Two experiments were conducted to investigate the roles of covariation and of causality in people's readiness to believe a conditional. The experiments used a probabilistic truth-table task (Oberauer & Wilhelm, 2003) in which people estimated the probability of a conditional given information about the frequency distribution of truth-table cases. For one group of people, belief in the conditional was determined by the conditional probability of the consequent, given the antecedent, whereas for another group it depended on the probability of the (...) conjunction of antecedent and consequent. There was little evidence that covariation, expressed as the probabilistic contrast or as the pCI rule (White, 2003), influences belief in the conditional. The explicit presence of a causal link between antecedent and consequent in a context story had a weak positive effect on belief in a conditional when the frequency distribution of relevant cases was held constant. (shrink)

William of Auvergne is one of the first Latin thinkers to discuss Avicenna’s cosmological theory of emanation and with it the famous principle «ex uno, secundum quod est unum, non est nisi unum». He accepts the validity of this principle itself, but vehemently rejects its use in the field of cosmology to explain God’s acting as the universe’s creator. Within the context of Trinitarian theology, however, William applies the ex-uno-principle to explain two core issues concerning the emanation of the second (...) Trinitarian person out of the first: the theory of the only-begotten Son and the persons’ sharing of the one divine essence. In his treatment of the latter, William uses the Avicennian principle in a modified way which is illustrated in this paper. (shrink)

This article presents results from a multidisciplinary research project on the integration and transfer of language knowledge into robots as an empirical paradigm for the study of language development in both humans and humanoid robots. Within the framework of human linguistic and cognitive development, we focus on how three central types of learning interact and co-develop: individual learning about one's own embodiment and the environment, social learning (learning from others), and learning of linguistic capability. Our primary concern is how these (...) capabilities can scaffold each other's development in a continuous feedback cycle as their interactions yield increasingly sophisticated competencies in the agent's capacity to interact with others and manipulate its world. Experimental results are summarized in relation to milestones in human linguistic and cognitive development and show that the mutual scaffolding of social learning, individual learning, and linguistic capabilities creates the context, conditions, and requisites for learning in each domain. Challenges and insights identified as a result of this research program are discussed with regard to possible and actual contributions to cognitive science and language ontogeny. In conclusion, directions for future work are suggested that continue to develop this approach toward an integrated framework for understanding these mutually scaffolding processes as a basis for language development in humans and robots. (shrink)

This book/CD package guides readers and listeners on a journey through Franz Schubert's Winterreise song cycle, in which the composer set the poetry of Wilhelm Muller to music. The complete text of the 24 poems is presented in both German and English, with 116 b&w photographs of winter scenes on the facing pages. An introductory essay by Susan Youens offers a critical examination of the song cycle. The music CD features a new recording of Winterreise, performed by baritone Paul Rowe (...) and pianist Martha Fischer. Oversize: 10.25x10.25". Annotation 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Im 20. Jahrhundert sind Zweifel an normativ hoch aufgeladenen Unterscheidungen aufgekommen, wie zwischen Mensch und Tier oder zwischen Frau und Mann, und dies hat die Dringlichkeit gesteigert, nicht nur uber bestimmte Unterscheidungen zu streiten, sondern sich auf die Arten und Weisen unseres Unterscheidens selbst zu richten. Unsere Praxis des Unterscheidens lasst sich nicht als ganze uberblicken, sondern nur exemplarisch an bestimmten Unterscheidungsvollzugen reflektieren. Dies geschieht in der vorliegenden Studie am Beispiel der Unterscheidung zwischen Wunsch und Wille. Diese Unterscheidung betrifft unser (...) Selbstverstandnis als Handelnde und sie verweist auf die Erfahrung der Diskrepanz zwischen dem, was wir uns vornehmen und gerne tun wurden, und dem, was wir tatsachlich tun. Das Ziel der exemplarischen Unterscheidungsstudie im ersten Teil wie der methodischen Grundlegung im zweiten Teil liegt darin, einen Grundriss spezifischer, inhaltsgesattigter und systematischer Unterscheidungsforschung zu entwerfen. Votiert wird in Auseinandersetzung mit Platon und Hegel fur eine dynamische Weise dialektischen Unterscheidens. (shrink)

Die Diatriben und das Encheiridion des Stoikers Epiktet (spätes 1. bis frühes 2.Jh.n.Chr.) erfreuen sich eines bleibenden Interesses in der Forschung. Dies belegen zahlreiche Einzeluntersuchungen sowie neuere Kommentare und Übersetzungen zu ausgewählten Kapiteln seines Werkes. Als Stoiker weist Epiktet insofern eine Besonderheit auf, als er die theologischen Aspekte in seiner Philosophie besonders betont. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit einem wichtigen Teil der Theologie Epiktets: seiner Gebetslehre. Epiktet integriert in sein Werk Gebetstexte, die er seinen Schülern als Vorbild- und Übungstexte (...) an die Hand gibt, und stellt mehrfach die Wichtigkeit der Gebete innerhalb des täglichen Lebens heraus. Sie sind nach Epiktets Lehre ein zentrales Element der angemessenen stoischen Lebenshaltung. Mit seiner Gebetslehre beeinflusst Epiktet nicht nur Philosophen der Antike, sondern auch frühchristliche Theologen. Um Epiktets Gebetslehre vorzustellen, werden die Gebete Epiktets und seine Aussagen über das Beten in der vorliegenden Arbeit in ihrem jeweiligen Kontext bezüglich Form, Inhalt und Funktionen analysiert und interpretiert. Darüber hinaus wird anhand der Gebetslehren ausgewählter Autoren ein Einblick in die Geschichte des philosophischen Gebets gegeben, um Epiktets Gebetslehre anschließend darin verorten zu können. (shrink)

Research on sustainability assurance is still in its beginnings. One of the key questions in this field that also is of the highest practical relevance is concerned with the quality of the assurance process. However, a common understanding of assurance quality and how it should be measured is still missing. We try to close this gap by building on the financial audit literature. We introduce a definition of assurance quality that comprises two key aspects: the depth of the assurance process (...) and the breadth of the assurance statement. Based on prior research, we hypothesize that a firm’s sustainability performance is related to the depth of the assurance process, while the type of the assurance provider, more precisely the affiliation to the accounting profession, is related to the breadth of the assurance statement. Results for a sample of 122 European firms reveal a negative relationship between sustainability performance and assurance process depth as well as between the affiliation to the accounting profession and assurance statement breadth. Thus, we find evidence that poor sustainability performers ask for in-depth assurance services, most likely as a means to enhance their internal sustainability-related processes and systems. Assurance providers that do not belong to the accounting profession in turn are associated with broader assurance statements. (shrink)

I am going to argue that it is a cost of libertarianism that it holds our status as agents hostage to theoretical physics, but that claim has met with disagreement. Some libertarians regard it as the cost of doing business, not a philosophical liability. By contrast, Peter van Inwagen has addressed the worry head on. He says that if he were to become convinced that causal determinism were true, he would not change his view that humans are free and morally (...) responsible. Rather, he would give up at least one of the formerly-thought-to-be a priori truths that are elements in his argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the relevant sort of freedom. Thus, according to van Inwagen, our status as free and morally responsible agents would not be held hostage to the physicists or hang on a thread I think that van Inwagen’s strategy for securing our freedom and responsibility is unattractive. Somewhat tendentiously, I have called the rejection of an a priori ingredient in the incompatibilist’s argument, contingent upon learning that causal determinism is true, ‘metaphysical fip-flopping.’ -/- And it does seem that van Inwagen’s approach is implausible insofar as he is open to such metaphysical fip-fopping. That he is open to it—that he would fip-fop if he became convinced of the truth of causal determinism—is a problem for his actual philosophical position. Or so I will argue. (shrink)

How does the brain generate our experience of being in control over our actions and their effects? Here, we argue that the perception of events as self-caused emerges from a comparison between anticipated and actual action-effects: if the representation of an event that follows an action is activated before the action, the event is experienced as caused by one’s own action, whereas in the case of a mismatch it will be attributed to an external cause rather than to the self. (...) In a subliminal priming paradigm we show that participants overestimated how much control they had over objectively uncontrollable stimuli, which appeared after free- or forced-choice actions, when a masked prime activated a representation of the stimuli immediately before each action. This prime-induced control-illusion was independent from whether primes were consciously perceived. Results indicate that the conscious experience of control is modulated by unconscious anticipations of action-effects. (shrink)

While interdisciplinarity is not a new concept, the political and discursive mobilisation of interdisciplinarity is. Since the 1990s, this movement has intensified, and this has affected central funding bodies so that interdisciplinarity is now a de facto requirement in successful grant application. As a result, the literature is ripe with definitions, taxonomies, discussions and other attempts to grasp and define the concept of interdisciplinarity. In this paper, we explore how strategic demands for interdisciplinarity meet, interact with and change local research (...) practices and results of higher education and research. Our aim is to question and trace the consequences of applying the slippery and difficult term interdisciplinarity in research. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish interdisciplinary research programme, where we observed and analysed practices of writing, publishing, collaboration and educational development in five different research projects. We show how the call for interdisciplinarity was mobilised in a way that rendered the incentives and motives behind the programme unclear. Furthermore, we argue that the absence of clear definitions and assessment criteria produced a dominant, all-inclusive, but vague, configuration of interdisciplinarity that affected the research outcome, and ultimately, promoted and reproduced the existing monodisciplinary research and power structures. (shrink)

In view of the numerous accounting and corporate scandals associated with various forms of moral misconduct and the recent financial crisis, economics and business programs are often accused of actively contributing to the amoral decision making of their graduates. It is argued that theories and ideas taught at universities engender moral misbehavior among some managers, as these theories mainly focus on the primacy of profit-maximization and typically neglect the ethical and moral dimensions of decision making. To investigate this criticism, two (...) overlapping effects must be disentangled: the self-selection effect and the treatment effect. Drawing on the concept of moral judgment competence, we empirically examine this question with a sample of 1773 bachelor’s and 501 master’s students. Our results reveal that there is neither a self-selection nor a treatment effect for economics and business studies. Moreover, our results indicate that—regardless of the course of studies—university education in general does not seem to foster students’ moral development. (shrink)

In this paper I explore in a preliminary way the interconnections among narrative explanation, narrative value, free will, an immortality. I build on the fascinating an suggestive work of David Velleman. I offer the hypothesis that our acting freely is what gives our lives a distinctive kind of value - narrative value. Free Will, then, is connected to the capacity to lead a meaningful life in a quite specific way: it is the ingredient which, when aded to others, enows us (...) with a meaning over an above the cumulative value erived from ading together levels of momentary welfare. In acting freely, we are writing a sentence in the story of our lives, and the value of acting freely is thus a species of the value of artistic creativity or self-expression (understood appropriately). Finally, I contend that the fact that our lives are stories need not entail that they have endings, or that immortality would necessarily be unimaginable or essentially different from ordinary, finite human life. Yes, a certain sort of narrative understanding of our lives as a whole would be impossible in the context of immortality; but much of what we care about, and value, in our stories might remain. (shrink)

The current neurosciences contribute to the construction of gender/sex to a high degree. Moreover, the subject of gender/sex differences in cognitive abilities attracts an immense public interest. At the same time, the entanglement of gender and science has been shown in many theoretical and empirical analyses. Although the body of literature is very extensive and differentiated with regards to the dimensions of ‘neuroscience of gender’ and ‘gender in neuroscience’, the feeding back of these findings into the field of neuroscience remains (...) a desideratum. Especially, the question of how gender knowledge, i.e. insights from feminist theory on gender/sex and from gender and science studies on knowledge production, may be integrated and applied within the neurosciences has been strongly neglected. Presumably due to their epistemic culture and epistemological presuppositions, these critical engagements are conceived as externalist by critical scholars and neuroscientists alike. In this context, the question arises of how substantiated gender knowledge may be accounted for in neuroscientific research practice? The article outlines methodological considerations for a critical research agenda in the cognitive neurosciences. I present thoughts on how insights and expertise from gender and science studies can be taken into account in the neuroscientific practice of knowledge production. Starting from the assumption that changes in neuroscientific research practices are possible, my aim is to point out possibilities of integrating gender knowledge into the neurosciences. (shrink)

This study explores the attitude of German psychiatrists in leading positions towards joint crisis plans and psychiatric advance directives. This topic was examined by contacting 473 medical directors of German psychiatric hospitals and departments. They were asked to complete a questionnaire developed by us. That form contained questions about the incidence and acceptance of joint crisis plans and psychiatric advance directives and previous experiences with them. 108 medical directors of psychiatric hospitals and departments responded . Their answers demonstrate that in (...) their hospitals these documents are rarely used. Among the respondents, joint crisis plans are more accepted than psychiatric advance directives. There is a certain uncertainty when dealing with these instruments. Our main conclusion is that German psychiatry needs an intensified discussion on the use of instruments for patients to constitute procedures for future critical psychiatric events. For this purpose it will be helpful to collect more empirical data. Furthermore, the proposal of joint crisis plans in psychiatric hospitals and departments should be discussed as well as the possibility of consulting an expert during the preparation of a psychiatric advance directive. (shrink)

This paper examines whether adults can adapt to novel accents of their native language that contain unfamiliar context-dependent phonological alternations. In two experiments, French participants listen to short stories read in accented speech. Their knowledge of the accents is then tested in a forced-choice identification task. In Experiment 1, two groups of listeners are exposed to newly created French accents in which certain vowels harmonize or disharmonize, respectively, to the rounding of the preceding vowel. Despite the cross-linguistic predominance of vowel (...) harmony over disharmony, the two groups adapt equally well to both accents, suggesting that this typological difference is not reflected in perceptual learning. Experiment 2 further explores the mechanism underlying this type of phonological learning. Participants are exposed to an accent in which some vowels harmonize and others disharmonize, yielding an increased featural complexity. They adapt less well to this regularity, showing that adaptation to novel accents involves feature-based inferences. (shrink)

In this paper an approach to the exhaustive interpretation of answers is developed. It builds on a proposal brought forward by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984). We will use the close connection between their approach and McCarthy's (1980, 1986) predicate circumscription and describe exhaustive interpretation as an instance of interpretation in minimal models, well-known from work on counterfactuals (see for instance Lewis (1973)). It is shown that by combining this approach with independent developments in semantics/pragmatics one can overcome certain limitations of (...) Groenenedijk and Stokhof's (1984) proposal. In the last part of the paper we will provide a Gricean motivation for exhaustive interpretation building on work of Schulz (to appear) and van Rooij and Schulz (2004). (shrink)

This article critically reflects upon the concept of “criminal offence” currently being discussed in Germany. One of the opinions that is critically reviewed argues that the criminalisation of behaviour (Verhalten) has to be legitimated independently of the criminal sanction (Sanktionsnorm). However, the author of this article argues that the concept of what a criminal offence is cannot be developed without taking into account what the reasons for punishment are.

Texts and textures: approaching an age of human-made nature through the particulate, the volatile, and the radiant. We have entered the Anthropocene era—a geological age of our own making, in which what we have understood to be nature is made by man. We need a new way to understand the dynamics of a new epoch. These volumes offer writings that approach the Anthropocene through the perspectives of grain, vapor, and ray—the particulate, the volatile, and the radiant. The first three volumes—each (...) devoted to one of the three textures—offer a series of paired texts, with contemporary writers responding to historic writings. A fourth volume offers a guide to the project as a whole. Grain: Granular materials add up to concrete forms; insignificant specks accumulate into complex entities. The texts in this volume narrate some of the fundamental qualities of the granular. In one pairing of texts, Robert Smithson compares the accumulation of thoughts to the aggregation of sediment, and an environmental historian writes about the stakes for earthly knowledge today. Other authors include Alfred Russel Wallace, Denis Diderot, and Georges Bataille. Vapor: The vaporous represents matter's transformations. In this volume, a political scientist compares Kafka's haunting “Odradek” to “vibrant matter”; a media theorist responds to poems and diagrams by Buckminster Fuller; and more, including texts by Hippocrates, Italo Calvino, and James Clerk Maxwell. Ray: A ray is an act of propagation and diffusion, encompassing a chain of interdependencies between energy and matter. This volume includes texts by Spinoza (with a reconceptualization by a contemporary philosopher), Jacques Lacan (followed by an anthropologist's reflections on temporality), Thomas Pynchon (accompanied by an interpretation of Pynchon's “electro-mysticism”), and others. These volumes constitute a unique experiment in design and composition as well as content. The mingling of texts and the juxtaposition of different areas of knowledge represented in a variety of forms express the dynamics of a world in change. (shrink)

Nothing seems more possible to me than that people some day will come to the definite opinion that there is no copy in the… nervous system which corresponds to a particular thought, or a particular idea, or, memory.WittgensteinIn a recent essay it was emphasized that brain and mind appear to the mind as complementary and reciprocally recursive domains of a hermeneutic circle (Fischer, 1987). An outstanding and not yet recognized feature of this hermeneutic circle is that interpretation within this (...) circle is not rule-governed and hence appears self-organized: individual features of the world (or the brain) become intelligible in terms of the whole context (of the mind)… while the entire context becomes intelligible through individual features (or brain functions). How, or from where then is significance arising? (shrink)

We investigated the impact of attention during encoding on later retrieval. During study, participants read some words aloud and named the print color of other words aloud . Then one of two memory tests was administered. The explicit test—recognition—required conscious recollection of whether a word was studied. Previously read words were recognized more accurately than were previously color named words. This contrasted sharply with performance on the implicit test—repetition priming in lexical decision. Here, words that were color named during study (...) showed priming equivalent to words that were read during study; both were responded to faster than unstudied words. Thus, an attentional manipulation during study had a strong effect on an explicit test of memory, but almost no effect on an implicit test. Focal attention during study is crucial for remembering consciously but not necessarily for remembering without awareness. (shrink)

Overweight and obesity among children and adolescents are global problems of our time. Due to their authority and role modeling, parents play an essential part in the efficacy of prevention and intervention programs. This study assessed the barriers that parents of overweight/obese children face in preventive and interventional health care utilization. Sixteen parents were qualitatively interviewed. A content analysis was performed, and barriers to change were allocated to their stage of change according to the transtheoretical model. Among the main barriers (...) is the underestimation of health risks caused by overweight/obesity in association with diminished problem awareness. Parents seem not necessarily in need of theoretical knowledge for prevention and interventions. They do however need support in evaluating the weight status of their child and the knowledge of whom to turn to for help as well as specific and hands-on possibilities for change. The results extend past studies by adding specific barriers to change that parents commonly experience. Possibilities to address these barriers, e.g., through trainings at the pediatric practice or adoption of conversation techniques, are discussed. Future studies might identify subgroups experiencing specific barriers and thus be able to address these in an individualized way. (shrink)

When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-monitoring and intervention components hold a lot of promise. We argue, however, that due to various factors such as access, targeting, personal resources or incentives, self-monitoring applications run the risk of increasing health inequalities, thereby creating a problem of social justice. We review empirical evidence for “intervention-generated” inequalities, present arguments that self-monitoring applications are still morally acceptable, and develop approaches to avoid the promotion of health inequalities (...) through self-monitoring applications. (shrink)

This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl (2000) to formalize a causal (...) notion of consequence. This notion inserted in premise semantics for counterfactuals in the style of Veltman (1976) and Kratzer (1979) will provide a new interpretation rule for conditionals. I will illustrate how this approach overcomes problems of previous proposals and end with some remarks on remaining questions. (shrink)

When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-monitoring and intervention components hold a lot of promise. We argue, however, that due to various factors such as access, targeting, personal resources or incentives, self-monitoring applications run the risk of increasing health inequalities, thereby creating a problem of social justice. We review empirical evidence for “intervention-generated” inequalities, present arguments that self-monitoring applications are still morally acceptable, and develop approaches to avoid the promotion of health inequalities (...) through self-monitoring applications. (shrink)

In this paper an approach to the exhaustive interpretation of answers is developed. It builds on a proposal brought forward by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984). We will use the close connection between their approach and McCarthy’s (1980, 1986) predicate circumscription and describe exhaustive interpretation as an instance of interpretation in minimal models, well-known from work on counterfactuals (see for instance Lewis (1973)). It is shown that by combining this approach with independent developments in semantics/pragmatics one can overcome certain limitations of (...) Groenenedijk and Stokhof’s (1984) proposal. In the last part of the paper we will provide a Gricean motivation for exhaustive interpretation building on work of Schulz (to appear) and van Rooij and Schulz (2004). (shrink)

In order for artificial intelligent systems to interact naturally with human users, they need to be able to learn from human instructions when actions should be imitated. Human tutoring will typically consist of action demonstrations accompanied by speech. In the following, the characteristics of human tutoring during action demonstration will be examined. A special focus will be put on the distinction between two kinds of motion events: path-oriented actions and manner-oriented actions. Such a distinction is inspired by the literature pertaining (...) to cognitive linguistics, which indicates that the human conceptual system can distinguish these two distinct types of motion. These two kinds of actions are described in language by more path-oriented or more manner-oriented utterances. In path-oriented utterances, the source, trajectory, or goal is emphasized, whereas in manner-oriented utterances the medium, velocity, or means of motion are highlighted. We examined a video corpus of adult–child interactions comprised of three age groups of children—pre-lexical, early lexical, and lexical—and two different tasks, one emphasizing manner more strongly and one emphasizing path more strongly. We analyzed the language and motion of the caregiver and the gazing behavior of the child to highlight the differences between the tutoring and the acquisition of the manner and path concepts. The results suggest that age is an important factor in the development of these action categories. The analysis of this corpus has also been exploited to develop an intelligent robotic behavior—the tutoring spotter system—able to emulate children's behaviors in a tutoring situation, with the aim of evoking in human subjects a natural and effective behavior in teaching to a robot. The findings related to the development of manner and path concepts have been used to implement new effective feedback strategies in the tutoring spotter system, which should provide improvements in human–robot interaction. (shrink)

Brain functions are stochastic processes without intentionality whereas mind emerges from brain functions as a Hegelian “change from quantity”, that is, on the order of 1012 profusely interconnected neurons, “into a new quality”: the collective phenomenon of the brain's self-experience. This self-referential and self-observing quality we have in mind is capable of (recursively) observing its self-observations, i.e., interpreting change that is meaningful in relation to itself. The notion of self-interpretation embodies the idea of a “hermeneutic circle”, that is, (in interpretation (...) theory) the treatment of the whole in relation to its parts. (shrink)

This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl to formalize a causal notion (...) of consequence. This notion inserted in premise semantics for counterfactuals in the style of Veltman and Kratzer will provide a new interpretation rule for conditionals. I will illustrate how this approach overcomes problems of previous proposals and end with some remarks on remaining questions. (shrink)

In this paper, a pragmatic approach to the phenomenon of free choice permission is proposed. Free choice permission is explained as due to taking the speaker (i) to obey certain Gricean maxims of conversation and (ii) to be competent on the deontic options, i.e. to know the valid obligations and permissions. The approach differs from other pragmatic approaches to free choice permission in giving a formally precise description of the class of inferences that can be derived based on these two (...) assumptions. This formalization builds on work of Halpern and Moses (1984) on the concept of ‘only knowing’, generalized by Hoek et al., (1999, 2000), and Zimmermann’s (2000) approach to competence. (shrink)

Micro-phenomenology is an interview and analysis method for investigating subjective experience. As a research tool, it provides detailed descriptions of brief moments of any type of subjective experience and offers techniques for systematically comparing them. In this article, we use an auto-ethnographic approach to present and explore the method. The reader is invited to observe a dialogue between two authors that illustrates and comments on the planning, conducting and analysis of a pilot series of five micro-phenomenological interviews. All these interviews (...) asked experienced researchers of micro-phenomenology to browse their memories to identify one successful and one challenging instance of working with micro-phenomenology. The interview then focused on this reflective task to investigate whether applying the method to itself might reveal quality criteria. The article starts by presenting a shortened and edited version of the first of these interviews. Keeping the dialogue format, we then outline the micro-phenomenological analysis procedure by demonstrating its application to part of this data and corresponding passages of other interviews. We focus on one unexpected finding: interviewed researchers judge the quality of an interview in part based on a connection or contact between interviewer and interviewee. We discuss these results in the context of the means and intentions of the method and suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

Stereotypes shape inferences in philosophical thought, political discourse, and everyday life. These inferences are routinely made when thinkers engage in language comprehension or production: We make them whenever we hear, read, or formulate stories, reports, philosophical case-descriptions, or premises of arguments – on virtually any topic. These inferences are largely automatic: largely unconscious, non-intentional, and effortless. Accordingly, they shape our thought in ways we can properly understand only by complementing traditional forms of philosophical analysis with experimental methods from psycholinguistics. This (...) paper seeks, first, to bring out the wider philosophical relevance of stereotypical inference, well beyond familiar topics like gender and race. Second, we wish to provide philosophers with a toolkit to experimentally study these ubiquitous inferences and what intuitions they may generate. This paper explains what stereotypes are, and why they matter to current and traditional concerns in philosophy – experimental, analytic, and applied. It then assembles a psycholinguistic toolkit and demonstrates through two studies how potentially questionnaire-based measures can be combined with process measures to garner evidence for specific stereotypical inferences and study when they ‘go through’ and influence our thinking. (shrink)

The postsecular turn within feminist theory refers to a renewed attention to religion within feminist scholarship. However, rather than conceptualizing the postsecular as a new moment within feminist theorizing that breaks with a previous trend of secular feminism, this article stresses that it is important to recognize the long history of coexistence and contestations between religious and secular feminist approaches. In this article, the different reception histories of the story of Sojourner Truth are examined to elucidate and reflect on the (...) complicated relationship of the religious and the secular within feminist scholarship. Three different types of feminist theoretical engagement with the story of Sojourner Truth are examined and contrasted: the implicitly secular use of the story of Sojourner Truth in black feminist scholarship and theorizing of intersectionality, the explicitly religious interpretations found in the work of feminist and womanist theologians, and the deconstructive reading by Donna Haraway. In discussing and comparing these different engagements with the story of Sojourner Truth, it is stressed that the boundaries between the religious and the secular are perhaps less clear-cut than initially imagined, and that a dialogue between secular and religious feminist approaches is very fruitful. The article closes by examining how the complex intersections of gender, religion and race in the story of Sojourner Truth can be connected to the contemporary theorizing on the racialization of religion within critical race scholarship. (shrink)