This paper explores the interrelations between temporality and emotion in rhetorical argumentation. It argues that in situations of uncertainty argumentation affects action via appeals that invoke emotion and thereby translate the distant past and future into the situated present. Using practical inferences, a threefold model for the interrelation of emotion and time in argumentation outlines how argumentative action depends on whether speakers provide reasons for the exigence that makes a decision necessary, the contingency of the decision, and the confidence required (...) to act. Experiences and choices from the past influence the emotions experienced in the present and inform two intertemporal mechanisms that allow speakers and audiences to take the leap of faith that defines decision-making under uncertainty: retrospective forecasting and prospective remembering. Retrospective forecasting establishes a past–future–present link, whereas prospective remembering establishes a future-past-present link, and, together, the two mechanisms provide a situated presence that transcends the temporal constraints of uncertainty. Finally, the applicability of the model is illustrated through an analysis of a speech delivered by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time where the need for decisive, yet argumentative action was crucial. (shrink)

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.Having been forbidden by his father to marry a Canaanite, the Old Testament patriarch Jacob travels to the house of his grandfather where he must choose a wife from among his female cousins. (...) During the journey, Jacob stops to camp, using stones for pillows. That night he dreams the now-famous vision of "a ladder set up on the earth" whose top "reached to heaven" (Genesis 28:12).1 The Lord reveals to Jacob in the dream that the land on which he sleeps is holy. Jacob later wakes, his soul .. (shrink)

In this piece we explore the COVID pandemic as an opportunity for the articulation and realization of digital health futures. Our discussion draws on an engagement with emergent discourse around COVID-19 and ongoing work on imaginaries of future care associated with digital tools for the detection of cognitive decline and the risk of dementia. We describe how the post-COVID futures of digital health are narrated in terms of the timing and speed with which they are being brought into being, as (...) market actors attempt to establish the scale and durability of the COVID transformation. However, we also point to the particularly spatial changes to medical practice they envisage. In a time of distancing and isolation, the ability to operate effectively at a distance has become integral to the future of medical assessment, diagnosis and care. However, spatialized promises of digital health and the ability to act remotely are unevenly spread – some organizations and entities inevitably have greater reach. (shrink)

This article will articulate what it means to be morally courageous in online discussions of science by distinguishing between different fields of action appropriate to “technical deliberation” and “public deliberation,” while placing respect as a vital constituent of courageous action. These distinctions and focus help reveal the cowardice in superficially courageous action as well as the hidden courage in actions that might seem cursorily to be rash.