The philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and the later Wittgenstein are shown to yield a common position opposing 'realist' attempts to reduce appearance, sense, and meaning to perception-independent objects and relations. Their 'Gestalt Philosophy' thus constitutes a new form of 'anti- realism'.

Bottom line on top: this is a wonderful book.

This book is a foray into the thorny interpretive issue of what to make of Kant's so-called "Metaphysical Deduction" of the categories. As with many of the arguments in the first Critique, the claim of the Metaphysical Deduction is easier to make out than its argument. The claim is that by some or other reference to "general logic," one may obtain a "transcendental logic," i.e., a justification (or "deduction") of the categories (of the understanding) necessary to the (very) possibility of (...) experience. But how? By, Kant says, discerning, in general logic, a "clue" to transcendental logic. But what sort of clue? And then what clue exactly? We need a meta-clue to get a clue.Herein lies the very mixed reception the .. (shrink)

In his book Wittgenstein’s Metaphysics, John Cook argues that from 1912 until his death Wittgenstein was a proponent of neutral monism. This involves, according to Cook, Wittgenstein’s espousal of phenomenalism---the view that there can be nothing beyond immediate experience---and the consequent elimination of matter, causality, and other minds. I argue that this conflicts with almost everything that Wittgenstein wrote after 1932, including the passages cited and systematicalIy misinterpreted by Cook.

In his book Wittgenstein’s Metaphysics, John Cook argues that from 1912 until his death Wittgenstein was a proponent of neutral monism. This involves, according to Cook, Wittgenstein’s espousal of phenomenalism---the view that there can be nothing beyond immediate experience---and the consequent elimination of matter, causality, and other minds. I argue that this conflicts with almost everything that Wittgenstein wrote after 1932, including the passages cited and systematicalIy misinterpreted by Cook.

In his book Wittgenstein’s Metaphysics, John Cook argues that from 1912 until his death Wittgenstein was a proponent of neutral monism. This involves, according to Cook, Wittgenstein’s espousal of phenomenalism---the view that there can be nothing beyond immediate experience---and the consequent elimination of matter, causality, and other minds. I argue that this conflicts with almost everything that Wittgenstein wrote after 1932, including the passages cited and systematicalIy misinterpreted by Cook.

Bottom line on top: this is a wonderful book.

In the pre-postmodern era, subtitles were truly and merely “sub” and were reserved for books. They served to characterize and categorize a book so as to let the innocent consumer know what he was getting into if he could not tell from the title proper; thus, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics or Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. But the proper subtitle has evolved into an entire second title, is routinely used for journal articles and conference presentations, (...) and not every author can stop herself at merely the second title. The new style subtitle—the second title—is still supposed to shed light on the first title, but not by way of a categorizing characterization the way old style subtitles did. The first title of John Searle’s latest book is Mind, Language and Society. The second title is Philosophy in the Real World. It is not immediately clear what this new style subtitle means. It is too subtile. It needs an old-style subtitle to shed light on it that it may shed light on the first title. And, in his introduction, Searle very nearly supplies such. (shrink)

Arendt Contra Sociology re-assesses the relationship between Hannah Arendt's work and the theoretical foundations of sociology, bringing her insights to bear on key themes within contemporary theoretical sociology. Departing from the view of Arendt as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from society, and political theory from the social sciences, this book re-examines her distinctions between labour, fabrication and action as a theory of the fundamental ontology of human societies, revisiting her criticism of the tendency of many sociological (...) paradigms to conflate the activity of fabrication with that of action. (shrink)

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

Limitations of Dienes & Perner's (D&P's) theory are traced to the assumption that the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness is true. D&P claim that 18-month-old children are capable of explicitly representing factuality, from which it follows (on D&P's theory) that they are capable of explicitly representing content, attitude, and self. D&P then attempt to explain 3-year-olds' failures on tests of voluntary control such as the dimensional change card sort by suggesting that at this age children cannot represent content and (...) attitude explicitly. We provide a better levels-of-consciousness account for age-related abulic dissociations between knowledge and action. (shrink)

The claims of Mt. 5:17—20 are often taken to provide the interpretive key to the ethical claims of the Sermon on the Mount as a whole. The theological issue at stake here is the determinative relation between Christ's person and work and his teaching. This article explores the vital role played by the identity of Christ as the `fulfiller of the law' and `bringer of the Kingdom' in the exegesis of the Sermon offered by Eduard Thurneysen and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in (...) their respective works Die Bergpredigt (1936) and Nachfolge (1937). Both readings assert that the force and nature of the claims of the Sermon cannot be understood aright apart from constant attention to the difference made by the fact that Christ is the preacher. Out of this shared conviction, both theologians advance a reading of the Sermon as `the gospel itself' in the light of the eschatological identity of Jesus. Such readings of the Sermon, arising amidst the German Kirchenkampf of the 1930s, represent substantial contributions to the `responsible interpretation' of the Barmen Declaration (1934) whose second article states that, `As Jesus Christ is God's assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so in the same way and with the same seriousness is he also God's mighty claim upon our whole life.'. (shrink)

A defense of the modern family, in historical perspective, this book reconstructs political theory with the family in an important and honorable place. By reviewing critically both traditional and contemporary thought on the most special relationships—as well as current public policy issues relating to them—the author addresses concerns shared by professional and lay constituencies. Noting Tocqueville's observation of the American obsession with reevaluating and remodeling the family, Professor Abbott pleads for a balanced view. The development of liberal ambivalence toward the (...) family, along with radical hostility toward it, is clearly traced. For the most part the family was safely incorporated into political theory from Aristotle to Cicero and onward to Augustine and Aquinas until modern times. Then came the challenges of the rational individualists and the romantic individualists, followed by the attacks of social and psychological radicals. Some traditional criticisms of the family are shown to be soundly based, albeit less devastating than the critics supposed. As expanded in contemporary life, however, the great critics' revisionist models take on a fantastic quality. Here we are introduced to pleas for the "eroticization of children" and for freedom from "tyranny of reproductive biology." Proposals for new bureaucratic support structures appear with great frequency: professional guardians, children's camps, cloning hospitals. And people try to act out the roles prescribed for them by theorists who attempted "to set the solitary in new and different units." Liberals and radicals, the author argues, are infatuated with a "rights model," which "takes as its basis self-sufficient rational human beings"—at the expense of "solidarity among human beings." A tradition exists, Professor Abbott holds, that facilitates reconciliation between the modern family and the political order: pluralism. Pluralism is an attempt to balance individual autonomy and mutuality, decentralization and stratification, reform and tradition, reason and sentiment. Public policy in respect to schools, housing, health care, working conditions, and recreation should be designed to foster a pluralistic family-centered society. In line with this thesis the author offers a fresh perspective on such burning issues as abortion, sexual preference, alternative lifestyles, child abuse, and children's rights. _The Family on Trial _therefore is relevant to the concerns of social and behavioral scientists, the helping professions and the clergy, teachers and parents. (shrink)

Von einem Roman erwarten wir, dass sich seine Handlung zielstrebig auf ein Ende hin bewegt. Bis ins 19. Jh. wurden auch Vorgänge in einer von Gott eingerichteten Wirklichkeit auf diese Weise verstanden. Romane konnten daher beanspruchen, in ihrer Zielstrebigkeit die Wirklichkeit abzubilden. Durch Charles Darwin geriet diese Weltsicht in eine Krise. Die Studie zeigt, wie sich das Erzählen in einer als ziellos und zufällig aufgefassten Wirklichkeit veränderte. Wie können Romane die so verstandene Wirklichkeit abbilden? Diese Frage wird beispielhaft an literarischen (...) und ästhetischen Texten von Friedrich Theodor Vischer und Gottfried Keller erörtert. (shrink)

Bibliographic records published by the British Education Index (BEI) between 1957 and 2000 are analysed in the context of a history of the BEI's changing presentation of information about the field. The value of frequency counts for BEI subject terms is discussed, in relation to their potential for revealing trends in the fields of educational studies and information management.

De verkenning van God als vreeswekkende rechter is diep verankerd in het werk van Wittgenstein. Hiermee wil hij de grenzen van het menselijk denken aftasten.

The cultural turn has yet to fully reconfigure ‘class’ as a set of fictions, tropes, discourses and enduring culture-structures. Existing Durkheimian approaches have stalled at his middle period morphological reductionism. This paper constructs a more radical understanding in the late-Durkheimian idiom. It shows how class operates as a signifier in a language game of purity and pollution, virtue and vice. Taking a lead from studies of the ‘unruly’ working class, the paper opens up the more subtle pollution that attends to (...) the mythical ‘bourgeoisie’ and its associated and imagined ‘bourgeois’ culture. As a sign system this class location is deemed inauthentic, sybaritic, and as strangely deadening to cultural vitality. Although commonly found in contexts of gentrification and commodification that involve class conflict, this critical discourse is also applied within the bourgeois milieu. Such needless auto-critique suggests a relative autonomy from determination by class struggle. The possibilities for this approach are illustrated at length with reference to a paradigm case: the highly bourgeois milieu of the composer Richard Wagner and his Bayreuth Festival. (shrink)

With their charming Irish brogues, the members of the Real IRA bring a rich and sometimes sinister history to the drama of Sons of Anarchy. By discriminating among their targets and practicing military‐like discipline, the Irish Kings gain the status of freedom fighters. Admittedly, their tactics are violent, but groups like the Real IRA resort to violence only because they have no other option for effectively fighting for their political cause. On Sons of Anarchy we usually see the Belfast police (...) who are on Jimmy O's payroll—the ones who harass SAMCRO—but there is evidence that other members of the police force actively support the Crown and have used violence against the Real IRA. Some philosophers have concluded that violence may be legitimate for groups opposing an oppressive regime, but only so long as it does not directly target the civilian population. (shrink)

Conversions occur in legal theory about as often as they do in religion, which is to say rarely—so rarely that they fascinate as much for the fact that they happen at all as for the reasons they happen. It should not surprise, then, that the Postscript to H.L.A. Hart's famous work on jurisprudence reveals “the outstanding English philosopher of law of the twentieth century” reaffirming, rather than revising in any significant way, the two central tenets that distinguish his theory from (...) that of both classical natural law theorists and modern “new naturalists” like Ronald Dworkin: There is no necessary connection between law and morality; and judges inevitably confront cases where the decision is “not dictated by the law” and the judge “must act as a conscientious legislator would by deciding according to his own beliefs and values”. (shrink)

Scholars of Arabic dialects have long noted the occurrence of a morpheme in a widespread number of dialects, realized -ən or -an, frequently suffixed to morphologically indefinite nouns, especially when followed by an adjective. Separately, another morpheme, realized -un or -u, is attested with a slightly different distribution in the dialects of western Yemen. Traditionally, scholars have interpreted both morphemes as reflexes of an etymological case vowel + tanwīn, traditionally labeled “dialectal tanwīn.” In this paper, I offer a new reconstruction (...) of the origin and diachronic development of this morpheme. Throughout I integrate data and insights from comparative Semitics, as well as recently studied pre-Islamic epigraphic and textual materials, in order to break the familiar Classical Arabic / dialectal Arabic dichotomy and reframe the way in which historiography of features in the dialects is conducted. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the encroachment of advocacy in certain disciplines has undermined their credibility, and that this trend is largely due to uncritical acceptance of relativist epistemologies such as social constructivism. Examples are cited from anthropology, educational theory, law, the sociology of science, and women’s studies. It is suggested that practices in the natural and historical sciences, as contrasted to the attributes of pseudoscience, provide guidelines for both university scholarship and the public debate essential to democracy.