Glosses, Gaps and Gender: The Rise of Female Elves in Anglo-Saxon Culture

It is difficult to detect lexical change within Old English, since most of our texts derive from a relatively short period, but lexical change can afford valuable insights into cultural change. The paper identifies changes in the semantics of the Old English word ælf (‘elf’) through a rigorous analysis of two textual traditions in which Old English words based on ælf are used to gloss Latin words for nymphs. Around the eighth century, it appears that Old English had no close equivalent to words for the supernatural, feminine and generally unthreatening nymphs: words for supernatural females denoted martial, monstrous or otherwise dangerous beings, while ælf seems not to have denoted females—at least not with sufficient salience to be used as a gloss for words for nymphs. Glossators instead found ways of altering ælf’s gender in order to create a vernacular word for nymphs. By the eleventh century, however, things had changed, and ælf had come to have the female denotation which was to prove prominent in Middle English. Tracing these lexical changes allows us to trace changes in Anglo-Saxon non- Christian belief-systems, and implicitly in Anglo-Saxon gendering more generally. overplayed, and the more general meaning of ‘otherworldly’ is to be preferred

Studying close entity encounters of the psychedelic kind: Insights from the cognitive evolutionary science of religion

This article calls for a more robust mutual engagement between the science of psychedelic experiences (SPE) and the cognitive evolutionary science of religion (CESR). Greater collaboration between researchers in these disciplines could open up opportunities for producing new knowledge not only about the human brain and the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, but also about the evolution of our species and our prospects for creatively enjoying our minds and peacefully living in pluralistic groups in a rapidly changing global environment. However, there are at least three major challenges facing the recently renewed field of SPE: 1) articulating adequate theoretical grounding for its research in a way that can be communicated to neighbor disciplines, 2) developing experimental designs that provide adequate warrant for its cross-cultural and more historically oriented claims, and 3) avoiding psychological, political, and philosophical minefields that could lead to an (over)reaction to the use of psychedelics in research of the sort that almost destroyed the field in the 1970s. While expressing a hope for reciprocal interaction, this article focuses primarily on some lessons learned by scholars in CESR – in relation to material theoretical developments, methodological testing strategies, and minefield navigation experiences – that might provide inspiration for scholars in SPE as they work to keep the renaissance in their field from going “off the rails.”Studying close entity encounters of the psychedelic kind: Insights from the cognitive evolutionary science of religionpublishedVersio

The Ethical Implications of Immanuel Kant's Philosophy for Human Development and Global Peace

This article explains and examines the ethical implications of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy for human development and global peace. The article addresses the problem of whether Kant’s philosophy advances human development and global peace. I argue that Kant’s philosophy promotes human development and global peace. The argument is based on the following premises: Kant’s moral philosophy supports reverence for humanity. Reverence for humanity promotes the cultivation of human potential, such as rationality. Kant considers rationality a property par excellence in human persons, making them superior to other animals; so, rationality is a guiding principle that makes human persons worthy of reverence. Rationality helps resolve conflicts among people in a society. Moreover, Kant’s political philosophy promotes cooperation among states, eventually leading to global peace. Peace and human development depend on each other: human development develops positive peace, and negative peace augments human development. Kant’s ethics of reverence for humanity promotes positive peace, while his politics of cosmopolitan rights creates negative peace among states. Negative peace is the absence of violence, while positive peace refers to activities affirming life. In general, Kant’s moral and political philosophy is characteristically rational and cosmopolitan, which strives to cultivate natural capacities among human persons across the states, which enhances human development and global peace. In the arena of qualitative research, this article uses the method of empirically informed philosophical analysis to examine journal papers, scholarly books, proceedings of conferences, and congresses

Organizational Posthumanism

Building on existing forms of critical, cultural, biopolitical, and sociopolitical posthumanism, in this text a new framework is developed for understanding and guiding the forces of technologization and posthumanization that are reshaping contemporary organizations. This ‘organizational posthumanism’ is an approach to analyzing, creating, and managing organizations that employs a post-dualistic and post-anthropocentric perspective and which recognizes that emerging technologies will increasingly transform the kinds of members, structures, systems, processes, physical and virtual spaces, and external ecosystems that are available for organizations to utilize. It is argued that this posthumanizing technologization of organizations will especially be driven by developments in three areas: 1) technologies for human augmentation and enhancement, including many forms of neuroprosthetics and genetic engineering; 2) technologies for synthetic agency, including robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life; and 3) technologies for digital-physical ecosystems and networks that create the environments within which and infrastructure through which human and artificial agents will interact. Drawing on a typology of contemporary posthumanism, organizational posthumanism is shown to be a hybrid form of posthumanism that combines both analytic, synthetic, theoretical, and practical elements. Like analytic forms of posthumanism, organizational posthumanism recognizes the extent to which posthumanization has already transformed businesses and other organizations; it thus occupies itself with understanding organizations as they exist today and developing strategies and best practices for responding to the forces of posthumanization. On the other hand, like synthetic forms of posthumanism, organizational posthumanism anticipates the fact that intensifying and accelerating processes of posthumanization will create future realities quite different from those seen today; it thus attempts to develop conceptual schemas to account for such potential developments, both as a means of expanding our theoretical knowledge of organizations and of enhancing the ability of contemporary organizational stakeholders to conduct strategic planning for a radically posthumanized long-term future

A Third-Generation Prediction Market

This article theorizes a new way to predict firm performance based on aggregation of sensing among frontline employees about changes in operational capabilities to update strategic action plans. We frame the approach in the context of first- and second-generation prediction markets and outline its unique features as a third-generation prediction market. It is argued that frontline employees gain deep insights when they execute operational activities on an ongoing basis in the organization. The experiential learning from close interaction with internal and external stakeholders provides unique insights not otherwise available to senior management. We outline a methodology to agglomerate these insights in a performance barometer as an important source for problem finding and innovation

Struktura ambiwalencji postaw wobec kobiet - Legitymizacja dyskryminacji płciowej i możliwości zmiany

One way in which sexism is distinct from other types of prejudice is its ambivalent nature. Women are both reviled and revered, depending on whether they fulfill or violate expectations concerning their gender roles. Basing on Ambivalent Sexism Theory (AST; Glick & Fiske, 1995, 1996, 2001), the following thesis explores dimensions that are not subsumed under AST that I consider critical to the perception of women. Specifically, based on data coming from qualitative and quantitative studies conducted in Poland and in the United States, I distinguish two additional springboards for sexism: 1. the belief that the fundamental role of a woman is that of the mother (together with the assumption that women’s goals should be subsumed under others’ goals and needs), and 2. the responsibility for aesthetics that is placed upon women. Subsequently, discriminant and predictive validity of the new dimensions is tested showing that these basic tenets form a richer structure of prejudice not encompassed by the existing sub-dimensions of AST. Theoretical implications of the findings and the universality of new dimensions are discussed

The Minds of God(s) and Humans: Differences in Mind Perception in Fiji and North America

Previous research suggests that how people conceive of minds depends on the culture in which they live, both in determining how they interact with other human minds and how they infer the unseen minds of gods. We use exploratory factor analysis to compare how people from different societies with distinct models of human minds and different religious traditions perceive the minds of humans and gods. In two North American samples (American adults, N=186; Canadian students, N=202), we replicated a previously found two-factor agency/experience structure for both human and divine minds, but in Fijian samples (Indigenous iTaukei Fijians, N=77; Fijians of Indian descent, N=214; total N=679) we found a three-factor structure, with the additional containing items related to social relationships. Further, Fijians’ responses revealed a different three-factor structure for human minds and gods’ minds. We used these factors as dimensions in the conception of minds to predict a) expectations about human and divine tendencies towards punishment and reward; and b) conception of gods as more embodied (an extension of experience) or more able to know people’s thoughts (an extension of agency). We found variation in how these factors predict conceptions of agents across groups, indicating further theory is needed to explain how culturally generated concepts of mind lead to other sorts of social inferences. We conclude that mind perception is shaped by culturally defined social expectations and recommend further work in different cultural contexts to examine the interplay between culture and social cognition.Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortiu

Contact and Contamination Modes: An Analysis of Intertextual and Paratextual Elements in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things (1992)

The delineation of Scottish National identity has been largely investigated in literature together with the issue of the language: writing in English has been conceived for long by most Scottish authors as writing “in a ‘foreign’ language that does not adequately convey the Scottish way of thinking and thereby undermines Scotland’s sense of identity” (Kaczvinsky 2001). This is particularly true for Scottish authors of prose fiction since the post-Act of Union cultural revival involved almost entirely poetry production. A sort of in-betweenness derived from the contact – and contrast – of two opposing cultures and languages emerges in many postmodernist Scottish authors whose works are permeated by that ‘contrair spirit’ that G. Gregory Smith first called “Caledonian Antisyzygy” (1919). In this connection, the proposed paper focuses on Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992) where split, divided selves distinguish most of its characters: Bella Baxter – a Frankenstein-like creature – ends up in personifying both Scotland and England in a “patchwork-like” construction of her opposing selves (Kirsten Stirling 2008). The same can be said about the whole novel in which intertextual and paratextual intrusions intertwine in a surprisingly new work of art. In particular, the paper aims at showing how overt and covert textual allusions operate as contaminating agents across cultures and genres. At the same time, several illustrations – the result of a reproduction by the author/artist – represent an opportunity of contamination across modes, the latter acquiring even more relevance in the author’s self-adaptation for the screen where artistic hints are wisely integrated in the scene set to convey specific meanings