Personal utilitarianism applies act-utilitarianism to the problem of individual choice. It is based on the view that the good life is achieved through maximizing the sum of individual measures of utility over a population. the population being the sequence of semi-autonomous selves from which the individual is composed. I begin by showing how our lives can usefully be partitioned into selves because the weights put on our various choice motives are constantly changing and, consequently, our preferences themselves concerning what we (...) should choose at any given time can also change from moment-to-moment. In particular, because we put disproportionate weight on our present needs relative to our future ones, we often become impatient and choose options that offer immediate gratification. I use concepts from game theory to describe multiple selves, and to discuss how strategic interactions between selves are possible, and then conclude by considering the practical problem of how to achieve the good life, or how can we get our selves to choose what is best for us in the long run. (shrink)

The cellular internal ribosomal entry site (IRES) is one of the most important elements to mediate cap‐independent translational initiation, especially under conditions of stress and pathology. However, a high‐throughput method to discover IRESs in these conditions is still lacking. Here, a possible way IRES long‐read sequencing based on the latest high‐throughput technologies is proposed to solve this problem. Based on this design, diversity and integrity of the transcriptome from original samples can be kept. The micro‐environment that stimulates (...) or inhibits IRES activity can also be mimicked. By using long read‐length sequencing technology, additional experiments that are essential for ruling out the cryptic promoters or splicing events in routine IRES identification processes can be circumvented. It is hoped that this proposed methodology may be adopted for IRES element discovery, hence uncovering the full extent of the role of IRESs in disease, development, and stress. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/JuWBbMzWXS8. (shrink)

DNA damage repair within telomeres are suppressed to maintain the integrity of linear chromosomes, but the accidental activation of repairs can lead to genome instability. This review develops the concept that mechanisms to repair DNA damage in telomeres contribute to genetic variability and karyotype evolution, rather than catastrophe. Spontaneous breaks in telomeres can be repaired by telomerase, but in some cases DNA repair pathways are activated, and can cause chromosomal rearrangements or fusions. The resultant changes can also affect subtelomeric regions (...) that are adjacent to telomeres. Subtelomeres are actively involved in such chromosomal changes, and are therefore the most variable regions in the genome. The case of Caenorhabditis elegans in the context of changes of subtelomeric structures revealed by long‐read sequencing is also discussed. Theoretical and methodological issues covered in this review will help to explore the mechanism of chromosome evolution by reconstruction of chromosomal ends in nature. (shrink)

Developments in the sequencing of whole genomes and in simultaneously surveying many thousands of transcription and translation products of specific cells have ushered in a conceptual revolution in genetics that rationally introduces top-down, holistic analyses. This emphasized the futility of attempts to reduce genes to structurally discrete entities along the genome, and the need to return to Johannsen's definition of a gene as 'something' that refers to an invariant entity of inheritance and development. We may view genes either as (...) generic terms for units of inheritance whose referents are pragmatic ad hoc and context-dependent, or as (epistemologically) representing entities of cell functions. It is cellular functions that determine the structural referents along the DNA. Structures that happened to secure specific functions that were essential for or conducive to the survival of cells were selected for. With natural selection being the etiological background of genes as functions, genes obtain again their theoretical role as intervening variables, abstractive variables that purely 'summarize' characters. The importance of DNA sequences is that of all possible phenotypes these are the most basic ones from which we can read off the genotype directly. (shrink)

The main goal of this article consists in addressing two fundamental issues of consciousness research and cognitive science, namely, the question of why declarative memory functions are inextricably linked with phenomenal awareness and the question of the physical basis of memory traces. The presented approach proposes that high-level cognitive processes involving consciousness employ a universal mechanism by means of which they access and modulate an omnipresent background field that is identified with the zero-point field (ZPF) specified by stochastic electrodynamics, a (...) branch of physics that deals with the universal principles underlying quantum systems. In addition to its known physical properties and memory capacities, the ZPF is hypothesized to be an immanently sentient medium. It is propounded that linking up to a particular field mode of the ZPF activates a particular phenomenal nuance, implying that the phase-locked coupling of a set of field modes, i.e., the formation of a so-called ZPF information state, constitutes an appropriate mechanism for the amalgamation of elementary shades of consciousness into a complex state of consciousness. Since quantum systems rest exactly on this mechanism, conscious memory processes in the brain are expected to differ from unconscious processes by the presence of the typical features of many-body quantum systems, particularly long-range coherence and attractor formation, which is supported by a huge body of empirical evidence. On this basis, the conceptual framework set out in this article paves the way for a new understanding of the brain as a write-read head interacting with the ZPF, leading to self-consistent interpretations of the neural correlates of memory formation and memory retrieval and explaining why these memory processes are closely intertwined with phenomenal awareness. In particular, the neural correlates suggest that the brain produces consciously perceived memory traces by writing sequences of information states into the ZPF and retrieves consciously experienced memory traces by reading sequences of information states from the ZPF. Using these theoretical foundations, altered states of consciousness and memory disorders can be traced back to impairments of the ZPF write-read mechanism. The mechanism should reveal itself through characteristic photon emissions, resulting in testable predictions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading the Mind:From George Eliot's Fiction to James Sully's PsychologyVanessa L. RyanWhat is the function and value of fiction? Debates over these questions involve considerations that range from aesthetics to ethics, from the intrinsic values of the genre to its moral effects. Recently, largely under the influence of the cognitive sciences, the question has taken on a new cast: might science give us a new answer to these (...) class='Hi'>long-standing issues? Studies such as Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction (2006), John Carey's What Good Are the Arts? (2005), and Alan Palmer's Fictional Minds (2004) are part of a growing area of interdisciplinary work on the relationship between art and consciousness.1 This body of work asks not just how our theories of consciousness inform our understanding of the process and function of [End Page 615] reading fiction, but also whether fiction itself might provide a key to new theories about the nature of consciousness.The nineteenth-century novel is often considered the high point in the literary representation of mind. Indeed, the terms "psychology" and "novel" are explicitly yoked in the nineteenth-century with the simultaneous emergence of both as discrete forms of intellectual and artistic activity. Not surprisingly, George Eliot has come to be identified with the term "psychological novel": in fact, Nicholas Dames argues that she was the first to couple the words psychology and novel in this way in an 1855 review where she contrasted Charles Kingsley's historical romance Westward Ho! with "those 'psychological' novels."2 While George Eliot initially used the phrase in what Dames calls "mock disdain," by the end of the nineteenth century the term "psychological novel" had gained currency as a straightforward description of a type of Victorian novel: Wilbur Cross, in his summary The Development of the English Novel, for example, describes the form as "stressing an inner sequence of thought and feeling, which is brought into harmony with an ethical formula and accounted for in an analysis of motive." Along with Elizabeth Gaskell and George Meredith, Cross also cites George Eliot as one of his central examples of the "psychological novel."3It seems natural, then, when a critic asks, "what is the special distinguishing function of the modern art of fiction?" to turn for an answer to George Eliot's novels and their close connections with psychological science. It is perhaps surprising that this still-current question was posed by the nineteenth-century psychologist James Sully (1842–1923) in an 1881 article in the journal Mind on "George Eliot's Art."4 His essay offers us a Victorian contribution to questions about the relationship of literature and psychology that are being addressed today by critics such as Sally Shuttle-worth, Athena Vrettos, Kay Young, Nicholas Dames, or Rick Rylance, especially [End Page 616] with respect to George Eliot. James Sully's essay not only provides valuable insight into how the Victorians themselves understood the role of psychology in the novel, but also helps to place contemporary debates about fiction and consciousness into sharper relief.In the wake of important studies, such as Rylance's Victorian Psychology and British Culture (2000), that have brought renewed attention to nineteenth-century British psychology, recent scholarship has shown the central role of Victorian debates about the mind in shaping the fiction of the period.5 Nineteenth-century mental science provided material and inspiration for works of literature, with imaginative writers eager to exploit and develop the narrative and thematic potential of contemporary psychological discourse and probe the problems it raised. Novelists such as Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Henry James turned to some of the most current work in the science of the mind, which they saw as the most sophisticated and credible approach to psychological realism available. These and other novelists rapidly absorbed the central terms of the new science as it considered problems of consciousness, identity, and memory, and brought them to life by dramatizing and questioning them in their fiction. James Sully's interest in George Eliot reflects this fruitful mid- to late-nineteenth-century cross-pollination between philosophers, scientists, and novelists who were interested in the nature of consciousness, psychology... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The fifth chapter of Saint Bonaventure's Long Life of Saint Francis, the Legenda maior , is a veritable blazon of the body of Francis and its senses, physical and spiritual. The first chapter in the so-called "Inner Life" – the sequence of eight chapters on the virtues of St. Francis – Chapter Five is notable for its insistent focus on sensory experience, due both to Francis's physical mortifications (...) and to his consciousness of the world's beauty, the "comfort" provided to him by the "creatures" he touched, tasted, heard, and saw. The chapter opens with a declaration of Francis's choice to "carry in his own body the armor of the cross" by holding "in check his sensual appetites," practicing self-denial lest he give in "to the earthbound inclinations of the senses," and they impede his spiritual progress. It ends, after an account of four miracles involving tactile, gustatory, auditory, and visual experience, respectively, with a laud of God, the "entire fabric of [whose] universe / came to the service / of the sanctified senses of the holy man." The pivot upon which the narrative turns from deprivation to gratification is, as editors of the Legenda have noted, "a carefully crafted paragraph" on Francis's freely flowing tears, a paragraph "which needs to be understood in light of Bonaventure's theology of the spiritual senses."That theology has been interpreted, however, in vastly different ways by two major twentieth-century theologians, Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, as the comparative work of Stephen Fields has shown, and as Balthasar himself, writing partly in response to Rahner, emphatically points out. Curiously, neither Rahner nor Balthasar pay particular attention to Chapter Five of the Legenda maior. In this essay I read that chapter closely, partly in light of the questions raised by the disagreement between Rahner and Balthasar . I argue that the operation of the spiritual senses in Francis's soul already at the purgative stage is understood by Bonaventure to have affected Francis's corporeal sensory experience, not as a general habitus but in isolated, expressive acts or perceptions involving particular senses at particular times and places. These corporeal perceptions of God's presence and glory in his creatures are, furthermore, an impressive means and safeguard for Francis's eternal beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" .For this reason Chapter Five singles out four episodes in Francis's life that correspond to the four dotes or endowments of the glorified body. These four episodes explicitly highlight four of the five physical senses, but omit, significantly, any direct reference to the fifth sense, that of olfaction. Represented indirectly in Chapter Five, I propose, through a decisive act of charitable discretion, the spiritual sense of smell becomes explicit in Bonaventure's Legenda maior in Chapter Fifteen, when Francis's body is laid to rest in the odor of sanctity. Linked to his earlier exodus from a worldly to a virtuous life, the descriptions of Francis's "passing" from this mortal life in Chapter Fourteen and of the "transferal" of his body in the immediately following final chapter return to, complete, and perfect the imagistic pattern of sensory experience established in Chapter Five. As a figure for the virtue of discretion and thus for the free exercise of the rational will at the core of the human personality , the obscure and seemingly unimportant olfactory sense proves to be a vital key for unfolding Bonaventure's Christocentric anthropology.Purgation, the Spiritual Senses, and the DotesChapter Five is incontestably associated with the purgative stage of St. (shrink)

Continental philosophy is in crisis. With the last few decades spent mainly on a “great figures” approach, this tradition is having to come to terms with the fact that most of its luminaries have now passed away. Derrida’s death in 2004 sent shockwaves through the community and seems to have functioned as marker for the generation before my own (I was not yet an undergraduate when it happened). For the rest of us, 2021 will have been a huge year as (...) it marked the loss of Jean-Luc Nancy, one of the few remaining giants of this tradition who was engaged in the task of thinking to the very end. A friend of mine recently ran a seminar with the title “contemporary continental philosophy” in which every single author on the reading list was dead. A strange understanding of “contemporary”! The course was well-received and I have no doubt the students learned a lot, but it illustrates the scale of the problem we face. At some point, the great sequence that began in France in the 1960s will have to be thought of as another period in the history of philosophy, but our tradition does not seem ready to make that transition just yet. For this to happen, philosophy may first have to take another step, or make another beginning. (shrink)

First Words, Last Words charts an intense "pamphlet war" that took place in sixteenth-century South India. The book explores this controversy as a case study in the dynamics of innovation in early modern India, a time of great intellectual innovation. This debate took place within the traditional discourses of Vedic Hermeneutics, or Mīmāṃsā, and its increasingly influential sibling discipline of Vedānta, and its proponents among the leading intellectuals and public figures of the period. At the heart of this dispute lies (...) the role of sequence in the cognitive processing of textual information, especially of a scriptural nature. Vyāsatīrtha and his grand-pupil Vijayīndratīrtha, writers belonging to the camp of Dualist Vedānta, purported to uphold the radical view of their founding father, Madhva, who believed, against a long tradition of Mīmāṃsā interpreters, that the closing portion of a scriptural passage should govern the interpretation of its opening. By contrast, the Nondualist Appayya Dikshita ostensibly defended this tradition's preference for the opening. But, as the book shows, the debaters gradually converged on a profoundly novel hermeneutic-cognitive theory in which sequence played little role, if any. In fact, they knowingly broke new ground, and only postured as traditionalists. First Words, Last Words explores the nature of theoretical innovation in this debate and sets it against the background of comparative examples from other major scriptural interpretive traditions. The book briefly surveys the use of sequence in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic hermeneutics and also seeks out parallel cases of covert innovation in these traditions. (shrink)

Let k be a positive integer. There is a longest finite sequence x1,...,xn in k letters in which no consecutive block xi,...,x2i is a subsequence of any other consecutive block xj,...,x2j. Let n(k) be this longest length. We prove that n(1) = 3, n(2) = 11, and n(3) is incomprehensibly large. We give a lower bound for n(3) in terms of the familiar Ackerman hierarchy. We also give asymptotic upper and lower bounds for n(k). We view n(3) as a particularly (...) elemental description of an incomprehensibly large integer. Related problems involving binary sequences (two letters) are also addressed. We also report on some recent computer explorations of R. Dougherty which we use to raise the lower bound for n(3). (shrink)

Probably no intellectual has suffered more distortion and abuse than Spencer. He is continually condemned for things he never said – indeed, he is taken to task for things he explicitly denied. The target of academic criticism is usually the mythical Spencer rather than the real Spencer; and although some critics may derive immense satisfaction from their devastating refutations of a Spencer who never existed, these treatments hinder rather than advance the cause of knowledge.

Peter Sloterdijk presented a reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism at a conference held at Elmau in 1999. Reinterpreting the meaning of humanism in the light of Heidegger's Letter, Sloterdijk focused his presentation on the need to redefine education as a form of genetic ‘taming’ and proposed what seemed to be support for positive eugenics. Although Sloterdijk claimed that he only wanted to open a debate on the issue, he could not have been surprised at the level of opposition this (...) suggestion aroused. In the weeks following, he blamed Habermas for raising this opposition and for refusing to engage with him openly. Although Luis Arenas has chronicled the aftermath of Sloterdijk's paper, it may be of interest to educators to examine how Heidegger's text is presented. What is this new humanism? If Heidegger's new humanism was based on a mystical attitude towards Being, so Sloterdijk's new humanism was to be based on the materialist principles of a biotechnological age. Unlike Heidegger who rejected technology as yet one further example of the forgetfulness of Being, Sloterdijk seems to embrace technology and the enhancement of the human body and mind as the next great step forward in educational theory. Could he possibly be right? Is education in these times a partner or an opponent of the technological enhancement of the human being? This article tries to identify Sloterdijk's disagreements with Heidegger on the question of the human. (shrink)

At almost every election, Americans are inclined to say that this is the most consequential election in American history. 2020 is no exception. However, what is particularly remarkable about the No...

At almost every election, Americans are inclined to say that this is the most consequential election in American history. 2020 is no exception. However, what is particularly remarkable about the No...

This long digression into language was necessary because we cannot understand verbal narrative unless we are aware of the iconic and indexical dimensions of language. Narrative is not just a sequencing, or the illusion of sequence, as the title of our conference would have it; narrative is a sequencing of something for somebody. To put anything into words is to sequence it, but to enumerate the parts of an automobile is not to narrate them, even though the (...) enumeration must mention each part in the enumeration's own discursive order. One cannot narrate a picture, or a person, or a building, or a tree, or a philosophy. Narration is a word that implicates its object in its meaning. Only one kind of thing can be narrated: a time-thing, or to use our normal word for it, an "event." And strictly speaking, we require more than one event before we recognize that we are in the presence of a narrative. And what is an event? A narrated event is the symbolization of a real event: a temporal icon. A narration is the symbolic presentation of a sequence of events connected by subject matter and related by time. Without temporal relation we have only a list. A telephone directory is a list, but we can give it a strong push in the direction of narrative by adding the word "begat" between the first and second entries and the words "who begat" after each successive entry until the end. This will resemble certain minimal religious narratives, even down to the exclusion of female names from most of the list . Robert Scholes is professor of English and comparative literature and director of the semiotics program at Brown University. He is the author of Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction, Fabulation and Metafiction, and Reading, Writing, and Semiotics. "Toward a Semiotics of Literature," his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, appeared in the Autumn 1977 issue. (shrink)

This paper addresses two interrelated questions. The first question is our relation, as the modern westerners that we are, to Greek philosophy in its historical context. The second question is the relation between Greek philosophical conceptions of the self and what we moderns take ourselves to be when we try to think about the world objectively. My inquiry is motivated by the belief that what a philosopher of the distant past can say to us is influenced by our own independent (...) viewpoint, a viewpoint which may enable us to use that philosopher as a contributor to debates of which he himself had no inkling. Greek philosophers were innocent of the Cartesian tradition and the problems it has generated concerning the connection, if any, between an individual subject of consciousness and the so-called 'external world'. However, I argue that early Greek speculation about the physical world was inward as well as outward looking. Their attempts to think about the world objectively raised issues about the nature of the self — the inquiring (or non-inquiring) subject — issues that, in the case of Heraclitus, are quite explicit. Following up my earlier point about linking modern viewpoints to ancient insights, I make a comparison beween parts of Thomas Nagel's book, The View from Nowhere, and the philosophy of Heraclitus. In particular, I argue that Heraclitus adumbrates a concept analogous to Nagel's 'objective self and shares some of Nagel's interests in integrating that perspective with the practice of being a person in the everyday world. In the final part of the paper I comment briefly on Plato's and Aristotle's criticism of Heraclitus, a criticism that, from a modern perspective, seems to me misconceived. I also offer the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was influenced by Heraclitus, as an excellent example of what it could mean to combine an objective viewpoint with one's ordinary humanity. More generally, the paper may be read as a defence of objectivity — not in the sense that we can hope to understand the world independently of our own concepts or culture (I sidestep any questions about objective truth), but in the sense, rather, that trying to get beyond an irreducibly personal view of things is a basic human propensity (property of the self) even though our use of it seems bound to be (and perhaps should be) selective. (shrink)

With a history dating back at least 3000 years, the philosophical tradition of India is one of the oldest to continue to thrive today. Encompassing a wide variety of worldviews, Indian philosophy includes perspectives that have ongoing relevance to contemporary issues such as the nature of consciousness, the relationship between philosophy and the good life, the existence of a divine reality, and the meaning of happiness. Contrary to widespread stereotypes, Indian philosophy is not simply an extension of Indian religion. Scepticism (...) is a pervasive feature of this discourse, and there is even a school of thought which affirms materialism. The idea of a divine reality is debated extensively, not only in terms of the existence of such a reality-"Is there a God?"-but also in terms of its nature-"What is God?" This book, drawing upon some of the latest research in the field, traces the history of the Indian philosophical tradition from ancient times to the present, outlining the views and major thinkers of such schools of thought as Vedanta, Jainism, Buddhism, and many more. Jeffery D. Long treats each system, however, not simply as an historical artifact, but as a living reality with important insights to offer our world today. It is essential reading for anyone interested in world philosophies and how they address the 'big questions' that have always engaged human beings. (shrink)

In the Gorgias, Socrates claims to practice the true art of politics, but the peculiar politics he practices involves cultivating in each individual he encounters an erotic desire to live a life animated by the ideals of justice, beauty and the good. Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy demonstrates that what Socrates sought to do with those he encountered, Platonic writing attempts to do with readers. Christopher P. Long's attentive readings of the Protagoras, Gorgias, Phaedo, Apology, and Phaedrus invite us (...) to cultivate the habits of thinking and responding that mark the practices of both Socratic and Platonic politics. Platonic political writing is here experienced in a new way as the contours of a politics of reading emerges in which the community of readers is called to consider how a commitment to speaking the truth and acting toward justice can enrich our lives together. (shrink)

This collection of original articles, written by leading contemporary European and American philosophers of religion, is presented in celebration of the publication of the fiftieth volume of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Following the Editor's Introduction, John Macquarrie, Adriaan Peperzak, and Hent de Vries take up central themes in continental philosophy of religion. Macquarrie analyzes postmodernism and its influence in philosophy and theology. Peperzak argues for a form of universality different from that of modern philosophy, and de Vries (...) analyzes an intrinsic and structural relationship between religion and the media. The next three essays discuss issues in analytic philosophy of religion. Philip Quinn argues that religious diversity reduces the epistemic status of exclusivism and makes it possible for a religious person to be justified while living within a pluralistic environment. William Wainwright plumbs the work of Jonathan Edwards in order to better understand debates concerning freedom, determinism, and the problem of evil, and William Hasker asks whether theological incompatibilism is less inimical to traditional theism than some have supposed. Representing the Thomist tradition, Fergus Kerr challenges standard readings of Aquinas on the arguments for the existence of God. David Griffin analyzes the contributions of process philosophy to the problem of evil and the relation between science and religion. Illustrating comparative approaches, Keith Ward argues that the Semitic and Indian traditions have developed a similar concept of God that should be revised in view of post-Enlightenment theories of the individual and the historical. Keith Yandell explores themes in the Indian metaphysical tradition and considers what account of persons is most in accord with reincarnation and karma doctrines. Feminist philosophy of religion is represented in Pamela Anderson's article, in which she argues for a gender-sensitive and more inclusive approach to the craving for infinitude. (shrink)

Social dilemmas occur when individuals make choices that are in their own best interest but not in the interest of society as a whole. Intrapersonal dilemmas occur when people make choices that are in the best interest of themselves at the moment of choice, but not in the best interest of themselves in the long run. A number of writers have observed that we can usefully model this self-defeating behavior by treating each individual as an aggregate of selves which (...) have competing interests, like the individual selves in a population. We undertake to synthesize and extend these contributions, applying the theory of intrapersonal dilemmas to addiction and procrastination, and discuss how the concept of multiple selves can explain why people attempt to control their behavior by imposing costs or constraints on themselves in the future, and how it can also help us develop new strategies of (personal) behavior control. (shrink)

Readers of the New Testament have long observed that Luke and Acts contain numerous scenes in which characters praise God. This study offers the first comprehensive analysis of this important narrative motif. Featuring a close reading of Luke-Acts, it draws insights from ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman views about praise of deity, and it compares praise in Luke with praise in two other ancient narratives: Tobit and Joseph and Aseneth. Attention to praise of God sheds light on Luke as historiographer (...) and on his treatment of revelation, healing, conversion, and eschatology. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians argue that distributive justice should be understood in terms of our capacity to be responsible for our choices. Both proponents and critics assume that the theory must rely on a comprehensive conception of responsibility. I respond to luck egalitarianism’s critics by developing a political conception of responsibility that remains agnostic on the metaphysics of free choice. I construct this political conception by developing a novel reading of John Rawls’ distinction between the political and the comprehensive. A surprising consequence (...) is that many responsibility-based objections to luck egalitarianism turn out to be objections to Rawls’ political liberalism as well. (shrink)

The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk seemed to agree with Heidegger’s critique of humanism when he delivered a Conference address at Elmau in 1999. He rejected, however, the way Heidegger used the metaphor of a shepherd to explain the proper essence of the human and developed a counter-position and a contrary understanding of shepherding that he considered truer to contemporary times. During his speech, Sloterdijk used some examples from Plato’s Statesman to support a distinction between good breeding and civility and thus (...) implied that humanistic education had to incorporate efforts to promote biomedical improvements in the human condition, effectively broadening the work of education centred traditionally on the “reading of good books.” Did Sloterdijk then commit himself to some kind of eugenic programme? He immediately denied this. Did his view amount to a logical progression from Heidegger’s position or was it a radical departure? To clarify this question, this paper first sketches out Heidegger’s argument as put forward in the Letter on Humanism, then notes Sloterdijk’s response to Heidegger’s analysis before finally attempting to identify some key differences between these writers on the issue. (shrink)

This essay argues that, for Thomas Aquinas, nature always points in the direction of Christ. Therefore, moral theologies that proceed by way of nature in order to move beyond the confines of confessional traditions fail to read Aquinas well. Because Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, the exemplar in whom all things are made, nature cannot be a more universal category than Christology. Karl Barth critiqued Roman Catholic moral theology for failing to honour this essential theological point, (...) wrongly attributing the error to Aquinas. However, many contemporary Catholic moral theologians have adopted the very understanding of nature Barth critiques, and are using Thomas to do so. This loses the ecumenical character of Aquinas’s work. (shrink)

Adrian Stokes , long admired by a small, highly distinguished, mostly English circle, was the natural successor to Pater and Ruskin. But though his place in cultural history is important, what is of particular interest now to art historians is his theory of the presentness of painting, a theory which offers a challenging critique of the practice of artwriting. From Vasari to the present, the most familiar rhetorical strategy of the art historian is the narrative of “the form, prophet-saviour-apostles,” (...) in which the first artist poses some problem that his successors develop and their successors solve.1 Such very different books as Art and Illusion and Art and Culture deploy that plan. The three periods of naturalism in E. H. Gombrich’s narrative—antiquity, Renaissance religious narrative, nineteenth-century landscape—function like Clement Greenberg’s sequence—old master art, early French modernism, American abstract expressionism. Gombrich and Greenberg disagree about how to narrate art’s history and about which works to include in that narrative—Gombrich asserts that cubism closes the canon while for Greenberg analytical cubism anticipates Jackson Pollock—but in each case, the art historian aims, as the novelist does, to tell a satisfying story and achieve narrative closure, and so how we think of the artworks the historian discusses depends in part upon the structure of the narrative. In a certain mood, we may find this fact intolerable. Why should a mere text tell us how to see the painting we may stand before?Stokes’ attempt to respond to this mood belongs to a tradition of early twentieth-century antihistorical thinking. For Rainer Maria Rilke, Rodin’s sculpture aimed to “refer to nothing that lay beyond it.” For Ezra Pound, an image “is real because we know it directly”; Henri Gaudier-Brzeska could read Chinese ideograms without knowing that language because those ideograms are transparently meaningful images. For Wyndham Lewis, a musical piece is inferior to a statue, “always there in its entirety before you.”2 Such an artwork need not be interpreted because it contains “within itself all that is relevant to itself.”3 All art is accessible to the gifted observer, and time is, in an interesting double sense, irrelevant. We see directly the meaning of works even from distant cultures; the visual artwork is experienced all at once, outside of time. If these claims are correct, what is the artwriter to do? Speaking of the Tempio Malatestiana, Hugh Kenner points to this issue:There is no description of the Tempio in accordance with good Vorticist logic: one art does not attempt what another can do better, and the meaning of the Tempio has been fully explicated on the spot by Agostino di Duccio with his chisel.4 1. Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition 1350-1450 , p. 75.2. Rainer Maria Rilke, Rodin, trans. Jessie Lemont and Hans Trausil , p. 19; Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir , p. 86; Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man , p. 174.3. Frank Kermode, Romantic Image , p. 107.4. Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era , p. 428. David Carrier, associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University, is coauthor, with Mark Roskill, of Truth and Falsehood in Visual Images and author of the forthcoming Artwriting, a study of recent American art criticism. He is working on a history of art history. (shrink)

Within feminist memory studies the economy has largely been overlooked, despite the fact that the economic analysis of culture and society has long featured in research on women and gender. This article addresses that gap, arguing that the global economy matters in understanding the gender of memory and memories of gender. It models the conceptual basis for the consideration of a feminist economic analysis of memory that can reveal the dimensions of mnemonic transformation, accumulation and exchange through gendered mnemonic (...) labour, gendered mnemonic value and gendered mnemonic capital. The article then applies the concepts of mnemonic labour and mnemonic capital in more detail through a case study of memory activism examining the work of the Parragirls and the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project in Sydney, Australia. The campaigns have worked to recognize the memory and history of the longest continuous site of female containment in Australia built to support the British invasion. The site in Parramatta, which dates from the 1820s, was a female factory for transported convicts, a female prison, an asylum for women and girls, an orphanage and then Parramatta Girls Home. The Burramattagal People of Darug Clan are the Traditional Owners of the land and the site is of practical and spiritual importance to indigenous women. This local struggle is representative of a global economic system of gendered institutionalized violence and forgetting, The analysis shows how the mnemonic labour of women survivors accumulates as mnemonic value that is then transformed into institutional mnemonic capital. Focusing on how mnemonic labour creates lasting mnemonic capital reveals the gendered dimensions of memory which are critical for ongoing memory work. (shrink)

Many scholars in religious ethics and political theory read Augustine's emphasis on pride as tied to a pessimism about politics and human nature as well as a neutralist vision of politics. Against these views, this essay argues that Augustine's vision of political humility is at once tied to a thick, non‐neutralist vision of the good and a limited view of politics' role in achieving this good on its own. To make this argument, I compare Augustine's largely neglected commentary on (...) Genesis with that of Hobbes, a political pessimist with whom Augustine is often compared. While Hobbes's political combatting of pride adheres to a vision of mere “preservation,” Augustine's instead entails a vision of “re‐creation.” Political re‐creation is aspirational, participating in a re‐instantiation of creation's order, but it is also limited, since (re‐)creation is ultimately the work of God. (shrink)

This paper considers current personalized recommendation approaches based on computational social systems and then discusses their advantages and application environments. The most widely used recommendation algorithm, personalized advice based on collaborative filtering, is selected as the primary research focus. Some improvements in its application performance are analyzed. First, for the calculation of user similarity, the introduction of computational social system attributes can help to determine users’ neighbors more accurately. Second, computational social system strategies can be adopted to penalize popular items. (...) Third, the network community, identity, and trust can be combined as there is a close relationship. Therefore, this paper proposes a new method that uses a computational social system, including a trust model based on community relationships, to improve the user similarity calculation accuracy to enhance personalized recommendation. Finally, the improved algorithm in this paper is tested on the online reading website dataset. The experimental results show that the enhanced collaborative filtering algorithm performs better than the traditional algorithm. (shrink)

When Paul Hirst and Wilfred Carr squared up to each other a few years ago on the issue of the role of philosophical theory in educational practice, it became clear that theory itself had become a troubled term. The very fact that Wilfred Carr could argue for the end of educational theory recalls Paul Feyerabend's fiery argument for the end of theory in natural science and simply deepened the attack that had already appeared in Carr and Kemmis's book, Becoming Critical (...) (1986). In response, Hirst insisted that theory, and particularly the philosophical theory of education, should be defined as a discrete area of study in itself, governed and structured by the axioms of logic. In this way, he argued, the philosophy of education would be no different from philosophy in general (at least in its analytic formulation). Carr, on the other hand, preferred to consider educational theory as a flexible event that took its shape from the landscape explored, and hence precisely not the kind of study that Hirst supported, but one based in action research and reflective practitioner experience. This debate is as yet unresolved. In this piece I begin by making several remarks about the current context for raising the question Hirst and Carr address, and I go on to consider other possible understandings of theoria in a Greek sense before developing this idea through a reading of Aristotle. I eventually conclude that each of the protagonists in the debate has taken a step too far. (shrink)

The study examined the development of Chinese as a second language learners’ formulaic knowledge through comparing the processing of Chinese idioms versus non-idiomatic formulaic sequences (FSs) by advanced-level learners (ALs), super-advanced learners (SLs), and native speakers (NSs). Using two phrase acceptability judgment tasks with and without think-aloud protocols, we collected data on participants’ processing accuracy, processing speed, and processing strategies of reading the two types of FSs. Four processing patterns emerged from the analyses of the datasets. First, learners’ processing accuracy (...) and speed increased along with their proficiency. Second, learners’ idiom processing ability was generally lower than that of non-idiom processing ability, but they demonstrated an improving trend as their proficiency level increased. Third, learners’ use of processing strategies did not change much as proficiency rose and demonstrated a categorical difference from NSs. Fourth, all three groups exhibited poorer productive idiom knowledge than productive non-idiom knowledge. The overall findings denote that second language learners’ formulaic knowledge can evolve beyond the lexical plateau as learners move from the advanced to a higher proficiency level, but the productive idiom knowledge can be a long-term problem. The findings provide implications for measuring and teaching Chinese formulaic knowledge at the higher-than-advanced stage. (shrink)

In reply to Seddon's charge that Long's analysis in Reason and Value rests on a mistaken reading of Plato, Long both defends his interpretation of Plato and argues that nothing in Reason and Value depends on Plato interpretation in any case.

In his Quadratura, Paul of Venice considers a sophism involving time and tense which appears to show that there is a valid inference which is also invalid. Consider this inference concerning some proposition A : A will signify only that everything true will be false, so A will be false. Call this inference B. A and B are the basis of an insoluble-that is, a Liar-like paradox. Like the sequence of statements in Yablo's paradox, B looks ahead to a moment (...) when A will be false, yet that moment may never come. In the Quadratura, Paul follows the solution to insolubles found in the collection of elementary treatises known as the Logica Oxoniensis, which posits an implicit assertion of its own truth in insolubles like B. However, in the treatise on insolubles in his Logica Magna, Paul develops and endorses a different solution that takes insolubles at face value. We consider how both types of solution apply to A and B : on both, B is valid. But on one, B has true premises and false conclusion, and contradictories can be false together; on the other (following the Logica Oxoniensis), the counterexample is rejected. (shrink)

Up to now scholars have not approached E[pictetus] as author, stylist, educator, and thinker, according to the eminent scholar of Stoicism Tony L[ong]. The aim of this book is to fill precisely this gap. L wants "to provide an accessible guide to reading E, both as a remarkable historical figure and as a thinker whose recipe for a free and satisfying life can engage our modern selves, in spite of our cultural distance from him" (2). This goal is met admirably. (...) Not only does L succeed in presenting E on his own terms, but in the process, he fairly demolishes the view, held by many since Adolf Bonhöffer,1 that E is a sturdy but unoriginal moralist who basically rehashed the same ideas, with an emphasis on practical application, that were articulated in a more sophisticated, theoretically fastidious form by Chrysippus and the early Stoics. (shrink)

In developing the moral implications of Heidegger’s work, Sherover takes seriously the well-known notion that persons become aware of themselves as already and always existing as beings in the world in relation to other persons and things. In this context, making a voluntary decision always involves one in a complex existential situation in which, Sherover argues, one seeks to live resolutely into the future while, as Royce emphasized, finding oneself as a member of a historically developed society with its conflicting (...) values, loyalties, and desires. Each authentic or free act thus entails implicitly at least choosing some aspects of one’s history or heritage, making it “mine,” so to speak, while setting aside other possible ways of being in the world. Sherover, like Heidegger, insists upon the process of mineness or separation from the other, but seeks to do so while spelling out and accepting the consequences of a richer understanding of heritage and the societal context. Sherover’s engaging chapter on the concept of heritage is among the best discussions on the topic that I have read. (shrink)

Wattpad is a popular online writing website in which individuals write, upload, and comment on original stories. In 2020, the platform had more than a hundred million registered users. In this article, we use a mixture of close and distant reading methods to study how lay authors wrote about the COVID-19 global pandemic during its first year. We examine some of the formal and generic norms these authors used to narrativize this event; how such norms evolved over time as the (...) pandemic dragged on; and how these online COVID stories differ from more established online genres, such as mystery and romance. Overall, this article explores how a large reading and writing public, leveraging the novel affordances of user generated content, came to respond to a massive social crisis in real time, before they knew how it would end. This exploration allows us to accomplish two things. First, we are able to situate real-time pandemic stories against the retrospective narratives that we expect from literary fiction. How does writing crisis in real time and in a collaborative mode produce its own unique plot and narrative structures, and how do stories written in the immediate wake of the pandemic anticipate later mainstream cultural productions (fiction, film, television)? Second, we gain a broader understanding of how new genres of writing emerge within a cultural ecosystem increasingly defined by generic predictability and the recycling of familiar cultural intellectual property (IP), such as The Avengers and Harry Potter. COVID-19 dramatically disrupted global economic, political, and health systems. How did it also disrupt cultural systems? (shrink)

At least since the appearance of Aristotle’s Politics, Plato’s Republic has been read as arguing for a politics of unity in which difference is understood as a threat to the polis. By focusing on the musical imagery of the Republic, and specifically on its compositional organization around three ‘preludes’, this essay seeks an understanding of Socratic politics that moves beyond the hypothesis of unity. In the first ‘prelude’, Thrasymachus and his insistence that justice is the self-interest of the stronger (...) threatens to subject the harmony of the community to the tyrannical whims of the individual. In the second, the perfected justice of Adeimantus’s city threatens to destroy the erotic rhythm of difference that is the very condition for the possibility of the polis. It is only in the song of dialectic, which itself is called a ‘prelude’, that the tension between the rhythm of plurality and the rational homophony of unity is dynamically tuned in such a way that both the anarchic politics of self-interest and the totalitarian politics of rationalized oppression are equally muted. This conception of politics is embodied in the relationship that emerges between Glaucon and Socrates. Ultimately, the true political community is established here, between rational, erotic individuals seeking justice in concrete, living dialogue. (shrink)

This book contributes to the 'new view' reading of Adam Smith, providing a historically and contextually rich interpretation of Smith's thought. Smith built a moral philosophy on the foundations of a natural theology of human sociality. Examination of his life, relationship with David Hume, and use of divine names shows that he retained a progressive form of Christian theism. The book interrogates the metaphor of the 'invisible hand' and highlights the importance of the religious dimension of Adam Smith's thought for (...) his moral philosophy, his jurisprudence and his economics. It reflects on the contemporary relevance of a theological reading of Smith and lays the ground for further inquiry between economic and religious perspectives. (shrink)

A homage in the guise of an essay, this is the story of the last course Reiner Schürmann taught. As a text, it attempts to describe, situate, and come to terms with the power of Schürmann’s teaching in the context of his last lectures on Heidegger’s Being and Time. But if it is to be true to the deepest lessons of Schürmann’s thinking, it will also need to be heard as an invitation to interpret together the significance of his reading (...) so that it may be permitted to shape the course of the lives of those who encounter it. (shrink)

What does the word clinic mean? The clinic is first a place to diagnose and treat sick persons. The clinic is also a way of thinking and speaking; it is a discursive practice that links health with knowledge. For Michel Foucault the clinic is a mode of perception and enunciation that allows us to see and name disease and to place statements about illness among statements about birth and death. Within the clinic resides understanding of disease visible on the surface, (...) yet hidden within the tissual depths, of an ailing patient. Foucault shows that by the dawn of the nineteenth-century medicine is no longer a two-dimensional reading of symptoms, but a three-dimensional probing from symptomatic surface into disease interior. The anatomical site of disorder hidden within tissual depths is visible to the scrutiny of pathologist, endoscopist or radiologist. The clinic, a discourse that enables us to think about disease when we make statements about health and death, operates not only in its familiar textual domain, the medical journal, but in pictures of the scene at the sickbed, and poetry about disease. The truth of disease and placement of that truth in a general plan of the world in Renaissance woodcuts and John Donne's poetry is different from the regime of truth after the birth of the clinic in Bichat'sTreatise on Membranes, the paintings of Laennec, Agnew and Gross, the modern lithographs and the verse of Walt Whitman and L. E. Sissman. Foucault's clinic is where knowledge and sickness some together in the modern period. (shrink)

“Canonical coherence” is necessary for reading, hearing and interpreting any text. It is not only something for which a theological interpreter of Scripture should aim, but also something that every interpreter of Scripture assumes. Irenaeus recognized that sources function as canons authorizing diverse readings. This essay assumes the truth of his Source and reads it against other sources by which biblical scholars and theologians interpret Scripture. It uses Hebrews 4: 14‐16 to examine the “Source” found in Gnostic, anti‐Platonic and Apocalyptic (...) orderings of the Bible. (shrink)

The Holocaust throws the study of the history of philosophy into crisis. Critiques of Western thinking leveled by such thinkers as Adorno, Levinas and, more recently, postmodern theorists have suggested that Western philosophy is inherently totalizing and that it must be read differently or altogether abandoned after Auschwitz. This article intentionally rereads Aristotle and Hegel through the shattered lens of the Holocaust. Its refracted focus is the question of ontological identity. By investigating the manner in which the totalizing dimensions (...) of Aristotle’s thinking are both eclipsed and implicitly endorsed by Hegel’s appropriation of Aristotle’s conception of God, and further by following the surplus of Hegel’s (mis)interpretation back into the heart of Aristotle’s ontology where we find a more open conception of ontological identity, we come to recognize not only the dangers endemic to certain strands of traditional philosophical thinking, but also the resources this tradition itself brings to bear on the attempt to think ontological identity after Auschwitz. (shrink)

While researchers have examined the types of ethical issues that arise in long-term care, few studies have explored long-term care nurses’ experiences of moral distress and fewer still have examined responses to initial moral distress. Using an interpretive description approach, 15 nurses working in long-term care settings within one city in Canada were interviewed about their responses to experiences of initial moral distress, resources or supports they identified as helpful or potentially helpful in dealing with these situations, (...) and factors that hindered nurses in their responses. Using a thematic analysis process, three major themes were identified from the nurses’ experiences: (i) the context of the situation matters; (ii) the value of coming together as a team; and (iii) looking for outside direction. The work of responding to initial moral distress was more fruitful if opportunities existed to discuss conflicts with other team members and if managers supported nurses in moving their concerns forward through meetings or conversations with the team, physician, or family. Access to objective others and opportunities for education about ethics were also identified as important for dealing with value conflicts. (shrink)