Nonetheless, psychoanalytic feminist theory can offer a new interpretive strategy for deconstructing her equally famous opposition between the social and the ...

Publisher's description: The realistic spirit, a nonmetaphysical approach to philosophical thought concerned with the character of philosophy itself, informs all of the discussions in these essays by philosopher Cora Diamond. Diamond explains Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings, explores the background to his thought in the work of Frege, and discusses ethics in a way that reflects his influence. Diamond's new reading of Wittgenstein challenges currently accepted interpretations and shows what it means to look without mythology at the (...) coherence, commitments, and connections that are distinctive of the mind. (shrink)

Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On To Ethics is a collection of seven essays, divided into three parts. The essays bring out connections between Wittgenstein's thinking and questions of continuing interest in the philosophy of language, logic, and ethics. A dialogue with Anscombe runs through the essays, which take up questions about how we should respond to thinking that has miscarried or gone off the rails. The main issues discussed in this book concern how we are to understand thoughts, forms (...) of words, and uses of language that seem crucially important to our understanding or self-understanding, but cannot fit in the template we instinctively bring to bear on questions about how language and thought are related to reality. The book presents Wittgenstein as a responsive philosopher, and it does this through a continuing dialogue with Anscombe. (shrink)

Drawing on an analysis of German national cybersecurity policy, this paper argues that cybersecurity has become a key site in which states mobilize science and technology to produce state power. Contributing to science and technology studies work on technoscience and statecraft, I develop the concepts of “territorialization projects” and “digital territory” to capture how the production of state power in the digital age increasingly relies on technoscientific expertise about information infrastructure, shifting tasks of government into the domain of computer scientists (...) and network engineers. The notion of territorialization projects describes states’ ongoing struggle to mobilize science and engineering in order to transform globally distributed information infrastructure into bounded national territory and invest it with patriotic meaning: making digital territory. Digital territory, in other words, is nationalized information infrastructure: it includes building and monopolizing infrastructure as well as normative ideas about nation—who is a digital citizen, and who isn’t; or what constitutes “good” and “bad” digital citizens. Nationalizing information infrastructure and placing statecraft into the hands of scientists and engineers might indicate an emerging form of “techno-nationalism”—a combination of nationalist and technocratic tendencies—raising urgent questions for STS scholarship to investigate the consequences of territorialization projects for justice, democracy, and civic life. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the prevailing view amongst philosophers and many mathematicians concerning mathematical proof. Following Cellucci, we call the prevailing view the “axiomatic conception” of proof. The conception includes the ideas that: a proof is finite, it proceeds from axioms and it is the final word on the matter of the conclusion. This received view can be traced back to Frege, Hilbert and Gentzen, amongst others, and is prevalent in both mathematical text books and logic text books.

Studies the social science of moral inquiry as an attempt to develop a psychology and sociology that would explain the complex in terms of the simple as the new physics was doing in the natural realm.

Whether one is reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus or his later writings, one must be struck by his insistence that he is not putting forward philosophical doctrines or theses; or by his suggestion that it cannot be done, that it is only through some confusion one is in about what one is doing that one could take oneself to be putting forward philosophical doctrines or theses at all. I think that there is almost nothing in Wittgenstein which is of value and which (...) can be grasped if it is pulled away from that view of philosophy. But that view of philosophy is itself something that has to be seen first in the Tractatus if it is to be understood in its later forms, and in the Tractatus it is inseparable from what is central there, the distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown. (shrink)

Nach Freuds anfänglichen Überlegungen hat die Verdrängung die Dissoziation als die primäre Abwehrreaktion auf ein schweres Trauma eher ersetzt als ergänzt. Dabei ist es zu einem unnötigen Schisma zwischen Traumatheorien und dem Mainstream der Psychoanalyse gekommen. Um die Rolle der Dissoziation in primitiven psychischen Zuständen wieder in den Blick zu bekommen, ist ein Verständnis der triadischen Natur des Traumas nötig, die die Faktoren der Triebökonomie, des strukturellen Konflikts und Defizits sowie der Objektbeziehung umfasst. Die Behandlungstechnik erfordert eine Beschäftigung mit verdrängten (...) Phantasien, die mit dem Trauma in Verbindung stehen, mit Objektbeziehungsmustern, die in die Bindung eingreifen, sowie mit den psychoökonomischen Problemen, die die Ich-Funktionen durcheinandergebracht haben. Eine klinische Fallstudie illustriert dies. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a certain sort of argument defending the rights of animals. Part I is a brief explanation of the background and of the sort of argument I want to reject; Part II is an attempt to characterize those arguments: they contain fundamental confusions about moral relations between people and people and between people and animals. And Part III is an indication of what I think can still be said on—as it were–the animals' side.

In “The Human Prejudice”, Bernard Williams discusses our treating human beings differently in our moral thinking from the ways we treat other creatures. He criticises the idea that this expresses a prejudice, speciesism, analogous to racism and sexism. His essay has been misunderstood by some of its critics, including Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan. My essay sets out several questions one may have about Williams's essay, and explains how they can be answered. I make clear the connections between “The Human (...) Prejudice” and some main elements in Williams's thinking about ethics, including his criticisms of moral theory. (shrink)

In his adoption of the Maimonidean guidelines for extreme humility, the king acts as the supreme existential model for imitatio dei. Imperial governance, when filtered through the prism of Maimonidean humility, results in a regime that most closely resembles a divine one. Using those who occupy the very bottom of the social and political hierarchy (slaves and orphans) as models, the king projects his own sense of "lowliness" to the people. The king thereby promotes their sense of autonomy, and inhibits (...) any anthropocentrism that would be fostered if he were to be viewed as an autocrat. His administration of the royal office is limited by the ethical and philosophical dictates of humility, thereby offering a window into the distinction between its common (anivut) and extreme (shefal ruah) manifestations. Maimonides does in fact define the parameters of this extraordinary humility, but he chooses to do so within the context of a distinct and concrete personality--that of the king. (shrink)

This essay is a critical review of two recent collections, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby and Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. While the collections differ in their manner of addressing the critical sources that have inspired them-the former relying upon a single theorist, the latter attempting to move through some of the philosophical history that constitutes our present theoretical terrain-both attempt to (...) think through and thus revisualize some of the categories of difference which we have inherited. Though the best essays from these collections are celebrated for demonstrating how "feminism as critique" can work to move us toward a clearer and more inclusive feminist theory, questions are raised about what the inattention to race in these volumes suggests about our own role in the construction of power and knowledge, and the erasures that help to secure them both. (shrink)

One of Iris Murdoch's most characteristic philosophical ideas is that any way of understanding what moral philosophy is and how it may be practised will be shaped by deep-going conceptual attitudes, of which moral philosophers themselves may be unaware. In her own philosophical writings, she tried to bring out the role played by these attitudes, and to unsettle accepted ideas about the subject. I examine some of the elements in her thought which open up different ways of understanding the subject, (...) and I discuss the relevance of these ideas to contemporary moral philosophy. (shrink)

1. Reflexiones de la realidad con enfoque de género -- 2. Aportes para un nuevo andamiaje social.

I want to argue for the importance of the notion human being in ethics. Part I of the paper presents two different sorts of argument against treating that notion as important in ethics. A. Here is an example of the first sort of argument. What makes us human beings is that we have certain properties, but these properties, making us members of a certain biological species, have no moral relevance. If, on the other hand, we define being human in terms (...) which are not tied to biological classification, if we treat as the properties which make us human the capacities for reasoning or for self-consciousness, then indeed those capacities may be morally relevant, but if they are morally significant at all, they are significant whether they are the properties of a being who is a member of our species or not. And so it would be better to use a word like ‘person’ to mean a being that has these properties , to bring out the fact that not all human beings have them and that non-human beings conceivably might have them. (shrink)

El interés en las potencialidades inexploradas del alumno de educación preescolar, así como de los recursos clásicos y contemporáneos inexplotados en este nivel educativo basan la presente investigación. Este artículo describe, analiza y expone los resultados al aplicar el cuento como una estrategia didáctica sistematizada que posibilita procesos de aprehensión al concepto de negociación y su uso en la resolución de conflictos en alumnos de 3º. de preescolar de la ciudad de San Luis Potosí. La selección minuciosa de una obra, (...) su lectura y reflexión en el grupo focal fue el punto de partida de la investigación organizada en tres fases: exploración, identificación y concienciación. Los alumnos trabajaron bajo consignas fundamentales, desarrollaron procesos metacognitivos y colaboraron entre sí para la obtención de un fin común. A la luz del juicio de expertos entre otros instrumentos de validez y confiabilidad de datos se deja ver el impacto favorable de esta estrategia en el aprendizaje, la imperante necesidad de innovación en las prácticas pedagógicas actuales y los alcances del uso de un recurso tan cercano pero olvidado como lo es el cuento. (shrink)

Increasing the “truth per dollar” of money spent on science is one legitimate long-run goal of the economics of science. But before this goal can be achieved, we need to increase our knowledge of the successes and failures of past and current reward structures of science. This essay reviews what economists have learned about the behavior of scientists and the reward structure of science. One important use of such knowledge will be to help policy-makers create a reward structure that is (...) more efficient in the future. (shrink)