Insults, free speech and offensiveness

This article examines what is wrong with some expressive acts, ‘insults’. Their putative wrongfulness is distinguished from the causing of indirect harms, aggregated harms, contextual harms, and damaging misrepresentations. The article clarifies what insults are, making use of work by Neu and Austin, and argues that their wrongfulness cannot lie in the hurt that is caused to those at whom such acts are directed. Rather it must lie in what they seek to do, namely to denigrate the other. The causing of offence is at most evidence that an insult has been communicated; it is not independent grounds of proscription or constraint. The victim of an insult may know that she has been insulted but not accept or agree with the insult, and thereby submit to the insulter. Hence insults need not, as Waldron argues they do, occasion dignitary harms. They do not of themselves subvert their victims' equal moral status. The claim that hateful speech endorses inequality should not be conflated with a claim that such speech directly subverts equality.

Thus, ‘wounding words’ should not unduly trouble the liberal defender of free speech either on the grounds of preventing offence or on those of avoiding dignitary harms.

A new comparator account of auditory verbal hallucinations: how motor prediction can plausibly contribute to the sense of agency for inner speech

The comparator account holds that processes of motor prediction contribute to the sense of agency by attenuating incoming sensory information and that disruptions to this process contribute to misattributions of agency in schizophrenia. Over the last 25 years this simple and powerful model has gained widespread support not only as it relates to bodily actions but also as an account of misattributions of agency for inner speech, potentially explaining the etiology of auditory verbal hallucination (AVH). In this paper we provide a detailed analysis of the traditional comparator account for inner speech, pointing out serious problems with the specification of inner speech on which it is based and highlighting inconsistencies in the interpretation of the electrophysiological evidence commonly cited in its favor. In light of these analyses we propose a new comparator account of misattributed inner speech. The new account follows leading models of motor imagery in proposing that inner speech is not attenuated by motor prediction, but rather derived directly from it. We describe how failures of motor prediction would therefore directly affect the phenomenology of inner speech and trigger a mismatch in the comparison between motor prediction and motor intention, contributing to abnormal feelings of agency. We argue that the new account fits with the emerging phenomenological evidence that AVHs are both distinct from ordinary inner speech and heterogeneous. Finally, we explore the possibility that the new comparator account may extend to explain disruptions across a range of imagistic modalities, and outline avenues for future research.

Ethnoreligious change in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe:A comparative study of how religious havens can have ethnic significance

This study compares the internal dynamics of religious change in the 'post-evangelical' Ikon community in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a charismatic, multiethnic congregation in Harare, Zimbabwe. Although the theological ideas behind Ikon and the congregation vary widely, the processes whereby both groups manage change are broadly similar and have wider theoretical significance. Accordingly, this article analyses how people use the religious resources of their traditions to construct 'havens' in which change is facilitated. Havens are conceived of as safe spaces where people use religious resources to challenge ethnic boundaries and power structures. They can be seen to function as mechanisms for disrupting long-entrenched feedback patterns of opposition and conflict. © 2010 The Editor of Ethnopolitics.

Evangelical Journeys:Choice and Change in a Northern Irish Religious Subculture

This book draws on interview material with more than 100 evangelicals. We ask why do people born into the same religious community turn out so differently? We tell the stories of pro-life DUP picketers, liberal peace-campaigning ministers, housewives afraid of the devil, students deconstructing their faith and atheists mortified by their religious past. We explore why people have chosen to go in one religious direction or another, and how their religious journeys have unfolded.

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland is the first major book to explore the dynamic religious landscape of contemporary Ireland, north and south, and to analyse the island’s religious transition. It confirms that the Catholic Church’s long-standing ‘monopoly’ has well and truly disintegrated, replaced by a mixed, post-Catholic religious ‘market’ featuring new and growing expressions of Protestantism, as well as other religions. It describes how people of faith are developing ‘extra-institutional’ expressions of religion, keeping their faith alive outside or in addition to the institutional Catholic Church.

Drawing on island-wide surveys of clergy and laypeople, as well as more than 100 interviews, this book describes how people of faith are engaging with key issues such as increased diversity, reconciliation to overcome the island’s sectarian past, and ecumenism. It argues that extra-institutional religion is especially well-suited to address these and other issues due to its freedom and flexibility when compared to traditional religious institutions. It describes how those who practice extra-institutional religion have experienced personal transformation, and analyses the extent that they have contributed to wider religious, social, and political change. On an island where religion has caused much pain, from clerical sexual abuse scandals, to sectarian violence, to a frosty reception for some immigrants, those who practice their faith outside traditional religious institutions may hold the key to transforming post-Catholic Ireland into a more reconciled society.

Beyond Pietism and Prosperity: Religious Resources for Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Zimbabwe

It is often assumed that charismatic Christianity in Africa promotes either a pietist withdrawal from social and political concerns, or a preoccupation with gaining individual health and wealth (the prosperity gospel). This research presents an alternative vision of the role of charismatic Christianity in Zimbabwe. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a charismatic congregation, it analyzes how these Christians are drawing links between spirituality and social action. This congregation is developing an egalitarian conception of power, promoting service to the poor, and using biblical discourses to support their actions. This can be understood as part of a wider process in which Zimbabwean Christians are using religious resources to develop a vision for reconstruction and reconciliation. This article points to further areas in which the churches could use their public position to raise sensitive issues, including how to deal with the past and heal relationships between previously antagonistic groups.

Combining multi-band and frequency-filtering techniques for speech recognition in noisy environments

While current speech recognisers give acceptable performance in carefully controlled environments, their performance degrades rapidly when they are applied in more realistic situations. Generally, the environmental noise may be classified into two classes: the wide-band noise and narrow band noise. While the multi-band model has been shown to be capable of dealing with speech corrupted by narrow-band noise, it is ineffective for wide-band noise. In this paper, we suggest a combination of the frequency-filtering technique with the probabilistic union model in the multi-band approach. The new system has been tested on the TIDIGITS database, corrupted by white noise, noise collected from a railway station, and narrow-band noise, respectively. The results have shown that this approach is capable of dealing with noise of narrow-band or wide-band characteristics, assuming no knowledge about the noisy environment.