A close reading of photography yields a groundbreaking cultural biography; reveals photography's impresario, Alfred Stieglitz, as he has never been revealed before and looks at his photographs as they have never been looked at before.

I forgive the slight spin of sloganeering conveyed by the motto so frequently cited by proponents of a cosmos chock full of organisms: "Life will fed a way." Life is resilient and quite capable (especially in bacterial form) of living in the most damnably improbable places-from nearly boiling ponds in Yellowstone National Park to tiny pores in rocks as deep as two miles below the earth's surface. But even this degree of resilience must work within limits; if life ever evolved (...) on the Martian surface during its initial billion years with running water, the planet's later desiccation probably extinguished our solar system's second experiment in advanced carbon chemistry. (shrink)

This paper examines the work of Nāgārjuna as interpreted by later Madhyamaka tradition, including the Tibetan Buddhist Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). It situates Madhyamaka skepticism in the context of Buddhist philosophy, Indian philosophy more generally, and Western equivalents. Find it broadly akin to Pyrrhonism, it argues that Madhyamaka skepticism still differs from its Greek equivalents in fundamental methodologies. Focusing on key hermeneutical principles like the two truths and those motivating the Svātantrika/Prāsaṅgika schism (i.e., whether followers of Nāgārjuna should offer positive arguments or (...) should proceed on a purely “negative” basis), it argues that the Svātantrika commitment to mere conventional practice is robust and allows for a skepticism consistent with the scientific practices we must take seriously in the modern world. These findings are put forth as an illustration of what the Western tradition might gain by better understanding of non-Western philosophy. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that uneliminated idealizations pose a serious problem for scientific realism. I consider one method for “de-idealizing” models—robustness analysis. However, I argue that unless idealizations are eliminated from an idealized theory and robustness analysis need not do that, scientists are not justified in believing that the theory is true. I consider one example of modeling from the biological sciences that exemplifies the problem.

In this essay, I argue for four related claims. First, Richard Levins’ classic “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology” was a statement and defense of theoretical population biology growing out of collaborations between Robert MacArthur, Richard Lewontin, E. O. Wilson, and others. Second, I argue that the essay served as a response to the rise of systems ecology especially as pioneered by Kenneth Watt. Third, the arguments offered by Levins against systems ecology and in favor of his own (...) methodological program are best construed as “pragmatic”. Fourth, I consider limitations of Levins’ arguments given contemporary population biology. (shrink)

He is currently a research fellow at the University of Frankfurt. Theory and Politics is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

We examine and criticise some interpretations of the neuropsychology of the emotions, arguing that emotion and cognition should not be distinguished as distinct entities that can occur independently or be separated physiologically. In the twentieth century the separation of the cognitive from the emotional and the sensory has been challenged within philosophy, psychology, and now neuroscience. Centrifugal anatomical wiring suggests that emotion and sensation cannot be independent from cognition. For emotions to function adaptively, they must incorporate interpretation, anticipation, and problem-solving, (...) a view we call functionalism. Neuropsychological data on the emotions are consistent with these assertions. (shrink)

In this study of how we know what we know, W. Jay Wood surveys current views of foundationalism, epistemic justification and reliabilism.

In this paper we argue that the phenomenon of evidentiality, the grammatical marking in some languages of the source of one's knowledge, gives us a revealing window into the developmental processes in middle childhood that subserve the achievement of narrative competence. First, we argue that the mastery of evidentiality is connected to the development of an understanding of inference, and of the ability to mobilize this understanding in the construction of human narratives. Second, we examine the role that parent-child discourse (...) plays in clarifying the contrastive uses of sources of knowledge. Finally, we discuss the difference between first person and third person narratives, and suggest that evidentials might reveal something of the sources of evidence for persistence of self as the protagonist in one's own life story. (shrink)

Greg Cooper’s The Science of the Struggle for Existence is a must read for those interested in the history and philosophy of ecology and in topics like laws of nature, scientific explanation, and mathematical modeling. If you want to explore some of the metaphysical and methodological challenges that face ecology, there is no better place to go. Thus, this book marks an important moment in the philosophy of ecology. Folks like myself will be responding to it for quite a while. (...) What I find most appealing about the book is just how much there is to argue with. On every page there are interesting ideas presented but which are excitingly controversial. Some will argue with Cooper’s interpretation of the history of ecology. There are parts of the book that empiricists will balk at. You will not be left unstirred. Having said this, Cooper can be longwinded and while you read you should remember patience is a virtue. (shrink)

This volume contains essays dealing with complex relationships between Judaism and Christianity, taking a bold step, assuming that no historical period can be excluded from the interactive process between Judaism and Christianity, conscious or unconscious, as either rejection or appropriation.

Explores the role of dance education both inside and outside the arts.

The Concordance is designed around units of philosophical sense whose limits in the text are indicated to the line. Unlike research tools based merely on the occurrence of key words (e.g., cause), it provides precise and complete information about not only the location but also the diversity of content in all the items covered by its survey. Furthermore it provides the capability for tracing the family of topics to which a particular text may belong. In short, the Concordance tells you (...) as much as possible about a text before you look it up. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider three philosophical issues that arise in the environmental sciences. First, these sciences depend on mathematical models and simulations which are highly idealized and are coupled with very uncertain data. Why should we trust these models and simulations? Second, in standard hypothesis testing, the burden of proof is in favor of the null hypothesis which claims some causal factor has no effect. The alternative hypothesis is accepted only when the likelihood of the null hypothesis is very (...) low. Recently, some have argued that we should minimize Type II errors (not rejecting a false null) rather than Type I errors (rejecting a true null) given the environmental risks involved. I consider arguments for shifting this burden of proof when possible environmental harms are significant. Finally, in debates over global climate change, much is made of the apparent consensus concerning the effects of human induced greenhouse gas emissions on average surface temperatures. However, scientific methods are structured around dissent and criticism. Is consensus-based science orthogonal are even harmful to science? (shrink)

In this commentary, we offer an additional function of rationalization. Namely, in certain social contexts, the proximal and ultimate function of beliefs and desires is social inclusion. In such contexts, rationalization often facilitates distortion of rather than approximation to truth. Understanding the role of social identity is not only timely and important, but also critical to fully understand the function of rationalization.

In this essay, I first consider what the implications of global climate change will be regarding issues of equity. Secondly, I consider two types of proposals which focus on sustainable emissions and subsistence rights respectively. Thirdly, I consider where these proposal types conflict. Lastly, I argue under plausible assumptions, these two proposals actually imply similar policies regarding global climate change.

Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse, along with other philosophers, have argued for a metaethical position, the natural goodness approach, that claims moral evaluations are, or are on a par with, teleological claims made in the biological sciences. Specifically, an organism’s flourishing is characterized by how well they function as specified by the species to which they belong. In this essay, I first sketch the Neo-Aristotelian natural goodness approach. Second, I argue that critics who claim that this sort of approach is (...) inconsistent with evolutionary biology due to its species essentialism are in- correct. Third, I consider the prospects of understanding ethical normativity as a species of biological teleology claiming that this would be incompatible with our considered moral judgments. Fourth, after presenting gene-culture coevolution theory, I argue that the only way of reconciling naturalism and normativity in accordance with the natural goodness approach requires amending the selected effects function account to include cultural evolution. However, this approach, though not biologically reductionistic, still generates claims incompatible with our considered moral judgments. Finally, I end with a discussion of methodology and revisionistic moral theories. (shrink)

Thomas Henry Huxley designated three men as the finest intellects of 19th century natural history: his dear friend Charles Darwin; his most worthy opponent Georges Cuvier; and Karl Ernst von Baer, who discovered the mammalian egg cell in 1827 and wrote the founding treatise of modern embryology in 1828. Of these three, posterity has largely forgotten von Baer, who suffered a severe mental breakdown in the 1830's, but then recovered and moved to Russia (not uncommon for a German-speaking Estonian national), (...) where he enjoyed a distinguished second university career, largely in anthropology and lasting well into the 1870's. (shrink)

Thomas Friedman’s best-selling The World is Flat has exerted much influence in the west by providing both an accessible analysis of globalisation and its economic and social effects, and a powerful cultural metaphor for globalisation. In this review, we more closely examine Friedman’s notion of the social contract, the moral centre of his hopeful vision of a globalised world. While Friedman’s social contract holds a more generous view of social and state obligation than his neoliberal economic analysis might otherwise allow, (...) his fallacious assumptions about education rest on poorly argued claims about the nature of human beings, the proper aims of schooling, and meanings of justice in a globalised world. (shrink)

The period of British colonial rule in India is typically regarded as philosophically sterile. Indian philosophy written in English during the British colonial period is often ignored in histories of Indian philosophy, or, when considered explicitly, dismissed either as uncreative or as inauthentic. The late Daya Krishna thought hard about this at the end of his life, and we have been thinking about this in conversation with him. We show that this dismissal is unjustified and that this is a fertile (...) period for Indian philosophy in which traditional Indian philosophical ideas were brought into dialogue with the West and advanced with great acumen. In this paper, we present one case study to illustrate this point. (shrink)

These essays take up contemporary debates concerning the rationality of legal and political institutions. Roberto Unger proposes a "politics of modernism"--a politics appropriate to the historical experience that Nietzsche calls "nihilism" and identifies as the re-grounding of all values in human will. Unger's aim is to heighten the artificiality, plasticity or revisability of all social arrangements, so that the self may perpetually overcome its context. But such an attempt to give the idea of self-overcoming a political translation threatens to be (...) devoid of any content beyond the reiterated assertion of the will. Wittgenstein's remarks on rule-following give voice to an anxiety that recurs in contemporary legal culture: Can a rule--in words that H. L. A. Hart once used--"step forward to claim its own instances"? Wittgenstein does not deny that it can, but he wishes to call attention to our captivation by a picture of a "rule by itself," according to which this "stepping forward" seems queer in light of an otherwise unbridgeable gap between a rule and its application. In the grip of such a picture, it becomes tempting to think that the normative demand of a rule must be activated by an interpretation. Such a thought leads not only to philosophical perplexity, but to failures of justification in the court-room. To make sense of Aristotle's notion of corrective justice, we need the idea that a judgment can be genuinely in accord with a universal even though the content of the universal cannot be completely spelled out in detachment from the concrete situations to which it is applied. It is plausible to see much of contemporary tort law as a specification of corrective justice. But attempts to supply corrective justice with a consequentialist foundation are unable to account for the significance of wrongful agency in tort law, while attempts to supply it with a deontological foundation are unable to account for the significance of the tort victim's loss. (shrink)

A provocative study of the complex relations between philosophy and journalism.