ABSTRACT This paper proposes a theoretical framework for occupational science that synthesizes the Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) with the Palestinian concept of Sumud (steadfastness), an Indigenous Palestinian philosophy of collective resilience under colonial military occupation. MOHO was chosen as the structural base for this synthesis because of its widespread use and comprehensive conceptual architecture; however, its Western-centric foundations require fundamental reimagining rather than mere cultural adaptation to be meaningful in contexts of military occupation. The framework is based on critical occupational justice, decolonial theory, and a transactional perspective on occupation. It addresses the need for culturally relevant and politically sensitive theories that can analyze occupation under conditions of structural violence, while simultaneously addressing the shortcomings of Western-centric frameworks when applied to contexts shaped by colonial oppression. The paper critically re-examines MOHO’s central concepts of volition, habituation, and performance capacity through the lens of Sumud. These concepts are expanded to include aspects of collective intentionality, cultural resistance, and community resilience. The framework suggests a reimagined interpretation of these core concepts—volition as a collective desire for justice, habituation as a mechanism for cultural continuity, performance capacity as collective resilience, and the environment as a multi-layered political landscape—including more than human elements. Case vignettes, based upon documented Palestinian experiences, illustrate these concepts in practice. This work contributes to the decolonization of occupational science by bringing an Indigenous knowledge system to the forefront, foregrounding the political aspects of occupation and questioning the Western-centric assumptions of the field. Implications for practice and education are discussed, providing avenues for implementation of this advancement in theory, practice, and education.

Causal-augmented disentanglement for contrastive recommendation

In this article, I explore conceptual connections between politics and spirituality, and I advocate for a spiritualization of the political sphere. I explain why the spiritual triad of love, communion, and gift is deeply related to the political triad of common good, political community, and government. I also make clear why individual and collective intentions and cultural values are the main channels of interaction between politics and spirituality. In the second part of the article, I argue that spirituality influences politics by, among other things: (a) prioritizing the person over the political community; (b) supporting the dematerialization of the political system; (c) fostering the respect for the law and ethics; (d) encouraging the limitation of domination; (e) inspiring the reduction of coercion; (f) stimulating reconciliation and union among peoples; (g) helping political systems to overcome necessary dualisms; (h) endorsing political participation and democracy; (i) inspiring diversity, solidarity, and inclusivity; (j) encouraging freedom and human rights; and (k) facilitating the decision-making process and political agreements.

ABSTRACT Background Generally, understandings of learning have predominantly been framed as knowledge transfer from the coach to the learner, and when there are discussions of learning the focus tends to be on coaches and coaching. As a consequence, learning has had little direct attention, so here the focus is on learning sport. Purpose This article presents a site-ontological practice theory perspective on learning sport, extending beyond traditional epistemological views. The purpose is to understand learning in sport as something that happens in time and space, and involves the practices of athletes, coaches, and others in the site. Method Drawing on a sociological practice theory perspective, we examine learning sport, with illustrations from volleyball. Specifically, we use the site-ontological ‘theory of practice architectures’ to demonstrate how learning happens in sport. Findings We argue that learning sport is an ontological transformation where participants are ‘stirred into practices’ rather than simply a process of acquiring discrete skills or knowledge. We position learning as site-specific and ecologically arranged, occurring through participation in ensembles where participants occupy different roles while sharing collective intentionality toward the practice's goals. The approach emphasises that learning transforms not only individuals but also sites, histories, and communities. Significance and Impact The significance of this site-ontological practice theory approach is that it highlights what actually occurs when people learn sport – ontological transformation, and this perspective provides a new ecological understanding of learning in sport that can inform coaching and player development.

This essay argues that democracy’s resilience lies less in grand reforms than in the quiet, continuous maintenance of its procedures. Tracing a lineage from early parliamentary record-keeping to contemporary AI tools, it shows how digital infrastructures mostly reinforce—rather than reinvent—existing legislative practices. These systems enhance institutional capacity by managing complexity, enabling parliaments to function under growing informational strain. Efficiency is thus reframed as throughput legitimacy: the ability to transform collective intent into coherent decisions without sacrificing representation. Yet this procedural competence must remain democratically guided. When aligned with deliberative purpose, technological innovation strengthens democratic stability rather than hollowing it out.

In the labyrinthine corridors of democratic theory and legal practice, there exists a realm seldom charted: the inner workings of collegial courts, where individual judgments dissolve into the elusive ‘we’ of collective authority. This inquiry, conducted under the auspices of the COIN project (The emergence of COllective INtentionality in participatory decision-making processes of the courts), seeks to trace the serpentine paths by which plural intentions coalesce into binding legal norms, revealing law not as a static codex but as a performative instantiation of collective cognition. Through a triangulation of textual exegesis, judicial interviews, and ethnographic observation, the project illuminates the delicate interplay between participatory democracy, collective intentionality, and the normative force of legal entities. Here, courts emerge simultaneously as laboratories and cathedrals of deliberation, spaces where the fragile architecture of shared recognition becomes visible and operative. The present reflection is less a conclusion than a prologue, an invitation to accompany law from its philosophical lexicon to its lived judicial enactment - a realm where the ‘I’ is constantly negotiated into the ‘we’, and where legitimacy is performed rather than proclaimed.

Human social cognition has evolved in the "we mode," a uniquely human capacity to form shared intentions and collaborate as unified agents. This collective intentionality, rooted in embodied mechanisms such as synchronized behavior, joint attention, interbrain coupling, and emotional attunement, has enabled the open-ended creativity and adaptability that define human culture. However, the rise of social media and artificial intelligence is reshaping these foundational dynamics. This article identifies a dual threat posed by the emergence of a "digital we." First, algorithmically mediated digital communication erodes embodied social cues and reinforces homophily, weakening the neurobiological scaffolding that sustains we mode cognition. Second, the increasing reliance on generative AI in communication and creative domains risks reducing novelty and fostering convergence, thereby narrowing the scope of cultural innovation. These developments are situated within the broader "comfort-growth paradox," the tension between technological systems designed for intuitive, predictable user experiences and the human need for cognitive challenge, ambiguity, and developmental tension. While comfort-driven design maximizes engagement, it may suppress the very dissonance necessary for creativity and growth. As a result, the "digital we" risks cultivating passive familiarity at the expense of dialogical tension and pluralistic meaning-making. To counter this trajectory, the article argues for reimagining digital technologies not as replacements for human connection but as extensions of it. Prioritizing design that fosters discovery, exploration, and critical intersubjectivity is essential for preserving the open-ended, transformative potential of human culture in an age of digital mediation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This study explores the intersection of law, policing, and justice by analyzing the legal dimensions of murder and rioting in Pakistan through a qualitative case study of a First Information Report (FIR) registered in Faisalabad. It addresses three key questions: (1) How does the FIR frame the charges of murder and rioting? (2) What legal provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) are invoked? and (3) What procedural and legal challenges emerge during investigation and prosecution? Despite extensive doctrinal work on murder and rioting offences, a significant gap exists in Pakistani criminological literature connecting statutory provisions with field-level practices, including FIR drafting, police investigation, forensic limitations, and witness protection deficits. To bridge this gap, the study employs a combined doctrinal and document-analysis approach, integrating statutory law, judicial precedents, and secondary literature with the examined FIR. Thematic coding identifies how the charges are framed, comparative analysis evaluates congruence with statutory and judicial standards, and doctrinal interpretation examines whether laws are properly applied or misused. Findings reveal that the FIR correctly invokes Sections 302, 148, and 149 of the PPC, establishing both individual and collective liability; however, difficulties persist in proving collective intent and distinguishing the roles of accused persons. While overall legal alignment is observed, investigative shortcomings—particularly in forensic application and evidence collection—undermine procedural justice. The study concludes that ensuring prosecutorial effectiveness and fairness in complex group-violence cases requires not only doctrinal clarity but also strengthening police investigative capacity, evidentiary rigor, and witness protection systems to enhance justice outcomes within Pakistan’s criminal justice framework.

The central claim of this book is that a paradigm shift from ideal to nonideal social ontology is currently underway, and that this shift ought to be fully followed through. I present a summary of three central ideas to argue for this claim. First, to develop and criticize the standard model of ideal social ontology. Second, to argue that social power, rather than collective intentionality, ought to play a key role in our general theories of the social world. Third, that my own nonideal account—the power view—can incorporate opaque kinds of social facts, such as economic classes.

There are three prevalent themes among the critics. First, a call to advance the concept of social power by expanding on structural power and demonstrating how telic power can be operationalized. Second, the critics want a stronger objection to the collective intentionality claim (assumed by the standard model). Third, there is a need to clarify the concept of opaque kinds of social facts, especially in relation to economic class. I integrate Khalidi’s clarification of opaqueness, elaborate on the concept of economic class, and introduce a new development of the power view by operationalizing telic power through an empirical case study.

ABSTRACT Upon entering Harlem for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir recounts how ‘a force pulls me back … fear. Not mine but that of others – the fear of all those whites who never take the risk of going to Harlem’. But of what are they fearful? The risk, Beauvoir describes, is not that of an external danger but themselves. These passages detail the phenomenon of having one’s collective being, one’s unity to certain others, revealed to oneself through a third-person encounter. In this paper, (2) I make sense of Beauvoir’s reflections through Gerda Walther’s social ontology, (3) to show how we consistently undergo pre-reflective we-experiences qua social identities. (4) I then demonstrate how this pre-reflective ‘we’ is made reflective by the external Third; and (5) how we may reflectively disavow ourselves of this ‘we’ when we find it uncomfortable, alienating, and inappropriate. These novel inroads into the phenomenology of collective intentionality leads me (6) to argue that while members of dominant groups enjoy the privilege of having their collective being remain in the unremarkable background, members who inhabit social identities that are stigmatised and oppressed are systematically forced back upon themselves through third-person encounters.

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to describe the fundamental properties of social reality and elucidate the normative behavioural processes constituting these properties. Relying on previous theoretical work on social behaviour and institutions, the paper synthesises key theoretical concepts and put forward a formal expression of these. Social reality is conceptualised as an institutional reality, where normatively based phenomena such as language, cultures and ideologies are considered institutions. These institutions are established through collectively accepted systems of rules, known as status functions. The creation of institutions relies on collective intentionality and brings about deontologies that provide reasons for action independent of personal inclinations. Norm circles are described as the social entities that establish and enforce normative pressure, thereby maintaining status functions. These circles are crucial for the creation and sustenance of institutions, as the rules of institutions lack causal power on their own. Social structures are understood as both the ontologically subjective characteristics internalised by individuals and the epistemically objective phenomena that shape these characteristics. The proposed theory acknowledges the existence of external social structures while addressing critiques of reductionism by highlighting the internalisation of characteristics by individuals.

The article analyzes the concept of social dramaturgy, which is becoming particularly relevant in the conditions of modern digital society. The main attention is paid to the game as a central element that allows to model social interactions and create new forms of motivation for active behavior of people in various fields of activity. The game is considered as a tool for playing social roles, forming collective intentionality and transforming cultural norms. It is emphasized that game scenarios distributed in digital media and on online platforms create new mechanisms of influence on consciousness, blurring the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, individual and collective. These changes have a significant impact on social structures and processes, opening up new perspectives for exploring the potential of drama methods and the role of media technologies in controlling the complex dynamics of the public sphere. The principles and methods of social dramaturgy are considered in the article from the point of view of an interdisciplinary approach that defines a methodological approach in analyzing the process of gamification of a digital society and designing interactions. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the analysis of post-drama theater as a game model of society, in which the boundaries between reality and simulation are blurred. Any social scenario becomes open to multiple interpretations, law and the text of culture. Thus, the text is a study of the functions of the game as a tool of social drama, its influence on the formation of dynamic connections, identities and collective intentionalities in modern media environments. The authors emphasize the need to rethink traditional approaches to understanding cultural practices of interaction in a digital media environment, as well as the role of gamification in blurring the boundaries between reality and simulation.

Phenomenal intentionality and the sense of togetherness: a defense of the consciousness-first approach to collective intentionality

Abstract The general question about how societies reproduce themselves is highly relevant to law, for law is one of the primary tools we rely on for both stabilising and changing social systems. Of course, because law is backed by the coercive power of the state, it can have a significant impact. But law alone is not the unique source of social stability and change, and for it to have the impact we might want, we need an understanding of the multiple forces at work in the process of societal reproduction. This article explores the multiple dynamics that are relevant to social transformation, arguing that it is a mistake to think that the social forces governing society are located in our collective intentionality. Instead, as social subjects, we participate in and are shaped by social practices that have both a cultural dimension and a material dimension which produce stable equilibria through their looping effects. Law can prompt social transformation in multiple ways, including changing social meanings and material constraints, but its success in doing so is more likely if it sees itself as one force among many that affect the evolution of the complex systems that constitute societies.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that basic forms of collective intentionality such as those involved in atttending, acting and feeling with others essentially involve experiencing and understanding others as co-subjects, that their content is nonconceptual, and that they represent co-subjects and their positions at a level that is prior to the mind-body differentiation.

This paper explores the concept of intentionality from both the individual and collective perspectives, focusing on the arguments presented by Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle. Intentionality, the capacity of the mind to represent objects and states of affairs, is a fundamental concept in philosophy of mind. Wittgenstein’s later works provide a basis for understanding how language and social practices shape intentionality, while Searle’s contributions, particularly in his theory of collective intentionality, extend these ideas to social and institutional contexts. Through a comparative analysis, this paper aims to highlight the distinctions and intersections between individual and collective intentionality, offering insights into the broader implications for philosophy, cognitive science, and social theory. This comparative study seeks to deepen our understanding of the interplay between personal intentionality and collective intentionality, with implications for broader discussions on social ontology, language, and the philosophy of mind. A central issue is understanding how individual intentional states translate into collective intentionality, particularly the mechanisms that connect personal intentions with shared social realities. Another critical problem involves the role of language in shaping intentionality, exploring how Wittgenstein’s ideas of language games and forms of life compare to Searle’s concept of collective intentionality in the formation of shared meanings. Additionally, the study addresses the challenges of distinguishing collective intentionality from individual intentionality, especially in cases where individual intentions conflict with collective outcomes. A further problem is the ontological status of collective intentionality, questioning whether it can be reduced to individual intentionality or if it holds an independent existence. The study considers the broader implications for social ontology, examining how Wittgenstein and Searle’s differing views influence our understanding of social institutions, norms, and collective practices.

[Generert med KI] Andrew John Thomas anmelder Andrea Rotas bok "Collective Intentionality and the Study of Religion", som utforsker religion som sosial virkelighet gjennom begrepet kollektiv intensjonalitet. Rota kombinerer filosofisk teori med empiriske studier av Jehovas vitners praksiser, og viser hvordan religiøs atferd formes gjennom felles intensjoner og talehandlinger. Boken er teoretisk ambisiøs og godt strukturert, men kritiseres for å ha utilstrekkelig empirisk belegg til enkelte påstander. Likevel fremheves den som et viktig bidrag til religionsvitenskapen, og Thomas etterlyser videre forskning med sterkere datagrunnlag. Boken åpner for nye tverrfaglige tilnærminger til studiet av religion som sosialt fenomen.

Bioethics offers a transdisciplinary domain for framing ethical questions of how to move forward with cutting-edge medical technologies. The practice of Bioethics is structured in terms of a complex interrelationship between institutional facts – Law, Science, Ethics and Religion – which arise out of a specific social ontology that involves the ascription of hierarchies, status functions, rules, regulations, conventions, standards and principles. Even though within this transdisciplinary domain alternative enunciation scenes can be setted, each deriving its existence from social institutions, a form of collective intentionality is deployed through which “argumentative activity types” may take place (van Eemeren & Houtlosser, 2005). The focus of this article is on the peculiarities of arguments leading to conclusions in the contexts of decision-making on ethical questions of problematic clinical situations. Considering the fact that rhetorical possibilities within the conflicts that fuel the growth of ethics expertise in health care arise out not from an ideal of reciprocal persuasion but from irresolvable misunderstanding, it is our aim to identify the key elements of those rhetorical issues as they are developed in the field of Bioethics apart from the prime target of classical rhetoric: persuasion. The study will examine the possibilities and limits of consensus in this argumentative space where rhetorical paradigm leads to cognitive breakdowns and persuasive strategies failure rather than to intercomprehension and mutual intelligibility (Angenot, 2008)

Recent discussions between evolutionary and theological anthropology have intensified, particularly through the work of Michael Tomasello. As a key figure in evolutionary anthropology, Tomasello synthesizes extensive empirical research into an accessible ‘natural history’ of core human abilities. He posits that a unique human trait distinguishing us from our closest relatives is the capacity for “collective intentionality”, a concept he adapts from the philosophy of action. In this article, I show that Tomasello’s insights carry significant implications for philosophical and theological debates. Philosophically, his evolutionary framework invites a new understanding of the mind–brain problem, promoting a non-reductive view of human consciousness which questions the basic metaphysical assumptions of the debate by taking a genealogical perspective. Theologically, his work supports a “practical metaphysics”, suggesting that although morality is autonomous, it can lead to theistic interpretations of human existence. This supports the Kantian idea that religion does not precede morality but that religious views of the world are interpretations of human moral life. At the same time, religion is not just an add-on to morality but an interpretation of a human form of life as such. Both discourses exemplify the importance of a genealogical perspective in philosophy and theology, especially reinforcing the necessity of considering the ‘natural history’ of consciousness, free will or religiosity in anthropology.