This research was designed to develop an inventory of vendor-related problems experienced by buyers for small retail apparel stores during the merchandise buying process, determine how frequently each difficulty occurs, and identify the experiences perceived to be unethical. Among the 22 vendor-related difficulties examined minimum order requirements, 6 month advance purchase, incomplete orders, late shipments, and shipping overcharges were identified most frequently. Analysis of results suggested that one factor, misleading vendor practices, and eight background variables (annual sales, price line, full- (...) and part-time employees, retail and buying experience, and shopping large or small markets) were associated with unethical experiences. Ethically troublesome experiences mentioned most frequently were padded orders, selling competitor same merchandise, withholding return authorization and credit, shipping overcharges, and dealing with vendor's factor. (shrink)

Is it ever possible for people to act freely and intentionally against their better judgement? Is it ever possible to act in opposition to one's strongest desire? If either of these questions are answered in the negative, the common-sense distinctions between recklessness, weakness of will and compulsion collapse. This would threaten our ordinary notion of self-control and undermine our practice of holding each other responsible for moral failure. So a clear and plausible account of how weakness of will and self-control (...) are possible is of great practical significance. Taking the problem of weakness of will as her starting point, Jeanette Kennett builds an admirably comprehensive and integrated account of moral agency which gives a central place to the capacity for self-control. Her account of the exercise and limits of self-control vindicates the common-sense distinction between weakness of will and compulsion and so underwrites our ordinary allocations of moral responsibility. She addresses with clarity and insight a range of important topics in moral psychology, such as the nature of valuing and desiring, conceptions of virtue, moral conflict, and the varieties of recklessness (here characterised as culpable bad judgement) — and does so in terms which make their relations to each other and to the challenges of real life obvious. Agency and Responsibility concludes by testing the accounts developed of self-control, moral failure, and moral responsibility against the hard cases provided by acts of extreme evil. (shrink)

Psychopaths have long been of interest to moral philosophers, since a careful examination of their peculiar deficiencies may reveal what features are normally critical to the development of moral agency. What underlies the psychopath's amoralism? A common and plausible answer to this question is that the psychopath lacks empathy. Lack of empathy is also claimed to be a critical impairment in autism, yet it is not at all clear that autistic individuals share the psychopath's amoralism. How is empathy characterized in (...) the literature, and how crucial is empathy, so described, to moral understanding and agency? I argue that an examination of moral thinking in high-functioning autistic people supports a Kantian rather than a Humean account of moral agency. (shrink)

Effective agency, according to contemporary Kantians, requires a unity of purpose both at a time, in order that we may eliminate conflict among our motives, and over time, because many of the things we do form part of longer-term projects and make sense only in the light of these projects and life plans. Call this the unity of agency thesis. This thesis can be regarded as a normative constraint on accounts of personal identity and indeed on accounts of what it (...) is to have the life of a person in the broad, rather than narrowly biological sense. It is also a fundamental condition of social life that persons within society fulfill a range of longitudinal roles: parenthood is one such obvious example, as are teachers, health professionals, engineers, artists, and many others. The fulfillment of these and other valuable social roles requires that agents have the capacity to rationally conceive of themselves as engaged in these roles and subject to the demands of them. To be unable to fulfill any such longitudinal social roles is to have a life deficient in value. The unity of agency is thus, we argue, something we rationally strive for, and something to be morally promoted. Psychiatric states that undermine the unity of agency are morally and rationally disvaluable. Using the example of dissociation, we explain how one such state may have this undermining or disruptive effect on the unity of agency. The therapeutic ends for psychiatry in conditions involving such states are thus seen more globally as the restoration of effective agency, that is, unified agency. (shrink)

Within the Givenness Hierarchy framework of Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993), lexical items included in referring forms are assumed to conventionally encode two kinds of information: conceptual information about the speaker’s intended referent and procedural information about the assumed cognitive status of that referent in the mind of the addressee, the latter encoded by various determiners and pronouns. This article focuses on effects of underspecification of cognitive status, establishing that, although salience and accessibility play an important role in reference processing, (...) the Givenness Hierarchy itself is not a hierarchy of degrees of salience/accessibility, contrary to what has often been assumed. We thus show that the framework is able to account for a number of experimental results in the literature without making additional assumptions about form-specific constraints associated with different referring forms. (shrink)

The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgments. However, we suggest that the empirical literature (...) indicates a complex interplay between automatic and deliberative mental processes in moral judgment formation, with the latter constraining the expression and influence of moral intuitions. We therefore conclude that the psychological literature supports a normative conception of agency. (shrink)

We have argued elsewhere that moral responsibility over time depends in part upon the having of psychological connections which facilitate forms of self-control. In this chapter we explore the importance of mental time travel - our ordinary ability to mentally travel to temporal locations outside the present, involving both memory of our personal past and the ability to imagine ourselves in the future - to our agential capacities for planning and control. We suggest that in many individuals with dissociative disorders, (...) forms of amnesia, or other frontal lobe damage, our capacity for mental time travel is impaired, resulting in commensurate losses to agency autonomy, and a forensic condition essential for holding persons responsible: in legal terms, the capacity for mens rea. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the existence of psychopaths undermines moral rationalism. I examine a recent empirically based argument for this claim and conclude that rationalist accounts of moral judgement and moral reasoning are perfectly compatible with the evidence cited.

It seems to be a truism that whenever we do something - and so, given the omnipresence of trying (Hornsby 1980), whenever we try to do something - we want to do that thing more than we want to do anything else we can do (Davidson 1970). However, according to Frog, when we have will power we are able to try not to do something that we ‘really want to do’. In context the idea is clearly meant to be that (...) what we really want to do and what we most want to do are one and the same. But how is this meant to be so much as possible? It seems to require that our desire not to do what we most want to do is both our strongest desire and not our strongest desire. And that is a blatant contradiction. This is the so-called ‘paradox of self-control’ (Mele 1987). The aim of our paper is to explain how to make sense of the story of Frog and Toad. (shrink)

In _Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction_, Jeanette Bicknell explores key aesthetic, ethical, and other philosophical questions that have not yet been thoroughly researched by philosophers, musicologists, or scientists. Issues addressed include: The relationship between the meaning of a song’s words and its music The performer’s role and the ensuing gender complications, social ontology, and personal identity The performer’s ethical obligations to audiences, composers, lyricists, and those for whom the material holds particular significance The metaphysical status of isolated (...) solo performances compared to the continuous singing of opera or the interrupted singing of stage and screen musicals Each chapter focuses on one major musical example and includes several shorter discussions of other selections. All have been chosen for their illustrative power and their accessibility for any interested reader and are readily available. (shrink)

A diagnosis of schizophrenia is often taken to denote a state of global irrationality within the psychiatric paradigm, wherein psychotic phenomena are seen to equate with a lack of mental capacity. However, the little research that has been undertaken on mental capacity in psychiatric patients shows that people with schizophrenia are more likely to experience isolated, rather than constitutive, irrationality and are therefore not necessarily globally incapacitated. Rational suicide has not been accepted as a valid choice for people with schizophrenia (...) due in part to a belief that characteristic irrationality prevents autonomous decision-making. Since people with schizophrenia are often seen to lack insight into the nature of their disorder, both psychiatric and ethical perspectives generally presume that suicidal acts result directly from mental illness itself and not from second-order desires. In this article, I challenge notions of global irrationality conferred by a diagnosis of schizophrenia and argue that, where delusional beliefs are unifocal, schizophrenia does not necessarily lead to a state of mental incapacity. I then attempt to show that people with schizophrenia can sometimes be rational with regard to suicide, where this decision stems from a realistic appraisal of psychological suffering. (shrink)

BM 76829, a fragment from the mid-section of a small tablet from Sippar in Late Babylonian script, preserves what remains of two new unparalleled pieces from the cuneiform astronomical repertoire relating to the zodiac. The text on the obverse assigns numerical values to sectors assigned to zodiacal signs, while the text on the reverse seems to relate zodiacal signs with specific days or intervals of days. The system used on the obverse also presents a new way of representing the concept (...) of numerical ‘zero’ in cuneiform, and for the first time in cuneiform, a system for dividing the horizon into six arcs in the east and six arcs in the west akin to that used in the Astronomical Book of Enoch. Both the obverse and the reverse may describe the periodical courses of the sun and moon, in a similar way to what is found in astronomical texts from Qumran, thus adding to our knowledge of the scientific relationship between the two cultures. (shrink)

Variations in human skin pigmentation are obvious, but how have skin colour differences evolved? Although clearly a polymorphic trait, the number and identity of key variants has remained unclear. Investigation of pigmentation phenotypes in model organisms provides a route to identify these genes and showed MC1R to be one key locus. Now, cloning of a classic zebrafish mutant, golden, identifies slc24a5 as a gene involved in fish skin pigmentation.1 Strikingly this study identifies the human orthologue, SLC24A5, as likely to make (...) a major contribution to the pale skin colouration of Western Europeans. BioEssays 28: 578–582, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between everyday talk, the reproduction of political ideology and the interactional accomplishment of situated identities through analyzing how institutional members index neoliberal ideology in their everyday interactions. Analysis of audio- and video-recorded data from racially diverse business members of two Texas chambers of commerce illustrates how chamber members indirectly index neoliberal ideology through taking stances toward government policies. White, upper class participants display neoliberal stances through using complaints – constituted by questions, humor, idioms and inference-rich (...) terms – about the Affordable Care Act because it is a form of government interference that increases taxes and the federal deficit. Minority business members use discursive strategies such as double-voiced discourse and self-repairs to balance tensions between criticizing neoliberal ideology because it does not benefit minorities yet still orient to its taken-for-granted value in their business community. Overall, while participants’ interactions generally seem to operate within the structural constraints of neoliberal ideology, our analysis illustrates how participants take up neoliberal ideology in situated ways that, at times, provide avenues for negotiating the relevance of neoliberal ideology to everyday life. (shrink)

A central feature of complexity is that it is based on non-linear, recursive relations. However, in most current accounts of complexity such relations, while non-linear, are based on the reductive relations of a Newtonian onto-epistemological framework. This means that the systems that are emergent from the workings of such relations are a narrowly reduced spectrum of complex systems. It is argued that John Dewey’s trans-actional relations, relations that are characterized by an irreducible internal distinction, can function as an exemplar of (...) the less reductive relations seen in living complex systems. Conceptualizing complex relations and complex systems in a less reductive way allows indeterminate concepts such as epistemological limits and the generative production of meaning, which are inextricably linked, to be considered. Methodologically, such lessened reduction highlights functional systems, revealing aspects of the biopsychosocial human ‘complex system of complex systems’ that are hidden from view in a Newtonian framework. (shrink)

Suicide prevention is a National Health Service priority in the United Kingdom. People with mental illness are seen to represent one of the most vulnerable groups for suicide and recent British Government policy has focused on prevention and management of perceived risk. This approach to suicide prevention is constructed under a biomedical model of psychiatry, which maintains that suicidal persons suffer from some form of disease or irrational drive towards self-destruction. Many react to the idea of self-inflicted death with instinctive (...) revulsion, which has prevented serious discussion of the concept of rational suicide, particularly in relation to those with schizophrenia. The idea that there may be circumstances in which suicide can be viewed as rational is discussed within the biomedical approach to ethics and wider literature primarily in relation to physical disease, terminal states and chronic pain. It is not deemed a viable choice for those who are considered ‘non-autonomous’ due to the controlling forces of mental illness. I propose that suicide is not a consequence of mental illness per se, and that it may be seen as a rational response to a realistic perspective on the course and consequences of living with schizophrenia. The denial of dialogue about the validity of suicidal ideation for people with schizophrenia has led to negative consequences for people with serious mental illness in terms of justice and recognition of person-hood. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to construct a valid new instrument to measure the effect of moral intensity on managers' propensity to manage earnings. More specifically, this study is a pilot study of the impact of moral intensity on financial accountants' propensity to manage earnings. The instrument, once validated, will be used in a full-study of managers in the hotel industry. Different ethical scenarios were presented to respondents in the survey; each ethical scenario was designed in both high or (...) low moral intensity form, to reflect the importance of the moral dilemma at hand. The results were analysed by factor analysis. The findings of this study have positively validated the instrument, with three of the five moral intensity components identified as having appropriate eigenvalues. This indicates that they have a significant influence in the study. The first factor captures the social consensus dimension and one scenario of the proximity dimension. The second factor indicates an interaction between the temporal immediacy and the magnitude of consequences dimension. The third dimension is probability of effect and one scenario of the proximity dimension. In addition, t-tests indicated that the manipulation of high and low conditions within each scenario were also successful. One limitation of the study might be the use of undergraduate accounting students as manager proxies, although prior evidence suggests use of accounting students as proxies is a valid approach in this type of study. This is a highly novel project as most prior studies have focussed on moral intensity and the general ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

Background In the course of the last four decades, the profession of physiotherapy has progressively expanded its scope of responsibility and its focus on professional autonomy and evidence-based clinical practice. To preserve professional autonomy, it is crucial for the physiotherapy profession to meet society's expectations and demands of professional competence as well as ethical competence. Since it is becoming increasingly popular to choose a carrier in private practice in Denmark this context constitutes the frame of this study. Physiotherapy in private (...) practice involves mainly a meeting between two partners: the physiotherapist and the patient. In the meeting, power asymmetry between the two partners is a condition that the physiotherapist has to handle. The aim of this study was to explore whether ethical issues rise during the first physiotherapy session discussed from the perspective of the physiotherapists in private practice. Methods A qualitative approach was chosen and semi-structured interviews with 21 physiotherapists were carried out twice and analysed by using a phenomenological framework. Results Four descriptive themes emerged: general reflections on ethics in physiotherapy; the importance of the first physiotherapy session; the influence of the clinical environment on the first session and; reflections and actions upon beneficence towards the patient within the first session. The results show that the first session and the clinical context in private practice are essential from an ethical perspective. Conclusions Ethical issues do occur within the first session, the consciousness about ethical issues differs in Danish physiotherapy private practice, and reflections and acts are to a lesser extent based on awareness of ethical theories, principles and ethical guidelines. Beneficence towards the patient is a fundamental aspect of the physiotherapists' understanding of the first session. However, if the physiotherapist lacks a deeper ethical awareness, the physiotherapist may reason and/or act ethically to a varying extent: only an ethically conscious physiotherapist will know when he or she reflects and acts ethically. Further exploration of ethical issues in private practice is recommendable, and as management policy is deeply embedded within the Danish public sector there are reasons to explore public contexts of physiotherapy as well. (shrink)

The initial purpose of this study is to provide an empirical validation of Victor and Cullen’s ethical-climate model (1987, Frederick (ed.), Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy, Vol. 9, pp. 51–71; 1988, Administrative Science Quarterly 33, 101–125; 1990, Frederick and Preston (eds.), Business Ethics: Research Issues and Empirical Studies (JAI Press Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut), pp. 77–97). Testing the model on a sample of Danish firms, this study demonstrates that the empirical model as suggested by Victor and Cullen is much (...) stronger than suggested by previous research. Based on a confirmatory factor model, the results of this study suggest a revised ethical structure. Especially a sixth dimension – own interest – is separated from the original instrumental dimension. Further, this study suggests that the ethical-climate model can be enhanced with the dimension of autonomy deriving from Koys and DeCotiis’ (1991, Human Relations 44(3), 265–285.) dimensional psychological climate instrument. (shrink)

This study examines cheating behaviors among 422 business students at two public Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business schools. Specifically, we examined the simultaneous influence of attitudinal characteristics and motivational factors on reported prior cheating behavior, the tendency to neutralize cheating behaviors, and likelihood of future cheating. In addition, we examined the impact of in-class deterrents on neutralization of cheating behaviors and the likelihood of future cheating. We also directly tested potential mediating effects of neutralization on cheating behavior. (...) Using structural equations modeling procedures, we conducted an assessment of the validity of a modified version of the K. J. Smith, Davy, Rosenberg, and Haight model of cheating behavior and its antecedents. The modified model included motivation as a potential predictor of cheating behavior. Results supported the differentiation of the theoretical constructs within the specified process model. Furthermore, tests of the aforementioned theoretical model indicated a significant positive relation between extrinsic motivation and prior cheating and a significant negative relation between both intrinsic motivation and academic performance, and prior cheating. Finally, prior cheating had a significant positive relation, whereas deterrents had a significant negative relation to likelihood of future cheating. (shrink)

Recent studies reveal some of the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in drug addiction. This prompts some theorists to claim that drug addiction diminishes responsibility. Stephen Morse however rejects this claim. Morse argues that these studies show that drug addiction involves neither compulsion, coercion, nor irrationality. He also adds that addicted people are responsible for becoming addicted and for failing to take measures to manage their addiction. After summarizing relevant neuroscience of addiction literature, this chapter engages critically with Morse to argue that (...) a subgroup of addicted people does meet plausible criteria for compulsion, coercion, or irrationality; that few addicted people are fully responsible for becoming addicted; and that some addicted people can be at least partly excused for failing to manage their addiction. Pickard and Lacey’s “responsibility without blame” approach is also suggested as a fruitful basis for future work in this field. (shrink)

This article addresses the complex reflections regarding gender relations expressed by women active in the contemporary Islamic revival movements in Europe (especially France and Germany). Much recent research conducted among these groups aims to counter the rather negative accounts prevailing in public discourses on gender and Islam. This literature notably argues that women's conscious turn to Islam is not necessarily a reaffirmation of male domination, but that it constitutes a possibility for agency and empowerment. However, when faced with certain ‘traditionalist’ (...) positions defended by these women, even this well-meaning literature seems precarious, left in a state of uncertainty. Taking this puzzlement as a point of departure, this contribution aims to think about the dilemmas involved in articulating a language for women's dignity and self-realization, which competes with dominant languages of equality, individual rights and autonomy. This project is rendered even more intricate by the fact that these pious Muslim women socialized in Europe have also been partly fashioned by the liberal discourses against which they want to position themselves. (shrink)

The options currently available to women with uterine infertility are adoption or surrogacy. Recently the option of uterine transplantation has been explored which would allow a woman to carry her own genetically related child. Although this type of transplant raises similar ethical considerations to other types of non-life-saving organ transplantation, such as facial tissue and limb, it also raises its own very unique considerations. In this paper, some of the considerations surrounding uterine transplantation, such as informed consent and an individual's (...) rights, and potential limit to reproductive autonomy are explored. (shrink)

What does it mean to know something - scientifically, anthropologically, socially? What is the relationship between different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing? How is knowledge mobilised in society and to what ends? Drawing on ethnographic examples from across the world, and from the virtual and global "places" created by new information technologies, Anthropology and Science presents examples of living and dynamic epistemologies and practices, and of how scientific ways of knowing operate in the world. Authors address the nature (...) of both scientific and experiential knowledge, and look at competing and alternative ideas about what it means to be human. The essays analyze the politics and ethics of positioning "science", "culture" or "society" as authoritative. They explore how certain modes of knowing are made authoritative and command allegiance (or not), and look at scientific and other rationalities - whether these challenge or are compatible with science. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to construct a valid new instrument to measure the effect of moral intensity on managers' propensity to manage earnings. More specifically, this study is a pilot study of the impact of moral intensity on financial accountants' propensity to manage earnings. The instrument, once validated, will be used in a full-study of managers in the hotel industry. Different ethical scenarios were presented to respondents in the survey; each ethical scenario was designed in both high or (...) low moral intensity form, to reflect the importance of the moral dilemma at hand. The results were analysed by factor analysis. The findings of this study have positively validated the instrument, with three of the five moral intensity components identified as having appropriate eigenvalues. This indicates that they have a significant influence in the study. The first factor captures the social consensus dimension and one scenario of the proximity dimension. The second factor indicates an interaction between the temporal immediacy and the magnitude of consequences dimension. The third dimension is probability of effect and one scenario of the proximity dimension. In addition, t-tests indicated that the manipulation of high and low conditions within each scenario were also successful. One limitation of the study might be the use of undergraduate accounting students as manager proxies, although prior evidence suggests use of accounting students as proxies is a valid approach in this type of study. This is a highly novel project as most prior studies have focussed on moral intensity and the general ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

The condition known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is metaphysically strange. Can there really be several distinct persons operating in a single body? Our view is that DID sufferers are single persons with a severe mental disorder. In this paper we compare the phenomenology of dissociation between personality states in DID with certain delusional disorders. We argue both that the burden of proof must lie with those who defend the metaphysically extravagant Multiple Persons view and (...) that there is little theoretical motivation to yield to that view in light of the fact that the core symptoms of DID bear remarkable similarity to the symptoms of these other disorders where no such extravagance is ever seriously entertained. (shrink)

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) is a condition in which a person appears to possess more than one personality, and sometimes very many. Some recent criminal cases involving defendants with DID have resulted in "not guilty" verdicts, though the defense is not always successful in this regard. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Stephen Behnke have argued that we should excuse DID sufferers from responsibility, only if at the time of the act the person was insane (typically delusional); (...) otherwise the presumption should be that persons with DID are indeed responsible for their actions. We find their interpretation of DID and of the way in which the requirements for criminal insanity relate to this condition worrying and likely to result in injustice to DID sufferers. Our thesis is that persons with DID cannot be responsible for their actions if the usual features of the condition are present. A person with DID is a single person in the grip of a very serious mental disorder. By focusing on the features of DID which have, as we argue, the effect of deluding the patient, we try to show that such a person is unable to fulfill the ordinary conditions of responsible agency (namely, autonomy and self-control). (shrink)

The tears of Odysseus -- History : music gives voice to the ineffable -- Tears, chills, and broken bones -- The music itself -- Explaining strong emotional responses to music I -- Explaining strong emotional responses to music II -- The sublime, revisited -- Conclusion : values.

This collection of newly published essays examines our relationship to physical objects that invoke, commemorate, and honor the past. The recent destruction of cultural heritage in war and controversies over Civil War monuments in the US have foregrounded the importance of artifacts that embody history. The book invites us to ask: How do memorials convey their meanings? What is our responsibility for the preservation or reconstruction of historically significant structures? How should we respond when the public display of a monument (...) divides a community? This anthology includes coverage of the destruction of Palmyra and the Bamiyan Buddhas, the loss of cultural heritage through war and natural disasters, the explosive controversies surrounding Confederate-era monuments, and the decay of industry in the U.S. Rust Belt. The authors consider issues of preservation and reconstruction, the nature of ruins, the aesthetic and ethical values of memorials, and the relationship of cultural memory to material artifacts that remain from the past. Written by a leading group of philosophers, art historians, and archeologists, the 23 chapters cover monuments and memorials from Dubai to Detroit, from the instant destruction of Hiroshima to the gradual sinking of Venice. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Die Passage über das Mittelmeer ist in den letzten Jahren zu einer der tödlichsten Migrationsrouten der Welt geworden. Während die Mitgliedsstaaten der Europäischen Union gegen die sogenannte „Flüchtlingskrise“ eine militärische und diskursive Fluchtabwehrpolitik betreiben und die Seenotrettung geflüchteter Menschen aussetzen und kriminalisieren, begreifen normative politische Theorien der Migration Fluchtbewegungen als ein politisches oder moralisches Problem sowie als Krise für etablierte Demokratien. Gegen den Topos der „Flüchtlingskrise“ und die implizite Normalisierung von Grenzen in einem Großteil gegenwärtiger politiktheoretischer Debatten zu Migration (...) und Flucht entwickelt der vorliegende Beitrag eine politische Theorie der Grenze aus der Perspektive postkolonialer und Schwarzer kritischer Theorie. Dazu werden zunächst Kolonialität und Rasse als bislang vernachlässigte analytische Kategorien in die politische Theorie eingeführt, um die koloniale Gegenwart von Grenzregimen und die Rassifizierung von Grenzen zu rekonstruieren. Im Rückgriff auf die Figur des Schwarzen Mittelmeers, die aus der radikalen Schwarzen Tradition stammt und im Kontext gegenwärtiger Migrationsrouten von Afrika nach Europa aktualisiert wird, wird sodann ein alternatives Register für eine politische Theorie der Grenze entwickelt: Erstens wird das europäische Grenzregime als eine rassistische Politik der Vergrenzung verstanden; zweitens werden die postkolonialen Ambivalenzen und rassifizierten Dimensionen einer Politik der Solidarität mit geflüchteten Menschen problematisiert; drittens werden Fluchtbewegungen als widerständige politische Imaginationen und Praktiken nachgezeichnet, die die Widersprüche hegemonialer Konzeptionen von Demokratie und Zugehörigkeit aufzeigen. Abschließend wird die Epistemologie des Schwarzen Mittelmeers für eine Kritik des dominanten Krisennarrativs der Demokratie und für eine selbstreflexive Auseinandersetzung mit den kognitiven Grenzen der politischen Theorie selbst produktiv gemacht. (shrink)

From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained (...) a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned. (shrink)

Small human complex systems, here called co-present groups, are found across all fields of human social life. Complexity thinking suggests why this is so: that these groups, irrespective of formal content, have a meta-function of providing maximum complexity to manage the indeterminacy or uncertainty that characterises the most complex of human social issues. This claim depends on an understanding of the functioning of these groups as being characterised by irreducibly complex intersubjective (person to person) relations, which are involved in the (...) processing of raw human experience (‘affective processing’), to produce shared meaningfulness. An example of the use of co-present groups in medical continuing professional development (CPD) is given. (shrink)

This article addresses the epistemic domain of adult make-believe activities in innovation workshops. In particular, we demonstrate how adults initiate imaginary transformations of objects while displaying an orientation to a general order of make-believe in which everyone has equal epistemic rights, and how this can be displayed both verbally and nonverbally. This distribution of equal rights is only overridden by external or locally derived roles, and once invoked they override the general preference for epistemic symmetry, after which interlocutors orient to (...) establishing epistemic congruence, despite the obvious presence of epistemic asymmetry. (shrink)