We enjoy sounds. What about silence: the absence of sound? Certainly not all, but surely many of us seek out, attend to, and appreciate silence. But, if nothing is there, then there is nothing to possess aesthetic qualities that might engage aesthetic interest or reward aesthetic attention. This is at least puzzling, perhaps even paradoxical. In this paper, I attempt to dispel the sense of paradox and provide a way to understand aesthetic appreciation of silence. I argue that silence (...) can have an aesthetic character and can sustain the kinds of rich experiences apt for aesthetic assessment and appraisal. (shrink)

There seem to be at least two leading conceptions of art appreciation. The first, and by far the most popular, it seems to me, regards “appreciation” as a synonym for “approbation,” which itself can be a synonym for affection or even love. “To appreciate,” in this sense, is “to cherish.” This is the notion of appreciation that most plain speakers have in mind when they say things such as “I appreciate what you’ve done with your garden.” They (...) mean “I like what you’ve done with your garden.” Call this “appreciation-as-liking.” Although I’ve claimed that this is the popular construal of appreciation, it also possesses some estimable philosophical credentials. David Hume, for example, seems to hold a... (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of appreciation. I argue that appreciation is an epistemic emotion in which the subject grasps the object in an affective way. The “grasping” and “feeling” components implies that in appreciation, we make sense of the object by having cognitive control over it, are motivated to maintain the valuable epistemic state of understanding, and experience the “aha” or “eureka” moment. This account offers a unified account of the many types of (...) class='Hi'>appreciation, including the aesthetic, the moral, and the epistemic. In all these cases, appreciation requires some other first-order emotions as prerequisite. (shrink)

When emotions are mentioned in the literature on mental competence, it is generally because they are thought to influence competence negatively; that is, they are thought to impede or compromise the cognitive capacities that are taken to underlie competence. The purpose of the present discussion is to explore the possibility that emotions might play a more positive role in the determination of competence. Using the MacArthur Treatment Competence Study as an example, it is argued that appreciation, a central theoretical (...) concept in many contemporary approaches to competence, has important emotive components that are seldom sufficiently recognized or acknowledged. If true, this means that some leading contemporary accounts of competence need to be revised in order to make more adequate provision for the positive contribution of emotion. (shrink)

Global climate change has been characterised as the crisis of reason (Val Plumwood), imagination (Amitav Ghosh) and language (Elizabeth Rush), to mention some. The 'everything change', as Margaret Atwood calls it, arguably also impacts on how we aesthetically perceive, interpret and appreciate nature. This article looks at philosophical theories of nature appreciation against global environmental change. The article examines how human-induced global climate change affects the 'scientific' approaches to nature appreciation which base aesthetic judgment on scientific knowledge and (...) the competing 'non-scientific' approaches which emphasise the role of emotions, imagination and stories in the aesthetic understanding of environment. The author claims that both approaches are threatened by global climate change and cannot continue as usual. In particular, he explores aesthetic imagination in contemporary times when our visions about environment are thoroughly coloured by worry and uncertainty and there seems to be little room for awe and wonder, which have traditionally characterised the aesthetic experience of nature. Finally, he proposes that art could stimulate environmental imagining in this age of uncertainty. (shrink)

What is aesthetic appreciation? In this paper, I approach this question in an indirection fashion. First, I introduce the Kantian notion of moral worthy action and an influential analysis of it. Next, I generalise that analysis from the moral to the aesthetic domain, and from actions to affects. Aesthetic appreciation, I suggest, consists in an aesthetically worthy affective response. After unpacking the proposal, I show that it has non-trivial implications while cohering with a number of existing insights concerning (...) the nature of appreciation and the constraints to which it is subject. In closing, I note some limitations on the analogy between aesthetic appreciation and morally worthy action. (shrink)

Some considerations are urgent and others are not. Sometimes, we invite criticism if we neglect the urgency of our situation, even if our action seem adequate to respond to it. Despite this significance, the literature does not offer a satisfactory analysis of the normative structure of urgency. I examine three views of urgency, drawn from philosophical and adjacent literature, which fail to explain the distinctive criticism we face when we do neglect the urgency of our reasons. Instead, I argue that (...) urgent considerations pre-empt our deliberation about less urgent considerations. Urgency is then a metanormative phenomenon, setting standards for how we handle and respond to first-order considerations, requiring that we close deliberation. In the face of urgency, appropriate action is not enough. Commitment is called for. This is how we enact appreciation of our practical reasons, independently of our carrying out the action they call for. (shrink)

In this article, I want to understand the nature of aesthetic experiences of landscapes. I offer an understanding of aesthetic appreciation of landscapes based on a notion of a landscape where landscapes are perspectival observer-dependent entities, where the 'creator' of the landscape necessarily happens to be the same person as the spectator, and where her scientific (and other) knowledge and beliefs matter for the appreciation to be complete. I explore the idea that appreciating a landscape in this sense (...) has quite a lot in common with taking and appreciating a photograph. On our way, we will see how imagination plays a crucial role in the story. (shrink)

To help frame the Festschrift for Gyula Klima (Metaphysics Through Semantics: The Philosophical Recovery of the Medieval Mind), this appreciation offers perspective on the scholar's person and project. Drawing on biographical details and reflecting on signal contributions, it seeks to honor a distinguished philosopher who deserves to be celebrated by friends and introduced to a new generation of readers. Download with frontmatter from: link[dot]springer[dot]com/content/pdf/bfm:978-3-031-15026-5/1?pdf=chapter%20toc.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Appreciation of Arvind Mandair's Sikh Philosophy:Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing WorldJeffery D. Long (bio)"Sikhism," the Colonial Project, and Modernity1I do not use this adjective lightly, but in his brilliant volume Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (Bloomsbury, 2022) Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair goes a considerable distance toward liberating sikhī—known more widely in the academic world as Sikhism—from the conceptual constraints that have kept it (...) from engaging with and informing global issues. In so doing, he does a service not only to the Sikh community and to sikhī itself, but to the world, for there is indeed much in Sikh thought from which the wider human community can benefit. By liberating sikhī from the constraining concept of religion, Mandair facilitates a process by which persons of any background can engage with gurmat ideas—that is, ideas drawn from the system of thought based upon the teachings of the Gurus of the Sikh tradition—and learn from their wisdom.Mandair skillfully deconstructs the concept of religion, building upon earlier work in which he demonstrates the colonial functionalities of this concept.2 When, through colonial knowledge-production processes, sikhī came to be conceived as a religion, Sikh thought was relegated to the realm of theology. This was a relegation, not an elevation, because under the dominant paradigm of modernity, theology is seen as a discourse that is relevant only to a specific religious community. It is thus perceived as lacking the universality [End Page 353] that is taken to inhere in the discourses of philosophy or science. When combined with the colonial situation of Sikhs under British rule, this relegation of Sikh thought to the realm of theology becomes a way of exerting power over the community. As Mandair explains,Once theology had become the primary regime of cultural translation, Sikh thinking was inevitably tethered to the social and political project of religious identification which was required primarily to facilitate governance of cultural differences or heterogeneity that characterized the indigenous populations [of India]. By doing so, it effectively locked Sikh activity within the confines of identity politics.(p. 10)Integral to British colonial policy in India was a project of defining communities, primarily on the basis of religion, but also deploying concepts such as caste and tribe. Through these definitions, the identities of Indians could be essentialized, and policies applied to them in ways that facilitated British dominance over Indian society.3Much has been written about the ways in which language is used to promote ideologies that serve to advance the power interests of some groups of people over others.4 No less an ideological mechanism than the Oxford English Dictionary has been brought to bear in the process of constraining sikhī and depriving it of the universal relevance that it ought naturally to possess. In Mandair's words, "By defining 'Sikhism' as the beliefs and practices of Sikhs, or as an Indian monotheistic religion founded in fifteenth-century India, the OED turns the Sikh aspect into a cliché—a religious type (monotheism), an ethnic type tied to a geographical location (Punjabi/North India) and a historical type (medieval India)" (p. 11).The damage that has been wrought by the modern colonial concept of religion globally is, of course, not limited exclusively to the Sikh community. It has been integral to the construction of a secular order in which what is regarded as religious thought is, again, relegated to a parochial realm of relevance only to members of specific communities. It further serves to marginalize these same communities, whose discourses come to be seen as lacking the universality of secular thought, which is presented as objective truth. As Mandair continues,The purpose of creating the modern category of 'religion' was to help authorize and naturalize secular rationality as the dominant form of modern consciousness, and as the essential language of conventional thinking, or 'common sense.' It is precisely this common sense which persuades us of the apparent naturalness of oppositions such as religion versus politics or materiality versus ideality, to give two well-known examples.(p. 11)To these two examples, one could add the opposition of religion and... (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} The constructionist approach of philosophy includes an epistemic dimension and a pragmatic emphasis on the interdependence between knowledge and action in the social areas. Appreciative approach to philosophy is based on the work of David Cooperrider on “Appreciative Inquiry”, which is a form of pragmatic discourse that substitutes the focus (...) on the problem with the focus on successful elements of previous experience of individuals, groups, organizations or communities. This experience can be integrated in the philosophical discourse starting from Plato's dialogues and maieutic method promoted by Socrates. Hermeneutic of the real seen as a philosophical reflection on the daily positive experiences falls into tradition of philosophical search of the ultimate meaning of reality. The appreciative speech starts from a postmodern view by a constructivist and constructionist approach, through which reality itself is a social construction generated by successive negotiations on accepted interpretations. Appreciative philosophy is centered on a semiotics grid that seeks positive qualities of existence and its strengths. Appreciative theology reveals a collaborative process between humanity and divine that catalyzes transformations in human being giving them life including eternal life. The communion human-Divinity is seen as a divine-human co-creation. (shrink)

Scientific cognitivism is the idea that nature must be aesthetically appreciated in light of scientific information about it. I defend Carlson's traditional formulation of scientific cognitivism from some recent criticisms. However, I also argue that if we employ this formulation it is difficult to uphold two claims that Carlson makes about scientific cognitivism: (i) it is the correct analysis of the notion of appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature, and (ii) it justifies the idea that nature, seen aright, is always (...) beautiful (that is, positive aesthetics about nature). I attempt to find a revised formulation of scientific cognitivism that can support both of these claims. I argue that to do this we must rethink the notion of positive aesthetics and its place in our theorizing about the appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. Specifically, I propose that positive aesthetics be made ‘internal’ to the theory of appropriate aesthetic appreciation, in the sense that this theory determines the correct scientific categories for appreciating a natural object, in part, in virtue of a ‘beauty-making’ criterion. I argue that this sort of formulation of scientific cognitivism can support both of Carlson's claims and does not compromise the objectivist scruples that motivate the view. (shrink)

I propose that the appropriate appreciation of nature must include the moral capacity for acknowledging the reality of nature apart from humans and the sensitivity for listening to its own story. I argue that appreciating nature exclusively as design is inappropriate to the extent that we impose upon nature a preconceived artistic standard as well as appreciation based upon historical/cultural/literary associationsinsofar as we treat nature as a background of our own story. In contrast, aesthetic appreciation informed by (...) our attempt to make sense of nature, such as science, mythology, and folklore, is appropriate because it guides our experience toward understanding nature’s own story embodied in its sensuous surface. (shrink)

Instances of epistemic injustice elicit resistance, anger, despair, frustration or cognate emotional responses from their victims. This sort of response to the epistemic injustices that accompanied historical systems of oppression such as colonialism, for example, is normal. However, if their victims have internalised these oppressive situations, we could get the counterintuitive response of appreciation. In this paper, I argue for the phenomenon of appreciative silencing to make sense of instances like this. This is a form of epistemic silencing that (...) happens when the accepted hegemonic intuitions of the oppressed are formed/influenced by the ideologies of the oppressors over time. Here, we have a resilient, oppressive and hegemonic epistemic system. Put together, it creates a variant of epistemic injustice and silencing that is obscure since its victims are neither resistant nor aware of the injustice they face but are appreciative. (shrink)

Dance can be appreciated from all sorts of perspectives: For instance, by the dancer while dancing, by the choreographer while watching in the wings, by the musician in the orchestra pit who accompanies the dance, or by the loved-one of a dancer who watches while hoping that the dancer performs well and avoids injury. This essay will consider what it takes to appreciate dance from the perspective of a seated, non-moving audience member. A dance appreciator in this position is typically (...) someone who can hear and see, who can feel vibrations of sound through their skin, and who can have other human, kinaesthetic responses and perceptions as well as the cognitive ability to process them. This appreciator is also someone who is a person with a history that may or may not include experiences of dance that have conditioned his or her responses to watching dance. Based on both this experience, and the skill and capacity to focus, pay attention, make judgments, and convey those judgments, there are different types and levels of audience appreciation. This essay will consider three: 1. Innocent Eye Appreciation, 2. Dance-Trained Appreciation, and 3. Critical Appreciation. (shrink)

There are some artworks which we appreciate for their bad artistic qualities; these artworks are said to be “good because bad”. This is puzzling. How can art be good just because it is bad? In this essay, we attempt to demystify this phenomenon. We offer a two-part analysis: the artistic flaws in these works make them bizarre, and this bizarreness is aesthetically valuable. Our analysis has the consequence that some artistic flaws make for aesthetic virtues. Such works therefore present a (...) counterexample to aestheticism, the view that all artistically relevant features of artworks are aesthetic features. (shrink)

This article is a response to yuriko saito's "is there a correct aesthetic appreciation of nature?" (jae 18:4) which challenges the position on the aesthetic appreciation of nature that i develop in a series of recent articles. i here consider saito's arguments, concluding that they neither establish the correctness of a wide range of kinds of aesthetic appreciations of nature nor undercut the grounds for the prominence i grant to scientific considerations in such appreciation.

Moral experience comes in many flavors. Some philosophers have argued that there is nothing common to the many forms moral experience can take. In this paper, I argue that close attention to the phenomenology of certain key emotions, combined with a clear distinction between essentially and accidentally moral experiences, suggests that there is a group of (essentially) moral emotions which in fact exhibit significant unity.

Aesthetic appreciation involves background belief. While some appreciations are adequate when these beliefs are false, there is an important class of beliefs -- beliefs about the nature art work kinds -- whose truth is required for adequate appreciation. Photography is an interesting case, since many of our beliefs about it are false.

As time passed, I discovered with surprise that the important role I assigned to literature was not recognized by everyone.iThis essay constitutes one aspect of an overall project to spell out the implications for the literary arts of Wittgenstein's systematic distinction between acts of description that carry truth values and acts of expression that display states of mind and feeling but do not describe them. My full case will require a book. That is good news for me but bad news (...) for the present reader, since I feel I have to offer a painfully brief version of my overall theoretical position as a backdrop for what I will say about appreciation. Expressions elicit or solicit attunement rather than propose .. (shrink)

I propose that the appropriate appreciation of nature must include the moral capacity for acknowledging the reality of nature apart from humans and the sensitivity for listening to its own story. I argue that appreciating nature exclusively as design is inappropriate to the extent that we impose upon nature a preconceived artistic standard as well as appreciation based upon historical/cultural/literary associationsinsofar as we treat nature as a background of our own story. In contrast, aesthetic appreciation informed by (...) our attempt to make sense of nature, such as science, mythology, and folklore, is appropriate because it guides our experience toward understanding nature’s own story embodied in its sensuous surface. (shrink)

The “patient perspective” serves as an analytical tool to present patients as knowing subjects in research, rather than as objects known by medicine. This paper analyses problems encountered with the concept of the patient perspective as applied to long-term mental health care. One problem is that “having a perspective” requires a perception of oneself as an individual and the ability to represent one’s individual situation in language; this excludes from research patients who do not express themselves verbally. Another problem is (...) that the idea of “talk” as a representation of the world ignores the fact that talk is also performative in the world: it requires, at least, the ability to deal with an interview situation. To think up alternative ways of including patients as subjects in research, I develop an approach that takes this performativity as a starting point. Analysing practical situations and activities, I argue that patients enact appreciations, making known what they like or dislike by verbal or non-verbal means in a given material environment, in situations that are co-produced by others. Thus, subjectivity is linked to situations and interactions, rather than just to individual characteristics; to “patient positions,” rather than “patient perspectives.”. (shrink)

Does trust play a significant role in the appreciation of art? If so, how does it operate? We argue that it does, and that the mechanics of trust operate both at a general and a particular level. After outlining the general notion of ‘art-trust’—the notion sketched is consistent with most notions of trust on the market—and considering certain objections to the model proposed, we consider specific examples to show in some detail that the experience of works of art, and (...) the attribution of art-relevant properties or characterisations to works of art, very often involves the notion of trust; in such cases—perhaps most or even, implicitly, all—the question ‘Do I trust the artist (or art-maker)?’, is inescapable. (shrink)

In September 1931, a panel discussion was convened at Central Hall Westminsteron the subject of the ‘Evolution of the Universe’, at the centenary meeting of theBritish Association for the Advancement of Science. Center stage was what todo about the evolving universe being younger than the stars, evidently a paradoxin the relativistic study of the evolving universe, at the time. Here, we discusstwo diametrically opposed reactions to the paradox, which were each broadcastat the meeting by Lemaˆıtre and de Sitter, respectively. As (...) we argue, that bothcould be projected to the public as viable reflects an unsettled question at thefoundations of the then-nascent discipline: what is the role for considerationsof scale in relativistic cosmology? (shrink)

The aesthetics of nature has over the last few decades become an intense focus of philosophical reflection, as it has been ever more widely recognised that it is not a mere appendage to the aesthetics of art. Everyone delights in the beauty of flowers, and some are thrilled by the immensity of mountains or of the night sky. But what is involved in serious aesthetic appreciation of the natural world? Malcolm Budd presents four interlinked studies in the aesthetics of (...) nature, approaching the subject from a variety of angles. As well as developing Budd's own original ideas, the book provides a comprehensive treatment of Kant's classic aesthetics of nature, and an encyclopaedic critical survey of recent literature on the subject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Appreciating Anorexia:Decisional Capacity and the Role of ValuesThomas Grisso (bio) and Paul S. Appelbaum (bio)Keywordscompetence, consent, anorexia, appreciation, decision makingTan and her colleagues (2006) reported that persons with anorexia nervosa typically manifest no difficulty satisfying the criteria for abilities associated with competence to consent to or refuse treatment. Their results led them to conclude that these patients generally had no problem grasping the nature of anorexia and its (...) possible consequences (understanding), typically did not have difficulty processing information when making treatment decisions (reasoning), and usually neither denied that they had a disorder nor manifested distorted beliefs about the potential consequences of treatment for the disorder.Nevertheless, these authors found, some anorexia patients said that they knew they might die and that they would rather die than suffer the alternative consequences (e.g., loss of identity, feeling of being disgusting). They point out that these beliefs, suggesting questionable competence, were not identified by the usual criteria for competence to consent to treatment. Therefore, they propose that we should consider a modification of the criteria for competence to consent to treatment. They argue for inclusion of "pathological values" as the basis for a finding of incompetence. Their notion of a pathological value (as we summarize it based on their Discussion) includes (a) a personal value (b) on which treatment refusal is based, that (c) is not authentic, and (d) is due to a mental disorder.Second, Tan and colleagues were concerned that the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Treatment (MacCAT-T), currently used widely to assess competence to consent to treatment, did not seem to take values into account when examining deficits related to lack of appreciation or reasoning. They point out that most patients with anorexia nervosa in their study had "pathological values" that influenced their thinking about treatment, yet they did not obtain poor scores on the instrument's appreciation scale, which assesses whether patients deny that they have the illness or offer reasons for accepting or refusing treatment that are based on delusional premises or a serious distortion of reality. Moreover, almost all of the anorexia patients in the study obtained adequate scores on reasoning, which examines the ability to process options and consequences when weighing a treatment decision. [End Page 293]Reasons for Caution in Altering Criteria for CompetenceA fundamental step in considering Tan and her co-worker's proposal is to examine whether it is necessary to add a concept of "pathological values" to the legal construct of competence to consent to treatment. Modifying the legal doctrine of consent is important if that is needed to improve its validity or reliability. But modifications of the doctrine would have considerable costs, including a long process of producing logical and empirical evidence for its necessity, developing methods to assess the new concept, and then a process of debate, persuasion, and education to change laws, ethical guidelines, and medical training. Moreover, principles of theory building urge parsimony. A theory should employ no more concepts or assumptions than are required to account for the phenomena that the theory seeks to organize or explain. So one must be sure that modifications are truly necessary before adding complexity to the theory of decisional competence.In addition, there is an inherent danger in altering a concept like competence to consent to treatment on the basis of the study of any one mental disorder. It is not at all clear how the modification might influence findings of competence when applied to other disorders. Using a study of patients with anorexia nervosa as the impetus for changing the competence concept runs this risk. For example, anorexia is one of a class of mental disorders that is characterized by a failure to abstain from behavior (here, limiting food intake and other behaviors designed to reduce weight) that has negative consequences for the person. Other conditions in this category might include substance abuse disorders and impulse control disorders (e.g., pathological gambling). Even if one concludes that revised criteria for competence would reduce false-positive findings of competence in this group of disorders, one would have to consider carefully its impact on the full range of disabling mental conditions.Moreover, the sensitivity... (shrink)

Aestheticians have had a great deal to say recently in praise of (aesthetic) appreciation. This enthusiastic appreciation for appreciation may seem unsurprising given the important role it plays in many of our aesthetic practices, but we maintain that some prominent aestheticians have overstated the role of appreciation (and, perhaps more importantly, understated the role of other elements we will discuss) when it comes to the exercise of aesthetic taste. This is not, of course, to deny the (...) obvious fact that appreciation often plays an important role in our aesthetic practices but merely that it is a mistake to cast it in the role of the sine qua non of aesthetics. (shrink)

Contemporary television has been marked by such exceptional programming that it is now common to hear claims that TV has finally become an art. In Appreciating the Art of Television, Nannicelli contends that televisual art is not a recent development, but has in fact existed for a long time. Yet despite the flourishing of two relevant academic subfields—the philosophy of film and television aesthetics—there is little scholarship on television, in general, as an art form. This book aims to provide scholars (...) active in television aesthetics with a critical overview of the relevant philosophical literature, while also giving philosophers of film a particular account of the art of television that will hopefully spur further interest and debate. It offers the first sustained theoretical examination of what is involved in appreciating television as an art and how this bears on the practical business of television scholars, critics, students, and fans—namely the comprehension, interpretation, and evaluation of specific televisual artworks. (shrink)

What is the relationship between acquaintance and aesthetic judgement? Wollheim’s acquaintance principle (AP) is one answer. Amir Konigsberg—the most recent critic of AP—has produced a number of examples which he claims will require us to restrict AP even further than has previously been suggested. I argue that Konigsberg is mistaken and that his examples do not necessitate any further restrictions on AP. This failure, however, is not the result of some specific flaw in Konigsberg’s argument; rather it is an artefact (...) of a deeper problem at the heart of the current debate over AP (and its successors). I conclude by arguing that this problem—the absence of any satisfactory reformulation of AP itself—has far-reaching consequences for our theorizing in aesthetics. (shrink)

This article pursues two central goals. First, I seek to advance the sustained study of occupational identity as a pivotal mechanism for organizing work and, thus, as a productive means of integrating the aims of two scholarly movements: 1) the ‘dislocation’ of organization and 2) the renewed emphasis on work in organization studies. Specifically, I propose the study of evolving relations between occupational image discourse and role communication, and my analysis of US commercial airline pilots enacts the potential of such (...) research. The analysis demonstrates how contemporary pilots draw on the deliberate historical construction of airline pilots as elite, fatherly professionals to make sense of their work, explicitly invoking gender discourse as a rational and emotional warrant for their labor and, in so doing, implicitly articulating sexuality, race, and class discourses. Accordingly, the second major goal of the article is to promote inquiry into how discourses of difference function to organize occupational identity and, thus, to produce the division and hierarchy of labor. With this move, I seek to bring a more constitutive view of discourse and communication, as well as a focus on intersection and interplay among discourses of difference, to the study of occupational identity and segregation. (shrink)

. The management of ethics within organisations typically occurs within a problem-solving frame of reference. This often results in a reactive, problem-based and externally induced approach to managing ethics. Although basing ethics management interventions on dealing with and preventing current and possible future unethical behaviour are often effective in that it ensures compliance with rules and regulations, the approach is not necessarily conducive to the creation of sustained ethical cultures. Nor does the approach afford (mainly internal) stakeholders the opportunity to (...) be co-designers of the organisations ethical future. The aim of this paper is to present Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as an alternative approach for developing a shared meaning of ethics within an organisation with a view to embrace and entrench ethics, thereby creating a foundation for the development of an ethical cul- ture over time. A descriptive case study based on an application of AI is used to illustrate the utility of AI as a way of thinking and doing to precede and complement problem-based ethics management systems and interventions. (shrink)

John Pollock (1940?2009) was an influential American philosopher who made important contributions to various fields, including epistemology and cognitive science. In the last 25 years of his life, he also contributed to the computational study of defeasible reasoning and practical cognition in artificial intelligence. He developed one of the first formal systems for argumentation-based inference and he put many issues on the research agenda that are still relevant for the argumentation community today. This paper presents an appreciation of Pollock's (...) work on defeasible reasoning and its relevance for the computational study of argument. In our opinion, Pollock deserves to be remembered as one of the founding fathers of the field of computational argument, while, moreover, his work contains important lessons for current research in this field, reminding us of the richness of its object of study. (shrink)

In this article, the principles of appreciative inquiry are used in order to mediate multicultural relations. Using the constructionism theory, I describe and analyze the theoretical articulations adopted to make sense of co-constructing the relationships between different people. I find that, instead of being applied as the sole theoretical foundation, constructionism principles have been incorporated in the appreciative inquiry principles, the effects of which should be the co-constructing of social reality by the interactions of different people. The paper draws on (...) the process that appreciative inquiry perspective works for rebuilding the social relationships. Its main contribution is to show how theoretical complementarities using constructionism theory are promising avenues of research in the field of multiculturalism. (shrink)

Perhaps the greatest irony about the contemporary religion‐science dialogue is the fact that, despite their own strongly articulated denials, many thinkers implicitly accept the “warfare” thesis of A. D. White—that is, they agree with White that traditional theology has proved unable to engage science in fruitful conversation. More than most others, John Polkinghorne understands just how badly White misread the history of Christianity and science, and how much theology has been impoverished by its failure to challenge this core assumption of (...) modernity. (shrink)

This is an essay in appreciation of The Abundant Herds, a study of the ama-Zulu's naming practices for their Nguni cattle. The book reveals an aesthetic vision in which contemplative and practical attention are intertwined and a complex classificatory system does not undermine an appreciation of the individuality of the cattle. The book and the practices it celebrates permit a richer account of the beauty of farm animals to the standard functionalist approach.

C. Thi Nguyen claims that although we can make aesthetic judgements based on testimony or inference, we resist doing so owing to a contingent norm of our social practice. For Nguyen, aesthetic engagement involves a ‘motivational inversion’ similar to games in which we adopt inefficient means of winning so that we can enjoy the process of playing. Similarly, he says, adopting the norm enables us to engage in the autonomous activity of appreciation. I argue that Nguyen is right that (...) the purpose of our practice is appreciation, but wrong to think any motivational inversion is required in pursuing it. (shrink)

This article argues that "gratitude to" and "gratitude that" are fundamentally different concepts. The former (prepositional gratitude) is properly a response to benevolent attitudes, and entails special concern on the part of the beneficiary for a benefactor, while the latter (propositional gratitude) is a response to beneficial states of affairs, and entails no special concern for anyone. Propositional gratitude, it is argued, ultimately amounts to a species of appreciation. The tendency to see prepositional gratitude and propositional “gratitude” as two (...) species of the same genus results from several deep-seated social and psychological factors, but must be resisted if we are to engage in constructive philosophizing about both gratitude and appreciation. (shrink)

Many interpretations of Kant’s first Critique fail to appreciate the revolutionary nature of his account of knowledge and its implications for skepticism, givenness and mind-independence, because they read Kant as holding a compositional account of knowledge. I contend that the reason for this is that this account is both naturally appealing in its own right, and fits an influential reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. On this reading, the Deduction aims to respond to a skeptical worry which issues from the empiricist (...) version of epistemic compositionalism and which questions the intelligibility of the claim to knowledge of our judgements. Against this, I argue that what Kant’s Deduction actually aims to address is a radicalization of this epistemic worry, which instead questions the intelligibility of the objective purport of our judgements. I contend that the compositional account is unable to respond to this more radical worry, thereby putting it into question both as a reading of Kant, and as an account of knowledge generally. To corroborate this, I provide a reading of the Deduction that overcomes epistemic compositionalism by thinking through its shortcomings in order to arrive at a more adequate successor account: the hylomorphic account of knowledge, which, I contend, is able to dissolve both the more radical and the epistemic worry. I suggest that this implies generally that the epistemic worry issuing from the compositional account is not self-contained, but must give way to Kant’s more radical worry, which I argue can only be addressed within the underappreciated framework of epistemic hylomorphism. (shrink)

In their paper exploring patient ambivalence in the context of medical decision-making Bryanna Moore, et al. state, “While bioethicists have not paid much attention to ambivalence and related menta...

In this paper, I explore some parallels and dissimilarities between aesthetic appreciation that takes as its focus art objects and that which focuses on natural objects. I cover three areas. The first deals with general approach, whether a paradigm of engagement is more appropriate to environmental aesthetics than one of detachment and disinterest. The second theme is about preservation and whether the appropriate model is static or dynamic. The final theme is about environmental criticism and the application of aesthetic (...) theory to arguments for preservation. (shrink)

The aesthetics of nature has over the last few decades become an intense focus of philosophical reflection, as it has been ever more widely recognised that it is not a mere appendage to the aesthetics of art. Just as nature offers aesthetic experiences beyond the reach of art, so the aesthetics of nature raises issues not contained within the philosophy of art. -/- Malcolm Budd presents four interlinked essays addressing all the main problems about the aesthetics of nature. These include: (...) how the aesthetic appreciation of nature should be understood; the character of an aesthetic response to nature; what kinds of aesthetic experience nature affords and what kinds of aesthetic judgement it is amenable to; the aesthetic significance of intrusions by humanity into nature; whether aesthetic judgements about nature can be objectively true; the doctrine of positive aesthetics with respect to nature; the aesthetic significance of knowledge of nature and in particular whether scientific knowledge is necessary for serious aesthetic appreciation of nature; and the correct model for the appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. -/- The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature also includes a comprehensive exposition and examination of the thoughts of the greatest philosopher to make a substantial contribution to the subject, Immanuel Kant, and an encyclopaedic critical survey of much of the most significant recent literature. Scholars and students of aesthetics will find valuable resources here, and much to think about. (shrink)

The history of landscape appreciation in the West, and especially in the English-speaking world, has been bound up with the concept of taste. For good reason: t.