. The management of ethics within organisations typically occurs within a problem-solving frame of reference. This often results in a reactive, problem-based and externally induced approach to managing ethics. Although basing ethics management interventions on dealing with and preventing current and possible future unethical behaviour are often effective in that it ensures compliance with rules and regulations, the approach is not necessarily conducive to the creation of sustained ethical cultures. Nor does the approach afford (mainly internal) stakeholders the opportunity to (...) be co-designers of the organisations ethical future. The aim of this paper is to present Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as an alternative approach for developing a shared meaning of ethics within an organisation with a view to embrace and entrench ethics, thereby creating a foundation for the development of an ethical cul- ture over time. A descriptive case study based on an application of AI is used to illustrate the utility of AI as a way of thinking and doing to precede and complement problem-based ethics management systems and interventions. (shrink)

The management of ethics within organisations typically occurs within a problem-solving frame of reference. This often results in a reactive, problem-based and externally induced approach to managing ethics. Although basing ethics management interventions on dealing with and preventing current and possible future unethical behaviour are often effective in that it ensures compliance with rules and regulations, the approach is not necessarily conducive to the creation of sustained ethical cultures. Nor does the approach afford (mainly internal) stakeholders the opportunity to be (...) co-designers of the organisation's ethical future. The aim of this paper is to present Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as an alternative approach for developing a shared meaning of ethics within an organisation with a view to embrace and entrench ethics, thereby creating a foundation for the development of an ethical culture over time. A descriptive case study based on an application of AI is used to illustrate the utility of AI as a way of thinking and doing to precede and complement problem-based ethics management systems and interventions. (shrink)

The present volume intends an incursion into some key techniques of social work practice. Using arguments of social epistemology, the author introduces an overview of the case work and brings to attention important aspects of social work counselling. The reader is challenged to explore methodological aspects of counselling and is encouraged to practice the use of NLP techniques during the nondirective interview, which is able to lead to a change focused on the strengths of the client. Putting into relation the (...) main occupations used in assistance-work creates the complex context of inter and multidisciplinary approach of social work practice, recognizing the border aspect of the discipline. The whole approach proposed by the author is filtered by the ethical character of social intervention directed towards the promotion of individual rights and having as central concept the quality of life. This is not viewed as an abstract concept, but as a source of operational indicators relevant to individual existence. To validate social work as applied science, the author brings into focus epistemological arguments adapted to the requirements and demands of this field. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} The constructionist approach of philosophy includes an epistemic dimension and a pragmatic emphasis on the interdependence between knowledge and action in the social areas. Appreciative approach to philosophy is based on the work of David Cooperrider on “Appreciative Inquiry”, which is a form of pragmatic discourse that (...) substitutes the focus on the problem with the focus on successful elements of previous experience of individuals, groups, organizations or communities. This experience can be integrated in the philosophical discourse starting from Plato's dialogues and maieutic method promoted by Socrates. Hermeneutic of the real seen as a philosophical reflection on the daily positive experiences falls into tradition of philosophical search of the ultimate meaning of reality. The appreciative speech starts from a postmodern view by a constructivist and constructionist approach, through which reality itself is a social construction generated by successive negotiations on accepted interpretations. Appreciative philosophy is centered on a semiotics grid that seeks positive qualities of existence and its strengths. Appreciative theology reveals a collaborative process between humanity and divine that catalyzes transformations in human being giving them life including eternal life. The communion human-Divinity is seen as a divine-human co-creation. (shrink)

In this article, the principles of appreciative inquiry are used in order to mediate multicultural relations. Using the constructionism theory, I describe and analyze the theoretical articulations adopted to make sense of co-constructing the relationships between different people. I find that, instead of being applied as the sole theoretical foundation, constructionism principles have been incorporated in the appreciative inquiry principles, the effects of which should be the co-constructing of social reality by the interactions of different people. (...) The paper draws on the process that appreciative inquiry perspective works for rebuilding the social relationships. Its main contribution is to show how theoretical complementarities using constructionism theory are promising avenues of research in the field of multiculturalism. (shrink)

In this article, I want to understand the nature of aesthetic experiences of landscapes. I offer an understanding of aesthetic appreciation of landscapes based on a notion of a landscape where landscapes are perspectival observer-dependent entities, where the 'creator' of the landscape necessarily happens to be the same person as the spectator, and where her scientific (and other) knowledge and beliefs matter for the appreciation to be complete. I explore the idea that appreciating a landscape in this sense has quite (...) a lot in common with taking and appreciating a photograph. On our way, we will see how imagination plays a crucial role in the story. (shrink)

The volume brings together a series of theoretical analysis and field studies in applied ethics. The philosophical perspectives concerned are the social-constructionist and the appreciative one (derived from appreciative inquiry). Are addressed themes of ethics, as autonomy and its social construction, contractualist ethics, and feminist ethics of care. The volume also examines some contemporary challenges that rise in front of ethics: transumanism and artificial improvement of species, protection of dignity of the human species, etc. Are also addressed (...) both ethical counseling and supervision of ethics, presenting an unique approach. In the volume we propose a model of ethics as appreciative ethics of care, which proposes a synthesis between feminist ethics of care and appreciative inquiry, as a priority of the author. (shrink)

This article pursues two central goals. First, I seek to advance the sustained study of occupational identity as a pivotal mechanism for organizing work and, thus, as a productive means of integrating the aims of two scholarly movements: 1) the ‘dislocation’ of organization and 2) the renewed emphasis on work in organization studies. Specifically, I propose the study of evolving relations between occupational image discourse and role communication, and my analysis of US commercial airline pilots enacts the potential of such (...) research. The analysis demonstrates how contemporary pilots draw on the deliberate historical construction of airline pilots as elite, fatherly professionals to make sense of their work, explicitly invoking gender discourse as a rational and emotional warrant for their labor and, in so doing, implicitly articulating sexuality, race, and class discourses. Accordingly, the second major goal of the article is to promote inquiry into how discourses of difference function to organize occupational identity and, thus, to produce the division and hierarchy of labor. With this move, I seek to bring a more constitutive view of discourse and communication, as well as a focus on intersection and interplay among discourses of difference, to the study of occupational identity and segregation. (shrink)

There are some artworks which we appreciate for their bad artistic qualities; these artworks are said to be “good because bad”. This is puzzling. How can art be good just because it is bad? In this essay, we attempt to demystify this phenomenon. We offer a two-part analysis: the artistic flaws in these works make them bizarre, and this bizarreness is aesthetically valuable. Our analysis has the consequence that some artistic flaws make for aesthetic virtues. Such works therefore present a (...) counterexample to aestheticism, the view that all artistically relevant features of artworks are aesthetic features. (shrink)

Suppose we thought of free inquiry as a social matter, a public good. We might ask not only whether individual scholars are free from illegitimate, especially external, censorship or attempts to control their work. We might ask also how much the university as an institution contributes to overall freedom of inquiry. To answer the second question would require assessing how well universities educate students to be participants in free inquiry, how well researchers communicate their work to raise (...) the quality of public discourse, and whether the results of scientific inquiry are made freely available to advance further inquiry or controlled as private property. It would require asking whether the specific structures and practices through which we organize academic work - from disciplinary departments to evaluation procedures to publication systems - do more to facilitate or obstruct free inquiry. This article will fall short of answering all these questions, but I hope it will put them on the agenda. I present them in the context of two successive transformations - the late 19th century reorganization of universities by disciplines devoted to the production of new knowledge and the dramatic 20th increase in scale and cost which challenged the internal integration of universities. These shifted the constraints and conditions under which students and faculty could take up the project of free inquiry. Appreciating the impact of these transformations is also basic to projects of renewing the university and free inquiry today. (shrink)

Suppose we thought of free inquiry as a social matter, a public good. We might ask not only whether individual scholars are free from illegitimate, especially external, censorship or attempts to control their work. We might ask also how much the university as an institution contributes to overall freedom of inquiry. To answer the second question would require assessing how well universities educate students to be participants in free inquiry, how well researchers communicate their work to raise (...) the quality of public discourse, and whether the results of scientific inquiry are made freely available to advance further inquiry or controlled as private property. It would require asking whether the specific structures and practices through which we organize academic work - from disciplinary departments to evaluation procedures to publication systems - do more to facilitate or obstruct free inquiry. This article will fall short of answering all these questions, but I hope it will put them on the agenda. I present them in the context of two successive transformations - the late 19th century reorganization of universities by disciplines devoted to the production of new knowledge and the dramatic 20th increase in scale and cost which challenged the internal integration of universities. These shifted the constraints and conditions under which students and faculty could take up the project of free inquiry. Appreciating the impact of these transformations is also basic to projects of renewing the university and free inquiry today. (shrink)

This paper examines what constitute the virtues of argumentation or critical thinking and how these virtues might be developed. We argue first that the notion of virtue is more appropriate for characterizing this aspect than the notion of dispositions commonly employed by critical thinking theorists and, further, that it is more illuminating to speak of the virtues of inquiry rather than of argumentation. Our central argument is that learning to think critically is a matter of learning to participate knowledgeably (...) and competently in the practice of inquiry in its various forms and contexts. Acquiring the virtues of inquiry arises through getting on the inside of the practice and coming to appreciate the goods inherent in the practice. (shrink)

Scientific Inquiry: Readings in the Philosophy of Science features an impressive collection of classical and contemporary readings on a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science. The volume is organized into six sections, each with its own introduction, and includes a general introduction that situates the philosophy of science in relation to other areas of intellectual inquiry. The selections focus on the main issues in the field, including the structure of scientific theories, models of scientific explanation, (...) reductionism, historicist challenges to the objectivity of science, and the dispute over the ontological interpretation of mature scientific theories. Both the positivist model of science and its competitors, including contemporary social constructivist models, are included. Ideal for introductory philosophy of science courses, Scientific Inquiry strives to provide students and other readers with a thorough knowledge of the philosophical complexity of modern science and an appreciation of its authoritative intellectual standing in contemporary life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 1-18 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Inquiry in Education:Community,Transcendence, and the Meaning of Pedagogy Hanan A. Alexander What does it mean to understand education as an art, to conceive inquiry in education aesthetically, or to assess pedagogy artistically? Answers to these queries are often grounded in Deweyan instrumentalism, neo-Marxist critical theory, or postmodern skepticism that tend to fall prey to (...) the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism. 1 This essay offers an alternative, communitarian account of education as an art and a neo-Kantian approach to aesthetic inquiry in education that avoids these difficulties.I begin by examining the emergence of aesthetic inquiry in education in the context of the larger qualitative revolution in educational research. The struggle to justify the qualitative turn in educational thought was initially framed in terms of two influential doctrines: that cognition and affect on the one hand, and truth, beauty, and goodness on the other, can be clearly distinguished from one another. Qualitative methods were conceived as an alternative research paradigm — a new epistemology — in keeping with Thomas Kuhn's influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2 Qualitative research, on this account, is a cognitive endeavor aimed at discovering a form of knowledge no less valid and reliable than that produced by quantitative methodologies. This way of framing the discussion led to the dichotomizing of positivist and postpositivist epistemologies, one embracing absolutism, objectivism, and rationalism, the other relativism, subjectivism, and romanticism. 3 This approach succeeded in pointing to some serious flaws in the prevailing positivist account of social research, yet it left qualitative inquiry dependent on versions of epistemological relativism and subjectivism that philosophers of knowledge have shown to be self-contradictory and incoherent. 4 [End Page 1]Conceiving of pedagogy in aesthetic terms challenges the prevailing positivist epistemology on a deeper level because it questions the accepted distinctions between thinking and feeling, and between truth, beauty, and goodness. If art can be conceived as a form of cognitive inquiry in addition to affective expression, then the appreciation and assessment of education as art requires not merely a new research paradigm or an alternative epistemology. Rather, it entails a reshuffling of our very conception of the relations between science, art, and ethics.These concepts can be reconceived to avoid the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism if we recognize with Iris Murdoch that sovereignty belongs to communal conceptions of a transcendent good. Educational arts empower people to express, appreciate, and critique collective conceptions of goodness, and artistic criticism of pedagogy celebrates a sacred dimension in educational thought and practice. 5 This approach occasions a fresh look not only at the practice, appreciation, and assessment of pedagogy, but also at the very meaning of the concept of education and the sorts of inquiry that can fruitfully inform its practice. Two Dogmas of Educational Research Two dogmas have dominated educational research for most of this century: the idea that there exists a clear disjunction between the cognitive and affective domains; and the supposed radical independence from one another of truth, beauty, and goodness. 6 According to a popular view rooted in these doctrines, the search for truth is a cognitive affair governed by science, while ethics and the arts are tied to the emotions and the humanities. Inquiry into the former is objective — reliability depends on method not researcher — and into the latter, subjective — results can vary according to interpreter. In this attitude, the cognitive domain dominates the public arena through the influence and prestige of science and measurement. 7Until the middle 1970s, behavioral and social research in education expressed these dichotomies in the distinction made between quantitative and qualitative research. The former was thought to be scientific and objective, the latter, humanistic and subjective. As qualitative inquiry came into its own in the 1980s, its proponents sought justification and legitimization in accord with cognitive dominance. 8 First, they argued that qualitative research methods had checks against error as rigorous as its quantitative counterparts. 9 Later, the cognitive domain... (shrink)

In this essay the authors provide arguments that teaching is an art and that teachers can learn much about their trade from a careful study of the performances of other artists. Artists and teachers have the same basic challenge: in order to be successful, both groups have to obtain and retain peoples’ attention. This also holds for popular music artists. Ten female student teachers specializing in the Pre-school and Foundation phases of schooling (four-to-six-year olds), and six lecturers from the Faculty (...) of Education at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, participated in a workshop at a local game lodge. During the workshop, videos of ABBA songs and Mamma Mia! The Movie were analyzed and discussed. The theme of the workshop was “Being an Excellent Teacher: Appreciating ABBA.” The 4D-cycle of Appreciative Inquiry– Discover, Dream, Design and Destiny–was used as a methodological framework to identify numerous positive themes with possible classroom applications from the songs and the film. These themes were then connected to educational theory and embedded in the insights of Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Judy Cramer and other people involved with ABBA. A reflective report by one student teacher about the impact the workshop had on her views of teaching and an excellent class that she presented is also included. (shrink)

In his 1836 lectures to the Royal Institute, the great landscape painter John Constable stated that ‘Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.’ Landscape, he went on to say, should ‘be considered a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments.’1Constable makes two claims in this striking passage. The first is that painting is a form of inquiry. This is, by itself, a bold claim, but Constable (...) goes on to state that painters and scientists inquire in the same way. As controversial as these views are, both of them have been sympathetically entertained in recent years by several philosophers. In particular, Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin have maintained that painting, and the other arts, are forms of inquiry, and that they are akin to the sciences in important respects.2I think, however, that Constable is only half right. Although I agree that the arts are forms of inquiry, I will argue that the arts and the sciences employ radically different methods. That the arts and the sciences are very different forms of inquiry might seem to be a point so obvious as to be scarcely worth making. We can, however, appreciate more clearly how the arts can contribute to our knowledge by contrasting its methods with those of science. (shrink)

Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in (...) the psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework. (shrink)

Adam Carter’s book Autonomous Knowledge: Radical Enhancement, Autonomy, and the Future of Knowing is excellent. It is clear, well-written, and interesting. On the whole, Autonomous Knowledge is rea...

In his 1836 lectures to the Royal Institute, the great landscape painter John Constable stated that ‘Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.’ Landscape, he went on to say, should ‘be considered a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments.’1Constable makes two claims in this striking passage. The first is that painting is a form of inquiry. This is, by itself, a bold claim, but Constable (...) goes on to state that painters and scientists inquire in the same way. As controversial as these views are, both of them have been sympathetically entertained in recent years by several philosophers. In particular, Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin have maintained that painting, and the other arts, are forms of inquiry, and that they are akin to the sciences in important respects.2I think, however, that Constable is only half right. Although I agree that the arts are forms of inquiry, I will argue that the arts and the sciences employ radically different methods. That the arts and the sciences are very different forms of inquiry might seem to be a point so obvious as to be scarcely worth making. We can, however, appreciate more clearly how the arts can contribute to our knowledge by contrasting its methods with those of science. (shrink)

In his article “Category Independent Aesthetic Experience: The Case of Wine” in this journal, David Sackris presents arguments against Kendall Walton’s view in the famous article “Categories of Art.”David Sackris, “Category Independent Aesthetic Experience: The Case of Wine,” The Journal of Value Inquiry, 47 (2013), pp. 111–120; Kendall Walton, “Categories of Art,” in Steven M. Cahn and Aaron Meskin (Eds) Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 521–537. [First published in The Philosophical Review, 79 (1970), pp. 334–367.] He (...) claims, with support in an argument about the immediate qualities of great wines, that for some kinds of aesthetic appreciation specific category knowledge is not necessary. We welcome the idea that wine appreciation is an aesthetic practice, and more importantly the view that the features of wine appreciation might shed light on, or even transform our understanding of aesthetic experience more generally. The article also draws welcom .. (shrink)

Genetic testing seems to hold out hope for the cure of a number of debilitating conditions. At the same time, many people fear the information that genetic testing can make available. In this commentary, I argue that as of now, the nature of the information revealed in such tests should lead to cautious views about the value of genetic testing. Moreover, I suggest that our overall views about such testing should account for the fact that individuals place different sorts of (...) value on the possession of their own genetic information. As a result, we should largely defer to personal preference in thinking about the propriety of genetic testing. (shrink)

This study takes up the challenge presented to philosophy in a dramatic and urgent way by contemporary medicine: the phenomenon of human life. Initiated by a critical appreciation of the work of Hans Jonas, who poses that issue as well, the inquiry is brought to focus on the phenomenon of embodiment, using relevant medical writing to help elicit its concrete dimensions. The explication of embodiment, aided by critical studies and inquiries into medical phenomena make possible the development of the (...) author’s original phenomenological theory of self, and its concrete relationships with the other self. This study attempts not only to show connections among the works of a number of thinkers in terms of central problems, but to demonstrate the mutual relevance of medicine and philosophy through concrete illustrations and analysis. (shrink)

The belief that science shows an accumulation of a body of objective knowledge has been widely challenged by philosophers and historians in the latter half of this century. In this treatise, Dr. Jardine defends this belief with a careful appreciation of the complexities involved, drawing on many controversial issues concerning truth in science, interpretation of past theories, and grounds of scientific method.

Anil Gupta’s Conscious Experience: A Logical Inquiry provides an impressive and novel account of rational justification based on conscious experience which is used as a foundation for a new theory of empiricism. In this critical notice, I argue that Gupta’s project is fascinating, but is often hampered by a lack of sufficient philosophical justification and clarity regarding some essential features of his project, as well as a lack of engagement with relevant scientific domains that would directly bear on it, (...) such as computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. This limits the sort of logical inquiry available to him in problematic ways. (shrink)

Peirce was a thinker who claimed that his mind had been thoroughly formed by his rigorous training in the natural sciences. But he was also the author who proclaimed that nothing is truer than true poetry. In making the case for Peirce’s relevance to issues of education, then, it is necessary to do justice to the multifaceted character of his philosophical genius, in particular, to the experimentalist cast of his mind and his profound appreciation for the aesthetic, the imaginative, and (...) (more narrowly) the metaphorical in their myriad guises. My aim in this paper is to go some distance, however small, toward doing such justice to Peirce. (shrink)

This is a brief guide to the ideal of open-minded inquiry by way of a survey of related notions. Making special reference to the educational context, the aim is to offer teachers an insight into what it wouldmean for their work to be influenced by this ideal, and to lead students to a deeper appredation of open-minded inquiry. From assumptions to zealotry, the glossary provides an account of a wide rangeof concepts in this family of ideas, reflecting a (...) concern and a connection throughout with the central concept of open-mindedness itself. An intricate network of relationships is uncovered that reveals therichness of this ideal; and many confusions and misunderstandings that runder a proper appreciation of open-mindedness are identified. (shrink)

This is a brief guide to the ideal of open-minded inquiry by way of a survey of related notions. Making special reference to the educational context, the aim is to offer teachers an insight into what it wouldmean for their work to be influenced by this ideal, and to lead students to a deeper appredation of open-minded inquiry. From assumptions to zealotry, the glossary provides an account of a wide rangeof concepts in this family of ideas, reflecting a (...) concern and a connection throughout with the central concept of open-mindedness itself. An intricate network of relationships is uncovered that reveals therichness of this ideal; and many confusions and misunderstandings that runder a proper appreciation of open-mindedness are identified. (shrink)

Seeks to find the appreciative, positive inquiry aspects of and similarities in the papers by B. D. Slife , R. N. Williams , M. S. Richardson , and G. S. Howard without critical academic judgment, applauding the removal, although insufficient, of the linear time metaphor, suggesting the allowance of agency as a characteristic of people-in-relations, and lamenting the commentary gap on relational unit of client and therapist. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

One of the foundational texts of interpersonal psychoanalysis, _Prelogical Experience_ is a pioneering attempt to elaborate an interpersonal theory of personality that encompasses the nonpropositional, nonverbal dimension of human experience. Prelogical processes, the authors hold, cannot be consigned to infancy; rather they shape experience throughout life and are especially salient in relation to dreams, emotion, perception, and the arts. Of special note is Tauber and Green's elaboration of the clinical situation that grows out of an appreciation of prelogical experience. In (...) a striking anticipation of contemporary thinking, they approach patient-therapist interaction in terms of the continuous exchange of "presentational data" by patient and analyst. These data enable patient and therapist alike to "know" more about the other than can ever be expressed in propositional terms. This perspective assigns an important role to what Piaget would term "the cognitive unconscious" in the clinical process. It likewise sustains a view of the countertransference - which includes the analyst's own dreams - as a vital source of presentational data about the patient. As Donnel Stern notes in his Introduction, these and other insights "amount to a surprisingly contemporary description of psychoanalytic treatment.". (shrink)

While compliments are usually intended to give credit and insults offense, the latter cannot simply be treated as opposites of the former. For example, a speaker can give credit to others as well as himself/herself. But while a speaker can offend others, it is less clear that a speaker can offend himself/herself. Understanding why this should be so provides us with a key insight into the nature of insults, namely, that it is predicated on the presumption that some dissimilarity exists (...) between the speaker and the target of the insult. Various interesting implications follow from this insight, allowing us to understand why competitive ritualized exchanges of insults are more commonly attested than are analogous competitions involving compliments; better appreciate the ideological bases of politically correct speech; and adjudicate on the relative merits of various theories of politeness, in particular, on claims concerning the relationship between politeness and face. (shrink)

Since the 1990’s the rise of China provokes heated debates in the West. Numerous politicians and scholars, who study contemporary political affairs, pose the question, which will be the new role of China in international affairs? Many Western observers presume that China will act as the Western powers did in the past, promoting policy of domination, enslavement and gaining profits at all costs. The Chinese declarations on peace, co-operation, mutual interests, and harmony are often considered empty words, a certain decorum (...) of “real politics”, as it had been often practised in the West. An inquiry into the Chinese political and intellectual traditions, almost unknown in the West, challenges such widespread opinions and fears. Of course, it is an open question to which degree the traditional Chinese concepts will determine contemporary policy, since China had been westernised in enormous degree.Nevertheless, attitude to war, struggle, and competition constitutes one of the principal characteristics of each culture and appears closely related to its structure of values. Such attitudes determine political concepts and systems, foreign relations, norms of social life, etc. The analysis of Western and Chinese civilisations demonstrates that in this respect they represented divergent orientations. In Erich Fromm’s typology of societies, the Chinese culture could be considered non-destructive but aggressive, whereas Western civilisation could be called aggressive and destructiveOf course, there were great differences both within Chinese and within Western civilisations. Local/regional cultures belonging to each of them had their own characteristics in respect to struggle, and one could also notice great changes in the course of their histories. In general, at the dawn of these two civilisations, both of them were more or less bellicose, although in the cultures of the Chinese Central Plain “avoiding struggle” traits could be detected quite early. Appreciation of peace and harmony eventually prevailed with the predomination of the Confucian ideology, although Taoism and other schools of thought also condemned struggle and war. On the other hand, in the Mediterranean the bellicose cultures and war-mongering states prevailed. The beginning of this “great divergence” could approximately be dated for the middle of the 1st millennium BC, and the civilisations of East Asia and Europe took the opposite courses in theirsocial and political development. Struggle constituted a fundamental principle in the Western vision of the world-order, and its crucial archetype constituted the eternal struggle of Evil against Good, with the eventual triumph of God, who embodies Good and forces of Light. The Chinese tradition promoted instead the vision of the universe as one giant organism based on the principle of harmony, where Yin complements Yang. Hence both civilisations adopted the dualistic concepts, but one was antagonistic, and the second—complementary.In the 19th century, when Asian nations faced the colonial conquests, many of them tried to protect their independence and modernise themselves. For this end they tried to adopt not only Western armaments and military skills, but also Western bellicose ideology and values. Japan was obviously the champion of such a militarist course, but there were similar tendencies in China as well. Such bellicose ideology reached its apex there during the famous Maoist Cultural Revolution, when class struggle and bellicosity was exalted. The triumph of the Western bellicose approach and rejection of the traditional native heritage marked the century 1860’s–1960’s in China. However, after the unimaginable sufferings of the World War I and II, of Nazism and of communism, the West started to revalidate its traditions condemning war and violence. People started to appreciate peace and co-operation within and among nations. The United Nations and the European Union had been founded for such purposes: to promote peace and co-operation. However, the condemnation of wars did not halt military confrontation of the states, and the West still cultivates political ideologies, which propagate the “proper order” based on competition and struggle. Hence the concepts of multi-party democracy and of free market could serve as hallmarks of the West. In China, since the end of the 1970’s step by step the ancient ideological traditions have been appreciated again and the new concepts of peaceful and harmonious development evolved. At the beginning of the 21st century the Chinese leaders elaborated a new ideology of both harmonious domestic and international order aiming at peaceful development based on co-operation. Of course, there are still vivid the remnants of the previous Western-type approach of the brutal competition and of aggressive foreign policy.Notwithstanding divergent tendencies inside each of these civilisations, in general they both approach each other again, but this time in a common search for peace, cooperation and harmonious development. Their interpretations obviously differ, since in China such concepts are traditional, but rather new in the West, and in various respects both sides have different values and ideals. (shrink)

According to some Philosophy for Children theorists, the pedagogy of the Community of Inquiry hinges upon the acceptance of a pragmatist epistemology. The underlying idea is that it is possible to participate, and to justify participation, in a community of inquiry only if some pragmatist view of truth and knowledge is true and accepted by the participants engaged in dialogue. In this article we argue that this claim is false. In this way, we want to free the pedagogy (...) of the Community of Inquiry from some epistemological assumptions that we regard as unwarranted. To support our contention, we shall highlight two distinctions that are important in order to appreciate the connection between epistemology and education: first, the distinction between the disposition of intellectual humility and the belief in fallibilism; second, the belief in the existence of Cartesian certainties and the attitude of psychological certainty. Finally, we also argue that to vindicate dialogic inquiry it is neither necessary to adopt a pragmatist theory of truth, nor is it necessary to regard warranted judgement as the primary aim of inquiry. In contrast, we argue that truth is the aim of inquiry, and so is the aim of children when they participate in a dialogic inquiry. In this way we also suggest a justification of philosophy with children that does not instrumentalize it. (shrink)

There are several paradigms of 'first philosophy' (e.g. Aristotle, Descartes). A third paradigm of first philosophy is transcendental pragmatics or transcendental semiotics (exemplified by Peirce and Wittgenstein). Husserl correctly grasped that Descartes inaugurated first philosophy in the sense of a transcendental inquiry into the foundations of absolute knowledge. But Husserl's retrieval of Descartes remains within the second paradigm in that it ignores the role of language as a condition of the possibility of objectively constituted knowledge. I propose to re-examine (...) Descartes's conception of first philosophy to see if it can be read in the light of the third paradigm of transcendental philosophy, namely transcendental semiotics. I argue that Cartesian methodic doubt can be rehabilitated (against Wittgenstein's critique) as a kind of 'fallibilistic' approach to knowledge of a Peircean kind, and that the Cartesian cogito can be read (following Hintikka) as recognition of performative contradiction and of the necessity of speech acts, and hence of the transcendental communication community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Historical Significance and Structure of Monroe Beardsley's AestheticsAn AppreciationNoël Carroll (bio)IntroductionMonroe C. Beardsley's Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, published in 1958 by Harcourt, Brace and World Inc.,1 was a watershed event in the history of analytic aesthetics—a climax of sorts with respect to what preceded it and, at the same time, the opening of a new, more intricately developed and defended research program in aesthetics (...) than what had been previously on offer. Beardsley's Aesthetics, and developments therefrom,2 consolidated and crystallized a tendency in aesthetics that had begun to emerge at least by the time of the publication of Francis Hutcheson's An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design,3 which tendency, following Beardsley, we can call the aesthetic theory of art. Assembled out of parts and suggestions from Hutcheson, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bell, among others, the aesthetic theory of art—of which Beardsley's version is one of the most accomplished, if not the most accomplished—has shown remarkable resilience, continuing to command allegiance from many distinguished, contemporary proponents, including Nick Zangwill, Gary Iseminger, and, with certain important modifications, Alan Goldman and Malcolm Budd.Part of what I would like to do in this essay is not only to trace the evolution of the aesthetic theory of art from its origins through to Beardsley's Aesthetics (and his subsequent tinkering with this masterwork) but also to show how the structure of the aesthetic theory of art, as crafted by Beardsley, is simultaneously so elegant, comprehensive, and systematic that it is understandable that Beardsley preferred constantly to repair it after each attack rather than to abandon it for the kinds of alternatives being proffered by Goodman, Danto, Wollheim, Dickie, Wolterstorff, and then Walton. In other words, Beardsley's reluctance to give up was genuinely motivated. [End Page 2] For, if only the kinks could have been smoothed out of it, the aesthetic theory of art, of the sort initiated in Aesthetics and elaborated subsequently by Beardsley, was itself a thing of beauty: exceedingly economical in its foundational principles and powerful in its reach. Thus, whereas typically I address the shortcomings of the aesthetic theory of art, in this essay I would like to talk about its strengths, strengths that I believe encouraged Monroe Beardsley to stick with it through thick and thin—that is, through a thick swarm of often thin counterexamples.In the next part of this essay, I will try to place Aesthetics historically in the course of Western aesthetics. Then in the final section, I shall attempt to explain how the structure of the sort of aesthetic theory of art incipient in Beardsley's Aesthetics and pursued by him in later works is so almost irresistibly attractive that virtually no number of anomalies can shake its friends out of the faith that such problems can be ultimately controlled, if not entirely overcome.On the Historical Significance of Beardsley's AestheticsBeardsley's Aesthetics is the culmination of certain tendencies that had been coalescing in various ways in Western aesthetics since the eighteenth century. One of Beardsley's most significant and influential twentieth-century predecessors was Clive Bell, who in his book Art, as is well known, defined art as that which possessed significant form. Significant form, in turn, was characterized as that which caused an aesthetic emotion. Bell's notion of an aesthetic emotion, I conjecture, derived from Schopenhauer's claim that what an artwork does is to lift us out of our everyday concerns—out of the world of striving. The aesthetic emotion, according to Bell, is a matter of being carried "out of life into ecstasy."4 The aesthetic experience, according to the Schopenhauer-Bell line of thought, involves the release of the individual from the pressures of life—from the pursuit of an endless process of desiring in Schopenhauer's lingo.This notion of aesthetic experience as detachment owes something to Kant's hypothesis that an authentic aesthetic judgment is disinterested, which, of course, itself is descended historically from Hutcheson's contention that beauty amounts to an experience of disinterested pleasure. However, whereas for Hutcheson and Kant disinterestedness is a... (shrink)

Anil Gupta’s Conscious Experience: A Logical Inquiry provides an impressive and novel account of rational justification based on conscious experience which is used as a foundation for a new theory of empiricism. In this critical notice, I argue that Gupta’s project is fascinating, but is often hampered by a lack of sufficient philosophical justification and clarity regarding some essential features of his project, as well as a lack of engagement with relevant scientific domains that would directly bear on it, (...) such as computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. This limits the sort of logical inquiry available to him in problematic ways. (shrink)

This paper presents a puzzle in the form of a tension between two things: (1) data points about what intuitively count as good guesses to a question given an agent's subjective probabilities, and (2) plausible strategic norms of inquiry that tell us how to go about answering a question. Recent theories of guessing and good guessing have acknowledged this puzzle in one form or another, and they aim to get around it by appealing to some sort of contextualism. But (...) I argue that the puzzle is more pressing than has been appreciated, that it makes it hard to understand how individually good guesses can form part of an overall rational inquiry, and that the appeal to contextualism in response to it relies on a very implausible kind of semantic blindness. In other words, I argue that the puzzle stands as a serious challenge to our understanding of how good guessing relates to rational inquiry. (shrink)

A model of culture as a partially coherent system of signs comprised the most widely employed instrument for analyzing cultural meaning among the new cultural historians. However, the model failed to account for meanings that are produced by agents engaged in practices that are not guided by "reading" the contrasts among signs. It also encouraged some analysts to conceive the difference between sign system and concrete practice as that between what is graspable as an intellectual form and what remains inaccessibly (...) material or corporeal. This essay introduces three exemplars of the ties between signs and practices to show how the pragmatics of using signs comprises a structure and a generator of meaning in its own right. In the three exemplars, which are based on the tropes of metonymy, metaphor, and irony, I employ the analytic tools of linguistics to appreciate the non-discursive organization of practice. Analysis of the diverse logics for organizing practice offers promising means for investigating how signs come to seem experientially real for their users. Finally, this view of culture in practice suggests new hypotheses about the possible interdependencies as well as the lack of connection among the elements of a cultural setting. (shrink)

Starting from Kant's striking question 'What is orientation in thinking?', this book argues that the main challenge facing global normative theorising lies in its failure to acknowledge its conceptual inadequacies. We do not know how to reason globally; instead, we tend to apply our domestic political experiences to the global context. Katrin Flikschuh argues that we must develop a form of global reasoning that is sensitive to the variability of contexts: rather than trying to identify a uniquely shareable set of (...) substantive principles, we need to appreciate and understand local reasons for action. Her original and incisive study shows how such reasoning can benefit from the open-ended nature of Kant's systematic but non-dogmatic philosophical thinking, and from reorientation from a domestic to a non-domestic frame of thought. It will appeal to all those interested in global moral issues, as well as to Kant scholars. (shrink)

I offer a modified characterisation of the dispositional grounds of inquiry, in which both the state of knowledge of those involved and their desire for answers or solutions are supplemented by a more nuanced set of dispositions, central to which is the intended transition from a state of unsettlement to one of settlement with respect to those who ask and respond to the questions. I test this characterisation against the Question Quadrant, a familiar device used by philosophy in schools (...) practitioners to assist them and their students to identify philosophical questions and distinguish them from other kinds of question. While appreciating its practical utility, I submit that this device fails to capture key elements of what we mean, or should mean, by such terms as ‘open questions’ and ‘inquiry’, with respect both to philosophy and to other disciplines. (shrink)

By framing Aristotle’s dialectic in the broader context of scientific inquiry and demonstration, this paper is aimed at showing of what use the “reputable opinions” can be for grasping the principles of sciences, as declared in Topics I.2. It argues that such a use cannot imply ‒ at any stage of inquiry ‒ a replacement of the logic and intrinsic goals of demonstration by those proper to dialectic. However, it also defends a substantive (but still modest) contribution of (...) dialectic ‒ beyond its well-attested methodological role in discarding contradictory opinions and its (possible though not germane to the context of Topics I.2) application to proving the principle of non-contradiction by means of refutation. This contribution consists in providing the preliminary accounts of facts in order to have scientific inquiry started, as required in Posterior Analytics II.8. To better appreciate how the proposed location of dialectic in a pre-demonstrative stage of inquiry is operational, the paper finally examines Physics IV.1-5. (shrink)