"... some very serious critiques of French existential phenomenology and post-structuralism... the contributors offer some refreshingly new insights into some tried and 'true' philosophical texts and more recent works of literary theory." -- Philosophy and Literature "By bridging the gap between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy, the authors of The Thinking Muse: Feminism and the Modern French Philosophy largely overcome the cultural polarity between 'male thinker' and 'female muse'." -- Ethics "These engaging essays by American Feminists bring toether feminist philosophy, existential (...) phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. The editors provide an excellent introductory overview, making this an ideal book for courses in feminist theory and philosophy and modern French thought." -- Philosopher's Index "The concerns raised in this volume are substantial.... a solid addition to the canon of American feminist philosophy." -- Philosophy and Literature "... a forum for feminist appropriations of existential and post-structuralist philosophy." -- Canadian Philosophical Reviews Marking a radical shift in the traditional philosophical separation between muse (female) and thinker (male), The Thinking Muse revises the scope and methods of philosophical reflection. These engaging essays by American feminists bring together feminist philosophy, existential phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

This paper explores the poetic politics of lesbian and feminist writing, the textual violence that writing exercises and the amazon intertext it creates. In this particular essay, Jeffner Allen takes as her point of departure the writing of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig.

This is a groundbreaking work of poetry, autobiography, lesbian studies, multicultural writing, feminist philosophy, and postmodernism. Jeffner Allen achieves a crossing of borders and complex worlds often heralded in feminist theory but rarely attempted These abundance writings are intimate chattings that celebrate collisions transitions unexpected that welcome fluidity a breathing that traverse deaths and lives How to love where there may be nothing in common or this today and (not) that tomorrow?

"Allen’s work is virtually unique among American writers. It illustrates a deep knowledge of the issues raised by the postmodernists, yet she does not succumb to the playing field, constructing instead her own philosophical direction and aesthetic." —Sarah Hoagland Jeffner Allen shapes a poetic politics that transforms textual and everyday realities. The surprising, resilient, and transformative windings of lesbian writing and lesbian lives—a poetics of sinuous movement, the turning of women to women—informs these reflections.

S. A. Erickson's recent book continues several of the themes introduced in Language and Being, especially that of the question of meaning. Erickson's approach to this question develops further his presupposition that to ask what entities mean is to inquire into their functions within the context of human presence. A shift in Erickson's focus is indicated, however, by his claim that human presence, a term used by Erickson to refer to human being, is even more fundamental to the question of (...) meaning than he had thought previously. Hence, this study which articulates the notion of human presence and analyzes the experience of its interconnected moments: interpretation, self-deception, and time-consciousness. Interpretation is presented as the prime cognitive relation that connects linguistic and extralinguistic items, the former interpreting the latter within the situation of human presence. Self-deception, the ground of interpretation, is understood in light of the tenuous human capacity to come to terms with mortality. One of the most interesting sections of the book is a psychoanalytic and an existential account of ways of dealing with the experience of time, without which human action would be unintelligible. "Existential time" is identified as that which is ingredient both in the direct experiencing of time and in time as it is experienced. An original concept of "timing" is set forth as the ways in which existential time is structured and lived, the manner in which time is used and the way in which items dealt with "in time" are reacted to and acted upon. Erickson claims as the goal of his account a conceptually restructured philosophy of mind and a propaedeutic to a new psychiatry of human being. Philosophy must, Erickson argues, change its direction, for the separation of philosophy from psychology, in both the phenomenological and the analytic traditions, has resulted in the loss to philosophy of empirical content. The prize of saving the integrity of logic as an a priori discipline and isolating the conceptual has been the increasing absence of the direct relevance of philosophy to the human situation. Erickson proposes that philosophy should return to the domain of psychology, not, as is the current practice, by pointing out instances of conceptual confusion and clarifying terms, but by recognizing the valuable experiential base that psychiatry provides for the examination of conceptual problems involved in understanding the human. Perhaps the most debatable aspect of the book is its study of 'presence' in the recent history of philosophy and its claim that philosophical problems, such as presence, have been ignored in recent times rather than resolved. For Erickson, the substitution of the term 'presence' for 'experience' or 'consciousness' indicates the direction in which an existentially enriched phenomenology must move. For this reader, however, contemporary continental philosophy has not so much ignored, as endeavored to think through the issue of presence. The critique of the metaphysics of presence, made by some phenomenologists and deconstructionists, suggests that the thematics of presence cannot be resolved, but must be abandoned. Erickson's statement, "Experience is experience. Though capable of being disliked or transformed, it makes no conceptual sense to speak of refuting, much less ignoring it," may appear to some readers as unduly assertorical. Nevertheless, Erick Erickson's "conversational" methodology, expressly developed to foster the reader in a point of view, impels an active rethinking of the grounds for rejecting philosophical anthropology and a positive demonstration of the philosophical accomplishments that can be effected within that domain.--Jeffner Allen, California State University. (shrink)

This review essay covers the lesbian writing of philosopher Jeffner Allen, contrasting her fiercely separatist earlier work with her more recent experimental writing. A quest for a separate ontic space-defining difference qua Lesbian and consistently characterized by Allen as "the open"-links her earlier work with her more recent atonalities richly coded with ritual, myth, memory, and play.

What determines qualitative sameness and difference? This book explores four principal accounts of the ontological basis of properties, including universals, trope theory, resemblance nominalism, and class nominalism, considering the assumptions and ontolological commitments which are required to make each into a plausible account of properties. -/- The latter half of the book investigates the applications of property theory and the different conceptions of properties which might be adopted with these in mind: first, the possibility and desirability of individuating properties, and (...) the distinction between sparse and abundant conceptions of properties; second, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties; third, the relationship between properties and their causal powers, and whether this is necessary or contingent; fourth, the relationship between properties and causation, modality, and laws of nature; finally, whether properties exist objectively, and if they do, what our epistemic position is with respect to such entities. (shrink)

A systematic introduction suitable for readers who have little familiarity with logic. Provides numerous examples and complete proofs.

The subject of this book is moral change, including moral progress and regression. The intention is to use the best thinking about the evolution of morality and the best available social science research to determine the possibilities for progressive change in human moralities by examining important morally progressive changes that have already occurred, in order to determine the social conditions that are conducive to moral progress.

Presents a self-contained introduction to logic suitable for majors and nonmajors, and can be covered entirely in a one-semester course. Natural deduction systems of sentential logic and of first-order logic, truth tables, and the basic ideas of model theory are presented without superfluous discussion.

In this book, Newell makes the case for unified theories by setting forth a candidate.

Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on the Couch, Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of its ongoing relevance. Countering the overly rationalist and progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that centers on notions of loss, (...) negativity, ambivalence, and mourning. Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive self-transformation, and progressive social change. At a time when critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims of critique. (shrink)

Kant's Moral Religion argues that Kant's doctrine of religious belief if consistent with his best critical thinking and, in fact, that the "moral arguments"--along with the faith they justify--are an integral part of Kant's critical thinking.

Scholars have detected hostility to technology in Daoist thought. But is this a problem with any machine or only some applications of some machines by some people? I show that the problem is not with machines per se but with the people who introduce them, or more exactly with their knowledge. It is not knowledge as such that causes the disorder Laozi and Zhuangzi associate with machines; it is confused, disordered knowledge—superficial, inadequate, unsubtle, and artless. In other words the problem (...) is not with machines but with the ethics of engineering and the government of technology. The Daoist argument does not devalue machines or knowledge of them; instead, it sets a new goal, defining an alternative ideal—alternative to techniques held hostage to despotic ideas about efficiency and profit. (shrink)

According to naïve realist (or primitivist) theories of colour, colours are sui generis mind-independent properties. The question that I consider in this paper is the relationship of naïve realism to what Mark Johnston calls Revelation, the thesis that the essential nature of colour is fully revealed in a standard visual experience. In the first part of the paper, I argue that if naïve realism is true, then Revelation is false. In the second part of the paper, I defend naïve realism (...) against a number of objections. (shrink)

The demise of behaviorism has made ethologists more willing to ascribe mental states to animals. However, a methodology that can avoid the charge of excessive anthropomorphism is needed. We describe a series of experiments that could help determine whether the behavior of nonhuman animals towards dead conspecifics is concept mediated. These experiments form the basis of a general point. The behavior of some animals is clearly guided by complex mental processes. The techniques developed by comparative psychologists and behavioral ecologists are (...) able to provide us with the tools to critically evaluate hypotheses concerning the continuity between human minds and animal minds. (shrink)

Kant’s position on the problem of free will can be perplexing and frustrating: all the real questions about human agential capacities or even about issues of moral imputability are empirical questions, which have empirical answers. But there remains a metaphysical or transcendental problem about the possibility of freedom, which is forever insoluble. Ian Proops’ discussion in The Fiery Test of Critique is to be commended for displaying the rare virtue of appreciating this last point and presenting Kant’s position about it (...) accurately. The only questionable part has to do with the standard terminology – ‘determinism’, ‘libertarianism’, ‘compatibilism’, and ‘incompatibilism’. I argue that it would be better to say, as Kant does, and Proops also does most of the time, that practical freedom, hence transcendental freedom, must be presupposed whenever we act or even judge, but how freedom is possible is both unknowable and even incomprehensible to us. (shrink)

On the occasion of a first conference on Cognitive Science, it seems appropriate to review the basis of common understanding between the various disciplines. In my estimate, the most fundamental contribution so far of artificial intelligence and computer science to the joint enterprise of cognitive science has been the notion of a physical symbol system, i.e., the concept of a broad class of systems capable of having and manipulating symbols, yet realizable in the physical universe. The notion of symbol so (...) defined is internal to this concept, so it becomes a hypothesis that this notion of symbols includes the symbols that we humans use every day of our lives. In this paper we attempt systematically, but plainly, to lay out the nature of physical symbol systems. Such a review is in ways familiar, but not thereby useless. Restatement of fundamentals is an important exercise. (shrink)

Forty years ago, Vaughn Ball demonstrated that the then received notion of conditional relevance served no useful purpose, as it would only come into effect if the probability of an element were 0.0. But, if the probability of an element were 0.0, a directed verdict would be in order and so once again conditional relevancy was doing no work. I extended that analysis to include the relationship between proffers of evidence and facts of consequence to demonstrate that the work that (...) conditional relevancy was supposedly doing was isomorphic to that done by relevancy in all significant ways, and yet the Federal Rules of Evidence provide different standards for the two situations to determine admissibility. I thus proposed an amendment to FRE 104(b) to provide for the same standard to be applied to ‘relevancy’ and ‘conditional relevancy’. In a recent article, Matthew Kotzen appears to subject this work to intense scrutiny and criticism, yet at the same time reaches, so far as I can tell, identical conclusions. This raises the question, which I examine, whether this is an example of cross-disciplinary difficulties in communication. (shrink)

This book offers twelve examples, from 1600-2000, of the development of scientific ideas that were shaped by religious factors. Understood in this way, the development of science is deeply influenced by theological ways of thought.

In Sounds, Ecologies, Musics, authors pose exciting challenges and provide fresh opportunities for scholars, scientists, environmental activists, and musicians to consider music and sound from ecological standpoints. The book covers topics such as how environment enables music and sound, how music and sound relate to Western environmental science, and mutidisciplinary collaborations among scholars.

This important study, the first book-length treatment of an increasingly crucial topic, treats the moral issues of secession at two levels. At the practical level, Professor Buchanan develops a coherent theory of the conditions under which secession is morally justifiable. He then applies it to historical and contemporary examples, including the U.S. Civil War and more recent events in Bangladesh, Katanga, and Biafra, the Baltic states, South Africa, and Quebec. This is the first systematic account of the conditions and terms (...) that justify secession from a political union.But Buchanan also locates this account of the right to secede in the broader context of contemporary political thought, introducing readers to influential accounts of political society such as contractarianism and communitarianism, and showing how the possibility of secession fits into a more complete understanding of political community and political obligation.At both levels this is an important book. It will interest not just political and social theorists but any reader concerned with one of the most momentous issues of our day: the future of troubled political federations and other states under conditions of ethnic and cultural pluralism. (shrink)

Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such analysis. A wide-ranging, multi-stranded, and interpretatively contested perspective, phenomenology in general has been taken up and utilised in very different ways within different disciplinary fields. (...) The purpose of this article is to consider some selected phenomenological threads, key qualities of the phenomenological method, and the potential for existentialist phenomenology in particular to contribute fresh perspectives to the sociological study of embodiment in sport and exercise. It offers one way to convey the ‘essences’, corporeal immediacy and textured sensuosity of the lived sporting body. The use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is also critically addressed. (shrink)