In Pietroski ( 2018 ) a simple representation language called SMPL is introduced, construed as a hypothesis about core conceptual structure. The present work is a study of this system from a logical perspective. In addition to establishing a completeness result and a complexity characterization for reasoning in the system, we also pinpoint its expressive limits, in particular showing that the fourth corner in the square of opposition (“ Some_not ”) eludes expression. We then study a seemingly small extension, called (...) SMPL +, which allows for a minimal predicate-binding operator. Perhaps surprisingly, the resulting system is shown to encode precisely the concepts expressible in first-order logic. However, unlike the latter class, the class of SMPL + expressions admits a simple procedural (context-free) characterization. Our contribution brings together research strands in logic—including natural logic, modal logic, description logic, and hybrid logic—with recent advances in semantics and philosophy of language. (shrink)

Comparative research enriches semiotics and deepens its exchanges with other sciences. The work can also highlight inductive methods and socio-historically specific forms and practices, thereby helping to develop a general semiotics and a semiotics of cultures. This article compares the morphology by Vladimir Propp that inspired the Greimassian narrative schema to a small sample of narrative forms, then to Aristotle's Poetics and to a model of Hollywood films. Certain motifs and subgenres represent elementary schemas with two or three actants and (...) functions that rely on role reversal and emotions. A half dozen subgenres can be differentiated by the different affects that they aim to elicit. Greek tragedy is to evoke intense emotional states, and reveals a close interdependence between characteristics of the hero, modulations of the critical action, and the emotive effect produced. In the films, the variation of the affective intensity constitutes a key element of the narrative rhythm, and two main sequences supply opposing and complementary axiologies. A conclusion suggests the value of bringing together the semiotics of the passions, recent research on the history of the emotions, and comparative studies of how different cultures express feelings. (shrink)

The concept of "ecological niche" is frequently employed in sociocultural anthropology, but there have been few systematic applications of it. This paper examines the utility of the concept for the analysis of social interaction and change, with special reference to complex societies. In a small agricultural valley of northern California, competition between two status groups over a scarce resource--land--has led to displacement and changing patterns of resource use. "Niche" describes the aggregate outcome of underlying processes of competition on the individual (...) level. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS toral inventions (such as basic Christian communities), and the religious backgrounds of millions who help to make up the churches, Catholic and Protestant, of the United States. Providence College Providence, RI EDWARD L. CLEARY, O.P. Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior. By ALFRED R. MELE. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. 272 + ix. $39.95 (cloth). Alfred Mele's overarching aim in this book (...) is to offer an account of the role of intentions in the explanation of intentional action. He works within the familiar terms of causal theories of action, and is particularly indebted to Donald Davidson. In Part I, Mele borrows a set of theses from Davidson's desire/belief model of intentional action, and in the process of addressing problems associated with these theses, he progressively refines an account of action that understands an agent's reasons to have explanatory force by virtue of being among the causes of action. In Part II, Mele argues that desire/belief models are insufficient as they stand and need to be filled out by recognizing that intentions provide a crucial link between reasons and actions. The discussion begins with the vexed question of how the content of mental states can be relevant to the causal explanation of action. We constantly appeal to our desires, beliefs, plans, and so on (i.e., to various propositional, or intentional, attitudes) in explaining our behavior. But how does, say, my appetite for good wine and my belief that the house chardonnay is such a wine figure in the causal order that brings about my act of ordering a glass of it? Presumably, these intentional states supervene upon certain physical states of my body, and the latter do the causal work of producing wine-ordering behavior. However, there are good reasons to think that, with certain sorts of changes in my history and environment (viz., of the sort described in twin earth thought experiments), these physical states could be the realization of different intentional states. So can a causal theory of action actually accord my desires and beliefs any role in explaining my action? Mele argues that even if we hold (with externalists) that the agent's history and environment help to fix the content of her intentional states, we can nonetheless say that unless the agent had intended what she did, she would not have acted as she did. The behavior is intentional action by virtue of issuing (in the right way) from physical processes BOOK REVIEWS 333 that realize the agent's reasons for acting, and these processes realize these reasons only if the processes have an appropriate causal history. The result is that what we desire, believe, and intend does after all make a systematic difference in what we do. Mele makes some helpful refinements in the standard account of the causal role of desire in intentional action. It has typically been claimed that when an agent's wants compete, the "strongest" of them deter· mines the action; if an agent wants to do A more than anything else that she takes herself to be able to do, then if she acts intentionally she will do A. Mele points out that this general claim must be qualified so as to index desires to times, to accommodate both unsuccessful at· tempts and the agent's estimates of the likelihood of success, and to deal with the complex relations between desires. He explores the way in which agents are able to control the motivational strength of their desires, and he works out a definition of irresistible desire. One of the deepest challenges to the claim that action is caused by what we most desire arises in considering "motivational ties." How, on this account, is intentional action possible when we equally desire each of two incompatible alternatives? An arbitrary decision procedure can be adopted (e.g., a coin toss), but this alone does not en· hance the attractiveness of the randomly selected alternative. Here Mele introduces his thesis about intentions: viz., that intentions have an "executive quality that is not reducible to desire-strength" (p. 72), so that even when there is no preponderant motivation to do A... (shrink)

Everything about us today tells us that we live in a world which will be increasingly dominated by empirical and theoretic science. This is the world in which the Church lives and proclaims its message about Jesus Christ. It is not an alien world, for it is in this world of space and time that God has planted us. He made the universe and endowed man with gifts to investigate and understand it. Just as he made life to produce itself, (...) so he has made the universe with man as an essential constituent in it, that it may bring forth and articulate knowledge of itself. Regarded in this light the pursuit of science is one of the ways in which man exercises the dominion in the earth which he was given at his creation. That is how, for example, Francis Bacon understood the work of human science, as man's obedience to God. Science is a religious duty, while man as scientist can be spoken of as the priest of creation , whose task it is to interpret the books of nature, to understand the universe in its wonderful structures and harmonies, and to bring it all into orderly articulation, so that it fulfils its proper end as the vast theatre of glory in which the creator is worshipped and praised. Nature itself is dumb, but it is man's part to bring it to word, to be its mouth through which the whole universe gives voice to the glory and majesty of the living God. (shrink)

We present a formal, mathematical model of argument structure and evaluation, taking seriously the procedural and dialogical aspects of argumentation. The model applies proof standards to determine the acceptability of statements on an issue-by-issue basis. The model uses different types of premises (ordinary premises, assumptions and exceptions) and information about the dialectical status of statements (stated, questioned, accepted or rejected) to allow the burden of proof to be allocated to the proponent or the respondent, as appropriate, for each premise separately. (...) Our approach allows the burden of proof for a premise to be assigned to a different party than the one who has the burden of proving the conclusion of the argument, and also to change the burden of proof or applicable proof standard as the dialogue progresses from stage to stage. Useful for modeling legal dialogues, the burden of production and burden of persuasion can be handled separately, with a different responsible party and applicable proof standard for each. Carneades enables critical questions of argumentation schemes to be modeled as additional premises, using premise types to capture the varying effect on the burden of proof of different kinds of questions. (shrink)

Existing research suggests that people's judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. We develop an explanation for this phenomenon that draws on standard tools from the literature on graphical causal models and, in particular, on the idea of probabilistic sampling. Using these tools, we propose a new measure of actual causal strength. This measure accurately captures three effects of normality on causal judgment that have been observed in existing studies. (...) More importantly, the measure predicts a new effect ("abnormal deflation"). Two studies show that people's judgments do, in fact, show this new effect. Taken together, the patterns of people's causal judgments thereby provide support for the proposed explanation. (shrink)

The reaction to Darwin's Origin of Species varied in many countries according to the roles played by national scientific institutions and traditions and the attitudes of religious and political groups. The contributors to this volume, including M. J. S. Hodge, David Hull, and Roberto Moreno, gathered in 1972 at an international conference on the comparative reception of Darwinism. Their essays look at early pro- and anti-Darwinism arguments, and three additional comparative essays and appendices add a larger perspective. For this paperback (...) edition, Thomas F. Glick has added a new preface commenting on recent research. (shrink)

The Pleadings Game is a normative formalization and computational model of civil pleading, founded in Roberty Alexy''s discourse theory of legal argumentation. The consequences of arguments and counterarguments are modelled using Geffner and Pearl''s nonmonotonic logic,conditional entailment. Discourse in focussed using the concepts of issue and relevance. Conflicts between arguments can be resolved by arguing about the validity and priority of rules, at any level. The computational model is fully implemented and has been tested using examples from Article Nine of (...) the Uniform Commercial Code. (shrink)

Theories of rational decision making often abstract away from computational and other resource limitations faced by real agents. An alternative approach known as resource rationality puts such matters front and center, grounding choice and decision in the rational use of finite resources. Anticipated by earlier work in economics and in computer science, this approach has recently seen rapid development and application in the cognitive sciences. Here, the theory of rationality plays a dual role, both as a framework for normative assessment (...) and as a source of scientific hypotheses about how mental processes in fact work. The latter project, often called rational analysis, depends for its success on a fine-grained characterization of the computational problem facing a decision maker, which may in turn depend on realistic assumptions about what the relevant agent is like. As a consequence, resource rationality involves a delicate, but often fruitful interplay between the normative and the descriptive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:706 BOOK REVIEWS struments of redemption for others. Mary is the primary exemplar of receiving her Son's redeeming love in freedom and of wholeheartedly mediating his graces to all he has redeemed. The final essay, "Mary and Modernity," is most timely for American Christians and ecumenists. It is a very worthwhile attempt to compare and contrast the secular triad of virtues, liberty, equality, and fraternity with the Christian triad (...) of theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, especially as they are exemplified in Mary. Although this approach perceives Mary more as a " sign of contradiction " to our secularistic culture, she will help us to avoid the extremes of confusing true freedom with licence, genuine equality with egalitarianism, and authentic fraternity with collectivism by helping inspire in us the really liberating values of her Son's Gospel. Everyone can benefit immensely from the intelligent reading of this book. Mt. St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, Maryland FREDERICK M. JELLY, O.P. Dieu et l'etre d'apres Thomas d'Aquin et Hegel. By EMILIO BRITO. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991. Pp. 422. 245 francs. Sprung from premature fears of post-modernity or from an ignorant nostalgia for a monoform Catholicism which never existed, universal dismissals of " modernity " still appear occasionally in Catholic j ournals. They recall,the neo-scholastic te:xitbooks prior to Vatican II in whose pages the " moderni " (among whom were numbered not only "Kantiani" but "Hegeliani ") were dismissed by authors who, having read a few pages, were incapable of grasping the basic directions of philosophy from Herder to Heidegger. Emilio Brito, S.J., however, follows in the line of the French and German Jesuits: through this century they have sustained a varied dialogue, in philosophy and theology, between Thomas Aquinas and the important figures of modern philosophy. His two works on Hegel's Christology, and a third large study of God and creation in Schelling are now followed by this comparative work. The theology of Aquinas and the philosophy of Hegel are like two galaxies. Do they move past each other at a distance, or do they move through each other guarding a proper identity with similar forces and shared motifs? Brito has chosen one theme within these two vast realms of thought: his topic (and the book's title can mislead) is God; 'being' BOOK REVIEWS 707 is present as a stimulus to our reflection about God. After an introduction on recent interpretations of Hegel, particularly by Catholics, pages which should be read by all interested in contemporary theology, there are three sections: " the knowledge and naming of God," " the divine substance and the cycle of its attributes," and " the operations of absolute spirit." The chapters in each of the three areas present Aquinas's and then Hegel's thought, and sometimes a section of further comparison. At the end of the work Brito offers a conclusion ("God's Goodness") and a postlude ("God's Beauty"). Finally there is a "Resume." According to Brito, Aquinas's thought is clear (his Aristotelian logic is readily understandable), and his emphasis lies with the divine transcendence. Despite the process-format of the Summa theologiae and the traces of history in the headship of Christ, the diversity of sacraments, and the theologies of faith and natural law, his modest description of movement in God and in God's world of beings stands in contrast to the unleashed and unresolved development penetrating Hegel's Geist. The concluding " Resume " of nine pages is particularly valuable as it brings together the author's synthetic insights into Aquinas and Hegel (one might hope that at least it would appear in translation). The following excerpt displays its balance and clarity. The God of the Summa tends to stay back from mediation, letting itself exist in a certain exteriority, while the Hegelian absolute " raises out" the determinations it posits only by also absorbing them negatively. In the same vein, the Hegelian parousia of the negative abolishes absolutely the distance maintained by the inexpressible in language. In an opposite direction, the originating positivity of the God of Thomas grounds the irreducible presence of a reality represented in discourse. If he is a stranger to this approach and more... (shrink)

While Bayesian models have been applied to an impressive range of cognitive phenomena, methodological challenges have been leveled concerning their role in the program of rational analysis. The focus of the current article is on computational impediments to probabilistic inference and related puzzles about empirical confirmation of these models. The proposal is to rethink the role of Bayesian methods in rational analysis, to adopt an independently motivated notion of rationality appropriate for computationally bounded agents, and to explore broad conditions under (...) which Bayesian agents would be rational. The proposal is illustrated with a characterization of costs inspired by thermodynamics. (shrink)

Carneades is an open source argument mapping application and a programming library for building argumentation support tools. In this paper, Carneades’ support for argument reconstruction, evaluation and visualization is illustrated by modeling most of the factual and legal arguments in Popov v Hayashi.

Some physicians, in their care of patients at risk of misusing opioids, use machine learning (ML)-based prediction drug monitoring programmes (PDMPs) to guide their decision making in the prescription of opioids. This can cause a conflict: a PDMP Score can indicate a patient is at a high risk of opioid abuse while a patient expressly reports oppositely. The prescriber is then left to balance the credibility and trust of the patient with the PDMP Score. Pozzi1 argues that a prescriber who (...) downgrades the credibility of a patient’s testimony based on a low PDMP Score is epistemically and morally unjustified and contributes to a form of testimonial injustice. This results in patients being silenced, excluded from decision-making processes and subjected to structural injustices. Additionally, the use of ML systems in medical practices raises concerns about perpetuating existing inequalities, overestimating their capabilities and displacing human authority. However, almost the very same critiques apply to human-based systems. Formalisation, ML systems included, should instead be viewed positively,2 and precisely as a powerful means to begin eroding these and other problems in ethically sensitive domains. In this case, the epistemic virtues of formalisation include promoting transparency, consistency and replicability in decision making. Rigorous ML systems can also help ensure that models …. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work was the first to propose an inquiry into the forms, dynamics, and constructs of educational policy. This fine book remains the only treatment of educational policy incorporating an account of the differences between various kinds of educational goods. Professor Green explored the nature of policy and prospects for the future, and it is a rare treat that we can now (more than fifteen years later) revisit the text to discover his uncanny accuracy.

Authors of books on business ethics and corporate social responsibility fall into two general approaches when they answer the question: Why should a business firm, which represents private property, have greater obligations to the local community than an ordinary citizen? Authors generally subscribe to a rights approach or to a power model. This paper will present four rights approaches and three power models which are used to describe the relationship of the firm to society. Introducing these different approaches and models (...) will be two brief expositions which provide the setting for determining the relationship of a firm to society. The first traces two lines to the development of the contemporary American corporation. The second views the business corporation as a quasi-public institution. (shrink)

Many individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) and individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) have social–emotional problems, such as social difficulties, and show signs of aggression, depression, and anxiety. These problems can be partly associated with their executive functions (EFs) and theory of mind (ToM). The difficulties of both groups in EF and ToM may in turn be related to self-directed speech (i.e., overt or covert speech that is directed at the self). Self-directed speech is thought to (...) allow for the construction of non-sensory representations (i.e., representations that do not coincide with direct observation). Such non-sensory representations allow individuals to overcome the limits set upon them by the senses. This ability is constrained by the development of word meaning structure (i.e., the way words are understood). We argue that the greater ability to construct non-sensory representations may result in more enhanced forms of EF and ToM. We conclude that difficulties in EF, ToM, and social–emotional functioning in those with hearing and language problems may be accounted for in terms of word meaning impairments. We propose that word meaning structure and self-directed speech should be considered in assigning EF and ToM treatments to individuals with DLD and those who are D/HH. (shrink)

We present a high-level declarative programming language for representing argumentation schemes, where schemes represented in this language can be easily validated by domain experts, including developers of argumentation schemes in informal logic and philosophy, and serve as executable specifications for automatically constructing arguments, when applied to a set of assumptions. This new rule language for representing argumentation schemes is validated by using it to represent twenty representative argumentation schemes.

What does religion contribute to business ethics? Related to the practical, religion applies theological concepts to business situations; namely, vocation, stewardship, human dignity, co-creation, co-conservation, sharing in God's power, servant leadership, encounter with the Incarnation, sacramental sign and justice (divine and human). These concepts suggest the threefold component of religion: doctrine (creed), worship (cult) and values governing behavior (code). A principle taken from religious practice illustrates its unique contribution to business ethics. The principle of proportionality (or double effect) exemplifies code (...) in its balancing of good and evil outcomes. The more contemporary principle called the fundamental option identifies the role of vocation and calling in the notion of creed. The component cult might be reflected in the insistence on human dignity which is highlighted in papal social teaching. (shrink)

While pragmatic arguments for numerical probability axioms have received much attention, justifications for axioms of qualitative probability have been less discussed. We offer an argument for the requirement that an agent’s qualitative judgments be probabilistically representable, inspired by, but importantly different from, the Money Pump argument for transitivity of preference and Dutch book arguments for quantitative coherence. The argument is supported by a theorem, to the effect that a subject is systematically susceptible to dominance given her preferred acts, if and (...) only if the subject’s comparative judgments preclude representation by a standard probability measure. (shrink)

Rights, justice, and power raise many interesting questions. Why do such basic concepts as rights and justice have such differentpoints of concern—equality, proportionality, medium rei? Why are there such different perspectives in philosophy, theology, and law? Why is the notion of power in business ethics so isolated from the general discussion of applied justice in treatises on business contracts, employee relations, and in other related topics? Discussions of power seemed parallel with discussions of justice. The two did not seem to (...) intersect. In this paper I shall argue that rights, power, and justice are interrelated. While natural rights are the basis for justice, rights cannotbe realized nor justice become operative without power. I shall call this relationship and the theory underlying it “Transforming Justice.”One of the basic concerns of this article is to notice the lack of interaction between rights and power in the traditional theories ofjustice. Granted that for many philosophers it is sufficient to determine what is just. But the notion of justice as an active virtue that persons are to exercise in their dealings with others goes further. It touches the realities of life that every person experiences. Life doesnot separate rights from power. Reflection upon the current separation of rights from power both in theory and in action is analogous to the separation of the “sensory” from the “imaginative” in art and in life. The urge to devise a framework of justice that brings out thewholeness of its existential being is the underlying rationale for developing a theory of transforming justice. Another purpose fordeveloping a theory of transforming justice is to suggest a conceptual framework of business ethics and corporate social responsibility that incorporates values, rights, power, and virtue. Authors and teachers approach these issues either from a value perspective or from the view that institutions respond only to those who exercise power. Thus, it isnecessary for a conceptual framework to incorporate the dynamics of power and the qualifying aspects of rights or claims.A natural law approach to justice and rights argues that humans have certain basic rights that others, whether humans or institutions, are required to respect. Natural rights theory places the burden or duty on each individual to respect the rights ofevery other person. In addition, justice is usually defined by natural law theorists as “giving each person his or her due,” what is requiredby natural rights, what is owed, earned, or deserved. But its applications fall short of reality. It raises other questions. How does one person get another to give him what is “his due”? How are duties and claims entailed by natural rights enforced in practice? The notionof transforming justice attempts to answer these questions. (shrink)

The provability logic of a theory $T$ is the set of modal formulas, which under any arithmetical realization are provable in $T$. We slightly modify this notion by requiring the arithmetical realizations to come from a specified set $\Gamma$. We make an analogous modification for interpretability logics. We first study provability logics with restricted realizations and show that for various natural candidates of $T$ and restriction set $\Gamma$, the result is the logic of linear frames. However, for the theory Primitive (...) Recursive Arithmetic (PRA), we define a fragment that gives rise to a more interesting provability logic by capitalizing on the well-studied relationship between PRA and I$\Sigma_1$. We then study interpretability logics, obtaining upper bounds for IL(PRA), whose characterization remains a major open question in interpretability logic. Again this upper bound is closely related to linear frames. The technique is also applied to yield the nontrivial result that IL(PRA) $\subset$ ILM. (shrink)

Rights, justice, and power raise many interesting questions. Why do such basic concepts as rights and justice have such differentpoints of concern—equality, proportionality, medium rei (moderation or the middle of the thing itself without reference to the person using it)? Why are there such different perspectives in philosophy, theology, and law? Why is the notion of power in business ethics so isolated from the general discussion of applied justice in treatises on business contracts, employee relations, and in other related topics? (...) Discussions of power seemed parallel with discussions of justice. The two did not seem to intersect.In this paper I shall argue that rights, power, and justice are interrelated. While natural rights are the basis for justice, rights cannotbe realized nor justice become operative without power. I shall call this relationship and the theory underlying it “Transforming Justice.”One of the basic concerns of this article is to notice the lack of interaction between rights and power in the traditional theories ofjustice. Granted that for many philosophers it is sufficient to determine what is just. But the notion of justice as an active virtue that persons are to exercise in their dealings with others goes further. It touches the realities of life that every person experiences. Life doesnot separate rights from power. Reflection upon the current separation of rights from power both in theory and in action is analogous to the separation of the “sensory” from the “imaginative” in art and in life. The urge to devise a framework of justice that brings out thewholeness of its existential being is the underlying rationale for developing a theory of transforming justice. Another purpose fordeveloping a theory of transforming justice is to suggest a conceptual framework of business ethics and corporate social responsibility that incorporates values, rights, power, and virtue. Authors and teachers approach these issues either from a value (or rights/justice)perspective or from the view that institutions respond only to those who exercise power (apart from legitimate claims). Thus, it isnecessary for a conceptual framework to incorporate the dynamics of power and the qualifying aspects of rights or claims.A natural law approach to justice and rights argues that humans have certain basic rights that others, whether humans or institutions(regardless of source), are required to respect. Natural rights theory places the burden or duty on each individual to respect the rights ofevery other person. In addition, justice is usually defined by natural law theorists as “giving each person his or her due,” what is requiredby natural rights, what is owed, earned, or deserved. But its applications fall short of reality. It raises other questions. How does one person get another to give him what is “his due”? How are duties and claims entailed by natural rights enforced in practice? The notionof transforming justice attempts to answer these questions. (shrink)

The emergence of ethical controversy -- First embryo research regimes -- The ethics of embryonic stem cell research -- Stem cell and cloning politics.

This collection of eminently practical advice from the likes of Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Pythagoras, and Aristotle covers subjects as diverse as money, child-raising, politics, philosophy, law, and relationships--all aspects of life and how to live it. Thomas Cleary has translated these sayings and aphorisms from the Arabic sources that preserved Greek thought throughout the Middle Ages. Many of the texts no longer exist in the original Greek. Included in the book is an appendix that presents resonant sayings and fragments (...) from Buddhist, Taoist, and Muslim sources, demonstrating the universal quality of the teachings of the Greek sages and hinting at the interaction between Western and Eastern cultures. (shrink)

Understanding the development and practice of power based on an in-depth observation of human psychology has been a part of traditional Chinese thought for thousands of years and is considered a prerequisite for mastering the arts of strategy and leadership. "Thunder in the Sky" presents two secret classics of this ancient Chinese tradition. The commentary by Thomas Cleary the renowned translator of dozens of Asian classics highlights the contemporary application of these teachings.

In this essay I will examine the changing historical relationship between two fundamentally modern concepts: self-preservation and self-ownership. These two concepts have served a dual function in modernity. On the one hand, they are crucial parts of the theoretical underpinning of liberalism: the natural law of self-preservation is the foundation of the rational inclination to form civil society (e.g., Hobbes); and self-ownership provides the foundation for the liberal (i.e., Lockean) notion of private property. But on the other hand, these two (...) concepts serve much more than a theoretical purpose; they also perform a duty in what I would like to call, borrowing Foucault's phrase, a modern technology of the self. At this level, the concepts of self-ownership and self-preservation shape individuals to follow certain routines in their behavior, to treat their bodies in specific ways, to organize their time in a particular fashion. In performing these routines, individuals participate in the collection and dissemination of that knowledge of individual bodies and groups of bodies which, as Foucault and Arendt in their different ways revealed, is endemic to modernity. (shrink)

This essay adopts a semiotic perspective focused on practices of communication, movement, and translation to examine the global impact of A. J. Greimas and his oeuvre. The linguist and semiotician’s lecture trips abroad, the number and provenance of international students in his Paris seminar, and the chronology and linguistic geography of translations of his work help describe, gauge, and explain the dissemination and development of his ideas throughout the world. His project has engendered distinctive appropriations and at times productive institutional (...) structures in a number of cultural and linguistic contexts, notably Romance, Anglo-American, Germanic, Russian, Lithuanian, and Chinese. The broader historical relations between France and other lands, and the extent of each society’s use of the French language have conditioned, fostered, or impeded responses to his proposals. The conclusion’s discussion of the relative importance of personal contacts, socio-historical context, and the sociolinguistic and pedagogical status of French for his international reception aims to contribute to general methodological debates in the history of science and ideas and in transnational history. (shrink)

This article on the early history of phenomenological psychological research in the academic context in America focuses on the four approaches of the following respective psychologists: 1) Donald Snygg, Arthur W. Combs, and Anne C. Richards and Fred Richards; 2) Robert B. MacLeod; 3) Adrian L. van Kaam; and 4) Amedeo P. Giorgi. It begins by first addressing the "context" for this early history namely, the European origin of philosophical phenomenology and the connection of it with the psychology of its (...) times in Europe, and then the American background for the development of a sensibility for phenomenology and an eventual connection of phenomenology with psychology. Each of the four positions was examined in terms of basic approach to the study of human experience and behavior. That is, examination was directed toward whether the respective position was under the aegis of psychology as a human science or as a natural science. Also examined were the research postures and the methodologies of the four positions in terms of their respective degrees of reflecting either the human science or the natural science approach, and in terms of their approximation to a phenomenological psychology. It was found that syncretism characterized the approaches of the first three positions, and that there was either an absence of phenomenological psychological method in the psychologies of those positions or, in the case of MacLeod, an undeveloped and non-worked-out method. Only the work of Amedeo Giorgi presented 1) a human science approach that was radical and not compromised by natural science syncretions, and 2) an articulated phenomenological psychological method based on Husserl's concept of intentionality and on mediation of Merleau-Ponty's philosophical phenomenological method. (shrink)