Will infants search when ‘no toy’ is hidden? A study of implicit assumptions about the development of object permanence

In the Piagetian tradition, presence or absence of a sense of object permanence is inferred from whether an infant does or does not search when an object is occluded. This line of reasoning entails an implicit assumption, i.e. an infant will not search if no object is seen to disappear. This assumption was evaluated in three studies of 9- and 12-month-old infants' responses to ‘hiding’ toy and ‘no toy’ in different orders in one and two positions. The infants did not search for ‘no toy’ when it preceded toy hiding, but they did search for ‘no toy’ when it followed ‘toy’ under some conditions.     

Materials for an analysis of a just universe

There is one assumption that is shared by practically all popular religious and philosophic systems, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western. In truth it may well be that it is this single assumption which makes such ‘systems’ possible. That shared assumption is the belief in a ‘just universe’, i.e. ‘just’ in the sense of morally ordered, morally predictable and morally explainable. This assumption rests, as most assumptions must, on pragmatic grounds; that is to say, the assumption is retained or used because it gets the users where they want to go, i.e. the assumption works. But if it could be shown that this assumption, aside from being useful, leads to insuperable logical or empirical problems, then this might be prima facie grounds for rejecting the assumption. Part I examines the historical roots of the assumption of a just universe. Part II, examines three implications that would seem to follow from the assumption that the universe, the world, is a just place in which to live. Part III explores the unacceptable consequences that are found in and that follow from these three implications and that necessitate the rejection of the assumption of the just universe of Part I.     

On the Vicarious Humanity of Christ

In the recent literature there has been a spate of essays, articles and books discussing the question of whether Christ had a ‘fallen’ human nature. This article offers a new argument for the conclusion that Christ had a fallen but not sinful human nature that was ‘healed’ of its fallenness at the moment of assumption by the Word – what we shall call, the vicarious humanity of Christ view. This account concedes to the defender of Christ's ‘fallen’ humanity that his human nature is generated in a fallen state (and immediately cleansed of fallenness in the act of assumption). And it concedes to the defender of Christ's sinlessness the claim that Christ is without sin from the first moment of incarnation. This represents an important via media in the contemporary debate about this vexed christological topic.     

Sporting Integrity,Coherence, and Being True to the Spirit of a Game

Abstract

The term ‘sporting integrity’ is widely used in the normative assessment of sports. The term, however, suffers from a lack of conceptual precision. Alfred Archer’s ‘coherence-view’ of sporting integrity goes a long way to help clarify what ‘sporting integrity’ actually means and the specific institutional and individual obligations that it generates. Archer argues that ‘sporting integrity’ essentially means that the constraints athletes face ‘cohere’, in the sense of applying consistent inefficiencies between athletic competitors. For example, those who use performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are less constrained than those who do not use PEDs, and thus PED use undermines sporting integrity. This paper presents the argument that over and above competitive coherence, sporting integrity means living up to the ‘spirit’ or ‘ethos’ of a game. The implications of this view are that a sport could have ‘coherent’ competitive constraints and still lack sporting integrity; additionally, a sport could have ‘incoherent’ competitive constraints and still demonstrate sporting integrity. These implications are drawn out relative to the three specific cases that Archer uses to illustrate his coherence view; namely, PED use in professional cycling, ‘tanking’ in Olympic badminton, and the prospect of allowing the Rangers Football Club entrance into the Scottish Premier League without playing through and first winning/qualifying in the lesser leagues.     

Labour discipline in a Christian Orthodox sisterhood in Russia*

This article discusses the issue of labour discipline in a Christian Orthodox organisation in Russia. The sisterhood which I analyse is the meeting point of two types of ‘work’: the ‘secular work’ of employed workers is embedded into the ‘religious work’ of the sisters who live a monastic life. I argue that the religious–economic mix of the sisterhood suggests that three employment models are evident: ‘work more, get less’, ‘work less, get more’ and ‘work for free’. Religious and economic spheres are mediated by labour which takes different forms, creating distinct, but related disciplinary labour spaces. I thread the concept of discipline through religious and economic discourses in the monastic workplace, the conflicts between the religious and economic motivations to work and the role of ‘emotional work’. The analysis is based on the participant observation, conducted over a period of four months while I was a staff member of the sisterhood.     

CHINESE VALUE SYSTEM AND MANAGERIAL BEHAVIOUR*

This is a paper which reviews and discusses the implications of Chinese value systems for managerial behaviour in Taiwan. With a central assumption that managerial behaviour and styles are largely shaped by the values and normative systems of senior members of corporate management, a study of 43 industrial firms in Taiwan investigating their organisational structure and the managerial assumptions, values and other socio-demographical features of their senior managers was conducted. The results of the research lead to the construction of a typology of four managerial patterns in Taiwan today, viz. the ‘grass-roots’ type, the ‘Mainlander’ type, the ‘specialist’ type and the ‘transitional’ type. While the ‘transitional’ type is more or less by definition ‘transient’, a tendency is postulated by the authors for both the ‘grass-roots’ and ‘Mainlander’ types to move gradually to converge with the ‘specialist’ type which will become increasingly widespread in Taiwan.     

Trying in some way

Most discussions about trying assume that the expression ‘person P's trying to ?’ refers to a particular of some sort. These discussions then differ amongst themselves about to which metaphysical type these particulars belong: mental particulars, brain states, or physical actions are three of the most obvious candidates. This paper examines that assumption and in particular considers an argument of Davidsonian inspiration that might be used in its favour, which is based on the fact that the verb ‘try’ appears to take adverbial modification. Reasons are offered for rejecting this Davidsonian line of argument. A further argument for rejecting the assumption that ‘P's trying to ?’ is a genuinely referring expression is modelled on Jonathan Bennett's discussion of event names.     

The Holy Spirit and the Humanity of Christ in John Owen: A Re-Examination

This article re-examines John Owen’s construal of the Holy Spirit’s activity in the humanity of Christ. While Owen’s ‘Spirit Christology’ is both lauded as exemplary and criticized as nearly Nestorian, both positions are largely based on a shared (yet faulty) assumption regarding the key text of Owen’s ‘Spirit Christology’ (Pneumatologia 3:159–88; esp. pp. 160–1). In order to correct this assumption, this article examines the claims that Owen makes in this section of Pneumatologia within three different contexts: (1) Owen’s historical context; (2) the context of Owen’s broader corpus; and (3) the immediate context of these claims within the structure and argumentation of Pneumatologia as a whole. I suggest that this rereading of Owen’s Spirit Christology is able to retain many of the desirable theological implications of the original interpretation without the same theological difficulties.     

“The ripples are big”: Storying the impact of doping in sport beyond the sanctioned athlete

ObjectiveThe purpose of this paper was to extend current doping research efforts by shifting the focus away from a doping-user perspective to examine the experiences of elite athletes that have been personally affected by other athletes' doping behaviours.DesignThis research works within the interpretive paradigm, adopting relativist ontology and transactional/subjectivist epistemology.MethodConversational interviews were conducted with ‘competitive’ (N = 2) and ‘retired’ (N = 2) elite Track and Field athletes from multiple countries. In order to communicate the findings in a way that captures the complexity of the issue, whilst also appealing to the athletes this issue affects, creative non-fiction stories were used to present the findings.ResultsTwo stories were created; one incorporating the ‘competitive’ athletes' experiences and one presenting the ‘retired’ athletes' accounts. The stories detail financial, emotional, and relational implications stemming from others' use of performance enhancing drugs. Critically, the impact is not ephemeral; the retired athletes detailed the long-term implications of their experiences. Meanwhile, the competitive athletes suggest that given the current state of sport, they regularly have to defend their status as ‘clean athletes’. Thus, the ripples of doping in sport appear to be far reaching and enduring.ConclusionsIncorporating a novel mode of knowledge production within the doping literature, the stories presented here demonstrate elite athletes' candid accounts of being impacted by others’ doping behaviours in sport. This study also emphasises the value of adopting novel and creative approaches to data collection and representation within the field of doping research.     

Abstract versus Causal Explanations?

In the recent literature on causal and non-causal scientific explanations, there is an intuitive assumption (which we call the ‘abstractness assumption’) according to which an explanation is non-causal by virtue of being abstract. In this context, to be ‘abstract’ means that the explanans in question leaves out many or almost all causal microphysical details of the target system. After motivating this assumption, we argue that the abstractness assumption, in placing the abstract and the causal character of an explanation in tension, is misguided in ways that are independent of which view of causation or causal explanation one takes to be most accurate. On major accounts of causation, as well as on major accounts of causal explanation, the abstractness of an explanation is not sufficient for it being non-causal. That is, explanations are not non-causal by dint of being abstract.     

Collaboration Talk: The Folk Theories of Nano Research

The nano initiative in the US and elsewhere encourages and promotes various forms of multi-stakeholder activities, such as industrial collaborations. Forming part of the discourse of expectations around emerging technologies, collaboration is an important resource holding together different practices of knowledge production. In the conversations between policy and science, collaboration becomes a measurable entity and a measure in itself, figuring in the evaluations of the performance of individual faculty and research centres; however, the policy metaphor of ‘collaboration’ stands for a variety of different forms and shapes of interactions between university and industry. From a discourse analysis perspective, ‘folk theories’ of nano collaboration help to explore the dynamics of the university/industry boundary in the scientific organisational discourse as in a recent series of interactions with scientists, university officials and technology transfer officers in a number of US universities. What does the introduction of the new entity (nano) mean for scientists, and for university practices of technology transfer and commercialisation, in terms of trying to accommodate individual ‘nano’ cases into university regulations and procedures? How are these practices and experiences discussed in terms of collaboration? Assessments of value of collaboration ranged between polarised views, raising questions about occasions, audiences and communities of assessors invoked in the construction of acceptable accounts of nano collaboration. Metaphors and analogies were used to mobilise specific meanings in the discourses of the innovative potential of emerging fields. As such, assessments of the potential of terms pertinent to the emerging discourses, such as collaboration, would be better based on the assumption of shared meanings, not fixed and given, but actively achieved.     

South American Evangelicals’ Re-conquest of Europe

This article focuses on networks of South-American preachers, led by charismatic characters such as the Argentinean pastor Carlos Annacondia, who export themselves not only to countries within the Americas but also to Europe. The prevailing justification among Latin-American Evangelicals for undertaking this ‘reverse mission’ (Freston) is in the view that especially the ‘old’ Roman Catholic Europe is spiritually ‘cooled down’ and that the time is ripe for re-evangelizing it. This study analyzes the way in which network-based charismatic entrepreneurship has encouraged transnational imaginaries of re-conquering Europe spiritually, more specifically in terms of the meanings the members of these networks attribute to the ‘spiritual re-conquest’. I conclude by suggesting that, similar to flows from other regions in the global South, such as Africa, the much vaunted ‘reverse mission’ to Europe is vested with meanings that transcend the spiritual re-conquest as such. In the case of Latin America, this article argues, the chief motivation is symbolic: to strengthen the status of local churches and their leaders against the backdrop of a highly competitive religious market on the Latin-American sub-continent.     

Religions and Conflicts

Many believe that a peaceful, tolerant and respectful coexistence among religions is not compatible with the conviction that only one of them is true. I argue that this ‘incompatibility problem’ (IP) is grounded in a ‘naturalistic assumption’ (NA), that is, the assumption that every subject, including religion, should be treated without taking into account that a super-natural being may exist and reveal to us an unexpected way to deal with our experience. I then argue that in matters of religion, NA is untenable and that its very opposite, which I call ‘super-naturalistic assumption’ (SA), should be adopted. My thesis is that, once SA is adopted, IP can be dismissed and that it is plausible to maintain that a peaceful, tolerant and respectful coexistence among religions is compatible with the conviction that only one of them is true.     

Some reflections on the individuation of events

Theories in physics require reference to manifolds of locations and events. Abstract versions of these manifolds, ‘space’, ‘time’ and ‘space‐time’ are frequently used as reference systems. Should they be included in the ontology of physics as well as the material manifolds from which they are abstracted? This problem can be approached through a study of the identity conditions of events. The argument is offered that neither an abstract ‘time’ of moments is viable, nor is the assumption that events are individuated by their locations necessary. Taken together these conclusions would require reinterpretation of relativity as a grammar of histories and of the Einstein—Podolski‐Rosen experiment as displaying the possibility of spatially distributed events.     

Teens on the Internet—commercial application of a deconstructive analysis of ‘teen zine’ features

This paper presents the authors' approach to understanding drivers of interest for teen e‐zines (Internet magazines). The paper shows how a deconstruction of the current set of e‐zines provides the raw material for a conjoint measurement study, whereby the elements are mixed and matched in order to create new test concepts. From reactions to those test concepts one can identify four newly emerging segments: the ‘indifferents’, the ‘adults in training’, the ‘media and me’ and the ‘talk and celebrate being a teen’. Deconstruction applied to the competitive frame provides both a deeper understanding of the e‐zine landscape and input for newer and better e‐zines that are targeted to specific mindsets. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Sport,Craft Or Technique? The Case of competitive aeromodelling

This essay takes competitive aeromodelling as a test case for certain contentious issues in philosophy of sport. More specifically, I look at the challenge it presents to prevailing ideas of what properly counts as ‘sport’, which in turn have their source in other, more basic or deep-rooted preconceptions. Among them are a range of ‘common-sense’ beliefs about the properly (naturally) human, the mind/body relationship, the role (if any) of scientific-technological innovation as a means of performance enhancement, and – most fundamentally – the distinction between nature and culture in so far as it bears on these questions. My approach is broadly deconstructionist in taking them as genuine questions and in pressing hard on those unresolved problems thrown up by any attempt to secure a definition of ‘sport’ that would pre-emptively exclude any kind of advanced technological adjunct (or Derridean ‘supplement’) that seemed to lead outside and beyond the realm of ‘natural’ human powers, capacities and skills. On the other hand I acknowledge – as against ‘strong’-conventionalist (e.g. Wittgensteinian) approaches – that the category ‘sport’ cannot be relativised or culturally contextualised to the point where it loses all determinate sense or normative significance. My main purpose here is to assess various claims and counter-claims by running them past a fairly detailed account of competitive aeromodelling – or one particular branch thereof – and the kinds of difficulty it creates not only for conservative, essentialist or naturalising definitions but also for that other reactive trend towards all-out cultural-relativist or social-constructivist doctrines. In addition, though far from incidentally, I want to make the case that this is indeed a sport on any reasonable, fair, or adequately informed reckoning and that its recognition as such might help to clarify certain obscure corners of current philosophical thinking about these issues.     

Heidegger and the Supposition of a Single,Objective World

Christina Lafont has argued that the early Heidegger's reflections on truth and understanding are incompatible with ‘the supposition of a single objective world’. This paper presents her argument, reviews some responses that the existing Heidegger literature suggests (focusing, in particular, on work by John Haugeland), and offers what I argue is a superior response. Building on a deeper exploration of just what the above ‘supposition’ demands (an exploration informed by the work of Bernard Williams and Adrian Moore), I argue that a crucial assumption that Lafont and Haugeland both accept must be rejected, namely, that different ‘understandings of Being’ can be viewed as offering ‘rival perspectives’ on a common subject‐matter. I develop this case by drawing on an alternative account of what a Heideggerian ‘understanding of Being’ might be like.     

On measuring the minimum detection time: A simple reaction time study in the time estimation paradigm

Kornblum's time estimation paradigm, together with the so‐called ‘race model’, provides an appealing alternative for measuring the ‘cut‐off’ which separates ‘true’ reaction times from anticipatory reaction times. However, the model is not precise enough to reveal the relation between the signal intensity and the ‘cut‐off’. Accordingly, Kornblum's model is extended with an emphasis on the measure of the ‘cut‐off’. Another aspect of the extension is to use a parametric method to analyse the data. In particular, it is assumed that the time estimation‐induced latency is gamma distributed and the signal‐induced latency is Weibull distributed, with the latter shifted by the ‘cut‐off’. The rationale behind the parametric assumption is discussed. For illustrative purposes, two pieces of experimental work are presented. Since the core of the race model is the assumption of an independent race between the time estimation process and the detection process, the first experiment tests whether, for the same signal intensity, the signal‐induced latency distribution is invariant across different time intervals; the second experiment tests whether, for the same time interval, the time estimation‐induced latency distribution is invariant across different signal intensity conditions. The data from the second experiment are also used to test various parametric assumptions in the model, which include the signal effect on the ‘cut‐off’. The new model fits the data well.