This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it (...) is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability. (shrink)

Positive monotone modal logic is the negation- and implication-free fragment of monotone modal logic, i.e., the fragment with connectives and. We axiomatise positive monotone modal logic, give monotone neighbourhood semantics based on posets, and prove soundness and completeness. The latter follows from the main result of this paper: a duality between so-called \-spaces and the algebraic semantics of positive monotone modal logic. The main technical tool is the use of coalgebra.

Re-working the Gramscian idea of the ‘organic’ intellectual from the cultural-political sphere to Higher Education (HE), suggests the need to develop critical and questioning ‘counter hegemonic’ ideas and behaviour in community education students. Connecting this reworking to the Habermasian theory of communicative action, suggests that these students also need to learn how to be constructive in developing such knowledge. Working towards critical and constructive capacities is particularly relevant for students who learn through acting in practice settings where general principles and (...) purposes acquired in the academy need to be interpreted in response to the unique demands of specific situations. From a Gramscian perspective, enabling students to develop the qualities of organic intellectuals means that lecturers have a duty to teach critical knowledges which the student will be unfamiliar with and unlikely to possess. If teaching is not to become simply didactic, however, there is also a need to acknowledge Habermas’s contention that all knowledge is contingent. This does not mean that knowledge is merely relative, subjective, or essentially interest serving, as some postmodernists would have it. In Habermasian terms, knowledge is developed through a rigorous process of contesting validity claims according to procedures appropriate to discipline areas. In these procedures, contestation occurs to the point where there is general agreement about the best current understanding, until such time as this is overtaken by ideas with a better claim. The danger is that over commitment to contestation in the classroom undermines subject knowledge and ultimately the authority of the educator. Speaking Habermas to Gramsci, and vice versa, helps socially and politically committed educators to construct a space in which didactic and discursive moments purposefully alternate. (shrink)

Drawing on John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book employs philosophy as a conceptual resource to develop new methodological and analytical tools for conducting in situ empirical investigations. Chapter one explores the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey. Chapter two exposits Deweyan ideas of embodiment, the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, and aesthetically expressive meaning underdeveloped in Wittgenstein. Chapter three introduces the method of practical epistemological analysis and a model of situated epistemic relations to investigate the learning of body (...) techniques in dinghy sailing. The concluding chapter introduces a model of situated artistic relations to investigate the learning of artistic techniques of self-expression in the Swedish sloyd classroom. (shrink)

This co-authored chapter offers a reconstruction of Bergson's conception of the relationship between the political and religion focusing on "The Two Sources of Morality and Religion". Bergson's claims and arguments are related to those of Nietzsche with a focus on the themes of critique, immanence and affirmation.

The original innovation talents and their achievements promote the development of natural science and are regarded as a symbol of the national comprehensive power. This study explores the process that causes original innovation talents’ personality, uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, and explores the linkage between configurations made up of early growth experiences and personality. We took Nobel Prize winners as samples and discovered that high responsibility was inspired by high family democracy driving, high family size driving, high family function driving, (...) and high teaching democracy driving; high extroversion was inspired by high family size driving, high family democracy driving, and high family status driving; high openness was inspired by high family status driving, high family democracy driving, high family size driving, both high open teaching and educational level driving, as well as high peer support driving; high or non-high family status brought high extroversion or openness; non-high teacher accomplishments and teacher-student relationships produced high openness; non-high extroversion came with non-high teacher-student relationship. We proposed strategies for strengthening the positive effects or avoiding the negative effects of early growing-up experiences on personality. (shrink)

The concept of political obligation has not attracted much attention within Heideggerian scholarship. In this paper, we identify and explicate Heidegger’s conception of political obligation embedded in his pre-Kehre works. It will be argued that Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time and his address as Rector of Freiburg contain a latent associative account of political obligation. We argue that the ontological framework disclosed in Being and Time and the more concrete policy prescriptions of the Rectoral Address reveal a communitarian ethos (...) which animates the early Heideggerian canon and grounds his account of political obligation. For Heidegger, Dasein must be connected to a particular community’s ontological heritage in order to delimit its ontical possibilities in concrete situations. It will be argued that this relationship between ontological heritage and ontical possibilities is what defines political obligation for Heidegger. (shrink)

Digital games have matured substantially as a narrative medium in the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done to more fully understand the poetics of story-based-games. Game narrative remains an important issue with significant cultural, economic and scholarly implications. In this article, we undertake a critical analysis of the design of narrative within Mass Effect 2: a game whose narrative is highly regarded in both scholarly and vernacular communities. We follow the classic humanities methodology of “close-reading”: (...) the detailed observation, deconstruction, and analysis of a text. Our close-reading employs a critical framework from our previous work to isolate and highlight the central narrative design parameters within digital games. This framework is grounded in the scholarly discourse around games and narrative, and has been tested and revised in the process of close-reading and analyzing contemporary games. The narrative design parameters we examine are character, storyworld, narrativized interface, emotion, and plot coherence. Our analysis uses these parameters to explicate a series of design decisions for the effective creation of narrative experience in Mass Effect 2, and by extension, for game narratives in general. We also expand our previous methodology through a focused “edge-case” strategy for exploring the limits of character, action, and story in the game. Finally, we position our analysis of Mass Effect 2 within contemporary discourses of “bounded agency”, and explore how the game negotiates the tension between player-expression, and narrative inevitability to create opportunities for sophisticated narrative poetics including tragedy and sacrifice. (shrink)

Exploring a wide range of sonic practices, from birdsong in the Marshall Islands to Zulu ululation, the contributors reorient the field of sound studies toward the global South in order to rethink and decolonize modes of understanding and listening to sound.

Digital games have matured substantially as a narrative medium in the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done to more fully understand the poetics of story-based-games. Game narrative remains an important issue with significant cultural, economic and scholarly implications. In this article, we undertake a critical analysis of the design of narrative within Mass Effect 2: a game whose narrative is highly regarded in both scholarly and vernacular communities. We follow the classic humanities methodology of “close-reading”: (...) the detailed observation, deconstruction, and analysis of a text. Our close-reading employs a critical framework from our previous work to isolate and highlight the central narrative design parameters within digital games. This framework is grounded in the scholarly discourse around games and narrative, and has been tested and revised in the process of close-reading and analyzing contemporary games. The narrative design parameters we examine are character, storyworld, narrativized interface, emotion, and plot coherence. Our analysis uses these parameters to explicate a series of design decisions for the effective creation of narrative experience in Mass Effect 2, and by extension, for game narratives in general. We also expand our previous methodology through a focused “edge-case” strategy for exploring the limits of character, action, and story in the game. Finally, we position our analysis of Mass Effect 2 within contemporary discourses of “bounded agency”, and explore how the game negotiates the tension between player-expression, and narrative inevitability to create opportunities for sophisticated narrative poetics including tragedy and sacrifice. (shrink)

In this paper, I will focus on the nature and appropriation of political power, and explore the right appropriation of political power given the present political and social condition. I discuss first the nature of political power, and then the three political alternatives in the appropriation of political power, namely, the centralized, the dispersed, and the balanced power. I argue that although there are still states that hold on to the centralized power, given the present political and social condition, the (...) balanced appropriation of political power is the best alternative. (shrink)

The secular ideals have impacted on the many aspects of our modern human life but the challenge of secularization is very much felt in the realm of religion especially in Christianity. We can observe that the more society modernizes the level of its religiosity lessens. With the dominance of science, politics and economics in rational discourses and the relevance of technology, the ideology of globalization and the attitude of consumerism and materialism, religious beliefs, practices, values and institutions are losing their (...) relevance to human life and society. Societies whose religious values are historically embedded in their social institutions are continuously moving away from their religious roots towards a nonreligious orientation. In this paper I focus on the challenge of secularization and secularism to religion specifically to the Christian belief in God. First, I show that although secularization is a recent phenomenon its philosophical roots can be traced back to the modern times where some Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers challenged the theocentric discourse of medieval thinkers. This set the stage for secularism as a counter discourse to the medieval belief in God. Second, that out of this modern thinking about God emerged two distinct attitudes towards the question of God – the attitude of the philosophers who although did not totally dismiss the notion of God reduce God to a mere idea or a product of human imagination, and on the other hand the attitude of the believers who continue to believe in the living God. Third, that although one can argue against the position of the non-believing philosophers and counter the position of secularism one appropriate response is self-criticism, that is, for the believers to take a hard look on themselves and see if God and religion are still relevant in their personal and social affairs. (shrink)

This study examines the contestability of “relevance” as an abstract construction with no fixed meaning when applied, and questions its usage in the research quality debate. It finds that different research agendas and approaches have their own idiosyncratic logic and that any logic has its own criteria for assessing quality which cannot be applied to assess the quality of others. This is illustrated by delineating practitioner-led research from academic-led research and by comparing and contrasting research perspectives as examples. The research (...) quality debate becomes meaningless when it is limited to a singular research agenda or approach as in practice these are invariably combined. Having said this, however, every agenda and approach can be argued to be legitimate as potentially each can find what otherwise cannot be noticed. As a result, this study challenges the conventional unitarist wisdom that conceptualises knowledge as commodity, and suggests instead that heterogeneity, linked to tolerance and relative independence of means and mind, free from the control or influence of others to enable critical distance from context and status quo and facilitate judgement, is the key to those seeking a meaningful research quality debate that acknowledges tolerance of the diversity of knowledge, difference, contestation and struggle. Although such heterogeneity may at first appear to add confusion rather than clarity, without first looking at this heterogeneity it is not possible to develop a dialogue, in the context of the present neo-liberal post-political drift that emphasises consensus, the annulment of dissensus and diverts attention from relationships of power, through which a positive contribution can be made to the research quality debate. (shrink)

Paulin Hountondji, béninois né en 1942 à Abidjan, est l'un des philosophes africains les plus influents de ces cinquante dernières années. Sa vive critique de ce qui se présente comme 'philosophie africaine' chez le prêtre Tempels et les auteurs qui adoptèrent la démarche 'ethnophilosophique' du missionnaire belge s'inspire de la pensée du philosophe allemand Edmund Husserl. Selon lui, la pensée philosophique doit prendre son point de départ non pas dans les représentations mais dans les problèmes, lesquels définissent alors la démarche (...) pour les formuler. La pensée de Hountondji s'inspire ainsi du Husserl qui, rompant avec l'idéalisme de ses premiers écrits, inscrit la philosophie dans 'le monde de la vie' et des cultures humaines. Ainsi est-on conduit à poser la question de l'universel et à en redéployer le sens dans une perspective qui ne privilégie plus les cultures occidentales et 'l'humanité européenne'. Sur cette question, ce livre montre comment Hountondji a anticipé une bonne partie des débats contemporains, en ayant aussi été l'un des premiers à avoir clairement énoncé le projet philosophique d'une refondation des savoirs endogènes africains."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The demanding frontier life of My Ántonia or Little House on the Prairie may be long gone, but the idyllic small town still exists as a cherished icon of American community life. Yet sprawl and urban density, rather than small towns and farms, are the predominant features of our modern society, agribusiness and other commercial forces have rapidly taken over family farms and ranches, and even the open spaces we think of as natural retreats only retain the barest façade of (...) their former frontier austerity. The fading communities, social upheaval, and enduring heritage of the Northern Plains are the subject of Jim Dow’s Marking the Land, a stirring photographic tribute to the complex and unyielding landscape of North Dakota. Jim Dow began making pilgrimages to this remote territory in 1981 and, with a commission from the North Dakota Museum of Art, he took photographs of the passing human presence on the land. The simple, stolid pieces of architecture carved out against the Dakota skies—whether the local schoolhouse, car wash, prison, homes, hunting lodge, or churches—evoke in their spare lines and weather-battered frames the stoic and toughened spirit of the people within their walls. Folk art is also an integral part of the landscape in Dow’s visual study, and he examines the subtle evolution of local craftsmanship from homemade sculptures, murals, and carvings to carefully crafted pieces aimed at tourists. Anchoring all of these explorations is the raw and striking landscape of the North Dakota plains. Marking the Land is a moving reflection by a leading American photographer on the state of the Northern Plains today, forcing us all to rethink our conceptions of America’s forgotten frontier. (shrink)

In light of recent technological innovations and discourses around data and algorithmic analytics, scholars of many stripes are attempting to develop critical agendas and responses to these developments. In this mutual interview, three scholars discuss the stakes, ideas, responsibilities, and possibilities of critical data studies. The resulting dialog seeks to explore what kinds of critical approaches to these topics, in theory and practice, could open and make available such approaches to a broader audience.

This paper presents a counterfactual account of what a mechanism is. Mechanisms consist of parts, the behavior of which conforms to generalizations that are invariant under interventions, and which are modular in the sense that it is possible in principle to change the behavior of one part independently of the others. Each of these features can be captured by the truth of certain counterfactuals.

The conclusion of this paper will be that e-sports are not sports. I begin by offering a stipulation and a definition. I stipulate that what I have in mind, when thinking about the concept of sport, is ‘Olympic’ sport. And I define an Olympic Sport as an institutionalised, rule-governed contest of human physical skill. The justification for the stipulation lies partly in that it is uncontroversial. Whatever else people might think of as sport, no-one denies that Olympic Sport is sport. (...) This seeks to ensure that those who might wish to dispute my conclusion might stay with the argument at least for as long as possible. Secondly, the justification for the stipulation lies partly in its normativity—I have chosen an Olympic conception of sport just because it seems to me to offer some kind of desirable version of what sport is and might become. Thirdly, I give examples which show how prominent promoters of e-sports agree with my stipulation, as evidenced by their strenuous attempts to comply with it i... (shrink)

"We become what we love," states Jim Garrison in Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching. This provocative book represents a major new interpretation of Dewey's education philosophy. It is also an examination of what motivates us to teach and to learn, and begins with the idea of education of eros (i.e., passionate desire)-"the supreme aim of education" as the author puts it-and how that desire results in a practical philosophy that guides us in recognizing what (...) is essentially good or valuable. Garrison weaves these threads of ancient wisdom into a critical analysis of John Dewey's writings that reveal an implicit theory of eros in reasoning, and the central importance of educating eros to seek "the Good." Chapters: Plato's Symposium: Eros, the Beautiful, and the Good • Care, Sympathy, and Community in Classroom Teaching: Feminist Reflections on the Expansive Self • Play-Doh, Poetry, and "Ethereal Things" • The Aesthetic Context of Inquiry and the Teachable Moment • The Education of Eros: Critical and Creative Value Appraisal • Teaching and the Logic of Moral Perception This book can be used in graduate courses in foundations, teacher education, philosophy of education, qualitative research, arts and education, language and literacy, and women and education. Jim Garrison is Professor of Philosophy of Education at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. He is pastpresident of the John Dewey Society and a winner of the Society's Outstanding Achievement Award. (shrink)

A startling look at one of this century's most influential philosophers, the book chronicles every stage of Foucault's personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.

Donald Davidson finds folk-psychological explanations anomalous due to the open-ended and constitutive conception of rationality which they employ, and yet monist because they invoke an ontology of only physical events. An eliminative materialist who thinks that the beliefs and desires of folk-psychology are mere pre-scientific fictions cannot accept these claims, but he could accept anomalous monism construed as an analysis, merely, of the ideological and ontological presumptions of folk-psychology. Of course, eliminative materialism is itself only a guess, a marker for (...) material explanations we do not have, but it is made plausible by, inter alia, whatever difficulties we have in interpreting intentional folk-explanations realistically. And surely anomalous monism does require further explanation if it is to be accepted realistically and not dismissed as an analysis of a folk-idiom which is to be construed instrumentally at best. Some further explanation is needed of how beliefs, desires, etc. can form rational patterns which have ‘no echo in physical theory’ and yet those beliefs, desires etc. be physical events. To this end I propose to graft on to anomalous monism a modest version of functionalism. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Scientists obtain a great deal of the evidence they use by observingnatural and experimentally generated objects and effects. Much of thestandard philosophical literature on this subject comes from20th century logical positivists and empiricists, theirfollowers, and critics who embraced their issues and accepted some oftheir assumptions even as they objected to specific views. Theirdiscussions of observational evidence tend to focus on epistemologicalquestions about its role in theory testing. This entry follows theirlead even though observational evidence also plays important andphilosophically interesting roles (...) in other areas including scientificdiscovery and the application of scientific theories to practicalproblems. (shrink)