This commentary offers a coherent reading of the papers presented in the special issue ‘Exclusion, Engagement, and Empathy: Reflections on Public Participation in Medicine and Technology’. Focusing on intellectual self-trust it adds a further perspective on the harmful epistemic consequences of social exclusion for individual agents in healthcare contexts. In addition to some clarifications regarding the concepts of ‘intellectual self-trust’ and ‘social exclusion’ the commentary also examines in what ways empathy, engagement and participatory sense-making could help to avoid (...) threats to intellectual self-trust that arise form being excluded from participation in communicative practices in the context of healthcare. (shrink)

Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it’s standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for managing (...) their limited resources tend to polarize into different subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations. (shrink)

Meaningful work is both a moral issue and an economic one. Studies show that workers’ experience of meaninglessness in their jobs contributes to job dissatisfaction which has negative effects to business. If having a meaningful work is essential for the well-being of workers, providing them with one is an ethical requirement for business establishments. The essay aims to articulate an account of meaningful work in the Catholic social teachings. CST rejects the subjectivist and relativist notion of work which affirms (...) the absolute freedom of individuals to choose their commitment and goals, even if this includes experiencing satisfaction in dehumanizing work. First, the paper will present a summary account of some of the current views on meaningful work from the objective-normative approach. This will be followed by a systematic treatment of the meaning and value of work in the CST, the similarities and differences it has with alternative views, and its implications for the way we promote meaningful work. The paper will argue that by recognizing the subjective and objective dimensions of work and affirming that although the two are inseparable, the former takes priority over the latter; CST develops a holistic, comprehensive, and coherent account of meaningful work which overcomes some of the difficulties that are usually encountered in dealing with this issue from a purely objective approach. (shrink)

A ideia de que certas categorias, propriedades, eventos, ou factos, são construídos socialmente tem sido defendida nas ciências sociais e humanidades desde meados do século xx. Nas últimas décadas, vários filósofos da tradição analítica começaram a dedicar mais atenção à possibilidade de que haja tipos de coisas construídas socialmente. A ideia complementa outra ideia relativamente consensual hoje em dia: a de que existem tipos naturais, mas que nem tudo o que existe constitui um tipo natural. São particularmente interessantes os tipos (...) de coisas que parecem naturais, mas que se argumenta serem na realidade construídos socialmente. Nesta entrada, identifico o papel que as teses construtivistas têm no progresso social e político, distingo entre várias formas de construtivismo teoricamente interessantes – causal e constitutivo, e discuto três objecções à ideia do construtivismo factual. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of the coherence of enactivism as a research perspective by making a case study of enactivism in mathematics education research. Main theoretical directions in mathematics education are reviewed and the history of adoption of concepts from enactivism is described. It is concluded that enactivism offers a ‘grand theory’ that can be brought to bear on most of the phenomena of interest in mathematics education research, and so it provides a sufficient theoretical framework. It has (...) particular strength in describing interactions between cognitive systems, including human beings, human conversations and larger human social systems. Some apparent incoherencies of enactivism in mathematics education and in other fields come from the adoption of parts of enactivism that are then grafted onto incompatible theories. However, another significant source of incoherence is the inadequacy of Maturana’s definition of a social system and the lack of a generally agreed upon alternative. (shrink)

Emotion recognition systems (ERS) offer the ability to identify the emotions of others, based on an analysis of their facial expressions and regardless of culture, ethnicity, context, gender or social class. By claiming universalism in the expression as well as in the recognition of emotions, we believe that ERS present significant risks of causing great harm to some individuals, in addition to targeting, in some contexts, specific social groups. Drawing on a wide range of multidisciplinary knowledge - including (...) philosophy, psychology, computer science and anthropology - this research project aims to identify the current limitations of ERS and the main risks that their use brings, with the goal of providing a clear and robust analysis of the use of ERS and their contribution to greater social justice. Pointing to technical limitations, we refute, on the one hand, the idea that ERS are able to prove the causal link between specific emotions and specific facial expressions. We support our argument with evidence of the inability of ERS to distinguish facial expressions of emotions from facial expressions as communication signals. On the other hand, due to the contextual and cultural limitations of current ERS, we refute the idea that ERS are able to recognise, with equal performance, the emotions of individuals, regardless of their culture, ethnicity, gender and social class. Our ethical analysis shows that the risks are considerably more numerous and important than the benefits that could be derived from using ERS. However, we have separated out a specific type of ERS, whose use is limited to the field of care, and which shows a remarkable potential to actively participate in social justice, not only by complying with the minimum requirements, but also by meeting the criterion of beneficence. While ERS currently pose significant risks, it is possible to consider the potential for specific types to participate in social justice and provide emotional and psychological support and assistance to certain members of society. (shrink)

We discuss the social-epistemic aspects of Catherine Elgin’s theory of reflective equilibrium and understanding and argue that it yields an argument for the view that a crucial social-epistemic function of epistemic authorities is to foster understanding in their communities. We explore the competences that enable epistemic authorities to fulfil this role and argue that among them is an epistemic virtue we call “epistemic empathy”.

Bayesians standardly claim that there is rational pressure for agents’ credences to cohere across time because they face bad (epistemic or practical) consequences if they fail to diachronically cohere. But as David Christensen has pointed out, groups of individual agents also face bad consequences if they fail to interpersonally cohere, and there is no general rational pressure for one agent's credences to cohere with another’s. So it seems that standard Bayesian arguments may prove too much. Here, we agree with Christensen (...) that there is no general rational pressure to diachronically cohere, but we argue that there are particular cases in which there is rational pressure to diachronically cohere, as well as particular cases in which interpersonal probabilistic coherence is rationally required. More generally, we suggest that Bayesian arguments for coherence apply whenever a collection (of agents or time slices) has a shared dimension of value and an ability to coordinate their actions in a range of cases relevant to that value. Typically, this shared value and ability to coordinate is very strong across the time slices of one human being, and very weak across different human beings, but there are special cases where these can switch—i.e., some groups of humans will have as much reason for their beliefs to cohere across a particular range of cases as the time slices of one human usually do, but some time slices of a human will have as much freedom to differ in their beliefs from the others as the members of a group usually do. (shrink)

A technical artefact is often described in two ways: by means of a physicalistic model of its structure and dynamics, and by a functional account of the contributions of the components of the artefact to its capacities. These models do not compete, as different models of the same phenomenon in physics usually do; they supplement each other and cohere. Coherence is shown to be the result of a mapping of role-contributions on physicalistic relations that is brought about by the (...) concept of function. It results a sandwich-like structure of the two models, which can be reconstructed as a two-sorted theory element. (shrink)

Aryeh Goldberg compellingly argues for a Narrative Coherence Standard (NCS) to bolster existing methods of assessing patients' mental capacity. But his account fails to distinguish between the cognitive abilities of children and adults; consequently, worries may be raised about the scope of the NCS, in particular when we consider child patients. In this article, I argue the NCS cannot plausibly apply to children. Since children's self-conception does not arrive fully formed — but rather is a product of both incomplete (...) cognitive development and socializing factors — I claim children may not possess a sufficiently intimate knowledge of self, and therefore a sufficiently coherent sense of self, as Goldberg demands. Therefore, we should either revise the NCS to accommodate children, adopt an incremental view of consent, or revert to the relevant form of the MacArthur competence criteria to establish children’s capacity to consent. (shrink)

Was bisexuality a widespread feature of ancient Greek society? This question is an instance of cross-cultural projection -- of taking the means through which people are categorized in one culture and applying it to members of another. It’s widely held by those who think that sexual orientation is socially constructed that its projection poses a problem. In this paper, I offer a more careful analysis of this alleged problem. To analyze projection, I adapt Iris Einheuser’s substratum-carving model of conventionalism to (...) fit the specific needs of social construction. Using this model, I show that projection is conceptually coherent, and so does not for that reason pose any problem. Along the way, I identify some of the epistemic difficulties facing projection. While these difficulties are formidable, they are not substantially affected by the constructivist claim. I therefore conclude that there is no unique problem facing the projection of a socially constructed sexual orientation. (shrink)

Being supposedly the ground for an exchange system that does not depend on central, top-down regulation, cryptocurrencies increasingly need new algorithmic and policy-driven rules to maintain their trustworthiness and capacity to exhibit empirically supported growth. The present paper offers a conceptual and philosophical discussion on whether and how cryptosystems could be able to generate resilient development in a way that is coherent with a non-reductionist view of positive economics. As proposed, a plausible way to understand them can be achieved considering (...) their complexity and their concrete, local features, which have to be grasped both in terms of formal and material specificity. (shrink)

This article outlines the role of globalized mass media in the perception of environmental and social threats and its reciprocal conditionality in the globalized society. It examines the reasons why the global environmental crisis will not lead to a world-wide environmental movement for change of the basic imperatives of the world economicpolitical system. Coherency between globalized mass media and wide-spreading of consumer lifestyle exists despite the fact that it deepens the devastation of environment and social conflicts. Globalized mass (...) media owned by transnational corporations are not only a part of the current global economic-political system, but also the prerequisite of its creation and existence, as well as social contradictions and conflicts. (shrink)

The problem of merging several ontologies has important applications in the Semantic Web, medical ontology engineering and other domains where information from several distinct sources needs to be integrated in a coherent manner.We propose to view ontology merging as a problem of social choice, i.e. as a problem of aggregating the input of a set of individuals into an adequate collective decision. That is, we propose to view ontology merging as ontology aggregation. As a first step in this direction, (...) we formulate several desirable properties for ontology aggregators, we identify the incompatibility of some of these properties, and we define and analyse several simple aggregation procedures. Our approach is closely related to work in judgment aggregation, but with the crucial difference that we adopt an open world assumption, by distinguishing between facts not included in an agent’s ontology and facts explicitly negated in an agent’s ontology. (shrink)

-/- Policy regulations of ethically controversial genetic technologies should, on the one hand, be based on ethical principles. On the other hand, they should be socially acceptable to ensure implementation. In addition, they should align with ethical theory. Yet to date we lack a reliable and valid scale to measure the relevant ethical judgements in laypeople. We target this lacuna. -/- We developed a scale based on ethical principles to elicit lay judgments: the Genetic Technologies Questionnaire (GTQ). In two pilot (...) studies and a pre-registered main study, we validated the scale in a representative sample of the US population. -/- The final version of the scale contains 20 items but remains highly reliable even when reduced to five. It also predicts behaviour; for example, ethical judgments as measured by the GTQ predicted hypothetical donations and grocery shopping. In addition, the GTQ may be of interest to policymakers and ethicists because it reveals coherent and ethically justified judgments in laypeople. For instance, the GTQ indicates that ethical judgments are sensitive to possible benefits and harms (in line with utilitarian ethics), but also to ethical principles such as the value of consent-autonomy. -/- In conclusion, the GTQ can be recommended for research in both experimental psychology and applied ethics, as well as a tool for ethically and empirically informed policymaking. (shrink)

This paper presents a challenge to the coherence of social constructivism about science. It introduces an objection according to which social constructivism appeals to the authority of science regarding the nature of reality and so cannot coherently deny that authority. The challenge is how to avoid this incoherence.

This article analyzes the practice of making social theory in terms of the changing styles manifested in writing social theory texts. It is claimed that, taken generally, "writing" social theory has not moved beyond its most widespread form of being an exercise in the systematic treatment of the phenomena under study rather than being a genuine problem-solving activity. As demonstrated on selected historical examples of "writing" social theory, it seems evident that there is no standard form (...) or style of "making" social theory apart from commentary. And that social theory, unlike related styles of academic writing, uses "commentary" not as a part of the argument being elaborated, but as a standard and routine way of making knowledge claims. It is argued here that commentary is not the basic method only in the contemporary and largely educational and instructive forms of social theory, but also in the supposedly original achievements of the field's leading figures. The argument elaborated here suggests that the inability to arrive at a standard form of "making" social theory may be a consequence of individual, authentic, original, creative thinking drawing its inspiration from sources that are heavily derivative and sometimes permeated by very chaotic and strenuous efforts to demonstrate the coherence of the thinking that it some way refers to the social world. (shrink)

Although many psychiatrists regard psychopathy as a coherent scientific construction, some clinicians and philosophers regard it as irrelevant. According to the latter, psychopathy is nothing more than a means of social control. The present study focuses on the issues of the neurological bases and moral responsibility related to psychopathy. While neuroscience aims to identify dysfunctions in psychopaths, action theory and ethics tend to vindicate the hypothesis of the moral irresponsibility of the psychopath. However, rather than reinforcing the concept of (...) psychopathy, recent results in neuroscience tend to stress its incoherence. Philosophical speculations on psychopaths’ responsibility are not sufficiently empirically informed and seem to announce endless ethical debates. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss the relation of physicalism to social ontology, and explores problems that social ontology raises for physicalism. Physicalism is often understood to be the view that all facts—the social ones included—are physical facts, or at least are exhaustively determined by physical facts. While this view is widely endorsed, social phenomena challenge physicalism in several ways, both challenging the coherence of claims of physicalism and raising potential counterexamples.

This paper examines recent forms of post-identity thought within contemporary gender theory, specifically the works of Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz and Bobby Noble. Despite the many insights that these theories offer, I argue that they suffer from what Lois McNay has labelled ‘social weightlessness’ insofar as their models of subjectivity and agency are disconnected from the everyday realities of social subjects. I identify two ways in which this social weightlessness is manifested in radical gender theories that endorse (...) a post-identity politics: (i) they overlook the social and political importance to many individuals of establishing stable, coherent identities; (ii) they are unable to offer a satisfactory account of agency. I suggest that these issues arise, at least in part, from the anti-recognition stance adopted by such radical gender theorists. I argue that by incorporating a properly nuanced model of recognition back into their theories they can imbue their accounts with a properly grounded model of the subject that is responsive to the inequalities and oppressions that infuse the particular concrete contexts in which we experience and live out our identities. (shrink)

Before commenting in detail on Making the Social World (MSW) I will first offer some comments on philosophy (descriptive psychology) and its relationship to contemporary psychological research as exemplified in the works of Searle (S) and Wittgenstein (W), since I feel that this is the best way to place Searle or any commentator on behavior, in proper perspective. It will help greatly to see my reviews of PNC, TLP, PI, OC,TARW and other books by these two geniuses of descriptive (...) psychology. -/- S makes no reference to W’s prescient statement of mind as mechanism in TLP, and his destruction of it in his later work. Since W, S has become the principal deconstructor of these mechanical views of behavior, and the most important descriptive psychologist (philosopher), but does not realize how completely W anticipated him nor, by and large, do others (but see the many papers and books of Proudfoot and Copeland on W, Turing and AI). S’s work is vastly easier to follow than W’s, and though there is some jargon, it is mostly spectacularly clear if you approach it from the right direction. See my reviews of W S and other books for more details. -/- Overall, MSW is a good summary of the many substantial advances over Wittgenstein resulting from S’s half century of work, but in my view, W still is unequaled for basic psychology once you grasp what he is saying (see my reviews). Ideally they should be read together: Searle for the clear coherent prose and generalizations on the operation of S2/S3, illustrated with W’s perspicacious examples of the operation of S1/S2, and his brilliant aphorisms. If I were much younger I would write a book doing exactly that. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date account of Wittgenstein, Searle and their analysis of behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may download from this site my e-book ‘Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Michael Starks (2016)- Articles and Reviews 2006-2016’ by Michael Starks First Ed. 662p (2016). -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX . (shrink)

This paper argues that a criticism attributed to Gregory Bateson – that the term ‘function’ is from mathematics and has no place in social science – looks incoherent, when subject to clarification.

Schleiermacher’s Icoses is the first book-length study of the 1813 Academy address “Ueber die verschiedenen Methodes des Uebersetzens”; in addition to celebrating its 200 years of influence, the book undertakes a comprehensive examination of the whole argument, from its theory of hermeneutics to its foreignizing theory of translation and all the passing “poetic” elements on which Schleiermacher’s rhetoric always so heavily relied. The “icoses” in the title are specifically an articulation of the Gefühle/feelings that lie at the heart of Schleiermacher’s (...) hermeneutics—specifically, his insistence that feelings are shaped by society, and so seem “objective” or “universal,” but are experienced inwardly by each individual, so that they seem “subjective” and “private.” Research-based “feeling one’s way into an author” is guided by culture, and is therefore not, pace certain twentieth-century hermeneutical philosophers, mystical but “icotic.” -/- TESTIMONIA -/- Robinson's intriguing study of Schleiermacher's 1813 Academy address "On the Different Methods of Translating," which grew out of an article commemorating its bicentennial, is the first book-length commentary on the address. Robinson works meticulously through the entire text, both the German original and his own English translation, exposing its logical and other argumentative flaws mercilessly, but in order not to attack or dismiss it, rather to show that logic is not the right interpretive lens through which to view Schleiermacher's project. The right lens, Robinson suggests, is what he calls "icoses": social ecologies that shape our thought and convictions as members of a social group. The result is a fresh look at Schleiermacher's address and the hermeneutics that inform it, and one that generates surprising new insights into foreignization, feeling-based hermeneutics, and the Romantic ethos of estrangement. (Radegundis Stolze, Technische Universität Darmstadt) -/- Robinson's reading of Schleiermacher deals in detail with the whole address, and more, bringing out numerous problems that have remained hidden, dormant, and should be discussed. It provocatively picks up what any close reader feels: Schleiermacher's is not a highly coherent account of translation -­ it got some things right but left many gaps and contradictions. Robinson's inquiry suggests how the unresolved problems might be approached in an unexpected way: by a hermeneutic blurring of distinctions between the subjective and the objective, the psychological and the linguistic, the individual and the social. (Anthony Pym, Professor of Translation and Intercultural Studies Rovira i Virgili University, Visiting Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies). (shrink)

Psychological well-being is a major global concern receiving more scholarly attention following the 2008 Great Recession, and it becomes even more relevant in the context of COVID-19 outbreak. In this study, we investigated the impact of economic uncertainty resulting from natural disasters, epidemics, and financial crisis on individuals' mental health. As unemployment rate exponentially increases, individuals are faced with health and economic concerns. Not all society members are affected to the same extent, and marginalized groups, such as those suffering from (...) chronic mental illnesses or low-income families cannot afford the downsizing, mass lay-offs and lack of access to public health services. Psychiatric profession is familiarized with the phenomenon of intolerance of uncertainty (IU), and we examine how this concept is associated with job uncertainty and social identity disturbance. Several studies have formally investigated the effects of IU, but to our knowledge, this is the first research integrating the psychological well-being, job uncertainty and identity disturbance caused by economic breakdown. Literature points to many reported cases of PTSD, anxiety, depression and suicidal tendencies following major social disasters. Yet, we have undertaken to analyze the subjective experiences underlying the self-harming behaviors in an attempt to fill the methodological gap by drawing insights from prominent psychological, sociological and economic theories. We find economic uncertainty to have a positive relation to job uncertainty and identity disturbance, and a negative relationship with psychological well-being. Psychological well-being depends on coherency between both abstract subjective and concrete objective identity, and when these perceptions are inconsistent, cognitive dissonance arises resulting in identity disturbance. We argue that stability is not associated with monetary advantage only, but also with a wide range of other benefits that are crucial for individuals' growth, satisfaction and sense of identity. Therefore, we propose the implementation of social support and public welfare policies to mitigate health risks during the turbulent socio-economic changes. (shrink)

Goetz outlined legal models of identical entities that include natural persons who are identical to a coregency and natural persons who are identical to a general partnership. Those entities cohere with the formula logic of relative identity. This essay outlines the coexistence of relative identity and numerical identity in the models of identical legal entities, which is impure relative identity. These models support the synthesis of Relative Trinitarianism and Social Trinitarianism, which I call Relative-Social Trinitarianism.

To fully rationally answer Socrates’s question, ‘How should one live?’, we need to answer the epistemic question: ‘How can one know how one should live?’. This paper attempts to answer both. ` The issue of rationality is crucial here. ‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge, and meta-knowledge concerning values. No values as such are rational or knowledge. However:- Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life, mental health and evidence-based education. (...) Human rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable – and that applies to the practised values prescribing the prescribable factors. Those prescribable factors require certain interrelated epistemic, moral, social, political, legal, educational and other values to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. This end provides the basis for answering Socrates’s question as rationally (correctly) as is possible for values. That end is fundamentally epistemic, namely ‘Be pro-rationality’, yet the theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications. It has implications for current and all possible moral, social, political, legal, educational, environmental etc issues. E.g., the theory shows that human rationality crucially requires certain emotions, health-care, education and upbringing. With this, the paper discusses affection, free speech, journalism, psychotherapy, political and sexual consent, rights, responsibilities, freedom and government. The theory’s sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition (in certain areas), rationally-critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, general types of liberalism, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, all other values-theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages total freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing the theory’s necessarily human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. So the theory is a work-in-progress. (shrink)

Before commenting in detail on making the Social World (MSW) I will first offer some comments on philosophy (descriptive psychology) and its relationship to contemporary psychological research as exemplified in the works of Searle (S) and Wittgenstein (W), since I feel that this is the best way to place Searle or any commentator on behavior, in proper perspective. It will help greatly to see my reviews of PNC, TLP, PI, OC, TARW and other books by these two geniuses of (...) descriptive psychology. -/- S makes no reference to W’s prescient statement of mind as mechanism in TLP, and his destruction of it in his later work. Since W, S has become the principal deconstructor of these mechanical views of behavior, and the most important descriptive psychologist (philosopher), but does not realize how completely W anticipated him nor, by and large, do others (but see the many papers and books of Proudfoot and Copeland on W, Turing and AI). S’s work is vastly easier to follow than W’s, and though there is some jargon, it is mostly spectacularly clear if you approach it from the right direction. See my reviews of W S and other books for more details. -/- Overall, MSW is a good summary of the many substantial advances over Wittgenstein resulting from S’s half century of work, but in my view, W still is unequaled for basic psychology once you grasp what he is saying (see my reviews). Ideally, they should be read together: Searle for the clear coherent prose and generalizations on the operation of S2/S3, illustrated with W’s perspicacious examples of the operation of S1/S2, and his brilliant aphorisms. If I were much younger I would write a book doing exactly that. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

I motivate the concept of styles of scientific investigation, and differentiate two styles, formal and compositional. Styles are ways of doing scientific research. Radically different styles exist. I explore the possibility of the unification of biology and social science, as well as the possibility of unifying the two styles I identify. Recent attempts at unifying biology and social science have been premised almost exclusively on the formal style. Through the use of a historical example of defenders of compositional (...) biological social science, the Ecology Group at the University of Chicago from, roughly, the 1930s to the 1950s, I attempt to show the coherence and possibility, if not utility, of employing the compositional style to effect the synthesis of biology and social science. I also relate the efforts of the Ecology Group to those of investigators in the Sociology Department of the University of Chicago. In my conclusion, I discuss the usefulness both of employing the category of styles of scientific investigation in historical and philosophical studies of science, as well as the concept of compositionality in scientific studies. I end the paper with some tentative suggestions regarding the importance of compositionality for an analysis of human society. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how Habermas used the writings of George Herbert Mead. This subject has already been examined by the critical literature; however, the originality of this analysis with respect to previous studies lies in its philological approach. The result of the research proves that the interest of Habermas towards the American social psychologist originates well before the Theory of Communicative Action and accompanies the elaboration of Habermas’ research programme for over two decades. It (...) is interesting to observe that the references to Mead’s writings continued to be very selective and focused on the same three particular areas: on the methodological level, around the problem of the foundation of the social sciences; on the theoretical level, around ontogenetic and phylogenetic development; on the moral level, around the justification of the discourse ethic and, more generally, the idea of a post-metaphysical concept of reason. This paper also shows the remarkable coherence with which Habermas is developing a general theory of society and a philosophy of rational discourse. (shrink)

Building on work by Steve Darwall, I argue that standard virtue ethical accounts of moral motivation are defective because they don't include accounts of social morality. I then propose a virtue ethical account of social morality, and respond to one of Darwall's core objections to the coherence of any such (non-Kantian) account.

This paper reflects on lessons learned from a validated model of international collaboration based on research and practice. During the European Year for Active Ageing, a partnership of seven organizations from the European Union plus Turkey implemented the Lifelong Learning Programme partnership “Connecting Generations‘ which involved universities, non-governmental organizations, third age Universities and municipalities in collaboration with local communities. Reckoning that Europe has dramatically changed in its demographic composition and is facing brand new challenges regarding intergenerational and intercultural solidarity, each (...) partner formulated and tested innovative and creative practices that could enhance better collaboration and mutual understanding between youth and senior citizens, toward a more inclusive Europe for all. Several innovative local practices have experimented, attentively systematized and peer-valuated among the partners. On the basis of a shared theoretical framework coherent with EU and Europe and Training 2020 Strategy, an action-research approach was adopted throughout the project in order to understand common features that have been replicated and scaled up since today. (shrink)

Building on work by Steve Darwall, I argue that standard virtue ethical accounts of moral motivation are defective because they don't include accounts of social morality. I then propose a virtue ethical account of social morality, and respond to one of Darwall's core objections to the coherence of any such (non-Kantian) account.

Central elements of Roman Catholic treatment ethics include: 1) that rejection of treatment with the intent of hastening death (even for a good end) is ethically equivalent to active euthanasia with the same intent; 2) a distinction between morally obligatory “ordinary” treatment and morally optional “extraordinary treatment”; 3) that the quality of the patient’s life is not be a legitimate basis for rejecting treatment; and 4) that extraordinary treatment is not forbidden, but optional, and that it is the patient or (...) the patient’s legal surrogate–not the doctor– who has the right to choose or reject it. Despite these principles, even in a cultural climate fully sympathetic to Catholic treatment ethics, it is appropriate as a legal matter to maintain the doctrine of informed consent under which it is possible for patients or their surrogates to reject life-preserving treatment, including for unethical reasons. It is normally impossible to enforce in practice in the external forum a differentiation between rejection of treatment for ethically acceptable and ethically unacceptable reasons. By contrast, in cases of direct killing, such as assisting suicide, the intent to cause death is unmistakable (as opposed to accepting an increased risk of death as a foreseeable but unintended consequence of pursuing a good end). In a pluralistic society Catholic ethics cannot be legislatively enforced on the ground that they are compelled by Catholic teaching. However, the basic principles of Catholic treatment ethics may be justified based on logic and widely accepted norms of human equality independently of revelation or ecclesiastical authority. Particularly in protecting the right of individuals to choose and obtain life-saving medical treatment regardless of their “quality of life,” and in suicide prevention, secular law can and should be congruent with key aspects of Catholic health care ethics. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline the ways that reification as a pathology of what I call “cybernetic society” shapes the fundamental structures of the self and our shared social reality. Whereas the classical theory of reification was a diagnostic attempt to understand the failure of class consciousness, I believe we must push this thesis further to show how is fundamentally an ontological and not a merely cognitive or epistemic concern. By this I mean that it is a pathology of (...) consciousness as well as social praxis and, as such, infects the ontological substrates of social reality. In effect, reification is a collective rather than merely subjective phenomenon. I explore this dialectic between our subjective and social dimensions of being to show how reification actively shapes self and world. I end with a discussion of how this theory of reification as an ontological concept can be used to overcome it via what I term “ontological coherence,” or the capacity of the self to reflect dialectically on the shapes of sociality that one inhabits, opening it up to evaluative reflection and critique. (shrink)

Unsere Kulturfähigkeit ist ein Ergebnis der biologischen Evolution der Spezies “Mensch”; die einzelne Kultur selbst jedoch ist ein Produkt gesellschaftlicher Entwicklungen, Differenzierungen und Traditionen. Der Kulturvergleich zeigt uns erhebliche Spielräume für Ausprägungen von Gemeinsinn. Da dessen Aktivierung wesentlich zur Lebensqualität einer Gesellschaft beiträgt, sind Versuche einer realistischen Einschätzung kultureller Gestaltungsspielräume in dieser Hinsicht sinnvoll. Sie sind nicht zuletzt durch die biologischen Grund- und Randbedingungen der Spezies Mensch gegeben und begrenzt, zumal hinsichtlich von Anlagen zu altruistischem und kooperativem Verhalten. Während bis (...) vor kurzem Soziobiologen und Sozialwissenschaftler oft wenig Neigung zu gegenseitigem Verständnis zeigten, zumal manche Biologen relativ extreme Theorien über genetisch angelegte egoistische Verhaltensanlagen vertraten, verstehen sich neuere, durch die Spieltheorie beeinflusste und sehr allgemeine psychische Disposition betonende Linien soziobiologischen Denkens dazu, auch ausgesprochen freundliche Eigenschaften unserer Spezies zu erklären und zu begründen. Sie kommen sozialwissenschaftlichen Bestrebungen entgegen, zum Beispiel in Zusammenhang mit Theorien begrenzt rationalen Verhaltens, in denen die Fairness eine wesentliche Rolle spielt. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit verdienen in diesem Zusammenhang die biologisch angelegte Fähigkeit zu kognitionsgestützter Empathie sowie die fragile Anlage “Vertrauensbereitschaft”, von denen die Effizienz und das Wohlbefinden in einer Gesellschaft wesentlich abhängen. Insgesamt kann eine - keineswegs unkritische - Beachtung evolutionsbiologischer Aspekte menschlicher Verhaltensdispositionen zu einer realistischen Einschätzung der knappen Ressource “Gemeinsinn” beitragen. Sie ist in Grenzen durchaus ein auch in der Natur des Menschen angelegtes Potential. Dies ist jedoch - unter Beachtung eben dieser Grenzen - behutsam zu aktivieren. Moralische Überforderungen, welche die natürlichen Anlagen des Menschen missachten, sind kontraproduktiv. (shrink)

Harmful and dangerous language is frequent in social media, in particular in spaces which are considered anonymous and/or allow free participation. In this paper, we analyse the language in a Telegram channel populated by followers of Donald Trump, in order to identify the ways in which harmful language is used to create a specific narrative in a group of mostly like-minded discussants. Our research has several aims. First, we create an extended taxonomy of potentially harmful language that includes not (...) only hate speech and direct insults, but also more indirect ways of poisoning online discourse, such as divisive speech and the glorification of violence. We apply this taxonomy to a large portion of the corpus. Our data gives empirical evidence for harmful speech such as in/out-group divisive language and the use of codes within certain communities which have not often been investigated before. Second, we compare our manual annotations to several automatic methods of classifying hate speech and offensive language, namely list based and machine learning based approaches. We find that the Telegram data set still poses particular challenges for these automatic methods. Finally, we argue for the value of studying such naturally occurring, coherent data sets for research on online harm and how to address it in linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

What makes fast, cumulative cultural evolution work? Where did it come from? Why is it the sole preserve of humans? We set out a self-assembly hypothesis: cultural evolution evolved culturally. We present an evolutionary account that shows this hypothesis to be coherent, plausible, and worthy of further investigation. It has the following steps: (0) in common with other animals, early hominins had significant capacity for social learning; (1) knowledge and skills learned by offspring from their parents began to spread (...) because bearers had more offspring, a process we call CS1 (or Cultural Selection 1); (2) CS1 shaped attentional learning biases; (3) these attentional biases were augmented by explicit learning biases (judgements about what should be copied from whom). Explicit learning biases enabled (4) the high-fidelity, exclusive copying required for fast cultural accumulation of knowledge and skills by a process we call CS2 (or Cultural Selection 2), and (5) the emergence of cognitive processes such as imitation, mindreading and metacognition – ‘cognitive gadgets’ specialised for cultural learning. This self-assembly hypothesis is consistent with archaeological evidence that the stone tools used by early hominins were not dependent on fast, cumulative cultural evolution, and suggests new priorities for research on ‘animal culture’. (shrink)

Social constructivist accounts purport to examine the individual from the standpoint of society. However, Zahavi argues that such accounts are incapable of explaining the ‘mineness’ character of experience. In this paper, by using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, I respond to Zahavi by offering a Bourdieusian social constructivist account that captures the ‘mineness’ of the practical experiences of social subjects inhabiting social habitats. Bourdieu’s account, I conclude, offers an important theoretical resource for philosophers to better grasp the (...) social-individual relationship. (shrink)

Relational egalitarians sometimes argue that a degree of distributive equality is necessary for social equality to obtain among members of society. In this paper, we consider how such arguments fare when extended to the intergenerational case. In particular, we examine whether relational reasons for distributive equality apply between non-overlapping generations. We claim that they do not. We begin by arguing that the most common reasons relational egalitarians offer in favour of distributive equality between contemporaries do not give us reasons (...) to object to distributive inequality between non-overlapping generations. This argument by itself however will not fully suffice to show that there are no relational reasons to care about intergenerational distributive equality, given the nature of relational equality and its requirements in the intergenerational case are likely to be qualitatively different than in the contemporary case. Therefore, we also make the positive argument that for the intergenerational case to satisfy the requirements demanded by the ideal of relational equality it suffices that future persons’ interests are meaningfully incorporated and protected in the decision-making of preceding generations, and there is no basis for a concern with distributive equality. While some have argued that the one-way and asymmetrical causal influence between non-overlapping generations means concerns of social equality are inapplicable in the intergenerational case, we argue that the ongoing nature of this influence makes concerns of social equality appropriate. If successful, the upshot of the argument is that it can be coherent to maintain a commitment to relational equality between non-overlapping generations, all while remaining agnostic about distributive equality between them. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)

Human beings are social animals, not solitary ones. Morality is an instinct we have because it helps us socialize, live together harmoniously. This paper reviews how the evolution of morality and other mental functions associated with our survival and sociality gave rise to cultural behavior among the small groups of humans during the Palaeolithic period when the tribe was personified as a supernatural identity and guardian, a totem, an ancestor and ultimately a god. Loyalty to the tribe required loyalty (...) to the tribal god representing the tribe. Preservation of the tribe meant mistrust of other tribes and their gods. The merging of small groups rendered obsolete the tribal, locally cultural conception of religion, but it persisted as monotheism in the imperial stage of society from about 2000 BC, becoming the world religions. Today’s empires are global, and a belief system modelled on local tribes in competition is naïve divisive. Out-group hatred is more of a threat than any in-group moral benefits, and they too are disappearing with the failure to preserve small group coherence, and justice and fairness in capitalist society. The moral failure of imperial religion on the urban and global scale is the “Death of God”. Humans now cannot afford the moral laziness of constantly appealing to a supernatural totem in an otherwise do-nothing religion. Imperial religion was and still is a tool of the political right, used to manipulate us. Yet Christ offered an ethical scheme that is essentially a practical morality of mutual lovingkindness which does not require a supernatural God. It is Secular Christianity, a world view any scientist and atheist could adopt without compromise, and most Christians should. (shrink)

The societal changes of the last century, especially in the aftermath of World War II, have led thinkers to imagine philosophical anthropology centred on the concept of hope. From very different perspectives, authors such as Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, and Hannah Arendt understood that hope is deeply connected with the condition and destiny of humanity. Various sociologists have developed concepts closely linked with hope: action, social change, utopia, revolution, emancipation, innovation, and trust. However, a coherent and systematic analysis is (...) yet to emerge. Taking up the threads of this rich but fragmented reflection, this paper intends to outline the traits of a “sociology of hope” as a tool for critically interpreting today’s society and the processes of change crisscrossing it, starting from some crucial questions: Who are the actors and historical bearers of hope? What are the main socio-historical forms of hope? What social, political, and cultural conditions favour the emergence and strengthening of this disposition? What are the effects and consequences on personal and social life? (shrink)

‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge. Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life and evidence-based thinking. Rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable. Those factors require certain moral, political, social, legal, health-care etc values to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory, with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. That theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications: the theory has implications for current (...) and all possible moral, political etc issues. The theory’s sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., non-sexism, non-racism, types of liberty, happiness, peace, altruism and fairness. However, other theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing their human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. Kant’s, Rawls’s, Aristotle’s, Mill’s and certain others’ ideal societies or lives fundamentally require rationality. Rationality-required factors and associated practised values are needed here. All societies and lives are rationality-required to be based on achieving that rationally-unquestionable general end. (shrink)

Amid the debates over the meaning and usefulness of the word “culture” during the 1980s and 90s, practice theory emerged as a framework for analysis and criticism in cultural anthropology. While theorists have gradually begun to explore practice-oriented frameworks as promising vistas in cultural anthropology and the study of religion, these remain relatively recent developments that stand to be historically explicated and conceptually refined. This article assesses several ways that practice theory has been articulated by some of its chief expositors (...) and critics, and places these developments in conversation with comparable accounts of “social practices” by recent pragmatist philosophers. My aim in generating such a conversation is to illuminate the ways that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work provides important resources for cultural analysis that are already implicit in practice theory, yet either frequently overlooked or dismissed by practice theorists. To demonstrate its relevance for cultural theorists in the study of religion, I show how such a Wittgensteinian understanding of practice theory coheres with, and illuminates, Clifford Geertz’s account of meaning, thick description and religious practices. (shrink)

This thesis contributes to a better conceptual understanding of how self-organized control works. I begin by analyzing the control problem and its solution space. I argue that the two prominent solutions offered by classical cognitive science (centralized control with rich commands, e.g., the Fodorian central systems) and embodied cognitive science (distributed control with simple commands, such as the subsumption architecture by Rodney Brooks) are merely two positions in a two-dimensional solution space. I outline two alternative positions: one is distributed control (...) with rich commands, defended by proponents of massive modularity hypothesis; the other is centralized control with simple commands. My goal is to develop a hybrid account that combines aspects of the second alternative position and that of the embodied cognitive science (i.e., centralized and distributed controls with simple commands). Before developing my account, I discuss the virtues and challenges of the first three. This discussion results in a set of criteria for successful neural control mechanisms. Then, I develop my account through analyzing neuroscientific models of decision-making and control with the theoretical lenses provided by formal decision and social choice theories. I contend that neural processes can be productively modeled as a collective of agents, and neural self-organization is analogous to democratic self-governance. In particular, I show that the basal ganglia, a set of subcortical structures, contribute to the production of coherent and intelligent behaviors through implementing “democratic" procedures. Unlike the Fodorian central system—which is a micro-managing “neural commander-in-chief”—the basal ganglia are a “central election commission.” They delegate control of habitual behaviors to other distributed control mechanisms. Yet, when novel problems arise, they engage and determine the result on the basis of simple information (the votes) from across the system with the principles of neurodemocracy, and control with simple commands of inhibition and disinhibition. By actively managing and taking advantage of the wisdom-of-the-crowd effect, these democratic processes enhance the intelligence and coherence of the mind’s final "collective" decisions. I end by defending this account from both philosophical and empirical criticisms and showing that it meets the criteria for successful solution. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by (...) the power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought. (shrink)

In recent years, feminist scholarship on emotional labor has proliferated. I identify a related but distinct form of care labor, hermeneutic labor. Hermeneutic labor is the burdensome activity of: understanding and coherently expressing one’s own feelings, desires, intentions, and movitations; discerning those of others; and inventing solutions for relational issues arising from interpersonal tensions. I argue that hermeneutic labor disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders in heteropatriachal societies, especially in intimate relationships between women and men. I also suggest that some of (...) the gendered burdens of emotional labor that feminist scholars point out would better be described as hermeneutic labor. Drawing on feminist philosophy as well as findings from social psychology and sociology, I argue that the exploitation of women’s hermeneutic labor is a pervasive element of what Sandra Bartky calls the ‘micropolitics’ of intimate relationships. The widespread expectation that women are relationship maintenance experts, as well as the prevalence of a gendered demand-withdraw pattern of communication, leads an exploitative situation to appear natural or even desirable, even as it leads to women’s dissatisfaction. This situation may be considered misogynistic in Kate Manne’s sense, where misogyny is a property of social environments rather than a worldview. (shrink)

In this thesis I develop an account of how processes of social understanding are implicated in experiences of mental disorder, critiquing the lack of examination of this phenomena along the way. First, I demonstrate how disorder concepts, as developed and deployed by psychiatric institutions, have the effect of shaping the cognition of individuals with psychopathology through setting expectations. Such expectation-setting can be harmful in some cases, I argue, and can perpetuate epistemic injustices. Having developed this view, I criticise enactive (...) accounts of mental disorder for failing to consider how such terms like ‘dysfunction’ are open to interpretation and can come embedded with normative expectations. Enactive accounts consequently run the risk of perpetuating injustices in their account of the sociality of mental disorder. Similar concerns arise when we consider the attachment of enactivism to the medical model, I argue. But by adapting enactivism to consider other experiences of disorder, such as those described as ‘madness’, enactive psychiatry may genuinely provide ethical groundwork for a better conception of disordered experience. Then, I consider a further concern with a distinctly medicalised conception of mental disorder from the perspective of self-illness ambiguity, arguing that self-illness ambiguities appear to form a special class of ambiguities due to their proximity to disorder concepts which mark them as appropriate targets for therapeutic treatment. However, I argue further that we should be critical of the idea that self-illness ambiguities necessitate disambiguation, as, in cases where self and illness are demarcated, individuals may still experience distress because simply having a mental disorder can be socially alienating. The medicalised focus in self-illness ambiguity, and the explicit need from the medical perspective to disambiguate it, might then exacerbate the distress someone experiences in mental disorder. Moreover, drawing on Mad Studies, I suggest that one might not need a coherent self-narrative to live well. Because of this, one may not need to adopt a medicalised view of the self in the case of selfillness ambiguity. In order to support this analysis, I provide a phenomenological account of language and argue that the very thoughts implicated in mental disorder shape the individual’s perception of the world due to the way that language foregrounds particular aspects of our world. This demands a critical examination of the language adopted and used by both clinicians and disordered individuals. I thus conclude with some thoughts on how to approach research and developing understanding of mental disorder given that we, as people, are always implicated in this process and therefore socialisation of some kind will always be taking place. (shrink)

The discrepancy between individual women and the stereotypes attributed to the group as a ‎whole has become progressively greater and more explicit over the course of history. The stereotypes remain the same age-old ‎allegations whilst the ‎developments in the occupations of women and the traits they have opportunity to express have increased the distance between women and those ascribed traits. Stereotypes’ abstention from revision in light of contrary evidence constitutes an epistemic paradox for it entails conflict between the stereotypical knowledge (...) and empirical evidence, as well as between the stereotypical knowledge and other empirical knowledges. This paradox of stubbornness also raises the question as to the epistemic source of stereotypes. For, people at young ages encounter evidence which should have formed a more complex knowledge regarding women rather than the pervasive stereotypical knowledge. It is this extremity of absurdness of stereotypes regarding women that is utile to understanding stereotypes as a whole. The epistemic paradox that is engrained in all stereotypes is exposed uncompromisingly by this group. The paradox cannot be dismissed with excuses of having a small basis of evidence, such as may be said regarding other social groups with which one may have had minimal or no contact. Thus, stereotypes of women provide a limit case to understanding the epistemology of this paradoxical form of knowledge. The traits and epistemic phenomena which render stereotypes epistemically puzzling and intriguing is the relationship between knowledges. Stereotypical knowledge regarding women as a group conflict with one’s experience-founded knowledges of particular women, deeming the corporate body of knowledge incoherent. Quine’s theory of knowledge, with its holistic empirical approach endorsing conceptual schemes, provides fertile ground for this analysis. The novelty in his account is his establishment of the criteria of coherency, which shifts the focal point of epistemic inquiry away from the adequacy of individual knowledges with empirical evidence to the intra-knowledge relationships themselves. In his empiricism, Quine rather examines the interactions between knowledges and the overarching coherence of the body of knowledge as a holistic unit. Quine creates place in his account for mechanism which provide for the epistemic incongruences of stubbornness and conflict found between stereotypical knowledges and empirical evidence. These very mechanisms are what this paper requests to examine. Quine, ultimately, formulates knowledge as a collectively held fabric consisting of relations and of posits – socially constructed mechanisms which are empirically-irreducible and implemented pragmatically for the organisation of empirical evidence. According to Quine, the fabric formation is a conceptual scheme sourced in social heritage. People are bestowed with an eclectic framework of ‎knowledge to pragmatically merge between an inherited, collective conceptual scheme and the personally experienced empirical evidence. This paper will delve into Quine’s fabric of knowledge, its relations, and inner-mechanisms. The finding of stereotypes to be an age-old posit entrenched pragmatically – thus stubbornly – in the collective conceptual scheme, will explain the epistemic paradoxes they entail and offer insight to their revision in light of empiric reality and its women. (shrink)

I begin this article with an increasingly accepted claim: that emotions lend differential weight to states of affairs, helping us conceptually carve the world and make rational decisions. I then develop a more controversial assertion: that environments have non-subjective emotional qualities, which organize behavior and help us make sense of the world. I defend this from ecological and related embodied standpoints that take properties to be interrelational outcomes. I also build on conceptions of experience as a cultural phenomenon, one that (...) coheres around shared environmental contours and public emotional concerns, introducing normative constraints (or what might be called “world grammars”). Endorsing this outlook suggests an argument for the view that cultural spaces have affectively charged, non-subjective, normative openings and closures. These openings and closures engender selectively permeable barriers which cordon space without physically preventing entry, as seen with decorative half walls and elevation changes. An area with such barriers may look emotionally hostile to, say, the dispirited homeless who are in fact less welcome there. Outcomes like these might be thought of as “political affordances.” These affordances can be regarded as normative openings and closures that implicitly filter, and hence segregate, according to various social divisions. Although registering political affordances requires more than the detection of ambient arrays, the notion retains core Gibsonian ideas: that affordances are values, that these values are linked with how a space can be used, and that the existence and nature of such affordances is not a subjective matter. (shrink)