New functionalism and the social and behavioral sciences

Functionalism about kinds is still the dominant style of thought in the special sciences, like economics, psychology, and biology. Generally construed, functionalism is the view that states or processes can be individuated based on what role they play rather than what they are constituted of or realized by. Recently, Weiskopf (2011a, 2011b) has posited a reformulation of functionalism on the model-based approach to explanation. We refer to this reformulation as ‘new functionalism’. In this paper, we seek to defend new functionalism and to recast it in light of the concrete explanatory aims of the special sciences. In particular, we argue that the assessment of the explanatory legitimacy of a functional kind needs to take into account the explanatory purpose of the model in which the functional kind is employed. We aim at demonstrating this by appealing to model-based explanations from the social and behavioral sciences. Specifically, we focus on preferences and signals as functional kinds. Our argument is intended to have the double impact of deflecting criticisms against new functionalism from the perspective of mechanistic decomposition while also expanding the scope of new functionalism to encompass the social and behavioral sciences.

The Women Are Up to Something

This book tells two intertwined stories, centered on twentieth-century moral philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. The first is the story of four friends who came up to Oxford together just before WWII. It is the story of their lives, loves, and intellectual preoccupations; it is a story about women trying to find a place in a man’s world of academic philosophy. The second story is about these friends’ shared philosophical project and their unintentional creation of a school of thought that challenged the dominant way of doing ethics. That dominant school of thought envisioned the world as empty, value-free matter, on which humans impose meaning. This outlook treated statements such as “this is good” as mere expressions of feeling or preference, reflecting no objective standards. It emphasized human freedom and demanded an unflinching recognition of the value-free world. The four friends diagnosed this moral philosophy as an impoverishing intellectual fad. This style of thought, they believed, obscured the realities of human nature and left people without the resources to make difficult moral choices or to confront evil. As an alternative, the women proposed a naturalistic ethics, reviving a line of thought running through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, and enriched by modern biologists like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. The women proposed that there are, in fact, moral truths, based in facts about the distinctive nature of the human animal and what that animal needs to thrive.

The Arab World and the Occident: Toward the Construction of an Occidentalist Discourse

Purpose: This article aims to engage in a meaningful discussion of Occidentalism as a discourse that draws its roots from Orientalism. It scrutinizes the limitations of Occidentalism in investigating the East-West encounter from the perspective of Orientals (Arab intellectuals) and the multifarious ways the latter relate to and imagine the Occident. It will cast a critical eye on the multiple and diverse constructions of Occidentalism as a discourse, arguing that unlike Orientalism, which homogenizes the Orient, Occidentalism does not Occidentalize/homogenize the Occident. Methodology: We take as a starting point Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’, and we explore the limitations and the possibilities of Occidentalism as a method to construe the colonial mechanisms of misrepresentation of the Other as everything different from the Self. This article compares and contrasts a plethora of existing definitions of Occidentalism as formulated by scholars from both the Arab world and the Occident. Findings: This paper concludes that the Oriental’s encounter with the Occident cannot, and should not, be projected as a reverse relationship, or, as some claim, as an ‘Orientalism in reverse’. Instead, it should be projected as a diverse set of relationships of Orientals who have experienced the Occident in a variety of manners. Furthermore, while Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between the Occident and its Orient, often through real or imagined encounters, Occidentalism is also the outcome of a long cultural relationship between the Orient and its Occident. What differs between the Orient and Occident, however, is the position of power and hegemony, which characterizes the Occident’s encounter with the Orient. Originality: This article takes an all-inclusive view to discuss the term Occidentalism from the perspectives of both the Orient and the Occident. It teases out the limitations of this term. It challenges Orientalist methods of misrepresentation, which continues to blemish the Arab world and its discourse of Occidentalism as a discourse of hatred of the Occident. Furthermore, through the discussion of Alloula’s Oriental Harem, it offers insight into the suggested Occidentalism method, which emphasizes the disfigurations of the Orient while tactfully writing back to the Occident.

Introduction

‘Introduction’ presents Hume by way of a summary description of his persona as a public intellectual, or man of letters, for whom philosophy was not so much a distinct subject matter as a style of thought. Hume had some very well-known contemporaries in Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin. over his lifetime, Hume developed many theories on the following: human nature, morality, politics, and religion.

CORAK PEMBARUAN PEMIKIRAN HUKUM ISLAM DALAM KONSEP “FIQH SOSIAL” K.H SAHAL MAHFUDH

The social fiqh K.H Sahal Mahfudh is a thought that was born from pesantren tradition. Social fiqh in fact is projected to redesign the stagnated fiqh in pesantren with the nuances of madzhabi fiqh which are considered less responsive to social problems, and to counter-discourse a "going too far" Islamic law contextuality. This paper will examine the Islamic legal thought of K.H Sahal Mahfudh social fiqh regarding the applied epistemology and style of thought. Thepurposes of this research are to obtain the clarity on the concept of K.H Sahal Mahfudh’s Islamic legal paradigm including its background of thought and epistemology. Supported by library research, the gathered information was analyzed with the hermeneutic approachThis research found that the KH Sahal Mahfudh’s Islamic legal thought is built from two interrelated epistemological reasoning. Firstly, Bayani reasoning which favors textuality. Secondly, Burhani reasoning as the rationality of two school of thoughts, namely Syafi'iyyah and Maliki. K.H Sahal Mahfudh tried to reconcile the authenticity of the text with social reality by extensifying fiqh, elaborating the traditions of Islamic science (fiqh and ushul fiqh) using maqashid reasoning.Abstrak: Fiqh sosial pemikiran K.H Sahal Mahfudh merupakan pemikiran yang lahir dari khazanah tradisi pesantren. Fiqh sosial nyatanya memiliki proyeksi menggagas ulang kejumudan fiqh di kalangan pesantren dengan nuansa fiqh madzhabi yang dianggap kurang begitu menjawab permasalahan sosial. Sekaligus counter-discourse proyeksi kontekstualisasi hukum Islam yang “kebablasan.” Tulisan ini bertujuan meneliti pemikiran hukum Islam Fiqh Sosial K.H Sahal Mahfudh berkenaan epis­temologi dan corak pemikiran yang digunakan. Penelitian ini bertujuan: mendapat­kan kejelasan konsep paradigma hukum Islam K.H Sahal Mahfudh; mengetahui gagasan konsepsi fiqh sosial K.H Sahal Mahfudh; mengetahui latar belakang pemikiran dan epistemologi K.H Sahal Mahfudh. Metodologi yang digunakan antara lain: pengumpulan data dengan jenis penelitian kepustakaan (library research); analisis data yang digunakan yaitu analisa data kualitatif dengan analisa data deskriptif interpretatif, yang bertumpu pada titik tolak hermeneutik, Sebuah cara pendekatan yang melihat secara tajam latar belakang obyek penelitian. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa corak pemikiran hukum Islam K.H Sahal Mahfudh terbangun dari dua nalar epistemologi yang saling berkaitan yakni nalar Bayani yang berpihak pada tekstualitas dan Burhani dengan sisi rasionalitas dari dua kubu pemikiran antara Imam Syafi’i beserta para pengikutnya (Syafi’iyyah) dan Imam As-Syatibi (yang berhaluan Maliki). K.H Sahal Mahfudh mencoba mendamaikan otentisitas teks dengan realitas sosial dengan cara melakukan ekstensifikasi fiqh, yakni mengelaborasikan tradisi ilmu keislaman (fiqh dan ushul fiqh) menggunakan nalar maqashid.

“Mombrain and Sticky DNA”: The Impacts of Neurobiological and Epigenetic Framings of Motherhood on Women's Subjectivities

The fields of epigenetics and neuroscience have come to occupy a significant place in individual and public life in biomedicalized societies. Social scientists have argued that the primacy and popularization of the “neuro” has begun to shape how patients and other lay people experience themselves and their lifeworlds in increasingly neurological and genetic terms. Pregnant women and new mothers have become an important new target for cutting edge neuroscientific and epigenetic research, with the Internet constituting a highly active space for engagement with knowledge translations. In this paper, we analyze the reception by women in North America of translations of nascent epigenetic and neuroscientific research. We conducted three focus groups with pregnant women and new mothers. The study was informed by a prior scoping investigation of online content. Our focus group findings record how engagement with translations of epigenetic and neuroscientific research impact women's perinatal experience, wellbeing, and self-construal. Three themes emerged in our analysis: (1) A kind of brain; (2) The looping effects of biomedical narratives; (3) Imprints of past experience and the management of the future. This data reveals how mothers engage with the neurobiological style-of-thought increasingly characteristic of public health and popular science messaging around pregnancy and motherhood. Through the molecularization of pregnancy and child development, a typical passage of life becomes saturated with “susceptibility,” “risk,” and the imperative to preemptively make “healthy' choices.” This, in turn, redefines and shapes the experience of what it is to be a “good,” “healthy,” or “responsible” mother/to-be.

Neuroscience and Meditation: Help or Hindrance?

In recent years a style of thought has emerged that privileges molecular biology, in the form of cognitive neuroscience, as the preferred or even only valid foundation for the scientific study of mind and mental life. Despite the lack of progress and honest positive prognosis, neuroscience has managed to create a false but pervasive sense of achievement and meaning that dominates debate not only in scientific circles, but also in the popular domain. This chapter examines how this has happened and spells out the limitations of this approach. It analyzes how neuroscience communications, including popular fMRI brain imaging, function as persuasive discursive formations giving rise to a popular conception that mind is simply a function of brain activity. The implications for meditation practice are considered using the example of Madhyamaka Buddhism. This analysis makes use of concepts developed in post-modernism, especially in the thought of Michel Foucault. Post-modernism has some parallels with and differences from Madhyamaka, and these are explored. It is arguable that the neuronal-self concept strengthens the sense of ultimate materiality of mind and self and thereby impedes meditative realization of emptiness.

Methodology of Modern Rhetorical Education: Russian Scientific Schools

The article is devoted to the description of the activities of Russian scientific schools in theoretical and pedagogical understanding of rhetoric as a science of the laws and rules of effective and appropriate speech. The process of restoration of rhetoric in Russia from the 70-80s of the last century is considered - a classical discipline dealing with the problems of speech and the culture of speech communication. It is shown that the result of this process was the creation in various universities of Russia of original scientific and pedagogical concepts, which today cover the whole range of general territorial rules for constructing prosaic speech and particular issues of professional communication in various fields of activity. It is noted that each described scientific school offers independent ways and methods of teaching good and correct, convincing and decorated, perfect speech. Rhetoric is defined as the central philological discipline that deals with the problems of public speech practice and dictates, with its recommendations, a certain style of thought and lifestyle. It is emphasized that this science is correlated with all “speech professions”, since each competent specialist expresses himself in a word and organizes his activity through communication and the creation of effective influencing texts.

Ayn Rand’s Vibrator: Masochism as Conservative Style

By treating conservatism as a style of thought, this essay examines how a flair for abjuring the social contract, social welfare, socialism, indeed, society itself provides pleasure from the pain of violation and lost autonomy. The innovation of Ayn Rand’s writing is to make this victimization sexy. For the Randian conservative who feels abused by the social welfare schemes of the liberal state, masochism restores autonomy by making the individual the sole author of his or her pain. Masochism allows Rand’s readers to wring intense satisfaction from feelings of vulnerability that notions of consent force on individuals. Rand’s penchant for imagining a literally libidinal economy hardly defines the tastes of conservatism tout court. Nevertheless, the masochistic erotic formations in her novels constitute a defining feature of an ideology that views government as a pain.

Introduction

Edward Said defines Orientalism as ‘a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and “the Occident”’.1 The literature thus produced takes the distinction between East and West/Orient and Occident as the dividing line between Orientalism and Occidentalism. While in Said’s view ‘Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient,’...