We build on some of Daniel Dennett’s ideas about predictive indispensability to characterize properties of video games discernable by people as computationally emergent if, and only if: (1) they can be instantiated by a computing machine, and (2) there is no algorithm for detecting instantiations of them. We then use this conception of emergence to provide support to the aesthetic ideas of Stanley Fish and to illuminate some aspects of the Chomskyan program in cognitive science.

We consider the problem of moral disjunction in professional and business activities from a virtue-ethical perspective. Moral disjunction arises when the behavioral demands of a role conflict with personal morality; it is an important problem because most people in modern societies occupy several complex roles that can cause this clash to occur. We argue that moral disjunction, and the psychological mechanisms that people use to cope with it, are problematic because they make it hard to pursue virtue and to live (...) with integrity. We present role coadunation as a process with epistemic and behavioral aspects that people can use to resolve moral disjunction with integrity. When role coadunation is successful, it enables people to live virtuous lives of appropriate narrative disunity and to honor their identity-conferring commitments. We show how role coadunation can be facilitated by interpretive communities and discuss the emergence and ideal features of those communities. (shrink)

In modern times a gap has appeared between the arts of history and literature, and the sciences of historicism and criticism. Many modern critics, historians, and teachers of literature and history (and even many so‐called authors of literature) have welcomed, or at least complied with, the “scientification” of their arts, resulting in widespread illiteracy with regard to literature and history. The solution to this problem lies in a (re‐)investigation of how the art of literature teaches us the truth. I maintain (...) that the lifeblood of literature is the set of common joys and griefs, the common blessings and sufferings, of mankind. Without a communication of these passions as passions with the result of a transformation or shaping of the soul – without a mimesis, as the Greeks would say –across the boundaries of tribe, race, gender and era, there is no literature; and no literacy. Using a scene from Solzhenitsyn's First Circle, I argue that these passions are part of the truth (or falsity) of any story involving human beings. So literature and history would both be restored if the writers, readers, and teachers of each developed a deeper concern for the whole truth. (shrink)

This paper argues that the framework of Community of Practice is beneficial for an understanding of the linguistic practices that international courts and tribunals employ in their interpretative approaches. Other than the frameworks of the social network, the speech community, and the epistemic community, the framework of Community of Practice can be said to allow for a more critical assessment of the social context in which international courts and tribunals function. Such an assessment is crucial in that it is in (...) that social context that interpretative approaches can be said to take form and in return shape the social institutions that international courts and tribunals comprise. That is, the framework of Community of Practice entails the notion that any form of meaning and its subsequent reifications, including, actual language use, are continually negotiated communally as a result of social interaction and, hence, shape the social constellations in which such interaction takes place accordingly. (shrink)

A provocative examination of the artistic interpretation of twelve of Borges’s most famous stories.

In The Metaphysics of Interpretation, I explore the ontological issues surrounding fictional characters, literary works, and literary interpretation. My central claim is that if one accepts a certain position on the ontology of fictional characters and literary works – artifactualism – then, under certain circumstances, the misinterpretation of a literary work will result in the full-fledged destruction of that work. Some related matters that are studied include: realism about fictional characters, artifactualism’s implications for the debate between textualism and constructivism, the (...) seeming temporal “gappiness” of literary works, and the question of validity in interpretation. (shrink)

It has been claimed that to fully understand the law, one must know the language of normative texts and the relevant rules governing its use. It usually means that normative texts do not seem to be comprehensible enough to persons without formal legal training. In an on-going research project, we are focusing on the process of writing texts of legal regulations, conducting semi-structured interviews with those involved in drafting normative texts. In this paper, we focus on lawyers as a speech (...) community of legal language speakers and we discuss why and to what extent this speech community may be considered an elite in a society. We show that competent usage of special – legal – language in regulating the whole society may help create a special group of persons wielding an important segment of cultural capital: the knowledge of legal language, and, in consequence, competent knowledge of law. Given the fact that this language is used to exercise (legal) power in a society, lawyers appear to be in the advantageous position of an elite. We argue that those who draft new legal texts reproduce writing rules and customs, constantly re-creating legal language as a language mostly incomprehensible to a non-competent speaker, and, in consequence, creating lawyers as an elite speech community. (shrink)