Mental imagery and fiction

Fictions evoke imagery, and their value consists partly in that achievement. This paper offers analysis of this neglected topic. Section 2 identifies relevant philosophical background. Section 3 offers a working definition of imagery. Section 4 identifies empirical work on visual imagery. Sections 5 and 6 criticize imagery essentialism, through the lens of genuine fictional narratives. This outcome, though, is not wholly critical. The expressed spirit of imagery essentialism is to encourage philosophers to ‘put the image back into the imagination’. The weakened conclusion is that while an image is not essential to imagining, it should be returned to our theories of imagination.     

The Problem of das Man—A Simmelian Solution

Current interpretations of Heidegger's notion of das Man are caught in a dilemma: either they cannot accommodate the ontological status Heidegger accords it or they cannot explain his negative evaluation of it, in which it is treated as ontic. This paper uses Simmel's agonistic account of human sociality to integrate the ontological and the ontic, indeed perjorative aspects of Heidegger's account. Section I introduces the general problem, breaks the exclusive link of Heidegger's account to Kierkegaard and delineates the general form of a solution. Section II then sketches Simmel's conception of sociology and sociality. Section III determines what Heidegger is trying to do in Chapter Four of Division I in Being and Time in order to formulate a strictly ontological account of das Man. Section IV uses Simmel's account of sociality to build into this ontological account an inherent tendency to display the negative features Heidegger ascribes to das Man. In conclusion, section V points to how the proposed account of das Man intimates the character of fundamental ontology as nascently a form of critical theory. It also explains the extent to which Heidegger's perjorative characterisations of das Man and the Man-selbst are legitimate.     

Index to Volume 49, 2006

A significant portion of recent literature on Nietzsche is devoted to his metaethical views, both critical and positive. This article explores one aspect of his positive metaethics. The specific thesis defended is that Nietzsche is, or is plausibly cast as, a reasons internalist. This, very roughly, is the view that what an agent has normative reason to do depends on that agent's motivational repertoire. Section I sketches some of the metaethical terrain most relevant to Nietzsche's organising ethical project, his “revaluation of all values”, and lays out three “design-requirements” that an adequate account of Nietzsche's metaethical views must satisfy. Section II introduces the basic internalist position. Sections III–IV provide textual support for the internalist reading of Nietzsche, with Section V showing how it meets each of the design-requirements. Section VI concludes by showing how the internalist apparatus also illuminates Nietzsche's views about the process of revaluing values.     

The new IOC and IAAF policies on female eligibility: old Emperor,new clothes?

The Caster Semenya debacle touched off by the 2009 Berlin World Athletics Championships resulted finally in IOC and IAAF abandonment of sex testing, which gave way to procedures that make female competition eligibility dependent upon the level of serum testosterone, which must be below the male range or instrumentally countered by androgen resistance. We argue that the new policy is unsustainable because (i) the testosterone-performance connection it posits is uncompelling; (ii) testosterone-induced female advantage is not ipso facto unfair advantage; (iii) the new policy reflects the gender policing impulses endemic to sport as well as the broader cultural impulses to monstrify women and to doctor women who have nothing wrong with them; (iv) female–male performance disparities are not the only reason for sex-segregated sport, but co-exist with respectable cultural and practical reasons, which (v) provide a powerful case for allowing athletes to compete in the sex category congruent with their gender identity.     

Bioethics' Gender

I argue that the field of bioethics is gendered feminine, but that the methods it uses to resist this gender identity pose real harm to actual women. Starting with an explanation of what I take ‘gender’ to be, I enumerate four drawbacks to being gendered feminine. I then argue that bioethics suffers from three of the same four drawbacks. I show how the field escapes the fourth disadvantage by adopting a masculine persona that inflicts damage on women, and conclude by urging bioethicists to reflect on their complicity in abusive power systems such as gender, race and class.     

Local pragmatics in a Gricean framework,revisited: response to three commentaries

There are two central themes that occupy the commentaries, and hence this response. The first is the character and role of what is said, both in my account, and in pragmatic theory in general. In response, I lay out in more detail the proposal from my original paper that the starting point for Gricean reasoning should be not what is said, but the pragmatically uncommitted what is expressed. As part of this argument, I restate and provide further arguments for my claim that global and local pragmatic effects are continuous. The second central theme of the commentaries concerns the value of a Gricean account, which is not intended to model the psychological processes of interpretation. I respond to this concern in Section 5, ‘Pragmatics, psychology and processing’.     

“Women easily feel that they have lost a year if they don’t ski faster”: Finnish ski coaches’ discursive constructions of gendered dual career pathways

ObjectivesEarlier qualitative researchers studying athletes’ dual careers (DCs) have shown that sociocultural discourses on gender are ingrained in DC policies and practices, creating gender inequalities and hierarchies. In this study, we aimed to extend this body of research by examining how Finnish elite youth ski coaches discursively construct athletes’ education and gender in their talk and coaching practices. Similarly, we examined how coaches’ beliefs about athletes' holistic development are interlinked with broader sociocultural discourses on gender.DesignQualitative study.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 Finnish ski coaches (seven male, three female) aged 25–62 years (M = 38.5), and then analyzed the data using reflexive thematic analysis, interpreted through a feminist poststructuralist lens.FindingsCoaches’ discursive practices regarding education depended on their athletes' ages. For athletes in secondary education, the coaches predominantly drew on DC discourses that emphasized the compatibility of sports and education, but for athletes transitioning to senior-level sports, they drew on dominant performance discourses, believing that athletes at the senior level should prioritize their sports. Moreover, coaches discursively constructed athletic development as especially important for female athletes, who were perceived as less capable of excelling in sports and therefore needing to invest in multiple careers.ConclusionsBy drawing on gender stereotypes and binary understandings of gender, the coaches discursively reproduced gender hierarchies and unequal power relations in sports. These gendered discourses influence athletes' DC aspirations and the gendering of DC pathways.     

Overcoming Functional Fixedness in Naming Traditions: A Commentary on Pilcher’s Names and “Doing Gender”

Because people’s names are central to everyday life, their role in the gender system is often overlooked. In the target article, Pilcher (2017) brings novel attention to the ways in which naming traditions allow individuals to enact gender in their lives. In this commentary, I expand on Pilcher’s argument that naming traditions merit more attention than they currently receive. Specifically, I begin by discussing links between forenaming and the gender binary. I then describe the ways in which the marital surname tradition reflects gendered power dynamics. In an effort to spur additional scholarly attention to naming traditions, I also delineate fruitful areas for future research. These future directions primarily focus on identifying why and how individuals “do gender differently” through their naming practices.     

Matters Olympic and Paralympic

Over the past several years, I have been arguing that nature sports such as surfing, backcountry skiing, and mountaineering are best described as sports in which athletes interact dynamically with natural features rather than compete with other humans. This article is part of a larger attempt to trace the implications of that view. Specifically, I consider the relationship between nature sports and competition. To this purpose, I address three separate, but related topics: First, I reply to Leslie Howe’s article, ‘On Competing Against Oneself, Or, I Need to Get a Different Voice in My Head’, in which she argues that there is a version of self-competition that is central to nature sports. Second, I argue that adapting nature sports to fit into formal competitive frameworks is problematic because, when we do so, the focus shifts from athletes interacting with natural features to athletes using natural features to outdo other athletes. And third, I argue that nature sports may seem competitive because the interaction between humans and natural features produces a type of intensity that is very similar to the intensity produced in competition. I argue further that because nature sports can produce this intensity in an environment that is not based on competition, they present an important alternative to traditional sports.     

An Examination of Homologous Reproduction in the Representation of Assistant Coaches of Women’s Teams

Researchers (e.g., Stangl & Kane Sociology of Sport Journal, 8: 47–60, 1991) have been successful in using homologous reproduction theory to explain the decline of women in coaching roles. In this investigation, we aimed to extend previous research by exploring the practice in (a) employment patterns of assistant coaches, and (b) environments in which women are actually the dominant gender doing the hiring. Data from the 2002–2003 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) was used to determine if a head coach’s gender impacted the gender composition of assistant coaches on a staff in four different women’s teams sports in NCAA Division I, II, and III institutions (n?=?2,964). The results indicate that the gender of a head coach does impact the gender composition of the assistant coaches on a staff, irrespective of sport. This relationship was most notable when the head coach was female, as female head coaches were much more likely to hire female assistants than male head coaches were to hire male assistant coaches.     

Careful What You Wish

Dilip Ninan has raised a puzzle for centered world accounts of de re attitude reports extended to accommodate what he calls “counterfactual attitudes.” As a solution, Ninan introduces multiple centers to the standard centered world framework, resulting in a more robust semantics for de re attitude reports. However, while the so-called multi-centered world proposal solves Ninan’s counterfactual puzzle, this additional machinery is not without problems. In Section 1, I present the centered world account of attitude reports, followed by the extension to counterfactual attitudes which Ninan targets with his puzzle. In Section 2, I pose the counterfactual puzzle and present Ninan’s multi-centered world solution, emphasizing similarities and differences between multi-centered and centered world accounts of attitude reports. In Section 3, I argue the counterfactual attitude wishing falls under the purview of the multi-centered proposal, but that the proposal generates false predictions for wish reports concerning unsatisfiable content. I canvass responses, ultimately concluding Ninan’s proposal requires substantial revisions.     

“Why Can’t Boys Be #LikeAGirl?”: Sticky Essentialism and Ambivalent (De)gendering in Fathers’ Online Accounts of Children’s Gender and Sexuality

In our media-centric age, stories and commentary about children’s gender socialization are exchanged online. Yet we know quite little about how fathers interpret the gender and sexual identities of their children and share those interpretations with others via social media. In this article, I present findings from a qualitative content analysis of blog posts about children’s gender and sexuality (n?=?122) written by American and Canadian fathers (n?=?36). I apply Kane’s (2012) “gender trap” typology to analyze how dad bloggers support and/or challenge heteronormative gendered identities, behaviors, relationships, and activities for children. Most of these fathers present anxious accounts of experimenting with gender-neutral parenting, imagining their children in future roles and relationships, permitting nonconformity in girls versus boys, and connecting childrearing to broader social inequalities. I develop the concepts of sticky essentialism—to demonstrate how essentialist logics permeate fathers’ explanations for gendered childhoods, and ambivalent (de)gendering—to explain fathers’ mixed feelings toward heteronormative gender socialization and accountability. To conclude, I discuss risks and benefits of fathers blogging publicly about children’s gender and sexuality.

     

Racers,Pacers, Gender and Records: On the Meaning of Sport Competition and Competitors

This paper examines footraces that are paced and unpaced, and runners who are pre-arranged, designated pacers and those who are not. Although pacesetting is commonplace in footraces today, the practice challenges our conception of sport competition, the nature of competitors and the meaning of records. For example, Bale calls paced races as ‘staged experiments’ to set world records and argues that pacers were crucial in the running career of Roger Bannister. In 2011, the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) banned women’s world records in mixed gender running events, like major marathons, because women were paced by male runners. By examining these cases and others, the authors here will claim paced footraces are qualitatively different than unpaced competitions, pacers introduce peculiar motives and intentions as competitors, women should not be denied opportunities to excel and perform at their very best, and the 2011 IAAF policy is unjustified.     

Economic Exploitation in Intercollegiate Athletics

This paper investigates philosophically the question of whether or not college and university athletes in the USA are doing something morally wrong should they terminate their college or university experience prior to graduation and enter the professional athletic ranks. Various moral arguments are brought to bear in order to attempt to shed light on this issue. One reason why such athletes ‘turn professional’ before they graduate is the perceived economic exploitation they experience as essentially underpaid workers earning much revenue for their respective institutions. But who is exploiting whom here? Is it just student athletes who are exploited by the system? I expand the reasoning about the exploitation of intercollegiate athletics to include not just student athletes, but their supporting colleges and universities. In the end, it is proposed that the National Collegiate Athletic Association and similar academically related athletic agencies should permit and encourage each of their constituent institutions as a matter of policy to protect themselves (and their supporting taxpayers, in the cases of public institutions) contractually from economic exploitation by professional sports franchises. Thus the question of student athletes leaving college for professional sports contracts has hidden beneath it questions of private professional sports franchises’ exploitation of the institutions with which such student athletes are affiliated.     

A Soft Gynocentric Critique of the Practice of Modern Sport

In this article we propose a philosophical critique of two general, but not exhaustive, approaches to gender studies in sport, namely gynocentric feminism and humanist feminism. We argue that both approaches are problematic because they fail clearly to distinguish or articulate their epistemological and ideological commitments. In particular, humanist feminists articulate the human condition using the sex/gender dichotomy, which fails to account adequately for gendered subjectivity. For them gender difference is a contingent feature of humanity developed through socialisation. As a result, it seems that what humanist feminists regard as women in their natural ‘state’ is in itself ideological. The generic ‘human’ condition is by no means a neutral condition but rather an idea tarnished by gender history characterised by the masculine. Consequently, humanist feminists uncritically argue for inclusion in sport, with access to an equal share of the human goods available, without carefully problematising the ideological nature of the practice. Gynocentric feminists also subscribe to the sex/gender dichotomy, suggesting however, that gender subjectivity is the result of a biological imperative. For gynocentric feminists, sexual difference provides authority for adjudicating between a separate and different male and female epistemology. Accordingly, gynocentric feminists commit the genetic fallacy by condemning sport to a masculine activity and therefore incompatible with feminine value in light of its male ancestry. ‘Soft’ gynocentrism does not fully sanction a conception of sport which allows only traditionally female values to flourish, or at least the reason for celebrating such sports would focus upon the goods and values therein. In other words, the value of the practice for either men or women is to be found, following MacIntyre (1985 Macintyre, A. 1985. After Virtue: A study in Moral Theory, London: Duckworth.  [Google Scholar]), in the internal goods that characterise the particular practice. Such internal goods are, as MacIntyre argues, goods of the practice and do not belong to any particular gender or group.     

Children and the Limits of Paternalism

Philosophers disagree about what precisely makes an act paternalistic, and about whether, when, and why paternalistic acts are morally objectionable. Despite these disagreements, it might seem uncontroversial to think that it is permissible to paternalize children. When paternalism seems morally objectionable, that is usually because an adult has been treated in a way that seems appropriate only for children. But, we might think, there can be nothing morally objectionable about treating children as children. In this paper, however, I argue that there are limits to how we may permissibly paternalize children. I begin in Section 1 by describing and endorsing Jonathan Quong’s account of paternalism, which defines paternalistic acts as those that involve particular kinds of judgments that the paternalizer makes about the capacities of the paternalizee. In Section 2, I identify a distinction between two kinds of paternalism: ‘compensatory’ paternalism, and ‘non-compensatory’ paternalism. In Section 3, I argue that compensatory paternalism is usually permissible in the case of children. In section 4, I argue that non-compensatory paternalism is much harder to justify than compensatory paternalism, and because of this, it is sometimes impermissible even when directed at children.     

Logic,Rules and Intention: The Principal Aim Argument

Stephen Mumford develops his view of sport spectatorship partly through a rejection of an argument he attributes to Best, which distinguishes between two categories of sports, the ‘purposive’ and the ‘aesthetic’, on the basis of the claim that they have different principal aims. This paper considers the principal aim argument and one feature of Mumford’s rejection of that argument, namely, Best’s observation that the distinctions to which he draws attention are based on logical differences. The paper argues that Mumford misconstrues Best’s argument by taking it to be about the intentions of players and athletes, while it is actually about a specific feature of the rules of each sport.     

Are Men Better Leaders? An Investigation of Head Coaches’ Gender and Individual Players’ Performance in Amateur and Professional Women’s Basketball

Male-dominated industries such as sport contain stereotypical and subjective notions of leadership ability (Burton et al. 2009; Fink 2008). These gender stereotypes often manifest themselves within varying levels of leadership, but specific to the sport industry, they are the most visible within the head coach role. Men hold the majority of head coach positions within the professional and amateur levels of sport, and these hiring practices can be based on gender-role stereotypes (Acosta and Carpenter 2014). In an attempt to challenge stereotypical gender based leadership preferences, leadership ability and performance should be objectively examined. Therefore, in the present investigation we aimed to examine the presence of gender stereotypes in the sport industry by determining whether the gender of a head coach for two women’s basketball leagues, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the National Intercollegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), impacted individual player performance. Data were collected for 1522 players for 19 WNBA seasons (1997–2015) and 4000 players for three seasons of NCAA Women’s Basketball (2013–2016). Results indicated that head coach gender does not appear to impact individual player performance in the WNBA or in the NCAA thereby providing objective evidence to challenge the traditional gender stereotypes found within the sports industry.     

The Self in Early Nyāya: A Minimal Conclusion

In this paper I revisit the early Nyāya argument for the existence of a self. In section 1, I reconstruct the argument in Nyāya-sūtra 1.1.10 as an argument from recognition following the interpretation in the Nyāyasūtra-Bhā?ya and the Nyāya-Vārttika. In Section 2, I reassess the plausibility of the Nyāya argument from memory/recognition in the Bhā?ya and the Vārttika in the light of recent empirical research. I conclude that the early Nyāya version of the argument from recognition can only establish a minimal conclusion that self is a unitary and persisting conscious agent, in contrast to the ontological conclusion that the self is distinct a substance qualified by consciousness. In the final section, I address the tension between the two conclusions in Nyāya and suggest how it might be resolved.     

How Did the Sport Make You Feel? Looking at the Three Dimensions of Emotion through a Gendered Lens

Emotional responses to mediated messages are dependent on the viewer and the content of the message. In this experiment, self-reported emotional responses of undergraduate females (N = 43) to gendered sports portrayals featuring male and female athletes were measured on the self-assessment mannikin. Female viewers felt more positive, aroused and dominant while watching sports broadcasts featuring female athletes rather than broadcasts featuring male athletes. These finding suggest that female viewers have these emotional responses due to the fact that these female athletes are surpassing the expectations their participation held in a traditionally masculine area. Also, feelings of positivity and arousal toward male athletes participating in feminine sports shows an acceptance of male athletes exhibiting characteristics traditionally thought exclusive to females.