In the films of the Alien franchise featuring Sigourney Weaver, Ripley's maternal instinct is an integral part of who she is as both survivor and protector—and as a destroyer, too. In Alien, Ripley's misplaced maternal instincts save her from the death‐by‐alien that is the fate of her crew mates as she hurries off in search of the ship's resident cat, Jones. When Ripley hears Jonesy's meow, she responds like a mother to a crying baby. Ridley Scott's Alien begins with an (...) image of near‐naked bodies in capsules, awakening from sleep, slightly dazed, slightly confused—intimating birth, or rebirth. In her theory, Stone harks back to the approach of psychoanalysis, claiming that each experience of motherhood repeats the mother's own infantile past and her own traumatic separation from the maternal body. In Alien: Resurrection, Ripley is reclaimed through a purposeful symbiosis of mother and child; human and alien; self and “other”. (shrink)

The notion of social practice and a family of notions akin to it play an essential role in contemporary philosophical reflection, with particular reference to the conceptualisation of historical processes. Stephen Turner's book A Social Theory of Practices has provided a major challenge to this family of notions, and our purpose is to outline a grounding account of the notion of social practice in the form of an answer to Turner's criticisms. We try to answer three questions: first, if it (...) is necessary to grant a tacit dimension to transmittable habits; second, if and how a tacit dimension of "meaning" could be intersubjectively transmitted; third, what is the possible role of rationality in changing social practices. Our discussion moves from Wittgenstein's argument on rule-following; in its wake we try to examine the nature of habits as a basis for rules and discuss their temporal sedimentation, inertia and modes of intersubjective transmission. In conclusion we support the idea that social practices must rely on a tacit dimension, that their tacit dimension does not represent a hindrance to intersubjective transmission, and that the possible dogmatism of social practices is not due to their "hidden" side, but to their explicit quasi-rational side. (shrink)

Algebraic Art explores the invention of a peculiarly Victorian account of the nature and value of aesthetic form, and it traces that account to a surprising source: mathematics. Drawing on literature, art, and photography, it explores how the Victorian mathematical conception of form still resonates today.

The Material and Ideological Base of the Old Babylonian State: History, Economy, and Politics. By Lukáš Pecha. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. Pp. xvii + 316. $115.

Resumen: El objetivo de este artículo es estudiar la inducción analítica como método científico de investigación, es decir, como modo válido de hacer ciencia. En 1934, su creador, el filósofo y sociólogo Florian Znaniecki, afirmó que este era el método que debía ser adoptado en toda investigación sociológica. Su relevancia radica en que se propone encontrar explicaciones globales de los fenómenos sociales a partir de la utilización de técnicas cualitativas de investigación. Aquí adopto una perspectiva histórica que permite inscribir su (...) emergencia y evolución en un contexto mayor del desarrollo de metodologías cualitativas en sociología, para luego reflexionar sobre sus presupuestos epistemológicos y las críticas de las que fue objeto. Por último, realizo un balance de los aportes de esta metodología a la disciplina.: The aim of this article is to study analytic induction as a scientific research method, that is, as a valid way of making science. In 1934, the philosopher and sociologist Florian Znaniecki, its creator, referred to this methodology as the method that should be adopted by any sociological research. Its relevance lies on the fact that its goal is to find global explanations to social phenomena by using qualitative research techniques. I adopt a historical perspective to inscribe this method’s emergency and evolution in a larger context of the development of qualitative methods in sociology, and then reflect upon its epistemological basis and the criticisms made in relation to it. Finally, I evaluate this method’s contributions to the discipline. (shrink)

In questo articolo intendo presentare e discutere le tesi avanzate da Husserl contro il naturalismo epistemologico e psicologico in La filosofia come scienza rigorosa. Intendo mostrare come la sua critica si rivolga a posizioni generalmente più estreme rispetto alle varianti del naturalismo oggi dibattute; e tuttavia le tesi husserliane hanno implicazioni interessanti per la discussione contemporanea. In primo luogo, egli mostra come vi sia un nesso importante tra naturalismo epistemologico e naturalismo psicologico. In secondo luogo, egli mostra come una versione (...) robusta di naturalismo epistemologico indebolisca se stesso, non riuscendo a traslare la cogenza logica in termini psicologici. In terzo luogo – e questo è il tratto più importante per la discussione contemporanea – egli attacca il cartesianesimo in quanto forma di naturalismo psicologico per via del considerare la psiche come sostanza. Contro questa posizione Husserl afferma la necessità di formulare nuovi obiettivi epistemici per le ricerche sulla coscienza, sostenendo che il fattore di maggiore interesse circa la coscienza non sia la sua fatticità empirica, bensì la sua funzione trascendentale, che garantisce accesso conoscitivo a ogni tipo di oggetto. Lo studio di questa funzione richiede un metodo specifico, da non confondersi con i metodi empirici. Nella parte conclusiva intendo sostenere come le analisi husserliane offrano nuove prospettive sulla struttura della coscienza, di cui oggi si sente il bisogno, ma anche argomenti persuasivi contro le incerte speculazioni metafisiche circa il rapporto tra mente e corpo. (shrink)

Under Directive 86/653/EEC on the co-ordination of the laws of European Union Member States relating to self-employed commercial agents, commercial agents have an obligation to act ‘dutifully and in good faith’. This article considers the impact that this general good faith clause has had upon the UK legal order. It first analyses the Obligation, assessing its scope, function and content. It then reviews the choices made by the UK legislature in implementing this duty and scrutinises the manner in which it (...) has been construed and applied by UK courts, as well as commentators. Finally, it charts the areas of the pre-existing common law agency rules that are affected by this imported notion and appraises the resulting alterations to the positive law. (shrink)

Intellectual knowledge is omnipresent in human lives and decisions. We are constantly trying to make good and correct decisions. However, responsible decision-making is characterised by rather difficult epistemic conditions. It applies all the more during the pandemic when decisions require not only specialised knowledge in a number of disciplines, scientific consensus, and participants from different fields, but also responsibility and respect for moral principles in order to ensure that the human rights of all groups are observed. Pandemic measures are created (...) by politicians, healthcare policy-makers, and epidemiologists. However, what is the role of ethics as a moral philosophy and experts in ethics? Experts in ethics and philosophy are carefully scrutinising political decisions. Levy and Savulescu have claimed that Ethicists and philosophers are not epistemically arrogant if they question policy responses. They played an important role in the creation of a reliable consensus. This study analyses epistemic and moral responsibility, their similarities, analogies, and differences. Are they interconnected? What is their relationship and how can they be filled with actual content during the pandemic? (shrink)

So far, T×W frames have been employed to provide a semantics for a language of tense logic that includes a modal operator that expresses historical necessity. The operator is defined in terms of quantification over possible courses of events that satisfy a certain constraint, namely, that of being alike up to a given point. However, a modal operator can as well be defined without placing that constraint. This paper outlines a T×W logic where an operator of the latter kind is (...) used to express the epistemic property of definiteness. Section 1 provides the theoretical background. Sections 2 and 3 set out the semantics. Sections 4 and 5 show, drawing on established results, that there is a sound and complete axiomatization of the logic outlined. (shrink)

The concept of tacit knowledge is widely used in social sciences to refer to all those knowledge that cannot be codified and have to be transferred by personal contacts. All this literature has been affected by two kind of biases : (1) the interest has been focused more on the result (tacit knowledge) than on the process (implicit learning); (2) tacit knowledge has been somehow reduced to physical skills or know-how; other possible forms of tacit knowledge have been neglected. These (...) two biases seem interconnected one with each other. A greater consideration of the role and relevance of implicit learning allows us to consider tacit knowledge as something more than pure physical skills or know how. This is the first step in order to develop more detailed categorisation of the different forms that tacit knowledge can assume. (shrink)

La riflessione sullo statuto epistemologico e sul funzionamento politico del discorso biologico – nel suo carattere eterogeneo, plurale e conflittuale – è un tema centrale nelle opere di Michel Foucault e Georges Canguilhem. A partire dall’analisi delle relazioni e delle tensioni tra i loro orientamenti teorici, questo studio propone una rilettura critica delle loro ricerche, integrandole e utilizzandole nei dibattiti epistemologici e politici contemporanei. In tal senso, la filosofia biologica di Canguilhem permette di riesaminare la concezione foucaultiana della storia, della (...) società, della soggettività, della tecnica, dell’ambiente, e di reinterrogare in una prospettiva socio-ecologica ed eco-storica lo spazio d’intervento delle tecnologie biopolitiche. (shrink)

A Partial Combinatory Algebra is completable if it can be extended to a total one. In [1] it is asked (question 11, posed by D. Scott, H. Barendregt, and G. Mitschke) if every PCA can be completed. A negative answer to this question was given by Klop in [12, 11]; moreover he provided a sufficient condition for completability of a PCA (M, ·, K, S) in the form of ten axioms (inequalities) on terms of M. We prove that just one (...) of these axiom (the so called Barendregt's axiom) is sufficient to guarantee (a slightly weaker notion of) completability. (shrink)

Urban landscapes in the Roman world were covered in written text, from monumental building inscriptions to smaller, more personal texts of individual accomplishment and commemoration. In the East, Greek dominated these written landscapes, but Latin also appeared with some frequency, especially in places where a larger Roman audience was expected, such as major cities and Roman colonies. When Latin and Greek appear alongside each other, whether in the same inscription or across a single monumental space, we might ask what benefits (...) the sponsor of the monument hoped to gain from such a bilingual presentation, and whether each language was serving the same function. This paper considers the monumental entrance to the Pamphylian city of Perge as a case study for exploring this relationship between bilingual inscriptions and civic space. By surveying the display of both Greek and Latin on this entrance, examining how the entrance interacted with the broader linguistic landscape of Perge, and considering the effects that each language would have had on the viewer, I show that the use of language, and the variation between the languages, served not only to communicate membership in both Greek and Roman societies but also to delineate civic space from imperial space, both physically and symbolically. (shrink)

Instead of presuming the ‘observer’ as given, we are (re)sensing the observer and are thereby offering an ‘open order cybernetics’ (OOC). We are first of all concerned about our acquisition and use of language as the precondition for any meaningful statement. This self-reflexive point of departure distinguishes our project from philosophers who are presuming ‘something’ (‘closure’, ‘selforganization’, ‘self ’, ‘auto-poiesis’, ‘senses’, ‘objects’, ‘subjects’, ‘language’, ‘nervous systems’ etc.) in the first place without being aware of their presumptions i.e. that they are (...) able to already talk meaningfully about ‘something’. We are undertaking a self-reflexive loop towards our already undertaken ‘meaningful’ actions, reflecting inside our concepts on our concepts, trying to find out how our concepts about ‘something’ have come into existence. We are reflecting on our concepts through this ongoing open investigation. We are sketching the ramifications of such a self-reflexive loop for epistemology as well as for the main research areas within cognitive science (i.e. language acquisition, perception, consciousness). We are also pointing towards virtual reality in combination with the arts as an awareness aid, helping us in our self-reflexive endeavours. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 845-862.

This article addresses a strange investment within ‘continental' philosophy, in asserting the impotence of a Derridean approach when it comes to addressing practical (juridical, political, ethical, economic) issues. Such assertions of impotence regularly stand as the foil for whatever is proposed as a more complex, and therefore powerful, means to make sense of concrete phenomena. Invariably, however, the criticism of a Derridean approach is based on reductive misconceptions of its complex logic, and the proposed correctives repeat the very pattern of (...) thinking that Derrida has consistently adopted throughout his writing. A case in point is Zizek's criticism of what he calls ‘Derrida's operation.' While Zizek's critique is more nuanced and contemporary than the hackneyed charge of ‘textualism,' his reductive conception of the logical structure of Derridean thinking remains open to challenge. Further, his Lacanian corrective, whose logic is represented by the figure of a ‘Borromean knot,' precisely matches the ‘plural logic of the aporia' that underpins a Derridean approach to concrete phenomena. Accordingly, what follows is an attempt to show how Lacanian and Derridean discourses can be brought into alliance as a consequence of their isomorphic logical structure. This attempt is motivated by the conviction that one can do well without the pseudo-antagonism generated by the unjust criticism directed at one another by like-minded thinkers, which, moreover, provides such thinkers with a far too facile excuse for dismissing one another, even before opening texts. I also have a hidden agenda of sorts, which is to outline and, indeed, promote the ‘complexity-thinking' characteristic of both Derridean and Lacanian discourses, as the most viable and appropriate approach to practical issues. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 (1) 2008 pp. 10-26. (shrink)

The COVID-19-pandemic brought massive changes in the provision of psychotherapy. To contain the pandemic, many therapists switched from face-to-face sessions in personal contact to remote settings. This study focused on psychodynamic therapists practicing Guided Affective Imagery, Hypnosis and Autogenous Relaxation and their subjective experiences with psychotherapy via telephone and videoconferencing during the first COVID-19 related lockdown period in March 2020 in Austria. An online survey completed by 161 therapists produced both quantitative and qualitative data with the latter being subject to (...) a qualitative content analysis. Our research suggests that telephone and videoconferencing are considered valuable treatment formats to deliver psychodynamic psychotherapy. However, therapists’ experiences with remote psychotherapy are multifaceted and ambiguous. In particular, the findings raise questions concerning the maintenance of the therapeutic alliance, the development of the analytic process, the sensitivity to unconscious communication, and the indication for certain types of patients that still need further investigation. Our research indicates that the long-standing reticence toward remote treatments offers among psychodynamic therapists is becoming more differentiated and partially dissolves as therapists gain experiences in their use. Attitudes are becoming more open. At the same time, the way is being prepared to take a closer look at the specific processes and dynamics of remote psychotherapy and to examine them critically in future studies. (shrink)

Resilient socioeconomic unsustainability poses a threat to democracy whose importance has yet to be fully acknowledged. As the prospect of sustainability transition wanes, so does perceived legitimacy of institutions. This further limits representative institutions’ ability to take action, making democratic deepening all the more urgent. I investigate this argument through an illustrative case study, the 2017 People's Climate March. In a context of resilient unsustainability, protesters have little expectation that institutions might address the ecological crisis and this view is likely (...) to spread. New ways of thinking about this problem and a new research agenda are needed. (shrink)