We are living at the dawn of the first truly scientific picture of the universe-as-a-whole, yet people are still dragging along prescientific ideas about God that cannot be true and are even meaningless in the universe we now know we live in. This makes it impossible to have a coherent big picture of the modern world that includes God. But we don't have to accept an impossible God or else no God. We can have a real God if we redefine (...) God in light of knowledge no one ever had before. The key question is, “Could anything actually exist in the scientific universe that is worthy of the name, God?” My answer is yes: God is an “emergent phenomenon,” as real as the global economy or the government or the worldwide web, which are all emergent phenomena. But God arose from something deeper: the complex interactions of all humanity's aspirations. An emerging God has enormous implications. (shrink)

Beginning in 2002, Wells Fargo began opening fraudulent accounts for unsuspecting customers. Stakeholders at every level either participated in, ignored, or tolerated the bank’s behavior that defrauded consumers on a massive scale. These unethical and well-documented schemes spanned more than a decade. Using public sources, this case recounts the events and ethical lapses that unfolded over the multiyear investigation of the Wells Fargo fraudulent accounts scandal and illuminates the general systemic failures of corporate culture and governance, public regulation, and market (...) responses to promote ethical business practices. This case provides the opportunity to consider what means for fostering ethical conduct might exist if a corporation can be big enough and rich enough that civil, criminal, regulatory, and market forces cannot deter unethical corporate practices, and if the market does not punish the corporation for a culture that promotes fraud. (shrink)

Civic agriculture is characterized in the literature as complementary and embedded social and economic strategies that provide economic benefits to farmers at the same time that they ostensibly provide socio-environmental benefits to the community. This paper presents some ways in which women farmers practice civic agriculture. The data come from in-depth interviews with women practicing agriculture in Pennsylvania. Some of the strategies women farmers use to make a living from the farm have little to do with food or agricultural products, (...) but all are a product of the process of providing a living for farmers while meeting a social need in the community. Most of the women in our study also connect their business practices to their gender identity in rural and agricultural communities, and redefine successful farming in opposition to traditional views of economic rationality. (shrink)

The past two decades of psychoanalytic discourse have witnessed a marked transformation in the way we think about women and gender. The assignment of gender carries with it a host of assumptions, yet without it we can feel lost in a void, unmoored from the world of rationality, stability and meaning. The feminist analytic thinkers whose work is collected here confront the meaning established by the assignment of gender and the uncertainty created by its absence. The contributions brought together in (...) _Psychoanalytic Reflections on a Gender-free Case_ address a cross-section of significant issues that have both chronicled and facilitated the changes in feminist psychoanalysis since the mid 1980s. Difficult issues which have previously been ignored are considered first. The book goes on to address family perspectives as they interact and shape the child’s experience of growing up male or female. Other topics covered are the authority of personal agency as influenced by the language and theory of patriarchy, male-centred concepts that consistently define women as inferior, and the concept of gender as being co-constructed within a relationship. The gender-free case presented here will fascinate all psychoanalysts interested in exploring ways of grappling with the elusive nature of gender, as well as those studying gender studies. (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that art, being a pervasive human behaviour across time and space, must have an evolutionary adaptive purpose, the Author claims in this paper that art making has evolved as a behaviour that serves to bind individuals together into cooperative groups. In more detail, the Author demonstrates here the adaptive value of art behaviour by showing how art can evoke fear and how it can evoke pleasure.

Using longitudinal, ethnographic data, the authors examine how the pursuit of self-sufficiency in the context of welfare reform may unintentionally encourage some women to develop alternative dangerous dependencies on abusive or potentially abusive men. In this article, the authors document how women ended up relying on men who have been abusive to them either for instrumental assistance or for more direct financial assistance as they struggled to move from welfare to work. The authors also document how some extremely disadvantaged and (...) vulnerable women became enmeshed in even more dangerous dependencies as they hit time limits and fell through public and private safety nets into drug addiction and sex work. The authors frame this discussion of dangerous dependencies with the recognition that dependency relations are necessary and inevitable components of carework. They argue that the discourse of self-sufficiency should acknowledge the fact that careworkers are productive citizens to the same extent as paid laborers and grapple with the question of the means through which they can support that productivity when personal resources are limited and paid labor is temporarily or permanently impossible. (shrink)

When developing computational models to analyze the tradeoffs between climate risk management strategies (i.e., mitigation, adaptation, or geoengineering), scientists make explicit and implicit decisions that are influenced by their beliefs, values and preferences. Model descriptions typically include only the explicit decisions and are silent on value judgments that may explain these decisions. Eliciting scientists’ mental models, a systematic approach to determining how they think about climate risk management, can help to gain a clearer understanding of their modeling decisions. In order (...) to identify and represent the role of values, beliefs and preferences on decisions, we used an augmented mental models research approach, namely values-informed mental models (ViMM). We conducted and qualitatively analyzed interviews with eleven climate risk management scientists. Our results suggest that these scientists use a similar decision framework to each other to think about modeling climate risk management tradeoffs, including eight specific decisions ranging from defining the model objectives to evaluating the model’s results. The influence of values on these decisions varied between our scientists and between the specific decisions. For instance, scientists invoked ethical values (e.g., concerns about human welfare) when defining objectives, but epistemic values (e.g., concerns about model consistency) were more influential when evaluating model results. ViMM can (i) enable insights that can inform the design of new computational models and (ii) make value judgments explicit and more inclusive of relevant values. This transparency can help model users to better discern the relevance of model results to their own decision framing and concerns. (shrink)

Dignity, according to some recent arguments, is a useless concept, giving vague expression to moral intuitions that are better captured by other, better defined concepts. In this paper, I defend the concept of dignity against such skeptical arguments. I begin with a description of the defining features of the Kantian conception of dignity. I then examine one of the strongest arguments against that conception, advanced by Arthur Schopenhauer in On the Basis of Morality. After considering some standard accounts of dignity, (...) showing how they fail adequately to address Schopenhauer’s concern, I propose and defend a new account of dignity, drawing on the ontology of Jean-Luc Nancy. (shrink)

This book proposes a substantially new solution to a classic philosophical problem: how is it possible that morality genuinely obligates us, binding our wills without regard to our perceived well-being? Building on Immanuel Kant’s idea of the fact of reason, the book argues that the bindingness of obligation can be traced back to the fact, articulated in different ways by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Serres, and Jean-Luc Nancy, that we find ourselves responsive, prior to all reflection, to a pre-personal, originary (...) dimension of sense. (shrink)

A brief account of the work of Giorgio Agamben and its relation to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.

A brief description of ontology and of its relation to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.

A brief description of phenomenology and of its relation to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.

According to Stephen Darwall, being with others involves an implicit, second-personal respect for them. I argue that this is correct as far as it goes. Calling on Jean-Luc Nancy’s more ontological account of being-with, though, I also argue that Darwall’s account overlooks something morally very important: right at the heart of the being-with that gives us to ourselves as answerable to others on the basis of determinate, contractualist moral principles, we encounter an irreducible excess of sense that renders those (...) principles questionable. Following Nancy, I characterize this exposure to excess as adoration and develop some of its moral implications. (shrink)

Building on the theory of humor advanced by Yves Cusset in his recent book Rire: Tractatus philo-comicus, I argue that we can understand the phenomenon in terms of what Jean-Luc Nancy, following Roland Barthes, has called the exemption from sense. I attempt to show how the humorous sensibility, understood in this way, is entirely incompatible with the experience of others as contemptible. I conclude by developing some of the normative implications of this, focusing specifically on the question whether it (...) is ever morally permissible to treat others with contempt. (shrink)

In the early modern period, contempt emerged as a persistent theme in moral philosophy. Most of the moral philosophers of the period shared two basic commitments in their thinking about contempt. First, they argued that we understand the value of others in the morally appropriate way when we understand them from the perspective of the morally relevant community. And second, they argued that we are naturally inclined to judge others as contemptible, and that we must therefore interrupt that natural movement (...) of sense-bestowal in order to value others in the morally appropriate way. In this paper I examine in detail the arguments of Nicolas Malebranche and Immanuel Kant concerning the wrongness of contempt, emphasizing the ways in which they depend on conceptions of community and of the interruption of moral sense-bestowal. After showing how each of these arguments fails to comprehend the nature and the wrongness of contempt, I argue that we can find the resources for a more adequate account in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, and specifically in his reflections on ontology and on the meaning of community. (shrink)

Much contemporary feminist theory continues to see itself as freeing women from patriarchal oppression so that they may realize their own inner truth. To be told by postmodern thinkers such as Jacques Derrida that the very possibility of such a truth must be submitted to the process of deconstruction thus seems to present a serious challenge to the feminist project. From a postmodern perspective, on the other hand, most feminist discourse remains deeply rooted, if not in essentialism, at least in (...) the logocentrism of traditional philosophical and political thought. Stepping beyond the usual confines of this debate, the eleven thinkers whose ideas are represented in this volume take a deeper look at Derrida's work to consider its specific strengths and weaknesses as a model for feminist theory and practice. Despite this common focal point, this collection is extremely diverse. The problems addressed include the status of the female subject, civil disobedience, and the AIDS epidemic; the subjects include Husserl's theory of signs, jealousy in Shakespeare's _Othello_, and Irigaray's concept of the divine; disciplines include cultural studies, literature, philosophy, political theory, religion, and the law as represented by major scholars in each field; and the opinions expressed range from strong criticism of Derrida's work to careful explorations of the avenues it creates for rethinking sexual difference. Included are an analytic introduction by Nancy J. Holland; important new essays by Elizabeth Grosz, Peggy Kamuf, Peg Birmingham, Kate Mehuron, Ellen Armour, and Dorothea Olkowski; "Choreographies," Derrida's 1982 interview with Christie V. McDonald; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "Displacement and the Discourse of Women," published in the same year; and recent articles by Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's commitment to the idea that _Dasein_ is ultimately gender neutral, as well as several other major aspects of his thought, raises significant questions for feminist philosophers. The fourteen essays included in this volume clearly illustrate the ways in which feminist readings can deepen our understanding of his philosophy. They illuminate both the richness and the limitations of the resources his work can provide for feminist thought. This volume engages the full scope of Heidegger's writings from_ Being and Time (...) _through his latest work, from his readings of the ancient Greek poets to his critique of modern technology. At the same time, it reflects a wide range of contemporary feminist concerns: the significance of gender difference; the role of the body in philosophical thought; the relationship between philosophy and the natural world, and between philosophy and the domestic realm; and the aspiration to move forward into a new, more just, political world. Included in this volume are important new essays by Ellen Armour, Carol Bigwood, Jack Caputo, Tina Chanter, Trish Glazebrook, Jennifer Gosetti, Luce Irigaray, Dorothy Leland, Mechthild Nagel, Gail Stenstad, and the editors—as well as a valuable historical and theoretical Introduction by Patricia Huntington, the first of Jacques Derrida's "Geschlecht" articles, and an important 1997 essay by Iris Marion Young. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance by Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret PfeilNancy M. RourkeThe Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret Pfeil new york: palgrave macmillan, 2013. 203 pp. $90.00As a white American Catholic ethicist, I often envy my Protestant counterparts’ legacy of acknowledging and fighting (...) racism. Catholic moral theology lacks Protestantism’s bodies of literature, activism, and bold ecclesial statements addressing racism in the United States. (For more on this, see Bryan Massingale’s Racial Justice and the Catholic Church.) The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration demonstrates how Catholicism might approach American racism using several elements of Catholic theology.The book opens with series editor Mary Jo Iozzo’s introduction to the Content and Context in Theological Ethics series, of which this is the fifth book. A personal and reflective foreword by Sr. Helen Prejean follows. Then the book’s argument begins with a description of the United States’ practice of mass incarceration and brief discussions of what is meant by “whiteness” and “complicity.” This book employs a phenomenological understanding of race and of whiteness, taking whiteness as habitus. The literature about this approach to race and to identity is enormous, but familiarity with that literature is not necessary to follow this book’s presentation, argument, or use of the idea.Each of the book’s three authors has written a two-chapter section. Alex Mikulich’s explanation of white habitus speaks on levels of social thought and of the individual’s experience. Laurie Cassidy’s section looks at the culture of hyperincarceration and the development of the “dangerous black man” myth, and Margaret Pfeil’s section on spirituality works from the beatitudes, John of the Cross, and a wide array of other sources to describe a political spirituality of resistance for white Christians.This book would be most useful to masters-level graduate students in theological ethics or anyone preparing to begin teaching in areas of ethics related to racism or criminal justice (particularly in Catholic institutional settings). Rather than drawing exclusively on Catholic social teaching to talk about white participation in racism, these authors more satisfyingly put many Catholic traditions into action. For example, the book demonstrates careful use of the concepts of complicity, responsibility, participation, and intention; it considers specific [End Page 195] actions while maintaining focus on systems’ structures; and it uses a wide range of Catholic thinkers, including Metz, Copeland, Soelle, Gutiérrez, Carmelite Sr. Constance FitzGerald, Lonergan, Day, and John of the Cross.This book assumes and asserts that racism still exists, that whiteness exists and aims to make itself invisible, and that racism is kept alive through social structures that flow from white habitus. However, the book does not assume the reader’s agreement with any of these. Instead, the book first makes the case that these things are true and then takes next steps toward responsive practices of resistance. Rhetorically tinged homiletic shortcuts are not used to bolster this argument. For example, in similar works, the question of moral culpability for racist social structures is sometimes managed only with a discussion of how such structures distribute benefits and harms unequally. In this book, that argument is not used alone but in tandem with a careful look at the intention of one’s participation in such structures.Minor problems exist. The book would have benefited from one more round of editing to eliminate minor punctuation and writing problems, and the Catholic moral concept of “scandal” receives little systematic attention despite its presence in the title. Otherwise, the book demonstrates well what Catholic moral theology could do if applied to American white racism. Here’s hoping that this is just the beginning of more such scholarship.Nancy M. RourkeCanisius CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 155-165 [Access article in PDF] Critical Discussions Big Guys, Babies, and Beauty Nancy Easterlin Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began, by Ellen Dissanayake; xvii & 265 pp. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000, $29.95. The intellectual climate of postmodernism has not been particularly encouraging for the development of an evolutionary theory of the arts. Concentrated in constructionist modes of analysis and (...) interpretation for the past thirty years, the social sciences and humanities have asserted that aesthetic objects and practices are produced and regulated by social and cultural structures, and serve overwhelmingly to reinforce those structures. In its most extreme form, postmodern constructionism claims that all meaning or significance derives from social and cultural factors, and that perceived truth is a matter of agreement or a function of power. If, for instance, we like Edward Weston's photographs and Georgia O'Keefe's paintings because we observe striking similarities between the organic forms represented in them and features of the human form, postmodernism counsels us that our preferences are dictated by social and cultural regulators, such as current discourses about nature and art, and not in any way by predisposed attractions to types of natural objects or to the relationships between them.Certainly, it would be foolhardy to argue that social and cultural context have no influence on either the type of art that is produced or its reception in any given culture, but a thoroughgoing or strong [End Page 155] constructionism is another matter. 1 Strong constructionism cannot explain--or, to be more accurate, refuses to explain--why we have art in the first place. Recent intellectual fashion has dictated, in sum, that the most interesting questions about art, the truly thought-provoking and hard questions, should not be asked. Yet even in an era inimical to the study of complexity, some scholars will continue to grapple with the interesting questions. So it is that within the past twelve years Ellen Dissanayake has published three books that together stand as the major contribution to an evolutionary understanding of the arts.Dissanayake's three books--What Is Art For? (1988); Homo Aestheticus: Where the Arts Come From and Why (1992); and, most recently, Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000)--build on one another, elaborating a functional account of the genesis and adaptive value of the arts. 2 It is fitting that each volume amplifies Dissanayake's central theory, representing, as it were, a new stage in that theory's evolution, for elaboration is a key concept in Dissanayake's work.First and foremost, Dissanayake establishes the need for a functional account of art in What Is Art For? before developing her central thesis. Pointing out that what we know of pre-industrial cultures is inconsistent with the traditional approach to aesthetics, Dissanayake fruitfully suggests we readjust our intellectual lens. Whereas aestheticians have been preoccupied for centuries with discovering a transcendent essence for art, a functional and evolutionary account reveals the myopia of such an approach. Premodern cultures, because they do not separate life into discrete categories including the real and everyday, the imaginative and aesthetic, and the religious, have no concept of art apart from everyday activities or utilitarian considerations and, therefore, the study of these cultures calls the existence of a transcendent art essence into question. As constructionist colleagues would be happy to point out, the quest for essences does indeed attest to a cultural bias, that particular bias being an overwhelming tendency to conceptualize in rigid dualities within modern western culture; simultaneously, the quest for essences conflicts with an evolutionary understanding of human beings and their practices. In thus preparing the ground for her central argument, Dissanayake recommends persuasively the need for a major shift in focus among aestheticians, who are encouraged to look at how art behaviors work in adaptively significant ways within human social life.In Dissanayake's account, all of those activities, adornments, and the like in pre-industrial culture that we today see as the ancestors of [End Page 156] modern art forms exemplify a predisposition toward elaboration or, in her chosen phrase... (shrink)

According to Dreyfus and Dreyfus, skilled coping in sport occurs when an athlete reaches an expert level and can execute a sport skill on ‘automatic-pilot’, in a state of ‘flow’. In this paper we reframe phenomenological accounts of sport that try to depict flow-states as part of an athlete’s competency framework. We do so from the point of view of post-structural and post-phenomenological scholars such as Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive work on sovereignty and Jean-Luc Nancy’s ontological vantage of ‘being-with’. This (...) lens pushes us to challenge phenomenological accounts of sport such as skilled coping and flow that, we argue, portray zombie-like performances as optimal. We suggest that such a phenomenological account of sport is not only impoverished as Breivik has argued, but also misses the very promising aspects of sport that can generate the possibility for creative and relational experiences. In making this claim we aim to reorient sport philosophy’s uptake of phenomenology towards a relat... (shrink)

This article reviews Bryan Lueck’s book Obligation and the Fact of Sense. In this quite original book, Lueck considers what he argues are the failures of various modern ethical theories to decisively identify the ground of obligation, and proposes a new account of obligation in light of those failures. The book traces the concept of obligation through its history in early modern thought up to Kant’s idea that the ground of obligation is the so-called fact of reason, that we (...) simply find ourselves bound by the moral law. Lueck’s own account begins from this point, but he recasts Kant’s idea of the fact of reason as the fact of sense, drawing on figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Serres, and Nancy. Ultimately, however, he argues that only a very deflationary version of obligation can be defended, as the failures of the early modern ethicists prove not to be accidental, but to emerge from the very phenomenon of obligation. (shrink)

Darwin’s classic ‘Origin of Species’ (Darwin 1859) described forces of selection acting upon individuals, but there remains a great deal of controversy about what exactly the status and definition of a biological individual is. Recently some authors have argued that the individual is dispensable – that an inability to pin it down is not problematic because little rests on it anyway. The aim of this paper is to show that there is a real problem of biological individuality, and an urgent (...) need to arbitrate over the current plethora of solutions to it. (shrink)

This chapter develops the idea that the germ-soma split and the suppression of individual fitness differences within the corporate entity are not always essential steps in the evolution of corporate individuals. It illustrates some consequences for multilevel selection theory. It presents evidence that genetic heterogeneity may not always be a barrier to successful functioning as a higher-level individual. This chapter shows that levels-of-selection theorists are wrong to assume that the central problem in transitions is always that of minimizing within-group competition. (...) Evidence of intralevel conflict does not qualify as evidence against the existence of a higher level of selection. (shrink)

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is often characterised in terms of competitive individuals debating orally with one another in public arenas. But it also developed over its long history a sense in which philosophers might acknowledge some other particular philosopher or group of philosophers as an authority and offer to that authority explicit intellectual allegiance. This is most obvious in the development after the classical period of the philosophical 'schools' with agreed founders and, most importantly, canonical founding texts. There also (...) developed a tradition of commentary, interpretation, and discussion of texts which itself became a mode of philosophical debate. As time went on, the weight of a growing tradition of reading and appealing to a certain corpus of foundational texts began to shape how later antiquity viewed its philosophical past and also how philosophical debate and inquiry was conducted. In this book leading scholars explore aspects of these important developments. (shrink)

Nanotechnology will allegedly have a revolutionary impact in a wide range of fields, but has also created novel concerns about health, safety and the environment (HSE). Nanotechnology regulation has nevertheless lagged behind nanotechnology development. In 2004 the International Organization for Standardization established a technical committee for producing nanotechnology standards for terminology, measurements, HSE issues and product specifications. These standards are meant to play a role in nanotechnology development, as well as in national and international nanotechnology regulation, and will therefore have (...) consequences for consumers, workers and the environment. This paper gives an overview of the work in the technical committee on nanotechnology and discusses some challenges with regard to legitimacy in such work. The paper focuses particularly on stakeholder involvement and the potential problems of scientific robustness when standardising in such early stages of the scientific development. The intention of the paper is to raise some important issues rather than to draw strong conclusions. However, the paper will be concluded with some suggestions for improving legitimacy in the TC 229 and a call for increased public awareness about standardisation in the field of nanotechnology. (shrink)

Thought experiments have played a prominent role in numerous cases of conceptual change in science. I propose that research in cognitive psychology into the role of mental modeling in narrative comprehension can illuminate how and why thought experiments work. In thought experimenting a scientist constructs and manipulates a mental simulation of the experimental situation. During this process, she makes use of inferencing mechanisms, existing representations, and general world knowledge to make realistic transformations from one possible physical state to the next. (...) The simulation reveals the impossibility of integrating multiple constraints drawn from existing representations and the world and pinpoints the locus of the required conceptual reform. (shrink)

Evil is not only an abstract concept to be analyzed intellectually, but a concrete reality that we all experience and wrestle with on an ongoing basis. To truly understand evil we must always approach it from both angles: the intellective and the phenomenological. This same assertion resounds through each of the papers in this volume, in which an interdisciplinary and international group (including nurses, psychologists, philosophers, professors of literature, history, computer studies, and all sorts of social science) presented papers on (...) cannibalism, the Holocaust, terrorism, physical and emotional abuse, virtual and actual violence, and depravity in a variety of media, from film to literature to animé to the Internet. Conference participants discussed villains and victims, dictators and anti-heroes, from 921 AD to the present, and considered the future of evil from a number of theoretical perspectives. Personal encounters with evil were described and analyzed, from interviews with political leaders to the problems of locating and destroying land mines in previous war zones. The theme of responsibility and thinking for the future is very much at the heart of these papers: how to approach evil as a question to be explored, critiqued, interrogated, reflected upon, owned. The authors urge an attitude of openness to new interpretations, new perspectives, new understanding. This may not be a comfortable process; it may in fact be quite disturbing. But ultimately, it may be the only way forward towards a truly ethical response. The papers in this collection provide a wealth of food for thought on this most important question. (shrink)

The standard view of explanation in science---the covering law model---assumes that knowledge of laws lies at the basis of our ability to explain phenomena. But in fact most of the high-level claims in science are ceteris paribus generalizations, which are false unless certain precise conditions obtain. Given the explanatory force of ceteris paribus generalizations but the paucity of true laws, the covering law model of explanation must be false. There is, it is argued, a trade-off between truth and explanatory power.

According to Marx one of the primary evils of capitalism is that it is exploitative-and necessarily so. Socialist and communist societies will not be exploitative and this is one of the reasons why they will in some sense be better. To understand such claims we have to determine exactly what Marx means by “exploitation” and what it is about exploitation that Marx finds to be bad. Neither of these questions is as simple as it might seem.A common misunderstanding of Marx (...) is this: exploitation consists simply in an unequal distribution of social wealth. Workers are exploited because they get so much less of the pie than do capitalists. Another interpretation of Marx's concept is that exploitation consists in the fact that workers to not get the whole pie. They produce all value and, therefore, deserve to get it all back. I will show that both of these interpretations are inadequate or simply mistaken. An error common to both is an overemphasis on distribution. (shrink)

Significantly, Berkeley, in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, leveled a sustained attack on just this geometrical theory of distance perception. At first glance it may seem, as it did to Berkeley, that Descartes’ geometrical theory is produced by a simple error: namely, by the idea that a physiological optics provides an adequate description of the psychological processes of judging distances. In truth, this is the weakest of Berkeley’s objections to Descartes’ theory. Obviously we do not see the (...) angles and lines of convergence when we focus on a distant object, nor are we aware of having used any geometrical rules in judging distance. And Descartes never claimed this. (shrink)