Since the advent of the internet, researchers have been interested in the intersubjective possibilities and constraints that digital environments offer users. In the literature, we find some who argue that seemingly disembodied digitally mediated interactions are severely limited when compared to their embodied face-to-face counterparts and others who are more optimistic about the possibilities that such technologies afford. Yet, both camps tend towards offering what we see as static accounts of online intersubjectivity – accounts that attempt to determine the very (...) possibilities and constraints of digital platforms based upon their design. What we think these approaches fail to take into account is how users’ intersubjective capabilities on digital platforms can evolve and change over time. Developmental psychology emphasises the way in which intersubjective capabilities build upon and are interrelated to one another, allowing for more sophisticated styles of intersubjectivity to emerge only once earlier stages are already in place. We find this suggestive for analysing intersubjectivity online as it provides a framework for thinking about how various an individual’s intersubjective capabilities might develop. We argue that in some cases this can happen through gradual adjustments of our basic intersubjective capabilities to digital spaces, especially those that strive to mimic established forms of offline interaction (e.g., Zoom). In other cases, this can involve more substantial processes of learning to walk and talk again online. Consequently, determining the possibilities and limits of online intersubjectivity is, at least in part, relative to a user’s skill, history, and familiarity with the technology in question. (shrink)

Empirical research provides striking examples of non-human animal responses to death, which look very much like manifestations of grief. However, recent philosophical work appears to challenge the idea that animals can grieve. Grief, in contrast to more rudimentary emotional experiences, has been taken to require potentially human-exclusive abilities like a fine-grained sense of particularity, an ability to project toward the distal future and the past, and an understanding of death or loss. This paper argues that these features do not rule (...) out animal grief and are present in many animal loss responses. It argues that the principal kind of “understanding” involved in grief is not intellectual but is instead of a practical variety available to animals, and outlines ways that the disruption to an animal’s life following a loss can hinge upon a specific individual and involve a degree of temporal organisation. (shrink)

This chapter critically analyses the ethical and political dimensions of supposedly subtle and non-coercive interventions that aim to ‘prevent crime’ through environmental designs making certain public spaces less attractive for specific groups. Examples include benches designed to discourage sleeping (targeted at homeless people), high-pitched noises or classical music played to deter lingering (targeted at youngsters), and specific lighting to prevent aggression (targeted at nightlife). While these interventions may appear less problematic than more traditional exclusionary measures, they raise ethical and political (...) worries that come into view clearly when we analyse them as instances of nudging, on the one hand, and niche construction and affective scaffolding, on the other. Employing this approach reveals how these exclusionary environmental designs not only risk reinforcing problematic stereotypes and social inequalities and discipline rather than prevent crime, they also can alienate specific groups, constitute affective injustices, and inflexibly reduce the diverse purposes public spaces potentially have. The chapter argues that environments are never neutral as they inevitably support and encourage some bodies, behaviours, moods, and emotions while suppressing and discouraging others. (shrink)

Using digital technology, in particular social media, is often associated with envy. Online, where there is a tendency for people to present themselves in their best light at their best moments, it can feel like we are unable to turn without being exposed to people living out their perfect lives, with their fancy achievements, their beautiful faces and families, their easy wit, and wide social circles. In this paper, I dive into the relationship between envy and digital technology. I offer (...) an enriched account of envy that aims to establish both the situated nature of envy, as well as (more controversially) the possibility of self-envy. I explore how features of digital technology not only increase the frequency with which we might experience envy directed at others, but also envy directed at other versions of one’s self. For online, we not only encounter idealized versions of others but digitally idealized versions of our selves. Moreover, I argue that digital technology does not only increase the likelihood of experiencing self-envy but makes the experience less cognitively onerous. I conclude by considering how current digital technology shapes _what_ we envy. (shrink)

The paper investigates epistemic vices in the fiduciary. Building on existing work exploring the presence of epistemic injustice embedded in the fiduciary, the paper examines the presence of another vice - epistemic hubris - and suggests how epistemic injustice acts as a capital vice within the context of the fiduciary, facilitating hubris to flourish. Three interrelated arguments are advanced. The first focuses on how the asymmetrical leader-follower dynamic within the fiduciary results in hubris. The second builds on this exploring how (...) the lack of consultation with the beneficiary alongside deployment of specific economic epistemic goods to interpret the fiduciary results in additional hubris. The third draws the two together, arguing that as epistemic injustice creates conditions for both examples of hubris to flourish, it serves as a capital vice within the context of the fiduciary. Finally, safeguarding suggestions are outlined for how these epistemic vices could be avoided. (shrink)

Despite the omnipresence of the fiduciary in organisations, there is an omission of contemporary theorizations of this legal concept within the organisational theory literature. This is particularly surprising given the situation that the presence of ethics within the fiduciary is increasingly contested ground, with clear implications for managerial practice. This article addresses the lacuna by theorizing the fiduciary using an original ontological analysis, alongside identifying a suitable ethical framework. It argues on two grounds that the ontology of the fiduciary is (...) inherently relational. The fiduciary’s process-oriented focus is shown to indicate an open, emergent, and relational ontology at work. Secondly, historical investigation of the development of the fiduciary highlights its core relationship structure, and the interdependency and power dynamic embedded in the fiduciary are revealed. The argument is advanced that by bringing this inherent relational ontology to the fore, we can see how a relational ethical framework - the Ethics of Care - is best placed to explicate the ethics at work. The article concludes with a discussion outlining how the ontological theorization offers utility in steering future practice of the fiduciary. (shrink)

The legal concept of fiduciary, from the Latin fīdūcia meaning trust, plays a fundamental role in all financial and business organisations: it acts as a moral safeguard of the relationship between trustee and beneficiary, ensuring that the beneficiaries' best interests are met. It is often referred to as a duty of care. This paper focuses on the ethics of the fiduciary, but from a unique and historical perspective, going back to the original formulation of the fiduciary within a familial context, (...) to reveal not only why care plays a central role in the fiduciary, but to also uncover key foundational presuppositions regarding agential capabilities embedded in the trustee-beneficiary relationship. In doing so, the paper uncovers ethical issues of an epistemological kind at the core of the fiduciary. By using Miranda Fricker's theory of pre-emptive testimonial injustice, the analysis helps shed light on shareholder activism and explains limited engagement to date. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider Collingwood’s Idea of History in the wider context of his thoughts on historical knowledge, and in the light of criticisms which have often been less than generous in giving a certain latitude to what he meant to convey. The article shows how the main doctrines, that are often taken in isolation and forensically analysed and criticized, may be defended and made more intelligible when considered as an integrated whole. Such an idea as (...) re-enactment, for example, need not be considered to lend itself to intuitionism in philosophy, nor methodological individualism in interpretation. It is possible to understand Collingwood presenting the theory of re-enactment as at once a method for the attainment of historical knowledge, which doesn’t simply come about fortuitously, while also being an ontological condition of understanding, that is, when historical knowledge is attained, something will have happened to us, that is, we will have thought exactly the same thoughts, broadly speaking, as the historical subjects themselves. (shrink)

Abundant research in adjacent disciplines shows forgiveness (including forgiving, not forgiving, being forgiven, and not being forgiven) to be an ordinary feature of how personal relationships are maintained, repaired, and rescinded. Sociologists, however, have scarcely considered forgiveness at all. This paper shows why sociologists of personal life should be interested in forgiveness, and how this contributes to sociological interpretations of conflict and repair in relationships. Indeed, it is argued that sociologists of personal life should be interested in forgiveness because it (...) seems to be part of the ordinary vernacular through which relationships are made sense of. It is also argued that sociologists of personal life can deliver a perspective on forgiveness in relationships that is missing from existing forgiveness research agendas. (shrink)

One of the greatest philosophical disputes in Germany in the latter half of the 19th century concerned the value of life. Following Arthur Schopenhauer, numerous philosophers sought to defend the provocative view that life is not worth living. A persistent objection to pessimism is that it is not really a philosophical theory at all, but rather a psychological state; a mood or disposition which is the product of socio-economic circumstance. A developed and influential version of this view was advanced in (...) the 1870’s by the English psychologist James Sully. Yet, as important as Sully’s critique was for the pessimism dispute, it has been almost entirely overlooked in the history of philosophy. With some growing recent attention to 19th century pessimism, this paper aims to reconstruct Sully’s view, and what I argue is his primary argument for it in terms of the best explanation for an alleged historical correlation between pessimistic belief and social hardship in the form of frustrated ideals. The paper then presents and analyses some challenges to this argument, some of which are argued to have been at least partially anticipated in the 19th century by the likes of Schopenhauer and Olga Plümacher. (shrink)

This paper aims to extend the discussion of silencing beyond the realm of speech and to the domain of conversational silences – that is, silences that have communicative functions in our conversational exchanges. I argue that, insofar as we can use silences to communicate, we can also be prevented from doing things with these silences. Alongside a three- fold taxonomy I show the different ways in which this can happen, utilizing and extending Maitra’s (2009) account of silencing to illustrate the (...) wrong happening in these cases. This discussion not only highlights a new domain of silencing that has, so far, been underexplored, but also uncovers just how deep linguistic injustices can run. (shrink)

In the context of a damaging absence of clarity, we define “Islamist Extremism” as: the absolutely divided and antagonistic Worldview of the “Us”-true-Muslim “in-group” who must strive to live in an “Islamic” State versus “Them”-non-Muslim’ and “wrong”-Muslim “out-groups” who are stripped of their human status due to their opposition to “true Islam.” We illustrate this definition of “Extremism” - including showing how Islamist Extremism is different from Mainstream Islam - using fresh empirical data from the largest ever study of Islam (...) and Muslims in prison. We proceed to show how this definition of “Extremism” can be used as the basis for understanding processes of radicalization and de-radicalization in and outside prison. We then extrapolate from the case of Islamist Extremism in prison to suggest a working definition of “Extremism” more generally as: any absolutely divided “Us” versus “Them” Worldview by which a “chosen” in-group strips “condemned” out-groups of their basic human qualities, properties and rights and thereby sets them up for harm. (shrink)

This presentation will introduce my doctrinal and socio-legal doctoral thesis, which is understood to be the first doctoral thesis on the subject of Law as it relates to Deaf people in the UK and possibly internationally, exploring the possible solutions to the conflict between equality law (which categorises Deaf people as disabled) and the Deaf identity, and how its findings contribute to the development of Deaf Legal Theory, originally penned by Bryan and Emery. Bryan and Emery argue that for Deaf (...) jurisprudence to develop, the current underpinnings of law are based on incomplete assumptions which need to be exposed. Thus, I will attempt to expose equality law’s incomplete assumptions of Deaf people, and how this exposure contributes to the development of Deaf Legal Theory. At present, equality law on a domestic, European and international level currently provides Deaf people with human rights and protects them from discrimination. However, with the limited exception of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), these rights are given to Deaf individuals as disabled individuals, rather than as Deaf individuals. This is essentially what I refer to as the ‘Deaf Legal Dilemma.’ The British Deaf Association espouses that “equality is what it stands for”, and on the international stage, the World Federation of the Deaf highlights that one of its most important priorities in its work is to ensure human rights for Deaf people all over the world, in every aspect of life. Thus, it would appear that what Deaf people want above all is equality. There is no initial agreement among scholars as to what the important questions are, and McIntyre J, speaking for the Supreme Court of Canada in Andrews v Law Society of British Columbia remarked that “more than any of the rights and freedoms, [equality] lacks precise definition”. Nonetheless, I have attempted to make sense of equality law, and relying on Westen’s precepts of equality and McLachlin’s “emerging rocks of certainty,” present three categories of equality: formal, substantive and transformative, within which the various concepts of equality can be categorised accordingly. It is clear from this exercise that transformative equality is the most appropriate approach for Deaf people to achieve equality in their own right as Deaf individuals rather than as disabled individuals. Having established which approaches to equality law are most relevant to Deaf people, a doctrinal approach is to be undertaken with regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, European Convention for Human Rights, the Equality Act 2010 and the UNCRPD, as well as the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015, to establish their main provisions that apply to Deaf people and a critique of each in relation to the Deaf identity, and other factors such as enforcement mechanisms. Initial findings as to the potential solutions to the Deaf Legal Dilemma in relation to equality law at present are wider use of the CRPD, the widening of the social model of disability, sign language recognition, and/or reverting to the social welfare model. (shrink)

In the northeast of Scotland, in the county of Caithness, local volunteers are invited to “read the landscape”. In a public engagement program, AOC_Archaeology teaches archaeological practices to members of the local community. These outdoor workshops use the old “reading” memory metaphor (Aristotle, 1908; Cicero, 1954; Freud, 1925; Krell, 1990) to forge non-invasive relations between the local population and the fragmented archaeological remains and to inscribe new cultural practices upon Caithness moorlands. The volunteers are challenged to re-inhabit their landscape and (...) to interpret ambiguous archaeological remains called Ephemera. (David & Wilson, 1999; Fowler, 2000). The ephemera (Barber, 2001) are obscure and scattered traces of human activity surviving from the Bronze Ages through to the Post-Medieval periods, which are constantly transformed by the erosion of time, the encroachment of peat and by current land management. AOC-archaeologists challenge the locals to “read the landscape” and to unravel the “time depth” of its ephemeral engravings. Locals establish new places of interest, rediscover old tracks and trails and gently carve new inscriptions as part of this emergent cultural practice. In Caithness moorlands, two kinds of “reading” take place: the distanced reading of the expert and the embedded sensory-rich reading of teams of experts combined with local apprentices. Caithness landscape is here examined as an infinite database of memory traces, a palimpsest of old and new signs inscribed upon this overused writing pad. The paper investigates how the “reading” metaphor affects locals’ interaction with their landscape as part of their cultural heritage (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). (shrink)

In the paper, I closely examine the spatial conditions and practises that support two kinds of silence, which permeate institutional engagement with heritage; I then discuss their effects on participants’ experience. In particular, I ethnographically investigate the silences that occur during museum-theatre events, mostly designed for engaging the general public (Jackson and Kidd 2011; McConachie and Hart 2006; Shaughnessy 2012), but also the silences that occur during the puzzling surveys of obscure archaeological remains, conducted by heritage professionals (Barker 1993; Carver (...) 2009). The ethnographic passage from public to professional engagement serves the identification of those silences that support more critical and enquiring forms of engagement and an ‘in-the-wild’ investigation of the spatial conditions and practices that support them. Throughout the paper, I presuppose that institutional practices of public or professional engagement with past remains are systematic and culturally orchestrated memory practices. I also suggest that while public engagement is predominantly shaped by the theatrical model, professional engagement is structured by what I define in the paper as a labyrinthine one. Taking a critical approach on the theatrical model, I look into the labyrinthine engagement of professional archaeologists for those silences that can support a more enquiring interaction with past remains. Ultimately, I suggest that during theatrical engagement with heritage, silence most often works as a reception to events of revelation but also of deception. Such a silence is supported by introverted, binary and well-delineated spaces. By contrast, the silence that dominates professional engagement with past remains works as the main hall of ‘intensified outwardness’ and ‘heightened attention’. Such silences are mostly supported by open-ended, fragmented and obscure environments. Focusing on the spatial condition and practices that consistently support critical and enquiring forms of engagement, I turn the spotlight from theatrical silence to labyrinthine one and suggest that it is the former to which we willingly surrender, and the latter that we employ to transgress. (shrink)

This chapter explores some of the major developments in the philosophical understanding of suicide in 19th Century Western thought. Two developments in particular are considered. The first is a widespread shift towards thinking about suicide in medical terms rather than moral terms. Deploying methods initiated by a number of French and German thinkers in the preceding century who worked at the then emerging interface between the social and biological sciences, a number of 19th century thinkers ejected what they took to (...) be old metaphysical superstitions about ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and replaced them with (allegedly) hard-nosed scientific diagnoses of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’. Dismissing traditional moral arguments against the permissibility of suicide, the phenomenon came to be viewed as a symptom of decline or degeneration. How variations of this view, in biological and social contexts, reorientated practical responses to suicide in terms of treatment rather than moral condemnation is explored. The second 19th century development in philosophical thought with respect to suicide the chapter considers concerns its place in one of the most significant controversies in Germany from 1860 to the turn of the century: the Pessimismusstreit or ‘pessimism dispute’. While philosophical pessimism might be thought to vindicate or even entail suicide, many of the most prominent pessimists—including Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann—denied that this was the case, and perhaps surprisingly took suicide to involve a special kind of moral and/or epistemic failing. The chapter aims to elucidate the different arguments which pessimists appealed to in order to ground this position. (shrink)

Contemporary right-wing populism mixes comic performance with authoritarian and reactionary sentiments in troubling ways, as much recent work has observed. We might thus be said to be living in an era of ‘tragic farce’ in which Marx’s famous distinction between genres of historical action has collapsed. To engage with these questions, this article focuses on the clown as a figure in which aesthetics and politics intersect in crucial ways. Through readings of Adorno, Deleuze, Agamben and Žižek, I show how the (...) clown has been an enduring concern for theory. I also analyze Todd Phillips’ 2019 film Joker, including the furor that greeted its release, in order to argue for a mode of aesthetic populism in which the category of ‘people’ remains a virtual or potential category that can drive artistic practice. To describe this, I draw on what Deleuze, in his philosophy of cinema, termed fabulation. (shrink)

Abstract: How is it that we can visually experience complete three-dimensional objects despite being limited, in any given perceptual moment, to perceiving the sides facing us from a specific spatial perspective? To make sense of this, such visual experiences must refer to occluded or presently unseen back-sides which are not sense-perceptually given, and which cannot be sense- perceptually given while the subject is occupying the spatial perspective on the object that they currently are – I call this the horizonality of (...) visual experience. Existing accounts of these horizonal references are unsatisfactory. In providing a satisfactory account, this paper argues that the content and structure of the visual experience of complete three-dimensional objects is as follows: the object is presented as being perceptible from yet-to-be-determined alternative points of view. As part of the content of visual experience, this motivates non-propositional attitudes of anticipation. Explicating this proposal is the central positive aim of this paper. (shrink)

A key claim of classical phenomenology is that intentional experiences involve a distinctive kind of implicit intentionality, which accompanies the relevant explicit intentionality. This implicit intentionality is purportedly co-constitutive of the object-presenting phenomenology of those intentional experiences. This implicit intentionality is often framed by Husserl and other classical phenomenologists in terms of horizonal intentionality or intentional horizons. Its most interesting form is labelled the 'inner horizon'. My aim in this paper is to consider whether a case can be made for (...) thinking that affective-evaluative experiences, predominately conscious emotions, exhibit a form of implicit intentionality in terms of an inner horizon. I suggest that one plausible way of motivating this idea is by reference to the normative phenomenology of the relevant experiences, in which particular objects' values are presented as either an ideal 'ought to be' or an ideal 'ought not to be'. (shrink)

In the article I argue that intellectual arrogance can be an individual, collective and even corporate vice. I show that arrogance is in all these cases underpinned by defensive positive evaluations of epistemic features of the evaluator in the service of buttressing its illegitimate social dominance. Individual arrogance as superbia or as hubris stems from attitudes biased by the motive of self-enhancement. Collective arrogance is underpinned by positive defensive attitudes to a one’s social identity that seeks to maintain its unwarranted (...) social dominance. Finally, corporations are arrogant when their attitudes are the aggregation of the arrogant dispositions of its managers or when these corporations have inherited structures and policies that are defensive of its illegitimately dominant social status. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the nominality of the neologism BREXT using a corpus-informed lexicogrammatical approach. The term BREXIT, coined in 2012, used initially in print and social media in the UK is now internationally wide-spread. BREXIT is a blend of British + exit, which expresses the meaning of’Britain exiting from the EU’. Although ‘Brexit’ clearly expresses an event (motion) meaning, as a nominalization, it also expresses nominal meaning. In systemic functional linguistics (SFL), nominalization is much broader (...) than lexical derivation and is treated as a means of conceptualising and encoding experience. In this paper the development of BREXIT is explored using a corpus of 1,641,903 words including 2,435 instances of BREXIT from its first use in May 2012 to the UK general election in 2015. Capturing the development of this term from its initial use allows some insight into the intended meanings of the speaker due to the glosses provided. These appositional expressions are combined with the collocations found in the corpus. The results show that while the meanings identifiable in the corpus are entirely nominal in use, the term encodes complex meanings of event-oriented meanings and of hypotheticality. In examining the nominal status of BREXIT, I show that not all nominalizations are instances of grammatical metaphor. (shrink)

In this chapter I show that idealizing assumptions can obscure conversational dynamics because they neglect power differentials that are crucial enablers of the successful performance of some speech acts (see, Sbisà, 2020). I examine how silencing is promoted by conversational norms that would defeasibly entitle linguistic agents to presume that silence indicates acceptance. I focus on Goldberg’s (2020) discussion of these phenomena. Goldberg argues in support of a norm of no silent rejections claiming that silencing is partly the result of (...) the misapplication of this norm. He further defends the view that the norm itself is part of the solution to the problem of silencing. In the chapter I argue that Goldberg is mistaken on these points. Instead, drawing inspiration from Sbisà (2020), I argue that norms of no silent rejection are temporarily enacted by means of speech acts that function as exercitive assertions. (shrink)

In the mid-1940s, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre both argued that a person’s preferences and behaviour are ultimately explained by their projects, which they have chosen and can reject. However, they did not agree on the details. Sartre’s theory of ‘radical freedom’ was that projects have no inertia of their own and persist only if they continue to be endorsed. Beauvoir held that projects become gradually sedimented with continued endorsement, increasing in both influence and inertia over time. Sartre’s theory (...) resulted from his basic ontology of being and nothingness, itself arrived at through his method of transcendental phenomenology. Beauvoir’s theory was grounded directly in the phenomenology of lived experience, particularly as articulated in her fictional writings. By the end of the 1940s, Sartre had replaced his original idea of freedom with Beauvoir’s theory of project sedimentation. He was right to do so. Project sedimentation explains what commitment to a project is and how there can be cultural values, neither of which can be explained within the theory of radical freedom. However, the theory of project sedimentation had not been available to Sartre until he revised his philosophical method in response to an anthology of negritude poetry. (shrink)

Filling a significant gap in prisons research, this paper articulates the experiences and perspectives of a group of Muslim prison officers interviewed as part of an international study examining Islam in prison. These Muslim prison officers occupied a precarious occupational cultural space between Us (prison officers) and Them (Muslim prisoners) which presented both risks of exclusion, religious and racial prejudices and opportunities to build bridges between prisoners and staff and to educate, especially in the dimension of religion. The very presence (...) of Muslim prison officers in prisons challenged traditional occupational cultural stereotypes around both prison officers and Muslims. The disproportionately large numbers of Muslim prisoners in Europe and the haphazard way that Muslim prison officers often encounter the profession, suggest both that better training focused upon Islam in prison for existing prison officers is vital and that more directed recruitment of Muslim prison officers is needed. (shrink)

Xilam is a modern Mexican martial art that is inspired by pre- Hispanic warrior cultures of ancient Mesoamerica, namely the Aztecs (Mexica), Maya and Zapotec cultures. It provides a noteworthy case study of a Latin American fighting system that has been recently invented, but aspires to rescue, rediscover and relive the warrior philosophies that existed before the Spanish Conquest and subsequent movements beginning in 1521. Using the thought-provoking work of anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo, I aim to analyse the (...) Xilam Martial Arts Association through the way that they represent themselves philosophies in their three main media outlets: the official webpage, the Facebook group and the YouTube channel. Overall, the data suggests that certain elements of Mesoamerican civilisation may be transmitted to young Mexicans through a mind-body discipline, which in turn acts as a form of physical (re)education. Overall, xilam is both an invented tradition (in a technical sense) and a re-invented tradition (in a cultural sense) that provides lessons on the timeless issues of transformation, transmission and transcendence. (shrink)

In the opening lines of ‘Black Orpheus’, written as a preface to an anthology of negritude poetry, Sartre challenges white readers ‘to feel, as I do, the shock of being seen’. Reading this poetry, he thinks, should undermine white people’s presumption of the objectivity of their perspective. Accordingly, the essay itself contradicts two prominent aspects of the philosophy he had so far developed: the idea that poetry could not be politically engaged; and the theory of radical freedom. These changes are (...) ultimately rooted in his realisation, upon reading this poetry, that his previous understanding of prose is mistaken. This has the consequence that his philosophical method, which derives ontological conclusions from prose descriptions of experience, has two important limitations: its premises cannot be drawn solely from his own experience; and French prose might be insufficient for formulating all relevant premises. He therefore revises his method to deploy this poetry as phenomenological grounds for ontological conclusions, which transforms his ontology of human existence to include cultural inheritance as a primary feature. We will see how this reading of negritude poetry exemplifies both the epistemic challenge involved in what he calls ‘the look’ and the use of listening in response to it. (shrink)

This chapter examines the representation of ageing and of neurodiversity in Graham Greene’s novel Monsignor Quixote (1982), and in the 1985 film adaptation of the book, shot entirely in Spain and with a Spanish crew. It argues that there is a continuity between Greene’s lifelong interest in the Hispanic world and the fact that his only novel to rework characters, structure and generic form from a canonical text should turn for this purpose to Cervantes and to the Spanish tradition of (...) the picaresque. It also argues that it is more than coincidental that the most autobiographical of Greene’s novels is set in Spain: Greene’s later years, and his understanding of old age, were shaped by frequent visits to Spain and by his journeys with his friend and philosophical sparring partner, Leopoldo Durán. The chapter posits that disability in Greene’s work remains an understudied subject. It underscores the author’s loyalty to his disabled friends and the inclusion of functional diversity in his works for the stage. The chapter argues that the colloquial format of the novel articulates Greene’s own internal conflicts, between his Catholicism and his left-leaning politics. Taking Sally Chivers’ Silvering Screen template as a benchmark, the chapter examines where the film adaptation reproduces stereotypical cinematic images of ageing, and where it departs from these. Close reading of the narrative’s final scene, in which a neurologically traumatised Quixote appears to perform a mass, queries the compartmentalisation of disability and aging in the silvering screen paradigm. (shrink)

Intellectual humility, which entails openness to other views and a willingness to listen and engage with them, is crucial for facilitating civil dialogue and progress in debate between opposing sides. In the present research, we tested whether intellectual humility can be reliably detected in discourse and experimentally increased by a prior self-affirmation task. Three-hundred and three participants took part in 116 audio and video-recorded group discussions. Blind to condition, linguists coded participants’ discourse to create an intellectual humility score. As expected, (...) the self-affirmation task increased the coded intellectual humility, as well as participants’ self-rated prosocial affect (e.g., empathy). Unexpectedly, the effect on prosocial affect did not mediate the link between experimental condition and intellectual humility in debate. Self-reported intellectual humility and other personality variables were uncorrelated with expert-coded intellectual humility. Implications of these findings for understanding the social psychological mechanisms underpinning intellectual humility are considered. (shrink)

Thought experiments play a prominent role in philosophical inquiry. And yet we lack a good understanding of how they work and how they are supposed to supply evidence or knowledge in inquiry. This dissertation offers a novel account of the epistemology of philosophical thought experiments, namely, the reason-responsiveness view. The view is inspired by a virtue ethical tradition that flowers in John McDowell (1994) and Miranda Fricker (2007). Drawing on this virtue ethical tradition, I argue that knowing in philosophical thought (...) experiments is achieved through the exercise of the virtue of sensibility, which has three distinct features. First, it is social in origin, acquired through our training in a human language and as ordinary members of a community. Second, it is recognitional in the sense that although our sensibility gives us the ability to classify situations, whether real or hypothetical and to resonate with rational considerations for or against a given classificational judgement (i.e., the judgements we form in thought experiments), it does not equip us with a reflective ability to fully articulate those reasons in an infallible way. And third, it allows us to project across various contexts, both in real and in hypothetical situations. And this ability to project, I argue further, does not come from the ability of people to grasp concepts or to have certain mental episodes or phenomenology or to grasp universals or to have mastery of the application conditions of rules or from belonging to some exclusive club or from enjoying a certain superior access to concepts or access to philosophically interesting phenomena not available to ordinary people. On the contrary, that we do comes down to “our sharing routes of interest and feeling, mode of response, senses of humour and of significance, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation—all the while of organism Wittgenstein calls “forms of life” (Cavell, 1969, p.52). The account is then used to shore up the claim of epistemological continuity, which asserts that the epistemology of thought experiments is an extension of social cognition or social epistemology (Cappelen, 2012; Deutsch, 2015; Williamson 2007), and to offer a claim of epistemological-continuity-style defence of philosophical thought experiments against two major objections in the literature, namely, the negative experimentalist challenge (see Machery, 2017) and the ordinary language challenge ( Baz, 2016, 2017). (shrink)

This work is the first complete Arabic and Persian edition with English translation of Ibn Sīnā's writings on optics across the whole of his oeuvre drawing upon Arabic and Persian manuscript and printed sources.

Contemporary architects have a philosophical problem: how to justify the value of good design, specifically aesthetics, in an economy which favours the objective and quantifiable. Philosophy, however, has neglected serious engagement with the aesthetics of the built environment, despite widespread agreement within the architectural world that contemporary building is often ugly or bland. This thesis examines key philosophical issues in the crisis of aesthetics in architecture. Part One seeks a better understanding of what we mean by aesthetic value in the (...) built environment, couching discussion within an aesthetics of design rather than of art. Exploring critical foundations for design aesthetics, it rejects both the Kantian judgement aesthetics favoured by Roger Scruton, and the everyday aesthetics of Yuriko Saito, in favour of Gernot Böhme’s aesthetics of atmospheres. Finally, it interrogates the common conflation of aesthetic value with beauty, tackling head on the problem of ugliness and negative aesthetics that is crucial to our understanding of contemporary building. Part Two examines the competition of values in corporate and political decision-making, most reductively in cost benefit analysis and value engineering, where aesthetics is often compared unfavourably with the expedient and quantifiable. It argues that buildings cannot be understood naively as the creative product of an architect. Rather, they tangibly exhibit the values of the clients – private and public sector – who commission them. Our treatment of aesthetics here is inherently political, bound to our treatment of equality, efficiency, welfare and the good life. The thesis concludes by arguing, in opposition to Scruton’s insistence that our values are objective and rational, that we should cease attempting to justify aesthetic value in these terms. Rather, those arguing for improved, or better distributed, aesthetics in the built environment should turn to Rorty’s notion that our social values are constructed for the achievement of an unrealised “dream country”. (shrink)

Debates around the state-firm analogy as a route to justifying workplace democracy tend towards a static view of both state and firm, and position workplace democracy as the objective. We contend, however, that states and firms are connected to one another in ways that should alter the terms of the debate, and that the achievement of workplace democracy raises a new set of political issues about the demos in the democratic firm and ‘worker migration’ at the boundaries of the firm. (...) Our argument thus contains two key steps: First, drawing on an empirical case study of a worker-owned firm, we enrich the state-firm analogy by developing a more dynamic view of both, focussing on the creation of workplace democracies; worker movement in and out of them; the dynamic meanings of ‘citizenship’ within them; and the status of the unemployed in a world of democratic workplaces. We then argue that in moving to a more sociological view of the state, the things we were comparing begin to show their real-world connections to one another. By going beyond the idealised view of states that has distorted the state-firm analogy debates, we arrive at a more robust view of how widespread workplace democracy might reconfigure basic political relationships in society. (shrink)

This article looks at Marco Bellocchio’s 2002 film My Mother’s Smile to re‐assess the central feature of Bellocchio’s cinema, i.e. its attempt to delineate a subjective strategy of subversion against a social order perceived as fundamentally repressive. In line with the director’s previous output, the film takes the Catholic Church and the family as its explicit polemical targets, endeavouring to unmask the nefarious ideological pressure they exercise on the ordinary individual in today’s Italian society. However, my reading draws on Lacanian (...) psychoanalytic theory to try and locate the disavowed (unconscious) kernel of Bellocchio’s narrative. Deploying Lacan’s controversial musings on ‘the gaze’, ‘desire’ and ‘femininity’, I suggest that the true stance of rebellion voiced by the film’s protagonist hinges on his recognition that the inconsistency of the ideological predicament he consciously struggles against paradoxically coincides with the traumatic inconsistency at the heart of his own attitude of defiance. (shrink)

Noting that Benhabib’s ethical theory has seldom been engaged with by sociologists of morality, this paper introduces and interrogates Benhabib’s ethical theory from a sociological perspective. It is argued that Benhabib’s critiques of Enlightenment conceptions of morality complement sociological theories of morality. Her concepts of the ‘concrete’ and ‘generalized’ other and ‘interactive universalism’ can potentially inform recurrent debates in the sociology of morality about the extent to which cultural plurality precludes the possibility of sociologists providing normative judgements, and the extent (...) to which certain features of moral experiences can be taken to be universal. However, Benhabib’s argument that discourse ethics can provide a procedural means to judge between competing moral claims leads her to prioritise the perspective of ‘postconventional’ Western modernism as the means to adjudicate between the moral tolerability of cultural beliefs and practices. This leads her to characterise ‘conventional’ moral systems as subordinate, which succumbs to postcolonial critiques of the role of processes of domination in organising the validity of moral claims. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on a subset of experiences in which action-properties are presented—namely, those in which objects in our perceptual surroundings or environment ‘demand’ that certain actions be carried out, as experienced mandates (EMs). The critical part of the paper argues that a complex contents view, which builds all of the distinctiveness of such experiences into their perceptual content, is unsatisfactory. As an alternative, I argue that EMs involve bodily potentiation, which is best understood in terms of felt (...) action readiness. I then outline a hybrid account, which combines content-based features of EMs with action-readiness. (shrink)

We have all heard people say ‘Beauty is only skin-deep’, or ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’: our culture promulgates a conception of beauty as subjective, superficial, and independent of other values like moral goodness or knowledge and understanding. Yet our taste in beauty affects many aspects of our lives, sometimes playing a decisive – and often detrimental – role in areas as wide-ranging as our identity and self-esteem, our morally salient decisions, and our relationship to the environment. (...) This presents us with a choice: we can either ignore the facts – leaving our conception of beauty unchanged and allowing our taste to influence much in our lives while either not acknowledging such influence, or perhaps seeking to reprimand it; or we can take the power of beauty seriously and seek to harmonise our taste with our values. I argue for the latter option and propose a way of bringing beauty and taste in line with what matters to us using the notion of functional beauty. Adopting this strategy, I suggest, can have a powerful – and positive – impact on our self-esteem and wellbeing, our relationship to others, as well as our attitudes towards the environment. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that social networking sites (SNSs) are emotion technologies that promote a highly charged emotional environment where intrinsic emotion regulation is significantly weakened, and people's emotions are more strongly modulated by other people and by the technology itself. I show that these features of social media promote a simplistic emotional outlook which is an obstacle to the development and maintenance of virtue. In addition, I focus on the mechanisms that promote group-based anger and thus give rise (...) to affective polarisation. In the final section, after a discussion of the positive value of some forms of anger, I argue that SNSs should not be designed to prohibit or suppress anger, but that its encouragement should also be avoided. I conclude with a suggestion about how this might be achieved. (shrink)

This chapter argues for three related points. First, answerability is the key to intellectual autonomy. However, in order to enjoy that status that befits an intellectually autonomous subject, other epistemic subjects must also recognize that one is answerable for one’s believing. Second, systemic conditions of social oppression impede recognition since they promote situations in which members of oppressed groups are disabled in their attempts to make themselves answerable for their believing. Third, these oppressive conditions foster the development of the epistemic (...) vices of hyper-autonomy in privileged individuals and of heteronomy in those who are subordinated. (shrink)

In Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History, Cathy Caruth defines as traumatic our encounter, not with life-threatening events but, with those that primarily cause a break in our perception of time (1996). She then explains that the experience and memory of traumatic events, while unavoidably visceral, are always in a fleeting state, leaving connections with their time and place of occurrence fragile and obscure. So, while traumas irreversibly scar the affected bodies, through collective memories and narratives they seek for new (...) places, times and bodies to invade. The paper uses as starting point the first globally televised industrial accident and community trauma, the Aberfan 1966 disaster, to then look at the systematicity and ordinariness that characterises the South Wales Valleys’ colliery disasters. The South Wales Valleys, widely known as “The Valleys” is a region drastically transformed by the iron and coal industries but also heavily scarred by consecutive industrial disasters since the second half of the 18th century. Echoing Lauren Berland’s thoughts on crisis of ordinariness (2011) the paper looks at the density of industrial localities and the frequency of time-ruptures, to un-map the Valleys’ as a region of exceptional disasters and industrial accidents. Albion, Abercan, Cymmer, Ferndale & Blaenllechaum Maerdy, Parc Slip, Senghenydd, Aberfan etc: the Valleys’ registry of industrial heritage is revisited to capture the trauma’s movement across space and time. The paper speaks of the unexceptional precarity and constant vulnerability that define the Valleys industrial communities, and of the repetitive displacement of traumatic experiences that renders their mappings ephemeral if not illusive (Berland 201). The paper ultimately suggests that regions of trauma are better defined/mapped, not by their dislocated “Ground Zeros” and their transient boundaries, but by their unbearable frequencies and persistent densities. (shrink)

Replication failures indicate that we have reason to doubt the generalisations made from the original experiment to the original conclusion. This thesis argues that the proposed statistical responses to the replication crisis in social psychology are necessary for long-term progress in the research programme but remain insufficient without a supplementary approach which targets the theoretical frameworks which justify the conclusions drawn. Beginning by offering an account of the replication crisis in social psychology, the thesis then turns to addressing some extant (...) approaches to parsing the literature into more and less reliable. In contrast to these approaches, the ontological critique is proposed as an approach which explicitly addresses the problems in social psychological theory. This ontological critique is a tool for unpacking the theoretical justifications which underpin the generalisations made when constructing conclusions from data. Proposed desiderata approaches to model choice for implicit cognition are addressed in chapter 3 and presented with problem cases from within the extant literature. These cases give us reason to prefer the ontological critique if it can be shown to be fruitful. The subsequent three chapters are studies in the application of the critique to the trait picture of attitudes, the mainstream model of attitudes, and the Cognitive-Affective Personality System as a model of attitudes, respectively, with the aim of demonstrating this fruitfulness. Each introduces the relevant theoretical framework before applying the ontological critique, illustrating both the directions of clarification and refinement for each account of attitudes and the utility of the critique. The final chapter draws together the conclusions reached throughout the thesis and relates this project to other approaches to the crisis in psychology. (shrink)

This paper takes the position that our current treatments that involve infilling with a neutral rather than matched colour are deceptive to the viewer and that such deliberate mediation through the act of conservation can deny the viewer an authentic understanding of the heritage object. Governing guidelines and documents describe authenticity as the alignment of the object and its story but for some practitioners the concept remains tied to originality. Authenticity could be considered a fluid concept as it is built (...) via the individual relationship between object and viewer. Many of the default approaches to conservation fail to address the fluidity embodied in the object and its representation of the passage of time. A lack of examination into the inherent biases of our work defends the status quo within our museums under a cloak of neutrality. Disruptive conservation is proposed as a challenge, exemplified by a jarring visible mend. It is an approach designed to disturb complacency. It calls upon analysis of our biases and challenges the consequences of freezing the meanings of our conserved objects. Placing the process of disruptive conservation into treatment dialogues enables conservators to account for the object’s journey in how their intervention is portrayed. It stops the object existing simply as a representation of the past and allows it to continue its evolution. The question ‘Why don’t I make this fill in hot pink?’ is offered as a catalyst for an appraisal of an object’s place and context without assuming or imposing a fake neutrality. (shrink)

From 2013 to 2017, Hollywood actor Scarlett Johansson was the star vehicle in four unrelated science fiction films that saw her portray a posthuman female enabled by artificially intelligent technology. As such technologies become ever more ubiquitous in the world, so too are the burgeoning discourses around posthumanism and artificial intelligence, which are predominantly disseminated to non-specialists through science fiction and journalistic media. These discourses hold the power to influence our perceptions of incoming technological advancements. Therefore, it is important to (...) gain an interdisciplinary understanding of these discourses and their intersections in order to contribute to the cultivation of a general population that is technologically literate and empowered, as well as foster productive dialogues between specialists from within and across the sciences and humanities fields. The media’s configuration of Scarlett Johansson as an ‘exceptional’ woman, often by drawing upon the lexicon of science fiction, has initiated underlying connections between the actor and posthuman figures within the genre, contributing to her perceived suitability for such roles. Despite appearing to be the ‘ideal’ candidate for posthuman female roles, Johansson’s repeated casting poses several problematic implications, particularly when taken into consideration through a feminist lens. Not only does it contribute to an agenda that establishes improbable conceptions of how artificial, posthuman entities should look and behave, but it also perpetuates retrograde notions of gender roles. (shrink)

This article examines how the media deal with absent information by examining representations of uncertainty, ignorance and speculation in the UK television coverage of airplane disasters. Drawing on thematic and discourse analyses, the article argues that there is a development over time whereby two phases can be discerned: (1) the (initial) ignorance phase and (2) the epilogue phase. The former describes coverage that contains an absence of information. The findings show that the reporting in this phase draws on modality and (...) speculation to counterbalance the absence of information regarding the airplane disasters. The epilogue phase factually concludes what happened and brings a form of resolution to the incidents. As a result, information is presented with more certainty than in the ignorance phase. These findings have implications for journalism studies more generally because they refine our understandings about the development of media coverage on events and situate the concepts of uncertainty, ignorance and speculation at the forefront of the discipline. (shrink)

The article argues that whilst our recent economic models are dependent on the overall ecosystem, they do not reflect this fact. As a result of this, we are facing Anthropocene mass extinction. The paper presents a collaborative regenerative region (COLreg) cocreation and tokenisation, involving multiple human and non-human, living and non-living stakeholders. It is unfolding different stages of multi-centered systemic codesign via collaborative gigamapping. In the first steps, certain stakeholders are present, and certain stakeholders represented, whilst they are all, even (...) the previously just potential ones, taking an active role in the final stages of generative development. The 'COLreg’ project represents a holistic approach that reflects today’s most burning questions, such as biodiversity decrease, unsustainable food production, unsustainable economic models, and social systems. It combines top-down and bottom-up approaches to cocreation to reach regional social and environmental justice of the coming symbiotic era of Post-Anthropocene. (shrink)

The Mismeasure of the Self is dedicated to vices that blight many lives. They are the vices of superiority, characteristic of those who feel entitled, superior and who have an inflated opinion of themselves, and those of inferiority, typical of those who are riddled with self-doubt and feel inferior. Arrogance, narcissism, haughtiness, and vanity are among the first group. Self-abasement, fatalism, servility, and timidity exemplify the second. This book shows these traits to be to vices of self-evaluation and describes their (...) pervasive harmful effects in some detail. Even though the influence of these traits extends to any aspect of life, the focus of this book is their damaging impact on the life of the intellect. Tanesini develops and defends a view of these vices that puts vicious motivations at their core. The analyses developed in this work build on empirical research in attitude psychology and on philosophical theories in virtue ethics and epistemology. The book concludes with a positive proposal for weakening vice and promoting virtue. (shrink)

This study uses a scientific realist methodology to explain how social outcomes of community care interventions are produced, sustained and contextually dependent. We evaluate an organization dedicated to wound care and leg health known as the Lindsay Leg Club network, so far studied mostly from a phenomenological perspective, to demonstrate the generative role of places where Leg Clubs are located, with objects in their environment, and people who organize and run Leg Clubs, with their agency and intentionality. We theorize the (...) explanatory role of these contextual features with the concept of affordances. Our approach shows that the phenomenological findings from community care evaluation are not unequivocal. Instead, researchers should recognize the nuanced nature of causality in social programmes, which requires a consideration of the links between community care interventions, how people respond to them and the conditions under which these responses are enacted. (shrink)

New materialist applications in ‘dirty work’ studies have rightly emphasised the importance of materiality alongside symbolism. However, these approaches have neglected important themes irreducible to the material world, such as temporality, reflexivity and social structure. This article develops an alternative critical realist perspective on socio-materiality in dirty work which emphasises these themes. It draws on 2016-2017 ethnographic data on the work of clinical photographers of wounds in a UK specialist outpatient wound healing clinic. First, it shows how photographers’ reflexivity mediates (...) the relationship between their embodied materiality and their agency in the physical domain. Second, it highlights the temporal dynamics between reflexive agents, their material environment, and the context of their operation. Finally, it emphasises the non-conflationary relationship between the social structures of the medical hierarchy and photographers’ agency in dirty work. Together, these contributions highlight the utility of an emergent, realist ontology in understanding the dynamics of dirty work. (shrink)

This thesis starts by introducing the theme of sensuous connections between one and other. I discuss the desire for epistemic kinship and philosophical concerns with objectivity which echo those of the natural sciences. At first, the focus is the ways in which various philosophies have attempted to bridge the gap between one and other. Then, there is a move to concentrating in particular on Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics, a system of thought that helps conceive a description of reality that (...) is made out of the processes defined by their relation to other processes. I sketch out features of Whitehead’s speculative philosophy which serves as a description of philosophical method. I then outline a description of reality as an interrelated web of prehensions which start from physical, empirical base, moves to the imaginative realm of conceptual possibility and is narrowed down to the propositions which lead to creative novelty. The case is made that in its most generalised form, this process of concrescence is a basic aesthetic mode of being, shared by human and non-human occasions of experience. I argue that coming to see the world as being constructed out of highly social processes in which we – our species and ourselves as individuals – are integral participants, bridges the modern chasm between individual and whole. I take Nietzsche’s notion of passive nihilism to be a symptom of such a gap and attempt to solve this problem using the framework of aesthetic education as means to attune oneself with the co-constructive processes which connect them with the immanent and intrinsic value in the systems around them. Finally, I engage with wider cosmopolitical implications of adopting attunement to the vibrancy of such processes, even if they are felt not known, and show the relevance of such an endeavour to an ethical disposition that is based on aesthetic feeling and directed to social change. (shrink)

To avoid the problem of regress, externalists have put forward defeaters-based accounts of justification. The paper argues that existing proposals face two serious concerns: (i) They fail to accommodate related counterexamples such as Norman the clairvoyant, and, more worryingly, (ii) they fail to explain how one can be epistemically responsible in holding basic beliefs—i.e., they fail to explain how basic beliefs can avoid being arbitrary from the agent’s point of view. To solve both of these problems, a new, externalist, defeaters-based (...) account of justification is offered—viz., System Reliabilism. The core message of the view—and the way it deals with both (i) and (ii)—is the claim that the justificatory status of justified basic beliefs originates from being the undefeated outputs of a reliable, cognitively integrated system that is capable of defeating them. Simply put, to be candidates for being justified, basic beliefs must be epistemically responsible and to be so they must be undefeated while being defeasible. The paper also offers a detailed, naturalistic analysis of the notion of cognitive integration. This long-due, mechanistic account of cognitive integration is then used to argue that an additional advantage of System Reliabilism is its unique position to account for the as yet unexplained intuition that responsible beliefs are also likely to be true. (shrink)

In order to understand present conditions and the complexities, a review of past thinking that links us to a range of future, emergent possibilities may be necessary. Financial, digital and social landscapes are seldom static and those with the responsibility of maintaining and striving for natural-socioeconomic equilibrium, have a never-ending task of sweeping back a dynamic, systemic tide. The undesirable impacts of an unbalanced ICT (information, communication technology) focus based progress was voiced almost two decades ago by Huesing and Selhofer (...) (2002), an argument that was reflected in the term 'info-exclusion'. Observations regarding the digital age being 'not so much as exclusion from information but rather by information' (ibid). This discussion relates purely to humans, not consider other species and other impacts. Fast-forwarding to current experiences and observations, and we see how the close links between societal structures, financial landscapes and individuals currently interact. There seem to be echos from the past regarding basic questions of imbalance between the pace of ICT infrastructures, and the skills sets or accessibility of the societies it strives to service. This imbalance seems to suggest an emergent result, one of disconnection (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015) but also cyclical, emergent impact (Nousala & Whyte, 2010) that repeats when the imbalance approaches a tipping point between the determining elements of the natural-socioeconomic fabric. (shrink)

Reading the report ‘The Digital Future of Mental Healthcare and its Workforce’ by the National Health Service (NHS) from the United Kingdom makes for a strange experience. Most centrally, it is utterly perplexing that no single argument is mounted in the report to wave aside accusations that it depicts a totalitarian world governed by a digipsy‐complex. As it seems to presage the COVID crisis in its assertion that digital mental health care will and should be the future, this paper takes (...) the pandemic as its point of departure. However, it does not set out not from the apparent digitalisation of psy‐care under COVID‐conditions, but rather, from the psychologisation of the COVID crisis itself; that is, individualising and pathologising the discontents and socio‐subjective sufferings under COVID. The aim is to tackle from here the intertwining of the psychological and the digital, of psychologisation and digitalisation. This article engages in a close ‘symptomatic reading’ of the report and makes two points. The first concerns how digitalisation as such is closely connected to the neurobiologisation of subjectivity. The second point is about how digitalisation is also closely connected to the commodification of all things subjective and social. After discussing and interrelating these two issues, the article explores what a critical response could be, and what it should not be. (shrink)

Historical Discourse’s Truth Matrix was first posited by Michel Foucault to describe the emergence of a discourse of historical events subsequent to the cessation of war and established by the most powerful arbiters of those events. This paper adapts the implements of Foucault’s toolbox to conceptualise the dimensions of subjectivity that historical events pass through from the original event to the subsequent depictions of those events in historical writing or other media. The Corpus of Irish Historical Narratives (COIHN) is a (...) one-million-word representative corpus of oral-history witness testimonies taken from the Bureau of Military History Archive (BMH) which depict the events surrounding the Irish struggle for independence from the lead up to the 1916 rising to the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty in 1921. The archive provides a rich source of both historical, social and cultural data and has been the source of many publications pertaining to events of this pivotal time in Irish history. This study takes a hybrid corpus-driven and corpus-based approach to the analysis of epistemic modality in these statements through hedged expressions using mental process verbs and, in doing so, offers a framework for the analysis of a core dimension of historical discourse’s truth matrix. The notion of ‘paradoxical authority’ is proposed, stating that the authority of a witness is boosted rather than mitigated by expressing weak commitment to the truth of a proposition. (shrink)

This text works as an introduction for the special issue “The legacy of Paulo Freire. Contemporary reflections on participatory communication and civil society development in Brazil and beyond”. The text outlines the contribution that each of the six articles constituting this issue makes, examining how they state the relevance of Paulo Freire’s ideas for the development and understanding of a notion of participatory communication and the articulation of bottom-up development processes. In addition, each contribution looks at the significance that the (...) legacy of Paulo Freire has for contemporary debates about politics not only in Brazil, but also in other settings. (shrink)

A belief in individual self-determination powered the development of universal human rights and inspired social movements from anti-slavery to socialism and feminism. At the same time, every attempt to embed individualism in systems of education and employment has eventually led to increased social inequality. Across the globe individualism has been transformed from a revolutionary force into an explanation for increasingly unequal societies where dissent is largely silent. This book explores the possibility of rediscovering the original, transformative potential of individualism.

The paper is exploring methodology within the work in progress research by design through teaching project called ‘Synergetic Landscapes’. It discusses codesign and cocreation processes that are crossing the academia, NGOs and applied practice within so called ‘real life codesign laboratory’ (Davidová, Pánek, & Pánková, 2018). This laboratory performs in real time and real life environment. The work investigates synergised bio-digital (living, non-living, physical, analogue, digital and virtual) prototypical interventions in urban environment that are linked to circular economy and life (...) cycles systems running on blockchain. It represents a holistic systemic interactive and performing approach to design processes that involve living, habitational and edible, social and reproductive, circular and token economic systems. Those together are to cogenerate synergetic landscapes. (shrink)

The paper exemplifies possible traces of transition towards Post-Anthropocene that is envisioned as non hierarchical system. It is taking Morton’s discussion on ‘hyperobjectivity’ further into multi-layered codesign performed in real time and real life across bio-digital agents, including humans. Though our planet might be recently experiencing drastic times and one catastrophic scenario follows the other, a natural succession often comes after most disasters.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have, in recent years, become increasingly popular. An important challenge facing MOOCs is the ‘teacher bandwidth problem’: In the MOOC environment, where there are potentially hundreds of thousands of students, it is impossible for a few teachers to interact with individual students—there is not enough ‘teacher bandwidth’. According to Siemens and Downes’s theory of ‘connectivism’ (Siemens, 2004) one can make up for the lack of teacher bandwidth by relying on collaboration between students; philosophically speaking, however, (...) this theory is underdeveloped. In this paper, we consider the question of learner collaboration in online courses, and the theory of connectivism, from the perspective of social epistemology. We note the similarities between Siemens and Downes’s theory and virtue reliabilist theories of epistemic collaboration more broadly. Our paper has two main aims. First, we offer an illustration of how it is possible to conceptualise learner collaboration in online settings as analogous to collaboration between scientists. Second, we attempt to expand on and clarify what Siemens and Downes had in mind when they proposed the theory of connectivism. (shrink)

Black Lives Matter might be the biggest movement in US history, the New York Times recently reported, with polls showing that 15 million to 26 million people in the US have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks. Other countries around the world have also seen massive protests since Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25. Here, César Jiménez-Martínez, Lecturer in Global Media and Communications at Cardiff University School (...) of Journalism, Media and Culture, assesses whether media coverage of recent protests follows the ‘protest paradigm’ or whether it is more complex than that. (shrink)

Using the theory of Michael White, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Charles Gerkin, this thesis discusses how and why narrative therapy techniques work and how they could be applied in group or parish settings. It further explores using theory developed by Charles Gerkin regarding how spiritual reflective practice could be utilised in the narrative process to help people process their life experiences for hope and resilience. In examining similar and difference theoretic framings in Gadamer and White, the thesis discusses and develops a (...) process for purposeful listening. This method of listening, unlike listening-to someone or listening-for information, involves an immediate “presentness” with others. It creates a context of openness for new insights to come and be explored openly. A special kind of questioning enables horizons to expand and new learning to be experienced either within a group or in pastoral care settings. This listening recognises biases and people’s historic realities and interpretations while fostering new interpretations that expand people’s horizons and bring new understandings. In Gadamer’s writing we find the theoretical understanding of human communication – what works and why it works. While in White we have practical applications of theory based on narratives and ways to use communication to bring healing and new interpretations of life experiences. Finally, Gerkin provides a spiritual component that assists people in connecting the bigger narrative of God to their individual faith to foster healing and hope. The thesis concludes with suggestions for training for pastoral care providers as facilitators of this process and ways in which this communication methodology could be utilised in a parish setting. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed the development of pernicious polarization in Brazil, partly due to the emergence of right-wing organizations promoting a conservative, populist-nationalist and neoliberal agenda. Despite the attention that this process has received, the viewpoints of individuals who identify themselves as part of the right-wing have been overlooked. This article aims to address this gap, drawing on twenty-one semi-structured interviews with members of right-wing organization Movimento Brasil Livre. By analyzing the interviews through the philosophy of Paulo Freire, we (...) show how these individuals propose a narrative of oppression that echoes in form but not substance Freire’s ideas of conscientization and liberation. We also suggest that a Freirean approach opens new ways to discuss and potentially unlock pernicious polarization, incorporating a significant distinction between sectarians and radicals, with the former unreceptive to criticism and discussion, and the latter defending their positions but open to dialogue and listening. (shrink)

In the vast majority of sports in the West, women are marginalized and disadvantaged in their plight to have their achievements recognised as equally valuable. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate not only why women and men are considered unequal as athletes but also to illuminate sport’s potential as a less explored terrain upon which to tackle sexism. It examines the reasons for the continued under-representation of women in sports and the trivialization of women's sports. It will first (...) explore age-old myths about women which continue to inform our ideas about them today as well as our conception of them as lesser athletes than men. Overthrowing extremely durable ideas of what women are and should be has proven difficult, hence feminist scholars are still striving to debunk the numerous alienating and oppressive myths surrounding ‘feminine nature.’ In recognition of this, the dissertation then goes on to explore the constructed juxtaposition of ‘femininity’ and ‘athleticism’. This is built upon by discussing how aestheticization and stereotyping of the feminine image conditions our perception of athletic ideals, ultimately contributing to sexist oppression within sport. Finally, I propose that the application of virtue ethics is key to the overthrowal of boundaries placed upon women in sport. Up until now, sport is a topic that has been under-researched by feminist scholars in philosophy. However, sport demands the use of the body and the mind simultaneously, so it is a sphere with the potential to offer unique insights into the hurdles that women face in their quest to be recognized as men’s physical and psychological equals. Critically, this dissertation focuses on the intersection of feminist philosophy and philosophy of sport, examining themes such as gendered myths, preservationism, femininity, aesthetics, implicit bias and stereotypes. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have defended the view that seemingly intellectually arrogant behaviours are epistemically beneficial. In this chapter I take issue with most of their conclusions. I argue, for example, that we should not expect steadfastness in one's belief in the face of contrary evidence nor overconfidence in one’s own abilities to promote better evaluation of the available evidence resulting in good-quality group-judgement. These features of individual thinkers are, on the contrary, likely to lead groups to end up in (...) stalemates and to polarise over issues. It is true that groups benefit from including members that, prior to discussion, hold diverse views. But disagreement benefits group judgement only when it is transient, rather than entrenched. That is, groups reach better quality conclusions when a number of diverse opinions are disseminated and evaluated fairly before reaching a consensus. If this is right, it would seem that individual qualities, such as open-mindedness and even-handedness about the epistemic value of opinions other than one's own, rather than steadfastness or overconfidence are conducive to better quality group judgement. (shrink)

This thesis argues that utopia is negatively articulated through akairological rupture, and engendered by an individual through particular musical creation. Akairological rupture is a qualitative state of incompatibility, where the contradictions in rational articulation are rendered apparent. This rupture is juxtaposed against a reading of utopia as the teleological result of chronological and collectively plotted out reform. The introduction provides a contextual justification for the argument, and a history of the key concepts: utopia and kairos. Chapter one focuses upon Friedrich (...) W. Nietzsche’s conceptions of self-overcoming, transvaluation and perspectivism, and how these relate in an essential way to Dionysian music as engendering ruptures that may be deemed akairological, and that correspond with a negative articulation of utopia. Chapter two examines Ernst Bloch’s response to Nietzsche’s Dionysian aesthetic theory through a historical materialist reading of utopia as concrete and kairological. Chapter three presents Theodor W. Adorno’s inversion of Bloch’s positive dialectic, and a development of Nietzsche’s aesthetic theory, to render a negative utopia in line with akairos. Discussed by the three primary thinkers, music is a strand that runs throughout the argument, insofar as it may express the contradictions of rational articulation, and is therefore central to the discussion of utopia as akairological rupture. (shrink)

This article first shows how an early essay of Walter Benjamin casts poetry as a transcendental mode of potential disruption that swerves away from harmful practices of politics. It then analyses how Benjamin’s understanding of the political dimension of the aesthetic differs from Martin Heidegger’s notion of truth as historical origin. According to Benjamin, art’s as well as technology’s political potential consists in a disturbance of history’s continuity. By breaking the link between the work of art and the aura of (...) its tradition and history, mechanical reproduction helps give birth to the new cosmos of poetry, whose liberating potential Benjamin celebrates in his response to a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin. This article argues that Benjamin is concerned with the social impact of art but in ways different to Heidegger. Rather than subordinating art to historical forces of politics and economics, Benjamin makes us see its intrinsic revolutionary potential. (shrink)

In the last third of the fifteenth century, Hugo de Urriés’s work can offer the modern reader a very rare and informative perspective from the points of view of social history and history of ideas. The Dezir del casamiento (Poem of Marriage) is a very extensive moralising poem written by Aragonese courtier Hugo de Urriés, known by critics as the devout lover of Spanish courtly literature because of his very unusual autobiographical celebration of his life with his wife. The poem (...) is an enthusiastic encomium that was completely alien to the Castilian mainstream courtly canon. This article analyses the literary, philosophical and religious traditions informing Urriés’s writing as well as the social, biographical, and historical circumstances shaping his ideas about gender relations. The methodology of this work serves the purpose of going beyond erudite study of texts, traditions and sources and tries to reflect intimate experiences and beliefs of real people about marriage, perhaps the most important and visible regulator of personal relationships between men and women in the period prior to the changes introduced by the Council of Trent. The article identifies the universal thinking behind Urriés’s idyllic account of his life as a married man. (shrink)

The enquiry sheds new light on three blockbusters produced under National Socialism: Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda piece Triumph of the Will (1934), Veit Harlan's anti-Semitic hate film Jew Süss (1940) and Josef von Baky's fantasy comedy Münchhausen (1943). In their frequent use of collective imaginative geographies, all three movies approach 'truth' and 'authenticity' via depictions of geographical patterns. My reading of these films popular in the Third Reich highlights the how and why of place manipulation. The article further explores Nazi (...) cinema's complex amalgam of visual aesthetics and geopolitics, yielding possible insights into the regime’s specific contradictions. (shrink)

This essay considers the claims to historical or social truths made by four contemporary Italian films: The One Hundred Steps (Marco Tullio Giordana, 2000), Romanzo Criminale (Michele Placido, 2005), Il divo (Paolo Sorrentino, 2008) and Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008). Posing them first as historical texts, it then identifies two techniques of engaging with or rejecting a claim to historical accuracy, based on notions of performativity and of historiographic metafiction. By locating these models in a period of postmodernity, it seeks ultimately (...) to offer some insight into contemporary Italian cinema more widely, in particular on the constant recourse made to realism. (shrink)

Biographical fiction films often raise questions about the accuracy of a story, the plausibility of a mise en scène or an actor's performance. If a genre is understood as a complex system of expectations and production, the idea of cultural verisimilitude becomes a central feature in the genre of biographical fiction film. Film criticism typically considers the problems that such a generic rule causes. In contrast to that approach, this article discusses the pleasures of verisimilitude. Using one of the first (...) Finnish biopics, Runon kuningas ja muuttolintu (1940) as an example, it examines how verisimilitude forms an essential feature of the film, understood as a biography, and how it ensures an enjoyable cinematic experience. Firstly, I shall suggest that the reconstruction of well-known historical moments in the film creates effects similar to those of the cinema of attractions (Gunning): they revitalise bygone days. Secondly, I shall demonstrate how the film challenges viewers to a knowing game (Rosen), a pleasurable quiz in which they can demonstrate their cultural competence. I suggest that these pleasures of verisimilitude, evident at the time when the genre was just emerging in Finland, could also explain the current persistent fascination with biographical films. (shrink)

This article investigates narrative strategies and forms of representation in one German biographical film: Hunger auf Leben [Hunger for Life]. This 2004 biopic dramatises the life of author Brigitte Reimann (1933-73), who wrote in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Particular attention will be paid to the question of how her diaries are transformed onto the screen. Exploration of the film's narrative structure reveals a set of tensions between the author’s diaries on the one hand, and on the other, the historical (...) and documentary material in, for example, the author's Stasi files. By examining the film's design, the modifications it makes to its sources and the attention it pays to certain scenes, this enquiry seeks to elucidate the film's key strategies. (shrink)

Ghosts are never far from the surface in the work of Venezuelan poet Eugenio Montejo, concerned as it is with loss and its possible poetic restitution. Two of his poems are based around Hamlet and its spectral figure: "Hamlet Acto Primero" ["Hamlet Act One"] and "La hora de Hamlet" ["Hamlet’s hour"]. They draw attention to fundamental hauntings in Montejo’s writing and being. The Hamletian ghost at stake is initially that of a quasi-rural Golden Age, at times symbolised by Simón Bolívar, (...) whose loss is linked to the emerging dominance of capitalism, against which the poet must fight. But the ghost is also that of the caudillo Juan Vicente Gómez, who haunts Venezuelan politics and society. The poet is, then, also called finally to finish off Gómez. In Hugo Chávez, the poet sees both the continuation of essentially capitalist policies and the embodiment of Gómez’s ghost. But Montejo responds to the chance to exorcise this spectre with poetic silence. Is this a Derridean recognition that to speak is merely to respectralise the caudillo figure? Or does it suggest that opposition is not about expressing criticism or dissent, but about creating an alternative space: a poetic space? (shrink)

Traditionally in Film Studies, the idea of cinema being able to put the truth on screen has been associated with one particular film theorist, namely André Bazin. However, only 6% of Bazin’s almost 2600 articles has been republished in anthologies or edited essay collections and reading the remaining 94% of these writings (which to date basically remains widely unread) makes it clear that Bazin was not so naïve. This paper focuses on an essay from 1947, one of Bazin's first and (...) most important, "Tout film est un documentaire social" ["Every Film is a Social Documentary"]. It suggests that fiction films can tell the truth, but mainly in the way that dreams do, by revealing what people really think, or their collective unconsciousness, regardless of their conscious awareness. What is this truth which is told by any fiction film? How can one reconcile this theoretical perspective with Bazinian ontological theory of cinema in general? This article seeks to answer these questions by means of an in-depth analysis of that essay and of a wide range of examples taken from other, mostly unknown writings by Bazin. (shrink)

In this article Teresa Ludden highlights what she sees as a concern in Anne Duden’s early prose work, particularly Übergang (1982), with marginal perspectives and spaces which have been left out of cultural norms. Using concepts of difference informed by Nietzsche and Irigaray, she examines what she perceives to be Duden’s interest in that which cannot be subsumed under fixed concepts and an attempt to write the specificities of different sorts of selves and bodies. Ludden shows how these selves and (...) bodies cannot adequately be understood by reference to a concept of a universal and unified transcendental subject. She focuses particularly on Duden’s textual strategies for writing these differences, for example her recourse to painting to invent a different language and her use of figures and images which ‘embody’ or symbolise difference, which are imitations of that which cannot be heard in Western culture but is nevertheless present. (shrink)

The article uses the Sissi trilogy as a case study to offer a new perspective on popular film in the 1950s in general and on Heimatfilm in particular. Rather than reading those films as the expression of a wilful collective amnesia, the article aims to show that, despite representing a sugar-coated world of royal romance, these films form a crucial part of people’s coping with the past. In adopting a phenomenological approach to cinematic representation, the article emphasises the fact that (...) realism is not to be sought in the fantastic setting of the costume spectacle but in narrative structure. The conventionality of narrative patterns and iconographies is brought out as an integral part of a social practice of narrativising, and thereby integrating, historical events within the private sphere of everyday experience. Within this familiar sphere, urgent issues of the 1950s such as gender relations and national identity were addressed and renegotiated. The argument culminates in the claim that it is only by suspending rash moral judgement and acknowledging this ‘privatisation’ as a necessary element in people’s narrative coping with the past that a new perspective on films like Sissi can emerge to provide us with a more complete picture of the 1950s. (shrink)

This short paper is a summary of Mapping and Methodology session abstracts, presentations and discussions of the Relating Systems Thinking and Design 8 symposium (RSD8) held at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, organised by the Systemic Design Association (Systemic Design, 2018). The topic of the conference was ‘Systems Change + Design for Governance’ (“RSD8,” 2019). The all work in progress (WIP) presentations in this session were touching the topic of systems change and governance through (...) discussing design of mapping and tools when the ‘product’ design process could be given out of the hands of the designers. Ryan Murphy, who is co-authoring with Jennifer DeCoste and Heather Laird presented an online accessible real time participatory modelling for social systems that is editable and open to multiple kinds and number of stakeholders who map themselves. The tool called ‘Open Social Mapping’ was discussed in relation to Systemic Design based on two case projects (Murphy, DeCoste, & Laird, 2019b). Murphy presented both, the successes and the failures which generated a fruitful discussion with the audience as well as with the other speakers. The presentation ended with the invitation for a workshop to help to develop this tool: ‘Getting the Whole System into the… Map: Addressing Key Issues in Open Social Mapping’ (Murphy, DeCoste, & Laird, 2019a). Joanna Boehnert, who is co-authoring with Simon Mair, introduced a discussion on mapping methodologies for the relation of productivity and wellbeing on an ongoing project for the Economic and Social Research Council. The discussed WIP project has questioned the commonly understood relation of productivity and growth (Boehnert & Mair, 2019). The evidence based with researchers co-mapped data will be digitally visualised and put interactive online to reach its audience amongst researchers and other stakeholders to work with. The presentation asked for an experience with both, the codesigning methodologies as well as for the experience with the mapping provision to interaction. Gordon Rowland questioned the designer’s cliché on that the humans resist to change. He asked us: ‘How could we possibly value what might be if we are not valuing first what is?’. He explained that people only resist to changes which they haven’t been involved in, the ones that are imposed to them. Rowland introduced two fully interconnected tools of his ‘CHIIS Model’: a) a set of activities to guide process and; b) objects of enquiry as system of parts and relations. Such model is thus interconnecting the process and the product and is meant to be given out of the designer as a facilitator’s hands to non-experts (Rowland, 2019). The presentation ended with questions for a dialogue to the audience and the two other speakers whether he has developed a real systemic design tool for non-experts and whether it reflects the today ethical values dealing with environmental issues. The discussion was opened with the speakers’ presentations’ questions to the audience. We asked first the audience for the feedbacks and suggestions to the presenters and later on we opened the discussion to their questions. To the topic of this session was particularly relevant the discussion of the designing of the methodology, therefore, the designers are outside of the expertise of their mapping. They are experts of its methodology and of the mapping itself, synergising the stakeholders together. Such performance and output are performed and given out for different levels of participation. It was discussed that typically the people who want change would come to the sessions for codesignig. That proves the fact that people are typically not resistant to change, if they can be involved. However, there was not found a clear answer to a scalability and political implementations of the discussed models, though there were some interesting speculations of translates between different local maps and discourse mapping references from previous work (Boehnert, 2019). The critical question is who and why is participating and whether we reach diverse enough audience which is equally heard and how is this evaluated. Employment of creativity in invitation to codesign was found as a critical tool for gaining wider participation across diverse communities. This one, however, requires an ongoing innovation and actually, being ‘weird’ in your invitations/innovations. Can it help to fold an origami crane for the event invitation instead of a flyer? The session was closed with that that reaching the diversity and the participants that are typically not heard was a challenge that was not resolved by the discussion. Sevaldson suggests to have experts talking on behalf of those who are typically not heard, in this case in larger consideration of the ecosystem (Sevaldson, 2018). These papers are offering many answers in this discussion. However, I would conclude this session that there should be paid much larger attention to the development of methodologies for more inclusive participation in codesign that is considering overall ecosystem for the better for planet’s future, its systems change and the governance. (shrink)

This thesis presents an interpretation of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy that emphasises the notion of the spell. This has been commented on, but rarely centred, in previous scholarship on Adorno. The spell represents Adorno’s understanding of the way in which totalising trends in society (including ‘identity thought’, and the tendency toward ever-greater integration, hierarchy and domination) exerts an ideological force that is so great it informs the way in which we are able to think and act in the world. I (...) argue that, in light of this, Adorno’s negative dialectics should be understood as an attempt to criticise the spellbound world immanently, i.e. without postulating any alternative vision, but only acting to reveal what is excluded under the spell and what, therefore, is false within it. This reading builds on recent work on Adorno’s ‘inverse theology’, extending this to an inverse theory of truth in Adorno, and taking seriously his argument that negative dialectics holds only so long as we are in the ‘wrong state of things’ (ND 11). For all this, however, Adorno is motivated in his critique by a strong sense of utopian possibility and the potential, however distant, of moving beyond the spell. The interplay between these two positions causes difficulty for Adorno at times, particularly in his account of experience, and notoriously when it comes to the question of political action. I argue that there are nevertheless grounds to believe that Adorno’s utopian urge and his critical practice can be reconciled, and I give a distinctive argument that changing social and political conditions since Adorno’s death could allow for meaningful, legitimate praxis that could lead us toward overcoming the spell, which I establish through the politics of climate breakdown. (shrink)