Dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena is abundant in philosophy. One particularly tenacious dichotomy is between “automatic” and “controlled” processes. In this characterization automatic and unintelligent go hand in hand, as do non-automatic and intelligent. Accounts of skillful action have problematized this dichotomous conceptualization and moved towards a more nuanced understanding of human agency. This binary thinking is, however, still abundant in the philosophy of joint action. Habits and skills allow us agentic ways of guiding complex action routines that would otherwise (...) overwhelm our reflective capacities. In this paper, I look at how theories of skill, habit, and know-how in individual action can inform a non-dichotomous account of joint action. I argue that a fuller understanding of joint agency has to understand not only group know-how, but also the role of attention and the highly integrated types of control that allow agents to act together. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Im Zentrum des Werkes von Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) steht die Frage nach der Vernunft der Praxis und der Praxis der Vernunft. Dieses klassische Thema der praktischen Philosophie, das heute im Hintergrund verschiedener Debatten in Philosophie und Politikwissenschaft steht, leitete Oakeshott in seiner Auseinandersetzung mit der modernen Politik. Die in dem Sammelband vereinigten Beitrage bieten einen Uberblick uber die internationale Forschungslage; ihr gemeinsamer Angelpunkt ist Oakeshotts Praxisbegriff: Diskutiert wird seine praktische Bedeutung im Durchgang durch die grundlegenden politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemfragen der (...) Gegenwart, seine theoretische Leistungsfahigkeit ist Gegenstand vergleichender Perspektiven, die vor allem die deutschen Zeitgenossen wie H. Arendt, H.-G. Gadamer, G. Simmel oder L. Strauss einbeziehen. Der vorliegende Band unternimmt es, die seit mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten intensiv gefuhrte, vor allem angelsachsische Debatte um Oakeshotts Denken in die einschlagigen deutschen Diskussionen zu tragen und die Anknupfungspunkte sichtbar zu machen, die sein facettenreiches Werk fur die Verstandigung uber eine humane Praxis in den Konflikten des 21. Jahrhunderts bietet. Mit Beitragen von: Josiah Lee Auspitz, Michael Becker, Wendell John Coats Jr., Peter Finn, Jurgen Gebhardt, Steven A. Gerencser, Michael Grossheim, Michael Henkel, Hans Jorg Hennecke, Bart van Klink, Silviya Lechner, Oliver W. Lembcke, Kenneth B. McIntyre, Efraim Podoksik, Rainer Schmidt, Suvi Soininen, Judith A. Swanson, Martyn P. Thompson. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Social practices are a key concept in Raimo Tuomela’s work on sociality, they help us understand many aspects of sociality, including customs, traditions, and institutions. The key elements in his analysis of social practices are we-attitudes and pattern-governed behaviors. I am sympathetic to Tuomela’s approach to sociality to the extent that it recognizes and spells out many sufficient and necessary conditions for different types of social activity that together make up sociality. I agree with him that the complexity and multiplicity (...) of human agency, both when acting individually as well as when acting collectively or cooperatively, indeed calls for such an analysis with multiple sufficiency conditions. I especially appreciate his acknowledgement of the role of habits, customs, and the like for sociality. His three most recent books all pay attention to this aspect of human being. In this paper, I will zoom in on this aspect of Tuomela’s work and look at how he integrates habits, customs, and skills. In Tuomela’s words, I will zoom in on pattern-governed behaviors and social practices. On the one hand he gives them an important role and mentions customs often, as the “collective counterpart of habits” (Tuomela, Raimo. The Philosophy of Social Practices: A Collective Acceptance View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487446, 2002, p. 121). At the same time, the analysis of habits and customs left me wanting. I will argue that they are too strongly dependent on and are integrated in a context in which we-attitudes are the key explanatory element. (shrink)

The work under consideration addresses a fundamental problem in cognitive neuroscience and social science. Although both aim to explain and understand human action, their explanatory tools are so divergent that our theories are riddled with conceptual gaps. Both fields are moreover permeated by old-fashioned action theory and folk psychology, which explain and understand action in terms of mind-reading and attributing beliefs, desires, and intentions to others. While these theories may work pragmatically in navigating our social world, they are increasingly questioned (...) as a basis for our theorizing. These and other problems within both disciplines have long held back a much-needed multidisciplinary approach to human action from gaining traction. Turner’s book aims to set it free. In this review I assess the book based on the key argumentative steps in Turner’s analysis, rather than providing a chapter-by-chapter overview. (shrink)

Dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena is abundant in philosophy. One particularly tenacious dichotomy is between “automatic” and “controlled” processes. In this characterization automatic and unintelligent go hand in hand, as do non-automatic and intelligent. Accounts of skillful action have problematized this dichotomous conceptualization and moved towards a more nuanced understanding of human agency. This binary thinking is, however, still abundant in the philosophy of joint action. Habits and skills allow us agentic ways of guiding complex action routines that would otherwise (...) overwhelm our reflective capacities. In this paper, I look at how theories of skill, habit, and know-how in individual action can inform a non-dichotomous account of joint action. I argue that a fuller understanding of joint agency has to understand not only group know-how, but also the role of attention and the highly integrated types of control that allow agents to act together. (shrink)

Chow tries to show that for the case of hard-core experimentation, the criticisms of NHST are not valid. Even if one is willing to adopt his epistemological ideology, several shortcomings of NHST remain. We argue for a flexible and thoughtful application of statistical tools (including significance tests) instead of a ritualized statistical catechism that relies on the magic of α.

Angiogenesis is central to both the growth and metastasis of solid tumours. Anti‐angiogenic strategies result in blood vessel regression accompanied by tumour cell apoptosis. Radiotherapy and many chemotherapeutic agents kill tumours by inducing apoptotic cell death. We propose that, in addition to its role as an angiogenic factor, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) can act as a survival factor for tumour cells protecting them from apoptosis. Thus anti‐angiogenics, in particular those directed against VEGF, have multiple anti‐tumour effects. We suggest that (...) anti‐VEGF strategies prevent vessel growth and block a tumour cell survival factor, VEGF, rendering tumour cells more sensitive to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In addition, as chemotherapy and radiotherapy have been shown to increase VEGF expression, anti‐VEGF strategies may overcome therapy‐ induced tumour cell resistance. BioEssays 24:280–283, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.; DOI 10.1002/bies.10043. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag nimmt als Ausganspunkt die gegenwärtige kontroverse Debatte um den adäquaten Erklärungsansatz in der Kognitionswissenschaft, und zwar zwischen Enaktivisten einerseits und Repräsentationalisten andererseits. Beispielhaft wurde aufgezeigt, dass in Bezug auf die soziale Kognition der enaktivistische Ansatz eine Voraussetzung machen muss, die er mit seinen eigenen Mitteln nicht einzufangen in der Lage ist. Denn der Versuch, das Verstehen des Anderen durch gemeinsame Sinnstiftung der Akteure innerhalb ihrer sozialen Interaktion zu erklären, gerät in einen Zirkel, da nicht erklärt wird, wie die (...) Kopplung und damit der Prozess der sozialen Interaktion allererst zustande kommen kann. Als Lösung dieses Problems wird eine repräsentationalistische Analyse der vorausgesetzten Fähigkeit, andere als potentielle Kooperationspartner anzusehen, entwickelt, und zwar mit den Mitteln von Millikans Teleosemantik. Diese Theorie aus dem Kontext der Debatte um die Naturalisierung mentaler Repräsentationen liefert mit den PP Repräsentationen den adäquaten Begriff, um sowohl verkörperte, handlungsorientierte Repräsentationen zur Analyse von Affordanzen, als auch verkörperte interaktionsorientierte Repräsentationen zur Analyse sozialer Affordanzen zu entwickeln. Dies erlaubt die Annahme einer zentralen Funktion für die soziale Wahrnehmung, die den blinden Fleck des enaktivistischen Ansatzes ausfüllen kann. Zugleich demonstriert diese Analyse der sozialen Wahrnehmung die explanatorische Überlegenheit (minimal) repräsentationalistischer Erklärungen gegenüber rein enaktivistischen Alternativen. (shrink)

Chromosomes that harbor dominant sex determination loci are predicted to erode over time—losing genes, accumulating transposable elements, degenerating into a functional wasteland and ultimately becoming extinct. The Drosophila melanogaster Y chromosome is fairly far along this path to oblivion. The few genes on largely heterochromatic Y chromosome are required for spermatocyte‐specific functions, but have no role in other tissues. Surprisingly, a recent paper shows that divergent Y chromosomes can substantially influence gene expression throughout the D. melanogaster genome.1 These results show (...) that variation on Y has an important influence on the deployment of the genome. BioEssays 30:409–411, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Carruthers rejects developmental evidence based primarily on an argument regarding one skill in particular: understanding false beliefs. We propose that this rejection is premature; and that identifying and examining the development of other subcomponent skills important for metacognition and mindreading, such as the ability to assess levels of knowledge, will in fact be useful in resolving this debate.

Clark and Fischer argue that people see social robots as depictions of social agents. However, people's interactions with virtual assistants may change their beliefs about social robots. Children and adults with exposure to virtual assistants may view social robots not as depictions of social agents, but as social agents belonging to a unique ontological category.

According to cognitive averaging theory, preferences for attractive faces result from their similarity to facial prototypes, the categorical central tendencies of a population of faces. Prototypical faces are processed more fluently, resulting in increased positive affect in the viewer.

This paper examines the controversy that followed the 1987 publication of Joseph Greenberg's book, Language in the Americas, attending to the role of language and linguistic research within overlapping disciplinary traditions. With this text, Greenberg presented a macro‐level tripartite classification that opposed then dominant fine‐grained analyses recognizing anywhere from 150 to 200 distinct language families. His proposal was the subject of a landmark conference, examining strengths and weaknesses, the unpublished proceedings of which are presented here for the first time. For (...) specialists in the anthropological and comparative‐historical study of Indigenous American languages, Greenberg's intervention highlighted the tension between language, conceived as an abstract object of study, and languages, understood to be carriers of specific cultural knowledge. For physical anthropologists and archaeologists, his theory was initially fortuitous on programmatic, substantive, and methodological grounds. The essay will show how interdisciplinary appeals were figured by supporters as a virtue, and by critics as a vice. The essay further highlights ethical reasons for integrating historical narratives of science and the humanities. (shrink)

This article attends to “questionnaires” in linguistic fieldwork defined by the inclusion of sensory stimuli. It shows that such non-verbal protocols have been used to help elucidate and compare semantic content, which has generally been subordinated to formal analysis in the history of linguistics. To explain and exemplify this relationship, I target the color questionnaire developed by Hugo Magnus, which included ten standardized color chips and a long list of interview questions on language use. Magnus’s questionnaire (Fragebogen) decoupled perception and (...) denotation in its day, though similar protocols have recently been employed to restore the connection between meaning and form. (shrink)

The society in which we currently live and operate is globally the Fourth Industrial Revolution and locally our environment or community. Although we are still in a lag period between the 3IR and 4IR, the 4IR already has a global disruptive effect, with artificial intelligence being gradually implemented, with fluid contexts, and where nobody agrees on anything. Deep learning, unlearning and relearning must take place on a daily basis. The question could well be asked if there is any place for (...) the Bible and Christianity in this new vibrant global community.All theology is contextual. Although theology deals with what is most absolute in reality, citing Mellert, it is also relative in that there is never a final or last answer to most religious questions. The handbook and norm for our theology and religion is still the Bible – a compendium of books written approximately 2000 years ago with no new information added to it ever since. The challenge of the church is to make that information contextual in this ‘disruptive’ era and to bring the gospel in a new and fresh way to everybody without compromising the basic truths and normativity of the Bible.This article argues that the Bible should still take centre stage in the academic training of our theological students, in our preaching of the gospel on a daily basis, in our engagement with people in need and in the transformation of our societies in general. As the centre of Jesus’ preaching on earth was the kingdom of God, he also acted as the perfect example of how to establish the kingdom of God and the flourishing life on earth.Contribution: This is a more practical article and puts the notion of the significance of the Bible within the environment of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As this is a disruptive era, it requires from us to also present the word of God in a ‘disruptive’ way. We will have to present the ‘old’ word of God in a brand-new way so as to make sure that the people of this era will grasp it. (shrink)

Post-school education in South Africa mostly takes place within an industrial-age factory environment as has been done for the past 50 years or longer. This is the case despite the fact that the world is on the brink of, or already part of, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, called by some an ‘emerging new world order’. Educating students today like we did it half a century ago has now become education to a ‘quickly vanishing world’. Although one may argue that the (...) content of Theology will not be much affected by the 4IR, it is proposed that the way in which that content is communicated and educated should change drastically. Doing this will prepare our students to become relevant preachers or theologians in the current postmodern society. The proposed model in this article is called an outside-in model – contrasted to the current inside-out model of education – in which our students should be taught to develop a sense of deep learning, to effectively learn and work in and with groups, to use their mobile devices and social media within the environment of education and to discuss new ways of gathering God’s people.The question that each educator should ask themselves nowadays is: Am I really preparing my students for the future that they are facing?Contribution: A new way of teaching Theology in the 4IR is imperative for our students. This article suggests how it could be done. Although this entails willpower and persuading the mostly ‘old’ lecturers in Theology to engage with real technology, it is all about the student, because many of these students will become the lecturers of tomorrow. Our faculties or departments of Theology are therefore urged to fit themselves into the new mould and to train our future theologians in a 4IR way. (shrink)

Empirical philosophers of science aim to base their philosophical theories on observations of scientific practice. But since there is far too much science to observe it all, how can we form and test hypotheses about science that are sufficiently rigorous and broad in scope, while avoiding the pitfalls of bias and subjectivity in our methods? Part of the answer, we claim, lies in the computational tools of the digital humanities, which allow us to analyze large volumes of scientific literature. Here (...) we advocate for the use of these methods by addressing a number of large-scale, justificatory concerns—specifically, about the epistemic value of journal articles as evidence for what happens elsewhere in science, and about the ability of DH tools to extract this evidence. Far from ignoring the gap between scientific literature and the rest of scientific practice, effective use of DH tools requires critical reflection about these relationships. (shrink)

In South Africa, the implementation of serious games and gamification in the design of curricula, being presented in schools and institutions of higher education, is mostly a novelty. As we are in a transitional phase with education, especially on two levels, namely, with the decolonisation of education and preparing education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it would be fitting and high time to fully implement gaming into the curricula. This article takes a look at the implementation of a serious game (...) on an undergraduate level at a residential university. It focuses in a pragmatic way on applying the serious game on biblical languages – Greek, Hebrew and Latin – proposing that they should be presented to the student as paper behind the glass. (shrink)

This paper examines the role that linguistic and cognitive prominence play in the resolution of anaphor–antecedent relationships. In two experiments, we found that pronouns are immediately sensitive to the cognitive prominence of potential antecedents when other antecedent selection cues are uninformative. In experiment 1, results suggest that despite their theoretical dissimilarities, topic and contrastive focus both serve to enhance cognitive prominence. Results from experiment 2 suggest that the contrastive prosody appropriate for focus constructions may also play an important role in (...) enhancing cognitive prominence. Thus different types of linguistic prominence (topic, contrastive focus) appear to have the common effect of increasing the cognitive prominence of the discourse referent. For pronouns with two possible antecedents, the cognitive prominence of an antecedent aids in anaphor resolution, immediately biasing selection towards the more prominent (and ultimately preferred) antecedent. (shrink)

From the 15th century onwards, most of the countries in Africa have been colonised by theEuropean world powers, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium.South Africa was officially colonised in 1652. Apart from the European colonisation beingexecuted from the south of the continent, South Africa also experienced a migration andinvasion of people groups from the north. The indigenous people groups, inhabiting thecountry long before these two groups arrived there, will be discussed as background to the restof the article. (...) A few factors that made the colonisation of South Africa unique within theAfrican context will be discussed. (shrink)

Described as a ‘sort of Human Genome Project for historical linguistics’, the Evolution of Human Languages Project (EHL) is dedicated to promoting long-range genealogical research into linguistic prehistory. Toward that end, its architects have sought to collect and coordinate evidence of every known human language, roughly 6000 in all, fostering an interdisciplinary and internationally accessible environment for the study of historical universals and contemporary diversity. This article investigates the roots and branches of the Global Lexicostatistical Database – a component project (...) of the EHL. It pays special attention to strategies for encoding epistemological pluralism in a web-based archive of global proportions. (shrink)

In the book of Romans, also called 'Paul's Letter/Epistle to the Romans', it is clear that Paul created a very close lexical semantic relation between the concepts πίστις/πιστεύω [faith, believe], δίκαιος/δικαιοσύνη [righteous, righteousness] and σωτηρία/σῴζω [salvation, save]. Although it is said that the theme of righteousness is the focal point of Paul's theology, especially in Romans, this term is very closely linked to the two concepts, faith and salvation, in this letter. The aim of this article is to investigate that (...) relation, specifically in the two passages of Romans 1:16-17 and 10:6a, 8b-10, in an attempt to come to an understanding of what Paul had in mind when he used these three terms together in these passages. (shrink)

This article examines a neglected ancient source for desire between women that nonetheless has a rich reception history in the context of female homoeroticism: the Callisto episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The article argues that the relationship between Diana and her hunting companion Callisto can be read as homoerotic and that, unlike many ancient accounts of female-female eroticism, neither character is represented as a tribas (a gender-deviant “woman” with a masculinized body, who seeks to penetrate other women). The Callisto episode is (...) therefore an invaluable piece of evidence for ancient discourses on sexuality exceeding the bounds of the active/passive model. (shrink)

The study has two objectives: to introduce grip force recording as a new technique for studying embodied numerical processing; and to demonstrate how three competing accounts of numerical magnitude representation can be tested by using this new technique: the Mental Number Line, A Theory of Magnitude and Embodied Cognition account. While 26 healthy adults processed visually presented single digits in a go/no-go n-back paradigm, their passive holding forces for two small sensors were recorded in both hands. Spontaneous and unconscious grip (...) force changes related to number magnitude occurred in the left hand already 100–140 ms after stimulus presentation and continued systematically. Our results support a two-step model of number processing where an initial stage is related to the automatic activation of all stimulus properties whereas a later stage consists of deeper conscious processing of the stimulus. This interpretation generalizes previous work with linguistic stimuli and elaborates the timeline of embodied cognition. We hope that the use of grip force recording will advance the field of numerical cognition research. (shrink)

The year 2017 is the year in which the Reformation, started by Martin Luther, is celebrating its 500th birthday. This depicts a milestone in the life of the Church of the Reformation and also in the life of Christians worldwide. This is a good time to ponder on the epistemological question of the validity and necessity of the Reformation. If this question is answered in a positive way, then it could bring us to the realisation that the time is ripe (...) for an African Reformation. This article will argue that this is indeed the case. A reformation, transformation and change is needed for the African Christian context. However, the question could well be asked: Who will be the 'second Luther?'. (shrink)

This article sheds new light on late-19th-century debates about the organization of knowledge through its emphasis on German orientalism and comparative linguistics. Centering on Friedrich Carl Andreas’ (1846–1930) controversial reconstruction of the Avestan language and its sacred literary corpus, I highlight a shift from the history of texts to an engagement with ‘living’ language in the decades around 1900. Andreas is shown to have inherited aspects of two schools, which collectively defined the landscape of 19th-century philological research – one traditional (...) and the other comparative. The long-standing struggle between these schools demonstrates that ‘the humanities’ were no monolithic foil to the rise of natural sciences during the second half of the 19thcentury. Instead, I argue that alternative conceptual frameworks were cultivated within German philology – concepts that were taken up in broader disciplinary debates, though they were not narrowly the products of them. (shrink)