The malaise of todays "Cultural Studies" is perhaps best summarized by Picasso (paraphrased) "success can lead to copying from oneself, and copying from oneself, and that is worse than copying from others". This book is both a response and an independent configuration of the dominant, current trend: that is "cultural studies" known as the Birmingham/U.S. School (B/USS). Contemporary Cultural Studies leapfrogs the Birmingham/U.S. School of future self-clarification. The fundamental conceptual, mythological and philosophical problematics have been worked over the last 40-plus (...) years in the United States in advance of the current self-clarificaion exercises. Surprisingly, the genesis of U.S. Contemporary Cultural Studies is in Continental philosophy, not unlike the genesis of the Birmingham/U.S. School. This book discusses some procedural questions and practical features relevant to theory and research practice in social science and humanities from the standpoint of phenomenology. (shrink)

The variety DMM of De Morgan monoids has just four minimal subvarieties. The join-irreducible covers of these atoms in the subvariety lattice of DMM are investigated. One of the two atoms consisting of idempotent algebras has no such cover; the other has just one. The remaining two atoms lack nontrivial idempotent members. They are generated, respectively, by 4-element De Morgan monoids C4 and D4, where C4 is the only nontrivial 0-generated algebra onto which finitely subdirectly irreducible De Morgan monoids may (...) be mapped by noninjective homomorphisms. The homomorphic preimages of C4 within DMM constitute a proper quasivariety, which is shown to have a largest subvariety U. The covers of the variety within U are revealed here. There are just ten of them. In exactly six of these ten varieties, all nontrivial members have C4 as a retract. In the varietal join of those six classes, every subquasivariety is a variety—in fact, every finite subdirectly irreducible algebra is projective. Beyond U, all covers of [or of ] within DMM are discriminator varieties. Of these, we identify infinitely many that are finitely generated, and some that are not. We also prove that there are just 68 minimal quasivarieties of De Morgan monoids. (shrink)

This book discusses the puzzle about death which is one of several extra-philosophical puzzles about the self. "Valberg's book is thoughtful, original, and challenging.

In an earlier paper I argued that time travellers cannot change the past: alleged models of changing the past either fall into contradiction or else involve avoiding, not changing, the past. Goddu has responded to my argument, maintaining that his hypertime model involves time travellers changing (not avoiding) the past. In the present paper I first discuss what would be required to substantiate the claim that a given model involves changing rather than avoiding the past. I then consider Goddu's hypertime (...) model and an earlier model due to Meiland. I argue that neither author does what would be required to substantiate the claim that the model involves changing (not avoiding) the past. I go on to give reasons for the stronger claim that no-one can present a coherent model and also substantiate the claim that it involves changing (not avoiding) the past. (shrink)

In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Students of Plato now had access to the entire range of the dialogues, which revealed to Renaissance audiences the rich ancient landscape of myths, allegories, philosophical arguments, etymologies, fragments of poetry, other works of philosophy, aspects of ancient pagan religious practices, concepts of mathematics and natural philosophy, and the dialogic nature of the Platonic corpus's interlocutors. By and large, Renaissance readers in the (...) Latin West encountered Plato's text through Ficino's translations and interpretation. -/- In Plato's Persona, Denis J.-J. Robichaud provides the first synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Robichaud analyzes Plato's works in their original Greek and in Ficino's Latin translations, as well as Ficino's non-Platonic writings and correspondence, in the process uncovering new aspects of Ficino's intellectual work habits. In his letters and works, Ficino self-consciously imitated a Platonic style of prose, in effect devising a persona for himself as a Platonic philosopher. Plato's dialogues are populated with a wealth of literary characters with whom Plato interacts and against whom Plato refines his own philosophies. Reading through Ficino's translations, Robichaud finds that the Renaissance philosopher seeks an understanding of Plato's persona(e) among all the dialogues' interlocutors. In effect, Ficino assumed the role of Plato's Latin spokesperson in the Renaissance. -/- Plato's Persona is grounded in an extensive study of scholarship in Renaissance humanism, classics, philosophy, and intellectual history, and contextualizes Ficino's intellectual achievements within the contemporary Christian orthodox view of Platonism. Ficino was an influential figure in the early Italian Renaissance: the key intermediary between Greek and Latin, and between manuscript and print, giving voice to Plato and access to the ancient frameworks needed to interpret his dialogues. (shrink)

There have been two main lines in the literature on restricted games: the first line was started by Myerson (1977) that studied graph-restricted games an the second one was initiated by Faigle (1989). The present paper provides a unified way to look on the literature and establishes connections between the two different lines on restricted games. The strength and advantages of this unified approach becomes clear in the study of the inheritance of the convexity from the game to the restricted (...) game where an interesting result by Nouweland and Borm (1991) on the convexity of graph-restricted games is turned into a direct consequence of the corresponding result by Faigle (1989), by means of this relation. (shrink)

Der Atheismus erlebte in den letzten Jahren eine Renaissance. Durch verschiedene Publikationen wurde der Atheismus in der Offentlichkeit und in den Wissenschaften wieder zum Thema. Religioser Glaube sei mit einem wissenschaftlichen Weltbild nicht vereinbar, so viele Atheisten. Diese Bewegung fasst man unter dem Namen Neuer Atheismus zusammen. Aber ist tatsachlich etwas neu am neuen Atheismus? Gibt es in den modernen Naturwissenschaften noch einen Platz fur Gott? Konnen Argumente der neuen Atheisten uberzeugend zeigen, dass es unvernunftig und unwissenschaftlich ist, an die (...) Existenz eines Gottes zu glauben? Dies sind nur einige Beispielfragen, die die Autoren dieses Bandes versuchen werden zu beantworten. Die Autoren kommen aus unterschiedlichsten Disziplinen: Aus der Physik, der Biologie, der Mathematik, der Philosophie und der Theologie.". (shrink)

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

Le névrosé est un homme qui demeure infantile et s'enferme dans un refuge imaginaire. Sans courage, il est prisonnier des angoisses primitives. A partir d'une compréhension de la relation fondamentale entre l'angoisse et le courage s'éclaire la valeur proprement humaine de l'amour humain, de la rencontre, de la confrontation et de la liaison entre le Moi et le Toi comme une existence sous la forme du Nous - la „liebende Wirheit” dont parle Binswanger. Le mysterium tremendum de l'amour personnel pour (...) un ‘étranger’ - qui n'est donc n i la mère n i le père - est un risque existentiel par essence, c'est le franchissement du seuil vers une forme nouvelle de l'existence du Dasein. C'est la raison pour laquelle la route vers le Toi passe par l'angoisse et que l'engagement dans cette voie présuppose un Moi libre, courageux et responsable. C'est ce que nous apprend déjà le dicton : „Qui veut épouser la fille du roi doit d'abord supporter le tremblement de l'angoisse”. Le courage qui est ici nécessaire s'accomplit dans la liberté heureuse de ce qu'on a appelé le „discours-révélant” -par lequel le „langage-du-désir” de notre inconscience originelle est assumé et qu'il accomplit sa signification. (shrink)

Opstellen van een hoogleraar in de wijsbegeerte.

Image-making is a nearly universal human behavior, yet the visual strategies and conventions to represent things in pictures vary greatly over time and space. In particular, pictorial styles can differ in their degree of figurativeness, varying from intersubjectively recognizable representations of things to very stylized and abstract forms. Are there any patterns to this variability, and what might its ecological causes be? Experimental studies have shown that demography and the structure of interaction of cultural groups can play a key role: (...) the greater the degree of contact with other groups, the more recognizable and less abstract are the representations. Here we test this hypothesis on a real-world dataset for the first time. We constructed a balanced database of Indigenous Australian rock art motifs from both isolated and contact Aboriginal groups (those often in contact with other groups). We then ran a survey asking participants to judge the recognizability of the motifs and to provide interpretations. Results show that motifs from contact Aboriginal groups were more likely to be judged as inter-subjectively recognizable and also elicited more convergent descriptions than motifs from isolated groups. This is consistent with the idea that intergroup contact is likely to be an important factor in the cultural evolution of pictorial representation. We discuss the implications of these findings for the archaeology and anthropology of art, and the parallels with language evolution. (shrink)