While aestheticians have devoted substantial attention to the possibility of acquiring knowledge from fiction, little of this attention has been directed at the acquisition of factual information. The neglect traces, I believe, to the assumption that the task of aesthetics is to explain the special cognitive value of fiction. While the value of many works of nonfiction may be measured, in part, by their ability to transmit information, most works of fiction do not have this aim, and so many conclude (...) that the transmission of information is irrelevant to their value. I am skeptical of these claims. I doubt that there is any value, cognitive or otherwise, special to all and only works of fiction. Thus I see no reason to neglect the capacity to convey factual information—specifically, propositional knowledge about real individuals and events—when assessing the value of particular works. In this paper I consider the value of learning about history from a particular work of fiction, Gore Vidal’s Lincoln: A Novel. Drawing on recent work in cognitive psychology, I argue that narrative devices used by Vidal can enhance our ability to learn and retain factual information, despite also increasing the possibility that we will form false beliefs, and that acquiring propositional knowledge from fiction, far from being a process we can take for granted, constitutes a difficult achievement. (shrink)

Radical cities have historically been hotbeds of transformative paradigms, political changes, activism, and social movements, and have given rise to visionary ideas, utopian projects, revolutionary ideologies, and debates. These cities have served as incubators for innovative ideas, idealistic projects, revolutionary philosophies, and lively debates. The streets, squares, and public spaces of radical cities have been the backdrop for protests, uprisings, and social movements that have had both local and global significance. This research project aims to explore and reimagine radical cities (...) and urban activism using a variety of visual and collaborative pedagogical approaches. This project will study and categorize these cities through comparative case studies from different regions, including North America, and Latin America, and beyond, in order to better understand and interpret pivotal societal transitions. (shrink)

Self-narrative is often, perhaps primarily, a tool of self- constitution, not of truth representation. We explore this theme with reference to our own recent qualitative interviews of substance-dependent agents. Narrative self- constitution, the process of realizing a valued narrative projection of oneself, depends on one’s narrative tracking truth to a certain extent. Therefore, insofar as narratives are successfully realized, they have a claim to being true, although a certain amount of self-deception typically comes along for the ride. We suggest that, (...) because agents typically value certain outcomes more highly than truth for truth’s sake, it makes sense to narrate in ways that aren’t strictly true if that helps ensure highly valued outcomes do come true. Walker (2012) outlines three ways of defending the truth of past-directed narratives, but the role of future-directed narratives in realizing highly valued truths provides her a fourth way. (shrink)

Adopting a materialist approach to the mind has far reaching implications for many presuppositions regarding the properties of the brain, including those that have traditionally been consigned to “the mental” aspect of human being. One such presupposition is the conception of the disembodied self. In this article we aim to account for the self as a material entity, in that it is wholly the result of the physiological functioning of the embodied brain. Furthermore, we attempt to account for the structure (...) of the self by invoking the logic of the narrative. While our conception of narrative selfhood incorporates the work of both Freud and Dennett, we offer a critique of these two theorists and then proceed to amend their theories by means of complexity theory. We argue that the self can be characterised as a complex system, which allows us to account for the structure of the wholly material self. (shrink)

The second of Gregory’s Dialogues, tells the life and miracles of Benedict of Nursia. In this paper, I will first introduce the Gregorian concepts of spiritual “stability” (stabilitas) and of the spiritual “ruler” (rector), along with the spiritual journey by which “stability” is recovered. Second, focusing on episodes that call attention to Benedict’s physical self-disposition (seated, standing, walking), I will read his life doubly. Under one reading, these episodes proffer moral exempla wherein Benedict’s physical self-possession outwardly manifests a spiritual ruler’s (...) proper response to attacks on him and on his community. Under another reading, the organization and emphases of these same episodes add up to an over-arching narration of Gregory’s theology of spiritual progress, all the way to fullness of love and the vision of God. Third, I will argue that the motif of steadfast love rather than of physical claustration is the deepest foundation of this journey and that the dialogue universalizes the “way of Benedict” to guide even non-monastic readers to the heavenly homeland. (shrink)

My chapter aims to advance the debate on a problem often raised by philosophers who are skeptical of implied narrators in movies. This is the concern that positing such elusive narrators gives rise to absurd imaginings (Gaut 2004: 242; Carroll 2006: 179-180). -/- Friends of the implied cinematic narrator reply that the questions critics raise about the workings of the implied cinematic narrator are "silly ones" to ask. -/- I examine how the "absurd imaginings" problem arises for all the central (...) arguments for the elusive cinematic narrator and discuss why the questions critics pose about this narrator are legitimate ones to ask. (shrink)

Prophet (pbuh) has given notice that the Salah [prayer] is the first deed in which the Muslim servant will be brought to account on the Day of Judgement. The Prophet (pbuh) also informed that if the believer’s obligatory (fardh) prayers are lacking this will be made up from voluntary (nawafil) prayers and that the servant comes close to Allah by fulfilling obligatories and continues to draw near to him with voluntary deeds. One of nawafil is the prayer which is performed (...) before and after the obligatory Friday prayer. When we examine the Prophetic narrations about those prayers -which is also called the first and the second sunnah- and their authenticity, we witness that the Prophet (pbuh) performed prayers in differing raka’ah numbers after the obligatory Friday prayer and urged to it, but there is no authentic and clear traditon indicating that He (pbuh) perfomed any prayer before it. However, by taking into account some general statements of Prophet (pbuh), some weak narrations and some practices of companions it has been said that the Friday prayer has a sunnah before it and moreover it is a Sunnah Muakkadah (stressed sunnah) which is performed in two or four raka’ahs. This article aims to present the narrations about whether the Prophet (pbuh) and companions used to perform any prayers before and after the obligatory Juma’ prayer and their number of raka’s, to determine their authenticity and to evaluate them by reporting the comments about them. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon offers a lucid account of his entrance into the white world where the weightiness of the ‘white gaze’ nearly crushed him. In chapter five of Black Skins, White Masks, he develops his historico-racial and epidermal racial schemata as correctives to Merleau-Ponty’s overly inclusive corporeal schema. Experientially aware of the reality of socially constructed (racialized) subjectivities, Fanon uses his schemata to explain the creation, maintenance, and eventual rigidification of white-scripted ‘blackness’. Through a re-telling of his own experiences of racism, (...) Fanon is able to show how a black person in a racialized context eventually internalizes the ‘white gaze’. In this essay I bring Fanon’s insights into conversation with Foucault’s discussion of panoptic surveillance. Although the internalization of the white narrative creates a situation in which external constraints are no longer needed, Fanon highlights both the historical contingency of ‘blackness’ and the ways in which the oppressed can re-narrate their subjectivities. Lastly, I discuss Fanon’s historically attuned ‘new humanism’, once again engaging Fanon and Foucault as dialogue partners. (shrink)

Death which is inevitably for every mortal is a sadness for those who are left behind is the cause of sırrrow. While some people reflect this sadness out-word as a tear some of them rebel against this through and cry out. -/- Some of them are traditionally reguired or lamenting as showy. For this reason it is inevitable to reveal the Position of the head of the head In İslam and the fact that it is not permissible to narrate it. (...) As a result of person who dies after A person who dies and sheds tears and silent or vocal crying like the lgnorant. -/- It’s not possible to say that, Permissible to cry after And that person sheds tears and tears. Because this situation is the essence of creation and work of mercy. The prophet Muhammad and Omar (d. 23/644), Fatima (d. 11/632), Ibn Mes’ud (d. 32/652-53), Ibn Omar (d. 73/692) Arecrying because of the death of their loved ones. However it’s understood that It’s not permissible to say the merits and beauty of the person who died from the narrations and to call the shocks of shouting and shouting. And it seen that, If a dead person is crying like that and affect and contribution of the dead person in it, He will see the punishment. This article aims to present to rumors that the prophet and some of companions had cried to their death relatives cried and cried forbidden behaviors and interpret and comment on the narrations about the punishment of the dead by the cry of alive and reveal the permissible and non-pemissible behaviors and forms of crying. (shrink)

We propose to analyze well-known cases of "imaginative resistance" from the philosophical literature (Gendler, Walton, Weatherson) as involving the inference that particular content should be attributed to either: (i) a character rather than the narrator or, (ii) an unreliable, irrational, opinionated, and/or morally deviant "first person" narrator who was originally perceived to be a typical impersonal, omniscient, "effaced" narrator. We model the latter type of attribution in terms of two independently motivated linguistic mechanisms: accommodation of a discourse referent (Lewis, Stalnaker, (...) Kamp) and 'cautious' updating as a model of non-cooperative information exchange (Eckardt). (shrink)

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has exposed a shared condition of vulnerability on a global scale. How can we use vulnerability as an effective paradigm in order to foster collective political initiatives? This essay claims that the idea of care is key to understand the vulnerability framework as being both an epistemic and a political resource to address ethical issues. The first half of the essay recollects several arguments in Adriana Cavarero’s and Judith Butler’s most recent works, insofar as both theorists (...) have insisted on the notion of vulnerability in order to interpret contemporary political mobilizations. The second part of the essay retraces a constellation of practices of care in the works of several Black and decolonial feminist thinkers situated in different socio-political contexts. Whereas for Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman the focus is on the matter of Blackness and Black lives in their constitutive vulnerability, both Cristina Rivera Garza’s and Sayak Valencia’s works remarkably insist on the specific socio-political context of today’s Mexico. These authors urge the readers to adopt a critical posture when encountering official narratives, also because in their texts they exhibit their own vulnerability. For them, writing, their writing is an ethical demand to imagine alternatives and to foster new entanglements between bodies persisting on the margins, at the limits of the norms that regulate legibility. (shrink)

In this paper, I explored what Sartre referred to as Camus’ ‘most beautiful and least understood novel,’ The Fall. As a methodology, I applied textual hermeneutics to immerse in the text and got out of it what I deemed as the crux of its existentialism as founded in the two-in-one leitmotif of narration and hypocrisy. In Clamence, there was a profound need – a specter that lingered and haunted – to narrate his life, especially the fall that triggered it (...) and the judgment that allowed him to do it. I argued then that the nature of the text reflected a deep sense of narration that stemmed from hypocrisy, in which Clamence branded himself as ‘judge-penitent’ – what such a life entails, how it freed him, and how it mirrored life-callings or vocations in all walks of life. (shrink)

Novels like Fight Club or American Psycho are said to be instances of unreliable narration: the first person narrator presents an evidently distorted picture of the fictional world. The film adaptations of these novels are likewise said to involve unreliable narration. I resist this extension of the term ‘unreliable narration’ to film. My argument for this rests on the observation that unreliable narration requires a personal narrator while film typically involves an impersonal narrator. The kind of (...) ambiguous story-telling that we find in literary fiction with unreliable narrators, where for certain descriptions it is unclear whether what we’re told is an accurate account of what’s happening in the story world or not, can instead be achieved by conventionalized filmmaking techniques for reporting the contents of mental states, like the point of view shot, but especially the more ambiguous blended perspective shot. (shrink)

A typical device in film is to have a character narrating what is going on, but this narration is not always a reliable guide to the events. According to Maier, distortions may be caused by the narrator’s intent, naivety, use of drugs, and/or cognitive disorder/illness. What is common to these various causes, he argues, is the presence of a point of view, which appears in a movie as shots. While this perspective-based account of unreliability covers most cases, I unpack (...) its methodological consequences and gesture at a possibility that Maier’s analysis overlooks. A narration, I suggest, can be unreliable simply because it is ill-timed with the events shown on screen. In such a case, the distortion is not due to any character’s point of view; rather, it comes from the film medium’s ability to divorce what is seen and what is heard. As a consequence of this mismatch, it is possible to have a reliable narrator but an unreliable narration. Since voice and context of utterance usually match in ordinary speech, I conclude that philosophy of language may be ill-suited to properly understand this particular phenomenon. (shrink)

One way to compare different theoretical approaches to the study of technologies is to see what the difference is between their narratives of the construction of a particular technology. In this paper, we re-narrate the bicycle construction from the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT), comparing to SCOT’s first account of the construction. Although SCOT has moved closer to actor-network theory later by paying more attention to co-construction and materliaty, Pinch and Biker have not modified their account of the bicycle development (...) according to these theoretical changes, despite the fact that one decade later Bijker allocated one chapter, ‘king of the road’, to Safety bicycle development again. An ANT’s narrative of bicycle development can provide a basis for a concrete comparison between ANT and the classic version of SCOT. Or it could be argued that this narrative could complement the story of Pinch and Biker of bicycle development. While we present a new narrative of bicycle development in comparison with SCOT’s one, we offer a methodological framework in the ANT literature that can be considered as a methodological procedure to the study of artefacts in general; this framework has three elements: 1. Phenomenal Bracketing, 2. Collective construction, and 3. Co-construction. (shrink)

Naive realism is a widely debated topic in the philosophy of the mind. In this article I will review the theses of naive realism through the works of one of the most influential philosophers who supported and developed them, Michael Martin. Once the reasons why naive realism should be supported are discussed, I will propose an empirical argument to show that naive realism and the most basic scientific knowledge of perceptive processes are contradictory.

One of the main features that distinguish modern novel from traditional one is the use of new narrative techniques such as monologue, flow of consciousness, leitmotiv and intertextuality. These techniques relate to new approaches that take shape in formal elements such as time, characters and event patterns that make up the modern novel. Which expression technique is used in the work is often related to the form and content of the novel. This research examines the Kevâbîsu Beyrût, which uses modern (...) and post modern expression techniques in the Arab novels of the last century, in the context of the content of the work and reveals the appropriateness of the techniques used for the purpose of the work. The authors of the novel, autobiographical, tried to convey the feelings of a civil war in many ways, and remained in the midst of conflicts. The techniques that came to the forefront in his narration have added aesthetic value to the composition of the narration and it has become one of the famous Arab novels. The introduction part of the work consists of the factors that prepared the ground for the civil war that took place in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990, the first chapter, the work of writer Gâde es-Semman, the third chapter; Kevâbîsu will investigate the relation between the narrative techniques of the novel Beirut and the factors leading to the writing of the work. (shrink)

The increased complexity of health information management sows the seeds of inequalities between health care stakeholders involved in the production and use of health information. Patients may thus be more vulnerable to use of their data without their consent and breaches in confidentiality. Health care providers can also be the victims of a health information system that they do not fully master. Yet, despite its possible drawbacks, the management of health information is indispensable for advancing science, medical care and public (...) health. Therefore, the central question addressed by this paper is how to manage health information ethically? This article argues that Paul Ricœur’s ‘‘little ethics’’, based on his work on hermeneutics and narrative identity, provides a suitable ethical framework to this end. This ethical theory has the merit of helping to harmonise self-esteem and solicitude amongst patients and healthcare providers, and at the same time provides an ethics of justice in public health. A matrix, derived from Ricœur’s ethics, has been developed as a solution to overcoming possible conflicts between privacy interests and the common good in the management of health information. (shrink)

In a theoretical reflection, the aim of this paper is primarily to discuss alterity in journalism. We believe that journalism plays a fundamental role in the construction of knowledge on similarities and differences between human beings, stressing social diversity as one of its purposes. We associate the concept of otherness, understood as a singular mode of existence of the “other”, with the purpose of journalism and with actions of empathy, sympathy and compassion. Based on a phenomenological perspective, we discuss the (...) importance of the meeting between the "self" and the "other", as well as the ability of journalists to perceive and narrate on the aspects that shape the identities of human beings. Moreover, we discuss otherness in journalistic narratives, approaching the relation between the lifeworld and the world of text... (shrink)

Recently, the debate on the ubiquity of fictional narrators – whether every fictional narrative has a fictional narrator – has spread from film to literature. George Wilson reacted to Noël Carroll’s and Andrew Kania’s claims that no fictional narrators but 1 explicit ones such as Ishmael from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick exist. a near-ubiquity position claiming that almost every fictional novel, except those consisting exclusively of dialogue, has at least a minimal narrating agency or a fictional narrator. Yet, he disassociated himself (...) from the usual ontological-gap argument made to support such claims. In other words, he denied the main tenet of an argument made by Jerrold Levinson; the claim that only fictional entities are able of presenting fictional events to the reader or viewer. (shrink)

After 41 years from the approval of the first living will law in 1976 in California, on December 22nd 2017 the bill on “Rules on in- formed consent and advance directives” has been approved in Italy. The applicability of the law highlights a lack of a univocal methodol- ogy regarding the recovery process of the patient’s subjective dimension under a testamentary will; so, it seemed useful to highlight the passages that occur between the drafting and the use of an advance (...) directive in an existential phenomenological prospective. Is the individual who freely drafts an A.D., choosing to decide now for the future, the same per- son for which the provisions were outlined? The goal of this paper is to offer an ethical reading of the ontological issue that illness can raises. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to show that for later Wittgenstein, language cannot be based on a pre-linguistic foundation. Following closely on the tracks of the philosopher, it argues that none of the proposed foundations that are claimed to relate language to reality - viz. verbal definitions, ostensive techniques, mental images, quantitative measurement , Fregean thought or intention - is able to sustain its assumed pre-interpretive character. In a dense exegetical engagement with Wittgenstein, the paper lays out that (...) the hallowed pre-interpretive reference taken to underlie the varying modes of interpretations or descriptions is actually a grammatical interplay, where what seems to be the pre-interpretive simple in one game turns out to be an elaborately complex construction in another. In the ultimate analysis, language and behaviour forge a non-foundational blend that internalizes and does not represent a supposedly extra-linguistic reality. (shrink)

A fictional text is commonly viewed as constituting an invitation to play a certain game of make-believe, with the individual sentences written by the author providing the propositions we are to imagine and/or accept as true within the fiction. However, we can’t always take the text at face value. What narratologists call ‘unreliable narrators’ may present a confused or misleading picture of the fictional world. Meanwhile there has been a debate in philosophy about so-called ‘imaginative resistance’ in which we are (...) inclined to resist imagining (or even accepting as true in the fiction) what’s explicitly stated in the text. But if we can’t take the text’s word for it, how do we determine what’s true in a fiction? We propose an account of fiction interpretation in a dynamic setting (a version of DRT with a mechanism for opening, updating, and closing temporary ‘workspaces’) and combine this framework with belief revision logic. With these tools in hand we turn to modelling imaginative resistance and unreliable narrators. (shrink)

Impossible fictions are valuable evidence both for a theory of fiction and for theories of meaning, mind and epistemology. This article focuses on what we can learn about fiction from reflecting on impossible fictions. First, different kinds of impossible fiction are considered, and the question of how much fiction is impossible is addressed. What impossible fiction contributes to our understanding of "truth in fiction" and the logic of fiction will be examined. Finally, our understanding of unreliable narrators and unreliable (...) class='Hi'>narration in fiction needs to accommodate stories that, on the face of it, cannot possibly be true. (shrink)

The issues of this essay concern whether there are ways of experiencing time that are specific to narration and whether such ways can also be applied to the experience of time in reflection. In order to tackle these issues, we shall compare and contrast the experience of time in life with both the temporal experiences of narration and the temporal experiences of reflection. We shall begin, then, with a discussion on what the “experience of time” is, in the (...) attempt of providing a theoretical framework for our inquiry on narrative and reflective temporalities. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur argues that narration is lived life. Therefore, human experience has a narrative dimension, ie, it has a narrative structure and every effort you want to make for the human need to consider the narrative. For this reason, the text theory is converted to Ricoeur in a general model for the study of human action, since this is conceived as an open work to anyone who can read it. Given this general framework for discussion, we have deepened the (...) notion of the patient as “text”, and described their richness for reflection of bioethics and medical act, rescuing the value of listening, prudence, responsibility and rediscovering a place for the principle of autonomy and casuistry. -/- Paul Ricoeur sostiene que la narración es vida vivida. Por lo tanto, la experiencia humana posee una dimensión narrativa, es decir, tiene una estructura narrativa y todo esfuerzo que quiera dar cuenta de lo humano tendrá que contar con lo narrativo. Por esta razón, la teoría del texto se convierte para Ricoeur en un modelo general para el estudio de la acción humana, pues esta es concebida como una obra abierta a cualquiera que pueda leer. Teniendo en cuenta este marco general de reflexión, hemos profundizado en la noción del paciente como “texto”, y describimos su riqueza para la reflexión de la bioética y el actuar médico, rescatando el valor de la escucha, la prudencia, la responsabilidad y redescubriendo un lugar para el principio de autonomía y la casuística. (shrink)

Can fictions lie? According to a classic conception, works of fiction cannot contain lies, since their content is neither presented as true nor meant to deceive us. But this classic view can be challenged. Sometimes fictions appear to make claims about the actual world, and these claims can be designed to convey falsehoods, historical misconceptions, and pernicious stereotypes. Should we conclude that some fictional statements are lies? This article presents two views that support a positive answer, and two that support (...) a negative one. After examining various ways in which fictions can deceive, it concludes in favour of the view that fictional statements can mislead, but never lie. (shrink)

Narrated in the first person, Peter Carey’s novel about the life of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly incorporates other aspects of speech derived both from Carey’s personal experience and from the editorial process. Kelly's voice is toned down to some extent by virtue of the latter, introducing expressions Kelly himself would not have used. Identifying these elements, along with the specific attributes of Kelly’s own speech, enjoins a diversity of cultural and social groupings that intersect and, in some instances, compete with (...) or contradict one another. Shifts in speakers might be signalled by textual markers or by adopting different expressive qualities and speech patterns, which may or may not include a change in grammatical person. In this novel, at one instance, a shift in person is apparent, but I want to argue, not necessarily a shift in the identity of the speaker because, although the grammatical voice shifts, its qualitative features are largely unaltered. The shift nonetheless introduces a significant change. Paradoxically, as far as literary theory is concerned, the subjective qualities produced through voice mean that stylisations of speech may be indicative of character point of view, rather than what is understood to be narrative voice, because they might function in narrative as inflections of speech that do not correspond to the established voice of the grammatically instanced speaker—offering a focalised perspective instead. The shift in True History presents problems in these terms, however: the point of view instanced here is clearly that belonging to the speaker, though the voice is Kelly’s, for the narrator’s point of view determines the generality of the descriptive terms where once these were specific and personal. Had the novel been narrated wholly in third person, an unproblematic reading of Kelly’s point of view, suggested by the use of his voice, would be possible. But the shift undermines this—Kelly’s point of view gives way to another, instanced in the shift that takes place in narrative voice. Carey, in other words, inverts the convention. This is not an instance of free indirect style or discourse, where grammatical mood is at odds with the speaker’s position and tenses align with the implicated subject position of another. The same features of voice that might identify character point of view must, in absence of any disparity of mood or tone, function in respect to narrative voice to convey something of its speaker’s subjectivity, and this seems apparent here: the speaker shares Kelly’s subjective emotional and intellectual perspective, but no longer occupies the subject position. Carey’s voicing of the bushranger therefore complicates distinctions between voice and point of view by revealing qualitative features of voice to be important to the question of who is speaking the narrative. (shrink)

Narrator Ron Howard tells us that Arrested Development is the “story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.” The cult-classic follows Michael Bluth – the middle son of an inept, philandering, corrupt real-estate developer, George Bluth Sr., who is arrested for white-collar crimes. Constantly faced with crises created by his eccentric family, Michael does his best to preserve the family business, put out fires, and serve as (...) a role model for his teenage son, George Michael. The Bluths’ misadventures raise the question, what, if anything, do adult children owe their parents? This chapter explores the relationships between the members of the Bluth family and argues that Arrested Development makes the case that, insofar as adult children “owe” their parents anything, such an obligation is grounded in a sense of friendship – a voluntarily entered relation that can be terminated at any time. As a result, Arrested Development challenges the often-unquestioned assumption that children owe their parents special consideration simply in virtue of the parent-child relationship. (shrink)

Models of discourse and narration elaborated within the classical compositional framework have been characterized as bottom-up models, according to which discourse analysis proceeds incrementally, from phrase and sentence local meaning to discourse global meaning. In this paper we will argue against these models. Assuming as a case study the issue of discourse coherence, we suggest that the assessment of coherence is a top-down process, in which the construction of a situational interpretation at the global meaning level guides local meaning (...) analysis. In support of our hypothesis, we explore the role of executive functions (brain functions involved in planning and organization of goal-oriented behaviors) in coherence’s establishment, discussing the results of several studies on narrative abilities of patients with brain injuries. We suggest that, compared to other models of discourse processing focused on comprehension, our model is a viable candidate for an integrated account of discourse comprehension and production. (shrink)

Narrations have been able to influence medicine, giving rise to a new approach call " narrative medicine ". In this paper we consider the patient as a text, such is, an open book that the physician intervenes, but also from which the physician may and need to learn a lot. To deepen a little in the narrative perspective of patient understanding and his/her situation helps us to discover how the patient is object of compassion by physicians, but also how he/she (...) turns into subject of compassion. We conclude that it is important for physicians to dedicate time in their initial medical training, as well as in their permanent training, to explore and exploit the value of narrations, that help them to categorize their living experiences and that of the patients. -/- As narrativas estão chegando a influenciar na medicina, dando origem a uma nova abordagem chamada " medi-cina narrativa ". Neste trabalho consideramos o paciente como um texto, em outras palavras, um livro aberto que o médico intervém, mas também, que deve aprender muito. Aprofundar-se um pouco na perspectiva narrativa da compreensão do paciente e de sua situação ajuda a descobrir como o paciente é objeto da compaixão dos médicos, embora também como se converte em sujeito desta compaixão. Concluímos que é importante que os médicos dediquem mais tempo em sua formação médica inicial, bem como em sua formação permanente, para explorar o valor das narrativas que ajudam a categorizar suas experiências e a dos pacientes. -/- Las narraciones han llegado a influir en la medicina, dando lugar a un nuevo enfoque llamado " medicina narrativa ". En este trabajo consideramos al paciente como un texto, es decir, un libro abierto que el médico interviene, pero también del que el médico puede y necesita mucho aprender. Ahondar un poco en la perspectiva narrativa de la comprensión del paciente y de su situación nos ayuda a descubrir cómo el paciente es objeto de la compasión de los médicos, pero también cómo se convierte en sujeto de esa compasión. Concluimos que es importante que los médicos dediquen tiempo en su formación médica inicial, así como en su formación permanente, a explorar y explotar el valor de las narraciones, que les ayuden a categorizar sus experiencias vividas y las de los pacientes. (shrink)

Importation in fictional discourse is the phenomenon by which audiences include information in the story over and above what is explicitly stated by the narrator. This paper argues that importation is distinct from generation, the phenomenon by which truth in fiction may outstrip what is made explicit, and draws a distinction between fictional truth and fictional records. The latter comprises the audience’s picture of what is true according to the narrator. The paper argues that importation into fictional records operates according (...) to principles that also govern ordinary conversation. An account of fictional records as a species of common ground information is proposed. Two sources of importation are described in detail, presupposition accommodation and conversational implicatures. It is shown that presuppositions are both mandatorily imported and mandatorily generated. By contrast, conversational implicatures are neither mandatorily imported nor mandatorily generated. The paper distinguishes conversational implicatures from contextual inferences. Both rely on background assumptions, yet conversational implicatures moreover depend on assumptions concerning Gricean cooperation. (shrink)

What can make storytelling “evil” in the sense that the storytelling leads to accepting a view for no good reason, thus allowing ill-reasoned action? I mean the storytelling can be argumentatively evil, not trivially that (e.g.) the overt speeches of characters can include bad arguments. The storytelling can be argumentatively evil in that it purveys false premises, or purveys reasoning that is formally or informally fallacious. My main thesis is that as a rule, the shorter the fictional narrative, the greater (...) the potential for argumentative evil. Here, the notion of length is to be understood such that it is generally a proxy for more abstract features such as how complex and nuanced the piece is. In other argumentative contexts, length generally appears to make no comparable difference. This feature would put fictional narrative arguments in a special class beyond what is determined by obvious features, such as the definitional fact that they in some way(s) collapse two of the four traditional types of discourse: exposition, description, narration, and argument. The nonobvious features that distinguish this class have been a source of puzzlement and inquiry. (shrink)

Can fictional narration yield knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional? This is the hard question of literary cognitivism. It is unexceptional that knowledge can be gained from fictional literature in ways that are not dependent on its fictionality (e.g., the science in science fiction). Sometimes fictional narratives are taken to exhibit the structure of suppositional argument, sometimes analogical argument. Of course, neither structure is unique to narratives. The thesis of literary cognitivism would be supported (...) if some novels exhibit a cogent and special argument structure restricted to fictional narratives. I contend that this is the case for a kind of transcendental argument. The reason is the inclusion and pattern of occurrence of the predicate ‘believable’ in the schema. Believability with respect to fictional stories is quite a different thing than it is with respect to nonfictional stories or anything else. (shrink)

The expression "analytic narratives" is used to refer to a range of quite recent studies that lie on the boundaries between history, political science, and economics. These studies purport to explain specific historical events by combining the usual narrative approach of historians with the analytic tools that economists and political scientists draw from formal rational choice theories. Game theory, especially of the extensive form version, is currently prominent among these tools, but there is nothing inevitable about such a technical choice. (...) The chapter explains what analytic narratives are by reviewing the studies of the major book Analytic Narratives (1998), which are concerned with the workings of political institutions broadly speaking, as well as several cases drawn from military and security studies, which form an independent source of the analytic narratives literature. At the same time as it gradually develops a definition of analytic narratives, the chapter investigates how they fulfil one of their main purposes, which is to provide explanations of a better standing than those of traditional history. An important principle that will emerge in the course of the discussion is that narration is called upon not only to provide facts and problems, but also to contribute to the explanation itself. The chapter distinguishes between several expository schemes of analytic narratives according to the way they implement this principle. From all the arguments developed here, it seems clear that the current applications of analytic narratives do not exhaust their potential, and in particular that they deserve the attention of economic historians, if only because they are concerned with microeconomic interactions that are not currently their focus of attention. (shrink)

This essay narrates what I have learned from Søren Kierkegaard & John Dewey about teaching philosophy. It consists of three sections: 1) a Deweyan pragmatist’s translation of Kierkegaard’s religious insights on Christianity, as a way of life, into ethical insights on philosophy, as a way of life; 2) a brief description of the introductory course that I teach most frequently: Ethics, Happiness, & The Good Life; and 3) an exploration of three spiritual exercises from the course: a) self-cultivation by means (...) of writing in an Ethics Notebook, b) an “existential experiment” in which we practice one of Aristotle’s virtues for a week, and c) a 15-hour service-learning component. (shrink)

This monograph investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse in two parts. The theme of the first part is narrative progression. It begins with a case study of the adverb ‘now’ and its interaction with the meaning of tense. The case study motivates an ontological distinction between events, states and times and proposes that ‘now’ seeks a prominent state that holds throughout the time described by the tense. Building on prior research, prominence is shown to be influenced by principles of (...) discourse coherence and two coherence principles, NARRATION and RESULT, are given a formally explicit characterization. The key innovation is a new method for testing the definitional adequacy of NARRATION and RESULT, namely by an abductive argument. This contribution opens a new way of thinking about how eventive and stative descriptions contribute to the perceived narrative progression in a discourse. -/- The theme of the second part of the monograph is the semantics and pragmatics of tense. A key innovation is that the present and past tenses are treated as scalar alternatives, a view that is motivated by adopting a particular hypothesis concerning stative predication. The proposed analysis accounts for tense in both matrix clauses and in complements of propositional attitudes, where the notorious double access reading arises. This reading is explored as part of a corpus study that provides a glimpse of how tense semantics interacts with Gricean principles and at-issueness. Several cross-linguistic predictions of the analysis are considered, including their consequences for the Sequence of Tense phenomenon and the Upper Limit Constraint. Finally, a hypothesis is provided about how tense meanings compose with temporal adverbs and verb phrases. Two influential analysis of viewpoint aspect are then compared in light of the hypothesis. (shrink)

Plato’s Phaedrus is a dialogue of journeys, a tale of transitions. It begins with Socrates’ question, ‘Where to and from whence, my dear Phaedrus?’ and concludes with the Socrates’ decision, ‘Let’s go’ (sc. back into the city from whence they’ve come). In the speech that forms its centre-piece Socrates narrates another famous journey—the descent of the soul into the body and its reascent to the realm of Forms through erotic madness. It is not too implausible to suppose that Plato himself (...) saw fit to relate his powerful images of the human soul’s fall and re-ascent by dramatic means that highlight the movement from one place to another. This explains how Hermias of Alexandria -- author of the longest sustained work on the Phaedrus to survive from antiquity related the physical journey to the Ilissus to the soul's descent and ascent. This seemingly implausible allegorising gains a certain kind of sense when we consider that the Neoplatonic commentary tradition formed part of a philosophic way of life with an ethical telos. (shrink)

On one natural interpretation of what the narrator from Notes from Underground is saying, “People are rebels.” If you give them evidence that this is the career path for them, say, they do something else. But underdeterminism entails one objection to this theory.

Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from (...) this work, there appear to be a variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life. (shrink)

We discuss two models of virtue cultivation that are present throughout the Republic: the self-mastery model and the harmony model. Schultz (2013) discusses them at length in her recent book, Plato’s Socrates as Narrator: A Philosophical Muse. We bring this Socratic distinction into conversation with two modes of intentional regulation strategies articulated by James J. Gross. These strategies are expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal. We argue that that the Socratic distinction helps us see the value in cognitive reappraisal and that (...) the contemporary neurological research supports the wide range of attitudes toward the value of emotional experience that mirror those found in the Republic. (shrink)

This article studies the architectural design and cultural significance of Villa Namazee, a modernist building designed by Italian architect Gio Ponti in Tehran. The study explores how the building, once a symbol of modernity and progress, has been neglected, delisted from the national heritage, and fallen into disrepair. Focusing primarily on the case of Villa Namazee in Tehran, Iran, as an example of Ponti’s projects in the Middle Eastern context, the second part of this paper aims to reconsider and re-narrate (...) Gio Ponti’s project in Tehran. In this context, the article sheds light on the nationally and internationally prominent concepts, ideas, collaborations, and design elements of Gio Ponti’s project in Tehran. The paper argues for reevaluating our understanding of heritage and recognizing the importance of preserving modern architectural masterpieces such as Villa Namazee. (shrink)

Analytical categories of scientific cultures have typically been used both exclusively and universally. For instance, when styles of scientific research are employed in attempts to understand and narrate science, styles alone are usually employed. This article is a thought experiment in interweaving categories. What would happen if rather than employ a single category, we instead investigated several categories simultaneously? What would we learn about the practices and theories, the agents and materials, and the political-technological impact of science if we analyzed (...) and applied styles, paradigms, and models simultaneously? I address these questions in general and for a specific case study: a brief history of systematics. (shrink)

David Hume is an ardent supporter of the practice of religions toleration. For Hume, toleration forms part of the background that makes progress in philosophy possible, and it accounts for the superiority of philosophical thought in England in the eighteenth century. As he puts it in the introduction to the Treatise: “the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration and of liberty”. Similarly, the narrator of part 11 of the First Enquiry comments.

I offer an account of how ideals motivate us. My account suggests that although emulating an ideal is often rational, it can lead us to do irrational things. * This is the third in a series of four papers on narrative self-conceptions and their role in moral motivation. In the first paper, “The Self as Narrator” (to appear in Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays, ed. Joel Anderson and John Christman), I explore the motivational role of narrative self-conceptions, (...) drawing on Daniel Dennett’s notion of the self as a “center of narrative gravity”. In the second paper, “Willing the Law” (in Practical Conflicts, ed. Monika Betzler and Peter Baumann [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming]), I explore the role of selfconceptions in Kantian “conflicts in the will”, drawing on Christine Korsgaard’s notion of “practical identities”. In a fourth paper, “A Sense of Self” (ms), I explore the role of narrative self-con-ceptions in Kantian “conflicts in conception”, drawing on the work of Thomas Nagel and John Perry on the self. (shrink)