An interactive collaborative drawing ‘machine’ designed on the concept of a neural network, allowing participants to experience a shared creative process, using the principles of open-source and social networked communication through an analogue string system. The underlying concept of the String Neural Network is to introduce participants to the idea of collaborative-shared drawing practice, as a dispersed collective that alludes to Roland Barthes The Death of the Author (1967) whereby each participant plays an equal role as both viewer and artist. (...) Played out like a surrealist Exquisite Corpse game of consequences or as a piece of Haiku poetry, the drawing participants contribute marks, signs and signifiers to an open-content drawing, akin to the development of open-source software. The string network consists of five drawing table ‘nodes’ within a room/studio space measuring eight by eight metres square. Each node is linked to the other four via pulleys and washing lines, making it possible to peg a sheet of A4 paper to a line and winch it across to any one of the other nodes. The network system uses ten string connections between the five drawing tables, creating a pentagram within a pentagon neural network design. Representing the interconnected synapses and neurons of the brain, the role of each participant is that of cause and effect. A single instruction initiates a series of consequences that unfold in drawings, marks and patterns that are created whilst being hoisted simultaneously across the room in quick succession. The Neural String Network project was first set up in March 2012 to coincide with ‘DecodeRecode’, a telematic art project undertaken by students at MediaCityUK Salford University, as part of the centenary celebration of Alan Turing. Each participating student was given a single word drawn from the Turing theme, such as machine, brain, code and apple that were interpreted and communicated as a drawing by a collective consciousness. (shrink)

analogies that epistemologists have used to discuss the structure and validity of knowledge. After reviewing foundational, coherentist, and other metaphors for knowledge, we discuss the metaphilosophical significance of the prevalence of such metaphors. We argue that they support a view of philosophy as akin to science rather than poetry or rhetoric.

In this article a particular approach is presented to the problem of the human I. The starting-point is an 'interdisciplinary' question: I wonder whether nowadays we can - imbued as we are with post-cartesian criticism of the I - still be interested in mystical descriptions of the 'way inward', in particular those of Jan van Ruusbroec. I then try to develop a positive answer in three steps. First, it is shown that we do well now to get acquainted with Descartes' (...) original experience of I think, therefore I am. As M. Henry has pointed out, this primary intuition should be taken into account as a fundamental element of modern philosophical reflexion on the I. Secondly, we come to see that the first cartesian insight in the proper reality of the I does not lay itself bare to the usual post-cartesian criticism. The reason for that immunity is rather obvious: the main targets - that the human I is a self-founding reality, that it is a substrat-substance and requires a 'robust' dualism - do not appear in Descartes' original self-experience. These three points are being elucidated by regular flash-backs on Augustine's self-analysis: the affinity between the original cartesian intuition and the augustinian view of 'interior man' is unmistakable indeed. By so looking back on Augustine we get, in the third place, a foretaste of the 'turning inwards', inkeeren presented by Jan van Ruusbroec. Of course, there are quite some differences between the inner exploration of the Latin thinker and the Flemish mystic's 'introversion' - caused by the divine 'touch', gherinen in his 'ground' - but that does not alter the fact of their being akin on those points that today embarrass us most. If then we allow ourselves to take some distance from the cartesianism we are acquainted with, Ruusbroec may well - and even more strongly than Augustine - appear as a valuable interlocutor. Maybe this medieval mystic is at least able to question our modern questioning of the reality of the I? (shrink)

Unpleasant sensations possess a unique ability to make certain aversive actions seem reasonable to us. But what is it about these experiences that give them that ability? According to some recent evaluationist accounts, it is their representational content: unpleasant sensations represent a certain event as bad for one. Unfortunately evaluationism seems unable to make sense of our aversive behavior to the sensations themselves, for it appears to entail that taking a painkiller is akin to shooting the messenger, and is (...) every bit as unreasonable. In this paper I distinguish two versions of the shooting-the-messenger challenge: First, how do we account for the badness of unpleasant sensation? And second, how do we account for our access to that badness? I suggest plausible responses to the first question, but I also argue that the seriousness of the second has not been appreciated. I then propose a solution to the second: when we introspect our pains we also turn our emotional distress inwards, enabling them to represent our pains as bad. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the most important metaphors and analogies that epistemologists have used to discuss the structure and validity of knowledge. After reviewing foundational, coherentist, and other metaphors for knowledge, we discuss the metaphilosophical significance of the prevalence of such metaphors. We argue that they support a view of philosophy as akin to science rather than poetry or rhetoric. Keywords: epistemology, metaphor, analogy, metaphilosophy, foundations, coherence.

This paper describes the linguistic phenomenon of prospective reference. It is a form of deferred reference exemplified by “my cake is ready to go in the oven”, which is interesting because raw batter generally does not qualify as a cake, and “my baby is kicking,” said of a fetus. Because of its importance in political and commercial discourse, prospective reference demands attention from semantic-pragmatic theories in linguistics and jurisprudence. I argue that in at least some cases prospective reference is not (...) the result of polysemy, indeterminacy, vagueness, or promiscuous breadth of concept; rather it is the result of pragmatics, akin to figurative speech and Donnellan’s “referential” use of language. My conclusion is supported by a philosophical critique of semantic externalism plus experimental work indicating that, for speakers of English, fetuses do not fall into the linguistic categories of children, human beings, or persons. (shrink)

A logic of intervals is proposed akin to the one published by Hamblin (Hamblin (1969) and (1971)). Like Hamblin's, the present system is also based on a single primitive. However, the work presented here differs from Hamblin's in a number of respects. Most importantly, the present system is explicitly based on mereological ideas in such a way that not only are the two notions of abutment and temporal order involved in Hamblin's primitive two-place relation "abuts at the earlier end" (...) distinguished ; the temporal ordering itself is built up from a symmetric mereological primitive. The present system is shown to be complete. (shrink)

This article identifies intellectualism as the view that if we simply think hard enough about our evidence, we get an adequate answer to the question of whether God exists. The article argues against intellectualism, and offers a better alternative involving a kind of volitional evidentialism. If God is redemptive in virtue of seeking divine -human reconciliation, we should expect the evidence for God to be likewise redemptive. In that case, according to the article, the evidence for God would aim to (...) draw the human will toward cooperation with God’s will. Accordingly, the available evidence for God would be volitionally sensitive in that one’s coming to possess it would depend on one’s volitional stance toward its source. The article identifies some implications for divine hiddenness, traditional natural theology, and the view that the evidence for God’s existence is akin to evidence for a scientific hypothesis. (shrink)

In keeping with the tradition of honoring living great philosophers, Paul Levinson has added yet another anthology of new essays on the work of one of the greatest philosophers of this century, Sir Karl Raimund Popper. What is peculiar to the book under review is the editor’s deliberate selection of authors who are either the old students of Popper or his long associates. This makes the pattern of discussion in each essay highly predictable—a monotony of defense of Popper against (...) his critics, and occasional appraisals of his influence on some of the authors’ philosophical viewpoints. (shrink)

Idealism tackles the mind-body problem by giving precedence to mind and relegating matter to a dependent status. Contrary to popular opinion, idealism need not deny the existence of matter nor dispute the realist contention that objects exist independently of perceptual experience. However, idealism requires that matter and external objects are experiential or mind-dependent in a fundamental way. I develop a form of idealism that affirms the existence of an external world, but makes it experiential. The characteristics of the external experience (...) are taken to be akin to those of perceptual experience, but attention is given to some likely differences. An attempt to accommodate modern physics in the experiential account yields an idealism with panpsychic features. (shrink)

This essay argues that there are concrete emotion regulation practices described, but not developed, in Kierkegaard’s Christian Discourses. These practices—such as attentiveness to emotion, attentional deployment, and cognitive reappraisal—help the reader to regulate her emotions, to get rid of negative, unwanted emotions such as worry, and to cultivate and nourish positive emotions such as faith, gratitude, and trust. An examination of the Discourses also expose Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions; his view is akin to a perceptual theory of the (...) emotions that closely connects emotions and concerns. In particular, this analysis unearths two main regulatory strategies located in the Discourses, strategies that closely resemble present-day psychological accounts of emotion regulation. I conclude that contemporary research reinforces Kierkegaard’s philosophical analysis of emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Drawing on this research provides the most persuasive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Additionally, present-day research clarifies the otherwise elusive, opaque strategies he describes. Finally, my analysis demonstrates that Kierkegaard’s work can uniquely contribute to the present-day psychological research by emphasizing the need for diachronic regulation strategies, while the contemporary literature overwhelmingly focuses on synchronic strategies. (shrink)

The finite age of the universe and the existence of cosmological horizons provides a strong argument that the observable universe represents a finite causal region with finite material and informational resources. A similar conclusion follows from the holographic principle. In this paper I address the question of whether the cosmological information bound has implications for fundamental physics. Orthodox physics is based on Platonism: the laws are treated as infinitely precise, perfect, immutable mathematical relationships that transcend the physical universe and remain (...) totally unchanged by physical processes, however extreme. If instead the laws of physics are regarded as akin to computer software, with the physical universe as the corresponding hardware, then the finite computational capacity of the universe imposes a fundamental limit on the precision of the laws and the specifiability of physical states. That limit depends on the age of the universe. I examine how the imprecision of the laws impacts on the evolution of highly entangled states and on the problem of dark energy. (shrink)

Speakers of different languages (e.g., English vs. Turkish) show a binary split in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. In this study, we focused on Mandarin Chinese, a language that does not follow the binary split in its expression of motion in speech, and asked whether adult Chinese speakers would follow the language‐specific speech patterns in co‐speech but not silent gesture, thus showing a pattern akin (...) to Turkish and English adult speakers in their description of animated motion events. Our results provided evidence for this pattern, with Chinese—as well as English and Turkish—speakers following language‐specific patterns in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. Our results provide support for the “thinking‐for‐speaking” account, namely that language influences thought only during online, but not offline, production of speech. (shrink)

This article presents a gnostic division of truth and the world, or between theory and philosophy. In the course of the article the structure of decision is articulated in both political and theoretical senses. Against the agnosticism of philosophy, always an alibi given over to the functioning of the capitalist world where life is not worth living, this article presents a gnosis that requires creating and beginning with the proletarian subject akin to the way the French Maoist group Gauche (...) prolétarienne began by taking theory into the factories in the late 1960s. (shrink)

The aim of my dissertation is to exploit philosophical insights advanced by John McDowell in the contemporary analytic philosophy of mind in order to readdress a fundamental theological issue, viz. how persons can have knowledge of God, or more specifically, how God can transcend the mind but still remain known to the mind. In the first chapter, I present the 'problem' of how God can be known, and briefly trace its development in modern and contemporary 'antirealist' philosophies of religion. In (...) the second chapter, I exposit the main features of McDowell's philosophy of mind and place McDowell in his wider philosophical context. A secondary aim of this chapter is to lay the necessary groundwork for the third chapter, in which I exposit and defend Aquinas's theory of cognition as a unique form of direct realism akin to the direct realism that undergirds McDowell's wider philosophy of mind as well as his specific construal of the nature of perceptual experience. In the fourth chapter, I build on themes developed in the third chapter and exposit and defend Aquinas's account of beatific knowledge of God as a paradigmatic instance of cognition and direct realism in Aquinas. In the fifth and sixth chapters, I use Aquinas's account of faith to advance a 'theological realism' akin to McDowell's 'ethical realism', which forms the basis of McDowell's moral psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western CivilizationPaul A. RaheVictor Davis Hanson. The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization. New York: The Free Press, 1995. xvi 1 541 pp. Cloth, $28 (US), $38 (Can.).On the back flap of the dust jacket of this volume, one finds a photograph of its author. He is not represented in the (...) customary manner—as an urbane sophisticate attired in jacket and tie, leaning against a bookcase or sitting at a desk, his hair carefully combed, his beard immaculately trimmed. Instead, he stands slouched before a weathered, wooden structure. He is adorned with sunglasses and jeans; his hair is unkempt, even wind-blown; he sports a mustache and appears to be unshaved; his sleeves are rolled up; his shirttails hang out and they appear to be soiled. We can infer that the shirt’s owner is himself unwashed. Victor Davis Hanson wants us to see him less as a professor of Greek than as a rube—akin to the “dour husbandmen, ‘their facial expressions like sour vinegar’” (403) celebrated by Aristophanes (Eccl. 289–92).This is as it should be, for among classicists Hanson is sui generis, and his is no ordinary scholarly work. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and teaches Greek at California State University at Fresno. But that is the least of it—for, with his brothers and a cousin, he has long operated a family farm in the southern San Joaquin Valley. He knows more about agriculture of the sort practiced by the ancient Hellenes than anyone now alive, and he has devoted his career as a scholar to making sense of classical Greek civilization in light of that knowledge. Everything that he has previously published—in articles and book chapters, in his splendid dissertation Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (Pisa 1983), and in his provocative monograph The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (New York 1989)—grew out of an attempt to make a whole of his divided life. The same can now be said for the book under review, which is nothing less than a masterpiece.Hanson makes no mention of Antonio Gramsci or even Karl Marx; and from the down-to-earth, resolutely empirical tone of his book, one can easily infer that he would have little patience with the elaborate theoretical posturings of either. But this notwithstanding, he can perhaps best be characterized as a heterodox Marxist. Put simply, he claims that late in the Dark Ages, Greek husbandmen invented a mode of production theretofore unknown and that in accord with the dictates of that mode of production, they elaborated the way of life and the institutions and practices that we commonly recognize as distinctively “Western.” The mode of production that Hanson has in mind is diversified farming [End Page 459] conducted in accord with the dictates of a primitive but nonetheless well-elaborated agronomy by slaveowning, resident proprietors.In the first part of his book Hanson surveys the archaeological and the literary evidence for early Greek settlement patterns and early Greek life; he examines with care the implications of what is said and of what is left unsaid in the last book of Homer’s Odyssey and in Hesiod’s Works and Days; and he draws together from the remaining literature every snippet of evidence pertinent to understanding what it was like to be a farmer in classical Hellas. At every point he is sensitive to information conveyed in the surviving evidence that city slickers, such as myself, inevitably overlook; and slowly, inexorably, piecing together fragments gleaned from a thousand sources, he builds up a persuasive picture of a transformation in agricultural technique more profound in its implications for human life than the Industrial Revolution.In the second part of his book Hanson traces the logic of ancient Greek constitutionalism and the otherwise inexplicable protocols of hoplite warfare to the special needs and peculiar outlook of agriculturalists eking out a livelihood from diversified farming and standing in need of protection for their property and their way of life against predators domestic and foreign. Finally... (shrink)

The publication of Weiss's extensive, multivolume philosophical diary, therefore, is important not only for its intrinsic philosophic virtues, but also for what it reveals of the self-definition of a philosopher. The current political tribulations of universities are bringing home Socrates' lesson that philosophy is not just an academic role; nor is it exhausted even in a discipline of knowledge; it is a way of life, a commitment of body, mind, and heart akin to religion in its demands on integrity; (...) but perhaps unlike religion the form of philosophy's commitment is unique to each professor, his own responsibility to create. Perhaps the greatest value of Weiss's diary is its making public part of the process by which he has defined himself as a philosopher. I know no more admirable model of a philosopher who has attended in published work to the whole range of philosophical issues, who has criticized his own work with a candor most of us reserve for our enemies, who has taken public and vulnerable stands on issues of practical import to his philosophy, and who has done all this persistently for so many years. (shrink)

The question of fiction is omnipresent within the work of Paul Ricoeur throughout his prolific career. However, Ricoeur raises the questions of fiction in relation to other issues such the symbol, metaphor and narrative. This article sets out to foreground a traditional problem of fiction and logic, which is termed the existence of non-existent objects, in relation to the Paul Ricoeur’s work on narrative. Ricoeur’s understanding of fiction takes place within his overall philosophical anthropology where the fictions and (...) histories make up the very nature of identity both personal and collective. The existence of non-existent objects demonstrates a dichotomy between fiction and history, non-existent objects can exist as fictional objects. The very possibility of the existence of fictional objects entails ontological status considerations. What ontological status do fictional objects have? Ricoeur develops a concept of narrative configuration which is akin to the Kantian productive imagination and configuration frames the question historical narrative and fictional narrative. It is demonstrated that the ontological status of fictional objects can be best understood in a model of possible worlds. (shrink)

Dada la polaridad entre las teorías "legitimistas" (Weber) e "ilegitimistas" (Arendt) respecto de la violencia en la arena política, en este artículo se explora el aporte de Paul Ricoeur en torno al tema. Puesto que para este autor lo político es la realización de la intención ética, primero se abordará la dimensión ética y moral de la violencia. Después se ingresará en el dominio propiamente político donde Ricoeur defiende una dialéctica "asimétrica" entre los argumentos "ilegitimistas" y "legitimistas" en la (...) cual los primeros adquieren razonabilidad dentro de un concepto "amplio" de violencia próximo al de Arendt. Por último, se abordará la dimensión temporal de la violencia presente en la memoria colectiva y en la historia. Se concluirá con un balance de los méritos y de las cuestiones parcialmente irresueltas en la obra de Ricoeur. Given the polarity between the "legitimist" (Weber) and the "illegitimist" (Arendt) theories of violence in the political field, I will explore the philosophical contributions of Paul Ricoeur to this issue. Since the political field is for the author the accomplishment of the ethical intention, I will first explore the ethical and moral dimension of violence. Secondly, I will enter in the proper political field where we will see Ricoeur defends an "asymmetrical" dialectic between the "legitimist" and "illegitimist" arguments in which the former acquire reasonability within a "broad" concept of violence akin to Arendt's. Thirdly, I will approach the temporal dimension of violence as it appears in collective memory and in history. I will conclude with an account of the merits and partially unresolved questions within Ricoeur's work. (shrink)

This thesis is a study of alienation in Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. The thesis is organized around three central questions: What does Sartre conceive alienation to be? What for Sartre are the causes and/or conditions of alienation? What are the prospects for overcoming alienation? ;In the course of this inquiry I arrived at a general definition of alienation, viz., that it is the process whereby the human subject is constrained to become 'other' than what he authentically is (...) in his being. The condition of otherness is characteristic of all alienation. But I discovered two notions of alienation in Sartre, one of which is a fundamental ontological condition rooted in the structure of human existence conceived as praxis, and the other more historically specific and akin to Marxian theories of alienation. The former is an ineliminable element of the "human condition" as well as the necessary, though not sufficient condition of the latter alienation, which is historically surpassable. I argue that the key to understanding Sartre's theory of alienation is to be found in his philosophical anthropology, a theory of man as perpetually self-transcending and self-objectifying activity whose activity leads to alienation. (shrink)

In the ninth fragment of his posthumous work Living Up to Death , Paul Ricoeur reflects on Jacques Derrida’s final interview given to the French newspaper Le Monde just months prior to his death. Although he confesses to a genuine distanciation from Derrida regarding salient aspects of their individual memento mori , he does so within the context of significant concessions of agreement. I argue in this article that their differing positions de facto agree at a critical structural level (...) with reference to the possibility of positing something akin to a textual immortality. Both contend that traces of the author remain in the corpus of a work, a remainder that allows for a form of resurrection through reading. By analogizing their perspectives with Rudolf Bultmann’s kerygmatic resurrection of Christ in the proclaimed word, I conclude that Ricoeur and Derrida contend that one truly learns to live up to death ‘ finally ’, that is, enfin — ‘at last’, ‘after all’, or one might say, ‘ in a word ’. (shrink)

This essay is an elaboration on some central themes and arguments from my recent book, Chronopathologies: Time and Politics in Deleuze, Derrida, Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy (Rowman and Littlefield 2012). There is hence an element of generality to this essay that the book itself is better able to justify. But a short programmatic piece has its own virtues, especially for those of us who are time poor (which is pretty much everyone in contemporary academia). Moreover, it adds a dimension to (...) the above book by more explicitly situating it in relation to what is an emerging view in some recent scholarship (such as John McCumber, Len Lawlor, David Hoy, and before this Liz Grosz) that time is central to the identity of continental philosophy, as well as considering some of the work that in different ways contests this kind of interpretation of the identity of continental philosophy (e.g. Simon Glendinning, and, tacitly, Paul Redding). In continuing to side with the former over the latter, I will also develop my argument that time is one of the most significant factors in the divided house that I think contemporary philosophy remains, and I conclude by offering a series of negative prescriptions regarding how we might better avoid particular chronopathologies, or time-sicknesses, that are endemic to these philosophical trajectories, and that are also present (to greater and lesser degrees) in the majority of individual philosophers standardly labelled analytic and continental. To the extent that such sicknesses are at least partly inevitable, akin to a transcendental illusion, this paper consists in a call to be more attentive to this tendency, and to the methodological, metaphilosophical, and ethico-political consequences that follow from them. (shrink)

New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. (...) Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Discovery of God Generally speaking, this progress is made through some individual pioneer Of truth who gathers into himself the best in what previous generations have handed down to him, and goes on to richer understandings. These adventures occur all through the Bible's reflection Of the soul of man, and we shall pause at but a few of them. It shall be at such times as when to some sensitive spirit new qualities in God became evi dent, (...) as radium to Madame Curie, or to New ton the law Of gravitation. The experiences Of men like Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, St. Paul, are SO akin to discovery that there is no forcing Of language in the use Of the term. Developing their own insight into the Divine, they Opened up the way by which others could follow their example. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The value of biodiversity is usually confused with the value of biological resources, both actual and potential. A sharp distinction between biological resources and biodiversity offers a clearer insight into the value of biodiversity itself and therefore the need to preserve it. Biodiversity can be defined abstractly as the differences among biological entities. Using this definition, biodiversity can be seen more appropriately as: (a) a necessary precondition for the long term maintenance of biological resources, and therefore, (b) an essential environmental (...) condition. Three values of biodiversity are identified and arranged in a hierarchy: (1) the self-augmenting phenomenon of biodiversity maintains (2) the conditions necessary for the adaptive evolution of species and higher taxa, which in turn is necessary for providing humans with (3) a range of biological resources in the long term. Two broad policy implications emerge: increments of biodiversity should not be traded off against biological resources as if they were the same, and the conservation of biodiversity should be a constraint on the public interest, not a goal in service of the public interest. (shrink)

In this short essay, I tackle, yet again, the question of the nature of inference and elaborate on the agential conception of inference that I've been pursuing (Boghossian 2014, 2016 and forthcoming). What's new in this essay is a better way of setting up the issue about the na- ture of inference; a better identification of the concerns that lie at the back of this way of thinking about the topic; and a response to some important criticisms that have been (...) made of the agential view I've been advocating. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William James, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Art of New Religious IdealsKolby Knight (bio)And I don’t know a soul who’s not been batteredI don’t have a friend who feels at easeI don’t know a dream that’s not been shatteredOr driven to its knees...Oh, and it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alrightYou can’t be forever blessedStill, tomorrow’s going to be another working dayAnd I’m trying to get some restThat’s (...) all, I’m trying to get some rest—Paul Simon, “American Tune” (1973) / Recreated by Allen Toussaint (2016)William James and W. E. B. Du Bois believed that an artful life could produce new and world-changing religious ideals. As cosmopolitan scholars who studied in the United States and Europe, both men confidently interlaced original interpretations of Shakespeare, Wagner, and Goethe into their academic accounts of individual and social behavior. Beyond their patronage of the arts, James and Du Bois also saw themselves as scientists and artists who had the responsibility to create new pathways and religious ideals at a time when many European and American intellectuals depicted Western civilization as the endpoint of history.This article explores the pragmatic visions of science, art, and religion respectively offered by James and Du Bois. Pragmatism, here, refers to an active mode of study that looks closely at the interaction between specific thoughts and behaviors in particular situations without assuming a standard of truth which influences or evaluates human life from the outside of experience. As pragmatists, James and Du Bois did not believe their work consisted of merely the explication and description of preexisting truths, but more importantly the religious creation of what James called “new facts,” including healthier habits of thought and practice.1 [End Page 71]In this article, I will trace how the two men, as religious naturalists and leaders in the development of a pragmatic social science at the turn of the twentieth century, challenged evolutionary theories which envisioned Western civilization as the highest standard of aesthetic and intellectual development. Part one demonstrates how James, as a psychologist who prioritized the study and development of “first-hand” experiences, worked against visions of science that saw “lower” emotions as a hindrance to impartial intellectual discovery. It also explores how James centered personal religious experiences in his effort to de-center “impersonal” scientific frameworks which depicted human behavior and thinking as beholden to evolutionary laws which transcended individual experience. Part two considers James’s dissatisfaction with the “bad habits” of his privileged intellectual class, and how his own experience of “soul-sickness” and “stage fright” led him to contest both celebratory histories of Western progress and institutional arrangements which juxtaposed his “mystifying” intellectual performances to the lives of everyday people.Part three moves to how Du Bois, as a sociologist and former student of James, refocused James’s religious pragmatism within the context of his experience of anti-Black racism in the United States. This section traces how Du Bois saw his intellectual career as a work of art which could empower Black individuals to see themselves beyond what David Lloyd describes as “the racial regime of aesthetics” which imagines the progress of “lower humans” as dependent on higher civilizational and educational agents. This section also offers a tripartite interpretation of Du Bois’s experience of “double-consciousness” that considers its aesthetic, social, and political dimensions.2 While James expressed a desire to discard his own sense of double-consciousness, Du Bois’s experience of anti-Black racism made his two-ness more enforced and insidious. The fourth section looks at Du Bois’s disillusionment with white standards of beauty and intelligence as an experience akin to what James described as “soul-sickness.” It shows that whereas James believed that his negative emotional experiences could lead him to “new religious ideals” taking shape within the spiritual energy [End Page 72] and discomforts of his own individual body, Du Bois’s negative experience of racism led him to immerse himself in the religious and artistic vitality of Black social worlds which resisted the oppressive mechanisms and caricatures of... (shrink)

Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more (...) virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith, and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy. (shrink)

(2002). Clarifying the Ethics of Clinical Research: A Path toward Avoiding the Therapeutic Misconception. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 22-23.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 188-195 [Access article in PDF] Wittgenstein and Poetic Language B. R. Tilghman ACCORDING TO RICHARD KUHNS there are certain important parallels between symbolist poetic theory, especially that of Paul Valéry, and Wittgenstein's picture of language developed in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1 It strikes me that these parallels are strained and certainly unhelpful in illuminating either what Valéry says about poetry or his poetic (...) practice. In fact, I find certain things in Valéry that are closer in spirit to Wittgenstein's view of language in the Philosophical Investigations. 2 My concern here is not to criticize Kuhns's thesis nor to provide a systematic exposition of Valéry's thoughts about poetry so much as it is to use some of what they say as stepping stones to show the relevance of Wittgenstein's work for understanding at least some of what goes on in poetry.Kuhn says that "Linguistic forms fascinated both Valéry and Wittgenstein, and the possibility that language might achieve necessity in that it produced sentences held together by bonds of absolute security and irrevocability operates in the logical forms of the Tractatus as it does in Valéry's art. A poem, Valéry believed, must be wrought with such necessity of part to part, such fastness of interior design, that the reader be compelled by his reading to recognize all the implications of the sentences." 3 I set aside trying to make sense of the idea of language achieving necessity and assume that the analogue of the "bonds of absolute security and irrevocability" in the Tractatus is that a perspicuous [End Page 188] symbolism should immediately make clear all the logical implications of any proposition. The analogy between whatever it is that counts as poetic implications and logical implication, however, seems impossibly lame. The word "implication" applied to the sentences of poetry is not a technical term as is the word when used in logic and its meaning may not be altogether clear. Nevertheless, some of what it may mean can be brought out, I believe, in terms of examples. Consider T. S. Eliot's line that "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land...," the full sense—implications—of the words are not realized until they are seen in the context of the rest of the poem where we can understand them as making a point about the constrained and empty lives of the dwellers in the waste land. The description of the spring as cruel will help to serve as the poem develops to reveal to us the resistance of people to open themselves to human emotion and reaction. There are too many differences between this kind of thing and logical implication to make the analogy helpful.At one point Valéry says that "A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words." 4 To that statement Kuhns comments that "Valéry's idea that a poem is a machine for producing poetic states is analogous to Wittgenstein's idea that logic is a machine for making sense, that there exists a structure which is the structure of possible meanings." 5 Valéry apparently wanted a poetry in which there is something akin to a necessary connection between the images and tropes within a poem so that there is only one way to read it. Although it is by no means clear what success in such an enterprise would be, some sense can be made of the idea of a poem as a structure of meanings held together by a kind of necessity. I shall try to make this clear. A poem invites us to move in various directions as the force of some figure of speech comes home to us or various associations dawn on us. In music a certain chord progression seems to demand a resolution into the tonic as its completion. This could be described as a kind of necessity, but, of course, not a logical one. Given our... (shrink)

The ‚Naturforschende Gesellschaft’︁, founded in 1793, proved instrumental for the development of science at the University of Jena around 1800. Its library can be considered as one of its most important facilities provided for research and for the education of students. Since this library has been preserved almost without losses, we can ask whether this library served the purpose of a research library in the newly established field of ‚science’︁. In consequence, the role of scientific societies and the genesis of (...) specialised libraries in the area of science can be investigated in an exemplary case, with implications for the concept of scientific research around 1800. (shrink)

The notion of a μέσον, formally defined as the «middle term« in a syllogism, plays a pivotal role in Aristotle's theory of scientific demonstrations in his Analytica Posteriora. It is via the μέσον that the distinctive traits of a demonstration – the employment of causal notions and of statements concerning the essence of things – enter into demonstrative syllogisms. This, however, raises problems with respect to the provability of statements concerning the essence of things that Aristotle seems to accept in (...) certain passages of the Analytica Posteriora, as opposed to well-known passages in the Metaphysics. It is shown in which sense essences are in fact demonstrated by their being employed – via the μέσον – in a demonstration, without, however, being mentioned in the conclusion of such a demonstration. The importance Aristotle ascribes to the μέσον in Analytica Posteriora suggests a more flexible, less formalistic understanding of Aristotle's view of science, while still being based on an analysis of the formal structure of the syllogism. (shrink)

[ Philosophy against the natural sciences: “Dogmatism” in the dispute about “scientific monism” after 1900].

Schelling und Hegel benutzen in ihren philosophischen Texten mathematische und naturwissenschaftliche Modelle wie Unendlichkeit oder Gleichgewicht. Die Strukturen dieser Begriffe liefern einen Massstab fur den Vergleich der Positionen Schellings und Hegels, der fur Schellings Identitatsphilosophie und Hegels erste Jenaer Schriften durchgefuhrt wird. Als wichtigstes Resultat kann eine grundlegende Differenz zwischen beiden Positionen bereits um 1801 nachgewiesen und gezeigt werden, dass diese auf einer unterschiedlichen Auffassung der Rolle des Absoluten beruht.

Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt: Ein Forscherleben zwischen Orient und Okzident. Edited by Sebastian Fink; Klaus Eisterer; Robert Rollinger; and Dirk Rupnow. Classica et Orientalia, vol. 11. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015. Pp. vi + 217, illus. €48.

This book explores noteworthy approaches to modal syllogistic adopted by medieval logicians including Abélard, Albert the Great, Avicenna, Averröes, Jean Buridan, Richard Campsall, Robert Kilwardby, and William of Ockham. The book situates these approaches in relation to Aristotle's discussion in the Prior and Posterior Analytics, and other parts of the Organon, but also in relation to the thought of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Boethius on the one hand, and to modern interpretations of the modal syllogistic on the other. Problems explored (...) include: Aristotle's doctrine of modal conversion, the pure and mixed necessity-moods, modal ecthesis, the pure and mixed contingency-moods, and Aristotle's use of counter-examples. Medieval logicians brought various concepts to bear on these problems, including the distinction between per se and per accidens terms, the notion of essential predication, the distinction between ut nunc and simpliciter propositions, the distinction between de dicto and de re modals, and the notion of ampliation. All these are examined in this book. (shrink)

Like Plato, Protagoras held that young children learn virtue from fine examples in poetry. Unlike Plato, Protagoras taught adults by correcting the diction of poets. In this paper I ask what his standard of correctness might be, and what benefit he intended his students to take from exercises in correction. If his standard of correctness is truth, then he may intend his students to learn by questioning the content of poems; that would be suggestive of Plato’s program in Republic III. (...) But his standard is more likely to be the accurate use of language; in that case he would intend his students to learn to express their thoughts clearly enough that their audience would understand what they were saying. That standard would be independent of the truth of what they are saying; and that would be a precursor to modern techniques by which we try to teach speaking and writing. Truth is not so easy to escape, however, and we shall see that Protagoras’ exercise must assume that the poet is trying to tell the truth. (shrink)