Deleuze and Guattari develop a notion of “minor literature” in their short book on Kafka, and the opposition major/minor has been used with varying degrees of success by critics working in a range of disciplines including architectural theory. Teasing out the potentially subversive implications of the major/minor opposition requires reading it in relation to other binarisms developed by Deleuze and Guattari in those same years, e.g., state/nomadic science, striated/smooth space, optic/haptic, as well as Guattari’s useful concept “machinic (...) heterogenesis.” Then, one ends up with a minor architecture concerned with partially subversive practices rather than with structure per se. A building’s minor status is figured through its deployment in and production of a space that is a technological, social and political pattern as well as a line of flight. This paper reads minor architecture by examining the minor house built by Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond and those currently being assembled by the Mad Housers in Atlanta, Georgia. (shrink)

Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, (...) the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic. (shrink)

This article investigates the agency of the architecture of the Temple of Apollo at Claros and its cognitive impact on the ritual of divination. In the comparison with Delphi, Claros represents a peculiar example of how architecture evolved to suit and shape at the same time the ritual it was hosting. The paper starts with the analysis of the exteriors of the building, highlighting the choice of the Doric style dictated by the desire of being associated to Delphi. (...) A further analysis of the internal layout gives the author a chance of describing the cognitive inputs that the peculiar structure sent to the ancient mind. Specifically, the paper studies how the narrow tunnels made of black marble that turned seven times and the underground cave like adyton created a situation of sensory confusion in the mind of the seekers and the oracle that found themselves prone to detect agencies in the surrounding space and specifically to identify the agent with Apollo. (shrink)

This paper examines the planning process and architecture of two public psychiatric institutions built around 1900 in Trieste and Lower Austria. From 1864, the building of new asylums was the responsibility of Crown land governments, which by the end of the nineteenth century had emerged as sites of power and self-presentation by minority groups and new political parties. At the same time, the area of asylum planning was establishing itself as a branch of asylum psychiatry and promoting the idea (...) of the asylum as model settlement, contributing to social reform. I analyse the interaction of psychiatrists, architects and government officials involved in planning the two institutions in the context of Crown land governments’ self-positioning within the empire and internationally . The Trieste asylum planners were working for a government controlled by Italian nationalists, but their desire for a ‘modern’ asylum turned them towards German models. The Christian Social government in Lower Austria sought to supplant Germany as the leader in this branch of science. The spatial arrangement and visual articulation of the two asylums is interpreted in the context of the interaction of psychiatry and the politics of regional autonomy. (shrink)

Recent sequencing of the metazoan Oikopleura dioica genome has provided important insights, which challenges the current understanding of eukaryotic genome evolution. Many genomic features of O. dioica show deviation from the commonly observed trends in other eukaryotic genomes. For instance, O. dioica has a rapidly evolving, highly compact genome with a divergent intron‐exon organization. Additionally, O. dioica lacks the minor spliceosome and key DNA repair pathway genes. Even with a compact genome, O. dioica contains tandem repeats, comparable to other (...) eukaryotes, and shows lineage‐specific expansion of certain protein domains. Here, we review its genomic features in the context of current knowledge, discuss implications for contemporary biology and identify areas for further research. Analysis of the O. dioica genome suggests that non‐adaptive forces such as elevated mutation rates might influence the evolution of genome architecture. The knowledge of unique genomic features and splicing mechanisms in O. dioica may be exploited for synthetic biology applications, such as generation of orthogonal splicing systems. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Architectural heritage is considered a fundamental issue in the life of modern societies. In addition to their historical interest, cultural heritage buildings are valuable because they contribute significantly to the economy by providing key attractions at a time when tourism and leisure are major industries. The need for preserving historical constructions is thus not only a cultural requirement, but also an economical and developmental demand. Herein, among different Iranian heritage buildings, pigeon towers, or dovecotes, are of a great importance. Hundreds of dovecotes, dating largely to the Safavid period, dot the fields in the vicinity of Isfahan. On the other hand, valleys formed by creeks in central parts of Anatolia seem to have offered suitable environments for ancient settlements. Cappadocia region and two valleys nearby the town of Gesi accommodate a number of villages surrounded by hundreds of dove cotes in different types. This paper investigates different types of dovecotes in Iran plateau and Central Anatolia, Turkey. The results show there is a fundamental difference between the structures of dovecotes in these two countries. However, ancient dovecotes in Iran and Central Anatolia can be considered good examples of 'architecture without architects' or ' spectacular vernacular architecture'. Master builders who designed and constructed these buildings for such a simple function, created impressive forms without much pretension and bringing forth the tectonic aspects of the art of architecture. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Keywords: Dovecotes, architecture, Iran, Isfahan, Central Anatolia. (shrink)

Against transmission -- For attention -- Education in the minor key -- Anthropology, art and the university.

Enhancing national cultural self-confidence involves promoting and strengthening the protection and utilisation of traditional national villages. Studying how to protect and inherit the resources of these villages, as well as utilising existing resources in a sustainable manner, poses a challenging issue. Further research is needed to investigate the influence of regional culture on residential buildings in the mountainous areas of the Yao people in Guangxi, and to explore how traditional architectural elements can preserve their cultural essence using modern artistic language. (...) The project aims to: 1. Examine how regional culture influences Yao ethnic minority houses in Guangxi's mountains; 2. Evaluate existing challenges and implement contemporary design for improvement; 3. Create sustainable and culturally significant Yao mountain dwellings. The research collected qualitative data from six towns using a combination of semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and reviewing internet and print news sources. The residential structures in Yaochi Mountain District, Guangxi exhibit unique regional cultural traits, although they also have deficiencies in several areas. This study find that the beauty of the natural environment remains constant but the architectural vestiges and cultural history show remarkable variance, both of which greatly contribute to sustainable development. This study found that traditional villages in Guangxi share a number of characteristics, including a severe deficiency in clean energy and a poor rate of carbon utilisation, during our investigation of the sustainable development of the spatial dimension of the ecological legacy of these communities. According to a weight analysis performed at the sub-index factor level, the variety of building uses is the most important indicator of the spatial sustainability of traditional villages in Guangxi. The outcomes of this study provided a valuable empirical evidence and practical suggestions for areas and nations involved in the preservation of cultural heritage and the investigation of sustainable rural development. (shrink)

The attraction of a wink, a nod, a discarded snapshot-such feelings permeate our lives, yet we usually dismiss them as insubstantial or meaningless. With The Logic of the Lure, John Paul Ricco argues that it is precisely such fleeting, erotic, and even perverse experiences that will help us create a truly queer notion of ethics and aesthetics, one that recasts sociality and sexuality, place and finitude in ways suggested by the anonymity and itinerant lures of cruising. Shifting our attention from (...) artworks to the work that art does, from subjectivity to becoming, and from static space to taking place, Ricco considers a variety of issues, including the work of Doug Ischar, Tom Burr, and Derek Jarman and the minor architecture of sex clubs, public restrooms, and alleyways. (shrink)

Thirty years ago, grounded cognition had roots in philosophy, perception, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. During the next 20 years, grounded cognition continued developing in these areas, and it also took new forms in robotics, cognitive ecology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology. In the past 10 years, research on grounded cognition has grown rapidly, especially in cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and developmental psychology. Currently, grounded cognition appears to be achieving increased acceptance throughout cognitive (...) science, shifting from relatively minor status to increasing importance. Nevertheless, researchers wonder whether grounded mechanisms lie at the heart of the cognitive system or are peripheral to classic symbolic mechanisms. Although grounded cognition is currently dominated by demonstration experiments in the absence of well-developed theories, the area is likely to become increasingly theory driven over the next 30 years. Another likely development is the increased incorporation of grounding mechanisms into cognitive architectures and into accounts of classic cognitive phenomena. As this incorporation occurs, much functionality of these architectures and phenomena is likely to remain, along with many original mechanisms. Future theories of grounded cognition are likely to be heavily influenced by both cognitive neuroscience and social neuroscience, and also by developmental science and robotics. Aspects from the three major perspectives in cognitive science—classic symbolic architectures, statistical/dynamical systems, and grounded cognition—will probably be integrated increasingly in future theories, each capturing indispensable aspects of intelligence. (shrink)

In minority societies, clothes and architecture are often designed to ward off disasters, such as severe weather, strong winds, torrential rains and floods, and attacks from hostile forces. In this sense, color is used to protect people against real threats to their existence. The function of color language associated with clothing and architectural design is, in other words, to ward off evil, chase away demons, and pray for the bestowal of good fortune; that is, to rid society of malevolent (...) forces, to pray for blessings from various gods and spirits, and to attempt to manipulate the powerful forces of nature to serve the interests of humanity. In this sense, the social function of color language is to guard the people's peace and welfare. (shrink)

Explanations of cognitive processes provided by traditional artificial intelligence were based on the notion of the knowledge level. This perspective has been challenged by new AI that proposes an approach based on embodied systems that interact with the real‐world. We demonstrate that these two views can be unified. Our argument is based on the assumption that knowledge level explanations can be defined in the context of Bayesian theory while the goals of new AI are captured by using a well established (...) robot based model of learning and problem solving, called Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC). In our analysis we consider random foraging and we prove that minor modifications of the DAC architecture renders a model that is equivalent to a Bayesian analysis of this task. Subsequently, we compare this enhanced, “rational,” model to its “non‐rational” predecessor and a further control condition using both simulated and real robots, in a variety of environments. Our results show that the changes made to the DAC architecture, in order to unify the perspectives of old and new AI, also lead to a significant improvement in random foraging. (shrink)

English- Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places offers a set of concepts that stimulate new approaches in planning, architecture, urban design, policy, and other practices of spatial development. These diverse concepts might reveal blind spots in urban discourse or bring insights from one discipline to another. The term ‘minor’ refers to the ambition to look at the local and social specificity of urban places and to challenge established discursive frameworks by giving voice to multiple actors (...) in the debate. This publication hopes to be a field guide that inspires spatial professionals, researchers, students, and communities to exchange knowledge, to engage with urban places and to discover and develop responsible approaches to current urban challenges. Dutch – Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places biedt een reeks concepten die nieuwe benaderingen in architectuur, stedenbouw en ruimtelijke ontwikkeling stimuleren. Deze uiteenlopende concepten kunnen blinde vlekken in het stedelijke discours onthullen of inzichten van de ene discipline naar de andere brengen. De term 'minor' verwijst naar de ambitie om naar de lokale en sociale specificiteit van stedelijke plekken te kijken en om gevestigde discursieve kaders uit te dagen, door stem te geven aan meerdere actoren in het debat. Deze publicatie is te zien als een veldgids die ruimtelijke professionals, onderzoekers, studenten en gemeenschappen inspireert om kennis uit te wisselen, over onderzoek naar stedelijke plekken, en om verantwoorde benaderingen te ontdekken en te ontwikkelen voor de hedendaagse stedelijke uitdagingen. (shrink)

English- Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places offers a set of concepts that stimulate new approaches in planning, architecture, urban design, policy and other practices of spatial development. These diverse concepts might reveal blind spots in urban discourse or bring insights from one discipline to another. The term ‘minor’ refers to the ambition to look at the local and social specificity of urban places, and to challenge established discursive frameworks by giving voice to multiple actors (...) in the debate. This publication hopes to be a fieldguide that inspires spatial professionals, researchers, students and communities to exchange knowledge, to engage with urban places and to discover and develop responsible approaches to current urban challenges. -/- Dutch – Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places biedt een reeks concepten die nieuwe benaderingen in architectuur, stedenbouw en ruimtelijke ontwikkeling stimuleren. Deze uiteenlopende concepten kunnen blinde vlekken in het stedelijke discours onthullen of inzichten van de ene discipline naar de andere brengen. De term 'minor' verwijst naar de ambitie om naar de lokale en sociale specificiteit van stedelijke plekken te kijken en om gevestigde discursieve kaders uit te dagen, door stem te geven aan meerdere actoren in het debat. Deze publicatie is te zien als een veldgids die ruimtelijke professionals, onderzoekers, studenten en gemeenschappen inspireert om kennis uit te wisselen, over onderzoek naar stedelijke plekken, en om verantwoorde benaderingen te ontdekken en te ontwikkelen voor de hedendaagse stedelijke uitdagingen. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter takes up, and sketches an answer to, the main challenge facing massively modular theories of the architecture of the human mind. This is to account for the distinctively flexible, non-domain-specific, character of much human thinking. I shall show how the appearance of a modular language faculty within an evolving modular architecture might have led to these distinctive features of human thinking with only minor further additions and non-domain-specific adaptations.

Music offers a unique opportunity to better understand the organization of the human brain. Like language, music exists in all human societies. Like language, music is a complex, rule-governed activity that seems specific to humans, and associated with a specific brain architecture. Yet unlike most other high-level functions of the human brain - and unlike language - music is a skill at which only a minority of people become proficient. The study of music as a major brain function has (...) for some time been relatively neglected. Just recently, however, we have witnessed an explosion in research activities on music perception and performance and their correlates in the human brain. This volume brings together an outstanding collection of international authorities - from the fields of music, neuroscience, psychology, and neurology - to describe the amazing advances being made in understanding the complex relationship between music and the brain. Aimed at psychologists and neuroscientists, this is a book that will lay the foundations for a cognitive neuroscience of music. (shrink)

The central argument developed in this essay is that today we are seeing a proliferation of normative orders where once state normativity ruled and the dominant logic was toward producing a unitary normative framing. One synthesizing image we might use to capture these dynamics is that of a movement from centripetal nation-state articulation to a centrifugal multiplication of specialized assemblages. This multiplication in turn can lead to a sort of simplification of normative structures insofar as: these assemblages are partial and (...) often highly specialized formations centered in particular utilities and purposes. The valence of these particular utilities and purposes can range from the search for justice to narrow self-interest . While this is still a minor process in the larger scale of our geopolity, it signals the beginning of a multi-sited, though partial, disruption of its existing formal architecture. This raises questions about the future of crucial frameworks through which modern societies, economies, and polities have operated: the social contract of liberal states, social democracy as we have come to understand it, modern citizenship, and the formal mechanisms that render certain claims legitimate and others illegitimate in liberal democracies. These frameworks have held together complex interdependencies between rights and obligations, power and the law, wealth and poverty, allegiance and exit.Keywords: assemblages; normative; globalization; denationalization; centripetal; centrifugal; utilities; logics; liberal state; claims. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with the Cambrian explosion. It considers only one particular kind of explanation for the Cambrian radiation: that major innovations in animal body plan were produced from relatively few genetic changes of large phenotypic effect. It investigates the developmental genetic hypothesis of the origin and maintenance of body plans. This chapter suggests that the genetic architecture underlying body plans was not set during the Cambrian and has been immutable since. It shows that the link between body (...) plan and phylum can become blurry when the minor phyla are considered. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the main challenge facing massively modular theories of the architecture of the human mind. This is to account for the distinctively flexible, non-domain-specific character of much human thinking. It shows how the appearance of a modular language faculty within an evolving modular architecture might have led to these distinctive features of human thinking with only minor further additions and non-domain-specific adaptations.

One face in the crowd meets another. Eyes lock, only to disappear again. Craigslist missed connections, a minor genre of the personal ad, reveal the imbrication of mediation and missing. They articulate anxieties over shifting relations in cityscapes and communication infrastructures. This article treats missing as an act and affect defined through mediation. Studying a vernacular narrative form such as the missed-connections ad offers insight on the significance of missing to urban life. The architecture of missed connections shows (...) that they trace and generate connections among physical, transit, and media infrastructures. Articulating a moment of loss and hope for recuperation, missed connections look simultaneously backward and forward in time. They describe interactions at once mundane and unique, leaving gaps that invite projection. These entextualizations of in-person encounters inspire various forms of remediation. These acts come to reanimate cities as spaces where surprise moments of fleeting intimacy can reveal themselves at any moment. (shrink)

The Sovereignty of Human Rights advances a legal theory of international human rights that defines their nature and purpose in relation to the structure and operation of international law. Professor Macklem argues that the mission of international human rights law is to mitigate adverse consequences produced by the international legal deployment of sovereignty to structure global politics into an international legal order. The book contrasts this legal conception of international human rights with moral conceptions that conceive of human rights as (...) instruments that protect universal features of what it means to be a human being. The book also takes issue with political conceptions of international human rights that focus on the function or role that human rights plays in global political discourse. It demonstrates that human rights traditionally thought to lie at the margins of international human rights law - minority rights, indigenous rights, the right of self-determination, social rights, labor rights, and the right to development - are central to the normative architecture of the field. (shrink)

In the case of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) imaging, image processing is crucial. In the medical industry, MRI images are commonly used to analyze and diagnose tumor growth in the body. A number of successful brain tumor identification and classification procedures have been developed by various experts. Existing approaches face a number of obstacles, including detection time, accuracy, and tumor size. Early detection of brain tumors improves options for treatment and patient survival rates. Manually segmenting brain tumors from a significant (...) number of MRI data for brain tumor diagnosis is a tough and time-consuming task. Automatic image segmentation of brain tumors is required. The objective of this study is to evaluate the degree of accuracy and simplify the medical picture segmentation procedure used to identify the type of brain tumor from MRI results. Additionally, this work suggests a novel method for identifying brain malignancies utilizing the Bagging Ensemble with K-Nearest Neighbor (BKNN) in order to raise the KNN’s accuracy and quality rate. For image segmentation, a U-Net architecture is utilized first, followed by a bagging-based k-NN prediction algorithm for classification. The goal of employing U-Net is to improve the accuracy and uniformity of parameter distribution in the layers. Each decision tree is fitted on a little different training dataset during classification, and the bagged decision trees are effective since each tree has minor differences and generates slightly different skilled predictions. The overall classification accuracy was up to 97.7 percent, confirming the efficiency of the suggested strategy for distinguishing normal and pathological tissues from brain MR images; this is greater than the methods that are already in use. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Both Interpersonal and Structural Efforts Are Necessary for Healthcare Professionals to Avoid Committing MicroaggressionsChidiogo Anyigbo (bio)I commend Lauren Freeman and Heather Stewart for acknowledging that the final chapter of Microaggressions and Medicine (2024), chapter 7, which provides practical guide for healthcare workers to avoid committing microaggressions, is a work in progress. The authors primarily focus on "strategies that can be implemented on the interpersonal and environmental levels because this (...) is where we can all immediately make the most impact to reduce microaggressions and their harmful consequences" (189). Presumably, readers of Microaggression and Medicine will by and large be healthcare workers: physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals working in direct patient care settings, and presumably these individuals pick up a book like Microaggression in Medicine to apply it to their own practice. Therefore, it may seem logical to act at the level that is closest to us as readers.The authors highlight seven strategies for reducing microaggressions in the healthcare space:• diversify employees• hire local health advocates, activists, and consultants to offer feedback on clinic design and practices• incorporate micro-cues into medical practices• foster medical humility• practice ethical listening• collaborate with patients as epistemic peers• increase awareness and education for colleagues and staffSome of these strategies occur at a systems level, like diversifying employees, hiring local health advocates, and creating staff educational awareness. Others are intended as steps for individuals to take during patient encounters. All of [End Page 152] these points, however, show how structural and systemic changes are important to address concurrently with taking individual steps. For example, if one makes interpersonal efforts to reduce or avoid microaggressions but is at the same time still operating within systems and structures that reinforce microaggressions, not only will harm continue to be done, but there is also a risk of burnout for the individual trying to make strides despite these harmful systems (as Hambrick and Tang Girdwood [2024] discuss). This may lead individuals to view their interpersonal and environmental efforts as futile because they do not lead to widespread reduction in microaggressions.For example, these structural and systemic strategies can start with institutional and organizational policies, for example, regarding how to respond to patients who harass healthcare professionals or expectations patients can have regarding the care they receive. Not only do patients experience microaggressions from healthcare workers, which is the focus of Freeman and Stewart's book, but healthcare workers can also experience microaggressions from patients (as Hambrick and Tang Girdwood elaborate). Hiring a diverse staff at all levels can certainly help foster a more inclusive environment, but it is not sufficient, and it also can lead to healthcare workers from historically underrepresented groups being the target of microaggressions from patients, their surrogate decision-makers, or their families. Institutional approaches to diversifying the healthcare workforce also need to consider how to best support a diverse healthcare workforce.The authors rightly point out that people of marginalized backgrounds often face a "minority tax" and that they are often the ones expected to do the uncompensated work of calling attention to and leading efforts to address microaggressions in their organization by educating colleagues and staff. As this happens, these more diverse staff may not feel the psychological safety or support needed to stay in the organization. The efforts to develop and maintain psychological safety are led by structural and systemic action, not solely individual herculean efforts. Education is not sufficient if there are no systems and policies in place to support and reinforce the desired behaviors.The concept of choice architecture is often used in business and behavioral economics to describe how to influence the conditions in which people make decisions to reduce bias, oftentimes creating default options that improve well being for many (Meder, Fleischhut, and Osman 2018). For example, this concept has been applied to improving healthy eating behaviors in workplaces (Rantala et al. 2024). There may be similar opportunities to explore how such efforts can be applied to create default action that does not rely on individual action and vigilance to address microaggressions. Choice architecture strategies for addressing microaggressions could perhaps expand the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) framework used for systems-based efforts to be... (shrink)

Dating and hookup apps (DHAs) are now widely used and may be transforming our intimate relationships. The apps are beneficial in fostering intimate connections among those who are lonely, who are members of minority or marginalized groups, or who live nomadic lifestyles because of work or recreational travel. However, the wider social and relational changes that DHAs portend are merely beginning to be seriously discussed by academics (Arias et al., 2017). In this chapter, we employ concepts from the philosophy of (...) technology that inform our analysis of these changes. We also collate some of the morally significant impacts of DHAs and present some of the elements of the architecture of DHAs that facilitate them. Although there are many reasons to be concerned about DHAs, we argue that there is room for cautious optimism that DHAs may be vehicles of positive social and moral change. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ECHIC—The European Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centres 2023 Annual ConferenceIlenia Vittoria CasmiriEcological Mindedness and Sustainable Wellbeing, ECHIC—The European Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centres 2023 Annual Conference, May 25–27, 2023, University of Ferrara, ItalyThis year’s annual conference of the European Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centres (ECHIC) invited international scholars with diverse backgrounds to explore visions of a desirable future world that is both environmentally sustainable and socially (...) just. In stressing the social and political relevance of the humanities in Europe today, the main goal of the Consortium, as it is articulated on the conference website, is the pursuit of the highest international standards of excellence with a spirit of innovation and exploration of new research areas:Since the World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common Future (1987) [commonly known as the Brundtland Report], the notion of... sustainability has been expanded to incorporate environmental, cultural, legal, and economic features of a low-carbon future and to encompass the wellbeing of all living species, which involves material aspects such as the social acceptance of resource-efficient transitions and immaterial ones such as flourishing human capabilities. [End Page 625]The participants of the 2023 ECHIC conference on Ecological Mindedness and Sustainable Wellbeing presented original, multidisciplinary perspectives, and offered valuable opportunities to develop holistic approaches to the prismatic issue of environmental sustainability. Bringing together cultural diversity as well as local and global perspectives, keynoters and panelists addressed the vast array of challenges imposed by the perpetuation of anthropocentric worldviews. Their challenge to traditional demarcations between the humanities, the social sciences, economy, law, architecture, engineering, and the life and medical sciences, generated synergies for exploring interconnections between life forms, resources, and heritage. While the theoretical frameworks varied considerably, they all advocated for the need to overcome ideological, cultural, and spatial barriers in favor of broader, more inclusive approaches to other disciplines, other cultures, other humans, other species. Overall, the conference not only exposed the cultural and economic roots of social inequality and of uneven distribution of resources, thanks to unsustainable modes of capitalist production and consumption, but also highlighted the media’s positive effect in eliciting pro-environmental behaviors.Toward More Sustainable FuturesThe prismatic nature of the concept of sustainability inspired keynote speakers Alexa Weik von Mossner (University of Klagenfurt), Adrian Ivakhiv (University of Vermont), Tim Waterman (University College London), and Antonio López (John Cabot University) to address climate apocalypse impacts on the human physical and psychological well-being from diverse personal and academic backgrounds.In the opening keynote lecture, “Growing Hope: Narratives of Food Justice and Sustainability,” Weik von Mossner explores the psychological implications of affect and emotion in the communication of environmental issues. Her diachronic account illustrates the rise and fall of the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, a sanctuary for locals by providing fresh produce, stimulating a sense of community, and representing a symbol of resilience against systemic inequalities. Weik Von Mossner elucidates the psychological benefits accruing from exposure to such a sustainably inhabited space. Her analysis of Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s documentary, The Garden (2008), affirms that climate change narratives across media may prompt food justice activism (Retzinger 2011, 337) by eliciting the emotional engagement of its audience. [End Page 626]However, observes von Mossner, the greater the popularity of the Farm, the greater the threat posed to its existence. Through documentaries, news articles, and online campaigns, the South Central Farm has received national and international attention. At the same time, media have shed light on the struggles faced by marginalized communities and provided a solid basis for discussions on social justice, environmental activism, and the value of communal spaces. She explains that activists used social media to voice their concerns about the potential eviction and the loss of a vital resource for the local community, leading to an outpouring of support from environmentalists and celebrities who had realized to what extent the predominantly low-income, minority community was affected by limited access to fresh food and green spaces.Adrian Ivakhiv, delivering his keynote “How to Face the Angel of History: A Call to Anthropocenic Conscience” the following day, suggests that a pervasive lack of an emotional... (shrink)

In contemporary democracies, the balance between the minority principle and democratic principles, one of the components underlying the relationship between liberalism and democracy, is being broken. This paper offers a reflection on this theme – crucial for the future of representative government – in relation to the importance of the theory of elites. The article is divided into three parts: the first part briefly traces the main phases of the theory of elites from the late nineteenth century to the present, (...) indicating, for each, the salient features; the second part focuses on the elements characterizing the alliance between the minority principle and democratic principles, which forms the basis of liberal representative democracy, with specific consideration paid to the geometric architecture of democracy, comprising a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension; finally, the third part argues the need for strengthening the logic of distance to consolidate the connection between the theory of elites and liberal representative democracy. (shrink)

Leg of St. Paul stepped on the European continent somewhere around the 50th in the time of his second trip from Asia Minor from the glorious Troy to today's Macedonia. Among the Europeans Pavlov's sermon has found a good ground: he founded several communities, traveling, in particular, in Philippi and in Thessalonica. But the apostle also faced a strong opposition, in particular from their Jewish brothers, who sometimes even driven him by force. From the town of Vera Paul, it (...) was necessary to protect the city of Athens, the capital of great glory, science, philosophy, literature, art, architecture, culture. Here, the scientists wanted to listen to Pavlov "a new science". The Pavlov's word on the Aeropagus ended in great failure and highs. Paul left Aithenes cursed, not returning more there, from neglect to "insidious philosophy" as "an empty deception". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Peculiarly Favored Condition of GeneticsJames J. Lee, PhD (bio) and Damien Morris, MSc (bio)Turkheimer and Greer (2024) (henceforth “T&G”) make some fair points about problems in the scientific profession, including the regrettable tendency to promise practical applications of research that then never materialize. However, T&G’s sustained critique of a body of work associated with one particular researcher to make these general points struck us as uncharitable. More pressingly, (...) we feel that the far-reaching conclusions that T&G attempt to draw from the results they review from the Spit for Science (S4S) cohort are unjustified and risk misleading readers that psychiatric and behavioral genetics is in a parlous state.T&G state that S4S “produced a clear answer to the question it was designed to address,” namely, that its results “unambiguously contradict the hypothesis that alcohol-related behaviors have a meaningful genetic basis.” But S4S cannot possibly have provided affirmative evidence for the null hypothesis, because as a single cohort it lacked the statistical power to do so. Elsewhere T&G acknowledge that the sample size of S4S does not suffice for many purposes; they cannot have it both ways. When GCTA has been applied to samples of greater size, it has unambiguously supported the hypothesis that alcohol-related behaviors have a meaningful genetic basis. The UK Biobank yielded estimates exceeding 0.10 for the contribution of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with minor allele frequency of greater than 0.05 to the heritability of drinks per week, estimates more than ten times their standard errors (Liu et al., 2019).This heritability contributed by common variants is sometimes called “SNP heritability,” and T&G disparage it for the alleged “disadvantage of being substantially smaller” than “twin and family heritabilities.” Nowhere do T&G consider what the precise numbers actually mean—an approach that can be hazardous to your scientific health, as the late John Loehlin might have said. Let us, then, consider these numbers. Under a model of pure neutrality, SNP and pedigree narrow-sense heritabilities should be fairly close, essentially as a result of factors p(1 − p) canceling in the multiplication of the numbers of SNPs to be found at a given allele frequency by the average heritability contributed per SNP (Hill, 2010). If SNP and pedigree heritabilities are not close, then natural selection must have been acting on [End Page 441] the trait, preventing new mutations of large effect from becoming common and thereby concentrating heritability at allele frequencies lower than those typically studied in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). This deduction has been abundantly confirmed: the tendency of GWAS SNPs to reside in evolutionarily conserved regions (Finucane et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2019), the younger age of GWAS SNPs when compared to control SNPs of comparable frequencies (Gazal et al., 2017), the discovery of several rare variants with larger effects than those observed in typical GWAS (Barton et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2023; Marouli et al., 2017), the directly measured deleterious fitness effects of mutations in evolutionarily constrained genes (Gardner et al., 2022), and the substantial additional genetic variance accumulated when rare variants are included in GCTA-type studies, sometimes enough to close the gap between SNP and pedigree heritabilities (Evans et al., 2018; Jang et al., 2022; Pathan et al., 2024; Wainschtein et al., 2022).The genetic architecture of a typical quantitative trait consists of many sites across the genome that can mutate to affect it, numbering potentially in the millions (Agarwala et al., 2013; Zeng et al., 2021), of which those that are common SNPs have very small effects as a result of selection. This is the message, but T&G seem to find fault with the messenger, painting “tiny” effect sizes as an embarrassment to the field of behavioral genetics as a whole. We prefer to view the finding of high polygenicity as a revelation about nature, rather than as a debating point. What is this finding telling us? If one takes the action of stabilizing selection as the initial assumption (Uyeda et al., 2011), then the extreme polygenicity revealed by GWAS becomes part of the answer to the question regarding how traits can... (shrink)

Much research on intelligent systems has concentrated on low level mechanisms or sub-systems of restricted functionality. We need to understand how to put all the pieces together in an *architecture* for a complete agent with its own mind, driven by its own desires. A mind is a self-modifying control system, with a hierarchy of levels of control, and a different hierarchy of levels of implementation. AI needs to explore alternative control architectures and their implications for human, animal, and artificial (...) minds. Only within the framework of a theory of actual and possible architectures can we solve old problems about the concept of mind and causal roles of desires, beliefs, intentions, etc. The high level ``virtual machine'' architecture is more useful for this than detailed mechanisms. E.g. the difference between connectionist and symbolic implementations is of relatively minor importance. A good theory provides both explanations and a framework for systematically generating concepts of possible states and processes. Lacking this, philosophers cannot provide good analyses of concepts, psychologists and biologists cannot specify what they are trying to explain or explain it, and psychotherapists and educationalists are left groping with ill-understood problems. The paper sketches some requirements for such architectures, and analyses an idea shared between engineers and philosophers: the concept of ``semantic information''. (shrink)

Ukraine is the motherland of not only Ukrainians but also of many national minorities with different cultures and traditions. Ukraine is a Christian country in general, with non-Christian and non-Christian religions and confessional currents, along with traditional churches - Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant - rooted and actively developing non-traditional Ukrainian culture and spirituality. In Ukraine there is a complex process of spiritual revival, especially in the intellectual environment. Many are written and talk about the preservation of cultural heritage. Everywhere, monuments of (...) architecture, art, which testify to the generally recognized historical contribution of Christianity to the development of spirituality and morality of the Ukrainian people, are restored. In our eyes, there are changes in social and religious relations. (shrink)

The 2023 edition of the Venice Architecture Biennial Time Space Existence will draw attention to the emerging expressions of sustainability in their numerous forms, ranging from a focus on the environment and urban landscape to the unfolding conversations on innovation, reuse, community, and inclusion. In response to climate change, exhibited projects will investigate new technologies and construction methods that reduce energy consumption through circular design and develop innovative, organic, and recycled building materials. Participants will also address social justice by (...) presenting living solutions envisioned for displaced communities and minorities, while others will examine the tensions between the built urban environment and the nature surrounding it, identifying opportunities for coexistence. Time Space Existence not only aims to be a display but also a living workshop where established and emerging practitioners can work together and present their own visions of the status of architecture and the built environment nowadays. By bringing together ideas from across the world, the exhibition presents itself as a platform for exchange and experimentation and strives to stimulate an engaging dialogue that is inclusive of all voices. (shrink)

Through an analysis of the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions concerning the practice of veiling, this article problematises the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights (Freedom of thought, conscience and religion), questioning which representation of the human and the female subject is recognised and therefore protected by secular/liberal and Human Rights law. It argues that the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9, which is based on the distinction between faith and its manifestation, not only (...) relies on a particular ontological understanding of the religious subject as well as a specific notion of religion, but it also reveals a distinct relationship between the individual and sovereign power through the division between the public and the private spheres. In light of this, the western debate surrounding the women’s veiling overlooks how liberal secularism perceives and defines the religious and legal gendered subject in the modern world, and how this understanding is embedded in and reproduced through the law, which emerges as an instrument for regulating minority religious communities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Foucault for Psychoanalysis”Monique David-Ménard’s Kind of BluePenelope DeutscherFoucault for psychoanalysis? This is a paradoxical question. Foucault also produced a critique of psychoanalysis, aiming to show that sexuality was not an a-temporal reality, nor a truth eventually discovered by Freud. It was a discursive formation, one among others.—Eloge des hasards dans la vie sexuelle, 172.To the philosophers..A practicing psychoanalyst and a professor of philosophy, Monique David-Ménard extends a singular proposition (...) to philosophers. She is not the first philosopher to engage the assumptions of psychoanalysis, but hers is a particularly idiosyncratic suggestion for how to think with the analyst’s clinical work, intimate and alien. She has proposed we do so in the company of Gilles Deleuze,1 and most recently, in Eloge des hasards dans la vie sexuelle (2011) has extended her invitation to think with the clinic through an ingenious reading of Michel Foucault.As Eloge opens, David-Ménard’s reading of Foucault is far from the scene. Early in the work, we are asked to think with a practice, seemingly in a different register. An analyst finds herself accused of being an obstacle, of opposing the analysand’s wishes in life. In this context, we are asked to think about the blue of a painting in the room where the analysand waits (David-Ménard 2011, 34). [End Page 111]Given the criticisms of psychoanalysis elaborated in the work of Foucault and Deleuze, one might have expected these philosophers to be considered in Eloge in that stead.2 Or, one could imagine Foucault playing a role because of his genealogical analysis of the formation of the Oedipus complex.3Two years after the publication of Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus, Foucault had, in Abnormal, characterized the desiring space of the family as stimulated in a capillary network of individualizing normalization (Foucault 2003, 257), linked by medicalized and expert concern of which parents became the auxiliaries. They are charged, and charge themselves, with the goals of family health, of preservative and defensive good parenting, and with the conduct of the child’s conduct. Foucault describes the pre-twentieth century emergence of lay and expert preoccupation with the dangers of childhood masturbation. This produces an environment whose intensive scrutiny involves a close “folding of... parents’ bodies over... children’s bodies” (ibid., 265) in a saturated, hermetic environment stimulating oedipalized desire. This means one can offer a genealogical account of the conditions of formation of the latter. These include a responsibilization of parents, who control for the presence of abnormal sex, advised by new experts (lay, medical, pseudo-scientific) in collective crusades for health and life. Thus there is differentiation through minor gradations of abnormality. Even the specificity of the architectural spaces in which scrutiny is directed plays a role in the hollowing out of the child’s putatively interior psychic-sexual life, the intense object of “palpating” interest (Foucault 1978, 45) in new apparatuses of knowledge-power (Foucault 2003, 327).Because he presents this as the context in which the “nuclear and substantial family was gradually constituted” (Foucault 2003, 264), along with its oedipal configurations of desire, Foucault emphasizes the contingency of both. Psychoanalysis would be, from his perspective, willfully indifferent to these or other possibilities for genealogical analysis of the apparatus of power, knowledge, and the body, of the repeating configurations of desire that are its special domain of expertise,4 and the emergent forms of authority associated with the analyst, described in History of Madness (Foucault 2009) and in Psychiatric Power (Foucault 2006).Perhaps we’d expect to see David-Ménard, the psychoanalyst, addressing these accounts, but they are neither repudiated in Eloge, nor extensively discussed. Far from rejecting a genealogical analysis of psychoanalysis, she promotes its promise. But this is so in a particular sense.Necessity and repetitionA particular patient might fear being “mad like her mother.” She might fear being denied, trapped, or annihilated (David-Ménard 2011, 33). She might [End Page 112] consider herself somehow denied a lover. She might seem to be denying herself a lover. There’s a degree of necessity in all these variants. Perhaps these... (shrink)

It might seem strange to propose an aesthetic consideration of the theme park, that artificial bloom in the garden of popular culture.1 The aesthetic is often considered a minority interest in the modern world, yet it offers a distinctive perspective, even on an activity that has mass appeal, and can provide insights that would otherwise remain undiscovered. Aesthetic description and interpretation can illuminate the theme park in many directions: as architecture, design, theater, landscape architecture, environment. I shall choose (...) the last of these, environment. (shrink)

A MEDIEVAL ARMENIAN CHURCH IN KARS: “TAYLAR CHURCH” ABSTRACT Some of the settlements located within the boundaries of the current Province of Kars had become the capital of the Armenian Kingdoms that existed in Eastern Anatolia in the medieval period as vassals of great empires of that time. Peace and prosperity prevailed in the region where Kars is situated during the 10th century and early 11th century. This provided an opportunity for the Armenian church which had developed under difficult political, (...) cultural and religious conditions, leading to the construction of numerous monasteries and churches in the region. We learn from the history book of Stephanos Asoğik Daronetsi, an Armenian historian who lived during the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century about plenty of building activities within the territory of the Armenian Kingdom. Taylar Church is located 45 km to the east of Kars and 2km to the north of Horomos monastery. Its original Armenian name and date of construction is unknown, and it is now known as the Taylar Church. Taylar Church has a “domed hall” plan type of spesific Armenian Architecture. This type is a single nave partitioned into three sections with a dome over the central section. The drum is octogonal within and without, and rested on pandantives supported by semicircular arches. The earliar examples of this plan type in Armenian Architecture, appear Zovuni Surp Bogos-Bedros Church (6th), Ptghni Church (7th), Aruch Surp Gregor Church (7th) ve Dedmaşen Surp Tadeus Church (7th). So far in our research, the plan of type Taylar Church-with minor differences (windows, doors, ornaments etc.)- has been observed extensively applied after numerous churches in the 9th century in Armenian architecture. The purpose of this article is to introduce the Taylar Church within the Armenian architecture and to discuss its problems like identity and dating, by means of collected material through research on previous written sources as well as through the architectural data gathered during our field survey. Key Words: Armenian, Taylar, Church, Kars, Architecture, History. (shrink)

In 2006, acclaimed Italian film director Nanni Moretti released Il caimano [“the Caiman”], a surreal depiction of Silvio Berlusconi’s career as controversial businessman and politician. In one of the last sequences, an indicted Berlusconi leaves the courthouse of Milan, while his supporters besiege its premises and set them on fire. Admired for his capacity of prophetically foreseeing the developments of Italian society, Nanni Moretti’s apocalyptic vision was confirmed by reality on March 11, 2013, when a group of deputes and senators (...) from PDL, Silvio Berlusconi’s political party, ‘besieged’ the courthouse of Milan in order to interfere with the new trials the political leader was involved in: an affair of prostitution of minors, known as “the Ruby case”, and the alleged corruption of a senator. Since when Silvio Berlusconi has been the center of the Italian both political and juridical arena, and with the increasing representation of his trials in Italian and international media, the courthouses of such trials, and particularly that of Milan, have turned more and more into the theater of a socio-political showdown, in which what matters though is not only what takes place in the Court, but also, and perhaps even more, what happens in the area surrounding its premises. Here pro- and -anti Berlusconi partisans have gathered daily in order to manifest their stand to both the citizenry and the media; here media professionals have been stationed 24/7, waiting for the next scandal; and here a dramatic battle line between the political power and the juridical one inexorably materializes with all the violent evidence of its proxemics. The essay analyzes through semiotics a series of verbal and especially visual texts representing the courthouses of Silvio Berlusconi’s trials, with the goal of understanding what this imagery reveals of the current trends of Italian socio-political and juridical arena. More broadly, the essay compares this case study with other instances of courthouses besieged by crowds, so as to semiotically seize the delicate equilibrium of the judiciary proxemics between totalitarian and populist ideologies of law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche and MetaphorKarsten HarriesNietzsche and Metaphor, by Sarah Kofman; translated by Duncan Large; xivi & 239 pp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, $37.50 cloth, $12.95 paper.Since its first publication in 1972, Sarah Kofman’s Nietzsche et la métaphore has become a minor classic; reason enough to welcome this readable translation, accompanied with the translator’s unusually informative introduction, which resituates the work “in the context in which it first (...) appeared, at the high-water mark during an extraordinary surge of interest in ‘the new Nietzsche’ which swept over France in the 1960s and early 1970s” (p. ix), and concludes with a brief glance at the similarly extraordinary growth of interest in Nietzsche today in the English speaking countries, which should assure this translation of a warm reception. The addition of thoughtful notes and a complete bibliography of Kofman’s writings reinforces the impression that a major work of a major writer has finally been made available in English.Indeed, anyone interested in the metaphor-intoxicated, “new Nietzsche,” will be required to turn to this book, which has made such an important contribution to the discourse that constructed this Nietzsche. Rather short (without Kofman’s appended review of Granier’s Heideggerian Nietzsche, just 119 pp.) and readable, it invites us to confront this “new Nietzsche” with Nietzsche himself, or rather with the texts he published and—here we must be on our guard—with texts that for different reasons he left unpublished.The way this book gives precedence to the unpublished over the published works invites challenge, and here again it is not The Will to Power, but rather early material that comes in for intense scrutiny where, by now quite expectedly, “The Philosopher: Reflections on the Struggle Between Art and Knowledge” and even more “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense,” come in for special attention—chapter 3, “The Forgetting of Metaphor,” and chapter 4, which bears the title “Metaphorical Architectures,” offer themselves as a partial commentary on the latter brief and never completed text. But still only a partial commentary, and as revealing as the passages Kofman chooses to discuss are those passed over. As expected one meets with Nietzsche’s famous description of truth as “A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms” (p. 58) and a great many related passages, pointing in the same general direction. But we should not allow ourselves to be carried away by the flow of Nietzsche’s youthful prose: only a one-sided reading of this text will overlook how close, despite his use of architectural metaphors to call into question the architecture of philosophy, Nietzsche here remains to one of the paradigmatic philosophical builders, to Kant, and even more to Schopenhauer—both mentioned only in passing by Kofman. That we ourselves have constituted the world of science is for Nietzsche no reason to question “the eternal consistency, omnipresence, and infallibility of the laws of nature” (“On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense”). Quite the opposite, he goes on, the [End Page 153] turn to the subject allowed a thinker like Kant to conclude that, in Nietzsche’s words, “so far as we can penetrate here—from the telescopic heights to the microscopic depths—everything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and all the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other.” Nietzsche advances no considerations to dispute such confidence. Readers of this text focused on the many ways in which Nietzsche here emphasizes “the artistic process of metaphor formation” should keep in mind his insistence that this process, with which every sensation is said to begin, is also said to presuppose Kant’s pure intuitions, time and space, and therefore “relationships of succession and number.” “The only way in which the possibility of subsequently constructing a new conceptual edifice from metaphors themselves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms. That is to say, this conceptual edifice is an imitation of temporal, spatial, and numerical relationships in the domain of metaphor. Every explanation of metaphor formation is here said to... (shrink)

This essay is an informal examination of the efforts made by mathematical logicians from Russell on, to evade the paradoxes revealed by uncritical methods of definition and predication. Where systems are described it is with a minimum of formal apparatus, so that the climate is one of rather vague statement and imprecise question. Russell’s drastic banning of type–offending formulas gives the starting–point for queries about the connection of sense and formalism, and the conclusion may be summed up as the detection (...) of a contrast between mechanisation and sensefulness which is seen as constituting a line of tension, as it were a geological weakness in formal structures, which permits the insertion of a philosophic wedge. Interesting as such an idea is, it is not clear between what regions this line has been drawn. On the one hand the undecidability results of Gödel show that formal methods can be extended indefinitely beyond the scope of what is mechanisable; on the other the author methodically refrains from defining what he means by ‘sense’. In so far as he explicitly leaves his meaning on this point to be gathered form his treatment of non–sense, and the paradoxes are here taken as representative of the latter, we might suppose that he is equating sense with consistency. For expressions leading to paradox were only ruled senseless by Russell because they lead to inconsistency. But it is fairly clear that something more epistemologically interesting is intended, since the author dismisses from consideration ‘la déductivité structurale, sens immédiat d’une vaste architecture symbolique d’abord vide, et intégralement traduisible en syntaxe’. Such translatability has, incidentally, its limits, as Gödel’s results again show, and it is our belief that the discussion might have been put in a more exact and workmanlike frame if the list of works consulted had contained more than one, and that a relatively minor, publication of Gödel. (shrink)

How human beings came to exist in this physical world is a question that has preoccupied mankind for as long as history records; every religion offers an answer, and so too have philosophers of natural history from Aristotle and before. The year 2009 will see celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, progenitor of the theory - or fact, as its adherents see it - that gives the secular scientific world the "creation story" dominant today. Social (...) status in every society flows to the people who persuade the mass that they offer the true and accurate explanation of how we humans came to be; but the social and financial benefits that flow to the "truth pronouncers" of society produce sociological and psychological motivations that bias and impair the independent logical assessment of whether the data supports, or contradicts, the story whose wide acceptance produces so many tangible benefits. The discoveries of molecular biology and DNA over the years since 1950 raise, in the minds of a dissident minority of scientists, substantial possibilities that the theory of evolution cannot be considered complete without the operation of some force or element in the material world that we can only conceive of as being akin to the intelligence with which we ourselves address the world. In this paper, the author, holder of an MIT bachelor of science (in architecture) and the latest in a family of seven generations of physicians, scientists, and engineers, from the 1700s to the 2000s, relates lessons learned not only about evolution, molecular biology, and "intelligent design," but also about the accumulated "bad habits" that have developed and encrusted the conduct of science in the 130 years since the foundation of the research-oriented universities in the 1870s. (shrink)

There is a tendency, a bad tendency, to make epistemic agency the central focus of epistemology. In brief, epistemologists have traditionally elevated epistemic agency as the crucial issue to be addressed, and ask all other epistemological questions in light of that issue. This is not surprising given the Cartesian influence on epistemology, but I argue that epistemic agency should not always be the central focus of epistemology. There are times when giving central place to epistemic agency gets in the way (...) of good epistemology. In this paper, I show how one approach to a communitarian epistemology falters precisely because of the primacy given to epistemic agency. Specifically, I take a close look at Lynn Hankinson Nelson?s notion of epistemological communities in terms of epistemic agency and analyze both its merits and its shortcomings. This is an important analysis for general consideration given the trend in non-traditional epistemologies to look towards social complexes as the real seats of knowledge. But this is also important because my analysis pushes one to consider an alternative framing concept for epistemology?that of epistemic practises instead of epistemic agency. (shrink)

Karen Barad develops a view she calls ‘posthumanism,’ or ‘agential realism,’ where the human is reconfigured away from the central place of explanation, interpretation, intelligibility, and objectivity to make room for the epistemic importance of other material agents. Barad is not alone in this kind of endeavor, but her posthumanism offers a unique epistemological position. Her aim is to take a performative rather than a representationalist approach to analyzing ‘socialnatural’ practices and challenge methodological assumptions that may go unnoticed in some (...) disciplinary fields. Yet for all the good of the challenge, Barad must support it with sound epistemological theorizing, theorizing that would apply to any methodology, whether that be sociological, historical, anthropological, or philosophical. Thus, where one might critique Barad on her assessments of sociological, historical, or anthropological incorporations of humans and the nonhuman, I critique Barad’s epistemology on its sense of objectivity and dismissal of the centrality of the human. I argue that Barad’s epistemology must retain a particular form of humanism, a humanism that stakes human subjectivity as the locus of rationality and objectivity, without which it creates intractable problems. To recuperate Barad’s challenge to contest assumptive distinctions while avoiding her epistemological problems, I offer some parting reflections. (shrink)

Barry Barnes and David Bloor of the Strong Programme of the sociology of knowledge advance a naturalized epistemology that reduces all accounts of normativity to social causes. I endorse their program of naturalizing one kind of normativity, but I argue that there is another kind they cannot naturalize. Within the context of sociological explanations of rationality, there are norms of rationality instantiated by scientists that Barnes and Bloor study, and Barnes and Bloor's own normative ascriptions of scientists as rational beings. (...) I argue that Barnes and Bloor successfully justify their naturalization of the norms of rationality of the scientists they describe by a methodological caution and arguments from under-determination and finitism. But they inevitably fail to naturalize their own normative ascriptions of those scientists as rational. (shrink)

Humanism is blurry. It can have some clarity, but it is mainly blurry. To say anything otherwise is to fool oneself. Yes, we can construct reasonable humanistic theories that attempt to organize our understanding, such as methodologicalhumanism where one unifies discourses or practices according to human subjects or substantivehumanism that touts the importance of humanity via some shared attribute or substance. But to suggest that one can delineate and define the full salience of humanity, whether great or small, in the (...) world we live and understand is to suppose a divine clarity that eludes our possession. Theorists use terms like ‘social causes,’ ‘matter,’ ‘construction,’ and ‘interpretation’ to help us figure out how our cognition and rationality work, and yet they woefully fail to capture the richness of our experiences, which blur distinctions between society and matter all the time. Every account of humanism should take stock of this difficulty, being careful to say only what one. (shrink)

Realism about the external world enjoys little philosophical support these days. I rectify this predicament by taking a relatively pragmatist line of thought to defend commonsense realism; I support commonsense realism through an interpretation and application of Donald Davidson’s notion of triangulation, the triangle composed of two communicators coordinating and correcting their responses with a shared causal stimulus. This argument is important because it has a crucial advantage over the often used abductive argument for realism. My argument avoids unwarranted conclusions, (...) whereas the abductive argument is “inflationary” because it reaches beyond the limits of evidence for its realist conclusion. To illustrate the problems of the abductive argument and motivate my Davidsonian approach, I take a brief look at the abductive argument for realism in Frederick Will’s work. (shrink)