This essay brings together the discourses of Daoism and Deleuze and Guattari to elucidate the convergence among them on a fundamental metaphysical level that can open, for the receptive mind, a deeper intuitive insight and understanding of what a person is capable of doing and becoming, and how such a person can enter into a different relation with spacetime beyond the conventional understanding of it. After examining how vital energy (qi 氣) is transformed in internal alchemy (neidan 内丹), the (...) focus turns to a consideration of the possible relation between Daoist “immortality” and Deleuzo-Guattarian “becoming-imperceptible.”** This essay is the result of decades of bodily practices beginning with gongfu 功夫 (Sanhedao 三和道 style) followed by taijiquan 太極拳 (Wu 吳 family style) and eventually qigong 氣功, which informed considerably my later philosophical reflections. Parts of this paper have been presented previously at the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, March 25, 2016; the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, Western Sydney University, Australia, November 23, 2018, the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, University of Leiden, Netherlands, May 24, 2019; and the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition, University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, September 9, 2021. I am grateful for the opportunity to present my work at these societies and for the important critical feedback I received from their memberships. I also want to thank especially Meilin Chinn and Elisabet Yanagisawa for their many hours of conversation with me about my work on this topic. (shrink)

Deleuze’s sense of the history of philosophy in Difference and Repetition is manifestly agonistic and counter-dialectic. Against a history of philosophy that has only considered difference as a relation between or among competing terms, Deleuze affirms a philosophy of immanence where the task of philosophy is to think difference in itself. This ‘overcoming’ of Hegel (and Plato) nevertheless intensifies rather than vanquishes Hegel’s own demand for immanence: philosophy is not one event among others, but the necessary means through which life (...) appears to, and recognizes, itself. Life is the absolute appearing to itself. For Deleuze philosophy is also, ultimately, the means through which life takes on a higher power of expression. A world that has overcome representation is a world made expressive. (shrink)

Under the influence of neoliberalism, academic work faces mounting pressure to align with imperatives of visibility and perceptibility. Traditionally criticised for working in isolated ‘ivory towers’, academics are now compelled to showcase the societal value of their work through performance metrics and evaluations. Paradoxically, these efforts have unintentionally led to the rigidification and commodification of academic work, stifling the production of knowledge beyond predefined parameters. In this paper, we contend that academics should resist the imposition of this neoliberal ‘grid’ and (...) instead seek a path of ‘becoming‐imperceptible’, drawing inspiration from the insights of Deleuze and Guattari. Becoming‐imperceptible does not entail silent disengagement; rather, it represents a creative form of resistance challenging prevailing modes of assessment rooted in visibility and perceptibility. By incorporating the concept of ‘fast feminism’ to subvert Paul Virilio's hypermasculine speed theory, we uncover the transformative potential of temporary absences. Leveraging these moments of absence, academics can intensify their affective connections with both their peers and their work, making them undiscernible to the confines of the academic establishment. We argue that these instances of imperceptibility create fertile ground for creative and inventive academic endeavours on the margins of established boundaries, where original scholarship can flourish. Such a subversive approach is particularly relevant in fields like nursing and the health sciences, where it can challenge the dominant discourses that typify neoliberal academia. (shrink)

This article aims to comprehend Kierkegaard’s theory of the movement of faith through Deleuze’s theory of becoming. At the same time, it aims to understand Deleuze’s theory of becoming in the light of Kierkegaard’s thought, mainly through his reflections on Abraham and the concept of anxiety. It will show the way in which the conceptual character of the knight of faith works as a possible variation of one of the most original concepts of Deleuze’s work: the becoming- (...) class='Hi'>imperceptible. This crossing of concepts allows us to shed light on the problem of thinking a theory of the subject that takes into account the intensive movements that escape the logic of representation; and also the deleuzian search for a renewal of philosophical ways of expression. (shrink)

This essay offers a response to Pamela Sue Anderson’s book, Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion. It focuses on three key aspects of Anderson’s work: first, her concern with the often imperceptible reality of gender exclusions; secondly, her discussion of ineffability in dialogue with Adrian Moore’s work and thirdly, her defence of realism in response to Grace Jantzen. These themes constitute a welcome articulation of rationality within a feminist framework, whilst opening up rationality to the validity of non-propositional truths. (...) The essay ends by suggesting that Anderson does more to work out new conceptualizations of the divine, arguing that her work and that of Jantzen are not so far apart on this point as might first appear. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s analytic theory of art relies on a form of artistic interpretation that requires access to the art theoretical concepts of the artworld, ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’. Art, in what Danto refers to as post-history, has become theoretical, yet it is here contended that his explanation of the artist’s creative style lacks a theoretical dimension. This article examines Danto’s account of style in light of the role the artistic metaphor (...) plays in the interpretation of the artwork, arguing that it is unable to account for the metaphorical power he claims is embedded within the work of art. An artist’s style issues from a unique perspective, the way an artist inhabits a specific spot in history. Though each person has such a perspective, when applied aesthetically, it is the key to the articulation of a unique historical meaning in the work of art. At the same time, artists’ knowledge of their contribution remains cut off from this perspective, for they are unaware of their self-manifestation of the historical concept of style. This article makes the case that Danto’s notion of style, based on Sartre’s notion of being-for-itself, cannot fulfil the role he allots it in his theory because, at some level, artists must apprehend their style to create a work of art capable of functioning critically as a countertext. It is only through the apprehension of their style, and dialogical activity that takes place between the artist and the beholders, that the unseen body of artworld theory is formed. Without this, when oriented to the aesthetic, style provides no concept or theory for the mind to behold. This article presents an alternative approach to style that recognizes the role of theory in the creation of metaphor, which would circumvent this problem. (shrink)

:Visual culture – art, film, entertainment, advertising – are saturated with images of normative heterosexual masculinity. They form visual narratives that project a largely coherent kind of masculinity where heterosexual men are shown to be creative and powerful; they initiate heroic action, take the moral high ground and preserve traditional roles and the status quo. This widely extensive visual field, peopled with normative images of masculinity, also affects and infiltrates the domain of art exemplified by Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism (...) which, to the present day, continues to project masculinity as the originator and pioneer of aesthetic value. This essay reviews feminist and queer artists’ image making that appropriates the myth of homogeneous masculinity and turns it into a medium for a variety of creative and hybrid explorations. I argue that Deleuzoguattarian concepts such as becoming-woman and becoming-imperceptible help us to understand this molecularisation of masculinity. And importantly in the other direction, these feminist and queer image makers allow us to understand and explore more fully these concepts. (shrink)

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari carve out an image of thought and a path for philosophy that is connected to the figure of the cosmic artisan. This article situates the artisan in relation to both past and future, comparing this figure to that of the artist in the work of another great philosopher who desired to bring forth a new beginning for philosophy, Martin Heidegger. After discussing multiple ways that Deleuze and Guattari's thought is world-destroying in terms of (...) past ontological and epistemological commitments, the article considers the cosmic artisan/philosopher's diagrammatic role in light of the technological-scientific advancements within the field of quantum physics. Through these elaborations, it becomes clear that Deleuze and Guattari are articulating the need for a new sensibility – to the imperceptible, the virtual, the compossible and the molecular. Deleuze and Guattari's noological nomadism opens a way forward, where world-destroying becomes linked to creation, and the figure of modernity becomes the possibility of a new relation to the earth – a cosmic earth. (shrink)

It is obvious that the closer the structure of a narrative conforms to causal-chronological sequence, the closer it corresponds to the linear-temporal order of language. It is now equally obvious, however, that such correspondence is contrary to the nature of narrative as an art form. Indeed, it is clear that all through the history of the novel a tension has existed between the linear-temporal nature of its medium and the spatial elements required by its nature as a work of art. (...) Most of what are known as the "formal conventions" of the novel are an implicit agreement between writer and reader not to pay attention to this disjunction and to overlook the extent to which it exists. Shklovsky provocatively called Tristram Shandy the most "typical" novel in world literature because it "laid bare" all the conventions, whose nature as conventions had become imperceptible through long familiarity, employed by the form. Joseph Frank, professor of comparative literature and director of the Christian Gauss seminars in criticism at Princeton University, received the James Russell Lowell Prize of the MLA for Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849, the first volume of his four-volume biography. Frank's original article on spatial form in modern literature appeared in Sewanee Review ; the essay was later revised and incorporated in his The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The article discusses the political meaning of refusal. Against the dominating philosophical perspective, praising participation and sense of community, it argues that the acts of refusal may play an important role in resistance against power. Some elements of a possible theory of refusal are to be found in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, especially in his famous essay on Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, but also in Dialogues and Mille Plateaux, where he coins the crucial concept of becoming-imperceptible.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari redefine the relation between the state and its war machine. Far from being a part of the state, warriers are nomads who always come from the outside and keep threatening the authority of the state. In this daring essay inspired by Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari redefine the relation between the state and its war machine. Far from being a part of the state, warriers are nomads who always come from the outside and keep (...) threatening the authority of the state. In the same vein, nomadic science keeps infiltrating royal science, undermining its axioms and principles. Nomadology is a speedy, pocket-sized treatise that refuses to be pinned down. Theorizing a dynamic relationship between sedentary power and "schizophrenic lines of flight," this volume is meant to be read in transit, smuggled into urban nightclubs, offices, and subways. Deleuze and Guattari propose a creative and resistant ethics of becoming-imperceptible, strategizing a continuous invention of weapons on the run. An anarchic bricolage of ideas uprooted from anthropology, aesthetics, history, and military strategy, Nomadology carries out Deleuze's desire to "leave philosophy, but to leave it as a philosopher.". (shrink)

In this article, I wish to engage in reflecting on the limits of affirmative and vitalist potentials visible in new materialist research. An enthusiastic note is clearly heard from within the new materialist perspective, for example in the important work of Rosi Braidotti. I offer an interpretation of her ‘The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible’ in hopes of reflecting on the limits of the affirmative approach. This interpretation is fuelled by more hesitant notes also heard within new materialist research, (...) tones expressing doubts, tracing the limits of materialist, vitalist, affirmative takes and offering perspectives that turn to ‘a matter that fails to come to life’, ‘unproductive and devoid of relations’. This turn – according to my reading – is an effort to respond to the need to recognise ‘our today’ in its complexity. To fully grasp the landscapes of ‘our today’, I offer a concept of bare death (in dialogue with bare life as coined by Giorgio Agamben and as used by Braidotti) as a concept that relates to instances where something has died but cannot enter into the ‘generative powers of a Life’. It is depicted with references to the nuclear and plastic landscapes of the Anthropocene. Relating to those landscapes, I make use of an art installation by Pinar Yoldas, The Ecosystem of Excess, as a kind of companion for thinking about becoming and the transformation of life and death in order to respond to the ambivalent landscapes of ‘our today’ and to understand how death matters beyond the human self. (shrink)

Cinema, thought and time -- Deleuze's cinema books -- Technology -- Essences -- Space and time -- Bergson, time, and life -- The movement-image -- The history of time and space and the history of cinema -- The movement-image and semiotics -- Styles of sign -- The whole of movement -- Image and life -- Becoming-inhuman, becoming imperceptible -- The deduction of the movement-image -- Art and time -- Destruction of the sensory motor apparatus and the spiritual (...) automaton -- Time and money -- Art and history -- Monument -- Framing, territorialization, and the plane of composition -- Politics and the origin of meaning -- Transcending life and the genesis of sense -- Beyond symbolic and imaginary -- Shit and money -- Exchange, gift, and theft -- The fiction of mind -- Collective investment and group fantasy -- The time of man -- The intense germinal influx. (shrink)

Undoing anthropocentrism : becoming-animal and the nonhuman -- Vectors of becoming-imperceptible : the multiplicity of the pack -- Animal politics, animal deaths : transversal connectivities and the creation of an ethico-aesthetic paradigm -- Animal re-territorialisations in art and cinema -- Transverse animalities : ecosophical becomings.

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The theory of a natural eternal consciousness (NEC) states that human consciousness is not extinguished with death but merely paused. That is, the last conscious moment of one’s last experience becomes imperceptibly timeless and deceptively eternal from their perspective. Moreover, if that experience is a vision, dream, or near-death experience (NDE) and is perceived as an afterlife, then the NEC is a natural afterlife. An earlier article by this author explains the NEC theory and claims its validity. This addendum provides (...) a brief overview of that article but, more significantly, these enhancements: (1) an easier to grasp description of the notation used to formally define the NEC and natural afterlife; (2) an extension to this notation to formally define the eventually timeless natural afterlife (etna) — a time-perceiving, activity-filled afterlife that concludes with the timeless natural afterlife and can provide optimal eternal happiness; (3) greater focus on the validity of the NEC theory: the role of self-awareness, the theory of Paused Consciousness in Timelessness (PCT) and its everyday verification, and the improbable falsification of the NEC theory as a hypothesis to the PCT theory; and (4) a new diagram that summarizes the meanings of NEC-related terms and the relationships among them. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism ed. by Janae Sholtz and Cheri CarrJami Weinstein (bio)Janae Sholtz and Cheri Carr, eds., Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2019, 304 pp., ISBN 978-1-3500-8042-3Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism is a timely, ambitious, and wonderfully diverse collection of essays that aims to forge a new feminist methodology. Described as a “delirium” with the potential to “unleash new (...) ideas, new desires, and new imaginings” (Sholtz and Carr, 1), the editors adopt Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis as the basis for this methodology. They argue that this juxtaposition of feminist theory and schizoanalysis might synthesize and advance research on notions like becoming-woman, rhizomatics, deterritorialization, assemblage, immanence, and material vitalism (2) that have propelled feminist work on Deleuze and Guattari over the last several decades. Moreover, in the volume’s critical reevaluation of schizoanalysis, it strives to reimagine “the philosophical, ethical, aesthetic, and political” (1) by incorporating the evolution of feminist thought since Deleuze and Guattari’s time. The volume is, indeed, important reading for feminist continental philosophers in search of fruitful applications of Deleuzo-Guattarian thought to a wide, intersectional diversity of feminist theory.Citing Buchanan and Colebrook’s Deleuze and Feminist Theory (2000) as the origin of a productive and less skeptical feminist engagement with their work, the volume aims to advance a new generation of feminist Deleuzo-Guattarian thought that departs from a radically heterogeneous, schizoanalytic foundation [End Page 192] asking, “what can philosophical concepts do?” (2). The editors also mention the recent uptake of schizoanalysis as a methodology by reference to the Schizoanalytic Applications series in which the volume is published. There, its application “to contemporary issues and uses in critically oriented and socially engaged philosophical approaches” (4) is explored in a variety of otherwise targeted collections. They suggest that the relevance of schizoanalytic methodology “to feminist theory can be similarly situated in providing a new lens for critical and social engagement,” which the volume explores under the guise of discovering what this “new encounter” between feminism and schizoanalysis “might yield” (4). Thus, the collection is a dual-pronged, dynamic investigation, where one trajectory investigates the potentials for forging a feminist schizoanalytic framework and the other considers the ways that feminism might nuance or reshape the contours of schizoanalysis that were established across Deleuze and Guattari’s collaborative works (1).Furthermore, the editors cite the publication of Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Cartographies (2013) as additional inspiration. And it is, indeed, in part from Guattari’s visionary work that the joint project with Deleuze—including the articulations of schizoanalysis in Anti-Oedipus, Kafka, and A Thousand Plateaus— came into being (see: Guattari 2006). As Stephane Nadaud explains, their collaboration was designed to “counter... despotic, solitary enunciation—with their own collective one,” which transcends the Cartesian “unity of our ego—the famous I that thinks, and therefore... the cogito” (Guattari 2006, 19). It is, thus, curious that the volume’s title omits Guattari’s name (though other books in the series include it) and that contributors make scarce reference to his individual work. For, it is the very process of their collaboration, which entails their essential duality and the schizoanalytic becoming-imperceptible of their respective individualities, that becomes an archetype for schizoanalytic praxis.The aforementioned delirium, which is at the heart of schizoanalysis, originates from the split or break implied by the “schizo,” meaning that schizoanalysis seeks to locate then mobilize these breaks toward the creation of delirious, impersonal subjectivities. Merging desire and delirium, which he considers “in a deep sense” indistinguishable, Deleuze emphasizes that “desire-delirium is by its nature a libidinal investment of an entire historical milieu, of an entire social environment” (2004, 275). The schizoanalysis process, according to the editors, thus aspires to be a liberatory short-circuit of the rigidly enclosed “Oedipal constraints on the unconscious,” which, in turn, decouples “the unconscious libidinal investment[s]... from the preconscious investments of class and interest” (Shultz and Carr, 4). This echoes Deleuze and Guattari’s well-known invocation: “Destroy, destroy. The task of schizoanalysis goes by way of destruction— a whole scouring of the unconscious, a... (shrink)

In Essays Critical and Clinical, Deleuze argues that Beckettian characters usually strive towards becoming imperceptible. This statement immediately poses another question: what is becoming imperceptible and where does it lead? How can we rid ourselves of ourselves? Paradoxically enough, Deleuze states that becoming imperceptible is life. The literal and self-evident meaning of life seems somehow incompatible with the image of dissolving and decaying characters in Beckett's works. Contrary to this self-evidence, the notion of life (...) in Deleuze and Beckett should be interpreted as pure potentiality which opens both the potential to be (or do) and the potential not to be (or do). Beckettian characters together with other figures, such as Bartleby, let us think of a life in its potential not to be. The life of the individual gives way to impersonal and singular life: a life of pure immanence. Such a life can be immanent to a man who no longer has a name, though he can be mistaken for no other: the Beckettian Unnamable. (shrink)

Among the reasons that Whitehead is such an interesting philosopher is that his work resonates across philosophical traditions. This collection develops connections between Whiteheadian concepts and recent European thinkers. The purpose is not simply to compare, however, but, as editor Jeremy Fackenthal suggests, to develop a Whiteheadian thinking “in tandem” with European philosophers in order to create disruptions or “dislocations” in thought that can engender creative approaches to contemporary problems.One general feature of the book deserves mention at the outset, though (...) I will return to it later in the review: although phenomenology and hermeneutics are each represented in the volume, roughly half of the essays focus on the work of Gilles Deleuze (if we group these together with essays focused on “new materialism,” which is connected with Deleuze, the proportion is more like two-thirds). This will be no surprise, since Deleuze is the European philosopher who was most appreciative of Whitehead. And yet, the result is that the conversation with “continental philosophy” is highly selective.The book is organized into three parts, each comprised of three essays. In part 1, “Technological and Systematic Dislocations,” William S. Hamrick brings Whitehead into conversation with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of “the flesh” to suggest an ecological ontology capable of overcoming the instrumentalization of nature. Hamrick's strategy is to read Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty as contributing to an “ontological foundation” for a sustainable civilization (18). Bo Eberle writes about the “quantified self” suggested in new, wearable self-monitoring technologies. Drawing on Whitehead's notion of causal efficacy, Eberle argues that devices such as Fitbit give us access to bodily states that bypasses the standard ways we are aware of ourselves (i.e., through consciousness). He goes further to argue that, like all ways of knowing, wearable technologies are selective, and that the selection reflects the interests of the manufacturers and promotes a certain kind of subjectivity (in the case of Fitbit, a subjectivity that is oriented toward “getting your steps in”). Whitehead's epistemology thus enables the critic of wearable technologies to understand how contemporary experience and self-understanding is shaped not simply by recent technological mediations but by the material interests embedded in them. J.R. Hustwit and Carl Dyke take on what they call “activist” uses of Whitehead that naively (in their judgment) suggest that a non-relational substance metaphysics is to blame for most of our social ills. They employ the theory of complex adaptive systems in conversation with Whitehead and Antonio Gramsci to show that, in fact, achieving significant social change is far more difficult and even unpredictable than mere insertion of better ideas into public discourse. Dominant hegemonies have ways of adapting and absorbing attempts to undermine them. Here Hustwit and Dyke draw on the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur to suggest that resistance to the dominant hegemony is nevertheless always possible because of the vagueness of discourse, allowing a plurality of competing interpretations and thus fractures in the dominant hegemony. However, even this kind of resistance is impossible to control and its effects incapable of being entirely predicted. To the essay's titular question, “Can Whitehead save the world?” the authors answer, “No.”In part 2, “Animal/Human Dislocations,” Jeremy Fackenthal draws on the new materialism of Rosi Braidotti (and Deleuze) along with Whitehead to argue for a “process-relational” nomadism that culminates in a “becoming-imperceptible.” His reading together of Whitehead and Braidotti creates the opportunity to recast the former's concept of objective immortality in such a way that it does not refer to death so much as to being diffused into a relational network. The satisfaction of an actual occasion may be taken as its translation into its effects among its relations. Fackenthal argues that this becoming-imperceptible makes possible a sustainable presence within a fragile network of life. Deena M. Lin uses Whitehead, Braidotti, and Judith Butler to lay out a vision of human life as precarious and deserving attention, care, and solidarity. She presses this vision as a direct moral assault on US (Trump's) policy toward Syrian refugees. Going further, she draws on Braidotti's posthuman account of zoe to argue for universal connection and solidarity with all life that should foster, as the title of her essay puts it, “Welcoming of Syrian Life.” Tano Posteraro offers an intriguing essay drawing on Jakob von Uexküll's account of animal experience. Posteraro argues that Uexküll's notion of an animal's Umwelt, shaped by its distinctive perceptual apparatus, needs to be supplemented by Whitehead's notion of prehension to account for the active dimension of animal perception. Rather than a passive registering of animal environments, Posteraro argues that the latter are constructed, and that concepts (or conceptual prehensions) should be understood as tools with which such environments are constructed.In part 3, “Time, the World, and Abstraction,” three essays probe ways that Whiteheadian and Deleuzian themes may resonate critically and constructively. Kris Klotz brings the thought of Whitehead and Deleuze together to inquire about how alternatives to present social forms are envisioned. He argues that, for Whitehead, every actual occasion involves a selection of some features of the past, and, further, that every selection is also an abstraction from the concrete welter of influences impinging on it. For Whitehead, then, to envision alternatives involves a critique of abstractions, a reinstatement of the concrete plurality of possibilities. This, for Whitehead, is what rationality does: it works at restoring the concrete, and, with it, a series of alternatives that have been eclipsed. To this Whiteheadian analysis, Klotz adds Deleuze and Guattari's critique of “opinion.” For Deleuze and Guattari, opinion is not an idiosyncrasy but a consensus to which differences of experience are subjected. Philosophy, for Deleuze and Guattari, must always struggle against opinion in order to bring alternatives to light. These conceptions of reason/philosophy, Klotz argues, represent useful ways to critique inequalities and other social wrongs that are embedded in the social forms that are routinely taken for granted. Elijah Prewitt-Davis uses a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with philosophical innovations of Foucault, Deleuze, and Whitehead, to offer a distinctive account of power. Prewitt-Davis calls attention to Deleuze's important book on Leibniz, The Fold, and to how Whitehead's concept of prehension lies at its center. The upshot is that power is not reduced to dominance but, instead, is at work wherever any occasion of experience persists amid the onslaught of the influence of other occasions. Power, as Deleuze wrote, is the capacity to be affected—and to decide how to constitute oneself anew. Keith Robinson offers a detailed account of Whitehead's epistemology along with a reading of Deleuze's analysis of temporality to suggest that there is a common trajectory that seeks to undermine what the title of the essay describes as the “Bifurcation of Nature” (i.e., the separation of natural phenomena and human experience) within the dominant Western philosophical tradition.There is much of value in the volume as a whole. Aside from staging what Spinoza might have called good encounters between Whitehead and a number of continental philosophers, enhancing the conceptual power of each, the contributors are able to make a case that these philosophical trajectories, when read together, have much to contribute to our understanding of and response to the pressing issues of the day. In addition, readers who are interested in the relationship between Whitehead and the new materialism will find this volume to be a helpful resource, stocked with fine examples of how to sharpen new materialist thinking with Whitehead and how to read contemporary contexts through these lenses. On the other hand, this book is not a handbook nor a comprehensive reference. The organizational logic behind its division into sections is murky and the amount of attention given to particular continental philosophers as opposed to others appears somewhat arbitrary: there are recent continental philosophers who get little to no attention at (Derrida, Malabou, Žižek, Agamben, Latour, Nancy, for example), several of whom might prove to be quite interesting to read “in tandem” with Whitehead. Perhaps that is just to say that there are many more essays to be written. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

In this daring essay inspired by Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari redefine the relation between the state and its war machine. Far from being a part of the state, warriers are nomads who always come from the outside and keep threatening the authority of the state. In the same vein, nomadic science keeps infiltrating royal science, undermining its axioms and principles. Nomadology is a speedy, pocket-sized treatise that refuses to be pinned down. Theorizing a dynamic relationship between sedentary power (...) and "schizophrenic lines of flight," this volume is meant to be read in transit, smuggled into urban nightclubs, offices, and subways.Deleuze and Guattari propose a creative and resistant ethics of becoming-imperceptible, strategizing a continuous invention of weapons on the run. An anarchic bricolage of ideas uprooted from anthropology, aesthetics, history, and military strategy, Nomadology carries out Deleuze's desire to "leave philosophy, but to leave it as a philosopher.". (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

The influence of Kant's philosophy has been, and continues to be, so profound and so widespread as to have become imperceptible. Philosophical inquiry within both the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ traditions is unthinkable without the lexical and conceptual resources bequeathed by Kant. Even outside philosophy, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, Kantian concepts and structures of argument are ubiquitous. Anyone practicing literary or social criticism is contributing to the Kantian tradition; anyone reflecting on the epistemological implications of (...) their work will find themselves doing so within parameters established by Kant. Indeed, many contemporary debates, whether in aesthetics, literary or political theory, show a peculiar tendency to mutate into disputes in Kant exegesis. All in all, in the less than 200 years since the death of its author, Kantian philosophy has established itself as an indispensable point of intellectual orientation. (shrink)

Computing has become ubiquitous and organic. The “new” human ecosystem is increasingly composed of "intelligent" objects. Since the Nineties there has been a constant application of the practice of disappearance of everyday objects. The daily experience changes, since the objects we use, in their disappearance and imperceptibility, do not divide us from the Life-World. At the same time, the designer is called to rewrite and amplify human experience, and design reflects a different conception of the aesthetic, which must be intended (...) not only as a theory of the artistic and/or cosmetic beauty, but mainly as a science of the experience as such. The designer is no longer limited to designing objects, but he can also design human beings. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze has become a key reference for the recent debate on virtual technologies, as his conception of the virtual is widely used to argue for the reality of virtuality. Nonetheless some scholars, among which Slavoj Žižek stands out, have warned about the risks of flattening the Deleuzian concept on the tech debate. This paper aims to show why the two concepts of the virtual do not overlap by explaining some features of the Deleuzian virtual that make it incompatible with (...) virtual media. Namely, its intensive dimension, its relationship with the possible and its imperceptible nature. The paper will also claim how differentiating the two concepts opens up wider applications for the Deleuzian virtual while, at the same time, lightening the tech debate of its ontological burden, allowing to approach the issues of virtual technologies from a more fruitful perspective – that is to say, their pictorial functioning. (shrink)

Individual identity and the multiplicity of cultural factors that “influence” the individual obviously raise the question of who we are as persons. But it is equally obvious that such individual reality is temporal, thereby constituting individual history. The latter seems to be like a Heraclitean flux where change is the only constant. In other words, since we never cease to change—even imperceptibly—shouldn’t we conclude that we never remain identical to ourselves in such a process of becoming? To use a (...) concept put forward by Ricœur, Idem-Identity, as stable and substantial sameness, appears to be an illusion, as we are the history of our actions and experiences, a history that continues to shape... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 3-11 [Access article in PDF] Preface The State of Death Jonathan Strauss In reality, there is perhaps a greater distance between old age and youth than there is between decrepitude and death, for here one must not consider death to be something absolute.... Death is not armed with a blade, nothing violent accompanies it, life ends by imperceptible nuances.... (D. J.)We dare... to assert, on (...) the basis of a knowledge of the structure and properties of the human body and a large number of observations, that death can be cured. (m.) —Diderot and d'Alembert, Encyclopédie1But if Man is Action, and if Action is Negativity "appearing" as Death, Man, in his human or speaking existence, is only a more or less deferred death, and one that is conscious of itself.Therefore: to recognize Discourse philosophically, or to recognize Man as one who speaks, is to accept unambiguously the fact of death and to describe... its significance and reach. Now, this is precisely what philosophers before Hegel omitted to do. —Alexandre Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de HegelDeath changed in the nineteenth century. The shift probably began during the Enlightenment, when, as Philippe Ariès has argued, people learned for the first time to fear their mortality—not just the terrors and uncertainties of their demise or the anguish over an eventual punishment for their sins, but extinction itself [1: 112-14, 125]. Within the space of a few decades, death became a sheer and unredeemable absence, an unconsolable loss, and a confrontation with pure negativity. During those years, death was transformed from a nuance between different states to an absolute. It became, in itself, infinite and sublime, a nothingness whose discovery, like that of the zero, unleashed unknown and limitless powers. These now had to be grappled with, to be grasped theoretically as well as practically, in both the intimacy of private fears and the communality of public legislation. And once death was recognized as an absolute it could be put to use as one, for both the individual and the social collective.Hegel, as Kojève taught, was the first to harness the new forces of mortality within an intellectual mechanism worthy of their scope. "Death," he wrote in the preface to the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit, "... is of all things the most dreadful, and to hold fast what is dead requires the greatest strength" [19]. This power to grasp one's demise, to confront it and "tarry" with it, was what he called the Subject—at once the isolated unit of humanity confronted by the limits of its mortality and the key to the social orders that [End Page 3] depend on it, in a pragmatic sense. As justice and enfranchisement increasingly rely on the responsibility of single subjects, so does death rise in importance as the final determiner of socially answerable individuality. In this setting, where mortality is the limit of the subject, society becomes a state of death, a collective grounded in the transcendental absolute of a nothingness that intervenes regularly and practically within the events of life.In such a state, executions are not merely exercises of authority or purgings of unassimilable elements from the social body; they are also, and most significantly, spectacles of the transcendental grounds of the social itself. Here, death is democratic not merely because it is the universal leveler, not simply because it imposes a one hundred percent experience tax on all brackets of the population, but because it produces the uniform units of untransferable humanity, individuals, who at once suffer the obligation to conform to the state and enjoy the, at least theoretical, enfranchisement to transform it. Throughout our days, in the most insignificant details, we feel this mortal isolation organizing our legal relation to our social context, and in each case my death to come draws a line around me, saying: this is you. My metro pass and airline tickets will be valid, my response to the jury duty summons required, and my vote counted, unless I die. It does not matter that I have changed lovers, or... (shrink)

Observations from philosophy and psychology heavily favor the Empiricist tenet that many lexical concepts are learned. However, many observations also heavily favor the Nativist tenet that such concepts are representationally atomic. Fodor Representations: Philosophical essays on the foundations of cognitive science, 1981, LOT2: The language of thought revisited, 2008) has famously argued that representationally atomic concepts cannot be learned, at least not learned by hypothesis formation and testing. Concept theorists who want to preserve observations about concept learning have developed acquisition (...) models on which the acquired concepts are either non-atomic or are acquired by a process that doesn’t involve hypothesis formation and testing. I offer a model, Baptizing Meanings for Concepts, in which representationally atomic concepts are learned by hypothesis formation and testing. The concepts are learned by the agent’s hypothesizing the existence of a latent/hidden/imperceptible property in objects to explain the objects’ perceptible similarities. Once a hidden property is hypothesized, a new atomic mental name is assigned to it, and this atomic name becomes the concept. Any connections between the name and the representations involved in linking the name to its referent are stored as contingent. Further experience may give the agent reason to revise its hypotheses about latent properties as explanations for its observations. I discuss a software robot implementation of the BMC process that uses a Bayesian learning network. The implementation provides an existence proof of the possibility of learning representationally atomic concepts by hypothesis formation and testing. (shrink)