When people retell stories, what guides their retelling? Most previous research on story retelling and story comprehension has focused on information accuracy as the key measure of stability in transmission. This paper suggests that there is a second, affective, dimension that provides stability for retellings, namely the audience affect of surprise. In a large-sample study with multiple iterations of retellings, we found evidence that people are quite accurate in preserving all degrees of surprisingness in serial reproduction – even when the (...) event that produced the surprisingness in the original story is dropped or changed. Thus, we propose that the preservation of affect is an implicit goal of retelling: not merely do retellers recall highly surprising events better, but rather they register all levels of surprisingness precisely and aim to surprise their implied audience to same degree. This study used 2,389 participants. (shrink)

This book studies the phenomenon of freethinking in medieval Islam, as exemplified in the figures of Ibn al-Rāwandī and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī. It reconstructs their thought and analyzes the relations of the phenomenon to Islamic prophetology and its repercussions in Islamic thought.

This chapter demonstrates how early modern male and female thinkers alike were concerned not only with ethical, religious, and political liberty, but also with the liberty to philosophize, or libertas philosophandi. It is argued that while men’s interests in this latter kind of liberty tended to lie with the liberty to philosophize differently from their predecessors, women were more concerned with the liberty to philosophize at all. For them, the idea that women should be free to think was foundational. This (...) chapter shows how some women thinkers of the period, such as Damaris Cudworth Masham (1658–1708) and Mary Astell (1666–1731), followed through on the general trend of thinking about liberty in terms of freedom of the mind, to thinking about liberty for women in wider ethical and political terms. To support this point, the chapter explores their views on education, female rationality, and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Based on personal experience, and content analysis, this paper examines Information Ethics from a student‘s perspective. Within this framework the paper defines IE, outlines the history of IE and highlights incidences of IE violations in Uganda. The paper concludes with proposals towards better adherence to IE in Uganda. The paper presents personal experience, observation and a content analysis methodology.

Sarah A. Mattice develops a comparative intervention in contemporary metaphilosophy. Drawing on resources from hermeneutics, cognitive linguistics, aesthetics, and Chinese philosophy, she explores how philosophical language is deeply intertwined with the definition and practice of the discipline.

Mélia en a assez des sobriquets et remarques désobligeantes que lui valent quotidiennement ses cheveux extrêmement courts, qui entraînent de surcroît les gens à la confondre avec un garçon. "Pour avoir l'air d'une vraie fille" et séduire ainsi le beau Jérôme, la fillette se met donc en tête de prendre tous les moyens possibles pour faire allonger sa chevelure dans les plus brefs délais. Mais voilà, potions magiques et perruques causent des désagréments qu'elle n'avait pas envisagés... Et si la patience (...) et le naturel étaient encore les meilleurs des remèdes? -- Un roman empreint à la fois d'humour et de sensibilité qui démontre que la véritable beauté ne réside pas dans les standards véhiculés par la société et que la féminité ne passe pas forcément par ces derniers. Quelques illustrations stylisées en noir et blanc accompagnent le récit, porté par une écriture vive et rythmée, qui pourra notamment aider les enfants suivant des traitements médicaux à accepter et surmonter la perte de leurs cheveux. [SDM]. (shrink)

John Rogers (G.A.J. Rogers) died on 26th November 2022 at the age of 84. Professor Emeritus at the University of Keele and a specialist in the history of seventeenth-century philosophy, John was on...

Discusses songs by the troubadours, trouvères, and Guillaume de Machaut, performed live and on the page, in the context of antique, late antique, and medieval thought and poetic practice and in the light of later opera. Topics include cosmology, education, astronomy, breath, beasts, monsters, hybridity, imagination, life, and death.

Sarah Arnaud C’est par une affirmation provocatrice que Hacking propose un ratio pour représenter le rapport entre science et militantisme dans le façonnement des notions sur l’autisme. Selon lui, la définition et la compréhension actuelles de l’autisme proviennent à 99 % de personnes « personnellement connectées à une personne autiste » plutôt que de la science. Kendler rejette un tel point de vue en suggérant au contraire que notre compréhension de l’autisme est le résultat d’un travail scientifique approfondi, notamment (...) par la recherche en génétique. Je considère que leur désaccord se fonde sur une fausse dichotomie selon laquelle seule la recherche scientifique est à même d’envisager l’autisme de manière empirique, alors que le discours des « p-c-a » construirait au contraire une conception socioculturelle de l’autisme. J’envisage les problèmes éthiques inhérents à un tel ratio et suggère que la perspective des personnes autistes elles-mêmes représente une étape nécessaire à l’atteinte d’une validité scientifique. (shrink)

This article is a reflection of the project ‘Welcome Aboard’, which I collaborated on in 2011, with two scientists Nicola Armaroli (Ist. ISOF/CNR, Bologna and Molecular Photoscience Group, Bologna) and Vincenzo Balzani (Department of Chemistry G. Ciamician, University of Bologna). The video establishes a dialogue based on Buckminster Fuller’s ‘World Game’ where they offer possible scenarios for our planet running under renewable energy sources. Ultimately, a democratic system of energy sharing, between consumers and suppliers, was proposed to be put at (...) the forefront. The article begins with David Bohm’s focus on how a collective thought process can have drastic affects on our society. He proposes that we recognize the ‘whole’ in which we live to avoid becoming a society of fragmented incoherency. Similarly, as an engineer Buckminster Fuller has devoted himself to finding an effective action to change the world through a global approach, which he calls a whole-system perspective. The technology of the Smart Grid, proposed in the dialogue between the two scientists of ‘Welcome Aboard’ in which every individual produces, shares and consumes energy (electricity), seems to be a new tool that could be combined with other technologies to provide a connectivity between human beings. (shrink)

In contemporary film theory, body and mind have been central to explorations of film form, representation, and spectatorship. While the soul may seem to have no place here, the history of film theory and its legacy to the present suggest otherwise. From the origins of film theory - from Hugo Münsterberg through French Impressionism to writings of the Weimar Republic - to the mid-twentieth century work of Henri Agel and Amédée Ayfre and Henri Agel, as well as Edgar Morin, the (...) soul emerges as a multi-faceted, if contested, concept. By revisiting such key moments in the history of film theory, and tracing the survival of this concept through to a range of cutting-edge debates today, from the work of Vivian Sobchack to Jean-Luc Nancy, Gilles Deleuze to Torben Grodal, The Soul of Film Theory tells the heretofore tacit tale of the relation between cinema and the soul, from classical to contemporary times, in dialogue with philosophy, religion, and science. (shrink)

South African philosopher Mabogo Percy More has devoted more than four decades of his work to the problem of “being-black-in-an-antiblack-world.” This article interrogates the extent to which More homogenizes the contingencies of black2 existence and black embodiment, as I feel black existentialists do; or subsumes the phenomenology of the lived experience of blackness under a “black universalist” account that does not give an adequate account of the gendered embodied experiences with antiblack racism. By “contingency” I mean More’s concept of the (...) contingency of existence, where he claims that human existence is without necessity, nor is it justified; and so people resort to attempting to justify their existence and to find meaning by trying to assume the status of God or superiority in relation to others. More argues that contingency is the source of antiblack racism, as white people attempt to justify their existence by dehumanizing black people. I claim that contingency does not only play out in the interracial domain, but is also one of the sources of intraracial sexism within the black community. My interrogation aims to extend the reach of More’s work by giving an existential-phenomenological account of “being-black-and-female-in-an-antiblack-antifemale-world.” To this end, I focus on two contingencies—the contingencies of biological sex and the contingency of physical strength—that More discusses in his sole article on intraracial sexism, “Black Attitudes: A Call for Personhood” (1981). I argue that within the black intraracial domain, these two contingencies are ascribed meaning that creates a binary, which elevates black men to superior status, while reducing black women to the inferior. (shrink)

John Cottingham In the anglophone philosophical world, there has, for some time, been a curious relationship between the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophical - quiry. Many philosophers working today virtually ignore the history of their s- ject, apparently regarding it as an antiquarian pursuit with little relevance to their “cutting-edge” research. Conversely, there are historians of philosophy who seldom if ever concern themselves with the intricate technical debates that ll the journals devoted to modern analytic philosophy. Both sides are (...) surely the poorer for this strange bifurcation. For philosophy, like all parts of our intellectual culture, did not come into existence out of nowhere, but was shaped and nurtured by a long tradition; in uncovering the roots of that tradition we begin see current philoso- ical problems in a broader context and thereby enrich our understanding of their signi cance. This is surely part of the justi cation for the practice, in almost every university, of including elements from the history of philosophy as a basic part of the undergraduate curriculum. But understanding is enriched by looking forwards as well as backwards, which is why a good historian of philosophy will not just be c- cerned with uncovering ancient ideas, but will be constantly alert to how those ideas pre gure and anticipate later developments. (shrink)

In post-Wollstonecraft terminology, the rights of woman, like the rights of man, are taken to include freedoms of many kinds – political, religious, social – freedoms enshrined in the French revolutionary generalisation, la liberté. The strength of liberty’s modern political connotations obscures the fact that, in earlier times, the term was freighted with connotations which were deemed socially and publicly unacceptable for womankind. The political claim, that women are entitled to the same freedoms as men, was both subversive of an (...) order where women occupy lower status than men, and it was also insubordinate – to speak out on any issue was, for a woman, to speak out of turn, to be insolent, if not impudent. The first women to proclaim those freedoms as rights broke the bounds not just of social order, but of social convention. My paper examines some of the ways in which pre- Wollstonecraft feminists conceived of ‘liberty’, particularly its political sense, and how their understanding of it fits with their feminism. I shall do so by discussing two figures who come from opposite poles of the political spectrum: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who was a staunch monarchist, and Catharine Macaulay, whose political preference was republican. In this essay, I point out some of the ways in which the ‘feminism’ of each is complicated by the rather different assumptions with which they operated. (shrink)

There is a major divide between the work of normative theorists and concrete climate action (or inaction) politics and policies. In this volume, authors tackle the strained relationships between principles of justice and climate politics by responding to real-world climate politics and policies, offering proposals and analyses that take concerns of feasibility seriously, and identifying immediate justice and feasibility concerns with recent proposals for climate action. Contributors look at questions of feasibility as they relate to specific international institutions like the (...) IPCC and UNFCCC, and widely discussed principles of climate justice, including backward-looking principles like polluter pays and forward-looking principles like ability to pay. Others explore the feasibility hurdles and justice concerns that challenge popular mitigation proposals. (shrink)

La 4ème de couverture indique : « Peut-on se sortir de ce que Platon appelle une aporie? de cette situation intenable, cauchemardesque où, comme tombé dans les profondeurs d’un puits, vous êtes soudainement désorienté, dépourvu de toute ressource? où vous êtes piégé, encerclé, paralysé, prisonnier dans les ténèbres sans issue des liens inextricables de la mort? Peut-on sortir d’une situation infernale? Trouver un poros, c’est-à-dire inventer un stratagème, pour faire cesser la détresse, tracer un chemin qui mène de l’obscurité à (...) la lumière? La philosophie est, pour Platon, ce poros salvateur : entreprise prométhéenne, elle est, grâce au feu dialectique, technique d’immortalité. La partie autobiographique de ce texte, intitulée Cauchemar, l’enracine dans les ténèbres d’une enfance particulièrement aporétique. ». (shrink)

Development in animals is frequently characterized by periods of heightened capacity for both neural and behavioral change. So‐called sensitive periods of development are windows of opportunity in which brain and behavior are most susceptible to modification. Understanding what factors regulate sensitive periods constitutes one of the main goals of developmental neuroscience. Why is the ability to learn complex behavioral patterns often restricted to sensitive periods of development? Songbirds provide a model system for unraveling the mysteries of neural mechanisms of learning (...) during development. Like many songbirds, zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) learn a specific vocal pattern during a restricted period early in life. Young birds must hear songs produced by members of their species; this auditory experience is thought to engender specific changes in the brain to guide the process of vocal learning. Many studies of the songbird system have focused on examining relationships between brain development and learning. One goal of this work is to elucidate mechanisms that regulate basic processes of neural development, and in so doing to shed light on factors governing the emergence of a complex learned behavior. (shrink)

La séparation parentale apparaît comme un événement fréquent, mais néanmoins majeur dans la vie d’un sujet, surtout à l’adolescence. Comment se conjuguent adolescence et les problématiques psychiques (œdipienne et de perte) et relationnelles qu’elle implique, avec la séparation parentale? L’article discute ici le cas d’Adèle, âgée de 22 ans, pour qui la séparation des parents a eu lieu lorsqu’elle avait 16 ans. Adèle a été rencontrée trois fois dans le contexte d’une recherche. Les éléments cliniques recueillis lors des entretiens mènent (...) sur la voie d’effets négatifs toujours actuels en lien avec la séparation parentale et qui se télescopent avec une sensibilité préalable à la perte. On peut repérer, dans le cas d’Adèle, une instabilité identificatoire, un clivage des figures parentales, une accentuation de l’ambivalence à l’égard du parent de sexe opposé, une errance scolaire et des difficultés relationnelles. Ce cas clinique illustre la nécessité de procéder à un repérage des adolescents en souffrance suite à la séparation parentale et d’offrir un accompagnement aux parents. (shrink)

The interpreter's problem is to reconcile Aristotle's reflections on theôria as the highest happiness with the practical emphasis of most of his ethics. Aristotle's problem is to explain why his godlike theoretical ideal ranks higher than his practical one, while showing that both are genuinely human ends. The argument turns on the importance of leisure and of serious activities.

In this essay I attempt to identify the conditions of morally responsible action; and from the start, I conceive morally responsible action as free action. Some philosophers argue that the causal origins of an act are irrelevant to whether it is a free act; others believe that free acts cannot be causally determined; and still others believe that a free act is an act from which the agent must be capable of refraining. I defend a view at odds with each (...) of these positions: a free act may be causally determined by events over which the agent has no control, but it must issue from the agent's attitudes and beliefs in a particular way. On my account, moreover, though the ability to do otherwise is relevant to free agency, it is not a necessary condition: some free agents are incapable of refraining from the acts they perform. ;I develop my position by investigating three major challenges to the claim that someone is a free agent if and only if she has a certain attitude toward what she does. The first of these challenges comes from thought experiments in which mad scientists directly induce an agent's motives; the second, from the phenomenon of weakness of will; and the third, from the main argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. An essential feature of my response to these challenges is the appeal to a normative notion of will power. (shrink)