En el presente artículo proponemos una reflexión sobre el concepto y los usos de la interculturalidad en América Latina. Pensamos que debemos seguir apostando por la posibilidad de construcciones discursivas alternativas, críticas y estéticas observables y vivenciales en el derecho a la educación, respetando y aprendiendo de las diferencias. Partimos de una epistemología «otra» que pone en discusión el conocimiento «universal», en la medida que buscamos posicionar conocimientos «otros». Asimismo, cuestionamos lo establecido por la institucionalidad de los discursos oficiales y (...) apelamos a iniciativas emergentes enfocadas en la construcción y consolidación de nuevas subjetividades. En el marco de una relacionalidad vivencial simbólica buscamos dar cuenta de la unidad en la diversidad, la dualidad complementaria y la reciprocidad, lo que implica que sigamos apuntándola a un intercambio dinámico y fluido de saberes, y a la construcción colectiva del conocimiento como responsabilidad social compartida, no sólo en el discurso, sino en actos coherentes de una diversidad de actores sociales que aprecian sus diferencias, pero no son ajenos a la situación de los otros y a la inequidad social. In this paper we intend to reflect on the concept and practices of multiculturalism in Latin America. We think we should keep committing ourselves to the possible creation of alternative, critical, aesthetic, experiential and perceptible discourses on the right to be educated, respecting and learning from differences. We start from an «other» epistemology that raises questions about the «universal» knowledge as we seek to locate «other» knowledges. Furthermore, we question what is established by the institutionalization of official speeches, and we appeal to emerging initiatives focused on the construction and consolidation of new subjectivities. As part of a symbolic experiential relatedness we aim to account for unity in diversity, complementary duality and reciprocity, which means that we continue pointing out to a dynamic and fluid knowledge exchange, and to the collective construction of knowledge as a shared social responsibility not only in speech, but also in consistent acts of a variety of social actors who appreciate their differences, not unaware of the situation of other people and of social inequality. (shrink)

This paper presents a reflection about the way in which Kant treats Future in his work, its possibility and conditions. First, I will present a résumé of the principal ideas on this task in his works Dreams os a Spirit Seer and The Conflict of the Faculties , published in 1766 and 1798. In the thirty years between both, Kant wrote his Critical Philosophy. We will see that the problem of the possibility of the speech about Future was always present (...) on his works, and it didn’t change in the deep sense other themes did. Secondly, I will outline the most important ideas of that first part in an Antinomy and I will complete the paper with other relevant considerations in the Critique of the pure Reason. In that way I will try to offer a solution to our principal task: Is it possible to talk with Kant about knowledge refered to the Future? (shrink)

Biosemiosis is a process of choice-making between simultaneously alternative options. It is well-known that, when sufficiently young children encounter a new word, they tend to interpret it as pointing to a meaning that does not have a word yet in their lexicon rather than to a meaning that already has a word attached. In previous research, the strategy was shown to be optimal from an information theoretic standpoint. In that framework, interpretation is hypothesized to be driven by the minimization of (...) a cost function: the option of least communication cost is chosen. However, the information theoretic model employed in that research neither explains the weakening of that vocabulary learning bias in older children or polylinguals nor reproduces Zipf’s meaning-frequency law, namely the non-linear relationship between the number of meanings of a word and its frequency. Here we consider a generalization of the model that is channeled to reproduce that law. The analysis of the new model reveals regions of the phase space where the bias disappears consistently with the weakening or loss of the bias in older children or polylinguals. The model is abstract enough to support future research on other levels of life that are relevant to biosemiotics. In the deep learning era, the model is a transparent low-dimensional tool for future experimental research and illustrates the predictive power of a theoretical framework originally designed to shed light on the origins of Zipf’s rank-frequency law. (shrink)

Properly understood, the instrumental rule says to take means that actually suffice for my end, not, as is nearly universally assumed, to intend means that I believe are necessary for my end. This alternative explains everything the standard interpretation can—and more, including grounding certain correctness conditions for exercises of our will unexplained by the standard interpretation.

I argue that much current environmental theory is unwittingly grounded in assumptions about personhood that entangle it within existing ideology. Culture theory, I suggest, offers a way out of this entanglement through its perception of our immersion within a symbolic realm which precedes consciousness. Environmental theory, by embodying, articulating and legitimating cultural forms, can avoid being assimilated by those individualistic and scientistic assumptions which undermine its potential.

I rettspraksis er det eksempler på at individualpreventive hensyn har begrunnet til dels betydelig straffereduksjon for lovbrytere i en ekstraordinært vanskelig livssituasjon. Artikkelen drøfter hvorvidt slik straffnedsettelse utfordrer skyldprinsippet og prinsippet om likhet for loven. I artikkelen utvikles et argument for at alvorlig sosial deprivasjon hos lovbryteren kan påvirke vår forståelse av lovbruddet, slik at lovbruddet kan fremstå mindre krenkende enn det ville gjort i et normaltilfelle. Dermed kan mindre enn normal mengde straff være riktig for å uttrykke en passende (...) reaksjon på lovbruddet. Hvis så er tilfellet, vil ikke skyldprinsippet og likhetsprinsippet utfordres, fordi det vil dreie seg om et relevant ulikt lovbrudd. (shrink)

This paper is about the nature of conscious sensory properties. My initial thesis is that these properties should not be equated with representational properties. I argue that any such representationalist view is in danger of implying that conscious sensory properties are constituted by relations to propositions or other abstract objects outside space and time; and I add that, even if this implication can be avoided, the broadness of representational properties in any case renders them unsuitable to constitute conscious properties. In (...) place of the representational account, I then defend an equation of conscious sensory properties with intrinsic non‐relational properties of subjects, and I show how this view deals naturally with all the difficulties facing representationalism. I conclude by defending this non‐relational account of conscious experience against arguments from the ‘transparency’ and the ‘intrinsic intentionality’ of experience. (shrink)

Although I am not supposed to have a favorite patient, she is one. Arissa is a three‐year‐old girl. Her parents, natives of Comoros, had illegally immigrated to the French department of Mayotte. When I first began treating her, I saw her as a time bomb. But we built a relationship, and when she deteriorated on my watch, I wanted to say, “Fight to the end!—she is my favorite patient!” But I thought that I did not have the necessary distance to (...) answer the question. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.2 (2001) 270-274 [Access article in PDF] Elizabeth S. Belfiore. Murder among Friends: Violation of "Philia" in Greek Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. xix + 282 pp. Cloth, $55. In explaining the kinds of situations that are dreadful or pitiable, Aristotle tells us in the Poetics (1453b14-23) that all actions occur between friends (philoi), enemies, or neither: the classification is evidently meant to (...) be exhaustive, and the third term, is added to the usual binary, friend or foe, for the sake of greater precision. Acts between enemies or neutral parties do not arouse pity, apart from the nature of the event itself (pathos). What one wants, then, is situations in which they occur en tais philiais, such as brother killing brother, son father, mother son, son mother, and the like--in other words, to judge from the instances Aristotle offers, when violence takes place within the family. The somewhat odd phrase, "within affective relationships"--embraces familial bonds, whereas en tois philois would, I believe, have suggested rather friends who are unrelated by blood.Such, at least, is my interpretation of the passage. Elizabeth Belfiore disagrees: in an appendix to the first chapter of her book, in which she discusses my published views on the question, she maintains that here "the noun philos surely has the same range as philia, and both refer primarily, if not exclusively, to relationships among close blood kin" (20). Whatever the sense of philos, however, Aristotle clearly means that tragedy is best at eliciting pity when it deals with tensions within the family, and, as Belfiore notes, such bonds are "central to more than half" the extant tragedies (xv)--and relations by marriage are not included in this figure. Of those fragmentary plays whose plots can be reconstructed with some confidence (Belfiore analyzes 141), 69 involve harm or the threat of harm to blood relatives, according to Belfiore. A dozen more focus on spouses, again classified separately under the heading "reciprocal relationships," which covers also xenia and suppliancy (202-3), although Belfiore (6) notes that Aristotle lists marriage under philia sungenikê (NE 9.4; EE 7.6-7), while guest-friendship belongs rather to koinônikê (supplication is not discussed in NE 8-9). "Reciprocal relationships" is thus a problematic class, since it includes bonds that the Greeks would, I think, have seen as quite distinct. Be that as it may, "Murder among Kin" might have been a more suitable title for this volume, especially [End Page 270] given that violence between friends in the narrow or modern sense is virtually nonexistent in Greek tragedy. It is an unfortunate consequence of broadening the meaning of philos that this circumstance goes unexplained in Belfiore's discussion.Before examining Belfiore's argument in more detail, let me first give an overview of the structure of the book. It falls into two halves of about equal length. The first part consists of a general overview of philia relations in Greek literature, followed by close readings of five tragedies. These include Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, where the danger is fratricide; Aeschylus' Suppliant Women, the theme of which is defined as "the suppliant bride"; Sophocles' Philoctetes, which is treated as a play about xenia; Euripides' Andromache; and Sophocles' Ajax, in which suicide is taken to be a violation of the most intimate kind of philia, that which obtains with oneself (the chapter title is "Killing One's Closest Philos").The second part consists of three appendices, the first of which summarizes the plots of the surviving tragedies other than the five singled out for treatment in the body of the text. These are arranged by category: blood kinship, subdivided in turn into "parent harms child," "child harms parent," "sibling harms sibling," and "harm to other blood kin" (17 plays in all); reciprocal relationships, covering marriage, xenia, and "suppliancy"; and exceptional plays, including Sophocles' Ajax and Euripides' Andromache. Within each subcategory, plays are treated by author, with individual works arranged in alphabetical order of the English titles. Thus, "parent harms child" begins with Aeschylus' Eumenides, followed... (shrink)

A defense of P.F. Strawson's view of asymmetrical dependency between objects and events. (Events are dependent on objects, not the other way around) put forth in his _Individuals_. I defend Strawson's view against a critique in "Strawson on Ontological Priority" by J.M.E. Moravscik. In doing so I critique Moravscik by drawing a distinction between ontological and conceptual dependencies. This was a chapter of my senior thesis published in an undergraduate journal and should probably only be read if you need a (...) good laugh. Published in an undergraduate conference journal Aporia. (shrink)

Collerton et al. postulate that in a variety of different clinical conditions, hallucinations are derived from object schema lodged in long-term memory. I review two new experiments in which memory images can be easily triggered in neurologically intact subjects. These examples of making visible items in memory may provide experimental models for genesis of hallucinations.

This dissertation is a heuristic and hermeneutic research paper on the evolution of consciousness and the individuation process. I begin by examining the question of the evolution of consciousness and its significance regarding individuation in the work of four different authors: Jung, Neumann, Sri Aurobindo, and Gebser. I then study the nature of the development of the Western mind since the period of the Greek philosophers up to postmodernism and beyond. Finally, I discuss the meaning of the individuation process. ;All (...) four of the authorities referred to on the evolution of consciousness emphasize the need to integrate life around the Self. From the point of view of this study, each brings forward different factors that help one appreciate how consciousness has evolved and how the individuation process can be fostered. An instructive aspect of Neumann's theory is the underlying error in his thinking involving his depiction of the evolution of consciousness as a direct, linear development from matriarchy to patriarchy. Both Sri Aurobindo and Jung saw it as a spiral-like process. The former also describes several different cultural attitudes, each of which can contribute to the realization of an integral consciousness. According to Gebser, the new integral awareness includes the integration of subjectively experienced time, a life of felt-intensity and the concrete realization of spiritual energy in life. ;Regarding the development of the Western mind, not only has there been a widening separation between the spirit and instincts over time, but the intellect has gradually descended from the realm of ideas to the physical universe. This has led to the modern mind and its offshoot, postmodernism. Jung takes us beyond both tendencies, while reconciling the split in the Western psyche. His psychology involves both following a superior will and the in-depth transformation of the chthonic feminine and realization of the chthonic spirit. I support Jung's view with the one held by Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, contrasting it with views held by Hillman, Ponce, and Fromm. (shrink)

The alliance of discursivity with neurosis on the one hand, and an exploration of new conditions of discourse on the other, conditions now self consciously denoted as 'West', gives notice of a certain disillusionment I feel with my culturally received, monotheistic valourization of the power of 'word-ing', and my sense that the problem is not discourse per se, but the way my understanding of it is, or has been, too stuck within its own cultural self enclosure, within the compound of (...) its own cultural grammar, one might say. In taking up these issues within the context of a conference convened to consider "Fragmentation and the Desire for Order/Unity" play off each other relationally, or symbiotically but how so inevitably and incidentally in the West that play-off has a neurotic tail-chasing character that is inspired precisely by Desire. My remarks, therefore, about the possibilities of new conditions of discourse for the West, turn most profoundly on a problematizing of Desire itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HumAnimality:The Silence of the AnimalDavid WoodDrawing Especially on Derrida and Agamben while looking over her shoulder at Foucault, Kalpana Seshadri’s central claim is that silence is not merely inscribed in discourse or in political life as the absence or negation of power, but can also be a site for transformation and resistance (Seshadri 2012). Derrida’s deconstruction weans us from any desire for a pure presence, whether in speech or (...) in silence, and draws us into the essential exteriorization he calls writing, which as gramme, trace, and program, opens onto the history and future of technology, and thereafter, the operations of power, in particular biopower, in the articulation of which Agamben in a way synthesizes Derrida and Foucault.Seshadri takes seriously the analogy between race discrimination and the human oppression of the animal. And yet the analogy is incomplete. Racial discrimination can be detected within unproblematically humanistic discourse and often in established legal concepts and frameworks, whereas speciesism needs to be more creative. Outcries over expressions such as “animal holocaust” show just how charged such analogical claims can be, and bring to the surface the complexities of their inscription in our political life and discourse.Seshadri focuses particularly on the paradoxes of autoimmunity (with Derrida) and sovereignty (with Agamben), the points at which the logics of life, power, and language break down, a process that can license both the reduction and curtailing of life (in slavery, in political oppression, and in factory farming), but which also allows for a different response. She writes of [End Page 193] “the possibilities that arise within regimes of domination to effectively annul, neutralize, or escape power in the very moment of its exercise” (Seshadri 2012, 19).Heidegger distinguishes between two reading strategies available to us when dealing with great thinkers, but which in effect are generalizable to anyone worth reading—first, frontal critique, going counter to the other, as he puts it, and second, going to their encounter (Heidegger 1976, 77). He adds that to take the latter path, one has to bring one’s own fundamental questions to the table. This may seem somewhat portentous, and it may seem too that one is merely using the other’s writing as a vehicle for exercising one’s own obsessions, but he is surely right. One’s own deep questions are never wholly personal, and there is no substitute for engagement with what is finally at stake.This is all to justify the line of response I am taking here. As I see it, Seshadri’s articulation of the “humAnimal” largely works on our conceptual protection and demarcation of the privilege of a certain concept of the human and the human subject, which, in the case of sovereignty, has a range of consequences that include but are far from limited to race and animal relations, and may even be distinctively applicable, as Spinoza or Deleuze might say, to what we imagine our bodies to be capable of. In this latter case what is being marked is not the plight of the animal but the impact of a certain discipline of life on the ways in which we live our own bodies. I am thinking in particular of that part of chapter 7, “HumAnimal Acts,” that deals with Philippe Petit’s high wire activity, in his particular his “agility” and, in a beautiful phrase, “exuberant body.”To be clear, this account is tied to Agamben’s rethinking of potentiality and Heidegger’s discussion of dynamis in Aristotle, each contributing to a renewed understanding of movement and life. For Seshadri, this also opens onto another kind of silence, an exuberant ethics, a politics of gesture, of “pure means,” creativity, the good life, the happy body, and so on. In the fascinating chapters 5 and 6 on the “Wild Child,” the upshot is a certain discombobulation, making the Human/Animal distinction tremble, as Derrida would say, arguably helping us live our humanity less dogmatically as well as helping us toward a more complex understanding of the various species of silence. But in each of these cases it could be said that while the shape and tenor of human animation is tweaked, critiqued, and deepened... (shrink)

In this paper I will consider criticisms that have been raised against Broome’s first-order model of practical reasoning by Bratman, Brunero, and Høj. I will modify Broome’s exposition so that it is no longer vulnerable to these objections. The main modification I will make is that I will take the principle Broome dubs the “beliefintention link” to express a pragmatic implicature instead of a material implication, on the basis of which implicatures the process of reasoning Broome describes reaches the conclusion-states (...) Broome desires to reach. This makes a cognitivist account of at least some norms of practical rationality plausible. (shrink)

In this paper I will defend a logical conception of refutations and fallacies against objections that are meant to show that a dialectical conception of refutations or fallacies is necessary. I will show that there is only one dialectical concept—not that of a thesis, as those favouring a dialectical analysis argue, but that of a concession—that may need to be added to a logical conception for such a conception to be adequate.

In this paper I will consider several interpretations of the fallacy of secundum quid as it is given by Aristotle in the Sophistical Refutations and argue that they do not work, one reason for which is that they all imply that the fallacy depends on language and thus fail to explain why Aristotle lists this fallacy among the fallacies not depending on language, amounting often to a claim that Aristotle miscategorises this fallacy. I will argue for a reading that preserves (...) Aristotle’s categorization by a quite different account of how qualifications function. (shrink)

Most philosophers, I think, would hold that there is a great deal more to be noticed about moral judgments than any special connections which they may be supposed to have with displays of emotion. I strongly hold this myself. Many philosophers, however—and I am one of them—are inclined to believe that special connections of this kind do exist. Agitation counts in ethics. But just what does it count for? What is to be made of the central fact that the same (...) forms of words to which both ethical and “emotive” meaning is ascribed may sometimes be used when emotions are being manifested and sometimes when they are not? Stevenson acknowledges, “There are emotively active and emotively inactive uses of literally all the ethical terms”. But how, in view of this fact, can it be illuminating to say that some forms of words—taken to be the characteristic forms of words for expressing moral judgments—have anything like a distinctive function of expressing emotions? (shrink)

In this dissertation, I explore the significance of remembering, especially in its communal form, and its relationship to narrative identity by examining the practices that make possible the formation and transmission of a heritage. To explore this issue I use Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur, who have dedicated several of their major works to remembrance and forgetting. In comparing Heidegger and Ricoeur, I suggest that Ricoeur's formulation of the identity of a subject and a community offers an alternative to Heidegger's (...) account. For, if Heidegger's critique of subjectivity offers the possibility of a new relationship to history and community, it nevertheless overlooks the possibility of a humanism that is not tied to a metaphysical account of subjectivity. By contrast, the positive work of remembrance can recover heretofore concealed possibilities through our being faithful to the past, and saving it from the destructive forces of time. To show how the fragility of memory preserves the past against the destructive work of time and brings with it the hope of a better future, I emphasize one specific theme--namely, the debt we owe to the dead, which dissertations the possibility for ethical consideration of an historical community. In this regard, this dissertation pursues two goals. The first task is to elucidate how Heidegger's and Ricoeur's phenomenological projects understand the intimate connection between remembrance and the creation of a community. The second goal of this dissertation is to show how Ricoeur is able to respond to the problems that Heidegger's ontological account of memory raises. The completion of these two tasks will contribute to a phenomenological hermeneutics of memory and forgetting. (shrink)

I consider whether the content of a speech act is best represented by a set of possible worlds or by an ordered set containing the individual and properties the speech act is about. I argue that there is nothing in such contents that an ordered set can represent that a set of worlds cannot. In particular, both can be used to capture what is distinctive about singular propositions. But a set of worlds better represents content in cases where the content (...) concerns individuals that no longer exist. It is also better at representing how content can be expressed in different ways, and how assertion relates to the pursuit of truth. Finally, representing content by a set of worlds allows for a clearer view of the puzzle about logical omniscience, even though it is often taken to founder on that puzzle. (shrink)

A Socio-Linguistic Approach to the Development of Folk Psychology One of the most interesting issues central to folk psychology is how it develops in humans. Over the past few decades, two distinct theories have emerged known as the Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory. Theory-theory supporters argue that children construct theories to explain behavior, while simulation theorists extol the virtues of empathy—putting yourself in another person's shoes. I argue that each position falls short of an adequate account of how folk psychology develops. (...) Instead, explaining behavior is a matter of acquiring folk psychological concepts within a culture and then learning how to deploy such terms with competence. (shrink)

Studies have shown ethics education has not systematically improved the moral reasoning of business students and professionals and, therefore, its effectiveness should be seen as deeply questionable. Business ethics education has limited effect, in part, because it rests on rationalistic traditions within normative ethics, business theory, and cognitive psychology. Emphasis is usually placed on student’s rationally thinking about issues as a way of improving their critical analysis and reasoning skills. Yet by focusing primarily on its cognitive dimension, ethics education has (...) tended to underdetermine the importance of social interaction in moral development. As an alternative to traditional business ethics education, using the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, I argue, that peer influence through a dialogical process is a better way to enhance and improve the moral reasoning and judgement of individuals. More specifically, small-group dialogue with peers encourages deep reflection about business dilemmas and has a direct influence on how one thinks about ethics. (shrink)

The role of Professor McLaughlin's sceptic is to introduce certain 'sceptical hypotheses', hypotheses which imply the falsity of most of what we believe about the world. Professor McLaughlin asks whether these hypotheses are coherent and thus whether they can tell us anything about what are entitled to believe, or to claim to know. He concludes that, semantic externalism notwithstanding, these hypotheses are both coherent and threatening. I shall not question this conclusion but I do wonder whether the fate of scepticism (...) hangs entirely on the coherence of the sceptical hypotheses. (shrink)

Michael Landmann, one of the prominent philosophers and scholars of our time, died in Haifa, Israel on January 25, 1984 at the age of seventy. He has enriched contemporary philosophy through his numerous writings whose principal theme was man's place in the world, or 'philosophical anthropology,' summarized as the conception of man as an individual with knowledge of his place within a historical tradition; man is therefore an expression of subjective and objective spirit at the same time. I.

_Acting Out _ is the first appearance in English of two short books published by Bernard Stiegler in 2003. In _How I Became a Philosopher_, he outlines his transformation during a five-year period of incarceration for armed robbery. Isolated from what had been his world, Stiegler began to conduct a kind of experiment in phenomenological research. Inspired by the Greek stoic Epictetus, Stiegler began to read, write, and discover his vocation, eventually studying philosophy in correspondence with Gérard Granel who was (...) an important influence on a number of French philosophers, including Jacques Derrida, who was later Stiegler's teacher. The second book, _To Love, To Love Me, To Love Us_, is a powerful distillation of Stiegler's analysis of the contemporary world. He maintains that a growing loss of a sense of individual and collective existence leads to a decreased ability to love oneself, and, by extension, others. This predicament is viewed through a tragic event: in 2002, in Nanterre, France, Richard Durn, a local activist, stormed the city's town hall, shooting and killing eight people. Durn committed suicide the following day. The later publication of Durn's his journal revealed a man struggling with the feeling that he did not exist, for which he tried to compensate by committing an atrocity. For Stiegler, this exemplifies how love of self becomes pathological: a "me" assassinates an "us" with which it cannot identify. (shrink)

This article examines the theoretical pathways connecting Benhabib’s thoughts on ethical normativity, human rights, legality, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and the tragedy of the political. It endorses Benhabib’s dialectical treatment of these paradoxical political tropes but notes a possible unresolved tension in her discussion of the ambiguous moral and legal nature of human rights. I propose a pluralist approach to the moral grounding of legal human rights that might be at odds with Benhabib’s approach.

Thanks to Axel Honneth, recognition theory has become a prominent fixture of critical social theory. In recent years, he has deployed his recognition theory in diagnosing pathologies and injustices that afflict institutional practices. Some of these institutional practices revolve around specifically juridical institutions, such as human rights and democratic citizenship, that directly impact the lives of the most desperate migrants. Hence it is worthwhile asking what recognition theory can add to a critical theory of migration. In this paper, I argue (...) that, although its contribution to a critical theory of migration is limited, it nonetheless carves out a unique body of ethical insights related to diagnosing the interpretative and epistemic pathologies and injustices associated with the legal processing of migrants’ claims for asylum. Going beyond discourse ethics, which mainly highlights procedural violations of legislative and judicial deliberation, it trains our gaze on the institutional biases that lead migrants to be misrecognized or under-recognized as credible witnesses to their own refugee status. (shrink)

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a concerted effort was made in the discipline of fluid mechanics to make hidden and fleeting processes visible and to capture the results photographically. I examine two important cases. One concerns the photographs taken by H. S. Hele-Shaw in the 1890s showing the flow of a “perfect”, frictionless fluid. The other case deals with the photographs of boundary layer separation taken by Ludwig Prandtl. These were presented to the Third International Congress (...) of Mathematicians in Heidelberg in 1904. My concern in both cases will be with the relation of the photographs to the reality actually or putatively portrayed in the photograph. Superficially the two cases are very different. “Perfect” fluids were accepted as mere mathematical abstractions to which nothing real could correspond while the reality of the boundary layer has been accepted as a discovery of enormous physical and technical importance. A detailed examination, however, suggests some inner connections of a kind that challenges the understanding of certain “common sense” distinctions between the two cases.Keywords: Sichtbarmachung; Fluid mechanics; Perfect fluids; Boundary layer; Social construction; Prandtl; Hele-Shaw. (shrink)

Can human acts be causally explained in the same way as the rest of nature? If so, causal explanation in the manner of the Hempelian model shouldn’t the human sciences and the natural sciences equally. This is not so much a question of whether the Hempelian model is a completely adequate account of causal explanation, but about whether it is adequate or inadequate in the same way for each: if there is some unique feature of human acts that dictates that (...) they are to be explained differently from natural events, then it is reasonable to suppose that this feature will be revealed by consideration of Hempelian explanations whether this is our final account of explanation or not, and if no such feature is revealed then it is reasonable to suppose that there are no fundamental differences between the human and natural sciences in how causal explanations proceed, whether this explanation is Hempelian or of some other kind. Two arguments have been given for there being such a feature. One - the well-known "Logical Connection Argument" - states that there cannot be a causal relation between a human action and the intention to perform that action. If this argument succeeds, then our ordinary explanations of human acts in terms of psychological states like intentions are not causal explanations at all. Although this does not mean that no causal explanation is true, we have the problem of finding appropriate causal antecedents of the acts. The other - the anti-predictionist argument - concludes from the fact that at least some human acts cannot be predicted that they cannot be causally explained. I wish to disarm the force of both of these arguments, and thus argue for explanatory monism: we do not need to adopt a mode of explanation for human sciences distinct from that of natural sciences. (shrink)

In manuscripts from the 1920s Husserl elaborates on what in the Cartesian Meditations he calls “personalities of a higher order.” We might expect the founder of phenomenology to be suspicious of this idea, considering it a mere façon de parler. In fact, Husserl strongly endorses this notion, borrowing the term Gemeingeist from the German Idealists, and defending it against attempts by empirical psychologists to reduce everything to individuals. He attributes to certain forms of community not only personality but also subjectivity, (...) consciousness, unity of consciousness, convictions, memory, and even “so etwas wie Leiblichkeit” - something like corporality. It is this last notion that I want to explore in this paper: what would such communal corporality be like? “We-intentionality” is much discussed these days among phenomenologists. Can we attribute corporality to it, and if so, how? I will consider possible answers to this question, not limiting myself to what Husserl says. (shrink)

“Terms that have histories cannot be defined.” – Nietzsche“[T]he reality to which we were attending seemed to resist our thinking it.” – Cora Diamond[1] Much has been learned in recent decades about the behaviour and abilities of many species of non-human animals. Increasingly many who reflect on the abilities of languageless animals are uncomfortable with a once prevalent dichotomy of either assigning these abilities to the realm of mere mechanism or granting such creatures full rationality and more or less the (...) entire range of abilities that involves. This has lead to no little reflection and debate regarding how to proceed in studying animal “cognition,” and about what counts as adequately or accurately explaining animal behaviour. I cautiously hope herein to contribute to the clarity of what is already a discussion too rich and complex to do any justice to here. Little of what I say will be original, but the particular way of approaching the issues herein may shed some light on why certain issues have endured. (shrink)

This study elucidates and appraises a conception of praxis developed by the Yugoslav Marxist Mihailo Markovi . This notion is first distinguished from everyday and alternative theoretical uses of 'practice', 'practical', and 'praxis' . Markovic's view is then characterized as a normative, pluralistic theory of both human being and doing. Praxis , for Markovi , is activity which realizes one's best potentialities: (i) the humanly generic dispositions of intentionality, self-determination, creativity, sociality, and rationality, and (ii) one's relatively distinctive abilities and (...) bents compatible with (i). Following a critical analysis of Markovic's attempts to justify praxis as norm, two substantive criticisms are advanced. The theory needs (i) priority rules for the relative weighting of praxis components when they cannot all be (fully) realized in an action, and (ii) a specification of the genus praxis so as to recognize important differences among optimal activities which shape things, construct theories, rear children, and share with mature persons. (shrink)

Learning by artificial intelligence systems-what I will typically call machine learning-has a distinguished history, and the field has experienced something of a renaissance in the past twenty years. Machine learning consists principally of a diverse set of algorithms and techniques that have been applied to problems in a wide range of domains. Any overview of the methods and applications will inevitably be incomplete, at least at the level of specific algorithms and techniques. There are many excellent introductions to the formal (...) and statistical details of machine learning algorithms and techniques available elsewhere. The present chapter focuses on machine learning as a general way of “thinking about the world,” and provides a high-level characterization of the major goals of machine learning. There are a number of philosophical concerns that have been raised about machine learning, but upon closer examination, it is not always clear whether the objections really speak against machine learning specifically. Many seem rather to be directed towards machine learning as a particular instantiation of some more general phenomenon or process. One of the general morals of this chapter is that machine learning is, in many ways, less unusual or peculiar than is sometimes thought. (shrink)

After distinguishing professional ethic s from legal and aesthetic norms I argue that a version of rule-utilitarianism is best able to account for professional ethics. The alleged relativism of role-specific duties is a badly posed issue, I argue, since how morality comes to one critically depends upon one's occupation. Alternative theories of the foundations of professional ethics are criticized, both consent theories and the views of those who object to the legalism implicit in a rule-based theory. A mixed theory of (...) virtue is defended to include the most important aspects of an ethic of virtue in the overall rule-utilitarian framework. (shrink)

kerekh 1-2. Maʼamarim rishon ṿe-sheni -- kerekh 3-4. Maʼamarim shelishi u-reviʻi -- kerekh 5. Maʼamar ḥamishi u-firḳe mavo.

This essay offers an analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe read in concert with Derrida’s treatment of the novel in the second volume of The Beast and the Sovereign. Drawing from Derrida while developing insights of my own, I assemble the elements of a unique account and critique of the logic of human sovereignty. Focusing on a crucial moment in both the novel and in Derrida’s reading of it, I argue the thesis that human sovereignty rests upon a logically prior (...) mastery of both non-human animals and subordinated human beings—a relation of mastery I call the human/animal logic of sovereignty. (shrink)

The generative and governing "idea" of radical modernity is spawned by the technique of mathematical construction deployed and interpreted by the major early-modern thinkers and their legatees. ;Chapter I is a survey of this legacy as it appears in Vico, Kant, Fichte, Marx and Nietzsche and in the post-Nietzschean inheritance of contemporary philosophy, hyperbolic in the case of Derrida et al., elliptical, in the case of Carnap and Goodman. ;In Chapter II I try to show how the pre-modern mathematical tradition, (...) represented by Euclid, aimed at keeping the enticements of technical facility in check by means of didactic phronesis and how the post-Kantian interpretation of "existence" in Euclid as constructibility betrays his usage and self-understanding. I suggest that his focus in the postulates and elsewhere is on the undistorted iterability of graphic evocations of the items already intelligible thanks to the definitions or to the pre-understanding shared by the teacher and student. ;In Chapter III, devoted to Descartes the principal claims of modern constructivism are brought to sight. After examining Descartes' fabulous autobiography and its emphasis on self-origination, I turn to the style, contents and under-pinnings of the Geometry in an effort to extract from that text what he once referred to as "the metaphysics of geometry." The latter yields the conditions of successful problem-solving, i.e., dimensional homogeneity and kinematic continuity. These conditions, in turn, find their justification in Descartes' theses in the Rules concerning order, measure and the uniformity of "mental" activity. In the final section I apply the lessons learned from the Geometry and the Rules to one critical issue in the later Meditations, the transition from essence to existence. Descartes' "solution" generates a sequence of perplexities with Hobbes, Leibniz, Kant and other radical moderns continue to wrestle. (shrink)

A few days after the twentieth anniversary of the death of Karl Popper, and a few days before the fiftieth anniversary of my first meeting with him, my thoughts turn again to his most glorious successes in the epistemology and methodology of science, namely his subtle resolutions of the problems of demarcation and induction. In the eighty years that have elapsed since the presentation of these ideas in the original German text of The Logic of Scientific Discovery countless criticisms, large (...) and small, have been adduced. Several of these criticisms undoubtedly expose defects that need correction, but it seems to me that almost all the black marks awarded are mere minor stains that are easily washed away. This applies especially to all those objections that depend essentially on the thesis that our knowledge, in order to be valid, demands some justification, be it partial and inconclusive. Although I have no hope that I shall be able to open eyes already closed, I plan to examine in this lecture some criticisms, recent and less recent, that have not to date been adequately dealt with. After all, an occasion designed to honour the memory of Karl Popper, and to celebrate his intellectual achievement, provides an opportunity, even an obligation, to expound his beautiful ideas as simply as possible, and to explain why so many of the prevailing criticisms miss their target. Nothing shows that Popper’s ideas are one and all correct, since they are not all correct, but I shall perhaps be able to make it evident that most of them are not mistaken in the respects in which they are commonly supposed to be mistaken. (shrink)

As propositions, Anatmavāda and Ātmavāda are simply negations of one another. Thus whatever serves as a criterion for truth of the one must serve as a criterion for the other. When we treat them both as a priori propositions, I claim that we are unable to determine their truth value. But if we treat them both as a posteriori propositions, I argue, we are only able to determine their truth value if we attain unqualified omniscience. Because the Hindu account of (...) knowing is far more conducive to the idea of unqualified omniscience, we might be tempted to assert that the empirical verification of these doctrines taken as propositions is far more likely in the Hindu tradition than the early Buddhist one. However, 'empirical omniscience' carries us very far from received views, thus I conclude that it makes no sense to treat these doctrines as truth-valued propositions. (shrink)

Although the importance of spirituality is increasingly recognized in clinical medicine, spirituality is rarely mentioned in the practice, literature, or training programs of global health. To understand the role of spirituality in global health practice and identify factors that influence and limit its expression, I initiated conversations and informal interviews with more than 300 global health leaders, students, and practitioners during 2010-2014. Four spiritual themes or challenges emerged: compassion at a distance; dichotomous thinking; conspiracy of silence; and compulsion to save (...) the world. Practitioners expressed strong interest in bringing spirituality more fully into global health discourse, which could help the field realize its potential. (shrink)

In a recent paper Ronald Meester and Timber Kerkvliet argue by example that infinite epistemic regresses have different solutions depending on whether they are analyzed with probability functions or with belief functions. Meester and Kerkvliet give two examples, each of which aims to show that an analysis based on belief functions yields a different numerical outcome for the agent’s degree of rational belief than one based on probability functions. In the present paper we however show that the outcomes are the (...) same. The only way in which probability functions and belief functions can yield different solutions for the agent’s degree of belief is if they are applied to different examples, i.e. to different situations in which the agent finds himself. (shrink)

One way of coming to terms with Platonic wonder is to examine what types of things in the dialogues elicit the pathos in the first place. My primary goal in this paper is to examine what evokes the wonder of Socrates and his interlocutors in a number of these works, and I will pay particularly close attention to what Plato has to say about the wondrous nature of humanity itself. I will show that Plato depicts Socrates and other characters found (...) in the dialogues, such as the young Theaetetus, as not only wonderers of the first rank, but also true wonders in themselves. (shrink)

Gauthier's thinking about the social contract continues to develop vigorously. Had I aimed my criticisms at the stage of his thinking that he had reached at the time of his reply to them, rather than at earlier stages already in print, I would have organized my argument differently. Yet the earlier stages were interesting enough—and remain so—to deserve attention for their own sake. Moreover, my criticisms, even as they stand, have some effects that transcend those stages. They undermine the assumption (...) that there is some uniquely attractive principle, whether Gauthier's principle of maximin relative advantage or any other, for determining what bargain is going to be struck on entering the social contract. They also, I persist in thinking, expose the difficulty of bringing home the maximum claims, as matters requiring respect, to agents who may lose out by accepting them as such matters. (shrink)

2. Mr. Raab is right that some elucidation is needed for thesis 1. Following his suggestion, I would say that an assumption is a proposition which we believe but can't prove. But, what he calls "assumptions which aren't believed" I subsume under "supposition." Suppositions and assumptions can be well-confirmed hypotheses. To entertain is to consider, to examine, or to test.

`Social theory is a very difficult subject to teach and it is one that students generally find hard to get to grips with. Teaching Yourself Social Theory offers a highly original and comprehensive resource that will be welcomed by students and teachers alike' - Barry Smart, University of Portsmouth `I have no hesitation in recommending Harris' text to students and teachers of social theory' - Sociology This refreshing and accessible text demonstrates how social theory can be made into an intelligible (...) discourse that touches upon key aspects of everyday life. The abstraction and formalism of much contemporary social theory is criticized as unnecessarily `scholastic' for the beginner. The author maintains that the main problems in studying the subject are not intrinsic to social theory, but derive from how the subject is taught as a university discipline. This lively book uses non-specialist terms to introduce more complex themes, and incorporates a Website with questions and reading guides to some of the classic works. (shrink)