Summary A pupil of Köhler and von Hornbostel in Berlin, Arnheim published an article in the Musical Quarterly in 1984, where he applied the principles of visual composition to the musical form. In a painting, for example, the forces of visual composition are essential for aesthetic enjoyment; in music, sounds are essential as they are always occurring in time, and this constitutes the main dynamic vector of music. Starting with the tetrachord of ancient Greek music and analysing the relationships between (...) notes in the major and minor scales, Arnheim identifies what in the Western musical tradition represents the basis on which each note must relate: the tonal centre, the attractive motor that determines the perceptual dynamics of musical expression. Two examples, taken from Schubert and Béla Bartók, show us how the structure of the melodic construction is essential in generating different states of mind; Arnheim, however, does not stop at the simple eliciting of an emotion, but situates the musical structure in a more general framework, which refers to perceptual patterns belonging to any sphere, mental or physical, thanks to which we experience our reality. (shrink)

We ran a pilot experiment to explore, using a new psychophysical method, the hypothesis proposed by Zietz and Werner in the ’30s, that a sound presented simultaneously with an afterimage can change its phenomenal appearance in non-synaesthetes. The method we adopted is able to directly collect and visualise the apparent changes in intensity of the afterimages, by recording observers’ interactions with a physical feedback mechanism, without referring to verbal descriptions. These first findings support some of the most meaningful observations reported (...) by Werner and Zietz, according to which the colours of the afterimages ‘disintegrate’ at the hearing of a low sound and ‘concentrate’ for a high sound. This relationship is particularly evident with the Yellow stimulus, where the perceived colour intensity of its afterimage seems to have a faster negative change with a low-pitched tone sound, and an increase in intensity and duration when perceived simultaneously with a soprano sound. These data are also coherent with the crossmodal correspondences between both pitch and loudness in audition and lightness and brightness in vision reported in the literature. (shrink)

Summary The famous essay by Christian von Ehrenfels, Über Gestaltqualitäten (1890), opens up, as is well-known, an important seam not only in the psychology of perception but also of aesthetics, of the psychology and philosophy of music, art and language. Here, in fact, the form understood as ‘Gestalt’ is something concretely audible and visible and not simply a formal abstraction. It is about a pioneering programme rich in ideas and original connections. The author does not mean simply to define the (...) meaning of the concept of Gestalt, but he also sets out a fertile variety of extraordinary applications. In the first place – following a suggestion of Ernst Mach’s – he indicates an application in the field of music, in particular in the exemplary case of melody. In this sense the melody, as a temporal Gestalt, is a more fitting illustration of Gestalt than a spatial Gestalt (e.g. of a geometric figure). But in other cases, as for instance in the case of perception of movement, both temporal and spatial Gestalts are admitted. And a characteristic example is provided by dance. In this article, we shall investigate the comparison between sound movement and visual–gestural movement, and we shall also be discussing the matter by having recourse to the experience of professional dancers. (shrink)

This book provides practical and research-based chapters that offer greater clarity about the particular kinds of teacher reflection that matter and avoids talking about teacher reflection generically, which implies that all kinds of reflection are of equal value.

_Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory_ takes on the claims of philosophical situationism, the ethical theory that is skeptical about the possibility of human virtue. Influenced by social psychological studies, philosophical situationists argue that human personality is too fluid and fragmented to support a stable set of virtues. They claim that virtue cannot be grounded in empirical psychology. This book argues otherwise. Drawing on the work of psychologists Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda, Nancy E. Snow argues that (...) the social psychological experiments that philosophical situationists rely on look at the wrong kinds of situations to test for behavioral consistency. Rather than looking at situations that are objectively similar, researchers need to compare situations that have similar meanings _for the subject_. When this is done, subjects exhibit behavioral consistencies that warrant the attribution of enduring traits, and virtues are a subset of these traits. Virtue can therefore be empirically grounded and virtue ethics has nothing to fear from philosophical situationism. (shrink)

I expose facets of Nancy's notion of being singular plural. Nancy's political ontology overcomes the metaphysical dualism of theory and practice by thinking the space of the between as primary. Nancy's treatment of the event of creation and the presence of the divine rethink meta-physical notions of origin and God in a way that emphasizes the parting of unity and the plurality of the world. Nancy thinks the everyday and the existential together by affirming the importance (...) of curiosity and wonder in the face of what is. Nancy offers an ontology of space (being-with) that uncovers what it means to be in touch as a way of being. (shrink)

What is the origin of the concept of a law of nature? How much does it owe to theology and metaphysics? To what extent do the laws of nature permit contingency? Are there exceptions to the laws of nature? Is it possible to give a reductive analysis of lawhood, or is it a primitive? -/- Twelve brand-new essays by an international team of leading philosophers take up these and other central questions on the laws of nature, whilst also examining some (...) of the most important intuitions and assumptions that have guided the debate over laws of nature since the concept's invention in the seventeenth century. -/- Laws of Nature spans the history of philosophy and of science, contemporary metaphysics, and contemporary philosophy of science. Contents: 1. Intuitions and Assumptions in the Debate over Laws of Nature, Walter Ott and Lydia Patton 2. Early Modern Roots of the Philosophical Concept of a Law of Nature, Helen Hattab 3. Laws of Nature and the Divine Order of Things: Descartes and Newton on Truth in Natural Philosophy, Mary Domski 4. Leges sive natura: Bacon, Spinoza, and a Forgotten Concept of Law, Walter Ott 5. Laws and Powers in the Frame of Nature, Stathis Psillos 6. Laws and Ideal Unity, Angela Breitenbach 7. Becoming Humean, John W. Carroll 8. A Perspectivalist Better Best System Account of Lawhood, Michela Massimi 9. Laws: An Invariance Based Account, James Woodward 10. How the Explanations of Natural Laws Make Some Reducible Physical Properties Natural and Explanatorily Powerful, Marc Lange 11. Laws and their Exceptions, Stephen Mumford 12. Are laws of nature consistent with contingency?, Nancy Cartwright and Pedro Merlussi. (shrink)

Contemporary Humeans treat laws of nature as statements of exceptionless regularities that function as the axioms of the best deductive system. Such ‘Best System Accounts’ marry realism about laws with a denial of necessary connections among events. I argue that Hume’s predecessor, George Berkeley, offers a more sophisticated conception of laws, equally consistent with the absence of powers or necessary connections among events in the natural world. On this view, laws are not statements of regularities but the most general rules (...) God follows in producing the world. Pace most commentators, I argue that Berkeley’s view is neither instrumentalist nor reductionist. More important, the Berkeleyan Best System can solve some of the problems afflicting its Humean rivals, including the problems of theory choice and Nancy Cartwright’s ‘facticity’ dilemma. Some of these solutions are available in the contemporary context, without any appeal to God. Berkeley’s account deserves to be taken seriously in its own right. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book initiates a dialogue among scholars in rhetoric and hermeneutics in many areas of the humanities. Twenty leading thinkers explore the ways these two powerful disciplines inform each other and influence a wide variety of intellectual fields. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde organize pivotal topics in rhetoric and hermeneutics with originality and coherence, dividing their book into four sections: Locating the Disciplines; Inventions and Applications; Arguments and Narratives; and Civic Discourse and Critical Theory. Contributors to this volume (...) include Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Gerald L. Bruns, Charles Altieri, Richard E. Palmer, Calvin O. Schrag,.Victoria Kahn, Eugene Garver, Michael Leff, Nancy S. Streuver, Wendy Olmsted, David Tracy, Donald G. Marshall, Allen Scult, Rita Copeland, William Rehg, and Steven Mailloux. For readers across the humanities, the book demonstrates the usefulness of rhetorical and hermeneutic approaches in literary, philosophical, legal, religious, and political thinking. With its stimulating new perspectives on the revival and interrelation of both rhetoric and hermeneutics, this collection is sure to serve as a benchmark for years to come. (shrink)

The four talks collected here transcribe lectures delivered to an audience of children between the ages of ten and fourteen, under the auspices of the little dialogues series at the Montreuil's center for the dramatic arts. Modeled on Walter Benjamin's Aufklrung for Kinderradio talks, this series aims to awaken its young audience to pressing philosophical concerns. Each talk in God, Justice, Love, Beauty explores what is at stake in these topics as essential moments in human experience. (Indeed, the book argues (...) that they are constitutive of human experience.) Following each, Nancy's audience is given a chance to engage with him in a process of philosophical questioning; the texts of these touching and probing exchanges are included in the volume. Despite the fact that these lectures were delivered to an audience of children, the intellectual level they achieve-while remaining easily comprehensible-is astounding. No attempt is made to simplify Nancy's positions or to resolve the complexities that arise in the course of the talks or the question periods that follow. The work of opening performed here is fully in keeping with the strategy of Nancy's philosophy as a whole. Thus, for readers unfamiliar with his work, God, Justice, Love, Beauty will function as an excellent introduction to Nancy's larger corpus. As varied as the individual talks are, they share the motif of incalculability or the immeasurable. Broadly speaking, one could say that the various ways in which Nancy approaches this motif exemplify his deconstructive approach to think of human existence. As well, those treatments exemplify his conviction that the task of thinking is to develop original ways of communicating the incalculable.God, Justice, Love, Beauty is thus a skillful reminder that philosophy is important to all of us. The book is also a model of intellectual generosity and openness. Seamlessly moving from Schwarzenegger to Plato, from Kant, Roland Barthes, and Caravaggio to Caillou, Harry Potter, and the pages of Gala magazine, Nancy's wide-ranging references bear witness to his commitment to think of culturein its broadest sense. (shrink)

In this article we explore the educational potential of cinema. To do this we first analyse how the American critical thinker Henry Giroux tries to give body to an educational theory in relation to cinema. His ‘film pedagogy’ is described as developing a critical response of the learner in relation to the public sphere of film. Giroux’s approach, however, seems to forget rather than explore the potential that is specific to the medium. Secondly, the article analyses Walter Benjamin’s (1936, Illuminations, (...) London, Pimlico) essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, because here we find not a different educational response to cinema, but one of the first studies on cinema that describes its ontological nature and the potential of moving images for thought. Finally, the article discusses the cinema philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, who, in contrast to Giroux, does not construct a Cartesian framework around cinema. Rather, he recognizes and explores cinema’s potential for thoughts like Benjamin did. In this way, Deleuze reverses Giroux’s question of how education should respond to cinema. A pedagogical discussion hereby comes to the fore that does not ask the question of what methodology should be used in education to think critically about cinema, but what the implications are of the nature of cinema for thought and for education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Politics Is a Mushroom: Worldly Sources of Rule and Exception in Carl Schmitt and Walter BenjaminKam Shapiro (bio)Life is not a mushroom growing out of death.—Carl Schmitt, The Visibility of the ChurchTo isolate death from life, not leaving the one intimately woven in the other, and each one entering into the other’s midst—this is what one must never do.—Jean-Luc Nancy, L’intrus1Carl Schmitt’s theory of the exception was bound (...) up with a thoroughgoing critique of philosophies of immanence, materialism, and “atheism,” which he treated as interchangeable. In his early writings, he adopted the Christian perspective according to which postlapsarian nature cannot by itself yield a juridical order, or in his poetic phrase, “life is not a mushroom growing out of death.” Yet—in accord with Catholic doctrine—he also found sources of life, or law, in this world. While he repudiated theories of collective self-legislation, he embraced a popular sovereign empowered to impose form on a chaotic society. In Political Theology (1922), he compared the form-giving power of the sovereign to an act of divine intervention. Law, he argued, can only function in a lawful or “normal” situation that precedes formalization, and the sovereign “produces and guarantees the situation in its totality” [13]. In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923) Schmitt retained his theological terms: “A scientific study of democracy must begin with a particular aspect that I have called political theology” [32]. In the modern age, democratic constituent power (pouvoir constituant) replaces the will of God as the transcendent source of a substantial order, namely democratic homogeneity. Democratic will-formation thereby becomes an act prior to its subject, or as Schmitt wrote, “[...] only political power, which should come from the people’s will, can form the people’s will in the first place” [Crisis 28]. A variety of democratic theorists dwell on the paradoxical character of democratic sovereignty, sometimes tracing it back to Rousseau’s well-known formulations [see esp. Connolly and Honig]. They highlight the gap between a transcendent (ideal or fictive) will in whose name political power acts, and the bounded, material consensus it forms, ostensibly rendering the latter vulnerable to challenge. As I argue, however, a closer look at Rousseau’s discussion of democratic founding in On the Social Contract reveals instead a dynamic relay between dispersed substantial or immanent sources of affiliation, on the one hand, and various agents and techniques of political power that draw on and combine them in a collective will, on the other, or what I call the virtual and the virtuosic.2 After briefly exploring this dynamic in Rousseau’s [End Page 121] On the Social Contract, I will highlight similar dynamics at work in Schmitt’s Weimar writings, examining three instances: the complexio oppositorum (1923), national myth (1923), and the polemical opposition of friend and enemy (1927), focusing especially on the first. Contrary to familiar readings of Schmitt’s metaphysical “exceptionalism,” I argue that for Schmitt, as for Rousseau, political power does not create a normative order from a vacuum, and the apparent transcendence of sovereign authority has a variety of worldly sources.3 Finally, I consider what I call “democratic virtuosity,” or virtuosity from below, focusing on Walter Benjamin’s repudiation of sovereign acts of lawmaking or law preserving in favor of ongoing collective habit-formation. As I argue, Benjamin returns spiritual force to the material world not only to shatter human authorities, but also to democratize creation.Rousseau—Anticipating the PeopleIn the Social Contract, Rousseau formulated the paradox of democratic founding to which so many, including Schmitt, would return. “In order for an emerging people to appreciate the healthy maxims of politics, and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which should be the result of the institution, would have to preside over the founding of the institution itself; and men would have to be prior to laws what they ought to become by means of laws” [Rousseau 69]. As Rousseau argues, a constitution can form a general will only if it commands the loyalty of the people, that is, if there is... (shrink)

With catastrophic events of «nature» like global warming, arguments emerge that insinuate an equivalence of vulnerability, responsibility or being affected by these catastrophes. Such an alleged equivalence when facing climate catastrophe is already visible, for example, in the notion of the «Anthropocene» itself, which obscures both causes and various vulnerabilities in a homogenized as well as universalized concept of humanity (anthropos). Taking such narratives as a starting point, the paper explores questions about the connection between catastrophe, temporality, and history, following (...) mainly Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jean-Luc Nancy with the goal to provide (1) a critique of the concept «Anthropocene» on the basis of nonequivalence while retaining its key features to still grasp the catastrophic present, (2) an analysis of anthropocenic time and the chronical structure of catastrophe, (3) philosophical considerations on the intersection of catastrophe and history. (shrink)

Both Walter Kohan (2002) and Nancy Vansieleghem (2005) have questioned the aims of Philosophy for Children (P4C). It is the intention of this current paper to pursue the line of inquiry opened up by these authors, but from the standpoint of John Dewey’s pragmatism. Dewey’s philosophy shifts the focus from discovering the aim of P4C to aims in the particular contexts in which P4C operates. As such, aims in education (including P4C) are seen as: required for intelligent education, inseparable (...) from the means, contingent upon specific contexts, used for ethico-politico-aesthetic purposes, multiple and complementary, and internally generated from those engaged in the practice. (shrink)

When does a person qualify for protected and continuing life? At a time when technology can sustain marginal life, it is ever more important to understand what constitutes a person.

It is often thought that the numerous contradictory perspectives in Margaret Cavendish's writings demonstrate her inability to reconcile her feminism with her conservative, royalist politics. In this book Lisa Walters challenges this view and demonstrates that Cavendish's ideas more closely resemble republican thought, and that her methodology is the foundation for subversive political, scientific and gender theories. With an interdisciplinary focus Walters closely examines Cavendish's work and its context, providing the reader with an enriched understanding of women's contribution (...) to early modern scientific theory, political philosophy, culture and folklore. Considering also Cavendish's ideas in relation to Hobbes and Paracelsus, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students of literature, philosophy, history of ideas, political theory, gender studies and history of science. (shrink)

I reply to Ahmed’s rejection (2011) of my argument (Walters 2009) that all counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents are themselves true.

Shamik Dasgupta (2016) proposes to tame the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) to apply to only non-autonomous facts, which are facts that are apt for explanation. Call this strategy to tame the PSR the taming strategy. In a recent paper, Della Rocca (2020a) argues that proponents of the taming strategy, in attempting to formulate a restricted version of the PSR, nevertheless find themselves committed to endorsing a form of radical monism, which, in turn, leads right back to an untamed-PSR. Suppose, (...) for the sake of argument, that Della Rocca is right. My question is this: Is there reason to believe the principle of sufficient reason (in its untamed version)? In this paper, I argue that it is impossible for there to be a reason to believe the untamed-PSR. (shrink)

Are a material object, such as a statue, and its constituting matter, the clay, parts of one another? One wouldn't have thought so, and yet a number of philosophers have argued that they are. I review the arguments for this surprising claim showing how they all fail. I then consider two arguments against the view concluding that there are both pre-theoretical and theoretical considerations for denying that the statue and the clay are mutual parts.

How might we historicize the idea of border control? If state borders can be understood as institutional sites of governance, what forms of governance do they enact? This article asks what insights Foucauldian political sociology might offer these questions. Drawing on Deleuze's analytic of ‘control’, the article seeks to bring new meaning to the idea of border control. Under standing control as a particular technology of power, special attention to the changing topography of border control as well as the changing (...) subjectivities presupposed by this form of power is paid. (shrink)

In the wake of the non-ideal theory turn in political philosophy, few have paused to ask: Is non-ideal theory a form of ideology? And perhaps even fewer have paused to ask: Is the debate between ideal/non-ideal theorists itself a form of ideology? To the first question, I argue that non-ideal theory is ideological in virtue of the fact that it rules out more utopian ways of theorizing by methodological fiat, and in so doing, risks entrenching an unjust status quo. To (...) the second question, I argue that the debate between ideal/non-ideal theorists is itself a form of ideology, one which serves to reinforce the status quo by convincing political philosophers/theorists that the most pressing problems are problems about what we should think about what we are doing. But this is false. An upshot of my argument is that we ought to abandon the ideal/non-ideal theory debate and address the pressing problems of political philosophy head-on in pluralist fashion, oscillating back and forth between these two modes of theorizing without a decision procedure to tell us when we should take up one perspective or the other. (shrink)

Provides philosophical definitions which help scholars and students to understand Plotinus’ notions of eternity and time; presents a way in which to understand the relationship between eternity, time, and the hypostases; conveys the practical and experiential aspect of Ennead III.7.

The standard semantics for counterfactuals ensures that any counterfactual with a true antecedent and true consequent is itself true. There have been many recent attempts to amend the standard semantics to avoid this result. I show that these proposals invalidate a number of further principles of the standard logic of counterfactuals. The case against the automatic truth of counterfactuals with true components does not extend to these further principles, however, so it is not clear that rejecting the latter should be (...) a consequence of rejecting the former. Instead I consider how one might defuse putative counterexamples to the truth of true-true counterfactuals. (shrink)

Walters analyses Canadian and global information highway policy and practices from a philosophical, human rights framework that views freedom and well-being as the necessary conditions of human action.

I present and discuss a counterexample to Kendall Walton's necessary condition for fictionality that arises from considering serial fictions. I argue that although Walton has not in fact provided a necessary condition for fictionality, a more complex version of Walton's condition is immune from the counterexample.

In the common law world, Albert Venn Dicey is known as the high priest of orthodox constitutional theory, as an ideological and nationalistic positivist. In his analytical coldness, his celebration of sovereign power, and his incessant drive to organize and codify legal rules separate from moral values or political realities, Dicey is an uncanny figure. This book challenges this received view of Dicey. Through a re-examination of his life and his 1885 book Law of the Constitution, the high priest Dicey (...) is defrocked and a more human Dicey steps forward to offer alternative ways of reading his canonical text, who struggled to appreciate law as a form of reasoned discourse that integrates values of legality and authority through methods of ordinary legal interpretation. The result is a unique common law constitutional discourse through which assertions of sovereign power are conditioned by moral aspirations associated with the rule of law. (shrink)

Are workers dominated? A recent suite of neo-republican and relational egalitarian philosophers think they are. Suppose they are right; that is, suppose that some workers are governed by an unjust and arbitrary power existing in labour relations, which persists even in the presence of the actual ability to exit. My question is this: does that give us reason to impose restrictions on firms? According to the so-called Efficiency Objection there are relevant trade-offs that need to be considered between the efficiency (...) of firms and the freedom of workers, and upon considering these trade-offs, we should reject workplace democracy. In this paper, I present a dilemma for the Efficiency Objection. I argue that either the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds or non-moral grounds; if the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds, then it fails because efficiency cannot be valued for its own sake (it is only instrumentally good); if the Efficiency Objection is justified on non-moral grounds, then it fails because of the respect that we owe to persons as persons; therefore, the Efficiency Objection fails. (shrink)

I sketch here an intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as created types, which are individuated in part by historical paths (re)production. Although attractive, this view has been rejected by a number of authors on the basis of general claims about abstract objects. On consideration, however, these general claims are overgeneralizations, which whilst true of some abstracta, are not true of all abstract objects, and in particular, are not true of created types. The intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as created types (...) is, then, left in place. (shrink)

What are the prospects for a linguistic approach to ontology? Given that it seems that there are true subject-predicate sentences containing empty names, traditional linguistic approaches to ontology appear to be flawed. I argue that in order to determine what there is, we need to determine which sentences ascribe properties (and relations) to objects, and that there does not appear to be any formal criterion for this. This view is then committed to giving an account of what predicates do in (...) sentences when they do not ascribe properties. I sketch an approach to the varieties of predication. (shrink)