Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) is a theory of choice underradical uncertainty– situations where outcomes cannot be enumerated and probabilities cannot be assigned. Whereas most theories of choice assume that people rely on (potentially biased) probabilistic judgments, such theories cannot account for adaptive decision-making when probabilities cannot be assigned. CNT proposes that people usenarratives– structured representations of causal, temporal, analogical, and valence relationships – rather than probabilities, as the currency of thought that unifies our sense-making and decision-making faculties. According to (...) CNT, narratives arise from the interplay between individual cognition and the social environment, with reasoners adopting a narrative that feels “right” to explain the available data; using that narrative to imagine plausible futures; and affectively evaluating those imagined futures to make a choice. Evidence from many areas of the cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences supports this basic model, including lab experiments, interview studies, and econometric analyses. We identify 12 propositions to explain how the mental representations (narratives) interact with four inter-related processes (explanation, simulation, affective evaluation, and communication), examining the theoretical and empirical basis for each. We conclude by discussing how CNT can provide a common vocabulary for researchers studying everyday choices across areas of the decision sciences. (shrink)

I argue that the modernist notion of a human self cannot easily be post-modernistically rejected because the need to view an individual life as a unified 'narrative' with a beginning and an end is a condition for asking humanly important questions about its meaningfulness. Such questions are central to philosophical anthropology. However, not only modern ways of making sense of life, such as linear narration in literature, but also premodern ones such as tragedy, ought to be taken seriously (...) in reflecting on these questions. The tradition of pragmatism has tolerated this plurality of the frameworks in terms of which we can interpret or 'structure' the world and our lives as parts of it. It is argued that pragmatism is potentially able to accommodate both the plurality of such interpretive frameworks-premodern, modern, postmodern — and the need to evaluate those frameworks normatively. We cannot allow any premodern source of human meaningfulness whatsoever to be taken seriously. Avoiding relativism is, then, a most important challenge for the pragmatist. (shrink)

I argue that the modernist notion of a human self cannot easily be post-modernistically rejected because the need to view an individual life as a unified ‘narrative’ with a beginning and an end is a condition for asking humanly important questions about its meaningfulness. Such questions are central to philosophical anthropology. However, not only modern ways of making sense of life, such as linear narration in literature, but also premodern ones such as tragedy, ought to be taken seriously (...) in reflecting on these questions. The tradition of pragmatism has tolerated this plurality of the frameworks in terms of which we can interpret or ‘structure’ the world and our lives as parts of it. It is argued that pragmatism is potentially able to accommodate both the plurality of such interpretive frameworks—premodern, modern, postmodern—and the need to evaluate those frameworks normatively. We cannot allow any premodern source of human meaningfulness whatsoever to be taken seriously. Avoiding relativism is, then, a most important challenge for the pragmatist. (shrink)

In Nietzschean Narratives, Gary Shapiro explores the narrative structure that informs Nietzsche's thinking and writing. Shapiro's primary aim is to show that Nietzsche's celebrated critiques of subjectivity and authority are perfectly consistent with his deployment of a unified narratology: "As a philologist, Nietzsche is always suspicious of the claims to originality, authenticity and exclusivity accompanying the grand stories or metanarratives that would provide a final accounting of first and last things. The task of the studies that follow is (...) to show, however, that such suspicion does not exclude narrative strategies, styles, or views of the world from Nietzsche's work". Shapiro proposes the narrative as an alternative to the two models most commonly invoked for Nietzsche's texts: the epistemically suspect metanarrative popularized by Heidegger, and the radically indeterminate fragment suggested by Derrida. Although the latter model is presently more influential, Shapiro takes less seriously the charge that the "postmodern" currents of Nietzsche's epistemology drown his texts in différance and discontinuity: "If one were... to read those books which [Nietzsche] published under his signature, the appearance of radical indeterminacy would be more difficult to establish". To the more serious charge that Nietzsche is a purveyor of metanarratives, Shapiro responds that "Nietzsche's path of thinking and writing maintains a constant vigilance with regard to the possibility and limits of narrative". (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to find a middle ground between the formalist critic, Vladimir Propp, and the psychoanalytic critic, Carl Jung. I argue that, instead of regarding Russian formalism and psychoanalysis as irreconcilable adversaries, the theories of the two figures can (and should) be unified; the result of which can be devised to establish a theory of what I call an ‘‘archetypal narrative’’. To be more explicit, Propp’s Morphology and Jung’s archetypal psychoanalysis are reconciled to bring about (...) an archetypal narrative theory, in which the underlying structure of narratives lies in the collective unconscious of humanity. (shrink)

Although there are notable exceptions, examination of nursing's participation in colonizing processes and practices has not taken hold in nursing's consciousness or political agenda. Critical analyses, based on the examination of politics and power of the structural determinants of health, continue to be marginalized in the profession. The goals of this discussion article are to underscore the urgent need to further articulate postcolonial theory in nursing and to contribute to nursing knowledge about paths to work toward decolonizing the profession. The (...) authors begin with a description of unifying themes in postcolonial theory, with an emphasis on colonized subjectivities and imperialism; the application of a critical social science perspective, including postcolonial feminist theory; and the project of working toward decolonization. Processes involved in the colonization of nursing are described in detail, including colonization of nursing's intellectual development and the white privilege and racism that sustain colonizing thinking and action in nursing. The authors conclude with strategies to increase the counter‐narrative to continued colonization, with a focus on critical social justice, human rights and the structural determinants of health. (shrink)

The search for a unified and coherent feminine aesthetic theory could not be successful because it relies upon "universals" which do not exist and assumes simple parallels among psychological, social and aesthetic structures. However, with an apparatus of narrative points of view, one can demonstrate that individual narrative texts are organized from a feminine point of view. To this extent, the intuition that there is a feminine aesthetic can be vindicated.

The tradition of Lughz and muʿammā in Arab poetry has an important place. Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235) is a divine love poet that lived in the Ayyubids period. He is an important point in the process of change and transformation of Arabic poetry language. This research aims to carry out a theoretical and anecdotal examination of the Lughzes in Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Dīwān. The work explains, firstly, the concept of Lughz in terms of conceptual content and theoretical structure and summarizes its (...) own method to be applied in solving and evaluating Lughzes in ten articles. The paper indicates whether the Lughzes in Dīwānhave a theoretical structure or not. In this context, it distinguishes the Lughzes from the number of layers, simple and compound structure maintenance. It examines the theoretical and functional contributions of the tahsīl, takmīl, tashīland tazyīlmethods, the stages of the establishment and the solution of the Lughzes.Abstract: Abū Hafs Sharafuddīn Omar b. Ali al-Hamavī al-Mısrī (d. 632/1235) known as the king of lovers, and called Ibn al-Fārid, is a divine love poet that lived in Egypt during the Ayyubids period (1171-1462). He is an important figure in the process of change and transformation of poetry language in Arabic literature. The lughz and muʿammā (enigma, enigmetic speech, allusion, inversion riddle, poetry puzzle, synecdoche and metaphoric language) means a word pointing to a name or something by symbol and sign. Numerous books have been written about lughzes. These include Arabic poetry, Persian poetry, Classical Turkish poetry, Arabic grammar, Islamic law, hadith, mathematics and inheritance law. The lughz and muʿammā have some linguistic features related to phonetics, statistical linguistics, morphology, lexicology, grammar, syntax, semantics and prosody. This tradition has an important place in Arabic poetry. The research aims to carry out a theoretical and anecdotal examination of the lughzes and muʿammās in Ibn al-Fārız’s Dīwān. The paper explains, firstly, the concept of lughz in terms of conceptual content and theoretical structure. The article summarizes its own method to be applied in analyzing and evaluating lughzes within ten items. The research examines the series of lughzes in Dīwānand divides them into parts according to the original question in the riddles. This work examines the secondary lughzes given in the details of poems in solution parts. The paper indicates whether the lughzes in Dīwānhave a theoretical structure or not. In this context, the research examines lughzes in terms of language and structure, especially in terms of the processes of establishment and solution. This paper categorizes the lughzes according to the number of layers and to whether they have a simple or compound structure. This paper examines the theoretical and functional contributions of the amal al-tahsīlī, amal al-takmīlī, amal al-tashīlī and amal al-tazyīlī methods in the stages of the establishment and the solution of the lughzes. The work applies the theoretical perspectives of these methods to each lughz. The research also examines the contribution of these four methods to the lughzes.There are many lughzes in Ibn al-Fārid’s poems. In Ibn al-Fārid’s Dīwān, in general, fifty-four things are asked. Fifty-one of them are words. Three of them are verbs. One of the verbs is in the order structure and two in the past tense. His lughzes have a theoretical and methodical structure. In terms of organizational structure, lughzes are generally multi-layered, intricate, compound and integrated. Composite lughzes are multi-layered, simple poems are single-layered. Approximately twenty words are asked in the lughzes. These words are always in the first layer of lughz, whether simple or compound. Thirty-seven words in the lughz are secondary lughz with an auxiliary and complementary nature. They are located between the second and sixth layers. Seventeen of the lughzes asked in the auxiliary nature are located in the second layer, thirteen in the third layer, five in the fourth layer, one in the fifth layer and one in the sixth layer. One of the lughzes is six-layered, one of them are five-layered, four of them are four-layered, eight are three-layered, four are double-layered and three are single-layered. According to this, the majority of lughzes in Ibn al-Fārid’s poems are in the unified form and multilayered.The lughzes are formed in terms of word, composition, phrase, grammar and meaning levels. The lughzes have both lexical and semantic characteristics. Ibn al-Fārid uses the configuration (amal al-tahsīlī), completion (amal al-takmīlī), facilitation (amal al-tashīlī) and addition (amal al-tazyīlī) methods to design the lughzes. The structure in the lughzes is shaped by these methods. The words in his lughzes constitute eleven categories, consisting of names, acts and noun verbs. The answers of the questions asked in the poems consist in general of prophet names, surah names, tribal names, administrator’s surnames, letters, cities, animals, food and drink names, attributes and actions. Verbs are in the past time or order form. Some of the lughzes in Ibn al-Fārid’s poems are built in an extraordinary style beyond being interesting. Not all the sentences used in couplets are part of the lughzes. These elements are mentioned in order to complete the lughzes in terms of rhythm and meaning. To be able to solve the lughzes of Ibn al-Fārid, one must be knowledgeable about the language and narrative features of Arabic and Islamic culture, as well as subjects such as the Quran, Sufism, abjad calculation, mathematics, geometry, geography, biology, botany and zoology. His poems contributes to the development and transformation of Arabic poetry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Storytelling and Narrative Knowing:An Examination of the Epistemic Benefits of Well-Told StoriesSarah E. Worth (bio)IntroductionPeople love to tell stories. When something scary, or funny, or out of the ordinary happens, we cannot wait to tell others about it. If it was really funny, etc., we tell the story repeatedly, embellishing as we see fit, shortening or lengthening it as the circumstances prescribe. When people are bad storytellers we (...) tend not to pay as close attention to their stories; our minds drift, and we hope for a swift conclusion. We tend not to remember those stories as well as the ones that were carefully constructed and skillfully delivered. Storytelling is one of our primary forms of communication with other people. Narrativity is the principle way that human beings order their experience in time. It is also one of the primary ways that humans make coherent sense out of seemingly unrelated sequences of events. Thus, an account of how this ordering works is essential to understanding one of the many ways of knowing used by humans, one that has been widely unaccounted for, I believe. What I will argue in this article is that reading, telling, and hearing well-constructed narratives are not just idle pastimes that we have created for entertainment purposes or even as a mere means of communication. Rather, there are epistemological benefits to reading, hearing, and telling well-constructed narratives. In particular, by practicing what I call narrative reasoning, we develop this skill, just as by practicing discursive reasoning we develop discursive reasoning skills. In turn, we develop an enhanced reasoning ability that arises from narrative reasoning and narrative meaning construction. Ultimately, I will argue that those who are able to develop the capacity to reason narratively will be able to have a more comprehensive understanding of the human experience. [End Page 42]Defining NarrativeTo begin, I will go into some detail about what I mean when I talk about narratives since the reasoning skills that will ultimately come from engaging with narratives will be related to the way that we come to understand and make sense of them. Since I do not intend to posit a theory of narrative, I will talk about what constitutes narrativity and what sort of features contribute to increasing the narrativity of a story. To begin, narrative is generally the representation of an event or sequence of events. It is closely tied to description, but it goes beyond description. "My cat has fleas" is a description of a state of affairs. "My cat was bitten by a flea" is a narrative about my cat, which includes a description. Some theorists (such as Barthes and Rimmon-Kenan) argue that a narrative must consist of more than one event or state of affairs in order to be minimally considered a narrative. For my purposes, the change in states of affairs from one to another will be essential for understanding the cognitive aspects that can be gained from engaging with narrative. Although I do not advocate a minimal requirement for something to be considered a narrative, at least two, if not multiple, states of affairs increase narrativity significantly. Narratives also have a unified subject and some relatively easily understood temporal structure. Although many narratives do not order all of their events sequentially, good narratives will have a temporal order that can be gleaned by its reader.1An annal might be something that is temporally ordered and likely have more than two events or states of affairs, and for this reason it might be put into a category of "story form." The primary principle of organization of an annal, however, is merely a temporal list of events. It cannot count as a full-fledged narrative since it may be a temporal list of events that has no unified subject. For example,A: "The Space shuttle Challenger explodes in 1988, the Berlin wall comes down in 1989, there is a massacre at Srebenica, Bosnia in 1995."B: "The Space Shuttle Columbia blows up upon reentry to Earth; the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes upon take off."A is a temporally ordered list of events and is an annal; B, however, is... (shrink)

This article explores the formal and functional characteristics of narratives of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths as they were told by 13 UK-based hospice managers in the course of semi-structured interviews. The interviewees’ responses include a variety of remarkably consistent ‘narratives of successful/frustrated intervention’, which exhibit distinctive formal characteristics in terms of the starting point and core of the action, the choice of personal pronouns and metaphors, and the ways in which positive and negative evaluation is expressed. In functional terms, the (...) hospice managers’ narratives play an important role in representing and constructing their professional views, challenges and identities. Overall, the narratives argue for the role of hospices and professional hospice staff in facilitating a ‘good’ death, and, by presenting a relatively unified view, may potentially preclude alternative perspectives. (shrink)

This book argues that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra employs circular and cyclical (diurnal and seasonal) symbols to communicate both the life-affirmative and the cosmological aspect of "recurrence" as a unifying idea. It shows that twelve day cycles, which run throughout the book's narrative, and the one full annual cycle, which encompasses the circular and the diurnal images in a continuous cycle of life affirmation, track Zarathustra's ever-changing identity throughout the text. In representing the eternal recurrence, the circular and the (...) cyclical symbols respectively convey the book's central message: Zarathustra comes into being in order to affirm existence as the teacher of eternal recurrence in an endlessly repeating cosmos. The study complements recent findings that Nietzsche's book is on eternal recurrence by establishing the unity among its language, structure, and fundamental conception, which solves the century-old problem of the communication or location of the doctrine within the text. The book is designed for the specialised audience of Nietzsche studies. It would also appeal to both students and professors in various disciplines across humanities and social sciences, as well as to anyone interested in understanding the basic tenets of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (shrink)

Due to its high degree of complexity and its historical nature, evolutionary biology has been traditionally portrayed as a messy science. According to the supporters of such a view, evolutionary biology would be unable to formulate laws and robust theories, instead just delivering coherent narratives and local models. In this article, our aim is to challenge this view by showing how the Price equation can work as the core of a general theoretical framework for evolutionary phenomena. To support this claim, (...) we outline some unnoticed structural similarities between physical theories and evolutionary biology. More specifically, we shall argue that the Price equation, in the same way as fundamental formalisms in physics, can serve as a heuristic principle to formulate and systematise different theories and models in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

In this chapter, we explore the role of habit in giving shape to conscious experience and importantly to our pre-reflective awareness of ourselves which includes the sense of mineness that accompanies our conscious experience. For the most part, discussions in philosophy of mind and phenomenology concerning pre-reflective self-awareness are focused on determining the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and selfhood. For this reason perhaps, the existence of pre-reflective self-awareness is usually appealed to as evidence for a form of selfhood that appears (...) within conscious experience as a component of its synchronic unity. In this chapter, however, we will concern ourselves with the pre-reflective sense of ourselves that appears in conscious experience as it pertains to the diachronic unity of the self—that is the sense of a unitary self as existing over the course of multiple episodic experiences. Our aim is to provide a phenomenological account of the relationship between the minimal, pre-reflective sense of self and what is often termed the ‘narrative self.’ We will argue that habits play a role in preserving the significance of our past in our present experience and in unifying our experience as a self for whom the world is present across disparate episodes of experience. (shrink)

The literature on theoretical reason has been dominated by epistemological concerns, treatments of practical reason by ethical concerns. This book overcomes the limitations of dealing with each separately. It sets out a comprehensive theory of rationality applicable to both practical and theoretical reason. In both domains, Audi explains how experience grounds rationality, delineates the structure of central elements, and attacks the egocentric conception of rationality. He establishes the rationality of altruism and thereby supports major moral principles. The concluding part describes (...) the pluralism and relativity his conception of rationality accommodates and, taking the unified account of theoretical and practical rationality in that light, constructs a theory of global rationality--the overall rationality of persons. Rich in narrative examples, intriguing analogies, and intuitively appealing arguments, this beautifully crafted book will spur advances in ethics and epistemology as well in philosophy of mind and action and the theory of rationality itself. (shrink)

Narratives are an integral part of human expression. In the graphic form, they range from cave paintings to Egyptian hieroglyphics, from the Bayeux Tapestry to modern day comic books (Kunzle, 1973; McCloud, 1993). Yet not much research has addressed the structure and comprehension of narrative images, for example, how do people create meaning out of sequential images? This piece helps fill the gap by presenting a theory of Narrative Grammar. We describe the basic narrative categories and their (...) relationship to a canonical narrative arc, followed by a discussion of complex structures that extend beyond the canonical schema. This demands that the canonical arc be reconsidered as a generative schema whereby any narrative category can be expanded into a node in a tree structure. Narrative “pacing” is interpreted as a reflection of various patterns of this embedding: conjunction, left-branching trees, center-embedded constituencies, and others. Following this, diagnostic methods are proposed for testing narrative categories and constituency. Finally, we outline the applicability of this theory beyond sequential images, such as to film and verbal discourse, and compare this theory with previous approaches to narrative and discourse. (shrink)

This study examines how audiovisual brand stories both invite and enable consumers to enact heroic archetypes. Integrating research on the archetypal structure of narratives with research on the event structure of narratives, we distinguish singular plot stories (i.e. stories that show a Hero’s Journey) from embedded plot stories (i.e. stories that not only show but also tell one or more Hero’s Journeys) and develop a conceptual and narratological framework to analyze their structural elements. Application of the framework to 20 brand (...) stories representing 8 different brands reveals meaningful variation in elements between the singular plot stories and embedded plot stories. Differences in the expression of archetypes and event structure are argued to evoke different types of Hero enactment which in turn result in different outcomes. We specifically hypothesize that the enactment of heroic archetypes in singular plot stories primarily results in catharsis (pleasure), whereas the enactment of heroic archetypes in embedded plot stories primarily results in an outcome we describe as phronesis: a form of moral sense making of the self that advances one’s practical wisdom and prudence. The final section of the paper discusses how cathartic and phronetic outcomes of hero enactment may foster the psychological bonding between brand and consumer, and invite consumers to align their moral values with the values that are reflected by heroic character traits. The central aims of the analysis presented are to provide an exploration of narrative phenomena in a reasonably broad range of brand story videos and foremost to provide a conceptual framework with an applicable instrument suited to analyze relevant categories in these brand stories. The present study is interdisciplinary in its approach to a contemporary, developing marketing phenomenon, applying psychological modeling of archetypes and heroic values with narratological insights on perspective-taking and story structure. Its contribution is to systemize, from a narratological viewpoint, how various narrative archetypes in brand video stories may contribute to the development of brand-consumer relations. (shrink)

Unifiability of terms (and formulas) and structural completeness in the variety of relation algebras RA and in the products of modal logic S5 is investigated. Nonunifiable terms (formulas) which are satisfiable in varieties (in logics) are exhibited. Consequently, RA and products of S5 as well as representable diagonal-free n-dimensional cylindric algebras, RDfn, are almost structurally complete but not structurally complete. In case of S5n a basis for admissible rules and the form of all passive rules are provided.

Some recent discussions of narrative structure consider the narrative as a sequence of events, and assume that the structure is what is manifested by the relation between any given event and the event 1, or perhaps the whole sequence from the first event up to the th event in the book. In the present discussion this approach will be modified in two ways. It will be modified, later on, by considering what would be happening if the writer were (...) revising his work into the final version, out of a penultimate version which was, as it were, a next-most complex version: one to which some final "complexifying" process had not yet been applied. The other way in which the present discussion will modify that approach is that it will consider narrative not as one sequence of events but as an interrelated set of sequences. · 1. E.g., R. Barthes, "Introduction à l'analyse structurale du récit," Communications, no. 8 , pp.1-27. John Holloway, professor of Modern English at the University of Cambridge, has written The Victorian Sage, The Charted Mirror, The Story of the Night, Blake: The Lyric Poetry, and five volumes of verse, such as New Poems. He is presently completing a book on poetic modes from Milton to Hardy and coediting a four-volume series on English and Irish street ballads. His other contribution to Critical Inquiry," Supposition and Supersession: A Model of Analysis for Narrative Structure" appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue. (shrink)

In this article, I am starting with a question which many years ago was at the center of the debate on structuralism. Are structures to be found in the object or in the subject ? If we take one of the famous analyses by Jakobson, we ascertain that as long as attention is brought to bear on the graphemic or phonological elements, or on rhymes and accents, then the objectivity of the examination is incontestable. The absolute or relative computation (...) of phonemes or groups of phonemes and the specification of their place in the text are independent of the critic's subjectivity. Subjectivity begins to impose itself when categories like "abstract" and "concrete" or "metaphor" and "symbol" are introduced, and even more so when these categories are grouped into classes the denomination of which does not have its basis in the data offered by the text but in nomenclative schemata developed by the critic . Cesare Segre, director of the Institute of Romance Philology at the University of Pavia and president of the International Association of Semiotic Studies, is coeditor of the journals Strumenti Critici and Medioevo Romanza and the series Critica e Filologia. His principal works of linguistic and semiotic criticism are Lingua, stile e società, Esperienze ariosteche, Semiotics and Literary Criticism , I metodi attuali della critica in Italia , La tradizione della Chanson de Roland, and Le strutture e il tempo . His editions of old Italian and French texts are Fornival's Li bestiaires d'Amours, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Giamboni's Libro de' Vizi e delle Virtudi, and the Chanson de Roland. "Narrative Structures and Literary History" originally appeared in Strumenti Critici . His contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Culture and Modeling Systems," appeared in Spring 1978. Rebecca West's previous contribution to Critical Inquiry was the translation of Guilio Carlo Argan's "Ideology and Iconology". (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between victims’ stories and normativity. As a contribution to understanding how the stories of those who have been abused or oppressed can advance moral understanding, catalyze moral innovation, and guide social change, this paper focuses on narrative as a variegated form of representation and asks whether personal narratives of victimization play any distinctive role in human rights discourse. In view of the fact that a number of prominent students of narrative build normativity into (...) their accounts, it might seem obvious that there is a connection between victims’ stories and moral insight. However, the category of victims’ stories spans an enormous variety of texts – private diaries, memoirs written for publication, interviews with journalists or social scientists, depositions prepared by human rights workers, stories shared with like-minded activists or with support groups, stories told to medical professionals, and testimony in courts, truth commissions and asylum hearings, to mention just some of the possibilities. The different contexts of elicitation and the different rules governing expression in these sites should make us wary of ready generalizations about the nature of victims’ narratives. Moreover, I doubt that existing explications of the way in which norms figure in narratives yield satisfactory theories of the contribution victims’ stories can make to discovering and defending just policies and practices. I consider two of the most prominent accounts of the relation between narrative and normativity. For different reasons, the account Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner present in their work on narrative and law and the account Hayden White presents in his work on narrative and history fail to appreciate the capacity of victims’ stories of abuse to advance understanding of and increase respect for human rights. In defense of the value of victims’ stories, I propose an account of the relation between normativity and a salient type of victim’s narrative that seems especially resistant to integration into human rights discourse. -/- . (shrink)

The literature on theoretical reason has been dominated by epistemological concerns, treatments of practical reason by ethical concerns. This book overcomes the limitations of dealing with each separately. It sets out a comprehensive theory of rationality applicable to both practical and theoretical reason. In both domains, Audi explains how experience grounds rationality, delineates the structure of central elements, and attacks the egocentric conception of rationality. He establishes the rationality of altruism and thereby supports major moral principles. The concluding part describes (...) the pluralism and relativity his conception of rationality accommodates and, taking the unified account of theoretical and practical rationality in that light, constructs a theory of global rationality--the overall rationality of persons. Rich in narrative examples, intriguing analogies, and intuitively appealing arguments, this beautifully crafted book will spur advances in ethics and epistemology as well in philosophy of mind and action and the theory of rationality itself. (shrink)

This textual analysis is a collective case study of K-12 United States History content standards in light of how they represent the historical experiences of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. The study uses a multi-perspective critical conceptual framework to evaluate the standards for nine state-level polities on both the quality of treatment and the orientation of how African Americans are depicted in the standards. Analysis revealed that the reviewed standards tend to discourage rigorous historical thinking in favor of (...) non-conflictual narrative perspectives that accentuate the historical contributions of African Americans within a framework of linear social progress. This curricular approach is ultimately problematic because it encourages teachers and students to rely on convenient historical archetypes to construct a usable past, rather than problematizing the past and present experiences of African Americans. (shrink)

Per Aage Brandt, commenting on a passage from Merlin Donald, suggests that there is ‘a narrative aesthetics built into our mind.’ In Donald, one can find an evolutionary account of this narrative aesthetics. If there is something like an innate narrative disposition, it is also surely the case that there is a process of development involved in narrative practice. In this paper I will assume something closer to the developmental account provided by Jerome Bruner in various (...) works, and Dan Hutto's account of how we learn narrative practices, and I'll refer to this narrative aesthetics as a narrative competency that we come to have through a developmental process. I will take narrative in a wide sense, to include oral and written communications and self-reports on experience. In this regard narrative is more basic than story, and not necessarily characterized by the formal plot structure of a story. A story may be told in many different ways, but always via narrative discourse. Also, having narrative competency includes not just abilities for understanding narratives, but also for narrative understanding, which allows us to form narratives about things, events and other people. To be capable of narrative understanding means to be capable of seeing events in a narrative framework. (shrink)

By 1999, when Atul Gawande's essay “Whose Body Is It, Anyway?” appeared in The New Yorker, patient autonomy had largely trumped physician paternalism in American medical practice. Gawande uses the stories of actual patients to attempt his counter case for physicians' “talking patients through their decisions.” Toward the end of his essay, Gawande acknowledges that “many ethicists find this line of reasoning disturbing,” but he reassures his readers that “the real task isn't to banish paternalism; the real task is to (...) preserve kindness.”What troubles me, however, is not so much the ethical position Gawande takes but the way he structures his narrative to support his position. “Whose Body Is It, Anyway?” offers an important example for close scrutiny because, in my experience, it so effectively engages readers‐especially medical students‐and persuades them to accept the ethical position it puts forward. Yet Gawande's own reflections about this issue do not stop with this essay. As he has gained clinical experience, he has continued his ethical reflections, and the stories that he tells have changed significantly over the years. I will argue here that close reading and careful narrative scrutiny can alert those who read this essay apart from Gawande's later work to some of the pitfalls in this kind of narrative ethics. (shrink)

Three experimental tasks—spontaneous telling of a story, reading, and parsing the story—were used to determine whether empirical data reflect the narrative structure of stories and can be predicted by a plot unit analysis of the stories (Lehnert, 1981). It was found that spontaneous pause durations at sentence breaks were highly correlated with the importance of these breaks as predicted theoretically. Only low correlations were obtained, however, when reading pause durations were correlated with the model. As for parsing values, the (...) value of the correlation coefficients depended on whether stories had sufficient superficial linguistic cues to help the subjects in parsing. It was concluded that spontaneous pausing not only reflects the narrative structure of stories, but can be used as a guide to constructing theories of narrative structure as well as for deciding between competing theories. (shrink)

This paper presents a qualitative-quantitative method of analysis for semiotic narrative, applied to a case study of the image projected by immigrants in Spanish television series. The results contain five narrative prototypes in which immigrant characters tend to appear in Spanish television series. We consider the possible effects of recurring narrative settings on the construction of a public image of immigration in Spain.

Aristotle's Physics presents us with a clear view of the structure of nature and natural processes, and also, in conjunction with the Posterior Analytics , of the structure of the science that deals with nature. Similarly, his Poetics describes the structure of the human condition and human events as depicted in tragedies, as well as the structure of those tragedies that dramatize this aspect of human existence.

When the reader turns to a text, he conceives of the narrated events as ordered in time. When the natural philosopher turns to the world, he also conceives of its events as ordered in time—or lately, in space-time. But each has the task of constituting this order on the basis of clues present in what is to be ordered. Interrogating the parallels to be found in their problems and methods, I shall argue that in both cases the definiteness of the (...) relation between the order and what is ordered resides mainly in how the matter is to be conceived, and is underdetermined by the facts. (shrink)