Over the past decade, Wolfgang Streeck has emerged as one of the most prominent voices in the debate on the crisis of democratic capitalism. This article provides a critical appraisal of Streeck’s recent writings in light of his wider intellectual trajectory, tracing the evolutions and continuities in his work over time; highlighting its important contributions to our understanding of the present crisis; and presenting a fourfold critique of his latest book on the end of capitalism. The main argument is that (...) Streeck’s work, while very valuable for its elucidation of the dynamics behind the demise of social democracy, ultimately remains plagued by a corporatist residue that keeps him from drawing his increasingly radical critique of capitalism to its logical conclusions. As a result, Streeck’s embrace of an exceedingly catastrophist worldview, devoid of any emancipatory potential, has tempted him to veer dangerously close to the welfare chauvinism of the nationalist right. (shrink)

Bruner sets forth nothing less than a new agenda for the study of the mind. He examines the irrepressibly human acts of imagination that allow us to make experience meaningful; he calls this side of mental activity the “narrative mode,” and his book makes important advances in the effort to unravel its nature.

Argues that educators should help students piece together authentic narratives about themselves and about society, and not to focus so much on teaching students to process information.

Closely related to this is Mr. Bruner's "evolutionary instrumentalism," his conception of instruction as the means of transmitting the tools and skills of a ...

" In the generations since, its influence has grown-today it is accepted as a classic of general jurisprudence.The work is a bold and persuasive attack on the ...

Is jealousy eliminable? If so, at what cost? What are the connections between pride the sin and the pride insisted on by identity politics? How can one question an individual's understanding of their own happiness or override a society's account of its own rituals? What makes a sexual desire "perverse," or particular sexual relations undesirable or even unthinkable? These and other questions about what sustains and threatens our identity are pursued using the resources of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines. The (...) discussion throughout is informed and motivated by the Spinozist hope that understanding our lives can help change them, can help make us more free. (shrink)

In chapter 5 of Knowledge and its Limits, T. Williamson formulates an argument against the principle (KK) of epistemic transparency, or luminosity of knowledge, namely “that if one knows something, then one knows that one knows it”. Williamson’s argument proceeds by reductio: from the description of a situation of approximate knowledge, he shows that a contradiction can be derived on the basis of principle (KK) and additional epistemic principles that he claims are better grounded. One of them is a reflective (...) form of the margin for error principle defended by Williamson in his account of knowledge. We argue that Williamson’s reductio rests on the inappropriate identification of distinct forms of knowledge. More specifically, an important distinction between perceptual knowledge and non-perceptual knowledge is wanting in his statement and analysis of the puzzle. We present an alternative account of this puzzle, based on a modular conception of knowledge: the (KK) principle and the margin for error principle can coexist, provided their domain of application is referred to the right sort of knowledge. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the role language plays at all levels of the argumentation process. It explores the effects that specific linguistic choices may have in the production and the reception of arguments and in doing so, it moves beyond the first, necessary, descriptive stance provided by current literature on the topic. Each chapter provides an original take illuminating one or more of the following three issues: the range of linguistic resources language users draw on as they argue; how cognitive (...) processes of meaning construction may influence argumentative practices; and which discursive devices can be used to fulfil a number of argumentative goals. The volume includes theoretical and empirical or applied stances, providing the reader both with state-of-the-art reflections on the relationship between argumentation and language, and with concrete examples of how this relationship plays out in naturally occurring argumentative practices, such as classroom interaction, and political, parliamentary or journalistic discourse. This is a very original, timely and welcome contribution to the study of argumentation conducted with the tools of the language sciences. The collection of papers relevantly tackles key linguistic, discursive and cognitive aspects of argumentative practices whose treatment is underrepresented in mainstream argumentation studies by offering new and exciting linguistically-grounded theoretical accounts. As such, the volume testifies both to the vigour of the linguistic current within the discipline and to the high standards of scholarly commitment and quality that the younger generation is pushing forward. Without question, this book marks an important milestone in the relationships between linguistics and argumentation theory. Christian Plantin, Professor Emeritus. (shrink)

Le développement du secteur privé et de la régulation par le marché à Cuba depuis dix ans questionne le projet de construction socialiste encore prôné par le pouvoir. Or, la concurrence inévitable entre le secteur d’État « socialiste » et le secteur privé marchand et capitaliste peut réduire à néant ce projet. En effet, la coexistence pacifique entre ces deux secteurs est illusoire. L’objectif de cet article est de mettre en évidence les modifications nécessaires des politiques économiques dans ce nouveau (...) contexte et de souligner l’importance d’appréhender le secteur productif privé comme un outil temporaire, permettant, à travers l’aliénation d’une partie de son surproduit, le développement du secteur socialiste. (shrink)

This book provides a much-needed critical introduction to the main doctrines of Frank Ramsey's work and assesses their contemporary significance.

This book, the product of a lifetime of research by one of the founders of developmental psychology, takes on the powerful assumptions behind these questions- ...

Perceptual experiences have been construed either as representational mental states—Representationalism—or as direct mental relations to the external world—Disjunctivism. Both conceptions are critical reactions to the so-called ‘Argument from Hallucination’, according to which perceptions cannot be about the external world, since they are subjectively indiscriminable from other, hallucinatory experiences, which are about sense-data ormind-dependent entities. Representationalism agrees that perceptions and hallucinations share their most specific mental kind, but accounts for hallucinations as misrepresentations of the external world. According to Disjunctivism, the phenomenal (...) character of perceptions is exhausted by worldly objects and features, and thus must be different from the phenomenal character of hallucinations. Disjunctivism claims that subjective indiscriminability is not the result of a common experiential ground, but is because of our inability to discriminate, from the inside, hallucinations from perceptions. At first sight, Representationalism is more congenial to the way cognitive science deals with perception. However, empirically oriented revisions of Disjunctivism could be developed and tested by giving a metacognitive account of hallucinations. Two versions of this account can be formulated, depending on whether metacognition is understood as explicit metarepresentation or as implicit monitoring of first-order informational states. The first version faces serious objections, but the second is more promising, as it embodies a more realistic view of perceptual phenomenology as having both sensory and affective aspects. Affectbased phenomenology is constituted by various metacognitive feelings, such as the feeling of being perceptually confronted with the world itself, rather than with pictures or mere representations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to study anomalies of self- and world-experience in schizophrenia from a phenomenological perspective, through the use of the EASE and the EAWE interviews. Four patients with diagnoses of schizophrenia were interviewed with both EASE and EAWE. A qualitative analysis of these interviews was carried out on all the data; quantitative scores were also assigned based on the frequency and intensity of items endorsed by the subjects. For the EASE, subjects endorsed an average frequency of (...) 45% of all items. For the EAWE, subjects endorsed an average frequency of 26% of all items. Furthermore, EAWE data indicated more heterogeneous profiles of experience than the EASE. This heterogeneity is not surprising, given that the EAWE was designed to be a more broad-based or less targeted exploration of various changes likely to be associated with schizophrenia spectrum. Our data suggest that, although disturbances of world experience may always be present in schizophrenia, they may take numerous and varied forms. Because the experience of the world occurs across many different modalities, disturbances of this experience would be fundamentally less unitary, whereas the experience of the self present a more coherent and unitary gestalt. These results show certain overlapping between the scales while also indicating the potential value of combined use of the two instruments. Finally, we discussed the relationship between experiential description and behavioral observation, and their potentially complementary value in exploring the first-person perspective, particular in the case of experiences that occur at a more pre-reflective level. (shrink)

This book consists of a focused and systematic analysis of Freud’s implicit argument for unconscious mental states. The author employs the unique approach of applying contemporary philosophical methods, especially Kripke-Putnam essentialism, in analyzing Freud’s argument. The book elaborates how Freud transformed the intentionality theory of his Cartesian teacher Franz Brentano into what is essentially a sophisticated modern view of the mind. Indeed, Freud redirected Brentano's analysis of consciousness as intentionality into a view of consciousness-independent intentionalism about the mental that in (...) effect set the agenda for latter-twentieth-century philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This text introduces university students to the philosophical ethos of critical thinking, as well as to the essential skills required to practice it. The authors believe that Critical Thinking should engage students with issues of broader philosophical interest while they develop their skills in reasoning and argumentation. The text is informed throughout by philosophical theory concerning argument and communication—from Aristotle's recognition of the importance of evaluating argument in terms of its purpose to Habermas's developing of the concept of communicative rationality. (...) The authors' treatment of the topic is also sensitive to the importance of language and of situation in shaping arguments, and to the necessity in argument of some interplay between reason and emotion. Unlike many other texts in this area, then, Good Reasons for Better Arguments helps to explain both why argument is important and how the social role of argument plays an important part in determining what counts as a good argument. If this text is distinctive in the extent to which it deals with the theory and the values of critical thinking, it is also noteworthy for the thorough grounding it provides in the skills of deductive and inductive reasoning; the authors present the reader with useful tools for the interpretation, evaluation and construction of arguments. A particular feature is the inclusion of a wide range of exercises, rich with examples that illuminate the practice of argument for the student. Many of the exercises are self testing, with answers provided at the back of the text; others are appropriate for in-class discussion and assignments. Challenging yet accessible, Good Reasons for Better Arguments brings a fresh perspective to an essential subject. (shrink)

Argumentation theory has much to offer our understanding of the doctor-patient relationship as it plays out in the context of seeking and obtaining consent to treatment. In order to harness the power of argumentation theory in this regard, I argue, it is necessary to take into account insights from the legal and bioethical dimensions of informed consent, and in particular to account for features of the interaction that make it psychologically complex: that there is a fundamental asymmetry of authority, power (...) and expertise between doctor and patient; that, given the potential for coercion, it is a challenge to preserve the interactive balance presumed by the requirement of informed consent; and finally that the necessary condition that patients be ‘competent to consent’ may undermine the requirement of respecting patient autonomy. I argue argumentation theory has the resources to deal with these challenges and expand our knowledge, and appreciation, of the informed consent interaction in health care. Keywords: argumentation theory, informed consent, doctor-patient interaction, competency to consent, autonomy, medical paternalism. (shrink)

This article discusses the common ground between William James and the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Recent commentators on this overlap have characterised philosophical anthropology as combining science (in particular biology and medicine) and Kantian teleology, for instance in Kant’s seminal definition of anthropology as being concerned with what the human being makes of itself, as distinct from what attributes it is given by nature. This article registers the tension between Kantian thinking, which reckons to ground experience in a priori categories, (...) and William James’s psychology, which begins and ends with experience. It explores overlap between James’s approach and the characteristic holism of 18th-century philosophical anthropology, which centres on the idea of understanding and analysing the human as a whole, and presents the main anthropological elements of James’s position, namely his antipathy to separation, his concerns about the binomial terms of traditional philosophy, his preference for experience over substances, his sense that this holist doctrine of experience shows a way out of sterile impasses, a preference for description over causation, and scepticism. It then goes on to register the common ground with key ideas in the work of anthropologists from around 1800, along with some references to anthropologists who come in James’s wake, in particular Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen, in order to reconceptualise the connection between James’s ideas and the tradition of anthropological thinking in German letters since the late 18th-century, beyond its characterisation as a combination of scientific positivism and teleology. (shrink)

Our research addresses the issue of teaching and learning concepts in science education as an empirical question. We study the process of conceptualization by closely examining the unfolding of classroom lesson sequences. We situate our work within the practice turn line of research on epistemic practices in science education. We also adopt a practice turn approach when it comes to the learning of concepts, as we consider conceptualization as being inherent within epistemic practices. In our work, pedagogical practices are modeled (...) as learning games and epistemic practices in science education are characterized as enacted epistemic games emerging through the unfolding of learning games. Science practices are modeled as source epistemic games since they are the source of the knowledge at stake in pedagogical practices. From this point, we examine closely how playing learning games can enable students to play enacted epistemic games and then in turn the source epistemic games at the core of conceptual understanding. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is to link pedagogical practices to epistemic practices in science education and to science practices in general. Our method is consistent with this epistemological framework as our case study on the concept of earthquakes in a 5th grade classroom sequence illustrates. Following an investigation of two experienced teachers and their classes during a teaching unit, our analysis shows how teaching effectiveness is determined by a dialectic. This entails on the one hand a didactic continuity between learning games and enacted epistemic games and, on the other, an epistemic continuity between enacted epistemic games and source epistemic games. (shrink)

Three reservations about Keller & Miller's (K&M's) argument are explored: Serious validity problems afflict epidemiological criteria discriminating disorders from non-disorders, so high rates may be misleading. Normal variation need not be mild disorder, contrary to a possible interpretation of K&M's article. And, rather than mutation-selection balance, true disorders may result from unselected combinations of normal variants over many loci. (Published Online November 9 2006).

In psychiatry's transformation from an asylum-based to a community-oriented profession, false positive diagnoses became a major challenge to the validity of the diagnostic system. The shift to descriptive, symptom-based operationalized diagnostic criteria of DSM-III further exacerbated this difficulty because of the contextually based nature of the distinction between normal distress and mental disorder. Through selected examples, the degree of success with which DSM-III and DSM-IV have attended to the challenge of avoiding false positive diagnoses is examined. Conceptual analysis of selected (...) criteria sets, with a focus on counterexamples to the claim that DSM criteria imply disorder, is performed. Psychiatry has so far failed to systematically confront the problem of false positives. Flaws in criteria, which can be recognized even by lay people, remain unaddressed, despite the fact that the issue is purely conceptual and is not sensitive to any new research information. (shrink)

There is something embarrassing about money. Everybody is seeking it but at the same time they are reluctant to talk about their bank balances and stock holdings. As a society we have so much of it that we can install 7000 saffron curtains all over Central Park, send tourists into outer space, and analyze the gas on the surface of Titan, yet we fail to spend it on millions of poverty-stricken people who die of disease or starvation each year. We (...) do open our pocketbooks sometimes, but only when television images of massive destruction overwhelm our sensibilities. Money often dominates our consciousness and bombards us in the headlines: Our national debt is 7.7 trillion dollars and it's increasing by more than 2 billion dollars a day; corporate executives of Enron walk away with millions while their employees lose their jobs and their pensions; and we had an endless fascination with Martha Stewart, who is worth millions, but went to jail trying to save a few thousand. (shrink)

Christian theology still condemns the sin of pride, yet many modern political movements stake their claims in terms of pride (Black Pride, Gay Pride, Deaf Pride, etc.). In the age of identity politics, it would seem pride may help to overcome self-loathing and to transform society. To see the appropriate personal and political place of pride, one must properly understand the differing roles of responsibility and value in the constitution of pride. A distinction between self-respect and self-esteem also helps clarify (...) the issues. (shrink)

J. Dokic s'interroge sur le concept de perception : en quoi consiste-t-elle? comment fonctionne-t-elle?, etc. Cette analyse est suivie de deux textes commentés, l'un de George Berkeley "Les idées du haut et du bas", et "Le contenu non conceptuel" de John McDowell.

Advances in behavioral and brain sciences have engendered wide ranging efforts to help understand consciousness. The target article suggests that abstract computational models are ill-advised. This commentary broadens the discussion to include mysteries of subjective experience that are inconsistent with current neuroscience. It also discusses progress being made through demystifying specific cases and pursuing evolutionary considerations.

Situation theorists such as John Barwise, John Etchemendy, John Perry and François Recanati have put forward the hypothesis that linguistic representations are situated in the sense that they are true or false only relative to partial situations which are not explicitly represented as such. Following Recanati's lead, I explore this hypothesis with respect to mental representations. First, I introduce the notion of unarticulated constituent, due to John Perry. I suggest that the question of whether there really are such constituents should (...) divide in two issues, one concerning language and the other concerning thought. Then I formulate a dilemma that any friend of cognitive unarticulated constituents must face: alleged unarticulated constituents seem to be either articulated or non-constituents after all. The dilemma is strengthened by the fact that unarticulated constituents cannot be inferentially relevant. In §4, three constraints on entertaining situated representations are spelled out. First, although the situation within which one is immersed is not represented as such, there must be cognitive facts that make immersion possible, and explain why one is implicitly related to a particular situation as opposed to another. Second, the move from a given representation to one which articulates the situation requires the capacity to contrast the latter with others in the same range. Third, I suggest that conceptual representations differ from non-conceptual ones in the permanent possibility of detachment that they allow. I then illustrate how these constraints work in three sorts of cases. In the first, thoughts like It's raining and It's over are implicitly related to their situations via some practical capacity of keeping track of particular places or times. In the second sort of cases, the relevant situations are not given, but stipulated, like in In Constance, it's raining. Cases of the third sort are those in which an unarticulated constituent is relevant to a whole system of representations, for instance the perceptual system. In the last section, I use the notion of ad hoc representation to defend the cognitive application of situation semantics against an important objection. (shrink)

This paper is about Ramsey's Principle, according to which a belief's truth-conditions are those that guarantee the success of an action based on that belief whatever the underlying motivating desires. Some philosophers have argued that the Principle should be rejected because it leads to the apparently implausible consequence that any failure of action is the result of some false belief on the agent's part. There is a gap between action and success that cannot be bridged by the agent's cognitive state. (...) At best, the Principle should be relativized to circumstances. We show on the contrary that when the Principle is properly understood, it does not amount to “overburdening” belief. We exploit an analogy between knowledge and action in order to show that intentional action is a source of knowledge relative to a set of beliefs whose collective truth guarantees the success of the action. It does not follow that the agent is explicitly representing all possible obstacles to her action. Most of the relevant beliefs are implicit, in the sense that if they were to be formed, they would be directly or indirectly justified by the agent's experience of acting. (shrink)