This study examines the direct and indirect effects of interpersonal fairness on employees’ willingness-to-stay and organisation-based self-esteem through affective commitment among manufacturing workers in Tema, Ghana. Using the survey design, 300 manufacturing workers in Tema were conveniently sampled for the study. The confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyse the data. Results indicated that affective commitment partially mediated the relationship between interpersonal fairness and employees' willingness-to-stay. Affective commitment also fully mediated the interpersonal fairness- organisation based self-esteem (...) relationship. Results further showed that organisation based self-esteem partially mediated the affective commitment and willingness to stay relationship, such that, an increase in organisation-based self-esteem leads to a decrease in employees’ willingness-to-stay. These findings emphasised the roles of interpersonal fairness and affective commitment in organisations, where affective commitment increases as a result of an increase in interpersonal fairness and makes employees have an intention to stay. The findings imply that employees who are very confident and have higher organisation-based self-esteem stand lower chances of staying in their current organisations. This study is the first to examine how affective commitment transfers the effects of interpersonal fairness unto employees’ intention-to-stay among manufacturing workers in Ghana. (shrink)

This article examines the role of culture in the metaphorical/metonymic conceptualizations of fear, a primary emotion, in two languages—Akan (a West African, Kwa language) and English. The article adopts the general framework of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) to compare and contrast the differences and/or similarities in the conceptualizations as well as the language-specific construals or elaborations of shared conceptual metaphors of fear in the two languages. The analysis of the language-specific realizations of the shared metaphorical/metonymic conceptualizations of the emotion concept (...) reveals both similarities and differences in the two languages, showing support for the cultural embodied cognition thesis, namely, the similarities in the conceptualization of emotions across cultures may be explained in terms of universal embodied cognition from which general metaphorical principles derive. However, the differences in language-specific elaborations may be explained in terms of cultural filtering of the general universal conceptualizations to reflect human experiences that are more salient to a particular sociocultural group. This analysis also shows a metaphor–metonymy interaction in the conceptualization of emotions across cultures. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard, der am 5. Mai 2013 seinen 200. Geburtstag hatte, wurde vor allem bekannt durch Schriften wie Entweder-Oder, Der Begriff Angst oder Die Krankheit zum Tode. Weniger Bekanntheit erlangten seine 94 erbaulichen (oder: religiosen) Reden, die Kierkegaard als sein eigentliches Vermachtnis ansah. Michael Heymel und Christian Moller interpretieren exemplarische Texte dieser erbaulichen Reden und befragen sie auf ihre Aktualitat hin. Das Wagnis, ein Einzelner zu sein eignet sich so auch als Einfuhrung in Glauben und Denken Soren Kierkegaards. (...) Der erste Teil des Buches stellt sein Leben und sein Werk vor, der zweite prasentiert zehn ausgewahlte erbauliche Reden und legt sie fur die Gegenwart aus. Im dritten Teil wird versucht, Kierkegaards Leben in der Spannung von Freude und Schwermut, Himmel und Holle zu verstehen, und gezeigt, wie er Turen zu neuen Welten offnet. So kann man Kierkegaard als religiosen Schriftsteller kennenlernen. (shrink)

In diesem Buch wird ein zweihundert Jahre altes Problem gelost: Wie beweist Kant in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft die Vollstandigkeit seiner Urteilstafel? Da diese Tafel, zusammen mit der Kategorientafel (die von ihr abhangt) das Herzstuck von Kants Hauptwerk ausmacht, gilt das Problem von jeher als Kernproblem der Kantinterpretation. Uberraschenderweise kann es durch sorgfaltige immanente Textauslegung gelost werden: Nachweisbar ist, dass das Leitfadenkapitel, also der unmittelbare Kontext der Urteilstafel innerhalb der Kritik, eine dicht geschriebene Argumentationsskizze zu einem strengen Vollstandigkeitsbeweis enthalt, (...) dessen Uberzeugungskraft nichts zu wunschen ubriglasst. Fur die Rekonstruktion dieses Beweises kommt es zunachst auf eine genaue Analyse der Behauptungen an, die Kant mit der Urteilstafel aufstellt. Diese Analyse prasentiert das erste Kapitel. Das zweite bietet dann einen ausfuhrlichen Satz-fur-Satz-Kommentar zu der fur den Vollstandigkeitsbeweis einschlagigen Textpassage und rekonstruiert ihn in allen Details. Das dritte Kapitel schliesslich untersucht den Begriff von 'formaler Logik', den Kant voraussetzt und von dem seine Behauptung abhangt, die in der Urteilstafel vorgenommene Aufzahlung logischer Formen sei vollstandig. Der im Anhang abgedruckte Essay behandelt die bis heute kaum beachtete Auseinandersetzung, die Gottlob Frege in seiner Begriffsschrift von 1879 mit der kantischen Urteilstafel Punkt fur Punkt gefuhrt hat. Freges Kritik an ihr wird im ersten Teil des Anhangs dargestellt und erlautert. Im zweiten Teil wird dann gezeigt, dass diese Kritik in allen Punkten auf grundlegenden Irrtumern und Missverstandnissen beruht. Als besonders schwerwiegender und folgenreicher Irrtum stellt sich Freges Ansicht heraus, die Regeln dessen, was Kant als formale Logik ansah, seien aus dem Axiomensystem der Begriffsschrift ableitbar. (shrink)

The Guan migrated from the old Wagadu Empire at the time of the Mandinka invasions and arrived in present-day Ghana in the 11th century, making settlements in the northern parts and along the confluence of the Volta Lake. The exodus of the Guans pursued three separate directions. The first group, which included the Kyerepon, settled in the northern part and along the confluence of the River Volta. The Guan and Kyerepon kins occupied the territories of Ghana until the first half (...) of the 15th century when the Akan migrants of Bono waged war against them and established themselves. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the immigrant nation-states consolidated the Guan chiefdoms and kingdoms through consanguinity, conquest, or alliances. These events resulted in the kingdoms of the Bono-Manso, Abron (Gyaman), Fanteland, Dankyira, Akwamu, Ga, Asante, and Akuapem. The research paper demonstrates the origins of the Guan-Kyerepon and their contributions to the Asante nation (1635-1750) through a historical study of primary and secondary materials comprising interviews, archival documents, books, and scholarly articles. The Asante migration exodus began in the 17th century from Asamankese, a town established by Guans and Aduana Akwamu, to Esiakwa, Esumenya, and Kwaaman. The founder of the organised state of Asante was the gift of a Guan god, Tutu (in Berekuso), and it was through the help of a Kyerepon priest, Ɔkɔmfo Anokye, that Kwaaman became an organised and exceptional nation and subsequently an empire. After 1701, when the Domaa, Dankyira, and Guan states (Kwabre, Sekyere, and Tafo) were annexed, Asanteman became an established state, with the institution of the Golden Stool, a symbol of national soul and consciousness. Through the prudent counsel of the Kyerepon priest, Asante became independent from its overlord, Dankyira, and covered more than 400km of territorial block by 1750. The celebration of Adae, Odwira, and all laws governing the Asante nation-state are attributed to the Guan-Kyerepon, who became annexed and naturalised as Asante. (shrink)

2 Corinthians 5:20 belongs to a long chain of verses beginning from 5:11 to 6:13. These verses at large deal with the subject of reconciliation. A concept that emerges from Paul’s teaching is that God through the redemptive work of Christ on the cross is restoring the whole world to himself and has given us also this ministry of reconciliation. However, this paper focuses on three Greek words extracted from the text: Christou, presbeoumen, and katallasso. The study is done mainly (...) through literary activities from existing materials such as Biblical and Akan literature. It first examines, in brief, the background data on Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians to provide a historical milieu for understanding the issues Paul raises. It then continues to discuss the above-mentioned Greek words. It will also be seen that the explanation of the text has been looked at from Akan (Asante Twi) reading of the same text and then engages them within the Akan context. The paper concludes with an invitation to see ourselves as key players in what God is doing in the world. (shrink)

The latent functions of African immigration are often overlooked. Over the years, these functions have produced scenarios worth researching. Many people migrate from Africa to the West looking for greener pastures with the goal of economic upliftment. Amid this venture, however, the African immigrants come along with skills, talents, academic potentials, and religious beliefs. Most African immigrants associate with Christianity and deem it a spiritual mandate from God to impact their sphere of influence during their expeditions. Thus, these groups of (...) immigrants raise churches, form prayer groups, preach the gospel, and create mission fields. The focus of this article is threefold. First, to examine how the religiosity of African Christian immigrants have influenced their lives and in turn impacted the American Christian landscape. Second, how immigration legislation of the United States has revolutionized the lives of African immigrants. Third, how pull and push factors have become a source of motivation for African immigration. (shrink)

The United States has dealt with issues on immigration for over a century. The largest wave of immigration before the late 20th century began in the 1870s and peaked in 1910. In the past few decades, the United States has dealt overwhelmingly with the issue of undocumented immigrants. This challenge has led to different approaches to immigration reform and to help regulate the influx of immigrants across its borders. Generally, however, there have been two major sets of voices indicative of (...) the opinion of the American populace. One group has called for tighter immigration rules to prevent the easy entry of undocumented immigrants who have been branded as criminals. The other group has taken a moral and ethical stance to permit the entry of immigrants and to formulate a process for their legal residency. These two opposing views have triggered an ongoing discussion on undocumented immigrants. (shrink)

This book defends a form of ethical intuitionism, according to which (i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know some of these truths through a kind of immediate, intellectual awareness, or "intuition"; and (iii) our knowledge of moral truths gives us reasons for action independent of our desires. The author rebuts all the major objections to this theory and shows that the alternative theories about the nature of ethics all face grave difficulties.

The increasing unethical practices of graduates’ admissions have heightened concerns about the integrity of the academy. This article informs this important subject that affects the students, admission systems, and the entire scientific community, thus, representing an approach against scholarly black market activities including falsified documents and unethical practices by consultants and students’ recruitment agencies.

This study examines the outcomes of a four-year faculty learning community (FLC) that aimed to transform departmental ethics curriculum by supporting Earth Sciences faculty members as they ethically inquired into their teaching of ethics and refined existing courses in alignment with an Integrated Community-Engaged Learning and Ethical Reflection (ICELER) framework. We present ethnographic case studies that unpack processes through which three faculty members transformed undergraduate courses. We assembled case studies by triangulating interview data, course artifacts, and faculty reflections. We examine (...) how faculty (1) built awareness around teaching ethics, (2) took responsibility for and made judgments about teaching ethics, (3) experimented by designing and implementing ICELER-inspired courses, and (4) interrogated the outcomes of their ethics teaching, utilizing findings to enhance awareness and revise courses. The paper closes by introducing a model detailing how instructors inquire into ethics teaching and how model components might inspire future educational practice and research. (shrink)

The first edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy took the dialogue of science and philosophy from Aristotle through to Newton. This second edition adds eight chapters, taking the dialogue through the Enlightenment and up to Darwin. This anthology is an attempt to help bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of philosophy.

Part I: The representation of life -- Can life be given a real definition? -- The representation of the living individual -- The representation of the life-form itself -- Part II: Naive action theory -- Types of practical explanation -- Naive explanation of action -- Action and time -- Part III: Practical generality -- Two tendencies in practical philosophy -- Practices and dispositions as sources of the goodness of individual actions -- Practice and disposition as sources of individual action.

Virtually all philosophers agree that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it must satisfy certain conditions. Perhaps it must be supported by evidence. Or perhaps it must be reliably formed. Or perhaps there are some other "good-making" features it must have. But does a belief's justification also require some sort of awareness of its good-making features? The answer to this question has been hotly contested in contemporary epistemology, creating a deep divide among its practitioners. Internalists, who tend to focus (...) on scientific or theoretical beliefs as the ideal, insist that such awareness is required for justification. Externalists, who think children's ordinary beliefs in obvious facts are paradigm cases of justified belief, say it isn't required. Michael Bergmann's book offers a decisive refutation of internalism and a sustained defense of externalism. (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield during 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume I: Metaphysics and Epistemology is comprised of two parts: “The Nature of Implicit Attitudes, Implicit Bias, (...) and Stereotype Threat,” and “Skepticism, Social Knowledge, and Rationality.” The first part contains chapters examining the relationship between implicit attitudes and “dual process” models of the mind; the role of affect in the formation and change of implicit associations; the unity (or disunity) of implicit attitudes; whether implicit biases are mental states at all; and whether performances on stereotype-relevant tasks are automatic and unconscious or intentional and strategic. The second part contains chapters examining implicit bias and skepticism; the effects of implicit bias on scientific research; the accessibility of social stereotypes in epistemic environments; the effects of implicit bias on the self-perception of members of stigmatized social groups as rational agents; the role of gender stereotypes in philosophy; and the role of heuristics in biased reasoning. (shrink)

Externalist theories of justification create the possibility of cases in which everything appears to one relevantly similar with respect to two propositions, yet one proposition is justified while the other is not. Internalists find this difficult to accept, because it seems irrational in such a case to affirm one proposition and not the other. The underlying internalist intuition supports a specific internalist theory, Phenomenal Conservatism, on which epistemic justification is conferred by appearances.

Social enterprises combine social and financial goals. Previous studies have theorized the existence of a dual objective and maintain that it can lead to conflicts and create trade-offs. While the literature on trade-offs is extensively developed, empirical evidence is lacking on how the intensity of trade-offs might vary among organizations. We fill the void by investigating the moderating effect of female directorship on the relationship between the social and financial goals of social enterprises. Using data on 1193 microfinance organizations (MFOs) (...) from 108 countries between 2007 and 2019, we find that a high proportion of women in the boardroom attenuates social-financial trade-offs. Further, our results show that the mitigating effect of female directorship on social-financial trade-offs is more pronounced in nonprofit MFOs, in unsubsidized MFOs, in the period since the recent microcredit crisis, and in countries where women are more empowered in terms of access to higher education, leadership positions, and employment opportunities. We attribute our findings to the distinctive skills, competences, and experiences of women, including an ethical social orientation, as well as their transformational and relational leadership style. The findings are supported by predictions based on resource dependence and leadership style theories. (shrink)

In this engaging and spirited text, Michael Lynch argues that truth does matter, in both our personal and political lives. He explains that the growing cynicism over truth stems in large part from our confusion over what truth is.

Causation: A Realist Approach Traditional empiricist accounts of causation and laws of nature have been reductionist in the sense of entailing that given a complete specification of the non-causal properties of and relations among particulars, it is therefore logically determined both what laws there are and what events are causally related. It is argued here, however, that reductionist accounts of causation and of laws of nature are exposed to decisive objections, and thus that the time has come for empiricists to (...) break with that tradition. -/- The basic goal of this book, therefore, is to set out and defend realistic accounts of those concepts. In the case of causal relations, for example, Tooley maintains that causation is basically a matter of theoretical relations between states of affairs that underlie and explain relative frequencies. He also argues that such an approach avoids the objections that tell against reductionist accounts and that it does so without making causal relations epistemologically inaccessible. (shrink)

Dignity plays a central role in current thinking about law and human rights, but there is sharp disagreement about its meaning. Combining conceptual precision with a broad historical background, Michael Rosen puts these controversies in context and offers a novel, constructive proposal. “Penetrating and sprightly...Rosen rightly emphasizes the centrality of Catholicism in the modern history of human dignity. His command of the history is impressive...Rosen is a wonderful guide to the recent German constitutional thinking about human dignity...[Rosen] is in (...) general an urbane and witty companion, achieving his aim of accessibly written philosophy.” —Samuel Moyn, The Nation “[An] elegant, interesting and lucid exploration of the concept of dignity...Drawing on classical, liberal and Catholic traditions, Rosen hopes to rehabilitate dignity to its rightful place near the centre of moral thought...Rosen's admirable book deserves wide attention from political theorists, jurisprudes and political philosophers.” —Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Education “Dignity deserves to be widely read, not only for its intrinsic interest, but also as a corrective to the habit of discussing such topics in abstraction from their social context. Whether or not one agrees with Rosen's arguments, there can be no doubt he has widened our horizons.” —Rae Langton, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

edition (unseen), $12.95. traditions, bringing into being new modes of understanding. Paper Anthropology, and particularly ethnography, is torn between two quests, one to capture the diversity of social life and the other to discover universal principles structuring that diversity. Jackson examines these quests within the context of ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the relationship between ethnographers and the people they study. He is concerned with defining the anthropological project as something more than the projection of the anthropologist's traditions and concerns onto (...) an alien culture. Rather, he would have the project open a genuine dialogue between people from different cultures or Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Michael G. Titelbaum presents a new Bayesian framework for modeling rational degrees of belief—the first of its kind to represent rational requirements on agents who undergo certainty loss.

In this paper, I propose a new way of defining sport that I call a ‘core-periphery’ model. According to a core-periphery model, sport comes in degrees – what I refer to as ‘sport-likeness’ – and the aim of the philosopher of sport is to chart those dimensions along which an activity can be more or less a sport. By introducing the concept of sport-likeness, the core-periphery model complicates the picture of what is or is not a sport and encourages philosophers (...) interested in defining sport to engage with the social sciences in exploring the extension of the term sport in common usage. In this paper I present the results of a small survey about attitudes to sport, and use it to illustrate how a core-periphery definition of sport would proceed. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of the most influential recent discussions of the crucial metaphysical questions: what is it for one event to cause another? The subject of causation bears on many topics, such as time, explanation, mental states, the laws of nature, and the philosphy of science.

Time may be infinite in both directions. If it is, then, if persons could live at most once in all of time, the probability that you would be alive now would be zero. But if persons can live more than once, the probability that you would be alive now would be nonzero. Since you are alive now, with certainty, either the past is finite, or persons can live more than once.

In previous work I have argued against internalism by means of a dilemma intended to force all internalists to accept one of two undesirable options: either their internalism is unmotivated or it is saddled with vicious regress problems. Recently it has been argued that Phenomenal Conservatism—a theory of justification according to which justification depends on seemings—is a kind of internalism that can escape this dilemma. In this paper, I argue that Phenomenal Conservatism cannot escape my dilemma for internalism. In order (...) to do this, it is helpful to get clear on what Phenomenal Conservatism is saying, and for that reason I begin, in section I, by examining in some detail what seemings are. I then argue, in the remainder of the paper, that, whichever horn of the dilemma for internalism they take, Phenomenal Conservatives are in trouble. (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield between 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume II: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprised of three parts. “Moral Responsibility for Implicit (...) Bias” contains chapters examining the relationship of implicit biases to concepts that are central to moral responsibility, including control, awareness, reasons-responsiveness, and alienation. The chapters in the second part—“Structural Injustice”—explore the connections between the implicit biases held by individuals and the structural injustices of the societies in which they are situated. And finally, the third part—“The Ethics of Implicit Bias: Theory and Practice”—contains chapters examining strategies for implicit attitude change, the ramifications of research on implicit bias for philosophers working in ethics, and suggestions for combating implicit biases in the fields of philosophy and law. (shrink)

Begins by explaining then proving a generalized language dependence result similar to Goodman's "grue" problem. I then use this result to cast doubt on the existence of an objective evidential favoring relation (such as "the evidence confirms one hypothesis over another," "the evidence provides more reason to believe one hypothesis over the other," "the evidence justifies one hypothesis over the other," etc.). Once we understand what language dependence tells us about evidential favoring, our options are an implausibly strong conception of (...) the a priori, a hard externalism on which agents are unable to determine what their evidence favors, or a subjectivist view that makes evidential favoring relative to features of the agent. (shrink)

Using an approach deeply informed by philosophy of art, art history and perceptual psychology, this book places seeing at the centre of an original theory of pictorial representation and explores the ramifications such a theory has for the visual arts.

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should conclude (...) that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

Radical skepticism endorses the extreme claim that large swaths of our ordinary beliefs, such as those produced by perception or memory, are irrational. The best arguments for such skepticism are, in their essentials, as familiar as a popular science fiction movie and yet even seasoned epistemologists continue to find them strangely seductive. Moreover, although most contemporary philosophers dismiss radical skepticism, they cannot agree on how best to respond to the challenge it presents. In the tradition of the 18th century Scottish (...) philosopher, Thomas Reid, Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition joins this discussion by taking up four main tasks. First, it identifies the strongest arguments for radical skepticism, namely, underdetermination arguments, which emphasize the gap between our evidence and our ordinary beliefs based on that evidence. Second, it rejects all inferential or argument-based responses to radical skepticism, which aim to lay out good noncircular reasoning from the evidence on which we base our ordinary beliefs to the conclusion that those beliefs are probably true. Third, it develops a commonsense noninferential response to radical skepticism with two distinctive features: it consciously and extensively relies on epistemic intuitions, which are seemings about epistemic goods, such as knowledge and rationality, and it can be endorsed without difficulty by both internalists and externalists in epistemology. Fourth, and finally, it defends this commonsense epistemic-intuition-based response to radical skepticism against a variety of objections, including those connected with underdetermination worries, epistemic circularity, disagreement problems, experimental philosophy, and concerns about whether it engages skepticism in a sufficiently serious way. (shrink)

Introduction : from victims and perpetrators to implicated subjects -- The transmission belt of domination : theorizing the implicated subject -- On (not) being a descendant : implicated subjects and the legacies of slavery -- Progress, progression, procession : William Kentridge's implicated aesthetic -- From Gaza to Warsaw : multidirectional memory and the perpetuator -- Under the sign of suitcases : the Holocaust internationalism of Marceline Loridan-Ivens -- "Germany is in Kurdistan" : Hito Steyerl's images of implication -- Conclusion : (...) transfiguring implication : eleven theses. (shrink)

Imagination is important for many things in science: solving problems, interpreting data, designing studies, etc. Philosophers of imagination typically account for the productive role played by imagination in science by focusing on how imagination is constrained, e.g., by using self-imposed rules to infer logically, or model events accurately. But the constraints offered by these philosophers either constrain too much, or not enough, and they can never account for uses of imagination that are needed to break today’s constraints in order to (...) make progress tomorrow. Thus, epistemology of imagination needs to make room for an element of epistemological anarchy. (shrink)

Bringing together ethnographic exposition with philosophical concepts and arguments and effectively transcending subdisciplinary boundaries between cultural and ...

Drawing on work from Marina Sbisà’s “Ideology and the Persuasive Use of Presupposition” (1999), Rae Langton has developed a powerful account of the subtle mechanisms through which hate speech and propaganda spread. However, this model has a serious limitation: it focuses too strongly on individual speech acts isolated from their wider context, rendering its applicability to a broader range of cases suspect. In this chapter, I consider the limits of presupposition accommodation to clarify the audience’s role in helping hate speakers, (...) and claim the necessary mechanisms are much more active and social than Langton suggests, with effects not capturable in the analysis of isolated speech acts. I revisit Sbisà’s work on presupposition and develop an alternative model that (1) improves upon the Langtonian model for explaining the power of hate propaganda, and (2) is more in line with Sbisà’s original approach to ideology and the normative aspects of presupposition. (shrink)