In mid-twentieth-century Mexican philosophy, there was a peculiar nationalist existentialist project focused on the cultural conditions of agency. This article revisits some of those ideas, including the idea that there is an important but underappreciated experience of one's relationship to norms and social meanings. This experience—something called accidentality—casts new light on various forms of social subordination and socially scaffolded agency, including cultural alienation, biculturality, and double consciousness.

This thesis, which is based on six peer-reviewed publications, is a theoretical and qualitative treatment of the ways in which social and contextual factors serve as a resource for understanding the particularities of ‘cybercrime’ that emanates from Nigeria. The thesis illuminates how closer attention to Nigerian society aids the understanding of Nigerian cybercriminals (known as Yahoo Boys), their actions and what constitutes ‘cybercrime’ in a Nigerian context. ‘Cybercrime’ is used in everyday parlance as a simple acronym for all forms of (...) crimes on the internet, whereas ‘cybercrime’ in a Nigerian context is rooted in socioeconomics and determined by it. In particular, the defrauding of victims for monetary benefit is the most significant theme that emerged from the analysis of Yahoo Boys. While all six publications are situated at the intersections of multiple fields of study, they all share a common endorsement of the constructionist/interpretivist position. The six published works comprise: [a] three conceptual publications; and [b] three empirical publications. The conceptual publications deconstruct the meanings of multiple taken-for-granted concepts in cybercrime scholarship and develop more robust conceptual lenses, namely: (1) ‘Digital Spiritualization’; (2) ‘The Tripartite Cybercrime Framework – TCF’; and (3) ‘The Synergy between Feminist Criminology and the TCF’. These new conceptual lenses represent the candidate’s contribution to developing theory in the field. Alongside this, the empirical section includes three sets of qualitative data, which include: (1) interviews with seventeen Nigerian parents; (2) lyrics from eighteen Nigerian musicians; and (3) interviews with forty Nigerian law enforcement officers. These diverse sources of qualitative data provide a more fully-developed understanding of ‘cybercrime’ in the Nigerian context (and elsewhere). All six-published works, while individually contributing to knowledge, collectively shed clearer light on the centrality of cultural context in the explanation of ‘cybercrime’. (shrink)

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 76-80.

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 48-59.

Context is a notion that is commonly invoked in many linguistic studies, either with very general reference or, more specifically, in the light of one of a number of research approaches which assign distinct definitions to context, ranging from factors that can be recovered from a text, through social parameters serving as an index for the appropriation of discursive performance, to factors that bring texts into being and give them meaning. This exploratory and descriptive research problematises the notion of context (...) specifically on the grounds of English/Polish translation of corporate documentation processed in company registration proceedings, touching upon factors that are presumed to be discursively relevant in this communicative situation. The study is conducted from the perspective of the sociocultural approach and it adopts the parallel corpus methodology. The author discusses the concept of context on the ground of legal communication and secondarily presents a corpus-based description of the context categories that are idiosyncratic and potentially discursively relevant for the said communicative situation in the cross-linguistic perspective. The contextual variation is tested for its capacity to affect translation performance. The results reveal specific tendencies as regards the distribution patterns in the values corresponding to the investigated context categories. They point to some divergencies in translation output caused by the source text variantivity and they pave the way and directions for further research. Already at this stage the findings may have significant pedagogical value and they constitute a solid starting point for sociolinguistic research on discourse variantivity. (shrink)

Decision-making has traditionally been modelled as a serial process, consisting of a number of distinct stages. The traditional account assumes that an agent first acquires the necessary perceptual evidence, by constructing a detailed inner repre- sentation of the environment, in order to deliberate over a set of possible options. Next, the agent considers her goals and beliefs, and subsequently commits to the best possible course of action. This process then repeats once the agent has learned from the consequences of her (...) actions and subsequently updated her beliefs. Under this interpretation, the agent’s body is considered merely as a means to report the decision, or to acquire the relevant goods. However, embodied cognition argues that an agent’s body should be understood as a proper part of the decision-making pro- cess. Accepting this principle challenges a number of commonly held beliefs in the cognitive sciences, but may lead to a more unified account of decision-making. This thesis explores an embodied account of decision-making using a recent frame- work known as predictive processing. This framework has been proposed by some as a functional description of neural activity. However, if it is approached from an embodied perspective, it can also offer a novel account of decision-making that ex- tends the scope of our explanatory considerations out beyond the brain and the body. We explore work in the cognitive sciences that supports this view, and argue that decision theory can benefit from adopting an embodied and predictive perspective. (shrink)

The evolution from pre-human primates to modern Homo sapiens is a complex one involving many domains, ranging from the material to the social to the cognitive, both at the individual and the community levels. This article focuses on a critical qualitative transition that took place during this evolution involving both the social and the cognitive domains. For the social domain, the transition is from the face-to-face forms of social interaction and organization that characterize the non-human primates that reached, with Pan, (...) a hiatus due to the centripetal effects that highly individualized behavior has on a social system. The transition is to the relation-based forms of social organization that evolved in the hominins ancestral to Homo sapiens and are universal in human societies today. For the cognitive domain, this transition involves going from behavior responding mainly to phenomenal level sensory inputs to behavior formed in accordance with the concept of a relation, initially abstracted from behavior patterns, then extending the concept of a relation beyond abstraction from behavior patterns to the concept of a relation generated recursively through constructing the relation of a relation. This extension made possible the construction of systems of relations; initially genealogical systems of relations constructed culturally using the logic of recursion, and subsequently, the symbolic, computational systems of kin term relations referred to by anthropologists as kinship terminologies. The latter are “constructed realities” in the sense this term is used by cultural anthropologists. It follows that the evolution of relation-based systems of social interaction is not adequately accounted for through population model evolutionary accounts such as the Dual Inheritance Theory of human evolution since “constructed realities” constitute collectively and publicly shared cultural knowledge rather than the individually and privately possessed knowledge that is assumed in the population model framework for human evolution. (shrink)

Bu makalenin amacı, bazı parametreler dikkate alınarak meslek edinme amaçlı din eğitimi alan bireylerin dindarlıklarının oluşumuna, Türkiye’de verilen formel din eğitiminin psiko-pedago-teolojik katkılarının niteliğini analiz etmektir. Bu kapsamda makalede, mesleki amaçlı din eğitimi alan yeni nesil bireylerin dindarlık formlarındaki niteliksel ve niceliksel değişim süreçleri, teorik olarak ‘sekülerleşme, çalışma ahlakı, kendini ayarlama ve kendini kandırma’ olguları bağlamında yorumlanmaya çalışılmıştır. Sonuç olarak makalede; sekülerleşmenin ortaya çıkardığı sosyal anomi ve yabancılaşmayla ilişkili sözü edilen bu dindarlığın dönüşümü bağlamında, orta ve yüksek düzeyde din eğitimi (...) alan bireylerin yeni nesil dindarlık formları ile ‘değer-yoksun dindarlık’ tipolojisi arasında olgusal düzeyde örtüşen yönlerinin olduğu; mesleki din eğitimi alan gençlerin dinsel kimlik-sosyal kimlik-mesleki kimlik oluşumları arasındaki psiko-sosyal uyumsuzlukların ‘kendini ayarlama ve kendini aldatma’ kavramı eksenli ortaya çıkabilecek sosyal maske kullanım riskini arttırması sebebiyle ‘değer-yoksun dindarlık’ formunun gelişimini kolaylaştırdığı vurgulanmıştır. (shrink)

Law can be characterised as a highly specialized tool with strong social impact requiring social legitimization and acceptance. Law is also specific, abstract world. World that needs words to exist. To understand law and to share its content it is important to focus on narratives related to it. The article deals with the importance of narration in law as the consequence of discursive peculiarity of law and its dependence on the acceptance of societies. Law is culturally conditioned, and by means (...) of narrative can combine the expectations of society concerning legitimation with legal rationality. The law cannot function exclusively as an abstract and formal structure nor an administrative apparatus, with own ways of legitimization or justification. Through social acceptance law gains its real form, but at the same time it is subordinated to cultural patterns. Changes in narratives change the law and then the real world. The article shows possible ways of analysis of narratives, narrative strategies and forms that are present in law. (shrink)

In the current global push to examine the diverse and complex approach in which classroom culture contributes to the shaping of students’ learning cultural identity. Classroom culture plays a fundamental role in constructing students’ learning competencies, perceptions and behaviors. Thus, this study conceptualizes and contextualizes a collective individualism learning model to explicate a specific learning model in classroom culture at Chinese particular context historically and traditionally. The collective individualism model is identified as the individualized learning style of students in Chinese (...) classroom culture characterized by nine symbolic objects, including a textbook, an exercise book, a pen, a blackboard, a screen, a computer, a table, a chair and platform in a Chinese collective class. In addition, two core components of formal collectivism and substantive individualism derived from constructive learning theory, social learning theory, Mezirow’s transformative learning theory and Kolb’s experiential learning theory. The implications for examining the collective individualism model of Chinese classroom culture are likewise linked to innovative talent cultivation and fulfillment of ‘Four Good Teachers’ goal. Both the discussion and conclusion led to the construction of promising classroom culture at Chinese context practically. (shrink)

This paper written as a dialogue between two interlocutors, Julie and a Student, deals with Understanding and its role in the social sciences. The fictional dialogue takes place in Hannover, Germany, and the interlocutors are exchanging arguments about Verstehen and how it should be conceptualized in the philosophy of the social sciences. A range of different approaches is discussed and a naturalistic strategy emerges as a defensible alternative.

The complete system of knowledge is a standard trope of science fiction, a techno-utopian dream and an aesthetic ideal. It is Solomon’s House, the Encyclopaedia and the Museum. It is also an ideology – of Enlightenment, High Modernism and absolute governance. Far from ending the dream of a total archive, 20th-century positivist rationality brought it ever closer. From Paul Otlet’s ‘Mundaneum’ to Mass-Observation, from the Unity of Science movement to Wikipedia, the dream of universal knowledge dies hard. As a political (...) tool, the total archive encompasses population statistics, gross domestic product, indices of the Standard of Living and the international ideology of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Health Organization, the free market and, most recently, Big Data. Questions of the total archive engage key issues in the philosophy of classification, the poetics of the universal, the ideology of surveillance and the technologies of information retrieval. What are the social structures and political dynamics required to sustain total archives, and what are the temporalities implied by such projects? This introduction and the articles that follow describe and place in historical context a series of concrete instances of totality. Our analysis is arranged according to four central themes: the relationship between the Archive (singular) and archives (plural); the image of the archive and the aesthetics of totality; pathologies of accumulation; and the specific historical trajectory of the total archive in the 19th and 20th centuries. (shrink)

The Mahdi is the eschatological figure of Islam who will rule over the world at the end of time after having rid humanity of evil. During the whole Islamic history, many rulers have claimed to be the long-awaited Mahdi, thus creating the conditions for political revolutions based on prophetic statements. The present paper will study this subject as it occurs in contemporary history, first outlining such messianic character in the light of Muhammad’s revelation, then finding the different meanings of Mahdist (...) claims (the man-oriented and the message-oriented inclinations, the Mahdi as a renewal and the Mahdi as an apocalyptic personality), finally studying different self-proclaimed Mahdis in recent history, in Africa as well as in the Middle East. The last paragraph will be dedicated to the messianic dispositions of the terroristic organization Islamic State which has deeply affected the political-revolutionary strategy adopted by the group. (shrink)

In the debate around ecological democracy, a pivotal point of contention has long been the question why democracy should actually be expected, as some claim, to deliver (more) ecological outcomes. This point is empirical as well as conceptual: it is difficult to conceive why voters would support any policies that – as is often (perceived to be) the case with environmental legislation – would leave them worse off; whilst democracy conceptually must remain open to all outcomes rather than being tied (...) to any particular agenda ex ante. Yet both empirically and conceptually, the nature and extent of this key puzzle has always hinged on the particular definitions used. This paper reconsiders the link between democracy and ecological sustainability from a cultural angle: I argue that conceiving of both sustainability and democratisation as essentially cultural transformations resolves the puzzle and thus makes a renewed case for ecological democracy. Only as cultural processes – the creation of new meanings of sustainable prosperity in people's everyday lives, and a culturally rather than institutionally based form of democratisation – can these transformations be deep-seated rather than superficial, and thus self-perpetuating rather than merely enforced. (shrink)

Recent history reveals a series of rogue traders, jeopardizing their employers’ assets and reputation. There have been instances of unauthorized acting in concert between traders, their supervisors and/or firms’ decision makers and executives, resulting in collusive rogue trading. We explore organizational misbehaviour theory and explain three major collusive rogue trading events at National Australia Bank, JPMorgan with its London Whale and the interest reference rate manipulation/LIBOR scandal through a descriptive model of organizational/structural, individual and group forces. Our model draws conclusions (...) on how banks can set up behavioural risk management and internal control frameworks to mitigate potential collusive rogue trading. (shrink)

This research proposes the comparative analysis of the symbolic representations of Maidan in the Ukrainian and Polish media outlets that comprise tabloid and quality publications. Different types of symbols are identified in the news analysis, reports, and feature stories on Maidan. The typology of symbols is worked out on the basis of the Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms and Langer’s symbol theory. The coded types of symbols include symbol-products, symbol-concepts, symbol-slogans, symbol-situations, symbol-processes, and symbolic actions. With the help of the (...) content analysis it is found that some most visible symbols in the media coverage of Maidan coincide in the Ukrainian and Polish print media. These are the symbol-concept “barricade”, the symbol-concept “Berkut”, and the symbol-process “dispersal of Maidan”. However, there are symbols that have either quantitative or qualitative significance in the Polish press and are absent in the Ukrainian media at all, namely, the symbol-product “blood”, the symbol-concept “solidarity”, the symbol-concept “freedom”. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the relationship between interpretivism about belief and normative standards. Interpretivists have traditionally taken beliefs to be fixed in relation to norms of interpretation. However, recent work by philosophers and psychologists reveals that human belief attribution practices are governed by a rich diversity of normative standards. Interpretivists thus face a dilemma: either give up on the idea that belief is constitutively normative or countenance a context-sensitive disjunction of norms that constitute belief. Either way, interpretivists should embrace the intersubjective (...) indeterminacy of belief. (shrink)

Ethnobiology has become increasingly concerned with applied and normative questions about biocultural diversity and the livelihoods of local communities. While this development has created new opportunities for connecting ethnobiological research with ecological and social sciences, it also raises questions about the role of cognitive perspectives in current ethnobiology. In fact, there are clear signs of institutional separation as research on folkbiological cognition has increasingly found its home in the cognitive science community, weakening its ties to institutionalized ethnobiology. Rather than accepting (...) this separation as inevitable disciplinary specialization, this short perspective article argues for a systemic perspective that addresses mutual influences and causal entanglement of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in socio-ecological dynamics. Such an integrative perspective requires a new conversation about cognition in ethnobiology beyond traditional polarization around issues of cognitive universals and cultural relativity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore how children learn to form new relationships with nature. It draws on a longitudinal case study of children participating in a stewardship project involving the conservation of salamanders during the school day in Stockholm, Sweden. The qualitative method includes two waves of data collection: when a group of 10-year-old children participated in the project (2015) and two years after they participated (2017). We conducted 49 interviews with children as well as using participant (...) observations and questionnaires. We found indications that children developed sympathy for salamanders and increased concern and care for nature, and that such relationships persisted two years after participation. Our rich qualitative data suggest that whole situations of sufficient unpredictability triggering free exploration of the area, direct sensory contact and significant experiences of interacting with a species were important for children’s development of affective relationships with the salamander species and with nature in an open-ended sense. Saving the lives of trapped animals enabled direct sensory interaction, feedback, increased understanding, and development of new skills for dynamically exploring further ways of saving species in an interactive process experienced as deeply meaningful, enjoyable and connecting. The behavioural setting instilled a sense of pride and commitment, and the high degree of responsibility given to the children while exploring the habitat during authentic situations enriched children’s enjoyment. The study has implications for the design of education programmes that aim to connect children with nature and for a child-sensitive urban policy that supports authentic nature situations in close spatial proximity to preschools and schools. (shrink)

The goal of our article is to review the widespread anthropological figure, according to which we can achieve a better understanding of humans by contrasting them with animals. This originally Herderian approach was elaborated by Arnold Gehlen, who characterized humans as “deficient beings” who become complete through culture. According to Gehlen, humans, who are insufficiently equipped by instincts, indirectly stabilize their existence by creating institutions, i.e., complexes of habitual actions. On the other hand, Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that corporeal relationship to (...) the world is already indirect because it is based on preestablished and readjusted “standards” or “norms” of interaction with the environment. Merleau-Ponty then calls these norms “institutions” and views culture as readjustment of institutions which operate already on the level of corporeal existence. The anthropological figure of confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. The Herderian approach can be meaningfully retained only if interpreted as an invitation to confront the norms of indirect interaction with the world in animals and in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

Well–being, health and freedom are some of the many phenomena of interest to science whose definitions rely on a normative standard. Empirical generalizations about them thus present a special case of value-ladenness. I propose the notion of a ‘mixed claim’ to denote such generalizations. Against the prevailing wisdom, I argue that we should not seek to eliminate them from science. Rather, we need to develop principles for their legitimate use. Philosophers of science have already reconciled values with objectivity in several (...) ways, but none of the existing proposals are suitable for mixed claims. Using the example of the science of well-being, I articulate a conception of objectivity for this science and for mixed claims in general. _1_ Introduction _2_ What Are Mixed Claims? _3_ Mixed Claims Are Different _3.1_ Values as reasons to pursue science _3.2_ Values as agenda-setters _3.3_ Values as ethical constraints on research protocols _3.4_ Values as arbiters between underdetermined theories _3.5_ Values as determinants of standards of confirmation _3.6_ Values as sources of wishful thinking and fraud _4_ Mixed Claims Should Stay _4.1_ Against Nagel _5_ The Dangers of Mixed Claims _6_ The Existing Accounts of Objectivity _6.1_ The perils of impartiality _7_ Objectivity for Mixed Claims _8_ Three Rules _8.1_ Unearth the value presuppositions in methods and measures _8.2_ Check if value presuppositions are invariant to disagreements _8.3_ Consult the relevant parties _9_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Ibogaine is a hallucinogenic alkaloid, derived from Tabernanthe iboga, a plant unique to the rainforests of West Africa. Its traditional use as an epiphanic sacrament in local magico-religious practice inspired its appropriation by Western drug addicts by whom it is now hailed as both a catalyst of psychospiritual insight and an effective alleviator of cravings and withdrawal. While scientific and early clinical studies confirm its role in reducing physical withdrawal and craving, debate continues concerning the significance of its “visionary” properties. (...) An analysis of many addicts’ testimonies of recovery, however, places the visionary experience at center stage. I set out to understand mechanisms of transformation and healing, via a comparative phenomenological exploration of this experience, through the opposing lenses of psychoanalysis and cultural constructivism. I propose that at the heart of the healing encounter is a culturally shaped creative journey to an imaginal unspoilt state in personal or collective history. How this experience is recovered and integrated into life is critically considered. I argue a secular account is vital as the ibogaine scene strives toward social and medical legitimacy. If and how such a framework can sit alongside spontaneously emergent spiritual and religious idioms and experience will also be tentatively explored. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

This paper pursues the philosophical significance of a relatively unexplored point of Platonic aesthetics: the social dimension of beauty. The social dimension of beauty resides in its conceptual connection to shame and honour. This dimension of beauty is fundamental to the aesthetic education of the Republic, as becoming virtuous for Plato presupposes a desire to appear and to be admired as beautiful. The ethical significance of beauty, shame, and honour redound to an ethically rich notion of appearing before others which (...) corresponds to a public conception of virtue. I suggest how this dimension of beauty in Plato – particularly the emphasis on beautification – proves fruitful for reconsidering the scope and the nature of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Chapter 1 (To know in order to survive) & Chapter 2 (A critique of evolved reason) explain human knowledge and its limits from an evolutionary point of view. Chapter 3 (Captured in our Cockpits) explains the evolution of consciousness, using value driven decision theory. Chapter 4-6 (Chapter 4 Sociobiology, Chapter 5 Culture: the Human Arena), Chapter 6, Genes, Memes, and the Environment) show that to understand culture you have at least to deal with 4 levels: genes, brains, the environment, culture. (...) Chapter 7-8 (Why some apes became humans) give a model of human evolution in which Alexander's concept of 'ecological dominace' plays a crucial role. (shrink)

Most modern definitions of art fail to successfully address the issue of the ever-changing nature of art, and rarely even attempt to provide an account that would be valid in more than just the modern Western context. This article develops a new theory that preserves the advantages of its predecessors, solves or avoids their problems, and has a scope wide enough to account for art of different times and cultures. It argues that an object is art in a given context (...) iff some person culturally competent in this context have afforded it the status of a candidate for appreciation for reasons considered good in this context. This weakly institutional view is supplemented by auxiliary definitions explaining the notions of cultural contexts, competence, and good reasons for affording the status. The relativisation to contexts brings increased explanatory power and scope, and the ability to account for the diversity of art. (shrink)

This paper sketches a brief account of multiculturalism in order to distinguish it from other positions that have been under attack recently. Following this, we address two prevalent and diametrically opposed criticisms of multiculturalism, namely, that multiculturalism is relativistic, on the one hand, and that it is absolutist, on the other. Both of these criticisms, we argue, simply mask liberal democratic theory's myth- begotten attempt to resolve the tension between the one and the many. Multiculturalism challenges the myths of meritocracy (...) and abstract individualism which underlie liberalism; properly understood, it evades the criticisms often hurled at it. (shrink)

Ethnocentrism, it is said, involves believing certain things to be true: that one's culture is superior to others, more deserving of respect, or at the ‘centre’ of things. On the alternative view defended in this article, ethnocentrism is a type of bias, not a set of beliefs. If this is correct, it challenges conventional wisdom about the scope, danger, and avoidance of ethnocentrism.

When stripped to the bare bone, there are only 11 foundational paradigms in social sciences. These foundational paradigms are like flashlights that can be utilized to shed light on different aspects of human society, but each of them can only shed light on a limited area of human society. Different schools in social science result from different but often incomplete combinations of these foundational paradigms. To adequately understand human society and its history, we need to deploy all 11 foundational paradigms, (...) although more limited combinations of them may be adequate for understanding more specific social facts. (shrink)

The semiospherical approach to semiotics and especially to semiotics of culture entails the need of juxtaposing several terminological fields. Among the most important, the fields of textuality, chronotopicality, and multimodality or multimediality should be listed. Textuality in this paper denotes a general principle with the help of which it is possible to observe and to interpret different aspects of the workings of culture. Textuality combines in itself text as a well-defined artefact and textualization as an abstraction (presentation or definition as (...) text). In culture, we can pose in principle the same questions both to a concrete and to an abstract text, although an abstract text is only an operational means for defining, with the help of textualization, a certain phenomenon in the interests of a holistic and systemic analysis. The practice of textualization in turn helps us to understand the necessity of distinguishing between articulation emerging from the textual material itself and articulation ensuing from textuality or textualization — the former provides for comparability between texts made from the same material, thelatter makes comparable all textualized phenomena irrespective of their material. Textuality is a possibility that culture offers to its analyser, and at the same time it is an ontological property of culture and an epistemological principle for investigating culture. (shrink)

Analytic theology as currently practiced has an ambiguous character. It may be understood either formally, as any instance of theology that draws on analytic philosophy, or substantively, as a cohesive theological school that draws on analytic philosophy in defense of traditional Christian orthodoxy. Both conceptions assume that analytic philosophy furnishes “tools and methods” to the analytic theologian. Yet on the best recent accounts of analytic philosophy, analytic philosophy has no unique tools and methods. I argue that analytic philosophy should be (...) understood as a robust and distinctive intellectual tradition. This understanding of analytic philosophy raises a worry for the emerging field of analytic theology, however: that analytic theologians might be more deeply grounded in the analytic philosophical tradition than in any tradition of theology. (shrink)

My thesis situates itself within the field of the Philosophy of Worldviews. Specifically, it aims to address the normative question of what the task should be of such a philosophy when faced with the problem of conflicting beliefs between religious worldviews. To answer this question, I turn to the procedure of aporetical analysis, in short, aporetics. Firstly, aporetics offers a distinct method of consistency restoration within inconsistent sets on the basis of thesis rejection and thesis modification. Secondly, aporetics leads to (...) an understanding of the availability of aporetic exits on the basis of epistemic criteria. On the one hand, this leads us to opt for an orientational monism/pluralism, which steers the middle course between the epistemic stances of exclusivism and pluralism. On the other hand, it allows us to identify epistemic criteria for worldview acquisition on the basis of three distinct superclasses. These superclasses can be derived from Jürgen Habermas' validity claims, and applied to the self-understanding of contemporary theories of religion. (shrink)

In this article, I reconsider bio-essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider’s influential critique that concluded that kinship was “a non-subject” (1972:51). Schneider’s critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view their enterprise as divorced from such bio-essentialist studies. Beginning with an alternative narrative connecting kinship (...) past and present and concluding by introducing a novel way of thinking about kinship, I have three constituent aims in this research article: (1) to reconceptualize the relationship between kinship past and kinship present; (2) to reevaluate Schneider’s critique of bio-essentialism and what this implies for the contemporary study of kinship; and (3) subsequently to redirect theoretical discussion of what kinship is. This concluding discussion introduces a general view, the homeostatic property cluster (HPC) view of kinds, into anthropology, providing a theoretical framework that facilitates realization of the often-touted desideratum of the integration of biological and social features of kinship. [bio-essentialism, kinship studies, homeostatic property cluster kinds, Schneider, genealogy]. (shrink)

This project reflects on the way in which students in a situation of social risk construct their identity. Based on the reflections and theories originating from research conducted on individuals and collective groups in a situation of social exclusion due to disability, social class or ethnicity, this paper will analyse the conflicts these students have to deal with when constructing their identity. It also examines the challenge that education has to face to turn those conflicts into opportunities that will help (...) to build life projects with which they can freely identify. For this reason, from a critical perspective, the school’s role in constructing identity will be analysed, as will the way in which it affects children and adolescents from minority groups. In the same way, we will study and put forward some different channels aimed at providing more equal educational attention to those identities that are depreciated in neoliberal society. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of cultural anthropology in Cognitive Science. Culture is described as a very large pool of information passed along from generation to generation, composed of learned “programs” for action and understanding. These cultural programs differ in important ways from computer programs. Cultural programs tend to be unspecified and inexplicit rather than clearly stated algorithms learned through a slow process of guided discovery, and involve the manipulation of content based rather than formal symbol systems. Cultural symbol systems (...) often have affective as well as objective referents, giving them a strong directive effect. The argument is made that in the process of repeated social transmission and use, cultural programs come to take forms which have a good “fit” to the natural capacities and constraints of the human information processing system. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRespect in morally and culturally critical situations during military missions is complex and loaded with ambiguity. Respect seems a desirable and positive cross-cultural competence. It is assumed and expected that respectful action serves the objectives of the mission and contributes to the perceived legitimacy of the military. However, by respecting ‘the others’ culture’ too much, one can neglect one's own values and sideline one's own ethical point of view. We conducted a qualitative study in which we extracted 121 morally and (...) culturally critical situations from 29 in-depth interviews with Dutch soldiers who have been deployed to, for them, unfamiliar cultural settings. The findings of this study reveal, firstly, that soldiers who refer to ‘culture’ as a reason for their own behaviour in morally and culturally critical situations encountered during deployments are less likely to intervene even though these situations conflict with their own values. This could be considered to be a sort of ethic.. (shrink)

What is a moral argument? A straightforward answer is that a moral argument is an argument dealing with moral issues, such as the permissibility of killing in certain circumstances. I call this the thin sense of ‘moral argument’. Arguments that we find in normative and applied ethics are almost invariably moral in this sense. However, they often fail to be moral in other respects. In this article, I discuss four ways in which morality can be absent from moral arguments in (...) the thin sense. If these arguments suffer from an absence of morality in at least one of these ways, they are not moral arguments in what I will call the thick sense of ‘moral argument’. Because only moral arguments in the thick sense could possibly qualify as proper responses to moral problems, the absence of morality in thin arguments means that these arguments will fail to give us a reason to do whatever they claim that we ought to do, even if we see no independent reason to question the truth of the premises or the logical validity of the argument. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks (...) for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

Philosophy of science and history of science both have a significant relation to science itself; but what is their relation to each other? That question has been a focal point of philosophical and historical work throughout the second half of this century. An analysis and review of the progress made in dealing with this question, and especially that made in philosophy, is the focus of this thesis. Chapter one concerns logical positivist and empiricist approaches to philosophy of science, and the (...) significance of the criticisms levelled at them by analytic epistemologists such as Willard Quine and 'historicist' philosophers, especially Thomas Kuhn. Chapter two details the attempts by Kuhn and Lakatos to integrate these historicist criticisms with historically oriented philosophy of science, in their separate attempts at providing rational explanations of historical developments. Kuhn's latest work seeks to mend fences with philosophy, but his efforts remain too closely tied to the epistemological approaches strongly criticized in his earlier work. Lakatos' treatment of history is much more subtle than most have understood it to be, but the conception of scientific rationality that arises out of it is transformed into an abstract cultural product, more reminiscent of Hegel's geist than of individual human rationality. Chapters three and four discuss the recommendations of Lakatos and Laudan to historians with regard to historiography, and the actual historiographies and philosophy of history of practicing historians and historians of science. The philosophers' contributions indicate little concern for the historians' own methods, materials, and purposes; and the historians' writings present methodologies for history of science that are independent of the normative demarcations of philosophy of science, pace Lakatos and Laudan. Chapter five develops a philosophical position that fosters a more productive engagement between philosophy and history of science, a 'methodological historicism' that embraces the possibility of an important role for social and political factors in a philosophical study of scientific development. The epistemological relativism that might accompany such a historicist position need not be the radical epistemological anarchism of Feyerabend, though it will allow for a significant underdetermination of scientific development by reason nonetheless. (shrink)

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

This article describes a study that examined the experiences of 27 individuals who frequented an Open Access homeless shelter in Toronto, Canada. The overarching aim of this study was to map the social organisation of health care in Toronto, with particular regards to the ways in which literacy, or the lack of literacy, mediates the experiences of homeless individuals attempting to gain access to health care. While terms such as “literate” or “illiterate” might be seen to reflect an individual’s level (...) of acquired education or competence, critical social theorists argue that such terms instead more accurately reflect an individual’s relative class or position within the social hierarchy. Individuals who possess literacy are able to read into texts for their implicit understandings, directives, and power structures. Furthermore, they are able to translate and decode texts as potential pretexts for coordination or control. This study draws on a Freirean critical standpoint, which acknowledges that knowledge and power are inextricably interconnected. This study asked: How does literacy, or the lack of literacy, facilitate or impede access to health care for homeless individuals? What are the social consequences of illiteracy? (shrink)

Intertwined with the celebration of Athenian democratic institutions, we find in the "Oresteia" another chain of interactions, in which the elite families of Argos, Phokis, Athens, and even Mount Olympos employ the traditional aristocratic relationships of xenia and hetaireia to renegotiate their own status within-and at the pinnacle of-the civic order, and thereby guarantee the renewed prosperity of their respective communities. The capture of Troy is the result of a joint venture by the Atreidai and the Olympian "family" . Although (...) Agamemnon falls victim to his own mishandling of aristocratic privilege, his son is raised by doryxenoi in Phokis , a relationship which is mirrored by that with the Olympian "allies," Hermes and Apollo. Orestes' recovery of his father's position is thus shown to depend upon a network of "guest-friends" and "sworn-comrades," reinforced by the traditional language of oaths and reciprocal loyalty. In the Eumenides, the alliance between the Olympian and Argive royal families is re-invoked as the basis both for Athena's protection of Orestes, and finally for Zeus' concern for his daughter's Athenian dependents. In contrast to this successful "networking," and the resultant benefits that trickle down to the citizens of Argos and Athens, stand the seditious oaths and perverted "comradeship" of Aigisthos and Klytaimestra; likewise, the Erinyes are unable to draw on equivalent claims of pedigree or xenia to those enjoyed by Orestes and Apollo. Like all Greek tragedies, the "Oresteia" presents the action through constantly shifting viewpoints, those of aristocrats and commoners, leaders and led, while the propriety of this hierarchy itself is never questioned. And although the action moves from monarchical Argos to an incipiently democratic Athens, paradoxically we hear less and less about "ordinary," lower-class citizens as the trilogy progresses. Thus, at the same time that the trilogy reinforces the sense of collective survival and civic values , it also suggests that these can be maintained only through the proper interventions of their traditional leaders. Aeschylus' plays were composed during a time when the Athenian democracy was still developing, and elite leadership and patronage were still taken for granted. Attic tragedy and the City Dionysia may be seen as a site of negotiation between rival ideologies within the polis, wherein a kind of "solidarity without consensus" is achieved. Written and staged by the elite under license from the demos, the dramas play out dangerous stories of royal risk-taking, crime, glory, and suffering, in such a way as to reassure the citizen audience simultaneously of their own collective invulnerability, and of the unique value of their leading families. (shrink)

In this article, I apply a structural-phenomenological conception of experience and self to the anthropological theorizing of spirit possession. In particular, I argue that a phenomenology of the alien, as elaborated by the philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels, allows for a more differentiated understanding of possession phenomena. Following a characterization of alienness—in conceptual distinction from the more common term “otherness”—as a dimension that necessarily eludes experience, I describe spirit possession as a cultural technology to appropriate the experiential alien by transforming it into (...) the symbolic other. I discuss this relation to the alien in thematic areas central to the anthropology of possession: illness and therapy, symbolism and naming, embodiment and self. (shrink)

Men's passage to fatherhood: an analysis of the contemporary relevance of transition theory This paper presents a theoretical analysis of men's experiences of pregnancy, birth and early fatherhood. It does so using a framework of ritual transition theory and argues that despite its earlier structural‐functionalist roots, transition theory remains a valuable framework, illuminating contemporary transitions across the life course. The paper discusses the historical development of transition or ritual theory and, drawing upon data generated during longitudinal ethnographic interviews with men (...) undergoing the transition to fatherhood, analyses its relevance in understanding contemporary experiences of fatherhood. (shrink)