Thirty-four scholars from 18 countries on five continents met in Cairo to debate for the first time the ideals of the Enlightenment and secularism while celebrating the 800th anniversary of the death of one of Islam's greatest philosophers. Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), known in the West as Averroës, may be viewed as a medieval precursor of the European Enlightenment and as a rallying point for dialogue between East and West. Averroës's attempt to harmonise philosophy and religion, reason and faith, (...) led to a rethinking of the tenets of Christianity. His work spurred on some of the great rational syntheses of Christian thought, such as Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica. This book offers a rare opportunity to learn about the contemporary Arab world and its efforts to dialogue with the West. (shrink)

Papers from a conference on Averroës influence on the Enlightenment in Europe and the Arab world.

Le projet révolutionnaire s'est largement identifié à un projet pédagogique, qui déborde de beaucoup les dispositifs scolaires pour s'attacher à une véritable conversion : du sujet au citoyen, de l'homme enchaîné à l'homme libre, du vieil homme à l'homme régénéré. Au coeur de cet ouvrage, on trouvera l'essai consacré à cette entreprise, dont Saint-Just a défini l'ambition ("faire des hommes ce qu'on veut qu'ils soient") et Mirabeau le possible délire : "Avec des moyens appropriés, on pourrait passionner les hommes pour (...) une organisation sociale entièrement absurde, injuste et cruelle". Toutes les études qui accompagnent ce texte central éclairent à leur manière la tentative utopique, magnifique et désespérée, de maîtriser à la fois l'événement et la durée, l'individu et le collectif, l'opinion réfléchie et l'opinion spontanée. Se dessine ainsi le vrai sujet de cet ensemble, que traitaient déjà La Fête révolutionnaire (1976) et L'École de la France (1984) : l'entrée, avec la volonté d'instituer l'homme aussi bien que le citoyen, dans notre culture démocratique. (shrink)

La France a longtemps passé pour le pays des femmes. Elle a pourtant la réputation d'être aussi celui d'un féminisme timoré qui a tardé plus qu'ailleurs à asseoir ses conquêtes. D'où vient cette timidité? C'est ce paradoxe qu'explore le livre de Mona Ozouf, en donnant à entendre "les mots des femmes", ceux qu'elles ont choisis elles-mêmes pour décrire la féminité.

En Russie, après 1917, « la question des femmes » et la « la question sexuelle » ont fait l’objet de politiques publiques qui se voulaient éclairées par les sciences sociales. Après avoir été décrétées résolues sous Staline, ces questions ont pu être partiellement réouvertes avec le Dégel. Cet article explique comment, sur le temps long, ces sciences sociales supposées « socialistes » se sont distinguées des sciences « bourgeoises » moins par leur épistémologie que par la priorisation ou l’exclusion (...) de certaines problématiques, au gré des évolutions politiques du régime. Ainsi, les recherches sur la sexualité et le contrôle des naissances, avant-gardistes dans les années 1920, sont devenues relativement illégitimes après le dégel. Dans les années 1960-1980, c’était surtout la baisse de la natalité et le « double fardeau » – domestique et professionnel – des femmes qui faisaient problème. Les comportements familiaux semblaient étrangers à la logique de la planification, et les sciences sociales étaient travaillées par la perspective d’un art de gouverner d’orientation plus libérale. Il s’est alors formé un clivage qui est toujours d’actualité, entre une conceptualisation du changement social en termes de « modernisation » – démographique, sexuelle... – à accompagner, ou de « crise » à enrayer. (shrink)

Ces trois ouvrages collectifs, qui se complètent et se prolongent mutuellement, sont des exemples révélateurs du dynamisme des études de genre en Russie. A. Temkina et E. Zdravomyslova ont joué depuis les années 1990 un rôle incontournable dans l’institutionnalisation de ce champ de recherches, à la marge du système universitaire russe, et se revendiquent d’une « sociologie publique ». A. Rotkirch (finlandaise) est professeure à l’Université d’Helsinski et directrice du Population Research In...

Dans le contexte du régime autoritaire soviétique des années Brejnev, on ne saurait retrouver des mobilisations féministes ou de patientes autour de la gynécologie similaires à celles qui ont pu se déployer à l’Ouest. Néanmoins, des dissidentes féministes se sont emparées de ce sujet dans des publications clandestines du début des années 1980 (les samizdats), restées très confidentielles en URSS. Ensuite, pendant la perestroïka, un abondant courrier de lectrices publié dans le magazine féminin grand public Rabotnitsa a véhiculé des témoignages (...) et des revendications extrêmement similaires à ceux des dissidentes féminines. L’article mobilise ces deux corpus. Les militantes et les lectrices ont notamment dénoncé le manque de contraceptifs menant à des avortements à répétition, l’absence d’anesthésie lors des avortements et des accouchements, l’indifférence et la « cruauté » d’un personnel soignant débordé, travaillant « à la chaîne ». Certaines ont même parlé de « tortures » gynécologiques. Ces critiques ordinaires et féministes ont porté, plus largement, sur le manque de moyens du système de santé. Après avoir examiné les politiques publiques soviétiques en matière de santé sexuelle et reproductive, l’article analyse les processus par lesquels des frustrations largement partagées par les patientes en gynécologie ont pu être mises en discours et politisées. Une mise en perspective sur la base de comparaisons internationales permet également d’interroger les impensés de ces discours critiques. (shrink)

Considers observation as it is enacted in the home, nursery or classroom. Drawing on a range of theories including feminist new materialism, social semiotics, and sociocultural and multimodal approaches to early childhood, the chapters cover a range of areas, from early childhood art and observational literacy tools to intergenerational research, and using photography and video in observations.

Cet ouvrage, issu d’une thèse soutenue en 2006, est parmi les premiers à aborder l’histoire soviétique sous l’angle de la mode et de la culture vestimentaire, et il s’agit d’une contribution unique grâce aux sources nombreuses et variées – archives étatiques et privées, presse, entretiens... – sur lesquelles il s’appuie. L’ouvrage de Larissa Zakharova vise à faire se rejoindre l’histoire « d’en haut » et l’histoire « d’en bas » en analysant l’articulation entre les attitudes officielles vis-à...

La catégorie du « naturel » a mauvaise réputation quand il est question de genre et de sexualité : elle est bien souvent utilisée pour essentialiser et valoriser les « bons » comportements et rejeter les « mauvais genres » du côté des monstres et du contre-nature. Mais si la « Nature » elle-même était déviante? Et si la matière elle-même était faite d’êtres qui défient la logique? Dans cet article, la physicienne et philosophe des sciences Karen Barad propose une (...) lecture oblique de la physique quantique et de ses réceptions, à la recherche de créatures (des éclairs, des électrons, du vide, un monstre de Frankenstein…) aux côtés desquelles toustes celleux qu’on a désignées comme contre-nature pourraient trouver compagnie. (shrink)

Rough set theory is an excellent mathematical tool for the analysis of a vague description of actions in decision problems. Now, in this paper by considering the notion of an equality algebra, the notion of the lower and the upper approximations are introduced and some properties of them are given. Moreover, it is proved that the lower and the upper approximations define an interior operator and a closure operator, respectively. Also, using D-lower and D-upper approximation, conditions for a nonempty subset (...) to be definable are provided and investigated that under which condition D-lower and D-upper approximation can be filter. (shrink)

Cet article soutient que les voitures autonomes sont des robots sociaux qui doivent agir comme des tenants-lieux de leurs propriétaires humains. Pour ne pas esquiver les choix moraux incombant aux utilisateurs humains de ces technologies, on pourrait programmer les véhicules de façon à ce qu’ils puissent se comporter selon différentes théories morales, en permettant aux propriétaires de choisir celle qui a leur préférence. L’article envisage également les implications éthiques d’autres problèmes pratiques liés à la technologie des voitures autonomes.

L’ascension et la chute récentes de la loi islamiste en Égypte appellent une réflexion, non seulement sur le rôle social des idées féministes islamiques, mais aussi sur les raisons des changements politiques, ainsi que sur les questions d’opposition éthique et de principe. Mon approche de ce sujet ne reprend pas l’opposition habituelle entre laïc et islamique, ni la critique du libéralisme laïc, mais propose une critique de tout mouvement féministe, qu’il soit laïc ou islamique, qui s’autorise de lui-même à coopérer (...) ou à être réduit au silence par des régimes politiques corrompus. La première partie de l’article traite de la question des relations fragiles entre les féministes et l’État plus particulièrement dans le contexte égyptien contemporain. La deuxième partie examine les ambiguïtés morales des positions du féminisme islamique. (shrink)

Hollywood films partially construct how Americans think about education. Recent work on the representation of schools in American cinema has highlighted the role of class difference in shaping school film genres. It has also advanced the idea that a nuanced understanding of American individualism helps to explain why the different class genres are shaped as they are. This article attempts to refine this theoretical approach by focusing on the paradox of individualism, which suggests that individualism must always be dependent on (...) community. We examine 5 films (Rushmore 1988, The Breakfast Club 1985, Mona Lisa Smile 2003, School of Rock 2003, and Stand and Deliver 1988) and argue that, although the values of individualism are certainly celebrated, these films also show, perhaps unwittingly, that the achievements of individualism require robust student communities. We describe how student communities function in these films, what achievements they make possible, and what obstacles they face. (shrink)

Si Leibniz a souvent présenté une analogie entre la substance et l’ ego, la détermination de la substantialité à partir de l’ ego ne relève cependant ni d’une analogie, ni d’un transfert de substantialité ni d’une « déduction égologique ». Il s’agit plutôt d’une hypotypose, ancrée dans l’expérience du sujet en première personne, qui est toujours l’expérience d’un corps associé. Sans cette expérience réflexive, le concept même de substance, qu’il soit identifié à la subjectité ou à la perséité, n’aurait aucun (...) sens. Par cette expérience réflexive, c’est toujours l’expérience d’un corps substantié et d’une infinité de substantiés qui est en jeu. En somme : la voie égologique de la substance est toujours en même temps celle du substantié. (shrink)

Dans la préface de cet ouvrage, Mona Ozouf associe les femmes et les hommes à la Révolution française au titre d’un espace d’interdépendance entre le politique et le civil, le public et le privé où la famille, et la femme en tant que membre de cette unité, touchent au plus près à « l’universalité ». Ce qui revient à entrer dans une explication socio-historique de la mise à l’écart des femmes et nous renvoie à une pensée politique de l’unité (...) « universelle » d’intérêts entre l’homme et la femme... (shrink)

the Mona Lisa, the Mondscheinsonate, the Chanson d’automne are works of art, the salt shaker on your table, the car in your garage, or the pijamas on your bed are not. the basic question of the metaphysics of works of art is this: what makes a thing a work of art? that is: what sort of property do works of art have in virtue of which they are works of art? or more simply: what sort of property being a (...) work of art is? In this paper we argue that things are works of art in virtue of what they are like, their intrinsic features, that is, in virtue of the fact that they have the perceptual (auditory, visual, etc.) properties they have. In other words: being a work of art supervenes on perceptual-intrinsic features. Currently, this metaphysical view is extremely unpopular within the philosophy of art. It is unpopular because there allegedly exists a knock-down objection to it, the well-known argument from indiscernible counterparts. our thesis implies, among other things, that every perceptual duplicate of a work of art is also a work of art. according to the argument from indiscernible counterparts, however, there could be (or even: there are) indiscernible counterparts such that one of them is a work of art while the other is not. hence things cannot be works of art solely in virtue of what they are like. Our paper divides into three parts. In the first part we state our views. In the second part we defend it against various versions of the argument from indiscernible counterparts. (In doing so our position will become more plausible, we hope). In the final part we provide some meta-reflections on the matter. (shrink)

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and zoosemiotics. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Synthese, Husserl Studies, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy East and West, and The Review of Metaphysics. She has also contributed essays to The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy (1997), Feminist Phenomenology (2000), and Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial (...) Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm (2006). She co-edited Philosophies of the Environment and Technology (1999) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled The Birth of Science Out of the Spirit of Myth: A Historico-Phenomenological Re-Examination of the Crisis of the European Sciences. BERNARD BOXILL was born in Saint Lucia, West Indies where he received his primary and secondary education. He studied philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and at the University of California, Los Angeles where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1971. He has published numerous articles, a book, Blacks and Social Justice (1992), and is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ED BRANDON was born and educated in England, studying philosophy and linguistics at The University of York, England, and later philosophy at The University of Oxford with the late John Mackie. After teaching in Sierra Leone and briefly in England, he went to teach philosophy of education at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1978. From 1992 he has been attached to a policy unit of the Vice-Chancellery, based at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, where he has been assisting since 2000 with a new major in philosophy. His academic work can be accessed from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/personalpage.html CAROLYN CUSICK is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, and phenomenology. LEWIS GORDON is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is Laura H. Carnell Professor, the most distinguished chair, at Temple University, where he holds appointments in philosophy, religion, and Judaic studies and directs the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is also Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm, 2005). CLEVIS HEADLEY is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master's in Liberal Studies. Professionally, he serves as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Professor Headley has published widely in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Africana philosophy. He has also published in Analytic philosophy, focusing specifically on Gottlob Frege. PAGET HENRY is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and the co-editor of C. L. R. James' Caribbean. Professor Henry also serves as the editor of the C. L. R. James Journal, and has published numerous articles on the political economy of the Caribbean as well as on African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy. ESIABA IROBI is Associate Professor of International Theatre/Performance Studies at Ohio University, Athens. His groundbreaking book: A Theatre for Cannibals: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1441 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, in 2007. He has been invited to be an External Resident Fellow at the prestigious Dartmouth College Humanities Institute for the 2007-2008 academic year. CHIKE JEFFERS is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. His interests are in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. He is originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CATHERINE JOHN is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her book Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing was co-published by Duke University Press and UWI Press in 2003. She has published several articles on Caribbean literature and culture and her current book project is entitled The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination. She spends her summer working in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica helping with a summer school for children and participating in the community's emancipation celebration. KENNETH KNIES is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of focus are phenomenology and ancient philosophy. He is also a contributing editor for Political Affairs magazine. EDIZON LEN is a photographer and coordinator of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In 2006, he was curator of the photo exhibit "The Color of the Diaspora" presented at the Cultural Center of the Catholic University of Ecuador and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar with a focus on Maroon thought. REKHA MENON is Associate Professor of Art History at State University of New York, Buffalo State. She is the author of Seductive Aesthetics of Post Colonialism (forthcoming). Her area of research focuses on current philosophical investigations in colonial and neocolonial aspects of Indian art, artistic/cultural practices and philosophies and their relationship to Western arts and philosophies. Her manuscripts under review are: Ashamed of Our Nakedness, Is There Ever a Naked Body? Ambivalence in Contemporary Indian Expressive Aesthetics and Insatiable Desire. MICHAEL R. MICHAU is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy and Literature Program at Purdue University, and during the 2006-2007 school year, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Studies and Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He is the co-founder and co-secretary of the North American Levinas Society. CHARLES W. MILLS is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He works in the general area of oppositional political theory, and is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). MABOGO P. MORE is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published articles on African philosophy and social and political philosophy in a number of academic journals, such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue and Universalism, Alternation, Theoria, and African Journal of Political Science. MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT, Ph.D., M.S.W. is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Lewis University. Dr. Nissim-Sabat is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the author of numerous book chapters and papers in the fields of philosophy (Husserlian phenomenology), psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Citations of her works can be found on her website: marilynnissim-sabat.com. FREDERICK OCHIENG'-ODHIAMBO is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Coordinator of the discipline at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. His major research areas are African philosophy and social philosophy. He has published several articles on philosophic sagacity. IVAN PETRELLA is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He is author of The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto (SCM Press, 2006) and editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: The Next Generation (Orbis Books, 2005) as well as co-editor of the series Reclaiming Liberation Theology (SCM Press) RICHARD PITHOUSE is a research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is editor of Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Africa World Press, 2006). SATHYA RAO is Assistant Professor in French translation at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His research fields include: theory of translation, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, discourses on Africa, and Francophone cinema and literature. He has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and written chapters in several collective books such as: De l'Ecrit Africain a l'Oral le Phenomene Graphique Africain, Simon Battestini (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) and Thèorie-rèbellion. Un Ultimatum, Gilles Grelet (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005). He has a co-edited a book on Francophone African cinema L'Afrique fait son cinema (Montreal: Memoires d'encrier, forthcoming). Sathya Rao is vice-president of the International Non-Philosophical Organisation (INPhO), member of the Canadian Association of Translatology (CATS), coordinator of the research team Poexil, and Secretary of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is co-founder of an online journal Alternative Francophone. CATHERINE WALSH is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. Her research interests include the geopolitics of knowledge, interculturality and concerns related to the Afro-Andean Diaspora and the production of decolonial thought. Among her recent publications are Pensamiento crìtico y matriz colonial (Quito: Abya Yala, 2005), "Interculturality and the Coloniality of Power. An 'Other' Thinking and Positioning from the Colonial Difference," in Coloniality of Power, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, R. Grosfoguel, J.D. Saldivar, and N. Maldonado-Torres (Eds.) (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and "Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies 'Others' in the Andes," Cultural Studies (forthcoming). KRISTIN WATERS has published widely in the areas of race and gender. Her anthology Enlightened Conversations: Women and Men Political Theorists (Blackwell, 2000) challenges political theorists to be more inclusive of race and gender in their research and teaching. Her book Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, co-edited with Carol Conaway (University of Vermont Press, forthcoming), addresses the varied intellectual traditions of black women's thought that spans more than two hundred years in North America. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Visiting Research Associate at Brandeis University. (shrink)

In the recent philosophical literature on inquiry, epistemologists point out that their subject has often begun at the point at which you already have your evidence and then focussed on identifying the beliefs for which that evidence provides justification. But we are not mere passive recipients of evidence. While some comes to us unbidden, we often actively collect it. This has long been recognised, but typically epistemologists have taken the norms that govern inquiry to be practical, not epistemic. The recent (...) literature challenges this assumption and uncovers a rich range of questions about the epistemic normativity of inquiry. In this paper, I approach these questions from the formal side of epistemology. Developing out of the philosophy of science, as it did, this branch of epistemology has long discussed inquiry. And, building on the insights of Janina Hosiasson (1931), David Blackwell (1951), and I. J. Good (1967), it has produced a reasonably well-developed framework in which to understand norms of inquiry, both epistemic and practical. In the first half of the paper, I will present the pragmatic versions of this framework due to Hosiasson, Blackwell, and Good, and the epistemic version due to Graham Oddie (1997); in the second half of the paper, I put this framework to work, turning to some of the questions from the recent debate about inquiry and asking how the framework can help us answer them. Questions include: When should we initiate an inquiry, when should we continue it, when should we conclude it, and when should we reopen it? How do epistemic norms of inquiry relate to epistemic norms of belief or credence, and can they conflict, as Jane Friedman (2020) contends? How should we resolve the apparent puzzle raised by Friedman's example of counting the windows in the Chrysler Building? How should we direct our attention, as Georgi Gardiner (2022) asks? How should we choose and reason after receiving evidence we'd rather not have received? And how should we understand the epistemic error that occurs when someone is resistant to evidence in the way Mona Simion (2023) describes? (shrink)

Depuis quinze ans, le monde arabe, en particulier le Liban, est le théâtre d’une campagne dynamique d’évangélisation, lancée par le protestantisme évangélique, qui accorde une place prépondérante à la conversion. L’organisation non gouvernementale (ONG) est la structure privilégiée des évangélistes. Elle s’adapte parfaitement aux caractères d’une mouvance qui fonctionne en réseau, au plan transnational, et investit de larges pans du social et de l’économique. Dans cet article, on questionne les valeurs dont se réclame une ONG évangélique particulière, World Vision, et (...) la manière dont elles sont reçues par les convertis. En analysant les parcours de deux protagonistes, Melkon et Mona, on tente de montrer que les valeurs morales alléguées par l’ONG permettent aux individus de donner sens et cohérence à leurs parcours conversionnels. Si World Vision travaille à la valorisation des individus et met en relief les manquements de la société libanaise en matière de solidarité, l’ONG participe paradoxalement à fragiliser la cohésion familiale. (shrink)

In The Quantum Self, Danah Zohar argues that the insights of modem physics can illuminate our understanding of everyday life -- our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Guiding us through the strange and fascinating workings of the subatomic realm to create a new model of human consciousness, the author addresses enduring philosophical questions. Does the new physics provide a basis by which our consciousness might continue beyond death? How does the material world (for instance, (...) ugly inner cities) impinge upon our sense of self? Is there a subatomic wellspring from which our creativity, our empathy with others, and our feelings of unity with the inanimate world originate?Most important, Zohar shows how the vitality of the new physics combats the alienation and fragmentation of twentieth-century life, and replaces it with a model of reality in which the universe itself may possess a type of consciousness, of which human consciousness is one expression. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 203-221 [Access article in PDF] Taste and "the Conversible World" in the Eighteenth Century Rochelle Gurstein In the middle of the nineteenth century a series entitled "Afoot" appeared in the literary magazine Blackwood's (1857), describing an Englishman's travels through Europe. In one installment the narrator tells of meeting a Yankee, who had just come from Florence the beautiful. Our friend approached (...) him warily, and began to ask him what he had seen, what admired. Then, after a little circumlocution, he dashed at once, in medias res, by saying, "Of course, you were in raptures with the Venus de Medici?"--expecting an answer such as he would himself have given. "Well, sir, to tell you the truth, I don't care much about those stone gals," was the answer he received. Our friend collapsed. Had anyone in his presence denied the orthodoxy of St. Augustine, or abjured the Thirty-Nine Articles, there would have been more sorrow in his anger, but scarcely more indignation. The Venus de Medici--a classic chef d'oeuvre--a thing which Praxiteles might have touched with his chisel, or Pericles have looked upon, to be called a "stone gal"! Had he doubted its genuineness, or spoken of it as a specimen of secondary art, he might have been deemed critical, hypercritical; but this was a classic impiety, an irreverence, a profanity. As if that were not enough, the Yankee's words betrayed "uncivism" and "egoism." He was undoubtedly among that type who "under their home influences, and the shadow of their own nationalities... have no aptitude for general civism." 1There is of course much that is familiar in this vignette, especially the contrast between Old World sophistication and American naivete. The unflappable Yankee who is irremediably unaware and proud of it and the overly fastidious, overly aestheticized Englishman were both destined to become stock characters in novels depicting Americans abroad, and here we see an early confrontation [End Page 203] between their rival sensibilities. Even though the Venus de Medici has now completely vanished from the modern imaginary museum of masterpieces, it was once among the most beloved, celebrated, and reproduced statues of antiquity; its repute was far beyond that of the Mona Lisa today, and from the time it was unearthed at the end of sixteenth century through the nineteenth century it was the indisputable exemplar of beauty. So it is no surprise that the Englishman, who, like all cultivated people of his day, was well versed in the world of classical antiquity, was mortified by the American's obliviousness before this "classic chef d'oeuvre"; for it revealed a man so utterly lacking in taste and sensibility that he did not have the wherewithal to know that he had been "irreverent" when he called the Venus de Medici "a stone gal."Where this anecdote moves into less familiar territory, however, is the Englishman's characterization of the Yankee's taste as uncivic and egoistic, as provincial and narrow. His willingness to judge a total stranger, to hold him accountable to a single standard of judgment, could not be in sharper contrast to our contemporary attitudes. Today subjectivity is celebrated in the common saying that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and taste; what is more, diversity of tastes is regarded as a measure of personal freedom and democracy. Thus, the Englishman's quickness to judge would be evidence of elitism, oppression, even cultural imperialism, and this response no longer belongs to naifs who cannot tell the difference between the most revered sculpture and stone gals; it now belongs to the sophisticated, educated, modern (and postmodern) person. Today the very idea of drawing distinctions--not only between practiced taste and first impressions but also between art and commercial entertainment, art and obscenity, high and popular culture, scholarship and propaganda, let alone between beauty and ugliness, right and wrong, excellence and mediocrity--is suspect. And since the capacity to make precisely these kinds of distinctions was once understood as the essence of... (shrink)

Les technologies contemporaines de l’image, telles que les ultrasons, l’endoscopie, et autres IRM et scanners, transforment l’image de notre corps. Dans cet article, cette transformation est particulièrement mise en lumière à partir d’une œuvre de Mona Hatoum intitulée “ Corps étranger ”. Cette œuvre d’art consiste en une projection vidéo d’images endoscopiques de l’intérieur du corps de l’artiste. On dit souvent qu’il est impossible de s’identifier soi-même à partir de ce type d’images dans la mesure où elles sont difficilement (...) reconnaissables comme des parties de son corps propre. Ou encore qu’elles n’appartiennent pas à l’image narcissique du corps. A l’aide d’une analyse phénoménologique et psychanalytique, l’auteur s’attache ici au contraire à montrer que de telles images fournissent une image affective de notre corps propre et qu’à travers elles il devient possible d’affronter l’étrangeté de celui-ci. (shrink)

At the beginning of his influential De Nominum Analogia, Thomas de Vio Cajetan mentions three mistaken positions on analogy. He does not attach names to these positions, but each one was held by distinguished Thomists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Furthermore, their proponents were responding to the same set of challenges from John Duns Scotus that set the agenda for the De Nominum Analogia. In this paper, I would like to do something that Cajetan did not do, and that (...) is, directly consider the merits of the first position in his list of mistaken accounts of analogy; namely, the position that analogy is constituted by disjunction. More specifically, this paper investigates the polemical use for which Hervaeus Natalis deployed analogy of disjunction; the reply of John Duns Scotus; and the implications of this back and forth for understanding the Thomist-Scotist dispute over the concept of being. (shrink)

Ian C. Jarvie developed the idea of situational logic in a subtle and effective way. He was also interested in, as well as a contributor to, the institution of academic publication. This chapter provides a situational analysis of an important recurrent pattern in academic publishing, namely, the concentration of work around particular topics, despite the fact that most such work will be unrewarded in the economy of esteem that is meant to be in play.

Chronic pain patients often miss receiving acknowledgement for the multidimensional struggles they face with their specific conditions. People suffering from chronic pain experience a type ofinvisibilitythat is also borne by other chronically ill people and their respective medical conditions. However, chronic pain patients face both passive and active exclusion from social participation in activities like family interactions or workplace inclusion. Although such aspects are discussed in the debates lead by the bio-psycho-social model of pain, there seems to be a lack (...) of a distinct interest in assessing more specifically the social aspects regarding chronic pain. As a result, the social aspects have yet to be taken into a more thorough theoretical consideration of chronic pain and to be practically implemented to help affected patients. By addressing chronic pain patients’ struggle for recognition, this paper attempts to shed light on some of these social aspects. We base this attempt on a theoretical framework that combines patients’ statements with an adaptation of Axel Honneth’s social-philosophical work onrecognition. Thus, this paper tries to make a suggestion on how the bio-psycho-social model of pain can live up to its name by helping to address more adequately some of the more neglected aspects in chronic pain patients’ suffering than has been possible to date. (shrink)

We propose a kernel method for using combinations of features across example pairs in learning pairwise classifiers. Pairwise classifiers, which identify whether two examples belong to the same class or not, are important components in duplicate detection, entity matching, and other clustering applications. Existing methods for learning pairwise classifiers from labeled training data are based on string edit distance or common features between two examples. However, if two examples from the same class have few common features, these methods have difficulties (...) in finding these pairs and achieving high recall. One typical example is to check whether two abbreviated author names in different citations refer to the same person or not. Since similarities between examples from the same class become close to zero, classifiers fail to distinguish positive pairs from negative pairs. One approach to avoiding the problem of zero similarities is using conjunctions of different features across examples, but implementing this idea straightforwardly makes the computational cost prohibitive for practical problems. Using a kernel on pair instances, our method can use feature conjunctions across examples without actually doing feature mappings, which are computationally expensive. The kernel is a tensor product of two inner products on the original feature space. The corresponding feature mapping generates conjunctions of features only across the two different examples while that of the conventional polynomial kernel also generates conjunctions of features from the same example, which are irrelevant to pairwise classification and cause deterioration of accuracy. Our experiments on the author matching problem show that this method can give a precision 4 to 8 times higher than that of previous methods at medium recall levels. (shrink)

This "festschrift" brings together authors from various countries who are specialists in different disciplines within the humanities and who share a common vision of human life. These essays in philosophical speculation, political theory, literary criticism, and historical analysis are rooted in the western cultural heritage and Christian religious tradition. Major figures examined include Aristotle, Aquinas, Thomas More, John of the Cross, Donoso Cortes, and the Spanish Carlists. The interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan nature of this "festschrift" reflects the approach and style of (...) the man honored, Dr. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen. A special feature of the volume is a selection of critical studies of Professor Wilhelmsen's own work. (shrink)

It is almost universally believed that in quantum theory the two following statements hold: all transformations are achieved by a unitary interaction followed by a von-Neumann measurement; all mixed states are marginals of pure entangled states. I name this doctrine the dogma of purification ontology. The source of the dogma is the original von Neumann axiomatisation of the theory, which largely relies on the Schrődinger equation as a postulate, which holds in a nonrelativistic context, and whose operator version holds only (...) in free quantum field theory, but no longer in the interacting theory. In the present paper I prove that both ontologies of unitarity and state-purity are unfalsifiable, even in principle, and therefore axiomatically spurious. I propose instead a minimal four-postulate axiomatisation: associate a Hilbert space \ to each system \; compose two systems by the tensor product rule \; associate a transformation from system \ to \ to a quantum operation, i.e. to a completely positive trace-non-increasing map between the trace-class operators of \ and \; evaluate all joint probabilities through that of a special type of quantum operation: the state preparation. I then conclude that quantum paradoxes—such as the Schroedinger-cat’s, and, most relevantly, the information paradox—are originated only by the dogma of purification ontology, and they are no longer paradoxes of the theory in the minimal formulation. For the same reason, most interpretations of the theory interpret the same dogma, not the strict theory stripped of the spurious postulates. (shrink)

Contemporary Continental Philosophy steps back from current debates comparing Continental and analytic philosophy and carefully, yet critically outlines the tradition’s main philosophical views on epistemology and ontology. Forgoing obscure paraphrases, D’Amico provides a detailed, clear account and assessment of the tradition from its founding by Husserl and Heidegger to its challenge by Derrida and Foucault. Though intended as a survey of this tradition throughout the twentieth century, this study’s focus is on the philosophical problems which gave it birth and even (...) now continue to shape it.The book reexamines Husserl as an early critic of epistemological naturalism whose grasp of the philosophical importance of the theory of meaning was largely ignored. Heidegger’s contrasting effort to revive ontology is examined in terms of his distinction between ontic and ontological questions. In contrast with many earlier studies, the author outlines confusions engendered by the misappropriation of the distinct philosophical agendas of Husserl and Heidegger by such famous figures as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. The book is also original in its emphasis on how social externalism in epistemology, inspired by Karl Mannheim, influenced this tradition’s structuralist and Marxist phases. The philosophical defenses of a theory of interpretation by Gadamer and Habermas are closely examined and assessed and the study concludes with a a probing yet balanced account of Foucault and Derrida as critics of philosophical autonomy. The book concludes by reassessing this century-long divide between the analytic and Continental traditions and its implication for the future of philosophy. (shrink)