Although much theoretical and empirical research has examined organizational power, virtually none has addressed the hierarchical abuse of power in organizations. Managers' incentives and discretion and subordinates' dependencies define the abuse of power as an important organizational issue. This paper offers a conceptualization and process model to help further theoretical and applied understanding, and it considers the ethical nature of power abuse. Two dimensions, disrespect for individual dignity and interference with job performance or deserved rewards, conceptualize the interpersonal abuse of (...) power. Behavioral examples of each dimension are provided.The process model delineates powerholders' motives to abuse power and indicates individual attributes that increase the probability of their pur-suing these motives. Organizational conditions that allow or encourage the abuse of power and managers' particular sources of power interact with these motives and attributes to define decisions about abusing power. Norms and considerations of risk influence these decisions. The decision to abuse power leads to the enactment of power strategies, and they generate intended and unintended outcomes. The process model presented here recognizes an emotional component of the hierarchical abuse of power. (shrink)

COVID-19 created a global crisis of unprecedented comprehensiveness affecting personal and professional lives of individuals worldwide. The pandemic and various governmental guidelines associated with it had numerous consequences for the workplace and the marketplace. In light of the global nature and multiplicity of the consequences of the pandemic, this study examines the impact of individual characteristics of respondents from three countries from various areas of the world: China, Israel, and the USA toward COVID-19 related business ethics decisions in three different (...) spheres: human resources, marketing, and social responsibility. Data from 374 respondents in these three countries indicated that moral disengagement was negatively related to all of the ethical decisions presented, with national pride moderating the above. Possible implications of these findings and future research directions are presented. (shrink)

In this book, Yael Greenberg discusses and clarifies a number of controversial issues and phenomena in the generic literature, including the existence of ...

Polysemy is a term used in semantic and lexical analysis to describe a word with multiple meanings. Although such words present few difficulties in everyday communication, they do pose near-intractable problems for linguists and lexicographers. The contributors in this volume consider the implications of these problems for linguistic theory and how they may be addressed in computational linguistics.

From his earliest work forward, phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempted to develop a new ontology of nature that would avoid the antinomies of realism and idealism by showing that nature has its own intrinsic sense which is prior to reflection. The key to this new ontology was the concept of form, which he appropriated from Gestalt psychology. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to give a positive characterization of the phenomenon of form which would clarify its ontological status. Evan Thompson has recently taken up (...) Merleau-Ponty’s ontology as the basis for a new, “enactive” approach to cognitive science, synthesizing it with concepts from dynamic systems theory and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis. However, Thompson does not quite succeed in resolving the ambiguities in Merleau-Ponty’s account of form. This article builds on an indication from Thompson in order to propose a new account of form as asymmetry, and of the genesis of form in nature as symmetry-breaking. These concepts help us to escape the antinomies of Modern thought by showing how nature is the autoproduction of a sense which can only be known by an embodied perceiver. (shrink)

Numerous scholars have signalled that neo-pagan practitioners use their body and their senses to interact with the divine and elaborate a spiritual experience. However, the learning process followed to achieve and produce a sensing body capable of communicating with summoned entities has not been properly assessed, until very recently. For over a decade, I have conducted ethnographic research on neo-pagan ritual practices held at European megalithic sites to understand how practitioners learn to co-construct their somatic experiences culturally. Collected data allowed (...) me to develop a model I called somatic pedagogy, which is a progressive sensory learning process applied by ritual specialists organizing practices. In this review article, I present a synthesis of published material where I have developed this model extensively. Specifically, I will go through the elements that permit this kind of somatic education to be implemented within analysed practices: the specificities of neo-pagan ontologies about the human body and world, the potential of neo-pagan rituals to function as learning sites, and the main stages of this progressive bodily education. (shrink)

"Semantic Truth Theories" uses the techniques of mathematical logic to develop a new semantic treatment of the concept of truth based on ideas of Saul Kripke. Yael Cohen goes on to solve the Liar paradox, Hempel's raven paradox in the philosophy of science, and other classical problems of philosophy. She does this by enlarging the scope of formal logic to include concepts of presupposition besides the usual implication. The book thus provides a unified treatment of many topics having to (...) do with truth, topics whose deep and unsuspected interconnections are not visible without the insights of mathematical knowledge which the author elaborates. The early chapters of the book contain an accessible introduction to semantic paradoxes which should be useful to students. (shrink)

A robust body of research supports the centrality of K-12 education to health and well-being. Critical perspectives, particularly Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit), can deepen and widen health justice’s exploration of how and why a range of educational inequities drive health disparities. The CRT approaches of counternarrative storytelling, race consciousness, intersectionality, and praxis can help scholars, researchers, policymakers, and advocates understand the disparate negative health impacts of education law and policy on students of color, students (...) with disabilities, and those with intersecting identities. Critical perspectives focus upon and strengthen the necessary exploration of how structural racism, ableism, and other systemic barriers manifest in education and drive health disparities so that these barriers can be removed. (shrink)

1000 time-travelers travel back in time, each with the intention of killing their own infant-self. If there is no branching time, then on pain of bringing about a logical contradiction, all must fail. But this seems inexplicable: what is to ensure that the time-travelers are stopped? For a time, this inexplicability objection was thought to provide evidence that there is something incoherent about the possibility of backwards time travel in a universe without branching time. There is now near-consensus, however, that (...) the objection has no bite: there is nothing inexplicable about the mass failure. Lewis, Sider and Ismael independently argue that since it is built into the description of the class of cases considered that the time-travelers must fail – and so we consider only unsuccessful attempts – there is no mystery. Smith argues that the absence of possible worlds at which auto-infanticide is committed suffices as a complete explanation for the failures. And Baron and Colyvan maintain that available causal and logical explanations jointly account for everything that needs accounting for. I argue that these are wrong. There is remaining, problematic inexplicability. For backwards time travel not to lead to logical contradiction, something would need to do logic’s bidding, after all. (shrink)

Over the past decade, scholarship on Kant’s practical philosophy has developed from a one-dimensional focus on his objective normative doctrines toward a more richly textured engagement with his views of character, virtue, and subjective moral consciousness. A significant contribution to this trend is made by G. Felicitas Munzel’s new study of the formal notion of character running throughout Kant’s mature works. As Munzel notes, the exhaustive attention that has long been focused on the Groundwork’s justification of fundamental moral principles has (...) obscured the equally crucial issue “of what it means for the human subject concretely to actualize such moral insight”. In Kant’s Conception of Moral Character, she provides a meticulously detailed and multi-dimensional answer to this question. Her book argues “not only that [Kant] has a very rich notion of moral character, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formal moral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects of his philosophy”. While the book is almost entirely devoted to the latter exegetical aim, Munzel’s larger purpose is to highlight the gulf between Kant’s conception of moral character and the Aristotelian conception that underlies much recent philosophical work in virtue theory. By demonstrating the possibility of a notion of character focusing on the principled, rigorously controlled conduct of thought, she wants to present the Kantian account as one capable of contributing to contemporary debates about character, virtue, and moral education. (shrink)

Is our moral cognition “colored” by the language(s) that we speak? Despite the centrality of language to political life and agency, limited attempts have been made thus far in contemporary political philosophy to consider this possibility. We therefore set out to explore the possible influence of linguistic relativity effects on political thinking in linguistically diverse societies. We begin by introducing the facts and fallacies of the “linguistic relativity” principle, and explore the various ways in which they “color,” often covertly, current (...) normative debates. To illustrate this, we focus on two key Rawlsian concepts: the original position and public reason. We then move to consider the resulting epistemic challenges and opportunities facing contemporary multilingual democratic societies in an age of increased mobility, arguing for the consequent imperative of developing political metalinguistic awareness and political extelligence among political scientists, political philosophers, and political actors alike in an irreducibly complex linguistic world. (shrink)

Contemporary realities of global population movement increasingly bring to the fore the challenge of quality and equitable health provision across language barriers. While this linguistic challenge is not unique to immigration contexts and is likewise shared by health systems responding to the needs of aboriginal peoples and other historical linguistic minorities, the expanding multilingual landscape of receiving societies renders this challenge even more critical, owing to limited or even non‐existing familiarity of modern and often monolingual health systems with the particular (...) needs of new linguistic minorities. The centrality of language to health beliefs, attitudes, practices, cultural scripts, and conceptual frameworks emphasizes its pivotal role in the healthcare process, and consequently in the adverse effects of treatment that is language‐insensitive and unaware. Such an attitude on the part of medical authorities risks considerable epistemic injustice in the form of a (mis)judgement of patients’ intelligence, credibility, and rationality based on the language that they speak and the manner in which they speak it, consequently impacting the quality and equity of care provided. This danger, I argue, may be effectively countered by fostering among the participants in the healthcare process a sense of epistemic humility through greater metalinguistic awareness. Outlining a range of operative steps that can be used to facilitate this. I argue that the reality of language barriers in the healthcare process, while not entirely eliminable, may nevertheless be successfully addressed, in order to mitigate the challenge of quality and equitable healthcare provision in multilingual societies. (shrink)

Recognition of the plasticity of development — from gene expression to neuroplasticity — is increasingly undermining the traditional distinction between structure and function, or anatomy and behavior. At the same time, dynamic systems theory — a set of tools and concepts drawn from the physical sciences — has emerged as a way of describing what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the “dynamic anatomy” of the living organism. This article surveys and synthesizes dynamic systems models of development from biology, neuroscience, and psychology in (...) order to propose an integrated account of growth, learning, and behavior. Key to this account is the concept of self-differentiation or symmetry-breaking. I argue that development can be understood as a cascade of symmetry-breaking events brought about by the ongoing interactions of multiple, nested, nonlinear dynamic systems whose self-organizing behaviors gradually alter their own anatomical conditions. I begin by introducing the concept of symmetry-breaking as a way of understanding anatomical development. I then extend this approach to motor development by arguing that the organism’s behavior grows along with its body, like a new organ. Finally, I argue that the organism’s behavior and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become more complex and asymmetrical through its own increasing asymmetry. Thus development turns out to be a form of cognition or sense-making, and cognition a form of development. (shrink)

Contemporary interpretations of Kant's ethics have tended to assume that he is unequivocally committed to the view that a priori insight into morality's demands is the sole condition of moral motivation; in other words, that the same rational concepts which inform moral judgments also fully motivate us to determine our willing accordingly. On such a view, the definitive rational activity of agents consists in the practice of moral judgment. In this study I contend that Kant's texts implicitly suggest motivation to (...) be rather more contingent than a simple internalist view presumes, and that they presume moral agency to include constitutive activities aimed at sustaining the worldview within which the possibility of moral willing is grounded. ;Drawing on the notion that an agent's moral motivation depends on her belief that rationally-commanded ends are attainable, I show that Kant expects this belief to be somewhat precarious in the subjective outlook of human beings whose practical rationality is significantly affected by empirical experience. The impossibility of self-knowledge, together with the manifestly evil and self-interested appearances of human conduct, means that doubt about the moral worldview is quite familiar to human agents. Out of this concern, Kant prescribes what I call 'disciplinary strategies' through which agents in real danger of succumbing to motivationally-corrosive despair or cynicism can see themselves as morally capable agents and can see the larger social sphere as a genuine arena of moral hopes. Kant's concern with these strategies for maintaining adherence to the moral worldview can be seen to underwrite some of his most contentious doctrines and duties. Insight into this subtle problematic of his moral thought, I contend, can provide new approaches in the ongoing interpretation of Kantian ethics. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on giving precise content to the general wisdom on the scalar presupposition of even, according to which the prejacent of even, p, is stronger than its relevant focus alternatives, q. To that end I first examine both familiar challenges for the popular ‘comparative likelihood’ view of the ‘stronger than’ relation, as well as novel challenges, having to do with the context dependency of even and with its sensitivity to standards of comparison. To overcome these challenges and to (...) account for the full range of data I develop a revised, ‘gradability-based’ scalar presupposition for even, which differs from the ‘comparative likelihood’ one in several respects: instead of directly comparing degrees to which propositions are more or less likely, we compare extents to which non-focus entities x in p and q exceed the salient standard on a scale associated with a contextually supplied gradable property G. To capture cases where information about contrastive topics is crucial for fixing two distinct standards on G, I follow theories which view even as a general, two-place alternative-sensitive operator, allowing it to associate with both focus and contrastive topics. Beyond the ability to account for a large range of intricate felicity variations and inferences found with even, a more general contribution of the paper lies in showing the linguistic relevance of tools originally developed in the literature on gradable predicates to the semantics of scalar alternative–sensitive particles. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The apparent consistency of Sobel sequences famously motivated David Lewis to defend a variably strict conditional semantics for counterfactuals. If Sophie had gone to the parade, she would have seen Pedro. If Sophie had gone to the parade and had been stuck behind someone tall, she would not have seen Pedro. But if the order of the counterfactuals in a Sobel sequence is reversed—in the example, if is asserted prior to —the second counterfactual asserted no longer rings true. This (...) is the Heim sequence problem. That the order of assertion makes this difference is surprising on the variably strict account. Some argue that this is reason to reject the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics outright. Others argue that the problem motivates a contextualist rendering of counterfactuals. Still others maintain that the explanation for the phenomenon is merely pragmatic. I argue that none of these is right, and I defend a novel way to understand the phenomenon. My proposal avoids the problems faced by the alternative analyses and enjoys independent support. There is, however, a difficulty for my view: it entails that many ordinarily accepted counterfactuals are not true. I argue that this cost is acceptable. (shrink)

Language is central to political philosophy, yet until now there has been little in the way of a common framework capable of bridging disciplines that share an interest in language, power, and ethics. Studies are predominantly carried out in isolated disciplinary silos - notably linguistics, philosophy, political science, public administration, and education. This volume proposes a new vision for understanding the political ethics of language, particularly in linguistically diverse societies, and it establishes the necessary common framework for this field of (...) inquiry: language ethics. Through creative and constructive thinking, Language Ethics considers how to advance our understanding of the human commonalities of moral and linguistic capacities and the challenge of linguistic difference and societal interdependence. The book embraces the longstanding centrality of language to moral reasoning and reinterprets it in a manner that draws on the social and political life of real-world inter- and intralinguistic issues. Contributors to this collection are leading international experts from different disciplines and approaches whose voices add diverse insight to the discourse on ethics and language justice. Exploring social, political, and economic realities, Language Ethics illuminates the complex nexus between ethics and language and highlights the contemporary challenges facing multilingual societies, including the uncertainties, ambiguities, anxieties, and hopes that accompany them. (shrink)

Advertising by health care institutions has increased steadily in recent years. While direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is subject to unique oversight by the Federal Drug Administration, advertisements for health care services are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and treated no differently from advertisements for consumer goods. In this article, we argue that decisions about pursuing health care services are distinguished by informational asymmetries, high stakes, and patient vulnerabilities, grounding fiduciary responsibilities on the part of health care providers and health (...) care institutions. Using examples, we illustrate how common advertising techniques may mislead patients and compromise fiduciary relationships, thereby posing ethical risks to patients, providers, health care institutions, and society. We conclude by proposing that these risks justify new standards for advertising when considered as part of the moral obligation of health care institutions and suggest that mechanisms currently in place to regulate advertising for prescription pharmaceuticals should be applied to advertising for health care services more broadly. (shrink)

At the Second Annual Meeting of the New York University Institute of Philosophy convened to consider the scientific status of psychoanalysis, Professor John Hospers was one of the few participating philosophers who undertook to defend the scientific status of psychoanalysis against the cogent criticisms of his fellow philosophers. In this paper I shall examine Hospers’ defense, “Philosophy and Psychoanalysis”, as it appears in the published proceedings of the meeting [12] and in the process of so doing I shall attempt to (...) demonstrate that Hospers misunderstood the critique of his opponents, argued invalidly on several crucial issues and neglected to take into account the possibility of alternative explanations. (shrink)

Kantian autonomy is often thought to be independent of time and place, but J. B. Schneewind in his landmark study, The Invention of Autonomy, has shown that there is much to be learned by setting Kant's moral philosophy in the context of the history of modern moral philosophy. The distinguished authors in the collection continue Schneewind's project by relating Kant's work to the historical context of his predecessors and to the empirical context of human agency. This will be a valuable (...) resource for professionals and advanced students in philosophy, the history of ideas, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

In the context of the launch of a new theater company whose mission is to bring entertaining theological content to audiences in and around Jerusalem, Roy Doliner’s Divine Right was chosen as the company’s first production. This play about the Disputation of Barcelona balances historical accuracy and creative dramatic content in a satisfying and intellectually honest portrayal of the events of the Disputation for educated lay audiences. Many theological and dramaturgical issues arise, especially in producing a play with a high (...) level of Christian content and theology for mainly Orthodox or at least traditionally educated Jewish audiences. English speaking audience members in Jerusalem tend to be well-informed, both on the historical level and on the level of Jewish law and mores. This makes them exacting viewers, critical of inaccuracies of history or interpretation, wary of challenging positions but mostly willing to learn, and delighted by thorough research and characterization. This paper examines the technical, dramaturgical, and theological issues that arose during this production for the playwright, director, actors, and audiences. (shrink)

"This is a most timely, intelligent, well-written, and absorbing essay on a central and painful social and political problem of out time."--Sir Isaiah Berlin"The major achievement of this remarkable book is a critical theory of nationalism, worked through historical and contemporary examples, explaining the value of national commitments and defining their moral limits. Tamir explores a set of problems that philosophers have been notably reluctant to take on, and leaves us all in her debt."--Michael WalzerIn this provocative work, Yael (...) Tamir urges liberals not to surrender the concept of nationalism to conservative, chauvinist, or racist ideologies. In her view, liberalism, with its respect for personal autonomy, reflection, and choice, and nationalism, with its emphasis on belonging, loyalty, and solidarity are not irreconcilable. Here she offers a new theory, "liberal nationalism," which allows each set of values to accommodate the other. Tamir sees nationalism as an affirmation of communal and cultural memberships and as a quest for recognition and self-respect. Persuasively she argues that national groups can enjoy these benefits through political arrangements other than the nation-state. While acknowledging that nationalism places members of national minorities at a disadvantage, the author offers guidelines for alleviating the problems involved using examples from currents conflicts in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe.Liberal Nationalismis an impressive attempt to tie together a wide range of issues often kept apart: personal autonomy, cultural membership, political obligations, particularity versus impartiality in moral duties, and global justice. Drawing on material from disparate fields--including political philosophy, ethics, law, and sociology--Tamir brings out important and previously unnoticed interconnections between them, offering a new perspective on the influence of nationalism on modern political philosophy. (shrink)

Boycotts of various types and forms have become in recent years an increasingly common feature of political life. And yet, despite both their ubiquity and clear ethical grounding, they remain to date under-explored in academic philosophy. I examine in this article the question of the ethics of boycotting, using the academic and cultural boycott of Israel as a case study. I propose that the boycott exhibits an intriguing pattern of continuous tension between its own stated principles and its realised practices, (...) and suggest that this tension is not a dysfunction of the boycott but rather a structural feature, which emanates from its primary commitment to the idea of anti-normalisation as an ethical imperative. I explore the complex cross-linguistic political pragmatics of the notion of normalisation, and argue that the commitment to it on the part of the boycott movement, as a group actor, effectively amounts to a capricious form of arbitrary treatment of the boycotted. I then propose that the effective validation of arbitrary treatment constitutes, first, a harm in itself; and, second, that it hinders the capacity of the campaign to draw on and contribute to a general theory of the ethics of boycotting. (shrink)

Just as knowledge contextualism offers a way out of knowledge skepticism in the face of powerful skeptical arguments, counterfactual contextualism purports to answer the many compelling arguments for the skeptical thesis that most ordinary counterfactuals of the form ‘if A had happened, C would have happened’, are false. In this article I review a few of the arguments for counterfactual skepticism, before surveying the various types of contextualist responses. I then discuss some of the recent objections to counterfactual contextualism, with (...) an eye toward weighing contextualism's costs with the costs of accepting skepticism. I conclude by remarking on some of the implications that skepticism and contextualism each has for many disputes in metaphysics. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen's influential Direct Argument (DA) for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and causal determinism makes use of an inference rule he calls "Rule B." Michael McKenna has argued that van Inwagen's defense of this rule is dialectically inappropriate because it is based entirely on alleged “confirming” cases that are not of the right kind to justify the use of Rule B in DA. Here I argue that McKenna’s objection is on the right track but more must be said (...) if we are to see why. To fill in the gaps I consider a recent attempt by Ira M. Schnall and David Widerker to defend DA against McKenna’s objection. I argue that neither prong of their attack is successful against a variation on McKenna’s basic argument. In the course of responding to Schnall and Widerker’s objections to McKenna, I identify what is, as I argue, the real reason DA fails in its purpose to shift the burden of proof. (shrink)

La monnaie symbolise la valeur, le souverain, ou le Peuple, bref la Totalité. Mais quelle fonction a cette symbolisation? Au plus strict, la fonction symbolique de la monnaie c’est de quantifier. Or la quantification est déjà épaisse de nombreux problèmes philosophiques. Alors, le propos tentera ici de montrer une problématisation foucaldienne de la fonction symbolique de la monnaie, en termes de pouvoir-savoir. Car la considération de la fonction symbolique de la monnaie ouvre, au niveau théorique, le problème de l’articulation de (...) la valeur (intensive) à sa manifestation (extensive), et au niveau épistémologique, un problème d’objectivation de l’objectivation, un problème réflexif de valeur de vérité des jugements de valeurs (bulle spéculative). (shrink)

Analysis of the debate concerning the appropriate way of researching the effects of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments highlights the controversial issue of the mind–body bond in medical research. The article examines a range of approaches, extending from outright opposition to CAM research, through the demand to employ only rigorous trials, to suggestions to use a hierarchy of evidence, up to practice‐based research proposals. These diverse approaches are analysed using theoretical concepts from the field of sociology of science and (...) knowledge. The article uses the concept of “hybrid knowledge” to denote the knowledge being constructed in late modern CAM discourse—knowledge that hybridises differentiated and even contradictory modern categories of knowledge. The article suggests that the different approaches taken by sociologists of science and knowledge, such as strong anti‐dualism and the assertion that there are differences in our understanding of the natural and the cultural–social terrain, are all useful and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The article seeks to clarify the debate concerning the appropriate way of researching CAM and to contribute to the ongoing development and application of sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

Various syntactical forms may be used for presenting an emotional event. The choice of a grammatical form may be related to cultural, social and personal attitudes towards the nature of emotions. One of the cases in which the consistency of choices is evident is the description of bodily changes during an emotional event. In one possible syntactic style, the human experiencer is in the center of attention when a somatic change takes place, or the experiencer actively produces the vocal or (...) facial communicative act. In a different syntactic style, the focus is on a body part or a physical sensation, which arises spontaneously and independently of the person’s will. Examples of translations from English into Hebrew and from Hebrew into English exemplify the syntactical alternatives. An empirical study is presented that links syntactic scripts to different emotion scenes. (shrink)

In 1967 Garfinkel and Bittner were investigating good organizational reasons for bad clinic records, demonstrating how the reading of such records as sociological data should be reported to the understanding of their production’s practical contingencies and to the situated circumstances of their use. This seminal paper opened new avenues of research related to the study of records in various professional contexts and of their transformation, to the development of praxiological approaches to practical and professional texts, or to the study of (...) historical documents and archives. To contribute to this ethnomethodological strand of research, I propose a case-study of artworks’ records management at the museum, investigated as a perspicuous site to reflect upon how artworks are experienced, apprehended and defined in the institutional ordinary business. Drawing on observations and materials collected at the French National Museum of Modern Art, I study records’ careers and describe their material and organizational properties, by giving a close look at some elements. More particularly, I focus on one distinctive property of some records: their thickness, investigated as a scheme of interpretation of the situated features of documentation work. By reading artworks’ records as local collective practices of assemblage, disruption and reconfiguration of pieces of documentation, I demonstrate that what is documented in this process is not only the artwork: it is also the collective work of working with artworks, dealt with as ongoing achievements of institutional practices. (shrink)

Children are those whose lives are most affected by political conflict. Efforts to establish global peace, equality, justice, and security should, therefore, consider best approaches for aiding and...

ABSTRACTFeelings and cognitions influence judgment through attribution. For instance, the attribution of positive feelings and cognitions to a stimulus leads to a positive judgment of that stimulus. We examined whether misattribution is moderated by the applicability of a distractor to the judgment question. For instance, when are people more likely to attribute to a target person the affective and cognitive experiences triggered by a kitten – when trying to judge the person’s cuteness or trustworthiness? The kitten triggers experiences specifically relevant (...) to cuteness, but people might more easily suspect the kitten’s potential influence when judging cuteness rather than trustworthiness. Using the Affect Misattribution Procedure, we found that applicability increases the effect of misattribution on valenced judgments. The results emphasise the importance of specific information in attribution and suggest that high applicability of distractors to the judgment question d... (shrink)

In this interpretive analysis, Ravin argues that thematic roles are not valid semantic entities, and that syntax and semantics are indeed autonomous and independent of one another. Suggesting a decompositional approach to lexical semantics in the spirit of Katz's semantic theory, the book considers such theoretical issues as indeterminacy and ambiguity, lexical configuration rules, and lexical projection, and analyzes the semantic content of event concepts such as causation, action, and change.

Professor Goodman first presented his "new riddle of induction" in 1946 but it was mainly the more elaborated version published in his Fact, Fiction and Forecast in 1955 that has captured the attention of philosophers. Since then, numerous attempts to solve his "paradox of grue" appeared in press; none of them, however, proved to be wholly satisfactory. In this paper I want to present a solution to this 30-years old puzzle. In the first section I shall try to show that (...) my solution, which is based on a Gedankenexperiment, is immune to the objections leveled against previous attempts. In light of this solution I shall re-examine the status of the paradox and show that in order to preserve the meaningfulness of the paradox some type of Platonic framework for the theory of meaning should have to be assumed. In the last section I shall discuss a proposed solution to the paradox using counterfactual claims. I will show that despite the similarity between counterfactuals and thought-experiments, the counterfactual approach does not lead to a satisfactory solution. (shrink)

This article explores the properties of formulations in a corpus of Hebrew radio phone-ins by juxtaposing two theoretical frameworks: conversation analysis and dialogic syntax. This combination of frameworks is applied towards explaining an anomalous interaction in the collection – a caller’s marked, unexpected rejection of a formulation of gist produced by the radio phone-in’s host. Our analysis shows that whereas previous CA studies of formulations account for many instances throughout the corpus, understanding this particular formulation in CA terms does not (...) explain its drastic rejection by the caller. We therefore turn to an in-depth examination of strategies for lexical and syntactic resonance as a stance-taking device throughout the interaction. In so doing, we not only shed light on the anomalous interaction, but also offer an answer to a provocative question previously put forward by Haddington concerning which of the two – stances or actions – have more meaningful consequences for the description of the organization of interaction. In the particular interaction analyzed here, stances play the more significant role. We propose that the intersubjective stance-taking of participants may be viewed as a meta-action employed among participants as they move across actions, sequences, and activities in talk. (shrink)

One of the central issues in modern linguistics has been the relationship between syntax and semantics. Within the framework of generative grammar, established by Chomsky in the early 1960s, it has been assumed that syntax is distinct from, and independent of, semantics. This premise has been challenged recently by Chomsky himself; he now proposes semantics, and in particular thematic roles, as the basis for generating syntactic structures. Yael Ravin argues that thematic roles are not valid semantic entities, and that (...) syntax and semantics are indeed autonomous and independent of one another. She advocates a Decompositional approach to lexical semantics, in the spirit of Katz's semantic theory. In the course of her argument she discusses theoretical issues such as indeterminacy and ambiguity, lexical configuration rules, and lexical projection, and analyses the semantic content of event concepts such as causation, action, and change. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper examines the relevance of the nomological view of nature to three discussions of tide in the thirteenth century. A nomological conception of nature assumes that the basic explanatory units of natural phenomena are universally binding rules stated in quantitative terms. Robert Grosseteste introduced an account of the tide based on the mechanism of rarefaction and condensation, stimulated by the Moon's rays and their angle of incidence. He considered the Moon's action over the sea an example of the general (...) efficient causality exerted through the universal activity of light or species. Albert the Great posited a plurality of causes which cannot be reduced to a single cause. The connaturality of the Moon and the water is the only principle of explanation which he considered universal. Connaturality, however, renders neither formulation nor quantification possible. While Albert stressed the variety of causes of the tide, Roger Bacon emphasized regularity and reduced the various causes producing tides into forces. He replaced the terminology of ‘natures’ by one of ‘forces’. Force, which in principle can be accurately described and measured, thus becomes a commensurable aspect of a diverse cosmos. When they reasoned why waters return to their place after the tide, Grosseteste argued that waters return in order to prevent a vacuum, Albert claimed that waters ‘follow their own nature’, while Bacon held that the ‘proper force’ of the water prevails over the distant force of the first heaven. I exhibit, for the thirteenth century, moments of the move away from the Aristotelian concerns. The basic elements of these concerns were essences and natures which reflect specific phenomena and did not allow for an image of nature as a unified system. In the new perspective of the thirteenth century the key was a causal link between the position of the Moon and the tide cycle, a link which is universal and still qualitative, yet expressed as susceptible to quantification. (shrink)

La epidemia causada por el Covid-19 ha alterado y redefinido la capacidad de los sistemas de salud a nivel mundial, al mismo tiempo que ha presentado un reto para los bioeticistas, que deben enfocarse en cuestiones como el proceso ético de desarrollo de las vacunas, y las estrategias que deben seguirse para garantizar una distribución justa y equitativa de ellas. Se analiza la estrategia de las pruebas de exposición directa al virus como un posible camino para acelerar la disponibilidad de (...) las vacunas contra el Covid-19, y sus implicaciones éticas. También se exhibe la problemática global que se tendrá que enfrentar para asegurar una vacuna universal y accesible a todos, y algunas estrategias de distribución de las vacunas a nivel local, que aseguren un proceso ético y justo para todos los miembros de la sociedad. Se presentan diferentes posturas éticas en referencia a ambos problemas, exponiendo distintos argumentos y soluciones a los dilemas éticos planteados. (shrink)