This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Phenomenal Causality From Classification to Dynamics Interpersonal Motivation References.

Theory of Mind(ToM) is a neurocognitive system that allows the perceiver to attribute mental states, such as intentions, beliefs, or feelings, to others’ actions. The aim of the present work is to analyse the engagement of the ToM system in communication, in particular, in communicative intention processing. To this aim, we propose anIntention Processing Network(IPN) with its own principles and mechanisms, that is, a brain network differentially engaged according to the complex intertwining of the context, goal, and action involved. (...) According to our IPN model, a set of brain regions of the ToM system (i.e. left and right temporoparietal junction, precuneus, and medial prefrontal cortex) are differentially involved in comprehending different types of intention, such as private or social intentions. We provide independent and convergent evidence on the role of the IPN model in communicative intention processing and we show that the engagement of the IPN does not depend upon the communicative means used, that is, written language, auditory language, or gesture. Evidence deriving from different experimental paradigms, including neuroimaging, lesion, neurodegenerative, and brain stimulation studies are discussed. In our view, this evidence establishes a link between ToM and pragmatics studies and suggests the role of intention processing as a core feature of human communication. (shrink)

BackgroundHealthcare professionals use the ethics of justice and care to construct moral reasoning. These ethics are conflicting in nature; different value systems and orders of justice and care are applied to the cause of actual moral conflict. We aim to clarify the structure and factors of healthcare professionals’ moral conflicts through the lens of justice and care to obtain suggestions for conflict resolutions.MethodSemi-structured interviews about experiences of moral conflict were conducted with Japanese nurses recruited using the snowball sampling method. Interviews (...) were conducted based on the real-life moral conflict and choice interview. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, then analyzed based on the interpretive method of data analysis. Verbatim transcripts were read four times, first to get an overall sense of the conflict, then to understand the person’s thoughts and actions that explain the conflict, and third and fourth to identify perspectives of justice and care, respectively. Each moral perspective was classified into categories according to Chally’s taxonomy.ResultsAmong 31 responses, 2 that did not mention moral conflict were excluded, leaving 29 responses that were analyzed. These responses were classified into six cases with conflict between both justice and care perspectives or within one perspective, and into two cases without conflict between perspectives. The “rules” category of justice and the “welfare of others” category of care were included in many cases of conflict between two perspectives, and they frequently occurred in each perspective.ConclusionsThe nurses in this study suggest that they make moral judgments based on moral values that are intertwined with justice and care perspectives complex manner.Organizational, professional, and patient-related factors influenced conflicts between justice and care. Additionally, multiple overlapping loyalties created conflicts within justice perspectives, and multifaceted aspects of care-provider’s responsibility and patient need created conflicts within care. Decision-making biased towards one perspective can be distorted. It is important to consider ethical issues from both perspectives to resolve conflicts, especially the effective use of the ethics of care is recommended. (shrink)

According to the Causal Theory of Action, actions are causally produced events and causal transitivity seems to apply to all such events. However, strong intuitions support the idea that actions cannot be transitively caused. This is a tension that has plagued this theory’s effort to account for action. In particular, it has fueled a serious objection suggesting that this theory of action seriously distorts the attribution of agency when two agents interact with each other. Based on Donald (...) Davidson’s analysis of the accordion effect and the nature of actions, I provide an answer to the problem of agential attribution. It is an answer that shows that the Causal Theory of Action can unambiguously attribute agency without resorting to a stipulation or denying that actions can be transitively caused. I then identify the sources of the problematic intuitions in the need to recognize spheres of agential influence and preserve their integrity. (shrink)

Ethics is of vital importance to the Swedish educational system, as in many other educational systems around the world.Yet, it is unclear how ethics should be dealt with in school, and prior research and evaluations have found serious problems regarding ethics in education.The field of moral education lacks clear and widely accepted definitions of key concepts, and these ambiguities negatively impact both research and educational practice. This thesis draws a distinction between three approaches to ethics in school – the descriptive (...) ethics approach, the value transmission approach, and the inquiry ethics approach – and studies in what way (if at all) they are prescribed by the national curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school, how they relate to students’ moral reasoning about technology choices and online behaviour, and what pedagogical merits and disadvantages they have. Hopefully, this both contributes to reducing the ambiguities of the field, and to answering the question of how ethics should be dealt with in education. The descriptive ethics approach asserts that school should teach students empirical facts about ethics, such as what views and opinions people have. The value transmission approach holds that school should mediate some set of predefined values to the students and make sure the students come to accept these values.The inquiry ethics approach is the view that school should teach students to reason and think critically about ethics and to engage in ethical inquiry. The role of ethics in the curriculum has not been studied in light of the above distinction, in prior research,and such an investigation is undertaken here.The results suggest that ethics has a prominent, but complicated, role in the Swedish national curriculum. Although no explicit distinction is drawn or acknowledged in the curriculum, all three approaches are prescribed throughout the curriculum, albeit to different degrees. In the general section of the curriculum, the value transmission and inquiry ethics approaches are more extensively prescribed than the descriptive ethics approach. It was found that most of the syllabi contained explicit references to ethics, while some only contained implicit references to ethics, and two syllabi lacked references to ethics altogether. In the syllabi, the inquiry ethics approach is the most dominant, both in the sense of being present in the most syllabi, and in the sense of being more strongly prescribed in many of the syllabi where several approaches occur.The value transmission approach has the weakest role in the syllabi. In total, the inquiry ethics approach is the approach most strongly prescribed by the curriculum. But prior research has shown that inquiry ethics is very rarely implemented in the classroom. In this thesis, it is found that the inquiry ethics and the value transmission approaches are incompatible, given certain reasonable interpretations, which makes the finding that inquiry ethics is rarely implemented less surprising, since value transmission is practiced in schools. Some possible causes, and some consequences, of this is discussed. The students, in their moral reasoning about technology choices, reasoned in accordance with several classical normative theories – including consequentialism, deontological ethics and virtue ethics – and in doing so, they expressed reasoning that in the discussion is found to be in conflict with the values of the value foundation in the curriculum. These findings complement earlier findings, for example that students in their actions contradict the value foundation, by adding that such conflicts also exist in their reasoning. The existence of these conflicts is found to be problematic for a value transmission approach. Many of the students defended very restrictive views on disclosing personal information online, and prior research as well as the present data has shown that adults typically hold views that are very similar to these, concerning how they think that young people ought to act online. On the other hand, youths’ actual online behaviour, as reported in earlier studies, differs considerably from this. In line with this, the students also seemed to endorse a form of private morals view, according to which moral choices are simply up to one’s own taste, which would yield an escape exit from the restrictive views mentioned above, and permit any behaviour. In the discussion, it is argued that this is the result of an attempt at value transmission from the grown-up community, probably including teachers, which might seem to work, since the students claim to hold certain views, but which likely instead constitutes a false security, since these values are not actually accepted, but only paid lip service to, and the adults are therefore wrong in their belief that the students are protected by a certain set of values (that they think the students are upholding), since the students in fact do not uphold, and therefore do not act based upon, these values. This situation risks making the students more vulnerable than had no value transmission attempt been taken in the first place. Hence, the attempted value transmission runs the risk of counteracting its purpose of helping the students acquire a safe online behaviour. Throughout the moral reasoning mentioned above, extensive variations in the students’ reasoning were found, both interpersonally and intrapersonally, both in the decision method and in the rightness criterion dimensions, as well as in between the dimensions.The existence of such variations is a novel finding, and while possible applications in future research are discussed, it is also noted that this existence constitutes a reason to question the successfulness of both the value transmission and the inquiry ethics endeavours of the educational system. The results and discussions described above highlight the importance of investigating the merits of the different approaches. Several arguments that arise from the material of this thesis are presented, evaluated and discussed. The ability of each approach to fulfil some alleged key aims of ethics education is scrutinised; their abilities to educate for good citizenship, to educate for quality of life of the individual, and to facilitate better educational results in other subjects are all investigated, as well as the ability of each approach to help counteract the influence from online extremist propaganda aimed at young people and to promote safe online behaviour in general. It is concluded that the inquiry ethics approach has the strongest support from the material of this thesis. Some consequences for school practice are discussed, and it is concluded that changing the role of ethics in the curriculum would be beneficial, downplaying the role of value transmission and further increasing, and making more explicit and clear, the role of inquiry ethics. It is also shown that there are strong reasons for the inclusion of a new subject in the Swedish compulsory education with special focus on ethics. 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Die in diesem Band versammelten Essays erörtern die Frage nach der Möglichkeit des Verstehens menschlichen Handelns ohne den Rückbezug auf moralische Werte und Normen. Obwohl die Autoren sich dieser Frage auf ganz unterschiedliche, manchmal divergierende, Weisen nähern, verbindet sie alle die Annahme, es sei nicht wünschenswert oder sogar inkohärent, das menschliche Handeln grundsätzlich unabhängig von moralischen Werten zu betrachten. Die Herausgeber haben sich um eine für Philosophen und Gesellschaftswissenschaftler gleichermaßen attraktive Beitragssammlung bemüht. Die Verknüpfung philosophischer und soziologischer Perspektiven könnte zur (...) Klärung gegenseitiger Missverständnisse beitragen, die aufgrund eines mangelhaften Dialogs zwischen der philosophischen und soziologischen Handlungstheorie erwachsen sind. In diesem Band enthalten sind Essays von Terry Pinkard, Sebastian Rödl, Dieter Schönecker, Ana Marta González, John Levi Martin, Alejandro N. García Martínez, Sophie Djigo, Teresa Enríquez und Evgenia Mylonaki. The essays in this volume address the question of whether we can understand human action without reference to moral norms or values. Although the authors approach this question in different and sometimes even incompatible ways, they are united in thinking that it is undesirable or even incoherent to treat human agency as if it were conceptually independent of value questions. The editors have attempted to invite contributions that would be interesting to both philosophers and social theorists. The conjunction of philosophic and sociological perspectives might help to overcome some of the mutual misunderstandings that have been fostered by a lack of dialogue between the philosophic and sociological action theory. The volume includes essays by Terry Pinkard, Sebastian Rödl, Dieter Schönecker, Ana Marta González, John Levi Martin, Alejandro N. García Martínez, Sophie Djigo, Teresa Enríquez, and Evgenia Mylonaki. (shrink)

An enduring question in the cultural study of psychological experience concerns how emotion may play a role in shaping moral aspects of children’s lives as they are mentored into socially preferred ways of understanding and responding to the world at hand. This article brings together approaches from psychological and linguistic anthropology to explore how cultural schemas of normativity are communicated, embodied, and enacted as children participate in day-to-day family activities and routines. Illustrative examples emanate from a videotaped corpus of naturalistic (...) interactional data that document the daily lives of 32 ethnically diverse U.S. middle-class families who reside in the Los Angeles, California metropolitan region. The article employs discourse and narrative analysis to examine how children are apprenticed into perceiving, appraising, and reacting to the emotions of self and others as culturally shaped indicators for proper comportment. Data analysis emphasizes how implicit components of caregivers’ interactions with children (i.e., gesture, gaze, facial expression) intertwine with explicit, verbal communication to constitute intricately layered affective messages that shape the evaluative frames through which children interpret, display, and respond to emotions. The article identifies two culturally salient childrearing practices, “pep talks” and “time outs,” that apprentice children into moral accountable relationships with others by encouraging them to manage their emotions in culturally preferred ways. Study findings suggest that parental communications conveying praise and approval—or conversely indexing disapproval—towards children are emotionally resonant motivational practices in this cultural milieu as children are mentored into culturally meaningful emotional management techniques. The article highlights how children actively employ semiotic socio-communicative resources and it closely traces their sense-making processes in tandem with their discursive contributions to the moment-by-moment interaction. It argues that emotion, morality, and interpersonal relations are critical in shaping children’s acquisition of consensually validated ways of perceiving, feeling, and responding to the phenomena they encounter in their day-to-day lives. This perspective aims towards contextualized understandings that render plausible connections between local contexts of everyday action and broader macro-level discourses and master narratives, such as those associated with a neo-liberal emphasis on cultivating citizens who learn to regulate their emotions on behalf of self and others. (shrink)

An exchange between Christopher Tollefsen and Steven Jensen highlights the contrast between a theory of natural law that relies purely first-person account of intention and one that relies more on elements from the physical world. Tollefsen, a proponent of New Natural Law theory, argues that the fetus’s death in the Phoenix case was an unintended side effect of saving the mother’s life. Jensen criticizes NNL generally and particularly for this conclusion. He argues that facts outside the agent make this procedure (...) immoral. This essay provides a more neutral perspective on the debate by laying out each argument clearly and identifying the fundamental issues present in the discussion. A fundamental and probably irreconcilable difference involves whether certain intentions should be included in the species of an action or characterized as fairly or unfairly accepted side effects. Nevertheless, the differences between these two accounts are not as great as they initially appear. (shrink)

Having a decreased sense of security leads to unnecessary suffering and distress for patients. Establishing trust is critical for nurses to promote a patient's sense of security, consistent with trauma‐informed care. Research regarding nursing action, trust, and sense of security is wide‐ranging but fragmented. We used theory synthesis to organize the disparate existing knowledge into a testable middle‐range theory encompassing these concepts in hospitals. The resulting model illustrates how individuals are admitted to the hospital with some predisposition to trust (...) or mistrust the healthcare system and/or personnel. Patients encounter circumstances increasing their emotional and/or physical vulnerability to harm, leading to experiences of fear and anxiety. Without intervention, fear and anxiety lead to a decreased sense of security, increased distress, and suffering. Nurse action can ameliorate these effects by increasing a hospitalized person's sense of security or by promoting the development of interpersonal trust, also leading to an increased sense of security. Increased sense of security results in diminished anxiety and fear, and increased hopefulness, confidence, calm, sense of value, and sense of control. The consequences of a decreased sense of security are harmful to patients and nurses should know that they can intervene in ways that both increase interpersonal trust and sense of security. (shrink)

Justice and Libertarianism The term ‘justice’ is commonly used in several different ways. Sometimes it designates the moral permissibility of political structures (such as legal systems). Sometimes it designates moral fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations that are relevant to moral permissibility). Sometimes it designates legitimacy in the sense of it being morally impermissible for others to interfere forcibly with the act or omission (e.g., my failing to go to dinner with my mother may be wrong but nonetheless (...) legitimate). Finally, sometimes it designates what we owe each other in the sense of respecting everyone’s rights. Of course, these notions are closely related. What we owe each other may, but need not, be partly based on issues of fairness. Legitimacy and permissibility of political structures are largely, but perhaps not entirely, determined by what rights of non-interference individuals have. Nonetheless, these are distinct notions and we shall focus only on what we owe each other. Justice as what we owe each other is not concerned with impersonal duties (duties owed to no one, i.e., that do not correspond to anyone’s rights). If there are impersonal duties, then something can be just but nonetheless morally impermissible. For brevity, we shall often write of actions being permissible or agents having a moral liberty, but this should always be understood in the interpersonal sense of violating no one’s rights. Libertarianism is sometimes advocated as a derivative set of rules (e.g., derived from rule utilitarian or contractarian doctrines). Here, however, we reserve the term for the natural rights doctrine that agents initially fully own themselves. Agents are full self-owners just in case they own themselves in precisely the same way that they can fully own inanimate objects. Stated slightly differently, full self-owners own themselves in the same way that a full chattel-slaveowner owns a slave. Throughout, we are concerned with moral ownership and not legal ownership.. (shrink)

I consider an old problem for preference satisfaction theories of wellbeing: that they have trouble answering questions about interpersonal comparisons, such as whether I am better off than you are, or whether a particular policy benefits me more than it benefits you. I argue that a similar problem arises for intrapersonal comparisons in cases of transformative experience. I survey possible solutions to the problem, and point out some subtle disanalogies between the problem involving interpersonal comparisons and (...) the problem involving transformative experience. (shrink)

We have many histories of social theory-what different authors attempted to do as they responded to previous theories. But we know precious little about how they did this in structural terms-what scaffolding they adopted and adapted to make their claims. Yet today's social thoughts largely employ structures passed down from previous generations, structures that were developed to solve problems that are no longer ours. In The True, the Good, and the Beautiful, John Levi Martin explores these structures, the resulting (...) tensions, and their broader significance for sociological thought. By examining how thinkers mapped interpersonal to intrapersonal structures, he traces the development of the underlying architectonics of theory, focusing on one that was inherited from eighteenth-century philosophy and brought into social science in the nineteenth century. He shows that the structural tensions inherent in these theories paralleled those being worked out in practical terms by constitutional theorists as thinkers attempted to return to their most fundamental understandings of the nature of the human, the social, and the political to recraft their societies. A magisterial new interpretation of the foundations of sociological thought, The True, the Good, and the Beautiful is as ambitious a work of social theory as we have seen in generations. (shrink)

Goldthorpe reveals the genealogy of present-day sociological science through studies of the key contributions made by seventeen pioneers in the field, ranging from John Graunt and Edmond Halley in the mid-seventeenth century to Otis Dudley Duncan, James Coleman and Raymond Boudon in the late twentieth. Goldthorpe's biographies of these figures and analyses of their work reveal clear lines of intellectual descent, building towards the author's model of sociology as the study of human populations across time and place, previously outlined in (...) his book Sociology as a Population Science. The extent to which recent developments such as computational sociology and analytical sociology are in continuation with the efforts of these influential thinkers is also critically examined. Pioneers of Sociological Science will appeal to students and scholars of sociology and to anyone engaged in social science research, from statisticians to social historians. (shrink)

According to the tradition of natural law justice is inherent to, and should always be observed in, all interpersonal relations: the science of natural law is nothing more or less than the expression of such principles of justice. The theoretical peculiarities that crop up regarding the lawfulness of appropriation are determined by the indirect interpersonal relations that take place within the process of appropriation: though appropriation is an action directed not towards another person or his property, but (...) towards tangible external goods, this action may have important consequences for other people. Therefore Locke's theory of appropriation is a theory of justice.Locke's solution is made possible by the methodological improvement which allows a clear separation between the natural law and the historical and empirical conditions of its application: this improvement is a consequence of the distinction between modes and substances established in Locke's Essay. (shrink)

Theories of justice, argues Virginia Held, are usually designed for a perfect, hypothetical world. They do not give us guidelines for living in an imperfect world in which the choices and decisions that we must make are seldom clear-cut. Seeking a morality based on actual experience, Held offers a method of inquiry with which to deal with the specific moral problems encountered in daily life. She argues that the division between public and private morality is misleading and shows convincingly (...) that moral judgment should be contextual. She maps out different approaches and positions for various types of issues, including membership in a state, legal decisions, political activities, economic transactions, interpersonal relations, diplomacy, journalism, and determining our obligation to future generations. Issues such as these provide the true test of moral theory, since its success is seen in the willingness of conscientious persons to commit themselves to it by acting on it in their daily lives. (shrink)

Movements of the Mind is about what it is to be an agent. Focusing on mental agency, it integrates multiple approaches, from philosophical analysis of the metaphysics of agency to the activity of neurons in the brain. Philosophical and empirical work are combined to generate concrete explanations of key features of the mind. The book should be relevant and accessible to philosophers and scientists interested in mind and agency.

SummaryThomas Hobbes's theory of action seems to give up on the idea that actions are ‘up to us’. Thomas Pink has argued that this counter-intuitive stance should be understood as the implication of his radical assault on the scholastic Aristotelian model of action. Hobbes rejects the existence of the immaterial soul. This means that he must also reject the existence of so-called elicited acts of the will, which form the primary locus of human agency. In this paper an (...) alternative interpretation is presented. It is argued that Hobbes's fundamental disagreement with the scholastic tradition is not over the existence of elicited acts of the will but over scope and productiveness of mechanical explanation. Hobbes aims to give an account of human actions as in our control and as ‘up to us’ while at the same time applying and defending his mechanical mode of analysis. This paper contributes to the contextualisation of Hobbes's views and furthers our understanding of his theory of action. (shrink)

The relevance of social cognition assessment has been formally described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5. However, social cognition tools evaluating different socio-cognitive components for Italian-speaking populations are lacking. The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test is a new social cognition measure that uses animations of everyday social interactions to assess cognitive theory of mind, affective theory of mind, interpersonal social norm understanding, and intrapersonal social norm understanding. Previous studies have shown that the ESCoT is a sensitive (...) measure of social cognition in healthy and clinical populations in the United Kingdom. This work aimed to adapt and validate the ESCoT in an Italian population of healthy adults. A translation-back-translation procedure was followed to create and refine the Italian version. Then, 94 healthy adults completed the ESCoT, a battery of conventional social cognition tests and measures of intelligence and executive functions. Reliability, convergent validity, and predictors of performance on the ESCoT were examined. Results demonstrated good reliability of the ESCoT and an association between the ESCoT scores and some traditional social cognition tests. Hierarchical regression results showed that the ESCoT total score was associated with age. Also, the ESCoT subscore was associated with education. These findings support the ESCoT as a valid tool testing social norm understanding, a reliable measure of social cognition for an adult Italian population, and provides further evidence that the ESCoT is sensitive to age- and education-related changes in social cognition, and it is a task not affected by general cognitive functioning. (shrink)

This article examines the Buddhist idea of anātman, ‘no- self ’ and pudgala, ‘the person’ in relation to the notion of ‘self ’ emerging from contemporary cognitive science. The Buddhist no-self doctrine is enriched by the cognitive scientist’s understanding of the multiple facets of selfhood, or structures of experience, and the causative action of a functional self in the world. A proper understanding of the Buddhist concepts of anātman and pudgala proves critical to mindfulness-based therapeutic interventions: this is as (...) the ‘person’, as constituted by various structures of selfhood, including—the ecological, interpersonal, extended, private, narrative, relational and conceptual selves—which may be disrupted by traumatic events which disorder one’s experience of time, defence, relationality, memory, resource and agency. In the absence of this understanding, the no-self doctrine might encourage a sort of bypass, in which traumatic facets of selfhood are overlooked in the quest for spiritual liberation. With a proper understanding of the function served by the Buddhist concepts of no-self and ‘person’, psychotherapeutic work may be situated as a necessary ‘preliminary practice’ for meditative exploration of deeper transpersonal domains and soteriological goals. (shrink)

I examine Alexander of Aphrodisias’ theory of action, addressing the question how his view that human actions are determined by reason accounts for the capacity of doing otherwise. Calling into question the standard view that Alexander frees agents from internal determination, I argue that (1) the capacity of doing otherwise is a consequence of determination by reason, since it enables agents to do something different from what they would have done had they followed external circumstances; and (2) this capacity (...) is compatible with causal determination by reason because as a case of potentiality for opposites, it grants agents the qualified possibility of doing otherwise insofar as their nature as human beings is concerned – a possibility which remains also when their actions are causally determined by reason and by their internal disposition. I show further that these elements of Alexander’s theory of action are ultimately based on his conception of the soul, specifically on his commitment to Aristotle’s view that the human soul is not purely rational, as the Stoics hold, but has nonrational and rational parts. (shrink)

It is necessary to take into account the data of science in the theoretical debates conducted by scientists contributing ontological theories in order to develop new approaches to theological issues in Islamic thought. Even, Kalam scholars with the duty of defending and basing the principles of Islam in the classical sense have established a theological understanding intertwined with science in understanding both existence philosophically and the Script theologically. With its discoveries and theories in the last century, it (...) can be argued that modern science has made a serious progress compared to the past. Maintaining its own methodology and paradigm, every scientific discipline has the opportunity to benefit from the methods and data of other disciplines. Consequently, it is possible to assert that Kalam can enjoy the same opportunity too, as long as staying in its own problem area. According to modern science, the motion system is the unity of structures that enable living things to move. Moreover, Bones and joints, which are the structures of the skeletal system, are passive elements of the movement system. Muscles, on the other hand, are the active elements of the movement system and provide the movement of the body by affecting the bones and joints. Muscle tissue shapes the body by adhering to the bones, besides enabling movement activity to occur. One of the most important systems that provide movement is the nervous system. Because for a person to have movement, the muscles must contract, and the muscles must be stimulated for the contraction of the muscles. The system that enables this contraction to occur is the nervous system. Energy is also required for contraction to occur in the human body. Muscles create energy for movement by first providing their energy from the ATP molecule present in the muscle cells. Considering the movement theories of classical theology scholars, it is seen that they shaped the occurrence of human actions through the concept of potency. While the scholars classify power as spiritual/mental and physical strength in terms of its structure, they have characterized it as accident in terms of its nature. In this context, we can say that the equivalent of the power, which is regarded as necessary for the formation of human acts by the theologians, is the movement system in today's science. The spirit/mental that scholars regard as a structure of power for the occurrence of human action can be regarded as the electrical activity that activates muscles when considered within the framework of the movement system of today's science. It is seen that Kalam scholars emphasize physical competence in their definitions of power as well. At this point, Ash'arians defined the power as the soundness of organs, Mu’tazila expressed it as the presence of organs and their being away from disasters, and the Mâturîdîs stated it as the organs being healthy. With these definitions, Kalam scholars mean that a person should also be physically competent to make a movement. The structures scientifically accepted as biological and physical competence in the movement system are the skeletal system, muscles and nervous system. Therefore, we can say that the strength of the physical fitness/well-being emphasized in the definition of power by theologians corresponds scientifically to the skeletal system, muscles and nervous system. One of the issues that Kalam scholars discuss about power is the issue of the accident of power. The reason why they describe power as an accident is to emphasize its impermanence and to show that it was created by Allah. So, in modern science, electrical activity must occur in the brain in order for human organs to move. The occurrence of this electrical activity is independent of the human being. The fact that electrical activity occurs independently from human beings shows that it conforms to Kalam scholars’ definition of the accident. As a result, we can say that the theory of power created by scholars for human movement has a counterpart in the movement system put forward by today's science. (shrink)

Focusing on the recent work of Michael Bratman as emblematic of several important developments in the philosophy of action, I raise four questions that engage with a set of interlocking concerns about systemic functionalism in the philosophy of action. These questions are: (i) Are individual and institutional intentions the same kind of thing? (ii) Can the risk of proliferation of systemic functional explanations be managed? (iii) Is there an appealing basis for the apparent methodological individualism in our (...) class='Hi'>theories of action and agency? and (iv) Why not, instead, pursue a methodologically anti-individualist and ecological approach to action and agency? The latter alternative, I suggest, offers a promising way to retain many of the core insights of the Bratmanian project while avoiding the difficulties inherent to some of the methodological presumptions of some strands of contemporary philosophy of action. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to make a critical assessment of Krister Segerberg''s theory of action. The first part gives a critical presentation of the key concepts in Segerberg''s informal theory of action. These are the ideas that motivate the formal models he develops. In the second part it is argued that if one takes all of Segerberg''s motivating ideas seriously, problems are forthcoming. The main problem is that on this theory the agents seem to be bound (...) to realize all of their intentions, a problem that stems from Segerberg''s attempt to individuate actions in terms of the agent''s intentions. On the ground that this unfortunate result is forthcoming in both of Segerberg''s approaches to the logic of action it is concluded that the conceptual basis of the theory is problematic. (shrink)

Traditionalists affirm that in self-deception I intend to deceive myself; but, on the standard account of interpersonal deception, according to which deceiver intend to make their target believe a falsehood, traditionalism generates paradoxes, arising from the fact that I will surely know that I want to make myself believe a falsehood. In this thesis, I argue that these well-known paradoxes need not arise under my manipulativist account of deception. In particular, I defend traditionalism about self-deception by showing that what (...) causes paradoxes is not the idea that self-deception is an intrapersonal analogue of interpersonal deception but rather our incorrect conceptions of deception, interpersonal deception, and lying. I show, by way of counterexamples, that the essence of deception is not ending up epistemically worse off but rather being intentionally manipulated into forming or retaining a certain truth-evaluable mental state. Vitally, contra the standard view, the deceiver need not hold that the mental state he intends to produce in the deceived involves a falsehood; in fact, the targeted effect may involve a proposition believed by the deceiver to be true or about whose truth the deceiver suspends belief. Any phenomenon rightly called self-deception, I argue, involves an action in which the person intentionally manipulates (by way of a trick) her own way of forming or retaining some truth-evaluable mental state of her own (belief or a belief-like thought). Thus, on the manipulativist view, a self-deceiver may non-paradoxically intend to deceive himself: the relevant intention is to affect a particular truth-evaluable thought by way of non-deviantly manipulating his agential use of his own cognitive capacities. While all cases of self-deception involve intentional manipulation of the self by the self, how this manipulative trick works out varies in different kinds of cases. In some cases, the self-deceptive manipulative trick is not intentional under that description, a description that captures the so-called deflationary view. Although the manipulativist account allows for numerous different strategies of self-deception, and is consistent with both traditionalism and deflationism, it cannot, by itself, vindicate the idea of lying to oneself. On the standard conception, lying to myself is practically impossible (if the mind is not partitioned) and this is because the very forming the intention to lie to myself – as including the intention to make myself believe my own lie – seems very unlikely. Arguably, people will not φ if they think that φ-ing is impossible. I argue that some kinds of behaviour typically understood as self-deception are actually cases in which the person is lying to herself without the intention to deceive herself; rather, she avoids legitimising an unfavourable state of affairs by openly affirming its contrary. It may also be the case, however, that some lies to oneself are aimed at deceiving – this is because, as I argue, liars need not assert what they believe is false; hence, by lying to myself, I may intend to increase my confidence in the belief I already hold. Finally, the motive for self-deception is always a matter of preserving the person’s endorsed idealised picture of reality. This account allows me to explain all possible cases of self-deception. In the last chapter, I apply my theory to some paradigmatic cases first outlined in my introduction. (shrink)

In this paper I present and compare the ideas behind naturalistic theories of health on the one hand and phenomenological theories of health on the other. The basic difference between the two sets of theories is no doubt that whereas naturalistic theories claim to rest on value neutral concepts, such as normal biological function, the phenomenological suggestions for theories of health take their starting point in what is often named intentionality: meaningful stances taken by the (...) embodied person in experiencing and understanding her situation and taking action in the world.Although naturalism and phenomenology are fundamentally different in their approach to health, they are not necessarily opposed when it comes to understanding the predicament of ill persons. The starting point of medical investigations is what the patient feels and says about her illness and the phenomenological investigation should include the way diagnoses of different diseases are interpreted by the person experiencing the diseases as an embodied being. Furthermore, the two theories display similarities in their emphasis of embodiment as the central element of health theory and in their stress on the alien nature of the body displayed in illness. Theories of biology and phenomenology are, indeed, compatible and in many cases also mutually supportive in the realm of health and illness. (shrink)

The primary objective of this book is to open space for rethinking the relationship between art and politics. It seeks to combat one of the fundamental assumptions that has plagued many of the previous debates on this issue: that art and politics are distinct entities definable in terms of common properties, and that they have privileged points of intersection, which can be determined once and for all in terms of an established formula. This common sense assumption is rooted in a (...) transcendent illusion according to which there are more or less fixed characteristics that unify our terms, concepts, and practices in such a way as to guarantee their meaning. Against this substantialist approach, Radical History & the Politics of Art argues for a praxeological account that begins the other way around by analyzing specific cultural practices without presupposing a conceptual unity behind them. Such an orientation is radically historicist in the sense that it recognizes that all of our practices—be they linguistic, theoretical, aesthetic or political—are historically constituted and that they are necessarily part of a temporal dynamic. Hence the contingent nature of the labels used to classify various practices or even identify ‘practice’ as such. Radical history thereby proposes a significant departure from the extant debates on art and politics by maintaining that there is no ‘art’ or ‘politics’ in general, nor a singular relation between them. There are only historically constituted practices in various conjunctures, some of which have been labeled, through practical acts of denomination, as ‘artistic’ or ‘political.’ Instead of proposing one more response to the oft-repeated question ‘what is the relationship between Art and Politics?’ this book seeks to overcome the presuppositions that plague such a question. It thereby changes the very nature of the investigation by asking: ‘how do the diverse aspects of practices identified as ‘aesthetic’ and ‘political’ overlap, intertwine and sometimes merge in precise socio-historical force fields of action? (shrink)

A deeper understanding of the role embodied intelligence can play in social change is vitally important if we are to be successful in creating and maintaining a more just and sustainable world. A key component of any change process, peacebuilding being one example of such a process, is developing inwardly focused bodily intelligence. A phenomenologically oriented understanding of social change, and by extension peacebuilding, is one in which bodily felt recognition must take a special place. Change that is bodily recognized (...) has a different character and functions distinctly from the change that is experienced during a change of mind. A change of mind may stem solely from assimilating new information, (e.g. reading the latest book or professional journal), while bodily experienced change registers along broader lines than cognition alone. Although both processes are kinds of change, the embodied change, which is felt from the inside, is far more generative than change that involves merely altering or shuffling around existing schema or concepts. To assist in further exploration of peacebuilding as inherently both a personal and social event, I have developed an approach based in part on Gendlin’s philosophical works, in particular his Process Model (Gendlin, 1997). I refer to this approach as a process model for peacebuilding because this articulates how intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social agency can be framed as one movement, a single ongoing process of human life. However, it must be admitted that this approach with its emphasis on developing embodied knowledge and practices is not as yet readily associated with such externally focused work as that which is found in peace-building as an academic field or social action activity. Embodied interior intelligence as a theoretically rich concept, although known in phenomenology and recognized in emerging theories of cognition, is not as yet sensible to many of those working in the peace-building arena. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

Skilled activity, such as shaving or dancing, differs in important ways from many of the stock examples that are employed by action theorists. Some critics of the causal theory of action contend that such a view founders on the problem of skilled activity. This paper examines how a causal theory can be extended to the case of skilled activity and defends the account from its critics.

: I shall discuss the relationship between the interventionist theory of causation and free action. Interventionist accounts of causation define causation on the basis of “intervention”. These theories can be reductive, if they explain causes on the basis of free human interventions, or non-reductive, if they consider causes and interventions as two inter-defined concepts, where interventions are regarded as explicitly not human. I will show that the dilemma between reductive and non-reductive interventionist theories of causality can be (...) overcome in favour of reductive accounts, with regard to what causation is in an anthropological sense, and with regard to the causal explanation of phenomena. Non-reductive accounts, explaining causes based on interventions and defining interventions as special causes create a dangerous explanatory circularity between cause and intervention and are not able to give a general and explanatory idea of causation. Reductive interventionist theories, by contrast, do not suffer from this circularity. Keywords: Causation; Free Action; Experiment; Interventionist Theory of Causality; Anthropomorphism L’azione libera e le teorie interventiste della causalità Riassunto: Intendo discutere il rapporto tra la teoria interventista della causalità e l’azione libera. Gli approcci interventisti alla causalità definiscono la causazione sulla base dell’“intervento”. Queste teorie possono essere riduttive, se spiegano le cause in base all’intervento umano come libero intervento umano, oppure non-riduttive, se considerano cause e interventi come due concetti inter-definiti, dove gli interventi sono considerati come esplicitamente non umani. Intendo mostrare che il dilemma tra teorie interventista della causalità di tipo riduttivo e non-riduttivo può essere superato in favore degli approcci riduttivi, con riferimento a ciò che la causazione è in senso antropologico e con riferimento alla spiegazione causale dei fenomeni. Gli approcci non-riduttivi, spiegando le cause sulla base di interventi e definendo gli interventi come cause speciali, creano una perniciosa circolarità esplicativa tra cause e interventi e non sono in grado di dare un’idea generale ed esplicativa della causazione. Le teorie interventiste riduttive, al contrario, non soffrono di questa circolarità. Keywords: Causazione; Azione libera; esperimento; Teoria interventista della causalità; Antropomorfismo. (shrink)

Positive emotions are highly valued and frequently sought. Beyond just being pleasant, however, positive emotions may also lead to long-term benefits in important domains, including work, physical health, and interpersonal relationships. Research thus far has focused on the broader functions of positive emotions. According to the broaden-and-build theory, positive emotions expand people’s thought–action repertoires and allow them to build psychological, intellectual, and social resources. New evidence suggests that positive emotions—particularly gratitude—may also play a role in motivating individuals to (...) engage in positive behaviors leading to self-improvement. We propose and offer supportive evidence that expressing gratitude leads people to muster effort to improve themselves via increases in connectedness, elevation, humility, and specific negative states including indebtedness. (shrink)

Conceptions of evil have changed dramatically over time, and though humans continue to commit acts of cruelty against one another, today we possess a clearer, more moral way of analyzing them. In _Narrating Evil_, María Pía Lara explores what has changed in our understanding of evil, why the transformation matters, and how we can learn from this specific historical development. Drawing on Immanuel Kant's and Hannah Arendt's ideas about reflective judgment, Lara argues that narrative plays a key role in helping (...) societies acknowledge their pasts. Particular stories haunt our consciousness and lead to a kind of examination and dialogue that shape notions of morality. A powerful description of a crime can act as a filter, helping us to draw conclusions about what constitutes a moral wrong, and public debates over these narratives allow us to construct a more accurate picture of historical truth, leading to a better understanding of why such actions are possible. In building her argument, Lara considers Greek tragedies, Shakespeare's depictions of evil, Joseph Conrad's literary metaphors, and movies that portray human cruelty. Turning to such philosophers and writers as Jürgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, Primo Levi, Giorgio Agamben, and Ariel Dorfman, Lara defines a reflexive relationship between an event, the narrative of the event, and the public reception of the narrative, and she proves that the stories of perpetrators and sufferers are always intertwined. The process of disclosure, debate, and the public fashioning of collective judgment are vital methods through which we make sense not only of new forms of cruelty but of past crimes as well. _Narrating Evil_ describes the steps of this process and why they are a crucial part of our attempt to build a different, more just world. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that common sense psychological explanations of human action are a species of causal explanation. I argue against this construal, drawing on Ramsey et al.'s paper, “Connectionism, eliminativism, and the future of folk psychology”. I argue that if certain connec-tionist models are correct, then mental states cannot be identified with functionally discrete causes of behavior, and I respond to some recent attempts to deny this claim. However, I further contend that our common sense psychological practices are (...) not committed to the falsity of such connectionist models. The paper concludes that common sense psychology is not committed to the identification of mental states with functionally discrete causes of behavior, and hence that common sense psychology is not committed to the causal account of action explanation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Movements of the Mind. A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action by Wayne WuDiego D’AngeloWU, Wayne. Movements of the Mind. A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 257 pp. Cloth, $80.00Wayne Wu presented a theory of attention as selection-for-action in 2014. According to this theory, given a behavioral space in which the agent has multiple inputs and outputs to choose (...) from, attention involves the selection of a particular course of action, that is, of certain outputs based on certain inputs. In the present work Wu puts to use the selection-for-action theory to shed light on the broader topic of the “movements of the mind”: intentionality and action. Action and movement are mostly not intended as bodily movement: By focusing on mental actions Wu aims to simplify philosophical explanations. His overall theoretical approach remains consistent with his work on attention, which involves a quest to develop rigorous philosophical concepts while incorporating insights from the empirical sciences. Interestingly, biology takes precedence over cognitive sciences and psychology for him; he says, “I aspire to a biology of agency” in which philosophical analysis must respond to “empirical friction.” In this framework, this book puts forth four main claims. The first concerns the general structure of action—action arises from solving a selection problem. Second, intentional actions can be differentiated from unintentional actions using the concepts of automaticity and control. Third, Wu argues that attention is a necessary aspect of every theory of action. Fourth, he claims that intention is practical memory for action. These four are woven throughout the different chapters of his book.The first part analyzes the structure of action along three axes: how the agent “takes things to be” as the basis for selection, the agent’s response to those things, and the biases that explain the link between perceptions and responses. In the second part, Wu presents a theory of intention as practical memory. The theory is surprising, as Wu himself acknowledges when he says, “The approach to intention will, I think, jar many readers.” And indeed, it does, but Wu provides strong arguments, and future work will determine if the theory is feasible. The third part of the book explores the implications of his theory of action for specific forms and aspects of action; the first chapter in this section deals with automaticity and biases, [End Page 734] the second deals with deductive reasoning, and the third deals with introspection.According to Wu’s theory, action involves a complex combination of elements. The agent is faced with many inputs and potential outputs within a behavioral space. She takes inputs in a certain way: The way she sees things is influenced by myriad aspects, such as intentions and biases of various forms. Action and intending to act are solutions to the problem of selecting appropriate inputs and outputs. Wu thematizes the role of attention in this process of selection. Attention comes in three different forms. It can be an action itself (“attending,” for example, in searching for something); it can mean “vigilance” as readiness to act; and most importantly, attention is “mental guidance.” Every action is guided by attention insofar as a selection problem must be solved: Attention is guiding when perceptual input “plays a functional role of guiding.” Attention also shapes the agent’s actions through remembering, and remembering in turn is nothing else then attending to remembered content. This attended content provides the agent with biases and reasons to select a particular course of action. Therefore, intending to act is nothing else than practical memory, that is, memory put to work in the choice of actions.One particular type of action that is crucially important for philosophical research is introspection. According to Wu, introspection, like every kind of mental action, is not entirely reliable—as some theories would have it—or entirely unreliable but, instead, depends on context. Like any other action, introspection follows the same guiding principle, attention, specifically, perceptual attention. Therefore, introspection is a particular type of perceptual experience where attention is focused on one’s own mental states. In this way, Wu establishes criteria for veridical introspective reports, such... (shrink)

Justice and Libertarianism The term ‘justice’ is commonly used in several different ways. Sometimes it designates the moral permissibility of political structures (such as legal systems). Sometimes it designates moral fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations that are relevant to moral permissibility). Sometimes it designates legitimacy in the sense of it being morally impermissible for others to interfere forcibly with the act or omission (e.g., my failing to go to dinner with my mother may be wrong but nonetheless (...) legitimate). Finally, sometimes it designates what we owe each other in the sense of respecting everyone’s rights. Of course, these notions are closely related. What we owe each other may, but need not, be partly based on issues of fairness. Legitimacy and permissibility of political structures are largely, but perhaps not entirely, determined by what rights of non-interference individuals have. Nonetheless, these are distinct notions and we shall focus only on what we owe each other. Justice as what we owe each other is not concerned with impersonal duties (duties owed to no one, i.e., that do not correspond to anyone’s rights). If there are impersonal duties, then something can be just but nonetheless morally impermissible. For brevity, we shall often write of actions being permissible or agents having a moral liberty, but this should always be understood in the interpersonal sense of violating no one’s rights. Libertarianism is sometimes advocated as a derivative set of rules (e.g., derived from rule utilitarian or contractarian doctrines). Here, however, we reserve the term for the natural rights doctrine that agents initially fully own themselves. Agents are full self-owners just in case they own themselves in precisely the same way that they can fully own inanimate objects. Stated slightly differently, full self-owners own themselves in the same way that a full chattel-slaveowner owns a slave. Throughout, we are concerned with moral ownership and not legal ownership.. (shrink)

Both mindreading and stereotyping are forms of social cognition that play a pervasive role in our everyday lives, yet too little attention has been paid to the question of how these two processes are related. This paper offers a theory of the influence of stereotyping on mental-state attribution that draws on hierarchical predictive coding accounts of action prediction. It is argued that the key to understanding the relation between stereotyping and mindreading lies in the fact that stereotypes centrally involve (...) character-trait attributions, which play a systematic role in the action–prediction hierarchy. On this view, when we apply a stereotype to an individual, we rapidly attribute to her a cluster of generic character traits on the basis of her perceived social group membership. These traits are then used to make inferences about that individual’s likely beliefs and desires, which in turn inform inferences about her behavior. (shrink)

An examination is made of the dispute between the proponents of rational explanation of actions and of the deductive nomological pattern of explanation. A rapprochement between these two positions is suggested, with the aim of accounting for the normative character of reasons for acting. It is argued that the disputed area is an area of intersection between facts and values, and that far from it being the case that the normative and descriptive components can be separated or isolated, the underlying (...) precepts are to be viewed as both explanatory (descriptive) and normative. The discussion is divided into two general areas: (1) the normative force of reasons for acting; and (2) the normative character of rationality. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas is commonly thought to hold that human beings will happiness and do so necessarily. This is taken to mean first that human beings are not able to will misery for the sake of misery and therefore not capable of pursuing misery for its own sake. Secondly, everything that human beings do will they will for the sake of happiness, and since human beings are moved to act on the basis of what they will, all of their actions are (...) performed for the sake of happiness. This claim is subject to doubt because it seems to many to be false on empirical grounds. Often, people choose things that they know and are willing to admit do not make them happy. Often, people choose things without even thinking about their happiness. Aquinas’s theory must deal adequately with such apparent counterexamples. But his account faces an objection of a different nature, an objection raised by John Duns Scotus. (shrink)

Causal theories of action are attempts to develop an account of actions in terms of events which have the right kind of causal ancestry. The causal ancestry must be traced back to some kind of intentional state in the agent, such intentional state must have the right kind of content, and it must cause the bodily movement in the ‘right’ way. Causal accounts differ on the nature of the intentional state, the nature of the content it must have, (...) and the specification of the ‘right’ kind of causal connection to bodily movements or other effects. Causal accounts also differ on the identification of the action itself. Some acounts say that the action is the bodily movement, provided that it was caused in the right way and had the right kind of effects. Others identify the action with the triggering intentional state, provided that it has the right kind of effects. Yet others identify the action with the composite event of the intentional state's causing the appropriate effects. Finally there are those which fail to identify the action with any of these events or combinations of them. (shrink)

Simon J. Evnine explores the view that some objects have matter from which they are distinct but that this distinctness is not due to the existence of anything like a form. He draws on Aristotle's insight that such objects must be understood in terms of an account that links what they are essentially with how they come to exist and what their functions are. Artifacts are the most prominent kind of objects where these three features coincide, and Evnine develops a (...) detailed account of the existence and identity conditions of artifacts, and the origins of their functions, in terms of how they come into existence. He then extends this account to organisms, where evolution accomplishes what is effected by intentional making in the case of artifacts, and to actions, which are seen as artifactual events. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kent Bach’s representational theory of action, one of the causal theories of action. Bach’s theory sets requirements not only for the cause of an action, but also for how it unfolds in time and transitions into another action. These requirements suggest a sequential emergence of two components of the agent’s action awareness: the representation of the prepared movement and the perception of its sensory consequences. Bach introduces the concepts of “effective representation” (...) (ER) and “receptive representation” (RR) to denote these components of awareness. According to representational theory, action has a cyclic three-step causal structure, where ER is the cause of a movement, the movement is the cause of RR, and RR is the cause of ER of subsequent movement. In constructing his theory, Bach tries to take into account the problem of deviant causal chains and to introduce the so-called minimal actions into the purview of the philosophy of action. Relying on the behavioral data on blindfolded deafferentated patients, in this paper I argue that RRs are not a necessary element of action. I also analyze Bach’s distinction between ER and RR and compare it with J. Searle’s approach, placing Bach’s theory within the context of studies of the structure of intentional states. I show that Bach’s theory occupies a unique position among views on the structure of action awareness. At the same time, I conclude that the frameworks of Bach and Searle are insufficient for describing the metaphysical difference between the two kinds of intentional states, and I also point out the difficulties facing the notion of ER. Based on this reasoning and the data on deafferentated patients, I propose a modification of the causal structure of action proposed by Bach, making a remark about the inadequate definition of ER. In the proposed modification, RR and the agent’s prior intention serve as alternative components of action awareness. (shrink)

Margaret Archer and Pierre Bourdieu have advanced what seem at first sight to be incompatible theories of human agency. While Archer places heavy stress on conscious reflexive deliberation and the consequent choices of identity and projects that individuals make, Bourdieu's concept of habitus places equally heavy stress on the role of social conditioning in determining our behavior, and downplays the contribution of conscious deliberation. Despite this, I argue that these two approaches, with some modification, can be reconciled in a (...) single emergentist theory of human action that is sketched out in this article. It examines how human dispositions and our reflexive decisions are related to the determination of human action, linking dispositions and decisions to their neural base in human physiology and to the social factors that influence them. As a result, it argues, we can see human action as the outcome of a continuous interaction between dispositions and reflexivity. The article goes on to relate this explanation back to Bourdieu's concept of the habitus and Archer's account of reflexivity. It argues that the weaknesses in Bourdieu's theory of action can be resolved by a reasonable reinterpretation of the habitus that makes it consistent with the emergentist theory and creates space for human choices as well as social influences on our behavior. This opens up a role for the sort of reflexive deliberations advocated by Archer and thus to a reconciliation of the key contributions of both Archer and Bourdieu. (shrink)

This entry addresses the action theoretical semiotics derived from A. J. Greimas’s theory and positions it in the context of edusemiotics. Greimas’s narratological theory is discussed and investigated in terms of its fruitfulness for education. The entry focuses on the major features of Greimas’s theory such as his famous actantial model as well as the anthropomorphic, or human- and subject-centered, approach in general. According to Greimas, at the core of the meaning of every significant discourse, there lies a typical (...) human situation within which the actants – or entities that assume certain roles in a narrative story – function as Subject and Object, Sender and Receiver, and at times also as Helper and Opponent. Greimas’s central analytic tools, the semiotic square and the generative model, are interpreted in dynamic terms and applied to the analysis of education as a meaningful practice. These tools help us see education as a value-based action and shed a critical light on the presupposed dualism between nature and culture in the context of education. For the analysis of action, Greimas’s major concepts prove themselves to be especially useful. The conception of competences expressed, specifically, in modal verbs such as want, can, know, and must is significant for education. As such, education becomes an action that strives to develop students’ competences. (shrink)

Meaning of place is usually approached as slow social cognitive construction. However, grounded on the theory of affordances, it may also stem from direct perception-action processes, which enable the formation of immediate perceived functional, social or symbolic meaning of place (Raymond, Kyttä, & Stedman, 2017). In the present study, affordances of places, which are perceived by a specific perceiver in a specific place, were mapped using a web-map survey. Each place offers opportunities for interaction, behavior, use, feeling or meaning, (...) which is directly perceived and actualized there. This paper aims at identifying the degree of youth-friendliness of urban neighborhoods using the hypothetical intertwined model of independent mobility and actualized affordances (Kyttä, 2004) combined with place use and meaning (Broberg, Kyttä, & Fagerholm, 2013). SoftGISchildren methodology (Broberg, Kyttä, et al., 2013) was adopted to carry out a cross-sectional research, involving 145 sixth to ninth graders of the Great Lisbon area. SoftGIS integrates Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS), enabling collection and place mapping of daily subjective environmental experiences in the physical environment, consequently allowing for individuals to be actively engaged in public processes of participation (Brown & Kyttä,2014). A place based web survey called “Ideal City: a game of graphic imagination” was adopted. Participants were asked to map their home place, select and mark social, functional, leisure and emotional place transactions, and report actual and ideal mobility to these places. Findings on mobility showed that shorter distances to meaningful affordances of places promote active and independent travel; ideally, youths would like to be more frequently active and more frequently autonomous. As for meaningful places, a total of 1632 affordances were localized, with a higher number on social category. Neighborhood area (500 meters around home place) was assessed as youth-friendly, where active and independent travel occurred more frequently, and social affordances were the most expressive type. Relational and affectional experience in the neighborhood places was meaningful for youth. Municipalities should consider these features when planning, designing and managing residential areas aiming for the well-being and health of young citizens; and include youths as specialists of space (spatialists) in planning participatory processes (PPGIS). (shrink)

Einstein acknowledged that his reading of Hume influenced the development of his special theory of relativity. In this article, I juxtapose Hume’s philosophy with Einstein’s philosophical analysis related to his special relativity. I argue that there are two common points to be found in their writings, namely an empiricist theory of ideas and concepts, and a relationist ontology regarding space and time. The main thesis of this article is that these two points are intertwined in Hume and Einstein.

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

Ibn Sina’s theory of efficient causality includes the definitions of metaphysical and natural efficient causes. In the first section, these definitions and two theses about their relation will be introduced. َAccording to the first thesis, natural efficient causes do not bestow existence and therefore they are not metaphysical. The alternative thesis defends bestowing existence by natural efficient causes, although this ontological status is restricted only to conferring existence of motion. In the second section, I will argue that, according to Ibn (...) Sina, natural causes bestow existence and therefore they are metaphysical. To do that, textual evidence and second definition of efficient causality will be appealed. Bestowing existence by natural efficient causes threatens, prima facia, Ibn Sina's theory of divine causality as a deistic theory. However, I will finally try to show that bestowing existence by natural causes leads to a theory which respects special divine action, and so it is not deistic. (shrink)

Reporting peers’ counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) is important for maintaining an ethical organization, but is a significant and potentially risky action. In Bandura’s Theory of Moral Thought and Action (Bandura, 1991) he states that such acts require significant moral agency, which is generated when an individual possesses adequate moral self-regulatory capacities to address the issue and is in a context that activates and reinforces those capacities. Guided by this theory, we assess moral potency (i.e., moral courage, moral efficacy, (...) and moral ownership) as key capacities predicting peer reporting intentions and assess three contextual factors influencing the generation and effects of moral potency: whether a potential informant (1) works for an ethical leader, (2) is embedded in a psychologically safe climate promoting interpersonal risk-taking, and (3) operates in a more normal or extreme context. We assess the proposed model across three field studies entailing both normal and extreme (i.e., firefighting units) contexts. Results show that ethical leaders raise employees’ moral potency, promoting greater willingness to report their peers’ CWBs. In normal work contexts, psychological safety positively moderated both the relationship between ethical leadership and moral potency and between moral potency and peer reporting intentions. However, psychological safety had the opposite effects in more extreme work contexts. Whereas psychological safety strengthens the positive association between moral potency and peer reporting intentions in normal work contexts, in contexts where individuals are more frequently exposed to extreme events, psychological safety weakens this relationship, thus highlighting the unforeseen downsides of psychological safety in extreme contexts. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity is the first full-length study of Beauvoir's political thinking. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir also wrote an array of other political and philosophical texts that together, constitute an original contribution to political theory and philosophy. Sonia Kruks here locates Beauvoir in her own intellectual and political context and demonstrates her continuing significance. Beauvoir still speaks, in a unique voice, to many pressing questions concerning politics: the values and (...) dangers of liberal humanism; how oppressed groups become complicit in their own oppression; how social identities are perpetuated; the limits to rationalism; and the place of emotions, such as the desire for revenge, in politics. In discussing such matters Kruks puts Beauvoir's ideas into conversation with those of many contemporary thinkers, including feminist and race theorists, as well as with historical figures in the liberal, Hegelian, and Marxist traditions. Beauvoir's political thinking emerges from her fundamental insights into the ambiguity of human existence. Combining phenomenological descriptions with structural analyses, she focuses on the tensions of human action as both free and constrained. To be human is to be a paradoxical being, at once capable of free choice and yet, because embodied, vulnerable to injury from others. Politics is thus a domain of complexly interwoven, multiple, human interactions that is rife with ambiguity, and where freedom and violence too often closely intertwine. Beauvoir accordingly argues that failure is a necessary part of political action. However, she also insists that, while acknowledging this, we should assume responsibility for the outcomes of what we do. (shrink)