Reviewing the state of play in the attempt to naturalise content a quarter of a century after John Haugeland’s survey paper “The Intentionality All-Stars”, Dan Hutto and Glenda Satne propose a new naturalistic account of content that supposedly synthesizes what is best in the three failed programs of neo-Cartesianism, neo-Behaviourism and neo-Pragmatism. They propose to appeal to a Relaxed Naturalism, a non-reductive genealogical form of explanation and a primitive notion of contentless ur-intentionality. In this paper I argue that the authors’ (...) Relaxed Naturalism is a broad form of Scientific Naturalism and, as such, it is unable to account for the problem of conceptual normativity that arises for any scientific naturalist attempt to explain content – whether reductive or not. This is based on the irreconcilability of the objective third-personal character of scientific inquiry and the intersubjective second-personal nature of the normativity of content. I suggest that the authors would do better to simply become neo-Pragmatists who, properly understood, are Liberal Naturalists who have the conceptual and methodological resources to acknowledge and do justice to conceptually normative content. (shrink)

The concept of place is ultimately a matter of ethical significance—of where something fits in a nexus or structure of meaning. Often this meaning is quite personal, involving a sense of presence we associate with a place. This essay investigates this connection through a study of Wordsworth’s poem, “Tintern Abbey.” It argues that the notion of a presence-infused place is ultimately that of a second-personal space. Presence is a matter of second-personal openness. Therefore, when (...) presence infuses place, it makes its space second-personal also. (shrink)

In recent human rights and legal instruments, individuals with impairments are increasingly recognised as agents who are worthy of respect for their inherent dignity and capacity to make autonomous decisions regarding treatment and care provisions. These legal developments could be understood using Stephen Darwall’s normative framework of the second person standpoint. However, this paper draws upon phenomena – both in legal developments and recent court cases – to illustrate theoretical difficulties with the contractualist underpinnings of Darwall’s account if applied (...) to questions of what is owed to individuals with disabilities. I argue that, under Darwall’s framework, whether the threshold for second-personal competence has been met will determine whether respect or rational care is owed to them. This fact distorts our understanding of what we owe to persons with mental impairments—in part because it limits respect to relations that are symmetrical and reciprocal. In light of these challenges the paper offers an account of hermeneutic competency, which can be applied to non-reciprocal and asymmetrical relationships. This alternative account will be of practical import to judicial determinations of best interests under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 in England and Wales. It will also be of broader theoretical interest to any legal system that deals with people with mental disabilities. (shrink)

In this response we address additions to as well as criticisms and possible misinterpretations of our proposal for a second-person neuroscience. We map out the most crucial aspects of our approach by (1) acknowledging that second-person engaged interaction is not the only way to understand others, although we claim that it is ontogenetically prior; (2) claiming that spectatorial paradigms need to be complemented in order to enable a full understanding of social interactions; and (3) restating that our theoretical (...) proposal not only questions the mechanism by which a cognitive process comes into being, but asks whether it is at all meaningful to speak of a mechanism and a cognitive process when it is confined to intra-agent space. We address theoretical criticisms of our approach by pointing out that while a second-person social understanding may not be the only mechanism, alternative approaches cannot hold their ground without resorting to second-person concepts, if not in the expression, certainly in the development of social understanding. In this context, we also address issues of agency and intentionality, theoretical alternatives, and clinical implications of our approach. (shrink)

I argue that Stephen Darwall's account of second-personal respect should be of special interest to feminists because it opens up space for the development of certain feminist resources. Specifically, Darwall's account leaves room for an experiential aspect of respect, and I suggest that abilities related to this aspect may vary along with social position. I then point out a potential parallel between the feminist critique of epistemology and a budding feminist critique of moral philosophy (specifically relating to (...) respect). (shrink)

The papers of this special issue are the outcome of a two-­‐day conference entitled “The Second-­‐Person Standpoint in Law and Morality,” that took place at the University of Vienna in March 2013 and was organized by the ERC Advanced Research Grant “Distortions of Normativity.” -/- The aim of the conference was to explore and discuss Stephen Darwall’s innovative and influential second-­‐personal account of foundational moral concepts such as „obligation“, „responsibility“, and „rights“, as developed in his book The (...) Second-­‐Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Harvard University Press 2006) and further elaborated in Morality, Authority and Law: Essays in Second-­‐Personal Ethics I and Honor, History, and Relationships: Essays in Second-­‐Personal Ethics II (both Oxford University Press 2013). -/- With the second-­‐person standpoint Darwall refers to the unique conceptual normative space that practical deliberators and agents occupy when they address claims and demands to one another (and to themselves). The very first sentence of Darwall’s examination of the second-­‐personal conceptual paradigm summarizes the gist of the argument succinctly when he claims that “the second-­‐person standpoint [is] the perspective that you and I take up when we make and acknowledge claims on one another’s conduct and will.” (Darwall 2006, 3) The Second-­‐Person Standpoint reminds us that this perspective has been ignored for much too long and that it better take centre stage in any philosophical analysis of moral phenomena, in order to yield a satisfying account of morality as a social institution. The negative part of Darwall’s strategy is to show that neither a purely first-­‐personal approach (represented by Kant and contemporary Kantians), nor a third-­‐personal state-­‐of-­‐affairs-­‐perspective (represented by most varieties of contemporary consequentialism) are capable of accounting for the categorical bindingness characteristic of moral obligation. The latter feat can only be accomplished, and this is the positive part of Darwall’s argument, when those second-­‐ personal normative “felicity conditions” and conceptual presuppositions are acknowledged and spelled out that are already presupposed in every instance of issuing (putatively valid) claims and demands. It is especially second-­‐personal competence and second-­‐personal authority that are the bedrock of these normative conceptual presuppositions, without which engaging in any meaningful address would be impossible. Kantians and utilitarians alike have neglected this critical dimension of the normative landscape. -/- In addition to working out an original conception of moral obligation, the first eight chapters of The Second-­‐Person Standpoint articulate this fundamental insight with respect to a variety of traditional projects in ethical theory such as developing accounts of moral responsibility, rights, dignity, and autonomy. In this context, special emphasis is to be awarded, on the one hand, to Darwall’s refreshing second-­‐personal interpretation of Strawson’s influential account of reactive attitudes and moral responsibility and, on the other, to his historically well-­‐informed reconstruction of Samuel Pufendorf’s often neglected version of an enlightened theistic voluntarism concerning moral authority. Darwall dedicates the second part of The Second-­‐Person Standpoint to the urgent question: how should one respond to the sceptical challenge that expresses utter indifference to the second-­‐person standpoint, including all its multifarious normative presuppositions and implications? What commits us to all this? It is at this point that Darwall, firstly, refines his criticisms of the Kantian, first-­‐personal, paradigm of normativity and emphasizes that only if one already incorporates the second-­‐personal conceptual apparatus into a Kantian analysis of moral obligation is the latter going to yield a convincing account. Secondly, and this certainly is one of the highlights of Darwall’s theory, the Second-­‐Person Standpoint employs themes from Fichte’s philosophy of right in order to strengthen the case for the inescapability of taking up the second-­‐person standpoint of moral obligation. In his contribution for this special issue Darwall further develops his diagnosis that Fichte’s thought offers in many respects a more promising, since more second-­‐personal, foundation of morality than, for example, Kant’s. -/- By now, the impact of Darwall’s second-­‐person standpoint theory has far transcended the confines of contemporary debates on moral obligation. Darwall has put to use the second-­‐personal apparatus to critical engagements with Joseph Raz’s theory of legal authority and Derek Parfit’s convergence arguments for his recent Triple Theory of moral wrongness. The constant theme that unifies all these diverse applications remains the one so impressively presented in The Second-­‐Person Standpoint: without paying attention to the “interdefinable” and “irreducible” circle of (four) foundational second-­‐ personal concepts (valid demand, practical authority, second-­‐personal reason, and accountability), neither superior epistemic status (Raz) nor the identification of optimific states of affairs (Parfit) are potent enough sources to generate anything close to the authority relationships that underlie the idea involved in obligating ourselves and one another. Given all of the above, it comes as no surprise that Darwall reserves his strongest sympathies for a specific ethical theory, namely contractualism. Our commitment to equal basic second-­‐personal authority, that Darwall arrives at through his Fichtean rectification of the Kantian project, leads him to the endorsement of a contractualist paradigm in the spirit of broadly Rawls and Scanlon. -/- . (shrink)

The claim that God is maximally present is characteristic of all three major monotheisms. In this paper, I explore this claim with regard to Christianity. First, God’s omnipresence is a matter of God’s relations to all space at all times at once, because omnipresence is an attribute of an eternal God. In addition, God is also present with and to a person. The assumption of a human nature ensures that God is never without the ability to be present with (...) human persons in the way mind-reading enables; and, in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God is present in love. (shrink)

This study investigates the impact of fraud/lawsuit revelation on U.S. top executive turnover and compensation. It also examines potential explanatory variables affecting the executive turnover and compensation among U.S. fraud/lawsuit firms. Four important findings are documented. First, there was significantly higher executive turnover among U.S. firms with fraud/lawsuit revelation in the Wall Street Journal than matched firms without such revelation. Second, although on average, U.S. top executives received an increase in cash compensation after fraud/lawsuit revelation, this increase is smaller (...) than that of matched non-fraud/lawsuit firms. Third, fraud/lawsuit firms were more likely to change top executive when chief executive officer (CEO) was not the board chairman and CEO had been on the board for a short time. Fourth, fraud/lawsuit firms were more likely to reduce their executive cash compensation when profitability was low, firms were involved in fraud, the compensation committee size was small, and the board met more often. These findings indicate that although, in general, U.S. fraud/lawsuits firms did not reduce their executive cash compensation, those involved in fraud were more likely to reduce their executive cash compensation than to change their top executives. The finding, that ethical standards is not a significant factor for U.S. executive turnover nor compensation reduction, suggests that ethics appears to play no part in the board’s decisions, and that U.S. firms may have ethical standards in writing but they do not implement nor enforce the standards. (shrink)

Relational agency is pivotal for understanding how language teachers seek and utilize relational resources in different contexts and grow to be agents of change amid various educational challenges. This study explored how three university teachers of Chinese as a second language enacted their relational agency to enhance their research capacity and sustain their professional development. Data on their personal network development was collected through concentric circle interviews, life-history interviews and written reflections over three months. Thematic analysis was adopted (...) for iterative coding and interpretation of the data. The findings revealed that teachers’ personal networks provided them with value guidance, emotional support and academic support, which exerted differential levels of impact on them to make agentic choices and actions. The study suggests that personal network analysis may serve as a suitable theoretical lens to achieve a multi-layered understanding of relational agency. The study also calls for more efforts to create learning opportunities and spaces in the relational context for teachers to build their career as agentic academics in language teacher education and development programs. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett's distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations was fundamental in establishing the philosophical foundations of cognitive science. Since it was first introduced in 1969, the personal/subpersonal distinction has been adapted to fit different approaches to the mind. In one example of this, the ‘Pittsburgh school’ of philosophers attempted to map Dennett's distinction onto their own distinction between the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘space of causes’. A second example can be found in much contemporary (...) philosophy of psychology, where Dennett's distinction has been presumed to be equivalent to Stephen Stich's distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. Both these interpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, and also Dennett's own philosophical views of the mind, go beyond the personal/subpersonal distinction itself. They each involve supplementing the distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations with metaphysical claims about the relationship between the two kinds of explanation and the entities they posit. (shrink)

The deliberative model of politics has recently been criticized for not being very well equipped to conceptualize current developments such as the misinterpretation of political difference, the digital turn, and public protests. A first critique is that this model assumes a conception of public spheres that is too idealistic. A second objection is that it misconceives the relationship between empirical reality and normativity. Third, it is assumed that deliberative democracy offers an antiquated notion of a shared ‘we’ of political (...) actors and because of this, fourth, fails to take into consideration the ‘digital turn’, in particular the de-personalizing effects of social media that have led to a rapid decline of the public sphere. And a fifth critique states that the deliberative model ignores the fact that politics is not, and especially protests and revolutions are not, seminar-like debates but spontaneous, chaotic and sometimes violent expressions. I will argue that all of these critiques fall short in a variety of ways. A deliberative model of politics allows us to address the tension between the ideal and the real, the ‘old media’ and the so-called digitalization of public spheres as well as peaceful discourse and violent uprisings. Especially the concept of communicative power, a notion also used by Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, reveals the potentials for future participation in digital spaces and public places. (shrink)

This article analyses the role of discussion in university studies in the context of Socrates’ philosophy of education. The article begins with a discussion of the relevance and continuity of Socrates’ ideas on philosophical education in the contemporary educational space and highlights the importance of Socratic discussion in university studies. It is argued that discussion contributes to the development of one of the most essential skills of the 21st century, i.e. critical thinking, which encompasses the totality of analytical, social (...) and personal skills. The paper also points out that Socratic pedagogy of discussions and humanistic education contribute to organising student-centred studies and enable the consolidation of lifelong learning. These competencies and skills are becoming a priority educational objective in the current age when knowledge, technology and the world are constantly changing and renewing.The second part of the paper deals with the specificities and polarities of the discussion process. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic discussion is made in the context of Socrates versus the Sophists. Much attention is paid to highlighting the difference between authentic discussion and inauthentic one as pseudo-discussion to provide pathways and guidelines for the implementation of authentic dialogue in the study process. (shrink)

Lynne Rudder Baker and many others think that paradigmatic instances of one object constituting another—a piece of marble constituting a statue, or an aggregate of particles constituting a living body—involve two distinct objects in the same place at the same time. Some who say this believe in the doctrine of temporal parts; but others, like Baker, reject this doctrine. Such philosophers, whom one might call “coincidentalists”, cannot say that these objects manage to share space in virtue of sharing a (...) temporal part confined to just that place and time. But what can or should coincidentalists say about the nature of constitution? Many have analyzed the relation as one of sharing, “at some level”, all and only the same parts. Most have agreed that such massive part-sharing is at least a central component of and necessary condition for constitution. The heart of Baker’s Persons and Bodies, and its most significant contribution to the development of coincidentalism, is a theory of constitution that makes no appeal to mereology. The leading idea in Baker’s account is, instead, a modal one: objects belonging to constituted kinds are the necessary result of putting objects belonging to appropriate constituting kinds in the right circumstances, circumstances which the constituting objects need not have been in. So putting a piece of man-shaped marble in the right circumstances necessarily results in the existence of a second object, a statue, constituted by the marble; but the piece of marble need not have fallen into these circumstances or any others in which it would constitute a statue. (shrink)

The deliberative model of politics has recently been criticized for not being very well equipped to conceptualize current developments such as the misinterpretation of political difference, the digital turn, and public protests. A first critique is that this model assumes a conception of public spheres that is too idealistic. A second objection is that it misconceives the relationship between empirical reality and normativity. Third, it is assumed that deliberative democracy offers an antiquated notion of a shared ‘we’ of political (...) actors and because of this, fourth, fails to take into consideration the ‘digital turn’, in particular the de-personalizing effects of social media that have led to a rapid decline of the public sphere. And a fifth critique states that the deliberative model ignores the fact that politics is not, and especially protests and revolutions are not, seminar-like debates but spontaneous, chaotic and sometimes violent expressions. I will argue that all of these critiques fall short in a variety of ways. A deliberative model of politics allows us to address the tension between the ideal and the real, the ‘old media’ and the so-called digitalization of public spheres as well as peaceful discourse and violent uprisings. Especially the concept of communicative power, a notion also used by Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, reveals the potentials for future participation in digital spaces and public places. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications that the construction and use of avatars in games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft have for our understanding of personal identity. It asks whether the avatar can meaningfully be experienced as a separate person, existing in parallel to the flesh and blood player. A rehearsal of Cartesian and Lockean accounts of personal identity constructs an understanding of the self that is challenged by the experience of online play. It will (...) be argued that playful engagement in virtual worlds invites the participant to reflect upon the human being as embodied and social; qualities of which are marginalised by Descartes and Locke. The strangeness of this experience of virtual worlds confronts the player with a challenge to construct a coherent narrative of online life, of which treating the avatar as a separate person is a coherent option. This opens up the virtual world as an important space within which personal identity is explored, but one with complex implicati... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Affective Spaces: Architecture and the Living Body by Federico de MatteisJasna SersicAffective Spaces: Architecture and the Living Body BY FEDERICO DE MATTEIS New York, NY: Routledge, 2021What is architectural space? For architects, urban planners, and all involved in the design and transformation of the environment, space is a central subject. However, despite this fact, nobody accurately states what space is all about. As a result, (...) the concept of space remains ambiguous, challenging to transmit, and a point of fundamental misunderstandings, with consequences on how we move, inhabit, and transform the world around us (1).In the attempt to provide order in today’s theory of space in architecture, De Matteis’ Affective Spaces invites the reader to explore the question of space from the subject’s point of view by asking what the encounter with architecture is like, and how do I feel, here, now?, borrowed from Eugene Minkowski (7). De Matteis offers an interconnected yet clear and instructive way to explore further what first-hand, direct experience with architecture can tell us about the effects it produces on us. Through this exciting intellectual journey, De Matteis thus shows how architecture, generally understood as an art of building space, does not regard the built environment alone. As people are also emotionally affected by the (built) world they live in, this book can ultimately be read as a quest to understand the relation between the feelings and moods arising from the bodily, corporeal experience of the built environment and the way they invite us to respond and act within environments we inhabit and modify (130).To accept De Matteis’ invitation to join him on his quest entails two things. The first is to take the position that the root of the emergence of sense and feelings is the subject’s corporeity. We must thus acknowledge the primacy of feeling (130). The second, by extension, is to put aside preconceived notions and conceptual tools for representing space inherited from modernity, as they are grounded in dualistic contraposition between physical reality, which is seen as objective (9). In contrast, experience and feeling are seen as subjective (9). Consequently, [End Page 142] they cannot adequately grasp the non- measurable dimensions of the lived space and thus the experience that the subject makes of it.Instead, De Matteis argues that one cannot describe space as a thing separate from us and that we are always a part of the space we inhabit. For this purpose, the book derives its theoretical model of space from phenomenology, which considers the felt body as a sounding board for the built environment and human experience of the world.The book is arranged into fourteen chapters that show the thematic progression of the argument, and is structured in three parts that explore space, the living body and corporeal dynamics, and the experiential character of some specific families of space. Titles of the chapters provide clear signposts to the reader about where the story is going and are much appreciated in this unique exploration. They also show that the author carefully weaves the conceptual intersections between phenomenology and its model of space with investigations in several fields of knowledge. Drawing across a multitude of disciplines, ranging from geography, anthropology, psychology, philosophy of mind, and aesthetics to neurosciences, and offering many examples from art, literature, film, and everyday life, the book helps the reader visualize the content discussed. This panoramic character and accessible language and format make it an engaging read for experts in the field and to a broader audience interested in topics addressed in the book.Perhaps one of the most compelling arguments the book brings forward is that the corporeal dynamics of space enable understanding of space as a thing that is not separate from us. It is from the coming together of persons and things that atmospheres arise. They are not objective, yet they exist as the natural qualities of things; neither are they subjective, yet they belong to sensing beings. This understanding implies a possible workable definition with no boundary between the subject and object. However, it also clearly points out that the book emerged in response to our modern understanding and critique... (shrink)

This essay examines some ethical aspects of stalkingincidents in cyberspace. Particular attention is focused on the Amy Boyer/Liam Youens case of cyberstalking, which has raised a number of controversial ethical questions. We limit our analysis to three issues involving this particular case. First, we suggest that the privacy of stalking victims is threatened because of the unrestricted access to on-linepersonal information, including on-line public records, currently available to stalkers. Second, we consider issues involving moral responsibility and legal liability for (...) Internet service providers (ISPs) when stalking crimesoccur in their `space' on the Internet. Finally, we examine issues of moral responsibility for ordinary Internet users to determine whether they are obligated to inform persons whom they discover to be the targets of cyberstalkers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Zhuangzi:Personal Freedom and/or Incongruity of Names?Paul J. D'Ambrosio (bio)Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom (hereafter Origins) has sparked much scholarly debate. Already numerous presentations, various types of discussions, and reviews have appeared based on Origins. The present review focuses specifically on the Zhuangzi chapter. The entire project actually began, Jiang writes, fifteen years ago as a (...) book on the Zhuangzi. Through his research Jiang realized he needed to learn more about the objects of philosophical ridicule and critique in the Zhuangzi. Origins is the result of this decade-and-a-half study.Origins provides a somewhat novel framework for reading Warring States period philosophy. Summarizing the basic structure of his project Jiang writes: "I make the case that the philosophical dialectics between the partialist humaneness and imperialist justice formed the fundamental dynamics underlying the mainstream moral-political project during the classic period, with the musing on personal freedom as the outlier" (p. 35). As Karyn Lai puts it, Origins revolves around a "predictable set of inherited pre-Qin texts associated with key figures, traditionally called the "Masters" (zi 子) text" (Lai 2022, p. 181). Some models inherited by the "masters," such as yinyang 陰陽 thinking or ming 名 (names) and shi 實 (actualities), are nearly absent in Origins and would cast new light on the project as well [End Page 458] as the tradition. In this review I will first outline Jiang's reading of the Zhuangzi before considering how a richer appreciation of the Chinese tradition, especially its own methodological tools, frameworks, and concepts, could bolster the exciting contributions Origins stands to make. We will start with Jiang's big picture view of the Zhuangzi.In Origins the Zhuangzi is taken to be a completely unique text. It does not engage in the moral and political discourse the other "masters" texts are subsumed by, and instead of supporting either partialist humaneness or impartialist justice it "muses" on personal freedom. Jiang defines: "Personal freedom is understood as the appreciation and cultivation of personal space wherein one can be left alone and enjoy the company of like-minded friends without being entangled in the sociopolitical world" (p. 36). There are two significant points to note about Jiang's understanding of freedom. First, it is almost a word-for-character definition of how the "Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove" have been described by many. Research on these philosophical works could significantly enrich Jiang's reading, albeit from a different angle. Second, Guo Xiang's 郭象 (d. 312) emphasis on, and philosophical explorations of, du 獨 (an interconnected type of "lone") would further fill out how freedom and relationality—which are both attributed to the Zhuangzi by Jiang—are connected.In addition to a "fierce advocacy for personal freedom" Jiang classifies the Zhuangzi as a "singular outlier" for ridiculing the "misguided character of [the contestations between humaneness and justice] and warn[ing] against their potential for inhumanity and injustice" (p. 49). Indeed, the Zhuangzi does demonstrate that these discussions can elicit "the very opposite of what was intended by the participants of the mainstream discourse" (p. 49). Its criticisms are even more penetrating when we appreciate its deeper point about "names being the guests of actualities" (Zhuangzi 1:4). From this perspective the Zhuangzi is not against systems of humaneness or justice as such. It rather points out that humaneness does not have a single referent, nor could that referent be reliably distinguished. The name "humane" does not guarantee humane action, or really anything in particular. The same is true for "justice." We will return to these points below.Jiang's chapter on the Zhuangzi begins by defending moral and political readings of the text. It is an outlier from the perspective of the "humanity-justice" framework, but this only means that the moral-political discourse Zhuangists were engaged in was different. The result was that already by the early Han and by the time of Sima Qian 司馬遷 (d. 86 b.c.e.) "Zhuangzi's teachings were … of little use to contemporary political discourse" (p. 288). Jiang should be delighted to know that the Wei-Jin period, which had inestimable... (shrink)

This article had several purposes. First, I wanted to highlight the work of Esther Bubley, an American photographer whose documentary work for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information in the early 1940s is largely unknown. Second, I wanted to show how her images complicated and undermined the traditional themes of Depression era photography in the United States, Third, by looking at her images of women, my intention was to reveal how she worked against depictions of (...) femininity during the Depression, and in confrontation with one-dimensional portrayals of women as America entered the Second World Wan In conclusion, I contend that Bubley's images were fundamentally portrayals of working-class femininity represented as being an individual – rather than a symbolic – experience. Most specifically in the images I have examined, Bubley deconstructs an ideological image of female working-class identity which was central to documentary photography in 1930s America. For example, unlike in photographs by Dorothea Lange, Bubley did not portray working-class women as metaphoric sites of passive endurance which would eventually lead to the rejuvenation of American nationalism. Rather, she showed working-class women to be potentially subversive in the ways they defined themselves against the legacy of 1930s photography and in opposition to the ideological impositions of wartime propaganda. As a result, Bubley's images of working-class women waiting in bars for lonely soldiers, or looking for a future beyond the confines of their boarding house existences while remaining outside the middle-class boundaries defined by capitalist consumerism, set out a pictorial foundation for working-class female identity which exists beyond the context in which the photographs were taken. Consequently, Bubley's work highlights individual self-identity, personal empowerment and self-conscious desire in working-class women which was – and still is – confined and repressed by economic disadvantage and systematic marginalization from an American society defined from a middle-class point of view. (shrink)

This paper uses the figure of the inbred laboratory mouse to reflect upon the management and mobilization of biological difference in the contemporary biosciences. Working through the concept of shifting experimental systems, the paper seeks to connect practices concerned with standardization and control in contemporary research with the emergent and stochastic qualities of biological life. Specifically, it reviews the importance of historical narratives of standardization in experimental systems based around model organisms, before identifying a tension in contemporary accounts of the (...) reproduction and differentiation of inbred mouse strains within them. Firstly, narratives of new strain development, foregrounding personal biography and chance discovery, attest to the contingency and situatedness of apparently universal biotechnological production. Secondly, discoveries of unexpected animal litters challenge efforts to standardize mouse phenotypes and control the reproduction of murine strains over space. The co-existence of these two narratives draws attention to the importance of and interplay between both chance and control, determination and emergence, and the making and moving of experimental life in biomedical research. The reception or denial of such biological excess reflects the distribution of agencies and the emerging spatialities of the global infrastructures of biotechnological development, with implications for future relations between animal lives and human becomings in experimental practices. (shrink)

Victor Verdejo’s paper ‘On Having the Same First Person Thoughts’ introduces an interesting and fruitful framework for applying the type-token distinction to first person thoughts. He draws a three-way distinction between types, instantiable types, and instantiated types, and uses that distinction to open up a conceptual space for the possibility of shareable first person thoughts. This note distinguishes two types of interpersonal shareability and argues that Verdejo’s suggestions about instantiable types can only secure shareability of the first kind, but (...) not the second. The author then shows how his own account of what he terms the token-sense of “I” succeeds in making possible this second type of interpersonal shareability, despite the criticisms in Verdejo’s paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:191 A PERSONAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY In his quest for the truth about moral life, Hume steers between the Scylla of Sentiment and the Charybdis of Reason. Sentiment operating alone, as a basis for morality, would threaten to engulf humanity with as many relativistic moral truths as there are individuals. Reason alone would produce objective, impersonal truths, but these would be powerless to move us. Hume's developed theory (...) ingeniously shows how Reason and Sentiment can operate together, to produce judgments based on feelings which are nonetheless impersonal and objective (T 581-584; E 227-229). Hume is acutely aware (as we shall see below) that there exists a considerable disparity between the impartiality required of us by moral theory and what in practice people think when it comes to moral matters. There would seem to be only two ways of accommodating this fact. One is to regard the disparity as a mark of the moral mediocrity of ordinary people; we are not as objective in our judgments as we could be. The other way is to treat the disparity as a token of failure and inadequacy in the theory; our best philosophical reasoning about morals fails to capture its subject matter without distortion. Our rational powers fall short, not only in Book I of the Treatise, where the task is to explain the foundation of our beliefs, but also in Book III, where Hume attempts to elucidate moral life. Certainly the first way would reduce the gap to some extent; some people, perhaps many, are moral truly low achievers. I want to show that Hume also suggests the second way; he is willing to deflate the 192 pretensions of philosophy, even when it comes to his own state-of-the-art efforts. I. The Objectivity of Certain Feeling-Based Judgments In the moral arena of life we make judgments which are based on feelings, on 'certain sentiments of pleasure or disgust' (T 581). "To have the sense of virtue, is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character" (T 471). Of course not just any feeling will do; it must be of a peculiar kind, which we can experience only under specific conditions. At first Hume characterizes the necessary condition as follows: 'Tis only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest, that it causes such a feeling or sentiment, as denominates it morally good or evil (T 472). Later on Hume provides a fuller account. Characteristically he elaborates in response to an anticipated objection. The objection is that our sympathetic feelings of pleasure and pain fluctuate wildly, depending mainly upon our distance, so to speak, from the character we assess, in space, time, and kind of relationship. Our moral judgments do not vary in this way; we give the same approbation to the same moral qualities in China as in England (T 581). So (it is concluded) our moral judgments do not rest upon sympathy. Hume's response is that, as a necessary condition for moral judgment and communication, we must "fix on some steady and general points of view" (T 581-2). He proceeds to employ an analogy with our situation regarding perception of (and communication about) the things which make up our common world. 193 Here a man obviously cannot consider things 'only as they appear from his peculiar point of view' (T 581). For instance I cannot describe my desk to a friend by reporting on how I perceive it at this moment — because at this moment the light is dim and I am standing across the room from the desk. If I were to do a painting of the scene before me, the desk would be black, its top a trapezoid shape on the canvas. What I say, however, is that I have a walnut desk of a medium brown color and it has a rectangular top. I say, in effect, how the desk would look under standard conditions of light and perspective. In the Enquiry version Hume spells out his analogy more fully. Again he addresses the case in which our sentiments, e.g., about two men, one distant and... (shrink)

Roman Jakobson, who had left Russia in 1920 and in 1941 took refuge in the USA from the Nazis, was one of the main figures in post war linguistics and structuralism. Two aspects of his work are examined in this article. Firstly, Jakobson purifies his linguistic theory of pragmatic references. Secondly, he develops his own diplomatic mission of mediating between East and West. In this article, I argue that these two aspects did not develop independently from one another. Instead I (...) claim that his theory is designed to slip through the Iron Curtain, while at the same time providing the means to analyse ways of acting politically by using language. This argument is unfolded in two steps, each consisting of two parts. First, I compare the theory of pronominal expressions as developed by Emil Benveniste to Jakobson’s theory of shifters. While Benveniste focuses on the relation of language and its subject using language, Jakobson introduces a model of communication to allow maximal formalisation of language. According to this even the category of person can be freed from its reference to a subject which would be understood as having a place in space and time. Then, Jakobson’s theory of shifters is studied in relation to his analyses of poetry. For this, two examples are chosen: Jakobson’s text on two poems by Russian poet Alexandr Blok, and his text on a poem by Bertold Brecht. In both texts, the theory of shifters—and the alleged purification from pragmatic aspects of language use ensuing from this theory—is challenged by the simple fact that they focus on the pronoun of the first person plural. According to Jakobson, the category of number does not belong to the shifters. Rather, number quantifies participants of the related event. The pronoun ‘we’ is at the same time a shifter and a non-shifter, as it refers to the speech event and the related event. Thus the pronoun ‘we’ opens up the possibility to include or exclude the participants of a communicative situation, and thereby enables the speaker to act socially or even politically by using language. The article concludes by coming back to the historical situation in which Jakobson developed his analyses of poetry. Analysing poetry seems to have been a passe-partout for him, a seemingly harmless subject that allowed him to get a foot in the door of remote and secluded lecture halls. (shrink)

Roman Jakobson, who had left Russia in 1920 and in 1941 took refuge in the USA from the Nazis, was one of the main figures in post war linguistics and structuralism. Two aspects of his work are examined in this article. Firstly, Jakobson purifies his linguistic theory of pragmatic references. Secondly, he develops his own diplomatic mission of mediating between East and West. In this article, I argue that these two aspects did not develop independently from one another. Instead I (...) claim that his theory is designed to slip through the Iron Curtain, while at the same time providing the means to analyse ways of acting politically by using language. This argument is unfolded in two steps, each consisting of two parts. First, I compare the theory of pronominal expressions as developed by Emil Benveniste to Jakobson’s theory of shifters. While Benveniste focuses on the relation of language and its subject using language, Jakobson introduces a model of communication to allow maximal formalisation of language. According to this even the category of person can be freed from its reference to a subject which would be understood as having a place in space and time. Then, Jakobson’s theory of shifters is studied in relation to his analyses of poetry. For this, two examples are chosen: Jakobson’s text on two poems by Russian poet Alexandr Blok, and his text on a poem by Bertold Brecht. In both texts, the theory of shifters—and the alleged purification from pragmatic aspects of language use ensuing from this theory—is challenged by the simple fact that they focus on the pronoun of the first person plural. According to Jakobson, the category of number does not belong to the shifters. Rather, number quantifies participants of the related event. The pronoun ‘we’ is at the same time a shifter and a non-shifter, as it refers to the speech event and the related event. Thus the pronoun ‘we’ opens up the possibility to include or exclude the participants of a communicative situation, and thereby enables the speaker to act socially or even politically by using language. The article concludes by coming back to the historical situation in which Jakobson developed his analyses of poetry. Analysing poetry seems to have been a passe-partout for him, a seemingly harmless subject that allowed him to get a foot in the door of remote and secluded lecture halls. (shrink)

Lynne Rudder Baker and many others think that paradigmatic instances of one object constituting another—a piece of marble constituting a statue, or an aggregate of particles constituting a living body—involve two distinct objects in the same place at the same time. Some who say this believe in the doctrine of temporal parts; but others, like Baker, reject this doctrine. Such philosophers, whom one might call “coincidentalists”, cannot say that these objects manage to share space in virtue of sharing a (...) temporal part confined to just that place and time. But what can or should coincidentalists say about the nature of constitution? Many have analyzed the relation as one of sharing, “at some level”, all and only the same parts. Most have agreed that such massive part-sharing is at least a central component of and necessary condition for constitution. The heart of Baker’s Persons and Bodies, and its most significant contribution to the development of coincidentalism, is a theory of constitution that makes no appeal to mereology. The leading idea in Baker’s account is, instead, a modal one: objects belonging to constituted kinds are the necessary result of putting objects belonging to appropriate constituting kinds in the right circumstances, circumstances which the constituting objects need not have been in. So putting a piece of man-shaped marble in the right circumstances necessarily results in the existence of a second object, a statue, constituted by the marble; but the piece of marble need not have fallen into these circumstances or any others in which it would constitute a statue. (shrink)

This paper reports two studies investigating the role of culture on the design and personalisation of virtual spaces. The first study was a systematic analysis of 60 MSN virtual spaces belonging to British and Chinese students. The analysis concentrated on design patterns and communication style. The second study was an on-line survey designed to compare the relative importance of cultural values and personality traits on self-reported behaviour with, and preferences for, virtual space design. Results highlighted the importance of (...) culture on design and communication in virtual spaces. Implications for interaction design are discussed. (shrink)

The central problem burdening common sense pluralism, as well as motivating the various Ockhamist reactions, is what has come to be called the problem of coincidence. Everyday thought and speech refer both to seals and to sealing wax, to kings and to human beings or bodies. Where the first coincides completely in space with the second, is there one object in that place, or two? The initial response of common sense is perhaps to dismiss the latter out of (...) hand. The king is a human, after all, and the seal a quantity of sealing wax. But once we note that the conditions for the persistence in time of such objects may differ, or that they differ in essential properties, the one-object option seems less appealing. If both exist, as pluralism asserts, and the seal can be destroyed without the wax ceasing to exist, then perhaps the best defense of common sense is to recognize that the seal and the sealing wax are two. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Allegory and the Spaces of LoveOscar Martín (bio)Writing about Spanish sentimental fiction from 1450 to 1550 is not an easy task, as we are discussing a genre with a difficult theoretical configuration. The investigation of sentimental fiction, however, has been sorting out the classifications that applied to a hodgepodge of works previously labeled as “sentimental novel” (“novela sentimental”). This label, once attached uncritically to a bunch of heterogeneous texts (...) that shared such intangibles as “loving focus” or “prevalence of psychological description over narratives,” has been applied more consistently nowaday, thanks in part to the scholarly efforts started in the 1980s like those of Martínez Jiménez and Muñoz Marquina (1982), and Martínez Latre (1989).1 Using some of these research efforts, Alan Deyermond has codified the genre accurately:Brevity; focus on psychological interest over external action; a tragic vision of love; autobiography (first-person narration or a narrator as a character) and the insertion of letters or poems (or, often, both) into the narration.[77]2Within this scholarly categorization, Regula Rohland de Langbehn has been pivotal in offering—first in 1986, and more recently in 1999—a threefold scheme in the development of the genre she labels as “sentimental novel”: a first group chronologically of the genre would be represented by Siervo libre de amor and Sátira de felice e infelice vida, both works marked by the influence of cancionero poetry—specially in the allegorical structuring and in the characterization of love, and by other subjects being limited to an abstract and general analysis of emotions. Both works also present a debate over the moral value of love. A second group would gravitate around Triste deleytacion and the works of Diego de San Pedro and Juan de Flores, works that show a wider range of topics and the impact of a broader generic textuality like cancionero poetry and such chivalric novels as Tirant. Finally, she distinguishes a third group whose main characteristic is the imprint of Celestina’s influence on both the narrative surface and its thematic approach. In the same vein, Vicenta Blay Manzanera has taken up this threefold scheme, dividing the genre into “the creation of the paradigm” (“la creación del paradigma”) the climactic stage, and the downfall and disarticulation of the narrative sentimental system” (“la fase climática” and “el tercero la fase de declive o desintegración del paradigma”) [“La conciencia genérica” 221]. [End Page 132]Just as Rohland de Langbehn’s works had at least settled down the arguments about the existence of a sentimental novelistic genre, however, medieval Hispanic scholarship has been shaken by an entrenched debate over not only the identification of this genre (novel or fiction) but whether the genre even existed at all. It was Antonio Cortijo Ocaña who, while editing a critical cluster in La Corónica on sentimental fiction, opened the door to some scholars such as Weissberger who voiced their skepticism over the generic nature of sentimental prose, a skepticism already present in an innovative volume published by Gwara and Gerli in 1997. This skeptical position was also supported by Cortijo Ocaña himself, who in 2001 published a monumental work in which, although using the generic term as a departure point, he ended up suggesting the difficulty of defining it, therefore jettisoning it. This position in turn was contested by Rohland de Langbehn, who in 2002 defended the validity of both the existence of a genre and its name novela sentimental, a position that has sparked a new round of replies in a La Corónica forum in 2003.In this debate, I would join today’s minority position on the existence of a sentimental genre, because, as I explained in my 2001 review of Rohland de Langbehn’s book and as I find convincingly argued in her 2002 contribution, there are internal traits within sentimental fictional texts that do not appear together in other sentimental generic texts [139]. In addition, once we take into account the obvious intertextuality of those sentimental texts, as Blay Manzanera has shown [“La conciencia genérica”], and the overutilization of central motifs in the configuration of love’s debate, we... (shrink)

Late in their architectural career, Alison and Peter Smithson designed an eighty-square-foot, indoor-outdoor space for a man and his cat. The Smithsons described this modest space in methodological and phenomenal terms, noting that the addition to Axel Bruchhäuser’s Hexenhaus could be read “as an exemplar of a method by which a small physical change—a layering-over of air adhered to an existing fabric—can bring about a delicate tuning of persons with place.” The Hexenhaus’ tuning elements—second skin, tree screen, (...) and double-acting mesh—create a “treillage’d space” that supplants mediation, reframes attunement, and elicits an active weaving of person, place, and phenomena. This paper seeks to understand what the architects meant by “tuning” and in the process to outline operations for spatial weaving. (shrink)

Late in their architectural career, Alison and Peter Smithson designed an eighty-square-foot, indoor-outdoor space for a man and his cat. The Smithsons described this modest space in methodological and phenomenal terms, noting that the addition to Axel Bruchhäuser’s Hexenhaus could be read “as an exemplar of a method by which a small physical change—a layering-over of air adhered to an existing fabric—can bring about a delicate tuning of persons with place.” The Hexenhaus’ tuning elements—second skin, tree screen, (...) and double-acting mesh—create a “treillage’d space” that supplants mediation, reframes attunement, and elicits an active weaving of person, place, and phenomena. This paper seeks to understand what the architects meant by “tuning” and in the process to outline operations for spatial weaving. (shrink)

An analysis of my personal journey growing up in a dominated society and studying in an American university. I recount my quest for a de-centered knowledge, which the problématique of second-wave feminist theory enabled me to partially achieve as I started writing about power, gender, and social theory.

One of the central questions within contemporary debates about collective intentionality concerns the notion and status of the we. The question, however, is by no means new. At the beginning of the last century, it was already intensively discussed in phenomenology. Whereas Heidegger argued that a focus on empathy is detrimental to a proper understanding of the we, and that the latter is more fundamental than any dyadic interaction, other phenomenologists, such as Stein, Walther and Husserl, insisted on the importance (...) of empathy for proper we-experiences. In this paper, I will present some of the key moves in this debate and then discuss and assess Husserl’s specific proposal, according to which reciprocal empathy, second-person engagement and self-alienation are all important presuppositions for group-identification and we-identity. (shrink)

The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality's supreme authority--an account that ...

This essay discusses how international political theory can become more receptive towards Islamism. The central claim is that Islamism can be interpreted as a form of communitarianism. To underpin this claim, the study relies on an analysis of how the concepts of community and person are conceived in communitarianism and Islamism. On the basis of the affinities of these conceptions between Islamism and communitarianism the essay shows that Islamism can be interpreted as a form of communitarianism. The study then concludes (...) that understanding Islamism as communitarianism produces a common space for public reasoning which would deserve more consideration from political theorists. Secondly Islamism as communitarianism reassesses the possibility of a political theory engagement with Islamist theory that can benefit the recognition of human rights norms in circumstances in which Islamism is particularly influential. (shrink)

The first set of topics is dedicated to the theoretical framework I employ in my target article. I will explain (a) why sense-making is participatory from the beginning and (b) how a personal communication with a place is possible. The second set of topics tackles my proposal’s ethical and political significance. I will consider (c) the objection on how it is possible to love the unlovable and (d) the question of what should change for us to love nature.

In this paper, I present an overview of personal and intimate technologies within a pedagogical context. I describe two courses that I have developed for Computation Arts at Concordia University: “Tangible Media and Physical Computing” and “Second Skin and Soft Wear.” Each course deals with different aspects of physical computing and tangible media in a Fine Arts context. In both courses, I introduce concepts of soft computation and intimate reactive artifacts as artworks. I emphasize the concept of memory (...) (contrasting computer memory and personal, interpretive memory), and explore how responsive or interactive objects can create a new medium for annotating architectural space and objects, for leaving traces of presence, and for recording personal histories. At the core of this pedagogical practice is a strong emphasis on engaging a vulnerable, personal approach to working with electronics and physical computation. To contextualize the teaching practice, I begin by presenting some of my own research projects developed at Extra Soft Labs (also known as XS Labs), then segue into a detailed discussion of these two classes, and conclude with a discussion of some student work. (shrink)

The modern world is multicultural and multilingual, it creates difficulties for the mutual contacts of the nations with different languages. The problem of overcoming the language barrier in a multilingual world is urgent. One of the best ways to solve this problem is bilingualism: possession of two languages, a native and a second one, generally intermediate language. The choice of the intermediate language is determined by socio-political and socio-economic conditions of contacting people. In a multinational state official language of (...) the country serves as an intermediate language. In the multi-ethnic Russian Federation, Russian language chosen as the intermediate language, by which representatives of different nationalities come into contact with each other. National-Russian bilingualism in the Russian Federation has become a mass phenomenon: all non-Russian population in varying degrees is fluent in Russian language. Further improvement of bilingualism at the present stage is solved in the new format - as an active bilingualism. In an active and harmonious bilingualism, languages distribute responsibilities among themselves: native language and intermediate language perform different public functions and the number of functions is usually not equal, one language performs more functions than the other does. It depends on the status of the language: the higher the status of the language, the more reason a speaker has for its extensive use in different areas of communication. Harmonious bilingualism helps to keep the national identity of each language and makes it possible to operate each of them on an equal footing in a multicultural space. Among the many politically and legally equal languages of the Russian Federation, a special place belongs to the Russian language: it performs a consolidating function, combines the languages of the nations of Great Russia into one united family. Multilingual Russia can be compared with a starry firmament. The more bright stars we can see, the more beautiful the starry sky is. The star of the Russian language in the sky shines especially bright. (shrink)

According to second‐personal approaches to moral obligation, the distinctive normative features of moral obligation can only be explained in terms of second‐personal relations, i.e. the distinctive way persons relate to each other as persons. But there are important disagreements between different groups of second‐personal approaches. Most notably, they disagree about the nature of second‐personal relations, which has consequences for the nature of the obligations that they purport to explain. This article aims to (...) distinguish these groups from each other, highlight their respective advantages and disadvantages, and thereby indicate avenues for future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 153-155 [Access article in PDF] Dieter Sturma. Philosophie der Person. Die Selbstverhältnisse von Subjektivität und Moralität. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997. Pp. 376. DM 68.00. According to Sturma, it was John Locke who first developed the concept of a person, molding it into an "elaborated theory of personal identity" (27). His approach was continued first by Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and (...) Hegel, and then in the 20th Century—via Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Sartre—by Anglo-American philosophers such as Strawson, Rawls, Frankfurt, Nagel, Parfit, and Taylor. While these authors provide the main orientation for Sturma, Kant seems to assume a leading position. The aim of the book is to trace out a non-reductionist philosophy of the person. Sturma believes that personhood consists in the fully developed subjectivity together with the moral components included in it" and he intends to uncover the "consequences for practical self-relation arising from it" (38). These relations are, first of all, relations to oneself.The book consists of eleven chapters. The last one is a kind of summary. The other ten can be subdivided into three parts. The first part serves as introduction and propedeutic. In it, Sturma first presents "Subjects and Problems of the Philosophy of the Person" (chapter I), then gives a compendium of "The History of the Philosophy of the Person" (chapter II), and finally presents a "Critique of Reductionism"(chapter III). The last part is the largest. Its main thesis is "that persons are at least in principle subjects who are due freedom, accountability, and self-determination, and who [... ] can initiate reflective and practical self-relations within the social space" (59). After claiming that in practice "every reductionism conceals a kind of determinism" (60), Sturma gives a sketch of his critical approach. Dealing with different forms of determinism, physicalism, logical empiricism, with Wittgenstein's position between reductionism and non-reductionism, and with Thomas Nagel's critique of reductionism, Sturma arrives at a discussion of the difference between (mental) experience (Erlebnis) and events (Ereignis). As a proponent of a "moderate naturalism" (95), he tries in the style of Davidson to take up a middle position, which neither denies events in space and time nor eliminates the personal standpoint of experience.The next two chapters, "Self-Consciousness"(chapter IV) and "Consciousness and [End Page 153] Personal Identity"(chapter V) form the second, more theoretical, part of the book. According to Sturma, Descartes deserves credit for revealing the irreducibility of self-consciousness. This irreducibility is revealed by the fact "that persons become aware of their existence in a way which differs from all other states of consciousness" (103). After discussing mainly analytical objections—above all Wittgenstein's 'private-language' argument and Ayers' critique of the Cogito argument—he summarizes the position of the Heidelberg school (Henrich, et al.). His effort is directed primarily at showing that reflexivity and self-reference are essential to self-consciousness. He tries to develop a concept of self-consciousness that is capable of tying together self-acquaintance and reflection. He believes that only in this way can "the project for a philosophy of the person that is critical of reductionism be transferred to a constructive concept of self-determination"(107). In self-consciousness a person always behaves in relation "to her concrete existence and her concrete behavior in ontological and social space." This explains why the immediate self-relation of self-consciousness is "always an alteration and its subject at once the altering instance and the altered person" (144f). This is followed in the fifth chapter by an examination of the relation between person and identity, where Sturma_starting with the Locke-Leibniz controversy_shows that a person refers to her identity as a given as well as something that needs to be produced (cf.187).The next chapter, "Personal Identity and Practical Self-relations" (chapter VI) is the beginning of the third part of the book, which is essentially practical. In this and the following chapters—"Contexts of Practical Self-relations: The Unconscious and... (shrink)

I at ○ ○四年been published "Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas," the meaning of existence and importance of "a text, and start thinking about writing" from and see "exist" and "personality" "article, a total divided into three: First, the concept of things like the meaning and importance of taking the second, by the natural, cultural, religious" realms that "the meaning of I Ching philosophy, three by of the structure of personality form and develop. Due to space constraints, therefore, published only (...) the first paragraph and second paragraph of this article. Since "'The Meaning and Importance of Being' in Thomas Aquinas's Philosophy" was published in 2004, the writer has been thinking about and writing this article, "On Being and Personality in the Light of Yi-Jing and Yi-Zhuan." This paper comprises of three parts: first, the meaning and importance of "taking in images in contemplation of the outside world;" second, on the immanence of the Zhou-Yi philosophy through the doctrine of three realms-nature, humanism and religion; and third, on the formation and cultivation of personality in terms of the structure of Yi-Jing. (shrink)

In spite of the burgeoning philosophical literature on human dignity, Stephen Darwall's second-personal account of the dignity of persons has not received the attention it deserves. This article investigates Darwall's account and argues that it faces a dilemma, for it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean one should reject a second-personal account. Instead, I argue that an alternative second-personal conception, one (...) I will call relational, promises to solve the dilemma by avoiding both the problem of antecedence and the wrong kind of reasons problem. More generally, distinguishing these two second-personal conceptions of the dignity of persons is important to enrich the available philosophical accounts of human dignity. (shrink)

The article analyses legal preconditions for personal identification in physical and electronic space (hereinafter – cyberspace). Analysis of legal governing of identification in physical space is followed by the analysis of the same in cyberspace. Compulsory elements of identification in physical space and compulsory and non-compulsory elements of identification in cyberspace are provided which leads to conclusions about problem aspects concerning personal identification in cyberspace and related legal governing. This scientific article consists of four main (...) chapters. The first chapter „Identity and Personal Identification“ looks into identity, its content and elements alongside with personal identification. The second chapter „Personal Identification in Physical Space“ scrutinizes legal preconditions of identification in physical space in Lithuania. The third chapter „Personal Identification in Cyberspace“ looks into elements of legally regulated and non-regulated personal identification in cyberspace and discusses identity of a person in cyberspace. The fourth chapter „Electronic Identity of a Person and Legal Regulation“ analyzes and systematizes elements of electronic identity of the person and presumes their reliability and mandatory legal governing. (shrink)

The mystery of Aquinas's virtue ethics -- The gifts as second-personal dispositions -- Virtues and the second-person perspective -- The fruition of the virtues and gifts -- Conclusions and implications.

High profile (and controversial) events and installations, like the Helter-Skelter in Norwich and the Crazy Golf Bridges in Rochester, have drawn attention to innovation and public engagement within Anglican cathedrals. The present study contextualised these innovations both empirically and conceptually. The empirical framework draws on cathedral websites to chronicle the wide and diverse range of events and installations hosted by Anglican cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man between 2018 and 2022. The conceptual framework draws on Edward Bailey’s theory (...) of implicit religion to classify and to explore these events and installations. Two insights from the theory of implicit religion emerged as of particular significance. First, the notion of implicit religion softens the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. This was exemplified by eight categories of events: scientific exhibitions, festivals, musical events, art exhibitions, theatre, markets, community events and installations. Second, the notion of implicit religion draws attention to the themes and activities that generate meaning and purpose. This was exemplified by seven themes: social justice and social conscience, violence and reconciliation, remembrance, migration and sanctuary, COVID-19 and lockdowns, personal well-being and nature and environment.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this article identifies the range of innovative events and installations hosted by Anglican Cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man and assesses the significance of these events and installations through Edward Bailey’s lens of implicit religion, discussing first the softening of boundaries between the sacred and the secular and then the generation of meaning and purpose through the core themes raised by these events and installations. (shrink)

Recent psychology research has established that people do not employ a simple unidimensional scale for attributions of personhood, increasing from non-sentient rocks to mentally complex humans. Rather, there are two personhood dimensions: agency (e.g. planning, deciding, acting) and experience (e.g. feeling, desiring, experiencing). Here we show that this subtle distinction also occurs in the semantic space of natural language. We develop computational-linguistics tools for measuring variation in agency and experience in language and validate the measures against human judgments. To (...) demonstrate the usefulness of the method, we map both dimensions of personhood in historical English-language corpora over the last 200 years. First, we show that while women are now perceived as having similar levels of agency as men, they are still perceived as more patient-like. Second, we show that domesticated animals have gradually gained higher attributions of experience, but not agency, over time. -/- . (shrink)

It has become increasingly common to talk about the second person in the theory of mind debate. While theory theory and simulation theory are described as third person and first person accounts respectively, a second person account suggests itself as a viable, though wrongfully neglected third option. In this paper I argue that this way of framing the debate is misleading. Although defenders of second person accounts make use of the vocabulary of the theory of mind debate, (...) they understand some of the core expressions in a different way. I will illustrate this claim by focusing on Reddy’s and Gallagher’s accounts and argue that these authors use the notions of knowing and of understanding other minds differently than traditionally assumed. As a consequence, second person accounts thus conceived do not directly address the questions that gave rise to the theory of mind debate. They invite us, however, to critically reflect upon the way the debate has been set up. (shrink)