Toward a personhood-based theory of right action: Investigating the Covid-19 pandemic and religious conspiracy theories in Africa

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in religious conspiracy theories (henceforth RCTs) in Africa, ranging from outright denial, partial acceptance to spreading misinformation about the Coronavirus. This essay will argue that RCTs pose serious challenges to Covid-19 prevention by encouraging non-compliance to Covid-19 preventive measures and refusal to take Covid-19 vaccination. It will then formulate a personhood-based theory of right action. This new theory will be teased out of Ifeanyi Menkiti's account of the normative conception of personhood and deployed here as a veritable tool for overcoming the challenges posed by RCTs in the fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa.

Defining Stereotypes and Stereotyping

How Stereotypes Deceives Us aims to illuminate the conditions under which stereotypes and stereotyping lead to misperceptions and misjudgements, but what exactly are stereotypes and what is stereotyping? This chapter defends the definitions of stereotypes and stereotyping that are adopted throughout this book. In particular, this chapter defends a non-normative conception of stereotyping, according to which stereotypes can be accurate or inaccurate, and stereotyping can be distorting or non-distorting. Existing arguments in favour of the non-normative account are critically evaluated before a pragmatic argument is presented and defended. It is argued that stereotypes should be defined as comparative social attitudes that make distinctions between social groups. Reasons are given for accepting that social attitudes other than beliefs, including implicit attitudes, should count as stereotypes.

Crusius über die Vernünftigkeit des Wollens und die Rolle des Urteilens

In this paper, I consider the relevance of judgment for practical considerations by discussing Christian August Crusius’s conception of rational desire. According to my interpretation of Crusius’s distinction between rational and non-rational desire, we are responsible at least for our rational desires insofar as we can control them. And we can control our rational desires by judging whether what we want complies with our human nature. It should become clear that Crusius’s conception of rational desire is normative in that we necessarily desire things that are compatible with our nature, such as our own perfection. Therefore, a desire is rational if the desired object is apt to satisfy the desires compatible with our nature. From a contemporary perspective, such a normative conception of rational desire might not appear very attractive; it is apt, however, to stimulate a debate on the normative criteria and the role of judgment for rational desire, which is the ultimate aim of this paper.

Language Pedagogy and Identity. Learning from Teachers’ Narratives in the Colombian ELT

This article examined two English teachers’ professional identities based on a series of interviews conducted in two universities in Bogotá, Colombia. This paper examined their experiences and discourses regarding language pedagogy. Accordingly, the study adopted a narrative methodology from a decolonial lens to put some tension on the normative conception of the traditional/hegemonic notions of pedagogy and teacher identities configured in the Colombian English Language Teaching (ELT) context. Findings revealed that teachers enact their language pedagogies by merging their personal selves with their professional ones. As a result, identities and ways of knowing are validated in negotiation between doing and being. This posture towards teaching exposes their ontological and epistemic struggles for humanizing their pedagogy.

Introduction

The introduction develops the conceptual framework for the notion of universal crime and details its analysis via the methodological angle of political productivity. Further, this chapter theorizes the normative conception of humanity entailed by conceptions of universal crime. The stakes of articulating humanity through criminality are thrown into sharper relief through an engagement with Carl Schmitt’s political theory of enmity. The hierarchical and coercive features of the concept further inform a discussion of its inclusive effects, which yield an inclusion that is minimal as well as unequal. Deployments of universal crime in European theorizations of world politics have therefore historically bestowed a repressive “recognition via liability” upon non-European peoples. Accordingly, this chapter outlines the distinction between an inclusionary Eurocentrism that subtends notions of universal crime and more commonly studied exclusionary Eurocentric thinking.

Imagining the future: Social struggles, the post-national domain and major contemporary social transformations

The question this article seeks to answer is what are the major social transformations going on in contemporary society that will shape the future? The argument is that the analysis of the future requires a clearer perspective on social struggles and major social transformations in societal structures including structures of consciousness. The future is thus both actuality and possibility; it is of the present but also beckons beyond the present. Or, in the terms of Koselleck (2004 [1976/1979]), it opens up the space of expectations beyond the horizons of the present. The radical uncertainty of the future has opened it up to imaginary significations of all kinds. Yet many such projections of the future lack a normative orientation and also do not provide a satisfactory connection with actuality, namely the world as it exists. This is to the detriment of a perspective on possibility. The future is created in moments of transformation when radically new interpretations of the present take root. The article discusses the fate of the post-national domain in the context of societal struggles in which new visions of the future are created and which play out in three major social transformations of the present. The argument in this article places more emphasis on a normative conception of a cosmopolitan future that identifies links between the social and the ecological as well as widening the notion of justice to include a broader sphere of issues than those that have traditionally been the concern of the left.

Wilson and Kierkegaard: Understanding Cognitive Authority

Different conceptions of cognitive authority in library and information science (LIS) obscure best practice for functions of the profession, such as information literacy instruction, that derive from how authority is understood. Some of these conceptions, such as a normative conception of authority, are prominent but not grounded in theory. Accordingly, this paper examines the work of Wilson (1983) and Kierkegaard (1813-1855) in hopes of reminding the profession of its most rigorously articulated formulations of authority. A more critical understanding of this concept is necessary for practice that speaks to the reality of a context bifurcated by adherence to competing authorities. Différentes conceptions de l'autorité cognitive en bibliothéconomie et sciences de l'information (LIS) obscurcissent la pratique des différentes fonctions de la profession, comme l'enseignement de la maîtrise de l'information, qui découlent de la façon dont l'autorité est comprise. Certaines de ces conceptions, comme la conception normative de l'autorité, sont importantes sans être fondées sur la théorie. En conséquence, cet article examine les travaux de Wilson (1983) et Kierkegaard (1813-1855) dans l'espoir de rappeler à la profession les conceptions de l'autorité les plus rigoureusement articulées. Une compréhension plus critique de ce concept est nécessaire pour une pratique tenant compte de la réalité des contextes tout en considérant les autorités concurrentes.

DISTRIBUTED LEDGERS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE PURPOSE OF THE CORPORATION

Distributed ledgers and blockchain technology are widely expected to promote more direct shareholder involvement in corporate governance by reducing costs of voting and trade clearance. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence may shrink the decision-making terrain where corporations rely on human management. This article analyses these technologies and concludes that, while such outcomes are plausible, their potential corporate governance impacts are likely more complex and contingent. Despite the implicit libertarianism that characterises much of the discourse, we in fact have choices to make about how such technologies are developed and deployed – and these policy decisions will have to be grounded in a normative conception of corporate purpose external to the technology itself.