Tendo como pano de fundo a concepção de filosofia, explora-se os diferentes tratamentos do tema da subjetividade conferidos pelo Tractatus e pela obra do que se convencionou chamar de “II Wittgenstein”. A concepção prática do significado inaugurada por esta, a despeito de significar uma drástica ruptura com o espírito do Tractatus, funda-se na preservação do antipsicologismo. Tem-se, portanto, a conciliação entre a concepção prática de significado e o antipsicologismo característico da lógica sublime do Tractatus, da qual o II Wittgenstein se (...) desfaz.AbstractHaving a conception of philosophy in the backgound, I investigate different approaches concerning the topic of subjectivism in the Tractatus and thoughout the writings of what is commonly called as “II Wittgenstein”. The practical conception of meaning that steam from those writings, in spite of being a shift with regards to that of the Tractatus, is based on the preservation of the anti-psychologism. Therefore, there is a conciliation between the practical conception of meaning and the anti-psychologism, by means of which, in the Tractatus, logic is something sublime, which is discarded by the II Wittgenstein. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late AntiquityMichael F. WagnerDominic J. O'Meara. Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 249. Cloth, $55.00.Porphyry tells of Plotinus's failed petition to emperor Gallienus to (re)establish a "city of philosophers" conformed to Plato's laws, named Platonopolis (Vit. Plo.12). O'Meara here articulates primary themes and developments in philosophical political thought in the classical Neoplatonic period, from Plotinus's (...) day in the mid-third century into the sixth century. Concurrently, he addresses head on "the conventional view that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity had no political philosophy" (3). This view exemplifies the more general perspective that the Neoplatonists were simply disinterested in this-worldly affairs in lieu of "an immaterial world... our true 'homeland,' where we can at last attain the good we desire" (3). Consequently, O'Meara provides both a unique study of an important [End Page 205] topic and a compelling case for a more complete, balanced understanding of Neoplatonic other-worldly-ness. O'Meara's study covers key figures from four main groups of (neo)Platonists: Plotinus and his students; the schools in Syria and Asia Minor inspired by Iamblichus; the Athenian school (Plutarch, Proclus, Damascius et al.); and the Alexandrian school (Hyapatia, Philoponus, Olympiodorus et al.). He organizes his investigation (chapters) into three Parts.The pivotal concept in O'Meara's two-pronged endeavor is divinization - "assimilation and unification, as far as possible, to god" (31, Proclus) - a concept whose meaning for classical Neoplatonists ranges from "becoming a god" to "imitating some form of divine life, in one way or another" (31). Part I focuses on the Neoplatonists' shared association of a human soul's divinization with virtue-osity [my jargon], beginning with Plotinus's distinction between political virtue(s) and purification—or purificatory virtue(s). O'Meara emphasizes the relevance of the resulting "scale of virtues" to a life of continued activity—for example explicating Plotinus's denial that a "purified" soul is somehow exempt from the rightness-of-acting expected of the politically virtuous soul: rather, "reaching higher principles and different measures he will act [directly, immediately] according to these" (43, En. I,2,7).Another organizing theme as O'Meara's investigations proceed beyond Plotinus is the significance of the increasing complexities of particular Neoplatonic metaphysical systems, and so also of their moral systems - e.g. their "scales of virtue." Part I also articulates related attempts (beginning with Porphyry and Iamblichus) to articulate programs of moral and philosophical study - i.e. a related "scale of sciences." Of special note here are proposals by some Neoplatonists to divide the "practical sciences" associated on this scale with political virtuousness into legislative science(s) and judicial science (56). Implicit in the Neoplatonic scale(s) of virtue(s) was the thesis that as one progresses towards divinization "lower" virtue-osity is not transcended in the sense of lost or dismissed but rather it is included or incorporated into a higher form. Arguably, "lower" sciences are likewise not merely aids or stepping-stones towards something "higher," but genuine topoi of study and knowledge in their own right.Part II is the true heart of O'Meara's outstanding scholarly and philosophical inquiry. Here is where he fulfills his intent to discern a substantive tradition of political philosophy and to articulate its key themes and concepts. Though he associates this part of his investigation with Plato's conceit of the philosopher's return to the cave, he immediately parses this "descent" as a "divinization of political life through philosophy" (71). He articulates various Neoplatonists' approaches to questions inspired by Plato's cave allegory—e.g. Is the philosopher socially obligated to "return"? Could s/he then still be happy? (His investigation here does seem to overlook Neoplatonic conceptions of choice, volition, or will as these might pertain to such questions.) O'Meara recognizes, however, that the more fundamental link between Neoplatonic metaphysics and Neoplatonic ethical-political thought derives from Plotinus's conception "of fecundity, of an [overflowing] abundance" (74) in his highest One, and so in a soul assimilated to It. In Proclus's formulation: "that which... (shrink)

Mobile health devices pose novel questions at the intersection of philosophy and technology. Many such applications not only collect sensitive data, but also aim at persuading users to change their lifestyle for the better. A major concern is that persuasion is paternalistic as it intentionally aims at changing the agent’s actions, chipping away at their autonomy. This worry roots in the philosophical conviction that perhaps the most salient feature of living autonomous lives is displayed via agency as opposed to patiency—our (...) lives go well in virtue of what we do, rather than what happens to us. Being persuaded by a device telling us how to conduct our lives seemingly renders the agent passive, an inert recipient of technological commands. This agential bias, however, has led to a marginalization of patiential characteristics that are just as much part of our lives as are agential characteristics. To appreciate the inherent interlocking of acting and being acted upon, it is vital to acknowledge that agency and patiency are correlates, not mutually exclusive opposites. Furthermore, it is unclear whether an action can only count as agential so long as its causes are internal. Drawing on the extended mind and extended will framework, I argue that mHealth applications merely serve as volitional aids to the agent’s internal cognition. Autonomously set goals can be achieved more effectively via technology. To be persuaded by an mHealth device does not mainly—let alone exclusively—emphasize patiency; on the contrary, it can be an effective tool for technologically enhancing agency. (shrink)

A funny, sharp and smart picture book to help mommy and daddy through difficult moments.

Utterances are planned and realized incrementally. Which information is salient or attended to prior to initiating an utterance has influences on choices in argument structure and word order, and affects the prosodic prominence of the constituents involved. Many phenomena that the linguistic literature usually treats as reflexes of the grammatical encoding of information structure, such as the early ordering of topics, or the prosodic reduction of old information, are treated in the production literature as a consequence of how contextual salience (...) interacts with production planning. This article reviews information structural effects that arise as a consequence of how syntactic and phonological information is incrementally encoded in the production process, and how we can tell these effects apart from grammatically encoded aspects of information structure that form part of the message. (shrink)

On analyse l’interprétation BHK de constantes logiques sur la base d’une prise en compte systématique de Prawitz, résultant en une reformulation de l’interprétation BHK dans laquelle l’assertabilité de propositions atomiques est déterminée par des systèmes de Post. On démontre que l’interprétation BHK reformulée rend davantage de propositions assertables que la logique propositionnelle intuitionniste rend prouvable. La loi de Mints est examinée en tant qu’exemple d’une telle proposition. La logique propositionnelle intuitionniste devrait par conséquent être considérée comme étant incomplète. Nous concluons (...) par une discussion sur l’adéquation de l’interprétation BHK de l’implication. (shrink)

A partir de la reprise par Nietzsche des analyses de Paul Bourget dans les Essais de psychologie contemporaine, l'auteur analyse la notion de décadence telle qu'elle s'applique, selon Nietzsche, dans l'art conçu d'un point de vue psychologique et physiologique. De l'œuvre de Wagner, envisagée physiologiquement dans Le cas Wagner, l'analyse de Nietzsche glisse vers la personne du Maître. L'analyse de cette notion capitale reliée à certaines problématiques centrales de l'œuvre permet de préciser la pensée du dernier Nietzsche. Starting (...) from Nietzsche's rehandling Paul Bourget's analyses in the Essais de psychologie contemporaine, the author analyzes the concept of decadence as applied, according to Nietzsche, to art conceived from a psychological and physiological point of view. From Wagner's work, studied physiologically in The Wagner Case, Nietzsche's analysis slides towards the character and personality of the Master. The analysis of this major notion, linked as it is to some very essential problematics inherent to the work, enables one to study much more precisely the thought of the late Nietzsche. (shrink)

In his autobiography, Mein Leben, Wagner tells us that it was partly his reading of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation , and the need to give ‘rapturous expression’ to the ‘frame of mind produced’ by that reading, that gave him the initial conception of Tristan and Isolde.

Musical formalism, which strictly limits the type of thing any description of the music can tell us, is ill-equipped to account for contemporary performance practice. If performative interpretations are in a position to tell us something about musical works—that is if performance is a kind of description, as Peter Kivy argues—then we have to loosen the restrictions on notions of musical relevance to make sense of performance. I argue that musical formalism, which strictly limits the type of thing any description (...) of the music can tell us, is inconsistent with Kivy's quite compelling account of performance. This shows the difficulty that actual performances pose to overly rigid conceptions of music. Daniel Barenboim unannounced performance of Wagner in Israel in 2001 shows that the problem of the boundaries of musical relevance is no mere philosophical puzzle. It is a pressing problem in the musical public sphere. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende apresentar e avaliar criticamente o projeto racionalista de David Chalmers e Frank Jackson na interpretação epistêmica da chamada semântica bidimensional. Diferentes versões do aparato formal da semântica bidimensional são lançadas para resolver certos problemas no âmbito da filosofia da linguagem, a saber, dar conta do conteúdo semântico de termos indexicais, produzir uma explicação para os híbridos modais como instâncias do necessário a posteriori e contribuir para o debate acerca da determinação do conteúdo mental. De um modo (...) geral, a semântica bidimensional estipula uma dupla dependência de expressões linguísticas frente a possibilidades ou cenários. Uma das noções centrais para a construção das possibilidades relevantes é a noção de “cenário”. O presente trabalho procura responder a duas objeções aa noção de cenário empregada por David Chalmers em sua interpretação do aparato bidimensional. AbstractThis paper aims at presenting and critically assessing the epistemic interpretation advanced by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson of the two-dimensional semantic framework. Different versions of the formal apparatus of the two-dimensional framework are used to account for philosophical phenomena such as the content of indexical terms, modal hybrids, such as posteriori necessities and the individuation of mental content. Generally, two-dimensional framework stipulates a double dependence of linguistic terms on possibilities or scenarios. One of the central notions for the construction of the relevant kind of possibility is the notion of “scenario”. The aim of the paper is to defend the two- dimensional framework from two objections regarding the notion of scenario. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy: Finding His Way by Richard SchachtRex WelshonRichard Schacht, Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy: Finding His Way Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023. xvii + 375 pp. ISBN: 978-0-226-82283-3 (cloth); 978-0-226-82286-0 (e-book). Cloth, $49.00; e-book, $48.99.Over the course of his distinguished career, Richard Schacht has written on alienation, value theory, and philosophical anthropology; he has analyzed the work of Hegel and coauthored a set of reflections (...) on Richard Wagner with Philip Kitcher. He has also recently completed the gigantic task of editing the two-volume Norton Anthology of Western Philosophy After Kant, and he is the sole editor of the set’s second volume, The Norton Anthology of Western Philosophy After Kant: The Interpretive Tradition. Still, for all of these achievements, his most enduring influence on philosophy is likely through his fifty-year-long engagement with the work of Nietzsche, which has produced several books and several dozen articles.Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy: Finding His Way is Schacht’s most recent contribution to Nietzsche scholarship. In this book, Schacht investigates the following two-part question: What kind of philosopher was Nietzsche, and what kind of philosophy did he produce? Each of Schacht’s answers reveals a consummate knowledge of Nietzsche’s entire corpus, a comprehensive appreciation of his philosophical project, and a scrupulous appraisal of his philosophical contributions. At once magisterial, scholarly, astute, judicious, congenial, challenging, and occasionally frustrating, Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy could have been written only by Schacht, and that is to say, among other things, that it is unique and deserving of praise.Schacht divides Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy into two parts. In the six chapters of the first and longer part, he canvases Nietzsche’s philosophical self-discovery following BT and UM. For Schacht, Nietzsche’s philosophical development begins in the latter half of the 1870s, after he resigned his professorship at the University of Basel, and ends with his 1889 collapse. So, after a prologue first chapter in which the challenges of understanding what kind of philosopher Nietzsche strove to become are discussed, Schacht examines, [End Page 232] in turn, 1878’s HH and 1881’s D (chapter 2); 1882’s Joyful Inquiry (GS), Books I–IV (chapter 3); Z, published in installments between 1883 and 1885 (chapter 4); BGE, from 1886, and 1887’s Joyful Inquiry, Book V (chapter 5); and then 1887’s GM and the final works from 1888, TI, CW, The A, and EH (chapter 6). In the second and somewhat shorter part of the book, Schacht allots five successive chapters to consider whether, and in what ways, Nietzsche can be identified as a nihilist, an existentialist, an individualist, a free spirit, and a naturalist.Given its scope, Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy cannot be expected to provide, and should not be criticized for not providing, the kind of detailed topical analyses typical of so much Nietzsche scholarship from the past forty years. Indeed, diving deeply into the current scholarly debates is not one of Schacht’s goals. He tells us he is not interested in trying “to read and understand Nietzsche in terms of the conventions in the recent philosophical literature on various matters being debated as though he were a participant in them” (xiv). Rather, he wants to provide a reading of “Nietzsche’s kind of philosophy on its own terms,” as presented by someone who not only has “a lifetime of engagement with Nietzsche’s texts and thought” but also “cares deeply about philosophy and its future, and Nietzsche’s potential importance in that context” (xiv).Interpreting Nietzsche thusly has limitations. After all, the relation between philosophy and its own past is intimate, reflexive, and continuously interpretive, so one might wonder how Schacht proposes to exhibit Nietzsche’s importance to philosophy without understanding how his thought relates to the discipline’s current state or to what its future might yet become. But perhaps this concern is uncharitable; perhaps Schacht’s point is instead an admonishment against thinking too quickly that because Nietzsche was so far ahead of his time and anticipated so much that has... (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 129-135. Introduction Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Successions of words are so agreeable. It is about this. —Gertrude Stein Nachoem Wijnberg (1961) is a Dutch poet and novelist. He also a professor of cultural entrepreneurship and management at the Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Since 1989, he has published thirteen volumes of poetry and four novels, which, in my opinion mark a high point in Dutch contemporary literature. His novels even more than his poetry are (...) criticized for being inaccessible, which I generally take to be a compliment. It would be like saying that Fernando Pessoa is inaccessible, which he is not. Neither is Wijnberg. When we think of the combination economist-poet we are immediately reminded of the American poet Wallace Stevens, who, as the story goes, had two stacks of paper on his desk, one for contracts, one for poems. We also know that Stevens wrote on the economy and that questions of economy and insurance surface at multiple points in his poems. The following text is a very preliminary attempt to point at the intersections between poems, novels, business, and poetry in Wijnberg’s work. On the back cover of his novel De opvolging ( The Succession , 2005), Wijnberg states the following: “[This is] a novel for whomever is interested in the workings of a company as much as in the workings of a poem.” Wijnberg thus claims that the way in which a company “works” may be similar to the way in which a poem “works.” The question is the obvious one, what does this similarity consist in? De opvolging tells the story of company in which bosses and company doctors, secretaries, children, clowns, and beggars have tons of meetings, recite poems, perform plays, tell jokes, and succeed each other, climbing up and down in the company’s hierarchy. De opvolging is a novel in which the career of people follows the career of words. It resonates with Gertrude Stein's sentences, "Grammar. What is it. Who was it" (1975, 50). The words in Wijnberg's poems are like he characters in his novel. And if we keep in mind this allegorical reading of De opvolging , which is obviously only one of the possible readings, we may be able to understand some aspects of Wijnberg’s poetry. A repetition is already a pun. Look, that word is trying it again, as if it is afraid that by not doing it it would give up the hope that it will ever be able to do something. A pun is the opposite of the first word coming to the mind of someone who shouts it when he suddenly discovers something. (104) The repetition, the succession of the same word, is already a pun, a joke. The succession of the father by the son after the revolution is a joke. "Look he's trying it again!" The essence of a joke is a repetition. Archimedes’ “Eureka!” is its opposite. Poems can easily become jokes, depending on the way the words follow and repeat each other. In De opvolging , the careers of the bosses, good and bad secretaries, and company doctors easily become jokes, as they are “afraid that by not doing it [they] would give up the hope that [they] will ever be able to do something.” Not only the repetition, but also the distance and difference between the words in a poem, their cause and effect relations can be read as company relations. This becomes clear when we, for example, read the first lines of the poem “Cause, sign” from Het leven van ( The Life Of , 2009). A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate some- thing only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I would be able to say more about it. (49) Upon reading the first two lines we can already conclude that any word may be cause or sign or both. If a sign is also a cause there is no reason to discriminate it, yet to the poet they are still different. This difference only becomes expressible the moment he would have a secretary. Just like in De opvolging , the secretary introduces a distance; not in a company but in a poem. Hence the difference between “good” and “bad” secretaries in a company, where the good secretary of one boss may be the bad secretary of another one. The more we can say about the bosses of the company, or signifiers of the poem, the greater the distance we introduce between them and us. We should take serious the relation between Wijnberg’s novels and poems. Although they operate on different scales, they explain and converse with each other. Another example may be the novel Politiek en liefde ( Politics and Love , 2002), which deals with the relation, precisely, between politics and love. In the novel, Nicolai, a lieutenant in the Dutch army, is sent to Africa on a military mission. Upon leaving a receives a letter from his father. Dear son, Don’t do anything stupid before your father has advised you to do so. Your mother asked me to write a wise letter. I have been looking for wisdom for half a day and haven’t found much. If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave. What I want to say is that you have to return from Africa in good health, and before you know it the world will be your slave [....] Signed with a kiss from your father. (88) The line, “If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave,” returns as the title of poem in Het leven van: “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” (12-3), which elaborates this theme. So both in the way that these poems are structured and in their subject matter, they refer to the structures of our economy, to the ever-continuing line of CEOs succeeding each other like words, to the distance between them introduced by bureaucracy, and giving and receiving as economical and poetical acts. Poem and economy map onto each other, as in another episode from De opvolging : Edward reads two of the beggar’s poems about presents. Of a holiday nothing remains, except for memories, and if some of them are bad I’d rather forget them all; if I get a present I’d rather get something that’s useful to me for a long time. If I may choose, I choose what I can use longest, long enough to partially forget that this was the present, because it feels bad when nothing is left of it. […] Giving away becomes destruction in the stock destruction economy [ voorraadvernie -tigings-economie ], that is a gift economy [ geschenkeneconomie ], encountering for the first time an economy in which there’s selling and buying on markets. Instead of destroying supplies someone can also quickly say that they aren’t worth anything anymore; if someone wants to take them I’d gladly give him something extra. In a stock destruction economy he is someone who each day wants to work more hours than his colleagues. If around a company there is a gift economy in which someone’s rank is determined and made visible by the gifts someone can give someone else, a company will be more often character- ized by an invisible or unclear system of ranks. (152) Two poems about gifts present two different economical models, described by Wijnberg with the terms “stock destruction economy” and “gift economy.” Here we immediately recall the opposition introduced by George Bataille’s work on the concept of expenditure in The Accursed Share , where a “general economy” would surpass the stock destruction economy based on scarcity (capitalism) and become a gift economy (potlatch) and an egalitarian (communist) society. These claims are made both on the level of the poems and in their discursive explanation. They follow each other and on each other. I would like to finish this introduction to Wijnberg’s writing with a translation from his novel De joden ( The Jews , 1999), which develops the story of Hitler abdicating as chancellor of the Third Reich, appointing philosopher Martin Heidegger as his successor. In a conversation with two Russian actor-spies, sent by Stalin to figure out the situation, philosopher Walter Benjamin describes the abdication scene. Maimon: You were there when Hitler resigned? Benjamin: In the room we’re right now. The desk and the chairs are new. After his resignation Hitler would like to take his furniture to his new house. Martin naturally agrees. It is a sunny day. Martin is very nervous and complains about the heat. Martin is wearing his best dark blue suit, not his professor’s robe. Hitler is wearing his uniform. We enter the room and Hitler gets up and embraces Martin. Martin is not very good at embracing. Hitler shakes his hand. Hitler’s cap is on the desk. The cap has a metal lining. Hitler has strong neck muscles. Hitler says: A man is unclean. He takes a bath. Does he make the bath water unclean? I say: a man is unclean. He steps into a river. A little further a man steps into the river; does he become unclean? Hitler nods. I say: a man is standing in music. Another man hears the music but also sees the first man moving on the beat of the music in a way that he is certain that the music would excite different feelings in him if he wouldn’t to see the first man. Hitler says: a man is clean, listens to music, is suddenly touched and he doesn’t know by what. The conversation ends in the way you know it ends. Hitler picks up his cap from the desk and puts it on Martin’s head. (73-4) Aware of the never ending debate on the question of Heidegger’s involvement in the Nazi regime, Wijnberg has the audacity to present the arguments of complicity in the religious terminology of cleanliness and uncleanliness, while at the same time recalling overtones of Hitler’s supposed love for Wagner, suggesting a relation between Benjamin and Hitler, and so on. The space of this introduction is to small to treat a novel like De joden , a reading of which together with passages from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political , Jacques Derrida's Of Spirit , Christopher Fynsk's Heidegger: Thought and Historicity , and Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book would be extremely elucidating and potentially open new avenues in thinking Heidegger's emphasis on poetry after the fall of the Nazi empire. But at this point we will have to curb our curiosity and follow the poet himself. The themes of the relation between business and poetry, but also Chinese landscape painting, love, Indian and Japanese poetry, and Western philosophy are analyzed and assimilated in Wijnberg’s work without ever losing the clarity of expression. It may be that, according to Alain Badiou, the “Age of the Poets” is over, but its end (Paul Celan) has exactly brought a new balance between philosophy and poetry, and it is this playful, but nonetheless serious balance that makes one hope that one day Wijnberg’s complete oeuvre might become available to readers across the planet. Tiranë, Albania February 15, 2011 English translations (all of them translated by David Colmer, who is preparing an English collection of Wijnberg’s poems entitled Advanced Payment ): Poetry International Words Without Borders Green Integer Review from Het leven van ( The Life of ) THE LIFE OF KANT, OF HEGEL As if every day he takes a decision that is as good as when he’d been able to think about it all his life. The life of Kant, of Hegel, the days of the life of, select three or four of them. Tell what he has discovered during those days as if he were the last one who knew so little. Give me something that I can cancel against then I can prepare myself for it. The reward is that I may continue with what I’m doing, it doesn’t matter how long it takes. This has nothing to do with everything remaining the same if I say that I no longer want anything else. I wouldn’t be able to say in which one and the other occur in a way that I if I knew something to cancel that one against it wouldn’t be possible now. The stars above my head and being able to say what belongs to what if I’ve let them in. FOLLOWING MY HEART WITHOUT BREAKING THE RULES Observing the rules without observing the rules by going where the rules no longer apply. I could also observe the rules there by applying them to what at great distance may resemble what the rules are about. But why would I do that, not to confuse someone who is seeing me from a great distance? Behind this morning the morning prepares itself when the rules are everything I have. IF I BORROW ENOUGH MONEY THE BANK BECOMES MY SLAVE A bank lends me money, if I don’t pay it back they tell my boss that he has to pay them my salary. But they have to leave me enough to eat and sleep and an umbrella when it’s raining. They can also empty my house, the furniture isn’t worth a lot, but every little helps. Each morning I leave for work, if I don’t start early they’ll soon get someone else, no bank will lend me money when the sun is shining. My boss has given me a cat to raise as a dog. Of course I know that it won’t work out, but I’ve asked for a week—maybe the cat gets lucky, maybe I get lucky. My hands around a cup of coffee, before I leave for work, warm-empty, cold-empty, as if hidden in the mist over a lawn. What I make when there’s no work left for me, I’m ashamed to say how little it is. Once I’m outside I check it, if they watch out of the window they can see me doing it. Suppose it is so much that I’d stay counting for hours, it’s getting dark and I’m still there. They stay watching for a while once they’ve finished their work, but have to go home, I get that, sure, I could also go home and continue counting there. If it’s too little running back immediately won’t help, because nobody’s there anymore, and if I come back tomorrow I may have spent what’s missing tonight. Going somewhere where it’s warm enough to walk around without clothes during daytime, it helps me to know that something’s more there than here. For someone like me there’s work anywhere, it shouldn’t take a week to find work for me there. Three times work and a home close to work, I may choose one and try for a week whether I want to stay there. If at the end of the week I don’t want to stay I’m back on the next day, then it was a week’s holiday. RULES If that’s against a rule, it’s yet another one that I cannot observe, or only so briefly that I cannot re- member it later. Anyways the rules are only there to help me remember what I need in order to do better what I do. In that respect there’s no difference between the rules that I find in a book and the rules that I think of early in the morning. I know that because I’ve made a rule just now nothing has yet to observe it. CAUSE, SIGN A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate something only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this down myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I could to say more about it. If something is taken away from me I consider how it would be if the opposite had been taken from me. That is what causes or signifies what is farthest away from what is caused or signified by what has been taken away from me. note: For the translations of “The life of Kant, of Hegel” and “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” I was able to consult David Colmer’s wonderful translations. (shrink)

As frequently pointed out in this discussion, one of the most characteristic features of Mayr's approach to the history of biology stems from the fact that he is dealing to a considerable degree with his own professional history. Furthermore, his main criterion for the selection of historical episodes is their relevance for modern biological theory. As W. F. Bynum and others have noted, the general impression of his reviewers is that “one of the towering figures of evolutionary biology has now (...) written a towering history of his discipline.”138 Bynum is here referring to The Growth of Biological Thought, but this observation holds equally true for Mayr's other historical writings: One must surely read this book [One Long Argument] not only for its content in itself, but for what it tells of its author. And certainly as one does so, one comes away full-handed. Many, if not all, of the disputes and controversies that have driven Mayr through his long intellectual life reappear, stated as forcefully and elegantly as ever.139Up to this point, most reviewers agree; the bone of contention is, rather, how to evaluate Mayr's historical work, considering this observation. The two related characteristics of his work-I will call them subjectivity and presentism-stand in opposition to a widespread approach in the history of science exemplified by Kuhn's suggestion that “insofar as possible..., the historian should set aside the science that he knows. His science should be learned from the textbooks and journals of the period he studies.”140 There are, however, historians who consider the close connection between Mayr and the subject matter of his historical studies to be an advantage.141On the other hand, it is assumed that the connection between past and present must result in a distortion of the historical truth and lead to a historiographical fallacy, commonly referred to as “Whig history”. Herbert Butterfield, who in 1931 gave the term its now generally accepted meaning, believed that “real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own”142. Unfortunately, Butterfield's definition of what he considers Whig history remains somewhat vague, and modern authors have emphasized what they consider most important. Butterfield's “subordination of the past to the present” is referred to in respect to the selection of subjects (there are more biographies of Charles Darwin than of, let's say, Louis Agassiz),143 to the evaluation of historical authors,144 or, more generally, to all kinds of histories “with one eye, so to speak, upon the present.”145 The underlying tendency of Whig historians is to produce a “historical account told from the viewpoint of those in power,”146 leading to a “glorification of the present.”147 It is obvious that Mayr's strongly presentist approach to the history of biology can be called Whiggish, if we apply the criteria of “selection” or “reference.” However, it might be worth mentioning that the program of writing a strictly historicist account of the history of science is challenged by various authors.148 For Mayr, it is not only legitimate but necessary to compare the present situation with the past. “Whiggish” is only the evaluation of an author in terms of our time.149I cannot discuss the Whit/anti-Whig controversy in any detail here, apart from saying that Mayr has defended himself rather extensively against the charges of being Whiggish.150 Nevertheless, it may be useful to touch on some of the criticisms that are predominant in reviews of his writings. First, we encounter the notion that historians can write a true and convincing historical account only if they have no personal interest or interpretation of their own; Mayr, on the other hand, because he “has such strong interpretations of his own, ... cannot possibly convince everyone that he is right about everything.”151 It makes one wonder, what historian has ever been able to convince everyone that he or she is right about everything? But apart from this peculiar idea, it unquestionably poses certain dangers if the subject matter of historical scrutiny and the author are identical. At the same time, this identity brings certain advantages with it, especially firsthand experiences of the period in discussion. Whether these personal memories ultimately result in a distorted picture of the past has to be decided in every particular instance. The notion that a scientific study can be conducted by a completely detached observer from a neutral standpoint has been shown to be impossible in physics, and it is also an illusion in historiography. The question is not whether, but which kind of interest are the underlying motivation for a historian. At this point, Mayr is ahead of his critics when he suggests that our understanding of the past always has a subjective component: The main reason, however, why histories are in constant need of revision is that at any given time they merely reflect the present state of understanding; they depend on how the author interpreted the current zeitgeist of biology and on his own conceptual framework and background. Thus, by necessity the writing of history is subjective and ephemeral.152Second, the temporal proximity between the event and the historical analysis makes difficulties inevitable and will finally result in certain false assessments. But this applies to all historians when they discuss recent problems, regardless of whether they are personally involved or not: As long as the battle between Darwinism and Lamarckism was raging, it was quite impossible to undertake an unbiased evaluation of Lamarck. ...[The] definite refutation of Lamarck's theory of evolutionary causation clears the air. We can now study him without bias and emotion and give him the attention that this major figure in the history of biology clearly deserves.153Third, Mayr is primarily interested in biological problems and not, for instance, historiographical, sociological, or psychological questions. Several authors have remarked that since the beginning of the professionalization of the history of science in the 1960s, a rift between two groups has developed, resulting from the heterogeneous professional backgrounds and interests of the people involved: the authors who were originally biologists and became interested in the history of their discipline only later on, and the authors who were trained as historians.154 Whereas the first group, the “biologists,” tend to be laymen in history proper, the “historians” are in most cases laymen in biology. Different professional backgrounds obviously shape the historical perspective in both groups, but neither approach is necessarily superior. The great number of important books in the history of biology written by “biologist” documents how valuable this point of view can be. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the writings of biologists in the history of science tend to have a strong “internalist” tendency and often neglect the professional, cultural, and political context of science. Mayr's approach is that of a “biologist”; it is “internalist,” and typical for scientists who turn to the history of their discipline.I want to conclude my analysis with a quotation from a review by Douglas J. Futuyma, which gives a perceptive glimpse of Mayr's personality and style: One cannot help standing in awe of the germanic capacity for vast, allembracing synthesis: consider the lifelong devotion of Goethe to Faust, or Wagner's integration of the arts into a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all of human history and experience is wrought into epic myth. It is perhaps in this tradition that Ernst Mayr's The Growth of Biological Thought stands: a history of all of biology, a Ring des Nibelungen complete with leitmotivs such as the failures of reductionism, the struggle of biology for independence from physics, and the liberation of population thinking from the bounds of essentialism.155 Within this style of thinking Mayr has “to offer...nothing less than a vision of biology that places neodarwinian evolutionary theory firmly at the centre.”156 There may be other visions of biology, but few of them have as indefatigable and able representatives as Darwinism has in Ernst Mayr. (shrink)

O presente texto propõe uma leitura de diversas teorias do afeto pelo viés da semiótica. Partindo do preceito de que é impossível não afetar ou não ser afetado, estabelece alguns parâmetros para definir o que é afeto para dar conta das dimensões epistemo e ontológica da semiose. Com base em Espinosa, Deleuze e Guattari, ensaia dizer que há, para além de uma capacidade significante, também uma qualidade “sensacional” da semiose, aproximando a processualidade deste fenômeno às cadeias afetivas que devém de (...) toda afecção. Palavras-chave: Afeto. Semiótica. Teorias da Comunicação. Espinosa. (shrink)

Through a series of provocative conversations, Frederick Luis Aldama and Herbert Lindenberger, who have written widely on literature, film, music, and art, locate a place for the discomforting and the often painfully unpleasant within aesthetics. The conversational format allows them to travel informally across many centuries and many art forms. They have much to tell one another about the arts since the advent of modernism soon after 1900—the nontonal music, for example, of the Second Vienna School, the chance-directed music and (...) dance of John Cage and Merce Cunningham, the in-your-faceness of such diverse visual artists as Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, and Damien Hirst. They demonstrate as well a long tradition of discomforting art stretching back many centuries, for example, in the Last Judgments of innumerable Renaissance painters, in Goya’s so-called “black” paintings, in Wagner’s Tristan chord, and in the subtexts of Shakespearean works such as King Lear and Othello. This book is addressed at once to scholars of literature, art history, musicology, and cinema. Although its conversational format eschews the standard conventions of scholarly argument, it provides original insights both into particular art forms and into individual works within these forms. Among other matters, it demonstrates how recent work in neuroscience may provide insights in the ways that consumers process difficult and discomforting works of art. The book also contributes to current aesthetic theory by charting the dialogue that goes on—especially in aesthetically challenging works—between creator, artifact, and consumer. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental existential experiences is the “indifference of the world”. Faced with the awareness of the insignificance of human fate, the lack of meaning, the indifference of the world, man creates various strategies of depotentialising reality. One of them is “story-telling”, working on a myth. Nietzsche also believed that “life needs a protective atmosphere woven from illusions, dreams, delusions”, so he tried to create a myth to fill the void left by the “death of God”. He began (...) with Wagner’s “aesthetic myth” and went on to create a “myth of the aestheticisation of existence”. His next attempts to give meaning to human life were the story of the Übermensch and the revitalization of the myth of eternal return. Another myth which can be found at the core of Nietzsche’s philosophy is “the myth of the myth-maker”. (shrink)

According to a dominant approach in philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics, the main task of semantic theory is to provide a recursive definition of truth at points of evaluation for the declarative sentences that make up the language under examination. A specific type of theory of truth (the definition of truth originally proposed by Alfred Tarski) is reinterpreted here as a theory of meaning. The idea of using definitions of truth to explain the meaning of linguistic expressions has its (...) origin in the works of Donald Davidson, which exemplarily develop the connection between the Tarskian point of view and the concept of meaning. More recent developments in truth-condition semantics have come to reject Davidson’s extensionalist restrictions, specifying semantic content in terms of truth relativized to actual and counterfactual circumstances of evaluation. The present work aims to provide an evaluative perspective of the argumentative path that led from the Tarskian theory of truth to the Davidsonian theory of meaning and then to contemporary intensional semantics. (shrink)

This article considers ethical dilemmas that nurse managers may confront and suggests an ethical decision-making model that could be used as a tool for resolving such dilemmas. The focus of the article is on the question: Can nurse managers choose the ethically right solution in conflicting situations when nurses’ rights collide with patients’ rights to quality care in a world of cost-effective and economic constraint? Managers’ responsibility is to ensure and facilitate a safe and ethical working environment in which nurses (...) are able to give quality care to their patients. In nursing it is frequently declared that managers’ main obligations are to patients’ needs and their rights to receive quality care. However, managers’ ethical responsibilities are not only to patients but also to the nurses working in their institution. This article describes a real (but disguised) situation from an Israeli health care context to illustrate the dilemmas that may arise. The question is posed of whether nurse managers can maintain patients’ and nurses’ rights and, at the same time, fulfill their obligation to the conflicting demands of the organization. The article also offers a way to solve conflict by using an ethical decision-making model. (shrink)

This article addresses a number of phenomena in the field of digital communication - disinformation, infodemics and conspiracy mania - that promote indifference regarding the distinction between truth and lies, fact and fiction, opinion and knowledge. They have thus decisively altered users' patterns of rationality and common sense and contributed to the rise of anti-democratic and anti-scientific positions. To address this complex problem, a systemic approach is provided that considers these phenomena to be factors that disturb the ethical-epistemic equilibrium between (...) uncertainty, trust and responsibility. After identifying a set of dynamics generated by these disruptive factors, three aspects are explored in depth: the polarisation and lack of a deliberative culture, the necessary correction of the social image of scientific practice, and the impact of the post-truth discourse. The article concludes with reflections on redefining the three key concepts of uncertainty, trust and responsibility in light of the demands of the digital sphere. (shrink)

This very long book sets out to track and trace the working-class men and, less commonly, women who, against the limited expectations of their social position, learned Greek and Latin as an aspiration for personal change. The ideology of the book is clear and welcome: these figures “offer us a new ancestral backstory for a discipline sorely in need of a democratic makeover.” The book's twenty-five chapters explore how classics and class were linked in the educational system of Britain and (...) in its cultural performativity: Is he a gentleman? Does he have Greek? became the paradigmatic questions, as the study of classics became a sign of cultural attainment and social exclusion. This book sets out to explore the counterstory of the cobblers and shepherds who, like Jude the Obscure, fought against society's oppressiveness to access classical learning.The book's breadth is exemplary. It looks at the issue through genres and media, through different communities and national identities, through the prosopography of ragged-trousered philanthropists, beggar-lecturers, body-building performers, and through other institutions and people who helped, including adult-education teachers, kind bosses, supportive vicars, and fiery communists. This breadth, and the fascinating research that it encapsulates, will make this book a fantastic resource for future scholarship: it outlines the richness of a field that has been all too rarely explored properly. If you do not know Stephen Duck, “the thresher poet,” or Hawkie, the crutch-wielding beggar who performed from the books he sold on the streets of Glasgow, then this book is the place to the meet them. The cast list alone is worth the entrance ticket.Yet this very breadth is also the source of the book's limitations. The sheer number of cases listed, treated at similar length and depth, repeatedly conceals the complexity and even the interest of individual figures or events. So, the numerous representations of Vesuvius in shows around London in the first half of the nineteenth century—after the discoveries at Pompeii—are duly noted as a source of excitement and knowledge about antiquity, but against the recent treatment by Clare Pettitt in Serial Forms (which came out the same year) this mere noting looks desperately thin. There is little discussion of how the characters themselves talked about or negotiated class. This deficiency is particularly important for someone like Charles Kingsley, who was very active in the Chartist movement but also became Queen Victoria's chaplain and the professor of history at Cambridge. There are hilarious descriptions of Kingsley's stammering engagement with the working-class leaders he actively supported, which capture how awkward the interaction of classes could be even and especially when the participants shared a goal of transformation. (Ed Richardson's Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in the Pursuit of Antiquity is good on these moments of awkwardness but is one of several books whose absence from the notes looks pointed.) The authors list cases of working men who were picked up by fashionable society as poets or scholars, many of whom were dropped almost as quickly back into penury—but the telling description of such a case in Kingsley's Alton Locke is passed over, although it reveals an acute self-consciousness about such narratives in a best-selling novel.The very structure of the book tends toward listing cases rather than analyzing them in depth. It is not clear why “Shoemaker classicists” should take up a chapter, bar there having been some. Nor is it clear why some figures are not included. John Brown was an uneducated Scottish shepherd who taught himself Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He was discovered by a professor, one John Pringle, when he went into a shop to buy a secondhand Greek Testament (though his own church thought this newfound and inexplicable linguistic brilliance suspicious or even satanic). Brown went on to write the wonderfully titled The Self-Interpreting Bible, which remained in print and sold very widely for more than a century after its publication in 1778—especially after it was championed by the evangelical preacher Charles Simeon. It is a pity that Brown escaped the authors’ net, but religion, one of the main reasons to learn the classical languages, is downplayed throughout this study, although its imbrication with classics is everywhere in evidence. The book, significantly enough, leads rather toward a rosy-eyed depiction of posh classical communists like Geoffrey de Ste. Croix and George Thompson, and other such heroes of the authors.The authors are much more at home in the years of ardent republicanism in the decades on either side of the turn of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century, when socialism and communism became embedded in British life. The last half of the nineteenth century, when classics really established itself institutionally as a discipline, and its revolutionary potential moved away from the zeal of the Romantic philhellenists into the artistic idealism of a Richard Wagner or the sexual freedom of an Oscar Wilde, are less adequately explored. The huge attendance at art galleries and the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace as a route to encountering the past of antiquity in material form are barely addressed (Kate Nichols's Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace would have helped); nor do shows like Astley's Circus get air time (Rachel Bryant Davies's Troy, Carthage, and the Victorians is revealing). It is particularly noticeable in such a voluminous study that there is no discussion of how turning to Greek was a crucial route for the self-understanding of what was considered transgressive male sexuality—and for a particular engagement between the classes. To understand the social force of classics requires a deeper appreciation of the dynamics between conservatism and transformation, disciplinarity and self-discovery. The big picture of how classics matters is lost in the gems picked out by the authors. Gems they are, but their facets need more attention and their setting a broader perspective. (shrink)

It shall be examined how anti-physicalist arguments give rise to the tension between those aspects of our everyday life and the thesis of physicalism. The debate over the subjective character of consciousness, or as it is sometimes called: “the hard problem of consciousness”, is considered to be the greatest challenge to physicalism. Many philosophers posit this as a matter that cannot be solved, regardless of scientific progress, for it is beyond the scope of what science can find out about the (...) world. If they are correct, the consequence is that the idea of physicalism itself fails. The paper is divided in two parts. For the first part we will deal with Chalmers’ version of the conceivability argument as well as the semantic apparatus of the two-dimensional framework required to make the appropriate link between conceivability and possibility. At the end of this we shall take a look at Kripke’s version of the conceivability argument against physicalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche in the Light of his Suppressed Manuscripts WALTER KAUFMANN SINCE THE EIGHTEEN-NINETIES there has been considerable discussion about the adequacy of the editing of Nietzsche's late works, and occasionally bitter polemics about suppressed material have appeared in German newspapers and periodicals as well as in a few books. In the mid-fifties the controversy was revived in the wake of a new three-volume edition of Nietzsche's works, edited by (...) Karl Schlechta, ~ but the acrimonious debate was not very illuminating, and the sensational claims that traveled across the ocean were largely misleading. More and more often it was asked how reliable our printed texts are; also, what new revelations may be expected from unpublished manuscripts. I shall try to answer both questions. The discussion will revolve largely around a recent German work by Erich F. Podach 2 who makes sensational claims about The Antichrist and, above all, Ecce Homo, and who wants to supersede all previous editions of these works, including Schlechta's. 3 II Erich Podach holds a unique place in the Nietzsche literature: nobody else has contributed five genuinely important books. Yet Podach is not a philosopher, and he has never shown any profound understanding of Nietzsche 's thought. The point is that all of his books make use of unpublished documents. His study of Nietzsches Zusammenbruch (1930) was translated i Werke in drei Biinden (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954-1956), 1282, 1276, and 1476 pp..2Friedrich Nietzsches Werke des Zusammenbruehs (Heidelberg: Wolfgang Rothe Verlag, 1961), 432 pp. and 24 plates with 29 facsimiles of MS pages. 3My article was completed before two reviews of Podach's book appeared in The Philosophical Review, April 1964, pp. 282-285, and in The Journal ot Philosophy, April 23, 1964, pp. 286-288. Both reviews are by Henry Walter Brann; both accept uncritically Podach's editing and Podach's claims; and both add original errors. Brann says that Podach tells "the amazing story of the most brazen literary fraud committed in recent times," and he quotes Podach as saying that "Nietzsche is the most brazenly falsified figure of recent literary and cultural history with regard both to his life and to his works." (The last sentence is rendered into smoother English in The Philosophical Review, and the two reviews arc altogether slightly different.) I shall try to show how Podach and Brann themselves have contributed to this "amazing story" by trying to convince us that one of Nietzsche's best hooks was not written by him. [2051 206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY into English in 1931. Gestalten um Nietzsche (1932) 4 is his most interesting book and deserves to be translated: it offers chapters on Nietzsche's mother, Rohde, Gast, Bernhard and Elisabeth F6rster (Nietzsche's sister and her husband), and Julius Langbehn. In 1937 Podach published Der kranke Nietzsche : Briefe seiner Mutter an Franz Overbeck, and after that Friedrich Nietzsche und Lou Salom& All of these volumes are important for the biography of Nietzsche. The fifth book aims to offer philologically reliable texts of Nietzsches Werke des Zusammenbruchs, i.e., Nietzsche contra Wagner, Der Antichrist, Ecce Homo, and Dionysos-Dithyramben. All of these were first published after Nietzsche had become insane (in January, 1889), and while no philosophically important changes were made, the early editors were not greatly concerned about philological exactitude. Nietzsche contra Wagner, for example, as published first in 1895 and reprinted many times since, differs quite strikingly from the final version of which Nietzsche himself was reading proofs in January, 1889, when he collapsed. Yet a very few copies of the original version were actually printed in 1889. This version contained a third chapter, "Intermezzo," deleted in 1895 and ever since, and this, a page and a half long, ended with the poem variously called, in later collections of Nietzsche's verse, "Venice" or "Gondola Song." The reason for this omission was not at all sinister. Nietzsche was working on several books late in 1888. Initially, this section formed part of Ecce Homo; then he inserted it in Nietzsche contra Wagner; then he wrote his publisher that after all he preferred to move it back into Ecce Homo; but when soon thereafter he received proofs of... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper aims at exposing a strategy to organize the debate around physicalism. Our starting point is the pre-philosophical notion of physicalism, which is typically formulated in the form of slogans. Indeed, philosophers debating metaphysics have paradigmatically introduced the subject with aid of slogans such as “there is nothing over and above the physical”, “once every physical aspect of the world is settled, every other aspect will follow”, “physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical”. These ideas are very (...) intuitive but they are, of course, far from being a satisfactory metaphysical conception of Physicalism. For that end, we will begin with the definition of physicalism as the thesis that everything is physical, following Stoljar, we should be able to respond to one central question: how to interpret the physicalist claim that everything in physical. (shrink)

We reconstruct the group action in the group configuration theorem. We apply it to show that in an ω-categorical theory a finitely based pseudolinear regular type is locally modular, and the geometry associated to a finitely based locally modular regular type is projective geometry over a finite field.

Kant’s conception of nature’s having a “purposiveness without a purpose” was quickly picked by the Romantics and made into a theory of art as revealing the otherwise hidden unity of nature and freedom. Other responses (such as Hegel’s) turned instead to Kant’s concept of judgment and used this to develop a theory that, instead of the Romantics’ conception of the non-discursive manifestation of the absolute, argued for the discursively articulable realization of conceptual truths. Although Hegel did not argue for the (...) “end of art” (although it is widely held that he did just that), he did, curiously enough, claim that it is art and not philosophy which tells us about the “life” of agents. To see how he reconciles that claim with his otherwise entirely discursively oriented philosophy, it is necessary to look at his thesis of the end of art’s “absolute” importance. Hegel’s worries have to do with the impossibility of fully exhibiting the “inner” in the “outer” in modern art and with the newly emerging problem of “fraudulence” in the poet’s voice. This is illustrated by examples drawn from the history of music and the problems besetting the lyric poet in modern life. Because of these problems, we are, Hegel says, now “amphibious animals” having to live in different and seemingly incompatible worlds. Hegel’s student, Heinrich Heine, found that the only satisfactory way of responding to this was for the modern artist to adopt a distinctive type of irony in response to the Hegel’s worries about modern art. This form of irony, it is argued, is itself Hegelian in spirit. (shrink)

OverviewEn 1979, la revue Meta publiait, sous la direction de Jean-Claude Gémar, un numéro spécial consacré, pour une première fois, à la traduction juridique comme activité et discipline autonomes au sein de la jeune traductologie [8]. Ce numéro reste une référence devant la persévérance et la rigueur manifestées par le Bureau des traductions d’alors et l’action, inspirée et audacieuse, du ministère de la Justice du Canada , qui laissaient entrevoir l’avènement d’une «jurilinguistique» en gestation. Cette tentative de refrancisation du langage (...) du droit canadien par le biais de lois bilingues, corédigées et non plus traduites, allait connaître une fortune peu commune. L’exemple canadien et son modèle de «lisibilité» de la loi se sont en effet répandus, inspirant de nombreux États aux quatre coins du monde. Quelques années plus tard, en 1982, le Conseil de la langue française du Québec publiait, sous la direction de J-C Gémar, un ouvrage collectif bilingue trai .. (shrink)

The essay seeks to harness the diverse and innovative work to date of legal semiotics. It seeks to bring together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a preclusion to identifying fertile avenues for research.

This paper explores the semiotic status of algebraic variables. To do that we build on a structuralist and post-structuralist train of thought going from Mauss and L vi-Strauss to Baudrillard and Derrida. We import these authors' semiotic thinking from the register of indigenous concepts (such as mana), and apply it to the register of algebra via a concrete case study of generating functions. The purpose of this experiment is to provide a philosophical language that can explore the openness of mathematical (...) signs to reinterpretation, and bridge some barriers between philosophy of mathematics and critical approaches to knowledge. (shrink)

The claim that at least some of our mental states have qualitative, phenomenal features to which we have privileged cognitive access is intuitively plausible. Nevertheless, the claim is considered by many philosophers to be incompatible with a physicalist ontology. Some radical physicalists prefer simply to deny the existence of the qualitative character of our mental states, whereas other physicalists try to reinterpret the knowledge of the phenomenal character of our experience as the acquisition of an ability, i.e., as a sort (...) of know-how in opposition to the acquisition of an information. The paper presents and examines critically some recent attempts to compatibilize the sui generis nature of phenomenal knowledge with the materialist claim that the content of this sort of knowledge is constituted entirely by physical facts. (shrink)

Numerous scholars in the social sciences and humanities have speedily analysed and interpreted the COVID-19-induced social and political crisis. While the commitment to address an urgent topic is to be appreciated, this article suggests that the combination of confidence in the applicability of one’s tools and belief in the certainty of the available knowledge can be counter-productive in the face of a phenomenon that in significant respects is unprecedented. Starting out from the plurality of forms of knowledge that are mobilized (...) to analyse COVID-19 and its consequences as well as the lack of any clearly hegemonic knowledge, the article tries to understand how a limited convergence in the politico-medical responses to the crisis emerged, and speculates on what would have happened if this had not been the case. In conclusion, it is argued that this pandemic demands a greater awareness of the uncertainty of our knowledge and of the consequences of our actions, both in terms of being situated in time and of aiming at timeliness. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of prosody in conversational humor in the HBO series Sex and the City in an exploratory study. Specifically, we examine how pitch and pauses are part of the prosodic bundle that can be used to mark an utterance as humoristic. We find that the use of prosodic resources participates not only in the marking but also the creation of humor. In this regard, we view pitch variation and pauses as having communicative strategies and cognitive benefits. (...) They are part of the performance of humor and participate in the characterization of the personage. The authors suggest the existence of a repertoire of prosodic devices associated to humor and to a particular discourse. (shrink)

A minimal field of non-zero characteristic is algebraically closed.

Dans cet essai, nous voudrions contribuer à offrir une compréhension adéquate de l’usage par Quine du prédicat de vérité dans la formulation des lois logiques. L’enjeu est central : puisque la « logique poursuit la vérité dans l’arbre de la grammaire » en généralisant sur des phrases exemplifiant la même structure logique au moyen du prédicat de vérité, commettre un contresens sur ce point, c’est se rendre incapable de comprendre adéquatement la relation interne entre logique et vérité. La méthode adoptée (...) consiste à corriger certaines confusions répandues au sujet de la relation entre logique, vérité et montée sémantique. (shrink)

The paper provides a deeper insight into institutionally given opportunities for and limitations to reflexive, dialogue-centered, and risk-sensitive knowledge exchange between scientific experts and agro-political decision makers, especially under the conditions of a significant degree of complexity, far-reaching uncertainties and potential impacts. It focuses on the practical orientations, guiding expectations and selection criteria shaping expertise in processes of science policy consulting. In doing so, two perspectives will be discussed: first the orientation of the knowledge production process by different concepts of (...) ‘‘usable knowledge.’’ Second, the influence of specific constellations on different stages of the political process, which shape the institutional conditions for the transfer and the use of scientific knowledge within the policy consulting process. Both perspectives help to come to a closer understanding of the demanding and very heterogeneous process of science policy consulting, which - if successful - leads to the interactive production of a very special form of ‘‘orientational knowledge.’’. (shrink)

The terms modernity and capitalism remain in widespread use to characterize contemporary societies, but the distinction between them is much less antagonistic in current social theory than it used to be when a theory of ‘modern society’ was opposed to the theory of ‘late capitalism’. Rather than seeing societies either on an evolutionary trajectory realizing the functionally efficient institutionalization of freedom or as determined by increasing contradictions due to the logics of capital and to class struggle, a key task of (...) social theory today is to reconceptualize modernity and capitalism in such a way that the dynamics of historical transformations and the varieties of current socio-political constellations can be more adequately understood. This article contributes to addressing this task, introducing a special issue of the European Journal of Social Theory devoted to ‘modernity and capitalism’. This introduction elaborates a concept of modernity focused on the interpretative self-understanding of societies and a concept of capitalism as a historically specific response to the question of satisfying human material needs. On this conceptual basis, a historical-comparative perspective is taken to analyze transformations in the self-understandings of societies and the institutional changes in organizing the economy related to the former, placing the comparative analysis of societies in the global context of transformations of modernity and capitalism. (shrink)

Johann Arnason’s work combines the most erudite historical-comparative sociology, discussing highly knowledgeably enormous stretches of world-history, with the most subtle social and political philosophy, drawing creatively on the traditions of hermeneutics and phenomenology. Invariably, his works introduce more nuance and sophistication into the analysis of even very well studied socio-historical phenomena. At the same time, he addresses such major phenomena in terms of modernity, democracy and capitalism, agreeing that there often – maybe always – is a combination of empirical, conceptual (...) and normative issues at work when analysing human history. Nevertheless, readers of his work may at the same time be impressed by the nuance and sophistication and at a loss with regard to what such further refinement of our socio-historical knowledge entails in terms of understanding our own time in its historical context. Searching through Johann Arnason’s work, this article identifies unexplored questions in the conceptual and historical relation between civilization, modernity, and equality and tries to understand why they have been left open. (shrink)