614,846 research outputs found

    Moral Objectivism in Cross-Cultural Perspective

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    Moral psychologists have recently turned their attention to the study of folk metaethical beliefs. We report the results of a cross-cultural study using Chinese, Polish and Ecuadorian participants that seeks to advance this line of investigation. Individuals in all three demographic groups were observed to attribute objectivity to ethical statements in very similar patterns. Differences in participants’ strength of opinion about an issue, the level of societal agreement or disagreement about an issue, and participants’ age were found to significantly affect their inclination to view the truth of an ethical statement as a matter of objective fact. Implications for theorizing about folk morality are discussed

    Writing My Way Home Disconnections, Connections, And Reconnections: Rifts And The Possibility Of Healing Through Memory And Story

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    The current environmental crisis in western, capitalist, colonial societies reflects a moral crisis for which one more technological fix will not suffice. It reflects rifts between our body and the rest of nature that originate with the lack of a sense of embodied, felt somatic relationship to self, others and to nature, of which we are a part. In this paper, I explore how a critical autoethnographic lens, as self-reflective research and writing: shines a light on the interplay between an individual’s lived experiences and those of the wider world; situates the individual in a broader context; returns the gaze and, by so doing, leads to both a greater understanding of the interconnections between all things and to the possibility of healing. Autoethnography has become an important way for those on the margins to “talk back to power.” The notion of truth is one I see as very relevant to autoethnography. What is truth, whose truth are we referring to when we say something is true or not true, how is truth constructed and, who is privileged to speak the truth, who is silenced? In a similar fashion, knowledge and knowledge making are important. Autoethnography frees the writer to write in an evocative, engaging manner that can be easily accessed by a broad crosssection of readers. It speaks to how all creatures survive and thrive, even in difficult situations, and how they leave behind, not only the remnants of their material possessions and their physical presence, but their strength, their courage, their passion, their ingenuity, their rage and their love. “Autoethnography disrupts the binary of art and science (Ellis, Adam, & Bochner, 2011, Section 5). It weaves together the social sciences, the humanities and the craft of writing. I draw on myth and folklore, literature, poetry and photography, as well as academic writing in environmental studies, sociology, social and political theory, narrative theory, philosophy, and women’s studies. In telling my story, I am gathering knowledge from the past, but it is not necessarily knowledge about the past, for all that I sometimes have are traces and fragments. Memory too is selective; it plays tricks on us, for it is mediated. There is also collective memory. Most relevant to autoethnography is the link between personal and collective identity. Through the writing process, I learn how loss begins to fade into memory and how I am able to construct memory and bring to consciousness seemingly lost memories, both individual and collective

    Reconstruction

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    When we think of how our past defines us we tend to dwell on our positive experiences as it is the positive attributes we gain from these experiences that best represent us. For a long time I struggled with the aftermath of sexual assault, mainly with how I was ever going to be the same person I was before that night. In truth I never quite returned to her, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Throughout my healing process I discovered an unwavering refusal to give up; I found strength I did not know existed in me. I take solace in the fact that I took what was the most traumatic experience of my life and derived an empowering sense of self-worth from it; it no longer holds power over me. As we move forward into our medical professions we will encounter people from all walks of life; some fighting demons we know nothing about. It is our duty as healthcare providers to help our patients derive happiness from the battles they are fighting, to remind them of their strength. It is my hope to empower patients to find purpose in their struggles, as that is what they will carry moving forward

    Not knowing a cat is a cat: analyticity and knowledge ascriptions

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    It is a natural assumption in mainstream epistemological theory that ascriptions of knowledge of a proposition p track strength of epistemic position vis-à-vis p. It is equally natural to assume that the strength of one’s epistemic position is maximally high in cases where p concerns a simple analytic truth (as opposed to an empirical truth). For instance, it seems reasonable to suppose that one's epistemic position vis-à-vis “a cat is a cat” is harder to improve than one's position vis-à-vis “a cat is on the mat”, and consequently, that the former is at least as unambiguous a case of knowledge as the latter. The current paper, however, presents empirical evidence which challenges this intuitive line of reasoning. Our study on the epistemic intuitions of hundreds of academic philosophers supports the idea that simple and uncontroversial analytic propositions are less likely to qualify as knowledge than empirical ones. We show that our results, though at odds with orthodox theories of knowledge in mainstream epistemology, can be explained in a way consistent with Wittgenstein's remarks on 'hinge propositions' or with Stalnaker's pragmatics of assertion. We then present and evaluate a number of lines of response mainstream theories of knowledge could appeal to in accommodating our results. Finally, we show how each line of response runs into some prima facie difficulties. Thus, our observed asymmetry between knowing “a cat is a cat” and knowing “a cat is on the mat” presents a puzzle which mainstream epistemology needs to resolve

    Pluralism about Knowledge

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    In this paper I consider the prospects for pluralism about knowledge, that is, the view that there is a plurality of knowledge relations. After a brief overview of some views that entail a sort of pluralism about knowledge, I focus on a particular kind of knowledge pluralism I call standards pluralism. Put roughly, standards pluralism is the view that one never knows anything simpliciter. Rather, one knows by this-or-that epistemic standard. Because there is a plurality of epistemic standards, there is a plurality of knowledge relations. In §1 I argue that one can construct an impressive case for standards pluralism. In §2 I clarify the relationship between standards pluralism, epistemic contextualism and epistemic relativism. In §3 I argue that standards pluralism faces a serious objection. The gist of the objection is that standards pluralism is incompatible with plausible claims about the normative role of knowledge. In §4 I finish by sketching the form that a standards pluralist response to this objection might take

    This Story Kills Fascists: How Ingmar Bergman Atones for his Nazi Past and Looks to an Uncertain Future in Fanny and Alexander

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    In Fanny and Alexander, Bergman creates a fascist character who exhibits the characteristics he saw in Hitler. The Bishop Edvard Vergerus sweeps into the young Alexander’s life and begins to rule it with authoritarian aplomb. Rather than get swept up in Vergerus’s show of Truth and strength, however, Bergman has Alexander see past the “surface lustre” and understand Vergerus’s “darkness.” In so doing, Bergman rights a wrong from his childhood. Bergman goes still further, though, when he has Alexander fight back against the Nazi-esque Bishop through the power of creative storytelling. Bergman’s weapon against fascists is not just art but rather storytelling specifically, because storytelling requires a participatory audience that will take in the story and add their own imagination to it, creating a new vision of the world that melds the story and reality into one. Only then can the stories, following Richard Delgado’s “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others,” “create their own bonds, represent cohesion, shared understandings, and meanings” and “shatter complacency and challenge the status quo” (2412, 2414). When Alexander tells stories that run counter to the Bishop’s own stories about his Truth and strength, Bergman documents these stories with an attention to the two audiences listening, the one in the film and the one watching the film. Because of this attention to the audience and its participation in the storytelling process, Fanny and Alexander represents a first for Bergman: a political film that asks its audience to tell counternarratives in an imitation of his storyteller so that they can avoid his mistake of becoming infatuated with a Nazi and instead fight fascism when its ideology and practices return
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