The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the (...) negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Viewing workplace deviance within a victim precipitation framework, we explore how abusive supervisors target subordinates low in core self-evaluations to explain when such employees respond by engaging in workplace deviance. We theorize that employees who are lower in CSE receive more abusive supervision, which generates subsequent harmful reactions toward supervisors, peers, and the organization. This occurs primarily when employees lack sufficient cognitive resources in dealing with supervisor abuse. We test, replicate, and extend our theoretical model in three empirical studies. Results (...) demonstrate that lower employee CSE drew more abusive supervision and led low-CSE employees to exhibit workplace deviance. This abusive supervision mediation effect was stronger for employees with comparatively lower cognitive ability levels. The findings are discussed with regard to theoretical and ethical issues in confronting employee abuse. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis work explores financial edgework by professional speculative traders as an explanation for the persistence of rogue trading in financial markets. The article joins in the scholarly application of “edgework,” the social psychological study of voluntary risk, to speculative trading. The discussion focuses on the origins and persistence of that subset of behavior wherein the trader knowingly creates the condition in which he or she endangers the brokerage house that employs them and even, at times, threatens the public's perception of (...) the integrity of the securities industry. Going over the edge between risk taking and unauthorized rogue trading is explained by looking at five inducements to escalate risk taking provided in the securities industry. This examination of financial edgework demonstrates how and, to a lesser degree, why rogue trading is a result of the security industry's pursuit of and desire to capitalize upon yet not publicize an occupational culture stressing a “risk‐and‐win” ethos. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the dynamics of secrecy and the secrets business. Secrets are defined as bits of information that, for one reason or another, are kept hidden or controlled so as to elude attention, observation or comprehension. Three conceptual lenses — the micro-analytic focusing on self-deception, the social-psychological focusing on self-disclosure, and the macro-analytic focusing on public secrets — are probed. Secrecy at each of the three levels is revealed to be a janusfaced issue providing undeniable benefits (...) to Homo sapiens in their efforts to adapt to a changing world yet also creates undeniable problems. While secrecy provides the occasion for the demonstration of loyalty and intimacy, it also generates the conditions for exclusion and betrayal. The contemporary impulse to create public forums in which all is revealed, in which sunlight prevails, is too simple a panacea to those who use the topic of secrecy as an occasion to correct social, political and economic problems. (shrink)

What are the driving forces of cultural macroevolution, the evolution of cultural traits that characterize societies or populations? This question has engaged anthropologists for more than a century, with little consensus regarding the answer. We develop and fit autologistic models, built upon both spatial and linguistic neighbor graphs, for 44 cultural traits of 172 societies in the Western North American Indian (WNAI) database. For each trait, we compare models including or excluding one or both neighbor graphs, and for the majority (...) of traits we find strong evidence in favor of a model which uses both spatial and linguistic neighbors to predict a trait’s distribution. Our results run counter to the assertion that cultural trait distributions can be explained largely by the transmission of traits from parent to daughter populations and are thus best analyzed with phylogenies. In contrast, we show that vertical and horizontal transmission pathways can be incorporated in a single model, that both transmission modes may indeed operate on the same trait, and that for most traits in the WNAI database, accounting for only one mode of transmission would result in a loss of information. (shrink)

Integrating and building on the constitutional ethics paradigm proposed by Paul Roush and the neo-intuitionist moral decision-making scheme proposed by Robert Audi, I defend a novel decisionmaking procedure for hard moral choices in the military. The key to Roush’s model of justifiable disobedience is a soldier’s ability to recognize when an ostensibly legal order constitutes a ‘fundamental violation of justice’. However, the nature and structure of this act of moral recognition requires more elucidation than Roush has provided. In order to (...) avoid grounding moral recognition and decision-making on a narrowly partisan account of moral theory, I appeal to Audi’s neo-intuitionist account of prima facie moral duties. I then repurpose and develop further a decision procedure that Audi proposed for the business context. When faced with an ethical dilemma in military service, a soldier should classify his/her obligations; identify the conflicts between his/her obligations; assess the weightiness of his/ her obligations; determine ethically viable options; and then make a decision. I close the discussion with an examination of the practical problems one might face in adopting the proposal. (shrink)

Following the recent decisions by Western militaries to pursue greater integration of women into combat roles, this paper examines the principles that motivate integration and organizes them into a theoretically coherent scheme that could serve as a roadmap for policymakers as they rebuild military institutions and their combat units in an integrated fashion. The strategy of the paper is Rawlsian: the right relationship between the principles that motivate integration can be derived through an application of Rawls's methodology as described in (...) A Theory of Justice. The result is a lexically ordered set of principles that begin with gender-blind equal opportunity but permit adjustments that take gender into account when these adjustments serve the interests of military institutions. The paper concludes with a discussion of two concerns, one practical and one theoretical, that one might have about the account. (shrink)

This article draws attention to the origins, forms, and implications of “toxic discourse” as a genre central to the understanding of the public sphere in business in society. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is used as a pivotal cultural document establishing “toxic discourse” as an ongoing form of moral narrative rooted in the rationality of counterpublics. Toxic discourse is framed within a center/periphery model in which toxic discourse gains salience in periods of economic dislocation and uncertainty. In these periods, toxic discourse (...) draws together those on the periphery or counterpublics who otherwise would not unite in their opposition to the center. The article critically examines how stakeholder theory, despite making sense of the public sphere for agents of organizations, glosses counterpublics and relegates toxic discourse, as evident in the “Occupy Movement,” to the ephemeral role of temporary, disruptive protest groups with very little of substance to communicate. (shrink)

This article investigates the social accounts employed by 11 highly paid professionals and managers for neutralizing the moral stigma of losing their job due to resume fraud. This ethnographic study, based on 66 hours of interviews, explores the retrospective sense making used by resume fraudsters to justify, personally pardon and excuse behaviour seen as morally problematic by others. In this study the resume fraudsters sampled were selected because they all found high-paying jobs after their public humiliation, and each one morally (...) disengages. They put their transgressions behind them, not by seeing the light of day or asking for forgiveness, but by pointing to the ubiquity of information distortion in their companies, the victimless nature of their so-called transgression, and, most interesting, a portrayal of themselves and their act of resume fraud as the very type of risk taking required to instil capitalism with a passion and a will to succeed. The article closes with a discussion of how moral disengagement enlarges the zone of indifference in populations and reinforces cultures in which the pursuit of amorality thrives. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article takes an interdisciplinary lens to the treatment of regulatory capture . RC ensues when government bureaucrats, regulators, and public sector agencies receive adverse publicity for ceasing to serve the wider collective public interest. The work is divided into four sections. The first takes the point of view of each of the participants in the capture situation and provides an overview of the three variations on the RC story. Each subsequent section focuses on a version of the story. RC (...) 1, the libertarian free market version celebrates capture as inevitable and desirable. RC 2, the regulators' communitarian take on capture places it in the context of a cycle story with regulators dutifully doing the public's shifting will. In the RC 3 version, the public finds it difficult to piece together a coherent version of the morally charged narrative. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance of each of these three versions of RC in order to understand dominant–submissive relationships between business and government. (shrink)

Factors such as subsistence turnover, warfare, or interaction between different groups can be major sources of cultural change in human populations. Global demographic shifts such as the transition to agriculture during the Neolithic and more recently the urbanization and globalization of the twentieth century have been major catalysts for cultural change. Here, we test whether cultural traits such as patri/matrilocality and postmarital migration persist in the face of social upheaval and gene flow during the past 150 years in postcolonial South (...) Africa. The recent history of South Africa has seen major demographic shifts that resulted in the displacement and forced sedentism of indigenous Khoekhoe and San populations. During the expansion of the colonial frontier, the Khoe-San admixed with European colonists and enslaved individuals from West/Central Africa, Indonesia, and South Asia, introducing novel cultural norms. We conducted demographic interviews among Nama and Cederberg communities representing nearly 3,000 individuals across three generations. Despite the history of colonial expansion, and the subsequent incorporation of Khoe-San and Khoe-San-descendant communities into a colonial society with strong patrilocal norms, patrilocality is the least common postmarital residence pattern in our study populations today. Our results suggest that more recent forces of integration into the market economy are likely the primary drivers of change in the cultural traits examined in our study. Birthplace had a strong effect on an individual’s odds of migration, distance moved, and postmarital residence form. These effects are at least partially explained by the population size of the birthplace. Our results suggest that market factors local to birthplaces are important drivers of residence decisions, although the frequency of matrilocal residence and a geographic and temporal cline in migration and residence patterns also indicate the persistence of some historic Khoe-San cultural traits in contemporary groups. (shrink)

In the life sciences, there is an ongoing discussion about a perceived ‘reproducibility crisis’. However, it remains unclear to which extent the perceived lack of reproducibility is the consequence of issues that can be tackled and to which extent it may be the consequence of unrealistic expectations of the technical level of reproducibility. Large-scale, multi-institutional experimental replication studies are very cost- and time-intensive. This Perspective suggests an alternative, complementary approach: meta-research using sociological and philosophical methodologies to examine researcher trust in (...) data. An improved understanding of the criteria used by researchers to judge data reliability will provide crucial, initial evidence on the actual scale of the reproducibility crisis and on measures to tackle it. (shrink)

Downsizing is a process whereby human relations management emerges as a critical skill in its effective management. This paperis about perceptions of employees of a small-sized Turkish firm who survived successive downsizing decisions. It was found that downsizing affected the organizational justice-related perceptions of survivors. The questionnaire used to explore organizational justice-related perceptions involved three dimensions and was developed by Saunders and Thornhill (1999). Procedural, interactional and distributive justice-related perceptions of survivors were influenced by the way management handled the process. (...) Management credibility, communication and commitment were other variables studied. The findings supported the view that downsizing not only affects the victims but also the survivors. (shrink)

Background In May 2020, England moved to an opt-out organ donation system, meaning adults are presumed to be an organ donor unless within an excluded group or have opted-out. This change aims to improve organ donation rates following brain or circulatory death. Healthcare staff in the UK are supportive of organ donation, however, both healthcare staff and the public have raised concerns and ethical issues regarding the change. The #options survey was completed by NHS organisations with the aim of understanding (...) awareness and support of the change. This paper analyses the free-text responses from the survey. Methods The #options survey was registered as a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) portfolio trial [IRAS 275992] 14 February 2020, and was completed between July and December 2020 across NHS organisations in the North-East and North Cumbria, and North Thames. The survey contained 16 questions of which three were free-text, covering reasons against, additional information required and family discussions. The responses to these questions were thematically analysed. Results The #options survey received 5789 responses from NHS staff with 1404 individuals leaving 1657 free-text responses for analysis. The family discussion question elicited the largest number of responses (66%), followed by those against the legislation (19%), and those requiring more information (15%). Analysis revealed six main themes with 22 sub-themes. Conclusions The overall #options survey indicated NHS staff are supportive of the legislative change. Analysis of the free-text responses indicates that the views of the NHS staff who are against the change reflect the reasons, misconceptions, and misunderstandings of the public. Additional concerns included the rationale for the change, informed decision making, easy access to information and information regarding organ donation processes. Educational materials and interventions need to be developed for NHS staff to address the concepts of autonomy and consent, organ donation processes, and promote family conversations. Wider public awareness campaigns should continue to promote the positives and refute the negatives thus reducing misconceptions and misunderstandings. Trial registration National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) [IRAS 275992]. (shrink)

With the growing interest in trust in the social sciences, this second edition of the Handbook of Research Methods on Trust provides a fully updated and extended account of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods for empirical research. While many researchers have already drawn inspiration and insight from the previous edition, the dynamic development of trust research calls for further and deeper engagement with methodological issues, particular methods, practical research experience, and current challenges and innovations as offered by this new edition.

Mark Balaguer’s project in this book is extremely ambitious; he sets out to defend both platonism and fictionalism about mathematical entities. Moreover, Balaguer argues that at the end of the day, platonism and fictionalism are on an equal footing. Not content to leave the matter there, however, he advances the anti-metaphysical conclusion that there is no fact of the matter about the existence of mathematical objects.1 Despite the ambitious nature of this project, for the most part Balaguer does not (...) shortchange the reader on rigor; all the main theses advanced are argued for at length and with remarkable clarity and cogency. There are, of course, gaps in the account but these should not be allowed to overshadow the sig-. (shrink)

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches (...) that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists. (shrink)

In New Philosophy for New Media, Mark Hansen defines the image in digital art in terms that go beyond the merely visual. Arguing that the "digital image" encompasses the entire process by which information is made perceivable, he places the body in a privileged position -- as the agent that filters information in order to create images. By doing so, he counters prevailing notions of technological transcendence and argues for the indispensability of the human in the digital era.Hansen examines (...) new media art and theory in light of Henri Bergson's argument that affection and memory render perception impure -- that we select only those images precisely relevant to our singular form of embodiment. Hansen updates this argument for the digital age, arguing that we filter the information we receive to create images rather than simply receiving images as preexisting technical forms. This framing function yields what Hansen calls the "digital image." He argues that this new "embodied" status of the frame corresponds directly to the digital revolution: a digitized image is not a fixed representation of reality, but is defined by its complete flexibility and accessibility. It is not just that the interactivity of new media turns viewers into users; the image itself has become the body's process of perceiving it.To illustrate his account of how the body filters information in order to create images, Hansen focuses on new media artists who follow a "Bergsonist vocation"; through concrete engagement with the work of artists like Jeffrey Shaw, Douglas Gordon, and Bill Viola, Hansen explores the contemporary aesthetic investment in the affective, bodily basis of vision. The book includes over 70 illustrations from the works of these and many other new media artists. (shrink)

Prehensity -- Intensity -- Potentiality -- Sensibility.

Over the past few decades, we have improved our understanding of the health impacts of climate change.1 Although many public health researchers have contributed to this knowledge, relatively few are aware of how their work may relate to the social cost of carbon. The social cost of carbon is a core economic concept in climate policy and one that can—and should—benefit directly from research produced by the public health community. The concept’s importance was recently highlighted by this past year’s Nobel (...) Prize in Economic Sciences, which was awarded to William Nordhaus in part for his pioneering work developing models to estimate the social cost of carbon. Below we describe this concept, explain how it is calculated, and provide some brief guidance on how health research can improve its estimation. (shrink)

Poised on the cusp between phenomenology and materiality, media institute a theoretical oscillation that promises to displace the empirical-transcendental divide that has structured western meditation on thinking, including the thinking of technics. Because media give the infrastructure conditioning thought without ceasing to be empirical, they form the basis for a complex hermeneutics that cannot avoid the task of accounting for its unthematizable infrastructural condition. Tracing the oscillation constitutive of such a hermeneutics as it serves variously to constitute media theory in (...) the work of critics from McLuhan to Kittler, from Leroi-Gourhan to Stiegler, my interrogation ultimately conceptualizes the medium as an environment for life:by giving concrete form to ‘epiphylogenesis’, concrete media find their most ‘originary’ function not as artifacts but via their participation in human technogenesis. (shrink)

In the past 25 years or so, the issue of ethical universalizability has figured prominently in theoretical as well as practical ethics. The term, 'universaliz ability' used in connection with ethical considerations, was apparently first introduced in the mid-1950s by R. M. Hare to refer to what he characterized as a logical thesis about certain sorts of evaluative sentences (Hare, 1955). The term has since been used to cover a broad variety of ethical considerations including those associated with the ideas (...) of impartiality, consistency, justice, equality, and reversibility as well as those raised in the familar questions: 'What if everyone did that?' and 'How would you like it if someone did that to you? But this recent effloresence of the use of the term 'universalizability' is something that has deep historical roots, and has been central in various forms to the thinking about morality of some of the greatest and most influential philosophers in the western tradition. While the term is relatively new, the ideas it is now used to express have a long history. Most of these ideas and questions have been or can be formulated into a principle to be discussed, criticized, or defended. As we discuss these ideas below this prin ciple will be stated on a separate numbered line. The concepts of justice and equality were closely linked in Greek thought. These connections between these two concepts are apparent even in two authors who were hostile to the connection, Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was described by Paul Ricoeur as 'the greatest of the French phenomenologists'. The essays in this volume examine the full scope of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, from his central and abiding concern with the nature of perception and the bodily constitution of intentionality to his reflections on science, nature, art, history, and politics. The authors explore the historical origins and context of his thought as well as its continuing relevance to contemporary work in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, biology, (...) art criticism and political and social theory. What emerges is a fresh image of Merleau-Ponty as a deep and original thinker whose philosophical importance has been underestimated, in part owing to the influence of intellectual movements such as existentialism and structuralism, into which his work could not be easily assimilated. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Merleau-Ponty currently available. (shrink)

"My aim in this paper is to develop an ontology of media operations that is rooted in Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation. I position this media operative ontology in contrast to Bernhard Siegert’s understanding of operative ontology as a cultural technique. Drawing on Wolfgang Ernst, Henri Atlan, and Michel Serres, I argue that Siegert’s position compromises the extra-cultural operationality of technical media, and of techniques more generally, in its bid to redirect media theory from its Kittlerian trajectory. With his theory (...) of information as reception of environmental singularity by a metastable receiver, Simondon provides a mechanism for theorizing how extra-cultural operationality of technical media informs the production of culture and the distinctions upon which it rests, without compromising the alterity of technics. Mein Ziel in diesem Beitrag ist es, eine Ontologie von Medienoperationen zu entwickeln, die auf Gilbert Simondons Theorie der Individuation fußt. Auf der Grundlage von Wolfgang Ernst, Henri Atlan und Michel Serres behaupte ich, dass Siegerts Versuch, die Medientheorie von ihrer Kittlerschen Linie abzulenken, den Stellenwert der außerkulturellen Operationalität technischer Medien und der Techniken im Allgemeinen herabspielt. Mit seiner Theorie der Information als Empfang von umweltlicher Singularität durch einen metastabilen Empfänger bietet Simondon dagegen einen Mechanismus, dank dem theoretisch durchdacht werden kann, wie die außerkulturelle Operationalität der technischen Medien die Kulturproduktion und die Unterscheidungen, auf denen sie beruht, prägt, ohne die Andersheit der Technik zu reduzieren. ". (shrink)

The United Nations' (UN) adoption of a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is intended to mark a fundamental ethical turn in the relationships between indigenous peoples and the community of sovereign states. This moment is the result of decades of discussion and negotiation, largely revolving around states' discomfort with notion of indigenous self-determination. Member states of the UN have feared that an ethic of indigenous self-determination would undermine the principles of state sovereignty on which the UN is (...) itself grounded. However, such fears are the result of very poor understandings of the ethical principles under which the relations between indigenous peoples and nation-states already have been formed under centuries of European colonialism. The principle of self-determination embraced in this Declaration does not diverge from colonial norms; it entrenches these norms as international policy. Without doubt, indigenous peoples are more likely to benefit than suffer from states' observance of the Articles within this Declaration. Reducing the challenge of indigenous peoples' rights to the notion of self-determination set out in this document, though, misses an extraordinarily important opportunity to critically investigate the ethic of rights that has produced an opposition between nation-states and indigenous peoples to begin with. A true turn in the ethics of this relationship would see not simply the institution of a right to self-determination but, rather, indigenous peoples' right to first determine the nature of self for themselves. (shrink)

This article proposes that time is not so much constituted by time-consciousness as given by technical inscriptions of time. The `digital gift' of time that comprises one fundamental mode of this giving of time correlates with Aristotle's conception of time as `the number of movement according to the before and after'; more specifically, it furnishes a minimal form of temporal difference — a minimal before-after structure — that proves useful for exploring how the experience of time has changed today. The (...) article argues that we increasingly live time not, as philosopher Bernard Stiegler argues, through neo-Husserlian temporal objects like the cinema that model the flow of time through our consciousnesses, but rather with the aid of artworks that eschew the objectal in favor of the processual. In works like Wolfgang Staehle's Empire 24/7, Pierre Huyghe's L'Ellipse and Lynn Kirby's Six Shooter, we confront open-ended digital structures that provide us with a technically-specific mediation of the minimal before-after structure and allow us to participate in more heterogeneous enframings of time that move beyond the temporal ratios of human perception. The article closes with a brief discussion of contemporary Chinese art that serves to broaden the proposed `digital aesthetic' of time beyond the `digital' construed narrowly as a concrete technical platform. (shrink)

Journal of International Political Theory, Ahead of Print. The contemporary international regime of law and politics regarding human migration largely follows Immanuel Kant’s contradictory approach, supporting the cosmopolitical rights of humans to move and expect hospitality while privileging the rights of sovereign states to assert territorial security against movement. International Relations scholars informed by Jacques Derrida’s ethical theory argue that one may press this tension to positive dynamics through affirmation of the aporia that a secured home is a requirement for (...) the possibility of the hospitality that might undo conflict between migrants and emplaced citizens. Yet, the attraction of Derrida’s critical Kantianism and this revival of hospitality depends on asserting the primacy of habitation to how citizen subjects stand with respect to foreigners who move. It depends on neglecting how any assumption of home is not based on a given home but, rather, on movements to impose the boundaries and bounty of a home. No one faces the movement of others who seek to make home from the position of home but only also in movements of homemaking. Both the citizen and the migrant move in forms of imposition. And it is only in a politics of imposition that rights to move can be affirmed and gain respect. (shrink)

The contemporary international regime of law and politics regarding human migration largely follows Immanuel Kant’s contradictory approach, supporting the cosmopolitical rights of humans to move and expect hospitality while privileging the rights of sovereign states to assert territorial security against movement. International Relations scholars informed by Jacques Derrida’s ethical theory argue that one may press this tension to positive dynamics through affirmation of the aporia that a secured home is a requirement for the possibility of the hospitality that might undo (...) conflict between migrants and emplaced citizens. Yet, the attraction of Derrida’s critical Kantianism and this revival of hospitality depends on asserting the primacy of habitation to how citizen subjects stand with respect to foreigners who move. It depends on neglecting how any assumption of home is not based on a given home but, rather, on movements to impose the boundaries and bounty of a home. No one faces the movement of others who seek to make home from the position of home but only also in movements of homemaking. Both the citizen and the migrant move in forms of imposition. And it is only in a politics of imposition that rights to move can be affirmed and gain respect. (shrink)

Our understanding of the nature and processing of figurative language is central to several important issues in cognitive science, including the relationship of language and thought, how we process language, and how we comprehend abstract meaning. Over the past fifteen years, traditional approaches to these issues have been challenged by experimental psychologists, linguists, and other cognitive scientists interested in the structures of the mind and the processes that operate on them. In Figurative Language and Thought, internationally recognized experts in the (...) field of figurative language, Albert Katz, Mark Turner, Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., and Cristina Cacciari, provide a coherent and focused debate on the subject. The book's authors discuss a variety of fundamental questions, including: What can figures of speech tell us about the structure of the conceptual system? If and how should we distinguish the literal from the nonliteral in our theories of language and thought? Are we primarily figurative thinkers and consequently figurative language users or the other way around? Why do we prefer to speak metaphorically in everyday conversation, when literal options may be available for use? Is metaphor the only vehicle through which we can understand abstract concepts? What role do cultural and social factors play in our comprehension of figurative language? These and related questions are raised and argued in an integrative look at the role of nonliteral language in cognition. This volume, a part of Counterpoints series, will be thought-provoking reading for a wide range of cognitive psychologists, linguists, and philosophers. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is proposed that experts are able to integrate prior contextual knowledge with emergent visual information to make complex predictive judgments about the world around them, often under heightened levels of uncertainty and extreme time constraints. However, limited knowledge exists about the impact of anxiety on the use of such contextual priors when forming our decisions. We provide a novel insight into the combined impact of contextual priors and anxiety on anticipation in soccer. Altogether, 12 expert soccer players were required (...) to predict the actions of an oncoming opponent while viewing life-sized video simulations of 2-versus-2 defensive scenarios. Performance effectiveness and processing efficiency were measured under four conditions: no contextual priors about the action tendencies of the opponent and low anxiety ; no CP and high anxiety ; CP and LA; CP and HA. The provision of contextual priors did not affect processing efficiency, but it improved performance effectiveness... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.4 (2001) 54-82 [Access article in PDF] Seeing With The Body The Digital Image In Postphotography Mark B. N. Hansen In a well-known scene from the 1982 Ridley Scott film Bladerunner, Rick Deckard scans a photograph into a 3-D rendering machine and directs the machine to explore the space condensed in the two-dimensional photograph as if it were three-dimensional [see fig. 1]. Following Deckard's commands to zoom (...) in and to pan right and left within the image space, the machine unpacks the "real" three-dimensional world represented by the two-dimensional photograph [see figs. 2-3]. After catching a glimpse of his target—a fugitive replicant—reflected from a mirror within the space, Deckard instructs the machine to move around behind the object obstructing the two-dimensional photographic view of the replicant and to frame what it sees [see figs. 4-5]. Responding to the print command issued by Deckard, the machine dispenses a photograph of the replicant which is, quite literally, a close-up of an invisible—indeed nonexistent—part of the two-dimensional original [see fig. 6]. And yet, following the fantasy of this scene, this impossible photograph is—or would be—simply the image of one particular data point within the data set comprising this three-dimensional data space. As fascinating as it is puzzling, this scene of an impossible rendering—a rendering of two-dimensional data as a three-dimensional space—can be related to the crisis brought to photography by digitization in two ways. On the one hand, in line with the film's thematic questioning of photography as a reliable index of memory, this scene foregrounds the technical capacity of digital processing to manipulate photographs. In this way, it thematizes the threat posed by digital technologies to traditional indexical notions of photographic realism. On the other hand, in what has turned out to be a far more prophetic vein, the scene presents a radically new understanding of the photographic image as a three-dimensional "virtual" space. Such an understanding presupposes a vastly different material existence of the photographic image: instead of a physical inscription of light on sensitive paper, the photograph has become a data set that can be rendered in various ways and thus viewed from various perspectives.The first position corresponds to the arguments made by William Mitchell in his now classic book, The Reconfigured Eye. In a comprehensive analysis of the techniques and possibilities of digital imaging, Mitchell concentrates on demarcating the traditional photographic image from its digital doppelgänger. While the specter of manipulation has always haunted the photographic image, it remains the exception rather than the rule: "There is no doubt that extensive reworking of photographic images to produce seamless transformations and combinations is technically difficult, time-consuming, and outside the mainstream of photographic practice. When we look at photographs we presume, unless we have some clear indications to the contrary, that they have not been reworked" [Mitchell 7]. To buttress this claim, Mitchell sketches three criteria for evaluating traditional photographic images: (1) does the image follow the conventions of photography and seem internally coherent? (2) does the visual evidence it presents [End Page 54]Stills from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Video. Rick Deckard navigates a two-dimensional image as a three-dimensional space." width="72" height="33" />Click for larger viewFigure 1Still from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Video. Rick Deckard navigates a two-dimensional image as a three-dimensional space.Stills from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Video. Rick Deckard navigates a two-dimensional image as a three-dimensional space." width="72" height="32" />Click for larger viewFigure 2Still from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Video. Rick Deckard navigates a two-dimensional image as a three-dimensional space.Stills from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Video. Rick Deckard navigates a two-dimensional image as a three-dimensional space." width="72" height="33" />Click... (shrink)