Commonsense View Research Articles

Science and Different Images of the World

Science and Different Images of the World

(Un)related variety, urban milieu and tourism-company differentiation

ABSTRACTHigh tourism growth in single-asset tourism cities is often associated with a standardization of supply of products and services by tourism entrepreneurs. However, and in contrast to this common-sense view, tourism growth in specific urban tourism milieus in the ‘sun-sea-sand’ tourism city of Antalya has stimulated tourism entrepreneurs to differentiate their products. Contrary to most economic-geography literature on spatial clusters, evolutionary economic geographers argue that inter-industry relations of (un)related variety are crucial in inter-firm differentiation. The aim of the paper is to define the factors that influence tourism-firm differentiation in the single-asset tourism city of Antalya. The empirical research is theoretically informed by evolutionary economic-geography literature, and pays much attention to the role different urban sub-milieus play in tourism-firm differentiation. It is the first research on the relation between (un)related variety and tourism-firm differentiation in tourism studies. The empirical research is based on primary data collected by a firm-level survey (hotels, restaurants, jewellery- and retail-trade firms) in the city of Antalya. The factors that influence tourism-firm differentiation are explored by using quantitative methods of analysis (an econometric logit-regression model and a correspondence analysis). The main result of the empirical research is that investments in firms in related sectors, in our case jewellery companies and hotels, are positively and significantly related to tourism-firm differentiation. In addition, the location tourism firms in areas visited by a mix of consumers (tourists and locals) also is positively and significantly related to inter-firm differentiation whereas urban milieus visited by locals only have a negative effect.

A puzzle about death’s badness: Can death be bad for the paradise-bound?

Since at least the time of Epicurus, philosophers have debated whether (and how) death could be bad for the one who has died, since (it is typically assumed) death is a permanent experiential blank. But a different (and hitherto unexplored) puzzle about death’s badness arises when we consider the death of a person who is paradise-bound. The first purpose of this paper is to develop this puzzle. The second purpose of this paper is to suggest and evaluate several potential attempts to solve the puzzle. After rejecting two seemingly attractive suggestions, I argue that there are two types of solution to the puzzle that can succeed. The first type of solution simply denies that death can be bad for the paradise-bound. I argue that the main worry for this type of solution, namely that it gives up (with respect to the paradise-bound) the common-sense view about death’s badness, is only a prima facie worry. The second type of solution maintains that death can be bad for the paradise-bound because it can deprive her of certain goods, which allows those who are attracted to this type of solution to adopt the deprivation account of death’s badness. I consider three views of the relation between the paradise-bound and paradise that are consistent with the deprivation account, connecting my discussion of paradise with the extant literature on death’s badness.

Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It.

The concept of free will is hard to define, but crucial to both individual and social life. For centuries people have wondered how freedom is possible in a world ruled by physical determinism; however, reflections on free will have been confined to philosophy until half a century ago, when the topic was also addressed by neuroscience. The first relevant, and now well-known, strand of research on the brain correlates of free will was that pioneered by Libet et al. (1983), which focused on the allegedly unconscious intentions taking place in decisions regarded as free and voluntary. Libet’s interpretation of the so-called readiness potential (RP) seems to favor a sort of deflation of freedom (Soon et al., 2008). However, recent studies seem to point to a different interpretation of the RP, namely that the apparent build-up of the brain activity preceding subjectively spontaneous voluntary movements (SVM) may reflect the ebb and flow of the background neuronal noise, which is triggered by many factors (Schurger et al., 2016). This interpretation seems to bridge the gap between the neuroscientific perspective on free will and the intuitive, commonsensical view of it (Roskies, 2010b), but many problems remain to be solved and other theoretical paths can be hypothesized. The article therefore, proposes to start from an operationalizable concept of free will (Lavazza and Inglese, 2015) to find a connection between higher order descriptions (useful for practical life) and neural bases. This new way to conceptualize free will should be linked to the idea of “capacity”: that is, the availability of a repertoire of general skills that can be manifested and used without moment by moment conscious control. The capacity index, which is also able to take into account the differences of time scales in decisions, includes reasons-responsiveness and is related to internal control, understood as the agent’s ownership of the mechanisms that trigger the relevant behavior. Cognitive abilities, needed for one to have capacity, might be firstly operationalized as a set of neuropsychological tests, which can be used to operationalize and measure specific executive functions, as they are strongly linked to the concept of control. Subsequently, a free will index would allow for the search of the underlying neural correlates of the capacity exhibited by people and the limits in capacity exhibited by each individual.

Freedom with Causation

Our actions have causes, some of which are beyond our control. Of that there can be no serious doubt. Some worry that this fact undermines the commonsense view that we perform free actions for which we are morally responsible. My aim in this article is to show that such worries are unfounded and, consequently, that pure non-causal theories of free action, according to which free actions must be entirely uncaused, are false. My argument for this conclusion doesn’t presuppose the cogency of existing objections to non-causal theories of free agency.

OCUPAÇÃO HUMANA E TRANSFORMAÇÃO DAS PAISAGENS NA AMAZÔNIA BRASILEIRA

A despeito da visão romântica que domina o senso comum, sobre a homogeneidade e a virgindade da floresta amazônica, as paisagens dessa região são caracterizadas pela diversidade e pela longa convivência com o ser humano. Por meio da complementação das perspectivas evolutivas, históricas e sociais, o presente artigo se propõe a caracterizar as diferentes dinâmicas de ocupação nessas paisagens, buscando compreender como o desenvolvimento das tecnologias e da organização sócio-política foram capazes de modificar as paisagens no passado e como o fazem atualmente. Os dados foram analisados em função de um sequenciamento temporal que abrange desde a chegada do ser humano à Amazônia até os dias de hoje. Três dinâmicas de ocupação distintas foram caracterizadas em função dos diferentes níveis de transformação da paisagem: Dinâmica da Diversificação (9000 a.C. a 1600 d.C.); Dinâmica da Simplificação (1600 a 1960 d.C.) e Dinâmica da Supressão (a partir de 1960 d.C.). Palavras-chave: Amazônia, paisagem, ocupação humana.

Occam’s Razor, Dogmatism, Skepticism, and Skeptical Dogmatism

Underdetermination arguments for skepticism maintain that our common sense view of the external world is no better, evidentially speaking, than some skeptical competitors. An important and well-known response by dogmatists, those who believe our commonsense view is justified, appeals to abduction or inference to the best explanation. The predominant version of this strategy, going back at least to Locke, invokes Occam’s razor: dogmatists claim the common sense view is simpler than any of its skeptical alternatives and so has more to recommend it, evidentially speaking. This dispute has overshadowed another possible view: skeptical dogmatism. Skeptical dogmatists hold that we are justified in believing that the common sense view is probably false. I argue that skeptical dogmatism presents some interesting complications to the dialectic between the dogmatist and the skeptic. On the one hand, even if the dogmatist’s use of Occam’s razor is sufficient to rebut skepticism, in itself it is not sufficient to refute skeptical dogmatism. On the other hand, skeptics themselves, ironically, must, given the assumptions of the paper, appeal to something like Occam’s razor in order to avoid capitulating to skeptical dogmatism.

Mental Disorder or Creative Gift?

In cases where one sense-modality is stimulated by another, we speak of synesthesia, i.e., of a subjective experience of multiple distinct sensations as being quite literally conjoined. The term “synesthesia” is derived indirectly from the Greek words “syn,” meaning “together,” and “aisthesis,” meaning “sensation.” This article focuses on the question of whether synesthesia is in fact a mental disorder or a creative gift. Both the commonsense views that have emerged in recent times, and neurological research, demonstrate that our knowledge of this relatively uncommon phenomenon is slowly but constantly expanding. Proper experimental research conducted with the right sorts of synesthete, and philosophically and scientifically nuanced conceptual studies of synesthesia, can all be helpful when seeking answers to the question posed above, while also confirming general claims about the extent to which our perceptions are really subjective. Most synesthetes see themselves as gifted, and claim that this “conjoining of the senses” enriches the quality of their lives.

Emergent Subjectivity: The Parallel Temporalities of Psychoanalysis and Social Theory

ABSTRACTKirsten Lentz uses Preciado’s Testo Junkie (2013) as an occasion to explore the rivalry between psychoanalysis and social theory in their attempts to account for human subjectivity. Although a commonsense view holds that the 2 fields have completely different relationships to temporality—psychoanalysts fix their gaze to the past, whereas social theorists imagine radical futures—the distinction is more complex than it appears. The analyst does not lead the patient toward the past but holds and guards the place of futurity so that new experiences of subjectivity eventually become available. Like “theory,” then, psychoanalysis tries to make room for “emergent subjectivity,” for ways of being in the world that have not yet been imagined or formulated, that have not yet been born in the mind of culture. Lentz thus insists that the radical critique of gender can and should be understood as fundamental to the work of psychoanalysis.

National accounting for infrastructure

This article discusses how more systematic information can be compiled about the state of the UK infrastructure. It stresses the importance of considering the stock and not just the flow of new infrastructure investment. It draws attention to the information about the balance sheet that is contained for all sectors of the economy in the National Accounts, as part of their integrated stock-flow structure. While there appears to be no internationally agreed convention about the definition of infrastructure, the National Accounts information can be used to construct time series estimates for the infrastructure on a common sense view of its coverage. In constant price terms, the ratio of the infrastructure stock to gross value added appears to have risen since the mid-1990s, back towards the levels of the 1970s. But that is not true in current price terms, where the ratio remains well below the levels of the 1970s. The explanation seems to be that a relative price effect has occurred: infrastructure has become cheaper in relative terms but that has not resulted in increased infrastructure intensity. The article notes other information about the state of the UK infrastructure. As they mature, the Whole of Government Accounts should be a rich source of information. So, too, might the UK Capital Services index. Ultimately, all this information could feed into a more systematic growth accounting framework for the UK.

A Moorean argument for the full moral status of those with profound intellectual disability

This paper is about the moral status of those human beings who have profound intellectual disabilities (PIDs). We hold the common sense view that they have equal status to ‘normal’...

Reply to Fred Seddon: What Does Ayn Rand Have to Do with Who Says That’s Art?

Abstract This commentary is in response to Fred Seddon’s review of Who Says That’s Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (December 2014). In addition to answering objections raised in the review about such matters as whether “abstract art” and photography should qualify as “fine art,” it aims to show in what respects the book was influenced by Rand’s thought.

TV-school hybrid literacy practices as sites for making another logic possible: voicing contrasts that promote gender and sexuality trans-experiences


 Considering the relationship between media and sense-making in Brazil, the purpose of this article is to examine an interventionist collaborative ethnography in a specific literacy context – history classes in a Brazilian state school, in which the classroom teacher, two researchers, and 5th grade students conjointly try to decenter commonsense views of gender and sexuality. By making ample recourse to media texts and to radical hybridity, they work towards promoting classroom literacy practices which “de-ground” certainties by shaking them through border-crossing (Mignolo 2000) and triggering the negotiation of new perspectives for social life. By dramatizing cemented social voices and engaging in what we have termed trans-experiences, participants show that social matrices and solidified meanings do not simply impose themselves on individuals but live through microsociological encounters. This movement is made visible through a microanalytical approach that, capturing tenuous voicing contrasts indexed by register use, reveals a delicate, but significant, performative flux.

Hypocrisy and the Standing to Blame

AbstractHypocrites are often thought to lack the standing to blame others for faults similar to their own. Although this claim is widely accepted, it is seldom argued for. We offer an argument for the claim that nonhypocrisy is a necessary condition on the standing to blame. We first offer a novel, dispositional account of hypocrisy. Our account captures the commonsense view that hypocrisy involves making an unjustified exception of oneself. This exception‐making involves a rejection of the impartiality of morality and thereby a rejection of the equality of persons, which we argue grounds the standing to blame others.

Shame, Divine Cannibalism, and the Spectacle of Subaltern Suffering in Ken Barris’s <i>What Kind of Child</i>

This essay examines the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of Ken Barris's portrayal of the life of a street child in What Kind of Child. Responses to literary representations of subaltern suffering are sharply divided. On the one hand, there is the commonsense view that such representations require one to imagine what the situation of other people may be like, and that, in doing so, one opens oneself to their experience of life. To the extent that representations of suffering inspire one to reflect on one's relations to others, they are salutary. On the other hand, though, such depictions, like tourism, may be accused of providing a spectacle of distant suffering that one vicariously experiences from a position of privilege and then discards. So, for instance, Shyamal Sengupta describes Slumdog Millionaire as a poverty tour (qtd. in Magnier), and Alice Miles even accuses it of being poverty porn. To aestheticise the suffering of impoverished people is to commodify it for the consumption and prurient pleasure of the bourgeois world. What is partly at stake here is the ethical question, harking back to Aristotle's account of tragedy, of the strange pleasure aroused by spectacles of suffering. While it may be that one's imaginative engagement with subaltern suffering renders one more sensitive to the plight of others, it may equally well be that one is entertained in the process.

Visões de cientistas e atividade científica na obra Ponto de Impacto de Dan Brown: possibilidades de inserção de elementos de História e Filosofia das Ciências

Considering the influence of literature on people lives, this study investigates elements concerning views about scientists and scientific work presented in Deception Point, a novel by Dan Brown. Multiple aspects to represent the scientist figure, life and work, emerge from the novel and problematize characteristics that can be considered as a common sense view, or others perspectives based on more contemporaneous philosophical thoughts on science. Reading and analyzing this novel could be an interesting opportunity to insert elements of history and philosophy of science under different focus. This study discusses some elements, from excerpts of the novel, which may become possibilities for debates in Science classes at schools, and in teacher education.

Current dynamics of scholarly publishing.

Scholarly publishing is an essential vehicle for actively participating in the scientific debate and for sustaining the invisible colleges of the modern research environment, which extend far beyond the borders of individual research institutions. However, its current dynamics have deeply transformed the scientific life and conditioned in new ways the economics of academic knowledge production. They have also challenged the perceived common sense view of scientific research. Analytical approach to set out a comprehensive framework on the current debate on scholarly publishing and to shed light on the peculiar organization and the working of this peculiar productive sector. The way in which scientific knowledge is produced and transmitted has been dramatically affected by the series of recent major technosocietal transformations. Although the effects are many, in particular the current overlap and interplay between two distinct and somewhat opposite stances-scientific and economic-tend to blur the overall understanding of what scholarly publishing is and produces distortion on its working which in turn affect the scientific activities. The outcome is thus a series of intended and unintended effects on the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. The article suggests that a substantial transformation characterizes science today that seems more like a thrusting, entrepreneurial business than a contemplative, disinterested endeavor. In this essay, we provide a general overview of the pivotal role of the scholarly publishing in fostering this change and its pros and cons connected to the idiosyncratic interplay between social norms and market stances.

Vargas-Style Revisionism and the Problem of Retributivism

Manuel Vargas advocates a revised understanding of the terms “free will” and “moral responsibility” that eliminates the problematic libertarian commitments inherent to the commonsense understanding of these terms. I argue that in order to make a plausible case for why philosophers ought to adopt his recommendations, Vargas must explain why we ought to retain the retributivist elements that figure prominently in both commonsense views about morality and philosophical discussions concerning free will and moral responsibility. Furthermore, I argue that his revisionist account lacks the resources necessary to accommodate retributivist attitudes and practices.

A Philosophical Investigation of the Nature of God in Igbo Ontology

In its general task, philosophy as an academic or professional exercise is a conscious, critical, personal reflection on human experience, on man, and how he perceives and interprets his world. This article specifically examines the nature of God in Igbo ontology. It is widely accepted by all philosophers that man in all cultures has the ability to philosophize. This was what Plato and Aris- totle would want us to believe, but it is not the same as saying that man has always philosophized in the academic meaning of the word in the sense of a coherent, systematic inquiry, since power and its use are different things altogether. Using the method of analysis and hermeneutics this article sets out to discover, find out the inherent difficulties in the common sense views, ideas and insights of the pre-modern Igbo of Nigeria to redefine, refine and remodel them. The reason is sim- ple: Their concepts and nature of realities especially that of the nature of God were very hazy, inarticulate and confusing. The conclusion is that their concept of the nature of God cannot conform to that in Western Philosophy. Consequently the author concludes that the nature of God among the pre-modern Igbo is monopolytheism which is what was touted as “one” and “many” by pre-modern scholars and scholars of African Traditional Religion. This concept is more acceptable in the light of Igbo Ontology or theory of being, so that the term “One” and “Many”, which, according to Igbo philosophy of language is just a “raw material”, may be dropped since in Igbo philosophy, the term “One” representing one God, and “Many” representing many gods can be made less clumsy since neither of them as in Western thought can fit into Igbo Theism. The solution must be sought in the integration of the “One” and the “Many” in order to distil the true nature of God in Igbo Ontology.

E-Book Enthusiasm

Abstract In this review, two significant works published in e-book format demand the attention of Rand scholars: Roger E. Bissell's book How the Martians Discovered Algebra: Explorations in Induction and the Philosophy of Mathematics and Michelle Marder Kamhi's Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts. Covering wildly different territory, the two works make an important contribution to the literature.