Expert vs. influencer: Philosophy presented under conditions of second-order observation

Philosophy is presented in a wide range of forms, none of which can be convincingly claimed to be the “genuine” one. Historically speaking, there is not one “proper” way of doing philosophy, evidencing what may be called the social contingency of philosophy. This paper aims to provide a “critical” philosophy of today, in the Kantian sense of a philosophy that reflects on the conditions of its possibility, and thereby acknowledges the limitations they impose. Conceptually, our approach is grounded in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, in which “functional differentiation” and “second-order observation” are two crucial characteristics of modern society. The paper discusses how presentations of philosophy align themselves with the second-order observation mechanisms of the specific social systems in which they are “hosted.” This paper deals in particular with two such systems: academics and social (or mass) media. These forms of presenting philosophy produce two different kinds of philosophy presenters: the expert and the influencer.

Homophobia and Antisemitism in Otto Julius Bierbaum’s Prinz Kuckuck (1907/08)

Starting from existing scholarship on the relationship among masculinity, sexuality, and Jewishness in the German-language cultural sphere, this article analyzes the connection between antisemitism and homophobia in Otto Julius Bierbaum’s fin-de-siècle novel Prinz Kuckuck. By tracing the respective paths of the Jewish protagonist and his male homosexual counterpart, the article elaborates on the specific versions of Jewishness and male homosexuality that Bierbaum’s novel creates. It can be shown that the novel exposes both the Jewish and the homosexual character as deficient and harmful. The novel, however, does not restrict itself to mere parallelization but establishes an intrinsic connection between the Jewish and the male homosexual character by integrating homosexual codes into the Jew’s “parasitic” repertoire. The article concludes by offering an explanation of this connection that draws on Moishe Postone’s critique of modern antisemitism. Antisemitism and homophobia are shown as two complementary and intrinsically connected ways of dealing with two dimensions of the experience of modernity: capitalism and social contingency.

From social contingency to verbal reference: a constructivist hypothesis.

In the first year of life, infants’ word learning is slow, laborious, and requires long, repeated exposure to word-referent co-occurrences. In contrast, by 14-18 months, infants learn words from just a few labeling events, use joint attention and eye-gaze to decipher word meaning, and begin to use speech to communicate about absent things. We propose that this remarkable advancement in word learning results from attaining verbal reference–a property of words (or other signals) that are linked to mental representations and used intentionally to communicate about real-world referents. We argue that verbal reference is supported by co-developing conceptual, social, representational, and statistical learning capacities. We also propose that infants’ recognition of this tri-directional link between words, referents, and mental representations is fueled by their experience participating in and observing socially contingent interactions. Verbal reference signals a qualitative shift in infants’ word learning. This shift enables infants to bootstrap word meanings from syntax and semantics, learn novel words and facts from non-ostensive communication, and even make inferences about speakers’ epistemic competence based on their language production. In this paper, we review empirical findings across multiple facets of infant cognition, propose a novel developmental theory of verbal reference, and reconcile a long-standing debate on the mechanisms of early word learning. Finally, we propose new directions of empirical research that may provide stronger and more direct evidence for our theory and contribute to our understanding of the development of verbal reference and language-mediated learning in infancy and beyond.

Basic capacity for social contingency detection continues to develop across adolescence

The main focus on individual social cognition in adolescence has prevented the study of the fundamental capacity to detect and respond to social cues, as this requires capturing interaction dynamics within dyads. To improve our understanding of basic social capacity development across adolescence, we used the Perceptual Crossing Experiment (PCE), to assess real-time social interaction in pairs of 208 adolescents. In comparing early, mid, and late adolescence, we found an overall higher performance of late adolescents on behavioural and cognitive measures of basic social capacity, while the reported awareness of implicitly established social interaction was overall lower in this group. In addition, late adolescents demonstrated faster improvement of behaviour throughout the experiment, compared with the other groups. Our results indicate that basic social capacity continues to develop throughout adolescence, which is expressed by faster social coordination on a behavioural level. This finding underscores dynamic social interaction within dyads as a new opportunity for identifying altered social development during adolescence.