This chapter examines the ancient Stoic theory of the physical composition of pneuma, how its composition relates to pneuma’s many causal roles in Stoic philosophy, and to what extent each of the first three leaders of the Stoic school accepted the claim that pneuma pervades the cosmos. I argue that pneuma is a compound of fire and air. Furthermore, many functions of pneuma can be reduced to the functions of these elements. Finally, it is likely that each of the early (...) Stoics posited a pervasive cosmic pneuma. This paper also explores the nature of pneuma’s tensile movement and offers an account of fire and air’s roles in causing its motion. (shrink)

Sources for Stoicism present conflicting accounts of the Stoic principles. Some suggest that the principles are inseparable from each other. Others suggest that they are separable. To resolve this apparent interpretive dilemma, I distinguish between the functions of the principles and the bodies that realize those functions. Although the principles cannot separate when realizing their roles, the Stoic theory of blending entails that the bodies that realize those roles are physically separable. I present a strategy for further work on the (...) principles in light of this interpretation. (shrink)

A sentence in Book 7 of Diogenes Laertius’s Lives states that, according to the Stoics, the four elements are “unqualified substance, i.e. matter.” Scholars have noted that this appears to conflict with the Stoics’ distinction between principles and elements. Different solutions have been proposed, from dismissing the sentence entirely to emending the text. This note proposes a new interpretation according to which the standard reading of the text can be retained.

This chapter investigates the Stoic understanding of impressions, assent, opinion, scientific knowledge, and cognition. By analyzing these concepts, I describe one major difference between the wise Stoic sage and unwise people: the wise person is capable of scientific knowledge and strong assent, while the rest of us are not. I will also interpret the Stoic account of the cognitive impression and describe several ways that the student of Stoicism might make epistemic progress.

According to the ancient Greek Stoics, the cosmos regularly transitions between periods of conflagration, during which only fire exists, and periods of cosmic order, during which the four elements exist. This paper examines the cosmogonic process by which conflagrations are extinguished and cosmic orders are restored, and it defends three main conclusions. First, I argue that not all the conflagration’s fire is extinguished during the cosmogony, against recent arguments by Ricardo Salles. Second, at least with respect to the cosmogony, it (...) is not necessary to posit the existence of proto-elements. Third, while scholars such as Salles and David Hahm have argued that Cleanthes held a distinct theory of cosmogony from Zeno and Chrysippus, I argue that each of these Stoics endorses the same cosmogonic theory. (shrink)

We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured.

Lucy Osler's piece, "Controlling the noise: A phenomenological account of Anorexia Nervosa and the threatening body," lays out an important new interpretation of anorexia. Anorexia Nervosa is no longer viewed as primarily a perceptual distortion of body-image, an obsession with thinness, or an attempt to dematerialize—to free the subject from its inert thing-like body. Rather, the body itself, and the visceral body in particular, takes on a "voice" which the anorexic experiences as demanding and threatening. Anorexic monitoring and self-starvation beckons (...) as a way to regain power over this renegade viscerality. Unfortunately, this strategy of self-empowerment is doomed to backfire; hunger, illness, and body/food... (shrink)

The Soul Knows No Bars compiles all of the authors' reactions to texts by Foucault, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others.

In this paper, I focus on the debate that surrounds “pragmatic” interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein. By this, I mean the debate between those who read Wittgenstein as a pragmatist or as having pragmatic affinities and those who object to this reading.In particular, drawing on Hilary Putnam’s lecture “Was Wittgenstein a Pragmatist?” and Stanley Cavell’s response “What’s the Use of Calling Emerson a Pragmatist?,” I will spell out the similarities seen between Wittgenstein and pragmatism as well as the divergences emphasized between (...) the two. I will argue that the teasing out of the similarities and the teasing out of the differences is important to a) having a clearer understanding of both Wittgenstein and pragmatism; b) showing elements that make twentieth century philosophy unique; and c) shedding light on where philosophy is now, what issues and questions are being raised, and what possible solutions and answers are being offered. (shrink)

On Monday, May 4th, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired 61 rounds of bullets into the Kent State University students protesting about the invasion of Cambodia. This work develops the ideas of the first symposium on American democracy established to commemorate the tragedy.

Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility for Being Human provides an unprecedented study of the ideas and methodology originally developed by the thinker Werner Erhard, and presented in a course called The Forum, a course that has since evolved further and is offered today by Landmark Worldwide. The book is a comparative analysis that demonstrates how Erhard's rhetorical project and the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger each illuminate the other. The central claim of the authors is (...) that the dialogue of The Forum--presented here in the form of a transcript of an actual course that took place in San Francisco in December of 1989--functions to generate a language which speaks Being, that is, The Forum is an instance of what is called ontological rhetoric: a technology of communicating the unspoken realm of language that allows its listeners to create a new possibility for being human in the world. The purpose of this book is to show that this is actually accomplished in The Forum, and to demonstrate--with Heidegger's thinking presented in a series of "Sidebars" and "Intervals" alongside The Forum transcript --how Erhard did it in 1989. Through placing Erhard's language use alongside Heidegger's, the authors not only have illuminated the work of both thinkers; they also have made this extraordinary form of rhetorical pedagogy available for interdisciplinary study. (shrink)

Should Newman be designated a “Doctor of the Church”? This essay responds first by considering the history and meaning of the title “Doctor of the Church,” and then by examining the recent Norms and Criteria proposed by the Vatican Congregation for designating Doctrine of the Church.

Shanker & King (S&K) argue that information-theoretic approaches to communication are too rigid to capture the ebb and flow of communicative interactions. They advocate instead a dynamic systems approach based on the metaphor of dance. We focus on two problems arising from the dance metaphor: first, that its inherently cooperative tone contradicts basic tenets of behavioral biology; and second, that it risks obscuring rather than clarifying the details of communicative interactions.

The art of living today has shifted to a continuous state of the experimental. In one of his last texts, _Telemorphosis_, renowned thinker and anti-philosopher Jean Baudrillard takes on the task of thinking and reflecting on the coming digital media architectures of the social. While “the social” may have never existed, according to Baudrillard, his analysis at the beginning of the twenty-first century of the coming social media–networked cultures cannot be ignored. One need not look far in order to find (...) oneself snared within some sort of screenification of a techno-social community. “What the most radical critical critique, the most subversive delirious imagination, what no Situationist drift could have done... television has done.” Collective reality has entered a realm of telemorphosis. (shrink)

Simondon is a secret password among certain discussions within philosophy today. As a philosopher of technology, Simondon’s work has a place at the forefront of current thinking in media, technology, psychology, and philosophy with complex accounts of man’s relationship to technology and the realm that continues to form itself via this tension between man and his technical universe. In this introduction to Simondon’s oeuvre, the reader has access to the grounding of one of the most fundamental and critical questions that (...) has been the focus of philosophy for millennia: the relationship between man and animal. (shrink)

In reply to Michael Campbell, I reformulate my questions of Raimond Gaita, avoiding the expression “form of life”. I examine what might remove the need for my questions, before taking up Campbell's line of thought about what he calls the “inwardness” of moral concepts. Campbell helps to clarify the picture of moral concepts advanced by Wittgensteinian moral philosophers. But at a general level, the picture remains unclear where a grammar meets its scaffolding of facts. Some may find this unproblematic, and (...) indeed unavoidable. But I remain unsure of this, and hope to provide at least a useful caution. (shrink)

Smaldino argues that evolutionary theories of social behavior do not adequately explain the emergence of group-level traits, including differentiation of roles and organized interactions among individuals. We find Smaldino's account to be commendable but incomplete. Our commentary focuses on a simple question that has not been adequately addressed: What is a group?

ABSTRACTBecause negative emotional memories are often disruptive, we conducted two experiments to reduce these memories by using a retroactive interference paradigm. In both experiments, participants were presented with highly negative pictures followed by highly negative, moderately negative, or neutral pictures or a rest period. Then, following a filler task, participants took a surprise free recall test, recalling pictures from List 1 in Experiment 1 and from both List 1 and List 2 in Experiment 2. In both experiments, recall of List (...) 1 was reduced by List 2, indicating that RI was present. Furthermore, in Experiment 1, RI was similar between moderately negative and highly negative List 2 whereas in Experiment 2, RI was greater for highly negative List 2 than moderately negative List 2. These results showed that RI can be used to reduce negative emotional memories by making these memories inaccessible. (shrink)

This paper notes the re-ignited controversy surrounding the publication of a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, suggesting that the early work of Michel Foucault can explain why the mere diagnosis of or criteria for mental illness remains a heated flashpoint. In particular, it argues that Foucault articulates a common issue within the philosophical foundations of psychiatry and psychology that the paper terms the ‘subjectivity problem.’ It observes, using Foucault’s work, that these disciplines treat not (...) just simple objects but complex subjects that are capable of interacting with that labelling and who are shaped by it. Drawing on the related work of Ian Hacking on kind-making as world-making, the article fleshes out why the subjectivity problem remains persistent within psychiatry and psychology as forms of knowledge, preventing them from operating as many commentators might desire them to – as pure and objective sciences. Finally, the paper reflects on the relationship of psychiatry and psychology as forms of knowledge, the manner in which they constitute their objects, and how this might shape the biopolitical episteme in which we find ourselves today. (shrink)

Bodily pain and distress come in many forms. They can well up from within at times of serious illness, but the body can also be subjected to harsh treatment from outside. The medical system is often cold and depersonalized, and much worse are conditions experienced by prisoners in our age of mass incarceration, and by animals trapped in our factory farms. In this pioneering book, Drew Leder offers bold new ways to rethink how we create and treat distress, clearing (...) the way for more humane social practices. Leder draws on literary examples, clinical and philosophical sources, his medical training, and his own struggle with chronic pain. He levies a challenge to the capitalist and Cartesian models that rule modern medicine. Similarly, he looks at the root paradigms of our penitentiary and factory farm systems and the way these produce distressed bodies, asking how such institutions can be reformed. Writing with coauthors ranging from a prominent cardiologist to long-term inmates, he explores alternative environments that can better humanize—even spiritualize—the way we treat one another, offering a very different vision of medical, criminal justice, and food systems. Ultimately Leder proposes not just new answers to important bioethical questions but new ways of questioning accepted concepts and practices. (shrink)

Drew A. Hyland, one of Continental philosophy's keenest interpreters of Plato, takes up the question of beauty in three Platonic dialogues, the Hippias Major, Symposium, and Phaedrus. What Plato meant by beauty is not easily characterized, and Hyland's close readings show that Plato ultimately gives up on the possibility of a definition. Plato's failure, however, tells us something important about beauty—that it cannot be reduced to logos. Exploring questions surrounding love, memory, and ideal form, Hyland draws out the connections (...) between beauty, the possibility of philosophy, and philosophical living. This new reading of Plato provides a serious investigation into the meaning of beauty and places it at the very heart of philosophy. (shrink)

Santayana's spectatorial view of spirituality asserts that the desire to live is unspiritual, but this produces too narrow a view of the spiritual life, sup-pressing the heart of spirituality, while distorting his understanding of atti-tudes relevant to spirituality such as charity and piety. In my critique, I tar-get Santayana’s theoretical distinction between psyche and spirit, indicating why it should be abandoned in favor of a view that identifies spirit with at least some part of psyche. This theoretical move expands what (...) we can un-derstand the spiritual life to be, enabling the incorporation of a genuine commitment to life into spirituality. (shrink)

Fratelli tutti expresses skepticism about the ability of the just-war tradition to provide guidance on the state use of force. It is dismissive of a whole range of rationales for going to war. In rejecting humanitarian “excuses,” Pope Francis puts to question the Church’s support even for armed enforcement of the Responsibility to Protect. In place of abstract moral reasoning, Francis invites contemplation of the suffering of the victims of war. He expands the horizon of analysis from particular acts to (...) consideration of the cascading consequences of war. He invites the military to color their warrior ethic with the kindness of Christ. In practice, his teaching implies increased attention to the ius postbellum and “the responsibility to rebuild” after armed conflict. (shrink)

In recent years, the US and the EU have pursued markedly different agendas in the pursuit of board gender diversity. The EU has taken a more pro-active governmental approach of mandated quotas, whereas the US is relying largely on the endogenous mechanism of shareholder diversity proposals. Despite their obvious allure as a means of bringing about rapid change, evidence is mounting that board gender diversity quotas may yield various deleterious side effects; and quotas may not be as successful in their (...) core aim of promoting gender diversity as initial broad statistical measures indicate. In this paper we critique the expanding EU quota regime, and consider US shareholder proposals as an alternative change mechanism for improving gender diversity in corporate boards. As an alternative to quotas, diversity resolutions are often dismissed as ineffective because the vast majority fail to formally pass (with a failure rate close to 95%). However, on closer inspection, this ‘failure’ actually results in success. Contrary to the conventional ‘folk’ wisdom -- in the quest to promote gender diversity on corporate boards, the endogenous (US) mechanism of board diversity proposals has, to date, resulted in similar increases in gender diversity as the exogenous (EU) mechanism of government-mandated gender quotas. Furthermore, the former mechanism is more consistent with recent ‘third-wave’ feminist theory. We conclude with the policy recommendation that, rather than quotas, the EU should focus on removing the regulatory barriers that inhibit shareholder democracy. (shrink)

Why is it that some instances of disagreement appear to be so intractable? And what is the appropriate way to handle such disagreements, especially concerning matters about which there are important practical and political needs for us to come to a consensus? In this paper, I consider an explanation of the apparent intractability of deep disagreement offered by hinge epistemology. According to this explanation, at least some deep disagreements are rationally unresolvable because they concern ‘hinge’ commitments that are unresponsive to (...) rational considerations. This explanation, if correct, seems to have troubling implications for how we should respond to deep disagreement. If my position on a topic is not responsive to rational considerations, then what choice have I but to dogmatically hold to that position, and simply dismiss the views of those with whom I disagree? I address this problem by identifying an attitude of intellectual humility that is appropriate to have towards one's hinge commitments, and suggest that this attitude provides the basis for a non-rational, constructive way to resolve deep disagreement. (shrink)

We agree with Archer that human sex differences in aggression are well explained by sexual selection, but note that explanations of human behaviors are not logically mutually exclusive from explanations and therefore should not be framed as such. We discuss why this type of framing hinders the development of both social learning and evolutionary theories of human behavior.

We make three points: (1) Overlooked studies of nonhuman communication originally inspired, but no longer support, the blinkered view of mental continuity that Penn et al. critique. (2) Communicative discontinuities between animals and humans might be rooted in social-cognitive discontinuities, reflecting a common lacuna in Penn et al.'s relational reinterpretation mechanism. (3) However, relational reinterpretation need not be a qualitatively new representational process.

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific (...) communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

Much previous work in artificial intelligence has neglected representing time in all its complexity. In particular, it has neglected continuous change and the indeterminacy of the future. To rectify this, I have developed a first‐order temporal logic, in which it is possible to name and prove things about facts, events, plans, and world histories. In particular, the logic provides analyses of causality, continuous change in quantities, the persistence of facts (the frame problem), and the relationship between tasks and actions. It (...) may be possible to implement a temporal‐inference machine based on this logic, which keeps track of several “maps” of a time line, one per possible history. (shrink)

Since the times of Plato and Aristotle, the relation of poetry to philosophy has been controversial. For certain scholars, poetry should in no way be confused with philosophy. For others, poetry is at the heart of the possibility of thinking itself. In _Affirmation of Poetry_, Judith Balso defends the significance of poetry as a necessary practice for thinking. For Balso, if reading poetry properly has become an obscure task, poetry itself still carries with it a power of thinking: the efforts (...) of the poets must continue. In analyzing the affirmation of thought found within the work of such poets as Osip Mandelstam, Wallace Stevens, Alberto Caeiro, and Giacomo Leopardi, Balso reestablishes poetry’s place as a site of thought. (shrink)

Twenty years after cultivating a new orientation for aesthetics via the concept of non-photography, François Laruelle returns, having further developed his notion of a non-standard aesthetics. Published for the first time in a bilingual edition, _Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard Aesthetics_ expounds on Laruelle’s current explorations into a photographic thinking as an alternative to the worn-out notions of aesthetics based on an assumed domination of philosophy over art. He proposes a new philosophical photo-fictional apparatus, or philo-fiction, that strives for a discursive mimesis (...) of the photographic apparatus and the flash of the Real entailed in its process of image making. “A bit like if an artisan, to use a Socratic example, instead of making a camera based off of diagrams found in manuals, on the contrary had as his or her project the designing of a completely new apparatus of philo-fiction, thus capable of producing not simply photos, but photo-fictions.” One must enter into a space for seeing the vectorial and the imaginary number. Laruelle’s philo-fictions become not art installations, but “theoretical installations” calling for the consideration of the possibility of a non-standard aesthetics being of an equal or superior power to art and philosophy, an aesthetics in-the-last-instance that is itself an inventive and creative act of the most contemporary kind. (shrink)

According to naturalism, philosophy is part of science. Its aim is thus to acquire synthetic knowledge of the world. Philosophy's methods of discovery – its use of a priori reasoning, conceptual analysis, and thought experiments – are legitimate to the extent that they further this broader scientific aim, naturalists aver. A very different view of philosophy sees it as distinct from science in both aim and methods. Philosophy aims to discover analytic knowledge through a priori reasoning on this competing view. (...) This view of philosophy emphasizes rational intuitions as a source of evidence for the truth of the conclusions attained by a priori reasoning. Naturalism has been criticized as incompatible with realism, the view that the existence and nature of the world are independent of human conceptions of it. What naturalistic sense could be made of the idea that a scientific theory that passed every conceivable observational and theoretical test might yet be false? Isn't such a notion of truth, presupposed by realism, simply at odds with the idea that science is the arbiter of truth? Further, doesn't the attempt to marry naturalism and realism open the door to a radical kind of skepticism, one that makes it impossible to know that all our experiences of the world are not illusory? This chapter explores the nature of philosophy and philosophical theorizing from the perspective of naturalistic realism, arguing that naturalism and realism are compatible in spite of attempts to show they are not. The chapter reviews the leading arguments for incompatibility – Hilary Putnam's model‐theoretic argument (MTA) and the brains‐in‐a‐vat argument – and finds that they do not establish this conclusion. Further, it shows that the view that philosophy is distinct in aim and methods from science – a view that places its faith in the evidential warrant supplied by rational intuition – is at odds with what cognitive science has shown about the nature and reliability of these sorts of intuition. (shrink)

While impressed by much of what Mercier & Sperber (M&S) offer through their argumentative hypothesis, we question whether the specific competencies entailed in each system are adequate. In particular, whether system 2 might not require independent reasoning capabilities. We explore the adequacy of the explanations offered for confirmation bias and the Wason selection task.

This paper argues that the Correspondence Theory of Truth is not well- served by Truthmaker Theory and is better developed in a different direction. For there are reasons to believe that the main axiom of that theory (TA) which states that for every truth there is a truthmaker is either unjustified or false. Some of these reasons are already well-known. Negative existentials and universal generalizations present initial difficulties for TM theory as do necessary truths. There is a more serious problem, (...) though which has not hitherto been noticed. (TA) even when restricted to contingent sentences seems to tolerate clear counterexamples. There seem to be, and I argue that there in fact are, true contingent sentences which lack truthmakers. The examples adduced are all truthmaker analogues of semantically pathological sentences. The positive proposal shares with Truthmaker Theory the view that our judgments and sentences are rendered true by the worldly facts but argues for an alternative conception of Ôrendering trueÕ and a novel conception of 'facts'. (shrink)