Reading Of Reality Research Articles

Realism, Constructivism, and Intuitionism. Outline of an Unorthodox Hybrid Theory

In this paper, I will suggest an unorthodox hybrid theory of ethical justification that combines, on an ontological level, a realist approach with constructivist elements. On an epistemological level, the realist part of the theory will be squared with an intuitionist account. Eventually, the suggested hybrid theory will take the form of an intuitionist ethics of persons. I will start with briefly sketching the ontological shape of the relevant concept of person whereby I will extensively draw on Kant and endorse a realist reading of his ethical theory (2.). Subsequently, I will explain why and how constructivist elements must complement the picture (3.). Then, I will focus on the epistemological shape of the theory. In particular, I will suggest an intuitionist reading of Kant’s doctrine of “the fact of reason” (4.). Next, I will briefly comment on classical intuitionism and on Bernard William’s notion of convergence in ethics (5.). Subsequently, I will compare my approach with Robert Audi’s attempt to refine a Rossian type of intuitionism (6.). Finally, I will revisit the charge of dogmatism that has traditionally been raised against intuitionism (7.).

Ontology of The Possible: on the Structure of the Object

Abstract This paper, through a realist reading of Husserlian phenomenology, aims to explain how the consciousness-sense has access to reality and, in general, to objectivity. There is a ‘strife’ between the essence of a thing and the specific concreteness in which it always becomes manifest, such that the identical object is indicated by changeable predicates, but at the same time always distinguishes itself from them. Language can express the evidence of the thing - which makes the determinable aspects of the thing exist and which is inexpressible through definitions - only “for conjectures”, showing the difference between its own expression and the thing. And it can do this by analogy, the only device that exhibits the antinomic relationship between the object and its determinations, and, in the meantime, makes possible not so much their composition, but rather their transformation. Analogy, in fact, operating through a logic of contradiction, grasps, within each object, the tension between the element of permanence and the element of emergency; shows how the object is a unity-without-a-mixture of absolutely distinct forms; and so it comes to think about the relationship between the in-definable forms of the possible representations of the thing and the impossible expression of its singularity.

Sumbangan Paul Ricoeur dalam Proses Berteologi

In understanding the theologizing process, the foci are not only on the reality, but also on the means or tools to understand the reality. This article intends to explain the means or tools of theologizing process according to Paul Ricoeur. As a process what at stake is not only the method, but also the methodology, namely the thinking process, the interest of the subject and the premises on certain values. The guiding question is what is Ricoeur’s theologizing methodology, i.e. his hermeneutics? Through dialogue with many parties, Ricoeur found the methodology of reading reality is started with an affi rmation and ended with a critic toward the distortion of reality; this is an affirmative-critical position. However, this methodology is inadequate to comprehend an extremely distorted reality. Hence, the present article offers a reversal move of theologizing process, by prioritizing the critical position toward the distorted reality and following up with the affirmation process by uncovering the element of hope of a good and just life. Ultimately, the theologizing process requires a dialectical methodology of reading the reality, between the critical-affirmative and affirmative-critical positions. The priority of the option is determined by the contextual challenges at hand.

From empowerment to response-ability: rethinking socio-spatial, environmental justice, and nature-culture binaries in the context of STEM education

In this conceptual paper, we draw upon the insights of Feminist Science Studies, in particular Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism, as a critical analytical tool to re-think nature and culture binaries in dominant science knowledge-making practices and explanatory accounts, and their possible implications for science education in the context of socio-spatial and environmental injustices. Barad’s framework proposes a relational and more expansive approach to justice, which takes into account consequential effects of nature-culture practices on humans, non-humans, and more than human vitalities. In efforts to understand potentialities of Barad’s theory of agential realism, we situate our argument in the “story” of local children who encounter a bottle of cyanide in a former manufacturing building. The story takes place in a post-industrial urban city located in the U.S., caught up in an inverse relationship between the technological and scientific advances observed “globally” and the deteriorating environmental and living conditions experienced “locally” as the result of erstwhile industrial activity. Based on agential realist readings of the story and taking into consideration children’s developing subjectivities, we argue that equity-oriented scholarship in science education might not be able to achieve justice devoid of understanding of the relatedness to plurality of life forms. We invite our readers to consider (re)configuring socio-spatial and environmental issues as an ethical response-ability that is constituted through relationships of care, recognition, openness, and responsiveness to vitalities of humans and nonhumans equally, one which cannot be conceptualized from a priori and distant calculations, but rather continuous entangled relations.

Bamboleho: The aesthetics and significance of the moment

Abstract Bamboleho is less concerned with plot resolution than with visual aesthetics and the communication of significant moments. More than an exercise in style, Bamboleho encourages the spectator’s active engagement – aesthetic, poetic, philosophical – with the moment itself, independent of causality and in tension with potentially exclusive social realist readings.

Hohfeld vs. the Legal Realists

2018 marked the centenary of Wesley Hohfeld’s untimely passing. Curiously, in recent years quite a few prominent legal historians and philosophers have identified him as a Legal Realist. This article argues that Hohfeld was no such thing, that his work need not be understood in such lights, and that he in fact made a smaller contribution to jurisprudence than is generally believed. He has nothing to do with theories of official decision-making that identify, amongst other things, “extra-legal” factors as the real drivers of judicial decision-making, and nor must his schema of jural relations advance a “Realist” political agenda. Distinguishing Hohfeld from the Realists will help to correct some misunderstandings about his work and point to its utility in many more contexts than a Realist reading of it allows.

Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes by Han Thomas Adriaenssen

Reviewed by: Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes by Han Thomas Adriaenssen Walter Ott Han Thomas Adriaenssen. Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. pp. viii + 279 Cloth, $64.99 hc. It is by now a truism that early modern debates are heavily indebted to their medieval antecedents. Just in what way, and to what degree, is controversial. Han Thomas Adriaenssen's excellent book follows its topics from the medieval controversy over species (according a chapter each to Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi, Peter Auriol, and Ockham) through the early moderns (Descartes, Malebranche, Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and the English anti-Cartesian, John Sergeant). A final part gives an overview of the debates. Throughout, Adriaenssen's work achieves a high level of clarity and insight. The chief subject of controversy is indirect realism, the view that an extra-mental object x "is cognized in virtue of the apprehension of a representational device y that is different from x" (21). Adriaenssen divides the problems it faces into two categories: criteriological and representational (222). The representational problems fall into two groups. First, we have the question whether an intermediary can direct the mind beyond itself. Critics argue that indirect realism slides toward idealism, with mental objects serving as the termini of acts of perception. Second, we find philosophers arguing that representations cannot resemble their objects to the degree necessary to serve as representations at all. The criteriological problem is the worry, familiar from Berkeley to Putnam and Rorty, that indirect realism interposes a "veil of ideas" between subject and world and provides a launching pad for skepticism. But as Adriaenssen argues, following Steven Nadler and others, direct realism is no better off. As long as it allows for the possibility of illusion and error (which any theory must), direct realism is just as vulnerable to skeptical doubts as its counterpart. Each time one of his philosophers claims epistemic advantages for his form of direct realism, Adriaenssen is quick to point out its limitations (see, e.g. 53, 176, and 243). Adriaenssen argues that the medievals' epistemic optimism explains their comparative neglect of the criteriological problem; only with the rejection of the largely common-sensical ontology of the Aristotelians in the modern period do we see skeptical issues take a leading role. Adriaenssen begins with Aquinas, arguing that, although at times equivocal, Aquinas's texts point to indirect realism, with species serving as the apprehended device. Nevertheless, these species are formally (if not materially) identical with those instantiated in the external world. In Adriaenssen's telling, Aquinas's critics treat species instead as "devices that, like imprints in sand, need to be interpreted by the subject" (107). This means their arguments often miss their target. Moreover, most of these figures (with the possible exception of Ockham) substitute their own apparatus to deal with non-veridical perception, imagination, and memory (witness Olivi's "memory species" (77), or Auriol's "apparent being" [98]). One is left with the impression that many of these departures from Aquinas are terminological and that there is not much substantive difference between the direct and indirect realisms of the medieval period; what differences there are appear to be primarily theological (79). The second part of the book takes up the debate among the moderns. And here we reach the book's only weak point: Adriaenssen's attempt to resurrect the direct realist reading of Descartes. I was never clear exactly what Descartes's alleged direct realism was meant to consist in, nor why the interpretive maneuvers Adriaenssen shows are logically possible should be thought at all plausible. Adriaenssen rightly points out that Cartesian ideas are not a veil but a window; ideas "disclose the world" (54). But that is, of course, just what the indirect realist wants to say. Adriaenssen is at his best in reconstructing arguments and showing how they persist, or are transformed, across figures and periods. To give just one example: Ockham questions the ability for species to serve as representations with his example of the statue of Hercules. The statue cannot serve as a representation of Hercules for anyone who has not already, by some other means, acquired...

The reward of unification: A realist reading of the predictive processing theory

Abstract In a recent paper, Colombo and Wright (C & W for short) built on their neat assessment of the activity of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic (DA) systems to argue that hierarchical predictive processing theory of the brain (PTB) is not the grand unifying theory that has been claimed by its advocates. To the contrary, they argued that the scientific practice is consistent with a pluralist reading (Colombo & Wright, 2016). Despite its reliance on solid experimental resources, C & W's defence of explanatory pluralism is adorned with sophisticated philosophical assumptions. Of course, this provides all the more reason to admire C & W's enterprise on account of its tasteful combination of scientific and philosophical insights. However, despite being conscious about the relation of their works to the philosophy of science, C & W have presented their pluralistic construal as if it is a direct consequence of the scientific status quo. This paper aims to defend a unificationist account. C & W's endeavour might successfully block the way of some discredited forms of unificationism (such as micro-reductionism and Nagelian model). However, in this paper, I argue that it fails to establish its pluralist reading in the face of the more advanced forms of unificationism that are at issue in the contemporary philosophy of science (mechanistic accounts or structural realist accounts). After introducing these more sophisticated theories of unification schematically, I refer to the scientific practice to show how the free-energy formulation of PTB (as well as a case that has been mentioned by C & W as evidence for pluralistic reading) could be construed along the lines of unificationism. I end the paper with reminding that the reward of unification is realism.

PRÁTICA PEDAGÓGICA E DIDÁTICA HUMANIZADORA: MATERIALIDADE DE PRESSUPOSTOS DE PAULO FREIRE

Com o objetivo de anunciar ações e relações que contribuem para a construção de uma didática humanizadora na Educação Básica e Superior, via práticas pedagógicas participativas, foram utilizadas como campo empírico duas instituições, uma de Ensino Fundamental e outra de Ensino Superior. O estudo decorre de duas pesquisas de abordagem qualitativa, do tipo etnográfico, que recorreram a entrevistas semiestruturadas, observação participante e análise de documentos para a coleta da empiria. Freire (1978, 1982, 2002, 1988, 2000, 2007, 2001, 1996, 1984); Shör e Freire (1986); Freire e Faundez (1985) foram os teóricos que deram suporte às análises das relações escola/universidade-sociedade, ensino-pesquisa-aprendizagem, conhecimentos populares-conhecimentos eruditos, conteúdo-forma, elementos de uma didática humanizadora, de matriz freireana. Foi possível perceber que práticas participativas ganham vida nos dois níveis de ensino, em movimentos nos quais os estudantes assumem a condição de sujeitos sociais, construindo e re-construindo as bases que podem sustentar uma didática humanizadora, lastreando a assunção de seus papéis sociais como sujeitos coletivos, com a capacidade de ler a realidade, interrogar-se e interrogá-la, realizando uma práxis transformadora.

The One Thing Journalism Just Might do for Democracy

In this article, I discuss counterfactual idealism, liberal optimism, and democratic realism as different ways of thinking about journalism’s role in democracy. On the basis of a democratic realist reading of Michael Schudson’s essay on six or seven things journalism can do for democracy and emphasizing the importance of developing a normative approach (1) based on what actually-existing journalism could conceivably do for democracy, (2) that is rooted in something journalists actually want to do, and (3) that identifies something that is distinct to journalism specifically, I identify one thing journalism just might do for democracy: provide people with relatively accurate, accessible, diverse, relevant, and timely independently produced information about public affairs. This is a more modest ambition than the ones many harbour on journalism’s behalf—less, even, than what Schudson’s liberal optimism asks for. This, I argue, is a strength of a democratic realist approach. We do not get more from journalism simply by wishing for more. A central part of any normative argument is not simply the articulation of a number of “oughts” in the face of an “is”, but also a judgement about what is most important. For journalism’s role in democracy, that is providing information.

Constructivism, moral realism, and the possibility of Kant's rational religion

AbstractIn this article I challenge Kantian constructivism both as an interpretation of Kant's own philosophical commitments and on its own merits as a moral theory, and argue in favour of a moral realist interpretation of Kant. I do so by focusing on Kant's own religious views and the question of whether a Kantian moral theory can be religiously neutral. I show that constructivist readings have severe problems on both fronts, while realist readings of Kant do not. This provides strong evidence that realist forms of Kantian ethics are preferable both as readings of Kant and as approaches to moral theory.

Latin America confronts the United States: asymmetry and influence

Where we used to consistently read that Latin America suffered ‘under the talons of the eagle’ and that the region had little sense of agency in the face of the North American giant, a recent bevy of extremely well-researched scholarship is indicating that such a view is mistaken. Tom Long's book is the latest contribution to this critical rethinking of US power in the Americas. Making extensive use of archival sources in and outside the US, as well as in-depth elite interviews with key protagonists across the hemisphere, Long convincingly argues not only that the US did not always get its own way, but also that it is possible for presumably powerless countries in the region to move US policy. Rather than focusing on standard realist readings of Latin American history predicated on arguments of hierarchy, Long turns his attention to the question of asymmetry, casting it as a situational challenge and not as a blocking obstacle. He asks how a country can move another country's foreign policy when it has no realistic recourse to the mechanisms of coercion commonly associated with the practice of international relations. His answer is that it has to deploy different strategies in an attempt to gain influence. Tellingly, the skill and persistence of national leadership and diplomatic services enter into this frame as central not only to selling the US on accepting this influence, but also as a fulcrum of personal relationships on which to bend this lever.

Ham and Eggs and Hermeneutics: Re-reading Hemingway's “The Killers”

Hemingway’s short stories have often been read through the aesthetic model of the iceberg, but the practice of omission has proved an obstacle to interpreting one of his most celebrated and supposedly exemplary texts, “The Killers.” In particular, dominant realist readings of “The Killers” as a story of Chicago gangsters and the adolescent Nick Adams’s moral education have failed to recognize the text’s deep internal contradictions and absurdities, which point toward its secret representation of an entirely different scene of psychic and historical reality. Circumstantial but compelling archival evidence supports a radical re-reading of Hemingway’s classic story based not on things left out but on things cryptically inscribed on the surface of the text in the form of the rebus. When deciphered, the text’s secret inscriptions locate the “other” scene of “The Killers” in Hemingway’s experience in World War I, and identify the text as a remarkable experiment in modernist form.

Being and Describing: An Entity Realist Appraisal of Internal Realism

Hilary Putnam’s later works capture a dissent from the idea that descriptions (linguistic representations) ‘map’ an ontology of the mind-independent world. He argues that descriptions ‘project’ an ontology onto the world. However, it is evident from his arguments that he is not against endorsing existential claims about the world. He agrees that the world and entities exist. But, when we attempt to know ‘what exists,’ we use language and consequently compromise the ‘real’ as it is in itself. One can see, in a certain sense, an entity realist thrust in Putnamian internal realism. That is, he acknowledges the causal component in the act arriving at existential claims. Surprisingly, at the same time, he is doubtful whether the ‘known’ is indeed real as it is in itself. I argue that Putnam’s mid-career works on internal realism incorporate a realism about entities (and the world) and an antirealism about theoretical descriptions. The first two parts of the paper provide the landscape of the debate over realism by starting with two unavoidable tenets of standard scientific realism. The subsequent parts provide a direction of thought, to an entity realist reading of internal realism.

The X Factorand reality television: beyond good and evil

AbstractDespite huge popularity and lasting cultural impact, reality television shows such asThe X Factor, a British music competition that started screening in 2004, are seen by many as a cultural nadir. However, in this article I argue that, while reading reality TV as an index of an increasingly superficial, market-based culture makes a great deal of sense, it doesn't tell the whole story. Using the particular music-based dramas ofThe X Factoras a case study, I explore ways in which this show and populist reality television in general might be seen to embody both the predicaments and potential pressure points of contemporary neoliberal culture.

The Generic Ambiguity of Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover

Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover is generally read as what the subtitle terms “a supernatural romance.” But there is evidence to suggest that the status of the supposed villain, Carmody Braque, as a wicked spirit of the dead is imposed upon an ordinary (though unpleasant) elderly man by the novel’s hero, Laura, who is repressing antagonism toward her absent father and preoccupied mother. Her conviction of Braque’s demonic power is the product of Freudian “displacement” and “projection.” Even so, not all the novel’s intimations of the supernatural invite a realist reading. The Changeover ’s generic ambiguity reflects Mahy’s longstanding preoccupation with the paradoxical relation between fiction and truth.

Authority, Autonomy and Automation: The Irreducibility of Pedagogy to Information Transactions

This paper draws attention to the tendency of a range of technologies to reduce pedagogical interactions to a series of datafied transactions of information. This is problematic because such transactions are always by definition reducible to finite possibilities. As the ability to gather and analyse data becomes increasingly fine-grained, the threat that these datafied approaches over-determine the pedagogical space increases. Drawing on the work of Hegel, as interpreted by twentieth century French radical philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, this paper develops a model of relational pedagogy which highlights three points of incompatibility with a datafied learning environment reduced to finite measures. Firstly: Kojeve’s accont of authority in Hegel posits two aspects to the mimetic relation between teacher and student: recognition and realisation, which belong to the ipseity or about-self-ness of the subject, and are incompatible with a general definition of data. Secondly, the Hegelian approach to human historical time, in particular the assertion that time and desire are begun in the future, not the past, renders it incompatible with mathematical time as used in data processing. Finally, from these it is possible to derive a distinctive notion of the work of pedagogy, grounded in Kojeve’s realist reading of Hegel, irreducible to information processing. In consequence of this threefold irreducibility, the paper draws attention to a need for relations of human pedagogical work to be inherent in the design of educational technologies and highlights the dangers of presuming a machine intelligence model in the design of learning environments.

Visual distraction in cytopathology: should we be concerned?

Visual distraction in cytopathology has not been investigated previously as a source of diagnostic error, presumably because the viewing field of a conventional light microscope is considered to be large enough to minimise interference from peripheral visual stimuli. Virtual microscopy, which involves the examination of digitised images of pathology specimens on computer screens, is beginning to challenge the central role of light microscopy as a diagnostic tool in cytopathology. The relatively narrow visual angle offered by virtual microscopy makes it conceivable that users of these systems will be more vulnerable to visual interference. Using a variant of a visual distraction paradigm (the Eriksen flanker task), the aim of this study was to determine whether the accuracy and speed of the interpretation of cells on a central target screen are affected by images of cells and text displayed on neighbouring monitors under realistic reading room conditions. Following a brief period of training, 31 cytology novices undertook four cell interpretation tests under different conditions of visual distraction. Error rates were measured under each condition. There was no effect of visual distraction on diagnostic accuracy. To the extent that the results from cytology novices extend to experienced practitioners, visual distraction is an unlikely source of error in virtual microscopy. Efficient visual selection and spatial attention, coupled with the high perceptual load of target images and the peripheral location of distractors, provide plausible explanations for the observed results.

Reading Reality into the Fantasy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis

This study examines the potential for wide-ranging interpretation that was already latent within the textual makeup of Metamorphosis. This potential was read or understood through its interaction with the reader’s real world context to reveal how an event as extraordinary as Gregor Samsa’s transformation can entail an element of realism. The signified aspect of the verminous insect can be seen as an extension of hatred against Jews as Gregor’s supernational transformation was closely tied to the anti-Semitism that spread across Europe during the time Metamorphosis was written. However, when adopted in a different time and space, it is most likely to be accepted as a fantastical tale that defies all rules of nature, a story that is simply “unrealistic.” At the same time, it could also be seen as unrealistic yet possible when the reader’s real world context conflates Jews who were the Other of Kafka’s time and other communities that are considered as the Other in the reader’s contemporary perspective. The implications drawn here are expected to contribute to the study of comparative literature of Kafka’s fantastic stories and the way they are being adopted in similar or varying forms.

Like "Any Muslim Family That Has Moved to Finland": The Fallacy of Realistic Reading Practices in the Reception of Parvekejumalat by Anja Snellman

In the past two decades, transcultural or cross-cultural literary texts have sparked several public controversies in various Scandinavian countries. Bokhandleren i Kabul (2002; The Bookseller of Kabul, 2003), by Asne Seierstad, in Norway; Gomda (1995; Buried Alive) and Asyl (2004; Asylum Granted), by Liza Marklund and Maria Eriksson, in Sweden; the poems of Yahya Hassan (Tahya Hassan: Digte, 2013) in Denmark; and Layla (2011), by Jari Tervo, in Finland are among these controversial texts that are located between cultures. All of these texts have induced arguments between those who write them and those whom they are written about (or who perceive themselves to be the object of the writing). The reasons for these controversies are manifold, but one almost always has to do with the question of realism: that is, to what extent have these texts been written, presented, or read as realistic and generalizing or as generalizable depictions of the texts' respective cultures and people? In recent decades, this problem has been particularly topical in Scandinavia; however, the issue is larger. Similar questions have touched cross-cultural literary texts all the way from The Satanic Verses (1988), by Salman Rushdie, to The White Tiger (2008), by Aravind Adiga (on Rushdie, see Pipes 1990). Are these texts offered to readers as realistic descriptions of alien cultures? Or, alternatively, to what extent are they read as true representations, regardless of their genre? The current article approaches this cross-cultural problem by examining the reception of the Finnish novel Parvekejumalat (2010; Balcony Gods), by Anja Snellman. As one of the first novels written in Finnish to deal with Somali immigration, Parvekejumalat narrates the story of a girl with a Somali background and a Finn who has converted to Islam. In the spring of 2010, several newspaper critiques of Parvekejumalat included a strange and, perhaps, worrying feature. More than one critic seemed to have read this novel, which describes cultural contact zones (Pratt 1992), as a truthful, realistic period piece, revealing aspects of society that had previously gone unnoticed. They read Parvekejumalat as a kind of expose of the taboos of contemporary Finland. As such, the reception of Parvekejumalat seemed to repeat the starting points for many literary conflicts located on the borders of cultures. This article focuses on this question of a realistic reading of Parvekejumalat. Even if Snellman's novel did not ignite an actual public controversy, by examining its reception, we can better understand why narratives located in cultural crossroads so often evoke strong emotions and determine the role of realistic reading practices in the controversies that follow. The article approaches this question by analyzing two sets of data in the reception of Parvekejumalat. newspaper reviews of the novel and entrance exam answers about the novel produced at the University of Turku. The first part of the article examines nine newspaper and magazine critiques of Parvekejumalat and the inclination of these critics to read the novel as a plausible and realistic story. It focuses particularly on critics' tendency to read and interpret the patriarchal violence of the novel in a larger culturalist frame. The second part of the article analyzes entrance exam results concerning Parvekejumalat, which were produced in the Department of Finnish Literature at the University of Turku. (In the Finnish educational system, access to universities is gained through participation in an entrance exam, for which material must always be read beforehand. In 2011, this material included Snellman's Parvekejumalat.) The second part of the article discusses how the examinees perceived the novel as a depiction of the clash between cultures, and tended to confuse the categories of fact and fiction. With the aid of these two source categories, reviews and examinations, I will discuss how Parvekejumalat was interpreted in relation to contemporary reality, which many consider to be plagued by a conflict between the values of Islam and Somali culture, on one hand, and Finnish and Western values, on the other. …