ABSTRACT This paper focuses on a recently conceptualized construct—sense of authentic inner-compass —and two parenting practices promoting it: basic autonomy-support and inherent value-demonstration. Rooted in self-determination theory, sense of AIC refers to the perception that we have self-guiding values, aspirations, and goals, which function like an ‘authentic inner-compass’ that informs us on what we truly value and need. The utility of this construct for understanding morality-related phenomena also in cultures not emphasizing autonomy and authenticity, is demonstrated by a study conducted (...) in two widely different cultures: Bedouin and Jews in Israel. As expected, across cultures, the practices of BAS and IVD were associated with sense of AIC, which then predicted adolescents’ resistance to peer-pressure to engage in antisocial behaviors. Invariance analysis showed a similar pattern across cultures. Discussion focuses on implications of the AIC concept for various moral behaviors, and for value-oriented parenting and moral education. (shrink)

Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user-friendly design, micro-targeting, default-settings, gamification, and real-time profiling. The authors in this (...) volume address four broad and interconnected themes: • What is the conceptual nature of online manipulation? And how, methodologically, should the concept be defined? • Does online manipulation threaten autonomy, freedom, and meaning in life, and if so, how? • What are the epistemic, affective, and political harms and risks associated with online manipulation? • What are legal and regulatory perspectives on online manipulation? The Philosophy of Online Manipulation brings these various considerations together to offer philosophically robust answers to critical questions concerning our online interactions with one another and with autonomous systems. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy, digital ethics, philosophy of technology, and the ethics of manipulation. (shrink)

Concerned with the state of the self in modernity, Charles Taylor engages in an act of cultural retrieval in order to allow for a meaningful struggle against the pernicious developments of the modern age. To avoid a loss of meaning, rampant instrumentality, and ultimately a loss of freedom, Taylor suggests that we must arrive at a new understanding of the self. To this end Taylor positions himself between contemporary liberals and communitarians, arriving at what he deems holistic individualism or an (...) "ethic of authenticity". He holds that, in order for this notion of authenticity to be realized, we must be in contact with the constitutive goods which underpin western society. After prolonged consideration Taylor arrives at the conclusion that the only publicly available constitutive good in the modern age is religion. Although he is at times hesitant to admit it, Taylor contends that religion is an invaluable source for the self and the only good able to meet the challenges of modernity. (shrink)

Judith Shklar, David Runciman, and others argue against what they see as excessive criticism of political hypocrisy. Such arguments often assume that communicating in an authentic manner is an impossible political ideal. This article challenges the characterization of authenticity as an unrealistic ideal and makes the case that its value can be grounded in a certain political realism sensitive to the threats posed by representative democracy. First, by analyzing authenticity’s demands for political discourse, I show that authenticity has greater flexibility (...) than many assume in accommodating practices common to politics, such as deception, concealment, and persuasion through rhetoric. Second, I argue that a concern for authenticity in political discourse represents a virtue, not a distraction, for representative democracy. Authenticity takes on heightened importance when the public seeks information on how representatives will act in contexts where the public is absent and unable to influence decisions. Furthermore, given the psychological mechanisms behind hypocrisy, public criticism is a sensible response for trying to limit political hypocrisy. From the perspective of democratic theory and psychology, the public has compelling reasons to value authenticity in political discourse. (shrink)

Since they are modern characters, living in an age of transition more urgently hysterical at any rate than the age which preceded it, I have drawn my people as split and vacillating, a mixture of the old and the new. and I think it not improbable that modern ideas may, through the media of newspapers and conversation, have seeped down into the social stratum which exists below stairs. My souls are agglomerations of past and present cultures, scraps from books and (...) newspapers, fragments of humanity, torn shreds of once-fine clothing that has become rags, in just the way that a human soul is patched together. (shrink)

This paper argues for an account of insincerity in speech according to which an utterance is insincere if and only if it communicates something that does not correspond to the speaker's conscious attitudes. Two main topics are addressed: the relation between insincerity and the saying-meaning distinction, and the mental attitude underlying insincere speech. The account is applied to both assertoric and non-assertoric utterances of declarative sentences, and to utterances of non-declarative sentences. It is shown how the account gives the right (...) results for a range of cases. (shrink)

: Contemporary common sense holds that authenticity is an ethical ideal: that there is something bad about inauthenticity, and something good about authenticity. Here we criticize the view that authenticity is bad because it detracts from the wellbeing of the inauthentic person, and propose an alternative moral account of the badness of inauthenticity, based on the idea that inauthentic behaviour is potentially misleading.

This article explores the implications of Charles Taylor’s politics of recognition for a global feminist theory. The main contention is that Taylor’s thought implies an innovative dialogue about human rights that assists a flexible understanding of diverse women’s needs. This central claim is developed, however unexpectedly, by focusing on the controversial practice of footbinding. Prevalent in imperial China, this debilitating convention was supported by values that contrast markedly with those of the modern West. The case thus confronts global feminists with (...) the serious issue of comprehending sympathetically the lived concerns of diverse human beings, while reacting critically to the oppression that they may experience. A creative reading of Taylor’s theory here yields, I argue, commitments to two normative claims that I call ‘narrativity’ and ‘instability’. Together, these claims promise not a static form of recognition based on uncontroversial rights to autonomy or bodily integrity but an imaginative dialogue which is sensitive to cultural differences in the interpretation of human needs and critical of culturally diverse forms of oppression. The critique of footbinding implied by Taylor’s thought is finally developed through comparison with contemporary cosmetic surgeries in the West. The study reveals a feminist politics of recognition attuned to subaltern struggles over the meaning of human rights and of women as active participants in this vital, ongoing work. (shrink)

This account demonstrates the key challenges faced in producing engaging educational content for information and communication technologies deployed in rural India. The ‘Stills in Sync’ project aims to enhance literacy through the revival and proliferation of popular regional folksongs with social awareness themes in rural India. This product entails the use of the Same Language Subtitling karaoke feature that won the Worldbank Development Marketplace award in 2002 and the ‘Tech Laureate’ honor from the Technology Museum of Innovation in 2003. This (...) case study highlights the struggles faced in the production process as we sought to negotiate localism with scalability. The paper is meant to stimulate discussion and further research on the process of digitalizing cultural and educational content in muliple languages for literacy gains and empowerment. I attempt to give three‐dimensionality to current buzzwords in education content creation using ICT: localism, relevance and engagement. (shrink)

Linguistic anthropologists have studied emotion in societies around the world for several decades. This article defines the discipline, introduces its general relevance to emotion theory, then presents five of the most important contributions linguistic anthropology has made to the study of emotion.

We argue that the value of authenticity does not explain the value of self-knowledge. There are a plurality of species of authenticity; in this paper we consider four species: avoiding pretense (section 2), Frankfurtian wholeheartedness (section 3), existential self-knowledge (section 4), and spontaneity (section 5). Our thesis is that, for each of these species, the value of (that species of) authenticity does not (partially) explain the value of self-knowledge. Moreover, when it comes to spontaneity, the value of (that species of) (...) authenticity conflicts with the value of self-knowledge. (shrink)

In this essay, I critically examine Habermas’ approach to fundamentalism, a question that explicitly and implicitly alike bears influence on the formation of his postsecular thesis. The overview of his theory is followed by a combined analysis, depending on Torkel Brekke’s sociological study on fundamentalism, on the one hand, and a joint study by Adam Seligman and others in the field of anthropology and social theory. In this regard, questions of sincerity and authenticity are in the focus of my examination, (...) underlying that philosophical relevance of the question. On the basis of this combined analysis I argue that fundamentalism can be best analysed as an essential though specific element of modernity. I state that despite its critical attitude towards many developments of modernity, fundamentalism is not only reactively but, in its attitudinal core, a proactively modern phenomenon, and needs be interpreted accordingly as part of the evolving postsecular scenario. (shrink)

Zhi 李贄, also named ( hao 號) Zhuowu 卓吾 (1527–1602), and argues that he articulates a coherent and compelling vision of a good life focused on the expression of genuine feelings distinctive to each individual. Through a study of literary texts and terms of art he refers to in his critical essay “On the Child-like Heart-mind” ( Tongxin Shuo 童心說), as well as the metaphors and images he fleshes out throughout his writings, I characterize Li’s ethical vision and show that (...) it is rooted in a particular loose and accommodating conception of human nature and centered on the simple and intuitive act of daily maintaining the birthright of our “child-like heart-mind.”. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide a preliminary outline of a theory of identity. The first section addresses what the sociologist Niklas Luhmann has called ‘the problem of identity’, or, in other words, the mind–society problem: In how far can the internal self and the external persona be integrated into a unit? The second section of the essay briefly defines a basic vocabulary of a theory of identity. ‘Identity’ is understood as the existentially necessary formation of a coherence between the ‘self’, (...) its body and its social ‘persona’. Three different major paradigms of identity formation are distinguished from one another: a sincere identity is constructed through a firm commitment of the self to its social roles; an authentic identity is constructed through the creation of a social persona on the basis of one’s unique and original self; a ‘profilic’ identity, as we call it, is shaped by successfully presenting a personal profile under conditions of second-order observation as they prevail, for instance, in the social media, but also in other contemporary social systems. In the third section of the essay, we present a sketch of the historical sequence of these three paradigms of identity. Although these paradigms are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, it seems that sincerity flourished in pre-modern society, while authenticity came to prominence along with the functional differentiation of modern society and is now, along with the increased significance of second-order observation, gradually overshadowed by the influence of profilicity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Wang Yangming is the founder of Chinese Enlightenment in the Ming-Qing period, in a similar way Descartes is for the European. The European Enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz and Voltaire had been inspired by China about the human being’s ethical independence at the collective level, namely, the ability of a community to lead an ethical life independent of God’s revelation. Meanwhile, the Enlightenment thinkers failed to notice the Chinese intellectual resources that encourage human being’s ethical independence at the individual (...) level, namely, the belief that every human individual is equally capable of leading one’s ethical life purely relying on one’s own good judgment. For this point, Wang Yangming is the resources that the West could have drawn upon. Both Wang Yangming and Descartes assert the egalitarianism about every individual’s power of judgment. I label this similarity as the ‘Sino-European juncture of Enlightenment.’ Other similarities between these two thinkers lie, firstly, in their common strategy in defending egalitarianism: both give a psychological account of the sources of error by analyzing the relationship between will and reason; and secondly, in their methodology: both redefine the method of attaining knowledge, and both emphasize that one should start from the plain, simple and insignificant things and then ascend to the complex things at issue. (shrink)

Mainstream news broadcasting pursues an authentication project, to bolster its claims to serious, weighty and factual news reporting. News review contributes to this project when it seeks to humanize front-stage news personnel. It moves away from the traditional, institutionalized concern with `authenticity-from-above' and works to generate `authenticity-from-below'. As an extreme instance of resistance to the `from-above' formulation, this article considers data from a televised UK weekday morning show, The Big Breakfast, and specifically its `review of the papers' slot. The show's (...) orientation is iconoclastic, from the establishment perspective on news, partly by its high degree of reflexivity about the television medium. Its main presenter, Johnny Vaughan, extrapolates from newsprint sources well beyond the conventional bounds of the review genre. He delivers a thoroughly performed, burlesque response to more and less trivial aspects of the day's print news. His stylized vocal and visual representations of figures in the news achieve a populist moral consensus, as a key process in constructing a `from-below' authenticity. Even in this thoroughly tabloidized and comic performance, the show retains a clear critical dimension, strikingly at odds with authorized modes of news and news review. (shrink)

In such 3D virtual environments as Second Life, one can ‘be’ re-created as avatar in whatever form one wants to be, facilitated by extensive beauty and cosmetic industries to help the residents of this world achieve a particular kind of glamorous image – limited only by their imaginations and Linden Dollar accounts. Yet, others in 3DVEs are working hard to re-create their avatars to be replicas of their ‘offline’ selves, appearing as they do in actuality. Such phenomena provide a rich (...) opportunity to explore the cultural contexts of ‘self-making’, the process of ‘becoming’ and the transformative, often transgressive, processes of ‘beauty practices’ as bodily praxis and serious play. Drawing on their international ethnographic research undertaken in Second Life, the authors explore the phenomenon of image, affect, subjectivity and representation in this alternative arena. We focus specifically on three interrelated and paradoxical aspects of self-making in this 3D virtual world: first, the ways in which many of our respondents described their avatar personae as symbolically representing their ‘authentic inner selves’; second, the ways our respondents used photography and video to verify and authenticate these ‘inner selves’, through capturing representations of their avatar bodies in action; and, third, the ways ‘authenticity’, for many of our respondents, depended on their avatar image aligning as closely as possible with their bodily appearance off-screen. The concept of what residents of Second Life understand as constituting the ‘authentic inner self’ both in and outside of the virtual world becomes particularly pertinent here. (shrink)

This article proposes a more culturalist and variegated conception of the individual than that presented by individualization theorists. Inspired by the approach of the individual advocated by Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and John Meyers, it first outlines the general script of the individual-as-actor that informs modern individualism as well as the generic characteristics that are routinely attributed to persons such as agency and free will. It subsequently reconstructs three predominant interpretations of this general script, i.e. utilitarian, moral and expressive individualism. (...) For each variant, the intellectual genesis and overall definition of the institutionalization in specific societal domains and the dominant articulations in social theory are briefly presented. With this threefold distinction, the aim is to synthesize the extensive literature on individualism and to show the sociological strengths of approaching subjectivity in terms of institutionalized scripts. (shrink)

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

This study is inspired by the current debate between the traditional anarchist views, the post-left and post-anarchist understandings of anarchy. It claims that the depictions of anarchy by both sides are primarily negative and develops an original and positive definition of anarchy. In particular, it argues that anarchy is the concept that refers to a way of being with the cosmos and thus instead of being posterior to the political it is in fact prior to it. This is to say, (...) it is neither political nor ontological but can only be seen as metaphysical in the sense of what cannot be spoken of in terms of a primary cause or a founding principle. Methodologically, it follows Martin Heidegger’s understanding of anarchy as an-arché and his idea to look into pre-Socratic, as in non-teleological thought, to define anarchy. But it then adopts Emmanuel Levinas’ approach that anarchy refers to what escapes the thesis- antithesis dialectic. It draws mainly upon Ancient Greek philosophy and literature as this is where anarchy appears as a term for the first time. In particular, it criticizes the Aristotelian ontological and political thought, while it is mainly assisted by the thought of Democritus as the only pre-Socratic whose work escapes ontological thinking. Moreover, the development of a positive definition of anarchy ultimately leads this study to defend the communal nature of traditional anarchism while rejecting its association with the political. (shrink)

Almost everyone has had an intuitive experience of authenticity that seems to reveal a glimmer of one’s true identity. Yet by positing the existence of a ‘true self,’ authenticity introduces metaphysical challenges that resist systematic solutions. I argue that authenticity properly analyzed demands an essentialist structure that strains to be applied to personal identity. I then assess the three most influential types of accounts in modern philosophical discussions against this framework: Romanticism and autonomy; late existentialism; and virtue conceptions of authenticity. (...) This analysis casts doubt on the possibility of generating a complete philosophical account of authenticity.À peu près tout le monde a déjà fait l’expérience intuitive de l’authenticité, d’un moment qui semble révéler une lueur de sa véritable identité. Pourtant, en posant l’existence d’un «vrai moi», l’idée d’authenticité pose des défis métaphysiques qui mettent en lumière les complexités de l’individualité. J’avance que pour être bien examinée, l’authenticité exige une structure essentialiste qui tend à s’appliquer à l’identité personnelle. J’examine ensuite les trois types d’approches les plus influents dans les discussions philosophiques modernes contre cette position : le romantisme et ses héritiers contemporains, l’existentialisme tardif et les conceptions de la vertu. Cette analyse met en doute la possibilité de générer une conception philosophique complète de l’authenticité. (shrink)

The article lays down the broad strokes of an interpretive approach to social criticism. In developing this approach, the author stresses the importance of both a pluralistic notion of social justice and a rich ideal of personal growth. While objecting to one-dimensional conceptions of social justice centering on legal equality, the author develops the idea of there being multiple "spheres of justice", including the spheres of "care" and "merit". Each of these spheres, he argues, is subject to historical interpretation. He (...) furthers this view by arguing that the social basis for these different spheres is best understood against the canvas of an ideal of self-fulfillment and individuality. Based on the elaboration of these two sets of premises—a pluralistic conception of social justice and a collective ideal of personal self-fulfillment—the article outlines the basis for and challenges inherent to the practice of interpretive social criticism. (shrink)

It has recently been pointed out that the cloudiness of the concept of authenticity as well as inflated ideologies of the ‘true self’ provide good reasons to criticize theories and ideals of authenticity. Nevertheless, there are also good reasons to defend an ethical ideal of authenticity, not least because of its critical and oppositional force, which is directed against experiences of self-abandonment and self-alienation. I will argue for an elaborated ethical ideal of authenticity: the ambitious ideal of a continuous self-reflective (...) process of ‘self-authentication’. For this purpose, the ideal of being authentic in expressing and unfolding one’s individual personality and characteristics will be combined with the ideal of being ‘an authentic person’ - whereby ‘a person’ is to be understood in a Kantian sense as an autonomous person who is reasonable and morally responsible. (shrink)

This article will examine how the notion of emotional authenticity is intertwined with the notions of naturalness and artificiality in the context of the recent debates about ‘neuro-enhancement’ and ‘neuro-psychopharmacology.’ In the philosophy of mind, the concept of authenticity plays a key role in the discussion of the emotions. There is a widely held intuition that an artificial means will always lead to an inauthentic result. This article, however, proposes that artificial substances do not necessarily result in inauthentic emotions. The (...) literature provided by the philosophy of mind on this subject usually resorts to thought experiments. On the other hand, the recent literature in applied ethics on ‘enhancement’ provides good reasons to include real world examples. Such case studies reveal that some psychotropic drugs such as antidepressants actually cause people to undergo experiences of authenticity, making them feel ‘like themselves’ for the first time in their lives. Beginning with these accounts, this article suggests three non-naturalist standards for emotions: the authenticity standard, the rationality standard, and the coherence standard. It argues that the authenticity standard is not always the only valid one, but that the other two ways of assessing emotions are also valid, and that they can even have repercussions on the felt authenticity of emotions. In conclusion, it sketches some of the normative implications if not ethical intricacies that accompany the enhancement of emotions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe translation of honraisei as “authenticity” has caused scholars to compare Watsuji with Heideggerian and Taylorian accounts of authenticity. In this article, it will be demonstrated that this translation of “authenticity” is misleading insofar as it suggests a sense of subjective individuality as prevalent within Western philosophical thought. However, rather than rejecting a Watsujian account of authenticity, it will be argued that we can salvage this understanding by rethinking honraisei as a distinctly Japanese approach to authenticity and one which is (...) underpinned by the Buddhist concept of emptiness. (shrink)

Authenticity as an ideal is construed in general as an expression of existentialist unhappiness with the perceived dehumanization of man in modern society. Existential journalism can be seen as rejection of the demands of conformism and compromise of personal convictions that many journalists face. Ethically, existential journalism calls on journalists to live authentic lives, as private individuals as well as in their profession. This means to resist external pressures and to choose to follow a path that can be defended by (...) the individual journalist's inner conscience. Existential journalism, in general, has been more debated in the field of mass media ethics than authenticity. Authenticity is, however, a contested concept, and this essay applies a critical discussion about authenticity as an ethical guide to the field of journalism. Weaknesses in the idea of existential authenticity problematize the existential construal of authenticity as a route to heightened ethical awareness for contemporary journalists. (shrink)

What is it for a speech act to be sincere? The most common answer amongst philosophers is that a speech act is sincere if and only if the speaker is in the state of mind that the speech act functions to express. However, a number of philosophers have advanced counterexamples purporting to demonstrate that having the expressed state of mind is neither necessary nor sufficient for speaking sincerely. One may nevertheless doubt whether these considerations refute the orthodox conception. Instead, it (...) may be argued, they expose other ways of elucidating sincerity in speech. “Sincerity in speech” is ambivalent between a number of different conceptions. Against this background this paper presents two alternative conceptions, viz., Sincerity as Spontaneity and Sincerity as Presenting Oneself as one takes Oneself to be and develops a third conception which we may call Sincerity as a Communicative Virtue. This conception emphasizes the speaker’s intention in communicating her attitudes and the need to be properly justified in saying what one does. (shrink)

No articulation of `historical thinking' has been as influential as Sam Wineburg's position, according to which historical thinking is, fundamentally, the recognition of the ways in which the past is different than the present. Wineburg argues, further, that achieving that state is `unnatural.' This paper critiques both of these claims, arguing instead that we should replace a generic conception of historical thinking with one that is much more rooted in the specific practice of the discipline. It is surely necessary for (...) students to learn this practice, but it is not unnatural. Instead, learning to think historically is learning to speak the language of the discipline that we call ‘history.’. (shrink)

In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel describes a mode of consciousness that is analogous to that of the sage in the Zhuangzi. He labels this “Evil Consciousness.” One of the more important phases of Spirit that leads up to this stage also resonates similarities, namely the “pure I” which Hegel modeled on Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew. In what follows we will first look at the “pure I” before moving to the evil consciousness and making a comparison with the Daoist sage. By (...) contrasting these depictions, we will be better able to understand the intricacies of the sage and Hegel’s Spirit. (shrink)

Ethical theories and theories of the person constrain each other, in that a proposition about the person may be a reason for or against an ethical proposition, and conversely. An important class of such propositions about the person concern the boundaries of the person. These boundaries enclose a person 's defining properties, which constitute his identity. A person 's identity may partly determine and partly be determined by his ethical judgments. An equilibrium between one's identity and one's ethical judgments is (...) the counterpart, at the personal level, of the philosophical ideal of reflective equilibrium between a theory of the person and an ethical theory. (shrink)

In philology, both 'sincerity' and 'cheng' primarily mean, 'to be true to oneself'. As a philosophical term, 'sincerity' roots in Aristotle's 'aletheutikos'. In medieval Europe, it is regarded as a neutral value that may either serve or disserve for 'truth.' As for Romantics, it is a positive value, and an individualistic concept whose two elements 'true' and 'self' refer to a person's 'true feeling' and 'individuality'. In contrast, both 'self' and 'true' in Confucianism are universalistic concepts, meaning 'good nature' common (...) to all humans, and 'true feeling' distinguishing them from beasts. Cheng itself means to face one's universal self with universal true feeling. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have devoted more attention to the “prophetic” critique of mass media. Clifford Christians has served as both an originator and an ongoing contributor to these discussions. Beginning with his doctoral thesis on Jacques Ellul, a concern for the prophetic has been a consistent thread throughout his career. This paper begins by examining Ellul's influence on Christians's approach, with an emphasis on media ecology, ontology, and the concept of technique. I then summarize Christians's critique of Ellul, and (...) explain how his unique vision addresses Ellul's shortcomings. In outlining Christians's unique approach, I highlight the ways in which authenticity serves as an axial value permeating his work. In Christians's work, prophetic witness against technological fetishism is a means of protecting certain universal values such as “cultural continuity” and “authentic Being.” Through a brief examination of media coverage of Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Jim Wallis, and the United Church of Christ, I show how Christians's discussion of authenticity and prophetic critique are not only applicable but uniquely relevant in the emerging new media environment. At this critical juncture in media, Christians's prophetic voice is among the most relevant and necessary that critical scholarship has to offer. (shrink)

I conclude that Gibbard fails to solve several of the traditional problems for expressivism. He solves some of these problems, but his solutions to them in effect give up expressivism. Of course, one might respond that it does not really matter whether his theory is expressivist. In some ways, I agree. Gibbard says many fascinating things about morality which have at most indirect connections to his expressivist analysis. I am thinking especially of his later discussions of hyperscepticism, parochialism, and indirect (...) pragmatism. These views could still be developed even if he gave up expressivism. All I have tried to show here is that he does need to give up expressivism unless he can solve the problems that I have raised. (shrink)

Insincerity is the intentional conflict between a state of mind and a synchronic linguistic act. Three cases have to be distinguished: lying, as the opposition of belief and assertion (the act is untruthful); dishonesty, as the opposition of will and declaration of will (act empty); and simulation, as the opposition of emotion and exclamation (act ungenuine). One of the problems arising is: Are there insincere commands, and if not, why?Disloyalty, on the other hand, is a diachronic inconsequence, the breach of (...) a linguistic action (act unredeemed) which was binding for the future (such as, e.g. a promise). There is a cross-connection to dishonesty, which can be seen as the will to be disloyal. (shrink)

Separate from the question of whether our patients believe us as doctors is the question of whether we ourselves believe in our healing ‘performances’. Borrowing from Bernard Williams’ model of truth based on the two irreducible virtues of sincerity and accuracy, this article describes a spectrum of states of self-belief, from the quack who does not believe in his acts to the fanatic who does not ‘dis-believe’, with ranges of pious fraud and bad faith in between and on either side (...) of a variable range of justified self-belief. I describe how as practitioners we move and are moved up and down this range throughout our careers and as a result of the behaviors of others. The model provides the basis for a critique of the marketing efforts of industries related to medical practice. (shrink)