This article presents the views of four sets of authors, each taking concepts of embodied cognition into problem spaces where the new paradigm can be applied. The first considers consequences of embodied cognition on the legal system. The second explores how embodied cognition can change how we interpret and interact with art and literature. The third examines how we move through architectural spaces from an embodied cognition perspective. And the fourth addresses how music cognition is influenced by the approach. Each (...) contribution is brief. They are meant to suggest the potential reach of embodied cognition, increase the visibility of applications, and inspire potential avenues for research. (shrink)

In the early 1980s, Edward Shils, together with others, undertook the task of defining what he called ‘The Academic Ethic’. It is perhaps best to think of this task in terms defined by Alasdair MacIntyre in many of his writings, in which he observes that the formulation of an ethic typically came at the point where it was no longer a matter of general tacit acceptance but was becoming lost. Shils’s exchanges with his friends and collaborators who commented on (...) the project bear this out: they understood the changes in circumstances that had made the traditional academic ethic obsolete. So did Shils himself. He understood science in terms of what might be called ‘the liberal theory of science’, which treated scientists, and by extension all of academia, as independent agents seeking truth in their own ways, governed by their own sense of what was promising to research, bound together only by a strong tradition of truth-seeking and mutual respect. This, however, required independence of finance – something that the high costs of science rendered prohibitive. The grants system undermined autonomy, and similar issues undermined the autonomy of non-science academics. What is the relevance of traditional academic values today? If the liberal theory of science is dead, what has replaced it? Answering these questions takes us to the heart of problems of the organisation and financing of academic life, the audit culture and the question of truth itself. (shrink)

The philosopher and moralist Alasdair Maclntyre closed his influential work, After Virtue, with a call for ‘another…Saint Benedict’. The idea of calling for a moral exemplar and savior who could change both forms and practice struck him as the only kind of serious intervention the moral thinker can make under present circumstances, What is lacking in modern life, he reasoned, is a genuine tradition of moral reasoning-moral persuasion and reasoning presuppose such a tradition. So the only choice is to (...) create one. But the creation of a tradition is not something that a professor can do in the study. It is an act, as Maclntyre conceived it, of community formation and the development of a common narrative-what St Benedict did when he created the religious communities of post-Roman Europe through the attractive example of his own way of living as a Christian. (shrink)

Many of the key issues that the later papers address are contained in his 1962 paper “A mistake about causality in social science,” which I will show, was an important seed bed for his later thought. The concept of practices MacIntyre developed was itself a social theory: the “philosophical” conclusions are dependent on its validity as an account of practices as a social phenomenon. There is a question of philosophical or social theoretical method that bears on the status of this (...) theory, one of which is critical: the validity of a form of argument that figures throughout MacIntyre’s work, in which characterizations of a topic, “identifications,” are used to exclude alternative explanations. In the end, I will argue, arguments of this form are intrinsically misleading or incomplete. (shrink)

Beginning with Margaret Somers and Christopher Roberts’ review of the sociology of human rights and Bryan Turner and Malcolm Waters’ debate therein, the author presents some of the questions which have been so far been the focus of this sociological sub-discipline. This review raises the question of ‘rights’ as a subject of study, and the normative consequences therein. From here, the author introduces recognition theory as a potential participant in these discussions around human rights. The author traces recognition theory (...) from its Hegelian origins to the work of Axel Honneth, and the critiques of Nancy Fraser, Frantz Fanon, and Glen Sean Coulthard. Despite Fanon and Coulthard’s critical accounts, they reinforce the value of recognition within any sociology of human rights. Lastly, the author briefly engages with Alasdair MacIntyre as both a dialogical participant, and a means towards dialogue in the first place between recognition theory and human rights. Concluding, the author argues that the normative and descriptive nature of recognition theory offers a useful tool to aid in sociological theorizations of human nature and rights, while addressing some of the problems raised by early theorists of the sub-discipline and preventing siloing of the sub-discipline within a universalist or particularist vein. (shrink)

Corporate psychopathy thrives perhaps as the most significant threat to ethical corporate behaviour around the world. We argue that Human Resources Management professionals should formulate strategic solutions metaphorically by balancing what strategic military planners famously call ‘Search and Destroy’ and ‘Hearts and Minds’ counter-terrorist strategy. We argue that these military metaphors offer creative inspiration to help academics and practitioners theorise CP in richer, more reflective and more balanced and complementary ways. An appreciation of both metaphors is likely to favour the (...) use of hybrid strategies comprising SD and HM elements, which may provide the best HRM solutions to CP for the same reasons as the military now considers parallel hybrid solutions optimal for combating terrorist and guerrilla insurgency. (shrink)

Conceptual integration—“blending”—is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that (...) escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not reserved for special purposes, and is not costly.In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, “blended” mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations.Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles. (shrink)

Conceptual integration—“blending”—is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that (...) escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not reserved for special purposes, and is not costly.In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, “blended” mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations.Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles. (shrink)

This paper examines a particularly egregious example of a NIMBY claim and considers three proposals for explaining what about that claim might be ethically problematic: The NIMBY claimant is being selfish or self-serving; The NIMBY claim cannot be morally justified, because respecting everyone's NIMBY claims leaves communities worse off; and if policymakers were to defer to people's NIMBY claims, they would end up perpetuating environmental injustices. We argue that these proposals fail to explain why there is anything wrong with the (...) NIMBY claim per se. (shrink)

This paper develops responses to several critics who commented on an earlier paper that we published in this journal. In that paper, we argued that there is nothing necessarily wrong with NIMBY claims or those who make them. The critics raised some important issues, such as whether “NIMBY” is essentially a pejorative term; the possibility that NIMBY claimants are saying something deep about the noncomparability of places; what exactly it means for policy makers to defer to a NIMBY claim; the (...) relationship between NIMBY and environmental justice claims; and whether there is any principled way to distinguish good from bad NIMBY claims. We explore these issues further, and in the course of responding to the critics, we develop some further reasons for skepticism about the prospects for distinguishing good from bad NIMBY claims in a principled way. (shrink)

This article considers the ‘creative education’ of influential Aotearoa/new Zealand art educator Elwyn Richardson, which is based on what he calls the ‘discovery method’: the ‘concentrated study of material from [students’] own surroundings’. Through a game that his students play with tyres, we explore the role that tools play in Richardson’s classroom and in the imaginary ‘worlding’ of his students’ play. By taking the ‘early world’ of the children’s development to be a product of the tools through which they describe (...) it, we reveal Richardson’s educative process to be essentially technological. His idea of the whole child who emerges through a process of experience and observation—of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, in the well-known phrase of Wordsworth cited by Richardson—conflates the nature of the child and nature of the ‘natural’ world. By this act of ‘natural settlement’ not untypical of settler narratives in Aotearoa/new Zealand, the child’s—and, by implication, other settlers’—relation to the world of nature is naturalized. Instead, we would argue that the child’s relation to nature is altogether unnatural: it is imprinted by the technological means through which she explores the world and makes it her own—and by which she is made over. The ‘tyre-child’ is no child of nature, but a child of technology, for whom creative errors—acts of ‘mis-taking’ like the ones Richardson’s children make in playing with tyres—reveal an imaginary capacity at once theoretical and unsettling. (shrink)

Alasdair Cochrane introduces an entirely new theory of animal rights grounded in their interests as sentient beings. He then applies this theory to different and underexplored policy areas, such as genetic engineering, pet-keeping, indigenous hunting, and religious slaughter. In contrast to other proponents of animal rights, Cochrane claims that because most sentient animals are not autonomous agents, they have no intrinsic interest in liberty. As such, he argues that our obligations to animals lie in ending practices that cause their (...) suffering and death and do not require the liberation of animals. Cochrane's "interest-based rights approach" weighs the interests of animals to determine which is sufficient to impose strict duties on humans. In so doing, Cochrane acknowledges that sentient animals have a clear and discernable right not to be made to suffer and not to be killed, but he argues that they do not have a prima facie right to liberty. Because most animals possess no interest in leading freely chosen lives, humans have no moral obligation to liberate them. Moving beyond theory to the practical aspects of applied ethics, this pragmatic volume provides much-needed perspective on the realities and responsibilities of the human-animal relationship. (shrink)

"The Renaissance in Scotland" contains original essays on the following topics of cultural history: literature; manuscripts and printed books; libraries; law; ...

Background. The concept of empathy in students has gained significant attention in medical education. Whether implementing formal educational interventions to promote long-term and effective empathy levels leads to sustained increased empathy levels in students, is however less clear. Objectives. The study aimed to evaluate the trajectory of medical students’ self-perceived empathy levels during their 6-year MB ChB degree. Methods. A longitudinal, prospective study was conducted over 4 years. A cohort of 292 medical students was invited to participate. Participants completed the (...) Jefferson Scale of Empathy for Students (JSE-S) at three intervals during their studies. The students attended two workshops related to empathic patient interactions during this time. The JSE-S mean score by age and gender was compared, making use of a linear regression model. Results. A total of 119 students completed the study. Students’ total empathy levels were similar during the first and the last measuring point (110), but there was a significant rise in the intermediate measuring point (113.3). When the male and female cohorts’ scores were interpreted separately, both genders demonstrated a similar pattern to the total score, although females’ JSE-S scores were higher than the males. Conclusion. The results of the study confirm that educational interventions can increase students’ self-perceived empathy levels; however, we suggest that students require reinforcement and multiple opportunities to practise and observe empathic communication with patients to sustain high levels of empathy. Follow-up sessions to specifically target the promotion of empathy should be implemented; otherwise the long-term effect of educational interventions might be limited. (shrink)

The thesis that Weber was without influence in Weimar Germany is examined. It is shown that in contemporary published assessments and in private statements in interviews contemporary sociologists regarded him as important. The many dissertations on Weber and the enormous secondary literature are noted. This literature, which was contributed by some of the best minds of the day, included both the philosophical and sociological aspects of Weber's work. It is concluded that the thesis that Weber was without influence is false.

Personal narratives in which medical students and clinicians reflect on their education and practice, or recipients of health care reflect on their journey though the system can provide valuable insights which can usefully be shared. In this paper, a medical student describes the effect of a humanities-based student-selected component on her understanding of anatomy and dissection, and a junior doctor in Iraq learns some painful lessons about medicine and society during a night shift in the casualty department.

Meaning construction through language requires advanced mental operations also necessary for other higher-order, specifically human behaviors. Biological evolution slowly improved conceptual mapping capacities until human beings reached the level of double-scope blending, perhaps 50 to 80 thousand years ago, at which point language, along with other higher-order human behaviors, became possible. Languages are optimized to be driven by the principles and powers of double-scope blending.

This interview with Mary Douglas took place at Lancaster University in the Religious Studies Department. The main focus of the interview was her recently published book, Purity and Danger, which had already become a classic of British anthropology. The questions and answers ranged mainly over the differences between the physical body, representations of the body, the body as a classificatory system, and social constructivism. Douglas’s early academic years and the influences on her work, such as the role of Roman Catholicism (...) in her childhood and youth, were discussed. The interview concluded with speculation about the connections between anthropology and colonialism, and how she responded to those developments. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between the role that information technology (IT) has played in the development of women’s employment, the possibility of women having a significant influence on the technology’s development, and the way that the IT industry perceives women as computer scientists, users and consumers. The industry’s perception of women and men is investigated through the portrayal of them in computing advertisements. While women are increasingly updating their technological skills and know-how, and through this process are entering some (...) positions in the workplace traditionally occupied by men, these achievements are not mirrored in their social and occupational status. The computer industry and higher education have worryingly low numbers of women, while the possibility of women influencing the development of computer technology is just emerging in feminist research. This paper argues that, though the IT industry, through their self-regulatory codes, subscribes to equal treatment of sexes, races and persons with disabilities, the industry nevertheless paints a stereotyped picture of inequality when portraying men and women in computer advertisements. As long as such a perception of women prevails within the industry, it will stand as a barrier to women having equal access to computer technology. If advertisements influence the way society perceives major social constructs and issues, then the computing industry has a social responsibility to portray men and women in an equal and non-stereotypical fashion. (shrink)

This classic and controversial book examines the roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in modern life, and proposes a path for its recovery.

This discussion begins from the dilemma, posed in some earlier writing by Alasdair MacIntyre, that education is essential but also, in current economic and cultural conditions, impossible. The potential for resolving this dilemma through appeal to ‘practice’, ‘narrative unity’, and ‘tradition’(three core concepts in After Virtue and later writings) is then examined. The discussion also explores the relationship of education to the modern state and the power of a liberal education to create an ‘educated public’ very different in character (...) from the electorates of contemporary democratic regimes. It concludes with some remarks on the role of education in combating prejudice against certain kinds of human difference. (shrink)

Some of the most important contributions to animal ethics over the past decade or so have come from political, as opposed to moral, philosophers. As such, some have argued that there been a ‘political turn’ in the field. If there has been such a turn, it needs to be shown that there is something which unites these contributions, and which sets them apart from previous work. We find that some of the features which have been claimed to be shared commitments (...) of the turn are contested by key theorists working in the field. We also find that the originality of the turn can be exaggerated, with many of their ideas found in more traditional animal ethics. Nonetheless, we identify one unifying and distinctive feature of these contributions: the focus on justice; and specifically, the exploration of how political institutions, structures and processes might be transformed so as to secure justice for both human and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

The expressive theory of paternalism holds that an action is paternalistic when and because it expresses the insulting idea that the actor knows better than the person acted upon. I argue that the expressive theory has implausible implications. First, it entails that a government’s interventions in people’s lives count as paternalistic only if their motivations are sufficiently consistent and well-publicised that the circumstances allow its policies to express the relevant insult. In other words, secret paternalism is impossible. Second, the theory (...) implies that governments can remove any objection to a policy qua paternalistic by means of a manipulative exercise in public relations. Nor, I argue, does the expressive theory offer any explanatory advantage over autonomy-based theories. (shrink)

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 what follows I propose to bring out certain methodological properties of projects of modelling the tacit realm that bear on the kinds of modelling done in connection with scientific cognition by computer as well as by ethnomethodological sociologists, both of whom must make some claims about the tacit in the course of their efforts to model cognition. The same issues, I will suggest, bear on the project of a cognitive psychology of science as well.

There is now widespread agreement that many non-human animals are sentient, and that this fact has important moral and political implications. This book is devoted to sketching what this 'sentientist politics' might look like.

Since its publication almost 150 years ago, The Idea of a University has had an extraordinary influence on the shaping and goals of higher education. The issues that John Henry Newman raised--the place of religion and moral values in the university setting, the competing claims of liberal and professional education, the character of the academic community, the cultural role of literature, the relation of religion and science--have provoked discussion from Newman's time to our own. This edition of The Idea of (...) a University includes the full text of "University Teaching" and four selections from "University Subjects," together with five essays by leading scholars that explore the background and the present day relevance of Newman's themes. In the essays Martha Garland discusses the character and organization of the early nineteenth-century English universities upon which Newman based much of his vision; Frank M. Turner traces the impact of Newman's influence during the vast expansion of higher education since World War II; George Marsden investigates how the decreasing emphasis on religion has affected higher education; Sara Castro Klaren examines the implications of Newman's views on education and literature for current debates between proponents of a curriculum based on western civilization and one based on multiculturalism; and George Landow considers what the advent of electronic communication will mean to university teaching, research, and community. To aid accessibility, the edition also includes an analytical table of contents, a chronology and biographical sketch of Newman's life, questions for discussion, expanded notes, and a glossary of names, all of which will help make this the standard teaching text for Newman's work. (shrink)

A closely argued book about what the negative tradition in Western theology involves.

We present a general framework for analyzing the contribution to reproductive success of a behavioural action. An action may make a direct contribution to reproductive success, but even in the absence of a direct contribution it may make an indirect contribution by changing the animal's state. We consider actions over a period of time, and define a reward function that characterizes the relationship between the animal's state at the end of the period and its future reproductive success. Working back from (...) the end of the period using dynamic programming, the optimal action as a function of state and time can be found. The procedure also yields a measure of the cost, in terms of future reproductive success, of a suboptimal action. These costs provide us with a common currency for comparing activities such as eating and drinking, or eating and hiding from predators. The costs also give an indication of the robustness of the conclusions that can be drawn from a model. We review how our framework can be used to analyze optimal foraging decisions in a stochastic environment. We also discuss the modelling of optimal daily routines and provide an illustration based on singing to attract a mate. We use the model to investigate the features that can produce a dawn song burst in birds. State is defined very broadly so that it includes the information an animal has about its environment. Thus, exploration and learning can be included within the framework. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal book After Virtue was central in the rehabilitation of the Aristotelian approach to ethics. His work in moral and political philosophy is among the most important of his generation, and is influenced by Marx, Aquinas, Aristotle, and conversion to Roman Catholicism. He is a permanent senior research fellow at the University of Notre Dame.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal book After Virtue was central in the rehabilitation of the Aristotelian approach to ethics. His work in moral and political philosophy is among the most important of his generation, and is influenced by Marx, Aquinas, Aristotle, and conversion to Roman Catholicism. He is a permanent senior research fellow at the University of Notre Dame.

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. A key objection to logical pluralism is that it collapses into monism. The core of the Collapse Objection is that only the pluralist’s strongest logic does any genuine normative work; since a logic must do genuine normative work, this means that the pluralist is really a monist, who is committed to her strongest logic being the one true logic. This paper considers a neglected question in the collapse (...) debate: what is it for a logic to do genuine normative work? As well as having wider upshot for the connection between logic and normativity, grappling with this question provides a new response to the Collapse Objection on behalf of the pluralist. I suggest that we should allow logics to generate pro tanto reasons in a way that bears not just on combinations of attitudes but on how an agent’s attitudes are based on one another. This motivates adopting normative principles that allow the pluralist’s weaker logics to earn their normative keep. Rather than being ad hoc, these principles capture a sense in which good reasoning goes beyond the consistency of an agent’s attitudes. Good reasoning is also concerned with how an agent’s attitudes are based on one another. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the growing literature in social epistemology of diagnosing the epistemically problematic features of fake news. I identify two novel problems: the problem of relevant alternatives; and the problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment. The former arises among individual epistemic transactions. By making salient, and thereby relevant, alternatives to knowledge claims, fake news stories threaten knowledge. The problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment arises at the level of entire epistemic communities. I introduce the (...) notion of an epistemic environment, roughly the totality of resources and circumstances relevant to assessing the epistemically interesting statuses, such as knowledge. Fake news degrades our epistemic environment by undermining confidence in epistemic institutions and altering epistemic habits, thereby making the environment less conducive to achieving positive epistemic statuses. This is problematic even if the decrease in confidence and the altering of habits are rational. I end by considering solutions to these problems, stressing the importance of reproaching each other for proliferating fake news. I argue that we should reproach even faultless purveyors of fake news. This is because fake news typically arises in abnormal epistemic contexts, where there is widespread ignorance of, and noncompliance with, correct epistemic norms. (shrink)

David Lewis defends the thesis of the asymmetry of overdetermination: later affairs are seldom overdetermined by earlier affairs, but earlier affairs are usually overdetermined by later affairs. Recently, Carol Cleland has argued that since the distinctive methodologies of historical science and experimental science exploit different aspects of this asymmetry, the methodology of historical science is just as good, epistemically speaking, as that of experimental science. This paper shows, first, that Cleland's epistemological conclusion does not follow from the thesis of the (...) asymmetry of overdetermination, because overdetermination is compatible with epistemic underdetermination. The paper also shows, contra Cleland, that there is at least one interesting sense in which historical science is epistemically inferior to experimental science, after all, because local underdetermination problems are more widespread in historical than in experimental science. (shrink)

The book guides the student and scholar through the vast array of approaches and frameworks that shape contemporary analysis of social reality.