Hans-Georg Gadamer is one of the leading philosophers in the world today. His philosophical hermeneutics has had a major impact in a wide range of disciplines, including the social sciences, literary criticism, theology and jurisprudence. Truth and Method, his major work, is widely recognised to be one of the great classics of twentieth-century thought. In this book Georgia Warnke provides a clear and systematic exposition of Gadamer's work, as well as a balanced and thoughtful assessment of his views. Warnke (...) gives particular attention to the ways in which Gadamer's work has been taken up and criticised by literary critics, social theorists and philosophers, such as Hirsch, Habermas and Rorty. She thus provides an introduction to Gadamer which demonstrates the relevance of his work to current debates in a variety of disciplines. This book will be invaluable to students and specialists throughout the humanities and social sciences, as well as to anyone who is interested in the most important developments in contemporary thought. (shrink)

In assessing the ethics of fetal therapy trials, we agree with Hendriks et al. that we should not just consider biomedical benefits, but also psychosocial benefits. Specifically, we argue th...

_Legitimate Differences_ challenges the usual portrayal of current debates over thorny social issues including abortion, pornography, affirmative action, and surrogate mothering as _moral_ debates. How can it be said that our debates oppose principles of life to those of liberty, principles of liberty to those of equality, principles of equality to those of fairness, and principles of fairness to those of integrity, when we as Americans share all these principles? Debates over such issues are not, Georgia Warnke argues, moral (...) debates over which principles we should adopt. Rather, they are interpretive debates over the meanings of principles we already possess. Warnke traces the structure of these debates with reference to the work of Jane Austen, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, and Bernard Williams. In separate chapters on surrogate mothering, affirmative action, abortion, and pornography she articulates new understandings of the meanings of some of our principles and shows the equal legitimacy of some different interpretations of the meanings of others. Finally, she suggests that the orientation of American public policy ought to be directed less at finding single canonical interpretations of our principles than at accommodating different legitimate understandings of them. The perspective offered by _Legitimate Differences_ should have a significantly beneficial effect on public discussions. (shrink)

This book offers a fresh analysis of the account of Peripatetic ethics in Cicero's On Ends 5, which goes back to the first-century BCE philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Georgia Tsouni challenges previous characterisations of Antiochus' philosophical project as 'eclectic' and shows how his reconstruction of the ethics of the 'Old Academy' demonstrates a careful attempt to update the ancient heritage, and predominantly the views of Aristotle and the Peripatos, in the light of contemporary Stoic-led debates. This results in both (...) a hermeneutically complex and a philosophically exciting reading of the old tradition. A case in point is the way Antiochus grounds the 'Old Academic' conception of the happy life in natural appropriation, thus offering a naturalistic version of Aristotelian ethics. (shrink)

Jean Grondin’s starting point in his impressive book is what Hans-Georg Gadamer refers to as the universal claim of hermeneutics. Gadamer is better known for the limits his hermeneutics seems to place on universal claims. Against the reliance the Enlightenment placed on the insights of a reason common to humanity, Gadamer stresses the prejudiced and partial character of attempts to understand meaning. And against more contemporary attempts to ground Enlightenment conceptions in universal human competencies, he stresses the historicity and finitude (...) of human knowledge. Our attempts to understand the meaning of texts, conversations, historical events, and social actions and practices are conditioned by the horizon of our language, our own historical experiences, and our assumptions and expectations. Still, Gadamer ends his Truth and Method by stressing not only the linguistic character of understanding but the infinite capacity of all languages to find and express new dimensions of meaning. “Language,” he writes, “forestalls any objection to its jurisdiction. Its universality keeps pace with the universality of reason.”. (shrink)

Social and political theorists have traced in detail how individuals come to possess gender, sex and racial identities. This book examines the nature of these identities. Georgia Warnke argues that identities, in general, are interpretations and, as such, have more in common with textual understanding than we commonly acknowledge. A racial, sexed or gendered understanding of who we and others are is neither exhaustive of the 'meanings' we can be said to have nor uniquely correct. We are neither always, (...) or only, black or white, men or women or males or females. Rather, all identities have a restricted scope and can lead to injustices and contradictions when they are employed beyond that scope. In concluding her argument, Warnke considers the legal and policy implications that follow for affirmative action, childbearing leave, the position of gays in the military and marriage between same-sex partners. (shrink)

Linguistic predictions may be generated from and evaluated against a representation of events and referents described in the discourse. Compatible with this idea, recent work shows that predictions about novel noun phrases include their definiteness. In the current follow-up study, we ask whether people engage similar prediction-related processes for definite and indefinite referents. This question is relevant for linguistic theories that imply a processing difference between definite and indefinite noun phrases, typically because definiteness is thought to require a uniquely identifiable (...) referent in the discourse. We addressed this question in an event-related potential (ERP) study (N = 48) with preregistration of data acquisition, preprocessing, and Bayesian analysis. Participants read Dutch mini-stories with a definite or indefinite novel noun phrase (e.g., “het/een huis,” the/a house), wherein (in)definiteness of the article was either expected or unexpected and the noun was always strongly expected. Unexpected articles elicited enhanced N400s, but unexpectedly indefinite articles also elicited a positive ERP effect at frontal channels compared to expectedly indefinite articles. We tentatively link this effect to an antiuniqueness violation, which may force people to introduce a new referent over and above the already anticipated one. Interestingly, expectedly definite nouns elicited larger N400s than unexpectedly definite nouns (replicating a previous surprising finding) and indefinite nouns. Although the exact nature of these noun effects remains unknown, expectedly definite nouns may have triggered the strongest semantic activation because they alone refer to specific and concrete referents. In sum, results from both the articles and nouns clearly demonstrate that definiteness marking has a rapid effect on processing, counter to recent claims regarding definiteness processing. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, February 2022.

The fifth volume in the Fundamentals of Philosophy Series, Debating Sex and Gender by Georgia Warnke is a concise yet in-depth introduction to contemporary feminist thought on sex and gender.

Der Begriff der Mischung ist von zentraler Bedeutung in der spateren platonischen Philosophie. Um das Wesen der Mischung offenzulegen, fokussiert Georgia Mouroutsou auf den Sophistes und den Philebos. Im ersten Kapitel ordnet sie die 'Mischung' in die ganzheitliche Ubertragung der beruhmten und beruchtigten Teilhabe ein: von der Teilhabe des Wahrnehmbaren an der Idee zu der innerideellen Teilhabe und von da zu der Teilhabe der zwei platonischen Prinzipien. Dabei erhellt die Autorin das Wesen der Mischung als Metapher: als Transformation eines (...) sinnlichen Bildes in ein philosophisches Bild. Als 'Mischung' wird einerseits die Beziehung der grossten Gattungen untereinander, andererseits diejenige zwischen Grenze und Unbegrenztheit bezeichnet. Im zweiten Kapitel wird die Konzeption der Mischung im Sophistes behandelt. Zur Leitfrage wird: Warum ist die Metapher der Mischung im Fall der Verbindung der Idee des Seienden mit der des Anderen gelungener als diejenige der Teilhabe? Mouroutsou bietet eine Analyse von Soph. 246a-259b und eine grundliche Diskussion der entsprechenden Sekundarliteratur. Von einer allgemeinen Ontologie des Seienden als 'Kraft des Tuns und des Leidens' gelangt der Gast aus Elea zu einer speziellen Ontologie des ausgezeichneten ideellen Seienden: Der Dialog kulminiert in der unhintergehbaren Mischung der Ideen des Seienden und des Anderen, die sich als gleichursprunglich erweisen. Die Mischung der grossten Gattungen ereignet sich in 254b-259b nicht auf der Basis vorhandener Elemente, die nachtraglich in Verbindung zueinander gesetzt werden; vielmehr kommen erst in der Dynamik des Vollzugs der Mischung ihre Momente als eigenstandige Elemente zur Erscheinung. Erst das Gefuge der Mischung wird so verantwortlich fur die Entmischung seiner Elemente. Im dritten Kapitel rekonstruiert die Autorin die einheitliche Bewegung von Philebos 15-27. Sie vermeidet Diskrepanzen oder Zusammenhangslosigkeit und verfolgt statt dessen Schritt fur Schritt die Ubertragung der Teilhabe in der dialogischen Bewegung. Der Dialektiker verlasst zunachst das Wahrnehmbare, um den holistischen Anspruchen der Ideendialektik nachzugehen, kehrt dann jedoch zu ihm zuruck. In der vierfachen Einteilung des Ganzen, in der Mouroutsou die Mischung als Ort der Genese der schonen Erscheinungen deutet, zeigt sich Platon als Retter der Phanomene. Nach dem Aufstieg zum Verwachsensein der zwei platonischen Prinzipien degradiert der Philosoph sie nicht langer als 'zwischen Sein und Nicht-Sein herumschweifend', sondern wurdigt sie als 'Zeugung'. Schonheit und Ordnung entstehen durch eine Bezahmung und Bandigung des nie vollig Bezahmbaren, dem sie agonal abgerungen werden: Es geht um die Pragung des Seins auf das von sich aus widerstrebende Werden. Die Momente der Mischung des Sophistes und des Philebos sind verschieden und jeweils anders bedingt. Die vorliegende Deutung versucht nicht, das eine Konzept durch das andere zu erklaren; stattdessen integriert sie beide Momente in eine umfassendere dialektische Bewegung. Der Bezug auf Aristoteles erweist sich bei der Platon-Interpretation erneut als unumganglich, obgleich sich unser Platonsbild seinetwegen oft nur muhevoll rekonstruieren lasst. (shrink)

RESUMO A série Black Mirror, transmitida entre 2011 e 2023 pela Netflix, tornou-se um fenômeno de mídia e seus episódios mostraram formas de interação homem-máquina (terminologia também referida como humano-computador). O nome da série se refere ao fato de que, quando uma tela é desligada, ela se torna um espelho negro que reflete a imagem do usuário. Este artigo1 tem como objetivo analisar os efeitos da interação homem-máquina nas organizações produtivas apresentadas em Black Mirror. Esta pesquisa utilizou a análise do (...) discurso, principalmente a partir das contribuições de Mikhail Bakhtin. O método consistiu em três etapas que contaram com a colaboração de estudantes de graduação e pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção, integrando ensino e pesquisa e desenvolvendo o senso crítico dos pesquisadores-iniciantes. Os resultados indicam que, nas organizações apresentadas na série Black Mirror, há uma transição do conceito de fatores humanos para fatores ciborgues, bem como o uso da interação homem-máquina para promover o controle social. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is the methodological presentation of the basic principles towards a critical interdisciplinary approach for studying the history of monuments restoration, valid for different cultures. The proposed integrated framework offers the possibility to study and document monuments restoration in various spatial levels e.g. global, continental, international, national, regional, and local. The conceptual and methodological aspects are based on the following fundamental pillars a) the development of science and technology, including relevant history of education, b) the evolution (...) of the restoration philosophy, c) the incorporation of the above in restoration projects at a lower level, d) the infiltration of the above in restoration interventions at the lowest level. The author expects that the above successive and/or parallel levels of scientific branches can contribute effectively to the analysis, synthesis and comparative assessment of the aspects and criteria that influenced monuments restoration timeline. The challenge for the researcher of the monuments restoration history is the adjustment of the whole process to his own –under research- level in such a way as to take advantage of all theinterdisciplinary inputs creating, thus, inventive links and stimulating new information and knowledge. The above are briefly tested in the case study of Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece. Such an inductive approach will enable all disciplines to devote their finest efforts towards understanding, documenting and studying monuments restoration history and, thus, support effectively a sustainable future for the world’s cultural heritagel audience. (shrink)

Over the past decades, science education researchers have suggested Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) teaching interventions for science classes. In this article, we argue that IBSE’s basic principles can be traced back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work Emile or On Education (1762). First, we will look at IBSE’s rationale. Then we will turn to Emile and outline Rousseau’s educational ideas concerning science education. We will show that Rousseau’s suggested practices for science education are very similar to those of IBSE. Yet despite their (...) vivid similarities, Rousseau seems to pursue epistemic virtues, whilst IBSE aims at epistemic skills. However, nurturing epistemic skills might be seen as the first step for cultivating an epistemically virtuous character. So, embracing Rousseau’s ideal for full character development could further inspire IBSE’s proposals. (shrink)

BackgroundSleep is a strong predictor of quality of life and has been related to cognitive and behavioral functioning. However, research has shown that most autistic people experience sleep problems throughout their life. The most common sleep problems include sleep onset delay, frequent night-time wakings and shorter total sleep time. Despite the importance of sleep on many domains, it is still unclear from first-hand accounts what helps autistic people to sleep. The purpose of this study is to explore together with autistic (...) adolescents their sleep-related practices before bedtime and during the day which contribute to a good night’s sleep.MethodsFifty-four autistic adolescents collaborated with an academic researcher in a novel adapted photo-elicitation methodology, rooted in a Lifeworld framework. The adolescents were invited to collect and analyze their data. The data were also presented in a community knowledge exchange event.ResultsSeveral self-reported practices that facilitate better nocturnal sleep were identified. Those were organized into two thematics: Evening/bedtime factors and Day time factors. These included practices such as personalized sensory and relaxation tools before bed and during night-time, engaging in a range of physical activities during daytime and accommodating personal time to engage with highly preferred and intense focus activities and hobbies. It also included spending time in predictable and fun ways with family members before bedtime.ConclusionThis is the first time that a study uses a novel methodological approach based on personal accounts elicited by photos rooted in a Lifeworld framework to describe personal sleep-related practices before bedtime and during the day to identify a “good night of sleep” in autistic adolescents. The outcomes from the current study showed that sleep facilitating factors are in a direct contrast to the sleep hygiene recommendations. Therefore, it is thus important for the sleep practitioners and healthcare providers to move beyond providing standardized sleep hygiene interventions. A Lifeworld led care model that pays attention to personal experiences, promotes sense of agency, evaluates both autism-specific strengths and struggles could and should complement biomedical approaches.Lay SummaryThis is the first study to examine autistic adolescents’ self-reported sleep habits and factors which facilitate autistic adolescents’ sleep by employing adapted photo-elicitation interviews. This study is innovative in at least three ways. First, it examines the factors that may facilitate a good night’s sleep through personal accounts of autistic adolescents. Second, this is the first sleep study to adopt a collaborative, flexible approach to understanding positive sleep factors in the lives of autistic adolescents. This study employed a personalized approach into collecting, categorizing, coding, and analyzing qualitative data allowing autistic adolescents and the researcher to work together across key stages of data collection and data analysis. Third, we adopted a theoretical framework that allows us to consider autistic adolescents in both agency and vulnerability positions when it comes to their sleep difficulties. Our results highlight that sleep should be treated individually and in relation to the environmental and personal factors that affect each autistic person. Hence, researchers and professionals may benefit from working collaboratively with autistic adolescents with the aim to identify individual strengths and adopt a positive narrative around sleep. Furthermore, it is important to further examine both the daytime and evening factors that may affect bedtime and the quality and quantity of sleep as well as the role of intense focused interests and physical activities that cultivate positive feelings and help autistic people to relax before bedtime. (shrink)

This article is a queer reading of the doctrine of miraculous conception and an exploration into how applying an intersex lens to these conception texts can liberate an intersex Jesus. In it, I explain the basics of intersex and otherwise queer theologies, before looking at sex difference in the New Testament through the figures of eunuchs, and conducting an intersex reading of Jesus’ conception and biology. I argue that, if we believe Mary to be a virgin at the moment of (...) Jesus’ conception, with no external male influence, then Jesus is necessarily a chromosomal ‘female’ (and therefore intersex, due to his ‘male’ physical appearance). I then discuss the ways in which his biology can transcend prescriptive roles of sex, mirroring how his social behaviour transcends prescriptive roles of gender. What this queer reading of Jesus can tell us relates to a gender-expansive view of deity – troubling rigid Church institutions by celebrating the breaking of binaries that constrain us. (shrink)

The presumption behind this book is that recent developments in political philosophy can be productively assessed under the idea of a hermeneutic or ...

Richard Rorty challenges the traditional use of hermeneutic understanding to defend the methodological autonomy of the social sciences, claiming that hermeneutics is part of both social and natural science and, moreover, that it exposes the limits of ?epistemologically centered philosophy?. Hermeneutics is interested in edification rather than truth, in finding new ways of speaking rather than adjudicating knowledge claims or securing the grounds of rational consensus. Although Rorty refers to Gadamer's ?philosophical hermeneutics? as support for this position, Gadamer's own analysis (...) points in a different direction. First, it distinguishes the social from the natural sciences as forms of practical, not theoretical, knowledge. As hermeneutic analyses, the social sciences participate in an on?going dialogue about values and forms of life. Second, the goal of this dialogue is cognitive and normative agreement. Indeed, hermeneutics is an act of integration which tries to expand consensus between different cultures and historical perspectives by mediating their claims to truth. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics - one of the seminal philosophies of the 20th century - has had a profound influence on a wide array of fields, including classical philology, theology, the philosophy of the social sciences, literary theory, philosophy of law, critical social theory and the philosophy of art. This collection expands on some of these areas and takes his hermeneutics into yet new fields including narrative medicine, biotechnology, the politics of memory, the philosophy of place and the non-verbal language (...) of the body. And, building on Gadamer's well-known discussions with Heidegger, Habermas and Derrida, Inheriting Gadamer sets him in dialogue with Mahatma Gandhi, Christine Korsgaard, Charles Mills and others. In these ways, the volume holds fast to a Gadamerian virtue: cultivating our important philosophical traditions while embracing the constant need to re-think their meaning in new circumstances and in relation to new knowledge. (shrink)

This article focuses on two very different thinkers from different periods of time, an early hedonist who belonged to Socrates’ circle and lived until the middle of the fourth century BCE and the late Stoic who ruled the Roman Empire in the second century CE. Despite all substantial divergences – for instance, on the value of pleasure – Aristippus the Elder and Marcus Aurelius shared an interest in presentism, broadly construed as a focus on the present and its primacy, and (...) engaged themselves in exercises regarding the experience of the present. Moreover, in developing their respective positions and the exercises they prescribed, we shall uncover and foreground their essentially therapeutic character. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle” has been popular in the limitation of freedoms within human rights jurisprudence. It has been used formally in court cases and also informally in legal argumentation and conversation. Shortly, it is described as a very simple principle that amounts to the notion that persons are at liberty to do what they want as long as their actions do not harm any other person or society in general. This article questions whether it is legitimate to (...) use the harm principle in cases concerning the limitation of religious freedom within education. For example, can the exemption of a learner from sex education be denied based on the argument that such an exemption will cause harm? In order to answer this question, the meaning, origin and use of the harm principle are investigated. This article also discusses four main criticisms against the use of this principle in general and in cases of religious freedom of learners in education. (shrink)

Though Plato's Phaedo does not focus on pleasure, some considerable talk on pleasure takes place in it. Socrates argues for the soul's immortality and, while doing so, hopes to highlight to his companions how important it is to take care of our soul by focussing on the intellect and by neglecting the bodily realm as far as is possible in this life. Doing philosophy, so his argument goes, is something like dying, if we grant that death is the separation of (...) the soul from the body and notice that genuine philosophers wish nothing else than to be detached from the bodily realm. For indulging into bodily pleasures has detrimental consequences on the soul, impeding the search of truth and distorting reality, and so philosophers should undertake to purify themselves from all bodily concerns and gratifications and love the objects of learning and knowledge without deviation and distraction. On the contrary, ordinary people fall for the bodily realm as the only real domain that should therefore be of priority and of their earnest concern. (shrink)

Feminists often look to postmodern philosophy for a framework within which to treat difference. We might more productively look to a hermeneutic philosophy that emphasizes the interpretive dimensions of difference and allows us to acknowledge the partiality of our understanding. Hence, we might also recognize the importance of a hermeneutic conversation unconstrained by relations of power or ideology in which all nonexclusionary interpretive voices can be educated by one another.

This article provides a detailed case study of F1 motor racing teams to better grasp the nature of contemporary elite formation. Drawing on an analysis of senior figures in F1 teams, and on a wider study of the industry, we argue that this affluent elite needs to be understood as part of a temporal ecology which deploys a technical habitus which has formed over a longue durée. In drawing out the significance of this approach, we extend analytical repertoires to focus (...) on processes of accumulation. Building on the thinking of Bourdieu, Piketty and Kluge and Negt, we explore how this approach might have wider resonance in the resurgence of current analysis of the formation of ‘elite constellations’. (shrink)