Schelling is often thought to be a protean thinker whose work is difficult to approach or interpret. Devin Zane Shaw shows that the philosophy of art is the guiding thread to understanding Schelling's philosophical development from his early works in 1795-1796 through his theological turn in 1809-1810. -/- Schelling's philosophy of art is the 'keystone' of the system; it unifies his idea of freedom and his philosophy of nature. Schelling's idea of freedom is developed through a critique (...) of the formalism of Kant's and Fichte's practical philosophies, and his nature-philosophy is developed to show how subjectivity and objectivity emerge from a common source in nature. The philosophy of art plays a dual role in the system. First, Schelling argues that artistic activity produces through the artwork a sensible realization of the ideas of philosophy. Second, he argues that artistic production creates the possibility of a new mythology that can overcome the socio-political divisions that structure the relationships between individuals and society. Shaw's careful analysis shows how art, for Schelling, is the highest expression of human freedom. (shrink)

Jacques Rancière's work has challenged many of the assumptions of contemporary continental philosophy by placing equality at the forefront of emancipatory political thought and aesthetics. Drawing on the claim that egalitarian politics persistently appropriates elements from political philosophy to engage new forms of dissensus, Devin Zane Shaw argues that Rancière's work also provides an opportunity to reconsider modern philosophy and aesthetics in light of the question of equality. In Part I, Shaw examines Rancière's philosophical debts to (...) the 'good sense' of Cartesian egalitarianism and the existentialist critique of identity. In Part II, he outlines Rancière's critical analyses of Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg and offers a reinterpretation of Rancière's debate with Alain Badiou in light of the philosophical differences between Schiller and Schelling. -/- From engaging debates about political subjectivity from Descartes to Sartre, to delineating the egalitarian stakes in aesthetics and the philosophy of art from Schiller to Badiou, this book presents a concise tour through a series of egalitarian moments found within the histories of modern philosophy and aesthetics. (shrink)

In this essay I attempt to defend Badiou's conception of inaesthetics, drawn from the Handbook of Inaesthetics, from the pertinent criticisms of Rancière. In doing so, it is possible to delimit the intra-philosophical effects (truth effects) of artistic events (this combination being the domain of inaesthetics). Badiou can be defended from all of Rancière's objections, save the objection that inaesthetics asserts a 'propriety of art.' However, in granting this objection, it is possible to open a different question regarding Badiou's work: (...) what is the status of Badiou's comments on art outside of the Handbook of Inaesthetics? Through a reading of Le siècle, I show that, for Badiou, the importance of art extends beyond inaesthetics to other domains of thought. Yet Badiou has yet to answer the question of how art and truth relate outside of the domain of inaesthetics. (shrink)

This essay presents an overview of what I call “Cartesian egalitarianism,” a current of political thought that runs from François Poullain de la Barre, through Simone de Beauvoir, to Jacques Rancière. The impetus for this egalitarianism, I argue, is derived from Descartes’ supposition that “good sense” or “reason” is equally distributed among all people. Although Descartes himself limits the egalitarian import of this supposition, I claim that we can nevertheless identify three features of this subsequent tradition or tendency. First, Cartesian (...) egalitarians think political agency as a practice of subjectivity. Second, they share the supposition that there is an equality of intelligences and abilities shared by all human beings. Third, these thinkers conceptualize politics as a processing of a wrong, meaning that politics initiates new practices through which those who were previously oppressed assert themselves as self-determining political subjects. (shrink)

Drawing a line of intellectual heritage between French philosophy and antifascist practice, this book provides new, incisive interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialism to make the case for a broader militant movement against fascism.

In this essay, I attempt to show that the “war on terror” intensifies the use of biopolitical techniques. One such example, which I take as a point of departure, is Guantánamo Bay. We must place this camp in its proper genealogy with the many camps of the twentieth century. However, this genealogy is not a genealogy of the extremes of political space during and after the twentieth century; it is a genealogy of the transformation of political space itself. I will (...) attempt to show this in three steps: first, a description and critique of the biopolitical in both Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, who I take as exemplary in their analyses; second, an analysis of contemporary biopolitical techniques (including the camp), which enables us to avoid the liberal-democratic ideological misunderstanding of the war on terror; and third, a discussion regarding resistance to biopolitical techniques. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose a mutually constructive reading of the work of Jacques Rancière and Jean-Paul Sartre. On the one hand, I argue that Rancière's egalitarian political thought owes several important conceptual debts to Sartre's Being and Nothingness , especially in his use of the concepts of freedom, contingency and facticity. These concepts play a dual role in Rancière's thought. First, he appropriates them to show how the formation of subjectivity through freedom is a dynamic that introduces new ways (...) of speaking, being and doing, instead of being a mode of assuming an established identity. Second, Rancière uses these concepts to demonstrate the contingency of any situation or social order, a contingency that is the possibility of egalitarian praxis. On the other hand, I also argue that reading Sartre with Rancière makes possible the reconstruction of Sartre's project within the horizon of freedom and equality rather than that of authenticity. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Diagne’s claim that the fundamental intuition of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s thought is this: African art is philosophy. Diagne argues that it is from an experience of African art and an encounter with Bergson’s philosophy that Senghor comes to formulate his philosophical thought, which is better understood as vitalist rather than essentialist. I conclude by arguing that Senghor’s vitalism is a philosophy of becoming which nevertheless lacks an account of radical political change.

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

In this essay, I propose a mutually constructive reading of the work of Jacques Rancière and Jean-Paul Sartre. On the one hand, I argue that Rancière's egalitarian political thought owes several important conceptual debts to Sartre's Being and Nothingness, especially in his use of the concepts of freedom, contingency and facticity. These concepts play a dual role in Rancière's thought. First, he appropriates them to show how the formation of subjectivity through freedom is a dynamic that introduces new ways of (...) speaking, being and doing, instead of being a mode of assuming an established identity. Second, Rancière uses these concepts to demonstrate the contingency of any situation or social order, a contingency that is the possibility of egalitarian praxis. On the other hand, I also argue that reading Sartre with Rancière makes possible the reconstruction of Sartre's project within the horizon of freedom and equality rather than that of authenticity. (shrink)

Devin Zane Shaw’s new book Egalitarian Moments is an attempt to think with and through Jacques Rancière. Shaw’s highly original interpretation of Rancière opens space within Rancière’s thought for a new, expanded account of the politics of art and literature, and Shaw is then able to use this theory as a way of rereading the history of philosophy. Shaw’s project is ultimately an attempt to show that it is possible to do philosophy in an (...) egalitarian way – that not all political philosophy need be “political philosophy” in Rancière’s pejorative sense – and that philosophy can serve as a vital resource for egalitarian political movements. (shrink)

The theme of the 6th biennial Radical Philosophy Association Conference, held at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in November 2004, was "Philosophy Against Empire." The U.S. imperial project, pursued by both Republican and Democratic administrations, has many dimensions, including military force and the mechanisms for its legitimation; the global economy and flows of money and people across borders; and biopolitics, or the disciplining of bodies through the micro-mechanisms of power apart from traditional forms of sovereignty. These issues are explored in (...) depth in these collected and revised essays from the Conference, along with the forms of subjectivity that can resist and respond to the alienation produced within and by the imperial project, toward the creation of an alternative global order. Authors include Karsten Struhl, Ann Ferguson, Edmund Byrne, David Cormier, Harry Targ, Jo-Ann Pilardi, Lucinda Joy Peach, Devin Zane Shaw, Tzuchien Tho, Eduardo Mendieta, Richard Schmitt, Richard Jones, Richard Peterson, Peter Amato, William McBride, Omar Dahbour, Kory Schaff, David Schweickart, and Carol Gould. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind (from eliminative materialists to psychofunctionalists to interpretivists) generally assume that a normative ideal delimits which mental phenomena exist (though they disagree about how to characterize the ideal in question). This assumption is dubious. A comprehensive ontology of mind includes some mental phenomena that are neither (a) explanatorily fecund posits in any branch of cognitive science that aims to unveil the mechanistic structure of cognitive systems nor (b) ideal (nor even progressively closer to ideal) posits in any given (...) folk psychological practice. Indeed, one major function of scientific psychology has been (and will be) to introduce just such (normatively suboptimal but real) mental phenomena into folk psychological taxonomies. The development and public dissemination of IQ research over the course of the 20th Century is a case in point. (shrink)

This book examines an important area of Aristotle's philosophy: the generation of substances. While other changes presuppose the existence of a substance (Socrates grows taller), substantial generation results in something genuinely new that did not exist before (Socrates himself). The central argument of this book is that Aristotle defends a 'hylomorphic' model of substantial generation. In its most complete formulation, this model says that substantial generation involves three principles: (1) matter, which is the subject from which the change proceeds; (2) (...) form, which is the end towards which the process advances; and (3) an efficient cause, which directs the process towards that form. By examining the development of this model across Aristotle's works, Devin Henry seeks to deepen our grasp on how the doctrine of hylomorphism - understood as a blueprint for thinking about the world - informs our understanding of the process by which new substances come into being. (shrink)

Many psychologists studying lay belief attribution and behavior explanation cite Donald Davidson in support of their assumption that people construe beliefs as inner causes. But Davidson’s influential argument is unsound; there are no objective grounds for the intuition that the folk construe beliefs as inner causes that produce behavior. Indeed, recent experimental work by Ian Apperly, Bertram Malle, Henry Wellman, and Tania Lombrozo provides an empirical framework that accords well with Gilbert Ryle’s alternative thesis that the folk construe beliefs as (...) patterns of living that contextualize behavior. (shrink)

In Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee reveals that American man of integrity Atticus Finch harbors deep-seated racist beliefs. Bob Ewell, Finch's nemesis in To Kill a Mockingbird, harbors the same beliefs. But the two men live out their shared racist beliefs in dramatically different fashions. This article argues that extant dispositionalist accounts of belief lack the tools to accommodate Finch and Ewell's divergent styles of believing. It then draws on literary and philosophical character studies to construct the required tools.

Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief (...) theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world to be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan’s Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been (...) duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan’s background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan’s Canon with an openness to the existence of non-humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the relationship between interpretivism about belief and normative standards. Interpretivists have traditionally taken beliefs to be fixed in relation to norms of interpretation. However, recent work by philosophers and psychologists reveals that human belief attribution practices are governed by a rich diversity of normative standards. Interpretivists thus face a dilemma: either give up on the idea that belief is constitutively normative or countenance a context-sensitive disjunction of norms that constitute belief. Either way, interpretivists should embrace the intersubjective (...) indeterminacy of belief. (shrink)

Double dissociations between perceivable colors and physical properties of colored objects have led many philosophers to endorse relationalist accounts of color. I argue that there are analogous double dissociations between attitudes of belief—the beliefs that people attribute to each other in everyday life—and intrinsic cognitive states of belief—the beliefs that some cognitive scientists posit as cogs in cognitive systems—pitched at every level of psychological explanation. These dissociations provide good reason to refrain from conflating attitudes of belief with intrinsic cognitive states (...) of belief. I suggest that interpretivism provides an attractive account of the former. Like colors, attitudes of belief evolved to be ecological signifiers, not cogs in cognitive systems. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Krzysztof Poslajko reconstructs—and endorses as probative—a dilemma for interpretivism first posed by Alex Byrne. On the first horn of the dilemma, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to an ideal interpreter (and thus loses any connection with actual folk psychological practices). On the second horn, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to individuals’ judgements (and thus denies the possibility of error). I show that this is a false dilemma. By (...) taking a model-theoretic approach to folk psychology, and marrying interpretivism with dispositionalism, interpretivists can viably reject the notion of an ideal (or canonical) interpreter—and relativize attitudes to actual lay interpreters—without taking on board the unacceptable epistemological consequences of allowing that attitudes are judgement-dependent. (shrink)

Since each term only has significance in contrast to its negation, the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal is a Kantian philosophical postulation that is as arbitrary as any binary (e.g., presence–absence) when submitted to Jacques Derrida’s method of deconstruction. According to Noumenism – a philosophy founded on the non-dualistic reinscription of phenomena and noumena – works of art possess elements which are simultaneously sense-data, and no data to any mind. This paradoxical status is achieved by means of an (...) artist-invented mechanism which allows its generative workings to run amok. The mechanism itself is a ‘compound-image’ formed by the paranoiac-critical activity of abolishing the mutual exclusivity of two or more different systems (i.e., the organization of related elements into complex wholes, methods, procedures, techniques, etc.). To illustrate this, an analysis of ‘No. 6’ from Noumenist poet Jason Johnson’s Hymns from Purgatory is undertaken. As they develop, refine or adopt their own philosophies of art, today’s artists and tomorrow’s are challenged to reckon with the ideas put forward in this article. (shrink)

I have proposed wedding the theories of belief known as dispositionalism and interpretivism. Krzysztof Poslajko objects that dispositionalism does just fine on its own and, moreover, is better off without interpretivism’s metaphysical baggage. I argue that Poslajko is wrong: in order to secure a principled criterion for individuating beliefs, dispositionalism must either collapse into psychofunctionalism (or some other non-superficial theory) or accept interpretivism’s hand in marriage.

A pluralistic approach to folk psychology must countenance the evaluative, regulatory, predictive, and explanatory roles played by attributions of intelligence in social practices across cultures. Building off of the work of the psychologist Robert Sternberg and the philosophers Gilbert Ryle and Daniel Dennett, I argue that a relativistic interpretivism best accounts for the many varieties of intelligence that emerge from folk discourse. To be intelligent is to be comparatively good at solving intellectual problems that an interpreter deems worth solving.

The new western way of war from Vietnam in Iraq -- Theories of the new western way of war -- The global surveillance mode of warfare -- Rules of risk-transfer war -- Iraq: risk economy of a war -- A way of war in crisis.

A general article discussing philosophical issues arising in connection with Aristotle's "Generation of Animals" (Chapter from Blackwell's Companion to Aristotle).

Background The ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care and public health continues to be an urgent issue for attention in policy, research, and practice. In this paper we report on central themes related to challenges and strategies for promoting ethics in research involving AI in global health, arising from the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR), held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2022. Methods The GFBR is an annual meeting organized by the World Health (...) Organization and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the South African MRC. The forum aims to bring together ethicists, researchers, policymakers, research ethics committee members and other actors to engage with challenges and opportunities specifically related to research ethics. In 2022 the focus of the GFBR was “Ethics of AI in Global Health Research”. The forum consisted of 6 case study presentations, 16 governance presentations, and a series of small group and large group discussions. A total of 87 participants attended the forum from 31 countries around the world, representing disciplines of bioethics, AI, health policy, health professional practice, research funding, and bioinformatics. In this paper, we highlight central insights arising from GFBR 2022. Results We describe the significance of four thematic insights arising from the forum: (1) Appropriateness of building AI, (2) Transferability of AI systems, (3) Accountability for AI decision-making and outcomes, and (4) Individual consent. We then describe eight recommendations for governance leaders to enhance the ethical governance of AI in global health research, addressing issues such as AI impact assessments, environmental values, and fair partnerships. Conclusions The 2022 Global Forum on Bioethics in Research illustrated several innovations in ethical governance of AI for global health research, as well as several areas in need of urgent attention internationally. This summary is intended to inform international and domestic efforts to strengthen research ethics and support the evolution of governance leadership to meet the demands of AI in global health research. (shrink)

Psychometric g—a statistical factor capturing intercorrelations between scores on different IQ tests—is of theoretical interest despite being a low-fidelity model of both folk psychological intelligence and its cognitive/neural underpinnings. Psychometric g idealizes away from those aspects of cognitive/neural mechanisms that are not explanatory of the relevant variety of folk psychological intelligence, and it idealizes away from those varieties of folk psychological intelligence that are not generated by the relevant cognitive/neural substrate. In this manner, g constitutes a high-fidelity bridge model of (...) the relationship between its two targets and, thereby, helps demystify the relationship between folk and scientific psychology. (shrink)

In this chapter I consider the narrow and wider benefits of permitting assisted dying in the specific context of organ donation and transplantation. In addition to the commonly used arguments, there are two other neglected reasons for permitting assisted suicide and/or euthanasia: assisted dying enables those who do not wish to remain alive to prolong the lives of those who do, and also allows many more people to fulfill their wish to donate organs after death. In the first part of (...) this chapter I explore the possibility of allowing those who die with assistance to donate their organs and the potential benefits of doing so in countries where some form of assisted dying is legal; in the second part I consider the added force that organ donation considerations bring to the argument in favour of legalizing assisted dying in countries where such practices remain forbidden. (shrink)

A hypnotic induction produces different patterns of spontaneous experiences across individuals. The magnitude and characteristics of these responses covary moderately with hypnotic suggestibility, but also differ within levels of hypnotic suggestibility. This study sought to identify discrete phenomenological profiles in response to a hypnotic induction and assess whether experiential variability among highly suggestible individuals matches the phenomenological profiles predicted by dissociative typological models of high hypnotic suggestibility. Phenomenological state scores indexed in reference to a resting epoch during hypnosis were submitted (...) to a latent profile analysis. The profiles in the derived four-class solution differed in multiple experiential dimensions and hypnotic suggestibility. Highly suggestible individuals were distributed across two classes that exhibited response patterns suggesting an inward attention subtype and a dissociative subtype. These results provide support for dissociative typological models of high hypnotic suggestibility and indicate that highly suggestible individuals do not display a uniform response to a hypnotic induction. (shrink)

How did the 3.5-inch Winchester hard disk drive become the fundamental building block of the modern data center? In attempting to answer this question, I theorize the concept of "data peripheries" to attend to the awkward, uneven, and unintended outsides of data infrastructures. I explore the concept of data peripheries by first situating Big Data in one of its many unintended outsides—an unassuming dog kennel in Indiana housed in a former permanent magnet manufacturing plant. From the perspective of this dog (...) kennel, I then build a history of the 3.5-inch Winchester hard disk drive, and weave this hard drive history through the industrial histories of rare earth mining and permanent magnet manufacturing, focusing principally on Magnequench, a former General Motors subsidiary, and its sale and movement of operations from Indiana to China in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. I then discuss how mobilities of rare earths, both as materials and political discourse, shape Big Data futures, and conclude by speculating on how using the situated lenses of data peripheries can open up new methods for studying the material entanglements of Big Data writ large. (shrink)

Intracellular NLR (Nucleotide‐binding domain and Leucine‐rich Repeat‐containing) receptors are sensitive monitors that detect pathogen invasion of both plant and animal cells. NLRs confer recognition of diverse molecules associated with pathogen invasion. NLRs must exhibit strict intramolecular controls to avoid harmful ectopic activation in the absence of pathogens. Recent discoveries have elucidated the assembly and structure of oligomeric NLR signalling complexes in animals, and provided insights into how these complexes act as scaffolds for signal transduction. In plants, recent advances have provided (...) novel insights into signalling‐competent NLRs, and into the myriad strategies that diverse plant NLRs use to recognise pathogens. Here, we review recent insights into the NLR biology of both animals and plants. By assessing commonalities and differences between kingdoms, we are able to develop a more complete understanding of NLR function. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of Descartes’s method of doubt. It wields an examination of Descartes’s pedagogy—as exemplified by The Search for Truth as well as the Meditations—to make the case for the sincerity (as opposed to artificiality) of the doubts engendered by the First Meditation. Descartes was vigilant about balancing the need to use his method of doubt to achieve absolute certainty with the need to compensate for the various foibles of his scholastic and unschooled readers. Nevertheless, Descartes endeavored (...) to instill willful, context-independent, universal doubt across his readership. If all goes well, readers of the Meditations are like method actors; the Meditator is the character they are meant to bring to life, via the method of meditating on reasons for doubt. The article concludes with the suggestion that Descartes was the same kind of skeptic as the early Academic skeptics Arcesilaus and Carneades. (shrink)

In his seminal essay “The Philosophical Basis of Eighteenth-Century Racism”, Richard Popkin argued that, when one looks more closely at some of the Enlightenment’s most important thinkers, one is c...

Descartes held the following view of declarative memory: to remember is to reconstruct an idea that you intellectually recognize as a reconstruction. Descartes countenanced two overarching varieties of declarative memory. To have an intellectual memory is to intellectually reconstruct a universal idea that you recognize as a reconstruction, and to have a sensory memory is to neurophysiologically reconstruct a particular idea that you recognize as a reconstruction. Sensory remembering is thus a capacity of neither ghosts nor machines, but only of (...) human beings qua mind-body unions. This interpretation unifies Descartes’s various remarks (and conspicuous silences) about remembering, from the 1628 Rules for the Direction of the Mind through the suppressed-in-1633 Treatise of Man to the 1649 Passions of the Soul. It also rebuts a prevailing thesis in the current secondary literature—that Cartesian critters can remember—while incorporating the textual evidence for that thesis—Descartes’s detailed descriptions of the corporeal mechanisms that construct sensory memories. (shrink)

This study tested the prediction that dissociative tendencies modulate the impact of a hypnotic induction on cognitive control in different subtypes of highly suggestible individuals. Low suggestible , low dissociative highly suggestible , and high dissociative highly suggestible participants completed the Stroop color-naming task in control and hypnosis conditions. The magnitude of conflict adaptation was used as a measure of cognitive control. LS and LDHS participants displayed marginally superior up-regulation of cognitive control following a hypnotic induction, whereas HDHS participants’ performance (...) declined. These findings indicate that dissociative tendencies modulate the influence of a hypnotic induction on cognitive control in high hypnotic suggestibility and suggest that HS individuals are comprised of distinct subtypes with dissimilar cognitive profiles. (shrink)

A compelling combination of photography, cultural history, and philosophical geography, Double Take presents more than seventy photographic pairs - each a distinctive "then" and "now" view of the same location - that document more than a century of change in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. Presented side-by-side, the dramatic transformations comprise one of the most ambitious and exacting urban rephotography surveys ever undertaken. Celebrated Wisconsin photographer Zane Williams has meticulously replicated the original views of an earlier Madison photographer, Angus McVicar, who (...) first shot these locales from the 1920s to the 1950s. The result is a rich archive of historic and contemporary images and a provocative examination into the nature of change in a mid-sized American city. (shrink)