La 4e de couv. indique : "Cet ouvrage, fruit d'un travail d'investigation de la philosophie de l'éducation, aborde plus particulièrement la question de la relation dans les débats éducatifs, éthiques et politiques. Il tend à rendre compte de la contribution de la relation dans l'élaboration du sens des processus et des structures d'humanisation. Son interpellation éthique examine la relation sous l'angle d'une rencontre qui réinterroge et refonde la question épistémologique. De même, son angle politique choisit de s'inscrire résolument dans une (...) promesse de célébration intelligente et heureuse de la dignité humaine dans un monde commun.". (shrink)

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of divergence. Here we (...) focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

This article examines the intersection of justice, forgiveness, and the promise through the lens of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology, particularly as articulated in his later works. While rooted in phenomenology and hermeneutics, the inquiry situates these concepts within the domain of legal theory, with a focus on their potential to complement and transcend the limitations of institutional justice. The analysis highlights how juridical systems, premised on equivalence and coercion, often fail to address the symbolic, emotional, and relational dimensions of harm. (...) Ricoeur’s concept of forgiveness—as a disinterested gift—and the promise—as a commitment grounded in trust rather than obligation—are explored as non-institutional acts capable of renewing human capacities undermined by guilt, debt, or historical trauma. Drawing on anthropological theories of exchange and mutuality, the article frames both forgiveness and the promise within the symbolic economy of the gift, arguing that these acts disrupt cycles of vengeance and open a horizon of ethical transformation. Special attention is paid to their dialogical and asymmetrical structures, their resistance to institutionalisation, and their capacity to reconstitute personal and collective identity. By illuminating the ethical potential of forgiveness and promise, the article proposes a supplementary logic of mutuality that enhances restorative and transitional justice practices. Ultimately, it argues that these acts are essential for re-establishing trust, dignity, and moral agency in contexts where legal mechanisms alone prove insufficient. (shrink)

There is an urgent need to understand how private and public organisations can play a role in promoting human values such as fairness, dignity, respect and care. Globalisation, technological advance and climate change are changing work, organisations and systems in ways which foster inequality, alienation and collective risk. Against this backdrop, organisations are being urged to make their contribution to the common good, take account of the interests of multiple stakeholders, and respond ethically as well as efficiently to complex challenges (...) which transcend traditional organisational and state boundaries. Ethics, Meaningfulness, and Mutuality poses critical questions related to organisational design by challenging limits to current thinking, such as the neglect by political philosophers of markets, firms and stakeholders, or by organisational theorists of business ethics. In so doing, the book advances our understanding of the theory and practice of ethical organising. Specifically, meaningfulness and mutuality will be used to yield values and principles for a philosophy of ethical organising which includes an account of human values in morally desirable collective action, and examines the relationship of collective action to the contested concept of shared value creation. Within a philosophy of ethical organising, mutuality permits an examination of the unavoidable relational nature of collective action, whereas meaningfulness addresses fundamental human concerns for significance and leading a life we have reason to value. By addressing our status as relational beings with human needs for meaning, a philosophy of ethical organising brings critical thinking to the creation of morally informed organisational practices which are not only instrumentally beneficial for addressing wicked problems, but are normatively desirable for human flourishing. (shrink)

A conflict arises from two basic insights concerning what recognition is. I call them the mutuality–insight and the adequate regard–insight. The former is the idea that recognition involves inbuilt mutuality: ego has to recognize the alter as a recognizer in order that the alter’s views may count as recognizing the ego. There always needs to be two–way recognition for even one–way recognition to take place. The adequate regard –insight in turn is that we do not merely desire to (...) be classified as recognizers, but to be treated adequately, in the light of any and all of our normatively relevant features. Both of these insights build on a third central idea, that recognition from others matters because it is relevant to one’s practical relations–to–self: say, respect from others is relevant for self–respect. But crucially for this paper, the two insights pull in different directions – they are in tension when it comes to deciding the scope of “recognition”. This paper is an attempt to negotiate the tension by comparing and assessing more and less restricted views on “recognition”. I discuss four issues on which definitions of recognition may be more or less restricted. The first question concerns the scope of possible recipients of recognition, and the second question possible recipient-dependent conceptual restrictions on whether recognition has taken place at all. On these questions I try to be true to both of the two conflicting insights. The mutuality–insight leads naturally to a strict conception of recognition (only recognizers can be recognized; recognition takes place only when two–way recognition takes place). By contrast, the adequate regard –insight leads to an unrestricted view (also other beings than recognizers can be treated adequately, and one–way adequate regard is conceptually possible). I argue that the tension between these is best negotiated by a two–part story, which will distinguish terminologically recognizing (and being recognized) from successfully giving and getting recognition. It is slightly unfortunate to have to draw such technical terminological distinctions, but drawing this distinction helps to make substantive points that upon reflection need to be made, given the mutuality–insight and adequate regard–insight. Or so I argue. The other two questions are: what sort of responses to what sort of features amount to recognition. Again, the adequate regard –insight would lead to an unrestricted normativist view: any kinds of responses that are normatively called for by any normatively relevant features may be cases of recognition. The mutuality – insight might motivate a narrower suggestion developing the idea that only other recognizers (or persons) can be recipients of recognition : only the kind of features that can only be had by other recognizers (or persons) can serve as the basis of recognition, and only the kind of responses, which are forms of taking the other as a recognizer (or a person) count as recognizing . I will argue that while such responses to such features are an important subclass of recognition, the unrestricted normativist view captures the full scope of recognition better. We should not in advance define recognition in a restricted way which rules some cases out (even though the mutuality–insight might seem to motivate some restrictions). We can fully preserve the force of the mutuality–insight with the two–part story, without restricting the scope of features and responses that amount to recognition. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The article posits the concept of economy of mutuality as an intellectual mediation space for shifts in emphasis between market and social structures within economic theory and practice. Economy of mutuality, it is contended, provides an alternative frame of reference to the dichotomy of market economy and social economy, for inquiry about what business is for and what values it presupposes and creates. The article centers around the objective of gaining a broadened understanding of business so as to (...) include not just market economy, but social enterprise and social economy. In pursuit of this objective, a range of various archetypes of business enterprise are considered in light of higher ends of economic life. The highest telos of business encompassing all such archetypes, it is argued, is founded on reciprocity and integral human development. The article concludes that, compared to market economy per se, economy of mutuality provides a better conceptual framework for business in undertaking the challenges of sustainability. (shrink)

BackgroundPatients with chronic heart failure and their family caregivers may experience adverse emotional problems, such as depression. Mutuality, which refers to the relationship between caregivers and those they care for, is an important factor affecting depression in the dyads. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between mutuality and depression in patients with CHF and their caregivers in China.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, we used the Mutuality Scale and the Self-Rating Depression Scale to measure (...) class='Hi'>mutuality and depression of patients and caregivers. We used SPSS version 26.0 and AMOS version 21.0 to analyze the data. An APIM was established to analyze the actor-partner effects of patient-caregiver mutuality and depression.ResultsA total of 250 dyads of patients and caregivers were included in the study. There were statistically significant differences in mutuality and depression between CHF patients and caregivers. The 4 dimensions of patients’ mutuality all have the actor effect on depression. There were 3 partner effects of caregivers’ “pleasurable activities”, “shared values”, and “reciprocity” on depression. Regarding caregiver depression, we only found an actor effect of caregivers’ “shared values” on depression.ConclusionThe relationship between patients and caregivers should be evaluated in the clinical setting, and it is very important to develop intervention measures to improve the adverse emotional problems affecting both patients and their caregivers. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: The main goal of this commentary is to make more discriminative the comparison between enactive and ecological theories of perception. Emergence at the level of the animal-environment system might be playing the role attributed to mental construction in basic perceptual processes. If correct, this would render some forms of enactivism compatible with the theoretical tenets of the target article.

The concept of an ecological niche (econiche) has been used in a variety of ways, some of which are incompatible with a relational or functional interpretation of the term. This essay seeks to standardize usage by limiting the concept to functional relations between organisms and their surroundings, and to revise the concept to include epistemic relations. For most organisms, epistemics are a vital aspect of their functional relationships to their surroundings and, hence, a major determinant of their econiche. Rejecting the (...) traditional dualism of organism and environment, an econiche is defined as the reciprocal (dual) of a functionally specified class of organisms (FSTU). From this perspective, an econiche necessarily implies a certain type of organism, and a class of functionally similar organisms implies a special econiche.The econiche concept is also discussed in relation to other ecological terms that reflect the distributional patterns of organisms, such as habitat, and the concept of an empty niche is criticized. (shrink)

This article examines the ambivalence of debt as a simultaneously moral and economic category. It argues that debt traverses two axes: existential and economic indebtedness, and debt as either mutuality or domination. Drawing on biblical prohibitions of usury, Jubilee legislation, medieval scholastic debates, and modern social contract theory, the article contends that the moral problem is not debt per se but its severance from covenantal relations of shared risk, trust, and limit. In premodern traditions, economic exchange was subordinated to (...) prior moral and political bonds; by contrast, financialised capitalism abstracts debt from these relations, treating it as a neutral instrument of contract between autonomous individuals. The result is a governance regime in which indebtedness concentrates power and erodes democratic agency. Recovering a theological grammar of mutuality enables a distinction between restorative and extractive debt, and offers resources for re-embedding economic life within just and participatory forms of common life. (shrink)

This review critically examines the current state of the science on the concept of family caregiver–care receiver mutuality, summarizes accomplishments and gaps and identifies directions for future theory development and research. Mutuality between family caregivers and care receivers is of increasing interest to researchers. However, no analysis of the current state of the science of this important concept has been published. Our literature search revealed 34 research articles that met inclusion criteria. The studies were assessed in terms of (...) conceptualization of mutuality, instrument development, populations studied, research designs and methods and findings. Significant scientific progress during the past 30 years includes the development of clear definitions and new instruments, expansion of research beyond the clinical populations in which mutuality was first studied, the use of a variety of research designs, and increasingly sophisticated methods of data analysis. Growing evidence suggests that mutuality is associated with caregiver emotional health outcomes and may decrease over time in the context of chronic illness. Directions for future research include development of new theoretical frameworks grounded in relational theory, development of theory on the dynamics of mutuality over time, exploration of mutuality in diverse cultures and populations, and intervention studies aimed at enhancing mutuality. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of seminal examples of Western thought (including the Bible, Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger) in which food features as a means to the conceptual differentiation of the human from the animal. Such an approach allows the emergence of a “structure” (in the Deleuzian sense) that seems to underlie the production of these distinctions. It is, paradoxically, human and animal mutuality – as this is manifested in their common need for, and consumption of, food (...) – that has been utilised as their “differentiator” in the Western tradition and it is this, I argue, that renders possible the functions of what Agamben calls the “anthropological machine.”. (shrink)

Trust in business is declining because business has focused too much on performance and too little on progress. From climate change to unfair compensation and technology-related fears, our list of concerns is large and growing. This book explores how economic actors might evolve their paradigms, preferences, and practices.

The endeavor to naturalize the philosophy of biology brings the problem of agency to the forefront, along with renewed attention to the organism and organicism. In this article, we argue for a mutualist approach to agency that starts to unravel layers of this complex issue by focusing on perception and action at the core of all biological agency. The mutuality of animals and their surroundings is seen as distinct from the typical concepts of organism, preexisting environment, and their interactions. (...) Mutuality means a deep ontological and epistemological compatibility between the organism and its surround. We suggest that the concept of direct perception developed and empirically researched in the tradition of the ecological approach, launched by James J. Gibson, offers a promising path to approach agency within an ecological–mutuality framework. At the core of our definition of agency is the animal’s ability to self-initiate actions and activities. Animals are the source of their own actions and activities within the mutual, co-defining relation to their surround. The place of agency related to mutuality has not been elaborated sufficiently thus far, in either biology or ecological psychology. In this article, our goal is to argue for the necessity of placing agency into an ecological–mutuality framework and of further research in this direction in line with Marjorie Grene’s call to assimilate Gibson’s theory of knowledge into biology. (shrink)

“There was something a little unseemly about how the building societies intending to demutualise did so by encouraging their members to vote in favour with the inducement of significant payments in shares”. Should one have no regard for the intentions of those who produced the present capital accumulation, or for the idea of holding reserves in trust for future members? The author is DBM Professor of Corporate Governance at Leeds Business School, Leeds Metropolitan University, Calverley Street, Leeds LS1 3HE.

Marina Sbisà has long advocated that we think of the illocutionary force of a speech act in terms of the act’s (predictable) systematic effects on the normative relationship between a speaker and her audience. Building on this idea, I argue that the hypothesis of distinctive speech act norms can be used to explain how participants in a conversation coordinate the normative expectations they have of one another in conversation. Such an explanation earns its keep by explaining how speakers render themselves (...) illocutionarily intelligible to their audiences—thereby enabling us to articulate the sense of mutuality that characterizes speech exchanges. One important upshot of my reflections is that we should reject both Austin’s thesis that the successful performance of an illocutionary act depends on audience uptake and Sbisà’s claim that Austin’s thesis is required if we are to make sense of the illocutionary dimension of speech in terms of an act’s systematic effects on participants’ normative expectations of one another. (shrink)

Paulo Freire consistently upheld humanization and mutuality as educational ideals. This article argues that conceptualizations of knowledge and how knowledge is sought and produced play a role in fostering humanization and mutuality in educational contexts. Drawing on Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, this article focuses on the two central characters who ‘ardently’ pursue knowledge at all costs. It will be argued that the text suggests two possible outcomes from the pursuit of knowledge. One is mutuality; the other is (...) social disconnectedness. (shrink)

My work aims to focus on the intersections between aesthetics, intergenerational values, and climate change while exploring some core questions. How do aesthetic values interact with the construction of social and intergenerational values? Can the aesthetic experience of art have any influence on our attitudes toward the environment? These questions are related to the broader question: is the aesthetic experience of art connected to the aesthetic experience of nature? The thesis underlying this paper is that aesthetic appreciation of nature and (...) art mutually influence each other. To prove this claim, I propose a Deweyan and pluralistic approach to environmental aesthetics that interacts with the fields of neuroaesthetics and intergenerational thinking. The key concept on which my proposal rests is the Deweyan connection between aesthetics and experience. (shrink)

How is the ethically unacceptable persistence of the unnecessary suffering of extraordinarily poor street children in extraordinarily rich European Union capital cities to be durably remedied? Perhaps centrally, this philosophical essay argues, by re-articulating current inadequate understandings in the European Union of social injustice not as an absence of solidarity but as the failure to imagine and to act on "mutualities." First presented in 2011 as invited lectures for the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, this (...) extended reflection explores four central elements of the empirical situations of such extreme child poverty amid great affluence in the contexts of a progressively developed case study of destitute street children in Paris. The essay focuses successively on such utterly destitute children's poor health, poor housing, poor food, and poor education. In each case, outstanding contemporary philosophical reflections on violations of social justice - those of J. Rawls, A. Sen, R. Dworkin, and J. Habermas - are found to be deeply suggestive but finally insufficient for understanding such legally and morally intolerable situations. Yet each may be interpreted as contributing substantively to a progressive re-articulation of at least four critical elements of what a renewed idea of social justice in the European Union tomorrow must involve - "mutualizations" of fairness, understanding, respect, and articulacy. (shrink)

While people in the U.S. hold research in high regard, recent years have seen a decline in the confidence attributed to researchers—that is, a decreasing confidence in those doing the work. Critiques from research participants have noted that some researchers abscond knowledge, expose participants or contort them into legibility, and misconstrue representations of participants’ contributions. We raise the question of what methodology and practices might suit the objectives of both researchers and participants. To investigate the question of suitability, this article (...) explores how feminist theorists, disability scholars, and feminist disability researchers have wielded phenomenology to reconstitute research praxis. We consider principles of phenomenology broadly, and feminist phenomenology specifically, that foster more conducive researcher-participant interactions. We conclude by noting supplementary practices that might magnify the methodology’s inclusion-building capacity. It is our hope that this critique will support researcher practices, grounded in relationality and mutuality, that lead to greater inclusivity and empowerment, culminating in improved public trust. (shrink)

This essay by Suzanne Rosenblith and Benjamin Bindewald is motivated by the question of how do those who value civic liberalism give the religiously orthodox a reason to engage in pluralist democratic deliberations in a manner that does not allow intolerance to undermine the foundations of liberal democracy. Introducing the idea of tolerance as mutuality — that is, a will to relationship — the authors argue, strikes a balance between those theories that are too demanding of the religiously orthodox (...) and those that are not exacting enough. Applying the principle of tolerance as mutuality to the special space of public schools allows for a new way to conceptualize civic education in pluralist democracies. (shrink)

Marina Sbisà has long advocated that we think of the illocutionary force of a speech act in terms of the act’s (predictable) systematic effects on the normative relationship between a speaker and her audience. Building on this idea, I argue that the hypothesis of distinctive speech act norms can be used to explain how participants in a conversation coordinate the normative expectations they have of one another in conversation. Such an explanation earns its keep by explaining how speakers render themselves (...) illocutionarily intelligible to their audiences—thereby enabling us to articulate the sense of mutuality that characterizes speech exchanges. One important upshot of my reflections is that we should reject both Austin’s thesis that the successful performance of an illocutionary act depends on audience uptake and Sbisà’s claim that Austin’s thesis is required if we are to make sense of the illocutionary dimension of speech in terms of an act’s systematic effects on participants’ normative expectations of one another. (shrink)

Jeffrey Tillman is perceptive in noticing that certain Protestant theologians have used evolutionary theory to become more sympathetic to Roman Catholic views of Christian love. But he is incorrect in saying that these formulations deemphasize a place for self-sacrifice in Christian love. Christian love defined as a strenuous equal-regard for both other and self also requires sacrificial efforts to restore love as equal-regard when finitude and sin undermine genuine mutuality and community.

This essay is informed by five different but interrelated conversations all focusing on the relationship between the city and the university. Suggesting the clown as metaphor, I explore the particular role of the activist scholar, and in particular the liberation theologian that is based at the public university, in his or her engagement with the city. Considering the shackles of the city of capital and its twin, the neoliberal university, on the one hand, and the city of vulnerability on the (...) other, I then propose three clown-like postures of solidarity, mutuality and prophecy to resist the shackles of culture and to imagine and embody daring alternatives. (shrink)

Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night's Dream shows ethical conflicts to be resolved relationally. Quarreling lovers divide Duke Theseus's Athenian court in advance of his own nuptial celebration, forcing the Duke to decide moral questions based on their ethical consequences. King Oberon's conflicted fairy world meddles in human affairs, adding to the ethical confusion. Athenian workmen vie for roles in a court performance that becomes both a theatrical travesty and a triumph of relational ethics owing to Bottom, the character most within (...) relation itself. Paradoxically, the “dream” elevates relating per se to self-consciousness. Hegel's dialectical, Jean-Luc Nancy's transfiguring, and Martin Buber's relational perspectives take up Shakespeare 's premise of treating ontology and ethics as facets of the same movement. Just as the play enacts Hegel's assertion that all alienation must be overcome, so it also shows Nancy's and Buber's symbolic consecration of ethical being as mutuality. (shrink)

The Normative Foundation of Legal Orders: A Balance Between Reciprocity and Mutuality Reciprocity seems to figure as a self-evident normative foundation of legal orders. Yet a clear understanding of the often opaque role that reciprocity plays in this regard demands drawing a conceptual distinction. This article views reciprocity as a social morality of duties, in opposition to mutuality, which concerns a legal morality of rights. In everyday life these two broad categories of human interaction interfere in a dynamic (...) way. They need to be brought into an appropriate balance in legal orders, for the sake of justice. The practical relevance of this conceptual distinction is clarified by the debate about justice between present and future generations. I argue that this debate should be viewed as a debate about the terms of reciprocity rather than relations of mutuality. Acknowledging the deeply reciprocal nature of the relations between past, present and future generations would lead to a more convincing moral theory about intergenerational justice. (shrink)

In this essay, Paula McAvoy critiques a commonly held view that teaching young people to be good choice makers should be a central aim of sex education. Specifically, she argues against David Archard's recommendation that sex educators ought to focus on the development of autonomy and teaching young people that “choice should be accorded the central role in the legitimation of sexual conduct.” Instead, McAvoy argues that under conditions of gender inequality this view advantages boys and disadvantages girls. Juxtaposing a (...) case of a culturally arranged marriage with a spring break scene from Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, McAvoy shows that focusing on sexual choice making obscures and reifies the unequal social conditions that young people navigate. She concludes by suggesting an alternative that is in line with Sharon Lamb's argument in “Just the Facts? The Separation of Sex Education from Moral Education” that intimate encounters are better governed by attending to our ethical obligations to others. (shrink)

Can there be an obligation to obey laws produced by patently illegitimate political institutions, or are these laws like rules of etiquette – rules we might have reasons to follow but which we are not obligated to obey?2 Exclude from the scope of this question laws that recapitulate or contradict independently valid moral principles. Let us instead query only whether there is an obligation to obey laws that (i) do not recapitulate or contradict valid moral principles, and (ii) are products (...) of illegitimate political authorities. In this paper, I argue that there can be such an obligation even if the laws’ “parent” political institution is not legitimate. I do so by showing how the law (whatever its provenance) can generate interpersonal relationships that have deep moral significance – relationships that in turn ground an obligation to obey the law. (shrink)

This chapter goes over the developments in American legal practice throughout the twentieth century that led to nonmutual collateral estoppel. It offers an in-depth account of the Supreme Court precedents that contributed to the transformation in estoppel doctrine and the abandonment of the requirement of mutuality of parties. Finally, it proposes a general framework of the law of nonmutual collateral estoppel according to such developments and indicates the points of concern that were left by the rejection of mutuality.

Carl Craver’s mutual manipulability criterion aims to pick out all and only those components of a mechanism that are constitutively relevant with respect to a given phenomenon. In devising his criterion, Craver has made heavy use of the notion of an ideal intervention, which is a tool for illuminating causal concepts in causal models. The problem is that typical mechanistic models contain non-causal relations in addition to causal ones, which is why the standard concept of an ideal intervention is not (...) appropriate in that context. In this paper, I first show how top-down interventions in mechanistic models violate the conditions for ideal interventions. Drawing from recent developments in the causal exclusion literature, I then argue for extended interventionism better suited for the purposes of the new mechanist. Finally, I show why adopting such an extended account leads to the surprising consequence that an important subset of mechanistic interlevel relations comes out as causal. (shrink)

Most scholars point out that Ricœur’s itinerary ends with a “phenomenology of the capable human being”. In this paper, I will try to propose a different hypothesis and explain why Ricœur’s last writings can be considered the starting point of a second Copernican revolution within phenomenology. A revolution of both method (from the analytic to the a-logical) and contents (from the theme of intersubjectivity to the theme of “giving” and loving), which, already in the Preface of Le volontaire et l’involontaire, (...) Ricœur wished could follow after the first revolution of the reflexive phenomenology: a hermeneutic poetic phenomenology that develops the project that the early Ricœur had drafted, but not completed in the 1950s. This is the project of a Poetics of the Gift, in which is hidden, in my opinion, the fecundity of Ricœurian philosophy and the possibility for it to become paradigmatic for the philosophy to come. (shrink)

This paper examines the application of the mutual manipulability criterion as a way to demarcate constituents of cognitive systems from resources having a mere causal influence on cognitive systems. In particular, it is argued that on at least one interpretation of the mutual manipulability criterion, the criterion is inadequate because the criterion is conceptualized as identifying synchronic dependence between higher and lower ‘levels’ in mechanisms. It is argued that there is a second articulation of the mutual manipulability criterion available, and (...) that it should be preferred for at least two reasons. The first is that the criterion of mutual manipulability is an instance of continuous reciprocal causation. The second is that it has implications for how to understand this distinction between causation and constitution. It is shown that when considering dynamic systems, continuous reciprocal causation - ubiquitous in dynamical systems - is a form of constitutive causality, which entails that causal factors may, in the right circumstances, by genuine constitutive factors of cognition. This notion of constitutive causality lends support to conceiving of the mutual manipulability criterion as a genuine demarcation principle in the debate over the boundaries of mind. (shrink)

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, 50 years ago on 04 April 1968, has been recalled in the United States with memorial services, conferences, public discussions and books. In contrast, the commemoration in 2017 of the death of Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli, 50 years ago on December 1967, passed almost unremarked. That is to our detriment. Yet, these two Christian fighters for freedom, in different contexts, did not only have much in common, but they also left remarkably similar and (...) equally inspiring legacies for South Africa, the United States and the world in the ways they lived their lives in complete faith commitment to ideals and ways of struggle that may guide us in the ongoing struggles to make the world a more just, peacable and humane place. For South African reflections on our ethical stance in the fierce, continuing struggles for justice, dignity and the authenticity of our democracy, I propose that these two leaders should be considered in tandem. We should learn from both. This article engages Martin Luther King Jr’s belief in the ‘inescapable network of mutuality’, applies it to the struggle for freedom in South Africa and explores the ways in which South Africans can embrace these ethical ideals in facing the challenges of post-liberation. (shrink)

This piece is a commentary on a precis of Sperber and Wilson's book "Relevance", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.