly’s inn suggested to me the one of the inn of Le mort. I am also almost certain—in the end—that I slept—alone—in this place that terrified me.§ 3. The rest is linked to the frenzied sexual arousal in which I was during November’s extravagance; in my almost total solitude, I lived then not far from Tilly, but we lived apart, a kilometer from one another, a beautiful girl, my mistress, and I; I was ill, in an obscure state of depression, of horror, and of arousal. It is difficult to imagine the mud of the rough small roads where I traveled, without the right footwear, on a bicycle. Then, I ate most of my meals, but alone, with farmers.§ 4. I remember in particular having heard one day a plane whose engine sputtered [avait des ratés]. The noise of the engine was followed by a violent shock. I took my bicycle. I ended up finding the place where this German plane had fallen. It was burning in the middle of an immense orchard (apple trees); several trees were calcinated, and three or four dead, thrown around the plane, were spread out on the grass. At some distance, in the valley of the Seine, an Englishman had probably just shot down this enemy plane that could only crash at some distance. The foot of one of the Germans was bared [dénudé], the sole of the shoe having been torn away. The heads of the dead, it seems to me, were shapeless. The flames must have touched them; this foot alone was intact. It was [End Page 97] the only human thing belonging to a body, and its nakedness, having become earthen, was inhuman: the heat of the blaze had transfigured it; this thing was neither baked nor calcinated: in the upper [l’empeigne] with no sole of the shoe, it was diabolical: but no, it was unreal, stripped naked [dénudée], indecent to the highest degree. I remained motionless for a long time that day, for this naked foot was looking at me.§ 5. [The truth, I believe, has only one face: that of a violent denial. Truth has nothing in common with allegorical figures, with figures of naked women: but... (shrink)

This archival feature serves to present the personality and philosophy of Elena Oznobkina (1959–2010), a key figure of late-Soviet and, later, Russian philosophy. Oznobkina pioneered the present-day reception of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl in Russia, but also made substantial contributions to Nietzsche studies and political philosophy, which are detailed in Nelly Motrozhilova’s introduction. Her philosophical work was inseparable from her personal political engagement, to which the featured archival text (“Prison or Gulag?”, 2000) testifies. It gives a poignant and concise (...) characterisation of the prison as an object of philosophical theory, while asking the question of where Soviet prison camps and the prisons of post-Soviet Russia are to be located within this field of thought. (shrink)

In the last fifteen years, testing has attracted much attention in science and technology studies. Most researchers have focused almost exclusively on testing in the laboratory, specifically designed test locations, and, for medical technologies, the clinic. What counts as testing has largely been described in terms of the activities of scientific experts. This is not to say that science and technology studies have completely neglected other institutional discourses. Journalistic texts have been a favorite research site for scholars in science and (...) technology studies, particularly those seeking to understand the dynamics of public controversies on science and technology. Although most constructivist studies of science and media relations have treated journalistic texts as secondary to scientific texts, other scholars have dismissed this hierarchy. In this article, scientific texts and journalistic texts are considered equally important locations in which to analyze the testing of technologies. Based on a case study on the testing of a new contraceptive technology for men, the article shows that what counts as successful testing is not solely in the hands of scientific experts. In the case of male contraceptive technologies, journalists have contested the claims of scientific experts, particularly their claims about the cultural feasibility of the new technology. (shrink)

Résumé Dans le cadre d’un réseau de périnatalité, une équipe de pédopsychiatrie anime depuis dix ans un groupe thérapeutique destiné à accueillir des parents en grande difficulté psychique, avec leur bébé de moins de 2 ans. Un dispositif sensoriel amène les parents, grâce à la parole et au groupe, à pouvoir revivre d’une manière dédramatisée et symbolisable des sensations corporelles. L’expérience de l’observation clinique indique une meilleure adaptation des mères aux besoins sensoriels de leur bébé avec, chez ce dernier, des (...) avancées certaines dans son développement psychomoteur et affectif. (shrink)

The role of users in innovation processes has gained increasing attention in innovation studies, technology studies, and media studies. Scholars have identified users and use practices as a source of innovation. So far, however, little insight has been generated in innovation processes in which communities of users are the driving force in all phases of the innovation process. This article explores the conceptual vocabularies of innovation studies and actor— network theory and discusses their adequacy for describing and understanding the dynamics (...) of user-initiated innovation processes in which community and innovation are closely intertwined. The authors introduce the concept of community innovation and argue for its relevance for understanding the full dynamics of innovations initiated and shaped by user collectives. The article elaborates a qualitative case study of Wireless Leiden, a local wireless network infrastructure in the Dutch town of Leiden initiated, designed, and maintained by a local community of users. (shrink)

Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī l-tarājim wa-l-akhbār. Edited by Shmuel Moreh. Max Schloessinger Memorial Series, Texts, vol. 9. 5 vols. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 2013. Pp. 2,780. $525.