Birch’s criterion for the precautionary principle imposes a high evidential standard that many cases will fail to meet. Reliable, relevant anecdotal evidence suggestive of animal sentience should also fall within the scope of the precautionary principle. This would minimize potential suffering (as happened in the case of cephalopods) while further evidence is gathered.

This is the first book to evaluate the significance and usefulness of the practices of anthropomorphism and anecdotalism for understanding animals.

Claims about the occurrence of future events play an important role in pragmatic argumentation. Such claims can be supported by inductive arguments employing anecdotal, statistical, or causal evidence. In an experiment, the actual and perceived persuasiveness of these three types of evidence were assessed. A total of 324 participants read a newspaper article in which it was claimed that the building of a cultural centre would be profitable. This claim was supported by either anecdotal, statistical or causal evidence. The statistical (...) evidence proved to be more convincing than the anecdotal and causal evidence. Although the latter two evidence types were equally unconvincing, the anecdotal evidence was perceived as less persuasive than the causal evidence. Therefore, the actual and perceived persuasiveness of the evidence did not correspond. These results partly replicate the results obtained in previous experiments. They also underscore the need to distinguish between the perceived and the actual persuasiveness of an argument. (shrink)

Although the term “anecdote” entered the modern European languages fairly recently and remains to this day ill-defined, the short, freestanding accounts of particular events, true or invented, that are usually referred to as anecdotes have been around from time immemorial. They have also always stood in a close relation to the longer, more elaborate narratives of history, sometimes in a supportive role, as examples and illustrations, sometimes in a challenging role, as the repressed of history—“la petite histoire.” Historians’ relation (...) to them, in turn, varied from appreciative to dismissive in accordance with their own objectives in writing history. It appears that highly structured anecdotes of the kind that are remembered and find their way into anecdote collections depend on and tend to confirm established views of history, the world, and human nature. In contrast, loosely structured anecdotes akin to the modern fait divers have usually worked to undermine established views and stimulate new ones, either by presenting material known to few and excluded from officially authorized histories, or by reporting “odd” occurrences for which the established views of history, the world, and human nature do not easily account. (shrink)

This paper introduces the first English-language book-length study to focus on the rhetorical function of anecdotal narratives across several literary genres of early China. In this volume we seek to clarify the nature and function of early Chinese anecdotes by raising the following questions: What are their characteristic features? What are their generic boundaries, that is to say, how do they relate to other types of narrative? What degree of historical authenticity do they display? How malleable were the stories? What (...) different framing techniques did authors use to fit stock anecdotes into larger narrative contexts? What was the rhetorical power of anecdotes when used in argumentation? How does the early Chinese preference for using anecdotes in argumentation differ from modes of argumentation preferred in other eras and cultures? In addressing these and other questions, this book will advance the idea that anecdotes were an essential rhetorical tool that early Chinese writers used effectively to persuade their audience of one or another point of view. (shrink)

This brief notice records anecdotes about Wittgenstein gathered from Br. Herbert Kaden OSB.

Anecdotal pluralism (AP) is the claim that, when two individuals disagree on the truth of a religious belief, the right move to make is to engage in a communal epistemic process of evidence sharing and evaluation, motivated by the willingness to learn from each other, understand the adversary's views and how these challenge their own, and re-evaluate their own epistemic position in regards to external criticisms. What I will do in my paper is to provide a presentation of AP and (...) give a few reasons in support. I will begin with showing how pluralism can be promoted by religious experiences inhering in any (historical) tradition. To this regard, my purpose is to analyse such experiences as conducive to the assumption of the two main principles defining any pluralist view. Subsequently, I will construe AP by seven claims, and I will focus my efforts on justifying its superiority both to exclusivism/inclusivism and other varieties of pluralism. My next and final move is to list a few reasons which support my view. (shrink)

We suggest that anecdotes have evidentiary value in interpreting nonhuman primate behavior. We also believe that any outcome from the experiments proposed by Heyes can be interpreted as a product of previous experience with trainers or as associative learning using the experimental cues. No potential outcome is clearcut evidence for or against the theory of mind proposition.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical Anecdotes: A Painful Lack of WoundsChristopher Bailey (bio)Keywordsdepression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), evolution, fight-or-flight, veteran (treatment of)Colin came to me complaining of depression, which started after he got back from Iraq in 2005. Although he had served in the National Guard, he volunteered absolutely nothing about his time in Iraq as we spoke, instead focusing on other factors, like problems at his job and a family history of (...) depression.Colin's depression seemed serious but not severe. He had been functioning fairly well at work and was not suicidal, although his home life had begun to suffer. As the interview proceeded, I myself fell into Colin's blind spot, all but forgetting his tour of duty as I forged ahead with my list of questions. My avoidance was conscious at first, a deliberate reluctance to come across as one more morbidly curious onlooker recklessly inflaming the wounds of war.When Colin complained of irritability, however, and being kept awake by sinister, shadowy “flashes” at night, I knew I had to ask about Iraq. He was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, I decided, and was thus trying to avoid the very memories that were haunting and hunting him. And for fear of retraumatizing him (if not suffering second-hand trauma myself), I had colluded in his denial.So when I finally got around to asking about Iraq, I fully expected to hear horror stories, half-articulated perhaps, but all the more grisly for the graininess of their images. Instead, Colin surprised me. He had not experienced anything he considered traumatic. No bombs, bloodshed, or shattered bodies. And in fact, he felt like a “wimp” for having been assigned to a noncombat detail where he missed what might have been his last, best chance “to be a hero.”Most of us would consider this a good thing, but in Colin's case, it had left him feeling somehow uninitiated, like he had not done his part or proven his manhood. Contrary to my assumption, it was the lack of trauma that seemed to trigger his depression upon returning from Iraq. In a relatively safe homeland, rife with middle-class comforts and lacking all but metaphorical rites of passage, perhaps we all feel this way at some level.I pointed out to Colin that people have been dying everywhere in Iraq and under all different circumstances, not just combat. From my stateside perspective, just being there is brave. Although I meant to honor him, he seemed to take my offering as more evidence of his failure, reassuring me that nothing he did could ever compare with the unspeakable horrors endured by veterans of Viet Nam and World War II.Now, as a civilian, he questions whether or not he would respond with sufficient ferocity if, say, he had to defend his family against an attacker. Although powerfully built, Colin (to his credit) has never been a brawler or a bully. Nonetheless, [End Page 223] I have no doubt he could do whatever it took to protect his family. What concerns me more is the opposite: That in trying to prove himself, he might unwittingly put himself and his family in harm's way, if not hurt someone who was never really a threat to begin with.With a new family member, I too feel the burden of hypervigilance. But although terrorists, serial killers, and gangs grab headlines, activating our visceral alarm systems, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that a sedentary lifestyle still exacts a higher death toll among white American men, like Colin and myself. Although the effect of inertia on the body has been discussed extensively, its impact on mental health has received relatively little attention. Maybe for a creature who evolved on the African savannah, competing over territory and trying not to get eaten, the absence of a visceral challenge can be as debilitating as too much of one.Colin seemed receptive to my concerns, which I took to be a good sign. Although insecure men are quick to fear emasculation, Colin did not seem to be the least bit threatened when I suggested a course... (shrink)

In seeking the truth, philosophers have long used fiction and counterfactual scenarios to raise and answer questions, to foster dialogue or give a commentary on some facet of life. In this paper I will present a few well-known thought experiments from contemporary Western philosophers and highlight some characteristic traits of such thought experiments. I will then discuss some of the fictitious anecdotes that appear in the Zhuangzi. In comparing the features of Western thought experiments to fables from Zhuangzi, we will (...) see that although Zhuangzi’s stories would likely fail to be considered good philosophical thought experiments (according to the Western tradition), the very thing that makes them fail is arguably what allows the writings of Zhuangzi to continue to inspire philosophical reflection and dialogue. (shrink)

My main claim is that, contrary to the assumptions of mainstream literature, epistemic religious diversity is not a matter of an abstract comparison among the belief systems of different religions or denominations; rather, it is a relation arising from the epistemic encounter among individuals who adhere to different doxastic groups. Particularly, while epistemic symmetry inclines to treat our doxastic opponents as peers, epistemic peerhood is not the starting point of doctrinal comparisons, but the potential outcome of the epistemic process of (...) the construal of shared evidence. A key point in my approach is that such a process is anecdotally constituted. My working plan is the following. In the first section I will introduce the challenge of religious diversity. In the next section, I will distinguish between two characterisations of the relation among seminal claims of doxastic groups, namely, beliefs which stand in a competing relation and beliefs which are merely alternative. I will provide a degree view of this distinction. The subsequent section consists in a overview of the outcomes from the epistemology of disagreement. In the fourth section, I will provide two basic motivations in support of TE. Finally, I will conclude by sketching how TE motivates the assumption of a schema for handling religious disagreements which I name anecdotal pluralism. (shrink)

Abstract: Critics of Havi Carel's 2008 book, Illness: The Cry of the Flesh, have contended that Carel's deployment of phenomenological philosophy adds little to commonsense views about illness and that Carel relies too heavily on emotion-laden autobiographical anecdotes. Against these contentions this article argues: first, that a perfectly respectable task of philosophy is to find reasons to support pre-existing beliefs; and secondly, that Carel's use of anecdotes, while certainly appealing to readers' emotions, constitutes part of a legitimate argumentative strategy. The (...) article links these proposals with broader debates concerning the proper task of philosophy and the role of emotionality and imagination in philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The ultimate language of madness is that of reason.In short, under the chaotic and manifest delirium reigns the order of a secret delirium. In this second delirium, which is, in a sense, pure reason, reason delivered of all the external tinsel of dementia, is located the paradoxical truth of madness. And this in a double sense, since we find here both what makes madness true and what makes it truly madness.At the urging of his parents, Mr. A, a college-age young (...) man with a past diagnosis of Asperger’s... (shrink)

Most literature on religious disagreements focuses on the epistemic problems related to doctrinal disputes. While, the main argument of my paper does not address such a topic, my purpose is to point at a practical exit strategy from the blind spot to which most disagreements lead. However, in order to argue for my views, I need to provide a substantive account of how religious beliefs work and which epistemic obligations they involve. Such account challenges most mainstream assumptions, and needs to (...) be developed in some details. My method consists, then, in construing a theory for religious beliefs, and exploring its consequence concerning disagreements. I will focus particularly on the positive task. Indeed, if my account for religious beliefs works, consequences easily follow. (shrink)

Anecdotes or episodes from the life of Jiddu Krishnamurti not recorded in the author's several previous books on this topic.

Hans Blumenberg’s work is characterized by a seemingly insatiable predilection for anecdotes — about Thales and Pyrrhus, Goethe and Fontane, Husserl and Wittgenstein, Polgar and Jünger. This essay explores the theoretical status of anecdotes by juxtaposing Carl Linnaeus’s Nemesis Divina with Blumenberg’s Care Crosses the River, both read alongside Aristotle’s notion of exemplarity and Joel Fineman’s delineation of the anecdote as the literary-historical form for expressing contingency. As a mode of thought at the nexus of literature and experience, anecdotes (...) immediately pose the question of evidence. Even if true, an anecdote opens the issue of whether it is the exception or the norm, whether it only speaks for itself or assumes exemplary force, and what such exemplarity might mean. By juxtaposing two theorists qua anecdotists — Carl Linnaeus and Hans Blumenberg — this essay aims to show the inextricable relation between anecdote and example, and thus between anecdote and rhetoric, a counterpart and supplement to the poetics of metaphor within what one can call with Blumenberg a theory of nonconceptuality. (shrink)

‘‘Anecdotal evidence’’ has become a central point of contention in two recent controversies over science and technology in referring to our cases as controversies over science and technology.) in the United Kingdom and a contact point between individuals, expert institutions, and policy decisions. We argue that the term is central to the management of the boundary between experts and nonexperts, with consequences for ideas of public engagement and participation. This article reports on two separate pieces of qualitative social research into (...) recent UK public risk controversies with the aim of unfolding the processes by which anecdotal evidence comes to be defined. We do not define anecdotal evidence as an epistemic category that exists prior to the public controversies themselves; rather, we aim to show how the term is constructed and contested by expert and nonexpert actors. We find that anecdotal evidence comes to be accepted by the main actors as an epistemic category, yet that it is multidimensional, open to interpretation as subjective reports, as an indicator of expert ignorance, as a source of novel hypotheses and as a set of political claims for recognition and inclusion. We conclude that the flexibility of anecdotal evidence at the boundary between science and its publics can offer opportunities for participation and engagement, as well as exclusion and alienation. (shrink)

The Cyrus anecdote recounted in the final chapter of Herodotus’Histories(9.122) has received the frequent notice of critics, with particular attention paid to the anecdote's relation to the work as a whole. Scholars have long since noted that the episode involves ‘the intersection of two basic narrative modes on which Herodotus has relied throughout theHistories: ethnographic description and detailed accounts of political activity and decision-making’. Thus scholars have illuminated the significance of the anecdote by comparing it to other (...) thematically related passages in theHistories. Reading the closure of theHistoriesin terms of didactic enterprise, recent treatments of the anecdote tend to view Herodotus’ use of it as a moral lesson to his contemporary Athenians. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to combine the intellectual and the psychosocial aspects. blurring the distinction between the conceptual and the anecdotal history of quantum mechanics. The full realization of the importance of such “anecdotal” factors leads to the revision of our understanding of the conceptual development itself. The paper concludes with the suggestion that a major part of numerous inconsistencies in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics are of a psychosocial origin.

Between History and Philosophy is the first book-length study in English to focus on the rhetorical functions and forms of anecdotal narratives in early China. Edited by Paul van Els and Sarah A. Queen, this volume advances the thesis that anecdotes—brief, freestanding accounts of single events involving historical figures, and occasionally also unnamed persons, animals, objects, or abstractions—served as an essential tool of persuasion and meaning-making within larger texts. Contributors to the volume analyze the use of anecdotes from the Warring (...) States Period to the Han Dynasty, including their relations to other types of narrative, their circulation and reception, and their central position as a mode of argumentation in a variety of historical and philosophical literary genres. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn two experiments, we explored whether anecdotal stories influenced how individuals reasoned when evaluating scientific news articles. We additionally considered the role of education level and thinking dispositions on reasoning. Participants evaluated eight scientific news articles that drew questionable interpretations from the evidence. Overall, anecdotal stories decreased the ability to reason scientifically even when controlling for education level and thinking dispositions. Additionally, we found that article length was related to participants' ratings of the news articles. Our study demonstrates that anecdotes (...) can discourage scientific reasoning while also pointing to the potential influence of article length on judgements of quality. (shrink)

This is an attempt to demonstrate that in early China anecdotes and biographical scenes are not to be despised in philosophical examination but, on the contrary, merit close attention. By analyzing the encounter between the monarch Helü of the state of Wu and the celebrated strategist Sun Wu, as it is described in various ancient written sources, an attempt will be made to show that this event, far from being a trivial story, concentrates and explains some of the most important (...) ideas to be found in the work traditionally credited to the latter, The Art of War, as well as in other military treatises of the time. (shrink)

Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars contain at least twenty discrete anecdotes about childhood and youth spread across the Lives. Some characterize the Caesars by looking forwards and others do so by looking backwards. In both foreshadowing and flashback, the childhood anecdote shows continuity with the adult and creates the impression of lifelong consistency of character. The foreshadowing technique is also something other ancient biographers do; the flashback is something that appears to be unique to Suetonius. In this note I (...) briefly consider the stories from childhood and youth that foreshadow character traits and themes of the rest of the Life, and then the flashbacks from the adulthood section of the Life that refer to childhood and youth in order to demonstrate vices of the grown adult. I show that the use of foreshadowing and flashbacks contributes to the appearance of a fully formed character in the child that will be consistent into adulthood, as well as facilitating the rubric system of arranging material by type rather than by time. (shrink)

Criticising someone’s conduct is a disaffiliative action that can attract recipient objections, particularly in the form of defensive detailing by which the recipient volunteers extenuating circumstances that undermine the criticism. In Therapeutic Community meetings for clients with drug addiction, support staff regularly criticise clients’ behaviours that violate therapeutic principles or norms of conduct. This study examines cases where, rather than criticising a client’s behaviour directly, TC staff members do so indirectly through an anecdote: a case illustrating the inappropriateness of (...) the type of conduct of which the client’s behaviour is an instantiation. TC staff members design the anecdote to convey a principle or norm of conduct which the client has putatively violated, and they systematically pursue endorsement of that principle by the client. By constructing the anecdote as an exemplary case, distanced from the individual client’s personal experience, TC staff members make it an empirically unverifiable, self-evident, and therefore hard to challenge, illustration of a norm. (shrink)

The following piece reflects a bit on the role of anecdotes in philosophy, and compares the anecdote, which rcounts a heretofore “unpublished” story based on oral tradition, to the aphorism, the narrative, and the fable. It offers some anecdotes involving Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt, and Derrida.

A unique edition of the sayings of Diogenes, whose biting wit and eccentricity inspired the anecdotes that express his Cynic philosophy. It includes the accounts of his immediate successors, such as Crates and Hipparchia, and the witty moral preacher Bion. The contrasting teachings of the Cyrenaics and the hedonistic Aristippos complete the volume.

A unique edition of the sayings of Diogenes, whose biting wit and eccentricity inspired the anecdotes that express his Cynic philosophy. It includes the accounts of his immediate successors, such as Crates and Hipparchia, and the witty moral preacher Bion. The contrasting teachings of the Cyrenaics and the hedonistic Aristippos complete the volume.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nonplaces:An Anecdoted Topography of Contemporary French TheoryBruno Bosteels (bio)In its juridical sense, a non-lieu is a judgment that suspends, annuls, or withdraws a case without bringing it to trial. It is thus a judgment that announces or enunciates that there will be no judgment as to guilt or innocence, a finding that there is no place to judge. It therefore renders justice by refusing to render it under the (...) law, which it does when it pronounces or enunciates the non-lieu.—Peggy Kamuf, "Béance"1Inside the Spatial TurnIf modernity will always be remembered as an era dominated by questions of time and history, then perhaps the steady waning of modern ideals invites us to think of the entry into something called the postmodern as a passage dominated by questions of space and geography. As Michel Foucault once famously observed in a 1967 conference paper, first published two decades ago: "Perhaps we might say that some of the ideological conflicts that animate today's polemics oppose the pious descendants of time and the willful inhabitants of space" ["Of Other Spaces" 22]. This conflict over time and space presupposes a much larger argument that is not only historical but also methodological in nature. What is at stake is both a question of the passage, or transition, from modernity to postmodernity, if that is indeed what we decide to name modernity's aftermath, and a question of the theoretical consequences that follow from giving precedence to space over time in treating this very transition. With regard to this second question, too, Foucault's work stands as exemplary insofar as he was able to show the degree to which a vital emphasis on space, geography, and territoriality [End Page 117] forces us to take leave of the modern paradigm of consciousness—typically associated with the category of time and its unfolding in the mind or spirit—in favor of a situated understanding of knowledge, subjectivity, and power. "Metaphorizing the transformations of discourse in a vocabulary of time necessarily leads to the utilisation of the model of individual consciousness with its intrinsic temporality," Foucault observes in an interview with the editors of the French journal of geography Hérodote, and he continues: "Endeavouring on the other hand to decipher discourse through the use of spatial, strategic metaphors enables one to grasp precisely the points at which discourses are transformed in, through and on the basis of relations of power" ["Questions on Geography" 69–70]. Whether real or metaphorical, a willful displacement of our categorial apparatus from time to space thus might enable one to avoid the idealist temptation inherent in a strictly discursive or textual model, by inscribing all discourses and practices in the geopolitics of power relations.My aim in the following pages is not to go over the much-discussed shift from time to space once more, even as I take advantage of several of its methodological principles along the way. Instead, I want to map out a momentous change of perspective that has been taking place over the past few decades within the parameters of the so-called spatial turn itself. In fact, if and when modernity is coming to an end, both in the sense of completing itself and of revealing its character as a finite historical entity, not only does whatever shape critical thought takes in the face of this turnabout need to be securely fastened onto specific places and spaces but, if we are to believe a growing number of authors, particularly but by no means exclusively in France, the study of art, literature, politics, philosophy, and even anthropology would also require a thorough consideration of so-called "nonplaces" as a rigorous category for critical thinking today [for a brief discussion of the use of "nonplace" in Anglo-American anthropology, including Melvin M. Webber's notion of "nonplace urban realm" from the mid-1960s, see Weiner]. In the end, these proponents of the nonplace confront us with one disarmingly simple question: how can critical thinking in the present time respond to the task of having to work through whatever lies outside of the order that is actually in place?The Exhaustion of... (shrink)

The use of anecdotes is not a viable research strategy to study animal culture. Social learning processes can often be documented with careful quantitative analyses of observational data. Unfortunately, suggestions that killer whales engage in teaching are entirely based on subjective interpretations of qualitative observations. Thus, of teaching in killer whales cannot be used to argue for the occurrence of culture in marine mammals.