How to Be a Fictionalist About Material Constitution (and Just About Anything Else)

2020 ◽  
pp. 142-167
Author(s):  
Mark Balaguer
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
General Strategy ◽  
Material Constitution ◽  
Composite Objects ◽  
Objective Sense

This chapter develops a general strategy for constructing error-theoretic fictionalist (ETF) views of controversial objects (e.g., abstract objects, composite objects, etc.). According to ETF-ist views, (1) ordinary sentences about objects of the relevant controversial kind are not literally true (despite the fact that they seem true to us) because objects of the relevant kind don’t really exist; but (2) these sentences are still “correct” in a certain objective sense; and (3) we can use the “correctness” of these sentences to explain why they seem so obvious to us, why they’re so useful to us in science and everyday life, and why it’s not harmful to our purposes that these sentences aren’t literally true. Second, having laid out the general recipe for constructing ETF-ist views, the author goes on to develop and motivate an ETF-ist view of our discourse about coincident objects and material constitution.

scholarly journals “Mad I’m mad!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-67
Author(s):  
Cher Hill
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Practitioner Inquiry ◽  
Material Constitution ◽  
Learning Contexts ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
A Site

This paper explores a common tension for parents and teachers working with young children – the tantrum. Building on practitioner-inquiry methodologies, I engaged in a living inquiry into my practices as a parent, with the initial goal of reducing or preferably eliminating my son’s angry outbursts. Frustrated with approaches informed by theories often applied within early learning contexts to address tantrums, including behavioural, attachment and self-regulation, I turned to new materiality theories, which provide a novel approach in understanding the socio-material constitution of subjectivities, emotions, and relationships. Within this assemblage, tantrums were reconfigured as a doing of emotions, occurring in the spaces in/between bodies, rather than an individual act of defiance. Through this inquiry, I shifted from a position of trying to intervene from the outside to eliminate, control or manage my son’s tantrums to a place of ‘intra-acting from within’ and journeying with. My parental inquiry became a site to continuously work and rework everyday life and participate in the creative practice of world making. Although the tantrums, which we came to know as Mad I’m mad, continued, the connection among and between my son and I shifted, often in positive and enduring ways. I came to understand parental inquiry as a practice of ‘wayfaring,’ where the focus is on the journey rather than the destination. These stories may ‘trace a path’ for other parents and educators as they participate within their own affective and embodied entanglements, creating new possibilities for teaching and learning relationships.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Mark Balaguer
Keyword(s):  
Wide Class ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Scientific Question ◽  
Composite Objects ◽  
Metaphysical Question ◽  
Modal Sentence

Chapter 1 provides a synopsis of the entire book. Roughly speaking, the book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view and argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions—most notably, the question of whether there are any abstract objects and the question of whether there are any composite objects. Second, the book explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into subquestions, and in connection with each of these subquestions, we can endorse one of the following three anti-metaphysical views: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality.

Thriving in Academia: Understanding and Managing the Complexities of Faculty Work

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketevan Mamiseishvili
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Research ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Work Setting ◽  
Higher Education Research ◽  
Faculty Work ◽  
College And University ◽  
Teaching Research ◽  
University Settings

In this paper, I will illustrate the changing nature and complexity of faculty employment in college and university settings. I will use existing higher education research to describe changes in faculty demographics, the escalating demands placed on faculty in the work setting, and challenges that confront professors seeking tenure or administrative advancement. Boyer’s (1990) framework for bringing traditionally marginalized and neglected functions of teaching, service, and community engagement into scholarship is examined as a model for balancing not only teaching, research, and service, but also work with everyday life.

God and Abstract Objects

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Einar Duenger Bøhn
Keyword(s):  
Abstract Objects

Moving Forward

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet B. Ruscher
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Spatial Metaphors ◽  
The People ◽  
Stationary Objects ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
Affective Forecasts

Two distinct spatial metaphors for the passage of time can produce disparate judgments about grieving. Under the object-moving metaphor, time seems to move past stationary people, like objects floating past people along a riverbank. Under the people-moving metaphor, time is stationary; people move through time as though they journey on a one-way street, past stationary objects. The people-moving metaphor should encourage the forecast of shorter grieving periods relative to the object-moving metaphor. In the present study, participants either received an object-moving or people-moving prime, then read a brief vignette about a mother whose young son died. Participants made affective forecasts about the mother’s grief intensity and duration, and provided open-ended inferences regarding a return to relative normalcy. Findings support predictions, and are discussed with respect to interpersonal communication and everyday life.

Mental Contrasting of Future and Reality

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Oettingen ◽  
Doris Mayer ◽  
Babette Brinkmann
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Brief Intervention ◽  
Middle Level ◽  
The Other ◽  
Metacognitive Strategy ◽  
Mental Contrasting ◽  
Low Expectations

Mental contrasting of a desired future with present reality leads to expectancy-dependent goal commitments, whereas focusing on the desired future only makes people commit to goals regardless of their high or low expectations for success. In the present brief intervention we randomly assigned middle-level managers (N = 52) to two conditions. Participants in one condition were taught to use mental contrasting regarding their everyday concerns, while participants in the other condition were taught to indulge. Two weeks later, participants in the mental-contrasting condition reported to have fared better in managing their time and decision making during everyday life than those in the indulging condition. By helping people to set expectancy-dependent goals, teaching the metacognitive strategy of mental contrasting can be a cost- and time-effective tool to help people manage the demands of their everyday life.

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