The court of King Arthur, the center of the Arthurian romances that were so popular in the Middle Ages, is illuminated anew in this book from an interdisciplinary perspective as an institution which is fictionally staged, stabilized and problematized. The book explores the forces, figures and positions that constitute or endanger the court as a picture of society in miniature or as a literary experiment. Finally, the contributions critically question the ideality of the court of King Arthur and investigate the (...) function and reception of the court even in contexts remote from courts. ". (shrink)

Publisher's description: The realistic spirit, a nonmetaphysical approach to philosophical thought concerned with the character of philosophy itself, informs all of the discussions in these essays by philosopher Cora Diamond. Diamond explains Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings, explores the background to his thought in the work of Frege, and discusses ethics in a way that reflects his influence. Diamond's new reading of Wittgenstein challenges currently accepted interpretations and shows what it means to look without mythology at the coherence, commitments, (...) and connections that are distinctive of the mind. (shrink)

Neither strict deduction nor high expectability is a necessary condition for historical explanation. Explanations that separate history from mere narrative are necessary, but deduction from causes is not a priori the only source. Explanations in terms of reasons, emotions, and motives of actors are essential and are satisfactory when an agent's reason for an action is made convincing and believable. The principle of action must make evident the appeal of some human good in the action with which we can empathize (...) or which is rationally understandable; there is an intimate connection between historical explanation and moral evaluation. The alternative account of historical explanation sacrifices the simplicity of the deductive model but gains several advantages in exchange, including greater descriptive fidelity to actual historical explanations. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a certain sort of argument defending the rights of animals. Part I is a brief explanation of the background and of the sort of argument I want to reject; Part II is an attempt to characterize those arguments: they contain fundamental confusions about moral relations between people and people and between people and animals. And Part III is an indication of what I think can still be said on—as it were–the animals' side.

Music as a narrative drama is an intriguing idea, which has captured explicit music theoretical attention since the nineteenth century. Investigations into narrative characters or personae has evolved into a sub-field--musical agency. In this book, Palfy contends that music has the potential to engage us in social processes and that those processes can be experienced as a social interaction with a musical agent. She explores the overlap between the psychological processes in which we participate in order to understand and engage (...) with people, and those we engage in when we listen to music. Thinking of musical agency as a form of social process is quite different from existing theoretical frameworks for agency. It implies that we come to musical analysis by way of intuition--that our ideas are already partially formed based on our experience of the piece (and what it makes us feel or how it makes us sense it as any other) when we choose to analyze and interpret it. Palfy's focus on social processes is a very effective way to pinpoint when and why it is that our attention is captured and engaged by musical agents. (shrink)

When the sociobiology debate erupted in 1975, there were almost too many contributions to the heated exchanges between sociobiologists and their critics to count. In the fall of 1976, a Canadian educational film entitled _Sociobiology: Doing What Comes Naturally_ sparked further controversy due to its graphic visuals and outrageous narration. While critics claimed the film was a promotional tool to further the sociobiological agenda in educational settings, sociobiologists quickly distanced themselves from the film and, in turn, accused the critics of (...) consciously misrepresenting sociobiology by organizing showings of the film. Using audio, video, archival, and published sources, this paper explores the complicated history of _Sociobiology: Doing What Comes Naturally_ and demonstrates how the public debate about the film reflects the positions, polemics, and polarization of the sociobiology debate as a whole. (shrink)

Research on animal-assisted interventions has increased massively in the last few years. But it is still not clear how AAIs work and how important the animal is in such interventions. The aim of this systematic review was to compile the existing state of knowledge about the working mechanisms of AAIs. We searched 12 major electronic databases for previous AAI studies with active control groups. Of 2001 records identified, we included 172 studies in the systematic review. We extracted previously published hypotheses (...) about working mechanisms and factors that have been implicitly considered specific or non-specific in AAI research by categorizing control conditions using content analysis. We analyzed the categories using descriptive statistics. We found that 84% of the included studies mentioned a hypothesis of working mechanisms, but 16% did not define specific hypotheses. By analyzing their control conditions, we found that in most controlled studies, the animal or the interaction with the animal was implicitly considered as a specific factor for the effects of the AAI. Non-specific factors such as therapeutic aspects, social interactions, or novelty have also been controlled for. We conclude that AAI research still cannot answer the question of how and why AAIs work. To address this important research gap, we suggest using component studies with innovative control conditions and results from placebo research to address both the specific and non-specific, contextual factors of AAIs to disentangle its mechanisms.Systematic Review Registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=158103, identifier: CRD42020158103. (shrink)

Many animals display a capacity to regenerate tissues or even a complete body. One of the main goals of regenerative biology is to identify the genes and genetic networks necessary for this process. Drosophila offers an ideal model system for such studies. The wide range of genetic and genomic approaches available for use in flies has helped in initiating the deciphering of the mechanisms underlying regeneration, and the results may be applicable to other organisms, including mammals. Moreover, most models of (...) regeneration require experimental manipulation, whereas in Drosophila discrete domains can be ablated by genetically induced methods. Here, we present a summary of current research into imaginal disc regeneration and discuss the power of this tissue as a tool for understanding the genetics of regeneration. (shrink)

We argue that dominant white cultural views and public health co-produce race as a technology that charts the path of viral transmission away from the white bodies to form a trajectory for an otherwise aimless disease. This epistemological project is one enmeshed in popular culture, medical practice, and biopolitics. COVID-19 and the related Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement work together to make visible the narrative technologies. This project contributes to understanding race and public health as co-constituted in ways that shape (...) imaginative possibilities, material and agential realties, and health outcomes in light of COVID-19. Our argument is novel in naming race a technology of American public health and taking up Coeckelbergh and Reijers’ call for a normative theory of narrative technology. We extend Coeckelbergh and Reijers’ narrative technologies to include race, a narrative artifact, co-produced by biology, public health, and individual actors. (shrink)

There is a natural view of nonsense, which owes what attraction it has to the apparent absence of alternatives. In Frege and Wittgenstein there is a view which goes against the natural one, and the purpose of this paper is to establish that it is a possible view of nonsense.

I want to argue for the importance of the notion human being in ethics. Part I of the paper presents two different sorts of argument against treating that notion as important in ethics. A. Here is an example of the first sort of argument. What makes us human beings is that we have certain properties, but these properties, making us members of a certain biological species, have no moral relevance. If, on the other hand, we define being human in terms (...) which are not tied to biological classification, if we treat as the properties which make us human the capacities for reasoning or for self-consciousness, then indeed those capacities may be morally relevant, but if they are morally significant at all, they are significant whether they are the properties of a being who is a member of our species or not. And so it would be better to use a word like ‘person’ to mean a being that has these properties , to bring out the fact that not all human beings have them and that non-human beings conceivably might have them. (shrink)

Cora Diamond; XIII—Secondary Sense, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 June 1967, Pages 189–208, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

_Perennial wisdom from one of history’s most important but lesser-known Stoic teachers__ “He knew that all a philosopher could do was respond well—bravely, boldly, patiently—to what life threw at us. That's what we should be doing now.”—Ryan Holiday, Reading List email_ The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus was one of the most influential teachers of his era, imperial Rome, and his message still resonates with startling clarity today. Alongside Stoics like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, he emphasized ethics in action, displayed (...) in all aspects of life. Merely learning philosophical doctrine and listening to lectures, they believed, will not do one any good unless one manages to interiorize the teachings and apply them to daily life. In Musonius Rufus’s words, “Philosophy is nothing else than to search out by reason what is right and proper and by deeds to put it into practice.” At a time of renewed interest in Stoicism, this collection of Musonius Rufus’s lectures and sayings, beautifully translated by Cora E. Lutz with an introduction by Gretchen Reydams-Schils, offers readers access to the thought of one of history’s most influential and remarkable Stoic thinkers. (shrink)

My essay explains and examines Anscombe's disagreement with Wittgenstein about what the Tractatus supposedly excludes. I also discuss her apparent disagreement with Geach about propositions that lack an intelligible negation. My discussion of these disagreements leads to the topic of Anscombe on the relation between the “business of thinking” and truth. I suggest that she takes the business of thinking to include thinking that helps to keep thinking on track. Since there is a tie between thinking truly and the business (...) of thinking being done well and since helping to keep thinking on track belongs to the business of thinking, helpings-of-thinking can be described as true. (shrink)

The following article deals with the Mahā Kumbh Melā1 in Allahabad and the practices of Hindu world renouncers2 during this festival. In 2013, the year under study, approximately 120 million renouncers and lay pilgrims attended the festival. After a brief overview of the academic discussion on Hindu renunciation, the article proceeds to outline the mythology, history, and meaning of the Kumbh Melā. Subsequently, it presents the festival from the renouncers’ point of view. This section of the article summarizes the functions (...) of the festival, describes two particular forms of meals, and outlines the daily routine of the participants. Finally, the article discusses the inner-worldly asceticism of lay pilgrims, the main participants, as well as the ritual bathing during the festival, a crucial part of the Kumbh Melā for all participants. (shrink)

P.M.S. Hacker has argued that there are numerous misconceptions in James Conant's account of Wittgenstein's views and of those of Carnap. I discuss only Hacker's treatment of Conant on logical syntax in the _Tractatus. I try to show that passages in the _Tractatus which Hacker takes to count strongly against Conant's view do no such thing, and that he himself has not explained how he can account for a significant passage which certainly appears to support Conant's reading.

Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On To Ethics is a collection of seven essays, divided into three parts. The essays bring out connections between Wittgenstein's thinking and questions of continuing interest in the philosophy of language, logic, and ethics. A dialogue with Anscombe runs through the essays, which take up questions about how we should respond to thinking that has miscarried or gone off the rails. The main issues discussed in this book concern how we are to understand thoughts, forms (...) of words, and uses of language that seem crucially important to our understanding or self-understanding, but cannot fit in the template we instinctively bring to bear on questions about how language and thought are related to reality. The book presents Wittgenstein as a responsive philosopher, and it does this through a continuing dialogue with Anscombe. (shrink)