A psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of sublimation as a key term in Jacques Lacan's theories of ethics and feminine sexuality.

After the publication of Begriffsschrift, a conflict erupted between Frege and Schröder regarding their respective logical systems which emerged around the Leibnizian notions of lingua characterica and calculus ratiocinator. Both of them claimed their own logic to be a better realisation of Leibniz’s ideal language and considered the rival system a mere calculus ratiocinator. Inspired by this polemic, van Heijenoort (1967b) distinguished two conceptions of logic—logic as language and logic as calculus—and presented them as opposing views, but did not explain (...) Frege’s and Schröder’s conceptions of the fulfilment of Leibniz’s scientific ideal. -/- In this paper I explain the reasons for Frege’s and Schröder’s mutual accusations of having created a mere calculus ratiocinator. On the one hand, Schröder’s construction of the algebra of relatives fits with a project for the reduction of any mathematical concept to the notion of relative. From this stance I argue that he deemed the formal system of Begriffsschrift incapable of such a reduction. On the other hand, first I argue that Frege took Boolean logic to be an abstract logical theory inadequate for the rendering of specific content; then I claim that the language of Begriffsschrift did not constitute a complete lingua characterica by itself, more being seen by Frege as a tool that could be applied to scientific disciplines. Accordingly, I argue that Frege’s project of constructing a lingua characterica was not tied to his later logicist programme. (shrink)

Universalistic claims about the nature of justice are presumed to require larger commitments from a global perspective than partialist claims. This essay departs from standard partialist accounts by anchoring partialist claims in a different account of the nature of responsibility. In contrast to substantive responsibility, which is akin to an obligation and derived from principles, relational responsibilities grow out of relationships and their complex intertwining. While such accounts of responsibility are less clear cut, they will prove in the long run (...) to be more valuable in thinking about global ethics. I illustrate this point by considering the moral issue surrounding abandoned relationships. The approach offered here—partiality that rests upon relational responsibilities—makes the responsibilities owed by those in higher income countries towards lower income countries much richer and more complex than is usually presumed. (shrink)

A holobiont is a composite organism consisting of a host together with its microbiome, such as a coral with its zooxanthellae. To explain the often intimate integration between hosts and their microbiomes, some investigators contend that selection operates on holobionts as a unit and view the microbiome’s genes as extending the host’s nuclear genome to jointly comprise a hologenome. Because vertical transmission of microbiomes is uncommon, other investigators contend that holobiont selection cannot be effective because a holobiont’s microbiome is an (...) acquired condition rather than an inherited trait. This disagreement invites a simple mathematical model to see how holobiont selection might operate and to assess its plausibility as an evolutionary force. This paper presents two variants of such a model. In one variant, juvenile hosts obtain microbiomes from their parents (vertical transmission). In the other variant, microbiomes of juvenile hosts are assembled from source pools containing the combined microbiomes of all parents (horizontal transmission). According to both variants, holobiont selection indeed causes evolutionary change in holobiont traits. Therefore, holobiont selection is plausibly an effective evolutionary force with either mode of microbiome transmission. The modeling employs two distinct concepts of inheritance, depending on the mode of microbiome transmission: collective inheritance whereby juveniles inherit a sample of the collected genomes from all parents, as contrasted with lineal inheritance whereby juveniles inherit the genomes from only their own parents. A distinction between collective and lineal inheritance also features in theories of multilevel selection. (shrink)

Frege begins Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, the work that introduces the project which was to occupy him for most of his professional career, with the question, 'What is the number one?' It is a question to which even mathematicians, he says, have no satisfactory answer. And given this scandalous situation, he adds, there is small hope that we shall be able to say what number is. Frege intends to rectify the situation by providing definitions of the number one and the (...) concept of number. But what, exactly, is required of a definition? Surely it will not do to stipulate that the number one is Julius Caesar - that would change the subject. It seems reasonable to suppose that an acceptable definition must be a true statement containing a description that picks out the object to which the numeral '1' already refers. And, similarly, that an acceptable definition of the concept of number must contain a description that picks out precisely those objects that are numbers - those objects to which our numerals refer. Yet, while Frege writes a great deal about what criteria his definitions must satisfy, the above criteria are not among those he mentions. Nor does he attempt to convince us that his definitions of '1' and the other numerals are correct by arguing that these definitions pick out objects to which these numerals have always referred. Yet, while Frege writes a great deal about what criteria his definitions must satisfy, the above criteria are not among those he mentions. Nor does he attempt to convince us that his definitions of ‘1’ and the other numerals are correct by arguing that these definitions pick out objects to which these numerals have always referred. There is, as we shall see shortly, a great deal of evidence that Frege’s definitions are not intended to pick out objects to which our numerals already refer. But if this is so, how can these definitions teach us anything about our science of arithmetic? And what criteria must these definitions satisfy? To answer these questions, we need to understand what it is that Frege thinks we need to learn about the science of arithmetic. (shrink)

Deux constats sont à l'origine de ce livre. Le débat dans le monde académique autour du lien entre religions, sciences et espace public semble s'être fixé sur l'idée de 'post-sécularité'. Or, sous couvert de rendre les sociétés plus hospitalières aux religions, cette idée profite essentiellement à des courants politico-religieux absolutistes et fondamentalistes. Et la solide expertise francophone qui s'est développée sur le philosophe américain John Dewey (1859-1952) néglige trop souvent ses nombreux écrits consacrés à la critique des religions. Joan (...) Stavo-Debauge retrace donc la généalogie de l'idée de 'post-sécularité' et détaille les méfaits qu'elle peut masquer, comme les mobilisations contre l'avortement, les droits des personnes LGBT, l'expertise scientifique ou encore les politiques écologiques. Il s'appuie ensuite sur les écrits de John Dewey pour remettre au jour la pleine puissance de sa critique des religions fondée sur une pensée naturaliste et pragmatiste et la présenter comme un antidote efficace aux fondamentalismes religieux. (shrink)

La teoría de la propiedad de Locke tiene como escenario el estado de naturaleza, cuyo correlato empírico es la colonización inglesa de América. Este es el supuesto que permite articular la apelación a la teología para fundar la propiedad privada de modo unilateral y en cualquier lugar del mundo; el desplazamiento del criterio de necesidad a la teoría del valor para justificarla; así como el supuesto de abundancia que la hace posible sin requerir pacto político ni consenso social. En este (...) sentido, si su teoría de la propiedad resultó esencial para legitimar el liberalismo que moldeó América desde la colonización inglesa y la Constitución norteamericana, el hecho de que América sea el ejemplo para su teórico más temprano y destacado, permite comprender mejor el carácter esencial de la relación entre liberalismo y colonialismo. Locke's theory of property appears in the context of the state of nature, whose empirical correlate is the English colonization of America. This is the basis upon which three elements can be articulated: the appeal to theology in order to found unilaterally private property anywhere in the world; the change from the criterion of necessity to the theory of value to justify private property; and the assumption of abundance which makes it possible without having recourse to political pact or social consensus. In this sense, if Locke's theory of property has come to be essential to legitimize the liberalism which modelled America since the English colonization and the American constitution, the fact that America is the example for its earliest and most distinguished theorist, allows to a better understanding of the essential nature of the relationship between liberalism and colonialism. (shrink)

Two aspects of mothering—using drugs during pregnancy and giving up the rearing of one's children—are the focus of this analysis of 58 addicted Chicana mothers who spent their adolescent years in barrio gangs. From a traditional stance, such women were doubly deviant, since they violated gender-role prescriptions by joining a barrio gang and by becoming involved in heroin and street life. Half of these women added to this deviance by using heroin during pregnancy, and 40 percent relinquished at least one (...) of their children. This article explores what distinguishes these classically “bad mothers” from addicts who maintain some degree of conventionality in their mothering. We found that Mexican gender-role traditionalism is not the only influence on these women. Many came from cholo or underclass families with a tradition of street involvement. In addition, their involvement in gang and heroin worlds may influence their behavior as mothers. We found that women who used drugs during pregnancy were more likely than abstainers to be cholas and to reject traditional gender-role values. However, those who gave up their children were more likely than those who kept their children to be from traditional families. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on deviance and the underclass among Hispanic women. (shrink)

Semanticists often restrict their theories by imposing constraints on the parameters that can be employed for interpreting the expressions of a language. Such constraints are based on non-logical features of actual contexts of utterance, but they often have important effects on issues that do pertain to logic, like analyticity or entailment. For example, Kaplan’s restriction to so-called “proper contexts” was required in order to count “I am here now” as valid. In this paper I argue that constraints of this kind (...) are often posited in an arbitrary and non-consistent way, and that they yield the intended results only at the price of imposing ad hoc principles whose justification could in turn justify further, often undesirable restrictions into the theory. I also introduce a criterion for telling whether such constraints are imposed in a legitimate manner. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 31-48, June 2012.

This study was designed to address the issue of whether there is a general processor for the perception of emotion or whether there are separate processors. We examined the relationships among three channels of emotional communication in 100 healthy right-handed adult males and females. The channels were facial, prosodic/intonational, and lexical/verbal; both identification and discrimination tasks of emotional perception were utilised. Statistical analyses controlled for nonemotional perceptual factors and subject characteristics (i.e. demographic and general cognitive). For identification, multiple significant correlations (...) were found among the channels. For discrimination, fewer correlations were significant. Overall, these results provide support for the notion of a general processor for emotional perceptual identification in normal adult subjects. (shrink)

NOTES: Based on the book Socrates on trial written by Andrew Irvine and published by the University of Toronto Press. Performed at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, May 31-June 7, 2008. CONTENTS: Trailer, Who was Socrates?, Selected scenes, The production, Credits. UBC Library Catalogue Permanent URL: http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=3956307.

According to care theory the good parent confronting a helpless child has an unmediated impulse to relieve his distress; that impulse grows into a prescriptive ethic of relatedness, often contrasted to the more individualistic ethic of justice. If, however, a child's nature is understood as assertive and competent as well as fragile and dependent; if, in addition, he acquires needs through socialisation and is the beneficiary of inferred needs determined by others, then an ethic of need-gratification is insufficient. Caring theory, (...) with its emphasis on empathy, compassion, and attentiveness to the child's present state undervalues the role of adult restraint and imposition in a rounded caring philosophy. Parents (and teachers) must continuously balance gratification with suppression, support with restraint, engrossment with detachment. From this process emerges a revised relational ethic in which the care/justice distinctions are collapsed. (shrink)

The distinction between regular and irregular morphology is not clear-cut enough to suggest two distinct modular structures. Instead, regularity is tied directly to the type frequency of a pattern. Evidence from experiments as well as from naturally occurring sound change suggests that even regular forms have lexical storage. Finally, the development trajectory entailed by the dual-processing model is much more complex than that entailed by associative network models.

The Silent Scream, a videotape which includes footage of a real time sonogram of an abortion in progress, has been receiving considerable attention in America as the anti-abortion movement’s latest argument. The tape has been enthusiastically endorsed by President Reagan and has been distributed to every member of Congress and to each of the Supreme Court justices. It is produced and narrated by Bernard N. Nathanson, a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist, and it includes a number of implicit and explicit claims (...) which are highly controversial. Chief among these are: (1) the claim that since we can draw no morally significant line during the stages of fetal development, the fetusmust be recognized as a person from conception onward, (2) the claim that the film is a high tech, state of the art proof that abortion is the brutal murder of an innocent human being, (3) the claim that in abortion the fetus experiences terror and pain, and (4) the claim that as long as abortion is legal, showing this film (or one relevantly similar) must be made part of the informed consent procedure for abortion. My purpose in this paper is to examine these claims to see if The Silent Scream adds anything to the moral case for making abortion illegal. I give particular attention to two claims which are seldom addressed in the abortion debate, viz., that the fetus experiences terror and pain during an abortion, and that women have not had the information they need (but which this film provides) to give an adequately informed consent to abortion. Since there is so much confusion in the abortion debate, and since this film trades on that confusion, my broader purpose is to add some clarificationto the public discussion of this issue, which is daily becoming a more divisive issue of public policy. (shrink)

In this article I clarify foundational violence by differentiating it from direct, structural, and cultural violence. Unlike direct violence, foundational violence is productive as well as destructive and can occur via practices that conventionally are considered peaceful. Unlike structural violence, it obliterates instead of exploits established social relations. Unlike cultural violence, it does not merely distort reality but annihilates the meanings permeating a pre-existing reality. I illustrate this argument with the erasure of the residency rights of citizens of the former (...) Yugoslavia by the Slovenian state and the erasure of American Indian life worlds by the continental expansion of the United States. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to put into practice, in the field of social sciences, the principles that Husserl displayed in his book from 1936, "The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology”. In that seminal work, Husserl reflected on the mathematization of nature and produced an historical meditation on the essence of geometry. Here we will try to extend the reach of Husserlian postulates in order to deal with economics and, more specifically, with the theory of money. We (...) think that, in certain social sciences, and in particular in those with a clear mathematical penchant like economics, the use of formalization often helps to cover an uncritical use of phenomenologically ungrounded idealizations. This fact ultimately results in a massive concealment of the true sense of some of its principal phenomenanamely, money. It is worth mentioning that this concern does not have its roots only in phenomenology, for even academic monetary theory openly acknowledges that we lack an understanding of the meaning of money which could help us clarify and prevent financial crisis and economic collapses. Crisis, in short, are not the result of a deep understanding of the concept of money; on the contrary, they highlight the fact that we don’t really know what money is. Thus, our goal here is to illustrate the possibilities offered by the phenomenological method in its application to the question of money. It is in this sense that the research taking place here can be understood as a “phenomenological critique of monetary theory”.En el presente artículo se pretende llevar a cabo una aplicación de los principios que Husserl lleva a cabo en su obra de 1936, “La crisis de las ciencias europeas y la fenomenología transcendental”, a las ciencias sociales; concretamente, al concepto de dinero. En su obra de 1936, Husserl puso el énfasis en la matematización de la naturaleza, centrándose sobre todo en la meditación histórica sobre la geometría. Pero en el caso de algunas ciencias sociales, como la economía, la utilización libre de construcciones idealizadoras fenomenológicamente infundadas, como en el caso del dinero, está teniendo como resultado un enorme encubrimiento de sentido del fenómeno monetario. Esto no es vivido tan solo desde la feno-menología: desde la propia teoría monetaria se reconoce que estamos faltos de una comprensión del sentido del dinero que nos ayude a clarificar y prevenir de manera suficiente las crisis financieras. Estas crisis no son fruto de que hayamos comprendido demasiado bien el concepto de dinero, sino de que todavía estamos faltos de una comprensión profunda del sentido del dinero. Aquí pretendemos ilustrar las posibilidades que el método fenomenológico ofrece, aplicado al caso del dinero. En este sentido, pueden considerarse las investigaciones que tienen lugar aquí como “crítica fenomenológica de la teoría monetaria”. (shrink)

A lo largo de más de tres décadas, la obra de Lluís Duch (Barcelona, 1936) se ha ido consolidando en el ámbito de los estudios de historia de la cultura europea con una voz verdaderamente singular. Sus estudios sobre el mito son ya un referente ineludible en nuestro país y en Latinoamérica. Empalabrar el mundo, título de este volumen, es una de las expresiones más conseguidas de Lluís Duch, ya que en ella se da cita el alcance de su compromiso (...) intelectual y espiritual con el ser humano que habita un aquí y un ahora ineludibles. Empalabrar el mundo dota de sentido a todo cuanto contiene este volumen: además de una introducción general al pensamiento de Lluís Duch, un conjunto de aportaciones centradas en momentos principales de su obra o que entran en diálogo con la misma, así como dos textos del propio Duch relativos a la cuestión del mito, una breve biografía del autor y una bibliografía completa de sus publicaciones. Este libro quiere ser una invitación a la lectura de la peculiar antropología desarrollada por Lluís Duch a lo largo de más de cuarenta libros y de centenares de artículos científi cos, y quiere constituir, con ocasión de su setenta y cinco cumpleaños, un homenaje al pensador, al antropólogo y al monje. (shrink)