For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The coherence of defined autonomous categories—such as religion, science, and art—has collapsed under the weight of postmodern critiques, calling into question the possibility of progress and even the value of knowledge. Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm aims to radicalize and move beyond these deconstructive projects to offer a path forward for the humanities and social sciences using a new model for theory he calls (...) metamodernism. Metamodernism works through the postmodern critiques and uncovers the mechanisms that produce and maintain concepts and social categories. In so doing, Storm provides a new, radical account of society’s ever-changing nature—what he calls a “Process Social Ontology”—and its materialization in temporary zones of stability or “social kinds.” Storm then formulates a fresh approach to philosophy of language by looking beyond the typical theorizing that focuses solely on human language production, showing us instead how our own sign-making is actually on a continuum with animal and plant communication. Storm also considers fundamental issues of the relationship between knowledge and value, promoting a turn toward humble, emancipatory knowledge that recognizes the existence of multiple modes of the real. Metamodernism is a revolutionary manifesto for research in the human sciences that offers a new way through postmodern skepticism to envision a more inclusive future of theory in which new forms of both progress and knowledge can be realized. (shrink)

For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The decay of master narratives showcases a distrust of universals, while deepening particularity seems to promise nothing but further dissolution. For Jason Josephson-Storm, these are dead ends. He wants to offer a path forward, which he terms metamodernism. This is the first full-length work to line up the various critiques of disciplinary master-categories (religion, science, art, etc.) and trace their affinities and shared (...) conceptual roots. It suggests that if these critiques are granted, they tell us something fundamental about the mechanisms through which concepts and social categories are produced and maintained. They suggest that the social world should be seen in terms of a "process social ontology" with temporary zones of stability called "social kinds." This amounts to a new theory of society and a new methodology for research in the human sciences. The work also broadens to fundamental issues of the relationship between knowledge and value, promoting not skepticism but zeteticism--a stance directed toward humble, emancipatory knowledge. Valuing this form of knowledge allows postmodernism to be channeled into a critical virtue ethics directed toward multi-species. (shrink)

Through an engagement with Sylvia Wynter, this article explores how black feminist critiques of the human can inform critical genealogies of religion. Specifically, the article develops a theoretical framework to interrogate how the modern construction of religion and the secular also produces racial identities and hierarchies. To draw attention to the global dimensions of this project, the article foregrounds the seminal work of Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm in his book, The Invention of Religion in Japan. The article argues (...) that studies like Josephson-Storm's show how religion helps transform existing forms of social organization within a bio-evolutionary conception of the nation, and is used by the state to differentiate between who can be considered fully human and who cannot. In this process “superstition” or “irrationality” is rewritten as a biological threat to the health and well-being of “the people,” and political domination is represented as a struggle to purify the nation. (shrink)

In Book II of the ancient architectural treatise, De architectura, Vitruvius gives a mythical account of the conjoined origins of architecture and language: “[I]n ancient times,” he writes, “men were born like wild animals in the forests, caves and woods, and spent their lives feeding on fodder”. One night, while a fierce storm ravaged the woods where these ancient humans lived, a mighty fire broke out. Faced with the flames, the men and women fled in terror. Some, however, recovering (...) from their initial fright, and sensing the warmth emanating from the blaze, moved closer to it and began to throw more wood on it. Using sign language, those feeding the flames communicated to the others the virtues of the... (shrink)

This study examined the performance and future predictions for the Middle East produced by 18 global climate models participating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. Under the Special Report on Emission Scenarios A2 emissions scenario the models predict an overall temperature increase of ~1.4 K by mid-century, increasing to almost 4 K by late-century for the Middle East. In terms of precipitation the southernmost portion of the domain experiences a small increase in precipitation due to the (...) Northward movement of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. The largest change however is a decrease in precipitation that occurs in an area covering the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Syria, Northern Iraq, Northeastern Iran and the Caucasus caused by a decrease in storm track activity over the Eastern Mediterranean. Other changes likely to impact the region include a decrease of over 170,000 km 2 in viable rainfed agriculture land by late-century, increases in the length of the dry season that reduces the length of time that the rangelands can be grazed, and changes in the timing of the maximum precipitation in Northern Iran that will impact the growing season, forcing changes in cropping strategy or even crop types. (shrink)

In the first part of this chapter, I will focus on two main questions: (1) how Maimonides departs from Aristotle in maintaining a difference of kind rather than degree in identifying prophecy rather than wisdom as the ultimate human perfection; and (2) why Maimonides does not explicitly identify a virtue of practical reasoning that corresponds to Aristotle’s understanding of phronêsis. In the second part of the chapter, I will discuss why Dante, contrary to Maimonides, emphasises the significance of practical judgement (...) in his redeployment of Aristotelian ethical theory. I will also discuss how the didactic and protreptic purposes of his poetic discourse are shaped by the same underlying psychological theory that grounds his emphasis on this intellectual virtue. The modest aim of this chapter is to treat these two engagements with Peripatetic philosophy as case studies that reward attention to the inextricable links between politics/religion and philosophical enquiry, even against the grain of seemingly common lineages sharing similar concerns. Connected with this modest aim, this chapter will also discuss how Maimonides’s and Dante’s attention to didactic and protreptic concerns impacts their treatment of philosophical questions and therefore indicates how attention to the kairos of their writings exposes and helps appreciate their philosophical rigour. (shrink)

Several noted political theorists have argued that a state can be legitimate even if it does not generate in its citizens an obligation to obey the law. I argue that this claim is false. All plausible analyses of political legitimacy either build in the concept of political obligation, or else incorporate claims that require some account of political obligation. In either case, political legitimacy is possible only when a state successfully generates in its citizens an obligation to obey the law.

Our motor system can generate representations which carry information about the goals of another agent's actions. However, it is not known whether motor representations play a deeper role in social understanding, and, in particular, whether they enable tracking others' beliefs. Here we show that, for adult observers, reliably manifesting an ability to track another's false belief critically depends on representing the agent's potential actions motorically. One signature of motor representations is that they can be disrupted by constraints on an observed (...) agent's action capacities. We therefore used a `mummification' technique to manipulate whether the agent in a visual ball-detection task was free to act or whether he was visibly constrained from acting. Adults' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs only when the agent was free to act on the ball and not when the agent was visibly constrained from acting. Furthermore, it was the agent's constrained action capabilities, rather than any perceptual novelty, that determined whether adult observers' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs. These findings signal that our motor system may underpin more of social cognition than previously imagined, and, in particular, that motor representations may underpin automatic false-belief tracking. (shrink)

_Reconsiders the contemporary relevance of Schelling’s radical philosophical and religious ecology._.

ABSTRACT This module is designed to sensitise you to the special needs of participants who belong to populations that are more vulner.

In addressing bioethical issues at the beginning of human life, such as abortion, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research, one primary concern regards establishing when a developing human embryo or fetus can be considered a person. Thomas Aquinas argues that an embryo or fetus is not a human person until its body is informed by a rational soul. Aquinas's explicit account of human embryogenesis has been generally rejected by contemporary scholars due to its dependence upon medieval biological data, (...) which has been far surpassed by current scientific research. A number of scholars, however, have attempted to combine Aquinas's basic metaphysical account of human nature with current embryological data to develop a contemporary Thomistic account of a human person's beginning. In this article, I discuss two recent interpretations in which it is argued that a human person does not begin to exist until a fetus has developed a functioning cerebral cortex. (shrink)

Epistasis plays an important role in the genetic architecture of common human diseases and can be viewed from two perspectives, biological and statistical, each derived from and leading to different assumptions and research strategies. Biological epistasis is the result of physical interactions among biomolecules within gene regulatory networks and biochemical pathways in an individual such that the effect of a gene on a phenotype is dependent on one or more other genes. In contrast, statistical epistasis is defined as deviation from (...) additivity in a mathematical model summarizing the relationship between multilocus genotypes and phenotypic variation in a population. The goal of this essay is to review definitions and examples of biological and statistical epistasis and to explore the relationship between the two. Specifically, we present and discuss the following two questions in the context of human health and disease. First, when does statistical evidence of epistasis in human populations imply underlying biomolecular interactions in the etiology of disease? Second, when do biomolecular interactions produce patterns of statistical epistasis in human populations?Answers to these two reciprocal questions will provide an important framework for using genetic information to improve our ability to diagnose, prevent and treat common human diseases. We propose that systems biology will provide the necessary information for addressing these questions and that model systems such as bacteria, yeast and digital organisms will be a useful place to start. BioEssays 27:637–646, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

A number of scientists have recently argued that neuroscience provides strong evidence against the requirements of the folk notion of free will. In one such line of argumentation, it is claimed that choice is required for free will, and neuroscience is showing that people do not make choices. In this article, we argue that this no-choice line of argumentation relies on a specific conception of choice. We then provide evidence that people do not share the conception of choice required of (...) the argument, nor do people hold that free will requires the conception of choice on which the argument relies. This leaves the proponents of the no-choice argument with a dilemma: Either they adopt a conception of choice that is not required of the folk concept of free will and thus they cease to be talking about the folk concept of free will, or they adopt a conception of choice that aligns with the folk concept of choice and thus the no-choice argument fails. (shrink)

"The Federalist" is commonly read as an exemplar of political realism. However, alongside Publius' arguments against the enthusiastic imagination --its tendency to inflame the passions, betray the intellect, and subvert political authority--are formative appeals to the imagination 's role in reconstituting the public authority shaken during the postrevolutionary years. This essay explores three central aspects of Publius' restorative appeal to the imagination : the appeal to the public veneration required for sustaining political authority across time; the strategies for shifting citizen (...) loyalty from the state and local level to that of a newly energized federal government; and the rhetorical elicitation of the public's imagination in aestheticized portrayals of Providential nationality. These aspects of Publius' argument make up the core of "The Federalist's aesthetics of rule. In each instance, Publius invokes the imagination as a heteronomic support to navigate familiar dilemmas of democratic self-authorization. (shrink)

The Routledge Guidebook to Aquinas‘ Summa Theologiae introduces readers to a work which represents the pinnacle of medieval Western scholarship and which has inspired numerous commentaries, imitators, and opposing views. Outlining the main arguments Aquinas utilizes to support his conclusions on various philosophical questions, this clear and comprehensive guide explores: The historical context in which Aquinas wrote A critical discussion of the topics outlined in the text including theology, metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, ethics, and political theory. The ongoing influence of Summa (...) Theologiae in modern Philosophy and Theology Offering a close reading of the original work, this guidebook highlights the central themes of Aquinas’ masterwork and is an essential read for anyone seeking an understanding of this highly influential work in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The process of engaging in historical empathy holds the potential for significant curricular and dispositional benefits for students in history classrooms. In order to realize these benefits, classroom teachers must be able to integrate historical empathy into their existing planning and teaching; a process that would benefit from empirical examination. This single subject case study examined the pedagogical reasoning process of an experienced classroom teacher who integrated historical empathy into an existing instructional unit designed to foster student knowledge of social (...) control as an enduring historical understanding. The findings of this study suggest that experienced teachers may only be able to partially anticipate the unique pedagogical needs integrating historical empathy requires, and that a holistic examination of pedagogical reasoning during all phases of planning and teaching may be most suitable for the task. (shrink)

Although Eugen Fink often reflected upon the role religion, these reflections are yet to be addressed in secondary literature in any substantive sense. For Fink, religion is to be understood in relation to “play,” which is a metaphor for how the world presents itself. Religion is a non-repetitive, and entirely creative endeavor or “symbol” that is not achieved through work and toil, or through evaluation or power, but rather, through his idea of play and “cult” as the imaginative distanciation from (...) a predictable lifeworld. This paper describes Fink’s understanding of religion and its most relevant aspects found in Spiel als Weltsymbol. The paper is organized into five sections—1: An introduction to his phenomenological approach in general, and description of the role of “play”; 2: investigations into the relation between play and world; 3: a description of his phenomenology of religion; 4: engagements in the idea of cult-play and the sacred sphere, and 5: reflection on his idea of the play of God. (shrink)

Wisdom and wickedness as a 'Woman' have always attracted much discussion, especially in the ways images of the female are employed in wisdom literature. This article focuses on two Qumran texts that fall into the category of wisdom literature, namely 4Q184 and 4Q185, and the metaphorical appropriation of the woman as a figure of wisdom or a figure of wickedness. By combining a number of traditions in certain forms, sages tried to establish an education for their learners on how to (...) obtain wisdom with the ultimate purpose of creating harmony. The ultimate purpose of the wisdom teachings of the sages was to confirm the harmony in the universe, and these teachings were also conveyed to their learners. In their instructions, they often employed binary opposites such as 'wise' and 'fool' according to which someone was characterised, or rather stereotyped. The result of such binary stereotyping was that the 'whore' and the 'holy one' represented opposite poles, and became fixed images in Judaism. According to feminist exegetes, these images typify the concept of cultural stereotyping. This article aims to illustrate that two Qumran texts, 4Q184 and 4Q185, regarded as wisdom texts, employ the female stereotypes that were known in the wisdom literature of Judaism. (shrink)

De Neys's incisive critique of empirical and theoretical research on the exclusivity feature underscores the depth of the challenge of explaining the interplay of fast and slow processes. We argue that a closer look at research on mindreading reveals abundant evidence for the exclusivity feature – as well as methodological and theoretical perspectives that could inform research on fast and slow thinking.

Puts Schelling in conversation with twentieth-century continental philosophy.

This chapter seeks clarification into how Marion understands “desire,” especially in The Erotic Phenomenon. Philosophies of “objectivity” have lost sight of love and its uniquely supporting evidences, and desire plays a number of roles in restoring to love the “dignity of a concept,” in its contribution to forming selfhood and “individualization,” and in its establishing the paradoxical bases of the erotic reduction and “eroticization.” Since he claims in La Rigueur des Choses that “The Erotic Phenomenon logically completes the phenomenology of (...) the gift and the saturated phenomenon,” it is necessary to conceive of how and to what degree. The erotic reduction demands that one bracket oneself and return to the Ursprung of intuition by asking the important question “can I be the first to love?” This chapter initiates an application of these findings on the manifold of desire back onto Marion’s understanding of “the gift” and his phenomenology of givenness. How might the erotic reduction and the reduction to givenness interrelate? Might love and desire be modes or “capacities” of alteration of one’s experience within intuition? Desire, which is conceived in relation to “lack” as a resource, provides a kind of “negative assurance” that allows the adonné to access an affirmation of love. (shrink)

We first argue that there are cases of “blameless non-belief.” That is, some people—through no fault of their own—fail to enter into a conscious relationship with God. But if so, then it would be unjust of God to make certain particular goods depend upon one having a conscious relationship with God. So, given that God is just, then despite what some theists believe, a relationship with God cannot be a necessary condition for the attainment of these goods; there might, e.g., (...) be atheists in heaven, even assuming that theism is true. This implies that religion is a far less important component of people’s lives than many might think. (shrink)

With the 500 year celebration of the Reformation, it is necessary that Bible translation be reviewed again. The year 2017 is not only the year of Reformation celebration, but also the year of centenary celebration of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria. The article attempts to briefly refer to the roots of Bible translation, which is anchored in the Reformation; but also to look at Bible translation in South Africa over the last hundred years, as well as (...) the contribution made especially by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria in this regard. (shrink)

The present study examines the use of metadiscourse in English and Chinese research article introductions in the field of educational psychology. The corpus for this study comprises 40 introductions of research articles – 20 Chinese and 20 English – in the field of educational psychology. Hyland’s model of metadiscourse has been employed as the analytical framework for the present study. The similarities and differences in the use of metadiscourse between the two sets of texts are looked at from a socio-cultural (...) point of view. The findings of the present study provide some insights into the teaching and learning of academic English writing for Chinese ESL students. (shrink)

Many epistemologists treat knowledge as a binary relation that holds between a subject and a proposition. The contrastive account of knowledge developed by Jonathan Schaffer maintains that knowledge is a ternary, contrastive relation that holds between a subject, a proposition, and a set of contextually salient alternative propositions the subject’s evidence must eliminate. For the contrastivist, it is never simply the case that S knows that p; in every case of knowledge S knows that p rather than q. This paper (...) offers a counterexample to the contrastive account of knowledge. Part 1 summarizes the contrastive theory developed by Schaffer in a series of recent papers. Part 2 presents an example from a class of cases characterized by compatibility between the proposition p and each of the alternative propositions that occupy q. In such cases the alternative propositions that partially constitute the ternary contrastive relation play no role in the acquisition of knowledge. Part 3 considers and rejects potential responses to the counterexample. The paper concludes that the contrastive theory is not a general account of knowledge. (shrink)

This study provides a comparative analysis of students' self-reported beliefs and behaviors related to six analogous pairs of conventional and digital forms of academic cheating. Results from an online survey of undergraduates at two universities (N = 1,305) suggest that students use conventional means more often than digital means to copy homework, collaborate when it is not permitted, and copy from others during an exam. However, engagement in digital plagiarism (cutting and pasting from the Internet) has surpassed conventional plagiarism. Students (...) also reported using digital "cheat sheets" (i.e., notes stored in a digital device) to cheat on tests more often than conventional "cheat sheets." Overall, 32% of students reported no cheating of any kind, 18.2% reported using only conventional methods, 4.2% reported using only digital methods, and 45.6% reported using both conventional and digital methods to cheat. "Digital only" cheaters were less likely than "conventional only" cheaters to report assignment cheating, but the former was more likely than the latter to report engagement in plagiarism. Students who cheated both conventionally and digitally were significantly different from the other three groups in terms of their self-reported engagement in all three types of cheating behavior. Students in this "both" group also had the lowest sense of moral responsibility to refrain from cheating and the greatest tendency to neutralize that responsibility. The scientific and educational implications of these findings are discussed in this study. (shrink)

This paper examines the assumptions underpinning one of the constitutive elements of the modern concept of art: the idea of aesthetic autonomy. I argue that the orientation of recent art practice towards what has come to be termed ‘site-specificity’ is best understood as a progressive relinquishment of the principle of aesthetic autonomy. I develop this position through a close analysis of the work of Miwon Kwon. The paper is intended as a case-study that investigates the problematic relation between historical and (...) philosophical enquiry. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Achieving valid informed consent from a human research participant involves an ongoing process designed to protect the participant and ensure their rights, safety, and well-being are not compromise...

Notwithstanding the existence of previous investigations into how research results are presented in different academic disciplines, fewer studies have looked into how authors pave the way for their results, the interdisciplinary differences in ‘result pavements’, and the interconnections between their communicative functions and linguistic choices. Using the techniques of genre analysis, I have analyzed two corpora of research reports in applied linguistics and education in order to identify the possible ways in which experienced writers schematically pave the way for their (...) findings. Using evidence based on authentic research articles, this study demonstrates how writers set the stage for their research results by demonstrating their control of the structure and flow of result-related information, connecting past research with a current finding while furnishing pertinent background elements that lead the readership progressively to specific findings, regenerating readers’ interest in their initial research purposes, and deploying locatives to embed results in a ‘space-saving strategy’ aimed at presenting an abridged Results section. I have also analyzed interdisciplinary differences in the frequencies of these rhetorical steps and the range of intricate linguistic mechanisms employed by authors as communicative resources in each step to establish a smooth rhetorical transition that sets the stage for their research results. (shrink)

Before a general cognitive model for recurrent complex visual hallucinations (RCVH) is accepted, there must be more research into the neuropsychological and cognitive characteristics of the various disorders in which they occur. Currently available data are insufficient to distinguish whether the similar phenomenology of RCVH across different disorders is in fact produced by a single or by multiple cognitive mechanisms.

Ecological validity is key in science and laboratory experiments alone cannot fully explain complex real-world phenomena. Yet the three flaws Cesario proposes do not characterize the field and are not “methodological trickery,” designed to intentionally mislead practitioners. In school discipline alone, these alleged flaws are indeed addressed and laboratory experimentation has contributed to mitigation of a real-world problem.

Drawing on recent attempts to critically reconstruct the ideas of Heinrich Wölfflin, this paper argues that there is a specific ‘logic of depiction’ that is distinctive to visual as opposed to verbal forms of representation. The aim is to provide a set of objective parameters that can allow a comparative analysis of the formal organization of pictures despite differences in period, subject matter, format, etc. The paper seeks to show that such an analysis is possible and that it possesses explanatory (...) force. Its frame is a critical engagement with Richard Wollheim's theory of style. Wollheim holds that general style terms are merely tools of classification and that they are relative to the changing point of view of those who seek to understand the art of the past. However, the critical reconstruction of Wölfflin's fundamental concepts aims to identify necessary conditions for visual representation as such. The fundamental concepts function not as taxonomic categories but as ‘limit concepts’ that demarcate a scale of possibilities and thus enable meaningful comparison of artworks. (shrink)