_Matters of Mind_ examines the mind-body problem. It offers a chapter by chapter analysis of debates surrounding the problem, including visual experience, consciousness and the problem of Zombies and Ghosts. It will prove invaluable for those interested in epistemology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

William Coperthwaite is a teacher, builder, designer, and writer who for many years has explored the possibilities of true simplicity on a homestead on the north coast of Maine. In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Helen and Scott Nearing, Coperthwaite has fashioned a livelihood of integrity and completeness—buying almost nothing, providing for his own needs, and serving as a guide and companion to hundreds of apprentices drawn to his unique way of being. A Handmade (...) Life carries Coperthwaite’s ongoing experiments with hand tools, hand-grown and gathered food, and handmade shelter, clothing, and furnishings out into the world to challenge and inspire. His writing is both philosophical and practical, exploring themes of beauty, work, education, and design while giving instruction on the hand-crafting of the necessities of life. Richly illustrated with luminous color photographs by Peter Forbes, the book is a moving and inspirational testament to a new practice of old ways of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 30.1 (2006) 289-298 [Access article in PDF] Theory Is Dead— Like a Zombie Brian Boyd University of Auckland Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent, edited by Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral; ix & 725 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. $72.50 cloth, $29.50 paper. Looking for an Argument: Critical Encounters with the New Approaches to the Criticism of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, by Richard (...) Levin; 309 pp. Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003. $49.50. Are we "after Theory"? And if so, then where are we? Seven years after Post-Theory (1996) came Reading After Theory (2002) and then After Theory (2003).1 Students inducted into the mysteries of Theory by an aging professoriate can no longer feel the zeal their teachers themselves have mostly long since lost. Theory's own leaders point out its failings.2 Like Queen Anne, Theory is surely dead. Or is it?In 1982 Jonathan Culler argued that post-structuralist literary theory should be called just Theory and that Theorists should play the "central role" in intellectual life (TE, pp. 26, 215). What now sounds hubristic seemed heady in the expansionist days of Theory's empire. But less than two decades later it could be pointed out in print that "everyone knows that if you want to locate the laughingstock on your local campus these days, your best bet is to stop by the English department" (TE, p. 315).So was theory dead by this point, five years after the start of the Bad Writing Contest and three years after the Sokal hoax? Not at all. The year of the "laughingstock" remark, David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare After [End Page 289] Theory (1999) claimed that we are "after theory" "not because theory's claims have been shown to be intellectually bankrupt but because its claims have been accepted as both useful and productive." A reviewer could demur: "As formulated the claim may be overstated—it sometimes seems that Shakespeare studies is insufficiently theorized."3But that was seven years ago. Surely things are different now, ten years after the Sokal hoax? Yes and no. After Reading After Theory and After Theory, a literature professor at the top of his field, Louis Menand, can (1) bemoan the sickness of the humanities and (2) deplore the culture of conformity in their Theorized students, and at the same time still (3) offer thanks that Theory "rescued" literature departments from "the literary" and (4) urge that despite their unhealthy state the Theorized humanities should resolve not "to retrench" but "to colonize."4So again, are we after Theory or not, and where are we, if we are? Are reports of the death of Theory exaggerated? Or is Theory dead in a special way, one of the Undead, a zombie or a vampire?There have been many blows driven through the heart of Theory in the last thirty years, but if Theory is at least dying now it is not because of blows from outside but only from its own terminal internal tedium. It has "always already" been immune to criticism because it refused to listen to critical arguments, treating them as so much unfriendly fire, proof of the enemy's perfidy, all the more reason to close ranks.I described Menand as at the top of his field because he belongs to the Harvard English Department, is a star essayist for the New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize winner, and was speaking to the 2004 MLA convention. There he wished some young Turks would stand up to challenge his generation, and tell them "You got it all wrong." But critics have been doing this cogently for decades. His generation has paid only enough heed to dismiss such criticism as proof that reactionary forces needed to be resolutely resisted.And the potential young Turks are simply too scared to speak up. Among all the many indictments of Theory collected in Theory's Empire, one of the most chilling indices of the betrayal of intellectual freedom and honesty in the Theorized humanities comes from a junior faculty... (shrink)

Plato and Aristotle used moral philosophy to influence the way people actually live. Focusing on the Republic and the Nicomachean Ethics, this book examines how far they thought it could succeed in this.

We hypothesize that aspects of animal multicellularity originated before the divergence of metazoans from fungi and social amoebae. Polarized epithelial tissues are a defining feature of metazoans and contribute to the diversity of animal body plans. The recent finding of a polarized epithelium in the non‐metazoan social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum demonstrates that epithelial tissue is not a unique feature of metazoans, and challenges the traditional paradigm that multicellularity evolved independently in social amoebae and metazoans. An alternative view, presented here, is (...) that the common ancestor of social amoebae, fungi, and animals spent a portion of its life cycle in a multicellular state and possessed molecular machinery necessary for forming an epithelial tissue. Some descendants of this ancestor retained multicellularity, while others reverted to unicellularity. This hypothesis makes testable predictions regarding tissue organization in close relatives of metazoans and provides a novel conceptual framework for studies of early animal evolution.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays Searching for Eve: Basal metazoans and the evolution of multicellular complexity Abstract. (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available for (...) humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

This article aims to present Judith Butler’s theory of diaspora as a theological paradigm for post-secular social existence. Her accounts of dispossession, statelessness, and exilic identity all afford us a normative challenge for how to think politics and the theological together. We begin by framing Judith Butler’s diasporic theory of politics within Adriennes Rich’s poetic perspective on ecstatic identity. We proceed to argue that by emphasizing both the precariousness and interdependency of social life, Rich and Butler’s shared commitments to universalizing (...) queer forms of collective belonging and affective relations offer an alternative post-secular paradigm to that offered so far by theorists such as Charles Taylor or Jürgen Habermas. Achieving a post-secular “state” may ultimately be a matter of embracing the failure of our own representations, particularly the failures of contemporary religion to represent either the divine or the human, or to constitute a society with its own political theology. It is paradoxically this kind of failure that can open us up to look at ourselves, and to focus on the precariousness and vulnerability of human existence that we see with our very eyes and reproduced by our very own hands. (shrink)

Interspecific comparisons reveal remarkable diversity in patterns of gene expression, even among closely related species. Combinatorial regulatory mechanisms could facilitate the evolution of this diversity. However, the high degree of interdependence characteristic of combinatorial networks would represent a major constraint on evolution and might generate many features that have no direct adaptive value.

This article seeks to lay out an analysis of Giorgio Agamben’s central claims with regard to the formation of a theory of citationality. By juxtaposing Walter Benjamin’s theory of citations alongside his more recent, critical engagements with the Western theological tradition, Agamben sets himself the goal of redefining ethics along Levinasian lines in order to arrive at a respect for the face of ‘whatever’ being before us, the true source towards which all citations point.

Though the work of René Girard has highlighted the interrelations between sacrifice and sacrality in the contemporary world, it has yet to engage the work of Walter Benjamin and his heir, Giorgio Agamben, whose project concerning the Homo Sacer has aroused interest in contemporary political thought. By focusing on Benjamin's early description of mimesis and its relation to language, a position can be elaborated that steers mimesis clear of its indebtedness to language and towards a ‘purer’ realm of gesture. Benjamin's (...) formulation of a more proper ‘divine’ language of gestures could then be said to coalesce with certain historical-religious proclamations, something that Agamben's work challenges us to consider as a viable, albeit ‘profane’, political and ethical option for humanity. (shrink)

For Derrida, the ‘‘as if’’, as a regulative principle directly appropriated and modified from its Kantian context, becomes the central lynchpin for understanding, not only Derrida's philosophical system as a whole, but also his numerous seemingly enigmatic references to his ‘‘jewishness’’. Through an analysis of the function of the ‘‘as if’’ within the history of thought, from Greek tragedy to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, I hope to show how Derrida can only appropriate his Judaic roots as an act of (...) mourning that seeks to render the lost object as present, ‘‘as if’’ it were incorporated by the subject for whom this act nevertheless remains an impossibility. As Derrida discerns within the poetry of Paul Celan, bringing a sense of presence/presentness to our experiences, and as a confirmation of the subject which the human being struggles to assert, is the poetic task par excellence. It is seemingly also, if Derrida is to be understood on this point, the only option left to a humanity wherein poetry comes to express what religious formulations can no longer justify. (shrink)

This essay seeks to articulate the many implications which Giorgio Agamben's work holds for theology. It aims, therefore, to examine his conceptualizations of language in light of particular historical glosses on the “name of God” and the nature of the “mystical,” as well as to highlight the political task of profanation, one of his most central concepts, in relation to the logos said to embody humanity's “religious” quest to find its Voice. As such, we see how he challenges those standard (...) notions of transcendence which have been consistently aligned with various historical forms of sovereignty. In addition, I intend to present his redefinition of revelation as solely the unveiling of the “name of God” as the fact of our linguistic being, a movement from the transcendent divine realm to the merely human world before us. By proceeding in this manner, this essay tries to close in on one of the largest theological implications contained within Agamben's work: the establishment of an ontology that could only be described as a form of “absolute” immanence, an espousal of some form of pantheism yet to be more fully pronounced within his writings. (shrink)

The ancient Stoics had an uneven track record with regard to women’s standing. On the one hand, they recognized women as fully capable of rationality and virtue. On the other hand, they continued to hold that women’s roles were in the home. These views are consistent, given Stoic value theory, but are unacceptable on liberal feminist grounds. Stoic value theory, given different emphasis on the ethical role of choice, is shown to be capable of satisfying the liberal feminist requirement that (...) autonomy must be respected. In turn, a model for Stoic feminism is proposed. (shrink)

Scott Gordon provides a magisterial review of the historical development of the social sciences from their beginnings in renaissance Italy to the present day.

Introduction to the Special Volume, “Method, Science and Mathematics: Neo-Kantianism and Analytic Philosophy,” edited by Scott Edgar and Lydia Patton. At its core, analytic philosophy concerns urgent questions about philosophy’s relation to the formal and empirical sciences, questions about philosophy’s relation to psychology and the social sciences, and ultimately questions about philosophy’s place in a broader cultural landscape. This picture of analytic philosophy shapes this collection’s focus on the history of the philosophy of mathematics, physics, and psychology. The following (...) essays uncover, reflect on, and exemplify modes of philosophy that are engaged with these allied disciplines. They make the case that, to the extent that analytic philosophers are still concerned with philosophy’s ties to these disciplines, we would do well to pay attention to neo-Kantian views on those ties. (shrink)

By a free logic is generally meant a variant of classical first-order logic in which constant terms may, under interpretation, fail to refer to individuals in the domain D over which the bound variables range, either because they do not refer at all or because they refer to individuals outside D. If D is identified with what is assumed by the given interpretation to exist, in accord with Quine’s dictum that “to be is to be the value of a [bound] (...) variable,” then a free variation on classical semantics does not require that all constant terms refer to existents, and in this sense such terms lack existential import. (shrink)

This study analyzes the influence of grandmothers’ household residency on the presence of low height-for-age and excessive fat, waist circumference, and sum of triceps and subscapular skinfolds in a sample of 247 6- to 8-year-old urban Maya children from Yucatan, Mexico. Between September 2011 and January 2014, we obtained anthropometric and body composition data from children and mothers, as well as socioeconomic characteristics of participants and households. Grandmothers’ place of residence was categorized as either in the same household as their (...) grandchildren or in separate households. Multiple logistic regression models were used to analyze the association between grandmothers’ residency and outcome variables. Models were adjusted for maternal anthropometric characteristics and the following socioeconomic variables: family size, location, maternal education, monthly family income, and household crowding. Models showed that the presence of grandmothers in their grandchildren’s households was not associated with any of the outcome variables. In contrast, larger family size, overcrowding in the household, and lower family income predicted low height-for-age in children. Larger family size decreased the risk for being overweight based on the three parameters of body composition. Overcrowding in the household increased the risk for greater skinfolds thickness, while low family income increased the risk for higher fat mass index. The residency of grandmothers in their adult daughters’ households is not significantly associated with the outcome variables in this sample of urban Maya families. Instead, maternal anthropometric characteristics and socioeconomic conditions of the family have a greater influence on the overall growth of children. (shrink)

The ‘messianic’ is one of philosophy’s most appropriated religious terms, yet one apparently now bereft of its historical religious particularity. This essay thus explores a genealogical approach to the ‘messianic’ which might prove helpful in uncovering the reasons for this transformation from the theological to the philosophical, and what role, if any, theology still has in determining the meaning and usage of this term. Accordingly, this essay traces the term through the work of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. (...) This development is made against the backdrop of another religious term which indirectly pervades the work of all three authors: the canon. The canonical is a term which lingers on the margins of these messianic discourses and needs to be explored further in the context of this work in order to provide a fitting foil to these otherwise ‘purely philosophical’ developments of the messianic. The necessity for invoking the canonical form will become clear as this analysis is extended to the work of Agamben in order to determine how canons remain an unstated factor in his attempt to eradicate all representation from a just ethical paradigm. In this attempt to articulate a model of understanding that goes beyond the universal/particular divide, he will in fact advance a movement from particularity to particularity which can be profoundly read as a genuine paradigm for articulating a theological principle of creation. Thus, this essay intends to point toward two related conclusions: first, that the triad of canon-creation-representation might be understood as a necessity for cultural intelligibility, yet one that must also be seen in relation to its messianic-redemptive-unrepresented elements; and, second, that even this epistemological framework can be undone through a bid to end all representations which nonetheless allows us to return to a more profound realization of creation. (shrink)

The article argues that bribery is wrong because it violates fundamental notion of equality and it undermines the vitality of the institutions affected.

Rights of Women attracted much UK media attention in late 2014 by bringing a judicial review that challenged the reduced provisions for family law legal aid available for victims of domestic violence: R v The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice [2015] EWHC 35. In June 2015, within Rights of Women’s 40th anniversary year, Hannah Camplin interviewed the organisation’s Director Emma Scott about the decision to bring the judicial review, the advantages and challenges of the judicial review (...) process, and the experience of strategic litigation within the context of Rights of Women’s long history of campaigning for women’s rights. What emerged is a portrait of a feminist organisation in 2015, and, in a fast changing political and financial landscape, the dual importance of collaborative working and the need for flexibility in service provision and campaigning tools. (shrink)

A Platonic explanation of non-modal and modal truths is explained and defended using non-spatiotemporal entities as their truthmakers. It is argued, further, that this theory is parsimonious, naturalistic, and ontologically serious. These features should commend the view to a wide swath of philosophers.

This report presents the personal experiences of three individuals who ingested iboga or ibogaine in different contexts and for different reasons. Narrative analysis reveals a connection with previously identified phenomenological categories of experience, however demonstrating a wide variability. Most notably, each of these interviewees reported a distinct impression of transpersonal communication, either with “iboga/ine” or with visions of others encountered in the oneirogenic experience. This relates with a sense of transpersonal presence that is mentioned elsewhere in literature describing waking REM (...) experiences, such as sleep paralysis. Within these cases, a sense of transpersonal intersubjectivity appears to contribute a sense of ontological realism and meaningfulness of the experiences. Similar deep engagement with narrative reports may better inform future research, as well as ibogaine‐assisted therapies. (shrink)

For Clarice Lispector, language is a sacrament on dazzling display in her work, where the celebration of writing and the emergence of a creative consciousness through the act of writing about writing access an immanent experience of grace beyond any historical religious sensibility. In this, she simultaneously accesses the “great potency of potentiality” that is an experience of freedom undoing anything bound up by language. She embraces the failure of language as the “glory of falling,” the useless experience of grace, (...) and of experiencing the gift of having a body beyond whatever words we can place upon it. In the struggle to behold the “it” underneath language, she strives for an impersonal love – a joy – that respects the inviolability of nature, the “Force of what Exists and that is sometimes called God.” If “the absence of the God is an act of religion,” as she claims, the inviolability of nature is that which preserves an experience of immanent grace in our world. Rather than describe the limitless potential of the self, one’s immersion in the joyful failure of language points toward the self in unique and profound ways without offering definitions, instead allowing internal contradictions to condition one’s selfhood. In Lispector’s fiction we thus confront the pure paradox of the self: an internal, singular individual who yet maintains within themselves (hence, its immanence) a plurivocal affirmation of existence itself and a redefining of God. (shrink)

Since the work of the late Jacques Derrida often found a more positive reception in the United States than in Europe, it is perhaps fitting that the Derrida-influenced writings of John Caputo have...