This article addresses the role of perceptual learning in the development of surgical skill. We propose perceptual learning, specifically haptic memory and active touch, provide the durable foundations of professional surgical skill, which cannot be replaced by the cognitive models that dominate many teaching modalities. To substantiate this, we combine ethnographic interviews with craftsmen, specifically artists and surgeons to establish haptic sensibilities in common, and an analytic framework built on an embodiment paradigm to illustrate shared properties and advantages of perceptual (...) learning to the development of craft skill. Our research demonstrates the live edge between actual bodies of patients, cadavers, 3D models, and the surgeon’s senses is more vital to the development and improvement of skill than standardized reliance on the propositional and cognitive grasp of procedural rules. (shrink)

Can what we know change what we see? Does language affect cognition and perception? The last few years have seen increased attention to these seemingly disparate questions, but with little theoretical advance. We argue that substantial clarity can be gained by considering these questions through the lens of predictive processing, a framework in which mental representations—from the perceptual to the cognitive—reflect an interplay between downward-flowing predictions and upward-flowing sensory signals. This framework provides a parsimonious account of how what we know (...) ought to change what we see and helps us understand how a putatively high-level trait such as language can impact putatively low-level processes such as perception. Within this framework, language begins to take on a surprisingly central role in cognition by providing a uniquely focused and flexible means of constructing predictions against which sensory signals can be evaluated. Predictive processing thus provides a plausible mechanism for many of the reported effects of language on perception, thought, and action, and new insights on how and when speakers of different languages construct the same “reality” in alternate ways. (shrink)

Examines and evaluates Socrates' role as an educator in Plato's dialogues.

Descartes' Meditations is one of the most widely read philosophical texts and has marked the beginning of what we now consider as modern philosophy. It is the first text that most students of philosophy are introduced to and this Guidebook will be an indispensable introduction to what is undeniably one of the most important texts in the history of philosophy. Gary Hatfield offers a clear and concise introduction to Descartes' background, a careful reading of the Meditations and a methodological (...) investigation of its main themes. As with all the Guidebooks, this is an exemplary companion to any reading of the Meditations. (Note: This edition has been superseded by Gary Hatfield (2014), The Routledge Guidebook to Descartes' Meditations.). (shrink)

This VSI highlights Foucault's life and thought, showing his impact on today's society. Beginning with a brief biography to set the social and political stage, Gary Gutting then tackles Foucault's thoughts on literature, in particular the avant-garde scene; his philosophical and historical work; and his treatment of knowledge and power in modern society, including his thoughts on sexuality.

The burgeoning literature on global value chains has recast our understanding of how industrial clusters are shaped by their ties to the international economy, but within this context, the role played by corporate social responsibility continues to evolve. New research in the past decade allows us to better understand how CSR is linked to industrial clusters and GVCs. With geographic production and trade patterns in many industries becoming concentrated in the global South, lead firms in GVCs have been under growing (...) pressure to link economic and social upgrading in more integrated forms of CSR. This is leading to a confluence of “private governance”, “social governance”, and “public governance”. This new form of “synergistic governance” is illustrated with evidence from recent studies of GVCs and industrial clusters, as well as advances in theorizing about new patterns of governance in GVCs and clusters. (shrink)

This is the first detailed assessment of the life and work of Felix Guattari--"Mr. Anti" as the French press labelled him--the friend of and collaborator with..

We have Nietzsche to thank for some of the most important accomplishments in intellectual history, but as Gary Shapiro shows in this unique look at Nietzsche’s thought, the nineteenth-century philosopher actually anticipated some of the most pressing questions of our own era. Putting Nietzsche into conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Deleuze, Agamben, Foucault, Derrida, and others, Shapiro links Nietzsche’s powerful ideas to topics that are very much on the contemporary agenda: globalization, the nature of the livable earth, and (...) the geopolitical categories that characterize people and places. Shapiro explores Nietzsche’s rejection of historical inevitability and its idea of the end of history. He highlights Nietzsche’s prescient vision of today’s massive human mobility and his criticism of the nation state’s desperate efforts to sustain its exclusive rule by declaring emergencies and states of exception. Shapiro then explores Nietzsche’s vision of a transformed garden earth and the ways it sketches an aesthetic of the Anthropocene. He concludes with an explanation of the deep political structure of Nietzsche’s “philosophy of the Antichrist,” by relating it to traditional political theology. By triangulating Nietzsche between his time and ours, between Bismarck’s Germany and post-9/11 America, Nietzsche’s Earth invites readers to rethink not just the philosopher himself but the very direction of human history. (shrink)

Erotic Wisdom provides a careful reading of one of Plato's most beloved dialogues, the Symposium, which explores the nature and scope of human desire (erôs). Gary Alan Scott and William A. Welton engage all of the dialogue's major themes, devoting special attention to illuminating Plato's conception of philosophy. In the Symposium, Plato situates philosophy in an intermediate (metaxu) position--between need and resource, ignorance and knowledge--showing how the very lack of what one desires can become a guiding form of contact (...) with the objects of human desire. The authors examine the concept of intermediacy in relation both to Platonic metaphysics and to Plato's moral psychology, arguing that philosophy, for Plato, is properly understood as a kind of "being in-between," as the love of wisdom (philosophia) rather than the possession of it. (shrink)

A properly programmed artificially intelligent agent may eventually have one duty, the duty to satisfice expected welfare. We explain this claim and defend it against objections.

Discourse about the use of animals in biomedical research usually focuses on two issues. The first, which I will refer to as the “necessity issue,” is empirical and asks whether the use of nonhumans in experiments is required in order to gather statistically valid information that will contribute in a significant way to improving human health. The second, which I will refer to as the “justification issue,” is moral and asks whether the use of nonhumans in biomedical research, if necessary (...) as an empirical matter, can be defended as a matter of ethical theory.If it is not necessary as an empirical matter to use animals in research, then there is no need to inquire about moral justification. Therefore, I examine the necessity issue first. The argument that it is necessary to use nonhumans in biomedical research, though flawed, is at least plausible, unlike our necessity arguments for other animal uses. I then discuss the justification issue and conclude that we cannot morally justify using nonhuman animals in research. (shrink)

"... Shapiro's book is bursting with thoughts, and if one is willing to mine them, one is sure to find items of interest or provocation." —The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Taking issue with a widely held view that Nietzsche's writings are essentially fragmentary or aphoristic, Gary Shapiro focuses on the narrative mode that Nietzsche adopted in many of his works. Such themes as eternal recurrence, the question of origins, and the problematics of self-knowledge are reinterpreted in the (...) context of the narratives in which Nietzsche develops or employs them. (shrink)

If opera had existed in Elizabethan London, the world's Top Bard, as W.H. Auden called him, might have become the world's Top Librettist. As Gary Schmidgall shows in this illuminating study, Shakespeare's expressive ways and dramaturgical means are like those of composers and librettists in numerous and often astonishing ways. No wonder that well over two hundred operas have been based on Shakespeare's plays. Ranging widely through the Shakespearean canon and the standard operatic repertory, Schmidgall presents a fascinating comparison, (...) focusing on similarities of expressive style, scenic structure, staging, and performance practice. Shakespeare and Opera offers extended discussions of issues central to both theatrical genres, including their shared demand for virtuoso display, the comparable functions of set speeches and arias, and the similarities of verbal and musical rhetoric, and the charges of unreality and melodrama that have dogged them both. In addition, Schmidgall provides concise essays on the most intriguing Shakespeare-based operas, including works of Verdi, Wagner, Bellini, Rossini, Berlioz, Thomas, Vaughan Williams, Barber, and Britten. He enriches his argument with the insights of the great composers who never set Shakespeare (Mozart, Puccini, and Strauss among them), major observers of the legitimate stage (from Samuel Johnson to Eric Bentley) and the musical stage (from Joseph Addison to Joseph Kerman), as well as the incisive views of influential artists, critics, and performers as diverse as Walt Whitman, H.L. Mencken, and Laurence Olivier. For all who love the stage, Shakespeare and Opera offers endless insight and fascination. Schmidgall's extended comparison of the two dramaturgies provides a fresh perspective on Shakespeare, musical theater, comparative drama, and theater history. (shrink)

E. E. Constance Jones, a regular contributor to Mind and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, and the author of several textbooks and a monograph, worked in both philosophical l...

People believe that perception is reliable and that what they perceive reflects objective reality. On this view, we perceive a red circle because there is something out there that is a red circle. It is also commonly believed that perceptual reliability is threatened if what we see is allowed to be influenced by what we know or expect. I argue that although human perception is often highly consistent and stable, it is difficult to evaluate its reliability because when it comes (...) to perception, it is unclear how one could establish a fact of the matter. An alternative to thinking of perception as being in the business of truth, is thinking of it as being in the business of transducing sensory energy into a form useful for guiding adaptive behavior. On this position, perception ought to be richly influenced by some types of knowledge insofar as this knowledge can aid in the construction of useful representations from sensory input. (shrink)

This article considers Helmholtz’s relation to philosophy, including Fichte’s philosophy. Recent interpreters find Fichtean influence on Helmholtz, especially concerning the role of voluntary movement in distinguishing subject from object, or “I” from “not-I.” After examining Helmholtz’s statements about Fichte, the article describes Fichte’s ego-doctrine and asks whether Helmholtz could accept it into his sensory psychology. He could not accept Fichte’s core position, that an intrinsically active I intellectually intuits its own activity and posits the not-I as limiting and determining that (...) activity, because that account requires cognitive abilities that conflict with Helmholtz’s claim that the development of spatial perception relies primarily on associative memory and involves no direct awareness of the ego’s activity as such. Helmholtz would have known various accounts of the distinction between subject and object, or self and world, from sensory physiology, including associative accounts invoking voluntary motor movements and accounts describing checks on the perceiver’s activity. Some of the accounts cite Fichte on the I and not-I, but most do not, and none adopt Fichte’s Idealism. Finally, the article examines Helmholtz’s relation to metaphysics, finding that in all periods he rejected Fichtean Idealism and that the modest metaphysics of his mature period is a version of structural realism. (shrink)

Descartes boldly claimed: "I think, therefore I am." But one might well ask: Why do we think? How? When and why did our human ancestors develop language and culture? In other words, what makes the human mind human? _Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture_ offers a comprehensive and scientific investigation of these perennial questions. Fourteen essays bring together the work of archaeologists, cultural and physical anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, geneticists, a neuroscientist, and an environmental scientist to explore the evolution of the (...) human mind, the brain, and the human capacity for culture. The volume represents and critically engages major theoretical approaches, including Donald's stage theory, Mithen's cathedral model, Tomasello's joint intentionality, and Boyd and Richerson's modeling of the evolution of culture in relation to climate change. The volume contains chapters by: Peter Carruthers; Thierry Chaminade; Philip Chase; Merlin Donald; Peter Gardenfors; Gary Hatfield; Jody Hey; Steven Mithen; April Nowell; Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd; Theodore Schurr; Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney; Kim Sterelny; and Felix Warneken. ISBN 978-1-934536-49-0. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt characterizes love as "a disinterested concern for the existence of what is loved, and for what is good for it." As such, he views romantic love as an inauthentic paradigm for love since such love desires reciprocation, sexual gratification and so on. I argue that Frankfurt's conception of love is too general—he does not distinguish between the type of love one has for one's partner, one's country, a moral ideal, etc., it overemphasizes the role of bestowal at the (...) expense of the part played by appraisal and it is insufficiently social. Certain forms of love, romantic love and friendship for instance, are defined largely in terms of reciprocation. For Frankfurt, reciprocation is somewhat of an accidental feature of love. This deficiency in Frankfurt's conception of love can be traced to a problem in his conception of selfhood which I argue is insufficiently social in nature. (shrink)

Development of a vaccine for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease currently affecting over 200 million people worldwide, has been targeted as a priority by the World Health Organisation. Research demonstrating the ability of humans to acquire natural immunity to schistosome infection, together with the successful use of attenuated vaccines in animals both under laboratory and field conditions, suggest that development of a human vaccine is feasible. Attenuated vaccines for schistosomiasis are considered neither safe nor practicable for human use, however, and therefore (...) other approaches must be considered. This review examines progress currently being undertaken in a number of different areas towards achieving the goal of a safe and effective human vaccine for schistosomiasis. (shrink)

Genomic research projects that collect tissues from deceased organ and tissue donors must obtain the authorization of family decision makers under difficult circumstances that may affect the authorization process. Using a quasi-experimental design, the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) substudy of the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project compared the recall and understanding of the donation authorization process of two groups: family members who had authorized donation of tissues to the GTEx project (the comparison group) and family members who had authorized (...) organ and tissue donations in years previous, who subsequently participated in two different mock-authorization processes that mimicked the GTEx authorization process (the intervention groups). Participants in the comparison and intervention groups were matched on key demographic characteristics.We found that participants in the intervention groups who experienced a mock-authorization process demonstrated better recall of the tissue donation request than members of the comparison group. Our data indicate that the stress associated with the loss of a loved one limited the ability of family members to recall details about the GTEx project. However, we found a similar lack of knowledge in both the comparison and the intervention group participants, suggesting lack of knowledge may be due to the complexity and unfamiliarity of the information presented to them during the authorization process. We discuss these findings in the context of everyday clinical decision making in cognitively challenging conditions. (shrink)

In this paper I look at the reasons for implementing VAR and the effect that it has had on the fans of soccer (football) in particular. I begin with a discussion of why VAR has been adopted in sports in general and in soccer specifically. I then discuss the notion of ‘flow sports’ and try to develop at taxonomy for classifying sports in terms of the relative importance of flow. Following this, I discuss the effect of VAR implementation on flow (...) sports in general before examining the effect of VAR on the fan experience in soccer, a game which I characterize as one of the purist examples of team flow sports. Finally, I discuss the effect of VAR on the fan experience of flow when watching sports. My main contention is that VAR, at least in its current forms, represents an erosion of the flow experience in matches which impoverishes the fan experience. In light of the perceived benefits of VAR for match officiating, I doubt that it will be going away anytime soon. The best that we can hope for is that it evolves so as to cause minimal disruption to the flow in flow sports. (shrink)

Most people care about animals, but only a tiny fraction are vegan. The rest often think of veganism as an extreme position. They certainly do not believe that they have a moral obligation to become vegan. Gary L. Francione—the leading and most provocative scholar of animal rights theory and law—demonstrates that veganism is a moral imperative and a matter of justice. He shows that there is a contradiction in thinking that animals matter morally if one is also not vegan, (...) and he explains why this belief should logically lead all who hold it to veganism. Francione dismantles the conventional wisdom that it is acceptable to use and kill animals as long as we do so “humanely.” He argues that if animals matter morally, they must have the right not to be used as property. That means that we cannot eat them, wear them, use them, or otherwise treat them as resources or commodities. Why Veganism Matters presents the case for the personhood of nonhuman animals and for veganism in a clear and accessible way that does not require any philosophical or legal background. This book offers a persuasive and powerful argument for all readers who care about animals but are not sure whether they have a moral obligation to be vegan. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preliminaries Descriptions and Quantification Descriptions and Predication Conclusion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 35-52 [Access article in PDF] Means Without End:Production, Reception, and Teaching in Kant's Aesthetics Gary Peters The Work of Art If aesthetics is to have a role within an art school context, it must be able to engage with the work of art as an ongoing and ontologically open productive enterprise. The reception of the artwork as a completed thing or (...) act and the aesthetic judgment necessary to take pleasure in the contemplation of it is largely irrelevant to the day-to-day work of the artist in the studio or onsite. Rarely do the tutor or student stand before a work that could be claimed to have reached completion or achieved what might be called "finality." On the contrary, in most cases an essential aspect of teaching practice is precisely to resist the impending closure of the work through a critical engagement which challenges the student to consider and reconsider the aesthetic possibilities of given forms within a situation of infinite reflection. Given this, it is important at the outset to consider Kant's notion of finality without end. So we may at least observe a finality of form, and trace it in objects — though by reflection only — without resting it on an end....Whenever an end is regarded as a source of delight, it always imports an interest as determining ground of the judgment on the object of pleasure. Hence the judgment of taste cannot rest on any subjective end as its ground. But neither can any representation of an objective end, i.e., of the possibility of the object itself on the principles of final connection, determine the judgment of taste. 1Echoing his famous description of art as "purposiveness without purpose," here the Kantian relation between finality and endlessness turns attention away from the art object, and the objective judgment determined by it, to the reflective process whereby the act of aesthetic judgment has primacy as that which acts upon the pleasure attending finality in the manner [End Page 35] of a tracing to be traced and retraced by the receiver. By thus denying finality an objective end, it is true that Kant removes the specter of desire from his aesthetics. But does this not also remove the originary work of the work of art, its eruptive production prior to reproduction in what might be called the "instant" of its creation outside of the "always already there" of what Jean-François Lyotard calls "aesthetic time?" 2 Indeed, to go further still, Maurice Blanchot famously conceives of the art work as harboring a radical "worklessness," a "neutral" absence that, nevertheless, is essential to its being a work, or its being as a work. 3 Does Kant's nonobjective account of aesthetic experience direct us, ultimately, toward this peculiar ontological neutrality, or does the communicative imperative at the heart of his aesthetics overlook what Blanchot would call the "fascination" of the work as the inscrutable presence of an absence? It is this problematic that weighs heavily upon the reading and teaching of Kant's aesthetics as presented here.In Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, Lyotard offers one solution to the problem. For him, reflective judgment is itself productive — "production that exceeds simple reproduction is an a priori condition for aesthetic judgment" (LAS, 67). That is to say, the power of the imagination and the pleasure associated with this power concern respectively the exercise and the registration of a productivity that is crucial for aesthetic reception to be possible. But does this playful enjoyment of our receptive/productive faculties and their beautiful attunement not obscure or distract us from the pure and immediate desire of the aesthetic where the concatenation of work and worklessness, that is to say, of production and reception, within the creative moment demands from the artist an interest in the ownership of, and responsibility for the work, as well as an absolute (one might say obsessive) commitment to the work of art — the labor of the aesthetic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach by Ryan ConnorsGary AtkinsonCONNORS, Ryan. Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xiii + 313 pp. Paper, $34.95The author adheres closely to the recommendation to tell his reader what he intends to do, tell him what he is doing while doing it, and having finished, tell him what he’s done, a recommendation (...) worth following for a work as tightly structured and complex as this one. It is clear, irenic, and shows extensive research: nearly 1,000 footnotes in its 275 pages of text offering many avenues for further exploration including numerous references to “alternative” accounts. It is far more than an analysis of cooperation, for it exposes the reader to a universe of concepts, many of which are seldom introduced in studies on the topic. It is also bracing, an elixir likely to incite (and likely intended to incite) the reader to a deeper commitment to careful moral thought and conscientious moral action. Few readers will close this book with a feeling of time unprofitably spent.The introduction makes clear the book’s two central claims: (i) that an adequate analysis of the topic of cooperation with evil has yet to be provided and (ii) that a virtue-based approach stemming from St. Thomas Aquinas contains the elements for its provision. In support of these claims the book is organized into five chapters, the first three foundational and the last two matters of application.Chapter 1, “The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas: Received and Jettisoned,” begins with a presentation of St. Thomas’s treatment of five topics—borrowing money from known usurers, scandal, restitution for [End Page 709] crimes committed by agents working together, exacting oaths from known perjurers, production of objects used for sinful purposes. This first section is followed by an examination of three theologians in the tradition of Thomistic analysis, Jean Capreolus (d. 1444), Giacomo de Vio Cajetan (d. 1534), and John of St. Thomas (d. 1644). Following this section is a third containing an account of the departure from the Thomistic mode of analysis represented by Thomas Sanchez (d. 1610) and St. Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787). The first chapter provides a nice introduction and solid grounding for what is to come.Chapter 2, “A Broad Sampling of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Casuist Authors,” explores in its first section the manuals of nine figures: Aloysius Sabetti, Thomas Slater, Dominicus Prümmer, Benoit-Henri Merkelbach, Noldin-Schmitt, Jone-Adelman, McHugh-Callan, Henri Davis, and Bernhard Häring. The second and third sections highlight the lack of consensus among the authors and the consequent perplexity encountered by a conscientious moral agent regarding what counts as a “sufficient, proportionate, serious, or grave” reason for cooperation with evil. At several points throughout this book the author acknowledges the good sense of the casuists and the careful articulation of their judgments, but he finds their general approach to be wanting for several reasons, including their tendency to neglect consideration of the moral virtues and the nature of the act of cooperation itself.The extensive historical grounding provided by chapters 1 and 2 prepares the reader for chapter 3, “The Renewal of Theology: A Return to Virtue,” the focal chapter of the book. The first section concerns the thought of Servais Pinckaers, who “initiated a revival of St. Thomas’s moral theory that continues to the present day.” This is followed by a section treating of magisterial documents adopting St. Thomas’s and Pinckaers’s approach: Veritatis splendor, Evangelium vitae, Declaration on Euthanasia (1980), Vademecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of Conjugal Life (1997), Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (2009). The third section considers the work of three twenty-first-century moralists who apply Thomistic methods to the topic of cooperation with evil: Steven Long, Archbishop Anthony Fisher, and Andrew McLean Cummings.Chapter 4, “A New Way Forward: the Virtuous Person Faces a Moral Dilemma,” is the first of two chapters showing St. Thomas’s approach at work. The author calls this approach both “object based” and “virtue based,” marking the two features receiving... (shrink)

The following reflections are intended as a preliminary to a more extended and in-depth series of case studies, focused analyses of actual artworks, and the issues arising from their particularity within what will be described here as a Heideggerian post-aesthetic aesthetics. The essay is not written from the perspective of a professional or academic philosopher or of a practising artist (even though I am one), neither fields of which have sufficiently engaged with the existential and aesthetic predicament sketched out below. (...) Thus, the attraction of both Heidegger and Blanchot is not just related to their well-known discussions of inbetween-ness, but, more essentially, to the peculiarly in-between location of their own thought and trajectory of thinking: Heidegger from "out of" philosophy "drawn" towards art; Blanchot from within the space ofliterature towards the exteriority of ontological thinking. The intention is to identify similarities and differences in their thought, but this is only perceived as relevant to the extent that it allows an initial reassessment of a de-subjectivized existential and aesthetic mode of thinking that has been largely abandoned by academic philosophy and art practice alike (albeit for very different reasons). If nothing else, the hope is that a different voice might be heard in the clamorous exchange between philosopher and artists, one that is sensitive to the complex predicament of the artist in a post-Heidegerrian world, and which above all remains faithful to the project of the artist and the artwork in the face of the philosophical valorization of "Art". Las siguientes reflexiones se presentan como preliminares a una serie de estudios de caso mas extensos y profundos, analisis focalizados de obras de artes reales, y los temas que surgen de sus particularidades dentro de lo que se describira aqui como una estetica heideggeriana post-estetica. El ensayo no esta escrito desde la perspectiva de un filosofo profesional o academico ni de un artista operante (aunque yo lo soy), ninguno de cuyos campos se ha comprometido suficientemente con el dilema bosquejado mas adelante. Asi pues, la atraccion de Heidegger y Blanchot no solo tiene que ver con sus bien conocidas discusiones sobre la inbetween-ness, sino, mas esencialmente, con la ubicacion particularmente in-between de su propio pensamiento y trayectoria del pensar: Heidegger desde "fuera de" la filosofia "sacado" hacia el arte; Blanchot desde dentro del espacio de la literatura hacia la exterioridad del pensar ontologico. La intencion es identificar similitudes y diferencias en su pensamiento, pero esto solo es percibido como relevante en la medida en que permite una reevaluacion de un modo de pensar existencial y estetico des-subjetivado, que ha sido ampliamente abando-nado por la filosofia academica y la practica del arte (aunque por razones distintas). Sin mas pretensiones, la esperanza es que se pueda escuchar una voz diferente en el intercambio clamoroso entre el filosofo y los artistas; voz que es sensible al complejo dilema del artista en un mundo post-heideggeriano, y que sobre todo permanece fiel al proyecto del artista y a la obra de arte frente a la valorizacion filosofica del "Arte". (shrink)

How does material culture matter for institutions? Material objects are increasingly prominent in sociological research, but current studies offer limited insight for how material objects matter to institutional processes. We build on sociological insights to theorize aesthetic style, a shared pattern of material object presence and usage among a cluster of organizations in an institutional field. We use formal relational methods and a survey of material objects from religious congregations to uncover the aesthetic styles that are part of the “logics (...) of god” in the United States’ Christian religious field. We argue aesthetic styles help structure an institutional field by spanning objects’ meanings across space and time, stabilizing objects’ authority, and demarcating symbolic boundaries. Our research provides a conceptual tool for understanding how objects bridge the material and symbolic dimensions of institutions and a methodological example for examining the meaning of objects across numerous organizations in an institutional field. (shrink)

In a cluster of books published originally in 1977, the two editions of La Révolution moléculaire, and L’Inconscient machinique, Guattari elaborated a typology of semiotic systems framed in a Peirce-Hjelmslev hybrid conceptual vocabulary. Reading across these three books I want to flesh-out a-signifying semiotics in relation to an infotech strand on the machinic phylum inspired by one of Guattari’s favourite examples of the kind of semiosis put into play by a-signifying signs : credit and/or bank cards. Guattari’s innovation was to (...) develop a-signifying signs in a typology of sign types but with respect to the problem of the relationship between material and semiotic dimensions in the age of planetary computerization and globalization. (shrink)

William James’s historic fascination with psychic phenomena, including the possibility of life after death, has become more widely known with the publication of recent books and articles on this controversial aspect of his scientific legacy. However, little is known about the emerging evidence suggesting the possibility that James’s scientific interest in these topics has not waned since he died. This paper reviews preliminary observations, including two exploratory double-blinded mediumship investigations, which are consistent with the hypothesis that James (with others) may (...) be continuing his lifelong quest to address the question of the survival of consciousness after physical death ‘from the other side’. These proof-of-concept investigations illustrate how future systematic laboratory research is possible. The limitations of current neuroscience methods are explicated in terms of investigating the hypothesis of the brain as a possible antenna-receiver for consciousness. If James’s tentative conclusions about the nature of the relationship between consciousness and the brain turn out to be accurate, then it is logically plausible (if not essential) to posit the possibility that his efforts have persisted in the recent past and present, and may even continue in the future. Scientific integrity plus the pursuit of verity require our being open to this important theoretical and empirical possibility. (shrink)

This essay is an exposition and analysis of the contrast Michel Foucault draws in "The History of Sexuality Vol. 1", between an outmoded conception of power as negatively restraining and his notion of power as productive, ubiquitous, and strategically dynamic. In "The Order of Things", Foucault had already shown how the locus of sovereignty changes in the "classical age" without either its structure being called into question or its theoretical warrant being exhibited. But he shows this by utilizing the term (...) "sovereignty" himself in all its richness and ambiguity. Contrasting his use of "sovereignty" with his more radical notion of fragmentary and inescapable "power," the essay concludes by arguing that at issue here is not the preemptive self-control of critical theory but normalizing interventions in the domain of everyday behaviors and practices. (shrink)