Online research in philosophy

It is customary to divide Wittgenstein’s work into two broad phases, the first culminating in the Tractatus, and the second comprising the writings that began upon his return to philosophy in 1929 and culminating in the Investigations. It is also commonly assumed that the Tractatus propounds various doctrines concerning language and representation, doctrines which are repudiated in the later work, and often criticized explicitly. One problem with this view of the Trac- tatus is Wittgenstein’s claim in 6.54 that its propositions (...) are “nonsensical,”2 a claim which on its face is at odds with the idea that they present substantive philosophical theories. The usual way of handling this problem is to assume that the claim is not to be taken literally, that the sentences of the Tractatus are not nonsense in the sense of mere gibberish, but are intended somehow to engender in the attentive reader a grasp of certain important aspects of the relationship between language and the world. Beginning with her seminal paper “Throwing Away the Ladder,” Cora Diamond has proposed reading the Tractatus in a way that takes literally 6.54’s claim of the book’s nonsensicality, and rejects the idea that its sentences represent a kind of elevated nonsense intended to.. (shrink)

In the paper I try, resolutely, to associate the open ended encyclopedic character of Cassirer’s philosophy with the core part of this philosophy concerning symbolic formation. In this way I try to supplement and strengthen the anthropology that Cassirer formulated in AN ESSAY ON MAN. Finally I discuss the historical character and value of this anthropology.

An essay challenging Cora Diamond's influential approach to reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus. According to Diamond, the Tractatus contains no substantive philosophical theses, but is purely an exercise in the debunking of nonsense. I argue that a convincing case for this claim has not yet been made--either by Diamond herself, or by the numerous defenders of this so-called "resolute" reading. Having critically examined the arguments that have been offered in favor of the resolute reading, I go on (...) to marshal textual evidence--using both published and unpublished sources--supporting the view that Wittgenstein advanced, and indeed took himself to have advanced, a host of substantive philosophical theses even in the (so-called) "body" of the Tractatus. I argue that resolute readers of the Tractatus have not begun to offer a satisfactory explanation of these problematic texts; and I argue that the "frame/body" distinction alleged by resolute readers does not stand up to critical scrutiny. (shrink)

The essays in the book have two main emphases. Regarding the late Wittgenstein, they focus on the idea that skepticism about rule-following is undermined, indeed incoherent, in virtue of Wittgenstein's emphasis on context of utterance and "forms of life" (roughly the "community" view of his later work). In the early Wittgenstein they take a "resolute" position on nonsense, saying that he did not believe there was some ineffable or informative nonsense, but only pure and utter nonsense, including everything in (...) the Tractatus. Although many of the essays are interesting and insightful, they do not amount to a demonstration that Wittgenstein held the positions attributed to him; moreover the positions are counterintuitive, and appear to be undermined by historical evidence regarding Wittgenstein's own view of his work. (shrink)

Abstract: “Resolute readings” initially started life as a radical new approach to Wittgenstein's early philosophy, but are now starting to take root as a way of interpreting the later writings as well—a trend exemplified by Stephen Mulhall's Wittgenstein's Private Language (2007) as well as by Phil Hutchinson's “What's the Point of Elucidation?” (2007) and Rom Harré's “Grammatical Therapy and the Third Wittgenstein” (2008). The present article shows that there are neither good philosophical nor compelling exegetical grounds for accepting a (...) resolute reading of the later Wittgenstein's work. It is possible to make sense of Wittgenstein's philosophical method without either ascribing to him an incoherent conception of “substantial nonsense” or espousing the resolute readers' preferred option of nonsense austerity. If the interpretation here is correct, it allows us to recognize Wittgenstein's radical break with the philosophical tradition without having to characterize his achievements in purely therapeutic fashion. (shrink)

A way of reading the Tractatus has been proposed which, according to its advocates, is importantly novel and essentially distinct from anything to be found in the work of such previously influential students of the book as Anscombe, Stenius, Hacker or Pears. The point of difference is differently described, but the currently most used description seems to be Goldfarb’s term ‘resolution’ – hence one speaks of ‘the (or a) resolute reading’. I’ll shortly ask what resolution is. (...) For now, it is enough that it aims to give full weight to the penultimate section of the Tractatus in which Wittgenstein declares his propositions to be nonsense, where giving full weight to that declaration involves not hearing it as allowing that those (strictly speaking) ‘nonsensical’ propositions might have another (more important) kind of ‘sense’. In that same section Wittgenstein explains that these nonsense propositions, while devoid of meaning, have a use: to make the kind of use of them that their author intends – and so to understand him (not them) – requires recognizing that they are nonsense; and through that recognition one ‘surmounts’ these propositions, and is led ‘to see the world aright’. So there is a point to (Wittgenstein’s having written) all this nonsense. What point? (shrink)

The paper assumes for its starting point the basic correctness of the so-called “resolute” reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, a reading first developed by Cora Diamond and James Conant. The main part of the paper concerns the consequences this interpretation will have for our understanding of Wittgenstein's well-known remark in a letter to a prospective publisher that the point or aim of his book was an ethical one. I first give a sketch of what, given the committments of (...) the resolute reading, the ethical point of the book will be, and then argue that given these committments and Wittgenstein's own philosophical biases at the time he wrote the Tractatus, the book cannot serve the ethical purpose for which it was written. (shrink)

Much has been written on the relative merits of different readings of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The recent renewal of the debate has almost exclusively been concerned with variants of the ineffabilist (metaphysical) reading of TL-P - notable such readings have been advanced by Elizabeth Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and H. O. Mounce - and the recently advanced variants of therapeutic (resolute) readings - notable advocates of which are James Conant, Cora Diamond, Juliet Floyd and Michael Kremer. During (...) this debate, there have been a number of writers who have tried to develop a third way, incorporating what they see as insights and avoiding what they see as flaws in both the ineffabilist and resolute readings. The most prominent advocates of these elucidatory readings of TL-P are Dan Hutto (2003) and Marie McGinn (1999). In this paper we subject Hutto's and McGinn's readings of TL-P to critical scrutiny. We find that in seeking to occupy the middle ground they ultimately find themselves committed to (and in the process commit Wittgenstein to) the very ineffabilism they (and Wittgenstein) are seeking to overcome. (shrink)

Ronna Burger’s Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates argues that the Nicomachean Ethics is a unified whole. Her reading runs against the tide of most contemporary scholarship. In particular, Book X.7–8, Aristotle’s valorization and near apotheosis of the “contemplative life,” has been taken to be a Platonic intrusion in a work otherwise characterized by a resolute “anthropocentrism,” as Nussbaum puts it. To account for such an apparent fracture commentators have attributed both chronological development and later editorship to the corpus. Burger, (...) by contrast, offers a “Talmudic reading.” She treats the Nicomachean Ethics as a work of integrity that dialectically culminates in, rather than is interrupted by, X.7–8. This essay situates her argument in a larger context that explores the nature of philosophical reading as such. (shrink)

Wittgenstein gives voice to an aspiration that is central to his later philosophy, well before he becomes later Wittgenstein, when he writes in §4.112 of the Tractatus that philosophy is not a matter of putting forward a doctrine or a theory, but consists rather in the practice of an activity – an activity he goes on to characterize as one of elucidation or clarification – an activity which he says does not result in philosophische Sätze, in propositions of philosophy, but (...) rather in das Klarwerden von Sätzen, in our attaining clarity in our relation to the sentences of our language that we call upon to express our thoughts.1 To say that early Wittgenstein already aspired to such a conception of philosophy is not to gainsay that to aspire to practice philosophy in such a manner and to succeed in doing so are not the same thing. It is therefore not to deny that, by Wittgenstein’s later lights, the Tractatus is to be judged a work that is marked by forms of failure tied to its having failed fully to live up to such an aspiration. But if it is thus to be judged, then it is to some degree a failure even by Wittgenstein’s own earlier lights. This means that if one wants to understand the fundamental turn in Wittgenstein’s thinking as he moves from his earlier to his later philosophy, and why it is that he wanted the Tractatus to be published and read together with Philosophical Investigations, one needs to understand what sort of failure this is – and that requires coming to terms with the Tractatus’s own understanding of what sort of work it was trying to be. We think that readers of the Tractatus – be they admirers or detractors of Wittgenstein – have, on the whole, failed to do this. (shrink)

This article provides a re-evaluation of David Hume's intensive reading of the classics at an important moment of his literary and intellectual career. It sets out to reconstruct the extent and depth of this reading as well as the uses – scholarly, philosophical and polemical – to which Hume put the information he had gathered in the course of it. The article contends that Hume read the classics against the grain to collect data on a wide range of (...) cultural information which he could utilise for a number of literary and philosophical projects he was engaged in during the early 1750s. This reading soon came to pervade almost all aspects of Hume's literary activities of that period and resulted in what is here described as a fragmentary history of classical antiquity. As a result Hume's reading of the classics emerges from this article as both more extensive and more significant than has so far been acknowledged. (shrink)

A fundamental question in reading research concerns whether attention is allocated strictly serially, supporting lexical processing of one word at a time, or in parallel, supporting concurrent lexical processing of two or more words (Reichle, Liversedge, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 2009). The origins of this debate are reviewed. We then report three simulations to address this question using artificial reading agents (Liu & Reichle, 2010; Reichle & Laurent, 2006) that learn to dynamically allocate attention to 1–4 words to “read” (...) as efficiently as possible. These simulation results indicate that the agents strongly preferred serial word processing, although they occasionally attended to more than one word concurrently. The reason for this preference is discussed, along with implications for the debate about how humans allocate attention during reading. (shrink)

It is often assumed that graphemes are a crucial level of orthographic representation above letters. Current connectionist models of reading, however, do not address how the mapping from letters to graphemes is learned. One major challenge for computational modeling is therefore developing a model that learns this mapping and can assign the graphemes to linguistically meaningful categories such as the onset, vowel, and coda of a syllable. Here, we present a model that learns to do this in English for (...) strings of any letter length and any number of syllables. The model is evaluated on error rates and further validated on the results of a behavioral experiment designed to examine ambiguities in the processing of graphemes. The results show that the model (a) chooses graphemes from letter strings with a high level of accuracy, even when trained on only a small portion of the English lexicon; (b) chooses a similar set of graphemes as people do in situations where different graphemes can potentially be selected; (c) predicts orthographic effects on segmentation which are found in human data; and (d) can be readily integrated into a full-blown model of multi-syllabic reading aloud such as CDP++ (Perry, Ziegler, & Zorzi, 2010). Altogether, these results suggest that the model provides a plausible hypothesis for the kind of computations that underlie the use of graphemes in skilled reading. (shrink)

Central to a new, or 'resolute', reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus is the idea that Wittgenstein held there an 'austere' view of nonsense: the view, that is, that nonsense is only ever a matter of our failure to give words a meaning, and so that there are no logically distinct kinds of nonsense. Resolute readers tend not only to ascribe such a view to Wittgenstein, but also to subscribe to it themselves; and it is also a (...) feature of some readings which in other respects are clearly not Resolute. This paper forms part of a reply to Hans-Johann Glock's work in which he argues (in part) that Wittgenstein in the Tractatus held a view of nonsense other than the austere view. Instead, Glock argues, Wittgenstein there held that there are many logically distinct kinds of nonsense. Here, I outline and defend the austere view, together with its attribution to the early Wittgenstein, against a number of Glock's criticisms, and focussing especially on Wittgenstein's reformulation in the Tractatus of Frege's context-principle. (shrink)

This paper aims to argue against the resolute reading, and offer a correct way of reading Wittgenstein'sTractatus. According to the resolute reading, nonsense can neither say nor show anything. The Tractatus does not advance any theory of meaning, nor does it adopt the notion of using signs in contravention of logical syntax. Its sentences, except a few constituting the frame, are all nonsensical. Its aim is merely to liberate nonsense utterers from nonsense. I argue that (...) these points are either not distinctive from standard interpretations or incorrect. Instead, the Tractarian elucidations help to shed light on the nature of language and logic, and introduce the correct method in philosophy. Philosophy deals with philosophical utterances and Tractarian elucidations by pointing out that they are nonsensical. By doing this, one is helped to see that what they appear to be saying is shown by significant propositions saying something else. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the role of the nonsensical ‘statements’ of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and the aims of the book, a topic which has in recent years been the subject of, at times heated, controversy among Wittgenstein’s readers.1 In this debate the so-called ineffability interpretation argues that the role of nonsense in the Tractatus is to make us grasp ineffable truths which ‘strictly speaking’ cannot be said or thought2. By contrast, the interpretation known as the resolute reading emphasises (...) the incomprehensibility of the notion of ineffable truths. According to the latter, nonsense in the Tractatus serves a therapeutic purpose: that of curing us from attempts to put forward nonsensical philosophical doctrines3. By employing a method of juxtaposition I.. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent discussions within the representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness, in particular, the discussions between first order representationalism (FOR) and higher order representationalism (HOR). I aim to show that either there is only a terminological dispute between them or, if the discussion is not simply terminological, then HOR is based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena that a theory of phenomenal consciousness should explain. First, I argue that we can defend first order representationalism from Carruthers' attacks (...) and ignore higher order thoughts in our account of phenomenal consciousness. Then I offer a diagnostic of Carruthers' misunderstanding. In the last section I consider further reasons to include mindreading abilities in an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Several philosophers have argued that the factivity of knowledge poses a problem for epistemic contextualism (EC), which they have construed as a knowability problem. On a proposed minimalistic reading of EC’s commitments, Wolfgang Freitag argues that factivity yields no knowability problem for EC. I begin by explaining how factivity is thought to generate a contradiction out of paradigmatic contextualist cases on a certain reading of EC’s commitments. This reductio results in some kind of reflexivity problem for the contextualist (...) when it comes to knowing her theory: either a knowability problem or a statability problem. Next, I set forth Freitag’s minimalistic reading of EC and explain how it avoids the reductio, the knowability problem and the statability problem. I argue that despite successfully evading these problems, Freitag’s minimalistic reading saddles EC with several other serious problems and should be rejected. I conclude by offering my own resolution to the problems. (shrink)

Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive (...) philosophical insights into how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. -/- The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task. (shrink)

Reading is an amazing skill. As you read this review, meaning flows from the page (or for many readers, the screen) into your brain. This happens automatically—you can’t choose not to understand the written word any more than the spoken one. It’s also highly efficient. Most people can process text two or three times faster than speech. Of course, humans have many amazing skills. We also identify objects, decode speech, and understand complex social situations automatically and efficiently. However, the (...) machinery in the brain that gives us these abilities, and many more, was plausibly constructed by natural selection, and, if so, they are adaptations just like our peculiar pelvis and the thick enamel on our molars. Reading arose a few thousand years ago, and this means that machinery in the brain that allows us to read did not evolve for that purpose. Instead, a series of scribes, priests, and printers working over a few thousand years gradually devised the writing systems that give rise to this amazing skill. In this fascinating book, Stanislaus Dehaene details how cognitive abilities evolved for other purposes were co-opted for reading, how these abilities are instantiated in the brain, and how they constrain the cultural evolution of writing systems. Dehaene does an excellent job explaining how reading works at both the neurobiological and cognitive levels. He takes the reader seriously, laying out diverse kinds of evidence that bear on the problem. For example, when you read, visual information is shunted to a small region in the left hemisphere of your brain, the brain’s ‘‘letter box’’ where the text is decoded. The earliest evidence for this came from the autopsy of a 19th century French stroke victim who lost the ability to read, even though he could still recognize numerals. More recently, PET and fMRI imaging studies have pinned down the location. Amazingly, these results show that it doesn’t matter whether you read Italian or Chinese, the same part of the brain is involved. Electroencephalograms gave us a better temporal resolution, and single neuron recordings of patients undergoing surgery confirm that only some neurons respond to text while others respond to faces, tools.. (shrink)

The Gita at first appears to be a series of explanations of various kinds of yoga strung together in no apparent order, and several of its claims and arguments seem to contradict one another. I argue that the apparent contradictions disappear if we see the arguments as related to one another dialectically rather than analytically. From an analytic perspective contradictions are either merely verbal and can be disambiguated by a conceptual distinction, or else they render the statement meaningless. A dialectical (...) resolution, in the sense I am using the term, requires a change of perspective rather than a simple terminological clarification. A dialectical reading can also show that the appearance of randomness in the order of presentation follows from an organizing principle that is hierarchical rather than linear. (shrink)

“Resolute” readings of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus maintain that the book is divided into two parts: an intelligible “frame” and an unintelligible “body.” This article questions the validity of the “frame/body distinction” and, by extension, the resolute reading itself. It first establishes the tenability of the resolute programme as entirely dependent upon such a frame/body distinction. It then explores three possible ways the claim that the Tractatus contains such a distinction might be grounded, arguing in each case (...) why it cannot do so. It therefore concludes that the frame/body distinction is unjustified, and the resolute reading untenable. (shrink)

The relationship between 20th-century phenomenology and the transcendental program launched by Immanuel Kant is crucial, but delicate. First there is Husserl, who seemed both attracted to and seriously critical of Kant's first Critique. Then there is Heidegger's ambition to scour the entire field of the three Critiques. Most important in this context, is probably his reading of the Critique of Pure Reason in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929). Faithful to his notion of a salvaging “destruction” of the (...) philosophical tradition, Heidegger argues that the earliest version of Kant's work, the so-called A-deduction, is radically different from the philosophy promoted by the neo-Kantians. Kant, he claims, was not really interested in epistemology in the narrow meaning of the term. He was, rather, a philosopher verging upon a genuine ontology of Being, but who, for reasons that remain unknown, felt forced to leave these tracks behind in order to pursue the transcendental conditions of knowledge. Then there is the second Critique, which Heidegger approaches through a discussion of the Kantian notions of freedom and causality. And, finally, there are his remarks about the Critique of Judgment, scattered all over his writing on art from the early 1930s onwards. However, Heidegger never produces a proper, systematic account of the relevance of the third Critique. Such an account, I argue in this essay, is provided by Hans-Georg Gadamer. (shrink)

Abstract: Philosophers interested in Kant's relevance to contemporary debates over the nature of mental content—notably Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais—have argued that Kant ought to be credited with being the original proponent of the existence of ‘nonconceptual content’. However, I think the ‘nonconceptualist’ interpretations that Hanna and Allais give do not show that Kant allowed for nonconceptual content as they construe it. I argue, on the basis of an analysis of certain sections of the A and B editions of the (...) Transcendental Deduction, for a ‘conceptualist’ reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. My contention is that since Kant's notion of empirical intuition makes essential reference to the categories, it must be true for him that no empirical intuition can be given in sensibility independently of the understanding and its categories. (shrink)

Pauline Kleingeld, "What Do the Virtuous Hope For?: Re-reading Kant's Doctrine of the Highest Good." In Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, Memphis 1995, edited by Hoke Robinson, Vol. I.1, 91-112. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995.

Both macaque monkeys and humans have been shown to have what are called ‘mirror neurons’, a class of neurons that respond to goal-related motor-actions, both when these actions are performed by the subject and when they are performed by another individual observed by the subject. Gallese and Goldman (1998) contend that mirror neurons may be seen as ‘a part of, or a precursor to, a more general mind- reading ability’, and that of the two competing theories of mind-reading, (...) mirror neurons lend support to simulation theory. I here offer four reasons why I think mirror neurons do not provide support for simulation theory over its contender, theory theory. (shrink)

Nietzsche's aims and targets -- Reading Nietzsche's preface -- Naturalism and genealogy -- Selflessness : the struggle with Schopenhauer -- Nietzsche and Paul Rée on the origins of moral feelings -- Good and evil : affect, artistry, and revaluation -- Free will, autonomy, and the sovereign individual -- Guilt, bad conscience, and self-punishment -- Will to power in the Genealogy -- Nietzsche's illustration of the art of exegesis -- Disinterestedness and objectivity -- Perspectival knowing and the affects -- The (...) ascetic ideal, meaning, and truth -- Beyond selflessness. (shrink)

What is the significance of and logic behind Jacques Derrida's recent "political" writings? While Derrida's work refuses to obey any singular movement or register, he does, nonetheless, make recurrent attempts to negotiate between a politics of identity and difference. A similar undertaking can be found in the radical democratic writings of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. An encounter between these thinkers is here carried out in order to elucidate key themes in Derrida's The Other Heading. The reading aims at (...) developing and contextualising Derrida's relation to radical democratic thought so that his political strategies can be made more explicit. (shrink)

Designed for readers new to the subject, Reading Philosophy of Language presents key texts in the philosophy of language together with helpful editorial guidance. A concise collection of key texts in the philosophy of language Ideal for readers new to the subject. Features seminal texts by leading figures in the field, such as Austin, Chomsky, Davidson, Dummett and Searle. Presents three texts on each of five key topics: speech and performance; meaning and truth; knowledge of language; meaning and compositionality; (...) and non-literal meaning. A volume introduction from the editors outlines the subject’s principal concerns. Introductions to each chapter locate the pieces in context and explain relevant terminology and theories. Interactive commentaries help readers to engage with the texts. (shrink)

Abstract The article is a reading, in conjunction with one-another, of Time and Being and What is metaphysics. Its scope is that of raising questions on certain Heideggerian topics that are here formulated as thesis. Namely, first that the turn in Heidegger’s thinking is not a change in his process of thinking, but rather an essential trait of what Heidegger calls the matter at hand (Sachverhalt). Secondly, that this turn of the matter at hand is in itself memory in (...) a twofold way: as metaphysics in its relation to being and time, and as questioning of this metaphysical relation. And finally, that this turn is a technical one, in the sense of technique as this latter is, in Heidegger’s thinking, the original determination of Being as Anwesenheit. (shrink)

In ‘An Almost Absolute Value in History’ John T. Noonan criticizes several attempts to provide a criterion for when an entity deserves rights. These criteria, he argues are either arbitrary or lead to absurd consequence. Noonan proposes human conception as the criterion of rights, and justifies it by appeal to the sharp shift in probability, at conception, of becoming a being possessed of human reason. Conception, then, is when abortion becomes immoral.The article has an historical and a philosophical goal. The (...) historical goal is to carefully present the probability argument in a charitable manner. The philosophical goal is to offer a unique criticism of Noonan's probability argument against abortion. I argue that, even on a very charitable reading of Noonan's argument for the conception criterion, this criterion is also susceptible to charges of arbitrariness and absurdity. Noonan's claim that probability shifts have anything to do with the moral rights of fetuses cannot be made coherent. I also show that there are problems with Noonan's assumptions about moral rights and the potential to become a being possessed of human reason. (shrink)

Most animals have mental states of one sort or another, but few species share our capacity for self-awareness. We are aware of our own mental states via introspection, and we are aware of the mental states of our fellow human beings on the basis of what they do and say. This chapter is not concerned with these traditional forms of mind-reading—forms whose origins predate the beginnings of recorded history—but with the prospects of a rather different and significantly more recent (...) form of ‘mind-reading’: the capacity to ascribe mental states to a creature on the basis of information derived from neuroimaging. (shrink)

In recent years Derrida has devoted a considerable number of writings to addressing “the question of the animal,” and, more often than not, this question arises in a reading of one of Heidegger's texts. In order to appreciate more fully the stakes of Derrida's posing of this question in relation to Heidegger, in this essay I offer some prefatory remarks to the question of the animal in Derrida's reading of Heidegger. The essay opens with a careful analysis of (...) Derrida's early essay “The Ends of Man,” in which Heidegger's “Letter on ‘Humanism”’ is read in terms of the motif of man's “proper.” Taking my point of departure from this Derridean reading of Heidegger's humanism, I return to Heidegger's “Letter” in order to uncover the manner in which Heidegger distinguishes man's “proper” from what is “improper,” namely, animality. This reading reveals that, while Heidegger offers a convincing account of the limits of metaphysical humanism, this critical account nevertheless ends up uncritically reinforcing the anthropocentrism of this same tradition. My closing suggestion is that Derrida's rethinking of animality should be understood as an extended meditation on the various consequences and effects of this dogmatic anthropocentrism in Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian thought. (shrink)

In this article I ask how moral relativism applies to the analysis of responsibility for mass crime. The focus is on the critical reading of two influential relativist attempts to offer a theoretically consistent response to the challenges imposed by extreme criminal practices. First, I explore Gilbert Harman’s analytical effort to conceptualize the reach of moral discourse. According to Harman, mass crime creates a contextually specific relationship to which moral judgments do not apply any more. Second, I analyze the (...) inability thesis, which claims that the agents of mass crime are not able to distinguish between right and wrong. Richard Arneson, Michael Zimmerman and Geoffrey Scarre do not deny the moral wrongness of crime. However, having introduced the claim of authenticity as a specific feature of the inability thesis, they maintain that killers are not responsible. I argue that these positions do not hold. The relativist failure to properly conceptualize responsibility for mass crime follows from the mistaken view of moral autonomy, which then leads to the erroneous explanation of the establishment, authority and justification of moral judgments. (shrink)

This article provides an affirmative feminist reading of the philosophy of Henri Bergson by reading it through the work of Karen Barad. Adopting such a diffractive reading strategy enables feminist philosophy to move beyond discarding Bergson for his apparent phallocentrism. Feminist philosophy finds itself double bound when it critiques a philosophy for being phallocentric, because the setup of a master narrative comes into being with the critique. By negating a gender-blind or sexist philosophy, feminist philosophy only reaffirms (...) its parameters, and setting up a master narrative costs feminist philosophy its feminism. I thus propose and practice a different methodological starting point, one that capitalizes on “diffraction.” This article experiments with the affirmative phase in feminist philosophy prophesied by Elizabeth Grosz, among others. Working along the lines of the diffractive method, the article at the same time proposes a new reading of Bergson (as well as of Barad), a new, different metaphysics indeed, which can be specified as onto-epistemological or “new materialist.”. (shrink)

On Reading Signs; Some Differences between Us and The Others If there are certain kinds of signs that an animal cannot learn to interpret, that might be for any of a number of reasons. It might be, first, because the animal cannot discriminate the signs from one another. For example, although human babies learn to discriminate human speech sounds according to the phonological structures of their native languages very easily, it may be that few if any other animals are (...) capable of fully grasping the phonological structures of human languages. If an animal cannot learn to interpret certain signs it might be, second, because the decoding is too difficult for it. It could be, for example, that some animals are incapable of decoding signs that exhibit syntactic embedding, or signs that are spread out over time as opposed to over space. Problems of these various kinds might be solved by using another sign system, say, gestures rather than noises, or visual icons laid out in spatial order, or by separating out embedded propositions and presenting each separately. But a more interesting reason that an animal might be incapable of understanding a sign would be that it lacked mental representations of the necessary kind. It might be incapable of representing mentally what the sign conveys. When discussing what signs animals can understand or.. (shrink)

New readings have recently been offered by Frederick Beiser and Robert Brandom of Hegel, a notoriously difficult writer. I believe that both Beiser and Brandom go astray in reading Hegel otherwise than how he reads others, that is, in terms of the internal development of their theories in response to philosophical problems with which they were concerned as opposed to other, external concerns. Beiser reads Hegel’s position in the context of German idealism in order to refute it and Brandom (...) reads it in the context of analytic philosophy to learn from it. I will be recommending an alternative reading of Hegel’s position in the context of German idealism in order to learn from it. I believe we cannot magically detach Hegel from idealism in order to learn from, or even to understand, his position. But I also believe we need to interpret German idealism differently in order to grasp Hegel’s contribution. Key Words: Frederick Beiser • Robert Brandom • G.W.F.Hegel • idealism • Immanuel Kant • realism. (shrink)

I try to focus our differences by examining the relation between what Dennett has termed "the intentional stance" and "the design stance." Dennett takes the intentional stance to be more basic than the design stance. Ultimately it is through the eyes of the intentional stance that both human and natural design are interpreted, hence there is always a degree of interpretive freedom in reading the mind, the purposes, both of Nature and of her children. The reason, or at least (...) a reason, is that intentional interpretation is holistic, hence indeterminate, for the kinds of reasons given by Davidson and Quine. In contrast, I take the design stance to be more basic than the intentional stance. Intentional attributions express our best guesses about the locations of effects of certain kinds of natural design. And although there is often indeterminacy, ambiguity, or vagueness concerning what it is that natural selection (or learning) has selected for, these indeterminacies and vaguenesses are local, not holistic. There is reason to suppose that the better portion of Nature's purposes and the intentional states of her children are determinate in content within quite closely defined limits. I propose to defend this position as well as I can, so as to call from Dennett his own views on precisely where our paths separate (if they really do). (shrink)

The central problem for pragmatics is that sentence meaning vastly underdetermines speaker’s meaning. The goal of pragmatics is to explain how the gap between sentence meaning and speaker’s meaning is bridged. This paper defends the broadly Gricean view that pragmatic interpretation is ultimately an exercise in mind-reading, involving the inferential attribution of intentions. We argue, however, that the interpretation process does not simply consist in applying general mind-reading abilities to a particular (communicative) domain. Rather, it involves a dedicated (...) comprehension module, with its own special principles and mechanisms. We show how such a metacommunicative module might have evolved, and what principles and mechanisms it might contain. (shrink)

This paper examines the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the light of the early Confucian thinker Mencius, arguing in essence that Mencian theories of moral development and self-cultivation can help us to recover the moral significance of Twain's novel. Although 'ethical criticisms' of Huckleberry Finn share a long history, I argue that most interpretations have failed to appreciate the moral significance of Jim, either by focusing on the moral arc of Huck in isolation or by casting Jim in one-dimensional terms (...) simply as a symbol or example of human dignity. By invoking the Mencian ideas of 'moral power' ( de ), human goodness, and the virtues of sympathy and humaneness, this study attempts to bring into relief the many ways that Jim, particularly in his role as an exemplar, functions as an active force in the moral life of Huck. It is hoped that this revised Mencian reading of Huckleberry Finn can restore the moral center of the novel and contribute to the growing discussion on the virtues in moral education. (shrink)

This is an annotated reading list on the beginning elements of the theory of computable functions. It is now structured so as to complement the first eight lectures of Thomas Forster’s Part III course in Lent 2011 (see the first four chapters of his evolving handouts).

Representing the best popular and scholarly contributions to transgender/ sex studies, and with their mutual concern with female-to-male sex and gender crossing (among other topics), these three books mark an important shift in scholarship on gender and sexuality. Trans studies has reached a level of autonomy and sophistication that firmly establishes it as a field with its own theoretical and political questions. Of course, connections to feminist and queer theory are still very apparent in these texts, and all three authors (...) are committed—to varying degrees—to reading trans identities against the backdrop of male dominance and heteronormativity. It’s no longer enough, however, for feminist readers to dismiss the projects of trans theorists and activists as epiphenomenal to feminist discourses or even queer theory, or to view trans studies as an optional extra in discussions of sex and gender. These books represent the best arguments against this position, and thus offer a new challenge to the inclusivity, scope, and terms of “women’s studies.”. (shrink)

The rediscovery in the mid-1970s of Ludwik Fleck's initially neglected monograph, Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Wissenschaftlichen Tatsache, published in 1935 and translated in 1979 as Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, has resulted in extensive, still ongoing, secondary writings, mainly within the humanities. Fleck has been interpreted as furthering a relativistic conception of science. Nowadays, he is often viewed as an important contributor to contemporary sociology of science and a forerunner to Thomas Kuhn. Fleck's account of the Wassermann reaction, (...) which forms the basis of his epistemology, has been praised as developed by a scientist well acquainted with the field in question. Because of the scarcity of available material on Fleck, however, the question of his sources has remained an unsolved issue. In the present article, an alternative reading is suggested. By focusing on the scientific content of the monograph, mainly neglected in the modern interpretations of Fleck, and on the so far overlooked sources of his writings traced back to their German origin, a better understanding of Fleck's account of the Wassermann reaction can be given. The consequences of this alternative reading for the conception of Fleck's monograph and for the impetus of his mission are discussed. (shrink)

This new edition of William James’s 1909 classic, A Pluralistic Universe reproduces the original text, only modernizing the spelling. The books has been annotated throughout to clarify James’s points of reference and discussion. There is a new, fuller index, a brief chronology of James’s life, and a new bibliography—chiefly based on James’s own references. The editor, H.G. Callaway, has included a new Introduction which elucidates the legacy of Jamesian pluralism to survey some related questions of contemporary American society. -/- A (...) Pluralistic Universe was the last major book James published during his life time. It is a substantial philosophical work, devoted to a thorough-going criticism of Hegelian monism and Absolutism—and the exploration of philosophical and social-theological alternatives. Our world of some one hundred years on is much the better for James’s contributions; and understanding James’s pluralism deeply contributes even now to America’s self-understanding. At present, we are more certain that American is, and is best, a pluralistic society, than we are of what particular forms our pluralism should take. Keeping an eye out for social interpretations of Jamesian pluralism, this new philosophical reading casts light on our twenty-first century alternatives by reference to prior American experience and developments. -/- . (shrink)

The two most popular approaches to Carnap's 1928 Aufbau are the empiricist reading of Quine and the neo-Kantian readings of Michael Friedman and Alan Richardson. This paper presents a third "reserved" interpretation that emphasizes Carnap's opposition to traditional philosophy and consequent naturalism. The main consideration presented in favor of the reserved reading is Carnap's work on a physical construction system. I argue that Carnap's construction theory was an empirical scientific discipline and that the basic relations of its construction (...) systems need not be eliminated. (shrink)

John McDowell's Mind and World is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important contributions to philosophy in recent years. In this volume leading philosophers examine the nature and extent of McDowell's achievement in Mind and World and related writings. The chapters, most of which were specially commissioned for this volume, are divided into five parts. The essays in part one consider Mind and World 's location in the modern philosophical tradition, particularly its relation to Kant's critical project. Parts (...) two and three cover issues in epistemology and philosophy of mind, while in part four the focus turns to problems of rationality, realism and ethics. In the final part of the book McDowell responds to the contributors and further elaborates his own views. Together, the essays provide an indispensable resource for understanding McDowell's work and they offer a timely snapshot of the state of play in contemporary philosophy. Reading McDowell is an important and critical contribution to the debates in analytic philosophy and will be a valuable resource for all those interested in Mind and World , philosophy of mind, and epistemology. (shrink)

I argue that Graham Priest's story 'Sylvan's Box' has an attractive consistent reading. Priest's hope that this story can be used as an example of a non-trivial 'essentially inconsistent' story is thus threatened. I then make some observations about the role 'Sylvan's Box' might play in a theory of unreliable narrators.

On Reading Signs; Some Differences between Us and The Others If there are certain kinds of signs that an animal cannot learn to interpret, that might be for any of a number of reasons. It might be, first, because the animal cannot discriminate the signs from one another. For example, although human babies learn to discriminate human speech sounds according to the phonological structures of their native languages very easily, it may be that few if any other animals are (...) capable of fully grasping the phonological structures of human languages. If an animal cannot learn to interpret certain signs it might be, second, because the decoding is too difficult for it. It could be, for example, that some animals are incapable of decoding signs that exhibit syntactic embedding, or signs that are spread out over time as opposed to over space. Problems of these various kinds might be solved by using another sign system, say, gestures rather than noises, or visual icons laid out in spatial order, or by separating out embedded propositions and presenting each separately. But a more interesting reason that an animal might be incapable of understanding a sign would be that it lacked mental representations of the necessary kind. It might be incapable of representing mentally what the sign conveys. When discussing what signs animals can understand or. (shrink)

This paper examines the therapeutic implications of Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment and revenge as our signature malady. §I examines the obstacles to a therapeutic reading of Nietzsche's thought, including his anti-teleological tendencies and the value he places on sickness. Then there is the energetic problem of finding resources to tackle ressentiment, given the volitional exhaustion of modern nihilism. Finally, the self-referential implications of Nietzsche's critique of slave values threaten to trap his thought in a futile ressentiment against ressentiment. If (...) the impulse to cure or redeem us from revenge through critical destruction repeats the logic of revenge, then the challenge for a therapeutic reading is to think through the transformation of revenge on the basis of repetition.An agonal reading of Nietzsche's philosophical practice is proposed to tackle these problems in §II. (shrink)

In Time and Death: Heidegger's Analysis of Finitude, Carol White pursues a strange hermeneutic strategy, reading Heidegger backwards by reading the central ideas of his later work back into his early magnum opus, Being and Time. White follows some of Heidegger's own later directives in pursuing this hermeneutic strategy, and this paper critically explores these directives along with the original reading that emerges from following them. The conclusion reached is that White's creative book is not persuasive as (...) a strict interpretation of Heidegger's early work, but remains extremely helpful for deepening our appreciation of Heidegger's thought as a whole. Most importantly, White helps us to understand the pivotal role that thinking about death played in the lifelong development of Heidegger's philosophy. (shrink)

: Studies of Chinese dialectical materialism have long neglected the important philosophical dimension of Hegelian thought and its influence on Chinese Marxism. This essay examines the work of Zhang Shiying of Beijing University, whose studies of Hegel's works on dialectical logic in the 1950s sought to clarify the nature of Hegel's speculative dialectic and its relation to dialectical materialism. Like Lenin before him, Zhang believed that Hegel's works on logic offered a more profound reflection on materialism than had previously been (...) recognized by Marxist critics of German idealism. Zhang's sensitive reading of both Hegel's Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia Logic highlights the problem of the speculative dialectic and negativity. Examined here is Zhang's analysis of the Hegelian dialectic in light of contemporary accounts of the role of Hegelian negativity in poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

The return to religion in contemporary continental philosophy is characterized by a profound sense of intellectual humility. A significant influence within this discussion is Heidegger’s anthropology of finitude in Being and Time and his later critiques of onto-theology. These critiques, however, were informed by Heidegger’s earlier phenomenology of the lived experience of religious humility performed alongside his reading of Martin Luther’s theology. This article shows that for Luther and Heidegger, religious humility is foremost an affection structured according to the (...) enactment of one’s dissimilitude from God and resulting existential tribulation. During a seminal period in his development, Heidegger’s phenomenology of humility changed from an Eckhartian conception of detachment culminating in the unio mystica to a Lutheran conception of humiliation and Anfechtung . Heidegger’s break from a mystical phenomenology of humility parallels Luther’s own break from that tradition, and anticipates contemporary developments in the continental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In the literature on Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy , two sorts of claim have been made by different interpreters. First, there is Beiner’s observation that there is a shift in Arendt’s thoughts on judgment, which has led to the idea that Arendt develops two distinct theories of judgment. The second sort of claim concerns Arendt’s use of Kant’s transcendental principles. At its core, it has led to the critique that Arendt detranscendentalizes — or empiricalizes — Kant, by (...) linking Kant’s judgments of taste to an empirical sociability. In this article, I argue against both of these claims. Early fragments of Arendt’s on judgment make clear that she develops only one theory of judgment. It is only that it is not until later in her life that she fully elaborates it. Nor does Arendt confuse Kant’s idea of enlarged thinking with an actual dialogue with others. In fact, Arendt introduces an interesting interdependence between judgment and speech, or communication. I develop my argument by first outlining the problems Arendt hoped to resolve via judgment. Through my reading of the Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy , I show how Arendt interprets Kant’s Critique of Judgment not as his theory of aesthetic judgments, but as an answer to the more general question ‘How do I judge?’ I also clarify the difference Arendt draws between common sense and community sense . With community sense, Arendt uncovers a foundation not only for men as political beings but also for the idea of humanity. This finding is often overlooked in the literature. I conclude with another Arendtian distinction that is often overlooked, that between spectators and the solitary philosopher. (shrink)

Our aim in this article, after providing the general framework of the reception of William James in Spain, is to trace the reception of The Varieties of Religious Experience through Unamuno’s reading of this book.

What follows is an English reading of the first edition of Martin Heidegger's inaugural lecture at Freiburg University,“Was ist Metaphysik?” delivered on Wednesday, July 24, 1929. The German text was first published in December of 1929, some five months after it was delivered, by Friedrich Cohen Verlag in Bonn, to whose heirs gratitude is expressed for the requisite arrangements. The original German publication of 1929 differs in a number of relatively minor ways from later editions -- for example, changes (...) in wording, additions of certain phrases (and at one place two sentences), paragraphization, and the like – without any basic alteration of sense. Some of those changes are listed in an appendix at the end. (shrink)

The idea that we have special access to our own mental states has a distinguished philosophical history. Philosophers as different as Descartes and Locke agreed that we know our own minds in a way that is quite different from the way in which we know other minds. In the latter half of the 20th century, however, this idea came under serious attack, first from philosophy (Sellars 1956) and more recently from developmental psychology.1 The attack from developmental psychology arises from the (...) growing body of work on “mindreading”, the process of attributing mental states to people (and other organisms). During the last 15 years, the processes underlying mindreading have been a major focus of attention in cognitive and developmental psychology. Most of this work has been concerned with the processes underlying the attribution of mental states to other people. However, a number of psychologists and philosophers have also proposed accounts of the mechanisms underlying the attribution of mental states to oneself. This process of reading one’s own mind or becoming self-aware will be our primary concern in this paper. (shrink)

Two readings of the much-discussed περιτρoπη argument of Theaetetus 170c-171c have dominated the literature. One I call "the relativity reading". On this reading, the argument fails by ignoratio elenchi because it "carelessly" omits "the qualifications 'true for so-and-so' which [Protagoras'] theory insists on" (Bostock 1988: 90). The other reading I call "the many-worlds interpretation". On this view, Plato's argument succeeds in showing that "Protagoras' position becomes utterly self-contradictory" because "he claims that everyone lives in his own relativistic (...) world, yet at the same time he is forced by that very claim to admit that no one does" (Burnyeat 1976b: 48). I discuss and criticise both readings, and present a third, according to which the point of the argument is, very roughly, that Protagoras is committed to equating truth and truth-for, and so, further, to their intersubstitutability. This further commitment proves fatal to his argument. (shrink)

This paper offers two possible readings of the Earth Charter that are informed by current scholarship in the field of environmental politics. The first reading finds much in the document to suggest congruence with emerging discourses of cosmopolitanism and global environmental citizenship. The second reading, a more sceptical one, identifies aspects of the Earth Charter that seem more resonant with depoliticizing United Nations-style light green globalism than with an inclusive ethical vision of environmentalism. After setting out these two (...) readings, I argue that, although potentially undermining of its endorsability, thinking critically about problematic aspects of the Earth Charter is an exercise that may point in the direction of a cosmopolitan environmentalism that is less banal and instrumental and more dialogically open, reflexive, and democratic. (shrink)

Authority qua empowerment is theweak reading of authority in Hans Kelsen's writings.On the one hand, this reading appears to beunresponsive to the problem of authority as we know itfrom the tradition. On the other hand, it squares withlegal positivism. Is Kelsen a legal positivist?Not without qualification. For he defends anormativity thesis along with the separation thesis,and it is at any rate arguable that the normativitythesis mandates a stronger reading of authority thanthat modelled on empowerment. I offer, in (...) the paper,a prima facie case on behalf of a stronger reading ofauthority in Kelsen. I go on to argue, however, thatthe textual evidence weighs heavily in favour of theweak reading. Both nomostatics and nomodynamics arepervasive points of view in the Pure Theory of Law,and both reflect species of empowerment as theendpoint of Kelsen's reconstructions. (shrink)

I argue for two claims. First I argue against the consensus view that accurate behavioral prediction based on accurate representation of cognitive states, i.e. mind reading , is the sustaining function of propositional attitude ascription. This practice cannot have been selected in evolution and cannot persist, in virtue of its predictive utility, because there are principled reasons why it is inadequate as a tool for behavioral prediction. Second I give reasons that favor an alternative account of the sustaining function (...) of propositional attitude ascription. I argue that it serves a mind-shaping function. Roughly, propositional attitude ascription enables human beings to set up regulative ideals that function to mold behavior so as to make it easier to coordinate with. (shrink)

A few years ago, a group of American philosophers, Cora Diamond and James Conant among them, suggested a resolute, or radical reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. These two authors claim that the Tractatus has a body, and a frame. Wittgenstein minded the frame seriously, whereas all the remaining propositions of the Tractatus, which belong to its body, are written tongue in cheek. To the frame of the work belong the Preface, 3.32, 3.326, 4.003, 4.111, 4.112 and 6.53, 6.54. In (...) it Wittgenstein gave meta-theoretical instructions how to treat the rest of the book. The main idea of the frame is expressed in 6.54 which reads: "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them 'as steps' to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)" This was the real message of the Tractatus. (shrink)

If, as the title of this book suggests, the state of Tractatus commentary has at times recently resembled something close to a state of war, then it has most of all resembled a war of attrition. Against this background, Roger White's "Throwing the Baby Out with the Ladder" makes for refreshing reading. To be sure, White repeats some of the familiar misconceptions of what resolute readers do or must claim that have marred the debate over the adequacies or (...) inadequacies of such an approach to the Tractatus (TLP). But he also introduces some novel and interesting lines of criticism that merit serious attention. Foremost among the latter is White's treatment (in Section III of his paper) of three engaging examples that he sees as making trouble for resolute readers, and for their opposition to the standard idea that the lesson of the Tractatrrs could consist in its communicating, and our grasping, ineffable insights by way of its nonsense-sentences. (shrink)

In this paper I make a comparison between the imaginative activity of reading literature and the elucidatory activity of doing philosophy. My aim is to highlight significant features of a non-traditional view of philosophical method – inspired by Wittgenstein.

Abstract. This article offers one response from within Christianity to the theological challenges of Darwinism. It identifies evolutionary theory as a key aspect of the context of contemporary Christian hermeneutics. Examples of the need for re-reading of scripture, and reassessment of key doctrines, in the light of Darwinism include the reading of the creation and fall accounts of Genesis 1–3, the reformulation of the Christian doctrine of humanity as created in the image of God, and the possibility of (...) a new approach to the Incarnation in the light of evolution and semiotics. Finally, a theodicy in respect of evolutionary suffering is outlined, in dialogue with recent writings attributing such suffering to a force in opposition to God. The latter move is rejected on both theological and scientific grounds. Further work on evolutionary theodicy is proposed, in relation in particular to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. (shrink)

I compare the two main readings of the argument against Protagorean relativism that 'Socrates' presents at Theaetetus 170-171, argue against both of them, and present a third alternative reading.

Newman Robert Glass argues that there are three workings of emptiness capable of grounding thinking and behavior: presence, difference, and essence. The first two readings, exemplified by Heidegger and Mark C. Taylor respectively, present opposing views of the work of emptiness in thinking. The third, essence, presents a position on the work of emptiness in desire and affect. Glass begins by offering a close analysis of presence and difference. He then fashions his own understanding of essence, or emptiness. He goes (...) on to use this third reading to construct a comprehensive Buddhist position based in desire and affect -- a Buddhism of essence. (shrink)

Synthetic biology, an emerging field of science and technology, intends to make of the natural world a substrate for engineering practice. Drawing inspiration from conventional engineering disciplines, practitioners of synthetic biology hope to make biological systems standardized, calculable, modular, and predictably functional. This essay develops a Heideggerian reading of synthetic biology as a useful perspective with which to identify and explore key facets of this field, its knowledge, its practices, and its products. After overviews of synthetic biology and Heidegger’s (...) account of technology, I discuss calculability, utility, function, setting-upon, and ordering, with the aim of discussing the manner in which synthetic biology works to render the biological world intelligible as something to be used, rather than something that is in and of itself. Having developed this Heideggerian reading, I proffer a number of corrections to his account that enable a more accurate, nuanced understanding of synthetic biology. Specifically, I discuss the notion of Ge-stell and submit that multiple systems of “enframing” may help to make Heidegger’s argument more robust. I suggest that synthetic biology may work to reveal the natural world as a standing-reserve of function. (shrink)

In considering two extended examples of educational reform efforts, this discussion traces relations that become visible through analytic approaches associated with actor-network theory (ANT). The strategy here is to present multiple readings of the two examples. The first reading adopts an ANT approach to follow ways that all actors—human and non-human entities, including the entity that is taken to be ‘educational reform’—are performed into being through the play of linkages among heterogeneous elements. Then, further readings focus not only on (...) the material practices that become enacted and distributed, but also on the otherings that occur: the various fluid spaces and ambivalent belongings that create actor-network(s) but also escape them. For educational research, particularly in educational reform and policy, it is argued that ANT analyses are particularly useful to examine the complex enactments in these dynamics. That is, ANT can illuminate movements of ordering and disordering that occur through minute socio-material connections in educational interventions. ANT readings also can discern, within these attempts to order people and practices, the spaces of flux and instability that enable and protect alternate possibilities. (shrink)

While Cavell is well known for his reinterpretation of the later Wittgenstein, he has never really engaged himself with post-Investigations writings like On Certainty. This collection may, however, seem to undermine the profoundly anti-dogmatic reading of Wittgenstein that Cavell has developed. In addition to apparently arguing against what Cavell calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ – a phrase contested by other Wittgensteinians – On Certainty may seem to justify the rejection of whoever dares to question one’s basic presuppositions. According to (...) On Certainty, or so it seems, the only right response to someone with different certainties is a reproach like ‘Fool!’ or ‘Heretic!’. This article aims to show that On Certainty need not be taken to prove Cavell wrong. It explains that Wittgenstein, in line with the first two parts of The Claim of Reason, does not reject scepticism out of hand but rather questions the sceptic’s self-understanding. Using arguments from Part Three of The Claim, the article moreover argues that a confrontation with divergence calls for self-examination rather than self-righteousness. Precisely because Wittgenstein acknowledges ‘the groundlessness of our believing’ or, in Cavellian terms, ‘the truth of skepticism’, he is not the authoritarian thinker that some have taken him to be. (shrink)

This article examines the belief among the cultural elites that 'people' should be protected from dangerous knowledge, 'dangerous' in the sense that there are factual statements which may have negative moral and political consequences to society. Such a belief in the negative consequences of dangerous - that is, politically suspicious - knowledge represents an intellectual tradition that goes back to Plato and his famous state-utopian work Republic. This article analyses moral interpretations of statements regarding matters of fact (so-called moral (...) class='Hi'>reading), and draws conclusions about the reasons why knowledge can be considered dangerous to 'the people' or to some specific groups in the population, such as children, mothers, students, the sick and dying and the working class. The so-called sociobiology debate, a controversy that started with the publication of the zoologist E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology in 1975, is discussed in this article as a 'case study' of dangerous knowledge. (shrink)

This paper explores two different methods of reading ‘Derrida’s own conscience’ – that is, of raising the question of ethics and obligation in deconstruction. The two readings under discussion here are staged by Jean-Luc Nancy in his seminal essay ‘The Free Voice of Man’. In the first half of the paper, I engage in a reading of Nancy’s essay in which I seek not only to highlight Nancy’s double formulation of the place of ethics in deconstruction, but also (...) to re-mark the transition in Derrida’s writings from the priority of the question to an emphasis on a call that precedes the question. In order to further explore this displacement of the priority of the question, the second half of the essay takes up an analysis of Derrida’s employment of the motif of ‘ Viens ’ (‘Come’) in his essay ‘On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy’. I suggest that ‘ Viens ’ should be read as Derrida’s formulation of: (1) another response, beyond questioning, to a call that precedes any question; (2) another thought of conscience and obligation; and (3) a thought of the trace of alterity at the very heart of conscience that signals the impossibility of any form of good conscience. Key Words: apocalypse • call • conscience • ethics • question • Viens. (shrink)

The concept of “self-awareness” ( svasaṃvedana ) enters Buddhist epistemological discourse in the Pramāṇasamuccaya and - vṛtti by Dignāga (ca. 480–540), the founder of the Buddhist logico-epistemological tradition. Though some of the key passages have already been dealt with in various publications, no attempt has been made to comprehensively examine all of them as a whole. A close reading is here proposed to make up for this deficit. In connection with a particularly difficult passage (PS(V) 1.8cd-10) that presents the (...) means of valid cognition and its result ( pramāṇa/pramāṇaphala ), a new interpretation is suggested, inspired by the commentary of Jinendrabuddhi. This interpretation highlights an aspect of selfawareness that has hitherto not been claimed for Dignāga: self-awareness offers essentially subjective access to one’s own mental states and factors. (shrink)

Hegel's dialectic "Consciousness," Part A from the Phenomenology of Spirit, is interpreted in light of the concept of "reading." The logic of reading is especially helpful for interpreting the often misunderstood dialectic of understanding, as that is described in chapter 3 of the Phenomenology, "Force and Understanding: Appearance and the Supersensible World." Hegel's concept of "the Inverted World" in particular is clarified, and from it Hegel's notion of originary difference is developed. Derrida's notion of "differance" is used to (...) illuminate Hegel's use of difference and to interpret the Hegelian metaphysics that is developed in "Force and Understanding" and in the opening moves of Hegel's Science of Logic. It is argued that the philosophical projects of Hegel and Derrida are ultimately indistinguishable. (shrink)

Authority qua empowerment is the weak reading of authority in Hans Kelsen's writings. On the one hand, this reading appears to be unresponsive to the problem of authority as we know it from the tradition. On the other hand, it squares with legal positivism. Is Kelsen a legal positivist?Not without qualification. For he defends a normativity thesis along with the separation thesis, and it is at any rate arguable that the normativity thesis mandates a stronger reading of (...) authority than that modelled on empowerment. I offer, in the paper, a prima facie case on behalf of a stronger reading of authority in Kelsen. I go on to argue, however, that the textual evidence weighs heavily in favour of the weak reading. Both nomostatics and nomodynamics are pervasive points of view in the Pure Theory of Law, and both reflect species of empowerment as the endpoint of Kelsen's reconstructions. (shrink)

This is an existential-phenomenological reading of Max Weber’s “Class, Status, Party” that seeks a fuller understanding of meaning accomplishment in a stratified World. I appropriate stratification as a single meaning structure ontically defined by domination, intersubjectivity, and life-chances and ontologically determined by the power-to-be (Seinkönnen), There-being-with-others (Mitdasein), and potentiality (Möglichkeit). I then discuss the significance of these structures in finite transcendence (There-being, Dasein) and describe ways they factually unfold in World achievement. I conclude with logotherapeutic reflections concerning meaning accomplishment (...) in a stratified World and a summary of key questions facing existential-phenomenology in light of the likelihood that There-being must embrace, indeed, live, the inherent equality of Being (Gleichheit des Seins) among Daseins to accomplish its authenticity. (shrink)

When political rationality deployed itself on the terrain of the biological life of the human species with the purpose of making this life healthier, more capable, and more "worthy of being lived," it also postulated that some life could be potentiated only at the price of killing off other life. Foucault therefore introduces the idea of biopolitics together with that of thanatopolitics (1990, 137) .Since Foucault, one of the urgent questions has been how biopolitics turns into a thanatopolitics and under (...) what conditions can this turn be prevented or reversed into an affirmative politics of life. In this article I offer a reading of Benjamin's project that leads from thanatopolitics to an affirmative biopolitics. .. (shrink)

Reading a book for a review is not the same as reading for pleasure or research. The voice of the ‘critic’—or the critic one would like to be—muffles the voice of the text. Reviewing a book on reading, written by a writer, is as disconcerting as speaking with an old high school English teacher. I take courage from Emerson. In “The Poet,” an essay to which Richard Deming often returns, Emerson offers: Doubt not, O poet, but persist. (...) Say, “It is in me, and shall out.” Stand there, baulked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power... (shrink)

Purpose With the increasing sophistication of neuroimaging technologies in medicine, new language is being sought to make sense of the findings. The aim of this paper is to explore whether the brain-reading metaphor used to convey current medical or neurobiological findings imports unintended significations that do not necessarily reflect the genuine findings made by physicians and neuroscientists. Methods First, the paper surveys the ambiguities of the readability metaphor, drawing from the history of science and medicine, paying special attention to (...) the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Next, the paper addresses more closely the issue of how metaphors may be confusing when used in medicine in general, and neuroscience in particular. The paper then explores the possible misleading effects associated with the contemporary use of the brain-reading metaphor in neuroimaging research. Results Rather than breaking new ground, what we see in current scientific language is a persistence of both a constraining and expansive set of language practices forming a relatively continuous tradition linking current neuroimaging to past scientific investigations into the brain. Conclusions The use of the readability metaphor thus carries with it both positive and negative effects. Physicians and neuroscientists must resort to the use of terms already laden with abstracted meanings, and often burdened by tradition, at the risk of importing through these words connotations that do not tally with the sought-after objectivity of empirical science. (shrink)

The direct reading emission spectrometer was developed during the1940s. By substituting photo-multiplier tubes and electronics forphotographic film spectrograms, the interpretation of special lineswith a densitometer was avoided. Instead, the instrument providedthe desired information concerning percentage concentration ofelements of interest directly on a dial. Such instruments `de-skill' the job of making such measurements. They do this by encapsulatingin the instrument the skills previously employed by the analyst,by `skilling' the instrument. This paper presents a history of thedevelopment of the Dow Chemical/Baird (...) Associates direct reader. Thishistory is used to argue for a materialist conception of knowledge.The instrument is a material form of knowledge, knowledge of aspectsof spectroscopy, analytical spectrochemistry, electronics, instrumentdesign and construction, and metal production industry economics. (shrink)

This paper describes the practice of rabbinic Torah-Study in Pragmatist epistemological terms. Pragmatists describe the quest for knowledge as a process in which we interpret our experiences and thereby construct an idea of our reality. This description creates or generates a tension between the constructive aspect of the knowledge quest and the idea of an independent reality. The paper argues that Pragmatism shares this tension, as well as the hermeneutical and pragmatic method for overcoming it, with the rabbinic concept of (...) "Torah Study." This association is illustrated through a close reading of a Midrash on the first verse of the Biblical "Woman of Valor" song. (shrink)

This paper examines Jean-Luc Nancy's interpretation of Hegel, focusing in particular on The Restlessness of the Negative. It is argued that Nancy's reading represents a significant break with other post-structuralist readings of Hegel by taking his thought to be non-metaphysical. The paper focuses in particular on the role Nancy gives to the negative in Hegel's thought. Ultimately Nancy's reading is limited as an interpretation of Hegel, since he gives no sustained explanation of the self-correcting function of reason.

The perceptibility and intelligibility of queer students and teachers have been a central theme in queer politics in education. Can queer teachers be 'out' to their colleagues and students? Can queer relationships be seen at the school prom? Can queerness be seen and heard? At the same time, perceptibility and intelligibility are by no means uncontested political goals. This paper analyzes different school initiatives by and/or for queer students and asks how political these initiatives are from the perspective of Jacques (...) Rancière's conception of politics. In particular, it employs Rancière's work on the 'distribution of the sensible' ( partage du sensible ) to analyze conditions of visibility and sayability and the political risks and benefits that gaining visibility and sayability carries for queer students and teachers. The paper brings Rancière's distinction between identification and subjectification into conversation with Judith Butler's work on the governing of intelligibility by social norms, and the promise of 'insurrectionary speech'. Finally, Rancière's work on the role of allies in political interventions that shift the distribution of the sensible provides a fresh reading of Gay-Straight Alliances in schools and the work of queer allies more generally. (shrink)

This article takes as its point of departure the question of how Wilhelm Halbfass, Daya Krishna, and Jitendranath Mohanty have conceptualized tradition in relation to “Indian” philosophy. They have all reacted to, and criticized, homogeneous and static conceptions of Indian philosophies, and by articulating different ways of apprehending tradition they have tried to come to terms with such limiting images. My reading of their texts has been informed by a questioning of how they, in turn, conceptualize tradition. Most of (...) all this is related to the tendency, on the one hand, to stress that tradition is open-ended and dynamic but at the same time to speak of tradition as one singular and universalizable phenomenon .. (shrink)

Since there are independent reasons for associating the habitual reading of the imperfective, in Italian, to a logical form based on universal or generic quantification, the purpose of Part I is to see how this kind of semantical structure accounts for another important interpretation of the imperfective: the progressive reading. And since in some particular cases the imperfective can also have a marginal interpretation which can be assimilated to a perfective effect (it is the so-called “narrative” reading), (...) a further problem is how to provide a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon too. If one considers the co-occurrence of the imperfective with different event predicates (in particular, accomplishments and achievements) it is possible to show that, with some minimal assumptions, the theoretical framework under discussion correctly predicts the following facts, which represent a crucial, but puzzling, characteristic of the imperfective in Italian: (i) activities allow for the progressive reading of the imperfective, but not the “narrative” reading; (ii) with achievements we have the opposite situation; (iii) accomplishments are compatible with both these readings. From this point of view, the semantic properties of the progressive reading of the imperfective are quite distinct from those of the perifrasi progressiva, which is the specialized form used in Italian to express the progressive meaning. Part II, which addresses the issue of the intensional character of both forms of the progressive, is more problematic, in the sense that it takes into consideration a possible extension of the theoretical framework presented in Part I. First of all I discuss some examples which clearly show that the perifrasi progressiva calls for some sort of “branching” representation of time, for it crucially refers to future courses of events which are not realized in the real world. On the other hand, since similar examples can be found in the case of the progressive reading of the imperfective, the main problem is represented by the fact that the kind of logical form under discussion is not completely adequate to account for such intensional phenomena.. (shrink)

A new edition of the first systematic reading of Hegel's political philosophy Elements of the Philosophy of Right is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important works in the history of political philosophy. This is the first book on the subject to take Hegel's system of speculative philosophy seriously as an important component of any robust understanding of this text. Key Features •Sets out the difference between 'systematic' and 'non-systematic' readings of Philosophy of Right •Outlines the unique (...) structure of Hegel's philosophical arguments •Explores key areas of Hegel's political philosophy: his theories of property, punishment, morality, law, monarchy, war, democracy and history This significantly expanded second edition includes: a more detailed explanation of Hegel's philosophical system, two new chapters on his theories of democracy and history and an appendix detailing the implications this work has for future interpretations of Hegel's philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to read Martin Heidegger’s later philosophy in terms of the assertion that themes such as the fourfold (das Geviert) and poetic dwelling could be interpreted as mythical elements within his writing. Heidegger’s later thought is often construed as challenging and difficult due to its quasi-mystical nature. However, this paper aims to illustrate that if one approaches his later thought from the perspective of myth, a different dimension of Heidegger’s thinking is revealed which is perhaps (...) more tenable than attempting to address his later thought purely from a philosophical position. In brief, Heidegger’s concept of the fourfold involves the following entities: mortals, divinities, the sky and the earth. His argument is that for mortals to dwell poetically (implying the living of a meaningful, holistic life) they must recognise and assume the guardianship of Being (which is inclusive of all the elements of the fourfold). Heidegger argues that our guardianship of Being will be a natural extension of our existence, once we realise the holiness or sacred nature of Being as such. Thus, the concept of the fourfold represents the possibility of existing in a harmonious, caring (or saving), relationship with Being. However, following Heidegger this holistic (and, arguably mythical) depiction of our existence is extremely unlikely due to the rampant nature of technological enframing (Gestell) that dictates the use of human and natural resources. Conceptually though, if this holistic depiction is approached taking into account Ricoeur’s argument regarding myth then it becomes tenable. Ricoeur writes that myth has a symbolic function in terms of its power of discovery and revelation and this implies that myth has a projected horizon. This horizon, Ricoeur writes, is a ‘disclosure of unprecedented worlds, an opening on to other possible worlds which transcend the established limits of our actual world’ (1997: 8). Thus, applying these characterisations of myth to elements of Heidegger’s later philosophy will reveal a justifiable and coherent interpretation of his concept of the fourfold from a mythical perspective. Such a reading demonstrates the centrality of the fourfold in Heidegger’s later thought, which more strictly philosophical approaches may undervalue. In closing this paper suggests the usefulness of a mythological approach to the later Heidegger, and demonstrates the continued vitality of myth, as a profoundly human paradigm which, as Heidegger recognised, can simultaneously complement and transcend our more restricted rational endeavours. (shrink)

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari offer a description of what they call ‘nomad art’ by detailing its three primary characteristics: close-range vision, haptic space, and abstract line. In an attempt to unpack the significance of this provocative term, this paper will sketch the provenance of the first two of these characteristics, both of which come from Deleuze and Guattari's particular reading of Alois Riegl. Together, close-range vision and haptic space delineate the synaesthetic vision of the artist as (...) well as the space s//he creates in the work. Walter Benjamin will be invoked as a sort of phantom link between Riegl and Deleuze, a link that will both provide the proper orientation towards the central aspect of the haptic — against a Phenomenology of affect — as well as inject the necessary political significance into the discussion of nomad art. (shrink)

The E-Z Reader model (Reichle et al. 1998; 1999) provides a theoretical framework for understanding how word identification, visual processing, attention, and oculomotor control jointly determine when and where the eyes move during reading. In this article, we first review what is known about eye movements during reading. Then we provide an updated version of the model (E-Z Reader 7) and describe how it accounts for basic findings about eye movement control in reading. We then review several (...) alternative models of eye movement control in reading, discussing both their core assumptions and their theoretical scope. On the basis of this discussion, we conclude that E-Z Reader provides the most comprehensive account of eye movement control during reading. Finally, we provide a brief overview of what is known about the neural systems that support the various components of reading, and suggest how the cognitive constructs of our model might map onto this neural architecture. Key Words: attention; eye-movement control; E-Z Reader; fixations; lexical access; models; reading; regressions; saccades. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that reading history of physics as a contribution to history of philosophy is important for contemporary philosophy of physics. My argument centers around a particular case: special relativity versus presentism. By means of resources drawn from reading aspects of Newton's work as contributions to philosophy, I argue that there is in physics an alternative way to approach what we mean by "present" such that (without adding any preferred foliation or anything like that) presentism (...) remains an open empirical question whose refutation requires resources that go beyond those of special relativity. I offer this as an example of one fruitful way in which we pursue integrated HPS. (shrink)

This study of Sartre's first novel seeks to move beyond the metaphysical constraints that are implicit when specifically focusing on either the work's literary or philosophical qualities, instead approaching the text as metafiction. Through an understanding of the novel's self-referentiality, its awareness of its accordance to narrative technique or reliance on existential verbatim, one gains an understanding of Sartre's fascination with the dialogue that exists between literature and philosophy. The examination of La Nausée and its Anglo-American criticism leads to a (...) re-evaluation of the role of bad faith, in which character, author and, particularly, reader, are implicit. For reading is, like Roquentin's concluding understanding of existence, a balancing-act between the in-itself and the for-itself ; an interaction with bad faith in which it is the individual/the reader that is responsible for attributing meaning to experience/ La Nausée. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to illustrate how Ebrahim Moosa's method of “contrapuntal reading” can be applied fruitfully to the Sunni hadith literature. My case study is the set of penalties (hudud) for illicit sex, which include flogging, stoning, and banishment. I propose a fresh reading of these sacred texts that brings to the fore the ethical dimension of Prophet Muhammad's conduct, especially his strong reluctance to apply these measures. I conclude by identifying four ethical problems that (...) the stoning penalty raises and suggest how the hadith literature can be read to argue against the validity of this specific punishment. (shrink)

This outstanding collection of specially commissioned new essays on Williams's work is essential reading for anyone interested in Williams, ethics and moral ...