This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview, Dave Elder-Vass discusses his main contributions to critical realist theory over two decades. In the first half, he explains his early work on emergence, agency, str...

_The Invisible Dragon_ made a lot of noise for a little book When it was originally published in 1993 it was championed by artists for its forceful call for a reconsideration of beauty—and savaged by more theoretically oriented critics who dismissed the very concept of beauty as naive, igniting a debate that has shown no sign of flagging. With this revised and expanded edition, Hickey is back to fan the flames. More manifesto than polite discussion, more call to action than (...) criticism, _The Invisible Dragon_ aims squarely at the hyper-institutionalism that, in Hickey’s view, denies the real pleasures that draw us to art in the first place. Deploying the artworks of Warhol, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Mapplethorpe and the writings of Ruskin, Shakespeare, Deleuze, and Foucault, Hickey takes on museum culture, arid academicism, sclerotic politics, and more—all in the service of making readers rethink the nature of art. A new introduction provides a context for earlier essays—what Hickey calls his "intellectual temper tantrums." A new essay, "American Beauty," concludes the volume with a historical argument that is a rousing paean to the inherently democratic nature of attention to beauty. Written with a verve that is all too rare in serious criticism, this expanded and refurbished edition of _The Invisible Dragon_ will be sure to captivate a new generation of readers, provoking the passionate reactions that are the hallmark of great criticism. (shrink)

This commentary reviews recent evidence that some hippo- campal functions do not depend on perirhinal inputs and discusses how the multiple-process model of recognition may shed interpretive light on previous reports of DNMS reacquisition deficits in pretrained subjects with hippocampal damage. Suggestions are made for determining whether nonhuman subjects solve object-recognition tasks using recollective memory or familiarity judgments.

This essay explores the practice of translation, in dialogue with Rosenstock-Huessy’s sociological philosophy. The intention is to reinvigorate his concept of ‘speech-thinking’ and shed light on the intricate relationship between language, thought, and reality. Through an exploration of translation’s position at the interface of cultural otherness, we argue that speech-thinking offers deep analytical insight into the inner-workings of human existence. To support our argument, we delve into the speech of an immigrant subject within the dimensions of time and space, in (...) Rosenstock-Huessy’s terminology. Applying his philosophy, we contend that understanding the other’s lived experiences requires a translational process. This process involves examining internalized differences and aspects of selfhood. Importantly, the process of speech-thinking not only requires a creative and translational space but also facilitates self-reflection and -articulation. This, in turn, prompts ethical and aesthetic discussion of pressing issues in educational research. Through the processes of speech-thinking and translation, we cultivate a liminal space that challenges conventional meanings and understandings. This space has the potential to open up new avenues for exploring diverse ways of knowing, feeling, and being, thereby enriching our understanding of human existence. (shrink)

In this era of suburban mega-churches and televised Sunday morning services, it is easy to forget that many Americans worship in small, community churches whose sanctuaries are often repurposed commercial spaces. In Articles of Faith, photographer Dave Jordano documents the at once humble and dynamic storefront churches of Chicago’s African American neighborhoods. These churches, which dot the south and west sides of the city, are truly community churches—individualized and idiosyncratic, they cater to the specific needs and wants of their (...) members. For the last five years, Jordano has spent his weekends traveling to different churches in the city, getting to know their pastors and parishioners. And this attention to personal detail is highly evident in his exquisite photographs that capture the identity and personalities of each church, from the hand-lettered signs to the icons. His interior images of the sacred spaces illustrate how the congregants create a comforting environment of affirmation, hope, and family for members who often live in neighborhoods marked by high crime and troubled homes. Infused in the space of these makeshift churches is also a sense of history that traces back to a time in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when one of the only forms of open expression available to African Americans was religious practice. These powerful and reverent images illuminate a vital component of urban life for many African Americans and speak to the links between the past and present African American experience. (shrink)

That photography is a supremely realistic medium may be the commonsense view, but—as Edward Steichen reminds us—it is by no means universal. Dissenters note how unlike reality a photograph is and how unlikely we are to confuse the one with the other. They point to “distortions” engendered by the photographic process and to the control which the photographer exercises over the finished product, the opportunities he enjoys for interpretation and falsification. Many emphasize the expressive nature of the medium, observing that (...) photographs are inevitably colored by the photographer’s personal interests, attitudes, and prejudices.1 Whether any of these various considerations really does collide with photography’s claim of extraordinary realism depends, of course, on how that claim is to be understood.Those who find photographs especially realistic sometimes think of photography as a further advance in a direction which many picture makers have taken during the last several centuries, as a continuation or culmination of the post-Renaissance quest for realism.2 There is some truth in this. Such earlier advances toward realism include the development of perspective and modeling techniques, the portrayal of ordinary and incidental details, attention to the effects of light, and so on. From its very beginning, photography mastered perspective . Subtleties of shading, gradations of brightness nearly impossible to achieve with the brush, became commonplace. Photographs include as a matter of course the most mundane details of the scenes they portray—stray chickens, facial warts, clutters of dirty dishes. Photographic images easily can seem to be what painters striving for realism have always been after. 2. See André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” What is Cinema?, trans. Hugh Gray, vol. 1 , p. 12; all further references to this work, abbreviated “OPI,” will be included in the text. See also Rudolf Arnheim, “Melancholy Unshaped,” Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays , p. 186. Kendall L. Walton is professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He is currently completing a book on representation in the arts. (shrink)

When restrictive abortion policies are presented there are often two questions posed: will there be an exception to save the life of the ‘mother’ and will there be an exception in the case of rape or incest. This article will demonstrate that there are no distinctive elements to the first ‘exception’, that do not also apply to all abortions on demand. Through consideration of the potentially lethal impacts of pregnancy on physical and mental health, the case will be made that (...) all requested abortions fit the criteria of ‘medically necessary’. (shrink)

An eye-opening tour of the political tricks that subvert scientific progress. The Butter-Up and Undercut. The Certain Uncertainty. The Straight-Up Fabrication. Dave Levitan dismantles all of these deceptive arguments, and many more, in this probing and hilarious examination of the ways our elected officials attack scientific findings that conflict with their political agendas. The next time you hear a politician say, "Well, I’m not a scientist, but…," you’ll be ready.

This introduction to a special issue of Topoi introduces and summarises the relationship between three main varieties of 'enactivist' theorising about the mind: 'autopoietic', 'sensorimotor', and 'radical' enactivism. It includes a brief discussion of the philosophical and cognitive scientific precursors to enactivist theories, and the relationship of enactivism to other trends in embodied cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

In fifteen essays-one new, two newly revised and expanded, three with new postscripts-Kendall L. Walton wrestles with philosophical issues concerning music, metaphor, empathy, existence, fiction, and expressiveness in the arts. These subjects are intertwined in striking and surprising ways. By exploring connections among them, appealing sometimes to notions of imagining oneself in shoes different from one's own, Walton creates a wide-ranging mosaic of innovative insights.

Big business moguls seem determined to dismantle public schools in the name of a market driven system of educating children via vouchers and charter schools. No Child Left Behind contributes to this business-model and penalizes children and teachers with unrealistic expectations and expensive unnecessary testing. Research indicates that NCLB, charter schools, and vouchers do not improve students’ learning or help educators teach better. The facts presented herein are evidence of public school successes and provide reasons to honor public school educators (...) and support public schools across America. (shrink)

A stable democracy requires a shared identity and political culture. Its citizens need to identify as one common demos lest it fracture and balkanise into separate political communities. This in turn necessitates some common communication network for political messages to be transmitted, understood and evaluated by citizens. Hence, what demarcates one demos from another are the means of communication connecting the citizens of those demoi, allowing them to debate and persuade each other on the proper conduct of government and on (...) issues of common interest. For the ancient Athenians, their public sphere was the agora (marketplace); for the Federalists in the American colonies, the newspaper; for us today, it is the Internet. Until now, the physical nature of these communication networks has resulted in a trade-off between the reach of political messages (the numeric and geographic composition of the demos who receive political messages and may participate in the public sphere) and the ability to target the content of a message on that network towards individual citizens. One-to-one interpersonal conversation in the agora was highly targeted but could reach only as far as a voice could carry. The speakers and audience were well known to each other through personal interaction. As the printing press and later television allowed for greater and greater reach, the content of these messages became more generic as the speakers became more distant from their audience. The wider the audience grew, the less a message could be targeted at a particular audience segment without alienating others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetorical Maneuvers:Subjectivity, Power, and ResistanceKendall R. Phillips and James P. ZappenA sense of subjectivity as fluid, dynamic, and multiple has become almost orthodox throughout the humanities. The widespread influence of poststructural thought has seemingly routed earlier Enlightenment notions of a unified, transcendent subject and opened the door for critical approaches to the numerous and changing manifestations of human subjectivity. The fluidity of the human subject, however, is not without (...) its bounds or constraints. Indeed, the same line of poststructural thinking that served to de-center the Enlightenment subject, especially the work of Michel Foucault, also stipulated that the subject was positioned by larger formations of discourse over which they had limited if any control. These two sides of poststructural subjectivity—its fluidity and its positioning—establish not so much two divergent approaches, but the two poles between which the human subject can be thought to operate. In turn the two poles of the apparent fixity of the subject position and the seeming fluidity of the subjectivity manifested within that position suggest the kind of productive tension through which we are simultaneously limited and enabled by the discourse formations within which we operate and against which we, at times, resist.This productive tension between the multiplicity of the subject and the singularity of the subject position has, of course, been the focus of numerous inquiries. In his later work, Foucault attended to the processes by which the subject makes itself an object upon which work might be done and urged a more aesthetic approach to the continuous crafting of the self.1 Along similar lines, Judith Butler has conceived of the subject in terms of its performativity and the ways that the "I" is crafted through numerous and fluid citations of existing power relations. Conceived in this way, the notion of the "self" is a constantly changing object crafted and re-crafted out of the points of identification provided in the exterior fields of power and knowledge. These points of identification, in turn, provide symbolic anchors by which a subject is moored, at least temporarily, into a particular subject position within which they become identifiable and intelligible in terms of the broader formation of discourse. [End Page 310]In addition to posing a serious challenge to Enlightenment philosophy, this conception of the self as fluid and dynamic presents some vexing questions concerning the practices of self and the capacity of a subject to offer any meaningful challenge to the formations of discourse that constitute its existence. As Butler puts the problem, "The paradox of subjectivation (assujetissement) is precisely that the subject who would resist such norms is itself enabled, if not produced, by such norms" (1993, 15). The theoretical concerns over the relationship between agency and subjectivity also impact upon a series of political questions surrounding the nature and possibility of identity politics and recent debates concerning the importance and efficacy of gaining "recognition" as a political move.2 Whatever one's position within such debates, it is clear that the question of subjectivity and its concomitant questions of subjectivation and agency must be addressed in order to conceive of any kinds of democratic politics.The question of the subject, then, clearly entails broad philosophical and political implications. Rhetorical scholars have entered this conversation with a particular concern for the practices that both constitute and challenge the constitution of the self and many of these scholars have attended specifically to the points of friction between prescribed positions in which a subject is constituted and the dynamic nature of subjectivity as performed. Following from the works of Foucault, Barbara Biesecker (1992), for instance, urges attention to the canon of style as a crucially rhetorical element in the processes by which the individual negotiates relations of power, knowledge, and subjectivity. In a similar vein, Bradford Vivian draws from the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to suggest that rhetoricians recognize "that the self may be conceived as a form—a rhetorical form—that exists only in its continual and aesthetic creation, in its indefinite becoming" (2000, 304). The indefinite nature of this becoming is, for both Vivian and Deleuze and Guattari, a politically crucial insight into the ways that... (shrink)

Considerations of the impact of new technologies of archival information and the texture of public memory.

Rene Descartes is the 16th century philosopher who perpetually doubted everything--even his own physical existence!

Soren Kierkegaard is widely held to be the founder of existentialism. His faith is ironic, playful and passionate, and he wrote like a novelist. This book brilliantly explains his life and thought.

The entire Who's Who of postmodern thought--Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard and others, can trace their philosophical ancestry to Nietzsche's radical relativism.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is an uncommon disorder that has long been associated with exposure to traumatic stressors exceeding manageable levels commonly encompassing physical, psychological and sexual abuse in childhood that is prolonged and severe in nature. In DID, dissociation continues after the traumatic experience and produces a disruption in identity where distinct personality states develop. These personalities are accompanied by variations in behaviour, emotions, memory, perception and cognition. The use of literature in psychiatry can enrich comprehension over the subjective experience (...) of a disorder, and the utilisation of 'illness narratives' in nursing research have been considered a way of improving knowledge about nursing care and theory development. This research explores experiences of DID through close textual reading and thematic analysis of five biographical and autobiographical texts, discussing the lived experience of the disorder. This narrative approach aims to inform empathetic understanding and support the facilitation of therapeutic alliances in mental healthcare for those experiencing the potentially debilitating and distressing symptoms of DID. Although controversies surrounding the biomedical diagnosis of DID are important to consider, the lived experiences of those who mental health nurses encounter should be priority. (shrink)

This article describes aspects of our biological nature that have contributed to the dangerous current state of societal, ecological and climatological affairs. Next, it deals with stratagems to take these aspects into account, so as to allow us better choices. I will concentrate on the concepts of evolved group mechanisms and “neoteny” and explain why they direct our responses throughout our lives. The connection between our biological make‐up and our vulnerability to the current rise of certain kinds of irrational, undemocratic, (...) populism is also laid bare. I will end by listing some simple, but possibly controversial, proposals that might have value in combating these societal tendencies and help decision making in a reality‐based, more scientific, manner. (shrink)

We present a specific elaboration and partial defense of the claims that cognition is enactive, embodied, embedded, affective and (potentially) extended. According to the view we will defend, the enactivist claim that perception and cognition essentially depend upon the cognizer’s interactions with their environment is fundamental. If a particular instance of this kind of dependence obtains, we will argue, then it follows that cognition is essentially embodied and embedded, that the underpinnings of cognition are inextricable from those of affect, that (...) the phenomenon of cognition itself is essentially bound up with affect, and that the possibility of cognitive extension depends upon the instantiation of a specific mode of skillful interrelation between cognizer and environment. Thus, if cognition is enactive then it is also embodied, embedded, affective and potentially extended. (shrink)

Shows how ethical subjectivity is not based on individual morals but contemporary cultureTaking his lead from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and engaging with a number of ethical thinkers, Dave Boothroyd addresses a number of key contemporary ethical subjects. In doing so, he reveals how responsibility is grounded in the everyday encounters and situations we are all familiar with.

Background The field of personal health monitoring (PHM) develops rapidly in different contexts, including the armed forces. Understanding the ethical dimension of this type of monitoring is key to a morally responsible development, implementation and usage of PHM within the armed forces. Research on the ethics of PHM has primarily been carried out in civilian settings, while the ethical dimension of PHM in the armed forces remains understudied. Yet, PHM of military personnel by design takes place in a different setting (...) than PHM of civilians, because of their tasks and the context in which they operate. This case study therefore focusses on obtaining insights into the experiences and related values of different stakeholders regarding an existing form of PHM, the Covid-19 Radar app, in the Netherlands Armed Forces. Methods We carried out an exploratory qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews with twelve stakeholders in the Netherlands Armed Forces. We focussed on participation in the use of PHM, reflections on the practical use and use of data, moral dilemmas and the need for ethics support, all in regard to PHM. The data was analysed using an inductive thematic approach. Results Three interlinking categories reflecting ethical dimensions of PHM emerged: (1) values, (2) moral dilemmas, and (3) external norms. The main values identified were: security (in relation to data), trust and hierarchy. Multiple related values were found. Some, but no broadly shared, moral dilemmas were identified and no strong need for ethics support was expressed. Conclusion This study shed light on key values, provide insights in the experienced and presumed moral dilemmas and bring to mind ethics support considerations when looking at PHM in the armed forces. Some values bring a certain vulnerability to military users when personal and organisational interests are not aligned. Furthermore, some identified values may hinder a careful consideration of PHM because they potentially conceal parts of ethical dimensions of PHM. Ethics support can assist in uncovering and addressing these concealed parts. The findings highlight a moral responsibility for the armed forces to devote attention to the ethical dimensions of PHM. (shrink)