The Muslimwoman

In the 6 years that have elapsed since the events of 9/11 Muslims have become the Other and veiled Muslim women have become their visible representatives. Standing in for their communities, they have attracted international media attention. So intertwined are gender and religion that they have become one. I have coined the term the Muslimwoman to describe this erasure of diversity. Some women reject this label. Others use it to empower themselves and even to subvert the identification. In the process they are constructing a new kind of cosmopolitanism. This essay asks how women can derive agency from an ascribed identity that posits their invisibility and silence.

Literature,Ethics, and Richard Rorty’s Pragmatist Theory of Interpretation

This article considers the validity and strength of Richard Rorty’s pragmatist theory of interpretation in the light of two ethical issues related to literature and interpretation. Rorty’s theory is rejected on two grounds. First, it is argued that his unrestrained account of interpretation is incompatible with the distinctive moral concerns that have been seen to restrict the scope and nature of valid approaches to artworks. The second part of the paper claims that there is no indispensable relationship between supporting Rorty’s pragmatist theory of interpretation and the important place that is attached to literature in the liberal society outlined by him. A reading of Donald Davidson’s texts on literary language and interpretation implies that an intentionalist theory of interpretation can accommodate those features that Rorty values in literature as well.

Scope Fallacies and the “Decisive Objection” Against Endurance

From time to time, the idea that enduring things can change has been challenged. The latest challenge has come in the form of what David Lewis has called a “decisive objection”, which claims to deduce a contradiction from the idea that enduring things change with respect to their temporary intrinsics, when that idea is combined with eternalism. It is my aim in this paper to explain why I think that no argument has yet appeared that deduces a contradiction from a combination of eternalism and the idea that enduring things change with respect to their temporary intrinsics, except ones that do so by committing scope fallacies.

Intentionalism and Change Blindness

According to reductive intentionalism, the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is constituted by the experience's intentional (or representational) content. In this article I attempt to show that a phenomenon in visual perception called change blindness poses a problem for this doctrine. Specifically, I argue that phenomenal character is not sensitive, as it should be if reductive intentionalism is correct, to fine-grained variations in content. The standard anti-intentionalist strategy is to adduce putative cases in which phenomenal character varies despite sameness of content. This paper explores an alternative antiintentionalist tack, arguing, by way of a specific example involving change blindness, that content can vary despite sameness of phenomenal character.

Lost in a sea of subjectivity: the subject position of the researcher in the anthropology of Islam

This paper examines some of the illustrative features of doing participant observation research with Muslims both in the field and back “home.” It is based on my experiences of conducting research in East Java, Indonesia in the classicalist Islamic boarding schools. My religious subjectivity was important to my research in a number of ways including: (1) the ways in which the community tried to define my subjectivity; (2) the nature of my personal religious subjectivity; and (3) academic interpretations of my role and my subject position vis-à-vis Islam and the profession of anthropology.

Supernatural Miracles and Religious Inclusiveness

In this paper I shall assess Clarke’s assertion that all definitions of miracles that purport to satisfy the criterion of religious inclusiveness should substitute the term ‘supernatural’ for ‘non-natural’. In addition, I shall attempt to strengthen Clarke’s conception of the supernatural by offering an analysis of what it means for something to be ‘above’ nature. Lastly, I shall offer a new argument as to why Clarke’s intention-based definition of miracles is necessarily less religiously inclusive than Mumford’s causation-based definition.

Meaningfulness and Identities

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - Three distinct but related questions can be asked about the meaningfulness of one’s life. The first is ‘What is the meaning of life?,’ which...     

Cybersecurity and Authentication: The Marketplace Role in Rethinking Anonymity – Before Regulators Intervene

Anonymous speech plays a fundamental role in America’s political history. However, that long tradition of anonymous communications faces an image problem in today’s age of spam, computer viruses, spyware, denial-of-service attacks on websites, and identity theft. The criminals and hackers who perpetrate these insults on the commercial Internet are, for the most part, anonymous; we simply do not know the identities of these bad guys. Yet, the promise of anonymous communications is vital to the preservation of political liberty across the globe. Therefore, how should we regard anonymity in a digital age? And how should we strike the right balance between security and anonymity online? To begin, we should not consider the outlawing of anonymous communications as the answer to today’s cybersecurity threats. Commercial sector “regulation” of anonymity, so to speak, can play a significant role in combating these problems. Increasingly, online authentication has become important to both personal security and to cybersecurity in general. Some recent proposals toward bolstering security have included greater authentication of the source of emails to deal with spam and the requirement that those who conduct transactions online reveal their identities – seeming violations of online culture. Policymakers also want a say in the matter, and as the process unfolds, they might feel increasingly tempted to intervene whenever issues impacting privacy and authentication emerge in debates over telecommunications, intellectual property, biometrics, cybersecurity, and more. Regardless, government should not strip us of our anonymity online. Cybersecurity concerns may instead call for the marketplace – not regulators – to deal with the fact that many threats stem from that very lack of authentication. The inclusion of greater authentication standards into online services by private vendors will lead to their working in concert in unprecedented ways that may draw attention from regulatory and antitrust authorities. But these private, experimental efforts have no implications for political liberty – nor are they anticompetitive. Private solutions are the only real hope we have for decreasing cybersecurity threats, given that previous government efforts to regulate the Internet – for example, outlawing spam in 2004 – have not lived up to expectations. Political anonymity and commercial anonymity are not the same thing, and the distinction requires better appreciation. Over the coming tumultuous period of dealing with online threats, policymakers should allow the experimentation necessary to cope with today’s lack of online authentication to proceed with minimal interference.     

No Plaything: Ethical Issues Concerning Child-pornography

Academic discussion of pornography is generally restricted to issues arising from the depiction of adults. I argue that child-pornography is a more complex matter, and that generally accepted moral judgements concerning pornography in general have to be revised when children are involved. I look at the question of harm to the children involved, the consumers, and society in general, at the question of blame, and at the possibility of a morally acceptable form of child-pornography. My approach involves an objectivist meta-ethics and a utilitarian view of practical ethics, and I bring out the advantages of these theories to the consideration of moral issues such as this one.

Are New Technologies the Enemy of Privacy?

Privacy is one good among other goods and should be weighed as such. The relationship between technology and privacy is best viewed as an arms race between advancements that diminish privacy and those that better protect it, rather than the semi-Luddite view which sees technology as one-sided development enabling those who seek to invade privacy to overrun those who seek to protect it. The merits or defects of particular technologies are not inherent to the technologies, but rather, depend on how they are used and above all, on how closely their use is monitored and accounted for by the parties involved. In order to reassure the public and to ensure accountability and oversight, a civilian review board should be created to monitor the government’s use of surveillance and related technologies. Proper accountability requires multiple layers of oversight, and should not be left solely in the hands of the government.

Moral Expertise and the Credentials Problem

Philosophers have harbored doubts about the possibility of moral expertise since Plato. I argue that irrespective of whether moral experts exist, identifying who those experts are is insurmountable because of the credentials problem: Moral experts have no need to seek out others’ moral expertise, but moral non-experts lack sufficient knowledge to determine whether the advice provided by a putative moral expert in response to complex moral situations is correct and hence whether an individual is a bone fide expert. Traditional accounts of moral expertise require that moral experts give reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification, an account which, I argue, is too lean in allowing for the possibility of a moral expert who is motivationally indifferent to her own moral judgments and advice. Yet even if the proposition that a moral expert is an individual who provides reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification and is necessarily motivated by that advice exhausts the necessary and sufficient conditions for moral expertise, this proposition cannot function as an applicable criterion for non-experts to use in appraising would-be experts’ claims to expertise. The credentials problem thus remains unanswered.

Inspirational Patterns for Embodied Interaction

The concern of this work is how knowledge based on design experience can be developed, disseminated, articulated, and acquired. We propose the notion of inspirational patterns, or i-patterns, which refers to abstractions of core ideas and essential elements from a class of coherent examples, pointing to promising regions in the design space. Most current work on patterns concentrates on proven solutions to recurring problems; i-patterns, on the other hand, are oriented toward the innovative and inspirational. The design domain of interest to us is interaction design, which can be roughly defined as design with digital materials. More specifically, we focus on the intersection of tangible interfaces and social computing that is called embodied interaction. The paper presents nine i-patterns for embodied interaction, including “Virtual information is tied to positions in the material world” and “Heterogeneous virtual information fuses into a few sensory parameters.” Published in Proc. Nordes 2005, submitted for republication in Knowledge, Technology and Policy.     

Predictors of Attributional Style Change in Children

A number of studies have supported the hypothesis that negative attributional styles may confer vulnerability to the development of depression. The goal of this study was to explore factors that may contribute to the development of negative attributional styles in children. As hypothesized, elevated levels of depressive symptoms and hopelessness at the initial assessment predicted negative changes in children's attributional styles over the 6-month follow-up period. In addition, elevated levels of verbal victimization occurring between the 2 assessments, as well as that occurring in the 6 months preceding the initial assessment, prospectively predicted negative changes in children's attributional styles over the follow-up. Further, initial depressive symptoms and verbal victimization during the follow-up continued to significantly predict attributional style change even when the overlap among the predictors was statistically controlled. Contrary to the hypotheses, however, neither parent-reported levels of overall negative life events nor parents' attributions for their children's events predicted changes in children's attributional styles.     

The Best Friendships of Shy/Withdrawn Children: Prevalence, Stability, and Relationship Quality

The mutual best friendships of shy/withdrawn and control children were examined for prevalence, stability, best friend's characteristics, and friendship quality. Using peer nominations of shy/socially withdrawn and aggressive behaviors, two groups of children were identified from a normative sample of fifth-grade children: shy/withdrawn (n = 169) and control (nonaggressive/nonwithdrawn; n = 163). Friendship nominations, teacher reports, and friendship quality data were gathered. Results revealed that shy/withdrawn children were as likely as control children to have mutual stable best friendships. Withdrawn children's friends were more withdrawn and victimized than were the control children's best friends; further, similarities in social withdrawal and peer victimization were revealed for withdrawn children and their friends. Withdrawn children and their friends reported lower friendship quality than did control children. Results highlight the importance of both quantitative and qualitative measures of friendship when considering relationships as risk and/or protective factors.     

Ethical Naturalism and Moral Twin Earth

In order to rebut G. E. Moore’s open question argument, ethical naturalists adopt a theory of direct reference for our moral terms. T. Horgan and M. Timmons have argued that this theory cannot be applied to moral terms, on the ground that it clashes with competent speakers’ linguistic intuitions. While Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment shows that our linguistic intuitions confirm the theory of direct reference, as applied to ‘water’, Horgan and Timmons devise a parallel thought experiment about moral terms, in order to show that this theory runs against our linguistic intuitions about such terms. My claim is that the Horgan–Timmons argument does not work. I concede that their thought experiment is a good way to test the applicability of the theory of direct reference to moral terms, and argue that the upshot of their experiment is not what they claim it is: our linguistic intuitions about Moral Twin Earth are parallel to, not different from, our intuitions about Twin Earth.

Pluralism,Postmodernism and Interreligious Dialogue

Interreligious dialogue does not take place in a vacuum, nor is it a matter of casual conversation. Dialogue is a contested phenomenon, advocated and embraced on one hand, eschewed and discarded on the other. By way of an exploration of the fact of plurality, the notions of modernism and postmodernism, and a brief discussion of select pertinent issues (unity, truth, and the very idea of theology), the paradigmatic context of pluralism will be critically discussed. Contemporary engagement in interreligious dialogue and interfaith relations requires to be underpinned by a carefully thought-out conceptualising of the context in which it can authentically occur. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the context of and for interreligious dialogue.

Marriage,Morality, and Institutional Value

This paper develops a Kantian account of the moral assessment of institutions. The problem I address is this: while a deontological theory may find that some legal institutions are required by justice, it is not obvious how such a theory can assess institutions not strictly required (or prohibited) by justice. As a starting-point, I consider intuitions that in some cases it is desirable to attribute non-consequentialist moral value to institutions not required by justice. I will argue that neither consequentialist nor virtue-ethical accounts account for these intuitions, suggesting that a distinctive deontological account is needed. The account I give is drawn from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals; I distinguish it from Kantian views of institutions developed by Barbara Herman and Onora O’Neill. Throughout, I use marriage as an example.

A Longitudinal Study of Relational Aggression, Physical Aggression, and Children's Social–Psychological Adjustment

Although great strides have recently been made in our understanding of relational aggression and its consequences, one significant limitation has been the lack of prospective studies. The present research addressed this issue by identifying and assessing groups of relationally aggressive, physically aggressive, relationally plus physically aggressive (co-morbid), and nonaggressive children during their third grade year in elementary school and then reassessing them a year later, during fourth-grade (N = 224, 113 girls). Two aspects of social–psychological adjustment were assessed during both assessment periods including internalizing difficulties (i.e., withdrawal, depression/anxiety, and somatic complaints) and externalizing problems (i.e., aggressive behavior, delinquency). It was revealed that the strongest predictor of future social–psychological adjustment problems and increases in these problems from third to fourth was the combination of relational and physical aggression. Relational aggression also contributed unique information, relative to physical aggression, in the prediction of future maladjustment. Implications of these findings for future research and prevention efforts, particularly for aggressive girls, are discussed.

Relations of Parenting and Negative Life Events to Cognitive Diatheses for Depression in Children

In a sample of 299 children (grades 2, 4, and 6), we examined parenting and negative life events as predictors of depressive cognitions, specifically low self-perceived competence, depressive cognitive schemas, and depressogenic attributional style. We also examined developmental trends in these relations. Children completed measures of parenting, negative life events, and depressive cognitions. Parents also completed measures of parenting and negative life events. Consistent with our hypotheses, negative parenting and negative life events corresponded with higher levels of depressive cognitions, whereas positive parenting corresponded with lower levels of depressive cognitions. The relations between negative parenting and negative automatic thoughts were stronger for older children. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Excessive Reassurance Seeking, Hassles, and Depressive Symptoms in Children of Affectively Ill Parents: A Multiwave Longitudinal Study

The current study examined whether excessive reassurance seeking serves as a vulnerability factor to depression in a sample of high-risk youth using a multiwave longitudinal design. At Time 1, 140 children (aged 6-14) of affectively disordered parents completed measures assessing reassurance seeking and depressive symptoms. In addition, every 6 weeks during the following year, children and parents completed measures assessing depressive symptoms and the occurrence of hassles. In line with hypotheses, the results of contemporaneous analyses indicated that children with high levels of reassurance seeking reported greater elevations in depressive symptoms following elevations in either hassles or parental depressive symptoms than children with low levels. At the same time, the results of time-lagged analyses indicated that both these relationships were moderated by age with excessive reassurance seeking being associated with greater elevations in depressive symptoms following elevations in either hassles or parental depressive symptoms in older but not younger children.