Introduction -- Authority -- Pleasure -- Reading from the life -- Fidelity -- Saving beauty -- My "others" -- Politics and the novel -- Realism -- The sublime -- Psychoanalysis -- Modernism -- Judgment.

Written from the perspective of a liberal intellectual who has spent a lifetime as a writer, editor, and college professor, The Tyranny of Virtue is a precise and nuanced insider's look at shifts in American culture--most especially in the American academy--that so many people find alarming. Part memoir and part polemic, an anatomy of important and dangerous ideas, and a cri de coeur lamenting the erosion of standard liberal values, Boyers's collection of essays is devoted to such subjects as tolerance, (...) identity, privilege, appropriation, diversity, and ableism that have turned academic life into a minefield. Why, Robert Boyers asks, are a great many liberals, people who should know better, invested in the drawing up of enemies lists and driven by the conviction that on critical issues no dispute may be tolerated? In stories, anecdotes, and character profiles, a public intellectual and longtime professor takes on those in his own progressive cohort who labor in the grip of a poisonous and illiberal fundamentalism. The end result is a finely tuned work of cultural intervention from the front lines."--Inside front book jacket flap. (shrink)

We describe a proof by a computer program of the unsolvability of the halting problem. The halting problem is posed in a constructive, formal language. The computational paradigm formalized is Pure LISP, not Turing machines. The machine was led to the proof by the authors, who suggested certain function definitions and stated certain intermediate lemmas. The machine checked that every suggested definition was admissible and the machine proved the main theorem and every lemma. We believe this is the first instance (...) of a machine checking that a given problem is not solvable by machine. (shrink)

The development of mathematics toward greater precision has led, as is well known, to the formalization of large tracts of it, so that one can prove any theorem using nothing but a few mechanical rules. -- Godel [11].

We describe an extension to our quantifier-free computational logic to provide the expressive power and convenience of bounded quantifiers and partial functions. By quantifier we mean a formal construct which introduces a bound or indicial variable whose scope is some subexpression of the quantifier expression. A familiar quantifier is the Σ operator which sums the values of an expression over some range of values on the bound variable. Our method is to represent expressions of the logic as objects in the (...) logic, to define an interpreter for such expressions as a function in the logic, and then define quantifiers as "mapping functions." The novelty of our approach lies in the formalization of the interpreter and its interaction with the underlying logic. Our method has several advantages over other formal systems that provide quantifiers and partial functions in a logical setting. The most important advantage is that proofs not involving quantification or partial recursive functions are not complicated by such notions as "capturing," "bottom," or "continuity." Naturally enough, our formalization of the partial functions is nonconstructive. The theorem prover for the logic has been modified to support these new features. We describe the modifications. The system has proved many theorems that could not previously be stated in our logic. Among them are. (shrink)

Boyers, R. and Orrill, R. Preface.--Rieff, P. The impoverishment of Western culture.--Rieff, P. Observations on the therapeutic.--Kolakowski, L. The psychoanalytic theory of culture.--Jones, J. Five versions of psychological man.--Cioran, E. M. Civilized man.--Jameson, F. Herbert Marcuse.--Beldoch, M. The therapeutic as narcissist.--Huizinga, J. Puerilism.--Brown, N. O. Rieff's "fellow teachers."--Nelson, B. and Wrong, D. Perspectives on the therapeutic in the context of contemporary sociology.--Sedgwick, P. Mental illness is illness.--Foucoult, M. History, discourse and discontinuity.

This study of contemporary art and culture brings together Boyers's sharply focused essays on writers, filmmakers, painters, and critics, first published in the _TLS_, _The American Scholar_, _Granta_, _The_ _American Poetry Review, and Salmagundi. The essays respond to the diversity of "events" that make up our cultural life, and take as their central theme what Boyers calls "object loss" in the art and writing of some prominent contemporaries. The term designates a radical incapacity to think clearly about the objects—actual or (...) imagined—that give a work point or focus. He argues that this incapacity has produced various kinds of irrelevance and dishonesty, not so much in the art of our day as in the various critical theories and response patterns which are dominant among us._ Dwelling on such figures as Jean-Luc Godard, Mario Vargas Llosa, Marcel Duchamp, John Ashbery, and William Styron, Boyers frequently casts his reflections as responses to theories that have gained—especially among contemporary literary intellectuals—an indisputable currency. His essays constitute a negative aesthetic, a "definition by recoil" of postmodernist art and the ideology that promotes or defends it. (shrink)

Meta-level reasoning was added to the Boyer-Moore theorem prover by 1979. We have recently re-implemented and, we think, slightly improved our approach to meta-theoretic reasoning in the Acl2 theorem prover. However, there is lots of room for much more substantial improvement. Our talk will consist of 3 parts: review, recent results, and general remarks.

We present an initial and elementary investigation of the formal specification and mechanical verification of programs that interact with environments. We describe a formal, mechanically produced proof that a simple, real time control program keeps a vehicle on a straightline course in a variable crosswind. To formalize the specification we define a mathematical function which models the interaction of the program and its environment. We then state and prove two theorems about this function: the simulated vehicle never gets farther than (...) three units away from the intended course and homes to the course if the wind ever remains steady for at least four sampling intervals. (shrink)

How are the properties of computer programs proved? We discuss three approaches in this article: inductive invariants, functional semantics, and explicit semantics. Because the first approach has received by far the most attention, it has produced the most impressive results to date. However, the field is now moving away from the inductive invariant approach.

We are pleased to present the following Review Forum of Harvey Whitehouse’s book, Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 204 pages. ISBN 0-19- 823414-7 (cloth); 0-19-823415-5 (paper). We have given the contributors and the book’s author sufficient space to discuss its themes carefully and thus make a significant contribution to the further analysis of religion and ritual generally.

In Pascal Boyer’s book Religion Explained inference systems are made to do a lot of work in his attempts to explain cognition in religion. These inference systems are systems in the brain that produces inferences when they are activated by things we perceive in our environment. According to Boyer they perceive things, produce explanations, and perform calculations. However, if Wittgenstein’s observation, that “only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one (...) say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious” is correct then it seems that Boyer’s talk of inference systems perceiving and inferring is confused. (shrink)

Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the (...) frameworks and practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies, contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments, anthropological observations and neurophysical research relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to Wittgenstein's objections. By developing and responding to his criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to religion, human nature, and the mind. Contents: Introduction (Robert Vinten); Ch.1: 'Wittgenstein, Concepts, and Human Nature' (Roger Trigg); Ch.2: 'On Truth, Language, and Objectivity' (Florian Franken Figueiredo); Ch.3 'Pascal Boyer's Miscellany of Homunculi: A Wittgensteinian Critique of Religion Explained' (Robert Vinten); Ch.4 'The Brain Perceives/Infers' (Hans van Eyghen); Ch.5 'The Imaginary Inner Inside Cognitive Science of Religion' (Christopher Hoyt); Ch.6 'Cognitive Theories and Wittgenstein: Looking for Convergence not for Divergence' (Olympia Panagiotidou); Ch. 7 'Wittgenstein, Naturalism, and Interpreting Religious Phenomena' (Thomas Carroll); Ch.8 'Natural Thoughts and Unnatural Oughts: Lessing, Wittgenstein, and Contemporary CSR' (Guy Axtell); Ch.9 'Normative Cognition in Cognitive Science of Religion' (Mark Addis); Ch.10 'Brains as the Source of Being: Mind/Brain Focus and the Western Model of Mind in Dominant Cognitive Science Discourse' (Rita McNamara); Ch.11 'On Religious Practices as Multiscale Active Inference: Certainties Emerging From Recurrent Interactions Within and Across Individuals and Groups' (Inês Hipólito and Casper Hesp). (shrink)

Boyer & Petersen argue that folk-economic beliefs are widespread – shaped by evolved cognitive systems – and they offer exemplar beliefs to illustrate their thesis. In this commentary, we highlight evidence of substantial variation in one of these exemplars: beliefs about immigration. Contra claims by B&P, we argue that the balance of this evidence suggests the “folk” may actually holdpositivebeliefs about the economic impact of immigration.

The aim of this chapter is to address the role of memory in past-life convictions. Although it is commonly accepted in the modern media - and popular western culture more generally - that people believe they have lived before because the memory contains detailed verifiable facts, little is known about how people actually reason about the veracity of their previous existence. To our knowledge, the current project is the most extensive research that probes the role of memory in past life (...) convictions. More specifically, we explore two questions. First, to what extent does memory lead to past-life belief, and is this conviction based on external validation or via the episodic sense of personal identity contained in the memory? Second, what is the conception of self on which one's current self is taken to be the same as the past-life self? -/- In what follows, we propose that memory plays an important role in convincing people that they have lived before. Fundamentally, this memory is episodic insofar as it represents the event as happened to the encoder. This memory contrasts with semantic memory - memory of facts...Further, we contend that it is the episodic sense of personal identity (rather than external validation) that typically contributes to the belief in a past life. Finally, we argue that the conception of self implicated in past-life belief is the non-trait conception. Of course, this fits naturally with the idea that the belief in a past life issues partly from the episodic sense of identity, since it is the non-trait conception of self that is implicated in the episodic sense of identity... -/- Our proposal in this chapter can be construed as a psychological extension of Reid's point in the context of past-life belief. People assume that they are the same person as someone in earlier times, despite large variations in the traits between those individuals, and they think this partly because of the testimony of their episodic memory. If our account is correct, then it makes the belief in a past life less bizarre, at least psychologically. For we are suggesting that the episodic sense of personal identity that led to your conviction that you existed at the time of your sixteenth birthday celebrations some decades ago, is also involved in other people's convictions that they existed 200 years ago. This proposal is also situated in recent cognitive approaches to the study of religion and religious experiences, which suggests that extraordinary convictions are often underpinned by the ordinary processes of social cognition (e.g. see Barrett 2000; Barrett 2007; Boyer 2001; Lawson and McCauley 1990; for reincarnation, see White Forthcoming-a,-b). (shrink)

"To think with Nietzsche against Nietzsche." Thus the editors describe the strategy adopted in this volume to soften the destructive effects of Nietzsche's "philosophy with a hammer" on French philosophy since the 1960s. Frustrated by the infinite inclusiveness of deconstructionism, the contributors to this volume seek to renew the Enlightenment quest for rationality. Though linked by no common dogma, these essays all argue that the "French Nietzsche" transmitted through the deconstructionists must be reexamined in light of the original context in (...) which Nietzsche worked. Each essay questions the viability of Nietzsche's thought in the modern world, variously critiquing his philosophy of history as obsessed with hierarchy, his views on religion and art as myopic and irrational, and his stance on science as hopelessly reactionary. Contending that we must abandon the Nietzsche propped up as patron saint by French deconstructionists in order to return to reason, these essays will stimulate debate not just among Nietzscheans but among all with a stake in modern French philosophy. Contributors are Alain Boyer, André Compte-Sponville, Vincent Descombes, Luc Ferry, Robert Legros, Philippe Raynaud, Alain Renault, and Pierre-André Taguieff. (shrink)

How do people detect mental dysfunction? What is the influence of cultural models of dysfunction on this detection process? The detection process as such is not usually researched as it falls between the domains of cross-cultural psychiatry and anthropological ethno-psychiatry . I provide a general model for this “missing link” between behavior and cultural models, grounded in empirical evidence for intuitive psychology. Normal adult minds entertain specific intuitive expectations about mental function and behavior, and by implication they infer that specific (...) kinds of behavior are the result of underlying dysfunction. This suggests that there is a “catalogue” of possible behaviors that trigger that intuition, hence a limited catalogue of possible symptoms that feed into culturally specific folk-understandings of mental disorder. It also suggests that some mental dysfunctions, as they do not clearly violate principles of intuitive psychology, are “invisible” to folk-understandings. This perspective allows us to understand the cultural stability and spread of particular views of madness. It also suggests why certain types of mental disorder are invisible to folk-understandings. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to discuss a classical issue in moral theory, i.e. how the motive of duty can be properly understood. A new approach, starting from the practice of promising itself and not from general theory of goodness, is particularly helpful to understand what it means for an agent to act from duty.

In Deep Space Nine's Chief of Security Odo is one who finds his identity in his job, which is a sufficient burden to keep him plenty occupied. In a more benign laboratory than what Odo experienced, philosophical instead of exobiological, he presents an ideal case study of George Herbert Mead's theory of how the self is formed and transformed. According to Mead, language starts with meaningful gestures. When creatures act in coordination through a gesture, signaling that the gesture means the (...) same to them; it becomes language. Focused attention is one of the ways one has of influencing the clarity and extent of memories. Over the arc of Deep Space Nine's tales, all the characters change. Yet Odo goes from being a one‐dimensional to a multidimensional character by learning languages from those who start out as generalized others, but become specific others as time goes on. (shrink)

Nous sommes aujourd'hui confrontés, à travers les objets techniques comme la réalité virtuelle ou, plus quotidiennement les images des jeux vidéo, à un changement qui affecte non pas les objets de la perception mais la perception elle-même. Ce changement a un nom qui est aussi un des grands impensés de la philosophie du XXe siècle : la «perception artificielle». A travers les textes d'Edmund Husserl, Jacques Derrida et Bernard Stiegler et en s'appuyant sur des cas empruntés tant aux jeux vidéos (...) et aux dispositifs de simulation qu'au cinéma, Elsa Boyer se livre à une enquête philosophique à la fois radicale et profonde. Car c'est la perception elle-même que son artificialité l'amène à repenser, par-delà l'opposition entre le réel et l'imaginaire. Relisant Husserl après Derrida et confrontant le dernier au fantôme du premier, Elsa Boyer nous montre comment la réalité virtuelle nous oblige à (re)faire de la philosophie. (shrink)

Le fait d'être humain ne procède pas uniquement de nous-mêmes, comme le fait d'être d'une culture, d'une histoire ne procède pas d'un seul autre, ou d'un seul semblable, mais de l'ensemble des autres, de tous les semblables, et plus loin encore de l'autre à venir, du dissemblable, de l'étranger, de l'autre culture, de l'autre histoire. Où et comment se pose la question de l'honneur à cet instant? N'est-ce pas à cette pliure que fait courir à l'espèce le mépris, l'incompréhension, le (...) refus de l'autre? Aujourd'hui nous devons faire face. Et savoir d'instinct, savoir sans le comprendre que la seule force, la seule valeur, la seule dignité, c'est de ne pas comprendre si comprendre nous fait renoncer à l'amour de l'autre. Voilà ce qui fonde, voilà ce qui fait la légitimité non seulement d'une existence mais de toute communauté. (shrink)

Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory—a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology—operates in (...) anthropology and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group of scholars to diagnose the state of the theory-ethnography divide in anthropology today and to explore alternative modes of analytical and pedagogical practice. Continuing the methodological insights provided in Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be, the contributors to this volume find that now is an optimal time to reflect on the status of theory in relation to ethnographic research in anthropology and kindred disciplines. Together they engage with questions such as, What passes for theory in anthropology and the human sciences today and why? What is theory's relation to ethnography? How are students trained to identify and respect anthropological theorization and how do they practice theoretical work in their later career stages? What theoretical experiments, languages, and institutions are available to the human sciences? Throughout, the editors and authors consider theory in practical terms, rather than as an amorphous set of ideas, an esoteric discourse of power, a norm of intellectual life, or an infinitely contestable canon of texts. A short editorial afterword explores alternative ethics and institutions of pedagogy and training in theory. Contributors: Andrea Ballestero, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University; Lisa Breglia, George Mason University; Jessica Marie Falcone, Kansas State University; James D. Faubion, Rice University; Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago; Cymene Howe, Rice University; Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design and the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden; George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine; Townsend Middleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. (shrink)

The abstract structure of inquiry - the process of acquiring and changing beliefs about the world - is the focus of this book which takes the position that the "pragmatic" rather than the "linguistic" approach better solves the philosophical problems about the nature of mental representation, and better accounts for the phenomena of thought and speech. It discusses propositions and propositional attitudes (the cluster of activities that constitute inquiry) in general and takes up the way beliefs change in response to (...) potential new information, suggesting that conditional propositions should be understood as projections of epistemic policies onto the world.Robert C. Stalnaker is a professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.