In recent years, academic research in many fields in the humanities has focused on the various cultural strategies by which knowledge is produced. Such strategies, ranging from epistemic to aesthetic practices, may be designed to validate and reinforce such knowledge, or, on the contrary, to discredit it. Thus, the production of knowledge is always part of a series of complex dynamics, evolving from the varying attempts to affirm or reject it. Within an interdisciplinary scope, the present volume brings together twelve (...) case studies, ranging from the medieval to the early modern period, which focus precisely on these dynamics. (shrink)

Back cover: This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. (...) Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author’s analysis of reductive explanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in the philosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reduction becomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the concept of a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results of these five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases her final chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction:Beyond Nature/Culture Dualism: Let's Try Co-Evolution Instead of "Control"Ronnie Hawkins (bio)In the original call for papers for this special issue, nature/culture dualism was characterized as a way of thinking that holds human culture and nonhuman nature to be radically different ontological spheres, hyperseparated and oppositional, or, as Val Plumwood maintains in her essay, an orientation that assumes "separate casts of characters in separate dramas." In the human sphere, individuals (...) are unique and their lives are precious (at least theoretically), with concerns understood "from the inside," in terms of experience, intention and agency. In the sphere of nature, on the other hand, nonhuman beings are seen "from the outside," at best as replaceable members of species or populations needed for ecosystem functioning and, at worst, as unagentive, thinglike objects open for unbridled human exploitation. With our vast information and communication systems now largely in place, however, our human "noösphere" is rapidly enlarging to place us firmly within the biosphere (which, of course, in the imagery of Venn diagrams, must make up the larger circle on the screen), illuminating "both casts in both dramas," or perhaps joining all actors on the stage in a many-act, multidimensional play, the denoument of which, whether or not the extant lifeforms on this [End Page 1] planet will continue to evolve, remains as yet unwritten. The five essays in this collection speak to these points, and together they develop an alternative vision to our present dualistic impasse, seeing multiple natural agencies engaged with humanity in ongoing co-evolution and, as Freya Mathews suggests, raising the hope for a synergistic restructuring of lifeways that may yet save us from anthropogenic catastrophe.In "The Culture of Nature As Seen Through Mississippian Geographies," Jeff Baldwin shows us the broad scope of interacting agents, human and nonhuman, biological and geological, in what he terms "the nature-culture of the Mississippi River," as highlighted by the recent devastation of human habitation along the Gulf Coast of the United States wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. By enacting a role in which we "believe [our]selves to rule over a mechanistic world," we humans have, over the last century or so, stemmed the natural flooding of the Mississippi, rerouting the sediments that maintained and extended the delta, funneling them into the sea and thereby bringing about the subsidence and erosion of hundreds of square miles of coastal land. Concomitantly, we have let agricultural runoff from the huge Mississippi drainage basin eject excess nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico, stimulating algal blooms and die-offs, depleting the water of oxygen so as to create a hypoxic "dead zone" that is now the size of Massachusetts, and (though Baldwin does not discuss this aspect of the problem) we have released enough petrochemical pollution in the area to have earned the lower reaches of the River the name "Cancer Alley" decades ago. A failure to grasp the import of these large anthropogenic effects is, sadly, evident in calls for rebuilding the New Orleans area according to the same mechanistic model that has already proven so inadequate. Baldwin observes that the earth changes wrought through human cultural innovation often occur so rapidly, or have their negative feedbacks technologically so displaced through time and space, that their eventual impacts on the larger system may initially go unappreciated. His vision of "the culture of nature," however, is ultimately an optimistic one, since his functional understanding of culture is that it ultimately works toward mutualism, promoting increasingly appropriate relationships among all interacting components, and he finds evidence of a growing effort to establish an "intentional co-evolution," a conscious alignment of human projects with the ongoing projects of a living nature that encompasses them. [End Page 2]If Baldwin's essay helps us see our human activities "from the outside"—not just "from within" prevailing human culture, where they seem taken-for-granted necessities given a certain form of social construction, but as they alternatively appear inside biospherical space, often as inappropriate, exploitative interferences and intrusions—Stacey Sowards' essay, "Identification Through Orangutans: Destabilizing the Nature/Culture Dualism," explores the potential for our connecting with nonhuman life "from the inside," relating... (shrink)

In response to an accusation of having said something inappropriate, the accused may exploit the difference between the explicit contents of their utterance and its implicatures. Widely discussed in the pragmatics literature are those cases in which arguers accept accountability only for the explicit contents of what they said while denying commitment to the implicature. In this paper, we sketch a fuller picture of commitment denial. We do so, first, by including in our discussion not just denial of implicatures, but (...) also the mirror strategy of denying commitment to literal meaning and, second, by classifying strategies for commitment denial in terms of classical rhetorical status theory. In addition to providing a systematic categorization of our data, this approach offers some clues to determine when such a defence strategy is a reasonable one and when it is not. (shrink)

This volume, the first of its kind written in English, interprets the realistic-phenomenological philosophy of Hedwig Conrad-Martius. She was a prominent figure in the Munich-Göttingen Circle, the first generation of phenomenology after Edmund Husserl, and was known as the “first lady of German philosophy”. The articles included in this collection deal with the two main themes constituting her realistic-metaphysical phenomenology: Being and the I. In addition, the collection includes a comprehensive Preface that describes the personal background and the social and (...) philosophical contexts behind Conrad-Martius’s thought, with an emphasis on the mutual influence and fertilization of the group of early phenomenologists in the Munich-Göttingen Circle. The book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy and educated readers. (shrink)

This accessible introduction to formal, and especially Montague, semantics within a linguistic framework, presupposes no previous background in logic, but takes students step-by-step from simple predicate/argument structures and their interpretation to Montague's intentional logic.

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines (...) and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures. (shrink)

This paper examines the Megg, Mogg and Owl stories of Simon Hanselmann, an Australian artist whose serialized comics both depict acts of contemporary roguery committed by a group of friends in an inner city sharehouse and test the generic limits of its own storytelling conventions, thereby becoming contemporary instances of “rogue texts.” The paper positions the adventures of Megg, a witch, Mogg, her familiar, Owl, their housemate, and associated characters including Booger and Werewolf Jones as contemporary variations of both the (...) Australian genre of grunge fiction and the broad international tradition of rogue literature. It shows how Megg, Mogg, Owl and their friends use the structure of the sharehouse to make their own rules, undertake illegal behaviour, and respond to the strictures of mainstream society, which alongside legal restrictions include normative restrictions on gender and behaviour. It shows the sharehouse as a response to their economic, as well as cultural and social conditions. The paper then shows how Megg and particularly Owl come up against the limitations of the permissiveness and apparent security of their “rogue” society, and respond by beginning to “go rogue” from the group. Meanwhile, the text itself, rather than advancing through time, goes over the same chronology and reinscribes it from new angles, becoming revisionist and re-creative, perhaps behaving roguishly against the affordances of episodic, vignette form. The paper argues that Simon Hanselmann’s Megg, Mogg and Owl comics can be understood as contemporary rogue texts, showing characters responding to social and generic limits and expressing them through a restless and innovative comics text. (shrink)

"China has 'arrived,' and Ronnie Littlejohn helps us know this antique culture better. In his entirely accessible introduction, Littlejohn has done the academy the timely service of resourcing the best contemporary research in sinology to tell the compelling story of a living Confucianism as it has meandered through the dynasties to flow down to our present time." -- Roger T. Ames, Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawai’i "Although basically intended as an introductory text for undergraduates, this book is equally a (...) very useful one for everyone with a serious interest in things sinological to have on their bookshelves. Littlejohn has surveyed well the modern Western scholarship on the manifold dimensions of the Confucian persuasion from its earliest beginnings to the present, and proffers it to the reader in a clearly written and commendably balanced narrative, complete with notes, references, and a working bibliography for further studies of this ancient but still vibrant philosophical and religious tradition we know as 'Confucianism'." —Henry Rosemont, Jr, George B & Wilma Reeves Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts Emeritus, St Mary’s College of Maryland, and Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University . (shrink)

In her 2002 essay, "Anthropocentrism, Artificial Intelligence, and Moral Network Theory: An Ecofeminist Perspective," Victoria Davion points out, utilizing Val Plumwood's ecofeminist analysis, the faulty anthropocentric, logocentric assumptions made both within the artificial intelligence (AI) community, generating serious problems in the effort to build "intelligent" machines, and in moral philosophy, its "rule-based picture of moral reasoning" (169) coming under fire from the emerging field of neural net research. Davion demonstrates prescience regarding the direction in which both disciplines eventually move, as (...) they learn important "lessons from nature": that intelligence and moral reasoning are widely distributed throughout the Biosphere and are _not_ based upon what has been taken as paradigmatic—the reductive, linear logic, abstracted from all context, characteristic of only one possible way of approaching the world. I present updates regarding artificial intelligence, neuropsychology, and the philosophical analysis of anthropocentrism, affirming that directing open, respectful attention toward the Other in the real, living world will eventually provide us with the ontological foundation for a nonanthropocentric ethics capable of sustaining truly intelligent and moral ways of living. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

Biological systems are highly complex, and for this reason there is a considerable degree of uncertainty as to the consequences of making significant interventions into their workings. Since a number of new technologies are already impinging on living systems, including our bodies, many of us have become participants in large-scale “social experiments”. I will discuss biological complexity and its relevance to the technologies that brought us BSE/vCJD and the controversy over GM foods. Then I will consider some of the complexities (...) of our social dynamics, and argue for making a shift from using the precautionary principle to employing the approach of evaluating the introduction of new technologies by conceiving of them as social experiments. (shrink)

This paper was read at the First Conference of the ISSEI, ‘Turning Points in History’, 26–30 September 1988, Amsterdam. It pertains to theme 2, ‘popular and Elite Culture’.

Chinese Philosophy: Overview of Topics If Chinese philosophy may be said to have begun around 2000 B.C.E., then it represents the longest continuous heritage of philosophical reflection. Trying to mention each philosopher or every significant thinker is not possible. This article is highly selective by choosing philosophers according to two basic principles: Those who … Continue reading Chinese Philosophy: Overview of Topics →.

This is the second of four volumes in the CARE-ing for Integral Development series, focused on CARE: Community activation, Awakening consciousness, innovation driven institutionalized Research and transformative Education. In this book, the author focuses on ways and means of developing, in an explicitly integral way, a particular organization or society, one in relation to another, locally-globally, building on prior, local community activation. He draws on two decades of experience and illustrates how such an awakening of integral consciousness can run alongside (...) innovation driven institutionalized research and transformative education, as well as community activation, at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. In the process he addresses such topics as how to embed development in a particular society locally, how in relation to the rest of the world globally, as well as how to consciously evolve as an individual, organization or society, as such, from one particular developmental perspective - southern (relational), eastern (renewal) or north/western (reasoned/realization) - or another. The overall integral approach, or rhythm that the author draws upon, and has used in the field for the past decade, is that of recognizing and releasing what he terms GENE-ius, through local Grounding, local-global Emergence, newly global Navigation and ultimately global-local Effect, encompassing nature, culture, technology and enterprise. Moreover, he offers a body of integral theory that has been developed in twelve separate volumes, related to different aspects of integral development. This book on awakening integral and developmental consciousness - from an African, Asian or Euro/American perspective - is unique. Moreover, and specifically as such, the author offers an alternately relational ("southern"), renewal ("eastern") and reasoned ("north-western") perspective on such development. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The key work of the early Johann Gottlieb Fichte is the Grundlage ser gesammten Wissenschaftslehre [Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Science] of 1794-95. The very circumstances of its publication ensure that it is a rather terse and disjointed statement of Fichtean philosophy. It consists of a very short preface, a “famous” section devoted to first principles, the so-called “basic propositions of the entire doctrine of science,” and eight discourses of widely diverging length. The first discourse, devoted to the “theoretical” (...) Wissenschaftslehre is one and a half times the length of the other seven. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth are barely a few pages long. It is an extremely peculiar work and not merely due to the circumstances of its publication. Its very argumentative structure threatens to trap the reader in forming hasty and preliminary judgements on the exact nature of the philosophical claims being made, and, quite specifically, those philosophical claims which might be ascribed to the author himself. The following contends that lack of attention to the structure of a work that, admittedly, exhibits very little in an overt fashion has led to wholesale confusion about the early system and its philosophical intent. Specifically, that too much attention has been paid to the famous section on grounding principles, and, furthermore, that attention only to these sections will lead to fundamental confusion and misunderstanding. This paper will attempt to examine this peculiar Fichtean text via the readings made by Dieter Henrich and Frederick Neuhouser, respectively. (shrink)

The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been a problem since its founding days. A large contribution to the discussion of possible interpretations of quantum mechanics is given by the so-called impossibility proofs for hidden variable models; models that allow a realist interpretation. In this thesis some of these proofs are discussed, like von Neumann’s Theorem, the Kochen-Specker Theorem and the Bell-inequalities. Some more recent developments are also investigated, like Meyer’s nullification of the Kochen-Specker Theorem, the MKC-models and Conway and Kochen’s (...) Free Will Theorem. This last one is taken to suggest that the problems that arise for certain interpretations of quantum mechanics are not limited to realist interpretations only, but also affect certain instrumentalist interpretations. It is argued that one may arrive at a more satisfying interpretation of quantum mechanics if one adopts a logic that seems more compatible with the instrumentalist viewpoint namely, intuitionistic logic. The motivations for adopting this form of logic rather than classical logic or quantum logic are linked to some of the philosophical ideas of Bohr. In particular a new interpretation of Bohr’s notion of complementarity is proposed. Finally some possibilities are explored for linking the intuitionistic interpretation of quantum mechanics to the mathematical formalism of the theory. (shrink)

El presente estudio aborda el nacimiento como problema filosófico desde una perspectiva intersubjetiva y corporeizada derivada del análisis del Cuerpo y el Otro presente en la Fenomenología de la Percepción de Merleau-Ponty. A partir de lo anterior, se discuten las limitaciones que tendría la coexistencia (Mitdasein) de Heidegger y la Otredad de Lévinas enmarcada en la relación del rostro en su intento de aproximarse a una filosofía del nacimiento desde una perspectiva de mundo compartido (madre-padre-hijo). Además, se plantea la necesidad (...) de incorporar al problema filosófico sobre el nacimiento tres etapas: embarazo-nacimiento-puerperio, ya que estas son fundamentales para ilustrar de manera profunda la dimensión relacional y corporeizada de este proceso que exhibe temporalidad e historicidad. (shrink)

In this paper we adopt the hypothesis that languages are mechanisms for interaction, and that grammars encode the means by which such interaction may take place, by use of procedures that construct representations of meaning from strings of words uttered in context, and conversely strings of words are built up from representations of content in interaction with context. In a review of the systemic use of ellipsis in dialogue and associated split-utterance phenomena, we show how, in Dynamic Syntax, words give (...) rise to a range of procedures for the building of representations of the content of some utterance, which both speakers and hearers use. We then extend the discussion to take account of adjuncts, showing how they contribute to content construction both in single utterances and across speakers. The same mechanisms are then shown to underlie the building of inferential extensions of meaning in context, giving rise to the creation of the ad hoc concepts expressed by phrases or single words in relation to the utterance context and ultimately to the creation of metaphorical uses of language. (shrink)

Bringing together scholars from a broad range of theoretical perspectives, The Language of Argumentation offers a unique overview of research at the crossroads of linguistics and theories of argumentation. In addition to theoretical and methodological reflections by leading scholars in their fields, the book contains studies of the relationship between language and argumentation from two different viewpoints. While some chapters take a specific argumentative move as their point of departure and investigate the ways in which it is linguistically manifested in (...) discourse, other chapters start off from a linguistic construction, trying to determine its argumentative function and rhetorical potential. The Language of Argumentation documents the currently prominent research on stylistic aspects of argumentation and illustrates how the study of argumentation benefits from insights from linguistic models, ranging from theoretical pragmatics, politeness theory and metaphor studies to models of discourse coherence and construction grammar. (shrink)

Only six men have written a major work on Old Testament ethics in the last hundred years, and only two of these works, both written before 1900, are in English.

The study of meaning in language has developed dramatically over the last fifty years. Semantics is distinctive as it not only presents a general introduction to the topic, including the most recent developments, but it also provides a unique perspective for addressing current issues. It opens by introducing readers to the study of logic as the background against which developments have taken place. This demonstrates the link between semantics and the study of reasoning and how this view can provide new (...) solutions to the puzzles that have plagued the approaches presented in other textbooks. The major subject areas of semantics are discussed, including quantification, anaphora and discourse, tense and aspect, ellipsis and context, and word meaning. The book also presents state-of-the-art research in topics at the forefront of semantics. (shrink)

How can finite creatures know an infinite God? How do the limits of our intellect and language impact how we know God and talk about God? This book explores a doctrine called divine incomprehensibility in hopes to seek how a proper understand of God's incomprehensibility protects us from both a theological despair in which there is no hope for Christian theology and a theological idolatry in which we are tempted to believe we can capture the essence of God with our (...) thoughts or words. (shrink)

El artículo describe los elementos de la pneumatología agustiniana que pueden deducirse de su uso de Ef 4,3. Afirma que esto no niega el contexto claramente cristológico que domina el pensamiento de Agustín, señalando que gran parte de la teología de Agustín sobre el Espíritu Santo hay que buscarla en el contexto y subordinada a su cristología.