Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 299-314, October 2021.

This book addresses the question of how and why history begins with the work of Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War is distinctive in that it is a prose narrative, meant to be read rather than performed. It focuses on the unfolding of contemporary great power politics to the exclusion of almost all other elements of human life, including the divine. Western history has been largely an extension of Thucydides' narrative in that it repeats the unique methodological assumptions and (...) concerns that first appear in his text. The power of Thucydides' text has never been attributed either to the charm of its language or to the entertainment value of its narrative, or to some personal attribute of the author. In this study, Darien Shanske analyzes the difficult language and structure of Thucydides' History and argues that the text has drawn in so many readers into its distinctive world view precisely because of its kinship to the contemporary language and structure of Classical Tragedy. This kinship is not merely a maTter of shared vocabulary or even aesthetic sensibility. Rather, it is grounded in a shared philosophical position, in particular on the polemical metaphysics of Heraclitus. (shrink)

Princeton University Press, 1974. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (5 MB).

Princeton University Press, 984. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (3.9 MB).

A identidade corporal e a expressão da sexualidade na cultura ocidental são marcadas por tabus, devendo ser restritas à intimidade das “quatro paredes”. Entretanto, a experiência da intimidade é construída socialmente e carrega consigo todas as marcas de um tempo histórico, no qual os corpos estão inscritos. As mulheres prostitutas que desafiam os prescritivos morais da sexualidade atrelados à reprodução e ao matrimônio e que monetizam a experiência sexual, sofrem penalidades sociais, como a exclusão. O objetivo deste trabalho é refletir, (...) a partir do filme Uma linda mulher, o modo como a identidade corporal das mulheres profissionais do sexo é significado socialmente, com base na literatura brasileira. A metodologia eleita é a análise de filme, por meio das categorias temáticas: objetificação do corpo feminino, invisibilização social do corpo feminino e adestramento corporal. As vestimentas, a composição estética de uma profissional do sexo pertencente a um contexto de classe baixa, como retratado no filme pela personagem Vivian, são alvo de um estereótipo de vulgaridade e a reduz a um objeto sexual. Essas mulheres tornam-se mais vulneráveis aos diversos tipos de violência, abuso e exploração, que, além da desumanização dos corpos, promove a invisibilização e o descarte para aqueles que não alimentam o estereótipo da prostituição. Para pertencer à classe das mulheres “respeitáveis”, rendem-se ao adestramento corporal e cultural, tornando-se este o passaporte para a visibilidade social. Tal percurso ocorre no filme com a personagem Vivian, que passa por um adestramento do seu corpo, por meio da contenção de seus hábitos gestuais anteriores, a fim de performar socialmente o lugar de uma mulher moralmente respeitável, o que também pode ser entendido como violência, podendo ser considerada uma ilustração do cenário brasileiro. (shrink)

This article takes as its provocation Marx's intriguing statement about the disjunction between the flowering of Greek art and the underdeveloped stage of social and economic development made as an epilogue to the Introduction to the Grundrisse in order to ask what are the relations between that which has been considered art and what Marx calls `production as such'. In the elaborated conditions of contemporary capitalist societies, we can ask: Is art still being made? To examine this question I juxtapose (...) what Bauman has called `thinking sociologically' with a proposition that art thinks aesthetically. So how can art historians deal with that challenge of thinking aesthetic practices both socially and historically? I track a genealogy of art historians (Clark, Antal, Shapiro) who have attempted to think socially about artistic practices. This leads into a section about the necessity for both sociological and aesthetic education if we are to avoid totalitarianism or free-market individualism (Bahro). Finally, thinking sociologically, by taking as a case study the work of Aby Warburg, I explore the technological conditions of art historical production itself particularly in relation to photography and the way this shapes our access to the image. Warburg represents the possibility of another model for art historical thinking about the image as Kulturwissenschaft, a parallel to Sozialwissenschaft in its ambition and relation to the great intellectual revolutions c.1905 (Freud, Bergson, Einstein, Hussserl). Like Marx, Warburg questioned the continuity of the imaginary space of art thinking in the age of technological industrialism. Where art is now, where art history is, are not just sociological questions to which Marx might offer a dismal answer. I conclude that what is necessary is a constructive conversation between thinking sociologically and thinking aesthetically, knowing synthetically and knowing for oneself — curricular issues made more intense by the shared conditions in which all intellectual production is being transformed in contemporary sites of intellectual practice, the university, by `production as such' leading thought to risk the same fate as art in contemporary society, as Marx hypothesized. As a final thought, I suggest that in contemporary art work that confronts trauma and catastrophe, often using new technologies as aesthetic processes, we may find a counter-argument. (shrink)

Thucydides is the author of the most harrowing account of societal breakdown in antiquity. Brian Leiter has recently made the provocative claim that Thucydides’ analysis of such breakdowns indicates that morality is of little import in guiding behavior, including legal behavior. Yet Thucydides also narrates events, particularly in Athens, that indicate that something resembling morality can continue to guide action, including legal action, even at the worst of times. Thucydides provides tantalizing clues as to why he narrates events that only (...) sometimes follow the path predicted by Leiter. In particular, Thucydides (accurately) portrays the law that suffuses Athenian life and saves Athens itself as, for the most part, informal and infused with moral concerns. Leiter's reading of Thucydides therefore not only is limited but misses implicit arguments that challenge Leiter's broader argument for a particular form of legal realism. (shrink)

In this book Pollock deals with the subject of probabilistic reasoning, making general philosophical sense of objective probabilities and exploring their ...

Direct inference derives values for definite (single-case) probabilities from those of related indefinite (general) probabilities. But direct inference is less useful than might be supposed, because we often have too much information, with the result that we can make conflicting direct inferences, and hence they all undergo collective defeat, leaving us without any conclusion to draw about the value of the definite probabilities. This paper presents reason for believing that there is a function — the Y- function — that can (...) be used to combine different indefinite probabilities to yield a single value for the definite probability. Thus we get a kind of “computational” direct inference. (shrink)

This new edition of the classic Contemporary Theories of Knowledge has been significantly updated to include analyses of the recent literature in epistemology.

Pollock describes an exciting theory of rationality and its partial implementation in OSCAR, a computer system whose descendants will literally be persons.

David Hume: Moral Philosophy Although David Hume is commonly known for his philosophical skepticism, and empiricist theory of knowledge, he also made many important contributions to moral philosophy. Hume’s ethical thought grapples with questions about the relationship between morality and reason, the role of human emotion in thought and action, the nature of moral … Continue reading David Hume: Moral Philosophy →.

One of the most striking characteristics of human beings is their ability to function successfully in complex environments about which they know very little. In light of our pervasive ignorance, we cannot get around in the world just reasoning deductively from our prior beliefs together with new perceptual input. As our conclusions are not guaranteed to be true, we must countenance the possibility that new information will lead us to change our minds, withdrawing previously adopted beliefs. In this sense, our (...) reasoning is “defeasible”. The question arises how defeasible reasoning works, or ought to work. In particular we need rules governing what a cognizer ought to believe given a set of interacting arguments some of which defeat others. That is what is called a “semantics” for defeasible reasoning, and this chapter will propose a new semantics that avoids certain clear counter-examples to all existing semantics. (shrink)

The author poses a question: when a person has a thought, what is it that determines what thought he is having? and, equivalently, what is it that determines what thought he is having. looking for an answer he sketches some general aspects of the problems involved in answering these questions, like the mind/body problem, for example. his conclusion is that the posed questions should be set against the background assumption that thoughts are just internal physical occurrences, and that thoughts are (...) categorized in the same way other mental occurrences are categorized. so the author categorizes them in terms of their introspectible characteristics and in terms of "that" clauses. these classifications can be understood as describing thought in terms of their place in the rational architecture. (shrink)

Franz Rosenzweig's near-conversion to Christianity in the summer of 1913 and his subsequent decision three months later to recommit himself to Judaism is one of the foundational narratives of modern Jewish thought. In this new account of events, Benjamin Pollock suggests that what lay at the heart of Rosenzweig's religious crisis was not a struggle between faith and reason, but skepticism about the world and hope for personal salvation. A close examination of this important time in Rosenzweig's life, the (...) book also sheds light on the full trajectory of his philosophical development. (shrink)

In this article I chart an indirect if not oblique path through my own theoretical formation as a social and feminist art historian, informed by Marxist cultural studies but deeply engaged with issues of difference and gender, to the response Zygmunt Bauman made to a book I gave him that I had reason to believe would resonate with his work. It did not. Indeed, my kind of theoretically informed visual and cultural analysis was indecipherable despite the influence of his writing (...) after 1989 on my work. Gender was not a topic for Bauman. Feminist theory remained an impenetrable territory. Art (as opposed to culture) was not to be theorized. Yet, in his later work on liquid modernity, Bauman incorporated the idea that we are all now artists of life. Here I recognized an oblique and unjustified if not misdirected dismissal of the working-class British artist Tracey Emin. My article concludes with my reading of her video work, Why I Never Became a Dancer, which poignantly and defiantly exposes the social violence and violations of class, race and gender in British society which she experienced. I seek to demonstrate how Bauman’s acute, but often academically devalued, attentiveness to the vernacular and quotidian forms of cultural experience and its ability to register and reveal changing social forms and forces should have enabled him to see Emin’s work as equally acute and culturally significant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate two related aspects of human reasoning, and use the results to construct an automated theorem prover for the predicate calculus that at least approximately models human reasoning. The result is a non-resolution theorem prover that does not use Skolemization. It involves two central ideas. One is the interest constraints that are of central importance in guiding human reasoning. The other is the notion of suppositional reasoning, wherein one makes a supposition, draws inferences (...) that depend upon that supposition, and then infers a conclusion that does not depend upon it. Suppositional reasoning is involved in the use of conditionals and reductio ad absurdum, and is central to human reasoning with quantifiers. The resulting theorem prover turns out to be surprisingly efficient, beating most resolution theorem provers on some hard problems. (shrink)

In the tradition of Milton Friedman's 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom, Lansing Pollock draws on moral, political, and economic theory to defend a libertarian vision of the good society. Pollock argues that mutual consent, derived from a fundamental Kantian moral equality, is the ideal standard for judging relations between persons. He contends that if the equal right of all persons to be free is taken seriously, most of the coercion by government that many take for granted is immoral. (...) Pollock situates libertarian moral theory in an American historical context, one compatible with the views of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Pollock argues that when the Constitution is interpreted according to the political philosophy of the framers, the modern welfare state is unconstitutional. Pollock goes on to demonstrate how free market economies promote human well-being, whereas government regulation is often counterproductive. In advocating a reduction in the size and scope of government, Pollock includes applied policy analyses of poverty and health care, among other topical issues. He also offers an innovative solution to the problem of funding a limited government without violating individual rights. The strength of The Free Society lies in its synthetic achievement. In a book that is accessibly written and sure to appeal to scholar and lay reader alike, Pollock provides a compelling conception of the good society--one in which the libertarian vision includes moral, social, political, and economic perspectives. (shrink)

There was a long tradition in philosophy according to which good reasoning had to be deductively valid. However, that tradition began to be questioned in the 1960’s, and is now thoroughly discredited. What caused its downfall was the recognition that many familiar kinds of reasoning are not deductively valid, but clearly confer justification on their conclusions. Here are some simple examples.

This book is addressed to readers who have laid the foundation of a liberal education & are beginning the special study of law.

New results in the theory of nomic probability have led to a theory of probable probabilities, which licenses defeasible inferences between probabilities that are not validated by the probability calculus. Among these are classical principles of direct inference together with some new more general principles that greatly strengthen direct inference and make it much more useful.

There are two general approaches to handling contingencies in decision-theoretic planning. State-space planners reason globally, building a map of the parts of the world relevant to the planning problem, and then attempt to distill a plan out of the map. POCL planners reason locally, attempting to build the plan up from local relationships. A planning problem is constructed that humans find trivial, but no state-space planner can solve. This motivates an investigation of decision-theoretic POCL contingency planners. Existing POCL contingency planners (...) attempt to generalize the results of classical POCL contingency planning. However, this paper argues that the nature of contingency planning changes dramatically in decision-theoretic contexts, and results from classical contingency planning are of little relevance. In particular, in classical planning contingencies can only be attached to conditional forks, but in most uses of contingencies in decision-theoretic planning they are attached to single branches of the plan rather than to conditional forks. A criterion of adequacy for contingency planners is formulated, following from ordinary completeness, and it is shown that existing decision-theoretic POCL contingency planners do not satisfy it. Some tentative suggestions are made regarding how to construct a planner that does satisfy the adequacy condition. (shrink)

This paper is informed by my own participant observation and uses my own ethnography which included conducting in-depth interviews with anonymous paid egg donors and observing a listserv for women considering, pursuing, or having completed egg donation, to illustrate the way that power operates at this particular site of the reproductive center in postmodernity. After outlining who the consumers and providers of eggs are, I will use Foucault's concepts of biopower, disciplinary power, and normativity to describe how anonymous paid egg (...) donation plays a socially useful role in reproducing privilege and in preserving the myth of the nuclear family. Drawing on feminist theorizing to problematize altruism, I will show how the construction of the altruist narrative feeds the preservation of that myth by giving egg donors appropriately feminine motivations. Finally, I will focus on one particular site of resistance on the part of egg donors—controlling their self-presentation, tweaking the pool of eggs—to underscore the simultaneity of control of and control by egg donors. (shrink)

The paper presents a simple but novel argument against the idea of abortion on demand – i.e. the situation where a woman does not need to justify an abortion. Rather than arguing from a theory of the Right to Life of the foetus, which many would regard as controversial, the paper argues from the point of view that the foetus has a certain (intrinsic) value – simply because it is human. Since the destruction of something of value must be justified, (...) it follows that the destruction of a foetus must be justified. This rules out abortion on demand. I believe that shifting emphasis from rights to values could make a major difference to the abortion debate and will make many people rethink their position on the subject. (shrink)