CAPTURING THE WORLD IN WORDS: LATER MOHIST HERMENEUTIC THEORIES ON LANGUAGE AND DISPUTATION

Early China ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 93-121
Author(s):  
Erica F. Brindley
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Early China ◽  
Phenomenal World ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Rectification Of Names

AbstractThis essay examines some key statements in the Later Mohist treatises to gain a sense of their views on language and disputation (bian 辯). I first show that the Later Mohists viewed disputation as an exercise in familiarizing oneself with patterns of language use and the verification of truth-claims in the phenomenal world. I then demonstrate that such an activity helps one attain one of the Mohists’ highest goals: the clarification of ethical imperatives about how to behave, as expressed through Heaven for all people. This claim ultimately links Early and Later Mohist ethical concerns and offers a religious explanation for Later Mohist involvement and interest in disputation. Lastly, I frame these writings from within a culture of debate about language in Early China—a culture which, for example, yielded not only Mohist views concerning the necessary correlation between language and reality, but also Confucian formulations on the rectification of names, and a Zhuangzian insistence on the emptiness of sayings.

scholarly journals Wade in the Water…: Awash in the Sense of Adoption

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Blake ◽  
Mandy Morgan ◽  
Leigh Coombes
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Discursive Approach ◽  
The Way

A discursive approach to knowledge contends that language is the constitutive force of experience and lived reality. Meaning is created through language use within relationships, while discourses function as the statements that produce knowledge, power and truth claims. We cannot step outside of the discourses through which our knowledge of experience is produced, though their complexity always allows us to resist particular identities that are discursively available to us. Based on interviews with 12 adoptees constituted within the ‘closed’ adoption period between 1955 and 1985, this narrative analysis represents the way in which the adoptive body matters to participants’ experiences of adoption and their resistances to the discourses that produce knowledge of adoption: Embodiment needed to be incorporated into this discursive work. Knowing, accessing and being- in-the-world are achieved through our senses in everyday life. We engage and shape cultural norms that enable and constrain corporeality. The adoptive experience is lived and felt through bodies that struggle to articulate their corporeality through discourse. Without discourses fit for purpose, speaking embodiment in and through adoption is precarious and adoptees attempt to articulate subjectivities beyond those allowed. This paper discusses the strategies used to materialise body matters in researching adoption.

scholarly journals Wade in the Water…: Awash in the Sense of Adoption

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Blake ◽  
Mandy Morgan ◽  
Leigh Coombes
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Discursive Approach ◽  
The Way

A discursive approach to knowledge contends that language is the constitutive force of experience and lived reality. Meaning is created through language use within relationships, while discourses function as the statements that produce knowledge, power and truth claims. We cannot step outside of the discourses through which our knowledge of experience is produced, though their complexity always allows us to resist particular identities that are discursively available to us. Based on interviews with 12 adoptees constituted within the ‘closed’ adoption period between 1955 and 1985, this narrative analysis represents the way in which the adoptive body matters to participants’ experiences of adoption and their resistances to the discourses that produce knowledge of adoption: Embodiment needed to be incorporated into this discursive work. Knowing, accessing and being- in-the-world are achieved through our senses in everyday life. We engage and shape cultural norms that enable and constrain corporeality. The adoptive experience is lived and felt through bodies that struggle to articulate their corporeality through discourse. Without discourses fit for purpose, speaking embodiment in and through adoption is precarious and adoptees attempt to articulate subjectivities beyond those allowed. This paper discusses the strategies used to materialise body matters in researching adoption.

Review of Article 27.3(b) and the Patenting of Life Forms: Hitting a BRIC Wall in the WTO?

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-318
Author(s):  
Jagjit Plahe ◽  
Nitesh Kukreja ◽  
Sunil Ponnamperuma
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
The World ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Under Article 27.3(b) of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO), all members are required to extend private property rights to life forms. Using official WTO documents, this article analyzes the negotiating positions of WTO members on life patents during a review of Article 27.3(b) which commenced in 1999 and is currently ongoing. Initially, developing countries raised serious ethical concerns regarding life patents, creating a clear North-South divide. However, over time the position of Brazil and India moved away from the ethics of life patents to the prevention of bio-piracy, a position supported by China. Russia too is supportive of life patents. A group of small developing countries have, however, continued to question the morality of life patents despite this “BRIC wall,” changing the dynamics of the negotiations from a North-South divide to one which now includes a South-South divide.

scholarly journals La potencia de la ficción en el pensamiento nietzscheano

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-176
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Phenomenal World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Late Works

La potencia de la ficción en el pensamiento nietzscheano Resumen analítico.-El presente trabajo analiza las implicancias de la ficción sobre la posibilidad del conocimiento y la razón. Partiendo desde la obra de Nietzsche, se recorrerá las diferentes valencias de la ficción tanto en sus obras tempranas como tardías. En tanto el conocimiento, se partirá de la propedéutica realizada por Kant en La crítica de la razón pura haciendo al distinguir entre el mundo fenoménico y el mundo nouménico. Clarificando la metodología kantiana en la obra citada se puede observar cómo las ideas de la razón poseen una faceta ficcional. En el eje de la Razón como nuevo Dios, emerge la propuesta arkhica de un ordenamiento que es la raíz de la metafísica occidental. La mitologización de la razón, tal como lo menciona Adorno, es la creación de una nueva ficción que da sentido a la existencia. Por ello, la logicización del lenguaje, como lo detecta Cacciari, es la respuesta encontrada por Nietzsche en la propia razón para la formulación de un sentido aprehensible de mundo. Palabras claves: Ficción -Razón -Conocimiento -Mitologización –Arkhé The power of fiction in the nietzschean thought Abstract.-This paper analyzes the implications of fiction on the possibility of knowledge and reason. Starting from Nietzsche's work, the different valences of fiction will be traversed in both his early and late works. Concerning knowledge, it will be based on the propaedeutic realized by Kant in Critique of pure reason, distinguishing between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world. Clarifying the Kantian methodology in the cited work, one can see how the ideas of reason have a fictional facet. Being Reason the new God, the arkhica proposal of an order that is the root of western metaphysics emerges. The mythologization of reason, as Adorno mentions it, is the creation of a new fiction that gives meaning to existence. Therefore, the logicization of language, as Cacciari mentions, is the answer found by Nietzsche in his own reason for the formulation of an apprehensive sense of the world. Keywords: Fiction -Reason -Knowledge -Mythologization -Arkhé

A Dynamical, Self-Organized View of the Context for Linguistic Performance

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Temporal Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Organizational View

Most everyone agrees that context is critical to the pragmatic interpretation of speakers’ utterances. But the enduring debate within cognitive science concerns when context has its influence in shaping people’s interpretations of what speakers imply by what they say. Some scholars maintain that context is only referred to after some initial linguistic analysis of an utterance has been performed, with other scholars arguing that context is present at all stages of immediate linguistic processing. Empirical research on this debate is, in my view, hopelessly deadlocked. My goal in this article is to advance a framework for thinking about the context for linguistic performance that conceives of human cognition and language use in terms of dynamical, self-organized processes. A self-organizational view of the context for linguistic performance demands that we acknowledge the multiple, interacting constraints which create, or soft-assemble, any specific moment of pragmatic experience. Pragmatic action and understanding is not producing or recovering a “meaning” but a continuously unfolding temporal process of the person adapting and orienting to the world. I discuss the implications of this view for the study of pragmatic meaning in discourse.

On the roles of repetition in language teaching and learning

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Larsen-Freeman,
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
The World ◽  
Mutable State ◽  
Exact Replication ◽  
Language Teaching And Learning

AbstractRepetition is common in language use. Similarly, having students repeat is a common practice in language teaching. After surveying some of the better known contributions of repetition to language learning, I propose an innovative role for repetition from the perspective of complexity theory. I argue that we should not think of repetition as exact replication, but rather we should think of it as iteration that generates variation. Thus, what results from iteration is a mutable state. Iteration is one way that we create options in how to make meaning, position ourselves in the world as we want, understand the differences which we encounter in others, and adapt to a changing context.

A Pragmatic Act Analysis of English Postproverbials on Twitter

Matatu ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-392
Author(s):  
Ronke Eunice Okhuosi
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Standard English ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
The World ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
Cultural Indices

Abstract Postproverbiality, the novel perspective to studying proverbs, has focused mainly on the radical revision of African proverbs. However, this phenomenon is not only found in African proverbs, but also in many other languages as already suggested in literature. Therefore, this study investigates postproverbiality in English proverbs as used on social media, particularly Twitter. Twitter is especially known for people’s display of radical ideologies, opinions, and idiosyncrasies; therefore, it serves as a useful source for such radical revision of English proverbs. The analysis was done using Jacob Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts as theoretical framework. The data was purposively gathered using five standard English proverbs to search for postproverbial versions; a total of thirty postproverbials were discovered on Twitter. The analysis revealed ten practs and allopracts which include affirming, insisting, informing, counselling, warning, instructing, and encouraging. These were projected through contextual features of shared situational knowledge, voicing, inference, metaphor, and socio-cultural knowledge. The interaction among the textual and contextual features and the allopracts shows that cultures and occurrences in public affairs affect such cultural indices as proverbs and language use and this interaction increases through the internet and social networks which link the world into a global community.

Phenomenological Commitments

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Inkpin
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
The World

This chapter identifies some general features that characterize a conception of language as phenomenological. Taking Heidegger’s nondualist view of ‘being-in-the-world’ as a model, it suggests that this involves conceiving language as ‘language-in-the-world’, as characterized by an antireductionist attitude and rejection of the ideas that language is a ‘formal’ system of signs and that it sustains an inside-outside opposition. It is then argued that critically assessing the significance of a phenomenology of language in relation to other philosophical conceptions of language requires a specific focus, and that this is provided by Heidegger’s emphasis (chapter 1) on the derivative nature of predication and the possibility of prepredicative language use. Hence the chapter also examines the idea of prepredicative foundation, arguing that this refers to factors that are functionally and structurally presupposed by propositional content.

Philosophical Background

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Mark Timmons
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Phenomenal World ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
The Will ◽  
Kant's Ethics ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul ◽  
Cognition And Knowledge

This chapter provides a brief overview of certain elements of Kant’s metaphysics and epistemology that are essential background for understanding certain features of his ethical theory. In particular, it presents Kant’s distinction between the ‘world of sense’ or ‘phenomenal world’ and the ‘world of understanding’ or ‘noumenal world’ as a basis for explaining the limits of theoretical cognition which rules out theoretical cognition and knowledge of God, immortality of the soul, and freedom of the will, yet allows Kant to affirm their reality on moral grounds, needed to explain how the highest good is possible. Of importance for understanding certain claims in his work on virtue is the distinction between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world as it applies to human beings. The chapter concludes with reflections on the relation between Kant’s ethics and his metaphysical and epistemological commitments.

There's Room for All of Us: Discerning Your Role in the Integration Movement

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-65
Author(s):  
Julie Exline
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Spiritual Beliefs ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Personal Strengths ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Best Fit

There are many creative ways to combine psychology with religious and spiritual beliefs, as shown in recent writings on the interface between Christianity and psychology (Johnson, 2010; Stevenson, Eck, & Hill, 2007). To help Christians with interests in psychology begin to discern where they might best fit within this larger integration movement, this brief article raises several practical questions. The questions focus on five areas: bases for truth claims, personal strengths and weaknesses, desired amount of uniformity in faith perspectives, wounds or negative past experiences, and sources of motivation and passion. These questions are presented in a personal style with the aim of encouraging self-reflection. By considering questions such as these, along with factors such as personality traits and seasons of life, Christians who are unsure of their place in the world of psychology may begin to identify areas where they could make distinctive and meaningful contributions.

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