We are social animals that seek to connect with others of our kind. This common thought stands in need of elaboration. In this article, I argue for three theses. First, that we pursue certain forms of communicative interaction for their own sake insofar as they are ways of connecting with another. Second, that interpersonal connection is a metaphysically primitive emotional relation which resists reductive analysis in terms of the states of individuals. And finally, that our desire for interpersonal connection has (...) a strong claim to being explanatorily and normatively prior to our desires for mutual-attachment, interpersonal belonging and approbation. (shrink)

John Macmurray (1891-1976) was born in Scotland and began his philosophical education in a Scottish university. As an academic philosopher, following in the footsteps of Caird’s Scottish idealism - a reaction against the debate between Hume’s scepticism and Reid’s ‘commonsense’ – Macmurray holds that a university education in moral philosophy is essential for producing virtuous citizens. Consequently, Macmurray’s philosophy of human nature includes a ‘thick’ description of the person, which is more holistic that Cartesianism and emphasizes the relation of persons. (...) Hence, Macmurray focuses on community, but, as this chapter reveals, he is not a communitarian in the contemporary sense; rather, he shares Caird’s focus on philosophy as the means to living well. Thus, he opposes increasing specialization in university education and highlights the limits of science, which, Davie notes, is representative of the Scottish metaphysic of Macmurray’s era. Macmuray is the last in this line of the Scottish philosophical tradition. (shrink)

From the middle of the twentieth‐century onwards, there has been a growing emphasis on the importance of relationality in what it means to be human, which we call a “relational turn.” This is found in various domains, including philosophical psychology, psychoanalysis, and theological anthropology. Many have seen a close connection between relationality and personhood. In the second half of the article, we consider the implications of this trend for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. So far, AI has largely neglected relational (...) intelligence, though that could perhaps be about to change. Cybernetics was rendered more open to assumptions about the contextuality of intelligence by its rather different assumptions from AI. Social robotics increasingly requires relational intelligence, and promising steps might be found in computational modeling of human relationships. Questions about whether robots can achieve personhood are difficult to resolve, though the possibility should not be ruled out. (shrink)

In his recent book “Becoming Human” Michael Tomasello delivers an updated version of his shared intentionality (SI) account of uniquely human cognition. More so than in earlier writings, the author embraces the idea that SI shapes not just our social cognition but all domains of thought and emotion. In this critical essay, we center on three parts of his theory. The first is that children allegedly have to earn the status of “second persons” through the acquisition of collective intentionality at (...) age 3. We make the case that humans take a second-personal stance toward others even as infants. The second point concerns Tomasello’s claim that 3-year-olds are group-minded and think in terms of “us” vs. “them”. We doubt both that children this young have a clear overview of their in- and out-groups and that they possess the “agonistic spirit” necessary for inter-group competition. Third, due to his focus on collective intentionality and how it might explain 3-year-olds’ difficulties with theory of mind problems, Tomasello appears to pay less attention to the crucial conceptual change that allows 4- to 5-year-olds to master such tasks. (shrink)

The radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing's first book, The Divided Self (1960), is informed by the work of Christian thinkers on scriptural interpretation — an intellectual genealogy apparent in Laing's comparison of Karl Jaspers's symptomatology with the theological tradition of `form criticism'. Rudolf Bultmann's theology, which was being enthusiastically promoted in 1950s Scotland, is particularly influential upon Laing. It furnishes him with the notion that schizophrenic speech expresses existential truths as if they were statements about the physical and organic world. (...) It also provides him with a model of the schizoid position as a form of modern-day Stoicism. Such theological recontextualization of The Divided Self illuminates continuities in Laing's own work, and also indicates his relationship to a wider British context, such as the work of the `clinical theologian' Frank Lake. (shrink)

This paper focuses, not on the existing conditions of institutional association, but on hoped-for conditions that would have to be met for professional relationships within higher education to aspire to what Aristotle referred to as ?virtuous friendship?. Such relationships, it is argued, constitute the social content of hope in that they look to new perspectives on institutional renewal and professional regeneration. They provide a context of mutuality and reciprocity within which individuals can begin to realise, through the acquisition of ?functional (...) capabilities?, their particular capacities. The question then arises as to the conditions necessary for generating and sustaining such relationships within the increasingly differentiated and stratified institutional settings of the higher education sector and across an academic workforce that has become fractionalised and atomised around increasingly complex divisions of academic labour. It is that question which this paper seeks to address. ?Civil society is fragile, and it needs to be extended? (Hall, 1995, p. 27). (shrink)

Life, whatsoever it is, is a temporal flux. Everything is doomed to change often apparently beyond our awareness. My body appears totally different now, so does my mind. I have gained new attitudes and new ambitions, and a substantial number of old ones have been discarded. But, I am still the same person in an ongoing manner. Besides, recent neuroscientific and psychological evidence has shown that our conscious perception happens as a series of discrete or bounded instants—it emerges in temporally (...) scattered, gappy, and discrete forms. But, if it is so, how does the brain persevere our self-continuity in this gappy setting? How is it possible that despite moment-to-moment changes in my appearance and mind, I am still feeling that I am that person? How can we tackle with this second by second gap and resurrection in our existence which leads to a foundation of wholeness and continuity of our self? How is continuity of self that results in a feeling that one’s life has purpose and meaning preserved? To answer these questions, the problem has been comprehended from a philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspective. I realize that first and foremost fact lies in the temporal nature of identity. Having equipped with these thoughts, in this article, it is hypothesized that according to two principles self-continuity is maintained. It is supposed that there should be a precise temporal integration mechanism in the CNS with the outside world that provides us this smooth, ungappy flow of the Self. However, we are often taken for granted the importance of self-continuity, but it can be challenged by life transitions such as entering adulthood, retirement, senility, emigration, and societal changes such as immigration, globalization, and in much unfortunate and extreme cases of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. (shrink)

When one is intentionally doing something, one represents that thing as a goal to be accomplished. One represents it practically. How should we characterize this practical representation further? In this paper, I argue that when one is intentionally doing something, one's representation of it as a goal to be accomplished must also be knowledge that one is intentionally doing that thing. And I argue that this knowledge must itself be one's intentionally doing that thing. I aim to show, then, that (...) insofar as representing practically just is knowing practically, it is equally acting intentionally. (shrink)

Serious re-examination of participatory traditions of democracy is long overdue. Iconically central to such traditions of democratic education is the practice of whole School Meetings. More usually associated with radical work within the private sector, School Meetings are here explored in detail through two examples from publicly funded education, Epping House School, a mixed residential primary/elementary school for students with severe emotional, social and behavioural difficulties and secondary/high schools within the Just Community School movement in the USA. In addition to (...) providing richly textured accounts of the multiple realities and challenges of pioneering overtly democratic practices such as School Meetings within the publicly funded sector of education substantial attention is paid to analytic engagement with the kind of organisational structures, practices and cultures that seem to play an important role in their successful operation and development. The different phenomenological and theoretical strands weaving their way through the texture of Meeting practices also raise a number of key issues within the fields of social and political philosophy, in particular, whether School Meetings are best understood as predominantly political or communal phenomena. In gesturing towards the philosophical groundwork of a satisfactory answer I argue for the importance of the undeservedly neglected notion of democratic fellowship within the lexicon of democratic polity and aspiration. (shrink)

There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of (...) scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant. (shrink)

This paper critically examines some assumptions involved in determining the nature of the relationships and work that constitute a school as a community dedicated to learning and knowledge. Rather than arguing from first principles, the paper assumes that respect for other people as ends is preferable to seeing individuals in terms of their function or status; and it argues, in particular, for the reinstatement of a sense of agency for teachers that seems to have been lost in recent education initiatives (...) in the UK. Following Heidegger's notion of authenticity and Gadamer's emphasis on the process of interpretation to precipitate understanding, the paper argues that professional knowledge and understanding is best generated in relation to others, and thus the ethical basis for schools as communities should focus less on individuals and more on the value of persons in relationships of a distinctive kind. (shrink)

How does faith-based social involvement within a cultural diverse society express itself? Is the focus pure social outreach, that is, the rendering of services, or should the focus include meaningful interaction between the so called 'outreacher' and those being supported by the outreach? This article looks at the relationship between koinonia and diaconia in the creation of an intercultural space where individuals from different contexts are welcomed and supported in a mutual way. Through an interdisciplinary approach this article reflects on (...) the experience of koinonia and diaconia in the mission of the church by bringing it into an interdisciplinary conversation with Sociology. God's reign become visible if koinonia and diaconia can dance together! (shrink)