This paper aims to elucidate the meanings of the concept of modernity, highlighting its contradictory core and the theoretical and practical implications of this contradiction. To this end, we turn to the works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), as a paradigmatic intellectual expression of modernity, insofar as the author highlights notions that seem central to understanding the specificity of his time, which are brought together in his reflections on history and human progress, in the context of the enlightenment (...) that is struggling to become effective. We believe it is possible to extract from these reflections an idea of utopia which, although it needs to be cleansed of certain idealistic excesses, ends up representing a perspective that dialogues with Critical Theory, notably with Theodor Adorno (1903-1969). Although he demonstrates the bankruptcy and limits of the philosophical categories that authors such as Kant used to think about modernity, he doesn't discard the concepts in question, but rather puts them under tension, ultimately aiming to unveil the prospects for emancipation from the administered world, which, in the final analysis, have always been present at the heart of modern thought. (shrink)

In this paper we propose that the term skill acquisition, as commonly used in traditional psychology, and the philosophy, education, movement science and performance development literatures, has been biased by an organismic asymmetry. In cognitive and experimental psychology, for example, it refers to the establishment of an internal state or representation of an act which is believed to be acquired as a result of learning and task experience. Here we elucidate an ecological perspective which suggests that the term skill acquisition (...) may not refer to an entity but rather to the emergence of an adaptive, functional relationship between an organism and its environment, thus avoiding an inherent organismic asymmetry in theorizing. In this respect, the terms 'skill adaptation' or 'skill attunement' might be more suitable to describe this process. (shrink)

Over two decades ago, Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) raised theoretical concerns associated with traditional, reductionist, mechanistic perspectives of movement coordination and skill acquisition for sport scientists interested in practical applications for training designs. These seminal papers advocated an emerging consciousness grounded in an ecological approach, signalling the need for sports practitioners to appreciate the constraints-led, deeply entangled and non-linear reciprocity between the organism (performer), task and environment subsystems. Over two decades later, the areas of skill (...) acquisition, practice and training design, performance analysis and preparation, and talent development in sport science have never been so vibrant in terms of theoretical modelling, knowledge generation and innovation, and technological deployment. Viewed at an ecological level of analysis, the work of sports practitioners has progressively transitioned toward the facilitation of an evolving relationship between an organism (athlete, team) and its environment (sports competition). This commentary sets out to explore how these original ideas from Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) have been advanced through the theoretical lens of Ecological Dynamics. Concurrently, we provide case study exemplars, from applied practice in high-performance sports organisations, to illustrate how these contemporary perspectives are shaping the work of sports practitioners (sport ecology designers) in practice and performance preparation. (shrink)

The following essay argues that Marx’s method of critique, conception of science, and mode of presentation in Capital are all phenomenological in the sense first articulated by Enzo Paci in The Function of the Sciences and the Meaning of Man. In Capital, Marx places the phenomenological problem of appearances at the centre of his criticism of political economy. His analysis begins with the way in which things typically present themselves in a capitalist society, but this is merely the starting point (...) for a systematic critique which tries to reveal the innerconnections and exploitative social relations hidden beneath those estranged outward appearances. Marx presumed that this phenomenological approach was the most appropriate method for demystifying the ‘naturalized’ semblance of the capitalist economy. According to Paci’s reading of Capital, the task of Marxian critique is to show these superficial appearances for what they really are: i.e., reflections of the reified reality of modern life. (shrink)

The recent upsurge in “brain-training and perceptual-cognitive-training", proposing to improve isolated processes such as brain function, visual perception and decision-making, has created significant interest in elite sports practitioners, seeking to create an ‘edge’ for athletes. The claims of these related 'performance-enhancing industries' can be considered together as part of a process training approach proposing enhanced cognitive and perceptual skills and brain capacity, to support performance in everyday life activities, including sport. For example, the 'process-training industry' promotes the idea that playing (...) games not only makes you a better player, but also smarter, more alert, and a faster learner. In this position paper we critically evaluate the effectiveness of both types of process-training programmes in generalizing transfer to sport performance. These issues are addressed in three stages. First, we evaluate empirical evidence in support of perceptual-cognitive process training, and its application to enhancing sport performance. Second, we critically review putative modularised mechanisms underpinning this kind of training, addressing limitations and subsequent problems. Specifically, we consider merits of this highly specific form of training, which focuses on training of isolated processes such as cognitive processes (attention, memory, thinking) and visual perception processes, separately from performance behaviors and actions. We conclude that these approaches may, at best, may provide some 'general transfer' of underlying processes to specific sport environments, but lack 'specificity of transfer' to contextualize actual performance behaviors. A major weakness of process training methods is their focus on enhancing performance in body “modules” (e.g., eye, brain, memory, anticipatory sub-systems). What is lacking is evidence on how these isolated components are modified and subsequently interact with other process “modules”, which are considered to underlie sport performance. Finally, we propose how an ecological dynamics approach, aligned with an embodied framework of cognition undermines the rationale that modularised processes can enhance performance in competitive sport. An ecological dynamics perspective proposes that the body is a complex adaptive system, interacting with performance environments in a functionally integrated manner, emphasising that the inter-relation between motor processes, cognitive and perceptual functions and the constraints of a sport task is best understood at the performer-environment scale of analysis. (shrink)

In this conceptual analysis contribution to the special issue on radical embodied cognition, we discuss how embodied cognition can exist with and without representations. We explore this concept through the lens of judgment and decision making in sports (JDMS). Embodied cognition has featured in many investigations of human behavior, but no single approach has emerged. Indeed, the very definitions of the concepts “embodiment” and “cognition” lack consensus, and consequently the degree of “radicalism” is not universally defined, either. In this paper (...) we address JDMS not from a rigid theoretical perspective, but from two embodied cognition approaches: one that assumes there is mediation between the athlete and the environment through mental representation, and another that assumes direct contact between the athlete and the environment and thus no need for mental representation. Importantly, our aim was not to arrive at a theoretical consensus or set up a competition between approaches, but rather to provide a legitimate scientific discussion about how to explain empirical results in JDMS from contrasting perspectives within embodied cognition. For this, we first outline the definitions and constructs of embodied cognition in JDMS. Second, we detail the theory underlying the mental representation and direct contact approaches. Third, we comment on two published research papers on JDMS, one selected by each of us: (1) Correia et al. (2012) and (2) Pizzera (2012). Fourth, following the interpretation of the empirical findings of these papers, we present a discussion on the commonalities and divergences of these two perspectives and the consequences of using one or the other approach in the study of JDMS. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE Este texto apresenta partes de um projeto de longa duração, desenvolvido pelas autoras, que trata da cultura e identidade, memória e nomadismo através da música e, em particular do fado. Este gênero fixou-se no Brasil, através dos imigrantes portugueses e luso-descendentes, a transmissão sendo feita pelo rádio. Após um período de esmaecimento, o fado reaparece na paisagem sonora do final do século XX, com importantes mudanças no processo de assimilação e transmissão (...) do gênero. (shrink)

Este artigo discute a imagem do vazio da personagem Ponciá Vicêncio no romance de mesmo nome, escrito por Conceição Evaristo. A sensação de vazio da personagem será pensada como resistência a partir da ideia de banzo, um estado em que o tempo do sujeito não é o tempo opressor da sociedade capitalista. Além disso, na narrativa, esse estado de alma permite a rememoração das dores e lutas dos antepassados de Ponciá – pensados a partir do personagem Vô Vicêncio. Por fim, (...) esse banzo levará à herança que Vô Vicêncio deixou para Ponciá – a loucura. O conceito de entre-lugar, de Silviano Santiago, será acionado a fim de pensar o devir-revolucionário da Literatura Negra.Palavras-chave: Conceição Evaristo. Ponciá Vicêncio. Vazio. Banzo. Resistência. (shrink)

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

Alan Millar examines our understanding of why people think and act as they do. His key theme is that normative considerations form an indispensable part of the explanatory framework which we use to understand each other. Millar offers illuminating discussions of reasons for belief and reasons for action, the explanation of beliefs and actions in terms of the subject's reasons, the idea that simulation has a key role in understanding people, and the limits of explanation in terms of propositional (...) attitudes. (shrink)

Alan Miller offers a focused account of perceptual knowledge, the knowledge that we gain by means of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting. He explains perceptual knowledge in terms of general recognitional abilities, then situates that account within a broader perspective on epistemology and philosophical method more generally.

Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity – particularly diversity of viewpoints – for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine (...) the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology. (shrink)

Whose Keeper? is a profound and creative treatise on modernity and its challenge to social science. Alan Wolfe argues that modern liberal democracies, such as the United States and Scandinavia, have broken with traditional sources of mortality and instead have relied upon economic and political frameworks to define their obligations to one another. Wolfe calls for reinvigorating a sense of community and thus a sense of obligation to the larger society.

The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill demonstrates that Mill both saw his views as part of a systematic defense of empiricist epistemology and utilitarian ethics, and was to a large extent successful in offering a coherent and connected defense of this system. At the time Alan Ryan's highly acclaimed study was first published, it was unusual in insisting on the systematic character of Mill's philosophy. Since 1970, however, many writers have contributed to a more systematic understanding of Mill's program (...) for philosophy, ethics and social science, and Alan Ryan's new preface to the second edition assesses the way Mill appears in this new climate of opinion. (shrink)

Authentic leadership has become increasingly important in the literature, attracting the attention of many scholars in the last decade. This study adopted an employee-centered perspective to guide its examination of the relationship between authentic leadership and individual performance and investigation of the sequential mediation of employees’ affective commitment and individual creativity. An analysis was conducted of data collected from 214 employees working in different business sectors. The results reveal a statistically significant positive relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ workplace performance, (...) which are both directly connected and indirectly linked through the two proposed psychosocial mechanisms. The findings thus indicate that authentic leadership reinforces workers’ emotional connection with their organizations, thereby increasing their individual creativity and, subsequently, promoting better on-the-job performance. This study presents new and significant results since, on the one hand, it relied on a sequential mediation analysis of variables and, on the other hand, integrated the four main constructs into a single model. The proposed model displays the chain of effects between authentic leadership, affective commitment, individual creativity, and employee workplace performance. Implications for organizational management are discussed. (shrink)

The aftermath of the European refugee crisis can be said to have sparked a crisis of solidarity. Despite abundant demonstrations of solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers, what many saw as an exercise of their duty to help was made illegal. The critical term that emerged to refer to this conjuncture was “criminalization of solidarity”. In order to include this term in the academic debate, this article starts by disclosing the embedded claims present in its rhetorical usage. The article then (...) scrutinizes the design of the politics of criminalizing solidarity and its consequences. It argues that at least three aspects of the politics of criminalizing solidarity plausibly indicate the possibility that regulating the aid in question will produce and reinforce consequences for the EU that are not only unintended, but also damaging. This is because, first, what I refer to as the blending aspect might spread the perception of illegality among several types of immigrants; second, the moral aspect can discharge people from their duty to help foreigners by conditioning this duty to group membership and belonging; and third, the polarizing aspect might exacerbate the existing divide between citizens and immigrants currently causing conflicts and social fragmentation. (shrink)

Using undergraduate students from the Waikato University in New Zealand as a sample, this study compared the ethical positions of students of different field of study and demographic characteristics. It was found that the ethical standard of business students are not significantly different from that of non-business students. The findings also suggest that female students are more ethical than male students, and senior students are more ethical than junior students.Besides sex and year of study, other variables studied were parents' occupation, (...) religiosity and household income of the students. All these variables were found to have no significant impact on the ethical position of the students. Furthermore, all the interaction effects between the variables studied and the students' major field of study were nonsignificant. (shrink)

Interest in ethical leadership from academics and practitioners has grown enormously in recent years. This article addresses this literature through a framework that identifies three interlocking questions. First, who are ethical leaders and what are their characteristics? Second, how do ethical leaders do what they do? Third, why do leaders do as they do and what are the outcomes of ethical leadership? Different dimensions to ethical leadership are examined and presented as three interlocking circles; Virtues, Purposes and Practices. This framework (...) presents an integrated approach to ethical leadership and argues that future research take this holistic framework and apply it to different sectors or contexts. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility refers to the duty of management to consider and respond to issues beyond the organization’s economic and legal requirements in line with social and environmental values. However, ‘management’ is constituted by real people responsible for routine decisions and formulation and implementation of policies. It can be said therefore that the ethical ideals and beliefs of these individuals – in particular their personal values – play an important role in their decisions. It is contended in this article that (...) the personal values of managers may contribute to the creation and maintenance of ‘CSR cultures’ in their organizations; that is, organizational cultures focused on ensuring environmental and social sustainability. Based on an exploratory study carried out in Brazil in 2008, this article explores the perceptions of five CSR managers in relation to the influence of their personal values on their work. The first part discusses the notion of CSR within the context of Brazilian society, the second provides a brief literature review on the link between values and organizational cultures and the third explores the perceptions of the participating managers, identifying the main thematic patterns that emerged in the study. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How does the human animal who thinks and loves relate to criminal justice? This essay takes up the idea of a moral psychology of guilt promoted by Bernard Williams and Herbert Morris. Against modern liberal society’s ‘peculiar’ legal morality of voluntary responsibility, it pursues Morris’s ethical account of guilt as involving atonement and identification with others. Thinking of guilt in line with Morris, and linking it with the idea of moral psychology, takes the essay to Freud’s metapsychology in Civilization and (...) Its Discontents. Two conflicting routes to guilt are noted in Freud, one involving internalisation of external anger to suppress destructive instincts, the other loving identification with others in the process of self-formation. This second route is developed through the psychoanalytic thought of Hans Loewald and Jonathan Lear. Following Loewald, the moral psychology of self-formation makes loving identification with others the root of responsibility, guilt and atonement. Following Lear, the moral psychology of guilt developed on these lines renders psychoanalysis part of a broadly understood philosophical project following Aristotelian and Socratic principles. Underlying Morris’s account of guilt is the possibility of ‘prospective identification’, understood as the moral and psychological ground of guilt and reconciliation. This is the rational core of criminal justice, which maintains an uneasy relationship with law’s ‘peculiar’ morality. (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel understanding of how Aristotle’s theoretical works complement each other in such a way as to form a genuine system, and this with the immediate (and ostensibly central) aim of addressing a longstanding question regarding Aristotle’s ‘first philosophy’—namely, is Aristotle’s first philosophy a contribution to theology, or to the science of being in general? Aristotle himself seems to suggest that it is in some ways both, but how this can be is a very difficult question. My (...) answer is in some respects a version of one that goes back at least to the middle ages—i.e., that first philosophy is concerned with the gods (and to that extent offers a theology) because the gods are causes and principles of beings precisely insofar as they are beings. The more original aspect of my position lies in my claim that the sort of tension found in the Metaphysics is likewise to be found in many of Aristotle’s physical works. Thus, for example, the De caelo is (I argue) concerned generally with natural beings (= beings susceptible of change), but its discussions are focused largely on the heavenly bodies and the Aristotelian elements insofar as they admit of change with respect to place. Here I claim that the particular objects of discussion are dealt with precisely because they are causes and principles of natural beings as such. Something similar goes, I claim, for the De generatione et corruptione, the general concern of which is a particular species of natural being—i.e., natural beings susceptible of generation and corruption. In this way, I argue, Aristotle successively deals in his theoretical works with those causes and principles of (say) a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a being, those causes and principles of a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a natural being, those causes and principles of a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a perishable natural being, and so on for the lower genera under which the species horse is subsumed. (shrink)

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Este trabalho apresenta uma discussão que tem como objetivo principal propor um novo risco ao contorno da noção de intericonicidade que aparece em Courtine, precisamente, em 2003. Aí encontramos uma abertura que nos permite traçar outras curvaturas em sua noção. É justamente por este interstício que vamos propor a inclusão de dois elementos que, a nosso ver, estão na ordem da constituição das imagens: as utopias e heterotopias, conforme discussões iniciadas anteriormente por Araújo (2014a, 2014b). Para tanto, tomamos como (...) pano de fundo as imagens em movimento de duas produções francesas de horror e as imagens fotográficas da prisão de Abou Ghraib que serão analisadas à luz da discussão realizada por Foucault em Le corps utopique, les heterotopies e em Outros Espaços, juntamente com as discussões de Courtine e de Milanez acerca da intericonicidade (cf. COURTINE, 2005; 2011; 2013; MILANEZ, 2011a; 2011b; 2013a, 2013b). Os Elementos de Semiologia e A escrita do acontecimento de Barthes também fazem parte da discussão, já que este autor aparece desde cedo no trabalho de Courtine, precisamente, quando buscava apresentar a noção de intericonicidade. (shrink)

Successful accounts of analogy in law have two burdens to discharge. First, they must reflect the fact that the conclusion of an argument by analogy is a normative claim about how to decide a certain case. Second, they must not fail to accord relevance to the fact that the source case was authoritatively decided in a certain way. We argue in the first half of this paper that the common view of the structure of analogical arguments in law cannot overcome (...) these hurdles. In the second half we develop an original account that aims to succeed where others failed. (shrink)

This essay examines logical empiricism and American pragmatism, arguing that American philosophy's embrace of logical empiricism in the 1930s was not a turning away from Dewey's pragmatism. It places both movements within scientific philosophy and finds two key points on which they agreed: their revolutionary ambitions and their social engineering sensibility. The essay suggests that the disagreement over emotivism in ethics should be placed within the context of a larger issue on which the movements disagreed: demarcationism and imperialism.

In the special section ‘Body Hacking: Self-Made Cyborgs and Visions of Transhuman Corporeality’, attention is drawn to cyborgism, a set of cultural and very personal practices of experimentation with the human body that often take place outside the confines of institutionalised technoscience. Known, for example, as ‘body hackers’, ‘grinders’ or ‘self-made cyborgs’ and engaging in unusual forms of body modification, the practitioners are enthusiasts who do not necessarily have any ‘disability’ in the conventional sense of the term. They consider the (...) body a highly malleable material, a transformable, improvable, augmentable entity. The collection of papers in this special section encompasses first-hand accounts of cyborg practices as well as intellectual reflections on their implications. (shrink)

This essay develops its idiosyncrasy by concentrating primarily on the trend of body hacking. The practitioners, self-defined as body hackers, self-made cyborgs or grinders, work in different ways to develop functional and physiological modifications through the contributions of technology. Their goal is to develop by themselves an empirically man-technique fusion. These dynamic “scientific” subcultures are producing astonishing innovations. From pocket-sized kits that sample human DNA, microchip implants that keep tabs on our internal organs, blood sugar levels or moods, and even (...) 3D printers that produce tailored hip replacements, the technical innovations of the body hacking trend are beginning to filter into mainstream use, and the repertoire increases every day. These physical transformations with intersecting techniques actively challenge long-held normative beliefs about what bodies do, what they should look like and how they should behave. They provide an alternative discourse on man’s correlation with the world and its biocenosis. Sculpting oneself has become an existential data. Medical technoscience crystallizes the effectiveness of new powers over the organism. Scientific temptation to recreate and enhance the human according to its normative principles has brought up experimental practices that have become the edge of a radical activism operating in the core of western societies, which will be the theme of this paper. (shrink)