Johnson-Laird's mental models theory claims that reasoning is a semantic process of construction and manipulation of models in working memory of limited capacity. Accordingly, both a deduction and a given interpretation of a premise would be all the harder the higher the number of models they require. The purpose of the present experiment was twofold. First, it aimed to demonstrate that the interpretation of if...then conditional sentences in children (third, sixth, and ninth graders) evolves as a function of the number (...) of models the children can produce. We proposed a theory of conditional reasoning development that hypothesises a developmental trend of three successive levels of interpretations underlain by one, two, and then three models, i.e. conjunctive, biconditional, and conditional respectively. Second, we aimed to show that these different levels correlate with working memory capacities: the higher the working memory span, the higher the number of models underlying the conditional interpretation. These two hypotheses were verified, supporting the mental models theory. The results are compared with the rival theory of mental logic. (shrink)
It is a rather safe statement to claim that the social dimensions of the scientific process are accepted in a fair share of studies in the philosophy of science. It is a somewhat safe statement to claim that the social dimensions are now seen as an essential element in the understanding of what human cognition is and how it functions. But it would be a rather unsafe statement to claim that the social is fully accepted in the philosophy of mathematics. (...) And we are not quite sure what kind of statement it is to claim that the social dimensions in theories of mathematics education are becoming more prominent, compared to the psychological dimensions. In our contribution we will focus, after a brief presentation of the above claims, on this particular domain to understand the successes and failures of the development of theories of mathematics education that focus on the social and not primarily on the psychological. (shrink)
A new model of bioturbation has been developed to describe short term sediment reworking induced by macrobenthic communities. The design of the model had to consider the mixing processes, firstly, at the organism level, and secondly, at community level. This paper describes the mixing mode of the four types of bioturbators defined by the authors: the biodiffusors, the upward-conveyors, the downward-conveyors and the regenerators. The mathematical formulation of these sub-models consists of ordinary differential equations. They take into account the size (...) of the bioturbated zone, the output fluxes to the water column, tracer decay, physical mixing due to local currents and the type and intensity of the bioturbation processes. These sub-models make it possible to describe correctly the mixing events that have occurred in cores with each type of bioturbator. They also provide the basis for general bioturbation model, that will take into account the respective degrees of involvement of (i) the different bioturbation processes and their characteristics, (ii) the interference between the different processes, and (iii) make possible to predict the particle reworking in order to include it in studies of organic matter in early diagenesis. (shrink)
L'acüon educative repose sur un double fondement: d'une part, la nature et la vocation de l'etre humain, et d'autre part, la societe humaine ä bätir. L'homme a des traits specifiques qui exigent et en meme temps permettent son education: il est imparfait, inacheve (il ne sait pas tout, il ne se comporte pas for cement bien), il faut done l'amener ä s'ameliorer; il est perfectible e'est-a-dire qu'il peut devenir meilleur; il a la volonte de se depasser, de tendre vers l'ideal, (...) ideal qu'il n'atteint, bien sür, jamais; il est capable materiellement, intellectuellement (grace ä sa formation, ä son experience) d'agir sur autrui, de le mener vers cet ideal; enfln, il est conscient de devoir le faire, car l'homme ne peut et ne doit etre eduque que par l'homme. Et, second justificatif de Taction educative: la societe des hommes et les rapports devant exister entre eux. L'homme, par essence, Vit et est fait pour vivre en collectivite. Celle-ci doit etre harmonieuse, bien organisee, de preference sous forme d'Etat, pour le bonheur de tous les membres, lesquels doivent etre ä meme de concourir ä l'edification d'une societe egalitaire, toutes choses qui necessitent Taction educative. (shrink)
Jean-Francois Lyotard is often considered to be the father of postmodernism. Here leading experts in the field of cultural and philosophical studies, including Barry Smart, John O' Neill and Victor J. Seidler, tackle many of the questions still being asked about this controversial figure.
Discourse, Figure signifies an event. I mean this in a variety of ways. There has been a recent event: the publication of an English translation of Jean-François Lyotard’s first major book. Its translation is an event forty years delayed and signifies the closing of a major gap in the translation of Lyotard’s work. Of course, both “signify” and “event” are important words for Lyotard. Discourse, Figure’s goal is to “signify the other of signification” (2011, 13, emphasis his). The question of (...) the representability of events that concerns Lyotard throughout his career originates in Discourse, Figure. I use these two words to guide my review. First I outline the events of the book: its context and its argument. .. (shrink)
Jean-François Lyotard. First acquaintance with Lyotard -- Kant's notion of the sublime and its appropriation by Lyotard -- Transposing Kant to the key of the postmodern -- The role of feelings in Lyotard's political judgment -- Universality revisited -- Jacques Derrida. The Nietzschean influence -- Derrida and phenomenology -- Derrida's exploration of exteriority and anteriority -- Derrida's political ethics : foundations -- Derrida's political ethics : further elaborations : the international scene.
This three-volume set is a collection of key critical responses by leading scholars to the philosophical and theoretical writings of this late postmodern philosopher. Organized thematically, the collection includes commentaries on Lyotard's life and early philosophical writings, as well as on ethics, aesthetics, and politics. With a new introduction by the editor providing a comprehensive overview of Jean-François Lyotards life and works, this impressive collection provides students and scholars with a valuable resource for studying this important philosophical figure.
The posthumous Pourquoi Philosopher? collects Jean-Fran ç ois Lyotard’s previously unpublished four-part introductory course in philosophy, delivered to students of the Sorbonne in 1964. The interest of this text is both historical (appearing at an important juncture in French thought) and meta-philosophical (answering the question "why philosophize?" in such a way that a philosophy of philosophy - or rather several - is offered for consideration). The text will be of interest to readers of various levels of philosophical sophistication.
One of the dominant themes structuring the trajectory of Jean-François Lyotard's philosophical work is his concern to think the event in a way that renders it intelligible, but that also respects the alterity and the uncanniness that are essential to it. In this paper I defend Lyotard's earlier understanding of the event, articulated most thoroughly in Discours, figure, from the criticisms of the later Lyotard, articulated most thoroughly in The Differend. More specifically, I attempt to demonstrate that the event, as (...) disruption of the stable system of signification, is given immediately with the signification that it disrupts. (shrink)
This is an essential guide to an thinker. Frederic Jameson sees Lyotard as responding to a contemporary "crisis of representation" in the sciences -- a crisis which calls into question "an essentially realistic epistemology, which conceives of representation as the reproduction, for subjectivity, of an objectivity that lies outside it -- projects a mirror theory of knowledge and art, whose fundamental evaluative categories are those of adequacy, accuracy, and Truth itself.".
Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published [following peer-review] in Southern Journal of Philosophy, published by and copyright University of Memphis.
At once photographic analysis, philosophical essay, and autobiographical narrative, Athens, Still Remains presents an original theory of photography and throws a fascinating light on Derrida's life and work.The book begins with a sort of ...
This book presents a timely reconfiguration of the relations between art, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Through connection with a range of contemporary social and philosophical issues and movements, this collection of essays highlights the imperative of sensorial aesthetics. The book focuses on the radical philosophical approach to aesthetics enabled by the works of Jean-François Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze. From these philosophers an older meaning of aesthetic has been recalled. Before it indicated primarily the theory of art and beauty, “aesthetic” referred (...) to the sensibility, the capacity to receive sensations. In summoning this “sensorial” meaning of aesthetics in their respective works, Lyotard, Deleuze, and other recent thinkers turn the philosophical theory of aesthetics away from the dominance of cognitivist and reception theories, and towards a thinking of aesthetics through considerations of the movements of matter, affect, and sensation. (shrink)
This article addresses Jacques Derrida's consideration of Judaism relating it to a need to understand international institutions and the notion of the universal in a new way. It also discusses Lyotard's and Hegel's accounts of Judaism.
Nihilism in Postmodernity is an exploration of the nature of the problem of meaninglessness in the contemporary world through the philosophical traditions of nihilism and postmodernism. The author traces the advent of modern nihilism in the works of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Heidegger, before detailing the postmodern transformation of nihilism in the works of three major postmodern thinkers: Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Vattimo. He presents a qualified defense of their positions, arguing that while there is much under-appreciated value in their responses to (...) nihilism, they fail to address adequately the problem of contingency in contemporary life. Drawing on the critical encounters with nihilism in both existentialist and postmodern traditions, the author concludes by staking out future directions for combating meaninglessness. (shrink)
The systematic philosophical foundation for Jean-François Lyotard's postmodern and post-Marxist politics is described. The central principle of the right to create different "phrases" is uncovered and examined. The political consequences of this philosophical system are explored, leading to the conclusion that Lyotard's commitment to difference leads to political indifference. The philosophical roots of this indifference are detailed in Lyotard's Cartesian starting point and his analysis of Holocaust revisionism. This analysis reveals an idealist basis to Lyotard's philosophy of difference. Lyotard's concept (...) of difference is compared to that of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. (shrink)
Van Heijenoort’s main contribution to history and philosophy of modern logic was his distinction between two basic views of logic, first, the absolutist, or universalist, view of the founding fathers, Frege, Peano, and Russell, which dominated the first, classical period of history of modern logic, and, second, the relativist, or model-theoretic, view, inherited from Boole, Schröder, and Löwenheim, which has dominated the second, contemporary period of that history. In my paper, I present the man Jean van Heijenoort (Sect. 1); then (...) I describe his way of arguing for the second view (Sect. 2); and finally I come down in favor of the first view (Sect. 3). There, I specify the version of universalism for which I am prepared to argue (Sect. 3, introduction). Choosing ZFC to play the part of universal, logical (in a nowadays forgotten sense) system, I show, through an example, how the usual model theory can be naturally given its proper place, from the universalist point of view, in the logical framework of ZFC; I outline another, not rival but complementary, semantics for admissible extensions of ZFC in the very same logical framework; I propose a way to get universalism out of the predicaments in which universalists themselves believed it to be (Sect. 3.1). Thus, if universalists of the classical period did not, in fact, construct these semantics, it was not that their universalism forbade them, in principle, to do so. The historical defeat of universalism was not technical in character. Neither was it philosophical. Indeed, it was hardly more than the victory of technicism over the very possibility of a philosophical dispute (Sect. 3.2). (shrink)
A colleague’s personal recollections of Jean van Heijenoort’s contributions to the editing of volumes I–III of Gödel’s Collected Works and of his interactions with the other editors.
Jean Hamburger (1909--1992) is considered the founder of the concept of medical intensive care (reanimation medicale) and the first to propose the name Nephrology for the branch of medicine dealing with kidney diseases. One of the first kidney grafts in the world (with short-term success), in 1953, and the first dialysis session in France, in 1955, were performed under his guidance. His achievements as a writer were at least comparable: Hamburger was awarded several important literary prizes, including prix Femina, prix (...) Balzac and the Cino del Duca prize (1979), awarded, among others, to Jorge Luis Borges and Konrad Lorenz.Here we would like to offer a selected reading of a "golden" book, "Conseils aux etudiants en medicine de mon service" ("Advice to the Medical Students in my Service"), the first book dedicated to patient-physician relationship in Nephrology, written when dialysis and transplantation were becoming clinical options (1963). The themes include: the central role of the patient, who should be known by name, profession, life style, and not by disease; the importance of the setting of the care; the need for truth-telling and for leaving hope; the role of research not only in the progression of science, but also in the daily clinical practice. (shrink)
Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the most famous philosophers of the twentieth century. The principal founder of existentialism, a political thinker and famous novelist and dramatist, his work has exerted enormous influence in philosophy, literature, politics and cultural studies. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings is the first collection of Sartre's key philosophical writings and provides an indispensable resource for readers of his work. Stephen Priest's clear and helpful introductions make the volume an ideal companion to those coming to Sartre's writing for (...) the first time. (shrink)
The article analyses the idea that according to the averroist Jean de Jandun, Master of Arts in Paris at the beginning of the 14th century, human beings are composed of a «double form» the separated intellect on the one hand, the cogitative soul on the other hand. After recalling several major accounts of the time, we explore Jean's reading of Averroes' major conceptions concerning the problem. Finally, we challenge the idea according to which we observe in his writings the radical (...) thesis of a sometimes cogitating sometimes thinking «double human being» that makes of the homo intelligens a punctual and exclusive new being, which is accidentally produced while the thinking takes place. (shrink)
This collection of writings by Jean-Luc Nancy, the renowned French critic and poet, delves into the history of philosophy to locate a fundamentally poetic modus operandi there. The book represents a daring mixture of Nancy’s philosophical essays, writings about artworks, and artwork of his own. With theoretical rigor, Nancy elaborates on the intrinsic multiplicity of art as a concept of “making,” and outlines the tensions inherent in the faire, the “making” that characterizes the very process of production and thereby the (...) structure of poetry in all its forms. Nancy shows that this multiplication that belongs to the notion of art makes every single work communicate with every other, all material in the artwork appeal to some other material, and art the singular plural of a praxis of the finite imparting of an infinity which is actually there in every utterance. In the collection, Nancy engages with the work of, among others, François Martin, Maurice Blanchot, and On Kawara. (shrink)
Van Heijenoort’s account of the historical development of modern logic was composed in 1974 and first published in 1992 with an introduction by his former student. What follows is a new edition with a revised and expanded introduction and additional notes.
This collection of articles illustrates the intimacy between science and literature, pleasure and sense, excess and moderation that Jean Ceard sought to understand and that he instilled in those who collaborated or studied with him.
Jean Starobinski, one of Europe's foremost literary critics, examines the life that led Rousseau, who so passionately sought open, transparent communication with others, to accept and even foster obstacles that permitted him to withdraw into himself. First published in France in 1958, Jean-Jacques Rousseau remains Starobinski's most important achievement and, arguably, the most comprehensive book ever written on Rousseau. The text has been extensively revised for this edition and is published here along with seven essays on Rousseau that appeared between (...) 1962 and 1970. (shrink)
In this article three viewpoints on the relation of body and language are discussed: the poststructuralist viewpoint of Judith Butler, the phenomenological viewpoint of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the postmodernist viewpoint of Jean-François Lyotard. The reason juxtaposing for these three accounts is twofold. First, the topic requires a combination of post-structuralist and phenomenological insights, and second, the accounts are supplementary. Butler's account raises questions that can be answered with the help of Merleau-Ponty's work. Lyotard's anthropology of the inhuman offers a perspective (...) of finitude that is missing in the other two. The aim of the article is to outline the necessary ingredients of an adequate conception of the speaking embodied subject. (shrink)
Philosophy and Tragedy is a compelling contribution to that oversight and the first book to address the topic in a major way. Eleven new essays by internationally renowned philosophers clearly show how time and again, major thinkers have returned to tragedy in many of their key works. Philosophy and Tragedy asks why it is that thinkers as far apart as Hegel and Benjamin should make tragedy such and important strand of philosophy should present itself tragically. From Heidegger's reading of Sophocles' (...) Antigone to Nietzsche and Benjamin's book length studies of tragedy, Philosophy and Tragedy presents and outstanding and original study of this preoccupation. The five sections are organised clearly around five major philosophers: Hegel, Holderlin, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Benjamin. Contributors include: Walter Borgan, Jean-Francois Courtine, Francoise Dastur, Gunter Figal, Rodolphe Gasche, David Farrell Krell, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, William McNeill, Marc Froment-Meurice. (shrink)
The article reconsiders the Davos-debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer to reassess the discussion of interrelations and differences of their philosophies. The focus is the fecund motifs of thought that each philosopher presents. These are worked out by dispersing the contexts. Heidegger’s primary motifs of thought are identified through the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard as the question of finitude understood as continuance of the event and as the act of understanding the event. The primary motif of thought in (...) Cassirer’s philosophy is identified with the question of form and formation. It is argued that it is possible to think the motifs of event and form in connection with each other. The focal point of connection between their philosophies is uncovered in the relations of form between persons—in the rigorous practice of promising and demanding. The philosophies of Heidegger and Cassirer are thus read in a way where they productively enhance each other without minimizing the differences of their motifs of thought. (shrink)
Best known for his book The Postmodern Condition , Jean-Francois Lyotard is one of the leading figures in contemporary French philosophy. This is the first collection of articles to offer an estimation and critique of his work, with particular focus on the importance to Lyotard of the question of judgement. Lyotard's interest in judgement is evident in his continuing engagement with the work of Kant. Lyotard's own essay, Sensus Communis , which opens the volume, investigates through Kant the presuppositions (...) of judgement. Other essays consider how Lyotard has rendered problematic existing forms of aesthetic, ethical, legal and political judgement. Judging Lyotard is an important collection that will reintroduce Lyotard to English-speaking audiences. It is of particular interest to students of philosophy, critical theory, and literary studies. (shrink)
Some have characterized the twentieth century as a Nietzschean century, while others, such as Bernard-Henri Lévy, call this Le siècle de Sartre. Those who are interested in the works of Sartre and Nietzsche wish to know what these two authors, who have left a deep impression on the twentieth century, share in common. Others, myself included, dare to ask: "Was Sartre a Nietzschean?" Studies on this connection are few and, besides Jean-François Louette's book, Sartre contra Nietzsche, no major study exists. (...) What is the particular nature of the relations between their thoughts? Is there an influence of Nietzsche upon Sartre? Is there a philosophical kinship? I will begin by clarifying the question of Sartre's interest in Nietzsche. Then, I will demonstrate that they had the same philosophical starting point: nihilism. Finally, I will show that both give a similar answer to the problem opened by nihilism, the question of meaning. (shrink)
In this article, I explore the relationship between the philosophy of Theodor Adorno and the Bilderverbot , or biblical Second Commandment against images. My starting point is J. F. Lyotard's construction of the melancholic sublime in his essay `What is the Postmodern?', which I argue he uses to critique Adorno's aesthetics, and, more generally, his position as a `modern' thinker. To prove that Lyotard had Adorno in mind when he constructed the category of the melancholic sublime, I return to an (...) earlier piece by Lyotard — `Adorno as the Devil' — which is a reading of Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus , in which Adorno is said to be one of the faces of the Devil. My argument is that Lyotard's understanding of Adorno is flawed because he does not recognize the distinctly Jewish, albeit secularized, character of his thought. I set out to challenge Lyotard by demonstrating the central importance that the Bilderverbot plays in Adorno's work, which should not be understood as melancholic because the Jewish Messianism associated with the Bilderverbot is profoundly future-oriented. In short, I argue that Lyotard's depiction of Adorno is flawed because he reads him as a Christian, while he should be approaching him as a secularized Jew. Key Words: Theodor Adorno • aesthetic theory • Dr Faustus • the image prohibition • Jewish thought • Jean-François Lyotard • Thomas Mann • Messianism • representation • the sublime. (shrink)
This book is the first comprehensive guide and introduction to the central theorists in the post-marxist intellectual tradition. In jargon free language it seeks to unpack, explain, and review many of the key figures behind the rethinking of the legacy of Marx and Marxism in theory and practice. Key thinkers covered include Cornelius Castoriadis, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Laclau and Mouffe, Agnes Heller, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas and post-Marxist feminism. Underlying the whole text is the central question: What (...) is Post-Marxism? Each chapter covers a key thinker or contribution and thus can be read as a stand alone introduction to the principal aspects of their approach. Each chapter is also followed by a summary of key points with a guide to further reading. Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-Marxism provides an ideal introduction to a hitherto complex subject and will be essential reading for all students of contemporary social and political inquiry today. (shrink)
Lyotard’s earliest major work, available in English for the first time. Jean-François Lyotard is recognized as one of the most significant French philosophers of the twentieth century. Although nearly all of his major writing has been translated into English, one important work has until now been unavailable. Discourse, Figure is Lyotard’s thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan’s influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting and sculpture. (...) Lyotard argues that because rational thought is discursive and works of art are inherently opaque signs, certain aspects of artistic meaning such as symbols and the pictorial richness of painting will always be beyond reason’s grasp. A wide-ranging and highly unusual work, Discourse, Figure proceeds from an attentive consideration of the phenomenology of experience to an ambitious meditation on the psychoanalytic account of the subject of experience, structured by the confrontation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as contending frames within which to think the materialism of consciousness. In addition to prefiguring many of Lyotard’s later concerns, Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard’s passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language. (shrink)
Jean-François Lyotard, the highly influential twentieth-century philosopher of the postmodern, has had an enormous impact on the course and commitment of contemporary philosophy. Lyotard: Philosophy, Politics, and the Sublime is a thoroughgoing reassessment of his extraordinary legacy and contribution to contemporary cultural, political, ethical, and aesthetic theory, and an indispenable guide to key issues in his philosophy. Fifteen distinguished scholars have contributed new, original essays examining the main themes in Lyotard's work with a focus on the special intersections of philosophy, (...) psychoanalysis, politics, and the experience of the sublime in art. The volume includes an up-to-date bibliography of works by and about Lyotard, previously unpublished photographs of Lyotard, and an incisive essay by Lyotard himself on the philosophical significance of Freud's case of Emma. (shrink)
Most instantiations of the inference ‘y; so if x, y’ seem intuitively odd, a phenomenon known as one of the paradoxes of the material conditional. A common explanation of the oddity, endorsed by Mental Model theory, is based on the intuition that the conclusion of the inference throws away semantic information. We build on this explanation to identify two joint conditions under which the inference becomes acceptable: (a) the truth of x has bearings on the relevance of asserting y; and (...) (b) the speaker can reasonably be expected not to be in a position to assume that x is false. We show that this dual pragmatic criterion makes accurate predictions, and contrast it with the criterion defined by the mental model theory of conditionals, which we show to be inadequate. (shrink)
In discussing the cultural history of the 19th century, Walter Benjamin diagnosed the emergence of the modern novel and its form of narration as the sign of a fracturing experience. The split in experience is related to the scattering of a homogeneous idea of space and time, constituted especially during the Enlightenment and in the German historicism. Benjamin's claim reflected the fracturing temporality of modern communities as well as the transformations in the understanding of the meaning of tradition. Here, I (...) begin by discussing Benjamin's conceptions of experience and memory in detail. Secondly, I consider his ideas on history in the framework of challenging the new forms of narration. In the end, I consider the loss of a unified community, especially by indicating ways in which the after-modern community reflects the relationship between aesthetics and politics in Jean-François Lyotard's thought. Key Words: Benjamin • community • experience • history • Lyotard • memory • narrative • remembrance • time. (shrink)
Jacques Derrida has written much in recent years on the topic of mourning. This essay takes Derrida's insights into mourning in general and collective mourning in particular in order to ask about the relationship between mourning and politics. Taking a lead from a recent work of Derrida's on Jean-François Lyotard, the essay develops its argument through two examples, one from ancient Greece and one from twentiethcentury America: the role mourning plays in the constitution and maintenance of the state in Plato's (...) Laws and the controversy surrounding the consecration of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier of Vietnam in Arlington National Cemetery. This latter example provides the occasion for questioning the possibilities of mourning the unknown or the unidentifiable and for addressing some of the ways in which the United States has mourned or failed to mourn, remembered or failed to remember, in the wake of September 11. (shrink)
In this essay, Perraudin sets out to contrast the competing philosophies of time and imagination of two major French thinkers of the twentieth century: Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). Despite Bachelard’s polemical approach vis-à-vis philosophical tradition in his works on epistemology and poetics, his accounts of time and imagination have been shown by several critics to be significantly influenced and inspired by his predecessor. Perraudin nonetheless argues that Bachelard’s critique of Bergson’s theory of continuous temporality opens the way—through (...) the subtle dialectics of his “philosophy of no”—to more prolific, and as yet untapped, therapeutic possibilities in our understanding of time and imagination than Bergson’s accounts of continuum of the élan vital had managed to reveal. (shrink)
Colour plays a fundamental role in the philosophical treatments of painting. Colour while it is an essential part of the work of art cannot be divorced from the account of painting within which it is articulated. This paper begins with a discussion of the role of colour in Schelling's conception of art. Nonetheless its primary concern is to develop a critical encounter with Jean-François Lyotard's analysis of the Dutch painter Karel Appel. The limits of Lyotard's writings on painting, which this (...) paper will attribute in part to Lyotard's ‘empiricism’, becomes most apparent in his treatment of colour. (shrink)
The conception of paralogy, which <span class='Hi'>Jean-Francois</span> Lyotard develops in The Postmodern Condition, motivates a number of questions concerning justice and the moral life. In this paper I suggest that Lyotard's account fails to provide an adequate answer to these questions, and that a more satisfactory account of justice in paralogy can be developed by exploring the concept of phronesis. John Caputo's "ethics of dissemination," in some respects, leads us in this direction. Although both theorists attempt to develop their (...) accounts in terms of the concept of phronesis, Lyotard reduces phronesis to cleverness, while Caputo elevates it to what he calls "meta-phronesis," a conception of how we are meant to cope under conditions of postmodern paralogy. Caputo's analysis of meta-phronesis, however, is carried out within the framework of a critique of the traditional concept of phronesis. To show how Caputo's account might lend itself to a fuller conception of phronesis, one which is appropriate to a postmodern hermeneutics, I raise some questions about (a) the radical definition of the paralogical situation offered by both Lyotard and Caputo, (b) Caputo's critique of phronesis, and (c) his characterization of meta-phronesis. (shrink)
This essay attempts a paradigmatic comparison between the fourfold worldview of Hua-yen Buddhism and the postmodern philosophy of Jean-François Lyotard. Employing a tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces as a structural underpinning of these two philosophies, the essay illuminates the liberating nature of Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought together with the shadow of skepticism involved in endorsing a vision for a poly-lingual existence. Despite human beings' desire for a totalitarian vision hidden in every aspect of our (...) discourse, Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought demand us to envision the world of the 'inconceivable' in which the diversity of existence raises its own voice beyond the regulating force of our society. (shrink)
There is a sort of natural closeness between Sartre and violence. Many have claimed that Sartre was fascinated by violence. Authors as diverse as Michel-Antoine Burnier and Mohamed Harbi have criticised the violence in Sartre, and even Bernard-Henri Lévy sees in Sartre's preface to Fanon's Les Damnés de la Terre a 'Sartre possédé'. Unlike these authors, we claim that Sartre was in no way fascinated by violence. In his eyes, violence was an historical fact that was characteristic of his time (...) and which he, personally, discovered at an early age. What is more, Sartre's violence is situational. If he discovered the world in books, it was also in books that he discovered violence. Books and history were the melting pots of a violence that haunts Sartre's work. The historical situations in which he found himself explain the omnipresence of violence in his work. (shrink)
: Grebowicz argues from the perspective of Jean-François Lyotard's critique of deliberative democracy that the project of democratizing knowledge may bring us closer to terror than to justice. The successful formulation of a critical standpoint requires that we figure the political as itself a contested site, and incorporate this into our theorizing about the role of dissent in the production of knowledges. This essay contrasts Lyotard's notion of the differend with Chantal Mouffe's agonistic model.
The suppression of the Modus Ponens inference is described as a loss of confidence in the conclusion C of an argument ''If A1 then C; If A2 then C; A1'' where A2 is a requirement for C to happen. It is hypothesised that this loss of confidence is due to the derivation of the conversational implicature ''there is a chance that A2 might not be satisfied'', and that different syntactic introductions of the requirement A2 (e.g., ''If C then A2'') will (...) lead to various frequencies in the derivation of this implicature, according to previous studies in the field of causal explanation. An experiment is conducted, whose results support those claims. Results are discussed in the light of the Mental Logic and Mental Model theories, as well as in the light of the pragmatic approach to uncertain reasoning. (shrink)
This paper examines the ways in which Luce Irigaray and Jean-François Lyotard critique western metaphysics by drawing on notions of birth and infancy. It shows how both thinkers position birth as an event of beginning that can be reaffirmed in every act of initiation and recommencement. Irigaray's reading of Diotima's speech from Plato's Symposium is positioned as a key text for this project alongside a number of essays by Lyotard in which he explores the potency of infancy as the condition (...) of philosophy itself. Despite this potency, however, Lyotard suggests that metaphysics is haunted by a melancholia that is inseparable from the limits of thought. I argue that Irigaray is able both to explain why western metaphysics is constitutively melancholic and to offer a shift in perspective that means we are not inevitably condemned to melancholia. The paper concludes that while Lyotard's account of infancy challenges the terms of western metaphysics from within, Irigaray's reassessment of our beginnings in birth offers the possibility of an alternative metaphysical horizon. (shrink)
Two notions from philosophical logic and linguistics are brought together and applied to the psychological study of defeasible conditional reasoning. The distinction between disabling conditions and alternative causes is shown to be a special case of Pollock's (1987) distinction between 'rebutting' and 'undercutting' defeaters. 'Inferential' conditionals are shown to come in two varieties, one that is sensitive to rebutters, the other to undercutters. It is thus predicted and demonstrated in two experiments that the type of inferential conditional used as the (...) major premise of conditional arguments can reverse the heretofore classic, distinctive effects of defeaters. (shrink)
