The women of Sons of Anarchy have pivotal, powerful roles in the drama, despite not being official members of the MC. Here we have three images of motherhood: the bad mother (few things are considered worse in our society) who endangers her child, the powerful matriarch who comes to the child's rescue, and the mothering healer who is responsible for keeping Abel alive. While the Mothers of Anarchy, on the surface, have no control, in reality they use their power in (...) the private sphere to influence the public sphere and effect great change, albeit with little public recognition for their efforts. While the traditional masculine and feminine spheres are firmly in place within SAMCRO, with the men making all the decisions about the club's future behind the closed chapel doors, the power this mother (Gemma) wields is monumental. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'guilt by association' (GBA). GBA is the erroneous logic that just because someone/something A is associated with someone/something B, that someone/something A has or accepts all of the qualities of someone/something B. This fallacy permeates society, from social groups, to political campaigns, to business relationships, and to the court system. When politics, social issues, and business collide, GBA enters new realms. It is also used when it is found (...) that perpetrators of horrific events belonged to a certain group. GBA is often a knee‐jerk reaction that has deep roots in people's implicit biases and has even been supported consistently by legal precedent. To disrupt the desire to make these immediate and fallacious assumptions, individuals must recognize the consequences of doing so and instead build their arguments on facts and realities. GBA can have dire consequences. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, etymological fallacy (EF). To understand the EF fully, it is important to break down the word etymology, which is a practice that in itself informs the conversation surrounding the fallacy. EF is a willful use of a former definition of a word that has changed meaning and/or developed new connotations because the change does not benefit the one committing the fallacy. To avoid committing the EF, individuals should approach (...) language as they would a scientific process: they may hypothesize the word means X, but after further research and consideration, realize that indeed a word now means Y. Either way, the changing nature of language must be considered and individuals should be learned enough and flexible enough to communicate within the time and culture they inhabit. Clinging to etymons while ignoring the evolution and everyday use of language is neither logical nor truthful. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'argument by repetition' (ABR). ABR controls the script by repeating the script, and it often distracts audiences in the process. Truthiness is a key to how ABR is a pervasive propaganda technique. ABR takes many forms: jingles for advertising shampoo, phrases politicians use to evoke fear or gain favor, and narratives to malign certain groups of people. Adolf Hitler's Big Lie technique in Mein Kampf extols the usefulness (...) of this technique in swaying masses of people. Hitler and his Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, utilized this Big Lie technique to repeat the narrative of an “International Jewry”, which launched World War I to kill all Germans; this repeated lie helped turn cultural anti‐ Semitism into the Holocaust, as many would argue. ABR seeks to convince an audience not by facts or logic but by the psychological and emotional power of repetition. (shrink)

A critique of Strawson's distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics.

Trust is often an assumed outcome of participation in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) as they directly connect producers with consumers. It is based on this potential for trust “between producers and consumers” that AFNs have emerged as a significant field of food studies analysis as it also suggests a capacity for AFNs to foster associated embedded qualities, like ‘morality’, ‘social justice’, ‘ecology’ and ‘equity’. These positive benefits of AFNs, however, cannot be taken for granted as trust is not necessarily an (...) outcome of AFN participation. Using Chinese case studies of AFNs, which are characterised by a distinct form of trust pressure—consumers who are particularly cynical about small scale farmers, food safety and the organic credentials of producers—this paper highlights how the dynamics of trust are in constant flux between producers and consumers. I suggest that it is the careful construction of the aesthetic and multi-sensory qualities of food, which is often celebrated via social media, that human centred relations in Chinese AFNs are mediated. This leads to two key conclusions: first, that the key variable for establishing trust is satisfying the consumer's desire for safe (i.e. "fresh") food; and second, the materiality of the food and the perception of foods materiality (especially through social media), must both be actively constructed by the farmer to fit the consumer's ideal of freshness. (shrink)

The theses and program below ask about judgment and tradition in a self-consciously plural world. The little program points down a path I am exploring in a pair of texts, one on notions of identity in the history of philosophy, and one on the identity of buildings and places. The underlying issue of those texts is: what will replace the old notion of a particular identity? Places, persons, and communities do not and have never had such simple identities as our (...) concepts often made them out to have. But our world today defies the application of universal categories and judgments to fixed particulars. Our places and identities become complexly multiplied, they interpenetrate, the electronic no-place / all-place opens before us. Yet at the same time exclusions and particularities assert themselves everywhere. If universal judgment seems unlikely, relativism is one response, but relativism remains within the horizon of universals and particulars. What kinds of identity can provide standpoints for describing and judging today? (shrink)

The early modern period (roughly, 1600–1800 ce) in Europe brought tremendous changes in intellectual, political, and cultural life. It was a period in which philosophical debates were inevitably bound up with questions about the nature and sources of religious truth. A chronological examination of some of the period’s major thinkers highlights two issues that were central to the development of philosophy of religion in the period. The first concerns the relations between God, the soul, and the body; the other concerns (...) the relationship between human reason and divine revelation. (shrink)

What would it take to design a real place online where real learning would happen?

In this paper I offer a reading of one of Plato's later works, the Sophist, that reveals it to be informed by principles comparable on the face of it with those that have emerged recently in the field of critical thinking. As a development of the famous Socratic method of his teacher, I argue, Plato deployed his own pedagogical method, a ‘mid‐wifely’ or ‘maieutic’ method, in the Sophist. In contrast to the Socratic method, the sole aim of this method is (...) not to disabuse the reader or learner of her false opinions. Rather, its purpose is to supply her with the skills and dispositions as well as the claims and counter‐claims she needs to critically evaluate a view, and so facilitate knowledge acquisition, for herself. But the text does not merely teach critical thinking in this indirect manner. One of the strategies its author employed was to encourage the reader/learner to consider under what conditions a claim or idea would be false. To the extent that it achieves this, the Sophist provides both a model and an application of that particular kind of critical thinking in the learning environment that Jonathan Baron has described as ‘active open‐mindedness’. (shrink)

_Decolonizing Educational Research_ examines the ways through which coloniality manifests in contexts of knowledge and meaning making, specifically within educational research and formal schooling. Purposefully situated beyond popular deconstructionist theory and anthropocentric perspectives, the book investigates the longstanding traditions of oppression, racism, and white supremacy that are systemically reseated and reinforced by learning and social interaction. Through these meaningful explorations into the unfixed and often interrupted narratives of culture, history, place, and identity, a bold, timely, and hopeful vision emerges to (...) conceive of how research in secondary and higher education institutions might break free of colonial genealogies and their widespread complicities. (shrink)

Lack of information is hardly our problem. Information comes at us in waves, sloshing out of the magazine rack, lapping at our computer monitors. It repeats and repeats on all-day news shows. It comes neatly packaged as sound bites, or little nuggets ready for trivia games. We have plenty of information, but it is not often the information we need. Even if it is, we need to learn how to deal with it. It is not just the amount, but the (...) speed. Too much happens everywhere that may be important anywhere. Too much comes for us to think it over. (shrink)

This book provides the first intellectual history of cosmopolitan ideas in the early modern age. The roots of modern cosmopolitanism can be traced back to as early as the 1500s when a meta-narrative and awareness of the cosmopolitan idea came into existence. Unearthing occurrences of cosmopolitan language in popular media and analysing the writings of leading thinkers, Leigh T.I. Penman illustrates how cosmopolitanism was not, as previously thought, purely secular and inclusive but could be sacred and exclusive too. And, (...) significantly, this book reveals the extent to which these contesting ideas of cosmopolitanism influenced the modern concept of the cosmopolitan. (shrink)

Am I pretty? A simple question that epitomises both beauty and vulgarity in its monstrous representation of feminine embodiment. In this work, I look at the 2007 Japanese Horror film Carved: The Slit Mouth Woman directed by Koji Shiraishi and its relation to the way in which it the monster Kuchisake-Onna presents the idealised role of motherhood in Japan today. Through this critical examination of the film, we see how communities establish social order and gender scripts of the feminine within (...) the media, perpetuating hegemonic normalised roles through the monstrous feminine. This work looks at the Japanese urban legend of Kuchisake-Onna and compares it with the movie monster Carved as it projects forms of femininity and motherhood. By cross-referencing the telling of the legend with popular cinema we can see how media influence takes on a broader context towards the gendering of woman. In both the legend and the film, we see how women seek the approval of self and sovereignty, which is demonised, by revealing herself through sexual autonomy. (shrink)

We introduce a path-based cyclic proof system for first-order $\mu $-calculus, the extension of first-order logic by second-order quantifiers for least and greatest fixed points of definable monotone functions. We prove soundness of the system and demonstrate it to be as expressive as the known trace-based cyclic systems of Dam and Sprenger. Furthermore, we establish cut-free completeness of our system for the fragment corresponding to the modal $\mu $-calculus.

In this paper I offer a reading of one of Plato’s later works, the Sophist, that reveals it to be informed by principles comparable on the face of it with those that have emerged recently in the field of critical thinking. As a development of the famous Socratic method of his teacher, I argue, Plato deployed his own pedagogical method, a ‘mid-wifely’ or ‘maieutic’ method, in the Sophist. In contrast to the Socratic method, the sole aim of this method is (...) not to disabuse the reader or learner of her false opinions. Rather, its purpose is to supply her with the skills and dispositions as well as the claims and counter-claims she needs to critically evaluate a view, and so facilitate knowledge acquisition, for herself. But the text does not merely teach critical thinking in this indirect manner. One of the strategies its author employed was to encourage the reader/learner to consider under what conditions a claim or idea would be false. To the extent that it achieves this, the Sophist provides both a model and an application of that particular kind of critical thinking in the learning environment that Jonathan Baron has described as ‘active open-mindedness’. (shrink)

Theological Determinism Theological determinism is the view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world. While there is much debate about which prominent historical figures were theological determinists, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Gottfried Leibniz all seemed to espouse the view at least at certain points in their … Continue reading Theological Determinism →.

Even though disquotationalism is not correct as it is usually formulated, a deep insight lies behind it. Specifically, it can be argued that, modulo implicit commitment to reflection principles, all there is to the notion of truth is given by a simple, natural collection of truth-biconditionals.

Peer review is an important component of scholarly research. Long a “black box” whose practical mechanisms were unknown to researchers and readers, peer review is increasingly facing demands for accountability and improvement. Numerous studies address empirical aspects of the peer review process. Much less consideration is typically given to normative dimensions of peer review. This paper considers what authors, editors, reviewers, and readers ought to expect from the peer review process. Integrity in the review process is vital if various parties (...) are to have trust, or faith, in the credibility of peer review mechanisms. Trust in the quality of peer review can increase or diminish in response to numerous factors. Five core elements of peer review are identified. Constitutive elements of scholarly peer review include: fairness in critical analysis of manuscripts; the selection of appropriate reviewers with relevant expertise; identifiable, publicly accountable reviewers; timely reviews, and helpful critical commentary. The F.A.I.T.H. model provides a basis for linking conceptual analysis of the core norms of peer review with empirical research into the adequacy and effectiveness of various processes of peer review. The model is intended to describe core elements of high-quality peer review and suggest what factors can foster or hinder trust in the integrity of peer review. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the superiority of a critical realist understanding of interdisciplinarity over a mainstream understanding of it. I begin by exploring the reasons for the failure of mainstream researchers to achieve interdisciplinarity. My main argument is that mainstream interdisciplinary researchers tend to hypostatize facts, fetishize constant conjunctions of events and apply to open systems an epistemology designed for closed systems. I also explain how mainstream interdisciplinarity supports oppression and gross inequality. I argue that mainstream interdisciplinarity is (...) not true interdisciplinarity and refer to it accordingly as ‘condisciplinarity’. By way of example, I examine the condisciplinarity of the World Health Organization’s ecological model applied to the issue of men’s violence against women. Specifically, I argue that critical realist interdisciplinarity is preferable because it acknowledges inter alia the empirical, actual and real layers of reality, which allows it to develop depth-explanations of phenomena. In practice, this means that critical realist interdisciplinarity can potentially provide explanations that, compared to condisciplinarity, are broader (include more of the human and non-human context) and deeper (include for example individuals’ conscious and unconscious psychological motivations). In the World Health Organization’s example of the causes of men’s violence against women, condisciplinarity resulted in the absence of historical, global and unconscious aspects of the problem. It is also restricted the analysis to reductive, constant-conjunction based theories of the causes of the problem, specifically ‘risk factors’, thereby providing a relatively shallow explanation for the problem. (shrink)

While various definitions of moral distress have been proposed, some agreement exists that it results from illegitimate constraints in clinical practice affecting healthcare professionals’ moral agency. If we are to reduce moral distress, instruments measuring it should provide relevant information about such illegitimate constraints. Unfortunately, existing instruments fail to do so. We discuss here several shortcomings of major instruments in use: their inability to determine whether reports of moral distress involve an accurate assessment of the requisite clinical and logistical facts (...) in play, whether the distress in question is aptly characterized as moral, and whether the moral distress reported is an appropriate target of elimination. Such failures seriously limit the ability of empirical work on moral distress to foster appropriate change. (shrink)

Studying Plato's "unwritten doctrines" in the light of his discussion of limit and unlimited in his dialogue Philebus. The essay raises also the question whether there is too much "atomism" in the usual presentation of Plato's Forms as individual absolute entities, rather than as themselves derived from a more fundamental limit/unlimited ontology.

This volume unites established authors and rising young voices in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to offer the single most wide-ranging examination of theological determinism-in terms of both authors represented and issues investigated-published to date. Fifteen contributors present discussions about theological determinism, the view that God determines everything that occurs in the world. Some authors provide arguments in favor of this position, while others provide considerations against it. Many contributors investigate the relationship between theological determinism and other philosophical issues, (...) theological doctrines, or moral attitudes and practices. This book is essential reading for all those interested in the relationship between theological determinism and philosophical thought. (shrink)

Habermas's criticizes Heidegger for insulating totalities of meaning from possible overturning by attempts to invalidate individual claims. I first state Habermas's criticism, then elaborate an example from Heideggerthat supports Habermas's attack. Then I defend Heidegger by distinguishing levels of meaning in Heidegger's "world" from Habermas's more propositional "lifeworld." I conclude by accepting Habermas's objection restated in terms of the contrast between transcendental and local conditions. If Heidegger is unwilling to pay the price of either Kantian generality or Hegelian unity, he (...) should give up the simple priority of his epochal understandings of being. (shrink)

This Element considers the relationship between the traditional view of God as all-powerful, all-knowing and wholly good on the one hand, and the idea of human free will on the other. It focuses on the potential threats to human free will arising from two divine attributes: God's exhaustive foreknowledge and God's providential control of creation.

ABSTRACTThis article presents a philosophy of science for ecology – deep naturalism – based on Roy Bhaskar’s transcendental realism. It includes a model of the emergence of ecosystems, analogous to...

Economies are complicated systems encompassing micro behaviors, interaction patterns, and global regularities. Whether partial or general in scope, studies of economic systems must consider how to handle difficult real-world aspects such as asymmetric information, imperfect competition, strategic interaction, collective learning, and the possibility of multiple equilibria. Recent advances in analytical and computational tools are permitting new approaches to the quantitative study of these aspects. One such approach is Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE), the computational study of economic processes modeled as dynamic (...) systems of interacting agents. This chapter explores the potential advantages and disadvantages of ACE for the study of economic systems. General points are concretely illustrated using an ACE model of a two-sector decentralized market economy. Six issues are highlighted: Constructive understanding of production, pricing, and trade processes; the essential primacy of survival; strategic rivalry and market power; behavioral uncertainty and learning; the role of conventions and organizations; and the complex interactions among structural attributes, institutional arrangements, and behavioral dispositions. (shrink)

The essays in this volume represent the first steps by philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers toward explaining why it is necessary to add an ...

Using rhetorical analysis as a bridge, the essay attempts to reconcile the scientific Locke with Locke the social philosopher of rights who worked a persuasion against the fruits of social passivity and the status quo; the latter are represented by ingrained institutions like legal nonage and monarchy. The consistency between the two Lockes is language as it forwards understanding in a legitimating consensus. Ironically, iteration and nominalisms bind Locke's social contract; yet the linguistic reduction inherent in nominalisms precludes the production (...) of a more complex public knowledge that might improve community problem solving. (shrink)

Though Plato favors physical atoms in his Timaeus, they are not ultimate; he generates them from a formless energy-space plus mathematical patterns. On the other hand most interpreters read the Platonic Forms as ultimate intellectual atoms. I suggest that Plato refuses atomism on all levels, and the Forms themselves should be seen as generated from a combination of limit and unlimited, as we are told in the Philebus and as is hinted at in the reports on the "unwritten doctrines.".