Based on anthropological fieldwork in Australia and Colombia, this collection of essays uses the workings of the human nervous system to illustrate concepts of culture.

In a world surrounded by smart objects from sensors to automated medical devices, the ubiquity of ‘smart’ seems matched only by its lack of clarity. In this article, we use our discussions with expert stakeholders working in areas of implantable medical devices such as cochlear implants, implantable cardiac defibrillators, deep brain stimulators and in vivo biosensors to interrogate the difference facets of smart in ‘implantable smart technologies’, considering also whether regulation needs to respond to the autonomy that such artefacts carry (...) within them. We discover that when smart technology is deconstructed it is a slippery and multi-layered concept. A device’s ability to sense and transmit data and automate medicine can be associated with the ‘sting’ of autonomy being disassociated from human control as well as affecting individual, group, and social environments. (shrink)

Starting with the first time they turned on a television or saw a billboard, this generation of teens, more than any generation before, has been inundated with the message, "If I can have that or look more like that, then I will be happy." Get Happy is a breath of fresh air for teenagers to help them become happy with who they are and what they have today rather than waiting for the next big thing. Teen advocate and author (...) class='Hi'>Kimberly Kirberger, along with her son, Jesse, enlightens readers with the idea that happiness is a choice, and it is available to us whenever we decide we want it. Kirberger uncovers the lies the media, our educational system, and even our well-intentioned friends and family tell us about happiness. Happiness can only be found in the here and now, not in what the future may bring. Get Happy Guide is all about letting go of our past and stepping into our present. It's about not being a victim and about learning how to gain control over our emotions. Poems, cartoons, and insightful stories are peppered throughout with examples of how other teenagers have found their own sense of happiness. (shrink)

: In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique, Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cannot (...) cause appearances directly because they depend essentially on the passive sensibility of finite beings. Kant’s response to the second version is that human beings are endowed with transcendental freedom, which blocks the causal transitivity that is presupposed by this version. We also contrast his position on this topic with Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to plumb the conventions which exist at a specific historical moment in both the aesthetic and scientific spheres. I will assume the existence of a web of conventions within the world of the aesthetic—conventions which have elsewhere been admirably illustrated—but will depart from the norm by examining the synchronic existence of another series of conventions, those of medicine. I do not mean in any way to accord special status to medical conventions. Indeed, the world is (...) full of overlapping and intertwined systems of conventions, of which the medical and the aesthetic are but two. Medicine offers an especially interesting source of conventions since we do tend to give medical conventions special “scientific” status as opposed to the “subjective” status of the aesthetic conventions. But medical icons are no more “real” than “aesthetic” ones. Like aesthetic icons, medical icons may iconographic in that they represent these realities in a manner determined by the historical position of the observers, their relationship to their own time, and to the history of the conventions which they employ. Medicine uses its categories to structure an image of the diversity of mankind; it is as much at the mercy of the needs of any age to comprehend this infinite diversity as any other system which organizes our perception of the world. The power of medicine, at least in the nineteenth century, lies in the rise of the status of science. He conventions of medicine infiltrate other seemingly closed iconographic systems precisely because of this status. In examining the conventions of medicine employed in other areas, we must not forget this power.One excellent example of the conventions of human diversity captured in the iconography of the nineteenth century is the linkage of two seemingly unrelated female images—the icon of the Hottentot female and the icon of the prostitute. In the course of the nineteenth century, the female Hottentot comes to represent the black female in nuce, and the prostitute to represent the sexualized woman. Both of these categories represent the creation of classes which correspondingly represent very specific qualities. While the number of terms describing the various categories of the prostitute expanded substantially during the nineteenth century, all were used to label the sexualized woman. Likewise, while many groups of African blacks were known to Europeans in the nineteenth century, the Hottentot remained representative of the essence of the black, especially the black female. Both concepts fulfilled an iconographic function in the perception and the representation of the world. How these two concepts were associated provides a case study for the investigation of patterns of conventions, without any limitation on the “value” of one pattern over another. Sander L. Gilman is professor of Humane Studies in the Department of German Literature and Near Eastern Studies and professor of Psychiatry in the Cornell Medical College, Cornell University. He is the author or editor of numerous studies of European cultural history with a focus on the history of stereotypes. In addition, he has coedited Degeneration with J. E. Chamberlin. His study Jewish Self-Hatred is forthcoming. (shrink)

The U.S. Supreme Court declared procreation to be a fundamental right in the early twentieth century in a case involving Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act, an act that permitted unconsented sterilization of individuals convicted of certain crimes. The right that the Court articulated in that case is a negative right: it requires that the government not place unjustified roadblocks in the way of people seeking to procreate, but it does not require the government to take positive steps to help people (...) procreate if they wish to. I argue that a positive legal right is morally necessary in the United States, given the profound significance of procreation, the current barriers to access to care, and the related issues of individual and societal justice. I assume at the outset that the right to procreate should be expansive enough to include a right to noncoital reproduction. The absence of a positive right to procreate reflects not just constitutional tradition but also a governmental and societal commitment to a longstanding set of reproductive hierarchies by which those who fall outside of the traditional framing of family too frequently find their procreative dreams hindered. Reconceiving procreative rights to include a positive right would create greater opportunities to argue and lobby for increased access to technologies that are out of reach for many. (shrink)

Sander Gilman and David Parent present a fascinating sellection of memoirs, anecdotes, and informal recollections by friends and acquaintances of Nietzsche, translated by Parent from the definitive German collection.

Why do physicians who've taken the Hippocratic Oath willingly cut into seemingly healthy patients? How do you measure the success of surgery aimed at making someone happier by altering his or her body? Sander L. Gilman explores such questions in Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul, a cultural history of the connections between beauty of body and happiness of mind. Following these themes through an impressive range of historical moments and players, Gilman traces how aesthetic alterations of the (...) body have been used to "cure" dissatisfied states of mind. In his exploration of the striking parallels between the development of cosmetic surgery and the field of psychiatry, Gilman entertains an array of philosophical and psychological questions that underlie the more practical decisions rountinely made by doctors and potential patients considering these types of surgery. While surveying and incorporating the relevant theories of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Karl Menninger, Paul Schilder, contemporary feminist critics, and others, Gilman considers the highly unstable nature of cultural notions of health, happiness, and beauty. He reveals how ideas of race and gender structured early understandings of aesthetic surgery in discussions of both the "abnormality" of the Jewish nose and the historical requirement that healthy and virtuous females look "normal," thereby enabling them to achieve invisibility. Reflecting upon historically widespread prejudices, Gilman describes the persecutions, harrassment, attacks, and even murders that continue to result from bodily difference and he encourages readers to question the cultural assumptions that underlie the increasing acceptability of this surgical form of psychotherapy. Synthesizing a vast body of related literature and containing a comprehensive bibliography, Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul will appeal to a broad audience, including those interested in the histories of medicine and psychiatry, and in philosophy, cultural studies, Jewish cultural studies, and race and ethnicity. (shrink)

The use and abuse and critique of Kant has generated a huge literature among contemporary political theorists; his work has been surreptitiously kept by some critics of the Enlightenment to exeplify starndards of modernity. Kimberly Hutchings reevaluates Kant's work in terms of its significance in the writings of Habersmas, Arendt, Lyotard and Foucault. This is not an exercise in the history of ideas; through her extremely lucid presentation of Kant's critical philosophy, Hutchings reveals the critique to be a complex, (...) ambiguous political practice. The common Kantian heritage in the thought of the four contemporary theorists challenges orthodox distinctions between modernist and postmodernist theorizing. Kant, Critique and Kant addresses why Kant's legacy is inescapable for current debates about both "critique" and politics. This reading sheds a new light on continental and political philosophy, international relations theory and feminist theory. (shrink)

In The Frontiers of Justice, Martha Nussbaum argues that social contract theory cannot accommodate political duties to animals because it requires the parties to the contract to enjoy rough physical and mental equality. Her interpretation of the social contract tradi­tion is unpersuasive; social contract theory requires only that the parties be equally free and deserving of moral consideration. Moreover, social contract theory is superior to her capabilities approach in that it allows us to limit the scope of the community of (...) justice to animals we are capable of recognizing as subjects of justice and with whom we have a political relationship. (shrink)

Stand your ground laws (SYG) allow an individual to use deadly force against a perceived attacker anywhere that he or she has a legal right to be, without the requirement to attempt retreat before using deadly force. This article offers an analysis of SYG laws through a Sartrean existentialist lens. Drawing off existing empirical research and case examples, I make three claims: First, SYG laws have existential import to the extent that they influence individuals’ beliefs, behavior, and judgments. Second, this (...) existential import makes individuals more likely to perceive situations as threatening and find reasons to be afraid. Third, the phenomenological experience of negative emotions such as fear and anger affects our ability to make careful and reasoned judgments regarding the amount of threat we face. I build my case for these three claims using Sartre’s concept of fundamental project, or the image of self used to organize one’s existential possibilities. I also use Sartre’s phenomenological account of emotion and Robert Solomon’s account of emotion, which has Sartrean roots. I argue that, based on my analysis, the right to use self-defense should include the duty to retreat when possible. (shrink)

Perhaps more than any other scholar, Michael Moore has argued that there are deep and necessary connections between metaphysics, morality, and law. Moore has developed every contour of a theory of criminal law, from philosophy of action to a theory of causation. Indeed, not only is he the central figure in retributive punishment but his moral realist position places him at the center of many jurisprudential debates. Comprised of essays by leading scholars, this volume discusses and challenges the work of (...) Michael Moore from one or more of the areas where he has made a lasting contribution, namely, law, morality, metaphysics, psychiatry, and neuroscience. The volume begins with a riveting contribution by Heidi Hurd, wherein she takes an unadorned and unabashed look at the man behind this monumental body of work, full of both triumphs and sadness. A number of essays focus on Moore's view of the purpose and justification of the criminal law, specifically his endorsement of retributivism and legal moralism. The book then addresses Moore's work in the various aspects of the general part of the criminal law, including Moore's position on how to understand criminal acts for double jeopardy purposes, Moore's claim that accomplice liability is superfluous, and Moore's views about the culpability of negligence, as well as the relationship between that view and proximate causation. Furthermore, the subject of defenses in criminal law is addressed, including self-defense, and also the intersection of psychiatry, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the criminal law. Also discussed are features of morality, and Moore's work in general jurisprudence. Finally, Moore concludes the volume with an essay that defends and delineates the features of his views. (shrink)

Verslagen van ontmoetingen met de Duitse filosoof (1844-1900) die een sleutel tot zijn werk bieden.

Various claims for theory-laden perception have involved empirical as well as conceptual considerations. Thomas Kuhn cites New Look psychological research in discussing the role of a paradigm in perception (1970) and Paul Churchland (1988) appeals to biological evidence, as well as New Look sources similar to Kuhn's. This paper offers a critical examination of the empirical evidence cited by Kuhn and Churchland, including a look at the underlying experimental work. It also offers a comment on the application of such evidence (...) in a naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

The relationship between technology, philosophy, and politics is both contentious and vital to our understanding of human nature and the ways human beings interact with one another in society; Francis Bacon outlined the wild potential and great danger of this relationship. Francis Bacon's New Atlantis in the Foundation of Modern Political Thought explores Bacon’s role as a founder of modern political science and the place of his New Atlantis in the founding of modern political thought.

This is a bibliography of Ann Dummett's work.

Georg Wilhelm Hegel’s dialectic plays a crucial role in some of the thought of the most prominent Black thinkers. The role it plays has received little attention. In this dissertation, I begin to fill this lacuna in Africana Philosophy by examining the arguments of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in “The Conservation of Races,” Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, and Cyril Lionel Robert James in The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San (...) Domingo Revolution and Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin. I argue that forms of praxis are the result of their engagement with Hegel’s dialectic: reflexive practice, absolute praxis, and organic praxis respectively. I show that in each of these cases Hegel’s dialectical approach to history (dialectical thinking) was essential to their own attempts to understand the possibility of a positive transformation of the pervasively racist world they inhabited. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s influence on the thought of Hannah Arendt has been frequently noted, but the precise nature of Arendt’s critique of her mentor is less understood. Kim Maslin argues that Arendt’s work attempted to transform fundamental ontology for responsible use in the public realm.

This volume offers both theoretical and research-based accounts from mothers in academia who must balance their own intricate knowledge of school systems, curriculum and pedagogy with their children’s education and school lives. It explores the contextual advantages and disadvantages of "knowing too much" and how this impacts children’s actions, scholastics and developing consciousness along various lines. Additionally, it allows teachers, administrators and researchers to critically examine their own discourses and those of their students to better navigate their professional and domestic (...) roles. Gathering narratives from academic women in traditional and nontraditional maternal roles, this volume presents both contemporary and retrospective experiences of what it’s like to raise children amidst educational and sociocultural change. (shrink)

Although it is not yet officially recognized as a clinical entity which is diagnosable, Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) has been included in section III for further study in the DSM-5 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2013). This is important because there is increasing evidence that people of all ages, in particular teens and young adults, are facing very real and sometimes very severe consequences in daily life resulting from an addictive use of online games. This article summarizes general aspects (...) of IGD including diagnostic criteria and arguments for the classification as an addictive disorder including evidence from neurobiological studies. Based on previous theoretical considerations and empirical findings, this paper examines the use of one recently proposed model, the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model, for inspiring future research and for developing new treatment protocols for IGD. The I-PACE model is a theoretical framework that explains symptoms of Internet addiction by looking at interactions between predisposing factors, moderators, and mediators in combination with reduced executive functioning and diminished decision making. Finally, the paper discusses how current treatment protocols focusing on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Internet addiction (CBT-IA) fit with the processes hypothesized in the I-PACE model. (shrink)

The greatest intensity of “live” life is captured from as close as possible in order to be borne as far as possible away. Jacques Derrida. Echographies of Television . Rainer Ganahl has made a study of studying. As part of his extensive autobiographical art practice, he documents and presents many of the ambitious educational activities he undertakes. For example, he has been videotaping hundreds of hours of solitary study that show him struggling to learn Chinese, Arabic and a host of (...) other languages. The stacked boxes of tapes are then presented like minimalist monoliths, dense archives of effort. About fifteen years ago, Ganahl began photographing the lectures that he attends. At the time, he hadn’t seen anyone else doing it, so besides his spare selection of images of the speaker and the audience, much of the time the lectures would just pass into memory, undocumented, or recorded in writing alone. Since then, he has felt the transition to digital cause a significant shift in his process. At the same time, he has seen the habit become ubiquitous as others photograph, record, and videotape the lectures all around him. In keeping with the theme of this inaugural issue of continent. , can we propose each small grouping of photographs that result an isthmus stretching between two disparate bodies of mind? The first being the body of the lecture as spelled out in the title of each work – the experience of the event in all its constituent parts. The second is the body of the recipient, the listener, in this case an artist, who plays a minimal role just beyond the prescripted behavior of sitting and listening. He uses a gesture of documentation to draw a line between himself and the event, creating an artwork. Františka + Tim Gilman: As we mentioned before, the theme of the magazine for this issue is "isthmus." It seems like a very good way into your work, and it leads us to ask what connection you see between your photographs of the lecture and the lecture itself? Rainer Ganahl: The relationship is of course a concrete, pictorial one, or if you want a mimetic one but also an abstract one because the photographs carry the title of the lecture, the names of the lecturers, the site, the institution and the time of the lecture. Photos are fixed moments of time and can reproduce images displayed and reproduce visuals presented at a moment but they don’t come with time based recordings that video or sound takes are offering. What remains of a lecture is usually just the memory, some notes and all the announcements of it. In my case I end up with a visual product I declare as my artwork. It might not differ from any snapshot taken by any other student or member of the audience but I do this in a semi-systematic way with certain rules and procedures I have set up. While I am at a lecture I am mainly focusing on the lecture itself. Last night I went to one of Slavoj Žižek which demanded quite some concentration. I even was asking him a question at the end. I took photos as well but still didn’t lose track of the lecture. I didn’t walk around, I was not preoccupied by where I was sitting and what light I was having like some of the other photographing and filming people in the room who came and left, moved around and tried to capture him from this and that angle, from close and far. I just sat there and concentrated on the lecture and yet managed to take about 30 or so images of him, the public around me and of the film clips he presented. Once the lecture is over the story changes: it all becomes a question of the images, their selection, their visual qualities, their labeling and archiving. The function of the images also change: not only do they stand for an intellectual event in a row of lectures that become part of my intellectual history within many possible such histories but they also have to function as art, something not everybody else with images of lecturers demands of their images. This is my specific claim as an artist to impose them as artworks. And as with all artistic propositions the offer can be accepted or rejected. I basically spend my life trying to do exactly that: making what I declare as art, offering something to anybody interested in it as my art, an offer that is not and will never be accepted as such by all people. F+T: What are your criteria for selection, i.e. how do you choose which lectures to photograph, by lecturer, by topic, or do you photograph any and every lecture you can? RG: As everything in my life, I go by my interest which is the result of many factors. If I am aware of a lecturer, read his books or appreciate his works my interest of attending his much higher than if I am not aware of it. I usually don’t go to lecturers simply based on their subjects—something that can happen of course, if the subject, the title of the lecture is promising or at the heart of my interest. Sometimes I also wait for years to get a change to photograph certain people but I do that in a very low-level “keep your ears up” mentality and not in a systematic scanning of all channels and possibilities. I do not go into philosophy departments and photograph everybody teaching there. I go with the flow—and unfortunately a great deal of great talks I also miss because I hear too late of them. Often, I also stumble into them by traveling, by getting emails from friends and by simply being in the right spot at the right time. Somehow you could look at my lecture par cours as some kind of loose intellectual flâneurism . If you know of interesting lectures and events, please, let me know. F+T: Is your selection of images more of a production or post-production method? That is, do you take a lot of photos and select only a few images from each lecture, or do you take them very selectively? Do you have a particular methodology for the selection of images? RG: This all changed a bit with the arrival of digital photography. In the beginning I had to pay a lot of money for film developing. Hence, I was taking either one role - 36 images - or half a role - 13 images - depending on who talked and whether they projected images. With the unlimited capacity of digital imaging I easily end up between 30 and 150 images of one event still depending of whether images are presented or not. In the first years of that project when I wasn’t fully aware yet of what I was doing, I printed at least 2 images of any lecture and sometimes three or even four, a choice that was also constrained by costs. But again, since I have a web site and since images can easily be selected and presented on my web site without generating remarkable costs I have now more and more pain to reduce them to less than ten or eight images for an event. Now, before I have them printed which really is expensive, I can present them already as artwork on my web site without any immediate costs. Thus the economic factor is at the end of the chain which enables me to be more ‘generous’ and include more images. Over the last years I have been mostly selecting at least four photographs for a lecture unit but recently also as many as ten. But so far only one set above four images has been actually printed and sold. What might sound even more shocking is the likely fact that if a curator or a collector demands me to reduce the number of images due to costs, I might compromise at this current stage if the images have not been yet printed or published outside my own web site. This means that to a certain degree any selection that has only seen publication on my web site and not yet been produced runs the risk to change in numbers of images included. Needless to say, I am the last one that finally makes a decision and I do honor all given earlier decision if those were final. F+T: How do you feel the act of photographing the lecture affects your reception of the contents of the lecture? And your recollection afterwards, do you remember the lecture more having photographed it, or just having sat and listened? RG: As mentioned above, I get very little distraction from photographing since I can multitask well and do not obsess about the quality of the image: I photograph from where I am and listen with my ears and not my eyes. I am not sure whether the images serve as a mnemonic devise to the content of the lecture if there are no images involved but they at least remind me that the lecture existed, the title of the lecture and the name of the people and institutions involved. The titles of the hundreds of lectures I took during the past 15 years can also be read as an essay of theoretical life in that period. This will be come more and more visible as time passes by. These images age much better than I do. F+T: You mentioned at the outset of our discussions that you started this practice some time ago and have seen the practice of photographing lecturers become more commonplace. Why do you think that this shift has taken place? RG: The answer is very simple. Photographing is now free of any charge and hence omnipresent. You buy a phone or any other personal digital assistant and it has a camera integrated in it whether you want it or not. There is no need to develop images and there is no hassle to keep images, to distribute images, to organize images and save them. It is all virtual, not creating any costs and doesn’t require any efforts. You don’t spend twenty dollars for photo-developing anymore, you don’t need to walk anymore to your pharmacy or your photo shop to drop off and return to pick up and pay. You don’t need to go to the post office to send somebody a picture. You have a program like Photoshop already built into your camera. Photographing is now a thing for everybody—with functioning cameras made for two year olds. It is technically now nearly impossible to make bad images. The image quality is virtually guaranteed by cheap, high performing, mini-computers packed into miniscule cameras. With all these technological changes, we are undergoing now a cultural paradigm shift that includes permanent recording (not only still image taking) of everything. I wonder even whether babies are just born to be photographed—at least a process where the first photograph is right there. What is interesting now, is how the law is trying to catch up. I am experiencing and expecting more restrictions on photographing and recording—something already in place in many museums and in certain galleries—as the recording devices become more and more invisible and undetectable. It is an interesting cat and mouse play and will end up with some of us that are photographing the world around us in court. The world has become very transparent and everybody is contributing to it with social networking technologies—like twitter and Facebook—that are designed to monitor and communicate every step we make in our lives. F+T: Why did you start the practice? As a way to remember, or to capture the experience of the lecture and the environment there? RG: A couple of years earlier I started to photograph my own reading seminars as part of my art work with results that surprised me positively. I really liked these images of students and people discussing heavy non-fiction with me. The reading seminars justified this kind of pictorialism. Then in 1995 I had the chance to attend an entire seminar by Edward Said entitled “The Representation of Intellectuals at Columbia University,” which really gave me the idea to start this series. Why not also photograph these lectures I visit all the time since this really is a way of representing intellectuals? F+T: The constellation of images and the title seem like a kind of portrait, do you agree? If so, is it a portrait of the speaker, of yourself, or of the event? RG: Well, to follow up on the previous question the lectures are more than just portraits of lecturers since I include not only the speakers but also the audience, an audience that is not named or specifically highlighted as is the speaker. So if we stick with the metaphor of the portrait we would have to extend it also to the environment, the class room, the lecture hall, the arrangements of seats or benches, tables, lecture stands and other stuff typically seen on my images. Often the walls are decorated or even tagged with graffiti or posters and other stuff. There is a big difference between a small seminar room at the English Department of Columbia University, full with books and cabinets and a lecture room at a Paris or Frankfurt university that accommodates 50 to 150 people. We should, maybe, also distinguish between lectures that are one time events—mostly open to the public, free of charge or paid—and events that are weekly, closed to the public and held mostly in universities that can cost fortunes or be paid by the State as it is still predominantly the case in continental Europe. All this, of course, is not necessarily announced in the title of the lecture and is subject to information that isn’t visible on the images. To a certain degree we see also portraits of a general privilege when it comes to the public of certain institutions that are highly selective and extremely costly without forgetting that most of the lectures are dealing with theory, art, philosophy and other highbrow subjects. In general, I would say we see very little if we don’t know already what’s going on, who the lecturer, the institutions, the context are in which we subsequently can zoom into variants like sexual, racial, or age-related make-up without ignoring clothing fashions, hair styling, body mannerisms, gadgets and stuff. F+T: Do you see a relation between this body of work and your other work, for example your language studies? RG: Everything I do is “unfortunately” related. I say unfortunately because this makes my work not so easy to grasp. The relationship to the language studies is relatively clear since both are originally grounded in the domain of education and knowledge production. Nearly all my work comes across that nexus where knowledge and power are addressed. I was at one point wondering what the relationship was to some of my earlier indexical work where I was happy alone with footnotes from books painted on the walls: I came to understand that both are just different manifestations of knowledge and information. F+T: Do you foresee continuing the series indefinitely, or is there an end to it? RG: I think that I will continue this series indefinitely or to be more precise, as long as I go listen to lectures and want to learn something which brings me to your previous question: What do the reading seminars, language studies, historical research and lecture hopping have in common: I learn something. Further Reading Rainer Ganahl’s website William Kaizen. “ Vulgar Politics .” art&education . April 2009. Web. Smith, Roberta. “ Rainer Ganahl: ‘Language of Emigration & Pictures of Emigration .’” New York Times April 23 2010. Web. (shrink)

Criticism of the observation/theory distinction generally supposes it to be an empirical fact that even the most basic human perception is heavily theory-laden. I offer critical examination of experimental evidence cited by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Churchland on behalf of this supposition. I argue that the empirical evidence cited is inadequate support for the claims in question. I further argue that we have empirical grounds for claiming that the Kuhnian discussion of perception is developed within an inadequate conceptual framework and (...) that a version of the observation/theory distinction is indeed tenable. The connection between cognitive science and epistemology is also discussed. (shrink)

It has been argued that infants possess a rich, sophisticated theory of mind that is only revealed with tasks based on spontaneous responses. A mature theory of mind implies the understanding that mental states are person-specific. Previous studies on infants’ understanding of motivational mental states such as goals and preferences have revealed that, by 9 months of age, infants do not generalize these motivational mental states across agents. However, it remains to be determined if infants also perceive epistemic states as (...) person-specific. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to use a switch agent paradigm with the classic false belief violation-of-expectation task. Results revealed that 16-month-old infants attributed true and false beliefs to a naïve agent—they did not perceive beliefs as person-specific. These findings indicate that infants’ understanding of beliefs is not as sophisticated as the rich mentalistic view suggests. (shrink)

Hegel and Feminist Philosophy traces the legacy of Hegel in the work of thinkers such as de Beauvoir, Irigaray and Butler, and also in contemporary debates in ...

Governing Animals explores the role of the liberal state in protecting animal welfare. Examining liberal concepts such as the social contract, property rights, and representation, Kimberly K. Smith argues that liberalism properly understood can recognize the moral status and social meaning of animals and provides guidance in fashioning animal policy.

Though many have recently attempted either to locate Arendt within feminism or feminism within the great body of Arendt's work, these efforts have proven only modestly successful. Even a cursory examination of Arendt's work should suggest that these efforts would prove frustrating. None of her voluminous writings deal specifically with gender, though some of her work certainly deals with notable women. Her interest is not in gender as such, but in woman as assimilated Jew or woman as social and political (...) revolutionary. In this paper, I argue that Arendt recognized that what frequently passes for a gender question is not essentially a matter of gender at all, but rather an idiosyncratic form of loneliness that typically affects, though is by no means limited to, women. In her work one finds the conceptual tools necessary to understand the “woman problem” rather than an explicit argument or a solution to it. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have come to understand emotions as dynamic and socially constructed—the product of interdependent cultural, relational, situational, and biological influences. While researchers have called for a multilevel theory of emotion construction, any progress toward such a theory must overcome the fragmentation of relevant research across various disciplines and theoretical frameworks. We present affect control theory as a launching point for cross-disciplinary collaboration because of its empirically grounded conceptualization of social mechanisms operating at the interaction, relationship, and cultural (...) levels, and its specification of processes linking social and individual aspects of emotion. After introducing the theory, we illustrate its correspondence with major theories of emotion construction framed at each of four analytical levels: cultural, interactional, individual, and neural. (shrink)

It is probable that few critics, if directly challenged, would admit to believing that a work of literature which was, in some sense, morally objectionable was therefore necessarily totally lacking in literary merit. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for a man—in the language he uses, in the conclusions he draws, in his obiter dicta—to seem yet to hold a view which, in its bald statement, he has denied. Certainly, those critics who most vehemently wish to dissociate themselves from any claims (...) that art exists for art's sake, or that there are peculiarly ‘aesthetic’ criteria, and who believe that such claims lead to irresponsibility, such critics often use moral concepts extensively in their criticism. Furthermore, they often do this in such a way as to suggest that if a work is morally objectionable, then there is no way of redeeming it aesthetically; for, it would seem, moral criticism exhausts the critical possibilities; no aesthetic saving graces are allowed. (shrink)

This book explores the relationship between modern technological progress and classical liberalism. The compatibility of classical liberalism and technology is questioned, using fiction and film as a window into Western society’s views on politics, economics, religion, technology, and the family.

This book analyses the problems of current just war theory, and offers a more stable justificatory framework for non-intervention in international relations. The primary purpose of just war theory is to provide a language and a framework by which decision makers and citizens can organize and articulate arguments about the justice of particular wars. Given that the majority of conflicts that threaten human security are now intra-state conflicts, just war theory is often called on to make judgments about wars of (...) intervention. This book aims to critically examine the tenets of just war theory in light of these changes, and formulate a new theory of intervention and just cause. For Michael Walzer, the leading scholar of just war theory, armed humanitarian intervention is permissible only in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, widespread massacres, or enslavement. This book shows why this threshold is too restrictive in light of the progressive shift away from interstate conflict as well as the emerging norms of 'sovereignty as responsibility' and the 'responsibility to protect'. _Justice, Intervention and Force in International Relations_ aims to establish a new, stable foundation for non-intervention and a revised threshold for 'just cause'. In addition, this book demonstrates that over-reliance on the just cause category distorts understanding, analysis, and public discussion of the justice or injustice of resorting to war. This new book will be of much interest to students of ethics, security studies, international relations and international law. Kimberley Hudson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at American International College, and has a Phd in International Relations from Brown University. (shrink)