What is it Like to be a Phenomenologist?

In a recent paper, 'On the Persistence of Phenomenology' (in T. Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience , Paderborn, 1995), Diana Raffman presents a new argument for qualia, an argument that provides new focus for the qualia debate. We think Raffman's work relocates the debate to a better neighbourhood, a neighbourhood in which what tempts us to think that there must be qualia or phenomenal information is highlighted. Raffman, we argue, locates the core thought shared by many of the friends of qualia, namely, that our conceptual resources are inadequate for capturing the richness of experience. Experience is ineffably determinate. Moreover, Raffman's argument in support of this thought seems especially embarrassing to scientific-minded materialists, since the argument relies largely on well established empirical facts. We show, however, that Raffman's argument fails. So, if we are correct that her argument highlights what is tempting about qualia, then we have also shown that it is not tempting.     

What is it Like to be a Group Agent?

The existence of group agents is relatively widely accepted. Examples are corporations, courts, NGOs, and even entire states. But should we also accept that there is such a thing as group consciousness? I give an overview of some of the key issues in this debate and sketch a tentative argument for the view that group agents lack phenomenal consciousness (pace Schwitzgebel 2015 ). In developing my argument, I draw on integrated information theory, a much‐discussed theory of consciousness. I conclude by pointing out an implication of my argument for the normative status of group agents.     

“It’s Like Playing with a Nuclear Bomb”

Abstract

Most observers of the evangelical purity culture situate it within a form of contemporary evangelicalism that prioritizes personal spiritual growth and self-fulfillment. As a result, portrayals of the movement emphasize the therapeutic individualism and optimism of new paradigm spirituality. But the new paradigm does not help us explain the language of spiritual warfare and what Jason Bivins calls a religion of fear within purity rhetoric. Evangelical purity culture is as equally informed by a religion of accommodation and new paradigm spirituality as it is by a religion of fear and the remnants of cold war fundamentalism. This discordance makes sense only when the contemporary purity culture is placed within a broader historical trajectory that marks its genesis in the fundamentalist resurgence of the 1940s, not the 1970s when new paradigm churches first emerged. By examining the seemingly discordant elements of evangelical purity culture, historians are able to recognize the theological and historical continuity between evangelicalism’s religion of fear and religion of accommodation.     

‘Like a ship amidst a raging sea’: Archbishop Laurentius Petri's Vision of the Church

Abstract

This article presents the ecclesiology of Laurentius Petri, former student in Wittenberg and Archbishop of Uppsala (1531–73). As a major actor in the Swedish Reformation, Laurentius Petri saw the Church as a ship amidst a raging sea. His presentation of the traditional signs of the Church is marked by the emphasis laid on penitence, amendment and church discipline. ‘Let all things be done decently and in order’ (1 Cor. 14.40) was Laurentius Petri's programme long before his major writing, The Swedish Church Ordinance (1571). He developed the Swedish tradition which sees some ceremonies and statutes as necessary, and not merely useful, for the Church. The separation of the ministries of bishop and priest is one among these necessary statutes. Both the Church's regimen and that of the secular authority originate in God. There is a thorough exposition of the obligations of the secular authority in The Christian Sermon on Secular Authority (1561).     

Man,You Might Look Like a Woman—If a Child Is Next to You

Gender categorization seems prone to a pervasive bias: Persons about whom null or ambiguous gender information is available are more often considered male than female. Our study assessed whether such a male-bias is present in non-binary choice tasks and whether it can be altered by social contextual information. Participants were asked to report their perception of an adult figure’s gender in three context conditions: (1) alone, (2) passively besides a child, or (3) actively helping a child (n = 10 pictures each). The response options male, female and I don’t know were provided. As a result, participants attributed male gender to most figures and rarely used the I don’t know option in all conditions, but were more likely to attribute female gender to the same adult figure if it was shown with a child. If such social contextual information was provided in the first rather than the second block of the experiment, subsequent female gender attributions increased for adult figures shown alone. Additionally, female gender attributions for actively helping relative to passive adults were made more often. Thus, we provide strong evidence that gender categorization can be altered by social context even if the subject of gender categorization remains identical.     

Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens

Employing Speech Codes Theory (Philipsen et al. in Theorizing about intercultural communication. Sage, Thousand Oaks, 2005) as my theoretical framework, I examine communicative practices and beliefs as to what it means to speak like a drag queen as portrayed within the reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR): Season Four. Examining this particular population increases knowledge on how marginalized populations use talk to construct rules of conduct for a coherent identity. Members uphold drag queen speech codes by revealing what it means to speak like a queen. Such items include to look like a “fish,” don’t be “hungry,” be humble, resist negativity, don’t complain, and exude professionalism. These are qualities and characteristics of communication that a drag queen must perform, uphold, and repeat in order to uphold drag family values, thus fulfilling the code of sisterhood that comes with the performance of drag. These are evident within beliefs and everyday talk as portrayed within RPDR.     

“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,a Long Way from Home”: Complex Adolescent Identity Formation in a Transcultural Adoption

During adolescence, concerns about identity come to the fore. Questions such as “Who am I?” and “Who am I in relation to other people?” present unusual difficulty for the adopted child, who must navigate the complex developmental task of including two sets of parents (and possibly several cultures) within his representational world. Adopted children must also integrate the knowledge that they were born to one set of parents but are being raised by another. When the child's physical characteristics are different from the adoptive parents, this further complicates identity issues. Even when children have developed a safe and secure attachment to the adoptive parents, knowing that they were born into this world by a mother who then gave them away can evoke feelings of being utterly alone, bereft, and unloved. When adopted children enter adolescence, these feelings can loom large and powerful, derailing the development of their sense of identity. Presented here is the case of an adolescent in a transracial adoption in which the boy left his adoptive mother's home in a cataclysmic crisis, feeling alone and motherless, to run to his adoptive father, who suffered from major depression. The mother, too, felt bereft, and the therapist initially felt unable to help.     

Like a Virgin…Again?: Secondary Virginity as an Ongoing Gendered Social Construction

Secondary virginity—a sexually-initiated person’s deliberate decision to refrain from intimate encounters for a set period of time and to refer to that decision as a kind of virginity (rather than “mere” abstinence)—has largely eluded sociological scrutiny, despite its increasing popularity as a concept and practice among American youth. This study explores beliefs and experiences regarding secondary virginity, drawing on qualitative interviews with 61 socially diverse women and men, of whom four were avowed secondary virgins, five likened their experiences to a second virginity/virginity loss, and 16 had phenomenologically similar experiences which they did not frame in terms of virginity. Respondents who endorsed the concept of secondary virginity were disproportionately White conservative Christian women born after 1972. Secondary virginity reveals the social construction of gendered sexuality and the heterosexual imaginary as it reinforces privilege along gender, racial, religious, and sexual dimensions.     

Thinking Like a Wolf,a Sheep,or a Firefly: Learning Biology Through Constructing and Testing Computational Theories—An Embodied Modeling Approach

Biological phenomena can be investigated at multiple levels, from the molecular to the cellular to the organismic to the ecological. In typical biology instruction, these levels have been segregated. Yet, it is by examining the connections between such levels that many phenomena in biology, and complex systems in general, are best explained. We describe a computation-based approach that enables students to investigate the connections between different biological levels. Using agent-based, embodied modeling tools, students model the microrules underlying a biological phenomenon and observe the resultant aggregate dynamics. We describe 2 cases in which this approach was used. In both cases, students framed hypotheses, constructed multiagent models that incorporate these hypotheses, and tested these by running their models and observing the outcomes. Contrasting these cases against traditionally used, classical equation-based approaches, we argue that the embodied modeling approach connects more directly to students' experience, enables extended investigations as well as deeper understanding, and enables "advanced" topics to be productively introduced into the high school curriculum.     

“Just Like Riding a Bike”: A Model Matching Approach to Predicting the Enjoyment of a Cycling Exergame Experience

Innovations in technology have led to the introduction of exercise devices that feature interactive virtual worlds, often referred to as exergames. Using the theory of model matching, this study seeks to determine if controller naturalness and perceived realism are predictors of immersion in an exercise-based virtual environment and, in turn, if perceived immersion is a predictor of enjoyment of this exercise experience. Participants rode a 3-mile virtual course on an Expresso HD upright bicycle and then reported their attitudes toward the experience. Findings suggest that extending the theory of mental models from traditional video game play to the study of certain exergame-based technologies is an appropriate application of the theory. Additionally, given the influence of immersion on the overall enjoyment of the fitness experience identified in this study, these findings also have implications for the development and use of exergames that are immersive, realistic, and utilize naturalistic controllers to promote commitment to physical activity.     

What is it Like to be a Butterfly? A Philosophical Interpretation of Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream

This paper attempts to recast Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream within the larger normative context of the ‘Inner Chapters’ and early Daoism in terms of its moral significance, particularly in the way that it prescribes how a Daoist should live through the ‘significant symbol’ of the butterfly. This normative reading of the passage will be contrasted with two recent interpretations of the passage—one by Robert Allinson and the other by Harold Roth—that tend to focus more on the epistemological and mystical concerns of the text. As will be argued, the undue emphasis on the epistemological and mystical significance of the passage not only comes to grief when considered in light of philosophical and textual concerns but also obscures the moral dimensions of the passage that are more congruent with the ‘Inner Chapters’ as a whole.     

Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding

Believers describe God as a strategic social agent who perceives human thoughts and actions. Thinking about God therefore might make believers feel as if their behavior is being monitored, a possibility we call the supernatural monitoring hypothesis. Three studies offered new and converging empirical support for this hypothesis using two variables that are sensitive to perceived social surveillance: public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. For believers, the effect of an explicit God prime on public self-awareness was comparable to the effect of thinking about how other people view oneself (Experiment 1). An implicit God concepts prime increased public self-awareness (Experiment 2) and socially desirable responding (Experiment 3) among believers. These studies offer the first direct evidence that thinking of God triggers perceived social surveillance.     

Is it Really Just About Being More Like a Fag? Confronting the Gay Male Model Mantra

Although the debate between feminism and queer is by now a fairly old and some might argue, trite and overwrought one, in this paper I direct my attention to a specific feminist assessment of queer that I find to be especially unhelpful and pernicious: the automatic linkage of queer with the exaltation of a gay male subjectivity. This article is informed by my own ethnographic research on lesbian/queer public sexual cultures; specifically, two Canadian lesbian/queer bathhouses, where public sex and sexual exploration are encouraged. I argue that this contention, that lesbians who espouse queer are aping (gay) male sexuality and subjectivity—due to the privileging of non-normative sexual practices found within the gay male community—does two things: (re)essentializes genders and sexualities, and, more importantly, robs non-gay male subjects (e.g., women, lesbians, butches, trans identified individuals) of their own agency. In sum, I believe that this linkage to a supposed gay male imitation, and concomitantly, viewing lesbian/queer sexual cultures, behaviors, configurations, and signifying sexual economies as mere derivatives of gay male culture, reinforces lesbian/queer invisibility and (re)centers the heterosexual matrix. For the sake of lesbian/queer subjects’ own viability, lesbian/queer sexualities must thus be pulled out of this discursive trap.     

Is Political Cognition Like Riding a Bicycle? How Cognitive Neuroscience Can Inform Research on Political Thinking

Our understanding of political phenomena, including political attitudes and sophistication, can be enriched by incorporating the theories and tools of cognitive neuroscience—in particular, the cognitive neuroscience of nonconscious habitual cognition (akin to bicycle riding). From this perspective, different types of informational "building blocks" can be construed from which different types of political attitudes may arise. A reflection-reflexion model is presented that describes how these blocks combine to produce a given political attitude as a function of goals, primes, expertise, and inherent conflict in considerations relevant to the attitude. The ways in which neuroimaging methods can be used to test hypotheses of political cognition are reviewed.     

“Like sheep for the slaughter”

The primary objective of this article is to investigate how a Lutheran theology supports the soldier’s vocation in war. First, the analysis is made in relation to the concept of larva Dei, second, in relation to “the pastorate” and “technology of power”. By the interaction, I show how Luther’s theology can be used as a critique towards Foucault and vice versa. Through this narrative method, structures of power and liberation are unveiled. The interaction illuminates their diverse views on secular and non-secular order, as well as an immanent and transcendental order. Luther points towards eternity, while Foucault points towards society and its powers. The main outcome is firstly: faith for Foucault is never an explanation of “reality”, but a result of social relations. For Luther, faith is to experience the world as reality; and secondly: larva Dei creates a possibility to overcome suffering by faith, whereas by Foucault’s immanent structure, suffering is understood as “empty” or “meaningless”. Foucault contributes with an important critique of misusing vocation in war. An area for further research is to continue developing critiques of vocation and power in relation to contemporary soldiers’, terrorists’ and anarchists’ masks, since some are used to protect life and others to protect identities.     

What Do the Theologically Educated Look Like?

What do the theologically educated look like? Nine outcomes of a theological education are suggested that respond to this question, outcomes particularly pertinent to the contemporary cultural setting and mission challenge of Western Europe. These outcomes are compared with the nine learning outcomes that the Church of England uses at the present time to assess candidates for ordained ministry. In the light of this comparison some broad recommendations are made for future emphases in theological education.     

“But I Like My Body”: Positive body image characteristics and a holistic model for young-adult women

Extant body image research has provided a rich understanding of negative body image but a rather underdeveloped depiction of positive body image. Thus, this study used Grounded Theory to analyze interviews from 15 college women classified as having positive body image and five body image experts. Many characteristics of positive body image emerged, including appreciating the unique beauty and functionality of their body, filtering information (e.g., appearance commentary, media ideals) in a body-protective manner, defining beauty broadly, and highlighting their body's assets while minimizing perceived imperfections. A holistic model emerged: when women processed mostly positive and rejected negative source information, their body investment decreased and body evaluation became more positive, illustrating the fluidity of body image. Women reciprocally influenced these sources (e.g., mentoring others to love their bodies, surrounding themselves with others who promote body acceptance, taking care of their health), which, in turn, promoted increased positive source information.     

A criticism of Young’s ‘Throwing Like a Girl’ through Scheler’s understanding of motor action

Continental Philosophy Review - This paper is concerned with the nature of feminine bodily comportment described by Iris Marion Young in ‘Throwing Like a Girl.’ According to Young, the...     

It Seems Like There Aren’t Any Seemings

I argue that the two primary motivations in the literature for positing seemings as sui generis mental states are insufficient to motivate this view. Because of this, epistemological views which attempt to put seemings to work don??t go far enough. It would be better to do the same work by appealing to what makes seeming talk true rather than simply appealing to seeming talk.