This paper provides an initial, multidimensional map of the complex relationships among consciousness, mind, brain, and the external world in a way that both follows the contours of everyday experience and the findings of science. It then demonstrates how this reflexive monist map can be used to evaluate the utility and resolve some of the oppositions of the many other 'isms' that currently populate consciousness studies. While no conventional, one-dimensional 'ism' such as physicalism can do justice to this web of (...) relationships, physicalism, functionalism, dualism, neutral monism, and dual-aspect monism can all be seen to provide useful ways of understanding different aspects of the relationships among consciousness, mind, brain, and the external world when these are viewed in either a first- or a third-person way from within this web of relationships by sentient creatures such as ourselves. For example, physicalism and functionalism provide a useful understanding of consciousness, mind, brain, and the external world when viewed from a third-person perspective, while neutral monism provides a useful way of understanding first- versus third-person views of external phenomena. On the other hand, dual-aspect monism provides a useful way of understanding first- versus third-person views of mind, including eastern versus western views of mind. Dual-aspect monism also provides a useful understanding of the 'unconscious ground of being' that gives rise to, supports, and embeds all these observable phenomena. For an integrated understanding one needs to understand how these phenomena and relationships combine into an integrated whole. (shrink)

A number of writers have picked out the way knowledge in the human sciences reflexively alters the human subject as what separates these sciences from the natural sciences. Furthermore, they take this reflexivity to be a condition of moral existence. The article sympathetically examines this emphasis on reflexive processes, but it rejects the particular conclusion that the reflexive phenomenon enables us to demarcate the human sciences. The first sections analyse the different meanings that references to reflexivity have in (...) the psychological and social sciences, in philosophy and in material life, and they link these meanings to the post-positivist philosophy of the social sciences. The discussion considers the problems raised (most influentially in the human sciences by Foucault) by being reflexive about reflexivity itself. They put a large question mark against hopes for a revived philosophical anthropology. Whatever the philosophical arguments, however, there is clearly a reflexive practice in the humanities and human sciences which there is not in the natural sciences. This leads to the argument that there are different forms of knowledge for different purposes and that it may therefore be divergence of purpose, not reflexivity itself, that creates differences among the sciences. It is the fact and purpose of human self-reflection that marks out the human sciences. If this is so, then it explains why an apparently circumscribed question about the classification of knowledge turns out to be inseparable from ontological and moral questions about human identity. (shrink)

I argue that Forst’s justification paradigm is less radical than claimed in that it fails to establish an immanent connection between the role of justification as a transcendental principle and as...

_In this paper, I show that a robust, reflexivist account of self-awareness (such as was defended by Dignga and Dharmakīrti, most phenomenologists, and others) is compatible with reductionist view of persons, and hence with a rejection of the existence of a substantial, separate self. My main focus is on the tension between Buddhist reflexivism and the central Buddhist doctrine of no-self. In the first section of the paper, I give a brief sketch of reflexivist (...) accounts of self-awareness, using the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti as my example. In the next section, I examine reductionism as it relates to accounts of the self. I then, in the third section, argue that a reductionist account of persons can account for the unique features of first-person contents and our deep and multi-layered sense of self_. (shrink)

This article looks at the discursive and practical construction of walking in a British context. It examines the ways in which notions and practices generated by conventions around the meaning of walking in the countryside apparently contradict prevailing ideas that walking is an escape from the restrictions of everyday urban life. Identifying particular, competing forms of walking and the techniques and identities that they espouse, it is suggested that such activities are suffused with disciplinary norms. Yet despite these conventions, walking (...) holds out the possibility of disruption, through confrontation with physical discomfort, unpredictable features and sensual experience that contrasts with much contemporary forms of movement. The work of artist Richard Long is used to explore these issues. (shrink)

One prominent aspect of recent developments in science studies has been the increasing employment of economic concepts and models in the depiction of science, including the notion of a free market for scientific ideas. This gives rise to the issue of the adequacy of the conceptual resources of economics for this purpose. This paper suggests an adequacy test by putting a version of free market economics to a self-referential scrutiny. The outcome is that either free market economics is self-defeating, or (...) else there must be two different concepts of free market, one for the ordinary economy, the other for science. Both conclusions will impose limits on the applicability of the ordinary economic concept of the market to the study of science. (shrink)

Token-reflexive theories of indexicals – words like ‘I,’ ‘here,’ and ‘today’ – are widely thought to face a problem in account for intuitively valid arguments involving indexicals. Yet all discussions of the problem with which I am familiar focus on particular examples or on particular rules of inference. In this paper, I first state the problem in its full generality, and then argue that two recent attempts to reject the problem fail. Finally, I consider the proposal by García-Carpintero that demonstratives (...) – ‘this’ and ‘that’ – raise the same problem. I argue that while there are important similarities between the logic problem for token-reflexives and the role of demonstratives in logic, recent work on the logic of demonstratives can offer insights into logic that token-reflexive theories cannot. (shrink)

Last paragraphe: Finally, we need to take on board the strange and disturbing fact that the modern destruction of environments has occurred not as if nature counted for nothing but, on the contrary, has occurred in a world of longstanding climatic theories that have earmarked environmental objects as the very things that produce humankind. Modern man, oblivious of the impact of his actions and blinded by his faith in progress and polarized vision of the world? Our postmodernity also has its (...) own mythologies. (shrink)

The critical realist and Bourdieusian conceptions of action fundamentally disagree on a number of fronts: the synthetic versus dualistic relationship between structure and agency; the social nature of the self/body; the link between morphogenesis and reflexivity. Despite these differences, this article argues that re-reading Bourdieu’s theories with attention to some of the core tenets of critical realism (emergence, the stratification of reality, and conjunctural causality) can provide insights into how the habitus is capable of reflexivity and social change. (...) In particular, this article reworks Bourdieu’s theory of habitus by suggesting that social selves are always situated at the intersection of multiple and competing social locations (or field positions) and that the habitus itself is always layered. Reflexivity arises from horizontal disjunctures (between field positions) and vertical disjunctures (across temporal sedimentation). (shrink)

David Bloor has advocated a bold hypothesis about the form any sociology of science should take in setting out the four central tenets of his ?strong programme? (SP). The first section of this paper discusses how three of these tenets are best formulated and how they relate to one another. The second section discusses how reasons can be causes of belief and how such reasons raise a serious difficulty for SP. The third section discusses how SP is committed to a (...) form of relativism about truth. The fourth section discusses how one might deal with the problem of SP applying both to itself and to other sociological theories. In addition there is, throughout, a discussion of how rules of inference, methodologies, and philosophical doctrines either apply to SP or are exempt from applying. It is argued that SP must be a severely limited doctrine impotent to make evaluative claims about the worth of any theory, including itself. (shrink)

This paper proceeds from examining the debate regarding the question of whether a systematic literature review should be undertaken within a qualitative research study to focusing specifically on the role of a literature review in a phenomenological study. Along with pointing to the pertinence of orienting to, articulating and delineating the phenomenon within a review of the literature, the paper presents an appropriate approach for this purpose. How a review of the existing literature should locate the focal phenomenon within a (...) given context is illustrated by excerpts from the first author’s literature review within a descriptive phenomenological study. Also discussed is the important issue of when the researcher should fully enter the attitude of the phenomenological reduction and how this may influence the study. (shrink)

Reflexive monism is, in essence, an ancient view of how consciousness relates to the material world that has, in recent decades, been resurrected in modern form. In this paper I discuss how some of its basic features differ from both dualism and variants of physicalist and functionalist reductionism, focusing on those aspects of the theory that challenge deeply rooted presuppositions in current Western thought. I pay particular attention to the ontological status and seeming “out-thereness” of the phenomenal world and to (...) how the “phenomenal world” relates to the “physical world”, the “world itself”, and processing in the brain. In order to place the theory within the context of current thought and debate, I address questions that have been raised about reflexive monism in recent commentaries and also evaluate competing accounts of the same issues offered by “transparency theory” and by “biological naturalism”. I argue that, of the competing views on offer, reflexive monism most closely follows the contours of ordinary experience, the findings of science, and common sense. (shrink)

J'attaque de front la notion d'un être nécessaire qui de par sa nécessité rend raison de sa propre existence. Une telle notion est entachée d'aporie. En plus elle confond la nécessité formelle, voire métaphysique avec la puissance réelle à un tel point qu'elle pousse Leibniz bel et bien vers le spinozisme. Le rejet d'une telle notion mène de sa part inéluctablement à une régression à l'infini de raisons raisonnantes d'où, bien entendu, Dieu est exclu, bien qu'il soutienne par son intellect (...) une telle régression en tant que celle-ci s'avère nécessaire. (shrink)

This paper proceeds from examining the debate regarding the question of whether a systematic literature review should be undertaken within a qualitative research study to focusing specifically on the role of a literature review in a phenomenological study. Along with pointing to the pertinence of orienting to, articulating and delineating the phenomenon within a review of the literature, the paper presents an appropriate approach for this purpose. How a review of the existing literature should locate the focal phenomenon within a (...) given context is illustrated by excerpts from the first author’s literature review within a descriptive phenomenological study. Also discussed is the important issue of when the researcher should fully enter the attitude of the phenomenological reduction and how this may influence the study. (shrink)

How Does a Society Change? is a scholarly work analyzing factors and ideas that either facilitate or hinder social renewal and political change. This question is explored via original examples and conceptual analyses, resulting in an appeal for apprising education and politics in the fullest sense of the terms.

This is a brief response to Loïc Wacquant’s article, ‘Homines in extremis’. The response makes four contributions. First, I consider some of the reasons for the confusion surrounding the habitus concept, arguing that this confusion may be lessened (without any obvious loss) if we revert to ‘habit’ or ‘disposition’. Second, I argue that, irrespective of these terminological quibbles, it is vital that we do not conflate ‘habitus’ and ‘embodied actor’ as some accounts do. There is more to the embodied actor (...) than her habits and she can only have habits because this is so. Third, I begin to explore the point of view offered by ‘carnal ethnography’ and call for further clarification of that point of view. Finally, I note that Wacquant’s ethnography has the effect of rendering certain of Bourdieu’s ideas in a more concrete manner and foregrounding sociability, which the latter is sometimes inclined to ignore. This, I suggest, is a positive development. (shrink)

Reflexive Methodology established itself as a groundbreaking success, providing researchers with an invaluable guide to a central problem in research methodology – how to put field research and interpretations in perspective, paying attention to the interpretive, political, and rhetorical nature of empirical research. Now thoroughly updated, the Second Edition includes a new chapter on positivism, social constructionism, and critical realism, and offers new conclusions on the applications of methodology. It provides further illustrations and updates that build on the acclaimed and (...) successful First Edition. (shrink)

The entropic state that engulfed the East Coast of Australia in the first eight months of 2020 followed thirty years of uninterrupted economic growth and 10 years of tenuous federal governments divided on the question of climate change. The twin geophysical crises of catastrophic bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a public reckoning around our guardianship of the environment, as well as our relationship with science and indigenous knowledge. Congruent with this was the rapid transformation of both schools (...) and universities to online learning, causing the most significant rupture to the traditional ‘grammar of schooling’ for decades. This unprecedented conflation of crises has resulted in the unusual situation where education can be radically transformed, as the material conditions that usually remain latent suddenly exist. As a result, there has been an increased openness to pedagogies of potentiality, as schools and universities resist the urge to ‘return to normal’. Amongst these pedagogies, the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler is unique in its direct response to the entropic state with a counter-impulse, negantropy, which seeks to harness our technological capacity under an ethos of care and unite it with our existential purpose to flourish and thrive. This paper will consider the possibilities of Stiegler’s utopian call for action in relation to the Australian context, as schools and universities reconceptualise the sharing of knowledge and the purpose of education that seeks to rectify the gaps of the past. (shrink)

The current study proposes a moderated mediation model to explain the relationship between humble leadership and team innovation. Our hypothesis integrates social information processing theory with the existing literature on humble leadership. As a result, we theorize that when a humble individual leads a team, the team members are more likely to reconsider strategies, review events with self-awareness, share diverse information, and adapt to new ideas, which in turn promotes innovative team activities. Moreover, consistent with the research that emphasizes the (...) inclusion of team culture in exploring leader–innovation relationships, we investigate the moderating role of a team’s expertise diversity in the above positive, indirect relationship. We test our model by using both archival and survey data collected from 135 teams within 18 medium-to-large internet technology firms in China. The findings largely support our theoretical assertions, suggesting that humble leadership has important implications for team processes and innovation. (shrink)

The chapter shows how the recognition of reflexivity of emotions is crucial for understanding the role of emotions in reasoning because it highlights the regulatory role of emotion in emotional experience. The chapter begins by showing that to attain a conception of rationality that incorporates feelings, emotions, and sentiments as parts of the reasoning processes requires capturing the emotional landscape in all its complexity, and that integrating the role of meta-emotions is a contribution in that direction. Then introducing the (...) notion of meta-emotions and showing how emotional reflexivity modifies the nature of our emotional world, it is shown how emotions also have a regulatory mechanism that can either be maladaptive or at the center of emotional health. In addition, because meta-emotions provide a test for the more general assumptions of theories of emotions, the chapter ends by showing how adopting a Situated Approach to Emotions is well-suited for explaining the refinement and complexity of emotion regulation. The final reflection of the chapter explains why adopting such theoretical frame of work makes it possible to use the term situation in a technical manner, which then reveals that emotions sometimes are described as causes while other times as reasons in connection to their regulative mechanisms. (shrink)

In their article, Nelson et al. (2023) raise concerns regarding the “paradox of experience” as it relates to the practice of bioethics. They argue that while experience provides individuals with in...

The ‘reflexive turn’ transcended disciplinary boundaries within the social sciences. Feminist scholars in particular have taken up its core concerns, establishing a wide-ranging literature on reflexivity in feminist theory and practice. In this paper, I contribute to this scholarship by deconstructing the ‘story’ of my own research as a white, genderqueer, masculine-presenting researcher in Ghana. This deconstruction is based on thirteen months of field research exploring LGBT activism in the capital city of Accra. Using a series of ethnographic vignettes, (...) I examine questions of queer subjectivity, embodiment and self/other dynamics in the research encounter. Specifically, I interrogate what a reflexive concern for power relations means when researchers share moments of commonality and difference with research participants, here in relation to axes of gender, sexuality, race and class. Finally, I explore the challenge of theorising resistance in light of feminist postcolonial critiques of the politics of representation. I conclude that it is only by locating these tensions and dissonances in the foreground of our inquiries that reflexivity becomes meaningful as a way of rendering knowledge production more accountable and transparent, of practising feminist solidarity, and of excavating our own queer research journeys. (shrink)

Bringing together such thinkers as Ulrich Beck, Bruno Latour, Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, this important book discusses critical themes in the development ...

The Dutch animal production sector faces significant pressure for change. We discuss a project for the design of a sustainable husbandry system for pigs. Named after the Greek hero Hercules, the project aimed for structural changes in both animal and crop production. However, instead of changing the course of the river, the project ended up merely adapting its flow. The Hercules project ran into difficulties typical for projects aiming at reflexive modernization. It relapsed from an effort for reflexive modernization to (...) ecological modernization, by ultimately leaving the structural features of the sociotechnical regime intact. We show how this resulted from the biases and limitations implied by existing institutions, in which the project was unavoidably embedded. We introduce the idea of reflexive design, as “doing” reflexive modernization, which implies working on action and structure at the same time. A number of recommendations are given for reflexive design projects like this. (shrink)