This chapter examines the role played by derogatory terms (e.g., ‘inyenzi’ or cockroach, ‘inzoka’ or snake) in laying the social groundwork for the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. The genocide was preceded by an increase in the use of anti-Tutsi derogatory terms among the Hutu. As these linguistic practices evolved, the terms became more openly and directly aimed at Tutsi. Then, during the 100 days of the genocide, derogatory terms and coded euphemisms were used to direct killers (...) to their victims. Understanding these speech acts helps to illuminate the important ways that power is enacted through discourse, how speech acts can prepare the way for physical and material acts, and how speech generates permissions for actions hitherto uncountenanced. Studying the role of speech acts and linguistic practices in laying the groundwork of the genocide illuminates how patterns of speech acts become linguistic practices that constitute permissibility conditions for non-linguistic behaviors. Further, the analysis presented here helps to make sense of the view that a steady, deep, and widespread derogation of a group can be part and parcel of genocide, not only an antecedent to it. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Reopening a Discussion The empiricist-derived epistemology that has directed most social and natural scientific inquiry for the last three ...

In this paper I wish to discuss some relationships between philosophy and science, or rather, between the philosophy of science and the natural sciences, as well as the role of research programmes in these relationships. My interest in the topic rises out of the problems involved in teaching philosophy, and especially epistemology, to science, engineering and technology students. My “field experience” in the last five years has led me to the conclusion that the purpose is better served through a programme (...) of courses of different levels carried out by the joined forces and complementary efforts of philosophers and scientists. However, I do not intend to discuss either this conclusion or my own teaching experiences concerning a particular educational system at a particular period — in fact, one of reformation. If I mention this, it is in order to draw attention to two implicit distinctions, made by teachers and students, philosophers and scientists, but not always in the same manner, which may become the source of dispute when one attempts to make them explicit. The two distinctions are (a) the one between philosophy (of science) and (the natural) science(s), and (b) the one between the view of science presented in the philosophy of science and the view of science created by the scientists and science teachers. (shrink)

A curious feature of Aztec philosophy is that the basic metaphysical question of the “Western” tradition cannot be formulated in their language, in Nahuatl. This did not, however, prevent the Aztecs from developing an account of 'reality', or whatever it is that might exist. The article is the first of its kind to compare the work of Aristotle on ousia (being) and the Aztecs on teotl and ometeotl. Through this analysis, it suggests that both of the Nahuatl terms are fundamental (...) for expressing the basic character of reality as process for the Aztecs. It also defends their notion as prima facia reasonable, despite its wide divergence from Aristotle's view. (shrink)

Whether an individual doctoral study or a large-scale multidisciplinary project, researchers working across cultures face particular challenges around power, identity, and voice, as they encounter ethical dilemmas which extend beyond the micro-level of the researcher-researched relationship. In using a cross-cultural perspective on how to conceptualise research problems, collect data, and disseminate findings in an ethical manner, they also engage with the geopolitics of academic writing, language inequalities, and knowledge construction within a globalised economy. It is increasingly recognised that existing ethical (...) codes and paradigms either do not sufficiently address such issues or tend to be rather restrictive and insensitive to multiple and complex cultural and contextual differences. This book extends our understanding of the ethical issues and dilemmas faced by researchers in comparative and international education. It asks what the relevance of postcolonial theory is for understanding research ethics in comparative and international education; whether Western ethical practices in qualitative social research are incompatible with cultures outside the West; how a ‘situated’ approach can be developed for exploring research ethics across cultures and institutions; and how ‘informed consent’ can be negotiated when the process appears to contradict community values and practices. In sharing experiences from a wide range of cultural and institutional contexts, the authors offer both theoretical resources and practical guidance for conducting research ethically across cultures. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. _. (shrink)

The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of the main theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as (...) polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practise using the concepts. 'Adopt-a-Word' exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word. (shrink)

Although Nietzsche's writings clearly deliver an unhealthy dose of misogyny, it must be noticed that they also contain the seeds of a deconstruction of that misogyny. This paper exposes one set of deconstructing elements of Nietzsche's works with respect to his views on women. The wider philosophical context of Nietzsche's thought provides grounds for taking seriously several passages of The Gay Science that reveal a more sympathetic understanding of women, since these passages take seriously Nietzsche's anti-dualism, his perspectivism, and his (...) early existentialist notion of the self. The destabilizing force of these passages, combined with Nietzsche's remarks about women within this philosophical context, reveals that Nietzsche's works promise more insight than many feminists have previously noted. A feminist analysis of Nietzsche's anti-dualism, perspectivism and discussion of the power of naming promises to inform contemporary feminist concerns about the importance of women's articulating our lives. (shrink)

This article argues that the real promise of feminist philosophy of language is in its account of articulated normativity. Feminist philosophy of language began within a descriptivist framework, seeking to identify and root out sexist discursive practices, like naming practices that subsume women’s identity under men’s, descriptive practices that erase or undermine women’s accomplishments and presence as subjects, and so on. This approach had its limits, and led to increased attention to the discursive practices through which we articulate our experiences (...) and construct our lives. Examining the core frameworks through which feminists have analyzed the power of language to shape social reality and construct social selves, this article shows how language is normative in its production and reproduction of social norms by way of its content, forms, and constitutive discursive practices. The article urges feminists to use knowledge of the processes of articulation and legitimation to effect and explain feminist reconstitution of women as whole. (shrink)

Humans regularly pursue activities characterized by dramatic success or failure outcomes where, critically, the chances of success depend on the time invested working toward it. How should people allocate time between such make‐or‐break challenges and safe alternatives, where rewards are more predictable (e.g., linear) functions of performance? We present a formal framework for studying time allocation between these two types of activities, and we explore optimal behavior in both one‐shot and dynamic versions of the problem. In the one‐shot version, we (...) illustrate striking discontinuities in the optimal time allocation policy as we gradually change the parameters of the decision‐making problem. In the dynamic version, we formulate the optimal strategy—defined by a giving‐up threshold—which adaptively dictates when people should stop pursuing the make‐or‐break goal. We then show that this strategy is computationally inaccessible for humans, and we explore boundedly rational alternatives. We compare the performance of the optimal model against (a) a myopic giving‐up threshold that is easier to compute, and even simpler heuristic strategies that either (b) only decide whether or not to start pursuing the goal and never give up or (c) consider giving up at a fixed number of control points. Comparing strategies across environments, we investigate the cost and behavioral implications of sidestepping the computational burden of full rationality. (shrink)

Zwischen 1258 und 1264 verfaßte Nikephoros Blemmydes eine Einführung in die Philosophie. Diese εἰσαγωγιϰὴ ἐπιτομὴ ist eine als Doppelhandbuch verfaßte Abhandlung, bestehend aus der ἐπιτομὴ λογιϰης und ἐπιτομὴ фυσιϰης. Während ersteres Werk mit einem Prooimion beginnt, verfügt der zweite Teil über keines. Dies bestätigt, in Verbindung mit weiteren Argumenten, die anderswo dargelegt werden, die These vom Doppelhandbuch, denn das Physiklehrbuch sollte gar nicht als selbständig gelten, sondern eine Fortsetzung der Logik sein. In historischen oder rhetorischen Werken sollte das Prooimion über (...) die Ziele des Werkes belehren, Spannung erzeugen, das Wohlwollen für den Verfasser erwecken (captatio benevolentiae) sowie als Ort für eine direkte oder indirekte Widmung dienen. (shrink)

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

This is the first of a two-volume edition of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The new edition, which includes a philosophical and philological introduction, as well as notes to textcritical issues, is based on a critical evaluation of the entire manuscript tradition of the commentary. It also takes into account its indirect tradition and the Latin translation of Juan Ginès Sepúlveda.

The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has the potential to eliminate or severely restrict access to legal abortion care in the United States. We a...

We prove that in an arbitrary o-minimal structure, every interpretable group is definably isomorphic to a definable one. We also prove that every definable group lives in a cartesian product of one-dimensional definable group-intervals. We discuss the general open question of elimination of imaginaries in an o-minimal structure.

In Greek Late Antiquity philosophy defined itself above all through the interpretation of authoritative texts such as Plato's dialogues or the treatises of Aristotle. This work looks at the last Late Antique commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, the pagan Simplicius and the Christian Philoponus. Golitsis demonstrates how differently the two contemporaries interpreted the philosophical tradition and how this led them to deducedifferent routes to finding the truth.

Language matters to feminism because language is a structure of significances that governs our lives. It contains and conveys the categories through which we understand ourselves and others, and through which we become who and what we are. Our linguistic practices are constituted largely by inferences which in turn constitute or contribute to our understanding of the connections (causal and otherwise) between things. These inferential roles and patterns, which are normatively inscribed, give order and significance to the categories. Once we (...) realize that our linguistic categories reflect and are reflected by our social categories, and once we see that our discursive practices are normative, it is a short step to see language as an arena of political struggle. Feminism is, at the very least, a struggle to end sexist oppression by eradicating both the means by which oppression is carried out and the ideology that seeks that it be carried out. As our most powerful and yet nuanced symbol system, language is perhaps the primary means by which the ideology of sexism is developed and reinforced; it is not news that language is an instrument of oppression. A narrow focus on sexist semantics is of limited use to feminist philosophers, for at best such studies yield lists of past and present harms, with little more to add than “stop it, now.” The real promise of philosophy of language for feminists is an understanding of articulated normativity; by understanding how language really works, we might just understand how the rabbit of normativity gets pulled from the hat of articulation. Language is normative in its production and reproduction of social norms by way of its content, by way of its forms, and most especially by way of its constitutive discursive practices. Once we understand how women are paradoxically constituted by and yet erased from discourse, we may use what we know of these processes of articulation and legitimation to effect and explain our reconstitution as whole. (shrink)

Confronting evils pulls the minds and hearts in several directions. This chapter focuses on acute cataclysmic events that shock people into awareness, or chronic corrosive evils that damage the agency and dull the attention. It also focuses on those who commit grave wrongs, or those who suffer them. Claudia Card's work has offered a steady focus on the experiences and needs of survivors of atrocities and grave wrongs. The chapter explores what Card's most recent work suggests about perpetrators, that is, (...) about the moral risks of participating in evil. Obvious atrocities include terrorism, torture, forced starvation, slavery, rape, and genocide; these each involve many grave wrongs. Card's concepts of social vitality and social death make sense of such cases, enabling us to see a perpetrator's act as a particular destruction of a survivor's world. Social vitality is important for each of us, in all phases of the lives. (shrink)

Many of our beliefs, practices, and theories reflect the assumption that the world impinges on us via our senses and, by so doing, shapes and constrains what it is reasonable to believe. And most of us engage in the practice of justifying and judging claims about ourselves and the rest of the world by reference to experience. As much to the point of the present discussion, feminist philosophers have long insisted that the questions, methods, and theories of philosophy should reflect (...) and be evaluated, at least in part, on the basis of women's experiences. Most of us are in these ways empiricists. (shrink)

This brief text assists students in understanding Quine's philosophy and thinking so that they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the "Wadsworth Philosophers Series," (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON QUINE is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book (...) offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher better enabling students to engage the reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The correspondence view Accounting for the two theses Implications.

J. S. Mill's role in the Indian education controversy is well known, but scarcely well understood. That he drafted, in 1836, a despatch sharply critical of Macaulay's infamous Minute on Indian Education, is general knowledge now. That in drafting the despatch Mill drew upon the ideas of H. H. Wilson, a noted Orientalist and sharp critic of Macaulay and the Anglicists, has been adequately demonstrated. That the despatch was never sent to India, because of the objections of the President of (...) the Board of Trade, John Hobhouse, a Whig with some utilitarian connections, has been common knowledge for several decades. (shrink)

This study investigates the differences in individuals'' ethical decision making between Canadian university business students and accounting professionals. We examine the differences in three measures known to be important in the ethical decision-making process: ethical awareness, ethical orientation, and intention to perform questionable acts. We tested for differences in these three measures in eight different questionable actions among three groups: students starting business studies, those in their final year of university, and professional accountants.The measures of awareness capture the extent to (...) which respondents felt that a particular action was unethical according to each of several ethical criteria. We found few differences between the two student groups on these measures, suggesting that their education had minimal effect on raising their awareness of the ethical issues in the vignettes. Indeed, overall, the graduating student''s scores were marginally lower than those of the entry-level students. However, the professionals viewed some actions as significantly less ethical than did the graduating students. (shrink)

There is a growing call for greater public involvement in establishing science and technology policy, in line with democratic ideals. A variety of public participation procedures exist that aim to consult and involve the public, ranging from the public hearing to the consensus conference. Unfortunately, a general lack of empirical consideration of the quality of these methods arises from confusion as to the appropriate benchmarks for evaluation. Given that the quality of the output of any participation exercise is difficult to (...) determine, the authors suggest the need to consider which aspects of the process are desirable and then to measure the presence or quality of these process aspects. To this end, a number of theoretical evaluation criteria that are essential for effective public participation are specified. These comprise two types: acceptance criteria, which concern features of a method that make it acceptable to the wider public, and process criteria, which concern features of the process that are liable to ensure that it takes place in an effective manner. Future research needs to develop instruments to measure these criteria more precisely and identify the contextual and environmental factors that will mediate the effectiveness of the different participation methods. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 4 Seiten: 458-473.

Imprecise definition of key terms in the “public participation” domain have hindered the conduct of good research and militated against the development and implementation of effective participation practices. In this article, we define key concepts in the domain: public communication, public consultation, and public participation. These concepts are differentiated according to the nature and flow of information between exercise sponsors and participants. According to such an information flow perspective, an exercise’s effectiveness may be ascertained by the efficiency with which full, (...) relevant information is elicited from all appropriate sources, transferred to all appropriate recipients, and combined to give an aggregate/consensual response. Key variables that may theoretically affect effectiveness—and on which engagement mechanisms differ—are identified and used to develop a typology of mechanisms. The resultant typology reveals four communication, six consultation, and four participation mechanism classes. Limitations to the typology are discussed, and future research needs identified. (shrink)

Damascius of Damascus, last ‘Platonic successor’ in Athens, is rarely compared to one of his masters, namely Ammonius, the philosopher of Alexandria. When scholars do compare the two Neoplatonist philosophers, they usually focus on the negative picture of Ammonius, which is drawn by Damascius in his Philosophical History. In this paper, I argue that Damascius admired Ammonius’ intellectual endeavours and espoused a basic feature of the philosophical exegesis of his master, namely his concordism regarding the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, (...) as is evident in Damascius’ surviving work on Plato and his (fragmentarily preserved) treatise On Time. Damascius’ downgrading of Ammonius came about rather as a disappointment, which is however by no means fully justified. (shrink)

Scholars have proposed a number of courses and programs intended to improve the ethical behavior of scientists in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the scientific enterprise. In the present study, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on 26 previous ethics program evaluation efforts, and the results showed that the overall effectiveness of ethics instruction was modest. The effects of ethics instruction, however, were related to a number of instructional program factors, such as course content and delivery methods, in (...) addition to factors of the evaluation study itself, such as the field of investigator and criterion measure utilized. An examination of the characteristics contributing to the relative effectiveness of instructional programs revealed that more successful programs were conducted as seminars separate from the standard curricula rather than being embedded in existing courses. Furthermore, more successful programs were case based and interactive, and they allowed participants to learn and practice the application of real-world ethical decision-making skills. The implications of these findings for future course development and evaluation are discussed. (shrink)

Let M = 〈M, +, <, 0, {λ}λ∈D〉 be an ordered vector space over an ordered division ring D, and G = 〈G, ⊕, eG〉 an n-dimensional group definable in M. We show that if G is definably compact and definably connected with respect to the t-topology, then it is definably isomorphic to a 'definable quotient group' U/L, for some convex V-definable subgroup U of 〈Mⁿ, +〉 and a lattice L of rank n. As two consequences, we derive Pillay's conjecture (...) for a saturated M as above and we show that the o-minimal fundamental group of G is isomorphic to L. (shrink)

Introducing a largely neglected area of existing interactions between Greco-Roman antiquity and media theory, this volume brings together a range of interdisciplinary studies to address the question of why interactions in this area matter and how they might be developed further.