Cairns, D. My own life.--Chapman, H. The phenomenon of language.--Embree, L. E. An interpretation of the doctrine of the ego in Husserl's Ideen.--Farber, M. The philosophic impact of the facts themselves.--Gurwitsch, A. Perceptual coherence as the foundation of the judgment of prediction.--Hartshorne, C. Husserl and Whitehead on the concrete.--Jordan, R. W. Being and time: some aspects of the ego's involvement in his mental life.--Kersten, F. Husserl's doctrine of noesis-noema.--McGill, V. J. Evidence in Husserl's phenomenology.--Natanson, M. Crossing the Manhattan Bridge.--Spiegelberg, H. (...) Husserl's way into phenomenology for Americans: a letter and its sequel.--Zaner, R. M. The art of free phantasy in rigorous phenomenological science.--Cairns, D. An approach to Husserlian phenomenology.--Cairns, D. The ideality of verbal expressions.--Cairns, D. Perceiving, remembering, image-awareness, feigning awareness.--Bibliography of the writings of Dorion Cairns (p. [263]-264). (shrink)

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.

This volume shows how Gandhi's thought and action-oriented approach are significant, relevant, and urgently needed for addressing major contemporary problems and concerns, including issues of violence and nonviolence, war and peace, religious conflict and dialogue, terrorism, ethics, civil disobedience, injustice, modernism and postmodernism, oppression and exploitation, and environmental destruction. Appropriate for general readers and Gandhi specialists, this volume will be of interest for those in philosophy, religion, political science, history, cultural studies, peace studies, and many other fields.

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

The diverse essays in this volume speak to the relevance of phenomenological and psychological questioning regarding perceptions of the human. This designation, human, can be used beyond the mere identification of a species to underwrite exclusion, denigration, dehumanization and demonization, and to set up a pervasive opposition in Othering all deemed inhuman, nonhuman, or posthuman. As alerted to by Merleau-Ponty, one crucial key for a deeper understanding of these issues is consideration of the nature and scope of perception. Perception defines (...) the world of the perceiver, and perceptual capacities are constituted in engagement with the world – there is co-determination. Moreover, the distinct phenomenology of perception in the spectatorial mode in contrast to the reciprocal mode, deepens the intersubjective and ethical dimensions of such investigations. -/- Questions motivating the essays include: Can objectification and an inhuman gaze serve positive ends? If so, under what constraints and conditions? How is an inhuman gaze achieved and at what cost? How might the emerging insights of the role of perception into our interdependencies and essential sociality from various domains challenge not only theoretical frameworks, but also the practices and institutions of science, medicine, psychiatry and justice? What can we learn from atypical social cognition, psychopathology and animal cognition? Could distortions within the gazer’s emotional responsiveness and habituated aspects of social interaction play a role in the emergence of an inhuman gaze? -/- Perception and the Inhuman Gaze will interest scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and social cognition. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction -/- Part I. The Gaze in Classical Phenomenology: Perspectives on Objectification -/- 1. Defending the Objective Gaze as a Self-transcending Capacity of Human Subjects -/- Dermot Moran -/- 2. Two Orders of Bodily Objectification: The Look and the Touch -/- Sara Heinämaa -/- 3. On Eliminativism’s Transient Gaze -/- Timothy Mooney -/- 4. Not wholly human. Reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty with Jacques Lacan. -/- Dorothée Legrand -/- 5. Disclosure and the Gendered Gaze in Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics -/- Christinia Landry -/- Part II. Vision, Perception and Gazes -/- 6. Inside the gaze -/- Shaun Gallagher -/- 7. Perception and its Objects. -/- Maurita Harney -/- 8. Technological Gaze: Understanding How Technologies Transform Perception -/- Richard Lewis -/- 9. The Inhuman Gaze and Perceptual Gestalts: The Making and Unmaking of Others and Worlds -/- Anya Daly -/- Part III. Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Inhuman Gazes -/- 10. Values and Values-based Practice in Psychopathology: Combining Analytic and Phenomenological Approaches -/- G Stanghellini and K.W.M. (Bill) Fulford -/- 11. The Inhuman and Human Gaze in Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Schizophrenia. -/- Matthew Broome -/- 12. Overcoming the Gaze: Psychopathology, Affect, and Narrative. -/- Anna Bortolan -/- 13. From excess to exhaustion : The rise of burnout in a post-modern achievement society. -/- Philippe Wuyts -/- 14. Blackout Rages: The Inhibition of Episodic Memory in Extreme Berserker Episodes -/- John Protevi -/- Part IV. Beyond the Human: Divine, Posthuman and Animal Gazes -/- 15. Wondering at the Inhuman Gaze -/- Sean. D. Kelly -/- 16. What Counts as Human/ Inhuman Right Now? -/- Rosi Braidotti -/- 17. Beyond Human and Animal: Metamorphosis in Merleau-Ponty -/- Dylan Trigg -/- Part V. Sociality and Boundaries of the Human -/- 18. Voice and gaze considered together in ‘languaging’. -/- Fred Cummins -/- 19. Ethics Beyond the Human: Disability and The Inhuman -/- Jonathan Mitchell -/- 20. Social Invisibility and Emotional Blindness -/- James Jardine -/- 21. What are you looking at? Dissonance as a window on the autonomy of participatory sense-making frames. -/- Mark James. (shrink)

Are human rights universal, and, if so, in what sense? Starting with the opposition between "foundational" universalism (as articulated in modern natural law and rationalist liberalism) and "antifoundational" skepsis or relativism (from Jeremy Bentham to Richard Rorty) and steering a path beyond this dichotomy, an inquiry is made into the "rightness" of rights-claims, a question that calls for situated, prudential judgment. With specific reference to "Asian values," Henry Rosemont's emphasis is followed on the need to differentiate between "concept clusters" and (...) reflecting different modes of human flourishing--clusters that are neither radically incommensurable nor blandly uniform and exchangeable. What this emphasis suggests is that the globalism or universalism of human rights is not a pre-given premise but rather a challenge and practical task--requiring intensive inter-human and cross-cultural learning and (what Tu Wei-ming calls) the ongoing "humanization" of humankind. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. Honoring his work, this anthology addresses questions and concerns that defined Ricoeur’s.

What do we mean when we utter the word ‘solidarity’? How do we apprehend its meaning when we hear it spoken of by others? The ancient Greeks - Homer, Thucydides, and Aristotle - offer a vantage point from which this inquiry may begin. The Book of Genesis sets before us a cycle of stories about brothers, along with questions about the bonds that keep them together. The sagas of Iceland explore the nature of conflicts between one family and another. Thomas (...) Aquinas gives a distinctive account of solidarity between Christians. Emile Durkheim, too, provides an influential analysis of solidarity. Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Scheler, and Richard Rorty make significant contributions to the discussion. John Paul II elaborated an impressive vision of solidarity. This essay undertakes a form of reconnaissance, then, by exploring the border region between these rival versions of solidarity. (shrink)

The claim that Empirical Research has Philosophical Implications is the thesis that empirical happiness research in psychology, economics, sociology, neuroscience, or some other similar field has direct implications for the truth of some philosophical theory about happiness. ERPI appears to be an unquestioned presupposition of some philosophers who write about happiness. Several psychologists seem to have endorsed ERPI. Other empirical researchers have made similar claims.After explaining the meaning and importance of ERPI, I discuss a series of specific instances that have (...) been cited in support of ERPI. I discuss work by Martin Seligman, Daniel Kahneman, Richard Layard, Donald Bruckner, Ed Diener, and Pelin Kesebir. In each case, I try to show that the instance cited does nothing to support ERPI. I am inclined to think that there is no instance in which clearly empirical research clearly supports a clearly philosophical conclusion. (shrink)

The debate over encumbered versus unencumbered selves that characterized the dialogue between liberalism and republicanism did not end well. Neither side seemed enlightened by its encounter with the other, as it became increasingly difficult to pin down the differences between the sides, never more so than when Michael Sandel was violently agreeing with Richard Dagger. Drawing on the work of novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, this essay argues that Sandel could have made a much stronger argument for his view than (...) he did. Sandel need not have conceded or concluded that encumbered selves are unable to choose freely. Freedom is a more subtle and complicated concept that either Sandel or Dagger recognize. (shrink)

The most popular concepts of happiness among psychologists and philosophers nowadays are concepts of happiness according to which happiness is defined as " satisfaction with life as a whole ". Such concepts are " Whole Life Satisfaction " concepts of happiness. I show that there are hundreds of non-equivalent ways in which a WLS conception of happiness can be developed. However, every precise conception either requires actual satisfaction with life as a whole or requires hypothetical satisfaction with life as a (...) whole. I show that a person can be "happy" at a time even though he is not actually satisfied with his life as a whole at that time. I also show that a person can be "happy" at a time even though it is not correct to say that if he were to think about his life at that time, he would be satisfied with it as a whole. My thesis is that if you think that happiness is the Good, you should avoid defining happiness as whole life satisfaction. (shrink)

Stephen King’s novel The Long Walk, written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, offers a vision of sport in a near-future society, where death-sports serve as a major spectacle. This was designed as a critique of trends and problems in sport in the 1960s and 1970s, with over-commercialization and increased violence. Some of this has been mitigated by recent rule changes in the world of sport, but King’s writing prefigured the rise of reality television, where people are practically willing to (...) risk it all for personal gain. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Preserving Life: Public Policy and the Life Not Worth Living. By Richard Sherlock.

This book explores the epistemology and the methodology of political knowledge and social inquiry. What can we know, and how do we know? Friedrich V. Kratochwil and Ted Hopf question all foundational claims of inquiry and envisage science as a self-reflective practice. Brian Pollins and Fred Chernoff accept their arguments to some degree and explore the implications for logical positivism. David A. Waldner, Jack Levy, and Andrew Lawrence address the purpose and methods of research. They debate the role of (...) explanation versus prediction, the relationship of theory to evidence, and their implications for the Democratic Peace research program. A concluding chapter by Mark Lichbach offers a pluralistic reformulation of neopositivism. An alternative conclusion by Steven Bernstein, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Gross Stein and Steven Weber contends that social science should be modeled on medicine and reformulated as a set of case-based diagnostic tools. The distinguishing feature of the book is the inclusion of authors who represent different approaches to social science and their willingness to engage with one another in a constructive debate. (shrink)

Niels H. Gregersen seeks to illuminate the nature of continuing divine action in the world and to show that the classical theistic doctrine of continuous creation is consonant with some recent scientific theories of self‐productive (“autopoietic”) systems. Central to these theories is the concept of co‐operation; central to Gregersen's theological appropriation of these theories is also the notion of structuring causality developed by philosopher Fred Dretske. While supportive of Gregersen's overall aims and emphases, we find significant disanalogies between co‐operation (...) as a theological construct and as an evolutionary strategy. We also doubt the utility of Dretske's notion for his project. (shrink)

Fred Dallmayr is one of the most perceptive commentators on the implications of continental philosophy for political thinking. Following Hannah Arendt he describes his essays as "exercises in contemporary political theory." Whether exploring the meaning of Heidegger's reflections on freedom, Gadamer, Oakeshott or Rorty on conversation and dialogue, Habermas on communicative action and rationality, or Foucault on power, Dallmayr has the rare gift of enabling texts "to speak to us" in new and illuminating ways. He beautifully exhibits a theme (...) that he explores in several of these essays--authentic conversation, where he shows us how to listen to the other and to pursue in depth the common subject matter--die Sache. These exercises continue the investigations begun in his Twilight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a Post-Individualist Theory of Politics. The important and intriguing aspect of Dallmayr's project is the way in which he confronts contemporary critiques of individualism, subjectivism, and humanism--and yet dialectically seeks to incorporate the "truth" of what is being criticized. His primary concern is with reconstruction rather than deconstruction. Throughout there is the exercise of good judgment and phronësis in his balanced interpretations. The dominant figure in Dallmayr's own meditative thinking is Heidegger. Dallmayr presents us with one of the most judicious, sensitive, and insightful interpretations of Heidegger's relevance for understanding the meaning of polis and praxis. The opening sentence of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism may well be taken as an epigraph for the entire volume: "We are still far from pondering the essence of action seriously enough." Like Heidegger, Dallmayr wants to dislodge the concepts of freedom and power from human willfulness and subjectivity, and to show that the essence of freedom involves solidarity--a reciprocal effort of liberation or a mutual "letting-be." Dallmayr underscores "the exploratory, non-systematic, or en route" character of his essays. One source of uneasiness that a reader may feel arises from the sheer variety of political views represented by the thinkers that Dallmayr examines including Strauss, Heidegger, Gadamer, Oakeshott, Rorty, Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault. For they cover the political spectrum. There are many directions that a post-individualist theory of politics may take. It is not entirely clear from these exploratory essays where we or Dallmayr are being led. To use a Hegelian turn of phrase, one needs more "determinate negation"--more specificity--in Dallmayr's own Holzwege. The type of tensions that have been characteristic of the Hegelian legacy where one can read Hegel as a potentially radical and revolutionary thinker or as a fundamentally conservative thinker--tensions which have continued to plague a good deal of political thinking since Hegel are implicit in and not yet resolved by Dallmayr. Nevertheless, although one follows the many pathways opened up for us with a certain amount of intellectual caution, the journey is an exciting and revealing one.-Richard J. Bernstein, Haverford College. (shrink)

Aristotle's doctrine that human beings are political animals is, in part, an empirical thesis, and posits an inclination to enter into cooperative relationships, even apart from the instrumental benefits of doing so. Aristotle's insight is that human cooperation rests on a non-rational propensity to trust even strangers, when conditions are favorable. Turning to broader questions about the role of nature in human development, I situate Aristotle's attitude towards our natural propensities between two extremes: he rejects both the view that we (...) must bow to whatever nature dictates, and also the view that nature is generally or always to be suppressed or overcome. This middle position requires that Aristotle hold nature and goodness apart, so that the latter can serve as a standard for evaluating the former. He holds that nature does not treat all human beings alike: just as some are handicapped in their development by a deficiency in their natural abilities or propensities, others are extraordinarily fortunate and have so powerful a disposition to act well that they easily acquire good habits and skills of practical reasoning. Further, he recognizes that sociable inclinations and natural virtues have to compete in the human soul with other natural forces that make ethical life extraordinarily difficult. That is why things so often go so badly for us: we need not only to subdue the external environment, but to overcome certain inner natural obstacles as well. Even so, for Aristotle ethical life is not generally alienated from nature, as it is for other philosophers. Footnotesa I am grateful to David Keyt and Fred Miller, and to the other contributors to this volume, for their helpful comments on the previous draft of this paper. (shrink)

This second volume continues Richard Routley’s explorations of an improved Meinongian account of non-referring and intensional discourse. It focuses on the essays 2 through 7 of the original monograph, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond, following on from the material of the first volume and explores its implications of the Noneist position. It begins with a further development of noneism in the direction of an ontologically neutral chronological logic and associated metaphysical issues concerning existence and change. What follows includes: a detailed (...) response to Quine’s On What There Is; a defense against further objections to noneism; a detailed account of Meinong’s own position; arguments in favour of noneism from common-sense; and a noneist analysis of fictional discourse. We present these essays separately and provide additional scholarly commentaries from a range of philosophers including Fred Kroon, Maria Elisabeth Reicher-Marek and a previously unpublished commentary on noneism by J.J.C. Smart. (shrink)

This is an edited collection containing papers on intrinsic value, consequentialism, the evil of death, among others.

The history of Australian art has been punctuated with survey exhibitions in London from the late 19th century to the present, just as our artists were drawn to Europe both to study and for the possibilities of wider recognition. This review article focuses on the post-war years from 1950 to 1965, a high point of Australian cultural expatriatism focused on London – now viewed as a significant episode in the history of Australian art. The two most influential figures supporting key (...) Australian artists were Kenneth Clark (promoting the work of Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale) and Bryan Robertson, director of the avant-gardist Whitechapel Gallery. Robertson was responsible for organizing the most significant of these exhibitions of Australian art: Australian Painting Today in 1961, focusing on the work of a younger generation of artists that included Charles Blackman, John Olsen, Fred Williams and Brett Whiteley. Australian’s most significant art historian, Bernard Smith, who had also sought to bring about comparable exhibitions, but without success, challenged the orientation and the cultural framing by Robertson and the young Australian art critic Robert Hughes in the catalogue of this key exhibition. (shrink)