How to formulate the doctrine of relativism -- Evaluating the doctrine of relativism.

_Material Feminisms: New Directions for Education_ provides a range of powerful theoretical and innovative methodological examples to illuminate how new material feminism can be put to work in education to open up new avenues of research design and practice. It poses challenging questions about the nature of knowledge production, the role of the researcher, and the critical endeavour arising from inter- and post-disciplinarity. Working with diffractive methodologies and new materialist ecological epistemologies, the book offers resources for hope which widen the (...) scope for how educational problems are interrogated, and provides a political counter-movement to neo-positivist, outcomes-based approaches within education. Inspired by writers such as Barad, Bennett, and Deleuze and Guattari, the book makes a radical break with cognitive, dualist, and universal conceptions of human subjectivity and intelligence in education. By taking its starting point as the co-consitutiveness of discourse, materiality, corporeality, and place, the book foregrounds educational practices as material enactments of multiple, non-linear, entangled, affective, and relational forces. It offers new insights into how gender, class, and ethnicity are constituted in, and by, material assemblages that are often submerged or ‘unseen’. This book is an essential starting place for those intrigued by what new theoretical accounts of materiality, posthumanism, and affect can offer educational research. Diffractive methodologies challenge readers to take a fuller range of actors into account than in ‘objective’ humanist methodologies, and in so doing to pay closer attention to what data is. It invites researchers to engage with long-standing feminist concerns about power and knowledge production in research processes. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Gender and Education. _. (shrink)

Debates about moral judgments have raised questions about the roles of reasoning, culture, and conflict. In response, the cognitive prototype model explains that over time, through training, and as a result of cognitive development, people construct notions of blameworthy and praiseworthy behavior by abstracting out salient properties that lead to an ideal representation of each. These properties are the primary features of moral prototypes and include social context interpretation, intentionality, consent, and outcomes. According to this model, when the properties are (...) uniform and coherent, they depict a promoral or immoral prototype, relative to the orientations of the properties. A promoral prototype is represented by an action that is supported by the culture, intentionally benevolent or other-regarding, consensual, and resulting in positive outcomes. An immoral prototype is an action that is condemned by the culture, intentionally malevolent or self-serving, lacking consent, and resulting in negative outcomes. It is hypothesized that moral prototypes will result in a high level of agreement and require effortless processing. Alternatively, when properties conflict or the situation deviates from the prototype, a nonprototype will result. It is hypothesized that nonprototypical situations will act as a source of moral disagreement and may require more effortful processing. (shrink)

Despite substantial evidence pointing to a looming Malthusian catastrophe, governmental measures to reduce population have been opposed both by religious conservatives and by many liberals, especially liberal feminists. Liberal critics have claimed that 'utilitarian' population policies violate a 'fundamental right of reproductive liberty'. This essay argues that reproductive liberty should not be considered a fundamental human right, or certainly not an indefeasible right. It should, instead, be strictly regulated by a global agreement designed to reduce population to a sustainable level. (...) Three major points are discussed: 1) the current state of the overpopulation problem; 2) the claim of a fundamental human right of reproductive liberty; 3) an outline of a global agreement to address overpopulation as a 'tragedy of the commons'. (shrink)

A Nietzschean theodicy would claimthat God has created the world exactly the wayit is in order to produce morally autonomousagents in Nietzsche's sense: self-consciousmoral subjectivists. Both atheism and a`Nietzschean theodicy' make the sameprediction: the world will appear to containgratuitous evil. Thus, observation ofapparently gratuitous evil is not evidence foror against either hypothesis. In the absenceof any other evidence for or against theism,the most reasonable position is agnosticism.

Neuroimaging has been to neuroethics what free will and determinism has been, albeit for much longer, to philosophy: pillars for scholarly inquiry and curiosity, and entries to dialogue, debate, and discovery. With interest piqued by reproducible measures of regional blood flow in the human brain under well-defined conditions such as existential problem solving, decision-making, and trust, this article meticulously documents emerging trends involving functional MRI studies. The article builds on that work and examines the hypothesis that almost twenty years after (...) the first wave of such studies, the focus on neuroimaging and its application to complex and profoundly personal human behaviors has not abated. Neuroimaging studies remain an unwavering source of energy for the field. It reviews some of the reasons that they have provoked so much attention in neuroethics and elsewhere, presenting a 2002–2008 update to the trends that documented for 1991–2001, comparing this second generation of data to the first. (shrink)

A recognition of Ezekiel's skill in manipulating the power of metaphor to illumine reality helps us to grasp the subtlety, meaning, and prophetic force of his oracles against Tyre.

Reply to Stanley Warner's response in Environmental Values 13.3 to the article by Carol Kates in Environmerntal Values 13.1.

A serial reaction time experiment tested the hypothesis that there are two independent forms of implicit learning: learning that is linked to making judgments about stimuli, and learning that is linked to motor processing. Participants performed 2, 6, or 12 blocks of single task SRT, dual task SRT, or observation with one of five sequences; each sequence had the same underlying structure. Participants then performed two implicit tests, SRT and pattern judgment, as well as a generation test and an explicit (...) knowledge test. There was a double dissociation of the effect of sequence surface structure on SRT and pattern judgment. SRT and pattern judgment competence developed independently of each other across length of acquisition task. Performance on both implicit tasks did not depend on explicit knowledge. These results indicate that the SRT and pattern judgment measures tap independent forms of implicit learning, which is consistent with the modular nature of memory and cognition. (shrink)

We know from the research literature that psychotherapy is effective, but we also know that hundreds of diverse therapies are being practiced that have not been subjected to scientific scrutiny; thus, in some circumstances iatrogenic effects do occur. Therefore, it is crucial that we recognize and implement therapeutic interventions that are evidence based rather than succumb to ethical dilemma, frustration, and complacency. Recommendations for family therapists are discussed, including the need to (a) keep abreast of research findings, (b) translate research (...) findings and developments as they apply to clinical practice, (c) prioritize techniques and intervention models, and (d) reexamine funding priorities and research foci. (shrink)

Two profound yet incompatible moral imaginations confront each other in the attempt to address Job's experience of turmoil That of the friends is grounded in a deep sense of the moral nature of creation. Job's moral imagination takes shape through an act of witness that attempts to create a community of answerability before God.

Conceptions of "the self" have received significant recent attention in philosophy, anthropology, and cultural history. Scholars argue that the introspective self of the modern West is a distinctive phenomenon that cannot be projected back onto the cultures of antiquity. While acknowledging such difference is vital, it can lead to an inaccurate flattening of the ancient self. In this study, Carol A. Newsom explores the assumptions that govern ancient Israelite views of the self and its moral agency before the fall (...) of Judah, as well as striking developments during the Second Temple period. She demonstrates how the collective trauma of the destruction of the Temple catalyzed changes in the experience of the self in Israelite literature, including first-person-singular prayers, notions of self-alienation, and emerging understandings of a defective heart and will. Examining novel forms of spirituality as well as sectarian texts, Newsom chronicles the evolving inward gaze in ancient Israelite literature, unveiling how introspection in Second Temple Judaism both parallels and differs from forms of introspective selfhood in Greco-Roman cultures. (shrink)

What is the nature of communicative competence? Carol A. Kates addresses this crucial linguistic question, examining and finally rejecting the rationalistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and elaborated by Jerrold J. Katz, among others. She sets forth three reasons why the rationalistic model should be rejected: (1) it has not been supported by empirical tests; (2) it cannot accommodate the pragmatic relation between speaker and sign; and (3) the theory of universal grammar carries with it unacceptable metaphysical implications unless (...) it is interpreted in light of empiricism. Kates proposes an empiricist model in place of the rationalistic theory—a model that, in her view, is more consistent with recent findings in linguistics and psycholinguistics. In attempting to clarify the nature of utterance meaning, Kates develops theoretical perspectives on phenomenological empiricism and produces an account of reference and intentionality directly relevant to empirically based theories of speaking and understanding. Among the major topics addressed in the book are transformational-generative and universal grammar, cognitive theories of language acquisition, pragmatic structure, predication and topic-comment structure, and empiricism and the philosophical problem of universals. An innovative and probing work, Pragmatics and Semantics: An Empiricist Theory will be welcomed by philosophers, linguists, and psycholinguists. (shrink)

To illustrate the strength of Bartky's clarity of insight I focus on her discussion of shame found in two essays in Femininity and Domination. I argue that these essays as well as the other in the collection identify and offer a clear analysis of many issues central to feminism and call for Bartky to write a sequel which offers constructive suggestions of ways out.

It's a mistake to endow the Holocaust or any other massive case of crimes against humanity with cosmic significance. We want to do it because we think the moral enormity of the events should be balanced by an equally grand theory. But it's not. The attempt to do so is poignant.Alain FinkielkrautSavage ethnonationalism, dating back to the end of the eighteenth century, and violent ethnic conflict, as ancient as history, are sometimes viewed as if for the first time in the (...) post-Cold War era. Still, it is the case that the end of the discipline imposed by the bipolar international system has permitted temporarily repressed ethnic and nationalist passions to reassert themselves. In response, a vast literature has sprung up discussing what states should do about genocide and ethnic cleansing, the gravest human rights abuses. In what follows I will consider barbarous nationalism in the context of the liberal international order put into place at the end of the Second World War, the roles of politics, law and morality forming a sub text to that discussion. (shrink)

The article is an explication of husserl's theory of perception. In particular, The meaning of 'constitution' is analyzed, With the result that traditional realistic or idealistic readings of husserl are discarded. Examination of passive and active synthesis and the meaning of 'hyle' within the framework of husserl's theory of inner time-Consciousness clarifies in turn the nature of phenomenological intuition and the significance of reduction.

We agree that social interaction is crucial for understanding the development of theory of mind, but suggest that further elaboration of certain issues is needed. Detailed description of the knowledge structure of a developing theory of mind is necessary, and the notion of criteria for the use of mental state terms requires consideration of the sentence structures in which such terms appear.

Relationships between self-ratings and expectations of an ideal U.S. president, were studied in 43 men drawn from a university setting in the eastern coast of the U.S.A. The men first rated themselves on personality variables, life choices (agentic and communal), peacefulness, spirituality, and morality. Then they were presented with a vignette requesting that they describe an ideal U.S. president on inventories measuring personality variables, life choices, peacefulness, spirituality, and morality. For the rating of the ideal U.S. president, they also were (...) asked to respond to a 20 item questionnaire that was a composite of several factors on organization and leadership, morality, spirituality, and peacefulness. The respondents belonged to one of seven different political persuasions, similar in some ways to different cultures. Self-ratings of the men and expectations of the president were highly correlated for extraversion, openness, trait morality, agentic and communal life choices. However, no significant correlations were found between the self-ratings and expectations of the president for neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, peacefulness, nor state morality. The men were also presented with vignettes for the ideal physician and ideal automechanic and asked to rate each of them on the inventory items. Overall, the U.S. President was rated as more neurotic and immoral in terms of ingrained ideas of right and wrong, but also as more caring for others, transcendent, seeking goodness and truth, forgiving, cooperative, and most concerned with matters of justice and mercy, and more concerned with both agentic (power-seeking) and communal (community-minded) life choices than were either the ideal physician or ideal automechanic. The ideal physician was rated as highest in extra-version, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and overall peacefulness, and lowest in neuroticism. The ideal automechanic was rated as highest in state or situational immorality, and lowest in both agentic (power-seeking, business-mindedness) and communal (community-mindedness) life choices, and also lowest in caring for others well-being, transcendence, seeking goodness and truth, forgiveness and cooperation, being concerned with justice and mercy, overall expectations, overall spirituality, and overall organization and leadership. In general, the self-ratings were significantly related to ratings/expectations, of the U.S. President, ideal physician, and ideal automechanic. The men seemed to identify more with the automechanic than with the present or physician. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: My comment will focus on the following five claims of Humphrey's. At some points I will be drawing on his book A History of the Mind as well as the target article in this issue.