We argue that natural language has the right degree of representational richness for false belief reasoning, especially the complements under verbs of communication and belief. Language may indeed be necessary synchronically for cross-modular reasoning, but certain achievements in language seem necessary at least diachronically for explicit reasoning about false beliefs.

In this paper we argue that the phenomenon of evidentiality, the grammatical marking in some languages of the source of one's knowledge, gives us a revealing window into the developmental processes in middle childhood that subserve the achievement of narrative competence. First, we argue that the mastery of evidentiality is connected to the development of an understanding of inference, and of the ability to mobilize this understanding in the construction of human narratives. Second, we examine the role that parent-child discourse (...) plays in clarifying the contrastive uses of sources of knowledge. Finally, we discuss the difference between first person and third person narratives, and suggest that evidentials might reveal something of the sources of evidence for persistence of self as the protagonist in one's own life story. (shrink)

Theories of relations between language and conceptual development benefit from empirical evidence for concepts available in infancy, but such evidence is comparatively scarce. Here, we examine early representations of specific concepts, namely, sets of dynamic events corresponding either to predicates involving two variables with a reversible, asymmetric relation between them (such as the set of all events that correspond to a linguistic phrase like “a dog is pushing a car,”) or to comparatively simpler, one-variable predicates (such as the set of (...) events corresponding to a phrase like “a dog is jumping.”). We develop a non-linguistic, anticipatory eye-tracking task that can be administered to both infants and adults, and we use this task to gather evidence for the formation and use of such one-and two-place-predicate classes (which we refer to as event sortals) in 12–24-mo-old infants, and in adults with and without concurrent verbal prose shadowing. Using visually similar stimuli for both the simpler (one-place) and the more complex (reversible, asymmetric, two-place) concepts, we find that infants only show evidence for forming and generalizing one-place event sortals, and, while adults succeed with both kinds in the absence of verbal shadowing, shadowing hampers their ability to form and use the asymmetric two-place event sortals. In a subsequent experiment with adults, we find that if the shadowing material is grammatically impoverished, adults now succeed in forming and using both one- and two-place event sortals. We discuss implications of these results for theories of concept acquisition, and the role of language in this process. (shrink)

This article analyses aesthetics and mysticism in the writings of Albert Geyser, the prominent South African theologian who is mostly known for his brave, uncompromising struggle against the apartheid system. In the first part of the article, brief introductory comments are made about Geyser's theological and political role in South Africa in the light of his Protestant context and his opposition to apartheid. It is then investigated how his reputation as a Biblical scholar and his protracted, much publicised stance against (...) apartheid obfuscate his remarkable interest in aesthetics and mysticism and explains why his other theological interests and especially his interest in mysticism have not yet been researched. In the second part of the paper Geyser's mystical interests are investigated by analysing his comments on church architecture, worship, music, liturgy and his pioneering translation of Thomas á Kempis' Imitatio Christi. (shrink)

The article discusses holiness as a theme in the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of biblical spirituality. It first establishes the framework within which holiness is understood by discussing holiness in spirituality, in the early Christian context of Mark and in terms of Mark's focus on the identity of Jesus. The article then focuses on holiness in terms of the human pole in the divine-human relationship by investigating how holiness is about awe and fear before Jesus as the mystery (...) of God's kingdom. It then analyses holiness in terms of the divine pole in the divine-human relationship by investigating Jesus as the Holy One of God. It concludes with an analysis of Jesus' reaffirmation, interiorisation, radicalisation and embodiment of holiness and of Mark's mystagogical approach to holiness within the lived experience of his community. (shrink)

This article evaluates the origins, nature and role of historical criticism in biblical studies as a discipline and its relationship with spiritual or theological readings of biblical texts. It firstly analyses the roots, origins and nature of historical criticism that dominated biblical studies as a discipline in modernity. It then investigates a critical response to historical criticism in the recent renaissance of theological and spiritual readings of the Bible. In this investigation, it discusses how recent hermeneutical developments confirm that the (...) two approaches, though clearly different, can function in a meaningful synergy to come to a more authentic and adequate interpretation of the Bible. The article concludes with an evaluation of this synergy, which is not about simply joining the two, but reflects a fixed pattern in which each one has a particular role to play. (shrink)

This article investigates the eschatological expectations of apocalyptic and millenarian groups from a spirituality perspective. It first analyses various historical examples of such expectations with particular attention to their sociopolitical consequences. A second part discusses the negative perceptions of, and violent responses to such groups by those who hold them in contempt as lacking spirituality. This issue is then specifically analysed in more detail in terms of the siege of the Davidian group, an offshoot of Adventism, in Waco, Texas, by (...) law enforcement officials in 1993. An analysis of the group’s spirituality discusses their religious commitment, spiritual practices and use of the Bible as positive outcomes that they share with other millenarian groups. A concluding part spells out the negative characteristics and dynamics of their spirituality. (shrink)

This article investigates the political nature and involvement of millennialism as a religious phenomenon. It, firstly, offers a brief analysis of how millennialism shifted from a significant, but marginal role player in the history of Christianity to become part of the mainstream religious discourse in recent times. It then seeks to explain how this came about by analysing the way this development continues and resonates with the political language and thought of the 19th-century religious discourse in the United States and (...) in early modern England since the 16th century. It finally investigates the dangerous consequences of politicising eschatology by specifically analysing the role of Israel in millennial expectations. (shrink)

The article investigates the potential of mysticism to revitalise theology. It firstly traces how aesthetics was understood in theology and provides reasons for this view. It then investigates how the predominant epistemological approach in theology privileged conceptual knowledge and relativised aesthetics as being subjective and therefore unreliable. It gives special attention to this epistemology by spelling out how the intellectualisation of contemporary theology intensified the process of obfuscating and sidelining aesthetics. In a third part, the article spells out the consequences (...) of this position by analysing how theology is becoming a disenchanted enterprise. The article then investigates how aesthetics often is taking over the role of theology and its formative role in social discourse. It focuses on the epistemological nature of this turn towards aesthetics, arguing that aesthetics with its profound notion of beauty, is increasingly reappraised as a legitimate, but different kind and source of knowledge. The article then argues how aesthetics can reinvigorate theology as a source of knowledge together with conceptual knowledge. It ends by investigating how theology can be re-enchanted by learning from the prominent role and invigorating forms of aesthetics in mysticism. (shrink)

This Special Issue commemorates the 60th anniversary of Business & Society with nine rigorous literature reviews that address important societal problems and provide opportunities for theory development in the business and society field; in this introduction we present an overview of the Special Issue. With the theme “Building on Its Past,” the nine articles address a host of contemporary issues, including climate change, wicked problems, business and human rights, human health, certifications standards, the governance of artificial intelligence, stakeholder engagement, stakeholder (...) theory, and corporate political activity. Together, these reviews offer a wealth of suggested themes, theories and approaches that can drive our research forward for the next decades in business and society research and practice. Using the lens of a miner-prospector continuum to categorize the diversity of articles within this special issue, a common theme emerges across the portfolio of reviews: they all call for a more systemic and integrative perspective toward studying the complex interactions that link business and society actors and issues. Building on these findings, we encourage future scholars to fill long-standing researched gaps through a more open systems approach, which supports both contextually sensitive and multi-level and multi-disciplinary approaches to address grand societal challenges. We conclude with specific suggestions as to how business and society scholars might use an open systems approach, including embracing methodologies to address complex causal pathways, theorizing with a view towards spanning external and internal elements of an organization, and reflecting on the temporal and spatial dynamics of complex systems. (shrink)

In recent attempts to define ‘harm’, the most promising approach has often been thought to be the counterfactual comparative account of harm. Nevertheless, this account faces serious difficulties. Moreover, it has been argued that ‘harm’ cannot be defined without reference to a substantive theory of well-being, which is itself a fraught issue. This has led to the call for the concept to simply be dropped from the moral lexicon altogether. I reject this call, arguing that the non-comparative approach to defining (...) harm has not been sufficiently explored. I then develop such an account that avoids the difficulties faced by comparative accounts whilst not presupposing a substantive theory of well-being. I conclude that this definition renders a concept of harm that can be meaningfully employed in our moral discourse. (shrink)

To what extent could Max Weber's ethic of responsibility serve as a model for us today? An adequate answer to this question could only be given on the basis of a satisfactory interpretation and thorough assessment of his ethic of responsibility. In this monograph Etienne de Villiers sets himself the task of doing just that. He establishes that, in spite of serious shortcomings, Weber's ethic points to the contemporary need for an ethic of responsibility as a second-level normative ethical (...) approach that would address the undermining effect of modernisation on ethical living. Such a contemporary ethic of responsibility would provide guidelines on how ethical living could be responsibly enhanced in our time. The author also presents a brief proposal on how a contemporary ethic of responsibility might be designed. (shrink)

Jill de Villiers has argued that children's mastery of sentential complements plays a crucial role in enabling them to succeed at false-belief tasks. Josef Perner has disputed that and has argued that mastery of false-belief tasks requires an understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives. This paper attempts to resolve the debate by explicating attributions of desires and beliefs as extensions of the linguistic practices of making commands and assertions, respectively. In terms of these linguistic practices one can explain (...) why desire-talk will precede belief-talk and why even older children will have difficulty attributing incompatible desires. (shrink)

The ArgumentPsychology has been frequently subjected to the criticism that it is an unreflexive science — that it fails to acknowledge the reflexive properties of human action which influence psychologists themselves as well as their subjects. However, even avowedly unreflexive actions may involve reflexivity, and in this paper I suggest that the practices of psychology include reflexive ones. Psychology has an established tradition of silence about the self-awareness and sell-consciousness of its actors, whether those actors are experimenters, theorists, or participants (...) in research, yet this silence has been established and maintained through sophisticated exercises in self-regard — through sustained reflexive work. Historical analysis reveals some of the ways in which psychologists recognized and then neglected, covered over, or denied reflexivity. Study of those instances where psychologists have engaged in self-conscious reflection or have attended to the sell-consciousness of research subjects indicates both the dangers of reflexivity to governing investigative practices and the resilience which psychology has built against reflexive work. Canonized procedures for scientific work reproduce selves of experimenters and subjects alike, selves who acknowledge only part of their reflexive engagements. Historians of psychology have a special opportunity to explore the reflexive dynamics of investigative practices, and, hence, to theorize aboutscientists, along with their actions and interactions, just as we theorize about science, its products, and its evolution. (shrink)

Psychologists tend to examine their activities in experimentation with the same objective scientific attitude as they routinely assume in the experimental situation. A few psychologists have stepped outside this closed expistemic practice to undertake reflexive analysis of the psychologist in the laboratory. Three cases of such critical reflexive analysis are considered to better understand the strategies and consequences of confronting what Steve Woolgar has called ‘the horrors of reflexivity’. Reflexive work of William James, Horace Mann Bond, and Saul Rosenzweig are (...) examined: working in the early years of modern experimental psychology these scientists identified limitations in the dominant natural science model of experimentation. Attending to the scientist's own cognitions, social status, and unconscious processes respectively, James, Bond, and Rosenzweig criticized this natural science model and presented methodological and epistemic alternatives. The relative neglect of their constructive observations underscores the resistance to addressing psychology's reflexive dimensions. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between the formation of the self and the worldly horizon within which this self achieves its meaning. Our inquiry takes place from two perspectives: the first derived from the Nietzschean analysis of how one becomes what one is; the other from current developments in complexity theory. This two-angled approach opens up different, yet related dimensions of a non-essentialist understanding of the self that is none the less neither arbitrary nor deterministic. (...) Indeed, at the meeting point of these two perspectives on the self lies a conception of a dynamic, worldly self, whose identity is bound up with its appearance in a world shared with others. After examining this argument from the respective view points offered by Nietzsche and complexity theory, the article concludes with a consideration of some of the political and ethical implications of representing our situatedness within a shared human domain as a condition for self-formation. (shrink)

Google Search is arguably one of the primary epistemic tools in use today, with the lion’s share of the search-engine market globally. Scholarship on countering the current scourge of misinformation often recommends “digital lit- eracy” where internet users, especially those who get their information from so- cial media, are encouraged to fact-check such information using reputable sources. Given our current internet-based epistemic landscape, and Google’s dominance of the internet, it is very likely that such acts of epistemic hygiene will take (...) place via Google Search. The question arises whether Google Search is fit for purpose, given the apparent misalignment the general epistemic goal of promoting true beliefs and the greater online commercial ecosystem in which it is embedded. I argue that Google Search is epistemically problematic as it stands, mainly due to the opacity related to the parameters it uses for personalising search results. I further argue that in as far as an ordinary internet user is legitimately ignorant of Google’s workings, uses it in an “ordinary manner”, and is generally unable to avoid using it in the current information environment, they are not ep- istemically blameworthy for any false beliefs that they acquire via it. I conclude that too much emphasis is currently placed on individual epistemic practices and not enough on our information environment and epistemic tools when it comes to countering misinformation. (shrink)

In ‘‘Why brains matter: an integrational perspective on The Symbolic Species’’ Cowley (2002) [Language Sciences 24, 73–95] suggests that Deacon pictures brains as being able to process words qua tokens, which he identifies as the theory’s Achilles’ heel. He goes on to argue that Deacon’s thesis on the co-evolution of language and mind would benefit from an integrational approach. This paper argues that Cowley’s criticism relies on an invalid understanding of Deacon’s use the concept of ‘‘symbolic reference’’, which he appropriates (...) from Peirce’s semiotic. Peirce’s analysis as well as Deacon’s appropriation will be examined in detail. Consequently it will be argued that an integrationist reading would add very little to Deacon’s core thesis. (shrink)

It has become something of a truism that people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties with pragmatics. Granting this, however, it is important to keep in mind that there are numerous kinds of pragmatic ability. One very important divide lies between those pragmatic competences which pertain to non-literal contents – as in, for instance, metaphor, irony and Gricean conversational implicatures – and those which pertain to the literal contents of speech acts. It is against this backdrop that our question (...) arises: Are certain pragmatic tasks more difficult than others for people with ASD? (shrink)

Boards of directors affect corporate strategy and decision-making through monitoring of management and resource provision. Recently, an increasing number of studies have examined the relationships between board characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). These studies have yielded inconsistent findings. This article therefore reports the results of a study applying meta-analytical techniques to a sample of 82 empirical studies to help clarify the relationships between board characteristics and CSR. Although prior research has tended to apply relatively simplistic models investigating the impact (...) of individual board characteristics independently and only directly, we adopt a more complex perspective to shed new light on the board characteristics–CSR nexus. Specifically, we use a meta-analytic path model that accounts for the potential interplay between board characteristics in determining CSR and tests whether the presence of a CSR committee plays a meditating role. Our findings suggest that board size, board independence, and female board representation are partially interrelated with each other and jointly influence CSR directly as well as indirectly via the presence of a CSR committee. In addition, we find that country-level institutional factors act as moderators and that the relationships differ with regard to the specific dimension of CSR (i.e., social, environmental, or aggregate). (shrink)