Agency,Thought, and Language: Analytic Philosophy Goes to School

I take as my starting point recent concerns from within educational psychology about the need to treat the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of empirical research in the field more seriously, specifically in the context of work on the self, mind and agency. Developing this theme, I find such conceptual support in the writings of P. F. Strawson and Donald Davidson, two giants of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Drawing particularly on Davidson’s later work, in which he seeks to integrate key claims about subjectivity, objectivity, belief, truth and knowledge, within what he refers to as a triangular framework of two speakers and a common world, I find support for pedagogic and classroom organizational structures based on collaborative thinking and dialogue. While Davidson did not write about education, I argue that his framework has much to offer, most particularly in view of the priority it affords language and dialogue as the necessary and sufficient conditions for reason, belief and thought—in short, for being a person in the world.     

Political Agency,Citizenship, and Non-human Animals

In this essay I challenge the idea that political agency must be central to the concept of citizenship. I consider this question in relation to whether or not domesticated animals can be understood as our fellow citizens. In recent debates on this topic, both proponents and opponents of animal citizenship have taken political agency to be central to this question. I advance two main arguments against this position. First, I argue against the orthodox view that claims political agency is a requirement of citizenship. This position ignores both how citizenship is understood in practice by modern, liberal democracies, as well as the separate functions of citizenship. Further, there are no plausible ways we can consistently extend citizenship to humans regardless of intellectual ability, while denying it to domesticated animals. Nevertheless, I argue that it is important to distinguish two ways in which citizenship is enacted: Citizenship as Membership and Citizenship as Responsible, Political Agent. Domesticated animals should be understood as citizens, despite the fact that they are not responsible, political agents. Second, I challenge the view, put forward by Donaldson and Kymlicka, that animals are capable of certain forms of political agency. I argue that political agency is not crucial to whether, and how, the preferences of these animals matter for political decision-making. The upshot of my argument is that political agency matters much less to debates about the citizenship of non-human animals than both sides of this debate have been inclined to think.     

From Theory of Rhetoric to the Practice of Language Use: The Case of Appeals to Ethos Elements

In their book Commitment in Dialogue, Walton and Krabbe claim that formal dialogue systems for conversational argumentation are “not very realistic and not easy to apply”. This difficulty may make argumentation theory less well adapted to be employed to describe or analyse actual argumentation practice. On the other hand, the empirical study of real-life arguments may miss or ignore insights of more than the two millennia of the development of philosophy of language, rhetoric, and argumentation theory. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for adapting such theories to serve as applicable tools in the study of argumentation phenomena. Our approach is both theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded in large-scale corpus analysis. The area of interest are appeals to ethos, the character of the speaker, building upon Aristotle’s rhetoric. Ethotic techniques are used to influence the hearers through the communication, where speakers might establish, but also emphasise, weaken or undermine their own or others’ credibility and trustworthiness. Specifically, we apply our method to Aristotelian theory of ethos elements which identifies practical wisdom, moral virtue and goodwill as components of speakers’ character, which can be supported or attacked. The challenges we identified in this case and the solutions we proposed allow us to formulate general guidelines of how to exploit rich theoretical frameworks to the analysis of the practice of language use.

     

The Power of Language: Gender,Status, and Agency in Performance Evaluations

Sex Roles - In the workplace, women often encounter gender stereotypes and biases that reinforce the existing gender hierarchy, may hinder women’s career aspirations and retention, and may...     

Beyond Fear Appeals: Negative and Positive Persuasive Appeals to Health and Self-Esteem

The present research was designed to extend our knowledge of fear appeals and attitude change in two directions. The first purpose was to compare a traditional negative, or fear, appeal to its counterpart, an appeal emphasizing the positive consequences of accepting a communicator's recommendation. The second purpose was to test the assumption of the theory of protection motivation that people are motivated to protect themselves from psychological and social, as well as physical, threats. The results disclosed that, compared to a no-message control condition, the traditional negative appeal to health was more persuasive than the positive appeal. A positive appeal to self-esteem, however, was superior to a negative appeal to self-esteem. Several implications for health psychology were discussed. First, the traditional negative appeals to health may be more persuasive than positive appeals. Second, people may be persuaded to adopt healthy lifestyles for reasons other than health per se (i.e., to enhance self-esteem). The following tentative conclusions were based on unexpected findings and should be interpreted with caution. The decision to use a positive or negative appeal should consider the number of available adaptive responses. Finally, the data suggested that mass media health campaigns should use both negative and positive appeals.     

Teaching Liberal Arts Undergraduates about Hinduism amid Theoretical and Political Contestation Today

Abstract. As the number of people of South Asian heritage in America has greatly increased over recent decades, the study and teaching of Hinduism has come under ever greater scrutiny. During this time, the number of students of Indian background has vastly increased in some schools in some parts of the United States. This increased presence and scrutiny has had some salutary effects, including greater attention to and accountability in our field, but has also led to some unwelcome conflict and feelings of misrepresentation by both academics and adherents. Some of us are in the perplexing position of being keenly aware of and in conversation about tensions elsewhere, yet still having few (or no) Hindu students in our own classrooms. This essay will discuss two matters given this background: first, I will describe how I present Hindu religious traditions in my local context, and then I will offer some more general reflections on teaching and researching Hinduism in the United States today.     

Normative Appeals to the Natural

Surprisingly, many ethical realists and anti-realists, naturalists and not, all accept some version of the following normative appeal to the natural (NAN): evaluative and normative facts hold solely in virtue of natural facts, where their naturalness is part of what fits them for the job. This paper argues not that NAN is false but that NAN has no adequate non-parochial justification (a justification that relies only on premises which can be accepted by more or less everyone who accepts NAN) to back up this consensus. I show that we cannot establish versions of NAN which are interesting in their own right (and not merely as instances of a general naturalistic ontology) by appealing to the nature of natural properties or the kind of in-virtue-of relation to which NAN refers, plus other plausible non-parochial assumptions. On the way, I distinguish different types of 'in virtue of' claims. I conclude by arguing that the way in which assessment of meta-ethical hypotheses is theory-dependent predicts the failure of non-parochial justifications of NAN.     

Gender Hierarchy in the Space: The Role of Gender Status in Shaping the Spatial Agency Bias

According to the Spatial Agency Bias (SAB), more agentic groups (men) are envisioned to the left of less agentic groups (women). This research investigated the role of social status in shaping the spatial representation of gender couples. Participants were presented pairs consisting of one male and one female target who confirmed gender stereotypes. The status of the targets in each pair was systematically varied (high-status vs. low-status job). Participants chose the target order (female/male vs. male/female) they preferred. In line with gender-status expectations (male: high-status, female: low-status), a male in a high-status job led to a spatial arrangement that favored the male/female order, regardless of the status of the female target. The female/male order was favored only when the female had a high-status job and the male a low-status job. No SAB occurred for pairs in which both targets displayed low-status jobs. The implications of status for the SAB are discussed.     

Taking Our Selves Too Seriously: Commitment,Contestation, and the Dynamic Life of the Self

In this article, I distinguish two models of personal integrity. The first, wholeheartedness, regards harmonious unity of the self as psychologically healthy and volitional consistency as ethically ideal. I argue that it does so at the substantial cost of framing ambivalence and conflict as defects of character and action. To avoid these consequences, I propose an alternate ideal of humility that construes the self as multiple and precarious and celebrates experiences of loss and transformation through which learning, growth, innovation, and dynamic relationship become possible. This ideal not only sustains prospects for integrity but is more suitable than wholeheartedness for recognizing practices of contestation, such as those involving potentially destabilizing encounters with difference that is common within pluralistic societies, as vital for rich, well‐lived lives.     

Identity,Culture and Contestation: Social Identity as Cross-Cultural Theory

In this paper we explore the logic and implications of the social identity approach to group processes. The theory argues that the consequences of social identification for behaviour are not simple givens. Rather than making generalisations about the behaviour that flows from social identification, the theory makes the point that behaviour depends upon the way in which identities are defined. This emphasis upon the contents of social identities draws our attention to their construction and we pay particular attention to how group identities are made and remade in and through argument and social practice. We argue that attention to the dynamics of identity construction means that this perspective is respectful of culture and cultural difference and that the social identity approach therefore has considerable value in exploring the politics and practice of identity wherever group behaviour may be found. Moreover, we argue that the ubiquity of identity-related argument across cultures and contexts reflects the fact that group identity is a basis for social power.     

Broadcasting to an Enemy Country: What Appeals are Effective,and Why

Summary

This study examined inmate perceptions of the value of membership of penitentiary residential unit management committees for the rehabilitation of inmates. The degree of favorableness of inmate perceptions of the committees was treated as a function of their participation in a number of other penitentiary programs.

It was found that categorization of inmates in this way was useful for identifying and explaining differences in their perceptions of the utility of membership of the residential committees for rehabilitation. It was also found that in the case of three programs—group therapy, playing bridge, and individual counselling of inmates by classification officers —participants had significantly more favorable perceptions of residential committees than nonparticipants. A comparison of the perceptions of residential committees by these inmate samples and staff disclosed that only participation in counselling by classification officers and playing bridge resulted in inmates' perception of the committees becoming as favorable as those of the staff.

The conceptual framework of the study employed dissonance theory to account for the effect of participation on inmates' perceptions of the committees.     

Agency,Patiency, and The Good Life: the Passivities Objection to Eudaimonism

Many contemporary eudaimonists emphasize the role of agency in the good life. Mark LeBar, for example, characterizes his own eudaimonist view this way: “It is agentist, not patientist, because it emphasizes that our lives go well in virtue of what we do, rather than what happens, to us or otherwise”. Nicholas Wolterstorff, however, has argued that this prioritizing of agency over patiency is a fatal flaw in eudaimonist accounts of well-being. Eudaimonism must be rejected, Wolterstorff argues, because many life-goods are “passivities” that are out of a person’s hands, including how she is treated by others. In this paper, I defend eudaimonism against this passivities objection. I argue that eudaimonism can maintain its agentist character while also capturing the element of truth in the passivities objection—namely, that human well-being is vulnerable and social. I also argue that eudaimonists should avail themselves of the notion of receptivity to capture important aspects of the good life.     

Fear-Arousing and Empathy-Arousing Appeals to Help: The Pathos of Persuasion

An experiment tested the proposition that the components of a fear appeal which persuade us to protect ourselves are the Same components that persuade us to protect others. The results confirmed this hypothesis for the two components examined: noxiousness of the threatened danger and efficacy of coping response. Films showing noxious scenes of industrial whaling and films showing a pro-environmental action organization successfully saving whales from whalers strengthened intentions to help this endangered animal species. Taken together, available data indicate that fear appeals can persuade us to protect ourselves, other people, and even infrahuman animals. The social psychological paradigm used to investigate attitude change was merged with a paradigm employed to examine prosocial behavior. As predicted, an empathy-arousing appeal facilitated attitude change. Three implications for promoting ecological actions were discussed. First, empathy-arousing appeals can be applied to mass media campaigns. Second, the concept of response-efficacy in persuasive appeals can be extended from direct, individual action to activity requiring the mediation of social organizations. Finally, pro-environmental campaigns can be effective when the potential beneficiaries are not the ones shown, but who symbolize the many others in the same plight.     

Situating Experience: Agency,Perception, and the Given

William Alston has been a long‐time critic of the arguments of Wilfrid Sellars, and he has recently revisited the arguments made by Sellars in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” Alston's work attempts to show how Sellarsian views fail to account for our understanding of perception by making a two‐part attack on Sellars's account: part one of the attack takes up the Sellarsian approach to ‘looks’‐talk, and part two concerns Sellars's thoroughgoing conceptualism with regard to perception. In this article, I argue that there is much in Alston's view that does violence to our understanding of theoretical and practical reason by removing concepts (and thereby constraint by norms) from perception, and I show that Alston's two‐pronged attack fails due to its inadequate reading of “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” and its problematic underlying epistemology.     

政治主体的伦理向度与公共利益的达成

在构建"优良的生活"的政治实践中,无论个体还是政治共同体,都体现一种共同善的诉求.政治主体如何就"对人而言的善和共同体的利益"达成一个"共同的理解",自然成为考察政治主体伦理的一个有效向度.在现代民主政治情境下,无论是政治家和公共行政人员还是与此紧密相关的公民,需要把作为目的的公共利益当作自己的规范价值和行为标准,从而使政治获得一种高贵的伦理品质.