Both sides in controversies tend to argue they have logic on their side. This book proposes that the interminable nature of these controversies suggests there is a problem with the main tool of logic, the syllogism. Drawing on contemporary developments in social theory and philosophy, Stanley Raffel argues that metaphors are not just aesthetic tools; they can also be used to judge phenomena. Featuring case studies drawn from both literary material and current controversial debates, _The Method of Metaphor_ (...) ultimately demonstrates the value of this neglected potential of metaphoric reasoning and shows its far-reaching implications in both moral behavior and moral education. (shrink)

Quantification is a topic which brings together linguistics, logic, and philosophy. Quantifiers are the essential tools with which, in language or logic, we refer to quantity of things or amount of stuff. In English they include such expressions as no, some, all, both, many. Peters and Westerstahl present the definitive interdisciplinary exploration of how they work - their syntax, semantics, and inferential role.

Although Hegel considered _Science of Logic_ essential to his philosophy, it has received scant commentary compared with the other three books he published in his lifetime. Here philosopher Stanley Rosen rescues the _Science of Logic_ from obscurity, arguing that its neglect is responsible for contemporary philosophy’s fracture into many different and opposed schools of thought. Through deep and careful analysis, Rosen sheds new light on the precise problems that animate Hegel’s overlooked book and their tremendous significance to philosophical conceptions (...) of logic and reason. Rosen’s overarching question is how, if at all, rationalism can overcome the split between monism and dualism. Monism—which claims a singular essence for all things—ultimately leads to nihilism, while dualism, which claims multiple, irreducible essences, leads to what Rosen calls “the endless chatter of the history of philosophy.” The _Science of Logic_, he argues, is the fundamental text to offer a new conception of rationalism that might overcome this philosophical split. Leading readers through Hegel’s book from beginning to end, Rosen’s argument culminates in a masterful chapter on the Idea in Hegel. By fully appreciating the_Science of Logic_ and situating it properly within Hegel’s oeuvre, Rosen in turn provides new tools for wrangling with the conceptual puzzles that have brought so many other philosophers to disaster. (shrink)

The question of the relation of my work to that of Martin Luther King Jr. cannot be resolved with the theoretical tools Christopher Beem brings to the task. Stanley Fish has written that "those who detach King's words from the history that produced them erase the fact of that history from the slate, and they do so, paradoxically, in order to prevent that history from being truly and deeply altered." The vice of liberalism is not selfishness so much (...) as a forgetfulness that spreads like a blight from the habit of abstraction. Martin Luther King Jr. remembered his people, his savior, and his church, and he called the rest of us to share those memories. Therein lay his strength. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stanley Cavell WHAT BECOMES OF THINGS ON FILM? And does this title express a genuine question? That is, does one accept the suggestion that there is a particular relation (or a particular system of relations, awaiting systematic study) that holds between things and their filmed projections, which is to say between the originals now absent from us (by screening) and the new originals now present to us (in (...) photogenesis)—a relation to be thought of as something's becoming something (say as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or as a prisoner becomes a count, or as an emotion becomes conscious, or as after a long night it becomes light)? The title is, at any rate, the working formulation I have given myself for the guiding question of this discussion. Of the many issues and many levels of issue raised by the papers I have been invited to comment upon, I have picked two moments at which work of my own about film has been referred to, wishing to contribute to a conversation in the territory of film study. The first moment is one in which I am quoted (or Heidegger and I jointly quoted) as saying that "The cinematic image accentuates the conspicuousness, obtrusiveness and obstinacy of things." I am sorry to have given such an impression. The background of what I said —in the course of giving some examples of how thinking about films and thinking about philosophy have drawn upon one another in my work— was this: early in Being and Time, Heidegger characterizes the specific way in which the phenomenon occurs, in his terms, of the "worldhood of the world announcing itself"; it is a phenomenon in which a particular mode of sight or awareness is brought into play. What brings this mode of sight into play is a disruption of what Heidegger calls the "work-world," a disruption of the matters of course running among our tools, and the occupations they extend, and the environment which supports these occupations. It is upon the disruption of such matters of course (of a tool, say by its breaking; or of someone's occupation, say because of an injury; or of some absence of material) that the mode of sight then brought forth discovers objects in what Heidegger 249 250Philosophy and Literature notes as their conspicuousness, their obtrusiveness, and their obstinacy. Now the foreground of what I said was this: it struck me that this perception or apprehension of the things of our world is part of the grain of silent film comedy; and, more particularly, that Buster Keaton is the silent comic figure whose extraordinary works and whose extraordinary gaze, perhaps the fundamental feature of his character, illuminate and are illuminated by the consequent concept of the worldhood of the world announcing itself. While I take even this bare broaching of this idea to formulate one possibility of cinematic images of the things of our world, it is no more to be expected that all cinematic images carry this force, than it is to be expected that all are in the service of Keaton's species of comedy; any more than the idea of such images exhausts what there is to say about Keaton, orabout Heidegger, or about any further relations between them. What the idea ought to do is to help us to see and say at once what it is Keaton permits us to laugh about and what concretely the nature is of the mode of sight from which Heidegger begins his analysis of Being-in-the-world. This laughter is not defined, for example, by a Bergsonian suggestion that the human being has become machine-like, or vice versa. Keaton is as flexible, as resourceful, as Ulysses, and his giant machines do exactly what they might be expected to do under their circumstances. We have here to do with something about the human capacity for sight, or for sensuous awareness generally, something wë might express as our condemnation to project, to inhabit, a world that goes essentially beyond the delivery of our senses. This seems to be the single point of agreement throughout the history of epistemology, at least throughout the modern history of the... (shrink)

This is the first anthology to take a theoretical look at violence against women. Each essay shows how philosophy provides a powerful tool for examining a difficult and deep-rooted social problem. Stanley G. French, Wanda Teays, and Laura M. Purdy, all philosophers, present a familiar phenomenon in a new and striking fashion. The editors employ a two-tiered approach to this vital issue. Contributors consider both interpersonal violence, such as rape and battering; and also systemic violence, such as sexual harassment, (...) pornography, prostitution, and violence in a medical context. The editors have further broadened the discussion to include such cross-cultural issues as rape in war, dowry deaths, female genital mutilation, and international policies on violence against women. Against this wide range of topics, which integrate personal perspectives with the philosophical, the contributors offer powerful analyses of the causes and effects of violence against women, as well as potential policies for effecting change. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper I investigate how conceptual engineering applies to mathematical concepts in particular. I begin with a discussion of Waismann’s notion of open texture, and compare it to Shapiro’s modern usage of the term. Next I set out the position taken by Lakatos which sees mathematical concepts as dynamic and open to improvement and development, arguing that Waismann’s open texture applies to mathematical concepts too. With the perspective of mathematics as open-textured, I make the case that this allows us (...) to deploy the tools of conceptual engineering in mathematics. I will examine Cappelen’s recent argument that there are no conceptual safe spaces and consider whether mathematics constitutes a counterexample. I argue that it does not, drawing on Haslanger’s distinction between manifest and operative concepts, and applying this in a novel way to set-theoretic foundations. I then set out some of the questions that need to be engaged with to establish mathematics as involving a kind of conceptual engineering. I finish with a case study of how the tools of conceptual engineering will give us a way to progress in the debate between advocates of the Universe view and the Multiverse view in set theory. (shrink)

Coordination is a key problem for addressing goal–action gaps in many human endeavors. We define interpersonal coordination as a type of communicative action characterized by low interpersonal belief and goal conflict. Such situations are particularly well described as having collectively “intelligent”, “common good” solutions, viz., ones that almost everyone would agree constitute social improvements. Coordination is useful across the spectrum of interpersonal communication—from isolated individuals to organizational teams. Much attention has been paid to coordination in teams and organizations. In this (...) paper we focus on the looser interpersonal structures we call active support networks, and on technology that meets their needs. We describe two needfinding investigations focused on social support, which examined four application areas for improving coordination in ASNs: academic coaching, vocational training, early learning intervention, and volunteer coordination; and existing technology relevant to ASNs. We find a thus-far unmet need for personal task management software that allows smooth integration with an individual’s active support network. Based on identified needs, we then describe an open architecture for coordination that has been developed into working software. The design includes a set of capabilities we call “social prompting”, as well as templates for accomplishing multi-task goals, and an engine that controls coordination in the network. The resulting tool is currently available and in continuing development. We explain its use in ASNs with an example. Follow-up studies are underway in which the technology is being applied in existing support networks. (shrink)

This book is a continuation of the project of Pollock's How to Build a Person: A Prolegomena. Pollock seeks to advance work on developing a program which meets reasonable criteria for being a rational agent. He sees that, to make the project feasible, the conception of rationality that one is aiming to implement needs to match the sort of program-constructing tools one is going to use. In this case, this means that rational agents will be algorithmically specifiable rule-followers.

"Featuring a carefully selected collection of source documents, this tome includes traditional teaching tools from the Zen Buddhist traditions of China, Korea, and Japan, including texts created by women. The selections provide both a good feel for the varieties of Zen and an experience of its common core.... The texts are experiential teachings and include storytelling, poetry, autobiographies, catechisms, calligraphy, paintings, and koans. Contextual commentary prefaces each text. Wade-Giles transliteration is used, although Pinyin, Korean, Japanese, and Sanskrit terms are (...) linked in appendixes. An insightful introduction by Arai contributes a religious studies perspective. The bibliography references full translations of the selections. A thought-provoking discussion about the problems of translation is included.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels." --_Choice_. (shrink)

This second of a two-part series of articles on applied semiotics and intercultural training provides a qualitative evaluation of the research initiative Tools for Cultural Development. The discussion will firstly centre on several theoretical and methodological challenges inherent to the qualitative research paradigm and then relate these shifting concerns to convergent findings in poststructuralist semiotics, especially with respect to phenomenology and pragmatics. Analysis of four focus group interviews in France and Australia will examine and evaluate the 2007 training experience (...) in light of the culture-specific contexts and stakeholder groups involved. Of particular concern will be the capacity of qualitative evaluative processes to account for the "local meanings" and "voices" within the trainee narratives so as to highlight their perceptions as to the use of semiotics for designing culturally significant practices in education and praxis. (shrink)

This second of a two-part series of articles on applied semiotics and intercultural training provides a qualitative evaluation of the research initiative Tools for Cultural Development. Th e discussion will firstly centre on several theoretical and methodological challenges inherent to the qualitative research paradigmand then relate these shifting concerns to convergent findings in poststructuralist (and postcolonial) semiotics, especially with respect to pheno menology and pragmatics. Analysis of four focus group interviews in France and Australia will examine and evaluate the (...) 2007 training experience in light of the culture-specific contexts and stakeholder groups involved. Of particular concern will be the capacity of qualitative evaluative processes to account for the “local meanings”and “voices” within the trainee narratives so as to highlight their perceptions as to the use of semiotics for designing culturally significant practices in educationand praxis. (shrink)

This exploratory enquiry seeks to examine the largely unexplored potential of semiotics for intercultural training and education. The proposed three-partdiscussion describes the process by which semiotic theoretical principles were selected and progressively refined into an applied model which was then pilotedthrough a 2007 research initiative entitled Tools for Cultural Development. The case study involved six groups of French and Australian trainees from both theacademic and professional sectors, in collaboration with university, government and community partners. The first part of the (...) article summarizes a review of theliterature on approaches to cultural competence training. The study then outlines the transcoding process by which the stated objectives of intercultural educationwere reformulated in semiotic terms, particularly in reference to cultural semiotics on which the theoretical core of the applied model was subsequently based.Relevant principles from other semiotic schools as well as similar theoretical and methodological stances in the social sciences reinforced the established body of theory for the training design. The third part of the study discusses the process by which semiotic principles were further defined as skill-based outcomes and goals for workshop implementation. This pragmatic defining process facilitated development of questionnaires and surveys, thereby allowing participants to evaluate the training experience by examining their perceptions about the workshop outcomes at the beginning and end of the sessions. This article presents the quantitative results of the evaluation and, in discussing the gains and limits of data obtained, provides the context for a follow-up article on the qualitative findingsof the study. (shrink)

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

Situation theory is the result of an interdisciplinary effort to create a full-fledged theory of information. Created by scholars and scientists from cognitive science, computer science and AI, linguistics, logic, philosophy, and mathematics, it aims to provide a common set of tools for the analysis of phenomena from all these fields. Unlike Shannon-Weaver type theories of information, which are purely quantitative theories, situation theory aims at providing tools for the analysis of the specific content of a situation. The (...) question addressed is not how much information is carried, but what information is carried. (shrink)

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

This article explores Stanley Cavell’s ordinary aesthetics through a close reading of one passage inThe Claim of Reason. This close reading leads to the suggestion that educating our aesthetic sense and responsiveness has ethical implications, especially as these relate to the mental health crisis in schools. The article draws implications for individuals in caring relationships with young people, suggesting that Cavell’s thinking on ordinary aesthetics is a powerful tool in our time.

Scientists and historians have often presumed that the divide between biochemistry and molecular biology is fundamentally epistemological.100 The historiography of molecular biology as promulgated by Max Delbrück's phage disciples similarly emphasizes inherent differences between the archaic tradition of biochemistry and the approach of phage geneticists, the ur molecular biologists. A historical analysis of the development of both disciplines at Berkeley mitigates against accepting predestined differences, and underscores the similarities between the postwar development of biochemistry and the emergence of molecular biology (...) as a university discipline. Stanley's image of postwar biochemistry, with its focus on viruses as key experimental systems, and its preference for following macromolecular structure over metabolism pathways, traced the outline of molecular biology in 1950.Changes in the postwar political economy of research universities enabled the proliferation of disciplines such as microbiology, biochemistry, biophysics, immunology, and molecular biology in universities rather than in medical schools and agricultural colleges. These disciplines were predominantly concerned with investigating life at the subcellular level-research that during the 1930s had often entailed collaboration with physicists and chemists. The interdisciplinary efforts of the 1930s (many fostered by the Rockefeller Foundation) yielded a host of new tools and reagents that were standardized and mass-produced for laboratories after World War II. This commercial infrastructure enabled “basic” researchers in biochemistry and molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s to become more independent from physics and chemistry (although they were practicing a physicochemical biology), as well as from the agricultural and medical schools that had previously housed or sponsored such research. In turn, the disciplines increasingly required their practitioners to have specialized graduate training, rather than admitting interlopers from the physical sciences.These general transitions toward greater autonomy for biochemistry and allied disciplines should not mask the important particularities of these developments on each campus. At the University of Caliornia at Berkeley, agriculture had provided, with medicine, significant sponsorship for biochemistry. The proximity of Lawrence and his cyclotrons supported the early development of Berkeley as a center for the biological uses of radioisotopes, particularly in studies of metabolism and photosynthesis. Stanley arrived to establish his department and virus institute before large-scale federal funding of biomedical research was in place, and he courted the state of California for substantial backing by promising both national prominence in the life sciences and virus research pertinent to agriculture and public health. Stanley's venture benefited significantly from the expansion of California's economy after World War II, and his mobilization against viral diseases resonated with the concerns of the Cold War, which fueled the state's rapid growth. The scientific prominence of contemporary developments at Caltech and Stanford invites the historical examination of the significance of postwar biochemistry and molecular biology within the political and cultural economy of the Golden State.In 1950, Stanley presented a persuasive picture of the power of biochemistry to refurbish life science at Berkeley while answering fundamental questions about life and infection. In the words of one Rockefeller Foundation officer,There seems little doubt in [my] mind that as a personality Stanley will be well able to dominate the other personalities on the Berkeley campus and will be able to drive his dream through to completion, which, incidentally, leaves Dr. Hubert [sic] Evans and the whole ineffective Life Sciences building in the somewhat peculiar position of being by-passed by much of the truly modern biochemistry and biophysics research that will be carried out at Berkeley. Furthermore, it seems likely that Dr. S's show will throw Dr. John Lawrence's Biophysics Department strongly in the shade both figuratively and literally, but should make the University of California pre-eminent not only in physics but in biochemistry as well.101Stanley, Sproul, Weaver, and this officer (William Loomis) all testified to a perceptible postwar opportunity to capitalize on public support for biological research that relied on the technologies from physics and chemistry without being captive to them, and that addressed issues of medicine and agriculture without being institutionally subservient. What is striking, given the expectation by many that Stanley would ‘be able to drive his dream through to completion,” was that in fact he did not. Biochemists who had succeeded in making their expertise valued in specialized niches were resistant to giving up their affiliations to joint Stanley's “liberated” organization. Stanley's failure was not simply due to institutional factors: researchers as well as Rockefeller Foundation officers faulted him for his lack of scientific imagination, which made it difficult for him to gain credibility in leading the field. Moreover, many biochemists did not share Stanley's commitment to viruses as the key material for the “new biochemistry.”In the end, Stanley's free-standing department did become a first-rate department of biochemistry, but only after freeing itself from Stanley's leadership and his single-minded devotion to viruses. Nonetheless, the falling-out with the Berkeley biochemists was rapidly followed by the establishment of a Department of Molecular Biology, attesting to the unabating economic and institutional possibilities for an authoritative “general biology” (or two, for that matter) to take hold. In each case, following Stanley's dream sheds light on how the possible and the real shaped the (re)formation of biochemistry and molecular biology as postwar life sciences. (shrink)

The Friedman–Stanley jump, extensively studied by descriptive set theorists, is a fundamental tool for gauging the complexity of Borel isomorphism relations. This paper focuses on a natural computable analog of this jump operator for equivalence relations on $\omega $, written ${\dotplus }$, recently introduced by Clemens, Coskey, and Krakoff. We offer a thorough analysis of the computable Friedman–Stanley jump and its connections with the hierarchy of countable equivalence relations under the computable reducibility $\leq _c$. In particular, we show (...) that this jump gives benchmark equivalence relations going up the hyperarithmetic hierarchy and we unveil the complicated highness hierarchy that arises from ${\dotplus }$. (shrink)

© Swanson 2017How Propaganda Works is a brilliant, rich, and wide-ranging exploration of the interactions between ideology, inequality, democracy and propaganda. Read as a piece of analytic political philosophy, it is radical, arguing for bold theses about democracy: legitimate democratic deliberation, Stanley contends, requires not only political equality but also substantive material equality. Read as a piece of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language, it is more modest, but nevertheless very compelling, extending well-established work in fascinating but methodologically conservative (...) ways. In particular, on Stanley’s view ‘the truth-conditional, cognitivist picture … gives us an elegant account of what happens when communication fails, due to propagandistic manipulation’. Stanley is thus not trying to think outside the box so much as trying to move or expand the box, using familiar, proven tools to make the job easier. The book generously rewards careful study and thought, and any short summary... (shrink)

This article revisits a forgotten, late project by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram: the ‘cyranoid’ studies he conducted from 1977 to 1984. These investigations, inspired by the play Cyrano de Bergerac, explored how individuals often fail to notice when others do not speak their own thoughts, but instead relay messages from a hidden source. We situate these experiments amidst the intellectual, cultural, and political concerns of late Cold War America, and show how Milgram’s studies pulled together a variety of (...) ideas, anxieties, and interests that were prevalent at that time and have returned in new guises since. In discussing the cyranoid project’s background and afterlife, we argue that its strikingly equivocal quality has lent itself to multiple reinterpretations by historians, psychologists, performers, artists, and others. Our purpose is neither to champion Milgram’s work nor to amplify the critiques already made of his methods. Rather, it is to consider the uncertain, allusive, and elusive aspects of the cyranoid project, and to seek to place that project in context, whilst asking where ‘context’ might end. We show how the experiments’ range of meanings, in different temporal registers, far exceeded the explanatory rubric that Milgram and his intellectual critics provided at that time, and ponder the risk for the historian of making anachronistic or teleological assumptions. In short, we argue, cyranoids invite our open-ended exploration of ‘voices offstage’ in social and psychological relations, and offer a useful tool for thinking about historical context and the nature of historical interpretations. (shrink)

The documentary film is a popular curriculum tool, and the goal of this paper is to expand the educational significance of the documentary genre I argue that current understandings of this genre are limited and limiting, and offer an alternative perspective on the genre. This alternative will be built from Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of education, in particular, his understanding of the role that ‘representativeness’ plays in teaching and learning.

In various publications, Stanley Cavell and Stanley Rosen have emphasized the philosophical importance of what they both call the ordinary. They both contrast their recovery of the ordinary with traditional philosophy, including the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl. In this paper, I address Rosen’s claims in particular. I argue that Rosen turns the real situation on its head. Contra Rosen, it is not the case that the employment of Husserl’s epoché distorts the authentic voice of the ordinary—a voice (...) that is clearly audible only from within everyday life. For (pace both Cavell and Rosen) there is no single voice of the ordinary: There are many such voices, not all of which are to be relied upon. Therefore, if we want to achieve an adequate grasp of ordinary experience, and Rosen does want this, we precisely need the epoché to curtail the misleading messages of certain other voices of the ordinary. Moreover, and somewhat surprisingly, this positive evaluation of the Husserlian epoché finds support in Heidegger’s writings from the twenties. I argue that Heidegger, too, believed that the epoché was an indispensable tool for the philosophical attempt to capture ordinary experience. (shrink)

"As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don't have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism's roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on (...) the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics--the language and beliefs that separate people into an 'us' and a 'them.' He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation's past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics--charged by rhetoric and myth--can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."--Jacket. (shrink)

_Philosophy and Animal Life_ offers a new way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself. Cora Diamond begins with "The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy," in which she accuses analytical philosophy of evading, or deflecting, the responsibility of human beings toward nonhuman animals. Diamond then explores the animal question as it is bound up with the more general problem of philosophical skepticism. Focusing specifically on J. M. Coetzee's _The Lives (...) of Animals_, she considers the failure of language to capture the vulnerability of humans and animals. Stanley Cavell responds to Diamond's argument with his own close reading of Coetzee's work, connecting the human-animal relation to further themes of morality and philosophy. John McDowell follows with a critique of both Diamond and Cavell, and Ian Hacking explains why Cora Diamond's essay is so deeply perturbing and, paradoxically for a philosopher, he favors poetry over philosophy as a way of overcoming some of her difficulties. Cary Wolfe's introduction situates these arguments within the broader context of contemporary continental philosophy and theory, particularly Jacques Derrida's work on deconstruction and the question of the animal. _Philosophy and Animal Life_ is a crucial collection for those interested in animal rights, ethics, and the development of philosophical inquiry. It also offers a unique exploration of the role of ethics in Coetzee's fiction. (shrink)

-/- Paperback -/- Price: $20.95/£17.99 ISBN: -/- Published: Dec 6, 2016 Copyright: 2015 Pages: 376 Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in. -/- ebook -/- Price: $20.95/£17.99 ISBN: -/- Published: Dec 6, 2016 Copyright: 2015 Pages: 376 Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in. -/- Buy This -/- Common Reading Selection Download Cover -/- Overview Author(s) Praise -/- Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about (...) public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren’t problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. -/- Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda’s selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. -/- How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere. (shrink)

Reissued with a new preface and a new essay on Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Coriolanius, Hamlet and The Winter's Tale, this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers the plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were many attempts to justify political and social systems on the basis of physics and astronomy. By the early twentieth century such moves increasingly also integrated the life and social sciences. The physical sciences gradually became less appealing as a sole source for sociopolitical thought. The details of this transition help explain the contemporary reluctance to capitalize on an ostensibly rich opportunity for naturalistic social reasoning: the anthropic principle in cosmology, which deals with (...) the apparent “fine-tuning” of the universe for life. (shrink)

This book argues that Wittgenstein's religious thought is misunderstood by its critics, and that their misunderstandings are a result of being oblivious of ...

Now available in paperback, ____The Quarrel Between Philosophy__ ____and Poetry__ focuses on the theoretical and practical suppositions of the long-standing conflict between philosophy and poetry. Stanley Rosen--one of the leading Plato scholars of our day--examines philosophical activity, questioning whether technical philosophy is a species of poetry, a political program, an interpretation of human existence according to the ideas of 19th and 20th-century thinkers, or a contemplation of beings and Being.

Journalism and media ethics texts commonly invoke Aristotle's Golden Mean as a principal ethical theory that models such journalistic values as balance, fairness, and proportion. Working from Aristotle's text, this article argues that the Golden Mean model, as widely understood and applied to media ethics, seriously belies Aristotle's intent. It also shortchanges the reality of our moral agency and epistemic responsibility. A more authentic rendering of Aristotle's theory of acting rightly, moreover, has profound implications for communication ethicists and media practitioners.

This book evaluates traditional musical performance and asks where its unique value lies.

In this article, the author argues for the probative value of ordinary language philosophy for the discipline of film studies by way of an analysis of the conversational protocols discernible in the film Steve Jobs (2015). In particular, the author focuses on the work of J.L. Austin, specifically his theory of speech acts and his formulation of the performative utterance, and Stanley Cavell, specifically his extension of Austinian speech act theory and his formulation of the passionate utterance, and analyzes (...) the interactions between the titular character and his daughter through this unique Austinian/Cavellian lens. In so doing, the author endeavors to encourage more scholars in the field of film-philosophy to explore the key concepts and arguments in ordinary language philosophy for use in analyzing films. Despite its having been virtually ignored by film scholars over the last half century, one of many regrettable effects of the Continental bias of film scholars generally and film-philosophers specifically, the author contends that ordinary language philosophy provides powerful tools for the analysis of dialogue and communication in film, with Steve Jobs serving as a particularly insightful test case of the broad utility of ordinary language philosophy for film studies. (shrink)

J.L. Austin’s insight that language should be treated as a domain of human action, rather than merely as a tool for the transmission of information, has been enormously influential. His analysis of speech acts continues to be widely utilised in a vast number of fields, from the philosophy of language to social and political philosophy, the philosophy of law, gender and literary studies, as well as a variety of social sciences. Yet scholars have so far focused on performative utterances and (...) illocutionary acts, while the perlocutionary dimension of speech has generally been dismissed as unessential. This special issue, drawing inspiration from Stanley Cavell’s seminal work on passionate utterance, aims to shed new light on the philosophical, moral and political relevance of the perlocutionary. (shrink)

The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, _The Letters and Other Writings_ features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of both _The Calamities of Peter Abelard_ and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover—an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to this (...) edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature. In addition to the _The Calamities_ and the letters--the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years--this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard's _Confession of Faith_, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to _The Questions of Heloise_, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated shaped poem, Open Wide Your Eyes. Extracts of lost letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are given in appendixes. (shrink)

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

Reification, fetishism, alienation, mastery, and control – these are some of the key concepts of modernity that have been battered and beaten by postmoderns and nonmoderns alike, with Bruno Latour, a nonmodern, discarding them most recently. Critical of this approach, which creates a rift between moderns and nonmoderns, the author engages in dialogue with modern thinkers – particularly Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann and Stanley Pullberg – with a view to recycling and redefining the concept of reification from a nonmodern (...) perspective. Marxian scholars associate reification with an attitude of detachment and passivity. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Luvale-speaking region of northwest Zambia, Africa, the author seeks to convert the negative and asymmetrical Marxian reading of reification, which places subjects above objects, to a positive symmetry. Marx explained the capitalist economy through the lens of religion. Reversing the direction of symmetrical comparison, the author considers the northwestern Zambian universe of ancestors and their different mahamba manifestations in the form of spiritual beings, diseased bodies and material objects through the lens of Marxian concepts, mainly reification and fetishism. Three aspects of reification understood as a human universal come to light: first, reification and animation entail each other both in the realms of materiality (human bodies and material objects) and immateriality (concepts and spirits), being best perceived as a form of fetishism. Reifacts are fetishes and fetishes are reifacts. Second, because fetishes are animated and do things, reification is a form of engagement with the world, a means to action and a tool for transformation. Third and last, and without contradiction, reification entails engagement and detachment, action and withdrawal, control and surrender. There is much to gain from recycling the old concept of reification. In a non-partisan symmetrical perspective, the redefinition of reification as fetishism yields a new, positive understanding of the place of material and immaterial things in social life and the ways in which we humans apprehend the world and implicate those things in our projects and struggles. Reification is not an impediment to action but a condition for action. (shrink)

This essay explores possible paths after postcolonial theory, with the after understood not as a negation, but as a form of inheritance and the creation of routes, such that an aftermath need not have a resentful or self-hating relation and nor simply an acceptance of given pictures of ‘western’ thought. The route explored here is neither fully secular nor religious, and nor from a radically alternative ontology, but rather prompted by three enduring concerns within the global humanities, explored in three (...) sections of this paper. The first section ‘Political Theologies as an Alternative to the Dichotomy of Religion and Secularism’, asks what the difference and proximity between theology and theory may be, if we acknowledge the at times less visible theological genealogies of ‘secular’ social and critical theory. Rather than taking such genealogies only to be an effect of Eurocentrism, or as the lasting hegemony of Protestant Christian assumptions, we examine other ways of navigating tentative movements across ontological borders. The second section, ‘Theory as Darsan (Pilgrimage/Path/School)’ suggests that rather than thinking of concepts as anchored entirely to given territories or identities or as tools of ‘generalization’, we might place the word theory in relation to its genealogical kin, theos and theoria/darsan, as the formation of contemplative styles that emerge through forms of recurrent journeying within and across territories, following the tracks of others. As an instance of such journeying, we focus on a particular thinker, Stanley Cavell, whose writing suggests ways of remapping geographies of thought, in ways that could be significant for global thought, across so-called western and non-western territories. How might such journeys be continued? Section 3: ‘A Darsan: the Killing of Birds, Some Centuries Apart’ offers one such journey, three minor coordinates of a world map, located in three poetically enshrined bird killings, in Valmiki’s Ramayana, in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and in Richard Power’s The Echo Maker, each of which incants a curse of unsettlement, and a fault line in relation to being human. This article hopes to contribute to debates on decolonization, currently underway in universities across the world, and seeks to offer a possible alternative to static conceptions of west and non-west. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Offering Hospitality: Questioning Christian Approaches to War by Caron E. GentryAndrew C. WrightOffering Hospitality: Questioning Christian Approaches to War Caron E. Gentry notre dame, in: university of notre dame press, 2013. 200 pp. $20.00Caron E. Gentry provides a constructive proposal for transforming jus ad bellum’s last-resort criterion through the reconceptualization of hospitality as “an essential practice” (2) in international relations, one that helps jus ad bellum “operate proactively (...) instead of coercively and reactively” (35) by seeking to protect “without interest the good and the bad of humanity and humans” (3). Gentry is particularly concerned with marginalized peoples who inhabit failed states, whose realities are willfully ignored through the “abstraction” and “hegemonic masculinity” in international relations, as well as in the dominant voices in political theology (Reinhold Niebuhr, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jean Bethke Elshtain) that support an “uncritical complicity with power … unable to deal with vulnerable populations outside of the West” (27). Understood in Christian terms as a practice of “agape,” or “self-giving love,” Gentry demonstrates how hospitality may be a plausible alternative to the paradigmatic approach to power in international relations, suggesting that acting without self-interest is a path to greater and more sustainable security (62).Gentry engages an impressive array of sources to structure her argument. For her critique of international relations discourse, she turns to feminist analyses of state sovereignty to demonstrate how a masculinized understanding of power abstracts the realities of war experienced by human populations (18). Drawing on a “human security” perspective (35), Gentry suggests that the prevention of violent conflict requires a proactive practice—using tools such as the Failed State Index—that attends to the realities of vulnerable populations within states before they erupt into violent conflict (34). Her emphasis on vulnerability and the mutual need for the other reveals Emmanuel Levinas as the primary influence on Gentry’s approach. Refracted through this vision, she opts for a practice of hospitality that moves beyond the realist, pacifist, and just war traditions to cultivate a “proactive last resort” that would extend care to the needs of the vulnerable beyond one’s own borders (136).Strengthening jus ad bellum’s last-resort criterion through a reconceived, proactive practice of hospitality is Gentry’s most compelling contribution, one that is particularly insightful for practitioners and theorists of the just war tradition. Yet readers may get the sense that Gentry wants to push her [End Page 204] contribution beyond the limits of political theology to shape the normative practices of international affairs; this is where Gentry’s persuasive force begins to wane. Specifically, Gentry obscures the genuine differences between an ecclesial practice of agape, embedded in a particular understanding of the nature of God, and the international affairs of a state, embedded in a game of realpolitik, where invulnerability is the rule. In order for Gentry to stake a claim in such a context, she needs to develop a more grounded account of how states could accept vulnerability as a normative practice in order to act without self-interest.Certainly, interdependence and mutual vulnerability are the right place to start. However, this kind of change does not simply concern the dominant patterns of international relations but also involves a change in shared conceptions about basic human nature. As such, her wider contribution may be less about a comprehensive framework and more about a potentially transformational question for theorists in international relations, political philosophy, and Christian ethics alike: What will it require for populations within states to recognize their own vulnerability and dependency, to see the well-being of “the other,” including the enemy, as essential to their own security? After Gentry, any answer to this question must move beyond patterns of hegemony and abstraction, toward proactive engagement with the realities of vulnerable populations.Andrew C. WrightFuller Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)