Ordinary Understanding Research Articles

Lyrik? En refleksion over den lyriske genres aktuelle status

Louise Mønster: “Poetry? A Reflection on the Status of the Poetic Genre”The article raises the question of genre in relation to contemporary poetry. The point of departure is the mismatch between the ordinary understanding of poetry as a short literary form that expresses the experiences, thoughts and feelings of a subject, and the actual ways in which much contemporary poetry unfolds. The article discusses why it is still relevant to sustain the concept of poetry, and it points out four factors that are believed to play an important role in explaining why the established concept of poetry has come under pressure in recent years. These factors have to do with mediatization, literary culture, forms of publication and increased politicization.

The deaths of human beings.

In ‘When Does a Human Being Die?’ Schofield et al . 1 present a definition of death focused on the ‘final denouement’ of human beings as biological organisms. Their view is such that the moment of death occurs ‘when the last process in the collection of bodily processes that maintain homoeostasis finally cease[s]’.1 Whilst this definition avoids certain conceptual problems there are difficulties with this view. Not least that its acceptance would mean placing death at a much later point than is commonly presumed. Arguably what is on offer is the modern equivalent of what Dungson had to say in 1833: ‘the only certain sign of real death is the commencement of putrefaction’.2 Were this account to be adopted it would clearly require significant revision to our ordinary understanding of death. In addition, we might consider if this ‘organismic’ and ‘denouement’ conception is of any practical use. The concern is similar to that expressed by Bernat3 regarding ‘higher’ formulations of brain death: ‘By declaring patients dead who are regarded as alive in every society and culture, it contrives a redefinition of death’. Schofield et al . offer such a contrivance, one that means not declaring dead certain patients who are commonly regarded as such. Thus, despite the title of their article, there is little to connect Schofield et al . ’s definition of death to particular human beings as opposed to specific human organisms . Whilst some approaches to death can be criticised for being overly focused on the …

On the Usefulness of “Value” in the Definition of Creativity

Current definitions of creativity almost universally include value or a close cognate as one of the criteria. This article discusses two problems that arise as the result of the inclusion of value in those definitions. First, there is a conflict between the researchers’ definition of the relevant phenomena and that used in the ordinary language, as well as a conflict between the ordinary understanding of the relevant concepts and the way they are used by researchers. Such conflicts may result in research being ignored or rejected by other researchers and policy makers. Second, the value attributed to some product is the result of a subjective judgment, which is subject to change over generations. Such changes have the consequence of making it impossible to develop a cumulative knowledge base in the study of creativity. In response to those problems, an alternative definition of creative, based on the criteria of intentional novelty, and not including value in any form, is discussed. In addition, positive reasons for adopting that definition are presented.

The Problem of Continence in Contemporary Virtue Ethics

The harmony thesis claims that a virtuous agent will not experience inner conflict or pain when acting. The continent agent, on the other hand, is conflicted or pained when acting virtuously, making him inferior to the virtuous agent. But following Karen Stohr’s counterexample, we can imagine a case like a company owner who needs to fire some of her employees to save her company, where acting with conflict or pain is not only appropriate, but necessary in the situation. This creates a problem for virtue ethicists because the virtue/continence distinction cannot easily be drawn in the case. One solution offered by Stohr is to claim that a virtuous agent will respond with an intensity of feeling corresponding to her correct judgment, whereas a continent agent will miss the mark: he will feel too much or too little pain in response to his correct judgment of value. This demarcation, I argue, is too strict because it entails something like a mean resembling a moral virtue or vice regarding pain, being inconsistent with our ordinary understanding of continence. In dealing with the difficulty, I argue that Aristotle’s (largely neglected) virtue of endurance is better suited to account for the problem case. The following move explains why the case of the company owner is problematic: the company owner was missing a virtue on which we did not have the conceptual resources to elaborate. This points to a deeper problem in virtue ethics (there being an incomplete account of the virtues) that needs to be addressed.

Reply to Dan Arnold

Reply to Dan Arnold Jonathan C. Gold I am honored by Professor Arnold’s enlightening engagement with my review of his book. I, too, always learn from our conversations, and I am grateful to him for this careful treatment. I also thank the editors of Philosophy East and West for offering me the opportunity of a brief reply. The limits of space require me to pick a few points and postpone the majority until a later occasion. Arnold says that “it is only as conventionally experiencing subjects that we can understand any claims at all.” That may be, under a certain definition of what it means to understand something. Yet Nāgārjuna and Yogācāra writers considered it their responsibility to make sense of Mahāyāna scriptures such as the Heart Sūtra, in which language is manipulated to express the possibility of a perspective that is quite different from our ordinary view. The great bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara speaks after coming out of his meditative attainment, and says that form is no different from emptiness, and that there is no eye, no ear, no nose, and no tongue. He does not say that all things are empty of essential nature except for normativity. There are no exceptions. From the ultimate perspective, there is “no wisdom, no attainment, and no non-attainment.” We could hardly expect a clearer refusal of Buddhist normative terminology. Notice that Arnold’s argument as to the irreducibility of linguistic intentionality would apply here as well as it does anywhere else: Even using these linguistic conventions in the negative, he might say, is “normative” in that it assumes a proper use of these terms that are being denied. But if these terms are to be “understood” in their ordinary sense, then Avalokiteśvara is foolishly contradicting himself. I would submit instead that the position that is affirmed in this scripture is one in which the key terms of Buddhist doctrine are denied precisely in order to challenge our ordinary understanding of language and conceptualization. Mahāyāna Buddhists do, I think, propose that there is a perspective—the ultimate perspective—from which our ordinary way of making sense doesn’t make sense. I leave it to the reader to decide if the paragraph above has failed to make sense. (Note, before judging, that it is printed in an august philosophical journal.) Arnold thinks it does not make sense; I think it does, and that it is a narrow, unconventional, philosopher’s definition of meaningfulness that makes him think otherwise. Granted, any tradition that claims that all of our conceptualizations are, in an important [End Page 1067] way, false, is asking that we change the rules of the language game in which we ordinarily understand how meaning and reference operate. We are asked to read such expressions as merely pragmatic, as not affirming any essential nature, as figurative, sous rature. This is not how words seem to work, including the words that express these ideas. But we are being asked to look at things in a new way. And it is not an appropriate response to a proposed rule change to say that to accept it would be against the rules. Arnold may be right that if perception and causality are affirmed to be conventional and not ultimate truths, then the distinction between perception and inference as epistemic means may not do the work that Dharmakīrti wants it to do. But that depends on what we take Dharmakīrti to want the distinction to do. If we read Dharmakīrti’s positions as situated on a “sliding scale of analysis”—whereby he sometimes adopts a position for practical purposes that in other contexts he disavows—it is possible that he is affirming here a distinction that has value in its context, but no ultimate reality.1 For a Mahāyānist, as for a pragmatist, this may be the best available kind of distinction. Arnold extends just this leniency to Madhyamaka, while denying it to Yogācāra. He says that the Mādhyamika is able to maintain Buddhist teachings (of emptiness, at least) as superior to other views in a conventional sense, even...

It’s OK if ‘my brain made me do it’: People’s intuitions about free will and neuroscientific prediction

In recent years, a number of prominent scientists have argued that free will is an illusion, appealing to evidence demonstrating that information about brain activity can be used to predict behavior before people are aware of having made a decision. These scientists claim that the possibility of perfect prediction based on neural information challenges the ordinary understanding of free will. In this paper we provide evidence suggesting that most people do not view the possibility of neuro-prediction as a threat to free will unless it also raises concerns about manipulation of the agent’s behavior. In Experiment 1 two scenarios described future brain imaging technology that allows perfect prediction of decisions and actions based on earlier neural activity, and this possibility did not undermine most people’s attributions of free will or responsibility, except in the scenario that also allowed manipulation. In Experiment 2 the scenarios increased the salience of the physicalist implications of neuro-prediction, while in Experiment 3 the scenarios suggested dualism, with perfect prediction by mindreaders. The patterns of results for these two experiments were similar to the results in Experiment 1, suggesting that participants do not understand free will to require specific metaphysical conditions regarding the mind–body relation. Most people seem to understand free will in a way that is not threatened by perfect prediction based on neural information, suggesting that they believe that just because “my brain made me do it,” that does not mean that I didn’t do it of my own free will.

A Call for a New Vision of Therapy

SYNOPSISThe time and place of our birth convey the cultural language that shapes pattern of thought and organizes perception into meaning and things. Perhaps by not questioning our ordinary understanding of things, we take for granted assumptions that create many of the problems experienced in our daily living. However, human knowledge can transcend the limiting structures that convey the ordinary sense of separate self with its problems and concerns. Therapy as knowledge can explore and thaw the frozen self of identity enabling more connective and dynamic ways of being. The Time, Space, Knowledge teaching conveyed by Tibetan Lama Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche serves as an enlivened ground and liberating vision of our self and the nature of all experience.

How can Common Rational Capacities Confirm the Correctness of the Deduction in Groundwork III—and Why does it Matter?

AbstractKant claims in Groundwork IV:454 that the correctness of his complex philosophical deduction is confirmed by the ‘practical use of common human reason’. My paper discusses how this confirmation is possible, and why it is important for Kant’s project in the Groundwork. I argue that agents without philosophical training consider an intelligible standpoint, which is one of the central elements of the deduction, to be possible (i), that they take up this standpoint insofar as they reason under the idea of freedom (ii), and that they can be brought to acknowledge the higher normative authority of this standpoint (iii). Kant’s complex deduction is not alien to common agents insofar as it spells out these three elements of our ordinary understanding of metaphysics, agency, and morality. I conclude that the confirmation of the deduction by common human reason shows that even the content of Groundwork III can become popular, and can serve to inform and direct moral education and moral improvement.

Is Present Time a Precondition for the Existence of the Material and Public World?

Proposing that all there ever is in the material and public world depends on, and arises out of, there being a present time, this paper sets out by describing two approaches to the NOW, or present time, these being an everyday understanding approach and a counter-intuitive approach. The former is distinguished and positioned in terms of Heidegger’s “ordinary understanding of time”, insofar as that relates to present time. We then take up this first approach, discussing five of its fundamentals or axiom-like features postulated as both self-evident and immutable relative to knowledge’s changing perspective. In the course of the discussion of both approaches a distinction is drawn between, on the one hand, the “knowing” that is incumbent upon the first approach and, on the other hand, the knowledge paradigm upon which the second approach to the NOW is premised. The aim of the paper is to show that the second approach fails, and that it is only by means of the immediacy of the NOW (as given to everyday understanding) that a material universe arises which stands as other, and in autonomy to, the subjectivity or psychological processes of the observer.

Why Legal Positivism?

This short paper will be presented at a panel on Positivism: For and Against? at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in New Orleans, January 9, 2010. It attempts to identify the theoretical considerations that explain why legal positivism is the dominant view among legal philosophers. Three are identified: (1) positivism gives the best account of the ordinary understanding of law; (2) its account of law is the one deployed fruitfully in all empirical social science; and (3) it does not involve incredible or controversial metaphysical commitments. The paper concludes by noting that the competitors to legal positivism have narrowed considerably in recent years. American Legal Realism (as I have argued elsewhere) depends on a positivist theory of law, rather than being in competition with it. The most sophisticiated version of natural law theory, that of John Finnis, has conceded the main points in dispute to the legal positivists, and simply proposes changing the subject. And Dworkin's theory fails along the three dimensions of theoretical adequacy noted. The paper concludes that the appeal of Dworkin's theory to constitutional lawyers in the Anglophone world and elsewhere is due entirely to the (correct) perception that his theory makes moral considerations relevant to the resolution of momentous constitutional questions. Unfortunately, so do the positivist theories of Hart and Raz. Only atrocious public relations for legal positivism--aided and abetted by decades of misrepresentations by Dworkin – has led so many casual consumers of the jurisprudential literature to think otherwise. Thinking morality relevant to constitutional adjudication is no reason not to be a legal positivist.

Haunted Ground: Journeys Through Paranormal America

Haunted Ground: Journeys Through Paranormal America

Toleration and informal groups: How does the formal dimension affect groups’ capacity to tolerate?

The ‘agents’ of toleration can be divided into three categories: public institutions, groups and individuals. If it is mostly accepted that both public institutions and individuals are capable of toleration, it is not clear that such a capacity can be attributed to groups, although in daily discourse we seem ready to say that a certain social group is (in)tolerant. This article aims to address this issue by investigating the relationship between collective agency and social groups. Formal groups (e.g. corporations) have internal rules and collectively recognized decision-making procedures that constitute a collective behaviour. However, it is not clear if and in what sense such a capacity is also upheld by informal groups. This article discusses some competing criteria to define informal groups and proposes the shared convictions criterion. In conclusion, this criterion is applied to toleration-related issues, so as to reconcile our ordinary understanding of groups’ toleration with a more technical analysis.

TheKairosof Philosophy

ABSTRACTThis essay seeks a philosophical understanding of the nature of kairos that, in turn, discloses the nature of philosophizing. This essay claims that the kairos of philosophy is dialogue, and that dialogue is kairological in two ways: (1) Dialogue is not just a phenomenon that occurs in chronological time but, rather, imposes its own time in order to see how life (or being) itself is disclosed to us; (2) dialogue is kairological because it denotes a moment in which we are pushed into the open, which demands our receptivity and response. Section I explains kairos as “circumstance” in Aristotle, as a required point of view in Heidegger, and as related to the beginning of creation in Schelling. Section II understands dialogue, as the kairos of philosophy, as a crisis—a breaking away from an ordinary understanding of and experience in the world. This destabilizing experience resonates with the untimeliness of philosophizing.

Wokół definicji terroryzmu C.A.J. Coady’ego

In my article I focus on C. A. J. Coady’s influential definition of terrorism and discuss its most important elements. I compare various definitions of terrorism and show that many of them depart from the ordinary understanding of the term and some lead to ridiculous consequences. I conclude that the lack of adequate distinctions blurs the differences between various types of political violence.

Afterimages and Sensation

According to purists, visual experience can be exhaustively characterised in terms of a subject’s apparent perspective on external, public reality. Visual experience presents us (or if we are subject to illusion, apparently presents us) with aspects of the world beyond us—nothing more, nothing less. According to sensationalists, we cannot adequately characterise experience solely in terms of a subject’s apparent perspective on external, public reality. In addition, or instead, we must appeal to visual sensation, in some sense of that vexed term. 2 Afterimages have long formed a core part of the sensationalist’s critique of purism. Afterimages, so the argument goes, are manifestly different in character to ordinary perceptual experiences of the publicly visible world. As a result, they cannot be accounted for solely in terms of the ways in which apparent aspects of that world are presented to us. Instead, they must be characterised in terms of visual sensation. Critics of visual sensation have failed to provide an adequate response to the objection from afterimages. Even Ryle, who famously declares visual sensation to be a myth—the product of misguided philosophicalcum-psychological theories which ‘trade on, and pervert’ our ordinary understanding of sensation as bodily feeling (1949: 243)—confesses to a

Imaginative Inventions: A Purposive Account of Literature in Response to Nicholas Boyle

IN SACRED AND SECULAR SCRIPTURES: A Catholic Approach to Literature, Nicholas Boyle undertakes a self-styled quest to explore and chart region where and secular writings intersect as bearers of revelatory (1) His aim, in part, is to offer a foundation for how Catholics readers and Catholic educational institutions might interpret and teach works from that unique standpoint. Eschewing any need to present an apologetic for sake of this perspective, Boyle instead takes it as his task to open up a space for dialogue about how this perspective can fruitfully discover and interpret ethical dimensions of works. His quest begins with a historical analysis of ways in which thinkers like Herder, Hegel, Levinas, and Ricoeur understood Bible as a form of literature. Using a number of conceptual tools from these scholars, Boyle then reframes his approach by examining how we might understand literature to be a reflection of Bible. One crucial aspect of this project involves mapping boundary lines between several types of discourse: between writings and literature and between literature and other nonliterary forms of secular discourse. Unfortunately, Boyle's definition of secular literature raises two serious problems. First, it conflicts with our ordinary understanding of value of literature. Second, it appears to defeat very purpose for which Boyle seeks to use it in his project. The focus of this article will be to analyze this definition of literature and difficulties it produces and to propose a friendly amendment to this definition that might better serve his project. Boyle categorizes secular literature as writing that is in nature. In describing literature in this manner, he intends to distinguish it from more utilitarian forms of communication, particularly those that appear ill-suited as potential bearers of sacred meaning, such as law documents, scientific or academic articles, and lab reports. Boyle further defines secular literature as discourse designed simply for sake of giving pleasure to its audience, and he regards this feature as mark that distinguishes secular literature from literature. My concern with this account is that authors often intend their work to be instructional in nature, and readers intentionally regard it as such. When we immerse ourselves in dissatisfaction and emotional scars of main characters of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, or grapple in anger with foolish decisions of Briony in Ian McEwan's Atonement, we expect to encounter novel perspectives and ways of thinking that will influence our own views regardless of whether we agree with them or even take pleasure in them. Thus, trying to insist on identifying literature as nonpurposive seems to deny to literature an aspect that we ordinarily regard as essential to it: its capacity to teach us about ourselves and others. This issue in itself might not be much of a difficulty for Boyle to overcome, but it is coupled with an additional, weightier problem. Boyle asserts that literature is site of meaning--that one can read literature as a source for learning sacred truths. Yet such a view presupposes that literature is instrumental in sense that readers and authors alike regard works as instruments that convey universal truths and facilitate self-discovery. If Boyle is correct in saying that secular literature contains such truths, then we must regard literature as having a purposive nature. This consequence undermines Boyle's attempt to differentiate literature from other secular forms of discourse and thereby open up a space where and the literary (as Boyle defines it) might intermingle. To elucidate concerns noted above, I will first sketch ideas that shape Boyle's account. Numerous strands of thought influence final picture he draws. …

Folk Moral Relativism

It has often been suggested that people's ordinary understanding of morality involves a belief in objective moral truths and a rejection of moral relativism. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist moral intuitions when considering individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions considering individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. The authors hypothesize that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions.

Psychological identification, imagination and psychoanalysis

Identification as a psychological concept is widely used in psychology and in social science. This use relies on an ordinary understanding of what identification is, and this understanding has itself been influenced by psychoanalysis. The concept is, however, in need of philosophical exploration. Central to its use is the idea of character, its nature and its development, which like identification itself is under-theorized. I use Richard Wollheim's philosophical analysis of identification in terms of the imagination, to trace a path from ordinary psychology's conception of characterological identification to the psychoanalytic one. I link this to a short discussion of character as a conception of the self available to reflection. Making reference to some psychoanalytic case material, I defend psychoanalysis’ version of identification and its applicability in psychology and the social sciences.

Roman Stoic Precreation Discourse

AbstractCosmological imagery figures prominently in the precreation discourse of Roman Stoics, more so than in the precreation discourse of Jewish and Christian writers of the Hellenistic-Roman period. Roman Stoics imagine a realm of eternal time and space beyond the world of ordinary human experience and understanding. What humans can know of this realm is not revealed to them by a deity who dwells there, but by the spirits of virtuous souls who speak to select family members from the places where they dwell in the afterlife. Two examples are Aeneas’ father Anchises who describes primal reality to his son in the underworld, in Book VI of Virgil’sAeneid, and Scipio Africanus, the Roman soldier and statesman, who speaks of similar matters when his grandson of the same name travels to the outermost realm of heaven in a dream, in Book VI of Cicero’sRepublic. The myth and philosophy from which Cicero and Virgil draw their images of the primordial realm make the rhetography of their precreation discourse much richer than that found in Jewish and Christian precreation discourse of the period. Also, the relationship between rhetography and rhetology is more complex in Roman Stoic discourse and poses challenges for translators and interpreters of Cicero and Virgil.

Specific Investments, Opportunism and Corporate Contracts: A Theory of Tag-along and Drag-along Clauses

This paper is designed to analyse the effectiveness of tag-along and drag-along arrangements. These are of widespread use in corporate reality, in particular among private companies. And yet, despite their recurrence in normal practice, they have not to date attracted the interest of the legal literature. The paper intends to confirm the validity of three essential intuitions about these arrangements that redefine the ordinary understanding of them. The first is that they constitute ‘anti-opportunism’ mechanisms inasmuch as they are arrangements in principle designed to respond to ex post conflicts of interest between liquidity and stability. They are, then, contractual tools that aim to protect one shareholder from opportunistic behaviour on the part of another in companies where both have made heavy specific investments. These clauses are particularly pertinent in settings such as joint ventures or venture capital companies, which tend to involve such investments. The second intuition is that these arrangements constitute self-defence tools that are, additionally, relatively self-enforceable. Specifically, self-defence adopts the form of a put option in tag-along arrangements or a call option in drag-along arrangements, to the benefit of shareholders exposed to expropriation risk. These tools are relatively self-enforceable because their implementation entails no third-party involvement. The third intuition is that their typical location is that of shareholders’ agreements and not bylaws, since they define inter-shareholder relations (involving all or some of them) rather than corporate structure or machinery.