This paper explores how the social and affective lives of people with marginalized social identities are particularly affected by digital influences. Specifically, the paper examines whether and how social media enables LGBTQ+ people to experience feelings of belonging. It does so by drawing on literature from digital epistemology and phenomenology of the digital, and by presenting and analyzing the results of a qualitative study consisting of 25 interviews with LGBTQ+ people. The interviews were conducted to explore the social media experiences (...) of LGBTQ+ people through an empirical framework informed by both phenomenology and social epistemology, particularly feminist standpoint theory. The paper emphasizes the importance of positionality and the epistemic value of research that centers marginalized perspectives and employs an anti-oppressive research approach, and focuses on understanding the digital experiences of LGBTQ+ people from within their marginalized perspective. (shrink)

To explain how social cognition normally serves us in real life, we need to ask which factors contribute to specific social interactions. Recent accounts, and mostly pluralistic models, have started incorporating contextual and social factors in explanations of social cognition. In this paper, I further motivate the importance of contextual and identity factors for social cognition. This paper presents scripts as an alternative resource in social cognition that can account for contextual and identity factors. Scripts are normative and context-sensitive knowledge (...) structures that describe behavior in terms of corresponding events, situations, social roles, individuals, or mental state types in a way that guides action. The script approach presented here builds on recent accounts of social cognition but points out important differences and possible advantages it has over them: for example, the script approach focuses even more strongly on context and identity. (shrink)

L'omniprésence des images dans la société mass-médiatique est corrélative de leur évanescence et du constant renouvellement qui conditionne le processus de leur consommation. Leur omnipotence se réduit ainsi à celle de stimuli destinés à induire des comportements. Or, il convient d'autant plus de revenir d'une telle exténuation de l'image que cette dernière constitue l'une des dimensions essentielles du déploiement de la vie humaine. L'image est traditionnellement rapportée à l'activité imaginante d'un sujet. Mais, s'il est vrai que l'étoffe des hommes et (...) des choses qui se donnent à voir dans le paraître sensible d'une image n'existe pas coupée d'un tel paraître, l'esthétique relève aussi de l'ontologie et sa tâche est de nous ré-apprendre à contempler les images. Au regard de la clarté et de la distinction conférées par la théorie à notre appréhension des choses, la détermination positive des images ne tient-elle pas en effet au fait que c'est dans leur dimension qu'il nous est donné de faire l'expérience vive du paraître de ces choses, jusqu'à l'extrême de l'horreur, du merveilleux et du sacré? (shrink)

Some philosophical and psychological approaches to social interaction posit a powerful explanatory tool for explaining how we navigate social situations: scripts. Scripts tell people how to interact in different situational and cultural contexts depending on social roles such as gender. A script theory of social interaction puts emphasis on understanding the world as normatively structured. Social structures place demands, roles, and ways to behave in the social world upon us, which, in turn, guide the ways we interact with one another (...) and the ways we coordinate our behaviors. In this paper, I explore the phenomenon of coordinated behaviors in social interactions in humans. I argue that looking closely at everyday interactions, for which social coordination is central, strongly points to a fundamental role of scripts for social cognition and interaction. In order to explain some social interactions, like those based on social coordination, we do not need to recourse to mental state attribution. Rather, I argue, scripts are a powerful resource for explaining social interaction and especially coordinated behaviors. Scripts have been neglected in standard approaches to social cognition but are (re-)gaining attention via the normative turn in social cognition. (shrink)

In recent years, an array of critical emotion theorists have emerged who call for change with respect to how emotion theory is done, how emotions are understood, and how we do emotion. In this chapter, I draw on the work that some of these authors have produced to analyze how emotional marginalization of trans and disabled identities is experienced, considering in particular how this emotional marginalization results from the long history of pathologization of trans and disabled people. The past and (...) current pathologization of trans and disabled people is produced through normative assumptions, values, and beliefs that uphold systems of normalcy, including assumptions, values, and beliefs about how we feel and express emotions. In order to examine these issues, I identify three different stages at which emotional marginalization may take place: emotion experience, emotional display, and emotion recognition. In other words, emotional marginalization of trans and disabled people can occur at any of these stages. The central concern of my chapter is thus to show how emotional marginalization, at each of these stages, affects trans and disabled people. (shrink)

This chapter argues that emotion recognition is a skill. A skill perspective on emotion recognition draws attention to underappreciated features of this cornerstone of social cognition. Skills have a number of characteristic features. For example, they are improvable, practical, and flexible. Emotion recognition has these features as well. Leading theories of emotion recognition often draw inadequate attention to these features. The chapter advances a theory of emotion recognition that is better suited to this purpose. It proposes that emotion recognition involves (...) scripts. Emotion scripts describe how people are likely to behave in different emotional contexts. Scripts can be improved with the addition of richer social knowledge, they are practical in that they describe and guide social interaction, and they are flexible because they must accommodate the fact that emotions have different behavioral impact depending on the agents involved and the circumstances at play. Learning to recognize emotions through scripts qualifies as a skill. (shrink)

While the importance of social emotions is widely recognized, the question whether all emotions are social and what this would mean for the category ‘social emotions’ is yet to be addressed systematically. Emotion theorists and researchers so far have proposed different candidates for social emotions. These include non-basic emotions, self-conscious emotions, higher-cognitive emotions, and defining social emotions via their social functions. This paper looks at these different candidates for social emotions and briefly discusses their issues. Discussing the candidates and their (...) issues motivates embracing a pluralistic approach to social emotions. In a further step, the paper will look at approaches exploring how social factors impact emotions in general. This serves as a basis for explaining what it would mean to propose that all emotions are social. After reviewing different candidates for social emotions and looking at the impact of social factors on emotions in general, the paper will propose that a pluralistic understanding of social emotions is needed to embrace the different ways in which social emotions may function. Embracing a pluralistic understanding of social emotions does not mean, however, that all emotions are social emotions. (shrink)

Die Krisenerfahrungen der Moderne führen zum Rückgriff auf vormoderne Ordnungsvorstellungen, die jene Legitimationsdefizite kompensieren sollen, die im Zuge einer Dialektik der Aufklärung entstanden sind: die emanzipatorische Kraft der Vernunft scheint sich in eine Instanz neuer Herrschaft zu verkehren, als deren Organ die als repressiv erfahrenen Ordnungsleistungen des Staates begriffen werden. Diese Situation begünstigt die Suche nach Kräften, die menschlichem Eingriff entzogen sind, und kommt der Rehabilitierung von Naturvorstellungen entgegen, die sich der Welt des Menschen als normative Ordnungsquelle anbieten. Inwieweit sich (...) gerade die Geschlechterbeziehungen als Ausdruck solch natürlicher Ordnung verstehen lassen, ist eine der zentralen Fragen einer kritischen feministischen Philosophie. Die Untersuchungen, die die AutorInnen dieses Bandes vorlegen, bewegen sich im thematischen Umkreis dieser Fragestellung: in der Art eines Kompendiums werden in Interpretationen von Texten der politischen Philosophie, die in der Epoche von 1600-1850 entstanden sind, paradigmatische Legitimationsfiguren herausgearbeitet und der feministischen Ideologiekritik zugänglich gemacht. (shrink)

This paper offers a systematic treatment of the social and cultural context of the blush. The paper looks into how different emotion theories approach blushing and does so by differentiating between basic emotion theories, which consider contextual factors but do not make them central to understanding emotional expressions, and contextual emotion theories, which make contextual factors central to understanding emotional expressions. The paper argues that blushing might be best explained by theories that make context central to understanding emotional expression.

To explain how social cognition normally serves us in real life, we need to ask which factors contribute to specific social interactions. Recent accounts, and mostly pluralistic models, have started incorporating contextual and social factors in explanations of social cognition. In this paper, I further motivate the importance of contextual and identity factors for social cognition. This paper presents scripts as an alternative resource in social cognition that can account for contextual and identity factors. Scripts are normative and context-sensitive knowledge (...) structures that describe behavior in terms of corresponding events, situations, social roles, individuals, or mental state types in a way that guides action. The script approach presented here builds on recent accounts of social cognition but points out important differences and possible advantages it has over them: e.g., the script approach focuses even more strongly on context and identity. (shrink)

Commentary on a beloved ancient philosopher of Zen by a beloved contemporary master of Zen. Eihei Dogen was a thirteenth-century Buddhist poet-philosopher and founder of the Soto school of Zen. Famously insightful and famously complex, his writings have been studied and puzzled over by generations of students. Kosho Uchiyama was a beloved twentieth-century Zen teacher and author of over twenty books, who here addressed himself head-on to unpacking Dogen's wisdom for a modern audience. Translators Tom Wright and Shohaku Okumura present (...) three fascicles of Dogen's monumental Shobogenzo, or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: "Shoaku Makusa" or "Refraining from Evil," "Maka Hannya Haramitsu" or "Practicing Deepest Wisdom," and "Uji" or "Living Time." For each one, they lovingly translate Uchiyama's thoughtful commentary on the piece. At turns poetic and funny, always insightful, this is Zen wisdom for the ages. (shrink)

Social media plays an important role in forming, maintaining, and reproducing norms and practices (Flanagan et. al 2008). Content shared on social media has the power to reaffirm certain norms and practices merely by being shared (Caldeira et al., 2018; Burns, 2015; Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015). When it comes to questions of identity and questions surrounding representation of certain identity groups in the media, social media content is often taken to play a significant role in the constitution of certain (...) identities (Haimson, 2018, 2021; Frissen et al., 2015; Eickers & Rath, 2021). This chapter specifically explores the role social media plays in trans peoples’ transitioning processes. Transitioning, as understood here, can be social – e.g., performing gender differently via clothing or behavior, using a different name or pronouns – and legal – e.g., changing one’s gender category on formal identification documents, official name changes, and medical – e.g., undergoing hormone replacement therapy or other gender-affirming medical care like gender-reassignment surgeries. Transitioning can encompass all or any combination of these aspects (Bettcher, 2009, 2017). The chapter homes in on the impact that the representation of trans people on social media has on the transitioning processes. Here, questions around bodies and their representation through and with technologies and increasing digitization emerge. One might ask, for example, whether representation on social media platforms facilitates someone’s discovery of their gender identity and/or supports their coming to terms with it. This kind of representation may also provide people before or in transitioning processes with different ways to conceive of their future self. There are numerous social media accounts of trans people documenting their transitioning processes (Horak, 2014; Gauthier & Chaudoir, 2004). Displaying one’s own gender transition online may not only be important to some trans people because they feel like it makes a difference for the community, it may also become a vital part of the transitioning process itself, influencing and shaping the way the transition is taking place (Rawson, 2014; McInroy & Craig, 2015). Indeed, the representation of trans people on social media matters to trans communities and trans individuals because, by seeing images and perceiving narratives of trans people, one might, first, conceive of the possibility of one’s existence as a trans person, including the possibility of embodying another gender, and, second, think of the possibility of representing oneself (as a trans person) too (Cavalcante, 2016; Cannon et al., 2017). Accordingly, this chapter argues that social media can be viewed as a form of corporeal technology that is involved in transitioning processes. Social media can help the individual to reconceive their identity by means of representing themselves to themselves and others online. (shrink)

Marginalized communities are confronted with issues resulting from their marginalization, such as exclusion, invisibility, misrepresentation, and hate speech, not only offline but – due to digital change – increasingly online. Our research project DigitalDialog21 aims at evaluating the effects of digital change on society and how digital change, and the risks and possibilities that come with it, is perceived by the population. Digital change is understood as a factor of social change in this project. By investigating digital change and its (...) effects on society, we are able to draw more general inferences on how societies change socially and what needs to be done in education to establish digital trust. In 2017 the Digital Evolution Index observed an increasing trust deficit and skepticism towards digitalization in both very industrialized and lesser industrialized countries. We will draw inferences from these observations here and hypothesize the following: It seems that especially in marginalized communities, that is: in communities that are structurally and systemically disadvantaged and that experience societal marginalization, this trust deficit and skepticism towards digitalization is prevalent. This could be so because, as a member of a marginalized community, one might quickly find issues resulting from marginalization to be present in digital spaces just like they are present in non-digital spaces. This paper will examine critically how attitudes in marginalized communities towards digital media are influenced by digital change. Do the risks of digitalization outweigh the advantages for marginalized communities? Are digital media perceived to provide advantages such as increased visibility and representation or are they perceived to fuel discrimination against marginalized people? Our research project brings together secondary analyses of existing studies with the results of our own qualitative interview study on marginalized people's perceptions of digital change. The paper will portray some example interviews, and thereby analyze if and how attitudes in the margins towards digital media change, what this change consists of, and how we can understand the changing attitudes within an ethical and educational framework. Our findings will point at a necessity to increase ethically based digital literacy (PEAT) in the German education system, starting in early education. Marginalized groups in particular must be empowered to become digitally competent through problem-oriented education. Independent self-efficacy can increase digital trust in fragmented societies. The paper concludes by introducing media ethics tools that are being developed as part of the project. (shrink)

There is no specific trans perspective on romantic love. Trans people love and do not love, fall in love and fall out of love, just like everyone else. Trans people inhabit different sexual identities, different relationship types, and different kinds of loving. When it comes to falling in love as or with a trans person, however, things can get more complicated, as questions of gender and sexual identity emerge. In a study by Blair & Hoskin from 2018, 87.5% of the (...) interviewed participants said they would not consider dating a trans person (Blair & Hoskin, 2018). Among those who were open to dating trans people, a pattern emerged: the subjects were disproportionately willing to date trans men but not trans women, even if this preference did not match their own sexual identity; for example, a woman who identifies as a lesbian may be open to dating a trans man but not a trans woman. This seems like a clash of sexual and gender identities: why are women who identify as lesbians willing to date men? This chapter aims to analyze this phenomenon: love between clashing sexual and gender identities – e.g., the love between a man, who identifies as being romantically interested in men, and a trans woman, – and thereby evaluates the limits of romantic love for trans people. Limits of love, in this chapter, are conceived of as normative restrictions on whom and how we love. By exploring cases of clashing sexual and gender identities in romantic love, this chapter analyzes how trans people’s opportunities for love are often limited. (shrink)

Trans healthcare and thus trans people have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Trans people’s healthcare situations have turned out to be so vulnerable in this crisis because they have been precarious to begin with. There are multiple ways in which trans healthcare has been affected: Surgeries and other procedures have been cancelled or postponed, and mental health services have been paused or moved online. This raises ethical questions around discrimination against trans people in the healthcare system. This article (...) argues that cancelling trans surgeries and procedures in the COVID-19 crisis is made possible through an understanding of trans healthcare as non-essential. The article explores how trans healthcare in particular has been affected by the pandemic. (shrink)

The contributions to this volume, which take into account literary, visual, and other types of evidence, show that animals and humans in Graeco-Roman antiquity are interconnected on a variety of different levels and that their encounters and interac.

Digital change is one of the most critical factors influencing social change in most societies. The Digital Evaluation Index 2017 (Chakravorti & Chaturvedi, 2017) showed based on 60 national economies that almost no digitally indifferent societies exist anymore. However, different speeds of development and, above all, different attitudes towards the challenges and opportunities of digitization can be observed. Primarily industrially, highly developed nations are also digitally highly developed. However, a "trust deficit" is prevalent in those nations as well; that is, (...) there is a rather reserved attitude on the side of policymakers and the population towards digital development. This "trust deficit" points to a changing attitude towards media and thus towards social change as a whole. According to the mediatization theory (Krotz, 2009), "digitization" can be understood as a factor of social change brought about by media-technical progress. This media-driven change is pedagogically and ethically relevant. Digitization does not only influence the ways we engage with one another (online vs. offline) but, more importantly, seems to influence the attitudes and feelings we have towards engaging with one another and also the attitudes and feelings towards how we engage with one another. Phenomena like cyberbullying, hate speech, digital addiction are examples of behaviors that are (seemingly) made possible through digitization. These negative examples might be considered to show the downsides of digitization, though, at the same time, the way these examples are portrayed generates a fear-based attitude around digitization that contributes to the "trust deficit." German teachers – as several international studies, especially the ICILS studies (cf. Fraillon et al. 2014; Fraillon et al. 2019), have shown – are rather critical and restorative media users. Research shows that ethically sound knowledge and easy use tools for reviewing and normatively evaluating media offerings and practices can have a positive impact on educational institutions (Marci-Boehncke & Vogel 2018). The interdisciplinary German research project DigitalDialog21 aims to contribute to a comprehensive evaluation of current and future technologies, practices, and ways of thinking of digital change. The task of an ethical reconstruction of the "trust deficit" is to make the attitudes of the population accessible and processable via a digital assessment of ethics (Rath, 2003). This task will set the theoretical framework for comprehensive digital literacy. One pedagogical goal of the project is to develop practical tools that help to arrive at a concrete, well-founded evaluation of digital offers at the individual level. (shrink)

Wenn wir davon sprechen, dass etwas sozial unangemessen ist, meinen wir damit in der Regel, dass es keine Übereinstimmung gibt zwischen dem erwarteten Verhalten und dem tatsächlichen Verhalten. Soziale Angemessenheit betrifft dementsprechend Fragestellungen, die (soziale) Normen betreffen. Betrachten wir Angemessenheitskriterien durch die Positionen bestimmter sozialer Gruppen, ist es uns möglich, gruppenspezifische Angemessenheitskriterien zu beleuchten und kritisch zu betrachten. Hier geht es um Fragen wie: Ist mein Verhalten meinem wahrgenommenen Geschlecht angemessen? Mit diesem Blickwinkel wird deutlicher, dass unseren Vorstellungen von sozialer (...) Angemessenheit unter Umständen widersprüchliche Normen zugrunde liegen. Gerade wenn es um gruppenspezifische Fragen zur sozialen Angemessenheit geht, die etwa das Geschlecht, physische und mentale Befähigungen oder die Ethnie einer Person betreffen, kann Dehumanisierung eine Rolle spielen. Moderne Normen, so die Argumentation in diesem Kapitel, berücksichtigen Aspekte der Dehumanisierung, während traditionellere Normen diese tendenziell ignorieren. Hierdurch ergibt sich die Existenz widersprüchlicher Normen rund um soziale Angemessenheit. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird erklärt, wie soziale Angemessenheit und dehumanisierende Interaktionsstrukturen zusammenhängen, um die Frage erörtern zu können, wie widersprüchliche Kriterien für soziale Angemessenheit zustande kommen und wie diese eventuell auch verändert werden können. Hierzu wird das Konzept der Skripte herangezogen. (shrink)

According to Brentano, logic, ethics and aesthetics are practical normative sciences, and they correspond to the three classes of psychic phenomena. But if a judgment or a love may be correct or incorrect, it seems more difficult to speak of a correct representation as this class of phenomena ignores a polarity such as right / wrong or good / bad. Brentano speaks nevertheless from the aesthetical “value” of representations. Aesthetics could in this way be considered as part of a general (...) theory of value; but compared to ethics the specificity of this science tends to vanish. Another way to consider the question is to remember that the distinction among the three classes of psychic phenomena is only formal. It means that one has to question more precisely the very nature of representation and especially its relation to feeling. (shrink)

According to Brentano, logic, ethics and aesthetics are practical normative sciences, and they correspond to the three classes of psychic phenomena. But if a judgment or a love may be correct or incorrect, it seems more difficult to speak of a correct representation as this class of phenomena ignores a polarity such as right / wrong or good / bad. Brentano speaks nevertheless from the aesthetical “value” of representations. Aesthetics could in this way be considered as part of a general (...) theory of value; but compared to ethics the specificity of this science tends to vanish. Another way to consider the question is to remember that the distinction among the three classes of psychic phenomena is only formal. It means that one has to question more precisely the very nature of representation and especially its relation to feeling. (shrink)

Japan is one of several East Asian countries that share an ethical system of mutual support. A review of Japan’s health care system reveals a strong egalitarian ethos often considered unique by outside observers.

Uexkull’s famous umwelt theory, which is simultaneously a theory of meaning, remains almost unknown in American environmental thought. Thepurpose of this article is to create a dialogue between the umwelt theory – a source of inspiration for biosemiotics – and one of the major figures of the environmental thought, namely Aldo Leopold. The interest of this dialogue lies in the fact that the environmental thought has much to gain by relying on Uexkull’s theory of meaning and, conversely, that Leopold’s land (...) ethic is likely to extend Uexkull’s thought in terms of ethics. (shrink)

De la scolastique médiévale au XIXe siècle, la tradition philosophique a cherché à saisir l'unité des directions en lesquelles elle se déploie à travers des métaphores, celle de l'arbre par exemple, ou en élaborant des systèmes dont le XXe siècle semble bien avoir fait le deuil. Comment donc penser l'hétérogénéité de ces directions, qui font l'ampleur d'une pensée, si ce n'est en les reconduisant à des modalités de l'existence qui en constituent le sol? Cet ouvrage s'est ainsi proposé de recueillir (...) le déploiement de la philosophie lorsqu'elle pense le mythique, l'esthétique et le logique, en partant de cette réflexion sur l'existence. Publié en l'honneur de Maryvonne Perrot, il se clôt par un triple hommage à sa personne, le premier d'entre eux témoignant du rayonnement international qu'elle a contribué à donner au Centre Gaston Bachelard, et ainsi à l'Université de Bourgogne. (shrink)

Essentiellement composé de photographies aériennes, Earthscape est néanmoins un ouvrage de phénoménologie. Après avoir commencé des études d’architecture, puis soutenu une thèse de doctorat en philosophie à Freiburg, son auteur, Chan-fai Cheung, qui a dirigé le département de philosophie de la Chinese University of Hong Kong, met en effet, en tant que photographe, en suspens nos appréhensions habituelles et, pour ainsi dire, naturelles de la terre ; comme l’écrit Bernhard Waldenfels à propos...

Le XXe siècle a été celui d'un éclatement sans précédent des formes traditionnelles de l'art, et donc aussi de son essence ou de son "idée". Est-ce à dire qu'un héritage entier de sens et de culture a été dilapidé en cet âge qu'on a dit être celui de la "fin de l'art"? Doit-on au contraire penser qu'héritage il y a bel et bien eu, sur un mode critique et selon des logiques qui ne firent peut-être pas sans raison? Loin d'être (...) dépourvus de sens, les signes contemporains de l'art - restes, bribes, traces, "symptômes" divers - sollicitent en fait plus que jamais les interprétations. C'est pourquoi nous avons estimé pouvoir, et même devoir, poser les questions suivantes : - Que fait donc l'art, de lui-même et de son histoire, à l'époque de son an-archie eidétique? - Que peuvent en dire aujourd'hui les théories esthétiques et philosophiques? - Sous quelle forme de fidélité critique à leur tradition respective le peuvent-elles? (shrink)

Ce recueil vise à interroger un versant moins connu, mais essentiel, de la pensée de Gadamer, sa méditation des philosophes grecs, des Présocratiques à Plotin, qui occupe un tiers de ses œuvres complètes.

Dans les premières lignes du compte-rendu substantiel qu’il fournit de l’ouvrage de Mikel Dufrenne paru en 1963 sous le titre Le Poétique, Paul Ricœur écrit : Le dernier livre de Mikel Dufrenne n’est pas seulement le fruit mûr d’une œuvre qui pousse comme une plante – les images végétales conviennent à merveille à une philosophie qui se veut fidèle aux voix de la Nature! –, il est aussi l’un des signes de la mue de la philosophie française : celle-ci, de (...) multiples façons, se rebelle comme l... (shrink)

Uexkull’s famous umwelt theory, which is simultaneously a theory of meaning, remains almost unknown in American environmental thought. Thepurpose of this article is to create a dialogue between the umwelt theory – a source of inspiration for biosemiotics – and one of the major figures of the environmental thought, namely Aldo Leopold. The interest of this dialogue lies in the fact that the environmental thought has much to gain by relying on Uexkull’s theory of meaning and, conversely, that Leopold’s land (...) ethic is likely to extend Uexkull’s thought in terms of ethics. (shrink)